Guild Wars 2

I think a lot of problems with staff will make more sense if you compare it to the way S/D works. S/D has almost no cast times on most skills and there’s no awkward pre or post casts.

Staff seems to try and mix the evasion of S/D with the big hits of dagger and uses cast times to balance this merging of strengths. However the lack of stealth and weaker mobility already balance it out. Meanwhile, the cast times take away the “thief” feel of the profession.

DeceiverX.8361:

No access to Fury and initiative restoration puts too much emphasis on Trickery, still. Not much really changes the way this profession is played in this spec, seeing as there are a lot of other equally-evasive ones that can offer still-better damage or sustain.

Really good point here. The spec needs to do some of what trickery does to feel less like a loss of a trait tree to get a new weapon or new utility skills.

If this went live today, I think D/D would still be king in PvE and D/P trickery would still rule PvP with DD just being a novel distraction to play with if you’re working on map complete.

Guys, we only get two shots of beta. That’s two tries to give feedback and get changes like the other classes have, but we won’t get those without being specific. Yes give feedback, but give the devs something to work with.

On that note, could someone please describe staff by USING MORE GODkitten WORDS THAN JUST CLUNKY?! I know we all like to use similar vocab to express consensus, but if you don’t drop specifics then ANET will not know what to do in order to make it ‘Not clunky.’ We are not going to get this fixed by being generic and coming off whiny about how ‘thief has no role.’ Bull. In WvW we are both havoc and zerg venom, in dungeons we’re part of chill/speed run skip (same with fractals. Seriously, tell me dredge isn’t easier with a thief. Go on, keep lying), and in PvP everyone right now is having trouble with condi/ so many eles. Admittedly i don’t pvp much on thief, but I haven’t gotten to use my pvp build for daredevil yet. When I do I’ll post in detail about it.

So far I’ve tried rocking two builds. One build for world running, and another for zerk pve fighting. World running build ran dash with sigils of energy on short bow and staff. Traits lines were trickery, acrobatics, and daredevil. Very boring and felt slow when compared to even old warrior. I do intend on trying out Berserker for a comparison, but the most underwhelming is Dash. While I’m aware it takes us further than a regular dodge, it completely lacks the feel of super speed running on Shiro Rev. Using acrobatics for vigor was less thrilling than promised. I won’t get into much detail because I gave up on the build very quickly.

Next build was significantly more fun in combat. Copied from my build notes:
Scholastic Fiend:
Trickery
~Flanking Strikes
~Bountiful Theft
~Sleight of Hand
Critical Strikes:
~Flawless Strike
~Sundering Strikes or Practiced Tolerance
~No Quarter
Daredevil
~Weakening Strikes
~Staff master
~Bounding Leap
Heal: Signet of Malice
Utility: Bandit’s Defense, Signet of Agility, SR
Elite: Daggerstorm
Weapons: Staff, Sword/Pistol, Shortbow for travel.
Sigils: Force/Energy, Force/Energy or Frailty for more vun (use sundering strikes for this)
Runes: Rune of the Scholar

WAY WAY WAY MORE FUN. Combat is fun against the new Mordy fodder and that knockdown on staff. Whatever critical comments i have to say below, PLEASE UNDERSTAND that the stealth staff 1 attack is the best kitten present you’ve given thieves in a long time. Oh and hey guess what, zerk on thief can still get you killed. I learned this the hard way and then tried planing for coordinated attacks on enemies. Stealth in, knockdown the sniper, use skill 2 for weakness sweep. Enemies run in, switch to sword pistol for black powder bounding leap from smoke field to go stealth while dealing damage. Daze strike on priority target, pistol whip, bounding leap, pistol 5, sword 1 or react as necessary until weapon swap occurs. I found it beneficial to always try to leave one evade available as a just in case, but that’s probably not optimal damage rotation. Hey, I had an hour to try.

So yeah, staff problems. Main issue is that it acts differently pending on camera position, and it’s hard with a brand new weapon to learn those key positions. 1 skill chain is hitting for less than any other weapon, which feels a little wrong when you look at sword, pistol, and dagger functionality. I’m not asking for it to be stronger, but in pvp there is almost no chance of getting to the third toggle skill. I like the animation for this skill’s third toggle though. Number 2 skill is actually quiet excellent for the reason of obtaining quickness. Rotate the camera as it spins you through enemies and quickly hit 1 to activate quickness, THEN AND ONLY THEN GO FOR LEAP. The 3rd staff skill I admittedly did not use much, but that doesn’t make it bad or wrong. Admittedly there were so many dodge options that it felt a little redundant. Would trade in a heartbeat for a reflect, but it at least offers total zerk a way to break cripple. Staff 4 is where my big problem lies. The blind moves way to slow to be useful in anything other than pve, or after obtaining a knockdown in pvp. Even still why bother when pistol 5 easily beats it? More often than not I’ll dodge roll for bounding leap or stealth in to start combat, which grants a much bigger advantage. It looks good but doesn’t function well compared to other combat options. Last but not least skill leap hits like a truck, but without quickness or knockdowns it will get your health bar much lower. It takes careful timing, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing…. but if it could at least hit in a wider range (seriously bounding leap for the win) it would be way more worth the risk. Or give us that sweet sweet 900 range gap closer? Pretty pretty please?

Utility notes:
I haven’t bothered with the healing skill. It seems like a really easy way to get yourself killed in the new areas. Probably awesome while running the ‘get across the map’ build I talked about, but otherwise meh.
Bandit’s defense is the second best present you’ve given thieves. A 1.5 second block is a life saver against things like Terragrifs. Please don’t raise the cooldown above 15 seconds or stealth will still remain the superior mechanic for 95% of enemies. Short story, knockdowns good.

I tried out the Distracting Daggers only briefly, but admittedly it feels like you guys wanted kits without having to give up physical skills as a theme. Equipping then throwing is abundantly terrible for the double clicks, especially just for an interrupt. You know how I like interrupting? Bandit’s Defense, or Blinding Powder + Staff 1, or Pistol 5+Bounding Leap+staff 1, or SR + staff 1, or hide in shadows + staff 1, or steal to grant stealth + staff 1…. OR THE VASTLY SUPERIOR PISTOL 4 SKILL headshot. (yes I’m aware most of those are knockdowns, but knockdowns are amazing as interrupts) Seriously either make these awesome with stun duration/not having to equip or GIVE A PHYSICAL REFLECT/STABILITY. <- Thief can use more of these.

I haven’t tried Fist flurry or Impairing Daggers, but I do have builds that incorporate them and I will try them out.

The Elite: It’s fun, But I made the mistake of not repressing the button again for the second and third hits. My bad, again hits like a truck and awesome even just as an interrupt on boss monsters if you start it when they have one stack of stability. Will be attempting to use this in pvp and provide better feedback.

That’s all I have for now, I’m working on more builds and will post thoughts on them as the weekend continues.

I like Staff, but not a fan of the “no hands!” third autoattack.

First of all, I’d like to say that I love the concept of the Daredevil. The Bo Staff is my favorite martial arts weapon, the concept of throwing punches, kicks, combos and counters during a fight is very exciting (especially in GW2), and I always loved the frenetic no-stealth flashy acrobatic gameplay of a D/D trickery Thief.

It should come as no surprise that the Daredevil instantly made me fall in love. I definitely want to main a Daredevil, and so I’ll list everything I noticed that about it that made me feel sad – as in it was so good in theory, but not so much in practice.

