forum page bug

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

Nike.2631:

Woaden.9425:

The issue now is that Acro needs a lot of love on it’s own, it can’t stand as its own line: Pain Response is a terrible condi clear (at the very least it needs to add torment and confusion), Guarded Initiation is useless, and the GM’s are outshined by minor-adept/minor-master traits in other lines, making the entire Acro line redundant on so many levels!

((looks at Assassin’s Reward))

((looks at raids being built around continuous unavoidable damage))

I can’t say I agree.

If you need continuous healing in PvE (I say PvE because you mention raids) Invigorating Precision is a better choice, in a better traitline, than Assassin’s Reward. The only time that Acro “stands as its own line” is gimmick situations like laser disarming in Aether fractal, and even then it will be made obsolete when Daredevil is live.

If you are going power certainly. If you are going condition in a unicorn build IP is a poor choice. IP needs high crits and high damage per crit. Assassins reward the damage is immaterial.

That all said without changes assassins reward does not warrant a GM trait. It needs a significant increase in its healing per INI and with its scaling to healing attribute.

It currently 69*INI +.05 healing and should be closer to 90 healing base and .15 healing. This would put its heal more in line with IP.

not that condi builds have a good reason to run acro in the first place. they probably want DA and trickery, and SA if they go for venoms. that leaves a choice between acro and daredevil. daredevil might not have a lot to offer in volume of traits, but the few traits condi users can benefit from are great, plus it gives access to impairing daggers. meanwhile acro… meh?

Actually there is(and more was) good reason to take Acro in a condition build .

dd/acro/da works well as does dd/acro/trickery. I used acro prior to the big patch because it gave health and a lot of dodges for the D/d set. In beta I ran tests with acro and the difference between traiting trickery and acro was not a lot.

Now it true many of the additions to DD make what is acro less desired from before patch but this is also true of power builds. If ACRO fixed i can forsee condition builds using it. Just as example HTC will refill endurance when triggered which can mean three more impaling lotus. This more condition damage loaded than one can get from BA or that extra 3 ini.

With the changes to Potent Poison the DA line is a little harder to give up in a condition build but i can certainly forsee someone going for maximum endurance for those dodges and that impaling lotus so as to increase condition damage and specifically in a d/d build and especially if the line is fixed.

it’s not just bewildering ambush, it’s caltrops on dodge as well, and bountiful theft gives you solid vigor uptime on top of stealing boons (to get rid of that resistance). then you have the reduced steal cooldown, which means endurance thief can be used more often as well.

not bringing DA is just out of question unless you’re running P/D condi, because dagger training + potent poison is a huge DPS increase.

which leaves acro competing with daredevil, which just isn’t happening.

Yes but speaking to DA , potent poison was not there yet. Again you predicate your argument on the current State of acro and I can make the same argument for power builds not wanting that line.

I dropped both trickery and DA in variants of the builds I was testing.

Now in beta I tested a trickery build with uncatchable and a build no trickery just going for more heals and endurance . There was no noticeable difference in the damage. I got more dodges off the acro line thus more damage avoided and a greater abilty to get damage off Impaling lotus. If I can get two or three more impalings off in a given time period due to more endurance , I am further ahead then a person with fewer overall dodges that has uncatchable tacked to his existing.

Further to that I am pretty used to uncathcable on a p/d build. When an enemy uses it I rarely get caught by it. You can adapt to that skill. (That said uncatchable is harder to avoid against a d/d build using db.)

As to vigor. trust me using the acro line in a d/d build even with the poor evade on DB , vigor is up all the time. Added to this we will now get 4 seconds swiftness per dodge which can not be ignored. p/d and d/d both need all the mobility they can get.

babazhook.6805:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

Nike.2631:

Woaden.9425:

The issue now is that Acro needs a lot of love on it’s own, it can’t stand as its own line: Pain Response is a terrible condi clear (at the very least it needs to add torment and confusion), Guarded Initiation is useless, and the GM’s are outshined by minor-adept/minor-master traits in other lines, making the entire Acro line redundant on so many levels!

((looks at Assassin’s Reward))

((looks at raids being built around continuous unavoidable damage))

I can’t say I agree.

If you need continuous healing in PvE (I say PvE because you mention raids) Invigorating Precision is a better choice, in a better traitline, than Assassin’s Reward. The only time that Acro “stands as its own line” is gimmick situations like laser disarming in Aether fractal, and even then it will be made obsolete when Daredevil is live.

If you are going power certainly. If you are going condition in a unicorn build IP is a poor choice. IP needs high crits and high damage per crit. Assassins reward the damage is immaterial.

That all said without changes assassins reward does not warrant a GM trait. It needs a significant increase in its healing per INI and with its scaling to healing attribute.

It currently 69*INI +.05 healing and should be closer to 90 healing base and .15 healing. This would put its heal more in line with IP.

not that condi builds have a good reason to run acro in the first place. they probably want DA and trickery, and SA if they go for venoms. that leaves a choice between acro and daredevil. daredevil might not have a lot to offer in volume of traits, but the few traits condi users can benefit from are great, plus it gives access to impairing daggers. meanwhile acro… meh?

Actually there is(and more was) good reason to take Acro in a condition build .

dd/acro/da works well as does dd/acro/trickery. I used acro prior to the big patch because it gave health and a lot of dodges for the D/d set. In beta I ran tests with acro and the difference between traiting trickery and acro was not a lot.

Now it true many of the additions to DD make what is acro less desired from before patch but this is also true of power builds. If ACRO fixed i can forsee condition builds using it. Just as example HTC will refill endurance when triggered which can mean three more impaling lotus. This more condition damage loaded than one can get from BA or that extra 3 ini.

With the changes to Potent Poison the DA line is a little harder to give up in a condition build but i can certainly forsee someone going for maximum endurance for those dodges and that impaling lotus so as to increase condition damage and specifically in a d/d build and especially if the line is fixed.

it’s not just bewildering ambush, it’s caltrops on dodge as well, and bountiful theft gives you solid vigor uptime on top of stealing boons (to get rid of that resistance). then you have the reduced steal cooldown, which means endurance thief can be used more often as well.

not bringing DA is just out of question unless you’re running P/D condi, because dagger training + potent poison is a huge DPS increase.

which leaves acro competing with daredevil, which just isn’t happening.

Yes but speaking to DA , potent poison was not there yet. Again you predicate your argument on the current State of acro and I can make the same argument for power builds not wanting that line.

I dropped both trickery and DA in variants of the builds I was testing.

Now in beta I tested a trickery build with uncatchable and a build no trickery just going for more heals and endurance . There was no noticeable difference in the damage. I got more dodges off the acro line thus more damage avoided and a greater abilty to get damage off Impaling lotus. If I can get two or three more implaings off in a given time period due to more endurance , I am further ahead then a person with fewer overall dodges that has uncatchable tacked to his existing.

Further to that I am pretty use to uncatcable on a p/d build. When an enemy uses it I rarely get caught by it. You can adapt to that skill. That said uncatcable is harder to avoid against a d/d build using db.

As to vigor. trust me using the acro line in a d/d build even with the poor evade on DB , vigor is up all the time. Added to this we will not get 4 seconds swiftness per dodge which can not be ignored.

of course i predicate my argument on the current state of acro, because that’s the only state there is right now. talking about what it once was or what it could be won’t change that right now, there’s little reason to go into acro when trickery offers you a really solid dps boost while at the same time providing utility through extra initiative, vigor, boon stealing and reduced steal cooldown.

side note, i added a bunch to my post describing what i’d like to see acro to be and what holds it back right now, you probably missed that ’cause i took my time editing that in.

