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It’d help if there were more than literally one non-Thief player suggesting constructive and well-thought changes. And believe me, it’s just that one—I’ve been keeping track 
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I really dont think this would be reasonable. Most thieves Ive fought against can pretty much reapply stealth nearly instantly.
4 seconds is the opposite of “nearly instantly” in PvP. It’s an eternity.
If you havent fought against a permastealth thief yourself though, you have no idea how frustrating it can be, simply swinging in the air and trying to guess where that thief is. Especially if its a zerker build, as are you, and he can literally one shot you with backstab.
It’s only possible to do anything remotely similar to what you describe in WvW, and PvP should not be balanced around WvW, as it is an extension of the PvE of the game and more about server community than anything else.
Even in WvW, “perma-stealth” builds have a multitude of weaknesses that can be easily exploited if you know what you’re doing. But as usual, that doesn’t matter, because they’re not “fun” to fight against (nor is it “fun” to have to educate yourself about something outside of your area of experience), so the nerfs will keep on coming because these kind of opinions are the ones ArenaNet actually listens to.
Granted, there are exceptions, but something as simple as C&D and bam, yer gone again.
Speaking of things outside of one’s experience… if you think hitting C&D consistently is “simple”, I suggest you play a Thief in PvP for a week (or even a day) and then getting back to me with your experience afterwards
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Thieves got Illusionary Weaponry’d 
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Thief tends to lack good fight presence. The burst is okay, but not as good as it once was, but I don’t think it is as bad as people suggest, I more think the gap between Thief and Mesmer became a bit too great and some Balancing needs to be done on Mesmer’s end as well.
Agreed. Other professions had their burst increased—so the gap between professions in terms of burst has shrunk some—but Thief’s is still quite good. Predictably, the bigger problem is that Thief often can’t survive long enough to deliver their potential burst. Until ArenaNet makes some major changes in the durability department, Thief will be a tough profession to even make adjustments to… so much potential is actively hindered or obscured by Thief’s inherent squishiness and lack of passive durability.
- Infiltrator’s Arrow, here’s the toughy, but an idea I wanted to throw out.
Infiltrator’s Arrow is such a huge, huge crutch for the Thief profession that I’m not even sure if there are meaningful balance adjustments to be made to it. At this point, I’d rather see it completely remade into something different (with some buffs and redesigns to the rest of Shortbow to even things out, of course). Maybe then Thieves could finally be allowed access to some of the tools every other profession seems to have.
- Improvisation, changed to “You can use Stolen items Twice. After stealing, your next utility has its cooldown reduced by 50%. I feel like this would reduce the RNG and the initial impact of certain resets while increasing the play. With the right set up and consideration, I feel like this could make for some better decision making and increase defenses in a more predictable manner. (Buff lasts 15 seconds.)
As much as I enjoy it at times, Improvisation definitely needs some kind of redesign. The more skill categories that are added, the more inconsistent Improv will get. My previous idea was to have it function mostly as now, but to reduce the recharge of a category of skills that ARE on your bar by 50% if the refresh RNG fails. Your idea would also work.
Most of your suggestions are generally on point, so I don’t have a lot of other specific feedback that immediately comes to mind
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This bug is quite a doozy and it’s been around for a while. If ArenaNet really wants GW2 to be as Esports as badly as it seems, you can’t have bugs like this hanging around for the better part of three years
The best solution is still to add a “Deathmatch” checkbox in the queueing window right next to the “Conquest” and “Stronghold” checkboxes we’ve seen in BWE builds. This would allow people who hate Courtyard to never have to play it, and for people who like Courtyard to tailor their builds to it knowing it’s the map they’ll be getting. It’d also open things up for the addition of future Deathmatch maps, in theory
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I like Scrapper a lot as a name. On a lore level, it fits nicely with the Charr origin of the term and its gradual evolution. On an aesthetic level, it’s a cool sounding name that well describes a hammer wielding spec that confidently wades into combat. That it reminds me of the halcyon days of City of Heroes doesn’t hurt, either
Some of the other elite specializations don’t have the best names though. No one seems to like Dragonhunter. As a Thief player I’m not crazy about Daredevil either; it doesn’t really fit the tone of the spec (the first minor is called “Enforcer Training” and that seems like it would have been a boring but more appropriate name).
