Guild Wars 2

Daredevil is a good concept but needs a lot work like someone else mentioned. It’s too easy to get hurt by random mindless spam by your opponents. As people mentioned above Staff, as well as dodge, both have clunky and stop and go animations.

Here’s some points I made after playing Daredevil:

1. Staff has great damage but it is difficult to deliver. Staff skills 2 and 5 don’t seem fluid in their execution. Suggestion: After animation fixes, remove evade frames from Staff 3(or keep it) and add it to Staff 2 & 5.

Option 2
2. Driven Fortitude: Reduce cooldown to 1/4 of a second while wielding Staff(or remove it completely lol). This will help us stay in combat and reward us for evading silly and mindless Rapid Fire.

Have to try the Staff again after the animation fixes currently it’s not on par with any other weapon set.

My intent this weekend was to test some of the other professions and their own traitlines. I ended up the entire time on a thief tinkering away. It was a lot of fun.

It a long weekend. Does this beta extend through tomorrow? So much to do!

IDICERI.4268:

Daredevil is a good concept but needs a lot work like someone else mentioned. It’s too easy to get hurt by random mindless spam by your opponents. As people mentioned above Staff, as well as dodge, both have clunky and stop and go animations.

Here’s some points I made after playing Daredevil:

1. Staff has great damage but it is difficult to deliver. Staff skills 2 and 5 don’t seem fluid in their execution. Suggestion: After animation fixes, remove evade frames from Staff 3(or keep it) and add it to Staff 2 & 5.

Option 2
2. Driven Fortitude: Reduce cooldown to 1/4 of a second while wielding Staff(or remove it completely lol). This will help us stay in combat and reward us for evading silly and mindless Rapid Fire.

Have to try the Staff again after the animation fixes currently it’s not on par with any other weapon set.

I actually like the idea of no cooldown on driven fortitude. I suggested the same on escapists absolution. It not all THAT easy to evade and if we daring enough to try and evade multiple attacks at once then reward that daring .

I played for a little while and here is my feedback concerning the Dare Devil, PVE and HOT:
1) Staff: I understand where it was going but it seemed to come up short. As many other people have mentioned the animations are lacking. To much in and out with the skills. One skill out of 5 is made to do the same thing practically as an evade with a breakaway. Another 1 of your skills puts you back in and does eh dmged. I know this was built for more of a dodge tank with aoe threat drain but I cannot help but to feel a block-counter skill like “bandits defense” would have been more effective as a staff skill. I like the blinding skill, but blind only works for one shot. I would have preferred a stationary kicked up dirt field similar to blinding powder or smoke screen.- this would be more effective for tanking. Last but not least the only passive effect you pretty much have is endurance regen which seems a bit lacking and comes from any other corner of the thief tree. I always have a full regen bar and feels like a waste as a so called “new trait” ability.
2) Physical Skills: I love the concept and I like the thought put behind each of the skills… I just feel they were done cheaply. One the animations are always delayed. 2nd the animations you cannot even tell what you are doing in a mob fight.
Fist Furry: I was expecting a Jet Lee type of bone crushing animation. Instead we just got some flinging fist. No martial stance or anything. It looks like you took the dagger swinging animation and removed the daggers… Add some shock waves, wind marks, hard smacking sounds, an elbow with a turn through punch, something to indicate I made a hit. As for Palm Strike and Pulmonary Strike I feel like the above fits in with this as well as I cannot even tell when it lands other than the debuff bar and when it explodes. No real animation. Give it a blood burst when it explodes. The graphic button looks better than the actual animation. Last the actual damage caused by Pulmonary Strike does not much more than white damage. I feel this skill was made only for PvP and really has no implication in PVE. The stun effect is really the only thing decent about this skill in PVE.
Bandits’s Defense: About the only skill that was done right. I have no complaints about it except for a more crushing animation and sound but it works for practicality.
Impairing Daggers: Not a bad skill. Doesn’t do a whole lot in PVE unless you are running a condition build. It is a decent opener and decent recharge.
Distracting Daggers: I had a lot of high hopes for this skill. However it doesn’t seem to work worth jack in PVE. I have interrupted countless mob only to have them start the same skill up right away again. No way in hell there is a 10 sec cool down. They might work in PVP but it is lacking luster in PVE. Also the arming than throwing is a bit annoying. If you have to arm it than have a CD between throws the initial 1 sec charge on the arm needs to go away. For a skill that requires you to have lighting fast reflexes to use it takes almost 2 seconds to get the first blade to hit. I used this against the Revy mobs who use the OP Shiro signature port ability that takes half my health only to find it supposedly interrupted it but they continued to flow through the attack. Sad part is the mob did it again 3 seconds later. 10 sec CD my kitten .
Impact Strike: Love this skill when it works. Animation is delayed and this is the only skill that actually has some light effects even though they don’t go off all the time. Still needs some work on the animation/sound to compete with the other classes new skills, specially for an elite. Also some damage modifying couldn’t hurt (PVE).
Dodges: I am a little disappointed in this as our “new trait mechanic”. All the animations are clunky and do not flow like the old fashion roll.
Impaling Lotus: The one trait I don’t have much of a problem with even though I will rarely use it. This might be because it is nothing more than death blossom with short burst of poisoning dagger storm mixed in with it. It is not bad for an AOE condition build. However unless you are packing condi armor this isn’t a build maker.
Dash: I had high hopes of this skill since I first heard of it. I pre planned my new build around this. The active breakaway is good but the animation makes me cringe every time I dodge. The dash is in a straight, your character turns around and runs. I feel like I get feared every time I use it. I simply wish I had the option to keep my old dodge animation just with the activated effect. It does not feel like you are evading at all just running through it. If you had the option to turn to smoke, or have a smoke bomb go off when this happens it would make more sense. Otherwise it looks like I am running right through that swinging baseball bat… Simply please just move away from the straigh dash “fear” run animation. It makes no sense on how you can run though something so called “evading”. Death Blossoming, Evade Rolling, Pole vol-ting suggest a dodge attempt not a straight run through…
Bound: It is just the Staff pole volt without the staff. This is a waste of a trait. Specially if you choose a staff as a weapon.
Leaving note: It feels like all of the new traits are just the old traits but wrapped differently. I don’t need 20 skills increasing endurance regen. You can’t dodge if you are dead.The dodging still offers no more survivablity than what we had before I just can do it more right next to cliffs. dodging does not protect from damage from AOEs. It offers no more protection to stuns, fear or knock downs. Just playing the first portion of the new map alone there are a lot more mob who either knock you down or stun you. Right now in a current state if you get knocked down for 2-3 seconds you are as good as dead as a thief. You can’t dodge if you are feared, stunned or knocked down.
Please work on the DD a bit when it comes to PVE. I see how the new skills can be use well in PVP. Also an auto finisher is pointless in PVE unless you plan on putting in more NPC that go into a “downed” state. Make the finishing skill and others more useful in PVE please

Here’s some feedback on the staff animations:

This is from playing a male human.

Skill 1: Part 1 and 2 of the autoattack look great (best staff animations on the weapon set), but the third attack looks like you’re using telekenesis to twirl the staff. Please change part 3 of this animation.

Skill 2: Fine. Not very staff like, but it works.

Skill 3: This one is good. No changes recommended.

Skill 4: The big golf swing animation doesn’t make sense and I really don’t think this skill needs a big cast time anyways. I suggest a quick flick of the bottom of the staff against the ground instead. The animation for this was blatantly copied from the guardian Banish skill on hammer and it just doesn’t work. =(

Skill 5: The animation is ok, but the long cast makes it look strange. A reduction on cast time would greatly help this.

Bound Dodge Roll is extremely odd. The evade doesn’t last as long as the animation does, so it leads to some really head-tilting evades. The animation needs to be shorter to match the length of the stomp.

Sometimes you’ve gotta evade twice to dodge something channelled like a Rangers LB-2 but with this dodge roll you just can’t. It seems the animation is almost 1.5 seconds long, but the evade only counts for .75 of a second. You can’t spam if for evades, plus the slight instant where you cant move after landing really ducks you up.

Also, with Staff-2, after casting you’re character seems to stand still for a split second and this causes you to lose ALL momentum you previously had. It makes the skill clunky to use. Not fun at all. It also does duck all damage. I’ve never had it hit over 3k.

I think the Staff-1 skill should also hit harder. I think it’s a little weak. 1k Crits for parts 1 and 2. 2k Crits for part 3 if all swings hit… That’s really low compared to sword or dagger. Also the staff swing is really slow compared to the other melee weapons.

As far as figuring out what works… After 10+ Games of sPvp, I have no idea. I like to think of myself being a good Theory crafter, but man… I was so useless. Nothing which I tried really worked. The whole thing felt slow, sluggish and weighted – The complete opposite of what a Daredevil is suppose to be.

The only build which felt “fine” was a kittenty condi build I had thought up. I say “fine” but in reality it was still slow, sluggish and weighted. Just not as much as the power builds I tried.

Overall I’m disappointed. Really lacklustre right now. I feel that the staff skills just aren’t doing enough damage or enough in general. Staff 5 and Bound dodge do the most damage, so you’re spamming these clunky rolls and leaps. You’re miles out in the open as you’re animation locked, so you just get ducked.

I’m projecting that the Thief meta wont change very much with DD coming out. I still believe D/P will rule over all.

We’ll have to wait and see, to be fair. Hopefully Anet reads the Thief section of their forums (if they remember it’s here) and makes the changes required. I’ve read a lot of people sharing my opinion on certain aspects so it’s nice to see I’m not alone in my beliefs.

(Everywhere I’ve typed “Duck”, remove the D and replace it with an F.)

Hello everybody,
here is my feedback after a couple of days of beta.
Almost everything is already said, but you know, repetita iuvant.

SKILLS

• Staff Strike should be instant. It’s the first strike of autoattack chain, there is no need for cast time.

• Weakening Charge should behave like Heartseeker. It should have its travelled distance and its radius increased to hit with all 3 strikes, or being converted to a single strike that hit at the end of the animation.
  It is frustrating to perform it and don’t hit the target or hit it only with 1 strike just because the enemy did a step back.
  Again, stops before and after the skill should be removed to make it fluid and not combat breaking.

• Dust Strike is a bit too slow and it should become faster or larger, it’s really enough 1 step to get out of it. If it’s ok in PvE it’s not in PvP/WvW where everyone is alwasy moving.

• Vault should let the thief do a Steal or Stealth or other instant abilities while in middle air. Aim -> Vault -> Steal -> hit your target

• Channeled Vigor is pretty good, maybe the first tick should be instant.

• Bandit’s Defense 1,5s of damage mitigation is not enough, especially since Karl already said its cooldown will be increased to 15s. Rangers have Counterattack, 15s cd but 3s absorb.
  I think it will be great to add something like 5s of protection (or 3s to allies) if you won’t double the block window.

• Fist Flurry doesn’t seem to worth a slot. It’s too hard to land all hit and it does not enough damage. Moreover you have to hit with all attacks to gain access to Palm Strike, it means that you have to hit even with Palm Strike to apply Pulmonary Impact… I think there are too many “if” for a skill that is more or less like a normal skill.

• Distracting Daggers should travel faster, like pistol #4. An interrupt that is not instant loses half of its potential. It’s a projectile, so it can be dodged, blocked, reflected, obstructed, there is no need to be also slow.

