Guild Wars 2

I might be a voice in the wilderness here, but when I heard of Bound being a Leap Finisher on dodge, I imagined the Daredevil diving forward as a dodge. Jumping into the air and slamming down as a Thief is kinda weird. I’d gladly swap diving forward with a leap finisher over stomping for damage on a dodge.

babazhook.6805:

Evasive empowerment exists in the DD line. it a 10 percent modifier. the trick is getting an evade off so as to have it kick in. All opf those other modifiers have ’conditions" some easier to obtain and others more difficult.

there also a 10 percent modifier to staff damageif you trait for staff mastery.

Time will tell just how often we can have Evasive empowerment up but in theory you can get a staff to hit 20 percent harder just with that one traitline. Throw DA in the mix with executioner and there the potential of 50 percent more damage if conditions right.

Vault hurts.

In that case, I take back what I said. +20% with staff is enough to make DD a nice fit.

Bllade.1029:

babazhook.6805:

Maintain pressure is not a function of dual wield skills just because you say it is.

You’re right, it’s the function of a Thief. And as a Thief that is your job, applying pressure constantly and doing a massive amount of damage. An ability that costs you initiative to hinder that, is not an ability that should be on a thief WEAPON. If this were a utility, heal or if this ability kept you in melee range so you wouldn’t have to follow up with another resource consumptive ability or even gave some sort of additional benefit other than an evade and one condition removal this wouldn’t be an issue.

Cost/Benefit ratio here is off. There are much better alternatives available to the Thief that give the same benefit and are far less costly and not as permanent as a weapons skill. Also, notice that Thief weapons follow a certain trend; The #2 ability on most thief weapons offer some sort of gap closer and/or damage.

There is also a trend for all of the #3 skills that Thieves have access to; Some sort of defensive/offensive oriented ability. The difference is, if you want to follow this trend which is exactly what I think the staff is modeled after to begin with; all of those abilities allow you to stay on your target one way or another and do not require an additional ability to move back into range.

Staff 3 does.

I hope you’re having as much fun with this debate as I am, I think this is a great discussion.

If you are fixated on maintining pressure you can always ignore #3 when immobbed . Immob does not prevent attacks so keep swinging away. Do not use it. Stay in battle. You have plenty of other attacks available that will allow you to maintain pressure.

As to “always maintining pressure” this depends on the build. The entire premise of mobility in a thief is that in and out as it is with stealth. A Warrior can sit in battle and slug it out toe to toe relying on blocks armor and health. A Thief can not do this even with staff. We go in and out , move around ,hide and reappear and having an evade and gap opener in a weapon build is excellent for this. I am sorry but the very presence of stealth and ports like shdowstep and our dodges contradicts the claim we always stay in battle.

I really liked how that gap opener worked when fighting two eles that were teaming up. They would try an immob me and then load under me a lava fount or around me a ring of fire. I would use this to get out of that without burning a dodge and than get right back on them.

It also worked great on Necros who would try a Immob and than load a mark under me. Again all in one and with using just 4 ini (3 if I evaded due to upper hand) I would hit for damage and cripple, break the immob and pull out of the mark leaving me my full suite of dodges for offense/defense.

Rangers also liked to drop their entangle on me and than follow up with multiple traps or with bonfire. It a combination I use on my own ranger and works very well. This Staff skill worked great to pull me out of those weeds and get me out of that AOE in short order. I did not have to immob then use up a a dodge.

As to there being better sources of breaking an Immob, I can not think of any. None are able to be chained consecutively. Don’t stop is very good but has cooldown and I am looking at upper hand in any case out of acro to try and see just how well I can do with the ini it offers. RFI is a great immob remover but is on a 60 second cooldown. I tend to fight in WvW where several people will chain these immobs together one following right after you break a first. Staff 3 saves me from that.

As to cost benefit given all that this one skill can provide it has an excellent ratio and specifically if traited for on evade traits. If you compare it to any other classes immob breaks using weapons (and there only a few) this skill has tremendous advantages.

Once the animations are fixed it will also make for some much more interesting and fluid staff/daredevil gameplay from a visual perspective (hopefully) which are enhanced and have more possibilities when there some sembalance of movement on a map rather than standing in one spot. It even has the “look” of being Thiefy even as it a very effective tactic.

I always think of the thief as that fellow fighting the heavy armored knight in one of the Game of thrones books. He did not stand their toe toe toe slugging it out. he wore the knight out with movement , that movement maintaining pressure. I want movemnet and mobility in my thief. #3 helps provide that.

Amante.8109:

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

Just a suggestion for Unhindered Combatant…from what I have seen, the current animation for Dash is a short version of Rush. Might I suggest that, if absolutely no new animations can be made, the animation for Burning Speed or Shield Bash be used instead? Both of these animations retain the characters weapons (I read that the thief’s weapons would disappear when using Dash), and in my opinion, would feel more like a quick dash than Rush does.

I’ve heard two great suggestions on a proper animation for Dash. One is what you mention, the other would be it having little animation at all and being a fairly quick shadowstep instead. Due to the potential for deception, a blinking dodge would have to be carefully balanced, but you could tweak particulars like the distance of the dash and the duration of its boons to compensate.

Either way, really, as the current animation for Dash does not work at all.

I would say the “blink” would be the best move imo. The only problem with this is the same problem we have with steal and other shadow step abilities right now. If the terrain has gaps or obstacles they fail before even trying to activate. This would just get a thief killed. If it worked like dodge where it would tp you to the obstruction at least this would work and be more favorable. Being it a shadow step I would have no problem with tping to the other side of a obstacle which would be more thiefish using the environment to your advantage but I feel like we would hear too much crying from other classes that a thief can shadow step and create obstructions.

Bllade.1029:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Bllade.1029:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Amante.8109:

I had a couple thoughts on Staff I’d like to share.

People are generally of the opinion right now that Debilitating Arc is of limited usefulness, as the evade back takes you out of melee range. This forces you to spend even more Initiative on Vault or Weakening Charge to get back in after evading if you want to keep doing damage at all. Lest ArenaNet forget, Initiative is a precious resource that Thief never really has enough of.

My suggestion would be to add an effect to Debilitating Arc along these lines: “Your next Weakening Charge within X seconds costs no initiative.”

The only way that DebArc will be used is to give the Theif a breather, meaning when they don’t want to keep doing damage, perhaps heal or cleanse.

What you want is to combo it with other skills, but if you choose to do that, it has to cost you and making other skills cost less will make this skill to powerful because of what it can do.

For the cost of 4 init, you can;
- deals damage
- cleaves upto 3 targets
- evade attack
- gap creator
- break immobilize/cripple
- then heal if you successfully evade

Then you want to make the next gap closer for free? Too much stuff for a cost of 4 initiative don’t you think?