Dodges:
All the dodges had me so excited! The animations looked great, and they all seemed so useful! But then, I tried them, and they all felt slow and clunky. The real problem is, they break the flow. It has a wind-up before going out, then the animation, and you’re frozen for some time after it ends. Why have dodges with cast times/channeling?

Impaling Lotus – This one is interesting: you can dodge while dodging. If you spam the dodge button, you’ll end up doing another dodge during the dodge, thus climbing higher and wasting more endurance. It’s one for the price of two! (This was still the most responsive dodge for me, probably because it has no chanelling. Also, it uses one initiative in combat. I believe it’s a bug.)

Dash – Feels more like a “run away”, disengage-ish dodge. If you miss the direction, you can screw yourself so easily… My suggestion would be to let us change direction during this one, even if slowly (after all, you’re running like a madman). By the way, he seems to be holding the weapon, but it disappears.

Bound – My favorite before using it. Couldn’t do it. You’ll NEVER land this on your opponent. I get it, maybe it’s more of an anti-zerg dodge or something – but in a 1v1 situation, whichever way you dodge, you won’t hit the person you’re fighting. Plus, you are stuck in place. It doesn’t seem to travel the 300 distance.

Finally, I feel the 3 bars end up effectively as one extra dodge per fight. It feels like it recharges slowly, and the signet that “refills” your endurance actually only fills two thirds of it. Even with the staff endurance regeneration trait it still didn’t feel right. I believe it’s because I didn’t manage to use the dodges effectively during combat, as they’d just put me out of range, having to run back into the fight and eating up all the damage as I do it (or use an extra dodge to get back in).

Physical Skills:
Love them! But I have some small gripes with each one, hahah. Hope you’ll bear with me for a little longer.

Fist Flurry – kitten , this one’s exciting! Beat up your opponent with many punches, and you have 5 seconds to follow up with a finishing blow! This works well as a combo skill. But the animation made me sad… I was playing on a Human, and it looks like the kitten has no idea how to throw a punch. He curls his wrists inward and wiggles his bent arms at the enemy. Why not some straight punches? The palm strike looks great, though – just wish it had a bit more impact.

Bandit’s Defense – Great skill. The animation looks great too, except for one detail – it instantly snaps back to the idle pose in the end.

Impairing Daggers – Why does this use initiative?

Distracting Daggers – I found it unusable, due to having to take a long time to equip it, then not having enough time to wait for the right move to use it on.

Impact Strike – Why is this a combo skill? You have less than a second to use the next one. Basically a skill that you need to spam the button to use. You can’t time it differently, like you can with Fist Flurry.

Channeled Vigor – …this came out of nowhere, right? It has nothing to do with the rest of the theme. Heck, it’s just Guardian’s Empower animation (which I really dislike on the male Human, but that’s my opinion). The skill itself, I felt was good, but the rest of it made me forget about the effect… :c

Staff:
Why that recycled pose? It had so much potential! Why not have this (http://massivelyop.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Weapon-Skill-5-Vault-1024x576.jpg) as the idle stance? I’d love it right away if it was the case.

Gameplay-wise, I actually liked the staff, though I feel it could be a bit faster. After playing for about an hour only using staff, I switched to dagger/dagger and it felt like I had quickness. Still, I agree that it doesn’t provide the frontliner sustain that the class promised.

To sum it up my impression of the Daredevil in a word, I’d use rushed. Most of the animations are recycled, and one of it’s core mechanics feels very clunky. But mainly, it was the animations that let me down. It seems to me you guys are struggling with the release date, not being able to do it all, and just putting out whatever is at hand. If that’s the case, I wish you had waited longer to reveal it, or gone for a later date. For the first time in all these years, I felt like someone there didn’t care about what they were doing, like we’d just accept whatever was thrown out, and it was very sad. :/

Again, I loved the Daredevil’s concept, and I’m saying all this because I want it to be a great class (it made me want to main a Thief after 3 years of being a bunker-style Guardian!). I hope you’ll get it right by October 23. (Also, I had a blast using Aureate staff and pretending I had a spear!)

Cheers from a faithful player! (Get it? Get it? c:)

P.S. – Loved the sound effects on the skills!

I believe many people have already gotten to many of the points I would have brought up. I think one that I would like to see is skill 5 on the staff be an evade and maybe thrust us up and give us more vertical takeoff. It just doesn’t make sense to me if I’m 6ft in the air and a small little hyena or something is still biting my ankles damaging me. It would also make sense as an evade because of the gap closer. It would be pretty awesome to see a DD flip over like a lava font (evading it completely in mid air) and going in for the kill. Also, adding more vertical take off would give us greater mobility so we could leap onto high platforms and stuff of that nature (personal preference). Finally I think the aa should be faster and a lot smoother. Seems to ridged and stuff.

Just a few bugs and feed back to mention.

Bugs:
-Impact strike (First strike) has the slight movement jump for closing a gap, the problem is it often passes the target if you are already in motion when it is being used. This causes the second to either miss entirely and cancels the attack chain completely or you can do two upper cuts into thin air (you’re facing the wrong way) and it’s lost. Was more noticeable if you had swiftness on (from unhindered combat) and both you and target were in motion.

-Both condition removal trait and healing trait on successful evade are not removing conditions/healing (respectively) even when you successfully evade an attack.

Thief specific Comments:
-Staff animations, they’ve been covered. Simply put, it needs work, and less pause frames.

-I think some of the internal cooldowns (weakening strikes) need to be reduced / looked at. The duration prevents us from stacking it, there’s no reason to have a 10 second internal cooldown, especially in PvP (sPvP or other wise) a fight can end in three seconds flat or less for a thief, even from full health.

-Dodge traits need the delays removed and likely a rework of several of the animations, rehashed skills is expected in beta, but i do hope there are plans to have more polished versions.

-Escapist Absolution really needs to be an on dodge….not on a successful evade. IMO. There might be arguments if they could remove more than 1, but they remove only one. I think THIS is my current biggest disappointment (complaint) for the trait line over others, even the grand master dodges that i think just need tweaking. For a more defensive “not-needing-stealth-all-the-time” trait line, it sure is lack luster / disappointing compared to what we already have in the core game for this aspect.

-As above, i think Driven Fortitude should also be compared for on dodge instead of successful on evade. Though Escapist Absolution does have priority in that regard.

As a trait line compared to other thief lines. Simply put it is not currently offering anything that makes anyone think “must have”. I get diversity is the goal but if a trait line has nothing that people might even consider as a must have for builds, its going to fall into shadow very quickly (no pun intended).

General playing with the spec builds and traits.

-Staff was okay. It has a niche i can see, i think we may even see some Staff/Staff players in our near future. I think some damage checks for balance may be in order though. Cast times, duration and effects included of course.

-Beginning story of this Beta …can we just get to it (the testing so much testing) with out all the hoopla next time?

-Masteries. Really? More time gated crap for things that keep you from actually playing the game cause they couldn’t be done in a story or something that would actually make sense. Or you know, just given (tutorial like) at a specific spot every player has to pass in the expansion. The whole “precursor” must build up to it, is also done in very poor form IMO. It was “promised”, at this point years ago, and this is how you do it? One of you in the office needs to go punch the decision maker for that one, a big smacker right on the nose. If you called that one Karl, punch yourself. I know I wont be alone on that feeling.

-On the plus side: 3 Dodge bars, ohhh yea, that was fun, I’ll admit it, I tested and confirmed we can keep Swiftness permanent with dodges (sigil of energy does wonders with this line). Not overly helpful, and not gonna kill anyone with it for sure, but there non-the-less.

Another note: Staff master’s endurance gain bonus seems to work even without it on. Whenever I use vault I see a little jump in my endurance bar. Js.

