As others have said give a toggle dodge button on f3 f4 f5
Add a daze to staff 4 because it needed something extra and see below
Add new GM traits (ideas below)
Remove vulnerability from staff auto attack 3rd chain and add an evadeTraits GM
Shadow Armor – Gain Protection (2s) when you sucessfully evade an attackSkulk in shadows – gain resistance while in stealth – drains 1 ini every second (this could synergise with ’Shadow rejuvenation, nullifying the ini gain from that trait, it would also help thief survive the insane aoe conditions currently in game)
Physical fitness – Staff and Physical skills deal more damage (1% per unspent initiative)
GM Minor
Endurance Thief – Gain Endurance when you succesfully steal from an enemyTraits Master
Passive Defense Take reduced damage per initiative (1 ini = (-) 1% dmg)Slip away – Gain stealth (2s) and superspeed (2 secs) when you daze a foe
(this would give old sets like PP SP ways to get stealth and also staff if you added a daze to staff 4)
Escapist’s Absolution – Remove a condition when you evade an attackMaster Minor
Driven Fortitude – Gain Health when you successfully evade an attackTraits Adept
Staff Master – Gain a stacking toughness buff while wielding a staff (400 toughness) resets on gaining stealth or swapping weapons (this is not crazy – scrapper has a 500 toughness buff)Quickital Wits – Critical hits reduce weapon swap (by 1 sec – 1 sec cool down)
Brawlers Tenacity – Gain Endurance when you first activate a physical skill. Physical skills have a reduced cooldown 20%
Adept Minor
Gain access to the physical skill category, enhanced dodges, staff weapon type and your maximum endurance threshold is increased.
These right here would be crazy broken. I appreciate that you’re trying to give us something to work with though. I don’t mean to call you out individually, but this is exactly why we will not see grand master traits redone at least until after launch. You do have some ideas I like though! Adding a daze to staff 4 is brilliant and would give some merit to the ability. Unfortunately your traits have heavy thematic synergy with something that daredevil should not be. With multiple classes getting new mechanics to combat stealth, we need non-stealth centrist options in order to stay competitive in sPvP. On PVE, the damage mechanics you have are crazy. Physical fitness + trickery + executioner would result in a 60% damage increase on targets below 50% when you have full initiative (15% trickery, 15% physical fitness, 10% for target having a condition, 20% for executioner). It would be essentially a new mandatory trait for us to run. Critical Wits with thief would allow for almost instantaneous constant weapon swapping between staff 1-2, dagger dagger and sword pistol for their 3 skill. The defensive abilities are not bad, but dip into more stealth mechanics when i believe thematically the daredevil was supposed to be less about stealth.
Mostly my point is that building even just 3 new traits let alone testing them would either delay launch or delay our elite spec from being accessible. Earlier I said that I didn’t want an f3 through f5 dodge, but mechanically that’s because I recognize that this cannot happen before launch. Yes I do want each dodge to be awesome and hard to choose between, but to get there we need to make sure they are fixed. Not only because of coding time, but also because of a lack of testing time. Think of how many things we found out from BW2 that needed tweaking, even just small breaks like impairing daggers using initiative.
That said, if we wanted a best of both worlds compromise down the road where we do get a class mechanic for changing dodges, these would be my recommended Grand Masters that still apply to each dodge. Or if we could just add these in and make them more awesome? Because while I feel dash is close to being ‘there’ as a ready class mechanic, Impaling Lotus and Bound are behind.
Black Lotus: Targets with bleeding, torment, and cripple receive three additional stacks of these conditions when you use impaling lotus.
One with the Wind: Dash becomes a 1 second evade and grants 2 seconds of super speed and stability
Tectonic Bound: Bound deals 10% additional damage and dazes targets for 3/4 second. 7 second cool down on daze.