That ability in actuality will cost 8 or more initiative if you stay on staff. Which is 66% of a Thief’s base initiative pool right there. That means to use that combo, you’ll be forced into Trickery. With that it will still cost you over 50% of your initiative just to use those two abilities.

We all pay for the cost of making combos work but making the this to reduce the cost of a skill is not the right way to do this.

Creating a gap as a DD is counter-productive and initiative does not regenerate nearly as quickly as endurance does (im referring to DD endurance regeneration specifically.) Let’s say it stays the same and we swap weapons to main hand sword or dagger. Infiltrators strike and Heartseeker both cost 3 intitative. So to use that ability then switch weapons will cost you a 10 second weapon swap cooldown and 7 initiative. That is very costly for something Withdraw does for you for no initiative cost with a heal, condi removal, evade and a much larger gap opener. Not to mention only an 18 second cooldown.

What this one does that Withdraw can’t do is to be used up to 3 times in a row which will only cost a total of 12s cooldown. And no it’s not counter-productive because there’s no reason to use this skill without reason.

Amante has the right idea but the problem with his/her suggestion is that it kind of forces the player to use that strategy. After every Debilitating Arc everyone would use Weakening Charge if they got that reduced initiative cost. Doesn’t really promote different strategies and tactics.

When I use Withdraw, I close the gap with Steal or Scorpion Wire. You can very well do the same here.

I agree reducing the cost of Weakening Charge after DA isn’t the right way to do this.

The point is that Debilitating Arc is a weaker version of something we already have (Withdraw) on a weapon skill. If you’re going to promote synergy on the Staff initiative cost is going to be the first thing that’s going to shut that weapon’s usefulness down; When we look at initiative cost, it isn’t just the initial cost of one ability we have to consider.

When looking at initiative compared to all the other Thief weapon sets and combinations the Staff is very costly in terms of initiative for the utility provided.

It is counter-productive the minute you seperate yourself from the enemy with a MELEE weapon skill not a utility, not a heal skill a MELEE weapon skill

Let’s compare:

Death Blossom: Evades while stacking bleeds and dealing damage in an AoE area – Still maintains pressure while evading. 4 Initiative.

Shortbow: Disabling Shot – Cripples with an evade at range (This is essentially what the staff is doing for us right now) but the Shortbow is ranged damage. Maintains Pressure – 4 Initiative

Pistol Whip: Stun followed up with high DPS while evading – Maintains Pressure – 5 initiative

Shadow Strike: Apply torment, shadow step away from your enemy (600 range) and deal damage. P/D is RANGED DAMAGE Maintains pressure 4 initiative.

Debilitating Arc: Minor damage, cripple, evade, immobilize removal. – Lose pressure – 4 Initiative

Were going to have to spend something else just to use that ability, whether its a scorpion wire (Utility) Steal (F1) or a Dodge (50 endurance) to close that gap again. All the other weapon sets #3 evade weapon abilities do not require you to do that.

“Fighting yourself and the enemy at the same time is counter-productive and not synergistic within the profession.” – Kruppe (In reference to a Melee weapon ability that costs initiative that takes you out of melee range.)

This doesn’t make any sense.

What’s the reason for using DArc if not to get out of melee range? Just to be flashy?

I mean seriously, if you’re not immobilized, why would you use it?

If you’re immobilized you lose your ability to maintain pressure anyway and this is when you have to use DArc to get out of immob and re-engage.

Have you played a Thief before?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

This doesn’t make any sense.

What’s the reason for using DArc if not to get out of melee range? Just to be flashy?

I mean seriously, if you’re not immobilized, why would you use it?

If you’re immobilized you lose your ability to maintain pressure anyway and this is when you have to use DArc to get out of immob and re-engage.

Have you played a Thief before?

This topic has run it’s course, great discussion though.

Thanks for the updates, Karl. I spent all my time this last BWE testing DD exclusively and I’m really looking forward to seeing how it plays with these changes in the next BWE. The increased damage on the Fist Flurry combo (due to its difficulty in landing all the strikes) and the general staff auto-attack damage increase were exactly what I was hoping to see.

Vault so far in the last BWE performed pretty much exactly as I thought it should. The damage was fair for an attack that was so obviously telegraphed and I was generally able to manage its initiative cost using it offensively. I think an evade added on the start or end of the skill would be very useful (with the cost left at 6). If the range of Vault was also increased to 800 (to match the Engineer’s Jumpshot) distance I don’t think that would be too out of line and would add some additional utility to the skill for a lot of people.

The change to the recast on Bandits Defense was expected (it was mentioned in the DD reveal stream) and I think that’s a reasonable change, I do wish the Block portion of the maneuver would last a little bit longer though- to help with certain situations where it might be necessary to use the skill outside of its counterattack function. A 2 second block outside of attack range would be great on this skill.

One question also regarding the Evasive Empowerment change… I think this is a solid change- but I was wondering how does it function exactly? Will this ability if triggered multiple times from successful dodging stack duration? If it does I think that would be great, and encourage more skillful play. If it doesn’t stack duration and will trigger on any dodge I could see raising the duration of the buff to between 3-5 seconds just to allow a little more wiggle room in its use.

In closing I won’t go into great length about the staff animations (because a lot regarding custom Martial Staff animations has already been said in this forum) but I will say I think Vault should feature a forward flip as the backwards one seems a bit unnatural. Apart from that I think the utility animations are great, especially fist flurry, palm strike, and uppercut. Thanks again for your work with the class Karl, and letting us know what’s coming up.

I have to say, I kinda liked DD at first, but the Scrapper makes the DD look like a joke, on every front. Would it be possible for Thieves to be able to spec into Scrapper too?

This might have come up already, but since the Stealth Gyro was talked about today I’m going to mention it anyway. Stealth is more accessible to other classes now than it used to be, particularly the mesmer and engie, so adding more ways of knocking enemy players out of stealth is logical. However, thief is balanced around stealth in a way the other classes aren’t, meaning between the changes to Shadow Arts and on/in stealth traits, Revealed lasting 4 seconds in pvp rather than 3, and the new sources of Revealed popping up all over the place, we’re eating a lot of indirect nerfs and not getting much compensation. Is it reasonable to suggest that the Revealed-applying skills be changed to, instead of applying Revealed, simply removing stealth from affected players? A thief (or any other class) would still lose the benefits of stealth and be exposed to enemy players; they would need to spend initiative or a utility to go back into it, while not being completely hard-countered by the click of a button.

e: this isn’t 100% on-topic for daredevil feedback, but it does affect us more than any other class, so voila

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

Is it reasonable to suggest that the Revealed-applying skills be changed to, instead of applying Revealed, simply removing stealth from affected players?