• Impairing Daggers is ok

• Impact Strike is really awesome. Great Elite skill.

TRAITS

• Brawler’s Tenacity: endurance gain is almost irrilevant.

• Escapist’s Absolution should give priority to conditions when removing them, or better have its cooldown removed.

• Unhindered Combatant should not have the little stop before and after Dash. It should be more fluid and if possible it should have a sort of blur effect like normal dodge.
  In addition, to really let thieves go in and out of combat, it should also remove immobilize.

This is more or less what I think about Daredevil.

Daredevil do NOT solve thieves problems. Karl, you asked if we feel we can manage 2 opponents, well the answer is no, we still have hard times with 1.

-Other professions have better and far more defensive skills.
-Our damage is not a super damage, it’s average.
-We can’t have sustained damage because we cannot stay in combat, even with an extra dodge.
-Thieves are now the first target when it comes to group fights, because we die really really fast.
-We have few access to boons (did you try revenant? almost perma fury/regen/5-8might and a lot of protection), 0 protection, 0 stability, 0 immunities, medium armor, low health.
-Our stealth is not so great, mesmers have longer stealth, and far better group stealth.
-We have no group support

I really cannot understand which is our place.

Moreover, why a thief should swap weapons?
Other professions have cooldown on their weapon skills, so if they have skills in cooldown, they can swap and have another set of skills. Thieves can’t. We have initiative, and we have skill that consumes a lot of it. Once ini is gone we can’t do anything but autottack. Basically thieves have a GLOBAL cooldown for all of their weapon skills, in both of their weapon sets, and this is really bad.
ANet’s purpose was to have a fast profession, that was not drawned down by cooldowns. Than ppl started to complain about single skill spam and we got nerf over nerf.
A high ini cost on some skills is needed to prevent the spam of powerful skills, but the fact that using a skill puts a cooldown on every other skill is not good, and hard to balance.

So basically we cannot stay in combat due to our low defense and we hardly can kill opponents with a single burst, due to nerf received and enemies’ defense (we can instagib only other thieves). If our burst fail, we have to wait and, doing that, we die. This is mitigated by a “0 support” for a group.

I’m not asking to be unique, special, OP, I’m just asking to be part of the game with the profession I like.

Thanks

p.s. sorry for my english.

Bugs:
—The new dodges cannot be used back-to-back (relatively high evasion downtime between 2 dodges) so that should be looked into. They should function like normal dodges.

—These dodge abilities also get canceled by weapon swap.

—The new dodges reset autoattack or any skill chains including the new elite unlike normal dodges

After playing DD a bit in PvE I came with the following feedback:
- staff and dodges are clunky. Animations are a bit strange.
-Staff lacks a field (preferable smoke or poison) and an interrupt, I felt that pistol offhand had more synergy with DD.
-Fist Flurry felt a bit lackluster
-Distracting daggers need longer duration a shorter cast time,Distracting dagger might need to be instant.
-Driven fortitude needs a fix (bugged).

So I tested thief a lot this weekend and here is my feedback (It’s mainly pvp tested. Other ppl mentioned most aspects already)

Staff in general needs a rework. It’s not that all skills are bad themselves but there is no synergy. So fixing the animations and stuff won’t fix the real problem. At the moment there is no evade rotation neither a stealth rotation ( like s/d or d/p).

Utility skills: bandit’s defense is amazing as well as new elite skill ( while the dmg part of finishing blow should be blockable etc. the stomp itself shouldn’t.)! I can finally go without SR. The other skills can’t compete with core skills.

Traits: these are underwhelming. It’s like you could have added evasive empowerment to swindlers equilibrium as well as escapists absolution to acrobatic trailine and move hard to catch to gm… The dodges are predictable and you are stucked in animation due to aftercast. While in animation during aftercast it’s no problem to spike the thief who is using DD.

So Daredevil as elite specialization…
Does it offer new playstyle? No. In PvP you are still decap bot and +1. 1v1 and in team fights you are still terrible compared to other classes. You are also sacrificing usually more than what you gain. There is no reason to take this specialization in PvE either unless there will be some dodge intense fight, where other classes will use their invulnerability and thief has to dodge. Signet of agility can replace this whole specialization and you don’t have to sacrifice trait line. It can work in WvW, but in WvW can work pretty much anything thanks to food buffs and people running terrible builds, still it will be worse than average build.

Is it fun to play? No, pretty much all animations are clunky and unresponsive. Staff skills have insane telegraphs. The only thing I can say is good is Elite skill, but that is because other elite skills are quite weak outside off very specific situations (except BV). In general there is nothing atm what makes me want to slot this specialization.

Does it change existing builds? Yes. You have to sacrifice 1 trait line so even playing with 2 trait lines instead of 3 would change build. Leap on dodge can offer stealth to x/p builds, but you can’t dodge much in stealth because you are risking to be revealed. The rest of the abilities and traits don’t have much impact.

How is it compared to other elite specs? It doesn’t feel like elite spec at all. When looking at other classes, then spec is weak and uninteresting. Boring animations which are usually too long. Skills with high risk no reward. If I was new player and no-one told me it is elite spec I wouldn’t even know. I would rate it even worse than some current specs from thief (and those are worse than a lot of specs from other classes). You could make all DD traits except GM baseline for thief and it wouldn’t still be OP, which is sad thing.

Traits:
Adept:
Evasive Empowerment: ok-ish trait, but using dodge to get 10% more damage doesn’t look like anything interesting. It can be a choice in non-crit builds, but those won’t get much from this trait.
Weakening strikes: probably the best trait in adept line. It still weak in comparison with weakness application from other classes even when paired with deadly arts, but it is better than other 2 traits here.
Brawler’s tenacity: this is clear loser in this line. 10 endurance is a joke and 20% reduction considering the skills you can apply it to is not interesting.

Master:
Staff master: could work as decent trait, problems are it is applied only to staff and it is applied to staff. Staff is terrible in many ways.
Escapist’s absolution: it is ok trait, far from OP which I thought it will be from POI presentation. It offers good defense against no-skill condition application builds like burn guardian or cele ele where you apply easily high stacks of burning. Against other conditions heavy builds it is not sufficient to make them weak (necro, engi). Might be interesting if it was 2 conditions removed, but the problem is that is some builds this might be too strong while in other builds it will be ok.
Impacting disruption: From POI presentation I thought this will be strong (again). In reality it doesn’t that good. It can work like +damage trait in S/P builds, but using interrupts only for damage is weak. If thief had AoE interrupts like mesmer, it might be decent option, otherwise it is just poor option.

Grandmaster:
In general they are all clunky and don’t feel like dodge at all as others wrote before me. The problem is in my opinion the fact that they are not coded as dodge, but as skills with applied evade to them. You can make them shorter, even non-existent if you watch your character from top. 2 of them roots you and reveal you with damage which is annoying even outside of combat when travelling in PvE/WvW.
Lotus training: Looks like deadly death-blossom, reveals while in stealth, hard to say when and where this dodge ends. Feels weak outside of condition builds, but that’s intended.
Unhindered combatant: Feels good compared to other two, because it least changes current dodge. Thanks to camera trick it won’t get you out off Shadow refuge and swiftness allows to actually keep up with classes with almost infinite swiftness like eles without spamming heartseeker or shadow shot. It is only one I had least issues with which makes it from terrible trait to OK trait.
Bounding dodger: This one is tricky. The animation is terrible and doesn’t feel like thief at all. The telegraph makes it easily dodge-able, but I guess it is fine, dodge shouldn’t feel like you have to dodge from it all the time and unlike for example mesmer’s GM trait for generating clones, this one has some counterplay. Leap allows you to get stealth on x/p builds which is nice, but that’s it. So it is OK in some builds but nothing super good.

Minor:
Driven fortitude: I am not sure if this trait was even working, but it could be merged with Escapist’s absolution or the heal can be much higher, considering requirement to actually evade attack compared to guardian’s trait.
Endurance thief: With sleight of hand it is ok trait, without it, it is weak for grandmaster minor. Steal CD would need to be like 20s base line but that’s well-known fact that steal as profession mechanic is weak without traits compared to other classes and with them it is on par.

Skills:
Channeled Vigor – ok heal for PvE world bosses if you fail to dodge large telegraphs, other than that it is not good enough to be used with this profession.
Fist Flurry: seems like joke. Interesting in design, but even moving out of it is easy and the damage is weak to sacrifice other utility skill to make this one work.
Impairing daggers: I heard it uses initiative to fire daggers which is bug I hope. otherwise it is decent skill for some builds and unlike venoms for example it is usable without heavily traiting for it.
Distracting daggers: This skill could work with some changes. If it worked like mantra with shorter CD it could be great. Or one use with higher damage, longer daze and very short CD without need of preparation – pretty much just the throw part of the skill. Or making it unblock-able and ignoring projectile destruction/reflection with 1 charge and slightly lower CD. Current state is weak even for interrupt heavy build.
Bandit’s defense: OK skill same as Impairing daggers usable even without traiting for it. I had only one issue with it, it seemed unusable when hit by Executioner’s scythe by Reaper. The second part – Reflexive strike is wierd. Does it strike everything around thief? If so then change description, if not, than the strike is sometimes performed at random target when there are more enemies in range.
Impact strike – decent choice for PvP in PvE is is weaker, maybe the new mechanics in new maps make it viable choice too. Slight number changes like cast time/CD/damage might be needed, but overall it is in better state than most of daredevil.

Staff:
Best for last? No, quite the opposite. Staff is just horrible. Slow many-hitting auto-attack makes it feel quite clunky. Terrible against retaliation. It really doen’t impress, either make it hit a bit harder, lower animations slightly, add some effect like destroy projectiles on the last chain move,…
Hook strike: weak damage, would be good otherwise. It is really hindered by the lack of stealth on staff.
Weakening charge: This one could be good, but… Current skill queue makes it terrible, you are locked in one direction you can’t change other than stowing your weapons. Make it lock on target or the direction dependable on your camera direction in moment when skill start executing, not when it was put in skill queue.
Debilitating strike: feels like 3 on shortbow, but with mandatory use of some gap closing skill to get you back in combat.
Dust strike: This is terrible. Similar like Dancing dagger on x/d. It is overpriced for what it does. If it was traveling smoke combofield (for example the carpet style which looks like very popular among devs for HoT) it could have place on staff.
Vault: Nice on paper terrible execution. When I used it first few times in PvE against small group of weak enemies, they killed me from 70% HP while I was performing the animation before landing. Either it has to be much quicker animation or slightly quicker with the last part of animation being evade.

TLDR: Even though some skills and traits work on their own, it doesn’t work much together. Daredevil looked like it is supposed to be about dodging, but staff and utility skills are not. Traits feel like “what can we add here to fill this slot, let’s recycle something”. After trying Revenant I can say that with right combination of stances (shiro+glint/malyx) it feels more like thief than daredevil. A lot of things on daredevil doesn’t and won’t work because of poor state of thief in general. Thief can’t be much bruiser type only with dodges with offensive amulet (he is forced to go in and out) and with defensive amulet his damage is laughable compared to any other profession in game.

Rin.1046:

…I feel that the staff should offer you tools to keep you in the fight and control your enemies. Therefore I have the following two skill change suggestions:

Debilitating Arc = Remove the evade and replace it with a half second stun/daze/knock up effect. Keep the cripple and immobilize removal, but increase the initiative cost to 5.

