Guild Wars 2

A lot of thief players feel that the acrobatics trait line is absolutely terrible since the trait changes, and that partially that has to do with Feline Grace, which now only grants vigor after performing a successful evade.

I was also incredibly disappointed to find more “on successful evade” traits revealed for the Daredevil. Here is why:

Simply put, there is a multitude of situations where you can dodge an attack but the game doesn’t register it as a successful evade. Dodge out of an AoE that’s just going down? You don’t get rewarded. Dodge early because you anticipated your opponent’s moves, rather than reacting to the attack? You don’t get rewarded. Dodge early because your opponent has telegraphed an attack with a large windup time? You don’t get rewarded.

The design as it currently holds, forces you to be at the mercy of the game engine for determining what’s an evade and what’s not … and if you play smart, by anticipating your opponent’s moves or reacting to their telegraphed attacks before it hits, you are effectively punished by the game engine. This is unfair.

I cannot stress enough how utterly terrible of a design this is. No gameplay mechanic in the game should ever punish players for skillful play! I understand Anet wants to make evading attacks more skill-based rather than reward every dodge equally, but in some ways this design actually accomplishes the opposite effect by not rewarding the players who play well.

I strongly urge Anet to consider reworking these traits. No gamer should be punished for skillful play.

B-But a timed dodge is skillful play. >_>
Conversely, should a player be rewarded for wasting a dodge?

I’m not going to say yes or no just yet, but it’s the inverse question that’s necessary to ask.

And no, I’m not one of those elitists or tryhards. I suck at dodging. I ‘waste’ them all the time. :P

Rauderi.8706:

B-But a timed dodge is skillful play. >_>

What then? Should players train themselves to always dodge at the last possible moment just to make sure the game actually recognizes it as an evade? Dodging is a reflex action. You don’t have time to think about whether or not the game will count it as an evade.

Rauderi.8706:

Conversely, should a player be rewarded for wasting a dodge?

You must have one or the other, and wasting a dodge comes with its own price of using up the endurance you had stored, leaving you without a dodge for when a real attack comes. I’d rather have a game mechanic that rewards players for all dodges, rather than a mechanic punishes players who play smart and anticipate their opponents.

That’s why they are called daredevils. Not for dodging the moment they see the circle but staying in it until the last moment.

Tim.6450:

That’s why they are called daredevils. Not for dodging the moment they see the circle but staying in it until the last moment.

Riiiiight, and the engineer is called a forge because they forge weapons and armor … the reverent is called a herald because they shout at people on street corners.

Give me a break. It was called a daredevil because it’s a high risk, high reward playstyle, not because the game developers intentionally wanted players to be at the mercy of the game engine’s evade recognition system.

It’s designed to promote skillful dodges, but inadvertently(or maybe intended) punishes a different type of viable and meaningful play, like Ausfer has wrote : dodging prior to aoe’s, wind up skills and etc. Aren’t those skillful?

Ultimately, whether or not Anet or we see those as skillful or not, what is definite and not subject to one’s opinion is that a part of the thief players spectrum is getting shafted because of this, no one can deny that.

I agree that this has to be turned back in to regular dodges, because I for one and atleast a handful of other thief players see this and the first thing that comes to our mind isn’t ‘oh alright lets play more skillfully!’, it’s ‘oh it’s punishing me even if I dodge and game sees it as no dodge’. It’s not fair.

Also, so what if I do dodge prematurely or otherwise in a manner seen as a ‘waste’? I will get those ‘benefits’ from those traits BUT I’ve lost a dodge because of that and I will be punished when I actually need a dodge. I won’t be able to dodge and be hit fair and square. I’m not getting better benefits for ‘wasting’ a dodge. I AM already punished for it.

So please Anet, revert it back to it’s old ‘on dodge’. All this ‘on successful evade’ is promoting an unjust playstyle where it’s stressful for the player to make sure we have to strive to see the ‘Evade’ words in battle just to reap a small benefit.

Or make it game wide for all other professions. Oh, no? Don’t want to let Guardians or Wars heal/dmg on dodge without successful evade? Then why do we? Why is our dodge on trait mechanism any different to theirs? Why don’t you ‘promote skillful dodges’ on their traits? We need all the benefits we can reap because unlike those other professions, we don’t have other forms of readily available blocks/reflects/defenses. They have those AND can proc their on dodge traits 100%. So why are we getting worse rewarding mechanisms? It’s not fair, anyone can see that.

