Guild Wars 2

Hey Karl,

I’ve taken a liking to a Pistol/Pistol Daredevil. It’s definitely viable in soloq play, but unproven in coordinated groups, and may not work well in such a situation when you have to deal with coordinated quick/instant bursts.

It’s been fun to play and revolves completely around the spacing created by dash to allow for safe unloads. I’ve never really felt good about not running shortbow, but it feels alright with this. Please don’t let it die.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQRAqa4an8lClPhlOBGmCkmiFYCzLNcGaDzhwSYLULBEAyAA-TJBFABiXGYhnAgO7PAwJBAA

Altie.4571:

MEGA HUGE BIG ISSUE:
class icon being a boot is really bugging me. It just doesn’t fit the theme (I know Hermes and whatnot, but he was not known for the thievery, but as a messenger boy). I really hope you don’t change it, and if you do, it’s something more sinister than a boot.

Hermes is also the god of the Thieves. He was actually known for sometimes tricking others gods for the sake of humanity.

Staff still seems very underwhelming. I still don’t see how it brings anything new to the table and doesn’t seem very practical.

I think the auto-attack damage is okay-ish and has vuln so it might be good for dungeons runs. But I prefer Sword for cripple, weakness, and more raw damage. Muli-hits may trigger signet of malice more often but not more than #3 on S/p.

Staff #2 Seems kinda weird. Damage isn’t impressive and the weakness is way too short. Would prefer a non-movement or controllable whirl like guardian. Sword auto does a better job.

Staff #3 Seems useful but very situational. May not even get much use if I use the Dash dodge since I’m already using the Daredevil tree.

Staff #4 I guess if you want to negate only up to 3 attacks from 3 different enemies that must be positioned in front of you. Pistol #5 does a much better job and is a dark field. I like the new animation; gives a nice visual cue. Would also like a better sound cue.

Staff #5 I think this skill is okay. It would be better if the cast time was a bit shorter and had more range if you won’t increase the damage anymore. It’s more like a hop than a leap. Sword #2 offers a faster shadowstep and immobilize.

S/P offers a more survivability and sustainable damage than staff.

• blind field
• interupt on command
• evades
• instantshadowstep
• cripple/weakness on auto
• AOE dmg

while staff only offers

• a momentary blind
• slow and short hop
• vuln on auto
• less aoe dmg

Overall, staff does what s/p already does but not as well.

Physical Skills

Channeled Vigor – Healing values seem okay. Not a big fan of channeling though. Mechanic seems a bit weird though. Heal more when you have endurance or heal less but gain endurance.

Bandit’s Defense – Yay a non-underwater block. May not have much use in pve since bosses usually can’t get cced and you’ll be better off attacking trash mobs than passively trying to knock them time. The 1s window must be accompanied by really good timing. Might be very hard to pull off in pvp.

Distracting Daggers – a mantra form of #4 pistol? While the increased cooldown is a nice effect. I don’t know how useful it will be in pve. As bosses and champs don’t get interrupted often and seem harder to interrupt in HoT and trash mobs just die fast already. May be pretty useful in pvp but these daggers must be used sparingly and with precise timing.

Fist Flurry – dmg from the skill and palm strike just don’t seem impressive.

Impairing Daggers – A slow :o I like this. I wish it had more uses or a shorter cooldown but I like it.

Impact Strike(elite chain) – Might not be that useful in pve. Like I said about champs, bosses and trash mobs. Finishing Blow seems kinda useful but not necessary. We can already stealth or shadowstep stomp. Might want to get an elite skill to get them down instead of using it to finish downed people off.

Overall, I don’t see physical skills being better than the current utilities like shadow’s refuge, shadowstep, smokescreen, or even the signets. I find the old utilities far more useful.

Daredevil

Enforcer Training – Okay but not necessary.

Brawler’s Tenacity – I am not big fan of physical skills at the moment so meh.

Evasive Empowerment – I don’t want to be dodging just to be able to use this trait and it’s duration is only good for 1 or 2 quick hits. Maybe a dodge > #4 staff combo?

Weakening Strikes – not good vs champs or bosses. Might be good in pvp.

Driven Fortitude – I won’t be dodging all the time and is pretty insignificant. Only heals like 4% of your hp with no added vitality.

Escapist’s Absolution – I like this. Even though its only on a successful dodge, I’ll take any condition removal.

Impacting Disruption – Dmg from pulmonary impact is okayish, but must have really good timing for those interrupts. Idk how you’ll pull them off.

Staff Master – I’m not really digging staff at all at the moment and 2 endurance per initiative is so insignificant. I wished the endurance not full conditions were the other way around. Having benefits from having full endurance teaches people to save their dodges and makes people watch out for any tells for when to dodge and is a lot easier to maintain.

Endurance Thief – Seems okay. Stealing is suppose to be the “identity” of the thief even though some people rarely use it in pve. Why not make it more useful.

Dodges – I like the overall fluid improvement of the dodges. I like the Dash dodge keep it how it is. Aoe on the Bound dodge is way too small. Requires some really good position and might distract you from its original purpose, dodging incoming damage. Impaling Lotus if you want to run away a lot or annoy your enemy? Condition dmg isnt impressive at all.

As a thief main, I find this HoT elite specialization very underwhelming. I don’t like how daredevil is themed with dodging and almost entirely on dodging. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. As it is a good method of survival, it is not always necessary and not beneficial most of the time. As one of the devs already said, they made sure zerk meta dies because dodging won’t save you now.

I was hoping for something more new(to gw2) or creative than a modified old acrobatics style trait line. Maybe make a traitline based on luck. Put some fixed probabilities on things and gamble your way to victory. A thief always takes risks. Maybe bring back Flashing Blades (You have 75% chance to block while attacking) from GW1. Or bring in something similar to Deep Wound in GW1. Dodging is much more harder than just blocking or invulnerability. Since thief has the lowest hp pool, why not give them one or two more of these for pve use especially in HoT? Stealthing doesn’t stop damage in a combat dungeon setting either. I hope all goes well and that my feedback is appreciated. Still excited for HoT release.

My Feedback so far.

Staff:

Auto Attack String.
Part two feels too unspecial, it should get merged with part one, making the first part do 2 strikes. Make Part 2 then an line of sight Quick Thrust with an little evade frame which grants you Vigor. The last part, the Staff Whirl would feel better, when it also would hit up to 5 targets.
It feels still too weak and would be better, if its speacility as a weapon would be, that you can hit up to 5 nearby targets with the Staff instead of only 3 with Part 1 to 3

Weakening Charge Should get its distance increased about like 50% and its amount of hits in that aninmation from 3 to 5 and it should convertfrom you a condition over to the first target hit

Deliberating Arc : Its distance feels bugged and the direction of where you want to roll to should be shooseable byadding a little arrow marker first that you have to confirm before you perform the skill to decide, into which direction you evade after the attack, so that you could also evade just to the sides or forward if you want.
The Cripple on this skill is just useless and theres a bug with 2x the evade skill fact in the description (at least in German) The Cripple should get changed into Torment, to make the Staff also a bit more interestign to be played as Condi, because under its current design its a 100% pure power weapon. Rename the Skill then to Punishing Arc

Dust Strike Is too weak, it needs more function, instead of like a 600 line blind for 3 targets it should create a 600 line vertical thicker smoke screen for like 4-5 seconds that can be used to combo with it with say vault or the dodge trait bound so that you can use Staff 4 as a good opener to get steealth, while the skill itsef can protect you from projectiles while it blinds foes peiodically in those 5 seconds, if they touch that smoke screen. This way would become the E Spec a very good on demand range skill defender that could forge ranged enemies to go into melee combat with them.
Using Staff 4 to quickly dodge into it 3x should be possible in the tiem that smoke screen is up so that you could steack with the 3 dodges up to 9 seconds of stealth for example before the smoke screen disappears or theoretically more, if you use multiple Staff 4 together with a Signet of agility to refill your endurance.

