Make Thieves Stealth Again: Black Powder Edition

Anet took away our Heartseeker control. Anet took away our 1-second Blind pulse. Anet added a 1-second cooldown on Stealth Attacks. Anet added many Reveal skills. Anet won't let us contest points while in Stealth, which completely negates an entire traitline.

What can Anet give us in return? Well, many things. But for one...

Halve the initiative cost and duration of Black Powder. 3 initiative for 2 seconds.

Allow the Thief to weave in and out of Stealth more reliably. It already costs 9 initiative for ONE BP+HS combo (3/4 of a non-Trickery Thief initiative, and over half with Trickery). A Dagger/Pistol Thief can't sustain in melee these days. At least allowing it to enter into Stealth without blowing all of its offensive/defensive potential would let it stick in a fight longer, especially with Shadow Arts. Condition cleansing with Shadow's Embrace is big. Stealth Attacks are needed even more in today's game... and even if using Deadeye, the Malice won't last for more than one hit (besides, Deadeye can already Stealth Attack twice in a row with Shadow Meld).

Alas, what a sad time it is when such a change should even be suggested.

I see what you are suggesting. It's interesting, but you gotta remember that the whole point of the high ini cost is that there needs to be a cost on the reliable source of stealth, whereas Cloak and Dagger is meant to function they way you are suggesting Black Powder should in the sense it is very efficient at the cost of reliability.

I would personally lean more toward making Black Powder just more reliable to use defensively against Melee instead of being used almost exclusively for stealth. Maybe bringing back the Blind application rate or even increasing the size of the field a little.

EDIT: That is assuming that BP needs to be changed at all. It may be wiser to focus on bigger fish before addressing an ability that has basically been fine for awhile (in the sense not many people are complaining about it).

TBH, offhand Pistol abilities in general may need to be looked at.