Guild Wars 2

Update: BWE is LIVE! Have fun out there!

Please refrain from hateful comments, unproductive statements like “Staff sucks, gg” etc. Also, they already know we want new staff animations. No need to continue beating that dead horse. Also, keep in mind that the dodge animations are currently “stubs” or placeholders.

The final BWE is nearly here. The purpose of this topic is to provide feedback on thief/daredevil throughout the weekend. If Karl/another dev would like to chime in here and there, I know we’d all really appreciate it. Please share your experiences and thoughts on:

• Practicality of skills. Is a certain skill reliable? Does it do enough damage or perform it’s function well? How’s the cast time?

• Trait synergy and effectiveness. Do traits work well with each other and with traits from other lines? Do they perform well in practice, not just on paper? Do they define builds well?

• Does daredevil feel unique from thief (given that acro has changed, please avoid comparing to pre June thief)? Can you create fun and useful builds with the tools it provides?

• How does thief (not daredevil) fare against daredevil and other classes introduced in HoT. Keep in mind, all elites and even base specs have received significant changes since the last BWE. Please give feedback based on this weekend and not past experiences.

• State one thing you really like about daredevil.

• State one thing you dislike/want changed about daredevil.

• Any other thoughts that don’t fit in the above sections.

Bound being bugged to not leap finish unless you land into field makes any Bound build impossible to test.

The new animation and range for dash is amazing.

Impaling Lotus just looks silly now. You rotate like a classic dancer lol.

I haven’t tested much yet but I wanted to make a quick post about the animations since that doesn’t take long. Some of the animations have improved and some are still absolutely terrible.

First off, Daredevils still run around carrying the staff like a big hammer and it looks absolutely silly. If only there were some snazzy staff idle and run animations coded into the game … oh wait, there is. The monkey king tonic. Please give us these animations, they look fantastic and it’d be less work than making new ones. Please, Karl … I’m begging you, here.

Staff Bash and Staff Strike (love the added spin) are fine, but the Punishing Strikes animation that was directly ripped from the revenant (AKA the third auto-attack chain where the staff hovers in the air and spins around like a helicopter rotor) needs to go. It needs to go and be replaced with something that actually resembles martial arts. Perhaps something like a series of rapid forward thrusts. I cannot take the daredevil seriously when its animations make it look like a glorified baton twirler.

Hook Strike moves way too slow. It looks like my character is in slow motion.

Weakening Charge looks really bad. The character’s feet glide across the ground at the beginning of the animation. The footwork isn’t synced up with the movement. The daredevil looks more like an ice skater than a staff fighter.

Dust Strike and Debilitating Arc are fine.

Vault still looks awkward as heck. This animation should be altered so that the character actually uses the staff to vault up in the air. Since, you know … that’s what is implied by the name “Vault”.

Not gonna comment on the dodge animations since they’re just placeholders, but I will say the one for Impaling Locust was so bad it made me laugh. Also, why are our dodge mechanics still grandmaster traits? Why can’t we have real grandmaster traits and have our new class mechanic accessible through the main UI like the revenant has for switching legends?

Yea…don’t think I’ll even bother with DD in this beta, even though my main is thief. Looking like I’ll be switching for HoT. =/

They changed bound to be a blast finisher rather than a leap finisher. It is nearly impossible to land in black powder if any of you were intending to use it as a heart seeker like skill.

Ismael.6074:

They changed bound to be a blast finisher rather than a leap finisher. It is nearly impossible to land in black powder if any of you were intending to use it as a heart seeker like skill.

That is a bug Karl addressed already.

@Ausfer, please read the OP. Everyone knows the animations are bad and we want them fixed. We don’t need to fill another thread with comments about that.

Hello!

Feedback time … will update later.

• Dash – Feels way better, good job

• The bug on Bound makes it impossible to test it

• Staff still missing a combo field on the skill number 4 … preferable a dark field. Please don´t add a smoke field. We got that as an utility and as a weapon skill already.
  A dark field would give us life leech and blind. More Sustain and group support.
  Can make use of our whirl, projectile, leap and blast finishers. Combos are fun.

• Animations are not that great .. (i know .. placeholders)

• Bound and Vault animation should just be a high jump and a fist smash to the ground where you land. The flip looks a bit strange and cut off in the end. Less is more.

• Vault could need a distance increase so it can compete with shortbows mobility. That would give us a good choice. Melee weapon with mobility or ranged weapon with mobility.

• Dodge changed to stances. Switchable only out of combat or at the beginning of a pvp match.

• Proper Grandmaster traits added

• Merge Escapists Absolution and Driven Fortitude … Heal and Condition Clear on a Successful dodge as a minor trait.

• Evasive Empowerement – could need a second more in duration

• Could you make prepardness from acrobatics baseline please and put back might on dodge as a minor again instead of prepardeness?

All for now!

Best regards!