Vault: Should get slightly its distance increased from 600 to 750, and it needs either an evade frame, or it should give you for the time of its animation stability/resistance, because the long animation makes you also at the same time very vulnerable to attacks/conditions.
It should have also a little side effect agaist targets that have lesser than 50% health.
If you hit targets that are under the threshold, then should vault remove a boon, before the damage occurs to make Vault as a skill more impactful in combat.
And the attack needs to be unblockable.
——

Traits

• Empowerment should get baseline into Minor Adept to make in general the damaging dodges by those 10% more powerful for every dodge, its too useless compared to the other 2.

• Weakness on critical hit every 10 seconds, feels not right, reduce the Weakness duration from 5 to 2 seconds and reduce the internal cooldown from 10 to 5 seconds

• Brawler should get changed from the 10 Endurance that you get when using a physical skill instead to the passive effect, that when you use this trait, that all your weapon skills get their Initiative costs reduced by 1 and after usage of physical skills you gain Quickness. Move it then up to Grandmaster Traits

• Guided Valor + Escapists absolution > Merge them, so that you get conditions removed and healed on dodge with that little internal cooldown

• Move that automatic pulmonary trait on interupt to Adept Tier

• Master of Staff + Endurance Thief > Merge them under Master of Staff as Minor Grandmaster

• Move all the 3 Dodge types from Grandmaster to the now 3 free spots of Master

• New Trait for Adept Tier: Self Defense: You gain the chance while equipped with a Staff to automatically block incoming melee attacks with Bandits Defense every 10s.

• New Traits for Grandmaster Tier: Bulletproof Monk Grain Protection and Stability whenever someone shoots Projectiles at you. Grants you also Resistance on successful Dodge.

• House of Flying Daggers: Increases the amount of Dagger Charges from the throwable dagger utility skill from 3 to 5 and the amount if daggers thrown from 1 per charge to 3 per charge to hit per throw up to 3 targets.
  and you throw on Death Blossom usage now also Impairing Daggers at your targets that you hit.
  —-

Utility Skills

• Fist Flurry: Remove the limitation of having to hit with all attacks juts to be able to use Palm Strike.

• Bandits Defense: You shoulld steal a Boon with this also and it should recharge by 2 seconds or so your Steal Skill

• Both Dagger Utilities should get ther recharge Times reduced to 20s

Elite Skill
The Skill is missing the Fact, that you dash now towards when you use it (if that is even intended)
And if it wasn’t yet changed, then when you finish with Finishign Blow, you should useyour finishing Move style that you have activated and not the default finishing animation
——

Dodge Animations

Dash: Would be awesome, if it would receive some kind of Aftershadow Effect to make it a bit more visually impressive, to show you, how fats you move and the animation should be quicker. While you dodge should the character move with Super Speed. Or instead of granting Swiftness it should grant Super Speed.

impaling Lotus: for the sake of god, please change back to the old animation lettign you perform death blossoms per dodge roll, looked way cooler and alot more martial artistic, than this silly spiral pirouette now that just looks stupid.

bound: is ok.

I just posted this in the daredevil feedback thread, but seeing as Karl has now shifted his gaze to this thread instead, I’ll post it here as well.

I think it would be great if you could change skill 3 to evade in the direction you’re moving, like a weapon version of a dodge roll. That would make the evade a whole lot better in my opinion, as it would give you more control over where you dodge to and would retain its reactive capability.

For a spec that is all about evasion I think you should have more control over evading with your weapon, not just via dodge rolls. We have the dodge replacers, which are great, but the staff doesn’t quite feel good enough for the daredevil.

I also think staff should have a non-stealth interrupt option, so what about adding a conditional knockdown to vault? The knockdown would only trigger if you are above a certain initiative threshold when you cast it (say 75%). So for example, if you are over 75% initiative when you press skill 5, vault will do a 1 second knockdown, but if you press 5 while under 75% it does extra damage or something instead?

Alternatively, maybe skill 4 could do a 1/4 second daze to your target if they are in melee range?

I just feel that because the daredevil is about improved evasion and interrupts, it would make thematic sense to give the staff fitting tools as well.

The more I have played the daredevil, the more it just continues to feel off to me. the staff 2 skill, 3 skill, and 4 skill just all seem to lack much use. The staff 2 feels far too slow to be used in the heat of combat, slow off the cast and slow as it climaxes. I feel of this skill had the same fluidity / distance as dash along with a different animation, it would be golden.
The staff 3 feels awekward to use.. Being the only skill on staff with an evade frame, it sends you off in a direction that is not suited for the staff play style. I feel that if it flipped you over the opponents head to his rear, it would be far more useful than it currently is, it throws you away from combat as it is now, especially because of its awekward timing and casting it twice in a row un-intentionally.
Staff 4 although much better now that it’s faster, still seems to lack something for me. Overall staff 4 is probebly the best mechanically of the three as an aoe blind can be quite useful. if these issues could be resolved along with fixing the said 3 staff skills animations, I think i could finally love the daredevil. I hope my feedback is of value to you guys, still hoping formthenbest from you all!

my 2 cents

p/p thieves need ricochet to be viable

drawback needs that heal buff that was promised

reduce cost for pistol 5, you nerfed it to by 50% without giving anything in return
actually MOST weapon skills need initiative reduction
currently no thief builds can even function without trickery line
heck almost every build rely on deadly arts + trickery

staff…there is nothing good about it besides the look…should have just went with rifle

Hey Karl,

Been playing all day and here’s a few quick things.

First off, LOVE the changes to Unhindered Combatant (Dash). The animation is perfection, no matter what weapon you have unsheathed whilst dashing it looks perfect. The dodge is smooth and functions properly, No further changes necessary.

Staff skills:

Staff #1: The damage is better, I still think every chain should apply vulnerability or something, there’s still very little incentive to use AA if you can help it.

Staff #2: Making it stick to your target like Heartseeker has improved this skill tremendously, however deciding to reduce the distance it travels was a mistake. Besides Vault this skill was our only gap closer until the distance was reduced.

Staff #3: I still don’t understand the thought process behind this skill. Daredevils are by design meant to be brawlers who excel at staying on our opponents, this skill contradicts the playstyle by sending us vaulting away from our opponent, why?

Simply change Debilitating arc so it sends us rolling towards our target rather than away from and you have a winner.

Staff #4: No words can properly describe how much I hate this skill. Simply put, I won’t even be hotkeying anything to Dust Strike, it’s useless in every way. 4 Initiative for a small amount of damage and a short blind? again, don’t understand the thought process behind this skill.

How to make Staff 4 useful? easy! listen to the majority of feedback 9/10 players have been giving you since BWE2 and make it do this:

Dust Strike

Slam your staff into the ground, blinding enemies around you.

Damage: 523
Blindness (2 sec): Next outgoing attack misses.
Number of targets: 5
Pulses: 2
Duration: 2 sec
Interval: 1 sec
Radius: 180
Combo Field: Smoke

Staff #5: You mentioned a little while back that you were considering adding an evade frame to Vault at the cost of raising the ini cost back to 6, ok? so what happened? The majority of Daredevils out there all agree this change is needed.

Currently (from a PvP standpoint) Vault is just too difficult to land on a player. It’s too telegraphed and with no Stability or evade frame there are too many things which can interrupt it, Daze/Stun/Push back/Fear…the list goes on, and considering Vault is the bread and butter of the staff skill set, we need to be able to land this in PvP at least 6 times out of 10.