Vault = Add an evade during the leap but reduce the damage by an appropriate amount.

I really think the staff needs at least one control skill and the evade needs to keep/get you in the fight, rather than take you out of it (which we already have on the shortbow)…

I just thought I would add a little more of an explanation as to why I feel the staff needs the above changes.

I wanted to run a high burst evade build, with strong control. So I ran with the Bounding Dodger and Impacting Disruption traits. These two traits allowed me to deal damage when evading and interrupting. In other words they rewarded me for playing skillfully, when I timed my interrupts or positioned my evades well I dealt more damage.

I was really hoping to be able to use the staff as my main weapon, and have either SB or PP for a ranged option when needed. However, because the staff’s evade takes you away from your target, and because there is no stun/daze/knockup on the weapon (outside of stealth), I found that sword+pistol was a far superior option for this build. With sword+pistol I was doing very well. When I timed Pistol Whip/Headshot/Steal right I was rewarded with a spike in damage. The staff unfortunately did not offer me this, certainly not anywhere near as reliably.

If the staff is not designed to keep you in a fight or to be strong at controlling foes, then that is fine. I will stick with sword+pistol for this role. But I got the impression from the blog post that the staff was supposed to be the daredevil’s weapon of choice when taking on a more offensive role. Unfortunately, while it does deal some very nice damage, it doesn’t do as well in any other respect compared to the thief’s existing weapons.

I really think the evade should keep you in, or take you into, the fight not take you out of it. I also think that, because we have the impacting disruption trait it would make sense to have some way of reliably making use of that trait with the staff, without having to rely on utility skills or stealth. We have no way to gain stealth on the weapon alone, so we cannot use Hook Strike without a stealth utility skill or traiting steal. I can live without a reliable source of Hook Strikes to be honest, but I would prefer it if the staff had a reliable way to interrupt enemies without stealth.

The staff to me feels like it would be an ideal stunning weapon and the daredevil feels like it shouldn’t need to use stealth to do well. Anyway, I hope the staff gets looked at, as I think that needs the most attention.

I am also very unhappy with the daredevil.. it looks like acrobatics but not really. I do not understand why the daredevil and acrobatics are Kinda get something on evade.. do we need 2 lines for that ?

About the staff.. the staff is a mess.. the 1 skill is ok for PVE but really really slow, the two skill doesnt make sense… dont like it for pve or pvp .. the third skill is fine but I dont see why anyone would use it over S/D 3 skill. The 4 skill is useless.. and the 5th skill is very very small range and very slow animation so everyone can dodge it (if you hit anyone in first place).

About the new physical skills the Distracting Daggers this “load” time should be removed. The whole idea of this skill is to have an interrupt skill, if you have to load it first slowly and etc.. meh no one will gonna use that.
The Impairing daggers is ok.
Bandit’s Defense is also ok.
The ellite skill is also nice and fun.

My biggest unhappines comes from the fact that.. okey the staff is not great but anyway I will not gonna use it.. the new trait line however I would use the cure condition on evade and etc are great the 50% endurance, or 10% more damage everything is great with S/D however the new dodges.. I HATE THEM …. the animations are so so SLOW the jump roll looks like a guildwars 1 like.(if we had a jump) I mean… all 3 dodges are very very bad, I guess they ware an job of a student or intern… I am even thinking that I should not choose ANYTHING because the normal roll and the normal jump roll looks sooo awesome this is the BEST dodge in the whole game.. and now ….it looks so bad, now we have 3 bad options :
1) one strangly rotating slowly starting dodge that do cripple but looks like bug and there is a small “puff” with cloud at the end.. I dont get it.
2) the HIT on dodge .. the hit part looks so weird … and for 1k damage I don’t see value in it, also the animation on the end looks so SLOW
3) the slide dodge… the swiftness is nice but this dodge is not dodge at all… and the jump roll or jump dodge .. looks so buggy am I Jesus Christ walking on the air or what ? I mean it is good to have some Chuck Noris dodge .. but please make a normal dodge.

IN anyway .. I am thinking to re-roll to reaper . The Reaper is amazing, the berskerer is fun the dragon hunter is unkillable …but the thief

Tried DareDevil in the beta map pve and mainly in wvw.

I have used full zerker gear with runes of strength, staff + sb

Overall from the very start I didnt like the staff idea – i tried to understand the idea behind monk thief and hardly had it digested . The brawler name fits better then monk but the staff is still far from what I would expect from a rouge style class.

The staff skills are … what to say – clunky:
Skill 1 – imo lacks dmg – the auto attacks are far from usefull and hits only 3 targets (which would be okish if the dmg was a bit higher)
Skill 2 – the animations feels delayed, it really slows the movement, lacks some more dmg
Skill 3 – camera based dodge- first start of animations lacks responsiveness, the distance feels strange
Skills 4 – long cast and very telegraphic, it would be better as a field f.e. BP
Skills 5 – this gave me a lot of fun in zerg fighting, BUT – animations is sloooow, it is channeled skill and during that channel you cannot stop it nor add F1 nor signet, though you can be interrupted by blinds, pushes etc – the highest crit i got in zerg fighting was 15k which is far better then average backstab

The dodges …. first I’d preffer an option to disable any of these as responsiveness is far from “working good”. The only dodge I was able to kind of “adapt” during the beta was the Dash – still it is sloooow, doesnt react on time and feels akward.
The dodges really slow down the mobility.

The new utility skills:
the only ones i liked was the impairing daggers still too telegraphic and

the elite skill – insta finish is nice, though there should be at least 5s delay between going on full CD between finishing all of the steps in this skill.

The high dps, high mobility class became slow, clumsy STAFF monk with skills killing the class itself you dont even need other class to kill you.

And the last thing: i’ve tried other specialisations with rest of the classes too. All of these have nice new graphics, animations added (reaper is really cool) but the thief? Old warmed up chops.

I would say, more than most of the problems/issuses/Feelings with and for the DD are named and commented in this thread.

For me, theres only 1 Thing left to say atm:

I think, DD should not only snyergize with DD itself, it should synergize with all of the other specs from thief. In that case, only one wish:

PLEASE MAKE PULMONARY IMPACT DOES NOT BREAK STEALTH

It’s not an direct attack from thief, ist a debuff with a delayed dmg application and should be handeled like conditions in this case….that’s all I want like to see =)

I think most of the staff concept is fine, up the damage on the auto, make number #2 act like heart seeker with an evade frame.
#3, it would be neat if this became a block skill, Daze and cripple before rolling back after blocking an attack.

I think #4 should be a pbaoe blind and blast, I know this weapon set will not get a smoke field, but more ways to proc combos would up its utility.
That or twirl your staff around kicking up dust and reflect projectiles back, on demand reflect? Kitten yeah.

Vault should make you do a roll instead of a stomp, that way you don’t really stop and can keep going, still doing a lot of damage when you land, whacking stuff with your staff as your rolling.

I like the heal, heals for a lot and give back a full dodge by the time you finish casting it.
I usually have little trouble with getting interrupted, most people front load their CC any ways :p
Bandit defence is alright, I wish it was a 2 sec block though.
Love Distracting daggers, this with the Traited Pulmonary impact does quite a lot of damage, I feel like a filthy Mesmer with this combo.
Pulmonary impact does quite a lot for its self, you can usually get up to 3-4k on it depending on the target. I wish the first five hits of fist flurry was faster though.
Can’t say mush about Impairing dagger, wish it did more.

Also like the elite, time it right and you got an instant kill. And you can almost get a guarantee kill if you hit a down target, yeah some classes can get away ( like I’m pretty sure another thief ported away mid air),
You can really mess with people’s tempo with this elite. I was having guardians and rangers pop their down skills way too early when ever I got them down

Most of traits are fine, smooth out the animation on the GM, I really like the dash one, that trait saved my like more times then a fall damage trait, ( pls fix the thief’s fall damage trait)
Fortitude should have 0 or 1/4 sec CD, it’s too dangerous out there with random aoe and pew pew not to have better healing

I agree. Animations are very lazy and bad looking. Like extremely bad.

Overall, I enjoyed the Daredevil. I tried a ‘tanky’ power build and a condition/hybrid build. My main complains are with clunky animations, especially the dodges.

Staff

Auto-Attack
Fine by me. The animation is pretty wooden, though…

Weakening Charge
While I overall like this skill I ended up not using it at all. Considering that Staff needs to stay in close combat, it really needs more capabilities to sustain itself. I feel that Weakening Charge needs a short evade frame to be worth it. It could lose the Whirl Finisher instead.

Debilitating Arc
Basically what I’d like Weakening Charge to feel like. Debilitating Arc is great but it’s extremly annoying that it puts me so far away from my target. It is good for retreating. But I need an evade which keeps my ontop of my opponent.

Dust Strike
Not worth the Initiative. I guess it is meant as a counter to range but just isn’t efficient enough plus it doesn’t help when facing more than one opponent in melee. I’d consider it if it had a point blanket Blind (or 1/4s Daze) added to it. It could also inherit the Whirl Finisher if Weakening Strike got an evade.

Vault
Fine by me. I understand why people want a short evade frame for this one. But let’s be honest: That would be silly. Vault deals way too much damage to be auto-securred by an evade frame.

Traits

Evasive Empowerment
Very underwhelming. Why not make it a 3s buff after evading?

Weakening Strikes
Fine by me. Pretty powerful in 1vs1 but not that useful in larger encounters.

Brawlers Tenacity
Not much to say here.

Staff Master
Not much to say here.

Escapist Absolution
Fine by me. Although it’s pretty frustrating having 5-10 Burning or Torment stacks ticking on me and the condition which is removed ends up being a Blind…

Impacting Disruption
I love interrupt builds.

Lotus Training
Fine by me. Clunky animation. A general issue I see with Lotus Training / Bound: It might put you in combat even if you don’t want to. Personally, I’d prefer if the offensive modified dodges were limited to in combat. Of course, this puts some other limitations onto them, especially Bound (leap + smoke field) but I’d rather have it this way. Unhindered Combatant could stay as it is.

Bounding Dodger
Quite fun. Same issue like with Lotus Training described above (animation, out of combat dodges).

Unhindered Combatant
Didn’t use it too much. Some animation hick-ups but overall fine.

Utilities

Channeled Vigor
I didn’t expect it but I actually like it.

Distracting Daggers
Pretty cool when combined with Impacting Distraction. Rather unimpressive with Pistol OH.

Impairing Daggers
Needs a slightly lower cooldown. Otherwise it’s not worth-it giving up survivability for it.

Fist Flurry
Okay I guess. Would be much more fun if the first part of the skill cleaved 3 people.

Bandit Defense
I’d like to see the block duration increased to at least 2s.

Impact Strike
Pretty fun skill.

Kydar Schattendolch.6879:

…PLEASE MAKE PULMONARY IMPACT DOES NOT BREAK STEALTH…

I actually feel the opposite to you on this. I think Pulmonary Impact should reveal you. I understand it is kind of like a condition, but to me the Daredevil is all about evades and nothing about stealth. So with that in mind I do not think the Daredevil’s techniques should work around or be considerate of stealth in any way. Hell, I would even be ok if the staff had no stealth skill.

