[if anet wants to design a brawler type of thief it shoud reduce the passive effects in the game to closely zero, give the thief in combat regen to make it able to survive the cleave it takes while actually doing damage, however it is still gonna be extremely weak against stealth spike damage.]
I like the evade concept anet is doing for DrD however it wont be strong enough in high MMR/competitive scene.
The problem with evasion is that it locks your character, you cannot do damage. this in mind your goal is to avoid big hitting abilitys and trade health when the enemy is unlikely to get on top. this would be doable if the eavesive weaponsets had abilityes with meaningful damage, but this is not the case(PWhip is an exception).
Even at this point you are most likely fail to hit due to the opponent has got 2evades + energy sigil+1, at least 2 types of invuln, and SHlTS blind condition or maybe has barely limited access to stealth.
Sometimes the opponent dosent even need to directly hit you with an ability, its passives and aoe fileds do the job for them, not to mention passive traits that CC you unevetably.
Even worse case is when your opponent got many instantcast abilityes (yes he is going to have becouse the more ‘against’ design abilityes you have the better).
Evading should be a mechanic that allows you to actively mitigate damage after seeing combat animations, NOT TO ENCHANCE YOUR PROPHET SKILLS to make sure for example mesmer wont hit F3, all the mantras with C S to burst you down in the upcomming stunned 1,5secs.
You dont have to be a mesmer to instantpunish somebody, just grab hydro+leeching or geom+20stacks might. ALLDONE you got your own selfmade, unavoidable bullkitten!! yay!
Builds with stalth are more likely to get on top of you. You have to use a lot of resources to avoid being gut for at least 40% hp. Becouse you know… you can’t really evade something that you dont see comming.
+1factor: you won’t be able to rez anybody unless you pick shadow arts, which is not fitting into the playstyle by any means.
So, as you see evasion oriented builds are doomed against GW2’s metagame.
Whar can be done? Not much… buffing driven fortitude for something like this wold be a good beginning:
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Gain regeneration on successfully evading an attack. (0.1 sec ICD)
Regeneration (1sec): 600 Heal
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this would enchance your survival in teamfights but stay closely the same in 1v1’s
(obviously you are going to evade more kitten at once in a bigger brawl so trait can proc more than once on an evade) also opening place to counterplay with boonhate.
EDIT: i dont want thief to excell in all 1v1 situations. that would be kinda kittened if thef jumps all over the map with the ports, winns all 1v1 for nodes. But evasive thief’s incompetence in any role needs solution.
that u did so well on pwhip. Rip sneaky pwhips c&d’s and backbrakers…