Guild Wars 2

Druid doesn’t use the Staff as a melee weapon, all they are asking for is the default Staff wielding animation. That’s far more reasonable than asking for a new stance. /shrug

I didn’t get to play much but I generally liked the Utilities but wasn’t sure about Fist Flurry. First impression was that the damage felt kinda low for a close range combo and urged me to swap it out quickly for a vanilla Utility.

I often play with Spider, and Devourer Venom and Impairing Daggers is awesome and easily replaces them in use, and with things like Jade Wind from Revenant I’m feeling pretty bad about Basilisk Venom’s existence. Venoms still offer more team support with Venom Share but without some love they’re going to fall off the map again with all these new elite specs around. I’ve seen people suggest combo fields added to them which could help.

The Heal was pretty good but I ended up using Hide in Shadows for fast condi removal. Would be cool if it did something like Pistol Whip to proc evades during channel if that isn’t too OP.. Maybe this is due to DD just not having enough on-use removal of damaging condi..

I was pretty satisfied with Staff overall, animations aside (which make me sad), with the exception of Staff 4. Without a combo field on it I couldn’t find it very useful. Without decent damage or a combo field I’d prefer just using Staff 3 to proc evade traits instead of using 4 to blind enemy. Either way I’m avoiding a hit so may as well use the better one.

The main mechanic change feels very underwhelming. All the other specs basically get an entirely new passive skill that adds whole new abilities but Thief just gets an extra dodge and nothing else, no skills or functionality at all to it. The Grandmaster Traits feel like a class mechanic but.. they’re traits. They should be built into the new 3Sectioned Endurance Bar and give us a changeable F3 button like Revenant’s legends.

As for the rest of the traits I feel like the “On Successful Evade” traits coulda been easily added/merged into Acrobatics and gave more room for more interesting traits for DD. Just doesn’t feel fresh and new when Acrobatics begged for it for so long and got nerfed into uselessness.

Haha yeah 1 second stun on one target while revenant gets 3 second stun on five. Auto casts on down too!

Thieves are totally fine though!

Final Evaluation: I will be ignoring Vanilla (basic/core) Thief because everyone and their mother knows how bad it is. The mom probably had to tell the dog. Everyone knows. For the details below I played Daredevil as intended- Staff and traits for this line along with shortbow secondary (with a pistol swap-over at one point, which felt terrible and useless so I went to shortbow again).

The Minor traits: I never noticed any of them at work EXCEPT for the one giving us our trait line (one dodge, phys skills, staff). I never felt like I was getting healed and steal gave me its benefits at the start of the fight because it never lasted long enough to warrant using it a second time. To repeat- these benefits are meant for long, drawn out fights. Daredevil seems to be intended for quick and dirty.

The Major Adepts: Damage on dodge was my go to. I couldn’t see a reason to trait weakness when sword and staff had access to it normally already, as it seemed pointless. On top of that, poison=weakness because of Deadly Arts. Physical skills giving endurance was not used for the following detail pieces. I can of course see why you would use weakness (pistols, possibly daggers) and phys skills (not using staff), but while using Staff neither of the other traits had a logical purpose.

The Master Adepts: I used Staff mastery- using initiative with staff wielded granted endurance, and staff gains damage while endurance is not full. Plays into me not being able to use steal and perpetuates massive damage numbers on Staff, not to mention the damage was kind of necessary to not feel like a wet noodle when I fought Reaper or Chronomancer (because they will just mitigate it in some annoying fashion, had to make each hit count). I believe that Escapist’s Absolution and Driven Fortitude should be put together or perhaps EA could become the Grand-master minor seeing as daggers grant endurance, and staff/sword will allow you to evade with no endurance available anyway. Impacting Disruption seems to very pleasantly play into P/P (something I did not use, but I see the appeal) and makes Soldier Ammy thief a conceivable factor.