Shinobi

- Does daredevil feel unique from thief (given that acro has changed, please avoid comparing to pre June thief)? Can you create fun and useful builds with the tools it provides?

No. It feels like a better version of an existing trait line (Acrobatics)

- How does thief (not daredevil) fare against daredevil and other classes introduced in HoT. Keep in mind, all elites and even base specs have received significant changes since the last BWE. Please give feedback based on this weekend and not past experiences.

Thief feels pretty much the same, point decapper with low survivalbility, however due to power creep on other classes, thief feels inferior out side of their decapping job.

- State one thing you really like about daredevil.

Damage leap finisher dodge.

- State one thing you dislike/want changed about daredevil.

#Jerkmode. The whole thing, it still feels like a better acrobatics, which overshadows acrobatics, and theres conflict between staff and SD as both are meant to fill the same roll meaning that one will always over shadow the other, putting the class in constant conflict.

Final thoughts: At least we arn’t reaper. Reaper, soul reaping. Two mandatory trait lines in the current state of things.

So far I am having fun … wow guys I am having fun. On a Thief.

Also stop talking about animations. please.

Have only played a couple of minutes so i have no real info damage wise.

Feels a lot better than last time. Staff skill 2 Weakening Charge in particular feels good to use now. Disappointed that it does not evade but given that it’s really spammable it might have been too strong.

Staff skill 3 Debilitating Arc, not feeling it right now. Will have to play more

Staff skill 4 Dust Strike I really want this to make a short smoke field, so it’s combo able with bound or vault once, that way we can actually use stealth in combat with staff without having to run utilities for stealth. (I know we have black powder on pistol offhand, but it limits the builds)

Staff skill 5 Vault, so far seem good, like that it’s a leap now (it was a blast before right?) it’s responsive +1

Staff skill 1 Auto attack chain, like i said i don’t really know anything damage wise. But wow, Reflect missiles on the last attack and a whirl finisher. Seems a little “too” strong. it’s kind of a no cooldown reflect for pve (if timed right). (like i said, played a couple of minutes it’s just the feeling i’m getting)

Bound being a blast is also fine, can stack stealth/might in corners, if you don’t want to go for Shortbow. otherwise kind of a pain having to aim it T.T

That’s just some quick things I wanted to list… so… Bye :o

i feel so bad for thief mains, you guys complain about being out shined by mesmers in pvp and you guys can’t even be satisfied with your new weapon. man i am so happy i didn’t chose to main thief

i love my p/p set with daredevile. i with bound was a leap so i could stealth more easy than to go out the field and stomp back to it for the blast.
also dash is very nice 450 range to for pp its very useful for preposition until an enemy thief target you
i will try to upload some fights but atm team arena que is bugged

main problem is sc/x ele, druid ranger unkillable

BUG!!!: Vault’s range is incorrect. The actual maximum distance you fly and attack is much shorter than what is indicated on the ground targeting… target thing. It is actually pretty far back, so much so that if an enemy is just beyond the centermost green circle, Vault will not hit them.

BUG: Bandits defense still doesn’t display reflexive strike while it is on the hot-bar. Bandit’s Defense only displays reflexive strike when changing traits.

Tooltip Error: The Impact Strike Chain still displays an endurance gain for each portion of the skill when equipped with brawlers tenacity, even though uppercut and finishing blow do not actually give endurance on use.

Note: Evasive Empowerment activates after Bound/Impaling Lotus, and thus does not increase the damage done for them. Also, bound is a blast finisher now. Not exactly sure what is going on with that.

So far, it definitely feels less clunky than before. The dodges are smoother, the staff is smoother, and overall it feels like a QoL upgrade.

As for my personal project, I have experiment with weakening charge spam. Partially I am relieved: the skill will proceed to go through your target even after it slightly tracks. This means to get all 3 hits on an enemy, you need to be standing in a “sweet spot” which is just outside of manual melee range (the range in which your attacks hit when the button is pressed, as opposed to the range at which your auto attack starts going auto). My concern was that the skill would be too mindless, and you would be able to down players by hitting them for 7k a pop. But since it tracks through, it means that it is still possible to hit other players hard, but the careful positioning doesn’t make it a sure thing.

There are two exceptions to this. First is in PVE, enemies that have larger hitboxes are quite easy to spam weakening charge against. Second, while under the effects of haste, it is very easy to hit with all 3 hits of weakening charge at point blank range.

I’ll get to working on the numbers soon. So far, it is much funner than last time.

Dodges
Dash – Now as strong as it should be for a GM

Impaling Lotus – Only okay in groupfights since it will hit multiple targets. Should be a bit improved since it is inferior to Bound and Dash.

Bound – Damage is good. Leap finisher needs to be fixed (was already mentioned by karl but hey). Best choice when mobility from dash is not needed or conditions are not speced but still lacks something.

Staff
Vault – Will not hit if used on max range. AoE hits about 450 units before the centre of the AoE circle (even behind the landing point of the character).