I am not speaking on behalf of every thief out there but I speak on these matters because I’ve seen and heard others expressing similar concerns. I am not alone and from what I’m seeing, there’s more than a handful of similar minded players.

Dodging is incredibly forgiving in GW2. In my opinion, evade frames on dodges should be less than they currently are…maybe 0.2 seconds instead of a full second.

OP makes a good case, but the counter argument that purposefully putting yourself in harms’ way until the last fraction of a second is also sound. How about splitting the rewards? eg. Get A for dodge rolling, get B for evading.

Rauderi.8706:

B-But a timed dodge is skillful play. >>
Conversely, should a player be rewarded for _wasting a dodge?

I’m not going to say yes or no just yet, but it’s the inverse question that’s necessary to ask.

And no, I’m not one of those elitists or tryhards. I suck at dodging. I ‘waste’ them all the time. :P

Try being a necro, I use mine to move into combat range when needed due to being so kitten slow!

As for the OP, IMO they are working as intended, if you can dodge an attack before it hits then good for you, but it is the avoiding of damage that counts here. If you want the traits to fire, maybe time you dodges a bit slower.

Rauderi.8706:

B-But a timed dodge is skillful play. >>
Conversely, should a player be rewarded for _wasting a dodge?

I’m not going to say yes or no just yet, but it’s the inverse question that’s necessary to ask.

And no, I’m not one of those elitists or tryhards. I suck at dodging. I ‘waste’ them all the time. :P

Why is it more skillful to dodge at the last moment, and thus being in your dodge animation when they arrive, rather than say, predicting your opponent’s gap closing attack at range, and dodging out of its reach early so that you’re free to attack while they’re animation locked?

Or predicting 100 blades, and dodging to get them before the first strike occurs, to maximise the time in which you can attack while they’re channeling.

When you’re dodging your not attacking. If you can get out of the line of attack early and retaliate while they’re caught in it, it’s better than simply dodging through it.

Eponet.4829:

Rauderi.8706:

B-But a timed dodge is skillful play. >>
Conversely, should a player be rewarded for _wasting a dodge?

I’m not going to say yes or no just yet, but it’s the inverse question that’s necessary to ask.

And no, I’m not one of those elitists or tryhards. I suck at dodging. I ‘waste’ them all the time. :P

Why is it more skillful to dodge at the last moment, and thus being in your dodge animation when they arrive, rather than say, predicting your opponent’s gap closing attack at range, and dodging out of its reach early so that you’re free to attack while they’re animation locked?

Learning the skill animations and understanding where the small window to get an evade is absolutely more skillful than hitting your dodge button in reaction to the wind-up. The former requires an understanding of mechanics while the latter is just a reaction to your opponent moving.

Silentsins.3726:

Eponet.4829:

Rauderi.8706:

B-But a timed dodge is skillful play. >>
Conversely, should a player be rewarded for _wasting a dodge?

I’m not going to say yes or no just yet, but it’s the inverse question that’s necessary to ask.

And no, I’m not one of those elitists or tryhards. I suck at dodging. I ‘waste’ them all the time. :P

Why is it more skillful to dodge at the last moment, and thus being in your dodge animation when they arrive, rather than say, predicting your opponent’s gap closing attack at range, and dodging out of its reach early so that you’re free to attack while they’re animation locked?

Learning the skill animations and understanding where the small window to get an evade is absolutely more skillful than hitting your dodge button in reaction to the wind-up. The former requires an understanding of mechanics while the latter is just a reaction to your opponent moving.

It’s hardly a small window, it’s a simple twitch based reaction to when you’re going to be hit. It barely impacts people who just hit dodge when they see an attack.

Predicting the opponent so that you can maneuver into the optimal position with the right timing to punish their mistake requires far more experience fighting against opponents of each class than just seeing the attack and pressing dodge (Assuming you don’t have high latency)

The change is like modern fencing, where it’s pushing a single aspect (touching your opponent first in the analogy, getting an evade marker in this case) rather than what the actual objective should be (A reasonable representation of killing your opponent without getting killed yourself in the analogy, killing your opponent’s character in this case.)

