Guild Wars 2

I literally saw a Daredevil dodge around in the middle of a 20 Man zerg.

It was absurd, funny for a moment, then questioned the Elite spec, the objective of the spec and what this does for the game.

But seeing it do that, I was like “Wtf is this?”

I thought the whole point of the Daredevil was High Risk, High Reward.

It seemed more like No Risk, No Reward, No worries.

He might as well been an Elementalist with perma-Obsidian Flesh but do zero damage, or spectator mode.

Even the most bunky or stalemate-y type of characters (Guardian/Ele) will eventually die in a zerg.

They have infinite amount of Endurance rotating through all these Endurance regen mechanics, I’ll list them out.

Here are some things to note:
The extra Dodge
Signet of Agility(30s)
Channeled Vigor (20s cd)
Shadow step (50s cd)
-Vault using 5 initiative as an extra form of dodge. with Trickery used up to 3 times including dealing damage following the Evading (which is invulnerability)
-and Superior Sigil of Energy, with plus dodges from each weapon swap. (once every 10s)
This includes Bandit’s defense (15s cd) used as a stall to get endurance back and cooldown for endurance gain-back skills, which are on low cooldown as it is.

In a span of 30 seconds you have multiple ways to get full Endurance, and still have other skills to regain/build endurance within the next 30s after, including the dodge with Staff vault.

I think this is poor design, Evasion = Invulnerability, people need to understand this.
This is not the same as Death Shroud, DS is damage mitigation, they still take damage and susceptible to effects.

Some questions, what is the trade-off between a Daredevil and running core Thief, hm?

And how it is “High Risk, High Reward” if Evading (Invul to dmg) deals damage on EVERY occasion after the dodge is complete? I.E. Vault/Bounding Dodger.

You get to evade AND deal damage?

I’m putting to question the whole point or design to this spec as a whole, it’s borderline absurdity and I’m quite critical of it, yet I see the fun in it.

My vision was, Thieves as Daredevils use less stealth and focus more on dodging, and focuses on Charging into battles being upfront, not being sneaky and backstabbing. They are being DARING, they are putting themselves at risk to get more damage in while be more seen, visible, and too close for comfort

It turned out to be more like a bouncing ball that bounces everywhere.

I think the block from Bandit’s Defense is out of place and needs to go, its a stall and removes the risk the DAREdevil is intended to be. I suggest it gets Retaliation when used and knocks back opponents when struck, no block. You have to rely on your dodges and evades as intended.

And I don’t think Bounding Dodger should be a blast finisher, simply because if you are gonna dodge around and do damage, you better commit! (you can’t blast into a stealth) There is no escape and better get it done.

These changes are intended to really weed out the cheese players ftom and in favor of the players thieves/dd who have ACTUAL skill.

If the Daredevil is gonna have a focus on dodges and dodge around, make them commit to it, that is the trade-off if there is any. Blocking should never be available, thematically it doesn’t fit, and mechanically its a cheap stall, and stealth takes some effort.

Also PVP cost of Vault should be unsplit from SPVP to WVW/PVE costing 6 initiative, which currently costs 6 now in sPVP. It just seems more consistent.

And that’s it, everything else get’s left alone.

With the recent August 8 patch, people were QQing about Warrior/Zerk nerfs, meanwhile it wasn’t a nerf, it buffed the core slightly and changed the interaction between Berserker bursts to certain traits, making it a clear trade-off between using Core warrior vs Zerker elite spec. Same includes for Revenants, more incentive to use Jalis/Retribution.

Similar was done to a smaller degree to Tempests. And Yet they completely failed regarding the Necromancer (seems they’ll never get that right.)

With the Deadeye coming out, THE TRADE OFF, is apparent, no more steal, and you get Malice/Target multiplier instead.

If people who play this class for a long time could enlighten me and share me their perspective between core Thief and Daredevil that would be great.

Tzozef.9841, it was needed that ammount of evasion, its how DareD. were ment to survive in pve (HoT).

Even though this is quite clearly a L2P issue, and I can guarantee this person lost 1v1, rather than “I saw them in a zerg” – I’ll humor it for a few of the more L2P points until I lose interest.

“-Vault using 5 initiative as an extra form of dodge. with Trickery used up to 3 times including dealing damage WHILE Evading (which is invulnerability)”
-No. It does not do damage while evading. It evades until the peak of the jump, then before landing and applying damage, it is vulnerable. Actually unable to do anything at that point except finish the attack. Can’t regular dodge, can’t steal, can’t even swap weapons. This is the only attack in the game that you cannot swap weapons/stow if I recall.

