My initial thoughts regarding this elite specialization, is that it feels both unfinished and clunky. Obviously, beta is beta, and it’s there for a reason.
To start, I want to talk about the specialization as a whole. DD is meant to be an in-your-face fighter, that initiates a fight, and avoids damage to stay alive, innately he’s still squishy, but you can’t kill a target you’re unable to hit… How this spec has panned out however, is that you’re not mobile enough, with not enough ‘evasion’ to justify just how squishy you are, in general, although you can avoid a lot of damage, once some one connects a single hit, you’re dead, or to be more accurate, you have to back out, this is currently impossible due to no mobility on the staff.
- Lack of condition removal (applies to both thief and DD)
Elongated fights vs conditions. Thief inherently has bad condi cleanse. Escapist’s absolutely, I feel, acknowledges this, however the aim in general is to dodge the condition application, and with the frequency and ease of applying and stacking conditions it’s impossible to dodge all applications and “Dodge” clense them all. My first experience with the DD in the starting maguuma story was against these modrem that would apply high torment, which I have no realistic way of cleansing, the result was me falling over despite being able to avoid most damage output.
- Staff feels weak.
From the moment guild mates suggested staff as a thief weapon in the up and coming expansion, I told them it would be a bad idea. I told them this largely due to the fact that S/D fits the play style they were looking for, and adding staff to the game, would either be weaker then S/D or visa versa. As the case goes, it turns out staff is out right worse then S/D. Staff itself, has no mobility. No way in, no way out of a fight… The evasive acrobatic fighter is slowly walking himself into fights, and once he takes a sizable hi, and has to disengage, he can’t and pretty much just dies.
Staff however, can be easily fixed, change Weakening Charge into a teleport, then the short ranged ‘charge’. This will allow the DD to do what he is meant to do, dive the backline, helping the mobility problem. However they still lack disengage.
In my mind there are two ways to add disengage to the staff, the first is to increase the ‘jump back’ from debilitating arc to some thing closer to 900-1200 range, I don’t much care for this personally because it would look rather odd flinging yourself back that far. The second option is to add a stealth effect to Dust Strike, if it hits a target. The latter option allows access to the staff stealth skill, a reliable disengage, the ability to use the shadow art’s line (not effectively, but at least use it), and of course, it would make sense, you’re disappearing into the dust.
Lastly, vault feels clunky. I can’t imagine myself ever landing this skill against a player of equal skill, not to mention it locks you into an animation that you can be knocked out of and to make matters worse, if you steal during the vault, you teleport AFTER you land from vault. I have no personal fix for it as of right now, at least none that I feel are adequate enough to share.
- Grandmaster traits. The big one.
I was so excited for DD, I was excited to take Bound, and crush people under my boots while avoiding their damage. It looked so cool!.. Then when I tried it, I noticed how slow, clunky, and awkward it felt, this applies for both dash and bound. The biggest problem with both of these skills, and to a lesser degree Impaling Lotus is that they are STILL our dodge roll, and taking our dodge and replacing it with a skill.. Unless those skills are insanely overpowered, it’s not worth it.
Fortunately, there’s an easy fix for this…. Revert all the dodge rolls to the basic dodge roll, but keep the added effects, IE you dodge roll normally but also do damage, or roll further (but only dodge for the same duration) or roll and daggers fly out of your butt.
Some other minor thing’s that need to be considered as well: Bound can land you a bit too far away from your target to not be able to hit him with Bound’s damage. Bound + Impaling Lotus can NOT be used while stealth without removing it, and therefore both should be disabled (or rather their secondary effects) while you’re stealthed.
- Impairing Daggers.
Love it. Truly, I do, this has been the most enjoyable part of the elite specialization, it’s just a shame you don’t have access to this skill unless you take DD.
- Channeled vigor.
I am still trying to wrap my mind around this skill. So the acrobatic fighter, designed to dodge and avoid all damage, is suppose to stop.. and channel? This skill I feel needs a complete redesign.
- Impact strike.
I actually found some success with this skill. However if they avoid a single hit from it, it becomes pretty worthless. As with vault I have no real suggestions for this skill, simply that it feels … risky? I suppose.
I think that about does it for my experiences with the elite spec. Overall it felt clunky and unfinished, and not really fun. Furthermore I feel as though the current SA DP meta thief build is far more functional, even if it also has an array of problems that still need to be addressed.
A thanks to those that read every thing.