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

Nike.2631:

Woaden.9425:

The issue now is that Acro needs a lot of love on it’s own, it can’t stand as its own line: Pain Response is a terrible condi clear (at the very least it needs to add torment and confusion), Guarded Initiation is useless, and the GM’s are outshined by minor-adept/minor-master traits in other lines, making the entire Acro line redundant on so many levels!

((looks at Assassin’s Reward))

((looks at raids being built around continuous unavoidable damage))

I can’t say I agree.

If you need continuous healing in PvE (I say PvE because you mention raids) Invigorating Precision is a better choice, in a better traitline, than Assassin’s Reward. The only time that Acro “stands as its own line” is gimmick situations like laser disarming in Aether fractal, and even then it will be made obsolete when Daredevil is live.

If you are going power certainly. If you are going condition in a unicorn build IP is a poor choice. IP needs high crits and high damage per crit. Assassins reward the damage is immaterial.

That all said without changes assassins reward does not warrant a GM trait. It needs a significant increase in its healing per INI and with its scaling to healing attribute.

It currently 69*INI +.05 healing and should be closer to 90 healing base and .15 healing. This would put its heal more in line with IP.

not that condi builds have a good reason to run acro in the first place. they probably want DA and trickery, and SA if they go for venoms. that leaves a choice between acro and daredevil. daredevil might not have a lot to offer in volume of traits, but the few traits condi users can benefit from are great, plus it gives access to impairing daggers. meanwhile acro… meh?

Actually there is(and more was) good reason to take Acro in a condition build .

dd/acro/da works well as does dd/acro/trickery. I used acro prior to the big patch because it gave health and a lot of dodges for the D/d set. In beta I ran tests with acro and the difference between traiting trickery and acro was not a lot.

Now it true many of the additions to DD make what is acro less desired from before patch but this is also true of power builds. If ACRO fixed i can forsee condition builds using it. Just as example HTC will refill endurance when triggered which can mean three more impaling lotus. This more condition damage loaded than one can get from BA or that extra 3 ini.

With the changes to Potent Poison the DA line is a little harder to give up in a condition build but i can certainly forsee someone going for maximum endurance for those dodges and that impaling lotus so as to increase condition damage and specifically in a d/d build and especially if the line is fixed.

it’s not just bewildering ambush, it’s caltrops on dodge as well, and bountiful theft gives you solid vigor uptime on top of stealing boons (to get rid of that resistance). then you have the reduced steal cooldown, which means endurance thief can be used more often as well.

not bringing DA is just out of question unless you’re running P/D condi, because dagger training + potent poison is a huge DPS increase.

which leaves acro competing with daredevil, which just isn’t happening.

IMO, acro should be a better defensive line, themed around vigor (and making your vigor do more cool stuff, like how other professions have “gain X benefit when you gain Y boon”), keeping the thief mobile, and defensive/utility benefits through dodging (whereas daredevil is all about using dodges offensively). the line in itself is already pointing towards that, it’s just grossly undertuned (swindler’s equilibrium being restricted to sword and only recharging one second, when trickery just outright takes those seconds off the max cooldown, for example) and clunky (pain response only removes 3 of the current 5 damaging conditions, only triggers if you let yourself get hit, and can be triggered when you don’t want it to, putting it on a long 20s CD)

to note: i’d still love a thief trait that cleanses one condition on shadowstep, which would be a perfect fit for an acro trait. i know it’s ridiculously strong, so make it a GM, and put assassin’s reward back on master tier where it belongs.

In all the suggestions about buffing acro I hadn’t really considered “extra vigor benefits” (heck, I myself invented a whole line around shadowsteps just to replace acro)

However, yeah, why not? What about “vigor also grants swiftness” or “reflect ranged attacks in a 1s ICD while you have vigor” or “When you gain vigor, reduce revealed by 1 second” or “lose 2 conditions every X second while you have vigor” or “gaining vigor also breaks stuns, and skills that grant vigor can be used while stunned”

So, like, you’d have this cadence, as you’d have a line that couldn’t give 100% uptime by itself, but similar to shadow arts, was built around “attack” and “defend” phases, only in stead of being invisible you’d just be rather hard to pin down even when you weren’t dodging?

If done right it could be a massive sustain line rivaling SA, and make taking two or three sustain lines actually pay off while nosediving your damage, or just give you real build options without DD for evasive specs.

Like, DD can empower builds to be basically immune to all slows, SA makes you immune to being seen… acro would make you highly resistant to stuns?

Btw i do think with all this discussion on DD , it has the looks of becoming a must have traitline. I am not sure if this good or bad.

I am trying to imagine the reasons we would have for not taking it in a given build and the only one I can see ignoring it for the most part is d/p. It has a whole lot of goodies .

Of course it might be that just because it new people are eager to try it so might be blind to potential shortcomings but only time and testing will tell.

PopeUrban.2578:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

Nike.2631:

Woaden.9425:

The issue now is that Acro needs a lot of love on it’s own, it can’t stand as its own line: Pain Response is a terrible condi clear (at the very least it needs to add torment and confusion), Guarded Initiation is useless, and the GM’s are outshined by minor-adept/minor-master traits in other lines, making the entire Acro line redundant on so many levels!

((looks at Assassin’s Reward))

((looks at raids being built around continuous unavoidable damage))

I can’t say I agree.

If you need continuous healing in PvE (I say PvE because you mention raids) Invigorating Precision is a better choice, in a better traitline, than Assassin’s Reward. The only time that Acro “stands as its own line” is gimmick situations like laser disarming in Aether fractal, and even then it will be made obsolete when Daredevil is live.

If you are going power certainly. If you are going condition in a unicorn build IP is a poor choice. IP needs high crits and high damage per crit. Assassins reward the damage is immaterial.

That all said without changes assassins reward does not warrant a GM trait. It needs a significant increase in its healing per INI and with its scaling to healing attribute.

It currently 69*INI +.05 healing and should be closer to 90 healing base and .15 healing. This would put its heal more in line with IP.

not that condi builds have a good reason to run acro in the first place. they probably want DA and trickery, and SA if they go for venoms. that leaves a choice between acro and daredevil. daredevil might not have a lot to offer in volume of traits, but the few traits condi users can benefit from are great, plus it gives access to impairing daggers. meanwhile acro… meh?

Actually there is(and more was) good reason to take Acro in a condition build .

dd/acro/da works well as does dd/acro/trickery. I used acro prior to the big patch because it gave health and a lot of dodges for the D/d set. In beta I ran tests with acro and the difference between traiting trickery and acro was not a lot.

Now it true many of the additions to DD make what is acro less desired from before patch but this is also true of power builds. If ACRO fixed i can forsee condition builds using it. Just as example HTC will refill endurance when triggered which can mean three more impaling lotus. This more condition damage loaded than one can get from BA or that extra 3 ini.

With the changes to Potent Poison the DA line is a little harder to give up in a condition build but i can certainly forsee someone going for maximum endurance for those dodges and that impaling lotus so as to increase condition damage and specifically in a d/d build and especially if the line is fixed.

it’s not just bewildering ambush, it’s caltrops on dodge as well, and bountiful theft gives you solid vigor uptime on top of stealing boons (to get rid of that resistance). then you have the reduced steal cooldown, which means endurance thief can be used more often as well.

not bringing DA is just out of question unless you’re running P/D condi, because dagger training + potent poison is a huge DPS increase.

which leaves acro competing with daredevil, which just isn’t happening.