My first impression on the Daredevil after equipping my character and moving around?

Clunky and awkward.

Biggest offender are the Grandmaster traits: an upgrade to the ability to dodge should not make it less fluid.

The three traits makes dodges feel longer than the regular dodge and have a pause at the end of it; because of this, you cant flow into a second dodge or into movement as smoothly as normal. Feels weird for an acrobat like the Daredevil.

The staff has similar issues with some skills having awkward pauses at the end of them.

Going to have to play more to get a better feel, but that’s what struck me when I first played with it.

My initial thoughts on daredevil… It felt underwhelming to be honest. I was a little disappointed that I can’t dodge roll inside a shadow refuge when using daredevil grandmasters without revealing myself.

S/D feels similar to what it felt pre-feline grace deletion (June 23rd patch).

Summary: thief is still underwhelming in high level PvP and D/P remains the best weapon set thief has since day 1 of gw2.

I do love the idea of daredevil but it still needs some work. Also, thief needs more weapon viability other than D/P

Hello all, just want to throw some feedback from my time playing daredevil today.
I quite enjoy staff as a pve weapon and have been using it all day with some decent success, It is incredibly enjoyable using vault and bound to hop around on the wyvern fight and not take much damage.
That being said, I feel like Vault and Bound have to much of a recovery time after landing (this is understandable on vault as in pvp It should be punishable) but for Bound I feel like it should be as seamless as regular dodging.

That’s about it, I will say it’s been incredibly fun running Staff and P/P with Bound. The access to stealth through black powder is awesome and makes P/P builds a lot of fun to play.

Staff animations are horrible, auto attack is chopping wood chopping wood magical spin without touching it. Animation locks on Vault and dodges feel like crap and need to go asap. Distracting daggers using initiative + cast time to activate and cd between throws = pointless.

On a good note impairing daggers seems fine…overall 3/10 so far needs work.
Edit: Besides the 3 ini cost on ID that is.

I agree with all sentiments pertaining to the dodge and skill animations and their clunkiness. The Dash dodge in particular, the way it recycles the warrior Rush animations seems problematic (especially with the weapons disappearing!). If animation assets are limited, might I recommend the elementalist’s Burning Speed animation instead? Though to be perfectly honest the default dodge animation is better than its current state. Because the traited dodges alter the direction you are facing (for instance, you turn around when dodging backwards), this leads to awkward interactions with skills that have directional leaps associated with them (like Withdraw, RfI, and Heartseeker). For example, when I am facing the enemy but dodging away from them, using Withdraw immediately after would evade me back toward my enemy, which is not what happens with regular dodges.

Not being able to Steal or otherwise Shadowstep during the Vault animation seems like a huge design flaw, and is thematically inconsistent with the way other thief skills can be chained with teleports.

Finally, the elite chain Impact Strike seems good on paper but is incredibly inflexible, which is bad especially for a skill that’s really only useful in PvP/WvW situations. My suggestions to improve it would be to give you a brief period to use other skills after using the first one or two skills in the chain (similar to how you can save a Larcenous Strike for later), and also to make the stomping aspect of Finishing Blow unaffected by blind (since regular stomps still work through blind). Not affecting stealthed targets like regular stomps is okay.

Since this seems to be the most checked thread, I’ll throw my own feedback in here (from a PVE perspective).

My impressions of the Daredevil so far have been mostly negative, to the point where I’d prefer stick to raw old Thief were this the state at release.

The staff is the best point, in my opinion. I’m not seeing anything it really excels at, and skill 4 doesn’t seem reliably useful, but it’s neat enough for the sake of variety.

The slot skills are a mixed bag. They all seem inconsistent and experimental in how they’re used (I guess for testing purposes?). Equipping then using daggers, for example, is a relatively slow process out of sync with the rest of the skills, and the combos in general are only good if they feel like playing nice. There’s generally a lot of holding still and waiting for states to tick over, which feels a bit off. Even then, the abilities generally lack visual impact. Dancing Dagger, by comparison, has much more of a visual presence than the dagger-based slot skills.

The Daredevil Elite Skill seems very underpowered to me for it’s difficulty of execution. It probably fares better in PVP, but in PVE it seems outclassed by the standard Thief skills, both for offence and survivability. The Healing Skill, on the other hand, seems to be more powerful than it needs to be, at least in raw numbers. Its actual utility I’m not sure on; it feels out of theme, but that could just be it being new.

The absolute worst, deal-breaking aspect though is the execution of the new dodges. They straight up don’t work properly right now. There’s a sizeable delay in responsiveness at the start and end of the input (disproportionate to latency), sometimes taking seconds to activate. I’m sure latency IS a factor, but it’s significantly worse for the Daredevil dodges than for the standard. For a profession built on mobility, not being able to dodge reliably is a severe problem. I can’t see this being anything but a hindrance in big encounters. Maybe if you didn’t HAVE to take one of the replacement dodges it’d be a bit better, but this seemed like the big selling point of the specialization; it shouldn’t be coming across as such a harsh penalty instead. I’d much rather stick with two standard dodges than have three that won’t work for the majority of uses.

The bottom line is that as it stands right now, the Daredevil is very clunky to use, to the point where I’d rather not take it when given the option. It is not yet in a state where it accomplishes its design goals.

Karl McLain.5604:

We’ll be keeping watch (and playing) over the weekend.

-Karl

less watching and less playing, more listening to players who have been playing, and more doing.

Since Unhindered Combatant can move you out of Shadow Refuge, how about the distance increase only applies to jump-dodging? All the other effects can still trigger on every dodge.

I’m not going to go down the whole list, just the big ones for me

Distracting daggers Completely unusable for its intended purpose. The cast time is too long to set it up in combat, and you have to set it up in combat because the duration of the equipped daggers is too short. In addition, the ICD between daggers seems arbitrary and clunky for a skill that already has a travel time and relies on use during very short time frames to achieve its intended function (interrupts) It’s already hard enough to land, it seems needless to put it on an ICD which makes it even more difficult to use within its narrow window of usefulness. Make this function like a mantra, increase the cast time to compensate, and remove the ICD between daggers so it feels like a thief skill.

dodges
The effects on these are right on the money, but as other posters have said they feel clunky. I’m glad this is being addressed, but while you’re at it maybe have a look at death blossom and staff 2 and apply a similar treatment. Also, why does lotus training cost initiative? I’m assuming this is a bug.

Impact Strike
The chain timing is too narrow to justify being a chain skill at all. Either increase the window to execute the next strike or just make it a one touch skill. The final hit, while an actual stomp, just looks bad. The skill has an overly narrow use, and seems more suited to a utility than an elite slot. Also, it’s the only skill in the game that is completely without purpose in PvE. The damage and conditions it applies simply don’t measure up against foes who don’t need to be finished. Maybe a split version with higher damage or better disables for pve would fix this.

Fist flurry
Just plain awkward to use in a lot of cases. The functionality is good, but it’s overly difficult to land all hits on a non-stationary target. Maybe increase the range/cone or something?

Animations overall
The animations on most of the skills feel obviously rushed or incomplete. The effects on the lotus dodge seem awkward without syncing sound effects and dont match up in quality with the same animation on deathblossom, rush hides your weapons and uses a hammer stance while holding nothing. Bound has extremely awkward timing and a largely theme inappropriate stomp. Bandit’s defense stows your weapons mid combat even though the reactive strike is a kick. The blows from fist flurry have no sense of impact. Overall the visuals as they currently stand are well below arenanet’s usual bar, and noticably poor in quality or half finished compared to the base game.

