Bug/oversight is with 'artful prey'.

Normal Thief steal - 2 seconds-ish
Goblin steal - 4 seconds

This is fine, its a fair trade since goblins aren't thieves and can steal from everyone.

Artful Prey is an automatic skill compareable to 'payment of the coward' in that it is automatic when people do close combat skills or when thieves steal from you. The problem is instead of it working lag free like payment of the coward, the thief is lagged for the 4 seconds normal lag of steal.

So basically a goblin that gets triggered to countersteal or steal automatically when being bashed is lagged not only for the bash duration but an additional 4 seconds from the steal.

tl;dnr if you want to kill a goblin make them countersteal from you because there is hella lag for them that they can't turn off

So artful prey will no longer steal an item back, but it will steal coins.

It will not lag the goblin at all.