I would like to strongly echo this. The toolbelt skill on the Scrapper Elite removing players from Stealth instead of causing Revealed seems like a great direction to go with other anti-Stealth abilities. You could still leave in self-applied Reveal to stop people from chaining Stealth.

I’d also like to suggest the idea of profession-specific durations for self-applied Reveal. The Thief has been sold as the “master” of Stealth to the point where they’re balanced around using it to survive, so four seconds of Reveal hurts Thief disproportionately more than any other profession. Either way you cut it, Thief badly needs more reliable Stealth OR less reliance on it through an increase in core durability. Preferably the latter

Amante.8109:

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

Is it reasonable to suggest that the Revealed-applying skills be changed to, instead of applying Revealed, simply removing stealth from affected players?

I would like to strongly echo this. The toolbelt skill on the Scrapper Elite removing players from Stealth instead of causing Revealed seems like a great direction to go with other anti-Stealth abilities. You could still leave in self-applied Reveal to stop people from chaining Stealth.

I’d also like to suggest the idea of profession-specific durations for self-applied Reveal. The Thief has been sold as the “master” of Stealth to the point where they’re balanced around using it to survive, so four seconds of Reveal hurts Thief disproportionately more than any other profession. Either way you cut it, Thief badly needs more reliable Stealth OR less reliance on it through an increase in core durability. Preferably the latter

I second that.

Oh yeah, I keep forgetting that in PVP the self-reveal on thief is 4 seconds. I’m not sure it is necessary anymore.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Oh yeah, I keep forgetting that in PVP the self-reveal on thief is 4 seconds. I’m not sure it is necessary anymore.

All things that were mentioned and ignored pre and post patch.

Staff is crap.
DD traits are weak.
DD utilities uninspired and mediocre.

DD is a mass of cut and paste of existing abilities. Other professions are getting new ideas and abilities, where we get refreshes (and weak ones at that).

We need a new dev who has a clue and interest in the profession.

If there weren’t other things coming in HoT that I wanted, I would’ve asked for a refund (and still might).

uglydan.1638:

Staff is crap.
DD traits are weak.
DD utilities uninspired and mediocre.

DD is a mass of cut and paste of existing abilities. Other professions are getting new ideas and abilities, where we get refreshes (and weak ones at that).

We need a new dev who has a clue and interest in the profession.

If there weren’t other things coming in HoT that I wanted, I would’ve asked for a refund (and still might).

The Daredevil dev is responsible for:

• Tempest
• Dragon Hunter
• Daredevil

Wonder why tempest community was disappointed

Thief class should be immune to reveal.

Shogun.7401:

Thief class should be immune to reveal.

No. But it should have access to skills and traits like everyone else.
Reveal was a good mechanic when it came from a done attack. Having other ppl that can apply reveal is just insane, since they are preventing not only the possibilty to not be seen, but some of our skills and traits.
It is like on a succesful steal we can negate a foe’s random trait line and special attacks for 6s (or 12 if traited).
Plz don’t destroy the thief, he already is in a bad place.

Realy don’t give us anything new. Just fix what we have already. Who needs a new specialization that is just an Acrobatic 2.0
Do you think that the thief community is so stupid? First nerf Acrobatic so that Daredevil seems good, right?
There are so many other things that need to be fixed about thief: venoms, traps, d/d, p/p, acrobatics, critical strikes, valuable condition removal, some burning application, and so on. I am sure thieves would be more appealed to have existing weapons, skills and traits fixed than having a new specialization.
I’m going to ask a refund for HoT and won’t buy it again till something change for good.
I’m sure you have a lot of work to do.

Completely random idea for a minor daredevil trait :

When you evade an attack you gain a stack of Audacity for 8 seconds. Audacity allows your melee attacks to strike 1 additional target in front of you and causes your range attacks to bounce.; nod ricochet. Stacks in intensity up to 3 or 5.

The reasons I like this for DD is because it encourages and rewards risky pay. In order to get the most of this skill you have to be near lots of enemies causing aggro making them attack you requiring you to successfully dodge again or escape or die (all things thieves are good at).

It probably wouldn’t work with some of the shortbow skills but would be a thing of beauty with staff and sword in particular. I wonder if they would let us get away with a double / quadruple / pen tuple backstab? Before you say overpowered … time travel, sword skills that shoot firerballs, ranged stomp, necrocopter, lighttraps, channeling a friggin dragon.

Shogun.7401:

Wonder why tempest community was disappointed

That’s dirty.

He did have my attention for some days with DH unfortunately,my condi signet ele died because of tempest. Now that I think about it he removed the only diversity ele saw in years lulz this guy is something else oh man why just why “he who knows his name”??

Edit: Acro says hi from the grave.

I remember when we were masters of stealth.

Then engineers got a mobile super-refuge.

And they still don’t rely on stealth to defend themselves.

Look, Karl, I realize this is the DD feedback thread, but acro was eviscerated, and with all the reveal being tossed around to every single other class in the game SA is being eviscerated as well.

You want our role in PvP to be back capping and +1? Well that’s awful, but if you’re going that direction go all the way. Give us more run speed, shadow steps, and mobility so we can at least reliably run from fights since it’s obvious that we’re not supposed to be able to win them unless we select the mandatory new evade playstyle.

I don’t even play a stealth build any more and I’m just plain upset about the constant inattention to thief stealth reliance as more and more revealed creeps its way in to the game.

how does it even make sense that the class The developers stated is “the master of stealth” actually worse at providing and maintaining stealth for both allies and self than not one but both pet spam classes?

How is thief burst even a problem when compared to mesmer burst, or the upcoming engineer stunlock?

Isn’t it more problematic to have a class that can continually hand out lethal damage while remaining completely invisible? Didn’t you nerf cloak & dagger because of that exact issue?

Isn’t it more problematic for a class that can literally stunlock someone for upwards of ten seconds to also hand out obscene amounts of stealth to his allies?

I get that daredevil is all about the evasion. I’m a fan of that. But core thief is not in a good place and it is the only class that has all of its passive defenses turned off when revealed by an outside source

Since you’re in charge of thief balance at the moment, can you enlighten us as to why you feel this is an acceptable limitation for thieves, but not for classes with far better innate passive survivability tools?

People keep saying that stealth “isn’t a Thief mechanic” because other professions have access to it, but there isn’t a single profession in the game besides Thief that relies on stealth just to be able to survive. For everyone else, it’s merely icing on the cake of all the other tools and options they have.

Focusing on evasion over stealth is ostensibly the right approach to be taking with a Thief elite specialization, but it will change very little if the massive design flaws afflicting Thief’s core skills and traits aren’t addressed.

Thief has gotten all of one official response in the last 3 months on anything not related to selling the expansion, and it was to say that Pistol is “something [they’re] looking to improve”. The language on that is so safely worded and vague—and the concern it’s addressing so far down the list of important, profession-breaking issues—that it makes me think they have little to no intention of addressing core Thief problems any time soon.