You are effectively performing a strike on your target that has a delayed damage portion. Therefore, in my opinion, I think inflicting Pulmonary Impact should reveal you the moment you plant it on your victim, not when the damage triggers. Either way, hitting your target with such a high damage attack should reveal you IMO.

I pretty much agree with everyone about the lack of synergy and clunkiness of the staff and dodge abilities. But I feel like it could be resolved with only a few weeks (animation issues notwithstanding)

1. Make the third attack on Staff 1 a larger aoe strike in a cone in front of the character or 360 degrees around. If the Daredevil is supposed to be a master staff wielder, but cant swing his staff around to hit multiple people? I think it would at least be a solution to the twirly wirly animation.

2. As everyone has said before, make Staff 2 like heartseeker. I feel like it could have a lot of synergy as an after-dodge ability if this was implemented.

3. This may seem kinda out there, but Dust Strike felt very lacking as a skill. It gives us a blind, yes, but it seems like an initiative guzzler as it is using dust strike as a lead attack followed up by vault or weakening strikes. So I was thinking, to make it seem more worth the cost, instead of having it as a ranged blind turn it into a aoe blind like smoke cloud and give it stealth.

But those are my two cents. It seems like reliable mobility and synergy between skills were my biggest issues. The dodge skills themselves I liked, but the animations were awkward like most people think

Here’s my feedback:

The staff: It sort of felt lackluster in comparison to S/P (which was the other weapon set I used on the daredevil)
Staff auto-attack is decent damage wise and gives some nice vulnerability stacking combined with the vuln on crit trait, but it just didn’t feel as useful as the sword auto-attack (which gives weakness and cripple)
Weakening charge deals quite some damage (and gives decent amounts of weakness) if you land all three hits, but it also fires in the direction your facing, which is kinda counterproductive some times. As others have mentioned in this thread, it would be better if this was target based. Also, this skill feels like a skill that could use a build in evade (like debilitating arc), but that would probably mean an increase in initiative cost, since an evade would make it much more powerful.
Debilitating arc is a rather odd skill in my opinion, as it disengages you, while it would be more beneficial to stay in melee range on the staff. It also disengages you over a very short distance, meaning most enemies will catch up with you rather quickly. While I’m aware that this skill should be combined with either weakening charge or vault for a disengage/reengage type of play, it just feels kinda weird to move back a little, only to move forward a little in some sort of strange dance routine with my opponent.
Dust strike is a skill that saw rather little use in my combat rotation, simply because it’s rather slow. It really is necessary that the blind on this skill is applied quickly, since most of the time you would like to use it to prevent that one hard-hitting skill from hitting.
Vault is a decent skill, but the balance between damage and animation time is way off. Right now, the animation time is too long for the damage vault deals, or the damage is too low for the lengthy animation vault has. Either the damage has to go up on this skill or the animation time has to go down.

some other remarks about the staff: there are several things I’m missing on the staff that would give the staff some synergy with itself, the daredevil traitline and other traitlines. These things include: combo fields (a field on dust strike wouldn’t be too much to ask), control effects (a daze on debilitating arc for example) and damaging conditions (maybe even confusion). It is also rather strange that the staff can only hit up to three targets, since it is a staff (most other staff users can hit up to five targets and a martial arts guy swinging a staff around should have the reach to do the same thing). I also have to concur with most people in this thread that some of the staff animations are a bit wonky and that they don’t work well with lag.

Physical skills: There were several physical skills I liked, but most of them weren’t that amazing that I actually fell in love with them.
Bandits defense is probably the best physical skill from the entire skillset, mostly due to its low cooldown. Having a stunbreaker on a 10 second cooldown is quite neat, but combining that stunbreaker with a 1 second block and a conditional knockdown makes it almost OP. I say almost here because the knockdown sometimes sends you flying towards you’re enemy (which can be good or bad depending on your situation) and most of the time seems to be off beat with your opponent’s skills, meaning you usually don’t interrupt said skills with it, therefore making it synergize rather poorly with impacting disruption.
Distracting daggers could be a rather good interrupting skill, if a) the equip was instant cast or b) the skill worked like a mesmer’s mantra. Right now, this skill feels like something you should cast right before engaging and then blow on the first skills used by your opponent, because it only lasts 15 seconds. It’s also an interrupt you have to plan ahead of time, since using distracting daggers to interrupt an enemy when you still have to equip them is nigh impossible. Removing the active duration timer and making it reloadable could also be an option (e.g. if you use distracting daggers, while still having one or more daggers available, it will return the amount of daggers back to three). This would keep it balanced, while still providing a QoL upgrade.
Fist flurry & Palm strike have the same problem as distracting daggers in that you have to plan palm strike ahead of time to make it interrupt something. You also have to hit all five attacks to get to palm strike, which is a rather harsh condition for a 2 second stun with some damage attached to it (especially since pulmonary impact can be achieved through interrupts as well). It might be better to switch palm strike and fist flurry in this rotation or even completely remove fist flurry and buff the initial damage of palm strike. To summarize: palm strike is the useful component of this utility skill, not fist flurry.
Impairing daggers is actually quite a neat skill, due to the 900 range immobilize attached to it (which makes it comparable to chains of light on the guardian if it’s not evaded). The only problem is that this utility skill doesn’t offer much more than that. The slow and poison are rather negligible and the entire skill can be cleansed quite easily by most condition removal. This utility skill overall gives the least value for its CD and really needs something extra. Perhaps it could leave a mark on the enemy that increases incoming damage, that can’t be cleansed by condition removal.
The elite skill felt rather subpar compared to most of the other elite skills in PvE. In particular the final move dealt very little damage for the build-up it was given. Besides that, it felt kind of strange that the elite skill was three seperate skills instead of 1 chained skill.

The daredevil traitline: Overall a really decent traitline with enough options to choose from, but some of the traits only shine in some situations.
Most of the minor traits feel somewhat… irrelevant. Enforcer training is a given, since it introduces the specialization mechanics and weapon, but Driven fortitude gives such negligible benefits that it should be removed to make way for a better minor trait. Endurance thief is a decent minor trait, but it requires you to use steal mid-fight, which means you won’t use it to gap-close/initiate a fight. However, it synergizes well with sleight of hand and impacting disruption, since the daze on steal is instant and works rather well as an interrupt.
Evasive empowerment can be fun, as it can be used on D/P to up the power of backstab (bound + smoke field for stealth, then + 10% backstab), but it requires a lot of strategizing for a mere 10% damage boost. Most professions get this boost as a baseline on one of their traits.
Weakening strikes could also work quite well, but has a relatively long ICD, meaning it will be rather easy to predict. Right now, it can also be combined with weakening charge to get 100% weakness uptime on anything without condition cleanse, which is rather powerful. This trait could be changed to give weakness on interrupt, for example, to increase the active participation required for this trait, but since interrupts don’t work on mobs with defiant/breakbar, this could kill this trait in dungeons/raids and on world bosses, where the higher weakness uptime is needed (due to reduction of weakness duration on unshakeable mobs).
Staff master is conceptually a very good trait, as it gives extra damage when your endurance is not full (which incentivizes dodging) and extra endurance when you use skills (which is useful since your endurance is partially drained most of the time). However, this requires the player to incorporate dodging as part of its combat rotation (even when it’s not necessary) to keep the endurance bar from being full. Nevertheless, since the grandmaster traits add damage to most of the new dodge skills, this trait can be used in a damage oriented dodge build (where dodges are used to damage the opponent in addition to evasion).
Impacting disruption is probably one of my favorite daredevil traits, as it rewards interrupting (active defense) with an almost unavoidable damage spike. It works particularly well with S/P, where the burst damage of pistol whip can be increased even further through this (pulmonary impact hits near the end of pistol whips sword damage spike). It also works well with head shot and steal (due to the (almost) instant daze). This trait, however, is useless against anything with a breakbar or defiant, as interrupts don’t work on those mobs, which means that it’s relegated to PvP and open world PvE (and even there it has its limits)
Out of all the new dodges I have only tried Bound, so I can only say something about that. Bound is both a blesing and a curse. The damage is quite good and the leap gives you easy access to stealth, but the animation truly sucks and the dodge doesn’t seem to take you anywhere (you can’t outspeed someone with bound, as it seems to not leap as far as the regular dodge and locks you in place). As an offensive dodge, it’s amazing and it opens up a lot of options, but as a defensive dodge, it’s simply subpar.

Summary: The daredevil is quite an impressive specialization that opens up a new playstyle for thieves (more control oriented with offensive dodging) while giving them new ways to enter stealth through several strong leap finishers. However, the staff needs a lot of work, as right now the daredevil works better with either D/P or S/P than with staff. The physical skills need to be more direct, as right now, most of the physical utility skills either have a long build-up time (distracting daggers and fist flurry) or they are more wait and see then pro-active (bandit’s defense). The traitline is quite good, but driven fortitude should be replaced with another minor trait. In addition, for impacting disruption to work on anything besides other players and non-defiant mobs, something has to be changed in the way interrupts work, but this might be too much to ask.

there is a big problem that you cant use the Dash to cancel your animation,like so auto attack, when you need an evade you got hit.the old dodge wont have this problem.

It’s like you nerfed acrobatics to bring acrobatics 1.1. Don’t know why you didn’t do it in first place but add daredevil to acrobatics and make one traitline out of it. This way we would have ONE traitline which actually would be worth picking. Otherwise btw. another solution would be to rework acrobatics completely and focusing on boons in that traitline, because that’s what thiefs are lacking at the moment.

Ok so the Daredevil as of today does weak damage with staff but has poison and bleeding conditions. Wow the suvivability is lame. If I’m gonna use a staff, I would like the condition damage to be stun, daze & confusion instead of bleeding, poison & cripple. If you are not gonna raise the damage of the staff at least give me those conditions so I could survive better. Staff conditions with stun/daze/confuse sounds right as well. Blocking 3 attacks when you twirl the staff would be helpful too.

Here are my thoughts on DD. Keep in mind that while I play Thief a lot, I’ve never figured out some of the basics I see others mention using, so this is from the perspective of a fairly casual Thief compared to all you dedicated theorycrafters:

I was very keen on this since my RP/LS/SW main is a Thief who goes for agility and stunts, not backstabbing and poison. So I ran a DD for around 7 hours, mostly in HoT and then in one Sorrow’s Embrace run.

Hoo boy is this an active spec. My arm was aching by the end. I had to pay constant attention to position and use all the skills all the time. I think the only fight I ever stood still in was killing Breachers, as I learned that if I ran behind them the Mordrem pretty much ignored me and I could just shortbow the heck out of the Breacher (possibly a design oversight in the fight).

It certainly played differently from my core Thief, especially as I had no stealth. I’m used to a stealth heal and Shadow Refuge and it was unnerving to lose those. I ended up putting the stealth heal back on, and swapping in Shadow Refuge when I was trying to explore around hostile Hyleks. In terms of effectiveness in combat DD felt pretty strong … but then I am fairly poorly traited and statted as a rule, can’t even solo escort a SW pack bull, so anything was going to feel stronger. (Donari was my first character, and very much statted and traited by what felt good at the time and matched his RP, and I haven’t really updated him because I love him as he is). I really enjoyed the extra dodge and initiative. I think that with those plus full use of skills and utilities I almost never had to wait for initiative to build up before I could do something useful.