IMO, acro should be a better defensive line, themed around vigor (and making your vigor do more cool stuff, like how other professions have “gain X benefit when you gain Y boon”), keeping the thief mobile, and defensive/utility benefits through dodging (whereas daredevil is all about using dodges offensively). the line in itself is already pointing towards that, it’s just grossly undertuned (swindler’s equilibrium being restricted to sword and only recharging one second, when trickery just outright takes those seconds off the max cooldown, for example) and clunky (pain response only removes 3 of the current 5 damaging conditions, only triggers if you let yourself get hit, and can be triggered when you don’t want it to, putting it on a long 20s CD)

to note: i’d still love a thief trait that cleanses one condition on shadowstep, which would be a perfect fit for an acro trait. i know it’s ridiculously strong, so make it a GM, and put assassin’s reward back on master tier where it belongs.

In all the suggestions about buffing acro I hadn’t really considered “extra vigor benefits” (heck, I myself invented a whole line around shadowsteps just to replace acro)

However, yeah, why not? What about “vigor also grants swiftness” or “reflect ranged attacks in a 1s ICD while you have vigor” or “When you gain vigor, reduce revealed by 1 second” or “lose 2 conditions every X second while you have vigor” or “gaining vigor also breaks stuns, and skills that grant vigor can be used while stunned”

So, like, you’d have this cadence, as you’d have a line that couldn’t give 100% uptime by itself, but similar to shadow arts, was built around “attack” and “defend” phases, only in stead of being invisible you’d just be rather hard to pin down even when you weren’t dodging?

If done right it could be a massive sustain line rivaling SA, and make taking two or three sustain lines actually pay off while nosediving your damage, or just give you real build options without DD for evasive specs.

Like, DD can empower builds to be basically immune to all slows, SA makes you immune to being seen… acro would make you highly resistant to stuns?

fun fact about your reflect suggestion, it almost was a real trait, only it procced on swiftness instead of vigor. the devs scrapped it though, because it was obviously broken as hell :P

but yeah, i was thinking of “clear one condition when you gain vigor” (merge “gain vigor on dodge” with daredevil’s escapist’s absolution and give DD a new trait :P), or reduced damage while you have vigor (ranger has reduced damage on regen, and ranger has regen coming out of their kitten, so i’m sure it’s not broken), or other similar buffs so that your vigor is more important.

the idea is that it’s a defensive line with a thief flavor. you’re not actively gaining health back or mitigating a lot of direct damage, but you can break out of most CC, clear condis, and avoid bursts, all through your dodges and innate stunbreaks.

on hard to catch: i think it bears repeating the suggestion i gave a couple posts ago: make signet of agility a stunbreak, and make hard to catch proc it. it’s a buff in that it nows clears one condi when it procs on top of the previous benefits, and can have its cooldown reduced with signets of power. free synergy through buffs!

PopeUrban.2578:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

Nike.2631:

Woaden.9425:

The issue now is that Acro needs a lot of love on it’s own, it can’t stand as its own line: Pain Response is a terrible condi clear (at the very least it needs to add torment and confusion), Guarded Initiation is useless, and the GM’s are outshined by minor-adept/minor-master traits in other lines, making the entire Acro line redundant on so many levels!

((looks at Assassin’s Reward))

((looks at raids being built around continuous unavoidable damage))

I can’t say I agree.

If you need continuous healing in PvE (I say PvE because you mention raids) Invigorating Precision is a better choice, in a better traitline, than Assassin’s Reward. The only time that Acro “stands as its own line” is gimmick situations like laser disarming in Aether fractal, and even then it will be made obsolete when Daredevil is live.

If you are going power certainly. If you are going condition in a unicorn build IP is a poor choice. IP needs high crits and high damage per crit. Assassins reward the damage is immaterial.

That all said without changes assassins reward does not warrant a GM trait. It needs a significant increase in its healing per INI and with its scaling to healing attribute.

It currently 69*INI +.05 healing and should be closer to 90 healing base and .15 healing. This would put its heal more in line with IP.

not that condi builds have a good reason to run acro in the first place. they probably want DA and trickery, and SA if they go for venoms. that leaves a choice between acro and daredevil. daredevil might not have a lot to offer in volume of traits, but the few traits condi users can benefit from are great, plus it gives access to impairing daggers. meanwhile acro… meh?

Actually there is(and more was) good reason to take Acro in a condition build .

dd/acro/da works well as does dd/acro/trickery. I used acro prior to the big patch because it gave health and a lot of dodges for the D/d set. In beta I ran tests with acro and the difference between traiting trickery and acro was not a lot.

Now it true many of the additions to DD make what is acro less desired from before patch but this is also true of power builds. If ACRO fixed i can forsee condition builds using it. Just as example HTC will refill endurance when triggered which can mean three more impaling lotus. This more condition damage loaded than one can get from BA or that extra 3 ini.

With the changes to Potent Poison the DA line is a little harder to give up in a condition build but i can certainly forsee someone going for maximum endurance for those dodges and that impaling lotus so as to increase condition damage and specifically in a d/d build and especially if the line is fixed.

it’s not just bewildering ambush, it’s caltrops on dodge as well, and bountiful theft gives you solid vigor uptime on top of stealing boons (to get rid of that resistance). then you have the reduced steal cooldown, which means endurance thief can be used more often as well.

not bringing DA is just out of question unless you’re running P/D condi, because dagger training + potent poison is a huge DPS increase.

which leaves acro competing with daredevil, which just isn’t happening.

IMO, acro should be a better defensive line, themed around vigor (and making your vigor do more cool stuff, like how other professions have “gain X benefit when you gain Y boon”), keeping the thief mobile, and defensive/utility benefits through dodging (whereas daredevil is all about using dodges offensively). the line in itself is already pointing towards that, it’s just grossly undertuned (swindler’s equilibrium being restricted to sword and only recharging one second, when trickery just outright takes those seconds off the max cooldown, for example) and clunky (pain response only removes 3 of the current 5 damaging conditions, only triggers if you let yourself get hit, and can be triggered when you don’t want it to, putting it on a long 20s CD)

to note: i’d still love a thief trait that cleanses one condition on shadowstep, which would be a perfect fit for an acro trait. i know it’s ridiculously strong, so make it a GM, and put assassin’s reward back on master tier where it belongs.

In all the suggestions about buffing acro I hadn’t really considered “extra vigor benefits” (heck, I myself invented a whole line around shadowsteps just to replace acro)

However, yeah, why not? What about “vigor also grants swiftness” or “reflect ranged attacks in a 1s ICD while you have vigor” or “When you gain vigor, reduce revealed by 1 second” or “lose 2 conditions every X second while you have vigor” or “gaining vigor also breaks stuns, and skills that grant vigor can be used while stunned”

So, like, you’d have this cadence, as you’d have a line that couldn’t give 100% uptime by itself, but similar to shadow arts, was built around “attack” and “defend” phases, only in stead of being invisible you’d just be rather hard to pin down even when you weren’t dodging?

If done right it could be a massive sustain line rivaling SA, and make taking two or three sustain lines actually pay off while nosediving your damage, or just give you real build options without DD for evasive specs.

Like, DD can empower builds to be basically immune to all slows, SA makes you immune to being seen… acro would make you highly resistant to stuns?

I was thinking pain response might work as a proc on vigor trait but then got to thinking it would not really help as you might gain vigor and not have any conditions on and proc the trait.

