The Acrobatics Line

[foste.3098]

Ever since the big patch the acro line has been deleted from the game due to the fact it was being carried by 2 passive traits, instant reflexes & hard to catch for non-sword builds, both of which now have a 300 sec cd. Now we all speculated that anet plans to eventually rework traits like these 2 across all classes, which is perfectly fine, however meanwhile something else about the acrobatics line surfaced; that most of the traits in it are total garbage unless you par it with sword. So then here is my view on what can be changed to make acrobatic better and less tied to sword:

 

-move vigorous recovery to master tier, replacing guarded initiation, reduce the vigor it gives from 10 to ~4 seconds BUT make vigor grant thief 100 power. This would solve the sword issue by having a good all around trait that can fit any build that has lots of dodges.

-move guarded initiation to adept tier, replacing vigorous recovery, and change it to remove combat inhibiting condition (blindness, weakness, slow, chill and cripple) when the thief has 100 endurance spent (this would mean when you have 0 dodges as a thief/deadeye and when you have 1 dodge left as daredevil) with a icd of ~50 sec, combat only. This is meant to be a mirror of pain response, giving you a choice between being resilient against damaging or inhibiting conditions.

-Change assassin's reward to grant ~3k hp, vigor for ~5 sec & regeneration for ~10 sec when the player drops below 4 initiative while in combat, with an icd of ~35 seconds. This is meant to change the trait from prolonged sustain to burst sustain which fits acrobatics thief better since you are dodging damage and therefore are at mostly full hp, and when you do take damage it is usually in the form of bursts in between evades, so making the trait burst-sustain you makes more sense.

 

And now for the 300 cd traits, they need to remain defensive since that is main the purpose of acrobatics, they have to not be passive bs that auto saves you, and they can be tied to boons since that is one of the themes of acrobatics. With that in mind:

 

-Move hard to catch to grand master tier, swapping place with don't stop (which is now master tier). Change it to grants 50 endurance and 2 initiative when you get disabled by hard cc, ~50 sec icd. This way you gain the means to escape when you get locked down BUT you have to have a stun break off cooldown since it no longer auto stun breaks you.

-Instant reflexes gets changed to grant regeneration ~3 sec when ever you grant yourself swiftness and it also grants you swiftness for ~4 sec whenever you use a skill that costs 5 or more initiative. Basically makes you have high regeneration uptime while maintaining swiftness uptime on yourself.

 

This is what i came up with, if you have any ideas of your own pin them in below.

 

 

[alchemyst.2165]

Heres my suggestion:

Vigorous recovery gets changed to getting 50 endurance when using a healing skill.

Instant reflexes gets changed to getting a 7% damage reduction buff for 4 seconds after a successful evade (synergize with dash) 10 second ICD

Pain response remains as is.

 

Hard to catch gets changed to getting superspeed for 4 seconds whenever you succesfully disable someone (~25 second ICD). Gain 5 endurance whenever you apply swiftness or superspeed to yourself.

 

Upper hand: Replace regeneration with 2 stacks of might for 4 seconds.

Assassin's reward: up the healing by 10%

Don't stop: leave as is

 

Basically, it should reward successful use of active play/defenses.