The Grandmaster Majors: Each one made sense, and I am personally glad they have to be traited; since they are traits, and higher tier traits, that means they HAVE to be powerful enough to be worth selecting. If they become a toggle, they can be nerfed at will and I dread the thought of the only solid spec being viable for too short a time. Each was straight forward- Dash gets you out of range, Bound lands and does damage (my pick), and Lotus grants conditions. Straight forward, I never felt like taking Dash would increase my personal playstyle of being a ballistic damage nuke MEANING you did well- if Bound did too little damage, I’d pick Dash in a damage build and that means developers failed. Same to Lotus. Good job devs, against crazy and weird odds you made a set of grandmasters that I actually think have purpose. Which is weird, usually GMs are not “this fits my build” but “this is the best choice available in any given circumstance”.

The Staff Skills: The auto attack chain was not something I felt comfortable using often. Weakening Charge was my least used move, but I needed burst damage and WC is more to survive an upcoming barrage than burst considering I took Bound. Debilitating Arc MAKES this set specifically if you take Bound, please do not change this skill in any way. My entire burst combo relied on this skill (despite the “get hit even though evading while using DA” bug). Dust Strike seemed to be bugged as well (I could spam it at close range, and still only get one damaging proc) and sometimes I needed it to not be bugged but I would never willing use this except to stop an Earth Shaker or some such. Vault is my most enjoyed Thief move so far. It feels good to use, satisfying to land, and is my most reliable way to traverse terrain when I see “no valid pathing”. Hook Strike needed to be toned from 3/4 cast time to 1/2 though. Otherwise, just minor bugs and this earns the “I will never stop using this upon release” badge ^.^

The Physical Skills: As with everything in this set, the concept that each had its place in a set of choices made me really, really happy. Block to survive, dagger pouch to stall, dagger barrage to overcome that stupid shared anguish trait that made me cry inside, and fist flurry for when you landed hook strike and needed to guarantee that rude Reaper stayed down and stayed dead. Of course, people probably know what I used.

Honorable mentions: Mostly just bug moments. Debilitating Arc seemed to not evade unblockable attacks (warrior signet with the kill shot bug was most common). Dust Strike seemed to only apply one instance of damage no matter how many were out at a given time (so spamming for quick damage at melee range because you missed hook strike was a NO GO). Vault’s damage seemed to fluctuate heavily and did not seem to respond to might stacks appropriately. Some may have been operator errors (probably were, I was having too much fun to take super accurate notes) but I do remember these 3 being recurring things. Probably my side though.

My playstyle, build, and impressions: This set is not evade or stealth, it is both. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAWVnsMBVmidmCePB8PhlxiybACgDYbDLrOc+279iH-TJBFwACuEAI3foaZAAPBAA How it would work is, shortbow to points and locate a target. Pop stealth if I had a stealth skill and proceed to hook strike. If I got stun reflected (my god stun reflects are broken) I’d have to use Steal to get a second daze if they tried anything, if not I’d proceed to Fist Flurry. Anyone who did not die to fist flurry, usually survived with a sliver of health. If I had no stealth available, I would Bound+Steal (so proc the bound damage guaranteed) then DA (it has no cast time and a very tiny animation) for a good deal of free damage. Depending on if they burned a dodge or charged (why?) I’d respond by burning my dodge into theirs for another free hit (dodge timing op) or DA again on them to avoid damage. Teamfight wise, I would wait for someone to disengage from the melee furball and then quietly delete them in one or two seconds. I’d deny rez by WC, Vault, Bound, Vault, Bound, etc unless I had SR (then I stomped, usually teammates handled or downed died long before I needed to consider stomping). If they ever make Preparedness baseline, I would say swap Trickery for Deadly Arts (because those 3 points are the only reason you have that line).

all id ask for is a dark field on staff 4. just for blinds/leeching for more sustain without spamming stealth. like a nice ring around the toon.

as much complaining as im hearing about DD, I have this feeling its going to be on the top of the META for pvp tournies.