That’s all the feedback I have to give right now, the utilities are pretty solid.

One last thing, a few bugs to report from playing today.

Vault – 50% of the time when I use Vault as an opener on my target (havn’t damaged the target with anything else yet) Vault does no damage.

Unhindered Combatant: Very occasionally, I will randomly become Immobilized after the animation finishes.

Thanks Karl.

I just don’t know what to do with staff. Every other weaponset has better survivability build in. S/X has port and stealth access. D/X has stealth and mobility.
Staff has the worst mobility besides P/P which has range. And it’s the only weaponset without a stealth utility.
I wanna like to like the staff, but every time I switch from staff to another weaponset I do way better. You can argue that I’ve never played staff before, but I also played rarely S/P and I do way better. Will be even better if bounding dodger is fixed.

PLZ Karl make up your mind what staff is supposed to do. Which is the scenerio where I should think: Man, staff is the best choice in such a situation. ATM I just can’t imagine a scenerio where I would think that staff is the best choice.

BTW: Good fixes so far, DD feels way more responsive than last BWE.

I mainly played as a Staff + X DD with DD/Acro/Trickery.
First of all… Acro is simply bad. And by bad I mean VERY BAD. The natural synergies offer nothing except that you basically lose a trait line.

That being said, on to the actual DD feedback.
Overall it felt much better than the last BW.
Out of the 3 Dodges Dash is even really, really good.
As a whole, though. DD is still missing something. I like the feel, but at the same time it feels off. But thief seems to have some problems in general, when it comes to the new content. Being able to dodge a lot is nice. But since it’s dodge or die, there seems to be no middleground. I was able to compensate for that by equipping a mix of berserker & soldier gear, but while that made me durable enough to actually damage the more dangerous opponents out there without getting gibbed, it also made my damage kind of lackluster when compared to for example the scrapper (which is btw. quite fun to play).

It seems that staff is still searching for its place to be honest.

Auto-attack feels better, despite the awfull third animation – but I see that as a WIP.
Weakening Charge has potential, but with its forced Movement I forsee many problems whent it comes to Content that needs actual positioning & exact movement. It should either be seen and balanced as a pure gap closer, or be stationary for proper weakness application. It might be enough to make it stop at your target, just like Heartseeker.
Debilitating Arc is kind of odd as it just does what the spec does anyway. It dodges stuff. And as the staff is pure DD, there is no way that less dodge builds utilise it. Still it’s not a bad skill by any means and does good damage. Personally though, I would have made it a block instead to add something new instead of something that’s already there. A good alternative might be to make it remove one damaging condition. See traits for explanation.
Dust Strike - Kind of the odd one out. I like its idea, blinding a bunch of weaker opponents, but have to say that it’s still rather clumsy and needs a wider cone. I have the gut feeling though that it needs a one target interupt/knock down added on top of the blind or something like that, to be really useful.
Vault It may sound strange, but despite kind of working, I feel that Vault is the one ability that just doesn’t fit the overall defensive nature of the staff. While the other skills might still be underwhelming, Vault feels out of place. It leaves you very vulnerable, even on short distance but at the same time is too expensive as a pure positioning tool (and has underwhelming range for that). It’s damage is good, and I could see it fitting for another weapon set, but tbh not for the staff. I’d suggest a ini 5, 5 target aoe with a 360 radius that evades during the time you whirl your staff and be done with it.

Physical skills.

Channeled Vigor - Good Idea, but not quite there jet. With the lowered channeltimes though, I feel it will have its place.
Distracting Daggers - Still too cumbersome. Haven’t tried them in PvP though, so there might be a place where they are actually useful.
Bandit’s Defense - Sadly nerfed, still strong. Not being able to stunbreak after a launch or something like that (as it is with RfI) hurts the ability, though. Still my favorite out of the physicals.
Fist Flurry - I like the idea to add raw damage to something like the staff, but am not a fan of Fist Flurry’s cumbersome usage. Don’t know what could be done. As of right now it’s just a pain to use.
Impairing Daggers - Didn’t try for a condi spec but have no complaints here. Straight forward skill that does what it should.

Traits.
I won’t go over the traits as they mostly seem ok on their own – but relatively weak compared with let’s say scrapper traits.
One thing that has to change through is Escapist’s Absolution.
Dare Devil (or thief in general) is already low on Condi-Cleanse anyway. And while the trait is fine (and actually rather weak given that you HAVE to evade, not just dodge), it being a master trait just like Staff Master will result in the latter being the inferior choice. Some weapon sets having traits while others don’t is problematic anyway (as it by definition makes them either better then the ones without traits OR brings them on par in which case you basically lose a trait), but it’s especially painful for our new weapon set. I suggest making the condi-cleanse baseline, or adding some condi cleanse to staff 3. See above.

DD needs more Conditionsupport to be even considered as replacement for Condition-thief.
Condi DD’s dps in PvE is something between worse-almost as good at compared to normal thief. It is a huge issue that you can only land one of Lotus Training's projectiles if you fight openfield since you have to dodge in a way that places you caltrops in your enemies. Atm, the specialization tree is a waste of damage since it has a single condition-skill that is unreliable.
Lotus Training's random projectiles also mean reveal 90% of the time if you dodge nearby foes, totally negating the function of dodges for thiefes especially in PvP.
If your enemy dodges the first of Impairing Daggers, the other two seem to miss him aswell most of the time.
I’d also like to see a duration buff to Bandit’s Defense's block aswell as an alternative skill you can use while the block is channeling like every other class has it.

I have to say that I’m really glad that DD got from “I’m really not going to play thief after HoT” to “Idk it seems to have potencial, I might stick with it for fun” since the last BWE.
Also the new Lotus Training Animation is awesome. I’d love to see something similiar for Death Blossom, but I can also live with what I got now.

Please keep doing your good work and don’t stop right now. I don’t know if I could stand another huge disappointment

The new dodge rolls are fluid now, like normal dodge, this is really nice, but…the animations from Lotus Training and Bounding Dodger…they look so…meh…there’s no flair in it anymore^^

Lotus Trainis is clunky at the end and for Bounding Dodger….I think it needs this “shadow animation” like the normal dodge….there’s something missing

Except this, no further testing from me^^…

Edit: Sry Karl, just saw your post, you’re working on it XD…

Staff 1,2,3,4 are really useless and slow, it’s only a spam of #5
A quickly class as thief cannot have a really slow weapon!!

Ran around for about 4 hours using Daredevil, Critical Strikes, and switchign between Trickery and Acrobatics. Using Sword/Dagger and Short Bow. Wearing Knights armor as I wanted to try out something other than Zerk or Valkyrie.

Unhindered Combatant feels good this time around. I found myself running around versus relying on short bow 5 to port places. The dodge was very fluid and the animation looked good.

Conditions are still a problem. I feel that we don’t have enough passive cleanse available to us compared to other classes. I think Escapist’s Absolution should be increased to two conditions removed, and Infiltrator’s Return should remove a second condition as well. Trickster should also have it’s condition removal increased to two.

Impairing Daggers should be considered a projectile and have the flight speed increased. Ran into a few mobs that were moving and only one of the daggers hit.

I agree with the previous posts that we need our dodges on the drop down menu, much like the Revenants have for selecting their legends. This will also open up the Grand Master Traits (GMT). Keeping the dodges in our GMT makes it so our whole class mechanic is having an extra dodge bar, which is pretty lack luster compared to other classes.

