Guild Wars 2

Is there anyone else who uses Critical Strikes in PvP?

After playing Berserker D/P with DA/CS/T since last season, I recently tried Marauder Shadow Arts instead. It feels SO SLOW to kill anyone! So I’m back to CS with Marauder.

I don’t know… I guess I’m using the “offense is the best defense” strategy. With the quickness from Flanking Strikes and extra punch from No Quarter, I seem to have a much better shot at downing someone I catch off guard before they recover and down me.

DA/CS/TR was a very common pre-HoT build.
The build still works for the same reasons it did back then.

A more interesting topic would be if People opt to use Critical Strikes instead of Deadly Arts in combination with Trickery and Daredevil… Think CS/TR/DD is the trait layout used for some PvE power D/D builds? Haven’t bothered with it in PvP yet. Maybe in some unranked matches

I run cs instead of da in some builds. Critical strikes is a nice line to boost your damage, especially for pistols.

This is my first season not participating, so I can’t comment on the meta.

The problem is not your build, rather the Marauder amulet. The old Beserker amulet gives both high damage and good health pool, but now it’s pure damage. The Marauder is what Berserker used to be but a nerfed version — they nerfed the Power and Ferocity to give the amulet more Precision — it’s a horrible stat distribution IMHO compare to the old Berserker.

Their goal is to tone down the burst builds in the meta to give your target a chance for counterplay, so if it takes you a while to down someone, then the changes to the amulet has met its goal. It’s working as intended — sacrifice fun for balance.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

…sacrifice fun for balance.

I hope you will eventually see the folly in that statement.

Perma weakness flying around kind of kills whole purpose of crit strikes :<

Problem is you need to sacrifice DD for it and it just doesn’t work when you face decent opponents.

Rin.1046:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

…sacrifice fun for balance.

I hope you will eventually see the folly in that statement.

It’s still half-empty.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The problem is not your build, rather the Marauder amulet. The old Beserker amulet gives both high damage and good health pool, but now it’s pure damage. The Marauder is what Berserker used to be but a nerfed version — they nerfed the Power and Ferocity to give the amulet more Precision — it’s a horrible stat distribution IMHO compare to the old Berserker.

Perhaps so, but I’m feeling the difference just between the last season and this one. But I’m thinking it has more to do with Shadow Arts instead of Marauder… for me, at least.

Under the current amulets, my build’s stats are the following…

Berserker
Power: 2555
Crit Chance: 52.8%
Crit Damage: 223.4%

Marauder
Power: 2405
Crit Chance: 59.95%
Crit Damage: 201.8%

I’m still doing pretty decent damage with Marauder while getting 48% more health.

So I think it must be the difference between Critical Strikes and the other traitlines that is the issue. While being able to last longer in a fight is a good thing, at least for the way I play, it doesn’t seem to make up for losing the ability to end a fight quickly.

As a Thief, every second the fight goes on, my chances of winning diminishes. Either the opponent will heal up, recharge powerful skills, or will be reinforced by others. Not to mention that the Thief’s defensive capabilities still aren’t great even when built for it… other than running away and hiding from everything.

Cynz.9437:

Perma weakness flying around kind of kills whole purpose of crit strikes :<

That’s another issue. As others have mentioned in my “Trait Shakeup” thread, the traitlines are currently designed with traits that synergize with unrelated traitlines. So it’s like each traitline is its own buffet. Pick a damage trait from this line, then another damage trait from that. And they all seem to have helpful utility traits. But Critical Strikes is left out. It does almost NOTHING but increase critical chance and critical damage. There are only a few really situational “utility” traits…

Signets of Power: Gain might (more damage) and faster signet recharge
Ankle Shots: Cripple and more damage ONLY with pistols and harpoons
Sundering Shots: Vulnerability (more damage)
Invigorating Precision: Healing

Compare those with other traitlines…

Mug: Heal and damage
Lotus Poison: Weaken
Panic Strike: Immobilize
Improvisation: Use stolen items twice and recharge utilities
Shadow’s Embrace: Cleanse conditions
Leeching Venoms: Might and steal life
Resilience of Shadows: Reduce damage taken
Cloaked in Shadow: Blind
Shadow’s Rejuvenation: Healing and regenerate initiative
Venomous Aura: Share venoms with allies
Expeditious Dodger: Swiftness
Pain Response: Healing and condition cleanse
Swindler’s Equilibrium: Faster Steal recharge
Assassin’s Reward: Healing
Upper Hand: Regenerate initiative
Kleptomaniac: Gain initiative
Flanking Strikes: Quickness
Thrill of the Crime: Might, Fury, and Swiftness
Preparedness: More initiative
Bountiful Theft: Steal boons
Trickster: Condition cleanse and faster trick recharge
Quick Pockets: Gain initiative
Sleight of Hand: Daze and faster Steal recharge

Why is there not utility in Critical Strikes? And why does every single traitline have the ability to increase ALL direct damage… not just critical damage?