Was it fun?
I used DD to supplement a condition deathblossom spec, and it definately added a lot, and significantly changed the game. Balancing the use of lotus and juggling two separate resource pools for DPS and attempting to maximize and position for trickery caltrops, favoring dodge against singles, deathblossom against multiples, and using bandit’s defense as a “fill” when other resources are low made the build much more durable, and increased its damage output significantly, and the extra endurance and dodge restored the old “I never run out of endurance as long as I don’t spam dodge” feel of pre-nerf feline grace. I think DD is in a good place thematically, but it needs visual polish and some basic usability adjustments to its skills.

I posted on here early about my initial thoughts on the daredevil..and after reading through again now, I cannot express how utterly disappointed I am I have always looked up to your company as the ultimate when it came to details. When I first played guild wars 2 i was so blown away by the fact that you took the time to make characters feet bend on slanted terrain to look fitting and many other small things that just made the game feel alive….and now its hard to say the same. The dare devil, despite its mechanical problems disappoints me the most in the over all flavor of the class. The animations are recycled and mundane aside from vault. Being a martial artist myself I was extremely exited the second I saw the very first data mine with a thief wielding a staff and being with you guys from release I felt i had nothing to worry about because you would flesh out the concept perfectly and then ..this. It is just disheartening to see you guys get comfortable with the business aspect and let the game lose the soul it had to it on launch.. I would wait another year for some true martial artist animations that looked suitable and a cool stance while wielding it…thief is that class that is solely physical, and unlike other classes with their amazing flashy spell animations to cover up their body language, all we see is the reused effects applied to a “new” class. I expected better and honestly feel we deserve better for all these years of support through thick and thin, with this being said I still have faith you guys are reading this right now and are willing to make this specs animations incredible before launch!

All that aside I feel you brought that soul of the game into Vault and some of the physicals skills such as fist flurry- now that’s cool! same with bandits defense, those two were done right in my opinion. Seeing those two animations I know what you guys are capable of and I will remain faithful that you will come through in the end

Some overall Feedback:
Traits:
Adept:
Traits seem to be all in a good place for different builds. Nothing too strong or too weak.

Master:
Staff Master will see imo not much use. Staff has no condi remove and you will go for Escapist’s Absolution. With S/x imo Impacting Disruption has a place, maybe it’s a little bit too weak (you have to compensate the missing condiremove so you can not play as agressive as with EA)

GM:
Too clunky, and idk, but Bounding Dodger feels really slow.

Minor:
Really good traits. They are strong and pushes our survivability.

Utility Skills:
Channeled Vigor: I like this healskill. Traited the CD is 16 sec and the endurance gain is fantastic. It’s easy to interrupt so it’s not too powerful.

Bandit’s Defence: You mentioned it, it’s too strong atm. This skill will use everybody

Distracting Daggers: BUG: The CD reduction doesn’t work. I like them, but I’m not sure if it’s worth to replace a utility with them. Overall ok I guess.

Fist Flurry: Nice Idea, but simply not worth it for a utility. Does to less and is way to situational that you will replace a utility with this.

Impairing Daggers: Nice, highly telegraphed. Maybe you could speed the animation a little bit up.

Impact Strike: I think you should have some extra time between each attacks (5 secs maybe?). ATM you have to spam them. Would be nice, but maybe too strong, if the skill would change if you miss. You could compensate this maybe with a CD increase.

Staff:

AA-Chain: Ok, a little bit too weak, but ok overall.

Weakening Charge: I find it simply to hard to hit all 3 attacks.

Debilitating Arc: Dodging backwards against nearly anything is not that good if you don’t wanna disengage. If you don’t want to remove the first hit, and the dodge direction, increase the distance.

Dust Strike: I don’t see a scenario where you would use this. It’s always a waste of initative. Maybe add a smokefield and increase the ini costs, but maybe it’s too similar than to P#5.

Vault: Because this is the only thing dangerous on staff, it’s easy to avoid (block, blind, dodge, interrupt, etc.). You said you will reduce the initative costs, I think it’s needed.

Overall the Staff is too slow and gives you too less mobility. With S/D you can maneuver in a teamfight. With Staff you can, I don’t know, spam #3? Against multiple enemys (in a teamfight) it’s better to switch to SB rather to stay on staff.
The staff should be overall faster to compensate for the lack of mobility and defensive tools.

Conclusion:
Thank you for the Daredevil. Imo the traitline is fantastic. S/D is a blast to play and S/P now plays different. But even with the other weaponsets the traitline is really great. Some utilities could use some polish to make them worth. Staff is unfortunately a complete lackluster. But it’s a Beta.

A Relink from my thread that I put into the Hot ares

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Daredevil-Feedback/first#post5457326

(but maybe a mod just merges it into this thread )
thematically it fits into both, but due to it beign thief specific, it might fit to be better here

So, since this will be “the” Feedback-Thread, i´ll start with mine now. All in all i agree with most people on the Daredevil as a whole, but one thing didn’t get adressed now.

- – - – - – - – -
Staff #5: Vault
Lets be honest. The damage is fine, i like the overly spinny animation, and the duration for the damage it does right off the bat is okay. It is more damage than a backstab after all. But there is something i want to see adressed.

First, the animation lock. Normally you can use any instant skills during any animation, but during Vault, you can’t. If you want to steal-combo to make it land, you have to steal right at the beginning, or at the very end. Right at the beginning defies the use of it being a steal combo since it is easily visible, and right at the end tends to fail landing the damage on your target. Please change the animation lock in order to allow the use of Steal and other instant abilities. Signet of Infiltration, Shadow Stap and Shadow Trap’s Shadow Return (when the trap has been triggered) behave the same.

Second, the pathing. This shares a lot similarities with Shadow Trap – its just horrible. besides Mesmers and Necroes, all other classes have some shiny cool leaps. Ours is shiny too, no debate here. But it doesnt work properly if you want to cross gaps. Often you dont land where your target marker is, thus resulting in a shorter jump distance. The slightest – really, the slightest, thus its as broken as Shadow Trap – change of elevation will result in weird behaviour most of the time. Even Jump Shot on Engineer’s rifle isn’t as picky. It also doesn’t like changes of elevation, but it has way more leeway there. The results are that you either seem to glide over the ground without lifting off at all, or you simply land in front of your intended landing zone, but below it, since it was just a pixel higher than your lift off point. Please – and this is almost my biggest concern – please, Karl, please change the skill so it behaves like Engineer Jump Shot. Give it a range of 700, so we can use it safely up to 600 units (try it, Jump Shot doesn’t reach it’s maximum distance), but keep the animation speed. Make it less dependant on elevation. If needed, give it a higher flight arc while keeping the horizontal speed. Just not too high so we don’t constantly can leap over Line of Warding and stuff like that.

- – - – - – - – -
Utility skills: Distracting Daggers

This needs much faster flight time, like almost all things the thief throws or shoots :|
Please give them the same speed as Ranger Longbow Autoattack. THey can be sdiestepped at 500-600 range. This applies to Shortbow Trick Shot and Disabling Shot, Dancing Dagger and Impairing Daggers as well. Please give them ALL more speed!
Second, this should be working like a mantra. Please make it so the charges don’t decay over time, and since it is an instant skill with no cast time, please make it usable during casts.

- – - – - – - – -
Utility skills: Impairing Daggers

As said above. Is in desperate need of a speed buff, everything else about this is fine in my book.

- – - – - – - – -
Utility skills: Bandit’s Defense

This skill is absolutely a god sent. But it also can get you killed – you cannot interrupt the block animation after breaking stun using another skill. Please make it so using other skills override this one. At least all defensive and evasive skills. Those should have priority over any and ALL cast / aftercast durations, but oh well, i fear thats like asking to send me 100k gold.