Yea. They do suck. Everyone arguing people should just “git gud”lol…hush. Especially in a game, bent for casuals,“balanced” for pvp, and inflicted with zillions of blooms and animations(although nice to see) on evade “windows” can get lost in the animations and network shenanigans, but that’s beside the point. At the moment, this is mostly a concern to thieves, because no other class has nearly as many, on evade procs.

Don’t give use cool kitten and lock it behind bull kitten #ayowtf

Eponet.4829:

Silentsins.3726:

Eponet.4829:

Rauderi.8706:

B-But a timed dodge is skillful play. >>
Conversely, should a player be rewarded for _wasting a dodge?

I’m not going to say yes or no just yet, but it’s the inverse question that’s necessary to ask.

And no, I’m not one of those elitists or tryhards. I suck at dodging. I ‘waste’ them all the time. :P

Why is it more skillful to dodge at the last moment, and thus being in your dodge animation when they arrive, rather than say, predicting your opponent’s gap closing attack at range, and dodging out of its reach early so that you’re free to attack while they’re animation locked?

Learning the skill animations and understanding where the small window to get an evade is absolutely more skillful than hitting your dodge button in reaction to the wind-up. The former requires an understanding of mechanics while the latter is just a reaction to your opponent moving.

It’s hardly a small window, it’s a simple twitch based reaction to when you’re going to be hit. It barely impacts people who just hit dodge when they see an attack.

Predicting the opponent so that you can maneuver into the optimal position with the right timing to punish their mistake requires far more experience fighting against opponents of each class than just seeing the attack and pressing dodge (Assuming you don’t have high latency)

The change is like modern fencing, where it’s pushing a single aspect (touching your opponent first in the analogy, getting an evade marker in this case) rather than what the actual objective should be (A reasonable representation of killing your opponent without getting killed yourself in the analogy, killing your opponent’s character in this case.)

Shrug I’ve been running Kinetic Battery on my enge for quite a while now. At first it was hard to get the trait to proc, but it’s a regular part of play now.

Besides, if there’s already a “large window” to get these traits to go off, why make it easier?

Ausfer.1853:

Tim.6450:

That’s why they are called daredevils. Not for dodging the moment they see the circle but staying in it until the last moment.

Riiiiight, and the engineer is called a forge because they forge weapons and armor … the reverent is called a herald because they shout at people on street corners.

Give me a break. It was called a daredevil because it’s a high risk, high reward playstyle, not because the game developers intentionally wanted players to be at the mercy of the game engine’s evade recognition system.

LOL. What he said was a ridiculous. But lets not jump to DD being a high risk high reward playstyle before its even out, its just one traitline not a whole class. I’m super excited about builds that can stand and fight outside of stealth, but with 2 free traitlines and a weaponswap, its possible (probable?) that the first thing players will try to figure out is a stealth variant of this that is Low Risk Low Reward.

They called it daredevil because the name fits the archetype of an agile rooftop vaulter.

Tim.6450:

That’s why they are called daredevils. Not for dodging the moment they see the circle but staying in it until the last moment.

Liadri also teaches you this, as it was the best way to do the 8 orbs chivo. ;x
She must be Daredevil Senpai.

Raven.9603:

Ausfer.1853:

Tim.6450:

That’s why they are called daredevils. Not for dodging the moment they see the circle but staying in it until the last moment.

Riiiiight, and the engineer is called a forge because they forge weapons and armor … the reverent is called a herald because they shout at people on street corners.

Give me a break. It was called a daredevil because it’s a high risk, high reward playstyle, not because the game developers intentionally wanted players to be at the mercy of the game engine’s evade recognition system.

LOL. What he said was a ridiculous. But lets not jump to DD being a high risk high reward playstyle before its even out, its just one traitline not a whole class. I’m super excited about builds that can stand and fight outside of stealth, but with 2 free traitlines and a weaponswap, its possible (probable?) that the first thing players will try to figure out is a stealth variant of this that is Low Risk Low Reward.

They called it daredevil because the name fits the archetype of an agile rooftop vaulter.

Then they shoulda just called it, Parkour.
Or the transporter, the protector, or Ipman…anything not starring Ben Affleck

Silentsins.3726:

Eponet.4829:

Silentsins.3726:

Eponet.4829:

Rauderi.8706:

B-But a timed dodge is skillful play. >>
Conversely, should a player be rewarded for _wasting a dodge?