Deadly Arts
Exposed Weakness: 10%
Executioner: 20%
Deadly Trapper: 5% Might/Vulnerability per trap

Shadow Arts
Leeching Venoms: 5% Might/Vulnerability per venom

Acrobatics
Swindler’s Equilibrium: 7% with Sword and Spear

Trickery
Lead Attacks: 15% possible

Something just seems wrong with that. I would say that Critical Strikes needs a revision… not simply be a critical damage/chance boost.

Kageseigi.2150:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The problem is not your build, rather the Marauder amulet. The old Beserker amulet gives both high damage and good health pool, but now it’s pure damage. The Marauder is what Berserker used to be but a nerfed version — they nerfed the Power and Ferocity to give the amulet more Precision — it’s a horrible stat distribution IMHO compare to the old Berserker.

Perhaps so, but I’m feeling the difference just between the last season and this one. But I’m thinking it has more to do with Shadow Arts instead of Marauder… for me, at least.

Under the current amulets, my build’s stats are the following…

Berserker
Power: 2555
Crit Chance: 52.8%
Crit Damage: 223.4%

Marauder
Power: 2405
Crit Chance: 59.95%
Crit Damage: 201.8%

I’m still doing pretty decent damage with Marauder while getting 48% more health.

So I think it must be the difference between Critical Strikes and the other traitlines that is the issue. While being able to last longer in a fight is a good thing, at least for the way I play, it doesn’t seem to make up for losing the ability to end a fight quickly.

As a Thief, every second the fight goes on, my chances of winning diminishes. Either the opponent will heal up, recharge powerful skills, or will be reinforced by others. Not to mention that the Thief’s defensive capabilities still aren’t great even when built for it… other than running away and hiding from everything.

The more you increase your critical damage through CS, the more significant the difference is due to the loss of power. You can go Shadow Arts with Berserker amulet but with Marauder, the loss of power and ferocity, your damage output suffers. IMHO, the best build in PvP is the one you have since last season using Berserker.

Marauder is only appealing because of the increased health, but that increase in health means nothing if you can’t end a fight. If you’re an experienced Thief, the extra health has a minimal advantage because if you can consistently apply pressure to put them on a defensive, the extra health means nothing at that point. Besides, it’s very rare that you will be left alone in a node, so the presence of a teammate can alleviate the pressure on you, which again means that the extra health means nothing at this point.

If you focus on +1 fights and let someone else take the nodes, you’ll make yourself more productive to your team because while you’re hopping around trying to cap nodes, your DPS is going to waste. I see this all the time in the tournament where Thiefs are leaving a team fight to cap a node. I really don’t get that since there are other professions in their team than can do so and are more tankier that the Thief. If the Thief focus on team fights where they can receive continuous buffs and heals, the DA/CS/T Berserker will very effective. Marauder amulet is for those who choose to hop around instead of DPSing in a teamfights, so they are more interested in extra health than extra damage.

TL;DR
- stay DA/CS/T using Berserker
- choose a wingman
- profit

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Marauder is only appealing because of the increased health, but that increase in health means nothing if you can’t end a fight. If you’re an experienced Thief, the extra health has a minimal advantage because if you can consistently apply pressure to put them on a defensive, the extra health means nothing at that point. Besides, it’s very rare that you will be left alone in a node, so the presence of a teammate can alleviate the pressure on you, which again means that the extra health means nothing at this point.

I guess that’s my issue. I’m never sure where I’m going to be or what I’m going to be doing… as is the life of a PUG. So I’ll move to decap points when I see the opportunity, but I’ll also assist teammates if I see that as more beneficial at that point in time.

But as for the difference between the two amulets, with my stats, do the following numbers make sense?

With No Quarter traited…
While not under Fury, Marauder does about 91.78% of Berserker’s damage?
And with Fury, Marauder does about 90.75% damage compared to Berserker?

Here’s my current build…
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoaVl0MhenYjTw0Jw/EHwElOBCgMYfBL3g6Dj4oNA-TJBFABAcEAEvMQN7PIwhAAA

Ps. Just curious… is this season more condi-heavy than last season? I’ve only played just a little so far, and I’m being condi-bombed much more, so maybe I’m not to the level needed where I can do without the extra health from Marauder :-P

Marauder is mathematically better – a 10% DPH loss for more reliability (especially since HK’s not being used, and overall DPS is up by a similar margin from critting more often) and so much more health is simply better. DA/SA/Tr was the previous meta even before DD. CS hasn’t been considered a worthwhile traitline in the competitive landscape for years.

As far as condition play goes, it’s been buffed massively through elite specs, and has always been an optimal source of PvP damage when looking at damage : defense ratios from strictly gear and build perspectives; celestial-boon builds were best countered by power builds, though, as these builds previously had the defensive stats to sustain out condition builds, and boon stripping was limited in availability and thus it was critical to kill the player in brief periods of weakness. With boon builds nerfed via the removal of many defensive stat combinations, increased boon hate from a variety of professions and builds, and changes to a lot of condition application abilities such as Death Blossom to boost viability and application, condi has been on the rise replacing the bunker meta because it simply plays in a similar nature and offers similar mathematical superiority.

