Four Simple Changes

Here are a few simple changes that could help the Thief out.

1. Change "Dagger Training" into "Poison Training" so that it affects all weapons. Dagger AA will still have the advantage with this trait due to its speed, however, it will slightly boost sustain for all weapon sets due to Lotus Poison. It still requires giving up the instant damage and healing of Mug. At the very least, allow it to affect all melee weapons.
2. Add a 1/2 second evade to Haste and Infiltrator's Signet only if they break a stun. This allows a Thief a brief window to escape the immediate melee barrage... something that both Roll for Initiative and Shadowstep allow.
3. Make Signets of Power actually useful by allowing a signet's passives to always be functioning even while on cooldown. It's worth removing the "on kill" effects if necessary.
4. Add the Shortbow to be effected by the Ankle Shots trait.

3. Make Signets of Power actually useful by allowing a signet's passives to always be functioning even while on cooldown. It's worth removing the "on kill" effects if necessary.I don't necessarily agree with this particular approach but the on-kill effects do suck. They are utterly useless in all of the situations where you would actually like them to function in. They don't even really make sense when you consider what thief is about, single target DPS.
4. Add the Shortbow to be effected by the Ankle Shots trait.This would make sense as Sb doesn't have a trait of its own. But for a P/P Deadeye that would be kinda ridiculous, buffing both of their weapon sets with 1 trait.

I am indifferent to the first 2 changes.

Agreed on signets of power. I think changing to an always on passive or alternatively enhancing the active the way to go. On kill passives just do nothing. If you kill an enemy there little use to stealth right after or gain an extra INI.

For Haste I'd rather see a 5s reduction off the base CD, and along the same lines a 10s reduction for BoS. Haste is more of an offensive skill than RoI, and imo we should double down on that instead of baking more evade into it.

With the nerf to AA, access to quickness has become more important for landing the ever elusive last hit of the AA chains. Right now, consistently getting quickness is awkward as the CDs are different from Steal (unless youre running untraited Steal, which nobody does). With a CD reduction, traited Haste and BoS will line up with Steal nicely at 20s increments.

@"Kageseigi.2150" said:

1. Change "Dagger Training" into "Poison Training" so that it affects all weapons. Dagger AA will still have the advantage with this trait due to its speed, however, it will slightly boost sustain for all weapon sets due to Lotus Poison. It still requires giving up the instant damage and healing of Mug. At the very least, allow it to affect all melee weapons.

Sooo from what I'm hearing Condi DE buffed when you could run a hybrid build and use its power dmg and put more than 20 stacks of poison on it if you wanted to.

2. Add a 1/2 second evade to Haste and Infiltrator's Signet only if they break a stun. This allows a Thief a brief window to escape the immediate melee barrage... something that both Roll for Initiative and Shadowstep allow.

I would Not do this with Haste it would make it to where you could set up a burst rotation where you could evade hits while hitting them which if ran with a full zerk build could be very broken. Not only just haste also with infiltrator's signet that's making it a steal with evading so if I was to run this with D/D and go into a zerg on say a commander not to say this would be fun to do. Shadowstep, precast CnD, Steal, Backstab, While immune to the dmg in the zerg than teleport back with Shadow return if ran with a glass build you could most likely kill a commander.

3. Make Signets of Power actually useful by allowing a signet's passives to always be functioning even while on cooldown. It's worth removing the "on kill" effects if necessary.

So the thing here is if we are to run this with lots of hp makes our dmg go up for 5 secs not worth it. But say something like a glassy build uses it you've just given it a dmg buff when it's easy enough to get 18k backstabs and etc with DE. But a good alternative is to bring back the next 5 attacks that way we don't get this power buff that's there all the time but it's no big deal if they do keep it in.

4. Add the Shortbow to be effected by the Ankle Shots trait.

Well, this could be interesting actually you could maybe make a glassy build with shortbow nothing to say on it otherwise.

@killy.3278 said:Haste is more of an offensive skill than RoI, and imo we should double down on that instead of baking more evade into it.@pureskullz.7536 said:I would Not do this with Haste it would make it to where you could set up a burst rotation where you could evade hits while hitting them which if ran with a full zerk build could be very broken.