I’m not going to say yes or no just yet, but it’s the inverse question that’s necessary to ask.

And no, I’m not one of those elitists or tryhards. I suck at dodging. I ‘waste’ them all the time. :P

Why is it more skillful to dodge at the last moment, and thus being in your dodge animation when they arrive, rather than say, predicting your opponent’s gap closing attack at range, and dodging out of its reach early so that you’re free to attack while they’re animation locked?

Learning the skill animations and understanding where the small window to get an evade is absolutely more skillful than hitting your dodge button in reaction to the wind-up. The former requires an understanding of mechanics while the latter is just a reaction to your opponent moving.

It’s hardly a small window, it’s a simple twitch based reaction to when you’re going to be hit. It barely impacts people who just hit dodge when they see an attack.

Predicting the opponent so that you can maneuver into the optimal position with the right timing to punish their mistake requires far more experience fighting against opponents of each class than just seeing the attack and pressing dodge (Assuming you don’t have high latency)

The change is like modern fencing, where it’s pushing a single aspect (touching your opponent first in the analogy, getting an evade marker in this case) rather than what the actual objective should be (A reasonable representation of killing your opponent without getting killed yourself in the analogy, killing your opponent’s character in this case.)

Shrug I’ve been running Kinetic Battery on my enge for quite a while now. At first it was hard to get the trait to proc, but it’s a regular part of play now.

Besides, if there’s already a “large window” to get these traits to go off, why make it easier?

It’s not about whether or not it’s easy.

It’s about the fact that it punishes skillful play.

If you dodge out of the way, that’s time spent dodging that you could have otherwise spent attacking your opponent while they’re vulnerable if you had gotten out of the way before the attack happened.

Eponet.4829:

Silentsins.3726:

Eponet.4829:

Silentsins.3726:

Eponet.4829:

Rauderi.8706:

B-But a timed dodge is skillful play. >>
Conversely, should a player be rewarded for _wasting a dodge?

I’m not going to say yes or no just yet, but it’s the inverse question that’s necessary to ask.

And no, I’m not one of those elitists or tryhards. I suck at dodging. I ‘waste’ them all the time. :P

Why is it more skillful to dodge at the last moment, and thus being in your dodge animation when they arrive, rather than say, predicting your opponent’s gap closing attack at range, and dodging out of its reach early so that you’re free to attack while they’re animation locked?

Learning the skill animations and understanding where the small window to get an evade is absolutely more skillful than hitting your dodge button in reaction to the wind-up. The former requires an understanding of mechanics while the latter is just a reaction to your opponent moving.

It’s hardly a small window, it’s a simple twitch based reaction to when you’re going to be hit. It barely impacts people who just hit dodge when they see an attack.

Predicting the opponent so that you can maneuver into the optimal position with the right timing to punish their mistake requires far more experience fighting against opponents of each class than just seeing the attack and pressing dodge (Assuming you don’t have high latency)

The change is like modern fencing, where it’s pushing a single aspect (touching your opponent first in the analogy, getting an evade marker in this case) rather than what the actual objective should be (A reasonable representation of killing your opponent without getting killed yourself in the analogy, killing your opponent’s character in this case.)

Shrug I’ve been running Kinetic Battery on my enge for quite a while now. At first it was hard to get the trait to proc, but it’s a regular part of play now.

Besides, if there’s already a “large window” to get these traits to go off, why make it easier?

It’s not about whether or not it’s easy.

It’s about the fact that it punishes skillful play.

If you dodge out of the way, that’s time spent dodging that you could have otherwise spent attacking your opponent while they’re vulnerable if you had gotten out of the way before the attack happened.

I prefer to view it as emphasizing one aspect of skillful play over another, which is fine for a specialization, no? I never suggested that there wouldn’t be an element of sacrifice as you re-prioritize when and how you dodge, but what’s the point of a new spec if it doesn’t make you play differently?

I’m not suggesting that it’s a skill cap issue either. I’m saying that you guys sound like me a couple months ago when I first saw kinetic battery :p. I believe that this mechanic is one of those things that an average player will be able to get, given time. I did, and that’s on a class without NEARLY as many evade frames as my Teef. Keep in mind that this trait line looks to be tied to a specific weapon with an indeterminate amount of built-in dodges…

I like the mechanic. Don’t knock it until you try it.