Amante.8109:

People keep saying that stealth “isn’t a Thief mechanic” because other professions have access to it, but there isn’t a single profession in the game besides Thief that relies on stealth just to be able to survive. For everyone else, it’s merely icing on the cake of all the other tools and options they have.

Focusing on evasion over stealth is ostensibly the right approach to be taking with a Thief elite specialization, but it will change very little if the massive design flaws afflicting Thief’s core skills and traits aren’t addressed.

Thief has gotten all of one official response in the last 3 months on anything not related to selling the expansion, and it was to say that Pistol is “something [they’re] looking to improve”. The language on that is so safely worded and vague—and the concern it’s addressing so far down the list of important, profession-breaking issues—that it makes me think they have little to no intention of addressing core Thief problems any time soon.

So, about the “stealth isn’t a Thief mechanic because other professions have access to it”, that’s just about it, as in I think when people say X is Y’s mechanic, they mean that it’s Y’s exclusive mechanic. So like Steal would be a Thief’s mechanic, or clones for Mesmers.
The weird bit comes in when one of the Thief’s mechanic’s – hidden/stealth skills (say Back Stab) – depend on stealth. By that, it is indirectly a Thief’s mechanic in a way. And like you’ve said, that there isn’t a single profession in the game besides Thief that relies on stealth just to be able to survive, makes it seem even more that it is a Thief’s mechanic – but that’s only due to poor quality of the class.

PopeUrban.2578:

I remember when we were masters of stealth.

Then engineers got a mobile super-refuge.

And they still don’t rely on stealth to defend themselves.

Look, Karl, I realize this is the DD feedback thread, but acro was eviscerated, and with all the reveal being tossed around to every single other class in the game SA is being eviscerated as well.

You want our role in PvP to be back capping and +1? Well that’s awful, but if you’re going that direction go all the way. Give us more run speed, shadow steps, and mobility so we can at least reliably run from fights since it’s obvious that we’re not supposed to be able to win them unless we select the mandatory new evade playstyle.

I don’t even play a stealth build any more and I’m just plain upset about the constant inattention to thief stealth reliance as more and more revealed creeps its way in to the game.

how does it even make sense that the class The developers stated is “the master of stealth” actually worse at providing and maintaining stealth for both allies and self than not one but both pet spam classes?

How is thief burst even a problem when compared to mesmer burst, or the upcoming engineer stunlock?

Isn’t it more problematic to have a class that can continually hand out lethal damage while remaining completely invisible? Didn’t you nerf cloak & dagger because of that exact issue?

Isn’t it more problematic for a class that can literally stunlock someone for upwards of ten seconds to also hand out obscene amounts of stealth to his allies?

I get that daredevil is all about the evasion. I’m a fan of that. But core thief is not in a good place and it is the only class that has all of its passive defenses turned off when revealed by an outside source

Since you’re in charge of thief balance at the moment, can you enlighten us as to why you feel this is an acceptable limitation for thieves, but not for classes with far better innate passive survivability tools?

I have been saying this for a while. The Thief was originally designed to use stealth to conceal them from damage and use dodges in between to close the defensive gaps. Due to this meta Thief’s were never buffed with any decent armor/toughness/defensive skills or vitality. Most mages have more health than thieves and carry more defensive skills. Thieve’s defensive skills were more about being passive while gaining health in stealth, taking less damage in stealth. removing conditions in stealth and simply not being seen while they fall back. With that said there has been a lot of changes to the thief’s meta since launch. And for thieves stealth “is” a meta. It might not be the F1/F2 skill but the theme is so hard coded into the way the class is built that you have to use it in one form or another for survivability.

Due to this every time you give another class another reveal skill you are indirectly nerfing Thieves. As it is SA has already been hit hard. SA no longer removes “all condition types” when you stealth. We can only remove damage conditions with a 3 sec CD. Every time I see another reveal skill introduced into the game I think "there is another option to keep me from healing, condition removing, gaining my only damage mitigation function or just making a break for it. Where other classes that have stealth skills you are just breaking there surprise attack or fallback. On the flip side for Theives you are breaking 4 or more metas.

Under DD we did get a reasonable condition removal trait. I will say I do like the fact we can remove “any” condition when we evade. I believe this is in it’s right spot as this doesn’t only work with dodges but evades from skills that have built in evades such as “Death Blossom”.

Back to the main topic though, if we are going to continue to add additional reveals to the game and make it even harder for the thief to perform a main mechanic, we need to give them an option to do something other classes cannot since they are “the masters of stealth”. I have thought of a few ideas:

1) Keep thieves in a sort of visible stealth. Other games have done similar things. Allow the thief to retain there stealth buffs for the allot time they normally would. Just make it so when they are “revealed” they are seen at 50% transparency. Keep it like a ghost image. This will allow the thief to keep there passive stealth buffs for survivability but also gives the enemy a chance to see them as a “reveal” should be. At 50% transparency they may also not be the direct focus of a large scale fight as most people are drawn to things they can clearly see.

2) Flash bomb trait. Give SA a trait that will allow you to throw down a flash bomb confusing the enemy for 2 seconds when you are revealed with a 25 sec CD. The thief will loose there buffs but they will at least have a minor counter/distraction to reveal. You could replace “Meld with the Shadows” with this as it is pointless when no one can stay in stealth for more than 3 seconds with reveal.

By the current state of the game and how broken the Thief is right now it is going to take much more than a “dodge” specialization to fix things. As of right now it looks as if Anet could not balance the stealth meta in the first place so now they are just trying to get rid of it. Which if this is the case than we need to go back and re-work the SA tree and Acro tree as they are becoming totally useless. After playing beta it is almost certain that one “must” take DD as a tree otherwise you are shooting yourself in the foot. You could take Acro or SA also to somewhat buff additional defense but unless you are “attempting” to squish tank, it will just kill your dmg output.

PopeUrban.2578:

I remember when we were masters of stealth.

Then engineers got a mobile super-refuge.

And they still don’t rely on stealth to defend themselves.

Look, Karl, I realize this is the DD feedback thread, but acro was eviscerated, and with all the reveal being tossed around to every single other class in the game SA is being eviscerated as well.

You want our role in PvP to be back capping and +1? Well that’s awful, but if you’re going that direction go all the way. Give us more run speed, shadow steps, and mobility so we can at least reliably run from fights since it’s obvious that we’re not supposed to be able to win them unless we select the mandatory new evade playstyle.

I don’t even play a stealth build any more and I’m just plain upset about the constant inattention to thief stealth reliance as more and more revealed creeps its way in to the game.

how does it even make sense that the class The developers stated is “the master of stealth” actually worse at providing and maintaining stealth for both allies and self than not one but both pet spam classes?

