Guild Wars 2

Ok, here’s my opinion on daredevil… To start, it’s great. I enjoy the hell out of it. took me a bit to find a build and get use to staff but that’s alright. let me start with talking about the staff
After using it for a bit I came to realize it wasn’t going to make a good primary weapon BUT it works great for get away’s, dmg mitigation, and group pvp. If you are in a group the 4 skill provides blindness to help your team and the 5 skill consistently hits 6k with a crit and i can use it and jump back out and blind again with 3 then 4. Now the bad about staff, the 2 skill needs more range. I expected something to get me around the fight faster and confuse my enemy, but 450 is not enough range, I feel 600, maybe 800 would be better. The 5 skill I would like to be direct instead of placement, just personal preference maybe, but I feel like it would be better as a direct rather than placement skill (while remaining AOE)
I also want to comment on my two new favorite utility/elite skills. Bandits defense and the new elite (duh).. Bandit’s defense is one of the most wonderful things ever. it’s great in a pinch, the 10 second cd is absolutely perfect (please don’t change it) and time you have to block is great too because it mitigates it being op, by making you time the block. Now for elite, I love it, don’t change it at all, and that’s all i’m gonna say. People are gonna get on here and claim it’s OP but it’s not… It’s really easy to dodge this attack, then I have a 40 sec CD till I can use it again. It finally gives thieves the ability to stomp they didn’t have before. As a thief I die a lot while doing stomps, i just don’t have the hp pool to sit there and channel a stomp in the middle of a 2v3 fight. I’ma get killed while doing it. the new elite gives me a way to stomp a player in the middle of a fight and still continue fighting. It’s fantastic. and the ability to find people at 20% hp and completely annihilate them is sick also. (if you’re at 20% hp and you are fighting a thief you’re done anyways so stop complaining) Well that’s all I have to say about DD. Love it, I’d be perfectly fine with ya’ll keeping it the way it is… Thoughts?

To be honest, after playing through the LS2 and getting to use Caithe’s weapon skills, I was really hoping we’d get them. However… I have a condi thief using venoms and SB so DD is just not going to do anything for me with the staff or adept/master traits. I really like the jumping lotus that applies more conditions, however, but it feels painful to take the traitline just for that (I would have to sacrifice Trickery and lose out on my stealing-poison and everything around that).

I guess I was expecting elite specs to work well with any other build in some way. The only physical skill of use is the impairing daggers one, which is a good substitution for either ice drake or devourer since they do little but the others do not aid a condi build any.

It would have been neat if they had a line (sticking to that line theme they have) for condi, power, and support/survivability.

Pompeia.5483:

To be honest, after playing through the LS2 and getting to use Caithe’s weapon skills, I was really hoping we’d get them. However… I have a condi thief using venoms and SB so DD is just not going to do anything for me with the staff or adept/master traits. I really like the jumping lotus that applies more conditions, however, but it feels painful to take the traitline just for that (I would have to sacrifice Trickery and lose out on my stealing-poison and everything around that).

I guess I was expecting elite specs to work well with any other build in some way. The only physical skill of use is the impairing daggers one, which is a good substitution for either ice drake or devourer since they do little but the others do not aid a condi build any.

It would have been neat if they had a line (sticking to that line theme they have) for condi, power, and support/survivability.

I disagree that while it may not use poisons, but condition DD will still fair well, it will just be dodging more to spread Caltrops and Impaling lotus.

Daredevil is looking to be in a good position come expansion with how it does so easily mesh with other trait lines.

T1 –
Evasive Empowerment: more damage upon dodging (which you can do a lot of)
Weakening strikes: if you go crit, good chance to keep weakened
Brawler’s Tenacity: cast physicals more, dodge more.

T2
Staff Master – does limit you to staff, so yes, not worth much to any other spec.
Escapist’s Absolution – depending on your build, that can be very powerful
Impacting disruption – probably the second weakest, since I don’t believe thieves have many interrupts.

T3
Impaling Lotus – God is this trait good for spamming conditions with dodging.
Unhindered combatant – I see it more as a disengage from combat to reset the fight, not to mention swiftness.
Bounding Dodger – warriors wish they had this instead of the wimpy trait they have now. But it at leaves gives a more AOE option

I don’t know, I see Daredevil working well with Trickery, with spamming Caltrops, and able to gain vigor on stealing, you can be a dodging machine.

I’m running trickery, deadly arts and DD currently and I destroy peoples existence with my current build

Some thoughts and suggestions, let me know what you guys think.