It is a high skill traitline with great reward tied to successful dodge.

If it is just additional effect that activate on dodge, those effect should tone down a lot as people will build themselves high vigor uptime and dodge spam thief instead of the intended design.

Salute to the design concept, can’t wait to try Daredevil.

Crossaber.8934:

Salute to the design concept, can’t wait to try Daredevil.

Impacting Disruption:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bthNfim8vCA

:)

Okay, I think everyone responding to the OP needs to come back down to earth from their utopian world of perfect players and perfect dodges. OP makes several good points regarding this system and why it is flawed; to reiterate, it is.

The argument that rewarding players for ‘wasting’ a dodge is a red herring that linear thinkers use instead of actively trying to think. This ‘wasted’ dodge comes with a cost; it’s not free. As such, good players are more adequately rewarded for using their allowance of endurance as they see fit with a much greater degree of freedom to their play in the effect on dodge model, whether it be to dodge to gain Vigor or what have you. Poor players are still penalized in this model where they are spending their endurance allowance in a sub-optimal manner, where good players can then capitalize from a bad player’s mistakes.

Poor dodge management does not get away with just ‘wasting’ a dodge, and it certainly is not rewarded.

Eponet.4829:

Why is it more skillful to dodge at the last moment, and thus being in your dodge animation when they arrive, rather than say, predicting your opponent’s gap closing attack at range, and dodging out of its reach early so that you’re free to attack while they’re animation locked?

Or predicting 100 blades, and dodging to get them before the first strike occurs, to maximise the time in which you can attack while they’re channeling.

When you’re dodging your not attacking. If you can get out of the line of attack early and retaliate while they’re caught in it, it’s better than simply dodging through it.

A dodge IS more skillful when done at the last moment, because if they have multi hit abilities you will evade more of them.

There is dodging in mobility especially when playing mind games with AoE placement and projectile manipulation. You going out of range using a dodge to miss the leap can be achieved by hitting “about face” and running in that direction, because its less skillful to waste a dodge when you could have just stepped to the side.

There is no argument when it comes to that. There are almost no cases where you would have moved out of range fast enough and not proc an evade yet avoid the attack but impossible to avoid an attack by simply running.

Using it to predict generally comes from attempting to dodge instant cast abilities.

Also with the daredevil specialization they made some dodge roll choices where you ARE attacking while dodge rolling… so there.

More random dodges is what the game needs. Bring it!

All it is is a differentiation metric for triggering effects. Just like on critical hit effect, on receiving critical hits, when you apply a condition, when you apply boons, when you use a dodge, when you’re not standing still, when you interrupt a foe, etc etc. It’s not punishing skillful plays nor is it really there to reward skillful play (getting critical hits or applying a condition isn’t skillful). It’s just a metric to which you the player have some controllable means to game for your advantage in a particular situation. It’s honestly the equivalent of giving you an extra button that appears only after certain factors are met that then grants you additional effects.

The reason they don’t make it “on dodge” instead of “on a successful evade” is because it’d be too easy to manipulate. And if you simply don’t want the effect there then ignore it (or don’t take them) as I doubt there are players that would rather have fewer mechanics in their favor.

tl;dr: just view it as a controllable metric that the game is giving you to take advantage of. It’s not a reward, it’s a trigger. Just like the act of dodging is a trigger given to you by game mechanics or how critical hits are triggers for other effects. They’re controllable triggers.

Ausfer.1853:

—
Simply put, there is a multitude of situations where you can dodge an attack but the game doesn’t register it as a successful evade. Dodge out of an AoE that’s just going down? You don’t get rewarded. Dodge early because you anticipated your opponent’s moves, rather than reacting to the attack? You don’t get rewarded. Dodge early because your opponent has telegraphed an attack with a large windup time? You don’t get rewarded.
—

Why should you get rewarded for dodging if you could have just moved out?