The staff: I liked the stunbreak leap back except that it felt very odd to be using it only to have to run back in at the foe to get back in melee range. I suppose the 2 and 5 and steal skills would be useful there but it was still jarring. The animation on 5 was also a bit odd (male human). I couldn’t see the planting of the pole; I just was suddenly hovering horizontally in the air and then shooting feet first at the foe with a weird physics-defying flip in the middle. It didn’t feel martial-arts fluid.

In fact all the animations other than the flurry of blows and palm strike felt a little clunky. This is the only elite so far with subdued special effects, so the body animations should make up for that by giving us fluid grace. Impaling Lotus manages that, but is just Heartseeker which we’ve had all along. I’ve seen others suggesting different animations; I particularly liked the one about having Staff 4 be a sweeping motion crosswise along the ground in front of the DD rather than a petulant golf swing. Biff! I’m kicking sand in your face! So there! I primarily used the Lotus dodge at least in part because I didn’t care for the dash animation and it simply felt more agile than Bound (which also was just using the staff 5 animation with the same awkwardness I described above).

Utilities: I didn’t use Bandit’s Defense though I should have, I like that kick. The wrist daggers were fun but I will need a lot more practice to use them effectively. I think I only got interrupts with them by happenstance because of the time pressure to fire them off. I’d like them more if they worked like a Mesmer mantra and could be preloaded and fired at leisure, then with a cooldown before loading them again. The immobilizing dagger was another that I didn’t find a superb use for, probably because I was mostly fighting either packs of mobs and keeping just one at bay wasn’t effective or fighting champions who were immune. I absolutely loved the flurry of blows ending with a palm strike, I just had to get up next to a mob that wasn’t moving a lot. The elite proved much handier for PvE than I’d feared, especially with the second part that flipped the foe on its back, even fairly large mobs. That just felt fun.

Overall I was quite happy with DD and Donari will be turning into one come HoT. I just hope the mechanics and animations can be made a bit more fluid.

Rin.1046:

Kydar Schattendolch.6879:

…PLEASE MAKE PULMONARY IMPACT DOES NOT BREAK STEALTH…

I actually feel the opposite to you on this. I think Pulmonary Impact should reveal you. I understand it is kind of like a condition, but to me the Daredevil is all about evades and nothing about stealth. So with that in mind I do not think the Daredevil’s techniques should work around or be considerate of stealth in any way. Hell, I would even be ok if the staff had no stealth skill.

You are effectively performing a strike on your target that has a delayed damage portion. Therefore, in my opinion, I think inflicting Pulmonary Impact should reveal you the moment you plant it on your victim, not when the damage triggers. Either way, hitting your target with such a high damage attack should reveal you IMO.

I know, ist more of evades, but this should not exclude other playsyles…there should be freedom to choose and synergy with all spec, IMO. And the staff has a stealth skill, so I think, it should also synergize with stealth, though ist not the main idea behind DD.

And this is exactly, what I asked for. You can only apply PI, when you hit the target, so this is no question^^, but the delayed dmg should not reveal you….

Staff was fun. But I never found a use for staff skill #3.
Also really enjoyed fist flurry.

It’s really funny how when the DD was first revealed the Thieves community was skeptical , then on PoI we got hyped because we thought we were finally getting some love, and now after testing it we are back at skeptical.

The DD is fun, but it does not feel like a specialization. Its just what Acro was always meant to be. I see many good suggestions here, but truth is we are less than two months away from release, so chances are we are not getting anything too dramatic … Anyways, here’s my two cents:

1. Fist flurry: Too slow. Hard to land if the foe is not dazed. Low damage at that. Then you get access to palm strike, only then pulmonary strike. Too many processes for too little reward.

2. Staff needs to be faster, more agile overall or if not, hit harder.

3. Make the dodges toggle on Fs and gives us other grandmasters.

Hello Everyone,

I wanted to offer some constructive feedback and maybe some suggestions on the staff as well as the Daredevil’s traits and mechanics over all.

Just wanted to say I love the direction Daredevil went in as far as the overall theme goes. Before I begin, I just wanted to thank all of the people who helped collaborate these ideas and I hope they may be of use to spark some creative thinking in future changes for the Daredevil!

Note: All of these suggestions were the result of the collaboration of multiple players in the Guild Wars 2 community. These suggestions were also made under certain assumptions:

• Staff was intended to be a synergetic weapon with the Daredevil specialization.
• Daredevil is intended to use less stealth as defensive means and instead use more evading and crowd control abilities for survival.
• Daredevil was intended to have more hard CC than any other trait line available to Thief.
• The physical utilities are intended to synergize well with Daredevil mechanics.
• Daredevil should be effective in both PvE as well as PvP.
• Daredevil specialization should be flexible with any build combination and not force players into a certain trait lines due to mechanics or the nature of the specialization.
• Daredevil’s combat style relies on speed, combos, evades and crowd controls.

I apologize if any of these assumptions do not coincide with what was intended for the specialization.

Staff Suggestions

• Staff Auto Attack – As the primary source of consistent damage for the staff, we felt it left the fragile Daredevil too exposed in a combat situation to justify the damage it does. We thought it would be nice to play on the theme of the agile physical damage dealer and reflect that within the auto-attack itself.

• Staff Auto Attack Suggestion: Three-chain auto attack. First strike deals two stacks of vulnerability. Second strike deals an additional two stacks of vulnerability. Third Strike includes an evade and at the end of the strike grants quickness for x amount of seconds. Another idea was, instead of quickness, inflict a short duration daze.

The quickness would help the thief chain combo into other abilities, promoting a much faster style of combat. The daze would offer a chance to interrupt an incoming ability and synergize well with Pulmonary Impact.

• Staff 2: Weakening Charge – Historically, the second weapon ability on many Thief melee weapons generally offered some sort of mobility combined with damage or a condition (Heartseeker, Infiltrators Strike, etc.) We thought this ability should also offer mobility along with an additional effect. The overall mechanic of this ability was great, just needed a few adjustments to help synergize with the rest of the staff abilities.

• Weakening Charge Suggestion – Dash towards your target quickly. Upon reaching your target immobilize for X amount of second(s), inflict weakness, and deal damage. Enemies you pass through to reach your target also take damage but do not get immobilized. They do, however, gain weakness for X amount of second(s). Gain stability for each enemy struck with your attack for X amount of seconds. Only one target can be immobilized by this ability.

The thought process behind this was the fact that the Daredevil is expected to be amidst the combat. With stealth not being the primary source of defense it is important that it has some sort of skill based defense to stay in a fight for a longer period of time. As it stands now, the animation is too slow without an evade. The immobilize on your target would set you up for potential combo’s and the speed of the ability would allow you to navigate a battlefield quickly.

We imagined a Daredevil weaving through a combat situation very quickly to find those vulnerable targets and apply strong pressure quickly. The stability would also be a skill cap in a sense that you must strike a target with the skill in order to gain the stability effect, the more targets available and struck the more reward with stability you get. Whirl finisher could be removed.

An example of the speed of the animation can be seen here: https://youtu.be/vHNOLytV6hU?t=38s

• Staff 3: Debilitating Arc – We really like this abilities mechanics and believe it is definitely in the right direction to assist with survivability. The only issue we have is the fact that the range of the roll-back is very short. For professions who are hard to slow down (Warriors for example), the cripple would be less effective and they could easily close the gap from an ability that consumes four initiative.

• Debilitating Arc Suggestion – Strike enemies in front you stunning them for X amount of second(s), evade and roll backwards removing any immobilization effects. Increase the roll-back distance.

We wanted to suggest replacing the cripple with a hard CC to compliment the theme of an interrupting thief. This goes well with Pulmonary Impact, and also helps the DD control the fight and interrupt abilities that may otherwise have been fatal. We felt the roll-back distance should be increased simply because of how easy it would be for the enemy to close that gap for an ability that costs four initiative.

• Staff 4: Dust Strike – There were many different opinions about this ability. Many agreed that some sort of ranged defense combined with the blind utility of this ability would be a great change. Others believed it should be changed completely to a control ability that offered CC. However, everyone agreed that this ability was far too costly in terms of initiative for the utility gained.

• Dust Strike Suggestion 1 – Leg Sweep: Sweep the legs out from under your enemies in an area in front of you knocking them to the ground for x amount of seconds. Enemies already on the ground cannot be knocked down again consecutively. Enemies not knocked down are crippled.

An example of this technique is shown here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_XrjRTOJv4&feature=youtu.be&t=14s

• Dust Strike Suggestion 2 – Spin 360 degrees with your staff and create a ring of dust around you, incoming projectiles are absorbed and enemies that enter or exit the dust ring are blinded for X amount of seconds.

• Dust Strike Suggestion 3 – Spin 360 degrees with your staff and create a ring of dust that absorbs projectiles. Enemies directly hit with the staff take damage and are inflicted with AoE weakness and vulnerability. Enemies that exit or enter the ring are blinded for X amount of second(s).

There are many that believe ranged defense for DD shouldn’t be only composed of spamming dodges to close the gap and get within melee range of your enemy. With the lack of stealth, damage- based- long range abilities would be very difficult to counter while in the middle of a combat situation. Suggestion 2 and Suggestion 3 would provide both utility in melee range as well as offer protection from outside sources of damage. This would also add to team utility.

• Staff 5: Vault – The damage potential of this ability is amazing. The only major issue many of us were having was landing vault due to its long hang time. If it wasn’t blocked it was easily dodged or interrupted. A line of warding for example would stop that ability even though it appeared you leaped over it. It’s usefulness in a PvE setting is fantastic for good AoE damage. However, in a PvP setting, the ability is extremely difficult to justify using given its initiative cost and how easily it was to avoid. Many of us would find ourselves using it strictly for mobility, rather than actually using it for damage.

• Vault Suggestion 1 – Decrease the cast time and initiative cost down from 5 to 4.

• Vault Suggestion 2 – Leave it the way it is but make it unblockable and decrease cast time.

• Vault Suggestion 3 – Jump into the air and instantly teleport above the targeted area, after a X second(s) delay, smash the ground with your staff dealing heavy AoE damage.

We thought a nice number for Vault Suggestion 3 would be 1/2 a second delay before bringing the staff down. The teleport would allow vault to be much less predictable but the delay would still offer some sort of time for an enemy to react. This is not a shadow step, simply a way to make the ability much easier to land and at the same time add to the fluidity of DD gameplay. You would still be susceptible to control effects during the cast.

Utility Skills and Elite

• Heal Skill – Channeled Vigor – Although the idea behind the heal is good in terms of reward, there are many better options available to the thief in its current state. A couple of major problems we noticed are as follows:

1. The heal yields a greater health reward if the players endurance is full. This is counter-productive for a specialization who’s core mechanic is about using endurance.
2. The channel time of the heal leaves an enormous window for it to be interrupted, and leaves the DD too vulnerable in a combat situation to justify using over other heals available.
3. Many believed the animation did not properly represent the profession. All other professions get unique animations that differentiate from them from their counterparts. (Ex. Overloading attunements, Berserker burst effects, Reaper death shroud.) This animation is almost exactly the same as Elementalists ether renewal and does not fit well with the theme of a fast-paced, evasive, hand-to -hand combat oriented fighter.

• Channeled Vigor Suggestion – [Insert name change of heal here] – Three part chain. Summersault (front flip) towards your target and evade, heal for a base amount, and cure two conditions. . If you strike a target with this ability deal damage and gain access to [Insert three part chain name here.]