hey guyes. so this weekend i tested alot the thief
build tested with DD for pvp arena

d/p
p/p

for the d/p i felt like DD is not needed much. the loose of panic strike to get 1 more dodge and cc ability if team fight in kinda useless where stealth sneekiness and fast burst is needed. sure it can work but why to broke something which works best

for the p/p i felt DD is so much needed long time ago. with many evade with dash to reposition fast or with stealth ability when dodge (though the leap was buged) gave the pistol a second chance. still p/p need more love to compete with the d/p meta like more range 1100 and evade/stealth abilities like any other thief weapon set

regarding staff . was fun to play with it but seem more supportive and tricky with out stealth in melee range. so 1v1 its fine but in group play where you can be pressure and you have no stealth but utilities can get you killed

also try the d/d condi with DD. nice pressure for 1v1 but in group play same problem as before . condi get cleasne for the thief pressure to fast also with the ew ranger and revenant abilities why go condi at all…..

also revenant will compete with our role for the d/p. with shadow steping fast reaction and huge dmg spike with lots of CC and boons . thief might be in problem

Karl! I already heard someone else say this: But I also want to thank you for the work you did on Daredevil. The physical skills and traits are interesting and even though I will probably not use staff, I still think you did a great job. So kudo’s for that!

The only changes I hope for are the following 2:

- I already noticed that the block duration of Bandits Defence is longer then 1 second (Or I can’t count haha). It would be great if it could become a flipover skill or get an evade during the knockdown. That would help a little in groups!

- Since thief has not much condition removal I hope that Escapist Absolution become a minor so we don’t have to sacrefice the interrupt or staff trait for that.

Thief basically has 7 damaging condition removal skills/traits:

- Hide in Shadows – Nice heal skill although a pretty big cooldown compared to others.
- Shadows Embrace – Stealth gets countered a lot lately and with staff we don’t have access to this.
- Escapist Absolution – We need to rely on evades, so whenever someone stops attacking we’re screwed:P

- Shadow step – Very high cooldown and rather saved for escapes.
- Infiltrator Strike – Sword only, only one condition
- Signet of Agility – One for each ally
- Trickster – Only useful if you run a full trick build.

I really hope that the interrupt builds can be saved by making Escapist Absolution a minor. (Its not that they will die:P Just conditions will be a very hard counter to these builds probably)

Keep the good work up! I am also a fan of the dodge toggle, but I don’t think there would be enough time to implement it. Daredevil already is looking great for me:P

Daredevil feedback(have 5.4k pvp games on main acc and played a lot of daredevil):

• Brawler’s Tenacity: Gain endurance when you first activate a physical skill. Physical skills have reduced cooldowns.
  - The endurance gain now occurs only on first use which means it is unsignificant. Requires buff to about 20 endurance per first use.

• Evasive Empowerment After dodging, your attacks deals bonus damage.
  - Better than last version but 2s is a bit short, I would try 3 sec (also: don’t know if it affects Bound but it should)

• Driven Fortitude Gain health when you successfully evade an attack.
  - It’s ok for 1v1s but in 2v2 and greater fights it is pretty meaningless, should have separate cooldowns for 3 different attackers if you have a staff or a sword in hand.

• Staff Master While wielding a staff, gain endurance for each initiative point spent. Deal bonus damage when your endurance is not full while wielding a staff.
  - This should be renamed to Martial Artist/Acrobat or something and also affect sword. Sword and staff fall into the same category in terms of evasiveness and head-on playstyle.

The rest of the traits are fine.

Staff is still weak

• Vault needs range increase to 900
• skill 3 needs to be ground targeted like warrior gs3

Skills

• Heal skill: Channel heal for a thief is a really bad idea, if kept it should at least grant supespeed(why don’t THIEVES have any?) and condi clear instead of endurance and heal scaling. don’t like the idea of healing more with full endurance, coz you never have full endurance.

Utilites and the elite are pretty good.

PS: please make weapon sets other than D/P viable and fix acro!

To add to the list, Karl thank you for your work on the Daredevil. I spent most of the weekend playing the DD in pvp trying out different builds and weapons but primarily went with the staff to see what it was all about as well as the utilities.

