Consider the following. Most of the subterfuge skills are ignored. At the endgame, rogue is too squishy to play solo melee. If smokebomb worked with imbue you could. . .
See more synergy with trick attack, rapid gambit, Precision Imbuement, Deadly Venom, Alchemical Advantage, Debilitating Toxins, etc.
It would work better with combo points, and gear modifiers, as you could spread CC effects before hitting twisting blades or flurry. As opposed to only benefiting from these effects after flurry/twisting blades spreads the effects.
It would work better with aspects. Quickening fog anyone? What about Edgemaster’s Aspect? You could have a crowd around you already effected by various status effects that would let us use more of our buckets. Since we’d no longer be using something like flurry to spread vulnerability as a requirement. You might actually see people using the alternative enhancement that stuns on evade, and people might begin to value addition evade charges as a result.
It would resolve some of the squishy-ness, too.
N’come on! Poisoned / drugging gasses are a thematic staple of assassins, rogues and ninja.
There’s a metric ton of nice things that making smokebomb imbue friendly would accomplish. It might even make frost imbue a viable option given the interplay of the talents around it.