• [Three part chain] – Strike your enemy three times in quick succession, dealing damage, restoring health and endurance. The last strike knocks enemy back for X distance. All three strikes can critically hit.

This suggestion we believe is a fantastic alternative in terms of what the mechanic of heal abilities have done for Thieves in the past. For the most part heals have put the Thief into a defensive position (Ex. Hide In Shadows, Withdraw). This heal would be a fantastic opportunity for thieves to continue pressure on the enemy while at the same time sustaining themselves. This would differentiate the DD’s heal by being the only gap closer offensive heal in the game with a hard CC at the end of a chain. We thought the knock back would be justified if a player managed to land all three strikes, further promoting the theme of the DD and at the same time setting up the DD for the next attack. This would also remove the long channel and allow the DD to time it’s heal strikes for maximum benefit. There would be a limited amount of time available for the chain to be used before it went on cooldown.

An example of a front flip or a somersault can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PmUDDgVKSI

This link demonstrates a martial art combo in rapid succession:
https://youtu.be/QyaVZKkmgqk?t=10s

• Utility Skill – Bandits Defense – This ability is a great addition to the DD. A short CD stun break followed by a skill block and knock down works extremely well with the DD traits and theme. Since it is skill based, damage could be increased a bit on counter attack.

• Utility Skill – Impairing Daggers – Since there are three individual daggers that each inflict a different condition, we suggest maybe increasing the projectile speed to match Distracting Daggers. Also to promote a much faster paced fighting style making impairing daggers instant cast would really help the DD combo its abilities together for maximum effectiveness.

• Utility Skill – Distracting Daggers – Remove the ICD between each dagger thrown, and make them instant cast to promote a fast paced combat style. This would also, like impairing daggers, help synergize with other abilities via combo’s.

• Utility Skill – Fist Flurry – This ability took far too long to channel even with the CC’s available to the DD. Many of us believed the utility of this ability would be justified if the cast time of the entire ability, including palm strike was reduced greatly.

• Elite Skill – Impact Strike – There was much debate on if this ability was worth taking given it’s current cooldown. The idea behind this ability is that it offers two hard CC’s followed by an instant stomp if your enemy goes down. One of the biggest issues with this elite is that it forces the DD to wait towards the end of the fight to use if you want full effectiveness of the ability. Basilisk venom, Thieves guild and Daggerstorm, can be used at any time during combat, due to their mechanics. This also is taken into consideration in a PvE environment where NPC’s do not have a down state.

• Impact Strike Suggestion – The first two chain abilities remain the same. Finishing Blow – Deal a downward strike on your foe. Downed enemies struck with this ability are finished. If enemy is not instantly finished, Finishing Blow is a garunteed crit and knocks target down for X amount of second(s). Reduce cast time on all three chain abilities. Increase damage on Final Blow.

A variation would be to cut the cooldown in half if an enemy player is not finished, but not include the knockdown on the third chain nor the garunteed crit.

This would promote using the ability at any time during combat. It would also bring more utility for both PvE and PvP.

Daredevil Traits

• Minor Adept Trait: Weakening Strikes – When compared to the other two options in the tree this trait was pretty insignificant due to the fact it would only affect one target for 5 seconds before it went on a 10 second ICD.

• Weakening Strikes Suggestion – Remove the 10 second ICD and give the trait a % chance to proc on critical hit. This would allow the AoE nature of the staff to apply weakness to more than one target while amidst combat. Adding an offensive way for the Daredevil to defend itself.

Minor Master Trait – Driven Fortitude – The sustain granted by this ability was too minuscule to notice. Conditions applied negated the effects of this ability, especially if one of those conditions were poison. This trait is designed to offer some sustain for the Daredevil through skillful play, meaning evading an attack. Since you must evade an incoming attack to gain the benefit of this trait the reward should be higher than traits that give sustain passively without any action (Example: Shadow Rejuvination).

• Driven Fortitude Suggestion – Remove healing power scaling with the trait itself. Increase the heal from evade substantially. Keep the ICD the way it is.

This would better reward a skillful dodge and offer much better sustain. We recommend at least doubling the base value of the heal if not tripling it.

• Minor Master Trait – Escapist Absolution – This goes back to what was said about Driven Fortitudes skill play. In order to gain the benefit from this ability, you must evade an attack not simply dodge. With that being said, since it has an ICD the benefit from this skill should be greater than that of a non-skill passive trait (Example: Shadows Embrace.)

• Escapist Absolution Suggestion 1 – Increase the number of conditions removed per evade. Keep ICD the same, or remove ICD and keep trait as is.

• Escapist Absolution Suggestion 2 – Gain x amount of seconds of resistance when you evade an attack and remove one condition. ICD for X amount of second(s).

• Major Grandmaster Trait – Lotus Training – The utility of this ability is great, the only issue anyone mentioned was the fact the animation is the same as a death blossom. There were a couple of thoughts in regards to if people wanted to play a condition daredevil that the ability should prioritize the targeted enemy and not be random within a certain radius.

• Major Grandmaster Trait – Unhindered Combatant – Most people felt the utility provided was good. The only suggestion was to increase the speed at which the animation goes off while still maintaining the same range. This is very similar to what we suggested for Staff 2 earlier in this post.

• Major Grandmaster Trait – Bounding Dodger – This was very difficult to land and use effectively. It also shares the same animation as bound, so it is difficult for an enemy to differentiate if someone is using bound or dodging. For balance reasons we feel the animation for either bound or this dodge would be a welcomed change.

We were not really sure how difficult it would be to program and animate this suggestion, so if it’s unrealistic I apologize in advance.

• Bounding Dodge Suggestion – Instead of the damage occuring at the end of the dodge roll, damage to enemies could happen at anytime during the channel of the dodge. An active hit box would allow you to do damage no matter your targets position as long as you made contact with the enemy during the dodge. Enemies could only be struck once per dodge, or multiple times but with reduced damage.

As it stands now Bounding Dodge is very predictable for an enemy and at the same time very very difficult to land. If this is going to remain a Grandmaster trait, we felt it really needed to be spruced up a bit. If the ability wasn’t dodged completely it was blocked and for a Grandmaster trait it was rendered quite ineffective in combat. An open hit box where you could strike your enemy at any time during the dodge would make it not only much less predictable to avoid, but also much easier to land in general.

Last but certainly not least we had some suggestions on Steal and the utility it could potentially provide for a Daredevil since one wasn’t released for the DD this time around . Before I get into it, we felt like every other specialization had some sort of distinguishing factor and upgrade to their F1 ability (Ex. Berserker Adrenal abilities, Reaper Death Shroud, Tempest Overload Attunement). I also want to mention that the suggestions we created are completely ignorant on how difficult it would be to actually animate and program, so again I want to apologize if our suggestions are unrealistic.

F1 Ability

• Steal Suggestion 1 – Steal a random utility from your target. This ability does not disable your targets utility skill, but copies it instead. Healing skills and Elite skill cannot be copied. If target does not have a utility gain x amount of quickness instead. The Utility stolen does not have to be currently equipped, any utility available to that profession can be copied.

• Steal Suggestion 2 – Steal x amount of endurance from your target. Replenishing your own endurance pool. Cure a condition per endurance bar you currently have.

Naturally some utilities that would require pets or gave access to things like kits would not be feasible for a Daredevil to use (Example: Ranger Search and Rescue, Engineer Tool Kit) with that being said a pool of abilities that could be stolen would have to be created that a DD could actually use and be available to be copied. We weren’t quite sure how the mechanic would work with something that required a specific type of energy like Revenants utilities for example, unless the energy cost is removed. The idea to grant quickness on steal for targets with no utilities was founded on the basis that NPC’s do not have utilities skill pools to choose from.

That sums up our take from this Daredevil beta weekend! Thank you Arena Net for all of these fantastic new additions to the game. I know I speak on behalf of many players when I say that were are excited to play HoT and look forward to rolling out all of these fun specializations on October 23rd!

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions feel free to post on here or contact me in-game!

Here is my suggestion: delete entire spec. 90% of it is bad so frankly it is just better to completely remake it.
- it is clunky and slow
- it offers literary 0 varierity to the class
- it didn’t fix any issues thieves had for 3 years

Cynz.9437:

Here is my suggestion: delete entire spec. 90% of it is bad so frankly it is just better to completely remake it.
- it is clunky and slow
- it offers literary 0 varierity to the class
- it didn’t fix any issues thieves had for 3 years

And take away something that we already had for balance sake, so it can be added later to daredevil trait line and call it an elite specialization.

Wanted to offer my thoughts about the Daredevil spec. I only did PvE, so my feedback will be from that point of view.

I tried two different specs; a staff power build and a condi d/d build.

I think the spec is in an OK spot right now, but needs quite a bit of work. My main concern is that I don’t really know where the spec fits for PvE. It offers zero group utility, and the damage isn’t better than a backstab build.

For power spec, you mainly spam Vault and use auto attack. The grandmaster line doesn’t really give you anything for this spec. You could use Bounding Dodger for more dps, but as others have mentioned, all the new dodges are clunky right now. The issue with staff is that it offers nothing new. The blind is not great (pistol 5 is better), Debilitating Arc is good when you need an immobilize break, Vault is good damage, but everything else is not super useful.

For the condi build, while I will admit was pretty fun to play, I don’t think the numbers will keep up with a power build. I took traits like Uncatchable, Bountiful Thief, Sleight of Hand with Lotus Training, using d/d in both sets with bursting and energy sigils. The amount of dodges I had was awesome, but you are using them offensively, which is fine because I almost always had a dodge or death blossom ready when I needed it. It took a while to get used to, mostly because Lotus Training feels off. I really only saw big numbers when NPCs were as full Vuln.

For staff to be viable in PvE it needs to offer something more, either good damage or some group utility, like making the blind a field. I feel the traits are ok, but the grandmaster line needs a lot of work. Either the latency on the dodges needs to be worked out and be made more predictable as to where you will land, or they need to be replaced and move the new dodges into a new class mechanic.

In closing, I will say my main concern is again, I don’t know where Daredevil belongs in PvE. If the spec is being made with raids in mind for PvE viability, then I feel you’re going down a slippery slope as we have no idea about raid mechanics, and can only give feedback about the PvE content we have now. Thanks.

You have some good stuff there man. But for the rest, you are way out there.
TL;DR.

Bllade.1029:

Dust Strike Suggestion 3 – Spin 360 degrees with your staff and create a ring of dust that absorbs projectiles. Enemies directly hit with the staff take damage and are inflicted with AoE weakness and vulnerability. Enemies that exit or enter the ring are blinded for X amount of second(s).

Heal Skill – Channeled Vigor – Although the idea behind the heal is good in terms of reward, there are many better options available to the thief in its current state. A couple of major problems we noticed are as follows:
The heal yields a greater health reward if the players endurance is full. This is counter-productive for a specialization who’s core mechanic is about using endurance.
The channel time of the heal leaves an enormous window for it to be interrupted, and leaves the DD too vulnerable in a combat situation to justify using over other heals available.
Many believed the animation did not properly represent the profession. All other professions get unique animations that differentiate from them from their counterparts. (Ex. Overloading attunements, Berserker burst effects, Reaper death shroud.) This animation is almost exactly the same as Elementalists ether renewal and does not fit well with the theme of a fast-paced, evasive, hand-to -hand combat oriented fighter.