Acrobatics
Now I don’t want to sound negative but with the introduction of DareDevil Acrobatics is pretty much obsolete. I don’t know how to make it again a viable choice but it seriously needs something to be even considered.

Staff still feels a little clunky but using p/p with daredevil/critical strike/deadly arts is actually very good on PvP, Dash is a great way to disengage a bit when necessary and the now buffed pistols have great dps.

As said before, Staff Vault range is not working correctly.

Also Finishing Blow would be cool with the actual finisher the player has selected.

First of all, I really love the new animation on Dash though.. Feels alot better now.

• Debilitating Arc: an increase to the dropback range would be a good idea. It feels a bit too short as some ppl running forward (towards u) auto attacking still hit u next attack. Maybe increase it to 600 range?
• Auto attack is awesome atm, it feels alot better
• Weakening Charge: became better working like heartseeker.
• Dust Strike: its much better now, this feels like blinding from dagger offhand, certainly needed the increase in casting time
• Vault: Aaaah, I do feel it became slightly better but still lacks something. It’s very easy to dodge and does cost 5 ini. I would suggest adding an evade here because it doesnt feel like Dare Devil can sustain fights 1v1 as other classes can due running out of dodges/ini quite fast with staff (since we got no stealth on it, so we cant quite position well)

I very much appreciate the hard work on DD Karl, I really notice the huge differences compared to prev Beta. Just some tweaks here and there, and should be good.

I’m not quite sure if we will see DD in the meta, though. Atleast not as Marauder.
But its certainly something different to play other than d/p for so long.

I see potential but its not quite on the level as other specializations just yet, we’re getting there!

Okay, I just played a few games as S/D Shortbow Daredevil with Dash, and the mobility is beyond anything that ever existed in this game.

I hope you like +1 decapping, because that build is SO fast we become literally GOD at doing it. Run signet of agility and try to steal when not full energy, and you never stop dodging to any point that need help.

Daredevil feels too weak. Other specs are so much better, I don’t see any reason to use it tbh. I think it’s useless in PVE, needs more DMG or condis. If acrobatics traitline wasn’t so bad DD would actually be good in PVP. The way it is now it’s lackluster. Any other gm dodge than dash isn’t possible in PVP, you simply need something against immob. DD is also very suspectible against any condi class.

So far from little testing:

Fist Furry seems to be better. I am about to try it out in a raid so I will get back on how that works. I like the 5 stakes of vul.

Impact Strike still seems a little lacking in PVE. I keep holding off to use it for a finishing blow to just find out the enemy eats the dirt too fast or heart seeker does the job just as well.

Dodge stubs seem to default back to default dodge outside of HoT content. Or least this is what it has bugged out to be.

Nocta.5274:

Okay, I just played a few games as S/D Shortbow Daredevil with Dash, and the mobility is beyond anything that ever existed in this game.

I hope you like +1 decapping, because that build is SO fast we become literally GOD at doing it. Run signet of agility and try to steal when not full energy, and you never stop dodging to any point that need help.

What about PVE, WVW and stronghold?

Can we get a bug fix on Bound for the weekend?
It’s very hard to test since it interacts differently with fields than it will at launch. This is important since it heavily impacts P/P and S/P play.

Overall, it feels much smoother! I love dash, and I actually like all of the staff skills except the auto.

• Staff 4 could use a line field (dark or smoke) for more play options.

• I really like the new Distracting Dagger animation, but the daggers are too big (on Asura at least).

• It would be nice if Bound and Vault had a bit of height. It feels weird when it falls short due to higher terrain. Also, 100 extra range on Vault would be nice.

I already know dodge animations will be fixed and the heal cast will be reduced, so thanks in advance for that! I appreciate your hard work!

Overall feels a lot better than the last beta,
so for that I want to thank you Mr. McLain,
now just some polish (animations, some range adjusts on skills that are not working as intended and what was promised before like the 10% on Withdraw) and I’ll be happy to play HoT.
Not saying Thieves will be the best prof. but at least It feels fun enough to keep using it.
So, good job

not had time to look over everything, but early impressions would be:

Staff

• Auto Attack damage is better, but animations still leave it feeling clunky

• ~Weakening Charge feels a little underwhelming. the weakness duration is short, so you really have to spam it if you want any decent duration, but that’ll drain your initiative.~ the animation’s looking nice though. Edit: the targetting on this is actually pretty awesome, and much less# suicidal. nice work there. More Edit: seeing the damage on this, I’m actually leaning more on feeling this is a pretty nice skill.

• Debilitating Arc – pretty good, no complaints. it’s not a bad skill, but not outstanding either.

• Dust Strike – another underwhelming defensive skill, this also fails to negate much damage. the nature of the skill means that 9 times out of 10 it’ll be single target (cone would be better than line), and canceling a single attack is pretty negligible when the enemy uses a repetitive skill like Hundred Blades or Rapid Fire. the sped up animation looks better.

