Eugenides.1274

Only if they also add Gift of Exploration. 😊

I don't know how else you would describe back to back to back Black Powder -> Bound / Black Powder -> Heartseeker / Sniper's Cover -> Death's Advance / Cloak and Dagger (on walls) chaining other than degenerate gameplay. Just because other classes can do similar things doesn't make it a false statement (classes can have similar issues). We've all fought those thieves where all you have to do is sneeze on them in a fight and then they stealth chain for 30 seconds waiting for cooldowns. Sure, if they're just chaining stealth they're not damaging you but I personally don't think it's a healthy gameplay style. I agree that old SA was worse but I feel like the current SA only moved the bar. The old SA stealth on steal, stealth on healing skill use, ini regen/healing while in stealth were kind of insane design choices looking back on them. I don't think changing Shadow Rejuvenation to reward on attacking from stealth would kill the traitline. You could even make it give 4 or 5 initiative since you have to proc revealed to get initiative back. I'm also personally okay with seeing builds other than d/p or rifle SA.

In PvP and WvW even if you adjust the current values Shadow Rejuvenation rewards degenerate gameplay a bit too much in my opinion. Making it reward you for hitting with a stealth attack is a healthier approach they could take if they want to rework it. For example, "Gain X initiative when you strike an enemy with a stealth attack." or even "Gain X initiative when striking an enemy from stealth." You could potentially add secondary effects to the trait or make it give back higher amount of initiative if it feels too weak since the thief ends up being revealed when proccing it.

Where are you looking to play it? If it's just open world PvE then just go ahead and use what you enjoy. If you're talking about looking at endgame meta builds then they're always shifting. After the most recent patch there are power dps deadeye and power quickness deadeye builds that use dagger/dagger alongside other weapons. Do you prefer core thief/daredevil/deadeye/specter? That influences what kind of build you'll have access to and suggestions people can make.

Weapon swap CD is kind of a double edged sword. It's nice for classes with weapon cooldowns but it doesn't play well with weapon swap sigils. Thief utilizes them in pretty much every game mode and in some cases alongside Quick Pockets. I'd rather they bump up the initiative regained to 5/6 or maybe change it to something like "For X seconds after swapping weapons your next X initiative based attacks do not consume/cost X less initiative."

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burst_of_Agility Yeah, it's a silly trait. It would be nice if thief had a reliable source of self quickness in our traits without DE. Burst of Agility doesn't really even need the stun break. If it was a low cooldown quickness on flanking attack it would be a competitive trait with Thrill of the Crime. Depending on the cooldown it could be best in slot. At the very least they should match the cooldown with the current Haste cooldown.

As much as it could help breath some life into thief I doubt we'll see any large change to the initiative system at this point. Most likely just continued tuning of the existing traits/initiative costs. They've created a balancing nightmare for themselves with all of the initiative related traits. They pretty much HAVE to assume that you will have Trickery (+3 base increase, +2 gained on successful steal) in PvP/WvW at this point. Throw in Shadow Rejuvenation (+2 gained entering stealth, +1 gained exiting) and the recently buffed Upper Hand (+1 gained on dodge w/ 4s cooldown, +1 gained on evade) and now you have even more initiative generation problems to try and balance around. Shadow Rejuvenation being the obvious biggest issue. Their solution to reduce the effectiveness of specific traits based on the other traits you're taking doesn't feel like the right way forward. If this is just a bandaid solution while they work an adjustments for a later patch, fine. If it's just a one-off change, fine. Either way they really should have added some notes about their mindset behind this change in the patch notes. Making 15 initiative baseline, removing initiative gain from some traits (mainly Shadow Rejuvenation), and rebalancing current initiative costs would probably be best but it would also require a lot of testing to make sure things remain viable.

It applies outside of WvW as well but using a few additional keybinds can help make specter support feel more fluid. None of them are set by default so you have to go into your settings and set them yourself. Set Personal Target & Take Personal Target: This lets you set a target that won't be overwritten by target calls in your subgroup. This is useful to put on high value damage dealers/frontliners that you want to focus with your sc/p barriers/prot/quickness. Nearest Ally / Next Ally / Previous Ally: I only personally use Nearest Ally because in a zerg the next/previous options get somewhat unwieldy. There are times where you just want to use your targeted skills regardless of the target and using these keybinds can help. Toggle Ally Targeting Mode: If you ONLY want to focus on healing and will never want to use your skills on an enemy. I don't personally use it but it's up to your personal taste. This will allow you to guarantee that you're clicking an ally and don't missclick an enemy in a close quarters fight. It's really up to personal preference if you feel like the keybinds help or not but they're worth playing around with a bit. I think everyone (especially thieves) should bind personal target since it allows you to plan escape routes/jukes (targets for s2/steal/infiltrator's signet/etc) while not interfering with party targets.

I agree but CMC doesn't want thieves to have unblockables. 🙃 RIP Swipe.

↑ Agree with this. PvE functionality won't really be affected by this change at all so it still has a use for skips/jumping puzzles/whatever. In WvW 99% of the time it just enables gremlin behavior. Making thieves work a little harder to troll around (we already have plenty of other tools available) doesn't seem like the end of the world.

+1. Even after they adjusted it from the beta it still needs some cast time reduction. It unfortunately feels like they designed this weapon with perma quickness in mind.

A/D still feels fine comparing before and after the patch. I haven't played A/P much because I don't like running Bounding Dodger with all the cripple/immo/chill spam in WvW. You need some sort of reliable stealth access if you're running axe. I've been having some success with A/D and S/D in small scale. Play it slow and try to set up 2 or 3 Cunning Salvo axes before using axe 3. Even though the A/D 3 doesn't have the damage buff that A/P 3 does it still pumps out damage. The burst can take people off guard. S/D mainly for more kiting potential and when melee is more appropriate. For zergs? I just don't run axe. You're going to kill yourself with reflects or by teleporting into a boonball. It's a projectile weapon at the end of the day so you have to treat it as such. A/P is somewhat similar but I just can't get into the playstyle (replace S/D with D/P) because of Bounding Dodger :/.

I'm assuming the line of sight change was the sloppy solution to prevent axe from being able to hit enemies inside of keeps/towers? It was kind of ridiculous and needed to be changed but their way of fixing it doesn't feel like it was tested very well. In other news, axe 3 on both dagger and pistol still can't hit any siege in WvW 🤣. Wonder how long it will take to get fixed.

Just tested in-game and can confirm that it isn't counted. This seems so odd that hopefully it's just an oversight. +1 to changing it to a shadowstep.

From your video it looks like the axe generated from Malicious Cunning Salvo consumes malice when recalled by using skill 3. I haven't been able to log in yet after the most recent patch to Malicious Cunning Salvo but I suppose whatever they changed made it behave that way? I can't recall if this was the same behavior we saw during the beta.