Weakening Strikes Suggestion – Remove the 10 second ICD and give the trait a % chance to proc on critical hit. This would allow the AoE nature of the staff to apply weakness to more than one target while amidst combat. Adding an offensive way for the Daredevil to defend itself.

Minor Master Trait – Driven Fortitude – The sustain granted by this ability was too minuscule to notice. Conditions applied negated the effects of this ability, especially if one of those conditions were poison. This trait is designed to offer some sustain for the Daredevil through skillful play, meaning evading an attack. Since you must evade an incoming attack to gain the benefit of this trait the reward should be higher than traits that give sustain passively without any action (Example: Shadow Rejuvination).
Driven Fortitude Suggestion – Remove healing power scaling with the trait itself. Increase the heal from evade substantially. Keep the ICD the way it is.

Steal Suggestion 2 – Steal x amount of endurance from your target. Replenishing your own endurance pool.

Ok, so my total feedback for the weekend. I played an Acro/Trick/DD, mostly Staff/SB, but I also tried it with PP/DP towards the end. I was playing in an Asura with a mix of Zerk and Soldier gearing (likely not meta anything). I was entirely fighting in the new content, and did a little of just about everything in VB.

Dodge: I enjoyed Lotus the most, the animation was solid, the daggers were fun, although I do wish there were a way for the daggers to not be automatic unless I initiated combat. It’s annoying when I’m just trying to slip by some enemies, one of them tags me, and suddenly every dodge roll is an indiscriminate shooting spree.

Dash I like the effect of well enough, but I miss my flippy animation, so I don’t think I’ll use it as often.

Bound I saw no use for, it felt especially clunky and did minimal damage.

Overall the three dodges were interesting, but not game changing, and they felt a lot “stiffer” than normal dodges. If I was running forward and used one of the new dodges, I was likely to slow down rather than speed up, it did not seem to behave as I would expect, or want a dodge to behave in this game. It’s like I was used to driving a sports car, and ended up in a tricked out minivan.

Suggestion: It would be awesome if we could change dodges, at least out of combat, without having to go into the Traits menu to do so. The Thief only uses two f-keys while some use five, would it be at all possible to assign f3 to toggle through you dodges, or even f3-5 to select them manually?

Triple Dodge: This is fairly worthless. Yes, from full you can dodge three times in a row, but once the fight starts you almost never see that third bar again unless you have specific “fully recharge” mechanisms in play. The triple dodge mechanic sorely needs better Endurance recovery that is NOT based on successful evades. I felt like a much better dodger as an Acro Thief a few months back than I do as a Daredevil today. Overall, just give us back everything that was stolen from us in the Spring “balance” patch, and we’ll be in a much better place for it.

Staff: I kind of like staff, but feel it’s perhaps missing something. I liked Vault for traversal, but almost never used it in combat because it’s hard to ground target things in a wild Thief melee fight. The other abilities were interesting, but I don’t know. I don’t hate the staff, but I’m not in love with it yet, and I really wanted a good melee staff set. Maybe it just feels too close range for a staff?

Utilities: I never used the heal, didn’t see much point to it. I also only tried Distracting Daggers and Bandits Defense for a little bit, I found the former too clunky to use, and the latter could be useful, but blocking isn’t really my style. I did use Impairing Daggers as a solid ranged compliment to my staff, and I enjoyed Fist Flurry a lot, but wish that the final hit were automatic and not something you needed to hit a second time. That element makes the move a real hassle to keep track of. I felt similarly about Impact Strike, it was a fun Elite to use, but it would be nice if it was just a standard three-hit move, one button press, instead of having to jam the button multiple times.

Overall, I did not have quite as much fun with the DD as I did with my Revenant. My current main is a Thief, do I plan to upgrade to a Daredevil? Maybe. Probably. I don’t really know. If the dodges stay as clunky as they are, it’s actually almost a downgrade in capabilities, and the benefits of the other trait lines make them seem more useful than the DD one. If you would offer the option of the DD or the pre-poatch Thief, I’d take the pre-patch version, with Feline Grace and the fall damage trait in Acrobatics any day of the week. Also, if you could still spread trait points between more than three lines, I might put 1-2 points into DD just to unlock the Physical traits, but then put all the rest of the points into other lines. Overall DD has some nice tricks, but I’m not sure it improves over the Thief I had last year before so much was stolen from the class.

Here’s a design question, on auto-attack chains, is it possible to greatly increase the duration that second and third abilities stay active? I mean, normally they only stay up for like a second or so, so if you go 11. . . 1, you’re back on the first hit instead of the third, right? Is it possible to extend that duration, so that you would be capable of going 1 → dodge → 1 → dodge → 1 and get all three hits of a combo in? I feel that this could make the staff far more impactful and synergistic with the DD spec, since each basic attack could have some real “heft” to it, a solid hit of its own, and you could ht the third strike more often without having to slow down.

Ok, I started another thread but didn’t realize this one existed, here’s my opinion on daredevil… To start, it’s great. I enjoy the hell out of it. took me a bit to find a build and get use to staff but that’s alright. let me start with talking about the staff
After using it for a bit I came to realize it wasn’t going to make a good primary weapon BUT it works great for get away’s, dmg mitigation, and group pvp. If you are in a group the 4 skill provides blindness to help your team and the 5 skill consistently hits 6k with a crit and i can use it and jump back out and blind again with 3 then 4. Now the bad about staff, the 2 skill needs more range. I expected something to get me around the fight faster and confuse my enemy, but 450 is not enough range, I feel 600, maybe 800 would be better. The 5 skill I would like to be direct instead of placement, just personal preference maybe, but I feel like it would be better as a direct rather than placement skill (while remaining AOE)
I also want to comment on my two new favorite utility/elite skills. Bandits defense and the new elite (duh).. Bandit’s defense is one of the most wonderful things ever. it’s great in a pinch, the 10 second cd is absolutely perfect (please don’t change it) and time you have to block is great too because it mitigates it being op, by making you time the block. Now for elite, I love it, don’t change it at all, and that’s all i’m gonna say. People are gonna get on here and claim it’s OP but it’s not… It’s really easy to dodge this attack, then I have a 40 sec CD till I can use it again. It finally gives thieves the ability to stomp they didn’t have before. As a thief I die a lot while doing stomps, i just don’t have the hp pool to sit there and channel a stomp in the middle of a 2v3 fight. I’ma get killed while doing it. the new elite gives me a way to stomp a player in the middle of a fight and still continue fighting. It’s fantastic. and the ability to find people at 20% hp and completely annihilate them is sick also. (if you’re at 20% hp and you are fighting a thief you’re done anyways so stop complaining) Well that’s all I have to say about DD. Love it, I’d be perfectly fine with ya’ll keeping it the way it is…

- staff is weak- autoatack is terribad (compered to rev autoack staff), no smokefield on staff, “5” is medicore for dmg and medicore for mobility, it feels like skill for everything and for nothing at the same time.
- dmg on dodge is interesting but it works only when player dodges which is not reliable source of dmg but i guess it will pass to final version
- daredevil traits are very weak compered to chronomancer

First off I enjoy the Dare Devil. I do like the concept and the direction you want to take the Thief with this specialization. Karl you are doing great please keep up the work.

TLDR version: General consensus. Fix staff animations, staff 1-4 need more lovin, more damage modification.

Dodge as you can tell by the posts need to be re-tuned. Very clunky, especially the damage on dodge I have no idea where at times where I am going to land and actually hit a mob. Also in HOT we are fighting on cliff sides? Sounds like a recipe for disaster with Daredevils flinging off the cliffs by accident.

Elite: I assumed it would be one click, 3 actions? I don’t like multiple activate. make it a streamline one fluid sequence of attacks. I understand the range because it is in your face melee attack.

Right, I did say I would update my earlier post, but due to the great amount of feedback (good job everyone!), I figure I’d just make a new post as the other one is probably allready overlooked.

*All of my feedback is based on PvP usage and a bit of WvW, so do keep that in mind *

Daredevil was despite it’s clunky aftercasts and bugs as well as other strange things like traits that simply didn’t work or utilities costing initiative, really fun to play.
It’s pretty obvious that it’s as much as a First Pass, using recycled animations and general clunky feel due to long pre-and aftercasts and thereby lacking a proper combat flow, but I did have a blast with it.
When playing it with S/D, I actually at some times felt like I was playing with pre-nerf Acrobatics, which was just amazing! That’s still no valid reason to not return Acrobatics closer to it’s former grace…

That get’s me to the weapons. I’ve found Daredevil to work with every weapon set, aside of P/D and (ironicly) Staff.
With P/D it just felt ‘meh’, I have to blame the set and it’s design for that though, it simply doesn’t suit my way of playing. I fear the same is true for the Staff. While using the Staff I felt like it tried to pull me out of combat, rather then have me stay in it, the Staff works for 1v1 if you’re facing opponents that cannot Interrupt and/or Blind a lot but it’s just a bit lackluster in other gamemodes. But like I said, that could just be me, I didn’t test the Staff for more than an hour before putting it down as it simply didn’t feel right for me. I supose you can make it work as I did see some Daredevils get lucky with some clever placed Vaults that I or my teammates simply didn’t see coming in the heat of the battle. I’ll force myself to play around with it a bit more in the next BWE as it does in theory suit my preffered stealthless/bruiser-ish type of play.
P/P and S/P felt like they were able to actually do something. Having access to Stealth through Bounding Dodger opens up some room for semi-viable builds. Maybe when the dodge animations are more fluid, these weaponsets may be better.
D/D did work with it, I felt a little more surviveable simply due to having the extra dodge and a bit more condi cleanse. I did lose a bit of DPS, dropping Critical Strikes for Daredevil, but I gladly did it to gain some more sustain. The greatest impact came from the fact that the Runes and Food we had weren’t optimal as I only tried D/D in WvW.
Then I tried S/D, I kept it for last because I was the most hopeful about it’s synergy to Daredevil. Boy did I have fun! I mean, it will definitly come of salty that I find Acrobatics was sacrificed and nerfed only for Daredevil to shine brighter. But I really did enjoy S/D with Daredevil. I felt like I could actually sustain and win 1v1’s properly again. I could stand toe-to-toe with bunkers or D/D Cele Ele’s for long enough to have my backup come in, while pumping out the burst when needed. So great job there, you gave me hope to see my beloved S/D back in top tier play!