• Vault range seems to be off, which is a pain

Utilities

• Fist Flurry’s still a pain to land. slight re positioning on even dumb enemies can render it useless, and I find it hard to believe my thief can’t turn slightly to land a punch. (I’m still a fan of the whole Palm Strike with stun -> Fist Flurry -> Pulmonary if all strikes land) all things considered, the payoff just doesn’t justify the setup.

• Impact Strike -> Uppercut -> Finishing Blow: this skill still feels pretty underwhelming in PvE, and I’ve found it tricky to land in all gamemodes due to the short range.

• Signet of Agility – only refils 2/3 of endurance, not sure if bug or not, but it feels a little sucky, espescially since it basically ignores the daredevil’s new mechanic.

Class Mechanic

I still think that the 50 extra max endurance is an incredibly weak class mechanic, and having the different dashes as Grandmaster Traits feels quite limiting. (having one at a time is fine, but we’re losing out on valuable trait space)

Overall

I’m warming up to daredevil, but I don’t think it really adresses the problems thief’s been facing. the defence we need simply isn’t there in a usable way, and we’re now expected to be running sustained damage rather than burst – leaving us open to more incoming damage that we do a poor job of negating. the condition cleanse on Escapist’s absolution is one of the strongest we have, but requires dropping the other two good traits daredevil has to get it – both of which are sustained damage traits.

Pros:

• dodges give us a defence that isn’t stealth
• staff is a reasonably decent direct damage weapon
• Escapist’s Absolution is one of the best Condition Cleanses thief gets
• I do like the theme
• the new dodges are pretty nice, even if I disagree with their implementation as traits.

Cons:

• 150 max endurance really doesn’t match up with Reaper Shroud or Berserk Skills as a class mechanic.
• the adept traits are lackluster
• the Master traits are all good, but don’t feel optional – EA is borderline mandatory.
• the staff’s 2-4 skills are more utility than damage.
• Dust Strike negates too little damage for the initiative cost.
• Impact Strike -> Etc doesn’t feel useful in or suited to PvE.
• Daredevil doesn’t seem to fix many of Thief’s base problems.
• if you want to run conditions, 90% of daredevil is useless to you. Staff, 5 of the utilities, and all but one of the traits.

Gray.9041:

I still think that the 50 extra max endurance is an incredibly weak class mechanic, and having the different dashes as Grandmaster Traits feels quite limiting. (having one at a time is fine, but we’re losing out on valuable trait space)

Agreed, I mean wtf!? You dodge 2 times and the class mechanic is basically useless until the next encounter (when you regenerated the endurance), regen is way more important.

Karl McLain.5604:

Re: Weakening Strikes – That’s sort of an intent for Weakening Strikes, in that against players and smaller creatures you have to work for your damage (positioning-wise)… While in encounters against larger creatures, high damage is easier to maintain. I’m not sure that it’ll keep that design, but at this point it’s fairly set.

I am very confused – Weakening Strikes doesn’t do damage? do you mean Weakening Charge or have I missed something entirely?

Debilitating Arc - distance is obviously bugged. much more short than it should be.

edit: look at the pictures. I started against the wall and I did “dash” (450), then heartseeker(450), weakening charge(450), debilitating arc(400)…
you can judge the results.

Karl McLain.5604:

Gray.9041:

cut!

Typo has been fixed.

You know you typed it wrong twice right? :P

Anyways, he’s just being nit picky…at least some of us know what you’re talking about.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Karl McLain.5604:

Gray.9041:

cut!

Typo has been fixed.

You know you typed it wrong twice right? :P

Anyways, he’s just being nit picky…at least some of us know what you’re talking about.

I was genuinely confused. I figured it might’ve been about Weakening Charge, but I wanted to be sure.

Dash-Works very well in it’s current state. I give an a+ on the immobilize removal.The stub while in HoT feels good. I kinda like it as you kinda have this “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” type leap as they do from tree top.

Impact Strike-In PvE I feel this works better in mid fight as a knock down stun than a “coup de grâce”. As others suggested for an elite it is a little under powered for PVE. I feel like it could use an additional debuff, pulmanary strike, vulnerability, weakness, etc (something). Though a straight up damage increase might help. In the current state the enemy has to be at like 5% health before this actually finishes them off. By than dots/other players finish them off before animation finishes which becomes a waste.

Actually managed to solo with a D/D ele tonight and not get hammered so I’m pretty pleased. Bound is so inaccurate that it’s just not worth taking.

Also some of my skills and weapon swaps are locking up, not sure why but it’s never happened before.

Still a real issue with cond cleansing a reaper just shut me down with chill and cond spamming.

Driften.8716:

Dash-Works very well in it’s current state. I give an a+ on the immobilize removal.The stub while in HoT feels good. I kinda like it as you kinda have this “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” type leap as they do from tree top.