The Staff is well developed in my opinion. The autoattack chain does good damage and the Vulnerability stacking you can do with the final attack in the chain is good for 1v1 and team fights. Getting a Whirl finisher and reflecting projectiles is a bonus. Weakening Charge serves well as a gap closer at closer range and does decent damage too, even more if you can position it. I thought making it like the Warrior GS would make it better but without a CD keeping it from being spammed I can see where that make it unbalanced. Debilitating Arc gave me no problems, serving as an extra evade and worked great for breaking out of Ranger’s Entangle and other immobilizes, plus an extra 8 Endurance when traited. Compared to others I found Dust Strike to be fine. It crited generally for about 1.5k and casted fairly quickly for a targeted ranged attack with a blind utility. I found like Weakening Charge it works better when positioned right in group fights. 8 Endurance when traited as well. Vault is the bread and butter of the weapon. Unlike others I found the velocity to be fine but the range bugs and not hitting for the full area of the targeting circle needs to be worked on but other than that the skill is perfect. It requires skill, with the velocity of the attack, to land it on moving foes but hits like a Backstab when you do. The only thing I would change on Vault is to make it a Blast Finisher instead of a Leap.

Physical Skills are a great addition and I found them to be good overall. The heal heals for a lot and the endurance regen is great but with the long channel it is not viable for pvp without some sort of protection. Maybe add a 2 second Protection buff when channeling? Fist Flurry into Palm Strike is good and the five attacks are difficult to pull off but not impossible. When it did the damage was insane and while I was using I thought it was a great way for thieves to deal big damage with a move that requires skill on the player’s part and doesn’t require stealth. The Elite is another one of those satisfying combos that is fun when you uppercut a Charr and make him do backflips in the air.

The “dodges” functioned well and I enjoyed them all but there was a bug I found with Bound. It says it is a Blast Finisher and it functions like one to trigger it ie. having to land in the field to trigger it, but instead it was doing a jump finisher. So like if I bounded into a Fire Field it would give me Fire Aura instead of doing Area Might. Personally I think Bound should be a Leap Finisher and Vault be the Blast Finisher. It would synergize so much better with everything.

Practicality of skills:

bound: bound in, staff #3 out. rinsed repeat. I’ve tried making evasion builds in the past and always failed. Being able to deal damage while evading was absolute bliss. The only lack of reliablity was that it could be hard to hit your target with bound, it seemed to me like impaling lotus was easier. This may be due to lack of my skill though.

Staff #2 nice to have high weakness uptime. no evasion so i mainly used it when my target was dazed. I can’t imagine using it before it had the auto aim.

staff #3 Again great with bound. Especially since it moves you back. Only problem i had is when spammed it sometimes accidntly activated twice, even if i tried to follow it up with a bound. I think this may have been due to my poor mechanics.

staff #4 I didnt use it much and think if i played more i would. It could work well as a long range defencive tool, either when clolsing range without using endurance and when your too far away to hit with bound. or for something like a dash kite build. I’d rather have this than a short range blind in radius.

staff #5 as a high damage pure offence attack, i found it often missed unless my target was locked down. I question weather some invincibility for one more init is necessary. I just dont want it to become the only skill you need because it would do everything.

Bandits defence: not OP like i expected, in team fights i was vulnerable during the knockdown animation, also seemed like the knockdown was unreialbe, triggered by a pet or dodged. would it be too much to make it an aoe knockdown? or only knock down the target selected? A stunbreaker/block/knockdown on a 15sec cd seems really good on paper, just not when it gets you killed.

Trait synergy:

I mainly used daredevil/acrobatics/trickery for high endurance and inituative regen, I felt they synergized well.

I do not think the daredevil grand master traits need to be changable on the fly as some people are saying. If you are a condition build u use lotus, power uses bound, and those who want to dodge defencively or kite use dash. If your aggroing mobs with your dodge, don’t dodge, other classes have the same issue.(explosives engineer for example)

does daredevil feel unique from thief?
Absoultely, from my perspective. I dont care for the stealthy asssasin class. but a monk like class that uses staves, evades, and basically does kung foo was enough for me to buy the ultimat edition of HoT.

