Guild Wars 2

Thieves I like thieves where they are. High burst damage, in and out of a fight, but generally weak to condition damage. The offensive style thieves excel in 1 v 1 situations but generally won’t find a happy home in a zerg. The change to assassin signet was also welcome due to 1 shot backstabs being a bit overboard. However, there are two things about the thief I think could use some tweaking for balance/enjoyment.

1- long, long stealth
There is not too much stealth, per se, just too long stealth. Blinding powder, hide in shadows, I don’t see as too bad, shadow refuge is a bit OP. I don’t think stealth should stack so high, or stack at all really. In addition the revealed debuff is very short. Keep in mind that thief stealth brokenness is empowered further by the slow model loading in WvW.

To further illustrate this point, I would like to mention that I have achieved UNLIMITED stealth with my thief and no outside help. If you want to reproduce it just offhand a pistol and switch between bow. That alone + initiative traits can do it, but if you want to go overboard you can take shadow refuge, blinding powder, and smoke screen. 3 initiative blast finishers with no cd + smoke field + 2 initiative back on creating stealth… deception cd.. you get the point.

This might be okay if there were a way to break or reveal stealth, but there is no such mechanic, and the balance was supposed to be short duration. This relates to my #2 gripe,

2- Easy mode- I like the initiative idea, but it lets people spam button for the win. Maybe reduced effect or double initiative penalty for using same skill repeatedly in a row?
History of the thief patches: haste then,
dagger 222222222222- stealth, F key. patched but still somewhat effective
short bow 3333333333333 on face, stealth, f key. patched
sword/pistol 3333 stealth, f key. 15% damage nerf patch, still somewhat effective
(current fads)
dagger/dagger 333333333333 stealth, f key.
pistol pistol 33333333 stealth, f key

also two bugs that REALLY need to go: 1- infinite stealth+ sitting on control point in wvwvw trolling 50 people for 5 minutes lawls
2- inifinite stealth + shooting short bow 4 tons of people with poison build for almost a whole minute..and never leaving stealth, because the 4 skill doesn’t do damage on hit.

edit because I forgot some 33333s.

PS the sword and short bow stealth moves could use some love

this bug is still in game, surprised it hasn’t been fixed yet.