Impact Strike-In PvE I feel this works better in mid fight as a knock down stun than a “coup de grâce”. As others suggested for an elite it is a little under powered for PVE. I feel like it could use an additional debuff, pulmanary strike, vulnerability, weakness, etc (something). Though a straight up damage increase might help. In the current state the enemy has to be at like 5% health before this actually finishes them off. By than dots/other players finish them off before animation finishes which becomes a waste.

I agree, Impact strike needs a buff and the time you get to use each part of the move needs increasing.

-Initial thoughts-

Not going to lie. I don’t at all feel survivalble with the DD. That said I think most of the issues with the DD atm are either QOL problems or other classes.

IE I feel insanely squishy on my DD, more so then I should . . . . But I noticed a trend ,that really only occurred when fighting reapers.

That said, I feel the DD does need more innate sustain, and merging the ‘on dodge remove condi’ trait with the heal on evade would really be advisable.

We also lack any sort of strong disengage tools, we can kinda get by with steal as our engage, but having no way of backing out of a fight is really debilitating.

Christonya.3856:

-Initial thoughts-

Not going to lie. I don’t at all feel survivalble with the DD. That said I think most of the issues with the DD atm are either QOL problems or other classes.

IE I feel insanely squishy on my DD, more so then I should . . . . But I noticed a trend ,that really only occurred when fighting reapers.

That said, I feel the DD does need more innate sustain, and merging the ‘on dodge remove condi’ trait with the heal on evade would really be advisable.

We also lack any sort of strong disengage tools, we can kinda get by with steal as our engage, but having no way of backing out of a fight is really debilitating.

Dash twice + 1 shortbow 5 and you’re disengaged from anything.

Defo need a GM trait adding I don’t think the new dodge mechanic being in there is balanced.

I know animations are still in the works, but imo punishing strikes REALLY need to change, i feel like im roleplaying a sassy cheerleader. Also please please please change the staff stance to something more suiting than the crappy hammer stance.

These two kinda destroy the feel of the spec for me.

Third exception: when used against a wall, it is also very easy to hit with all 3 attacks. And now it is time for math. As always these values are taken from an equipmentless character in PVP, so these are effectively the tooltip damage values.

BUG: Impaling Lotus activates whether you are in combat or not.
TOOLTIP ERROR:Debilitating Arc lists its evade time twice.
TOOLTIP ERROR: Distracting Daggers currently does not list the ICD between thrown daggers, nor the 1/4 second activation time to actually throw the dagger
TOOLTIP ERROR: With Brawler’s Tenacity, Distracting Dagger has the endurance gain listed, but actually throwing the daggers gains no endurance. Distracting Daggers (the equip skill) is the one that gains endurance.
TOOLTIP ERROR: The impact strike chain doesn’t display how long you have between attacks before the skill goes on cooldown.

Reference Numbers:
Dagger Auto: 198, 302, 302. 1 × 6 poison, 10 endurance gain. 2.1 seconds total. 2 targets
Backstab: 426. 853 from behind. 1/4 second activation time listed (closer to 1/2 second IRL)
Heartseeker: 355, 533, 710 per respective health levels. 3 Initiative cost, leap finisher. 0.75 second activation time listed (though I’m getting 0.9).
Sword Auto: 284, 284, 462. 1 × 2 cripple, 1x 2 weakness. 3 targets. 2.5 seconds total.
Unload: 1,136. Projectile Finisher (20%). 1.5 seconds listed time, 1.8 seconds actual time.

Staff Strike: 215
Staff Bash: 254
Punishing Strikes: 516, 4 × 8 vulnerability, reflects missiles, x1 whirl finisher
Total Auto Attack Chain time: 2.25 seconds (3 trials of 20 attacks). 3 targets.

Hook Strike: 254, 2 second knockdown. 0.75 second listed activation time.

Weakening Charge (x3): 822. 1 × 2 weakness per hit. 5 targets. 450 range. 3 initiative cost. Listed activation time: 1/2 second. Total animation time: 1 second. x3 whirl finisher

Debilitating Arc: 391, 1 × 6 cripple. Cures immobilize. 0.5 second evade. 400 distance. 3 targets. 4 initiative cost. Real animation time: 0.75 seconds.

Dust Strike: 235 1 × 5 blind, 3 impacts, 3 targets, 600 range. 4 Initiative cost. 1/4 second listed animation time. Total animation time: 0.8 seconds. Note: The animation time listed is the delay before the blind. Everything else is animation and aftercast. At point blank range this skill can hit twice.

Vault: 879. 5 Targets. 180 Radius. 600 Range. Leap Finisher. 5 Initiative Cost. 3/4ths second listed activation time. Can’t get an accurate reading of real animation time, but I"m assuming it is one second due to the numbers I did get.