Most daredevil’s i saw stuck to their old weapons though, more so than the other elite spec classes.

How does thief fare against daredevil? fine imo. I lost to a lot of thieves, i’ve found they win with having more damage and can escape better when things look bad. while the daredevil would win by having better combat sustain.

One thing i like about daredevil?
feeling like a martial artist not a sneaky assasin.

One thing i would like changed about daredevil?
Overall i was way more pleased with the daredevil than i expected, although other people have pointed out room for improvement, I was personally quite content with the tools i was given. I wouldnt mind a damage buff though especially on bound and staff #3. There wasnt much I could do to tankier targets.

no other thoughts.

i have played the Daredavil a quite long time during the bwe3, and like him pretty much.
A few things i have seen that interfere with my playflow, that are manly that you cant interupt the Staff 5 or the staff 2 with ESC or stow/draw weapon. That means if you see that vault will not hit you will lose 1/2 sec, or if you click the 5 two times its will come 2 times what means 1,5 sec on the same spot with much initative drain.

I dont know if that is used inteded form the Defs or its just a beta bug, and i know neither if it was posted before or iam the first, but iam hoping that it will be posible to interupt these skills in the add on.

One other thing i noticed was, in the first beta with the daredevil you could jump with vault and a moment before the landing you could port to the enemie. That was a pretty heavy opening, but in the bwe3, it worked sometimes and somtimes it didnt worked. So it was unreliable that you couldn´t use it…
its another thing i would like to see fixed in the add on ^^.

thx for your time, iam out.
o/

Karl McLain.5604:

Aloh,
As we continue screaming toward launch, I’ll update this thread with the goings-on for Daredevil. Here’s a few things we’re testing now:

• Reduced channel time of Channeled Vigor from 2.25 to 0.75
• Vault: Fixed an issue that caused it to not travel its full distance.
• Fist Flurry: Reduced cast time by 20%. note: The final strike occurs just prior to 1 second.
• Evasive Empowerment: This trait has been renamed to Havoc Master and grants the player 7% bonus damage to enemies within the 360 range threshold.
• Impaling Lotus: Increased bleeding duration from 8 to 10 seconds.
• Bounding Dodger: In addition to granting access to the Bound dodge ability, the thief will gain 10% bonus physical damage for 4 seconds after dodging.
• Lotus Training: In addition to granting access to the Impaling Lotus dodge ability, the thief will gain 10% bonus condition damage for 4 seconds after dodging.
• Unhindered combatant: In addition to granting the Dash dodge ability, the thief will gain 10% damage reduction against physical and condition damage.

We like the interaction that Evasive Empowerment had with your endurance bar and wanted to carry it further, but didn’t feel like it could have the desired impact in the adept tier. Thus, each of the grandmaster traits have their own version, geared toward their specific style of play.
Havoc Master has taken its place, as we felt that the line could use a more guaranteed damage increase. For trait mods, we’d like to experiment with Weakening Strikes slightly, adding a secondary to it within its role of debilitation. Options we’re looking at it:

• Inflict X (torment, bleeding, something) when you weaken a foe.
  or
• Receive less damage from weakened foes.

Once again, thanks for your continued constructive feedback. It’s greatly appreciated.

-Karl

After BWE 3 I feel the following changes will help the Daredevil greatly:

1. Vault – I feel the evade frames that was being contemplated from BWE 2 will help(damage mitigation). Also can’t seem to shadow-step(using steal) mid animation, but able to do that when using bound dodge. Is this intended or am I doing something wrong?

2. Driven Fortitude – Removing the 1 second cool down will eliminate any sustain issues the Daredevil has in game. It will complement good thieves that evade attacks and waste the endurance of bad thieves that spam dodge. Staff really needs this because you no longer have much stealth to mitigate the damage and dodges only prolong a fight. Eventually you need to attack and with the low health pool the thief has, they get shreked in the exchange of damage. Removing the cool-down of this trait will provide the much needed sustain for a stealth-less fighter that thieves have been looking for.