Same thing with Bounding Dodger. Damage not applied before evasion ends. For both of these cases, if the end of their dodge lands in some red circles, there is a high probability that those red circles will affect the Thief. If those red circles happen to be hard-CC fields – damage will not apply and the Thief will be hard-CC’d.

Bounding dodge isn’t a blast finisher. OK I’ve lost interest.

Turk.5460:

Even though this is quite clearly a L2P issue, and I can guarantee this person lost 1v1, rather than “I saw them in a zerg” – I’ll humor it for a few of the more L2P points until I lose interest.

“-Vault using 5 initiative as an extra form of dodge. with Trickery used up to 3 times including dealing damage WHILE Evading (which is invulnerability)”
-No. It does not do damage while evading. It evades until the peak of the jump, then before landing and applying damage, it is vulnerable. Actually unable to do anything at that point except finish the attack. Can’t regular dodge, can’t steal, can’t even swap weapons. This is the only attack in the game that you cannot swap weapons/stow if I recall.

Same thing with Bounding Dodger. Damage not applied before evasion ends. For both of these cases, if the end of their dodge lands in some red circles, there is a high probability that those red circles will affect the Thief. If those red circles happen to be hard-CC fields – damage will not apply and the Thief will be hard-CC’d.

Bounding dodge isn’t a blast finisher. OK I’ve lost interest.

It’s attitudes like yours where this issue doesn’t get resolved.

I wish I recorded it because it was a gorgeous thing to behold, ridiculous yet very funny.

After my zerg left, I decided to chase down the Daredevil to try duel him. It ended up a stale mate, he was harmless, couldn’t really do damage afraid I’ll catch him.

So it was a stalemate until his friends came along and ended me.

Again, this has happened to me before with bunker Ele’s and Guardians, this isn’t new, the difference is that same bunker Ele/Guard will eventually die in a zerg if around it for too long.

Daredevils ARE NOT OP. Let me make that clear. The primary issue is that they have No risk, and No cost with constant regenerating returns.

There needs to be cost/benefit relationship. And I know the damage comes immediately after the dodge and not during, at no point I specifically said that.

Also https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vault : its a combo Finisher, STILL a finisher, so when it last in smoke field it goes into stealth, that is my point.

And you still haven’t addressed my main questions.

What is the trade-off from using a Daredevil from a core Thief?

Thief has a lot of broken mechanics atm, that will likely never be addressed. The damage from Bound is higher than a lot of skills and abilities in the game. Although not the only class with damaging avoidance mechanics, there is no reason dodging should deal direct aoe damage (or any damage at all).

Just like it makes no sense that thieves (or any class) can start their spike on a downed player and use other abilities while casting it. Spiking a player should be all or nothing. Not, start spike, teleport away to continue your cast from 600 away safely, than port back as the spike finishes to kill the player. Or rangers using signet of stone during, or engineers using elixir S. So many things that need to be fixed.

Thieves are pretty much useless in zergs anyway, who cares.
They melt inside AOE otherwise. There are broken mechanics in wvw, but complaining about this is like someone who claimed light armour classes were OP in zergs.

As a daredevil, I regularly dodge through entire zergs using evades/mobility. Usually it’s to distract them and buy time for something else.

Before I played GW2, I thought that thieves would be evade based. Based on the promo materials, I expected a class with a bunch of mini-evades and/or conditional evades that had to stay a step ahead of an opponent to win a fight. Instead, core thief is just supposed to stealth as much as possible. When DD came out, I hoped it was closer to the class I wanted way back then…but it’s just an obscene amount of dodges layered on top of everything else. Now the ideal is to spam stealth, attack, then spam dodges until stealth comes back up.

I don’t care too much about the balance side of things—that whole situation is too much of a mess to be worth the trouble. I do think you’re right that the amount of evades is way too high, though in the situation you mentioned it’s probably ok. Trading all of your damage for evades is w/e—but the amount of damage you can keep while still having ~10 evades in a quick fight is a bit much.

Would not expect any changes. It’s nowhere near the most ridiculous thing around.

Tzozef.9841:

After my zerg left, I decided to chase down the Daredevil to try duel him. It ended up a stale mate, he was harmless, couldn’t really do damage afraid I’ll catch him.

What is the trade-off from using a Daredevil from a core Thief?

The trade off is in your own words right there. Sounds like you wasted a lot of time being baited by a Nomad wearing troll who did NO DAMAGE.

Saw a daredevil hopping around me yesterday. It died in one attack.