The types of benefits gleaned from a proc on vigor have to be the types one would always want but it a good suggestion. The problem of course if there too many or the boon/benefit too good they might make it harder to gain vigor in the first place and we back where we started. I think this the reason they dropped the missile avoidance thing if one gained swiftness.

Now given the Acro line inherently grants vigor on a successful evade and given escapists absolution clears a condition on a successful evade, what is the different between a proc on vigor condition cleanse over escapists resolution?

babazhook.6805:

PopeUrban.2578:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

Nike.2631:

Woaden.9425:

The issue now is that Acro needs a lot of love on it’s own, it can’t stand as its own line: Pain Response is a terrible condi clear (at the very least it needs to add torment and confusion), Guarded Initiation is useless, and the GM’s are outshined by minor-adept/minor-master traits in other lines, making the entire Acro line redundant on so many levels!

((looks at Assassin’s Reward))

((looks at raids being built around continuous unavoidable damage))

I can’t say I agree.

If you need continuous healing in PvE (I say PvE because you mention raids) Invigorating Precision is a better choice, in a better traitline, than Assassin’s Reward. The only time that Acro “stands as its own line” is gimmick situations like laser disarming in Aether fractal, and even then it will be made obsolete when Daredevil is live.

If you are going power certainly. If you are going condition in a unicorn build IP is a poor choice. IP needs high crits and high damage per crit. Assassins reward the damage is immaterial.

That all said without changes assassins reward does not warrant a GM trait. It needs a significant increase in its healing per INI and with its scaling to healing attribute.

It currently 69*INI +.05 healing and should be closer to 90 healing base and .15 healing. This would put its heal more in line with IP.

not that condi builds have a good reason to run acro in the first place. they probably want DA and trickery, and SA if they go for venoms. that leaves a choice between acro and daredevil. daredevil might not have a lot to offer in volume of traits, but the few traits condi users can benefit from are great, plus it gives access to impairing daggers. meanwhile acro… meh?

Actually there is(and more was) good reason to take Acro in a condition build .

dd/acro/da works well as does dd/acro/trickery. I used acro prior to the big patch because it gave health and a lot of dodges for the D/d set. In beta I ran tests with acro and the difference between traiting trickery and acro was not a lot.

Now it true many of the additions to DD make what is acro less desired from before patch but this is also true of power builds. If ACRO fixed i can forsee condition builds using it. Just as example HTC will refill endurance when triggered which can mean three more impaling lotus. This more condition damage loaded than one can get from BA or that extra 3 ini.

With the changes to Potent Poison the DA line is a little harder to give up in a condition build but i can certainly forsee someone going for maximum endurance for those dodges and that impaling lotus so as to increase condition damage and specifically in a d/d build and especially if the line is fixed.

it’s not just bewildering ambush, it’s caltrops on dodge as well, and bountiful theft gives you solid vigor uptime on top of stealing boons (to get rid of that resistance). then you have the reduced steal cooldown, which means endurance thief can be used more often as well.

not bringing DA is just out of question unless you’re running P/D condi, because dagger training + potent poison is a huge DPS increase.

which leaves acro competing with daredevil, which just isn’t happening.

IMO, acro should be a better defensive line, themed around vigor (and making your vigor do more cool stuff, like how other professions have “gain X benefit when you gain Y boon”), keeping the thief mobile, and defensive/utility benefits through dodging (whereas daredevil is all about using dodges offensively). the line in itself is already pointing towards that, it’s just grossly undertuned (swindler’s equilibrium being restricted to sword and only recharging one second, when trickery just outright takes those seconds off the max cooldown, for example) and clunky (pain response only removes 3 of the current 5 damaging conditions, only triggers if you let yourself get hit, and can be triggered when you don’t want it to, putting it on a long 20s CD)

to note: i’d still love a thief trait that cleanses one condition on shadowstep, which would be a perfect fit for an acro trait. i know it’s ridiculously strong, so make it a GM, and put assassin’s reward back on master tier where it belongs.

In all the suggestions about buffing acro I hadn’t really considered “extra vigor benefits” (heck, I myself invented a whole line around shadowsteps just to replace acro)

However, yeah, why not? What about “vigor also grants swiftness” or “reflect ranged attacks in a 1s ICD while you have vigor” or “When you gain vigor, reduce revealed by 1 second” or “lose 2 conditions every X second while you have vigor” or “gaining vigor also breaks stuns, and skills that grant vigor can be used while stunned”

So, like, you’d have this cadence, as you’d have a line that couldn’t give 100% uptime by itself, but similar to shadow arts, was built around “attack” and “defend” phases, only in stead of being invisible you’d just be rather hard to pin down even when you weren’t dodging?

If done right it could be a massive sustain line rivaling SA, and make taking two or three sustain lines actually pay off while nosediving your damage, or just give you real build options without DD for evasive specs.

Like, DD can empower builds to be basically immune to all slows, SA makes you immune to being seen… acro would make you highly resistant to stuns?

I was thinking pain response might work as a proc on vigor trait but then got to thinking it would not really help as you might gain vigor and not have any conditions on and proc the trait.

The types of benefits gleaned from a proc on vigor have to be the types one would always want but it a good suggestion. The problem of course if there too many or the boon/benefit too good they might make it harder to gain vigor in the first place and we back where we started. I think this the reason they dropped the missile avoidance thing if one gained swiftness.

Now given the Acro line inherently grants vigor on a successful evade and given escapists absolution clears a condition on a successful evade, what is the different between a proc on vigor condition cleanse over escapists resolution?

Why would it need a 10 second ICD attached. If it had a 1 second ICD, it would only ever be as powerful as escapist’s absolution, and then only because it’s combined with FG.

Edit: Edited as I was responding. … If it was tacked on to vigorous recovery, then you’d have an extra condi clear attached to the heal. Also DrD and Acro would yhen compliment each other allowing you to pick up similar traits to compounded with each other or create more build variety by selecting either.

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

PopeUrban.2578:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

Nike.2631:

Woaden.9425:

The issue now is that Acro needs a lot of love on it’s own, it can’t stand as its own line: Pain Response is a terrible condi clear (at the very least it needs to add torment and confusion), Guarded Initiation is useless, and the GM’s are outshined by minor-adept/minor-master traits in other lines, making the entire Acro line redundant on so many levels!

((looks at Assassin’s Reward))

((looks at raids being built around continuous unavoidable damage))

I can’t say I agree.

If you need continuous healing in PvE (I say PvE because you mention raids) Invigorating Precision is a better choice, in a better traitline, than Assassin’s Reward. The only time that Acro “stands as its own line” is gimmick situations like laser disarming in Aether fractal, and even then it will be made obsolete when Daredevil is live.

If you are going power certainly. If you are going condition in a unicorn build IP is a poor choice. IP needs high crits and high damage per crit. Assassins reward the damage is immaterial.

That all said without changes assassins reward does not warrant a GM trait. It needs a significant increase in its healing per INI and with its scaling to healing attribute.

It currently 69*INI +.05 healing and should be closer to 90 healing base and .15 healing. This would put its heal more in line with IP.

not that condi builds have a good reason to run acro in the first place. they probably want DA and trickery, and SA if they go for venoms. that leaves a choice between acro and daredevil. daredevil might not have a lot to offer in volume of traits, but the few traits condi users can benefit from are great, plus it gives access to impairing daggers. meanwhile acro… meh?