I apologize if I didn't make the caveat clear enough (I should have put it in bold). But the evade would happen ONLY if the skills broke a stun. Meaning that the evade is not on-demand. The skills would function as normal UNLESS the Thief is stunned.

The reasoning is this. Assume you are a glass cannon going into melee with a Warrior with nobody else around. For whatever reason, you fail in avoiding a stun, and the Warrior is following up with a Hundred Blades to finish you off. Roll for Initiative would evade out of range. Shadowstep would teleport you well out of range. However, while Haste and Infiltrator's Signet will break the stun, the Warrior is still going to be in your face with the killing blow on its way. If they had 1/2 evades ONLY on stunbreaks, then you would have a decent shot to run out of range of the attack (especially with Haste's Swiftness). Even if you can't outrun the attack, you would be able to avoid some of the damage as well as creating a short window to be able to dodge roll out of range.

So the evade would not be there to increase the offensive potential of the Thief, or even to allow it to avoid attacks under normal conditions. It would simply be there to allow a Thief to survive a follow-up attack to a stun... instead of successfully stunbreaking only to be killed by the attack already on its way.

But say something like a glassy build uses it you've just given it a dmg buff when it's easy enough to get 18k backstabs and etc with DE.

I'm not so sure it would imbalance the Assassin's Signet too much. It's only 180 Power, the equivalent of 6 Might. In order to run Signets of Power, the Thief would already be running Critical Strikes, and he would already be giving up Twin Fangs and also Assassin's Fury (which can achieve 180 Power in 2 seconds as well as boost Fury and Ferocity with No Quarter). The only change is that the Thief would be able to keep that extra 180 Power from the signet for those 5 seconds of active time as well the other 15 seconds of cooldown time.

As for the other signets, I don't see why they would be so overpowered either. Healing on attack as well as increased Precision, movement speed, and initiative regeneration shouldn't break anything. It would just allow a Thief to use signets when needed without actually punishing the Thief for using them.

@Kageseigi.2150 That can work and this might just if it was added help signet thief get a better place. Id still be cautious with the dmg buffs tho. It's not hard if your willing to lose all your hp for dmg the hardest BS I hit rn are 21.5k and I use power signet that 180 power all the time would boost me to around 4k power with an already 80% crit chance and 258% crit dmg. That's the only reason I'm saying be careful with suggesting that. But then again I'm not a fan of the after a kill heal or gain this it's not worth it in my eyes only for a group fight but I'd definitely take these changes compared to what we have for the signets.

@pureskullz.7536 said:the hardest BS I hit rn are 21.5k and I use power signet that 180 power all the time would boost me to around 4k power with an already 80% crit chance and 258% crit dmg.

Just curious... do you run in WvW or PvP?I don't have access to Deadeye, so I can't test it for myself. Thanks :-)

@Kageseigi.2150 WVW and in pvp its only a 3k difference for my build. And I don't use DE I'm daredevil, When I do use DE I'm using rifle and my crits are usually 20k each DJ.

@pureskullz.7536Ah, not sure why I thought Deadeye. Thanks.Would you mind posting your PvP Daredevil build please?I'm stuck to Core Thief, so I can't test it either, haha!

@"Kageseigi.2150"No worries and I do have a core build as well, I play D/D I started with core and I run all glass.but I don't use marauders or berserker I use Assassin and I use a core based utility but Daredevil its just all dmg and dash.But my core build I use crit strikes, trickery, DA,http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVlsMhSnYjTwyJw/EH0E1OPHu90HGfRZoDgJMCA-jpxHQBA4IAosDBQyKD0j9HI4JAIgPAAACore build ^

@pureskullz.7536Thank you. I used to run a similar build for D/P :-)

@Kageseigi.2150
No Problem, Can't stand running D/P I prefer to just be up in people's faces with D/D a lot more fun especially when I can just accidentally one shot if I land BS.

@pureskullz.7536 said:@Kageseigi.2150

No Problem, Can't stand running D/P I prefer to just be up in people's faces with D/D a lot more fun especially when I can just accidentally one shot if I land BS.

If only I could kill with a Backstab! :-DToo many Scourges around for me stay in melee without a quick escape or condi clears :-P

@Kageseigi.2150Yeah the best thing to help with that is keep lots of pressure on them and pop in and out of the AOE.