Guild Wars 2

General

Aftercasts on dodges and a few Staff skills are very clunky. A lot of tidying up needs to be done. There’s just a serious lack of fluidity when using the new dodges that NEEDS to be addressed.

Staff

Dust Strike is too slow to be a reactive skill. I would say it needs to come down to maybe 1/4s to be used properly.

I wouldn’t be against getting the autoattack damage up a bit more. Compared to S/D, it doesn’t feel like you’re gaining much at all, if anything, by using Staff instead. More damage vs. more mobility would be a fair trade between the two sets but in the auto chain we’re not really seeing that.

Weakening Charge needs tweaking on its aftercast. The way it locks you in place at the end of the animation is very awkward. Its damaging radius should also be increased by a fair margin since it’s very difficult to land even 2 of the 3 hits against a moving target.

Utilities

Palm Strike doesn’t feel rewarding to land. Fist Flurry’s strict requirements to reach it don’t really have much payoff. I would suggest either a slightly lower cast for Fist Flurry to more easily land it or just buff Palm Strike’s initial damage.

Channeled Vigor doesn’t make much sense, since you’re encouraged to be USING your endurance, not saving it up. I feel like the healing effects need to be reversed or there just needs to be a single healing value between the 2 current ones. Also, the cast time is just a tad too long – Thieves can’t be expected to hang around channeling a heal that isn’t much more potent than Withdraw’s healing. Consider bringing it down to 2 or 1.75 seconds.

Finishing Blow looks a little awkward. Maybe just take the last part of the finisher animation (the jump) and slow that down to make up the cast time.

Traits

Evasive Empowerment doesn’t give enough of a damage benefit to outweigh the Weakness uptime or Physical skill benefits. I would maybe change this so that you do 10% more damage for a tiny period of time (2 seconds) after a dodge roll instead. That way you can get off a couple of attacks for a bigger benefit. Or, just make the number bigger, I guess. That would be the cheap way out.

Escapist’s Absolution is mandatory for PvP. I think that nobody would take either of the other traits while this is a choice. Not sure what to do about that. Making it a Minor and swapping it with Driven Fortitude would probably mean a jump in the ICD which is NOT what this trait needs as the sole source of reliable condition removal for stealthless gameplay.

Impacting Disruption is strong, but not that strong. I feel like this is the reason why Palm Strike is unrewarding – because they use the same skill (Pulmonary Impact), and making it good for Palm Strike (crittable) means breaking this trait. I would suggest splitting them up. A crittable Pulmonary Impact for Palm Strike and some kind of Lesser Pulmonary Impact on this trait instead.

Channeled Vigor actually has the same healing as Hide in Shadows. However it has more HPS than HiS because of it’s 20s CD (16s traited) and recovers half of your endurance bar (85 traited). It’s actually a pretty good heal for evasion builds.

Auesis.7301:

Channeled Vigor doesn’t make much sense, since you’re encouraged to be USING your endurance, not saving it up. I feel like the healing effects need to be reversed or there just needs to be a single healing value between the 2 current ones. Also, the cast time is just a tad too long – Thieves can’t be expected to hang around channeling a heal that isn’t much more potent than Withdraw’s healing. Consider bringing it down to 2 or 1.75 seconds.

I don’t see this as a healing skills rather an endurance refill station, the heal is just an added benefit. Of course, if you want real heal, you wouldn’t take this skill.

The point I’m trying to make is that Withdraw is far more beneficial for PvP with the condition clear, gap opener and built-in evasion on top of an instant cast. Channeling for that long is a death sentence on a Thief heal skill.

Aside from that, I’d also like to suggest that Dust Strike be a circular AoE blind around the user rather than a line, as well as being quicker. It would fit in to “get stuck in to a group of enemies” vibe of the weapon a lot more.