Actually there is(and more was) good reason to take Acro in a condition build .

dd/acro/da works well as does dd/acro/trickery. I used acro prior to the big patch because it gave health and a lot of dodges for the D/d set. In beta I ran tests with acro and the difference between traiting trickery and acro was not a lot.

Now it true many of the additions to DD make what is acro less desired from before patch but this is also true of power builds. If ACRO fixed i can forsee condition builds using it. Just as example HTC will refill endurance when triggered which can mean three more impaling lotus. This more condition damage loaded than one can get from BA or that extra 3 ini.

With the changes to Potent Poison the DA line is a little harder to give up in a condition build but i can certainly forsee someone going for maximum endurance for those dodges and that impaling lotus so as to increase condition damage and specifically in a d/d build and especially if the line is fixed.

it’s not just bewildering ambush, it’s caltrops on dodge as well, and bountiful theft gives you solid vigor uptime on top of stealing boons (to get rid of that resistance). then you have the reduced steal cooldown, which means endurance thief can be used more often as well.

not bringing DA is just out of question unless you’re running P/D condi, because dagger training + potent poison is a huge DPS increase.

which leaves acro competing with daredevil, which just isn’t happening.

IMO, acro should be a better defensive line, themed around vigor (and making your vigor do more cool stuff, like how other professions have “gain X benefit when you gain Y boon”), keeping the thief mobile, and defensive/utility benefits through dodging (whereas daredevil is all about using dodges offensively). the line in itself is already pointing towards that, it’s just grossly undertuned (swindler’s equilibrium being restricted to sword and only recharging one second, when trickery just outright takes those seconds off the max cooldown, for example) and clunky (pain response only removes 3 of the current 5 damaging conditions, only triggers if you let yourself get hit, and can be triggered when you don’t want it to, putting it on a long 20s CD)

to note: i’d still love a thief trait that cleanses one condition on shadowstep, which would be a perfect fit for an acro trait. i know it’s ridiculously strong, so make it a GM, and put assassin’s reward back on master tier where it belongs.

In all the suggestions about buffing acro I hadn’t really considered “extra vigor benefits” (heck, I myself invented a whole line around shadowsteps just to replace acro)

However, yeah, why not? What about “vigor also grants swiftness” or “reflect ranged attacks in a 1s ICD while you have vigor” or “When you gain vigor, reduce revealed by 1 second” or “lose 2 conditions every X second while you have vigor” or “gaining vigor also breaks stuns, and skills that grant vigor can be used while stunned”

So, like, you’d have this cadence, as you’d have a line that couldn’t give 100% uptime by itself, but similar to shadow arts, was built around “attack” and “defend” phases, only in stead of being invisible you’d just be rather hard to pin down even when you weren’t dodging?

If done right it could be a massive sustain line rivaling SA, and make taking two or three sustain lines actually pay off while nosediving your damage, or just give you real build options without DD for evasive specs.

Like, DD can empower builds to be basically immune to all slows, SA makes you immune to being seen… acro would make you highly resistant to stuns?

I was thinking pain response might work as a proc on vigor trait but then got to thinking it would not really help as you might gain vigor and not have any conditions on and proc the trait.

The types of benefits gleaned from a proc on vigor have to be the types one would always want but it a good suggestion. The problem of course if there too many or the boon/benefit too good they might make it harder to gain vigor in the first place and we back where we started. I think this the reason they dropped the missile avoidance thing if one gained swiftness.

Now given the Acro line inherently grants vigor on a successful evade and given escapists absolution clears a condition on a successful evade, what is the different between a proc on vigor condition cleanse over escapists resolution?

Why would it need a 10 second ICD attached. If it had a 1 second ICD, it would only ever be as powerful as escapist’s absolution, and then only because it’s combined with FG.

Well thats the point. it becomes the exact same skill. Meaning if I trait dd acro I clear 2 conditions on every evade. if one takes Acro line one aways has FG.

It a sort of power creep that can happen in that an evade does more and mrre stuff leading to a situation where a nerf called for because “hey on an evade the thief gets vigor, clears conditions, heals, avoids damage gets swiftness gets…..” and that too much.! nerf it!

Now imagine what I can do if I traited withdraw and we had clear condition on gaining vigor and I took trickster as well…

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

PopeUrban.2578:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

Nike.2631:

Woaden.9425:

The issue now is that Acro needs a lot of love on it’s own, it can’t stand as its own line: Pain Response is a terrible condi clear (at the very least it needs to add torment and confusion), Guarded Initiation is useless, and the GM’s are outshined by minor-adept/minor-master traits in other lines, making the entire Acro line redundant on so many levels!

((looks at Assassin’s Reward))

((looks at raids being built around continuous unavoidable damage))

I can’t say I agree.

If you need continuous healing in PvE (I say PvE because you mention raids) Invigorating Precision is a better choice, in a better traitline, than Assassin’s Reward. The only time that Acro “stands as its own line” is gimmick situations like laser disarming in Aether fractal, and even then it will be made obsolete when Daredevil is live.

If you are going power certainly. If you are going condition in a unicorn build IP is a poor choice. IP needs high crits and high damage per crit. Assassins reward the damage is immaterial.

That all said without changes assassins reward does not warrant a GM trait. It needs a significant increase in its healing per INI and with its scaling to healing attribute.

It currently 69*INI +.05 healing and should be closer to 90 healing base and .15 healing. This would put its heal more in line with IP.

not that condi builds have a good reason to run acro in the first place. they probably want DA and trickery, and SA if they go for venoms. that leaves a choice between acro and daredevil. daredevil might not have a lot to offer in volume of traits, but the few traits condi users can benefit from are great, plus it gives access to impairing daggers. meanwhile acro… meh?

Actually there is(and more was) good reason to take Acro in a condition build .

dd/acro/da works well as does dd/acro/trickery. I used acro prior to the big patch because it gave health and a lot of dodges for the D/d set. In beta I ran tests with acro and the difference between traiting trickery and acro was not a lot.

Now it true many of the additions to DD make what is acro less desired from before patch but this is also true of power builds. If ACRO fixed i can forsee condition builds using it. Just as example HTC will refill endurance when triggered which can mean three more impaling lotus. This more condition damage loaded than one can get from BA or that extra 3 ini.

With the changes to Potent Poison the DA line is a little harder to give up in a condition build but i can certainly forsee someone going for maximum endurance for those dodges and that impaling lotus so as to increase condition damage and specifically in a d/d build and especially if the line is fixed.

it’s not just bewildering ambush, it’s caltrops on dodge as well, and bountiful theft gives you solid vigor uptime on top of stealing boons (to get rid of that resistance). then you have the reduced steal cooldown, which means endurance thief can be used more often as well.

not bringing DA is just out of question unless you’re running P/D condi, because dagger training + potent poison is a huge DPS increase.

which leaves acro competing with daredevil, which just isn’t happening.

IMO, acro should be a better defensive line, themed around vigor (and making your vigor do more cool stuff, like how other professions have “gain X benefit when you gain Y boon”), keeping the thief mobile, and defensive/utility benefits through dodging (whereas daredevil is all about using dodges offensively). the line in itself is already pointing towards that, it’s just grossly undertuned (swindler’s equilibrium being restricted to sword and only recharging one second, when trickery just outright takes those seconds off the max cooldown, for example) and clunky (pain response only removes 3 of the current 5 damaging conditions, only triggers if you let yourself get hit, and can be triggered when you don’t want it to, putting it on a long 20s CD)

to note: i’d still love a thief trait that cleanses one condition on shadowstep, which would be a perfect fit for an acro trait. i know it’s ridiculously strong, so make it a GM, and put assassin’s reward back on master tier where it belongs.