The Utilities all seem to have a place somewhere, they’re not all optimal, but that’s good! It gives people something to choose from/between.
Channeled Vigor was surprisingly good if you could get yourself into Stealth or kited to safety prior to using it, otherwise it was just a big target saying ‘please interrupt me while I do this’. So yeah, I think that actually hit a sweet spot… I can see people using it over Withdraw or Hide in Shadow.
Bandit’s Defense was amazing in it’s current iteration. A 1 second Block isn’t too much, but the Stun Break’s really strong on a 10 second cooldown. I’ve heard on the PoI that the cooldown would be increased to 15 seconds, so I’d suggest to increase the Block duration to something like 1.5 seconds to still keep it as attractive as it is now.
Distracting Daggers doesn’t have much that needs to be said, it’s solid and is a good potential pick for people that want to run interrupt builds. I can only imagine the horror of a Condi Thief in WvW using this along with Perplexity Runes…
When trying Impairing Daggers I noticed I didn’t really use them because I didn’t feel like I needed to use them. Maybe someone running a condi build benefits more of it, I personally just used it as an alternative gap closer due to the immobilize :\
And then there’s Fist Flurry, I did make it work to actually hit with this by picking up Basilisk Venom and combining the two, or picking up something else to make my opponent hold still. In it’s current state it’s just too weak though. You have to go trough a fair bit of a hassle if you wish to properly land it and risk/reward wise, it’s just lacking a lot.
All in all, the utilities certainly got some use to them, Fist Flurry is the only one that can do with a bit more work, maybe have your character walk after the target it is used on. Yes, walk. It’s better than standing still and it’s not as overpowered as just following a target at full speed through Shadowsteps and Portals (yes, I’m looking at you, Unrelenting Assault!).
Personally, I’d stick to my old utilities, but I’d definitly ditch Shadow Refuge for Bandit’s Defense on a Bruiser build (which I ran for the majority of the time).

As for the Elite, I absolutely loved Impact Strike. It’s strong and there’s a lot of play with it. This will definitly be my go-to elite whenever I play Daredevil. I miss it allready

Smooth out the animations to improve combat flow, fix bugs where Utilities use Initiative and Dazes make it impossible to dodge and make sure all traits work properly, Driven Fortitude seems like it didn’t work which has/had a pretty significant impact on surviveability (maybe work on other things aswell if possible, Withdraw still doesn’t have the promised extra 10% healing). I certainly look forward to the next BWE!

As to the build I ended up running extensively:

Sword/Dagger & Shortbow
Air/Blood Sigil & Fire/Energy Sigil
Marauder Amulet & Pack Rune

Deadly Arts: Mug – Panic Strike – Improvisation/Executioner
Trickery: Thrill of the Crime – Bountiful Theft – Sleight of Hand
Daredevil: Weakening Strikes/Brawler’s Tenacity – Escapist’s Absolution – Bounding Dodger/Unhindered Combatant

Withdraw – Signet of Agility – Shadowstep – Bandit’s Defence – Impact Strike

I’m going to simply paste here a post I made a few days ago on the reddit Daredevil feedback thread. I have additional input after having finished the whole beta with this spec, but I’ve yet to properly convert it all from gut feelings into something resembling speech.

“Initial criticisms:

I am having so much fun being a Daredevil, but I’ve decided to make this a feedback post on what needs addressing, rather than what’s currently awesome. I think I’ll be able to give a better review of what they got -right- after much more playtime.

The dodges need work. I think them being tied to the Grandmaster traits is a bad idea, because I’ve found myself actually preferring to play WITHOUT any of the new dodges, because they either have an undesirable level of clunkiness, take too long to finish or take me too far away from melee range to the point where it’s almost as beneficial to my opponent that I dodged their attack. I shouldn’t feel encouraged to simply not choose a GM trait in order to maintain a the dodge I know, love, and enjoy.

There could, perhaps, be a new UI element similar to ranger petswapping that lets a Daredevil ‘slot’ which dodge they want to be using. This would open up the actual trait line to further balancing. Powerful current traits can either be moved up to GM or currently subpar ones can be buffed and brought up to GM, leaving room for more choices along the line.

Also: Fist Flurry could do with being a 3-target cleave to benefit from PvE. The DD playstyle lends itself to S/P really well but the singletarget nature of Fist Flurry makes it almost feel like a necessary sacrifice to have to use that skill to access Palm Strike. If it hit multiple targets it’d fit the theme a lot more, and also be far more desirable in builds. This would also, naturally, have to come with a change to its currently wafer-thin hitbox.

So far that’s all I have. I’ll likely come back with more thoughts after I play around a bit more."

with daredevils staff being based on a martial arts staff i really should have more evades/blocks, if you would look at shaolin monk staff fighting you would see that most of the “moves” are almost never purely offensive but allways have room to block a attacks or move out of the way, i am missing this feeling on staff now while yes it does have a dodge on the 3 skill it feels clunky and unusable because you would need to use a gapcloser to get back up in someone’s face thats why i would like to propose certain evade frames into the auto attack (like the ranger on GS and sword main) because the damage reducing conditions don’t give enough survivability to thief since those hit only 3 characters and you can be hit by unlimited amounts of players/mobs,
also with the current condition meta DD doesnt have synergy with condi builds because you would have to sacrifice vigor gain. and while the heal on successful evade needs to be fixed i feel like its in a good place while the clear condi on dodge should be able to proc multiple times in one evade since most condi builds apply multiple kinds conditions, to cover for those that actualy hurt (or make it remove 3-2 conditions on evade).

Being baseline stances on the different dodges I feel would be too strong. Considering the first minor gives you free dodge right off the bat is pretty strong as it is. I feel like everyone is right the dodges are not as fluid as the standard dodge and need to be looked at. But being ablet to swap them mid-combat is just a no no. You shouldn’t be rewarded for every type of dodge and then gain bonus new grand master traits.

Once you pick a type of dodge you should be limited to that one. Each of the dodges are pretty darn strong having access to all 3 at any given time should present the same problem as to why Reaper can not use Death shroud and Reapershroud at any given time when you take the reaper trait line.

In short more fluid yes, The extra dodge yes, being able to swap between them like an ele does attunements No.

ZDragon.3046:

Considering the first minor gives you free dodge right off the bat is pretty strong as it is.

it’s really not. it’s putting off your inevitable death a little longer. now it’s be the 4th hit that insta-kills you, not the third. the extra dodge is nice, but realistically it’s nowhere near making up for thief’s inherent squishiness, and it’s certainly not on par with Continuum split, Reaper Shroud, or the new Berserk Skills.

also, we used to have this as a trait, and I don’t recall it being game-breaking then either.

ZDragon.3046:

being able to swap them mid-combat is just a no no. You shouldn’t be rewarded for every type of dodge and then gain bonus new grand master traits.

Once you pick a type of dodge you should be limited to that one.

this, however, I agree with. just add a little choose-box, like revenant legends.

ZDragon nice try Necromancer. You can feel lucky for your Reaper elite spec. We try to give feedback and suggestions on the Daredevil which is by far not as good as your spec. I bet you didnt even play Daredevil and just say one more dodge is good enough as a new elite specs mechanic. No, its just not.
And its so obvious that the new dodges are a part of the mechanic. So in comparison to other elite specs mechanic, it should be in the first minor trait, hence F3-5 skills (or only one which switches through or swap between two with cd of maybe 10s).

Staff 1- Staff Strike-Staff Bash- Punishing Strikes is slow and easy avoidable in WvW/PVP. Speeding up the attack would help. The Punishing Strike Whirl looked odd on my Asura as the staff stuck out a few feet from my hands as it whirls. Perhaps add a daze or stun on the punishing strike for a reward for hitting all three hits or an initiative return.

Staff 2-Weakening Charge as mentioned many times would feel much smoother with a lock on target such as the way heart seeker functions.

Staff 3- Debilitating Arc- It’s fine, maybe add a condition removal on it since I really struggled with conditions, even with all the evade condition removal options, in WvW/PP

Staff 4- Dust Strike- Slow and easily avoidable. Speed up attack, increase range, and/or give it a stealth.

Staff 5- Vault- Increase aoe, increase range to 900 at least, speed up leap/attack.

Skills- Fist Furry – Palm Strike should auto attack automatically. Easy to miss it’s activation in the heat of combat.

Elite—Upper Cut, not sure if it does but it should have a lock on charge as well.

Dodges- Seemed clunky and slow as well as hard to command.

a. Bounding Dodger is fun but hard to control. Perhaps drop the range to lock on target with large vertical evade.

b. Unhindered Combat- Should remove all conditions. Again I had major issues removing conditions in WvW with all the new condition removal abilities.

Escapist Absolution should remove conditions on dodge.

Impacting Disruption should have a 1 sec stun or daze on it.

All an F3-f5 soultion would need is a cooldown of 10 seconds between swaps. Some have suggested these be baseline with new GM traits devised. I do not think that necessary. Once the animations cleaned up and the dodges smoother and more functional I think a tweak upwards in power for each might be warranted.

As example impaling lotus upped to 2 torments 2 bleeds. Bounding dodger a larger AOE or keep the small one and add a small 1/4 second daze. Dash distance longer and the dash more controllable and so on.

This would allow the thief to change the dodge type mid battle as needed. This is not OP as the thief is still limited by the total dodges and can not just spam at will as the thief will need that for defenses.

This can also open the door for a few tweaks to the other underwhelming traits such as brawlers tenacity. Add to it “when changing Dodge modes gain 15 endurance” or add to evasive empowerment “Gain 2 stacks of might for 5 seconds when changing dodge modes”

Now some have suggested linking a cost to the dodge swap trait paid for in endurance. This revised Brawlers tenacity lowering that costs somewhat would be sort of like the old felines grace albeit it only lessens the cost of changing modes and does not dramatically increase dodges overall.

I think this will make the DD style of combat even more fun and dynamic and open the door to even a wider variety of builds.

ZDragon.3046:

But being ablet to swap them mid-combat is just a no no.

Make it, that you can only swap when you are ooc and maybe disable swap while in PvP completly….Problem solved^^

I have an idea to improve “Bounding Dodger”.
There are complains, that DD is a spec which should stay in combat, but the benefit of this dodge doesn’t help you much, cause often you dont do any dmg, cause you dodge away from target. So, my idea is to inverse the animation for this one, so that the dmg is dealt at the start of the dodge.
1. You sill do dmg while/before dodging AND
2. you get some distance between you and your target.

Something like picture below^^

I’m just hoping for better staff animations, not forgetting a new idle stance too. Holding a staff like a hammer is just no

Kydar Schattendolch.6879:

ZDragon.3046:

But being ablet to swap them mid-combat is just a no no.

Make it, that you can only swap when you are ooc and maybe disable swap while in PvP completly….Problem solved^^

I have an idea to improve “Bounding Dodger”.
There are complains, that DD is a spec which should stay in combat, but the benefit of this dodge doesn’t help you much, cause often you dont do any dmg, cause you dodge away from target. So, my idea is to inverse the animation for this one, so that the dmg is dealt at the start of the dodge.
1. You sill do dmg while/before dodging AND
2. you get some distance between you and your target.

Something like picture below^^

LOL dat backflip doe.

.-.-.-.-.————————————————————————-

On a serious note… I am just waiting for the dev to say something.

Kydar Schattendolch.6879:

ZDragon.3046:

But being ablet to swap them mid-combat is just a no no.

Make it, that you can only swap when you are ooc and maybe disable swap while in PvP completly….Problem solved^^

I have an idea to improve “Bounding Dodger”.
There are complains, that DD is a spec which should stay in combat, but the benefit of this dodge doesn’t help you much, cause often you dont do any dmg, cause you dodge away from target. So, my idea is to inverse the animation for this one, so that the dmg is dealt at the start of the dodge.
1. You sill do dmg while/before dodging AND
2. you get some distance between you and your target.

Something like picture below^^

Honestly, it should deal damage at the beginning and end of a dodge. The likelihood of hitting the same person twice is really small, but it would be useful when dodging around in a brawl against 2+ people. Right now the trait is effectively reckless dodge + leap. Adding 2 hits + the leap would bring it from adept minor status on warrior to GM major quality on thief.