- – - – - – - – -

Thats it for me for now. I have one last honorable mention though:

Utility skills: Shadow Trap

Please please please change this skill’s behavior/mechanic from “Shadowstep” to “Teleport”. Since i can only place it where i can naturally walk in, it won’t break the game to have it behave like a one man, one direction, single use Mesmer Portal, right? it would only fix this skill from not working properly because of a pebble on the road or pathing hiccups.

- – - – - – - – -

Thanks alot for reading this, and please keep up the good work. The Daredevil seems to have the potential to give the thief the value back it had 1 or 1 1/2 years ago. Being more than just the fastest decapper would be so graceful.

Thus, a big, fat Thank You, Karl.

So i thought about the daredevil again:

• The new dodge types should be baseline as soon as you slot daredevil.

• Make them stances/attunements/combat modes. You have that coding already from the elementalists attunements.

• Switching between “combat modes” while in combat burns 50 endurance.

Seems quite conclusively when you take into account that the Daredevil gives you 50 extra endurance baseline and 50 endurance on steal etc. So the daredevil brings *more endurance management into play.

• Put some enhancements for the different dodge types into the grandmaster slot.

e.g.:

Unhindered Combatant gives “one stack of stability” if you trait for it.

Bounding Dodger applies 5 stacks of vulnerability on impact.

Lotus Training gives you 1 second of resistance aswell.

Last but not least:

• Smoothen the new dodge abilities and work on the staff animations.

Most of my feedback was posted already.

To but it short: Dodges, Staff Animations as well as most of the physical abilities feel quite clunky and therefore not much fun. That’s my biggest issue with the DD.

It’s nice to hear work is being made, the clunkiness however doesn’t seem to be a matter of lag but more so of the way the animations and skills are designed.

Some examples would be: Staff 2 makes a short stop when moving forward and the skill can’t be interupted. Dash: At the end of the dodge the animation stops the character for a short while. Same goes for bound where it makes more sense though.

Other than that: Staff seems very underwhelming and useless.

Bandit’s Defense is nice in single target fights but might easily kill you when fighting more than one target.

Finishing Blow is great and impairing daggers kind ofnice – But are they worth skilling into an otherwise useless trait line?

Changing dodges in fight as an above poster suggested sounds great. I would love to be able to use the standard dodge too though– especially if the new dodges stay that clunky.

Pilmonary impact seems to be bugged or do I miss something? I can’t get it to work at least not with pistol 4.

What worked best for me (in WvW and sPVP) interestingly was with Dagger/Pistol. I don’t think I would ever play that though and honestly – no… not another D/P Build!

As far as PVE goes S/D still feels a lot more powerful and fluid that staff.

Interestingly the Revenants Staff skills feel more “martial arts” than the thieves.

If truth be told, we don’t even need an Elite Specialization.

Here is my feedback: RETURN RICOCHET! Or just do official announcement about what you did and why.

There is no way you can make make this staff work in pvp. Because it does not provide stealth or blocks or invulnerabilities. And thieves health and toughness pool is still absurdly low. So d/p is still on top.

The asura performs a very ugly lateral spin when in mid air. Please watch some butterfly spins on you tube and change the animation.

I played staff/DD for a few games tonight, but the issues with dodges and aftercasts made it frustrating enough that I couldn’t keep playing.

Staff
General: This isn’t good at running away or chasing really. It could be all the aftercasts and animations, but it has no stealth, shadowstep, or soft CC. It has very poor access to the only hard CC on the set. It’s got alright damage, but overall it’s pretty mediocre really.

1) A little clunky at base speeds. When given quickness, it actually felt pretty good. Even if the damage per hit needs to be lowered to keep the same DPS, the animation should be sped up 33-50%.

2) Put a 0.75 cast time on it and a 0.5 second evade. Make it aimable like warrior’s GS #3. Lower the damage, and put a cripple on it as well as the weakness. This set lacks solid chase options. The #3 is a gap creator, but #5 is extremely difficult to chase with. Having a directable dodge that could be used better offensively would make the set actually stand out from S/X by giving you choice in your dodges.
3)Have the evade frames start right at the beginning. A windup with a hit defeats the purpose of this skill. You can have open frames on the end where you can be hit, but precasts on evasion skills render them useless as evasion skills and weaken the set. Look at the overall picture S/P and Deathblossom for reference.
4)Negligible effect. I feel this would be much more useful as a skill that has CC attached to it or perhaps a set up for stealth. Keep it melee range if you’re worried about the overall strength, but I didn’t care to waste my initiative on it in this current state. Maybe as a melee AoE headshot that blinds and hits 3 targets. (Ie: range 130, 0.25 second daze, blind 5 seconds, 3 target cleave)
5) Animation is over the top and clunky. This set overall should play less like a hammer warrior and more like a GS warrior. It needs better mobility. I feel like this skill would do better as a leap similar to warrior’s sword 2 or Guardian GS leap with a powerful hit on the end. 0.5-0.75 cast at most. Making it function like earthshaker/jumpshot just doesn’t work well.

Traits
Dodges need to be fixed as stated.

The rest of the traits (which worked) were ok.
Utilities
The block utility doesn’t actually block some CC occasionally. I think this shouldn’t be a triggered CC, but rather a rollover to knock someone down. If you’re trying to use it in a fight against more than one enemy (including AI) it gets triggered way too easily. Have it be 2 seconds of block and during the block have a rollover skill that you can use to knock someone down, leaving you the choice of using it defensively or offensively.

The fist flurry is hard to land for what feels like little payoff.

The elite is cool, but having it go on CD if you use another skill in the middle makes it predictable. Giving it 5-7 seconds for the next part in the chain that doesn’t roll over would make it a lot more tactical to use at certain points in a short fight.

I’ll try to add more as the weekend goes on

Edit: I just wanted to say I’m not trying to be negative. I love the concept here, the execution just needs more time and polish.

Animations too clucky to even tests DD, im just gonna keep playing d/p meta until this is fixed.

Daredevil / trickery/ deadly arts will be the new condi spec, it’s fun to use
i was able to stack 25+ bleedings on my target, and 6+ venoms + 5confu + several cover condis. oh and these 25 stacks of bleeding are aoe….
while stacking up this bleeds im dodging alle the time, so i am hard to catch, and if you manage to place some condi on me, i will clean it with my next dodge, and the next dodge will come, i promise. When you fix this daze bug, condi daredevil will be a pain to meet in the field.

the new elite is awesome if it works, but would be great, to have a greater window of oportunity to hit the next attack of the chain. 3seconds for each attack would be great, so if a thief is porting away in downstate, you can run/port to him, and finish the job.

Only reason why I’d spec this is to only use dagger/pistol…having a nifty death blossom as a dodge is kinda fun. Plus all those extra dodges/stam regen is handy. If I didn’t have to equip a staff to access this line, I might even use it occasionally.

But I won’t be usin a staff nor the new secondaries since none them really interest me; to clunky, to slow, to situational, to not fun. Oh well.

Guess I stick with d/p – SB in HoT.

You don’t have to equip a staff to play the specialization. But you have to specialize in DD to equip a staff.

I play WvW almost exclusively, so all of my feedback is in the context of fights with real opponents.

BUGS

Underwater Dodging: Unhindered Combatant doesn’t work at all under water. In fact, it does literally nothing except consume endurance, making it even worse than a normal dodge. Lotus Training almost works, doing the spin, but instead of moving, it roots you in place, which is a highly undesirable quality in an underwater dodge. Bounding Dodge, however, works perfectly underwater, and the giant blue bubble is awesome!