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Druid is being designed by the same person behind Scrapper, which—a couple of meh Gyros aside—looks fun, interesting, and borderline overpowered. So yeah, I think Druid will be ok 
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That’s a hard question to answer, because as much as I’d like to see some major redesigns (especially on Staff), it’s unrealistic to expect that at this juncture. A lot of my feedback is also aimed at the core profession itself. No matter how well Daredevil ends up executed, it can only do so much while resting on top of such a shaky foundation. That said, here is what I think are the essential changes needed for Daredevil:
• Replacement Dodges: While they are good on a mechanical level, everything about their animation and usability needs to be rock solid. It is also very important that the game treats them like a basic dodge, both for latency and gameplay reasons (they’re punishable by Confusion right now). For what it’s worth, these changes are almost certainly coming.
• Real Grandmaster Traits: There is no excuse for us not having them. None. The most obvious solution is to design new Grandmaster traits, then expand the first minor so that it adds a Revenant Legend style drop-down list. This drop-down would let you select one of the three Dodges at any time outside of combat or an active SPvP match.
• Escapist’s Absolution: This needs to be merged into the Driven Fortitude minor without any further debate. Assuming the core profession doesn’t receive any buffs to its condition removal before HoT, Daredevil needs EA as a minor for even D/P and Shortbow to remain viable against the power creep of the upcoming HoT meta.
• Staff #3: While the Immobilize break is nice, the skill is clunky and doesn’t flow with the rest of the Staff. It also forces you to spend Initiative to get close enough to resume pressure. Initiative is a precious and finite resource, and you shouldn’t have to spend 2/3 of it just to remove one Immobilize and get back in melee. The best solution would be to add an additional effect that triggers if Staff #3 hits an enemy with the initial attack. This effect would either give a temporary reduction on the cost of Staff #2, or trigger some kind of flip-skill on Staff #3 that lets you re-engage affordably.
• Staff #4: Currently serves no meaningful purpose. There is a widespread consensus that it should leave a line-shaped Dark or Smoke field. If you don’t want the field to pulse Blind, the skill itself could still fire a projectile that Blinds.
• Staff #5: Badly needs an evade for at least the last half or it will be useless in PvP after the first week of HoT no matter how much damage it does. There is no way it should cost 6 Initiative either, as the only weapon skill that does is Infiltrator’s Arrow and Vault is nowhere near that in terms of power or usefulness.
• Channeled Vigor: This feels like it was designed for a profession that doesn’t have the near non-existent durability that defines Thief. Even if that fragility were somehow addressed, 2.25 seconds is not a realistic cast time for a PvP heal. For basis of comparison, there are a scant three other healing skills in the entire game that have a 2+ second cast time. All belong to professions more durable than Thief, and yet those heals still don’t see play. Thieves are so squishy right now that a 1s cast heal isn’t realistic, so what are we going to do with one that takes 2.25s? CV is unique in that it pulses three small heals over its channel, but it’s still too long. Lower the channel to 1.5s at the most.
• Bandit’s Defense: As powerful as a 10s stun break sounded on paper, Thief has such specific needs from its stun break just to survive that this skill’s limitations already meant it might not see play… then it was nerfed to 15s with no further changes. Cooldown aside, the block needs to be longer and to block all hits during its duration, not one. It is also important that BD act like a normal rollover skill instead of automatically triggering, lest pets and other NPCs waste the trigger. It would be nice if the Kick portion had Evade frames for its duration, but that’s not as essential.
• Distracting Daggers: Drowning in needless limitations that obliterate its potential usefulness. The upcoming buff to projectile speed won’t address its deeper problems, such as an arbitrary 1s ICD between throws. At the minimum, it needs the ICD removed or the daggers made unblockable, otherwise the skill can’t fulfill its own purpose. The time limit also seems unnecessary—especially on top of an equip delay—but those limitations could theoretically be worked around if the rest was cleaned up.
• Fist Flurry: Speaking of arbitrary restrictions, it’s not reasonable to require that you land all five hits of a 1.25s melee range channel just to get to the good part of a skill. The smallest change that could make it worthwhile would be having the last hit trigger the flip over to Palm Strike. Funnily enough, it’s Palm Strike—not the Bandit’s Defense knockdown—that should trigger automatically.
• Impairing Daggers: Very close to where it needs to be. The design is fine, but it has some usability issues with the projectile speed and how it travels that cause this skill to fizzle in situations that it shouldn’t. Fix that and it’ll be fine.
• Impact Strike: Like the dodges, it is fairly good mechanically but has animation and usability issues. Tighten up the way the chain flows together (and make the last hit trigger the user’s custom finisher) and it should fulfill its intended purpose.
Did that answer your question?
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