The role of Thieves and lack thereof.

(Anyone know what the key is supposed to represent?)

             Good idea:  Bringing an infiltration specialist to an infiltration mission

Bad idea:  Bringing a pickpocket into an infiltration mission

I've previously covered a lot of my rants about Thieves here; How to Re-work the Thief.

This long list of changes summed up to the following Thief-related issues:

1. Thieves don't have a role in WvW
2. Steal is an incomplete profession-specific mechanic
3. Weapon choices for Thieves need to be improved
4. Thieves lack a variety of different play-styles

Keep in mind, this was the information I gathered during BWE2/3 and the various stress tests that occurred in between.  After having played the Thief for the past 2 weeks since launch though, I've found a whole other list of problems and solutions to my favorite archetype.

In no short order, I'll sum up what exactly the Thief does well, and where it should be - but isn't.

Can Do's:

1. Thieves have high mobility.  Steal, Infiltrator's Arrow, Heartseeker, Infiltrator's Signet, Shadowstep - and various forms of access to Swiftness make it almost impossible to escape a Thief so long as you are on a semi-flat plane as the enemy.
2. Thieves can avoid a lot of attacks.  Dodging, faster dodging with signets, blinds, death blossoms (if wearing daggers) and disabling shots (if using a shortbow), you can successfully avoid a lot of potential damage - leading to one of the many reasons Thieves are a "skill" based class.
3. Thieves can get away like no one's business.  Hard to Catch, several anti-ports like Shadow Strike, Withdraw, Roll for Initiative - and other similar mechanics make it so the Thief can essentially escape combat whenever they want.*

*I would just like to point out the hilarity of the situation in which you are under attack by 20+ enemies in world vs. world, and in order to escape the situation you do a combo of withdraw + roll for initiative + multiple heartseekers.  Nothing makes the enemy say "ehhh... not worth it" like a thief troll-rolling and flipping away at 1000 miles an hour.  "troll-lol-lol-roll!"

Tries-But-Can't Do's:

1. Thieves can't be tricksy:  Needle, Ambush, Shadow and Tripwire traps are far from useful.  They've got unfortunate restrictions placed upon them, what with the half minute+ cooldowns, and the inability to use more than one of the same trap.  So many possibilities for complex skill-based combat are muzzled and silenced.  You can't lay down an arena of needle or tripwires to run your enemy around, or summon a small army of 20 second thieves to keep the enemy on their toes.  Worse yet, there are conflicting play-styles associated with traps.  Only one of them can be placed at a distance, meaning that in order to effectively use traps in melee will require you to set one down, wait for an enemy to trigger it, and hope you aren't dead before they get impaled by spikes or have a vicious attack-ninja after them.
2. Thieves can't be infiltrators:  Don't let infiltrator's signet or infiltrator's arrow fool you.  They don't infiltrate squat, and it's due in part to the fear of using the word "catch-up" as a synonym for infiltrate, as well as the developers not wanting to give enough liberty with Thieves to become an actual competitive class in WvW.  All our shadow-stepping won't change the fact that enemies on a slightly inclined ledge, up a wall (but still within range), will laugh their asses off when they see you blow a long-cooldown only to end up 2 feet from where you were just standing.  We're grounded, and may never know what it's like to fly, let alone infiltrate.
3. Thieves are passive-aggressive:  Poisons, Signets, and Traps make up 75% of our utility skills.  These either have set-and-forget mechanics, or an active -> passive effect which means almost all of our combat is dependent on either setting up a skill effect, or mashing our weapon skills.
4. Thieves can't stealth:  Oh they can?  They have so many effects which trigger stealth after all.  I must be wrong here.  Normally when you're stealthed you become "invisible".  You are now the 'unknown'.  Where'd he go?  I don't know!  Is he running away?  Is he going to stab me in the back?  Am I about to be shadow-stepped into the enemy formation?  OH GOD THIS IS HORRIBLE!  Wait, no, he was only stealthed for 3-5 seconds, he only had enough time to get away from me by a few feet, or get behind me (which I knew he was going to do so I shuffled around so he couldn't get a clear shot and/or just ran away because they don't have much of an answer to the enemy turning tail upon seeing you stealth).  You can't even set up a decent hit with a simple skill like backstab, let alone get the upper-hand in a 1v1 combat situation as a Thief.

I've got plenty of solutions for everything about a Thief, as mentioned in the above linked post.  However, I have even more than that if anyone's interested.  Ask me for a solution to a problem you see, and I'll give you one.

For now though, take this for what I've presented - Thieves are good at running away, catching up, and evading attacks - but all that counts for nothing if you either can't access your enemies.  Even worse, what happened to me might happen to you - you get your Thief into their 40's, and become bored out of your mind at mashing the same 2-3 weapon skills over and over.