Unhindered Combatant: I really want to love Unhindered Combatant, but the dash often has a really awkward hitch both at the start and especially at the end that makes me cringe every time I try to use it. I wish it were a lot more fluent to use, as fluency is practically the selling point of this elite specialization!

Bounding Dodger: Sometimes this doesn’t dodge in the direction I am pressing. For example, I have had it go forward/left when I am pressing only forward, or sometimes it goes backward no matter what I am pressing. I am not quite sure why this is.

This might be the case with the other dodges, too, but I have not played them as extensively as Bounding Dodger.

Sigil of Energy: Claims to restore 50 PERCENT (a bar and a half) of endurance on weapon swap. Only restores 50 energy (one bar).

THE BETA ITSELF

The Beta Components Loot Box does not include any Runes of the Trapper. With the Trading Post disabled, I can’t buy any, nor is there much of a chance I’d be able to craft my way up to level 400 without the Trading Post, either. On top of that, I can’t send mail to myself, and my friends say they can’t send me anything either. So to my great disappointment, I find myself stymied at every turn and completely unable to test out the build I wanted to try.

Sad face.

DAREDEVIL TRAITS

Unhindered Combatant: The length of the dodge tends to put me out of melee combat, which would be amazing if I were a pewpew ranger and not a thief… In practice, this causes me a considerable loss in dps while simultaneously subjecting me to a lot more damage, as my enemy cam usually hit me, while I have limited options for hitting them.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad, though, as I have yet to try pistol/pistol with it, and now that I know how it works, I might be able to find a playstyle that does take advantage of its unique nature. I need to experiment with it more. But for now I’m using Bounding Dodger.

Bounding Dodger: Works great. The Leap combo finisher is perfect with Black Powder.

Impacting Disruption: I tried building around this trait, but I couldn’t get it to proc more than a couple times in a medium-length fight, adding a negligible amount of damage for the amount of effort it took. I might just need more practice, though.

DAREDEVIL SKILLS

Bandit’s Defense: Works great against NPCs who don’t move, but I found that in real combat this skill frequently (as high as half the time) does not knock down the person that triggers it.

I also wish the block could be canceled into an attack, as the best use of the skill seems to be as a low-CD stunbreak, and sometimes I don’t want the full block duration.

Impact Strike: I find this frustrating to land sometimes. Probably a matter of practice.

STAFF

Staff Strike: This doesn’t do enough damage, and if the enemy is moving at all (which is always the case in WvW), you’re not always going to even hit with the whole sequence. Combined with the fact that a single backstab is better than the whole sequence, while being much, much easier to hit, I feel like it’s not worth using unless you have no initiative, no endurance, can’t weapon swap, can’t heal, and all your skills are on CD. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but, yeah, the damage is pretty disappointing. Expect to get wrecked if you use this much.

Hook Strike: The knockdown seemed unreliable, even against enemies without any form of stability.

Also, the damage is sooooo low that it’s a real waste of Evasive Empowerment (which I didn’t use for this very reason).

But when it does work, the 2 second knockdown is delicious.

Debilitating Arc: Nice and fluid. This is how Unhindered Combatant should feel.

Can’t say anything about balance, but animations on staff and dodges need A LOT of work. Clunky, not smooth, weird, out of place, unfitting, something’s off and even stupid — that’s what comes to mind when you look at them.

Have not read everything but I’ll pile this on.

Staff
Animations on staff feel clunky and don’t really have a good “flow” and lack impact. Attacks don’t really seem to hit hard, except for vault. And vault could also be improved a bit since the whole jump feels kind of slow (I don’t mean to just increase the animations speed but the animation ).

Traits/specialization
The daredevil traits seem fair, kind of underwhelming to just get an extra dodge but it’s not supposed to be op. Like with staff the new dodge animations just don’t seem to have a good flow, getting rooted and the likes. The bound animation is the vault animation without the staff. could be simpler and (in my mind) lower, not a show off jump. Seems to be hard to use to actually dodge with. Would like the dodges to be as flowing as the regular dodge.
Same for dash animation is just a reused rush and that seems lazy and does not look nice at all. the character is holding an invisible weapon and running. (maybe a straight low jump would work?) want it to react to directions like the regular dodge.

Physical
I don’t know why you would run these over the regular skills. I do like the elite and impairing daggers. (Impairing daggers for condi builds)
Finishing blow animation could be something other than the flag finisher animation. You are not even hitting the enemy. Had the cool down been any longer i would probably not run it.

It seems that there is a “new” bug that makes you visible to other players while in stealth, I’m not sure it’s due to the bow #5, maybe the dodge, or something else ?
See it here: http://i.imgur.com/4lQkDMt.gifv

I played the Daredevil in PvE (open world and dungeons) and in sPvP.

The mechanic of the Daredevil is an extra dodge bar for the thief, thats nothing really special and very underwhelming. The real new mechanic is hidden in the grandmaster traits where you change your dodge fully to something new. In comparison to all the other elite specs this feels wrong. So i really like the suggestion to move the current grandmaster traits to baseline DD (make it a F3) and give the DD real grandmaster traits.

The animations in general for the DD are underwhelming. Just from the looks you have the feeling to play a warrior, not an acrobatic elite spec for thief. Thats one of the reasons i think that you just feel really slow on DD.

The dodges feel just clunky and slow. This is because of the small aftercast/rooting effect after each dodge, the animations are too long and all the bugs (weapon swap during dodge interrupts the dodge, you cannot dodge when dazed etc.). You cant use Dash when you are in fight (and want to fight) cause this brings you way out of melee range. Bound is just so unreliable to hit (is it on purpose that if you look down you do a Bound on spot – same with Weaking Charge?).

The staff has no real reason to exist. It should be THE cleave weapon for the thief but its just inferior to s/x in every way. Only Vault hits 5 targets which fits the cleave theme and which is better than s/x. Nevertheless the staff is the weapon with the worst survivability of all the thief’s weapon combination. The only evade frame is on the third skill which brings you out of melee range – inferior to Pistol Whip and Flanking Strike.

Staff AA the animations should be faster or the chain needs to do more damage and the last attack in the chain should hit 5 ppl.

Weakening Charge should get an evade frame and be aimable (like GS3 on warrior) or you should dash towards your target.

Debilitating Arc should get the evade frame in the beginning of the skill animation.

Dust Strike is the worst skill in my opinion. This long cast time and this extremly underwhelming effect doesnt save you in any cases. Maybe change it to AoE blindness around you or change it to a block with an AoE knockback/knockdown with 5 initiative cost.

Vault needs to do more damage or a faster animation or an evade frame. You are just dead by arriving/interrupted etc.. Its by far the slowest leap ingame (Bound is very slow too). If you weapon swap during Vault your character doesnt react like in any other normal leap (that you leap a bit longer in distance).

The traits are fine. But Evasive Empowerment should change to a buff over 5 seconds and stack in intensity or duration. Staff Master feels a bit underwhelming, maybe up the % damage a kitten

anneled Vigor seems like a bad healing skill just because of the fact that it goes against the mechanic of their own spec.

Bandit’s Defense is a really nice skill if it stays on 10s CD baseline and not (like in the stream said) goes up to 15s CD. But it should be changed that you can interrupt your own block with another skill.

Distracting Daggers cast time feels way too long and should be lowered. Its just not really usable with that 15s timeframe you get and the GCD after every dagger throw.