Waiting for the fixes for the dodge animations to further comment on the GM traits.

IDICERI.4268:

After BWE 3 I feel the following changes will help the Daredevil greatly:

1. Vault – I feel the evade frames that was being contemplated from BWE 2 will help(damage mitigation). Also can’t seem to shadow-step(using steal) mid animation, but able to do that when using bound dodge. Is this intended or am I doing something wrong?

2. Driven Fortitude – Removing the 1 second cool down will eliminate any sustain issues the Daredevil has in game. It will complement good thieves that evade attacks and waste the endurance of bad thieves that spam dodge. Staff really needs this because you no longer have much stealth to mitigate the damage and dodges only prolong a fight. Eventually you need to attack and with the low health pool the thief has, they get shreked in the exchange of damage. Removing the cool-down of this trait will provide the much needed sustain for a stealth-less fighter that thieves have been looking for.

Waiting for the fixes for the dodge animations to further comment on the GM traits.

bound dodge isn’t ground targeted, vault being GT while also moving the thief is probably why it’s impossible to do it.

BrunoBRS.5178:

IDICERI.4268:

After BWE 3 I feel the following changes will help the Daredevil greatly:

1. Vault – I feel the evade frames that was being contemplated from BWE 2 will help(damage mitigation). Also can’t seem to shadow-step(using steal) mid animation, but able to do that when using bound dodge. Is this intended or am I doing something wrong?

2. Driven Fortitude – Removing the 1 second cool down will eliminate any sustain issues the Daredevil has in game. It will complement good thieves that evade attacks and waste the endurance of bad thieves that spam dodge. Staff really needs this because you no longer have much stealth to mitigate the damage and dodges only prolong a fight. Eventually you need to attack and with the low health pool the thief has, they get shreked in the exchange of damage. Removing the cool-down of this trait will provide the much needed sustain for a stealth-less fighter that thieves have been looking for.

Waiting for the fixes for the dodge animations to further comment on the GM traits.

bound dodge isn’t ground targeted, vault being GT while also moving the thief is probably why it’s impossible to do it.

It’s because Vault puts you vertically in the air, and you can’t use most skills in mid-air. Bound doesn’t actually put you in the air, the animation just looks like it. But the upside to Vault is that you can cross gaps with it due to it being a jump.

Oh, how about instead of those projectiles on the GM Daredevil dodge we are given a random venom or two with max charges? That would synergize nicely with a shadow specialization!

We need the condition cleaner like in shadow tree..
like 60% of peoples are walking with condition damage.. and the shadow tree is the ONLY option.
No daredevil is not an option since it clears a condition on evade and not on dodge.. which means out of combat there is no way to clear conditions.

Trapper thief or ranger.. if hit me all conditions and go invisible or stop attacking me he can just stay and watch me die, burning guardian is the same.

Also if I kill someone but have a lot of conditions there is NO way to clear them so I will fall for sure.

If you want to have something else apart from shadow tree give a normal condition removal tool.

I am thinking about a way to transfer conditions or hide them somehow. We are “bandits” which means we should have a way for fast patching.

Dust Strike on staff and Death Blossom:
Arenanet as all their focus on elite specs so adding a “new”(it’s already kinda there in form of shadow trap) behavior to staff and then copying it to dagger seems like a possibility.

• Death Blossom: evade duration must go up to 1/2s, moreover to prevent spamming it and add more play, it would switch -if any of the attacks hit- into a second skill that lets you shadowstep to the foe first marked by the Death Blossom for additional initiative (3?) like Shadow Trap, but without the stealth & buffs part. This would have the range limitation of 900 or 1200 and if the teleport is not used in the following 6 seconds or so, the skill would reset back to Death Blossom. This would add a shadowstep mechanic that most other weaponsets already have and a good way to chase down ppl.

• Dust Strike on staff could get the same treatment I proposed for Death Blossom (hitting an enemy flips the skill and marks them for shadowstep)