My thought’s for what GMT should be:
Daredevil’s Fortitude After evading gain Protection and Resistance for 2 seconds.
Daredevil’s Cunning Maintain passive effects of signets when you activate them. When activating a signet gain Aegis for 3 seconds
Daredevil’s Retribution After evading gain Retaliation for 2 seconds and 5 stack of might for 2 seconds

Definitely a lot of improvement since the last beta, dodges and also staff skills feel a lot more smooth now. I would love to see the leap finisher of dash (and keep blast on bound) but that might be a bit too much.
However, Acrobatics becoming obsolete is an elephant in the room. With Daredevil taking the place of evasive gameplay, Acrobatics could be turned into something that synergizes more with all playstyles instead of opening one of its own.

Fair warning: I am not a numbers/mechanics player at all. I tend to focus on the overall feel of something when it’s in my hands and I have to say that the staff feels much nicer to wield. There’s a better synergy between the skills, their execution is smoother— you guys did a great job in the time crunch.

Now, if you could just do me a solid with that Staff Auto-attack 3….

This is really important, if you change nothing else about the dodges:

Bound needs a lot of work. It’s in a really weird spot.

On one hand, as a dodge it doesn’t take you very far at all, and has no defensive value – Dash is simply a better defensive option by giving better distance, and removing conditions/providing boons.

As an attack, it’s so hard to aim that it’s just a total waste to think about using it offensively. If I’m already in melee, 99% of the time the damage is going to miss because I’ll leap over the thing I’m trying to hit with it. I don’t even know what to do with it, tbh. Maybe it should just deal damage to everything in a line between your starting point and your landing point?

PVP day 2.

Weakening Charge needs a buff in damage.

Debilitating Arc doesn’t seem to do much of anything with all the stability and cond cleanse that’s about these days.

Dust strike should be AOE

Vault needs a range buff and I can be downed before I’ve even landed it. Had a warrior start GS skill 2 and I was dead before I could do anything about it.

Impact strike is easily interrupted.

I agree that it’s super annoying to have Impaling Lotus take you out of stealth.

I’d like to add that we are still super squishy when taking a power build. Particularly as people are revealing me so being able to survive in stealth is no longer an option.
Although I have decent DPS because other classes can sustain much better than me and put out decent burst I’m still getting destroyed in most 1v1.

With the introduction of these reveal skills, I’m finding it really hard to keep up and some times it just screws me over royally. Anyone else having this issue?

Reveal must be counterable.

Either:
1: Make the different dodges part of the class mechanic and give us some new grandmaster traits or if thats too much to ask then,
2: Make every dodge cost 33,333 endurance instead of 50.

I do like the daredevil, but the new class mechanic (1 extra dodge at the usual cost) is way too weak!

(And also please give the staff a combi field)

I was just wondering if they decide to move dodge grandmaster traits somewhere else what people thoughts are on what they could replace them with that would improve the feel off the daredevil

One thing i have noticed playing that really gets to me, is that the daredevil dodges are ether for running away (disengage) or dashing/bounding towards your opponent to get there faster or burst. Impaling lotus seems like the only one that can actually be used to evade attacks and stay at range like the regular dodge.

So, i can’t really get use of the new dodges for evading attacks in any way that feels useful and natural. since i always have to run back into the fight taking hits on the way, or waste two evades, back and forth. (Dash works great when fighting with ranged weapons, but not melee)

What if the evades we get to choose wasn’t the different GM traits but a single one and ether do the “F3 to choose dodge ooc” or another way.

That way we could get some GM traits that actually gives us survivability in some useful way, like gaining protection when evading an attack, and/or adding to our small pool of vitality.

I don’t really know what the staff is supposed to be, Daredevil was supposed to be the line that gave us survivability (and it does, but only active on evade).
The staff seems to be a high dps weapon where we are supposed to stand still and attack our opponent. But we don’t get anything to make the thief able to stand still and survive. So it’s use is in pve stacking where we get healed by others?
Staff feels like an attempt to force us to play with other stats than zerker. (I my self already play with a mix)

Just want to get my thoughts down, (might edit)

Vault: the impact radius doesn’t match the actual leap target Ground-To-Target. The only way to hit anything with GTT marker is to make sure they are partially inside the middle ring as the 2nd inner ring wont work making it seem the radius of the leap impact seem shorter than tooltip. Also the leap doesn’t actually reach the marker and falls short which only makes you leap to the outter ring of your marker…always. it needs tweaking.

So far, it could be my luck but improvisation wont recharge any physical skills yet which is a bummer

Debilitating Arc: The Range dodged back looks more 250 rather than 400, did a range comparison with Vault, it doesnt seem right even if i were to half it

My remarks and ideas:

Staff

• Auto Attack feels better compared to previous BWEs mainly because of damage increase and animation speed increase?

• I kind of like the more “skillful” or positioning-dependant usage of Weakening Charge to be able to hit all three strikes against “smaller” opponents. I guess against moving targets it will be dependant on good timing and great anticipation of enemy’s movement.
  This skill has a synergy with the trait Weakening Strikes, as you are able to reach up to 10s of Weakness with a critical hit (hint> Weakening Strikes has an internal cd of 10s)
  Sidenote: Combos well with Steal and Infiltrator’s Signet

• Debilitating Arc is comparable to Disabling Shot, the distance travelled might be the same but for some reason I am getting pushed forward every-time Disabling Shot ends. Could anyone confirm the distance as the information is not included in the skill description?

• Dust Strike is much faster now, which is nice, but I would rather have this skill work as a combo field.
  It could either:
  #1 create a field that would spread in line in front of us
  #2 or could leave the skill as is but when it hits a target it would create a circular combo field at that location.
  This would allow us to Vault right into the field for the combo finisher effects (either smoke or dark).

• Vault’s radius or the hit area is bugged as the skill does not land a hit when at max distance or even a bit into the traget circle.
  The damage is great.
  Vault is still very avoidable and easy interruptable skill. It is good that it has a huge tell for the sake of counterplay, but a great execution of this skill should be more rewarding. I would like to see this skill buffed with either of these:
  control effect, survivability boon, evasive frames or invulnerability when we land or distance for better mobility
  I personally would like a 1s Aoe stun on hit just like Warrior’s Earthshaker. That added Stun would syngergize well with Impacting Disruption.
  To avoid spamming those stuns I would bring the initiative cost back to 6.
  Rather popular idea is to have Staff rival the Shortbow as a mobility weapon choice. In this case increasing the distance of Vault to 900 would do the trick?

Kocoff.7582:

Altie.4571:

MEGA HUGE BIG ISSUE:
class icon being a boot is really bugging me. It just doesn’t fit the theme (I know Hermes and whatnot, but he was not known for the thievery, but as a messenger boy). I really hope you don’t change it, and if you do, it’s something more sinister than a boot.

Hermes is also the god of the Thieves. He was actually known for sometimes tricking others gods for the sake of humanity.

But it’s not the thief icon, it’s the daredevil icon. Also, when I think of Hermes, I think of the version from the Disney movie.

http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Hermes

Couldn´t make Staff work against decent opponents.
If anyone has found a way to make it work, i am listening.
What works best for me so far is
DA-TR-DD with Shortbow and Dagger/Pistol
The damage from pulmonary impact is really good.
Pictures of the build attached. Have fun.

Best regards!

Shinobi

Shinobi.3240:

Couldn´t make Staff work against decent opponents.
If anyone has found a way to make it work, i am listening.
What works best for me so far is
DA-TR-DD with Shortbow and Dagger/Pistol
The damage from pulmonary impact is really good.
Pictures of the build attached. Have fun.

Best regards!

Shinobi

With staff you have to make sure not to waste all your initiative very quickly. Use weakening charge often, though, especially against power builds. It has good damage and gives you a good amount of defense. With staff I recommend running weakening strikes as well for extra defense. Use #3 when you’re in sticky situations or if you need to evade and have nothing else. #4 is good to use when you’re expecting a big attack to come your way and you want to save dodges. You can also get it to double hit. Use vault when you’re confident it will hit, for example after a hook strike or Bandit’s defense, which I honestly recommend running over SR.