Staff notes:

This is much better. The auto attack of the staff now has a base DPS of 428-437, as compared to sword’s 412 and Dagger’s 382. This makes the staff auto have the highest base damage out of any weapon before factoring in vulnerability. The animations are much smoother, the skills are much faster, there’s less aftercast, and the weapon can output massive amounts of damage.

My only suggestion for the staff is to make vault accurate to its ground targeting reticle.

Physical Skills

Fist Flurry (x5): 995. 1 × 5 vulnerability per hit. 130 range. Single Target. Listed Animation time: 1.25 seconds. Actual animation time is closer to 1.5 seconds. 20 second recharge.
Palm Strike: 465. 2 second stun. 130 range. Singlee target. Animation time 1/2 second (unable to adequately test). Causes Pulmonary Impact
Pulmonary Impact: 872. Cannot crit.
Total animation time: 2-2.25 seconds

Bandits Defense: Stun Break. 1 second block. Actual block time is longer, however I cannot adequately test that. 15 second cooldown. Causes Reflexive Strike when blocked in melee range.
Reflexive Strike:199 damage. 2 second knockdown. 0.5 second animation time.

Distracting Daggers: 0.5 second activation time. 25 second cooldown.
Distracting Dagger: 146. 1/4 second daze. Increases cooldown by 10 seconds. 1 second ICD. 1/4 second cast time. 900 range.

Impairing Daggers (x3): 597. 3 × 8 poison, 1 × 4 slow, 1 × 2 immobilize. 1/2 second activation time. 900 range. 25 second cooldown

Impact Strike: 199. 1 × 2 daze. 300 range. 1/2 second activation time. 40 second cooldown.
Uppercut: 598. Launch 0 (implied 2 second knockdown). 3/4s second activation time.
Finishing Blow: 532. 1.5 second activation time. Instantly kills enemies who are downed/will be downed by this attack.
Actual Length of this chain: 4 seconds

Channeled Vigor: 5,520 healing if endurance is not full. 7,320 healing if endurance is full. 3 pulses of 25% endurance each. Listed Activation time: 2.25 seconds. Actual activation time: 2.75 seconds. 1.5 scale healing power when endurance is full. 1.125 scale healing power when endurance is not full. 20 second cooldown.

Physical Notes: Fist Flurry and Bandits Defense are fine. For comparison, assuming full decked out zerker with 240% crit damage, Fist Flurry Does 810 to 912 scaled DPS, even without pulmonary impact being able to crit. Even if you don’t get all hits, the fists do up to 663 DPS. BTW this scale is basically me dividing pulmonary impact by crit damage and then calculating tooltip DPS normally.

I do have notes about the daggers, though. First of all, they should be 100% projectile finishers, to make them more useful and to put them in line with other thrown daggers. This will make the otherwise decidedly average daggers have more synergy. Second, with upcoming break bars, Distracting Daggers needs to be split between PVE and PVP. 1/4 second daze might as well not exist. In PVE only, increase this duration to 0.75 seconds daze.

Final Impact is the one that needs the most improvement. I’ve written about it before… and now I’ll do it again. In order for final impact’s unique ability to be used, you have to have_already won the fight_. Thieves are already excellent stompers, so there’s no need for that utility. Outside of the lackluster stomping power, the skill is lackluster overall. The aftercast on the skill is a second long, and leaves you vulnerable. The current DPS of this skill is 332, which means that as a stun it is wholly outclassed by something like basilisk venom. My suggestion for final impact is to reduce the after cast greatly (so you don’t linger there for literally a whole second), and then after doing that increase the direct damage of all of those skills by 50%. Then it will be worth using.

Traits. This is going to be done differently, since there aren’t many numbers to go by. I’m just going to give the suggestions trait by trait.

Evasive Empowerment: This trait isn’t good enough. The window of opportunity is too short (you can’t even get in the full Fists Flurry Combo). Increase the duration to 5.75 seconds, have it start at the beginning of the dodge so it synergizes with the dodge traits.

Weakening Strikes: much like lotus poison, this trait would be a lot stronger if it were by target instead of a single global ICD. However, as it is not exclusive with lotus poison, this isn’t necessary. It would just be nice.

Brawler’s Tenacity: Fine.

Driven Fortitude and Escapists Absolution: I’m putting these two together because these should be merged into a single trait, and kept as the master minor. Nothing else in the master tier will be taken because Escapists Absolution is necessary for PVP/WvW and a really big help in PVE. The other two traits might as well not exist. Conditions are everywhere in every game mode, so there’s never a situation where you won’t need Escapists Absolution. Driven Fortitude is alright, but it pales in comparison to what Escapists Absolution needs to do.

Staff Mastery: This trait is cumbersome and works against itself. Its first mechanic (endurance recovery) works to eliminate its second mechanic (damage bonus when endurance isn’t full). It is nonsensical. There are two ways to improve this trait. First is to remove the weapon requirement, and have it so it gives 10% damage when endurance is not full, no matter what. Second is to make it always give 10% bonus damage to Staff, regardless of how the endurance bar is.