In all the suggestions about buffing acro I hadn’t really considered “extra vigor benefits” (heck, I myself invented a whole line around shadowsteps just to replace acro)

However, yeah, why not? What about “vigor also grants swiftness” or “reflect ranged attacks in a 1s ICD while you have vigor” or “When you gain vigor, reduce revealed by 1 second” or “lose 2 conditions every X second while you have vigor” or “gaining vigor also breaks stuns, and skills that grant vigor can be used while stunned”

So, like, you’d have this cadence, as you’d have a line that couldn’t give 100% uptime by itself, but similar to shadow arts, was built around “attack” and “defend” phases, only in stead of being invisible you’d just be rather hard to pin down even when you weren’t dodging?

If done right it could be a massive sustain line rivaling SA, and make taking two or three sustain lines actually pay off while nosediving your damage, or just give you real build options without DD for evasive specs.

Like, DD can empower builds to be basically immune to all slows, SA makes you immune to being seen… acro would make you highly resistant to stuns?

I was thinking pain response might work as a proc on vigor trait but then got to thinking it would not really help as you might gain vigor and not have any conditions on and proc the trait.

The types of benefits gleaned from a proc on vigor have to be the types one would always want but it a good suggestion. The problem of course if there too many or the boon/benefit too good they might make it harder to gain vigor in the first place and we back where we started. I think this the reason they dropped the missile avoidance thing if one gained swiftness.

Now given the Acro line inherently grants vigor on a successful evade and given escapists absolution clears a condition on a successful evade, what is the different between a proc on vigor condition cleanse over escapists resolution?

Why would it need a 10 second ICD attached. If it had a 1 second ICD, it would only ever be as powerful as escapist’s absolution, and then only because it’s combined with FG.

Well thats the point. it becomes the exact same skill. Meaning if I trait dd acro I clear 2 conditions on every evade. if one takes Acro line one aways has FG.

It a sort of power creep that can happen in that an evade does more and mrre stuff leading to a situation where a nerf called for because “hey on an evade the thief gets vigor, clears conditions, heals, avoids damage gets swiftness gets…..” and that too much.! nerf it!

Well you’d be taking 2 rather defensive lines at that point missing out on a lot of damage. You’d basically be making a bunker thief.

Edit: Being able to trade damage for survivability but not having both simultaneously is good design IMO.

Edit 2: It’s almost like throwing all of your traits into steal, but dodges instead.

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

PopeUrban.2578:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

Nike.2631:

Woaden.9425:

The issue now is that Acro needs a lot of love on it’s own, it can’t stand as its own line: Pain Response is a terrible condi clear (at the very least it needs to add torment and confusion), Guarded Initiation is useless, and the GM’s are outshined by minor-adept/minor-master traits in other lines, making the entire Acro line redundant on so many levels!

((looks at Assassin’s Reward))

((looks at raids being built around continuous unavoidable damage))

I can’t say I agree.

If you need continuous healing in PvE (I say PvE because you mention raids) Invigorating Precision is a better choice, in a better traitline, than Assassin’s Reward. The only time that Acro “stands as its own line” is gimmick situations like laser disarming in Aether fractal, and even then it will be made obsolete when Daredevil is live.

If you are going power certainly. If you are going condition in a unicorn build IP is a poor choice. IP needs high crits and high damage per crit. Assassins reward the damage is immaterial.

That all said without changes assassins reward does not warrant a GM trait. It needs a significant increase in its healing per INI and with its scaling to healing attribute.

It currently 69*INI +.05 healing and should be closer to 90 healing base and .15 healing. This would put its heal more in line with IP.

not that condi builds have a good reason to run acro in the first place. they probably want DA and trickery, and SA if they go for venoms. that leaves a choice between acro and daredevil. daredevil might not have a lot to offer in volume of traits, but the few traits condi users can benefit from are great, plus it gives access to impairing daggers. meanwhile acro… meh?

Actually there is(and more was) good reason to take Acro in a condition build .

dd/acro/da works well as does dd/acro/trickery. I used acro prior to the big patch because it gave health and a lot of dodges for the D/d set. In beta I ran tests with acro and the difference between traiting trickery and acro was not a lot.

Now it true many of the additions to DD make what is acro less desired from before patch but this is also true of power builds. If ACRO fixed i can forsee condition builds using it. Just as example HTC will refill endurance when triggered which can mean three more impaling lotus. This more condition damage loaded than one can get from BA or that extra 3 ini.

With the changes to Potent Poison the DA line is a little harder to give up in a condition build but i can certainly forsee someone going for maximum endurance for those dodges and that impaling lotus so as to increase condition damage and specifically in a d/d build and especially if the line is fixed.

it’s not just bewildering ambush, it’s caltrops on dodge as well, and bountiful theft gives you solid vigor uptime on top of stealing boons (to get rid of that resistance). then you have the reduced steal cooldown, which means endurance thief can be used more often as well.

not bringing DA is just out of question unless you’re running P/D condi, because dagger training + potent poison is a huge DPS increase.

which leaves acro competing with daredevil, which just isn’t happening.

IMO, acro should be a better defensive line, themed around vigor (and making your vigor do more cool stuff, like how other professions have “gain X benefit when you gain Y boon”), keeping the thief mobile, and defensive/utility benefits through dodging (whereas daredevil is all about using dodges offensively). the line in itself is already pointing towards that, it’s just grossly undertuned (swindler’s equilibrium being restricted to sword and only recharging one second, when trickery just outright takes those seconds off the max cooldown, for example) and clunky (pain response only removes 3 of the current 5 damaging conditions, only triggers if you let yourself get hit, and can be triggered when you don’t want it to, putting it on a long 20s CD)

to note: i’d still love a thief trait that cleanses one condition on shadowstep, which would be a perfect fit for an acro trait. i know it’s ridiculously strong, so make it a GM, and put assassin’s reward back on master tier where it belongs.

In all the suggestions about buffing acro I hadn’t really considered “extra vigor benefits” (heck, I myself invented a whole line around shadowsteps just to replace acro)

However, yeah, why not? What about “vigor also grants swiftness” or “reflect ranged attacks in a 1s ICD while you have vigor” or “When you gain vigor, reduce revealed by 1 second” or “lose 2 conditions every X second while you have vigor” or “gaining vigor also breaks stuns, and skills that grant vigor can be used while stunned”

So, like, you’d have this cadence, as you’d have a line that couldn’t give 100% uptime by itself, but similar to shadow arts, was built around “attack” and “defend” phases, only in stead of being invisible you’d just be rather hard to pin down even when you weren’t dodging?

If done right it could be a massive sustain line rivaling SA, and make taking two or three sustain lines actually pay off while nosediving your damage, or just give you real build options without DD for evasive specs.

Like, DD can empower builds to be basically immune to all slows, SA makes you immune to being seen… acro would make you highly resistant to stuns?

I was thinking pain response might work as a proc on vigor trait but then got to thinking it would not really help as you might gain vigor and not have any conditions on and proc the trait.

The types of benefits gleaned from a proc on vigor have to be the types one would always want but it a good suggestion. The problem of course if there too many or the boon/benefit too good they might make it harder to gain vigor in the first place and we back where we started. I think this the reason they dropped the missile avoidance thing if one gained swiftness.

Now given the Acro line inherently grants vigor on a successful evade and given escapists absolution clears a condition on a successful evade, what is the different between a proc on vigor condition cleanse over escapists resolution?