I know what staff does. All good. ^^
But i still don´t see it on par with D/P.
What does it excel at? Why should i want it?

Evasive Combat? I go S/D. Getting a port, condi cleanse, access to stealth+daze, boon rip and ranged cripple.

Damage and control? I go D/P. Getting a blind field + a ranged blind, two gap closers, access to stealth and an interupt on demand.

I don´t see it. I don´t want to play staff at all right now. And i am a huge fan of stick fighting. Was practicing it myself for years.

Best regards!

Shino

i have main a thief since i started playing gw2 … i have more than 3k + pvp battle ‘s, i play a lot of WVW and pve.. and what i found very disappointing is how thief class it’s not worth playing anymore…
why i started with a thief? because, i always liked the way they play… they go inv, and they do a lot of damage… but now
we have mesmer-ranger-ing that can go inv as well… more than that.. mesmer almost have perma stealth, with the freaking clones that can do a lot of damage, if we add to that that they have skill that allow them to take no damage at all (we can add to that… the warriors- the rangers- guardians, and we can add.. why not the ele’s with earth trait they recive no crit. damage and they have perma health)….
but what amazed me the most, that all the classes have more burst damage than a thief, for example, mesmer with mantra’s and with 3-4 of gs skills they can take you in 2 if they hit you ( this.. is thinking that you are running a zerker build)… but for you to take a mesmer at least you have to be able to do 2 or 3 backstab… that right now the backstab is really easy to avoid…rangers for example if they hit you with the 4 of longbow… and next with pew pew.. they can make you 10k+ of damage in a really easy way—-traps rangers .. can take you in 3 sec if you cant avoid the traps.
… ing can take you to the ground and with the granades..well you are done if you get hit by that.. dont make me talk about burn guardian’s.. if you can’t go inv to clean the condi’s you are done ..(remember that if you are running a zerker build at least in pvp you only have 11k of hp!!:. 11k… really?? all the other class have at least 15k of hp… if you want to go zerk and have more vitality 17k hp i think you need the marauder amulet.. but you are losing damage with that… and even with that 17k hp its nothing cuz you have no defense.. 2 good hits and you are pretty much done
…. now lets talk about the new traits of all classes…. daredevil pretty much useless 150 endurance dont solve the main’s problems of the thief .. you change burst damage to sustain damage.. but in pvp or wvw when you get outnumber .. dodge dont work to well.. and we are back to the main problem of the thief.. that now is worse… cuz its seem that all classes can reaveal you!!!! (we are suposse to be the master of shadow … and we can’t reaveal anyone).. dont even think in using shadow refuge if you are fighting a ing .. cuz its going to make the sr useless… and you will get reveal dbuff
going bk for the sustain damage …. that is useless if you only have 1 condi clear.. you have no inv (cuz they can reveal you in a easy way)… so with daredevil no more burst damage (that all the other class have more than you anyway).. 150 endurance dont fix the main problems of the thief .. so its useless …
the buff to p/p.. well the damage its really good i have to admit that.. but i still prefer ricochet to the damage.. ricochet was the only good area damage that we thief have.. and you take it away from us…
i’m not much a fan of condi’s build.. but daredevil with d/d was good… but again if you get 2vs 1 you are dead (at least in pvp) … new traits of other class are way to op for the thief right now…
i dont want to leave my thief.. but right now .. in pvp its better to use other class than the thief.. (cuz the thief its seem its only good for dcap ) in wvw well… no comments about that.. pve pretty much the same as always

Improv wont work on physical skills yet, just a heads up

Please do NOT raise INI cost of Vault to 6. An evade frame should be added and it kept at 5. It still easy to dodge and still to expensive to spam.

INI 6 makes trickery all but mandatory locking down two traitlines for a build. Using half ones ini on a skill is why so many people feel they need trickery in a build because using up half of ones INI is generally not effective.

This of course changes if preparedeness made baseline. Were our baseline INI 15 and preparedensss changed to something else 6 would be fine and more builds would open up for other sets.

People also suggest a forward roll on Number 3. Again I fail to see the logic here. It is an Immob break. When I am immobilized I do not want to roll forwards. Case in point I was fighting last night against a group of enemy who immobilized me. I used this skill to break Immob and roll backwards which saved me. Had I rolled forwards it would have been into the AOE laid down by the enemy on the chokepoint.

If the user could select direction it would be much better but a disengage is needed in the set. The option remains to stay in battle for those who wish to by not breaking the Immob. Others have suggested an out and in type skill where one could roll back and then roll back in as the Ranger is able to do . This would be much better as well.

Shinobi.3240:

I know what staff does. All good. ^^
But i still don´t see it on par with D/P.
What does it excel at? Why should i want it?

Evasive Combat? I go S/D. Getting a port, condi cleanse, access to stealth+daze, boon rip and ranged cripple.

Damage and control? I go D/P. Getting a blind field + a ranged blind, two gap closers, access to stealth and an interupt on demand.

I don´t see it. I don´t want to play staff at all right now. And i am a huge fan of stick fighting. Was practicing it myself for years.

Best regards!

Shino

I see it excelling at teamfighting, with its strongpoints being sustainability while keeping good sustained damage, similar to S/D, however from my experience staff has more damage than S/D. The cleave of Vault and Weakening strikes is good for teamfights, and the blind is actually pretty useful in that situation as well.

I really like the idea of a dust cloud behind the thieif as he uses dash Or maybe a pile of leaves stirred up.

alchemyst.2165:

I see it excelling at teamfighting, with its strongpoints being sustainability while keeping good sustained damage, similar to S/D, however from my experience staff has more damage than S/D. The cleave of Vault and Weakening strikes is good for teamfights, and the blind is actually pretty useful in that situation as well.

How on earth do you survive a teamfight? It’s not a damage problem, but you have nearly no defensive utility in this weaponset.

apocom.3172:

alchemyst.2165:

I see it excelling at teamfighting, with its strongpoints being sustainability while keeping good sustained damage, similar to S/D, however from my experience staff has more damage than S/D. The cleave of Vault and Weakening strikes is good for teamfights, and the blind is actually pretty useful in that situation as well.

How on earth do you survive a teamfight? It’s not a damage problem, but you have nearly no defensive utility in this weaponset.

Why are you in a teamfight? Shortbow the rim, engage in 2- fights. 5 people is too much, and will remain too much. That’s the concept.

Shinobi.3240:

I know what staff does. All good. ^^
But i still don´t see it on par with D/P.
What does it excel at? Why should i want it?

Evasive Combat? I go S/D. Getting a port, condi cleanse, access to stealth+daze, boon rip and ranged cripple.

Damage and control? I go D/P. Getting a blind field + a ranged blind, two gap closers, access to stealth and an interupt on demand.

I don´t see it. I don´t want to play staff at all right now. And i am a huge fan of stick fighting. Was practicing it myself for years.

Best regards!

Shino

I think you make a good point. A dark field (not smoke we have enough with smoke fields) would help a lot here IMHO on number 4 and an evade tacked on to 5. 3 might get an out and in both with an evade. At that point reassess.

Serious Thought.5394:

apocom.3172:

alchemyst.2165:

I see it excelling at teamfighting, with its strongpoints being sustainability while keeping good sustained damage, similar to S/D, however from my experience staff has more damage than S/D. The cleave of Vault and Weakening strikes is good for teamfights, and the blind is actually pretty useful in that situation as well.

How on earth do you survive a teamfight? It’s not a damage problem, but you have nearly no defensive utility in this weaponset.