Fist Flurry is my favorite new utility skill. You need to hit everything to get access to Palm Strike. That sounds really nice in theory. But Palm Strike is the very definition of disappointment. It feels so extremly unrewarding. My suggestion would be to let Palm Strike always hit critically and the damage should be like a Backstab into the back.

Impairing Daggers seems fine so far (are the mobs in Verdant Brink immun to slow?)

The Elite seems okay. The animation is a bit off though in comparison to the effect.

Howl.2498:

Sigil of Energy: Claims to restore 50 PERCENT (a bar and a half) of endurance on weapon swap. Only restores 50 energy (one bar).

50% endurance is 1 bar. We have now 150% and its not 50% of 150%. Same with signet of agility and hard to catch.

apocom.3172:

Howl.2498:

Sigil of Energy: Claims to restore 50 PERCENT (a bar and a half) of endurance on weapon swap. Only restores 50 energy (one bar).

50% endurance is 1 bar. We have now 150% and its not 50% of 150%. Same with signet of agility and hard to catch.

50% is not 1 bar. 50% is 50% of all your endurance, which would be 1.5 bars. Therefore they changed the description of Signet of Agility to gain 100 endurance. There is a difference between 50% and 50 endurance.

I didn’t see this in another post, so maybe I’m an oddball, but the one thing that drove me nuts playing DD spec was that every backwards dodge I did left me facing away from my target at the end. This was true of each of the three new dodge roll moves. For one of them, you initiate a backward dodge and your character turns and dashes away from the target and stops with back to target. One of the others (sorry I don’t remember the new names) has you jump to a spot, land hard and do damage — but when that backward dodge is initiated, the character turns away from the target and performs the jump, landing with his back to the target.

I don’t like that from two perspectives: 1) what sort of expert fighter performs moves in-fight that leaves him with his back to his enemy?, and 2) once you end your backward dodge (and so are facing away from your target), a few bad things happen — auto-attack ends and some of the staff skills go wonky because they aren’t programmed to move you back to your target. So if you dodge backwards and then hit staff skill #2, you end up running even further from your target — the skill moves you in the direction you face rather than toward the target, and, again, thanks to the backwards dodge, you are facing away from your target at the end.

The end result makes me feel much slower in combat. Instead of the old way, where I just roll backward to avoid a hit and then immediately attack again, I now dodge away, end up with my back to the target, get frozen at the end of the move for an instant, and then have to swing my camera around to face the target again, and have to perform some sort of closer to re-initiate close melee combat. And if my target is moving (as a player target always will), I have to take a moment to make sure my character is facing precisely the right way before using the #2 staff skill.

I sort of understand why Anet may have done this — if the whole idea is that a DD fights multiple targets at same time, these new dodges might be OK. But I find them next to useless, and in some ways actually harmful, when fighting a single target. I don’t think I’d choose this play style — speccing for utility only in a group fight at the cost of harming your single fight ability.

So, my request would be to at least let my character remain facing my target at the end of a backward dodge.

As an aside, if there’s some chance that staff skill animations will be altered, I would suggest looking at a staff chanter in Aion to get some ideas of what melee staff combat should look like.

1) Guys i have noticed that when you choose the Grand master trait “Bound” (Leap into an area, and deliver a massive blow to enemies) “Bounding Dodger” whenever you Dodge evade an attack you will still get hit by the attack.
I got hit when the animation started and in some cases when i was in the air doing the animation. If we are getting hit all the time it shows that by using this trait we are removing totally our dodge ability.
Maybe its a bug so if it is please fix this asap because makes this trait not useful at all.

2) Also in another thing that i want to give my 2 cents. The ability “Weakening Charge” Staff 2, they need to change it to always hit your target and not use it where you are facing. They are some situations you need to turn around and get away from a wide area attack and at that moment you are not facing your enemy and if you cast it to minimize the dmg of that attack with weakness you will just not hit your target. Needs a fix on my opinion.
Thank you.

I’ve spent several hours now with the Daredevil.

General Feel
The Daredevil gives my thief a feeling that I have dodges for days. I can dodge any attack that I can see coming. This is a pretty cool feeling and despite the low HP, I feel much stronger than previously. The abilities are confusing, though. I’m not certain what my place in a group is with these things. Staff doesn’t seem to do anything that can’t be done better by either dagger or sword.

Animations
I’m not sure where you were going here, but they’re lazy, uninspired, and dont even make sense. I’m playing a male asura.
Auto Attack. Staff should be about arcing sweeping motions, spins, and acrobatics. Instead, this is a blunt 90 degree smack followed by a slightly better animated swipe, followed by… a magical spinning staff. The last especially is so lazy it makes me angry. Animating hands was hard, so you avoided the problem by spinning the staff with magic. This is the animator’s equivalent to drawing all of your characters with their hands in their pockets because you cant draw hands.
Staff 2, 3, and 4 don’t look bad, but the animations could be better especially on Asura. To achieve the same reach of a Norn, we’d have to throw our whole body into it like the greatsword abilities.
Staff 5 is what all of these animations should look like. However, you copied the same animation to use on bound.
The dodge replacements. Stop. Being. Lazy. Bound is clearly Staff 5, Impaling Lotus is clearly death blossom, and you didn’t even bother to animate Dash differently than the run. Spend the time. Do it right. Your players are going to be staring at these animations for potentially years. The least you can do is dedicate a few days to giving us slick looking abilities.

The damage seemed alright, but I’m a little concerned from a pvp standpoint that pairing acrobatics and daredevil will give players access to near permanent dodging while still doing some damage. Between staff 3, 3 dodges, and the endurance sigil, you may find that it’s possible to maintain dodges for much longer than you’re intending to.

I had a lot of fun with playing the class, but the animations are a huge letdown. What you need is to look at some reference and to stop being lazy. Darth Maul could lend some inspiration on how to spin a staff, as could the Chinese staff or spear spins. The animations are the thing that is going to be foremost in my thoughts because they’re so bad. Literally, we had better melee staff animations in Dark Ages of Camelot over 10 years ago. If they could figure it out, you can. Don’t let a decade old game show you up.

With regular dodges, you can dodge back to back with no hesitation. With Lotus training, there’s like a .25 to .5 delay before you can dodge again.

Loving the new spec, but as already mentioned, the animations need work.

Staff
The animations feel so slow that I feel like a turtle instead of a nimble martial artist. It feels too weighty. Also, the leap doesn’t work with elevation changes, and doesn’t travel the full distance.

Dodges
They need to be smooth like normal dodges. Dash especially feels clunky with very noticeable start and ending lag. I wouldn’t complain if they were made a toggle as OP suggested.

Acro
It needs to be said. I feel no benefit from taking acrobatics. I recommend adding more boons and buffs to differentiate it more from DD. Resistance on guarded initiation would be a good start.

Heal
Remove the delay when you start healing. It should begin giving health immediately. Also, the animation looks really strange with anything other than staff.

Utilities
Great, but it feels weird having my weapon disappear every time I use one. Also the prep cast time on distracting daggers is prohibitively high, and the animation looks really out of place (on Asura at least).

Elite
Finishing blow does not work at all if it completes right as they are downed. The whole skill also doesn’t seem to connect very well. Hitbox issues?

Traits
Generally good. Minors could be a bit better, and we’ll need new grandmasters if dodges are made a toggle. Impacting disruption doesn’t seem to work very often. Is there an ICD?