How is thief burst even a problem when compared to mesmer burst, or the upcoming engineer stunlock?

Isn’t it more problematic to have a class that can continually hand out lethal damage while remaining completely invisible? Didn’t you nerf cloak & dagger because of that exact issue?

Isn’t it more problematic for a class that can literally stunlock someone for upwards of ten seconds to also hand out obscene amounts of stealth to his allies?

I get that daredevil is all about the evasion. I’m a fan of that. But core thief is not in a good place and it is the only class that has all of its passive defenses turned off when revealed by an outside source

Since you’re in charge of thief balance at the moment, can you enlighten us as to why you feel this is an acceptable limitation for thieves, but not for classes with far better innate passive survivability tools?

This^

PopeUrban.2578:

I remember when we were masters of stealth.

Then engineers got a mobile super-refuge.

And they still don’t rely on stealth to defend themselves.

Look, Karl, I realize this is the DD feedback thread, but acro was eviscerated, and with all the reveal being tossed around to every single other class in the game SA is being eviscerated as well.

You want our role in PvP to be back capping and +1? Well that’s awful, but if you’re going that direction go all the way. Give us more run speed, shadow steps, and mobility so we can at least reliably run from fights since it’s obvious that we’re not supposed to be able to win them unless we select the mandatory new evade playstyle.

I don’t even play a stealth build any more and I’m just plain upset about the constant inattention to thief stealth reliance as more and more revealed creeps its way in to the game.

how does it even make sense that the class The developers stated is “the master of stealth” actually worse at providing and maintaining stealth for both allies and self than not one but both pet spam classes?

How is thief burst even a problem when compared to mesmer burst, or the upcoming engineer stunlock?

Isn’t it more problematic to have a class that can continually hand out lethal damage while remaining completely invisible? Didn’t you nerf cloak & dagger because of that exact issue?

Isn’t it more problematic for a class that can literally stunlock someone for upwards of ten seconds to also hand out obscene amounts of stealth to his allies?

I get that daredevil is all about the evasion. I’m a fan of that. But core thief is not in a good place and it is the only class that has all of its passive defenses turned off when revealed by an outside source

Since you’re in charge of thief balance at the moment, can you enlighten us as to why you feel this is an acceptable limitation for thieves, but not for classes with far better innate passive survivability tools?

Couldn’t of said that better myself and i’m really glad you did. I think many of us were hoping the Daredevil would fill in the MASSIVE gaps in thief gameplay you listed in your post. As we can all see though it’s going to take a lot more than Daredevil to put Thief in the position it needs to be in.

Only reason I posted this was to reinforce the fact that it’s not just a few people who feel this way.

Going back to daredevil stuff, I’ve thought about it for awhile, and I am now certain that the Impact Strike combo needs a buff. Let me explain:

The ability to instantly finish off an opponent, while unique, isn’t necessarily a good tech. Thieves already blind stomped and stealth stomped, so it isn’t fulfilling any niche role. The problem is, in order for the instant-stomp of Finishing Blow to take effect, you have to already have won the fight. You are up, the enemy is down, so what good is it to stomp someone a second or two early? You aren’t winning a fight because of Impact Strike.

I worked out the damage awhile ago, and the Impact Strike combo has the tooltip DPS of 443. The sword auto attack, for comparison, has a tool-tip auto attack DPS of about 420. So impact strike is only a 5% increase over just normally attacking (with sword). The staff auto is about 393 tooltip DPS, but factor in sustained vulnerability (14 average) and it goes up to 448. The dagger is kitten , with several ancillary effects. So, as far as damage goes, there is little to no difference between using Impact Strike and not using it.

What it does have is stun. A 2 second daze that is followed immediately up with a 2 second knockdown. So it has interrupt potential. I don’t have the exact animation times down, but since the entire skill takes 3 seconds, I’m going to assume that the total overlapping duration of daze + knockdown is 3 seconds. Lets compare this to another skill: Basilisk Venom. Basilisk Venom is 2 × 1 stun with a fancy name, so basically it is 2 seconds worth of stun. It comes with several advantages:

#1: It can be precast to reduce the recharge further
#2: It activates during attack, so precast and stealth cast venom essentially have no activation time
#3: It synergizes with venom traits, so when traited it is shared, grants might, steals health, and recharges in 32 seconds. The recharge here isn’t a super-advantage, since Impact Strike has its own recharge reduction trait.

The ability to simultaneously stun and preform other actions is what is really valuable. With impact strike being only as strong as auto attacking, it is arguably inferior to just pre-casting basilisk venom, then… auto attacking.

Ultimately, this means the Impact Strike Combo isn’t very good. It isn’t more damage than a melee auto attack. It isn’t necessarily a longer or better stun than the competing elite skill Basilisk Venom. And for its unique finisher ability to take effect, you need to have already won the fight anyway, so Finishing Blow doesn’t help you win at anything. This last one is a pretty big problem, because it is quite illogical to equip a utility that doesn’t help you win.

Overall, my suggestion is this:

Increase the damage of Impact Strike, Uppercut, and Finishing Blow by 50% each.

Yes, that seems like a lot. But even with that buff, it is less of a DPS boon than Fists of Fury + Palm Strike. The advantage here being that one isn’t exclusive with the other.

EDIT: The Dagger DPS is 454 + 1, not including poison. It is censored above.

Glad you guys agree. I’m not saying DD need to die. it’s a cool spec choice. I’m just saying it shouldn’t be a mandatory choice just to compete, and the thieves should somehow retain thier title of “the stealth guys” if the build for it.

DD is great, I’ll probably be playing a non-stealth DD just like I play a non-stealth corkscrew now because it’s fun. I like timing dodges more than stealths.

However, what pushed me out of stealth was this situation when it was much less problematic, and it’s sad to see it get incrementally worse with no mention of compensation or why they feel the repeated indirect nerfs to a core tratline are considered well balanced. Stealth is becoming incrementally less fun to play, which is the only option for a “core” thief, and even many DD weaponset builds.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Going back to daredevil stuff, I’ve thought about it for awhile, and I am now certain that the Impact Strike combo needs a buff.

There is one major element of Impact Strike that makes it more useful than it initially appears, and I don’t think a lot of people are aware of it: if the final hit of the combo does more damage than the victim has remaining in HP, they are instantly killed without being downed. This has tremendous potential in my opinion.

In the interests of consolidating feedback (and Karl hopefully seeing it), I’m going to copy and paste a post I just made in another thread about the essential changes Daredevil still needs to perform as designed and advertised:

• Replacement Dodges: While they are good on a mechanical level, everything about their animation and usability needs to be rock solid. It is also very important that the game treats them like a basic dodge, both for latency and gameplay reasons (they’re punishable by Confusion right now). For what it’s worth, these changes are almost certainly coming.