Why are you in a teamfight? Shortbow the rim, engage in 2- fights. 5 people is too much, and will remain too much. That’s the concept.

The first sentence I’ve quoted was that it may excell in teamfights. From what I’ve saw till today is that staff is our new PvE weapon. Every other weaponset, even P/P is imo stronger atm in PvP.

Small change I’d personally like to see, can we make Impact strike use the finisher we have selected?

Also, been testing DD pretty extensively over the last two days. My biggest issue is DD is not built for Stealth not one bit, In fact I find myself running builds more with no stealth at all.

I am literally leaving out the stealth opener. Picking up Shadow Arts feels like a huge waste compared to using other trait lines That being said does anyone else feel like equipping DD should also increase our base hp and armor?

My biggest concern by far actually relates to the competitiveness of non-daredevil thieves and the thematic overlap of Daredevil and the Acrobatics line.

It still feels like Daredevil is supposed to supplant Acrobatics, and I’m not okay with that.

I’m not big on analyzing numbers and synergy for abilities and traits, so I can’t really provide all the information suggested in the original post. I’d refer to others in this thread for that information. However, as this was my first beta weekend, I was excited to try out the Daredevil. I found the new dodge animations very clunky feeling.

Impaling Lotus – Spins so suddenly and immediately drops back into your normal running pose. The angle of the animation looks awkward as it has no ease-in or ease-out animation to connect to your running pose, so that it has a very unnatural start and finish. I think the animation from Dagger Storm, where you’re upright instead of at an angle might work better from an animation easing standpoint.

Dash – Looks pretty good. It was the only one I really don’t have much to say on, since the animation seemed to connect to your run animation decently enough.

Bound – I LOVE the idea of this one, being able to pole-vault into your enemies during a dodge. However, for some reason, when you reach the height of your jump, there’s nearly no animation for coming back down, and then the crater happens moments after you land, not AS you land. It’s not that the animation for coming down is quick, as it should be for anticipation’s (animation term) sake, it just feels like it stops the vaulting animation to immediately give you the run animation back.

I understand that getting these to look fluid whilst also maintaining the timing of the normal dodge would be difficult, but I’d love if they got another pass before launch.

Edit: I just noticed I missed Karl’s post that specifically mentioned the dodge animations being in-progress. I’d like to suggest my post now just be used as feedback to consider for the updates in-progress if needed. Sorry about that.

DD feels much much better than during previous beta but there are still some problems, like with staff skills.
Most of the stuff has already been said by others, so i just give a quick feedback.

*all of this is from pvp perspective

1 : Feels kind of lackluster, almost every single time it felt like it wasn’t worth to complete the whole chain when comparing how much damage i would receive during it. I don’t think it necessarily needs more damage, but some kind of better utility.

2 : The new targeting made this skill also much better than what it used to be but i would really like if it was easier to land multiple hits.

3 : Also much better now since the evade starts right away, lets you actually use this thing for what it’s supposed to do. I would personally like to see some kind of different utility on it instead of the immobility removal, thief already has so so many different ways of getting rid of it that it feels like huge overkill to have that on a spammable skill.

4 : I like the suggestion that people have been making of making this aoe around you instead of a cone. Imo could cost one ini less.

5 : still difficult to land on enemies who have eyes, not really sure how that could be adjusted.

Overall i think staff really needs something that really differentiates it from s/d (in a good way).

Also quickly about the other stuff.

Fist flurry is still too hard to land for what it does.

Impact strike suffers quite a bit from the same problem.

I hate how it feels like i’m absolutely and completely forced to take escapist absolution instead of the other traits in pvp because of how bad our condi cleanse is.

Einlanzer.1627:

My biggest concern by far actually relates to the competitiveness of non-daredevil thieves and the thematic overlap of Daredevil and the Acrobatics line.

It still feels like Daredevil is supposed to supplant Acrobatics, and I’m not okay with that.

I really think the core of acro can remain. There is nothing wrong with the concpet of getting endurance from two traitlines. It does not all have to come from one. Thus the Endless stamina , Expeditious dodger and Feline Grace can remain. (Coceptually that is. Numbers may be needing tweaks) This would allow a person to pick one traitline or the other for more endurance or go all out for more and take more.

The other traits need fixups.

Hard to catch and maybe endless vigor are the only ones not needing some sort of adjustment. Don’t stop still might be ok for those who do not want the DD line.

We still have to assume some will not want DD and will prefer Acro over DD.

Channeled vigor just feels SO out of place. It’s as if it’s on the wrong class. I can’t see myself self ever considering using it. The benefits and stuff are good yes but I keep finding myself saying “This heal would be good…if I was a sword n’ board full plate armor tank maybe..” We’re so squishy a mechanic like that just gets us killed. I think it really needs to be looked at. It breaks the flwo of combat and really makes us vulnerable. Maybe if it gave protection or blocked during channel? I dunno. The endurane gain is nice but everytime I use it (in pvp) i die before I finish channeling it

Oh, just one thing about impact strike.

Finishing Blow
From a PvE point of view, it isn’t really interesting right now (not sure if the down state will be spread out more for mobs).
It doesn’t feel like a finishing blow at all, on the contrary, it looks like the weakest strike of the three.
Maybe adding some PvE exclusive effect on that finishing blow would be nice.
(Maybe adding confusion)

Edit:
Animation-wise ( I know right now it’s not the priority but just an idea for later) :

Staff auto-attack : it would be nice to take inspiration from the ranger sword auto-attack animation.

Making the second attack of the staff as a butterfly kick using the momentum of the first strike would make the character look less stiff.

Here a video to show what I mean : https://youtu.be/vbefem-b8p8?t=114
(also, you can notice that this attack is more natural from a Monkey King idle stance as a starting point)

Third attack should make the character twirl the staff from side to side instead of on the front.

Allright here it goes:

What I like on daredevil: The Idea.
What needs changing: Almost everything to be on par with the other elite specs.

Staffskills:

1- I think this one is quite allright as it is
2-Feels a bit slow.
3- This one is allright as well imo.
4- 600 range seems short. having a hard time hitting anything. I believe 900 would be more fair.
5- Vaulth is hard to hit, because its a very obvious skill very easy to interupt. I think it would be more fair to add a shord evade at the end of the skill so we can actually hit it. Also I would like it to be a blast finnisher so it is more team supportive as well.

Utility:

Heal- The heal is simply not competing with withdraw and hide in the shadows.
impairing daggers- Seems allright
Distracting daggers- I think they should not have a timer to disappear make it like a mantra?
Fist Flurry- Amazingly hard to hit the first 5 all, and if you do not worth it as the damage is out done by about everythign else you can do. just make it a power skill and let it be able to crit?
Revlective strike- Nice for stunbreak, yet a pain to use. you don’t want to use it for the counter, it makes your self vulnerble for attacking and you are locked in the kick. in wvw this is death.
Impact strike- Love it!

Traits (minor)
adept- Fair enough I like it (as much as I kinda want to use staff without this trait line but I come back on that a bit futher)
master- Like it.
grandmaster- Like it. nice job

traits (major)
Adept- they all seem allright, but compare to what all the other classes get its just lack lusting. we miss survival trait that is not bount to things like physical traits.
master- don’t like any. Staff should get a permanent boost trough this not based on endrance and even then these seem weak.

Grand master is where it gets funny. I basicly play without them.
I reslect the traitline and do NOT select a grandmaster triat as all 3 put me in more harms ways then in good ways. the only one I would like is the dash. It does not reveal me. but it still travels me to far away from my target, travel time is also too long. this trait dash would be so much better on the defaulth dodge. I miss my defaulth quic dodge, really miss it.
Also this does not feel like a profession mechanic at all. why do we have to select a 1 of the grandmaster traits for this? I give 1 thing though they feel less clunky even though the animations are bugged for me :P.. but yes I miss my fast defaulth dodge. and don’t really want to be forced to pick one of these 3.