Why would it need a 10 second ICD attached. If it had a 1 second ICD, it would only ever be as powerful as escapist’s absolution, and then only because it’s combined with FG.

Well thats the point. it becomes the exact same skill. Meaning if I trait dd acro I clear 2 conditions on every evade. if one takes Acro line one aways has FG.

It a sort of power creep that can happen in that an evade does more and mrre stuff leading to a situation where a nerf called for because “hey on an evade the thief gets vigor, clears conditions, heals, avoids damage gets swiftness gets…..” and that too much.! nerf it!

Well you’d be taking 2 rather defensive lines at that point missing out on a lot of damage. You’d basically be making a bunker thief.

Indeed but it would lead to calls for a nerf and certain skills LIKE the withdraw heal would become even more powerful. RFI would all but supplant shadowstep and so on. There an overload of benefits on one game element. (evade)

(very much the same happened with Eles and cantrips so it got to the point only cantrips ever used and they had to start nerfing cantrips)

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

PopeUrban.2578:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

Nike.2631:

Woaden.9425:

The issue now is that Acro needs a lot of love on it’s own, it can’t stand as its own line: Pain Response is a terrible condi clear (at the very least it needs to add torment and confusion), Guarded Initiation is useless, and the GM’s are outshined by minor-adept/minor-master traits in other lines, making the entire Acro line redundant on so many levels!

((looks at Assassin’s Reward))

((looks at raids being built around continuous unavoidable damage))

I can’t say I agree.

If you need continuous healing in PvE (I say PvE because you mention raids) Invigorating Precision is a better choice, in a better traitline, than Assassin’s Reward. The only time that Acro “stands as its own line” is gimmick situations like laser disarming in Aether fractal, and even then it will be made obsolete when Daredevil is live.

If you are going power certainly. If you are going condition in a unicorn build IP is a poor choice. IP needs high crits and high damage per crit. Assassins reward the damage is immaterial.

That all said without changes assassins reward does not warrant a GM trait. It needs a significant increase in its healing per INI and with its scaling to healing attribute.

It currently 69*INI +.05 healing and should be closer to 90 healing base and .15 healing. This would put its heal more in line with IP.

not that condi builds have a good reason to run acro in the first place. they probably want DA and trickery, and SA if they go for venoms. that leaves a choice between acro and daredevil. daredevil might not have a lot to offer in volume of traits, but the few traits condi users can benefit from are great, plus it gives access to impairing daggers. meanwhile acro… meh?

Actually there is(and more was) good reason to take Acro in a condition build .

dd/acro/da works well as does dd/acro/trickery. I used acro prior to the big patch because it gave health and a lot of dodges for the D/d set. In beta I ran tests with acro and the difference between traiting trickery and acro was not a lot.

Now it true many of the additions to DD make what is acro less desired from before patch but this is also true of power builds. If ACRO fixed i can forsee condition builds using it. Just as example HTC will refill endurance when triggered which can mean three more impaling lotus. This more condition damage loaded than one can get from BA or that extra 3 ini.

With the changes to Potent Poison the DA line is a little harder to give up in a condition build but i can certainly forsee someone going for maximum endurance for those dodges and that impaling lotus so as to increase condition damage and specifically in a d/d build and especially if the line is fixed.

it’s not just bewildering ambush, it’s caltrops on dodge as well, and bountiful theft gives you solid vigor uptime on top of stealing boons (to get rid of that resistance). then you have the reduced steal cooldown, which means endurance thief can be used more often as well.

not bringing DA is just out of question unless you’re running P/D condi, because dagger training + potent poison is a huge DPS increase.

which leaves acro competing with daredevil, which just isn’t happening.

IMO, acro should be a better defensive line, themed around vigor (and making your vigor do more cool stuff, like how other professions have “gain X benefit when you gain Y boon”), keeping the thief mobile, and defensive/utility benefits through dodging (whereas daredevil is all about using dodges offensively). the line in itself is already pointing towards that, it’s just grossly undertuned (swindler’s equilibrium being restricted to sword and only recharging one second, when trickery just outright takes those seconds off the max cooldown, for example) and clunky (pain response only removes 3 of the current 5 damaging conditions, only triggers if you let yourself get hit, and can be triggered when you don’t want it to, putting it on a long 20s CD)

to note: i’d still love a thief trait that cleanses one condition on shadowstep, which would be a perfect fit for an acro trait. i know it’s ridiculously strong, so make it a GM, and put assassin’s reward back on master tier where it belongs.

In all the suggestions about buffing acro I hadn’t really considered “extra vigor benefits” (heck, I myself invented a whole line around shadowsteps just to replace acro)

However, yeah, why not? What about “vigor also grants swiftness” or “reflect ranged attacks in a 1s ICD while you have vigor” or “When you gain vigor, reduce revealed by 1 second” or “lose 2 conditions every X second while you have vigor” or “gaining vigor also breaks stuns, and skills that grant vigor can be used while stunned”

So, like, you’d have this cadence, as you’d have a line that couldn’t give 100% uptime by itself, but similar to shadow arts, was built around “attack” and “defend” phases, only in stead of being invisible you’d just be rather hard to pin down even when you weren’t dodging?

If done right it could be a massive sustain line rivaling SA, and make taking two or three sustain lines actually pay off while nosediving your damage, or just give you real build options without DD for evasive specs.

Like, DD can empower builds to be basically immune to all slows, SA makes you immune to being seen… acro would make you highly resistant to stuns?

I was thinking pain response might work as a proc on vigor trait but then got to thinking it would not really help as you might gain vigor and not have any conditions on and proc the trait.

The types of benefits gleaned from a proc on vigor have to be the types one would always want but it a good suggestion. The problem of course if there too many or the boon/benefit too good they might make it harder to gain vigor in the first place and we back where we started. I think this the reason they dropped the missile avoidance thing if one gained swiftness.

Now given the Acro line inherently grants vigor on a successful evade and given escapists absolution clears a condition on a successful evade, what is the different between a proc on vigor condition cleanse over escapists resolution?

Why would it need a 10 second ICD attached. If it had a 1 second ICD, it would only ever be as powerful as escapist’s absolution, and then only because it’s combined with FG.

Well thats the point. it becomes the exact same skill. Meaning if I trait dd acro I clear 2 conditions on every evade. if one takes Acro line one aways has FG.

It a sort of power creep that can happen in that an evade does more and mrre stuff leading to a situation where a nerf called for because “hey on an evade the thief gets vigor, clears conditions, heals, avoids damage gets swiftness gets…..” and that too much.! nerf it!

Well you’d be taking 2 rather defensive lines at that point missing out on a lot of damage. You’d basically be making a bunker thief.

Indeed but it would lead to calls for a nerf and certain skills LIKE the withdraw heal would become even more powerful. RFI would all but supplant shadowstep and so on. There an overload of benefits on one game element. (evade)

Are you saying it would be bad if we could have another playstyle fulfilling another role? The thing is I don’t think it would be any more powerful than any other bunker spec because of the loss of damage. It wouldn’t even have the might stacking of the bruiser specs (i.e. cantrip D/D ele)

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

PopeUrban.2578:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

Nike.2631:

Woaden.9425:

The issue now is that Acro needs a lot of love on it’s own, it can’t stand as its own line: Pain Response is a terrible condi clear (at the very least it needs to add torment and confusion), Guarded Initiation is useless, and the GM’s are outshined by minor-adept/minor-master traits in other lines, making the entire Acro line redundant on so many levels!