• Real Grandmaster Traits: There is no excuse for us not having them. None. The most obvious solution is to design new Grandmaster traits, then expand the first minor so that it adds a Revenant Legend style drop-down list. This drop-down would let you select one of the three Dodges at any time outside of combat or an active SPvP match.

• Escapist’s Absolution: This needs to be merged into the Driven Fortitude minor without any further debate. Assuming the core profession doesn’t receive any buffs to its condition removal before HoT, Daredevil needs EA as a minor for even D/P and Shortbow to remain viable against the power creep of the upcoming HoT meta.

• Staff #3: While the Immobilize break is nice, the skill is clunky and doesn’t flow with the rest of the Staff. It forces you to spend Initiative to get close enough to resume pressure. Initiative is a precious and finite resource, and you shouldn’t have to spend 2/3 of it just to remove one Immobilize and get back in melee. The best solution would be to add an additional effect that only triggers if Staff #3 hits an enemy with the initial attack. This effect would either give a temporary reduction on the cost of Staff #2, or trigger some kind of flip-skill on Staff #3 that lets you re-engage affordably.

• Staff #4: Currently serves no meaningful purpose. There is a widespread consensus that it should leave a line-shaped Dark or Smoke field. If you don’t want the field to pulse Blind, the skill itself could still fire a projectile that Blinds.

• Staff #5: Badly needs an evade for at least the last half or it will be useless in PvP after the first week of HoT no matter how much damage it does. There is no way it should cost 6 Initiative either, as the only weapon skill that does is Infiltrator’s Arrow and Vault is nowhere near that in terms of power or usefulness.

• Channeled Vigor: This feels like it was designed for a profession that doesn’t have the near non-existent durability that defines Thief. Even if that fragility were somehow addressed, 2.25 seconds is not a realistic cast time for a PvP heal. For basis of comparison, there are a scant three other healing skills in the entire game that have a 2+ second cast time. All belong to professions more durable than Thief, and yet those heals still don’t see play. Thieves are so squishy right now that a 1s cast heal isn’t realistic, so what are we going to do with one that takes 2.25s? CV is unique in that it pulses three small heals over its channel, but it’s still too long. Lower the channel to 1.5s at the most.

• Bandit’s Defense: As powerful as a 10s stun break sounded on paper, Thief has such specific needs from its stun break just to survive that this skill’s limitations already meant it might not see play… then it was nerfed to 15s with no further changes. Cooldown aside, the block needs to be longer and to block all hits during its duration, not one. It is also important that BD act like a normal rollover skill instead of automatically triggering, lest pets and other NPCs waste the trigger. It would be nice if the Kick portion had Evade frames for its duration, but that’s not as essential.

• Distracting Daggers: Drowning in needless limitations that obliterate its potential usefulness. The upcoming buff to projectile speed won’t address its deeper problems, such as an arbitrary 1s ICD between throws. At the minimum, it needs the ICD removed or the daggers made unblockable, otherwise the skill can’t fulfill its own purpose. The time limit also seems unnecessary—especially on top of an equip delay—but those limitations could theoretically be worked around if the rest was cleaned up.

• Fist Flurry: Speaking of arbitrary restrictions, it’s not reasonable to require that you land all five hits of a 1.25s melee range channel just to get to the good part of a skill. The smallest change that could make it worthwhile would be having the last hit trigger the flip over to Palm Strike. Funnily enough, it’s Palm Strike—not the Bandit’s Defense knockdown—that should trigger automatically.

• Impairing Daggers: Very close to where it needs to be. The design is fine, but it has some usability issues with the projectile speed and how it travels that cause this skill to fizzle in situations that it shouldn’t. Fix that and it’ll be fine.

• Impact Strike: Like the dodges, it is fairly good mechanically but has animation and usability issues. Tighten up the way the chain flows together (and make the last hit trigger the user’s custom finisher) and it should fulfill its intended purpose.

Karl, in my opinion an evade frame at the end of Vault would be most effective. We will be diving into fights and as soon as we make contact we will be vulnerable. I feel it is important we have some dodge while landing in the chaos lest we just get immediately smashed to pieces by the amount of incoming damage that will shortly follow our arrival. Also pleeeeaaase give us some feedback on if we will be getting some animation revamps for the staff skills/ idle positions, its very important to me

Amante.8109:

In the interests of consolidating feedback (and Karl hopefully seeing it), I’m going to copy and paste a post I just made in another thread about the essential changes Daredevil still needs to perform as designed and advertised:

I only quoted the beginning to save space. Karl – Look at this post a few times. This is what we need as a profession.

The only thing this post is missing is distracting daggers being an autorefresh skill that never needs to be precast (basically not a weaker mantra).

This is a perfect consolidation of Daredevil’s complaints. Even with these changes Daredevil won’t be an outright stronger profession than all other professions, it will just help us be something aside from the weakest profession in the game.

• Staff #3: While the Immobilize break is nice, the skill is clunky and doesn’t flow with the rest of the Staff. It also forces you to spend Initiative to get close enough to resume pressure, a limitation not shared by the #3 of any other Thief weapon.

There have been a lot of complaints about Staff #3. I feel the need to remind you guys that the Thief does not have cooldowns. You do not have to use moves in rotation, meaning that you never have to use moves if they are not useful to you. Even if you almost never use one of the moves, it is not hurting your DPS, since you can just spam one of the other moves infinitely, unlike with a non-Thief, where if a move is sitting left untouched, then it’s wasting time when everything else is on CD.

Staff 3 does pull you out of melee range, and if you then want back in quickly, you might have to Dodge, use one of Staff’s two built-in gap-closers, or Steal. This is not terrible, and if you don’t want to use any of those moves any time soon, then don’t use Staff 3.

Me, I use those moves all the time, so I can just use Staff 3 when I already intend to do one of those things. Staff 3 away from one enemy, Dodge towards another. Staff 3 away to avoid an attack, Steal back in. My non-DD Thief is already specced out to love dodging, with all sorts of abilities that proc on dodges. Heck, I run a D/P build in which I’m constantly backflipping out of melee and then D/P#3ing back into melee range, just to proc some Fury.

So ok, they can tweak #3 here and there, I wouldn’t turn away more damage or something, but the basic function, getting you out of melee range and “abandoning” you there, is perfectly fine. Don’t use it unless you want it to do what it does, but there should be plenty of cases where you want it to do exactly what it does, and when you want that, it’s actually very strong (dealing 8 times the damage of the SB version if you start in melee, three times the Cripple, and auto-breaks immobilize without having to pop a stronger stunbreak), and well worth its cost.

I feel like Debilitating Arc should have a quick rollover skill that allows you to bounce back in to combat right after you get pulled out, even if it’s just a leap with possibly another evade frame.