So yes in general.. I would rate Daredevil as the least efficient and most neglected elite profession out there, then dragon hunter, then tempest.
which makes me sad as thief is the only class I love, my secondary class (guardian) is also not as great. I will stick with thief no matter what but I hope for a better future :/
Staff still better then rifle If only I could use Staff without having to go daredevil trait line… I would not need to use this diabolical name and teamfortress 2 scout class logo either xD…

tl:tr Daredevil is an elite spec that imo fits poorly on that what is a thief in gw2. and is imo on the bottum compared to all other elit proffessions.

(I am quite annoyed so sorry or my slightly annoyed feedback, been at it a while)

Seth alre, Thief for 6k hours and counting.

EDIT:
———————————————
S/D is mainly possible because of ports in combination with evade’s something the Staff lacks. utility is just not high enough. Thiefs can not sustain much at all anymore since all other classes are being buffed all the time… (wvw stand point)

I am still loving the Daredevil alot. Sadly, not as much as Scrapper this weekend — Daredevil sort of pales in comparison to what the scrapper has in terms of damage and utility. But still very fun. Hoping for some solid tweaks before launch.

Here are a few comments from the hour+ I spent Friday night checking out the changes. (See Edit section below for additional, more thoroughly tested comments.)

1. Evasive Empowerment – buff duration is too short
In principal, the change is better than it was for BWE2. In practice, the 2 second duration is too short, and thus, the trait is hard to use and feels disappointing. For example: I’d be fighting moving around, then I Dash dodge roll out of incoming damage and attempt to Vault back in. Between the cast time and travel time the buff usually wears off. Especially with the bug on Vault where we are landing short of the center of the targeting circle. Bound probably works better with this trait than Dash. But just 2 to 3 more seconds on the buff would make a HUGE difference.

Any chance this can be “on evade” instead of on dodge roll? That would boost overall damage much more consistently and pair well with weapon based evades and skills like Withdraw and Roll for Initiative. Such a chance would more closely approximate a static damage bonus and reduce the negative effect of distance and situationality.

2. Staff damage still feels low
Especially compared to Scrapper! LOL And especially when not using most of the new Physical utility skills. I’m very happy with the damage for now

3. Most of the Physical Utility Skills are too situational for WvW/PvP
The only ones I plan on using consistently are Impairing Daggers and the Elite chain. Impairing Daggers is reliable, good damage, and great utility. Fits my play style and WvW environment perfectly. The Elite is just epic good fun in WvW and PvP. Sadly, as much as I love Fist Flurry in PvE, it’s just not reliable in WvW.

4. Make Escapist Absolution part of the Driven Fortitude minor trait
These 2 traits go hand in hand really well. If one drops Shadow Arts to pick up Daredevil — which I did because staff has no stealth related skills and is more about being in the thick of it with lots of evades — then Escapist Absolution becomes the go-to condi removal trait in a Daredevil build. But it’s competing against 2 good damage increase traits. This just seems imbalanced to me. Merge it with the minor and gives us another Master trait in it’s place.

Anyhooo….perhaps more thoughts later. I’m going to mess around with it more today.

Edited 10/5/2015:
I spent a ton of time yesterday and today working on getting my daredevil spec down and practicing with different aspects of it that I had previously dismissed. Eventually, I really got in the zone with it and was seeing some incredible damage numbers with the WvW build I ran (balanced stats non glass-cannon using CS, Trick and DD trait lines). Which, btw, was a stealth-less build — an interesting challenge for me!

For example:

• regular 6-8k crits with Vault; even a 10k crit once with tons of might from a Revenant
• consistently good damage from all staff attacks (better than I’m used to with d/p)
• great damage and utility from Impairing Daggers
• WvW camps melted!
• got the rhythm of the elite chain down better and the huge satisfaction of the near insta stomp!
• Even tried out Bandit’s Defense for real. I decide NOT to hold out any hope for the knockdown. Instead, I simply used it as a stun break/damage reduction/get out of trouble spell, on a wonderfully short cooldown. It ended up taking a permanent spot on my bar. Go figure! lol

Only additional comments for Karl and the team are thus:

1a. Definitely extend Evasive Empowerment buff
…by enough to do 1 Dash and jump back with a Vault (once Vault distance is fixed. see next item). Would also still love to see this “on evade” rather than “on dodge”.

1b. Vault travel distance is short when ground target set at full range.
I ran a few test with this using static objects around me — bushes, grass clumps, dead players :P — and consistently was NOT landing at the center of the targeting circle. I would land inside the targeted area, but on the outer edge closest to my departure point. This made getting a Vault in after a Dash quite difficult. Maybe Dash is traveling too far? I didn’t test this. But quite often I would Dash backwards and attempt to Vault back to a mob my friend was fighting and NOT land on the mob. Some oddities there.

5. Love the Dash animation.
Very smooth and cool too. Thank you!

6. Staff #2 reduction of distance messing up the flow of chaining skills
I understand that you reduced the range for staff #2 to improve the feel. Sadly, this made chaining quite rough. For example: I often tried to kite by Dashing backwards, or using staff #3, then rushing forward with staff #2. It never worked. But it feels like it SHOULD work. And given the skill facts, I would guess that was the design intent. I adjusted by running forward a bit. However, between that odd flow and the Vault coming up short, the rhythm was a bit off still.

7. Staff 4 range indicator broken?
It would indicate I was in range, and I’d cast it, but then it wouldn’t hit the target. Very odd. Great skill though. I’d often use it to blind stomp someone.

8. Still hoping for personal finisher to be used with the Elite combo
Not sure if the tech is in place to do this, as the scrapper function gyro doesn’t use it either. But it would be epic!!

9. Channeled Vigor and Survival
I am glad to read from a few days ago that the team is still evaluating changes for this heal. I would still love to see it trigger the large heal and endurance regen when endurance is low. It makes no sense to me, in a spec that encourages regular, skillful use of dodge rolls, for a heal to encourage the exact opposite. The heal should support and reward the use of endurance during times when it’s most needed —- low endurance and emergency healing. When endurance is full, it should give less healing and little or no endurance regen. Especially because this spec does not encourage the use of stealth. So when someone like me drops the Shadow Arts line to use the Daredevil line, thus greatly diminishing the value of stealth to survival, survival becomes more of an issue.

As I’m sure you’re aware, most thieves are very used to stealth as our main survival mechanic. Almost every thief I know is used to taking the Shadow Arts line, with Shadows Embrace and Shadows Rejuvenation. Daredevil is clearly an intended departure from that, shifting the survival from stealth to evasion. I’m ok with this. But this takes alot to get used to.

For example: i dropped the SA line and used NO stealth in order to push myself to adapt. What a challenge! The loss of Shadows Embrace made me feel like I HAD to take Escapist Absolution for my damaging condi cleanse. But it is much harder to get this cleanse to happen, than it was to just go into stealth and wait out the 3-4 secs for the cleansing, while also gaining health and init regen.

So without stealth or the benefits of the SA line, it feels like survivability goes down some. I certainly cannot escape outnumbered fights as well any more. Dash helps, as did Bandits Defense, but they seemed to just prolong the inevitable. That alone is a asking a HUGE adjustment of the thief community.

Channeled Vigor TLDR: Essentially, it would be great if the Daredevil heal can do a better job synergizing with the mobile, evasive play style of the spec, so we can get out of trouble quickly and/or back in the fight refreshed — just like stealth has provided for us for years. If this is accomplished, and you also do something like I suggest in #4 above, then this will GREATLY enhance survival and sustain in combat plus hugely support thieves who choose not to use stealth in their daredevil builds. Then I will undoubtedly use this heal!