Pulmonary Impact: Fine

Endurance Thief: Fine

Bound: Currently bugged, but you’re working on it

Dash: Fine

Impaling Lotus: There’s a fairly significant problem with this skill: The daggers fly gradually as you move through the dodge. This causes two issues. If you move out of range of an enemy, then you stop throwing daggers. If you move in range of a completely different enemy, you’ll end up throwing daggers at them. This skill needs much more control. To fix this, make it so all 3 daggers are thrown instantly at the location of the dodge, on the dodge, instead of being a targeting AoE that follows our toon around as they dance like a ballerina.

Also, increase the missile radius to 450 at least. Currently it is too hard to use, even with my suggestion.

Well, that is all for now. I’m working on very little sleep, and my vision is fuzzy, so the last thing I’ll do is archive the dodge skills that do damage. Pity me, for tomorrow I’ve got to work on the tempest and the dragon hunter.

Bound: 465. 5 targets. 180 radius. 300 distance traveled. 0.75 second evade. Blast Finisher. 5 targets.

Impaling Lotus: 50 × 3 damage. 1 × 8 bleed, 1 × 6 torment, 1 × 3 cripple. 3 Targets, 3 daggers, 360 missile radius. 300 distance traveled. x3 whirl finisher

I really hope the animation for Dash isn’t a placeholder, since it’s looking great imo. Although I hope that those white and blue swirly effects are.

The Elite skills needs to include your personal finsiher in addition to the broken floor.

Also is it just me, or is the dmg on staff quite high now?

Karl McLain.5604:

Hi all,
Let’s use this thread as the main place for feedback, if possible. Please keep it constructive! We’ll be able to make a few changes between now and Heart of Thorns launch, but they will likely be smaller. We’ve already got some in testing, but I’ll talk about those a bit later.
So, if you’ve got feedback, send it on in! Animations are in-progress, you’ll notice that we’ve got a few stubs in for the dodge abilities. note: This isn’t all of the animations we’re working on, but further feedback on animations at this point (we’ve been locked down for quite a while) won’t be very useful. We’ll be looking at making smaller adjustments as time fades, so feedback in that area is definitely easier to action.
Enjoy the BWE!
-Karl

As discussed in another thread, DD dodges should be on an F3 toggle. Not the dodge activation itself obviously… but hitting f3 should rotate to a different dodge (may need CD in combat). This will not only give the DD added utility, but it should make room for more trait ideas. Losing interesting trait options just to access a part of the spec mechanic is making thieves salty.

The dash and the lotus training dodge feel MUCH smoother than before (the clunkiness is gone completely, especially for the dash).

Dash actually feels really good, and I like the direction the animation is going with it too (even if it’s a stub right now). It feels more like a dash.

Lotus training dodge’s helicopter animation was really funny to watch xD. But mechanic wise, it’s there. Smooth and really practical.

Bounce feels a bit lackluster compared to the other two. I personally don’t feel like it weighs enough for me to choose it over the other two, even in a direct damage build.
There’s little control over the location of the impact at the landing.

It may make things easier if you actually shorten the range of this dodge compared to the default one (and maybe slightly increase the impact range).
Right now this dodge feels like a mid-range exclusive attack with a too tight miscalculation window.

staff #3 would benefit from a gap closer after the dodge (like ranger sword #2)

BUG: when you do a disabling shot, you can’t dodge anymore, you need to move first.

I feel so weak, so helpless…. RIP thief -_-

While i get that staff might not be a damage based weapon, and i could be wrong. i really wish it would still get more damage increases, because it feels lacking compared to daggers in damage. i just think they should be close or staff being better on account of it being slower and 2 handed, plus i also think staff should get a way to gain endurance per auto attack hit like first hit you get 5 endurance and second you get 5 and third you get 10. cuz tbh for me at least after i use the 3 dodges it becomes very hard to keep them up and i either end up with 0 endurance or 2 bars or 1 bar of endurance but yeah those are just my thoughts.

Nocta.5274:

Christonya.3856:

-Initial thoughts-

Not going to lie. I don’t at all feel survivalble with the DD. That said I think most of the issues with the DD atm are either QOL problems or other classes.

IE I feel insanely squishy on my DD, more so then I should . . . . But I noticed a trend ,that really only occurred when fighting reapers.

That said, I feel the DD does need more innate sustain, and merging the ‘on dodge remove condi’ trait with the heal on evade would really be advisable.

We also lack any sort of strong disengage tools, we can kinda get by with steal as our engage, but having no way of backing out of a fight is really debilitating.

Dash twice + 1 shortbow 5 and you’re disengaged from anything.

What if you don’t take dash? If dash is your only disengage it makes it mandatory, which is bad, options are good.

Cyhann.2609:

I really hope the animation for Dash isn’t a placeholder, since it’s looking great imo. Although I hope that those white and blue swirly effects are.

