Guild Wars 2

I think the reason why Trickery appears to be a must have is because of the sheer weakness of the other supportive line, namely the Acro traitline. Unfortunatly, too much of the evasion reward system is part of the Daredevil, making Acro lackluster as it is by now. Some people say that the Daredevil traitline actually is what the Acro traitline should be. Well, I think they are right in some way. In my opinion, Escapists absolution and Driven fortitude should be Acro traits.

If Acro rewarded evasions in a actually fair and meaningful way, we would have a real contender to Trickery and maybe we wouldn’t need to role it. So fixing Acro might resolve the problem. For example: If Upper hand gave two initiative instead of 1, I would consider to have a real contender to Prepardness and Kleptomaniac.

That’s just my two cents. I think you could perfectly play competitively with 10 initiative; IF we have viable initiative regen system that replaces the benefits from Trickery.

Same here, I really enjoy the work put in the animations, especially considering the fact that we were originally supposed to get the hammer animations for the staff. I am surprised and happy

I am highly skeptical about the riffle. Unless Anet blows our mind with a super-innovative approach to this weapon, I am afraid that we will basically just get a harpoon-thrower copy, with a basic auto- attack, a pewpewpew skill,…

This scenario would be disappointing and dull. Especially of you consider the fact that the riffle is a static, heavy weapon, designed for long and powerful shots. I just don’t think it would fit to the overall theme of the thief, who needs to be light and mobile to compensate for his low health pool.

I really enjoy the thief gameplay, the main reason being the mobility and the shadow step mechanic, which allows all these crazy tp combos. With the riffle, I think that those two features of the thief would take a serious hit.

That’s just my 2 cents about the topic, I am basically open for anything as long as the concept of the thief is not betrayed.

(I wouldn’t even mind to get a riffle; under the condition that it is well designed! ^.^)

I think thiefs have the lowest health pool and are the most vulnerable of all professions. Train stealth gameplay of course and, more importantly, train the mechanics of the shadow step. It was quite hard for me to get used to the sheer speed and anticipation that results from the shadow step gameplay.
For example: What do you want to do to an enemy once you used steal on him? Wanna CnD? Or flanking strike? Or get out of melee with shadow strike? Or do you prefer to blind him and stay in melee? Or set a trap? You have to know that before you get close to the ennemy.

The engine of Guild wars 2 allows you to do all this crazy, instantaneous shadow step combos that are incredibly cool and satisfying, but it won’t go without practice!
Your brain has to get used to the speed and timing of shadow steps, so train them! that’s the best advise I can give