Conclusion
All-in-all, despite some quirks, bugs and stuff clearly being still worked on, I can confidently say I will miss my Daredevil very much for the next few weeks! :P I’m glad I stuck through the challenge of trying to figure out this spec — one that is clearly designed to be a very different unfamiliar play style for thief. I look forward to using it when HoT drops and wish the team great success and low stress as the days countdown. Thanks for such a great effort!

Alright, the daredevil is very great, i do know improvements are coming which also is exciting.

Utilities

Impact Strike: One thing i wanted to ask/add is the finisher animation for the elite skill. When you use it to finish the enemy it drops a regular Wooden Flag on them. I was wondering if it could be changed to the custom finisher we have equipped but it might no be possible.

Fist flurry: I feel needs an immobilize or something of the sort since its pretty hard to hit them, of course using a trait or the venom could solve this problem,but thats just opinion.

Bandit’s Defense: Very well done, love that we will get a block. Just need to learn how to use it!

Impairing Daggers: This skill is very nice, the conditions are quite useful. My only problem is they are very hard to use when every time you throw them, its blocked most of the time. And unblockable part added to this would be pretty nice, but im not sure if that would make them OP. Otherwsie very cool addition!

Distracting Daggers: This skill is very great as it’s a great little stun. I feel as though it should be increased to having them for 20 seconds instead of 15, 15 is a very limited time. Otherwise AMAZING love the dagger animation around the arm!

Channeled Vigor: Great skill, need to learn how to use it to advantage me but its very cool!

Traits

Evasive Empowerment: Love the skill, only had to comment to say it might be more useful to be increased to 3 seconds but im not sure if its fair to.

Lotus Training: This from using it gave me a hard time because it would take me out of stealth. I was wondering if it would let us stay in stealth since its hard to evade an attack in stealth if it throws a dagger.

Bounding Dodger: Great skill, only concern is about where the strike goes. I was thinking it would be a little more useful if the damage was done in the area from where you evaded not the area that you land in.Unless you use the dodge to enter the combat, it’s kinda okittenward to use. Of course, i could be wrong to the usefulness of that but i just wanted to throw it out there.

The traits in the second Line are perfect and don’t require any comments!

Staff

My only comment on the staff as a whole(since im not sure about the skills yet) is that its very hard to use. This might be me just not having enough practice but its very hard to use against other’s in PvP. It does give great physical skills but it seems very stiff when using it against an opponent which makes it hard to run around. Other than that, its great damage and very fun to use, but the mobility of it and the stiffness are problematic for me personally.

Class Icon

The icon used for daredevil is interesting, i was just wondering what other variations it comes in or if it can be changed to something else. No problem with it, but it looks a little less visually attractive than the other specials.

Overall

Great class, and i can see the potential. I just wanted to give feed back as i feel that this will be great when everything is sorted.I cant wait to see how all of this feedback is taken into account! Great job guys, looking forward to see the cool things to come for this specialization!

If the staff had something that gives him the ability to ignore aoe fields for a short duration it might be more usefull than it is right now.

But well anyway the condi d/d dd seems to work quite well.

Answering OPs questions

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

Mechanic wise, Daredevil feels like the old Acrobatics Thief. It’s DPS is higher with the new dodges and Dash is pretty fun to use. I don’t think our sustain went up enough to match the current power-creep meta of HoT.

• 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?

Our traits aren’t exciting. Having the dodges on our grandmaster trait line instead of being baseline like Rev legends is a pretty big let down for most people.

• 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?

It’s like Thief and a half. It’s good enough to be considered useful but doesn’t offer us anything we didnt really already have access to.

• 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.

I fought quite a few traditional and HoT meta builds as a Staff Daredevil. The weapon doesn’t provide the sustain we need. I tried it out as a sustain DPS style since that what it’s apparently designed for but Vault was too dangerous to use consistently.

• State one thing you really like about daredevil.

The animation’s are much cleaner (dodges aside) – I’m not in the camp that it should look like Naruto… No martial artist will ever run with a staff behind their back. The only thing I wish was different was the fantasy-style abilities should be more martial arts looking. Ex. Staff auto-chain #3 should be a whirling spin that an actual martial artist does instead of the weird helicopter thing.

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

I wish we had more sustain. I was hoping this would bring us up to group fight potential or better 1v1 that didn’t require pure burst and run tactics. If that was the goal it’s not quite there. The worst is probably that the trait’s are messy and our elite spec mechanic is on the trait line instead of baseline like everyone elses. The last 3 traits could add the sustain we need.

Thoughts on Daredevil
We’ve beaten this dead horse a few thousand times and at this point I’m not even sure it’s corpse resembles a horse anymore… but Daredevil needs to have the dodges selectable outside of combat as a baseline selection box similar to rev’s legends. We need the grandmaster line traits to be well thought our, grandmaster quality traits.

Staff
People sent me /whispers very often in sPvP telling me that they tried staff in PvP and it sucked. These notes are a result of those convos.

Staff is just not quite there. It doesn’t give us the sustain we need to be effective in mass scale fights. So many other professions have invulnerability and strong stunbreaks/condi cleanse. Daredevil could be our sustain/off-tank quality spec line. To prevent our other meta builds from going crazy, IMO this survivability can be put on Staff.

• The auto chain is nice as is. Projectile reflections cool, though a little hard to time since it’s on the third move. Maybe if you add very short projectile reflect to the first two so we can use it like a baseball bat on purpose, that’d be cool. A combination of this and a larger vault distance can make Staff a great option to replace Shortbow.
• AoE weakness just isn’t great. It’s no where near powerful enough to help Thief with it’s baseline weaknesses. Putting something like transferring condi’s to a nearby enemy would be something more helpful – though obviously too powerful for a spammable skill.
• #3 is in a good place. It doesn’t have any umph to it, but as it works in the weapon I’d say it’s pretty good.
• #4 needs a darkness or smoke field. 4 initiative for just a small AoE blind is too expensive to keep going with. If it’s going to remain without a combo field I think the initiative should be dropped to 3.
• I think Vault needs a buff. The distance is too short and it needs evasion frames. 6 Initiative will be too much to keep it competitive. The distance should be 900 and the aftercast should be removed so that we can use it instead of Infiltrator’s shot.

Additional Staff Notes

• I found it a little more difficult to stay on people using staff compared to most other weapon sets.
• When we need DPS in PvE, D/D and D/P provide it better.
• When we need to stack for PvE content, S/P and D/P do it better.
• When we need survivability, S/P and S/D provide it better.
• When we need control, S/P provides it better.
• When we need mobility SB provides it better.

I can’t think of any content where Staff is a better option than something else we already have.

Bug
To add to the bug’s listed in posts before mine:

• Vault doesn’t go the max distance. If you put the vault ground placement as far as you can and use the ability you’ll stop short about 50-100 units shorter than where you intended. When the ring’s close it works fine and you land exactly where the center is – only far away does this issue occur.
• Pulmonary Impact on interrupt trait doesn’t trigger on mobs with breakbars. I know you guys made other effects-on-trigger traits that don’t work on breakbars work, such as Reaper’s chill effect traits work against break bars so in all likelihood this is just an oversight.
• The animation for the heal is bugged if you cast it while moving. While still you float up in the air and look all fancy. if you cast it while moving your legs stay on the ground and it looks like you break your neck lol. Just update it so that you float around while moving and it’ll be fixed.
• The heal casting time was supposed to be 3/4 sec this BWE instead of 2 and 1/4. It’s still 2 and 1/4.