Guild Wars 2

I always felt the evade on this skill was very bad and so I rarely used it but that was back when I though the evade on it was bugged. Since most of the time the player is used to a 3/4s evade duration (even on the 3rd attack on ranger gs is 3/4s evade), using this skill to dodge just feels clunky. The reason why I felt it was so clunky is because I’d activate it as I needed to evade, be jumping, get hit. If that wasn’t the case, I’d click it, jump in the air, be over the target, get hit, land.

Ofc I’d had many successful evades with it in my time, but as is, the skill just doesn’t feel worth while if you’re not a condition thief. Even if you are a condition thief, most of those thieves don’t use it for the evade, just for the bleeds. This tells me there’s somethign wrong with how this skill acts and works.

I always thought thieves needed evade on Lotus strike.

Evade could be longer, i also feel that it should scale with power a bit better. Thought I’ve had survived some clutch moment that a guardian or warrior would have nightmares in, it’s not all bad.

not all bad but the evade should be a bit longer to compensate for the high ini cost

I remember how I died while performing this skill in the mid air and I was like “Isn’t my thief suppose to evade those attacks?”

I think the evade should last a little longer. And I hope they scale better with power by reducing bleed from 10sec to 8sec somehow.

Flanking strike’s evade should be improved as well, on top of better response during autoattack chain.

Even on a condition build just for the bleeds it’s nothing special really. At least for pvp/wvsw that is…

They just need to reduce the initiative cost and maybe increase damage or something so non-condi builds can use it too apart from the evade.

If you go on a 0 0 10 30 30 Initiative/vigor spam build with x2 sets of daggers. you can actually become “invincible”, rarely antying will be able to touch you since most of the time you just evade. that being said, it’s not just spam DB like crazy, find your rotation between DP and dodges and you should be able to keep it up 100% of the time and have LOTS of pressure through bleeds

Invincible until they learn to just CC you when you land from DB.

They never learn :| this build launch days old and i run it whenever im bored, and trust me, people never learn

I recently made this build for WvW, and it can easily cap camps in under 1 min by yourself! and last time i kept farming this ranger with legendary bow/sword , another ranger and a guardian who kept trying to take back the camp i stole, killed them every time

Yep. The evade presumably built into the weapon set so that it can be used as a strong alternative to a dodge roll. This clearly isn’t the case because of the evade duration but positioning/facing can be also hard to manage. Flanking strikes is a better evade but I’m guessing that gets put into the animation queue and loses precise timing. Death blossom might has the same problem but this could be hidden by the dagger attack speed.

stof.9341:

Invincible until they learn to just CC you when you land from DB.

This, any thief running a combo of basilisk/devourer venom will laugh at a LDB build.

I almost never dodge attacks with it. 90% of the time, if I had actually managed to avoid an attack it’s because I flipped behind the person and went out of range, not because of the Evasion effect.
Even if you manage to spam the skill literally non-stop, you’re only evading less than half the time. It lasts for half the animation itself right in the middle (so you can’t even time it effectively), and there’s a noticeable pause between uses.

Is this a PvP observation or a PvE? I only ask because I’ve never been hit hard while usin’ this skill in my D/D rotation for PvE. I don’t rely on it for the evade, but I’d say it works for me more often than not. Maybe I’m just lucky; though the changes to stealth have been throwing my rotations off all over the place, so I might start noticing it more.

How do you guys even handle the weird range/animation of this attack?

I find that it is almost impossible to get all 3 hits to land consistently on my target when it is right next to me. The only semi-reliable way I’ve found to use this in PvE is to NOT target anything, make sure you NEVER death blossom when your target is right next to you, and do some crazy camera turning/dodging to keep your target(s) in the correct range.
With my current build I can “spam” DB 5 – 7 times with steals and signets in between.
However, I get very dizzy.

kekuso.5837:

How do you guys even handle the weird range/animation of this attack?

I use it in groups more often than 1 on 1; typically I use one of my distance closers to get into the group, then use DB to get clear and give myself some space.

Rafahil.2857:

Even on a condition build just for the bleeds it’s nothing special really. At least for pvp/wvsw that is…

They just need to reduce the initiative cost and maybe increase damage or something so non-condi builds can use it too apart from the evade.

Nothing special? with 100% bleed duration and all my build going towards regen ini. withdraw, Roll for Ini, Assassins sig. along with vigor on dodge traits and ini on heal heal on ini use 0/0/10/30/30.
Self buffed i.e. none lol my bleed from DB hits for 118 per tic for 30 seconds….. again 30 seconds…. with caltrops and endless ini and end I can 25 stack bleeds in 3 to 5 seconds. Then the 30 sec DB bleed will take over after caltrops in gone. so 118×25 per second is nothing?

Bleet.1094:

Rafahil.2857:

Even on a condition build just for the bleeds it’s nothing special really. At least for pvp/wvsw that is…

They just need to reduce the initiative cost and maybe increase damage or something so non-condi builds can use it too apart from the evade.

Nothing special? with 100% bleed duration and all my build going towards regen ini. withdraw, Roll for Ini, Assassins sig. along with vigor on dodge traits and ini on heal heal on ini use 0/0/10/30/30.
Self buffed i.e. none lol my bleed from DB hits for 118 per tic for 30 seconds….. again 30 seconds…. with caltrops and endless ini and end I can 25 stack bleeds in 3 to 5 seconds. Then the 30 sec DB bleed will take over after caltrops in gone. so 118×25 per second is nothing?

1 dodge to get out of caltrops, 1 condition removal to take off all those bleeds. I’ve taken maybe 400 dmg and now most likely have the advantage.

randomfightfan.4091:

1 dodge to get out of caltrops, 1 condition removal to take off all those bleeds. I’ve taken maybe 400 dmg and now most likely have the advantage.

And that’s the big problem with Thief condition builds. Nothing but bleeds. One-dimensional, underwhelming and easy to counter by anyone with two brain cells to rub together. Maybe we’ll see those promised extra poisons and burns by 2025.

haviz.1340:

Flanking strike’s evade should be improved as well, on top of better response during autoattack chain.

I agree on this, I don’t feel the evade on flanking strike is very good, not like the comparable ranger sword attacks anyways.

Against thieves, I’ve had death blossom cause some important attacks to whiff, and I imagine people I’ve used it on have had a similar experience. Maybe it could be a like a 1/2 second or something since the animation takes awhile to play.

The last thing I want is for thieves to have an on-land version of shadow assault. I can’t believe that thing hasn’t been altered yet.