Ausfer.1853:

—
Simply put, there is a multitude of situations where you can dodge an attack but the game doesn’t register it as a successful evade. Dodge out of an AoE that’s just going down? You don’t get rewarded. Dodge early because you anticipated your opponent’s moves, rather than reacting to the attack? You don’t get rewarded. Dodge early because your opponent has telegraphed an attack with a large windup time? You don’t get rewarded.
—

I am not buying this.
Dodge out of AOE circle prematurely? Why don’t you just walk out?

Dodge because you anticipate? That’s exactly what random dodge is. If you indeed anticipated correctly(which means opponent indeed used a skill), then you should still get the evade bonus.

Dodge early because opponent have a long casting attack? Oh please, that’s exactly unskillful play. You dodge too early and risk being hit!

People seem to forget that the dodge besides the clear “evade an attack” is a fast change of position.
In some situations you can’t walk out of “red circle” fast enough but you can dodge fast enough (especially if you need to go other direction than forward !), though I believe that getting out of circle should always count as success.

When fighting a melee opponent on ranged, a dodge can be used to remain out of range. So in this case trait like “Gain vigor upon successfully evading an attack” may well work for sword / dagger in main hand, and is a lot less useful for pistol users.
Another issue is of course whenever really people should be given an “extra dodge” advantage at all.

Though trait that removes 1 second from steal CD upon successful dodge – and only while wielding sword or spear (and really really why those ?!?) is kinda a bad joke.

If you want to reward “fast change of position” then those traits should also work when not dodging.

There is no way for the game to recognize “strategic” dodge. While I DO consider such maneuvers to be much more elegant and intelligent than merely pressing the evade button when a blow is about to land, its simply impossible for a machine to judge when a premature dodge was well used and when not.

BUT, since just playing tactically actually rewards you, so is not that bad.

So… IMO they should properly implement both kind of rewards. “On dodge” should offer simpler, less battle oriented and more QoL rewards (Like gaining swiftness). “On avoid hit” should give more aggresive and fight focused boons (next attack is unblockable, might stacks, etc).

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with an ‘on evade’ trigger for some effect. I think it’s a totally acceptable design. The problem, as mentioned, is that ‘on evade’ is a much more difficult thing to trigger reliably than ‘on dodge’ – at the very least, on dodge can be triggered at will proactively, while on evade must be used reactively – so while, for example, you can get a ton of usage out of on dodge traits by stacking up endurance regen to dodge spam, on evade traits are still limited by the frequency of reactively dodgable attacks (otherwise you are simply dodge spamming and getting incidental evades, which are not at all reliable).

The problem with on evade traits, and the reason they tend to be terrible, is that they are balanced as though an on evade trigger is easier to get than an on dodge trigger – that is, individual on evade triggers are less powerful than equivalent on dodge triggers – when the opposite is true. Sure, in theory an on evade trigger has a higher potential (since you could trigger it multiple times using evade frames from skills in addition to dodges), but in practice you don’t have anywhere near as much control over those triggers and many will miss, which puts it well below the consistent output of on dodge (especially a juiced on-dodge from endurance regen).

Thus I would argue that on evade traits are terrible not due to poor design, but because the numbers are too low across the board.

Evade only appears when you dodge in range of attack if you use dodge to make distance of enemy than it won’t register as evade

I don’t and won’t be playing with “on evade” traits. Using dodge a bit earlier than strictly necessary for the sake of evading attacks is often tactically the better option. It’s not all about the incoming attacks, it’s also about neatly fitting in your dodges between your own skill use, especially if your skills can’t be used on the move. I’ll pick traits that don’t conflict with how I want to and am used to play. Plenty to chose from.

I don’t see anyone mentioning this: On-evade traits also proc from non-dodge evades,(something the thief in particular has plenty of), thereby giving you more opportunities to proc the traits.

Maybe the thief shouldn’t get such good short coolown condition removal unless it’s playing a risky style of play

Manasa Devi.7958:

I don’t and won’t be playing with “on evade” traits. Using dodge a bit earlier than strictly necessary for the sake of evading attacks is often tactically the better option. It’s not all about the incoming attacks, it’s also about neatly fitting in your dodges between your own skill use, especially if your skills can’t be used on the move. I’ll pick traits that don’t conflict with how I want to and am used to play. Plenty to chose from.

This!

And really it’s a bit annoying for me. When I dodge out of a large aoe ring I’m always less than a second off to getting a “successful evade”. It’s like . . . really? Well wont slot for that again. xD