Guild Wars 2

Something that irks me about the way Daredevil’s special dodges is being locked into one based on the GM Major selection. A Thief should be adaptive to change based on his/her immediate situation, and being unable to use two of his/her elite bonuses lacks fluidity. Also, as stated in this thread, players should be able to access these abilities from the onset.

My suggestion is to add F3, F4, and F5 profession skills to the Daredevil and mold them in a similar vein to the Elementalist’s attunement swap or the Revenant’s legend swap. These skills can be called Stances for the sake of nomenclature, and will allow a Daredevil to switch between the unique dodges when necessary.

Something like:

F3: Lotus Stance: Enter a stance, which turns your dodge into Impaling Lotus: hurling damaging daggers, dealing multiple conditions to enemies.

F4: Unhindered Stance: Enter a stance, which turns your dodge into Dash: removing conditions, gaining swiftness, and rushing forward to evade attacks on dodging.

F5: Bounding Stance: Enter a stance, which turns your dodge into Bound: leap into an area and deliver a massive blow to enemies.

Much like attunement or legend swapping, each Stance would be on a cooldown for balance purposes. The GM minor Endurance Thief could be changed to give the Thief something extra, along with reduced cooldowns, upon swapping a Stance.

With this change, the Daredevil GM major line can be modified to enable the player to specialize in one of these dodges. Effects could include adding a short-lived stability and/or AoE blindness on Bound, brief resistance and/or AoE cripple from the starting point on Dash, and a minor condition duration increase and/or an increased radius or target ceiling on Impaling Lotus. These added effects would only trigger on a successful evade to promote skillful play and would have a fair ICD since Daredevil has a lot of access to endurance.

Of course, balance is balance: this is a mere template for how Daredevil could be improved. All in all, I feel this would help the elite’s current status by giving the player more options and promoting tactical dodges for a greater effect.