First impressions of the daredevil, I absolutely hated it, I’ve loved thief since launch and have played it fairly exclusively in comparison to other classes in the game. The whole style just felt uncomfortable to me. However, I’ve now spent a lot more time in the beta with DD and staff and my opinion has changed somewhat. Personally I would still like to see changes in a few places such as the number of targets staff hits, 3 seems a little low to me considering dagger will hit 2 and is much stronger, I believe. I feel staff 4 would benefit from a smoke field or be able to pulse blind as I understand that having a easy access to stealth on staff would make the sneak attack really op, however as it is now I don’t feel its strong enough when we compare it to offhand pistol. Staff 2 also needs some tweaking, I would like to see this skill move towards your target rather than the way your facing. I love the new changes to dodge, however I really don’t like how they’re tied to grandmaster traits it feels like we’re losing out on 3 traits compared to the other elites as we have to take these to be able to use our new mechanic. I really like the idea of a previous post where someone suggested making an f3 button to change them out like rev legend swapping. The impairing daggers skill also seems to use 3 initiative? I don’t know if this is a bug or a feature but having a utility that uses initiative doesn’t sit well with me even though I do really like this skill. In addition to the points above some of the staff and dodging animations are very clunky and feel very uncomfortable at times, if these were smoothed out somehow it would make the DD spec feel a lot better. Just to end on some things I really like about the spec, vault is awesome! I really love this skill! I’ve also had lots of fun using bandits defence, the addition to this and impairing daggers has finally pulled me away from just using signets and I feel I can play a lot more actively with these skills.

I didn’t try the staff for very long since it felt a bit too slow for me. I did find a trolly build though that was a lot of fun. I used venoms (skale and spider) with lotus training and acrobatics traits, then D/D for death blossom which is another evade.

This lets you perma-evade while throwing condis all around you, (like 6 stacks of poison, 8 stacks of torment and 10+ stacks of bleeding). I could even 1v2 a few times since they could hardly ever hit me. D/D ele’s and guardians will remove the conditions so the fight will continue endlessly, so these are the only counters.

Right now it’s clunky. This would fix that:

-Remove all after casts from the evades, staff and physical abilities.
-Remove all rooting from the evades, staff and physical abilities.
-Remove all spinning from the abilities.
-Change all movements where the direction of your character changes from the camera direction (evade GM)
-Make the vault jump time and animation equal to the Hammer burst from warrior.

Hepcat.9045:

the one thing that drove me nuts playing DD spec was that every backwards dodge I did left me facing away from my target at the end.

It might just be me, but I liked this. I found it frequently convenient to dodge roll away, then use Withdraw to get back into melee range.

The daredevil trait line is fine, perfect. The staff, utilities, and new dodges are problematic. 25% there =D yippee.

Bugs first:
Staff- animations are slow, you get stuck in aftercast so often it makes you laugh. Most of the skills are bugged in some way like 2 sending you off into Narnia even though the target is sitting in Australia, the 3 sometimes not applying damage or not even rolling (that happened… I got evades but the stick poked and then… I blurred?), the 4 will sometimes fail to hit or will apply repeated hits usually missing, and the 5 misses despite people being in your hitbox. There’s Staff.
Fist Flurry rarely connects 100%. You can’t chain to anyone because stun breaks and stun reflects are a thing. Impairing Daggers got obstructed at point blank range, that was memorable. Happened once, so yea- mighta just been a thing. Takedown is beautiful, if you use ANYTHING while it’s holding the second or third charge it will go on full cooldown. Meaning I used the hit for a stun to land fist flurry and I lost my stomp >.<
The dodges all have aftercasts and stick you in one spot. All the dodges proc Confusion. I have yet to get the heal on evade, but maybe I need to pay attention?

Solutions: Staff auto needs no aftercasts. Staff 2 works like Heartseeker. Staff 3 should be fine, I think it was my camera pointed at the ground. Staff 4 needs to start working correctly. Staff 5 needs animation cast time REDUCED ~~~AND~~~ it needs to evade until you land. As it is staff 5 gets me killed more often than it lands. That’s not counterplay, that’s a please kill me now thing. The dodges need new animations that do not root you at the beginning and end, AND THAT THEY WORK WITH DOUBLE JUMP (dodge+jump simultaneously is important on jumping puzzles and world exploration, so far bound does not work with it making me assume the others don’t either). Fist Flurry needs to immobilize 1 second (not stun, stun reflects are a thing). Impairing daggers is fine, I am not sure what happened there. Distracting daggers need damage…it hits like a whiff of febreeze, and again stun reflects/breaks. Takedown needs to work like distracting daggers, I want to save this for stomps not try to project my damage for a kill or use it when they are downed and my build gave me quickness anyway.

=) Decided to make this more constructive after more testing. D/P still murders staff daredevil, and s/d DD is kinda…meh? You run full defensive traits and offensive sigils and sometimes people die XD

This is headed towards my prior concerns regarding Staff #5 Vault as seen in my previous post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Daredevil-Feedback/5457503

I deep dived into the actual physics of this skill, Engineer Rifle #5 Jump Shot and Warrior Hammer F1 Eartshaker for comparison. All three share the same baseline physical behavior. You activate them, you literally jump, and you land doing whatever attack. You can reproduce these by going into ego perspective and disabling camera shake. You´ll see that you are actually being lifted in the air for the same time and height as a normal jump.

Now what does it mean for Staff #5 Vault? Well, take a look at Jump Shot and Earthshaker first. Both are executed in about the same time. This time approximately matches the time you are airborn when jumping. Actually they suffer the problem of their animations being a bit longer than this time, which is why both Jump Shot and Earthshaker fail to reach their target destination at maximum range or when elevation is different. However, since that difference is so small, it doesnt cause that much of a problem. But now look at Vault. Vault is executed in about 1.5x of the time you are airborn during a normal jump. This difference in time is huge, causing two problems:

1. You cannot reach your intended target destination on maximum range if its on the same level as you, or if its slightly higher elevated within 400-600 units distance. Since you are only truly airborn during the first 2/3 of the skill, you are actually falling in the last 1/3, causing the “pathing” problems i spoke about in my previous post. Besides one all solutions for this are technically impossible because they’d be breaking the physics of GW2. To stay within these limitations you have to speed up the animation to match the time of an actual jump. All leaping skills work this way. If Vault should lift you in the air at starting point and land on the target point you’d literally have to hack GW2’s physics to low gravity porperties on this skill.

2. This second problem is actually not caused by the time difference i mentioned but rather by the fact that all leap skill currently ingame, be it targetted like Jump Shot, Earthshaker and Vault or untargetted like Savage Leap, Leap of Faith or Swoop, actually lift you in the air. You can reproduce it on any class with access to shadowstepping abilities like Ele, Mesmer and Thief and a Lightning Hammer. Try to teleport during Lightning Leap – it won’t work. The same applies to Vault: Since you cannot use most abilities when airborn, you actually cannot properly combo Vault with Steal and the like. That may very well be intended though, so please just take this as a explanation and not a complaint. The only two suggestions (once again to keep GW2’s physical rules in working order) would be to allow the Daredevil to use Steal, Shadow Step, Signet of Infiltration and Shadow Trap while airborn, or to strap the actual leap from Vault while keeping it’s skill properties and facts. The former would open up a can of worms, thus invalidating the idea, and the latter would mean to have Vault working like Heartseeker, which just moves you over the ground and does not lift you into the air. I dont want that either because the Thief should have at least one true leap ability. You cannot teleport everywhere, you know…

TL;DR:
My proposal is, dear Karl McLain, please speed up the animation of Vault so it is executed in the same time like Jump Shot and Earthshaker. Only this way Vault can be useful on all ranges.

I for one love Impacting Disruption!

As for my gripes with all the bugs everyone pretty much covered what i’ve noticed as well.