Ohoni.6057:

I feel the need to remind you guys that the Thief does not have cooldowns.

Initiative is a different kind of cooldown.

Ohoni.6057:

Staff 3 does pull you out of melee range, and if you then want back in quickly, you might have to Dodge, use one of Staff’s two built-in gap-closers, or Steal. This is not terrible

You seem to be under the impression that Steal won’t be on cooldown and Thieves have infinite initiative. Why should we have to waste initiative in order to compensate with an awkward move? S/D 3 doesn’t do this.

hino.3157:

Ohoni.6057:

I feel the need to remind you guys that the Thief does not have cooldowns.

Initiative is a different kind of cooldown.

Ohoni.6057:

Staff 3 does pull you out of melee range, and if you then want back in quickly, you might have to Dodge, use one of Staff’s two built-in gap-closers, or Steal. This is not terrible

You seem to be under the impression that Steal won’t be on cooldown and Thieves have infinite initiative. Why should we have to waste initiative in order to compensate with an awkward move? S/D 3 doesn’t do this.

Exactly. Why do we have to use more resources to make up for our own ability? Why is this the only #3 Thief weapon skill that puts you in a position where you cannot maintain pressure on your target?

Anyone see the Scrappers Hammer skills? Did anyone notice any of those abilities displacing the Engineer out of melee range? Reaper Greatsword?

A melee two-handed weapon’s skills should always function around keeping you in melee.

Let’s try and not repeat ourselves, it’ll just put the dev team off reading the wall of text.

Just accept that #3 is a defensive move. When you don’t want to use it defensively just don’t use it. Much like S/P and not spamming #4 unless you need to interrupt, don’t spam #3 on staff if you don’t want to dodge away.

hino.3157:

Ohoni.6057:

I feel the need to remind you guys that the Thief does not have cooldowns.

Initiative is a different kind of cooldown.

Ohoni.6057:

Staff 3 does pull you out of melee range, and if you then want back in quickly, you might have to Dodge, use one of Staff’s two built-in gap-closers, or Steal. This is not terrible

You seem to be under the impression that Steal won’t be on cooldown and Thieves have infinite initiative. Why should we have to waste initiative in order to compensate with an awkward move? S/D 3 doesn’t do this.

Use your dodge. Staff #3 is well designed as is. This was one of my favorite skills in Beta. If I got Imobbed there was generally an AOE effect laid immediately under me such as a mark or a lava font. #3 all in one motion broke the immob and got me out of that AOE as it inflicted damage a cripple and as it procced on evade traits.

I would then use bounding dodger trait to inflict damage instantly and dodge INTO battle. Dodges are not going to be used just to get away. You will be dodging towards an enemy more. This does not cost INI.

Premising an argument on #3 skills do not remove one from combat is a logical fallacy. Were there only p/p as a weaponset and another weaponset added where the number three skill did condition damage one could not claim “#3 skills are based on dirrect damage”. You are building an argument around a faulty premise that being Number 3 skills must keep you in battle.

Tldr: please make staff the thief skillshot weaponset. Skip to (1) and (2) for the ideas on how.

Quick thoughts on staff again. I know it’s repeating myself a little, but I’m just want to illustrate how i feel about the set clearly. Even with the change to #2 being targeted, it’s not going to have a unique feel/role amongst the weaponsets. The reason I think making #2 like whirlwind attack would be better than targeted like heartseeker is the weaponset could be made into one of those that you don’t necessarily have to target the opponent to fight. What do I mean by that? Let me explain.

Some other professions have weaponsets where you don’t really need to target the opponent to fight them. Virtually every skill is AoE or ground targeted making it a skill shot set. To better understand what I mean, look at engineer grenades or D/D ele. The nature of their cleaving/ground target skills allows you to fight without ever selecting a specific enemy.

So back to staff thief. The weaponset is halfway there already. Making it the skill shot weaponset would give it a unique niche for thieves. It’s just going to require 2 minor changes.

1) Make #2 directable so it can be used for repositioning and whirling through multiple people.
2) Make #4 a cone attack like warrior hammer 3, but blind instead of cripple. This cone should leave a dark field for 2-3 seconds that doesn’t pulse any effects. In this way you can aim it with the camera against multiple targets and get a nice life steal combo to fight them better.

These two changes would give staff a role that’s new, instead of being a combination of existing weaponsets. It would help focus it.

Maugetarr.6823:

Tldr: please make staff the thief skillshot weaponset. Skip to (1) and (2) for the ideas on how.

Quick thoughts on staff again. I know it’s repeating myself a little, but I’m just want to illustrate how i feel about the set clearly. Even with the change to #2 being targeted, it’s not going to have a unique feel/role amongst the weaponsets. The reason I think making #2 like whirlwind attack would be better than targeted like heartseeker is the weaponset could be made into one of those that you don’t necessarily have to target the opponent to fight. What do I mean by that? Let me explain.

Some other professions have weaponsets where you don’t really need to target the opponent to fight them. Virtually every skill is AoE or ground targeted making it a skill shot set. To better understand what I mean, look at engineer grenades or D/D ele. The nature of their cleaving/ground target skills allows you to fight without ever selecting a specific enemy.

So back to staff thief. The weaponset is halfway there already. Making it the skill shot weaponset would give it a unique niche for thieves. It’s just going to require 2 minor changes.

1) Make #2 directable so it can be used for repositioning and whirling through multiple people.
2) Make #4 a cone attack like warrior hammer 3, but blind instead of cripple. This cone should leave a dark field for 2-3 seconds that doesn’t pulse any effects. In this way you can aim it with the camera against multiple targets and get a nice life steal combo to fight them better.

These two changes would give staff a role that’s new, instead of being a combination of existing weaponsets. It would help focus it.

Good idea. I know some sugested a smoke field #4 but I would prefer a water or dark field myself just to distinguish the set from others. Dark field is likely more theif like than a waterfield.

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

Tldr: please make staff the thief skillshot weaponset. Skip to (1) and (2) for the ideas on how.

Quick thoughts on staff again. I know it’s repeating myself a little, but I’m just want to illustrate how i feel about the set clearly. Even with the change to #2 being targeted, it’s not going to have a unique feel/role amongst the weaponsets. The reason I think making #2 like whirlwind attack would be better than targeted like heartseeker is the weaponset could be made into one of those that you don’t necessarily have to target the opponent to fight. What do I mean by that? Let me explain.

Some other professions have weaponsets where you don’t really need to target the opponent to fight them. Virtually every skill is AoE or ground targeted making it a skill shot set. To better understand what I mean, look at engineer grenades or D/D ele. The nature of their cleaving/ground target skills allows you to fight without ever selecting a specific enemy.

So back to staff thief. The weaponset is halfway there already. Making it the skill shot weaponset would give it a unique niche for thieves. It’s just going to require 2 minor changes.