The Elite skills needs to include your personal finsiher in addition to the broken floor.

Also is it just me, or is the dmg on staff quite high now?

I actually was thinking the exact opposite about the dash animation. I guess everyone is different. It will be interesting to see what they actually finalize on.

style.6173:

I actually was thinking the exact opposite about the dash animation. I guess everyone is different. It will be interesting to see what they actually finalize on.

That’s just how life is.

BUG: when you do a disabling shot, you can’t dodge anymore, you need to move first.

Why are you even standing still in an ongoing fight?

Daredevil is feeling solid so far. The only thing that I would look at is the speed of Fist Flurry. Maybe give it a minor increase? It’s very hard to connect all five hits for the other combos. I love the idea of this skill very much.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAWVnsMBVmidmCePB8PhlxiybACgDYbDLrOc+279iH-TJBFwACuEAI3foaZAAPBAA

Tons of fun, tons of success. (moved my tabs to a single comment so I no longer am spamming >.> I was surprised). Fits my playstyle so far, not sure why people are saying Bound is bad. I personally think it needs to be FAR stronger than Reckless Dodge on warrior BECAUSE its a GM (which is why I’m happy we choose a dodge. it means they get to be very powerful). Only a few bits (mostly QoL plus forgotten changes?)

1)Hook Strike+Steal sometimes bugs out if you use them at the same time (meaning you have to queue Hook wait a quarter of a second then steal or it might break and do neither but reveal you…which is annoying)
2) Impact Strike is unreliable, but fun. I have had massive damage come out, but you get chained into a combo that often doesn’t work because people see you and they go “oh look, a non dodging, non stealthed, very slow Thief. squish time” and that hurts. Not sure what to say, but it doesn’t work for a dps build as well as basilisk.
3) Debilitating Arc has fantastic damage and purpose, I’d suggest giving you swiftness after you break (or some assorted speed buff) so you can get back to your target. So far I have to DA, WC, DA, WC and since WC has no evade I go init hungry or get a kill.
4) Impairing Daggers will sometimes get obstructed if target goes behind pillar after you cast EVEN if its about to hit them. So I toss, guy runs around a wall to block me just before they hit (milliseconds) and since my LoS breaks I see “obstructed, obstructed, obstructed” and the skill goes to waste.
5) Vault still has no evade and the animation needs a tiny bit of cleaning ^.^
6) I take Hips (er… His…? Hide in Plain Sight or Hide in Shadows, not sure which) because the cast time on your endurance heal is still way too long.

Other than those, I personally can’t find problems that you haven’t mentioned fixing already (evade frames, animation cleanings, qol fixes to skills). Having a blast =D and killing guys so life is fantastic+ getting my refill of salty tears/surprised wtf-did-you-do’s. =D This is so much better than last time.

Playing the Daredevil both this week and last I have noted the following:

• Dash feels MUCH more fluid and overall better to use this week compared to last (is this still a placeholder animation?) while the other two still need work, particularly bound.

• QUICKNESS! this boon really hurts aspects of the Daredevil, particularly the staff skills Vault, Weakening Charge, Debilitating Arc, and most annoyingly Impact Strike. On all of the listed skills (possibly more) Quickness causes them to only go half their intended distance making them more often then not miss their target completely. For Example a Thief pops quickness via Utility/trait to get Impact Strike off faster but in doing so reduces the initial charge range from 300 to 150 (melee range) causing the first strike to miss and thus wasting the skill completely.

• Lack of synergy in the traits. This is a big issue for me and many others, the Daredevil trait-line feels very odd in that the only other line that seems to compliment it is Acrobatics which is another defensive line and not a particularly good one, it almost feels like these 2 lines are fighting over the same position while trickery remains as absolutely vital as ever. Recently I tried the Reaper specialization and was absolutely amazed at how much synergy the spec had between existing Necromancer traits/utilities and abilities, almost everything worked together flawlessly to produced a really powerful feeling and fun elite spec. In short the Daredevil offers us almost nothing that the baseline thief couldn’t already do better and has no traits in it line that scream “WOW! That’s cool I want that for my X build!”.

• Fist Flurry, The damage buffs this skill received following BWE2 made it more desirable to actually take. However it remains very hard to actually hit anything not standing completely still with this skill and while this may be intended it makes the skill feel very unrewarding to use if you land 4 hits only to miss on the 5th because your target moved very slightly backwards (this happens quite often even in PvE) which prevents you from using the main attack (Palm Strike). Perhaps this skill should only require the final punch to hit to trigger palm strike instead of all 5 or nothing?

• Channeled Vigor, Still sucks, wasn’t this one suppose to have its cast time reduced?

• Distracting Daggers, This skill could have great synergy with the Impacting Disruption trait, unfortunately it seems crippled by a random 1s CD in-between dagger throws which really throws it off, though the projectile speed increase was nice.

That’s all for now, but if I find more worth commenting on I’ll be sure to post it again in this thread.