Thanks for the info! :-)

What would it take for Critical Strikes to become competitive again?
More utility? The ability to negate or mitigate defenses?
Perhaps just increasing the DPS with a Quickness trait similar to Flanking Strikes?

And yes, the more I get condi-bombed, the more I wish they would grey-out the health bar for potential health loss from conditions.

To make CS good? That’s tough, because its lack of viability extends almost almost solely from issues pertaining to sPvP and the profession itself rather than specifically the trait line.

CS gets all its damage from boosting the damage the thief deals via scaling outgoing damage by percentages (Flawless Strike, Sundering Strikes, PT, Ankle Shots, Ferocious Strike, NQ), which typically also gets modified through other trait lines as well. In PvE and WvW, this lets the thief really push its stats to new heights, as multiplicative stacking leads to the thief getting huge damage potential over static values like a few stacks of might or static effects from other professions (think Revealed Training).

Since stats are so much lower in sPvP, as well as with the stat distribution choices available being unfavorable to the thief due to the lack of granularity in build-making (especially post-Ferocity changeover some time ago), scaling become less effective; 10% increased critical damage is less-preferable to +175 power from might.

DA provides a very strong mix of utility and damage through poison and weakness applications, lifesteal and damage on mug, finishing potential on executioner or utility on Improv, and a choice of either utility on Panic Strike or damage on RT. All said and done, it also has good stat synergy with marauder gear, as it gains tons of durability and the high precision offsets the need for HK or the CS line in general.

Pure utility lines like SA and Acro are obviously and intentionally better for defense and utility than what CS can offer, which makes sense.

So while more damage seems like the logical solution, it isn’t for the sake of PvE and WvW. CS already is the hardest-damaging trait option available to the thief for PvE and WvW, because the scaling gets to work in these environments.

The big issue with CS is that it can’t stand on its own, and isn’t comparable to other trait lines, while the thief effectively only has one choice of trait line, since Tr and DrD are required for PvP purposes for the most part.

So first and foremost, as well as general thief viability in sPvP, put PvE/WvW stats into sPvP and do away with the over-simplified and impossible-to-balance amulet system. This normalizes all formats in the game and thus lets ANet balance skills with the same damage outputs across different formats without worrying about the consequences of scaling tweaks across different formats. There’s little overlap between these formats in respects to builds, anyways, just because of how things play (I don’t see many druids in sPvP or WvW with Water Spirit, etc.).

I think a few things would need to be changed with Trickery to allow its use:

Preparedness baseline, Sleight of Hand’s cooldown reduction on Steal baseline. This pushes Trickery out from being a hard requirement to more-or-less optional for burst specs.

For CS traits themselves:

Unrelenting Strikes buffed and altered. Right now it has a 40% Fury uptime after a foe is taking a hit after already being taken to below 90%. This is meant to enable people to build a little bit away from precision mandating critical hits. It sadly doesn’t do that on engage, though, which is the most important period of time for the thief while in combat in PvP. Move it to 10s of Fury on steal like ToTC to also help push away Trickery from being totally necessary, but also enabling its uptime to near-permanent if taking ToTC with CS and Trickery (thus freeing NQ) to loosen coupling among traits. NQ is cool, but only because of the ferocity bonus. The permanent fury potential due to +2s duration boosts is honestly pretty terrible, especially for a class which hinges on stealth and sometimes not attacking every so often.

Signets of Power: Passives still on effect while on cooldown, or at least for Signet of Shadows. C’mon ANet. SoS was supposed to be the only mobility boost signet in the game for a long time, and this change with reduced dependency on Trickery for swiftness access lets signets become quite menacing. Ele even has this ability already.

Side Strike: Change it to 7% increased critical chance baseline, 14% if from behind or the side. Helps push off the need for HK and gives CS a potential little bit of durability love without just giving it innately more defense while needing to uphold a certain level of skill and back-stabbi-ness.

HK: Cure a condition upon critting in stealth. This gives CS a single condition cleanse every few seconds. This promotes the CS-style of play by rewarding players for entering and then immediately exiting stealth in an aggressive way, also supporting D/D play a bit more with cheaper stealth (eating the consequences of higher revealed uptime), and also gives SA thieves a little bit of consistency in condition removal with SE in stealth removing DoT’s while HK can cure control conditions like Weakness, immob, etc.

This pushes CS into the more in-and-out of stealth aggressive style while sporting some options and damage boosts for non-stealth players like Sundering Strikes, NQ, and IP, while giving SA builds consistency options and a reason to perhaps play a bit more aggressively depending on the current battle circumstances, which is how the thief should play.