1) Make #2 directable so it can be used for repositioning and whirling through multiple people.
2) Make #4 a cone attack like warrior hammer 3, but blind instead of cripple. This cone should leave a dark field for 2-3 seconds that doesn’t pulse any effects. In this way you can aim it with the camera against multiple targets and get a nice life steal combo to fight them better.

These two changes would give staff a role that’s new, instead of being a combination of existing weaponsets. It would help focus it.

Good idea. I know some sugested a smoke field #4 but I would prefer a water or dark field myself just to distinguish the set from others. Dark field is likely more theif like than a waterfield.

I originally said smoke field as well, but on thinking about it more, this is a set that it seems they don’t want to give weapon stealth to. Adding a dark field increases out-of-stealth sustain through lifesteal and blind combos with the whirl and leap finishers respectively.

Darius.2651:

Let’s try and not repeat ourselves, it’ll just put the dev team off reading the wall of text.

At the same time, until the forums are changed in a way that allows the users to consolidate their opinions on feedback (e.g. an upvote button of some kind), we’re essentially forced to repeat ourselves in order to give the developer the understanding that it’s not a single person, or a small minority requesting these changes.

It’s a wall of text, yes – and I’m sure it’s disgruntling to read through. But, at the same time, it’s a necessary evil due to the fact that the developers do need to understand that these are changes a large number of Thief players are requesting.

Another thought (yeah, i know, but I’ll keep throwing them out there because I want DD to work):

Increasing the total endurance pool really doesn’t help in a fight. It’s 1 more dodge and then the rest of the fight it’s not noticeable because the regen remains the same. The idea is to make the base endurance regen scale with the increased endurance pool the same way. This would be a 50% increase to the base regen, putting it at 7.5 per second.

I’m emphasizing base regen, because this should be modified by vigor. So the overall regen with vigor would be 11.25 or 13.125 with endless stamina. That would really bring DD up into the evasive brawler category. Yes, I realize that that means DD could have a dodge just over or under every 4 seconds depending on whether or not they took acro, but without access to significant healing or mitigation, avoidance is the only other option. And really, combining it with acro (and taking the virtually mandatory trickery) means you’re losing out on a lot of damage modifiers and utility in DA, CS, and SA, so it seems like a fair tradeoff, especially when comparing it to the strengths of stealth.

Please try it internally before dismissing it. I think it would bring DD up to the evasive machine it is intended to be.

P.S: If that proves difficult to balance with the 10 endurance on physical skill trait and the staff trait, I would recommend reworking those traits slightly so that there can be more build diversity within the DD line. Those can be given more utility enhancements or duration buffs instead of endurance returns. For example, “increase the effectiveness of physical skills and reduce their cooldown.” This could make the Brawler’s Defense block last longer, the CD lengthening of Distracting Daggers longer, the Imairing Daggers’ condition duration longer, the heal cast time shorter, and Fist Flurry unblockable.

The staff trait could daze the opponent (0.25 seconds) on the next attack after successfully evading an attack.

Stuff to think about.

Initiative is a different kind of cooldown.

Not really relevant to the point I was making. My point was that with a cooldown set, the abilities that you don’t use as soon as they’re off cooldown are a wasted opportunity, because as soon as you do use them they will be unavailable until their CD is over. An ideal weapon set is one where you can burn all the abilities as soon as they’re off cooldown. A Thief weapon set does not have that pressure, because you can spend initiative on any power, at any time. If you have a build where it’s most efficient to spam one ability and only use the other powers every now and then, then that’s just as fine as if you use every ability evenly, so long as each of the more rare abilities provides some useful benefit on occasion.

You seem to be under the impression that Steal won’t be on cooldown and Thieves have infinite initiative. Why should we have to waste initiative in order to compensate with an awkward move? S/D 3 doesn’t do this.

I’m not saying that Steal will always be available, but it often will be, especially if you trait it up. My point isn’t that “every time you Staff 3, you’ll have something available to hop back in,”my point is that you NEVER have to use staff 3 if you don’t want to, and that’s perfectly ok, so just don’t press 3 unless you see some benefit to doing so. Don’t use it unless you’re rooted, or need to back out of melee for a second, and have a Dodge/Steal/Vault/Weakening Charge ready to get you back into the fight, or something else you’d want to do from a distance.

You don’t have to use it unless you want to, so don’t use it when you don’t want to.

Anyone see the Scrappers Hammer skills? Did anyone notice any of those abilities displacing the Engineer out of melee range? Reaper Greatsword?

Anyone notice that both of those classes have cooldowns, rather than Initiative?

A melee two-handed weapon’s skills should always function around keeping you in melee.

No.

A Melee weapon should always have options that will keep you in melee. Not every option needs to do so, If you want to stay in melee, don’t use the option that will push you out of melee. You never have to choose that option, because any time that you could hit 3, you could instead hit 1, 2, 4, or 5 instead, and those will work just as well.

Initiative.

@Ohoni It would be more effective if it went forward if you want to get away just turn your camera and use it.

Please no smoke field on staff dark is fine.

@Ohoni It would be more effective if it went forward if you want to get away just turn your camera and use it.

What? No! We already have Staff 2 and 5 if we want to make a targeted dash, not to mention Dodge. I’d prefer both 2 and 5 to work better than they do, but there’s no point to 3 also being a forward dash. The whole point of it is to be able to escape with only a single button press, no ambiguity. Maybe I’m just more used to this function because I play SB a lot?

Ohoni.6057:

@Ohoni It would be more effective if it went forward if you want to get away just turn your camera and use it.

What? No! We already have Staff 2 and 5 if we want to make a targeted dash, not to mention Dodge. I’d prefer both 2 and 5 to work better than they do, but there’s no point to 3 also being a forward dash. The whole point of it is to be able to escape with only a single button press, no ambiguity. Maybe I’m just more used to this function because I play SB a lot?

SB #3 doesn’t go back much but you do turn to disengage right? Don’t load much on a single weapon or it fails in every situation or it gets nerf especially a 2H in thief’s case. Staff is made to stay in combat.

SB #3 doesn’t go back much but you do turn to disengage right? Don’t load much on a single weapon or it fails in every situation or it gets nerf especially a 2H in thief’s case. Staff is made to stay in combat.

I wouldn’t necessarily want to disengage entirely though, I might just want to pull back out of a bad local situation, and then move back in when it’s safe (and no, I don’t need staff 3 to do that for me, I have plenty of other tools at my disposal). I’d also want to be able to activate the move as soon as I hit the button, rather than having to adjust the camera and then hit the button. I’d also want the ability to hit the button more than once if I wanted to retreat more than a single hop.

Staff is meant to stay in combat, which is why you shouldn’t use Staff 3 unless you want to. But good news! You don’t have to use it unless you want to!