Overall, I think the DD specialization is awesome. It provides nice build variety.

Staff Skills:
Skill 2 – offers nice dsp and weakness application, however it feels very clunky and it seems to lack the quick gap closing function you see on both the dagger and sword skill 2. It would be nice to see the staff skill 2 be used more as a quick gap closer. Perhaps they could even make it a skill that if you land the first hit, it then gives you the option to activate another skill. (very similar to sword 2 and 3 with infiltrators return and larcenous strike)

The rest of the staff skills are perfect in my opinion.

The Traits:
Unhindered Combatant – This feels very slow and clunky, I think its the animation itself that gives it that feel. I would like to see the animation speed up or changed from a running motion to a fast dashing animation like the warriors Bulls Charge or Revenants Staff 5 skill.
Another option is if this dodge skill could actually shadow step the player away in the direction that you dodge, at a range of 300-360.

Bounding Dodger – Cool trait, I just find it a little tricky to actually land the damage of this skill as more often that not you are dodging away from an attack and you put yourself out of range to get any damage out of the skill. I really like that its a leap so it can be used on a smoke field to gain stealth. I just think the damage aspect needs to be reworked. maybe the damage should proc at the dodging start location and not where you finish your dodge.

Physical Skills – I’m not sure why ANET only allows you to use these skills by taking the DD specialization. I think Physical skills should be freely available regardless whether or not you want to trait into DD. It’s almost as if they thought that the traits alone are not good enough to make people what to choose the DD specialisation.

Last comments: I think DD is awesome, it just needs some very minor adjustments and animation changes.

In terms of Daredevil feedback, I mostly agree with what you posters above have said.

One thing I found strange with the Dd aesthetic was the lack of abilities that used more of the shadow magic/arts theme. Like it was said above me, why does the new dodge not have us just shadowstep to our end destination and cut out the visual dash on foot?

As a thief player, I was hoping we’d see more interesting uses of the shadowstep, visually, to remind other players that we’re masters of that art.

Just a thought.

I personally feel that the staff 2 skill [Weakening Charge] was the most frustrating to play with. Much like the Reaper’s Death Charge skill in the previous beta weekend, I found myself overshooting enemies very frequently. I would much prefer it as a gap-closer that ended upon contact with enemies, and with greater range.

I also feel that some if not most of the animations on the Daredevil were clunky, particularly on the asura. Thief animations tend to be very fluid and graceful (shadow arts), but I found the actions often felt “too fast” and landed “too heavy” immediately after [staff skill 3 Debilitating Arc is a good example of this]. I think a shadowstep-type animation here would be much better. Visually it felt like the character’s weight was constantly shifting to extremes and it was very unpleasant visually, which made it less fun to play in all honesty. That being said, skill 5 Vault was pretty wonderful.

was excited to try it out, but found it awkward and not fun to play.

the staff damage seemed fine, but the animations/targeting on all but skill 5, was clunky.

but much worse were the delayed animations to the GM trait dodges. these pretty much killed the spec for me……so i maybe played around w/ it for 30 minutes before deeming it unplayable and deleting. not going to waste time on a spec that i have to NOT choose a GM trait to play.

I wasn’t completely opted out, but I really like how this class is supposed to play. I feel I have to agree with a lot of players when they say that the animations often don’t fit the graceful feel we’re supposed to have for the character. The stomp at the end of a dodge trait is pretty clunky aesthetically and pragmatically I feel only works when facing crowds in pve and most specifically in the new content. Somebody had mentioned that the damage portion would be better at the beginning of the dodge roll instead of at the end and I would have to agree. Perhaps striking the ground with their staff to dodge backwards and impacting the folks around him.

All in all, while damages, ranges distances and mechanics for the staff will need to be fine tuned, I think the animations must really have a sense of agility to them to make this a really striking class. I would think that Kilik from the Soul Calibur games would make for great inspiration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7iN18u7pYE

I am a little disappointed that there wasn’t a sweep the leg staff skill as Cobra Kai would dictate.

I agree with what some people have posted. Staff #2 feels clunky and poor targeting. Sometimes I tap 2 once, and the ability activated twice, thus I moved behind my target, and stuck in the animation till it finished.

Please try to keep the feedback in one place.

That way the devs don’t have to waste precious time hunting the entire forum for different threads containing feedback. If you want to increase your chances of your feedback being read, go to where the most people have posted, or (as is the case here) where a dev has already posted.