((looks at Assassin’s Reward))

((looks at raids being built around continuous unavoidable damage))

I can’t say I agree.

If you need continuous healing in PvE (I say PvE because you mention raids) Invigorating Precision is a better choice, in a better traitline, than Assassin’s Reward. The only time that Acro “stands as its own line” is gimmick situations like laser disarming in Aether fractal, and even then it will be made obsolete when Daredevil is live.

If you are going power certainly. If you are going condition in a unicorn build IP is a poor choice. IP needs high crits and high damage per crit. Assassins reward the damage is immaterial.

That all said without changes assassins reward does not warrant a GM trait. It needs a significant increase in its healing per INI and with its scaling to healing attribute.

It currently 69*INI +.05 healing and should be closer to 90 healing base and .15 healing. This would put its heal more in line with IP.

not that condi builds have a good reason to run acro in the first place. they probably want DA and trickery, and SA if they go for venoms. that leaves a choice between acro and daredevil. daredevil might not have a lot to offer in volume of traits, but the few traits condi users can benefit from are great, plus it gives access to impairing daggers. meanwhile acro… meh?

Actually there is(and more was) good reason to take Acro in a condition build .

dd/acro/da works well as does dd/acro/trickery. I used acro prior to the big patch because it gave health and a lot of dodges for the D/d set. In beta I ran tests with acro and the difference between traiting trickery and acro was not a lot.

Now it true many of the additions to DD make what is acro less desired from before patch but this is also true of power builds. If ACRO fixed i can forsee condition builds using it. Just as example HTC will refill endurance when triggered which can mean three more impaling lotus. This more condition damage loaded than one can get from BA or that extra 3 ini.

With the changes to Potent Poison the DA line is a little harder to give up in a condition build but i can certainly forsee someone going for maximum endurance for those dodges and that impaling lotus so as to increase condition damage and specifically in a d/d build and especially if the line is fixed.

it’s not just bewildering ambush, it’s caltrops on dodge as well, and bountiful theft gives you solid vigor uptime on top of stealing boons (to get rid of that resistance). then you have the reduced steal cooldown, which means endurance thief can be used more often as well.

not bringing DA is just out of question unless you’re running P/D condi, because dagger training + potent poison is a huge DPS increase.

which leaves acro competing with daredevil, which just isn’t happening.

IMO, acro should be a better defensive line, themed around vigor (and making your vigor do more cool stuff, like how other professions have “gain X benefit when you gain Y boon”), keeping the thief mobile, and defensive/utility benefits through dodging (whereas daredevil is all about using dodges offensively). the line in itself is already pointing towards that, it’s just grossly undertuned (swindler’s equilibrium being restricted to sword and only recharging one second, when trickery just outright takes those seconds off the max cooldown, for example) and clunky (pain response only removes 3 of the current 5 damaging conditions, only triggers if you let yourself get hit, and can be triggered when you don’t want it to, putting it on a long 20s CD)

to note: i’d still love a thief trait that cleanses one condition on shadowstep, which would be a perfect fit for an acro trait. i know it’s ridiculously strong, so make it a GM, and put assassin’s reward back on master tier where it belongs.

In all the suggestions about buffing acro I hadn’t really considered “extra vigor benefits” (heck, I myself invented a whole line around shadowsteps just to replace acro)

However, yeah, why not? What about “vigor also grants swiftness” or “reflect ranged attacks in a 1s ICD while you have vigor” or “When you gain vigor, reduce revealed by 1 second” or “lose 2 conditions every X second while you have vigor” or “gaining vigor also breaks stuns, and skills that grant vigor can be used while stunned”

So, like, you’d have this cadence, as you’d have a line that couldn’t give 100% uptime by itself, but similar to shadow arts, was built around “attack” and “defend” phases, only in stead of being invisible you’d just be rather hard to pin down even when you weren’t dodging?

If done right it could be a massive sustain line rivaling SA, and make taking two or three sustain lines actually pay off while nosediving your damage, or just give you real build options without DD for evasive specs.

Like, DD can empower builds to be basically immune to all slows, SA makes you immune to being seen… acro would make you highly resistant to stuns?

I was thinking pain response might work as a proc on vigor trait but then got to thinking it would not really help as you might gain vigor and not have any conditions on and proc the trait.

The types of benefits gleaned from a proc on vigor have to be the types one would always want but it a good suggestion. The problem of course if there too many or the boon/benefit too good they might make it harder to gain vigor in the first place and we back where we started. I think this the reason they dropped the missile avoidance thing if one gained swiftness.

Now given the Acro line inherently grants vigor on a successful evade and given escapists absolution clears a condition on a successful evade, what is the different between a proc on vigor condition cleanse over escapists resolution?

Why would it need a 10 second ICD attached. If it had a 1 second ICD, it would only ever be as powerful as escapist’s absolution, and then only because it’s combined with FG.

Well thats the point. it becomes the exact same skill. Meaning if I trait dd acro I clear 2 conditions on every evade. if one takes Acro line one aways has FG.

It a sort of power creep that can happen in that an evade does more and mrre stuff leading to a situation where a nerf called for because “hey on an evade the thief gets vigor, clears conditions, heals, avoids damage gets swiftness gets…..” and that too much.! nerf it!

Well you’d be taking 2 rather defensive lines at that point missing out on a lot of damage. You’d basically be making a bunker thief.

Indeed but it would lead to calls for a nerf and certain skills LIKE the withdraw heal would become even more powerful. RFI would all but supplant shadowstep and so on. There an overload of benefits on one game element. (evade)

Are you saying it would be bad if we could have another playstyle fulfilling another role? The thing is I don’t think it would be any more powerful than any other bunker spec because of the loss of damage. It wouldn’t even have the might stacking of the bruiser specs (i.e. cantrip D/D ele)

i was editing as you responded. In the last patch burning fires was changed so that eles no longer gain might on using a cantrip. If you read the eles threads many were finding that cantrips provided so many benefits when traited that is all people were taking.

What happnes if we stack too much stuff into one facet of play is we limit the build variety. “On evade” is getting enough events triggered off it. I think we are better served looking for another trigger type.

As example On using a teleport skill GAIN XXXX is much more desirable then more on evade type traits in acro. We can keep the vigor and FG as is “on evade” but for those opther traits lets look at on port or on something else. (ie another might be On clearing a condtion gain XXXX)

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

PopeUrban.2578:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

Nike.2631:

Woaden.9425:

The issue now is that Acro needs a lot of love on it’s own, it can’t stand as its own line: Pain Response is a terrible condi clear (at the very least it needs to add torment and confusion), Guarded Initiation is useless, and the GM’s are outshined by minor-adept/minor-master traits in other lines, making the entire Acro line redundant on so many levels!

((looks at Assassin’s Reward))

((looks at raids being built around continuous unavoidable damage))

I can’t say I agree.

If you need continuous healing in PvE (I say PvE because you mention raids) Invigorating Precision is a better choice, in a better traitline, than Assassin’s Reward. The only time that Acro “stands as its own line” is gimmick situations like laser disarming in Aether fractal, and even then it will be made obsolete when Daredevil is live.

If you are going power certainly. If you are going condition in a unicorn build IP is a poor choice. IP needs high crits and high damage per crit. Assassins reward the damage is immaterial.

That all said without changes assassins reward does not warrant a GM trait. It needs a significant increase in its healing per INI and with its scaling to healing attribute.

It currently 69*INI +.05 healing and should be closer to 90 healing base and .15 healing. This would put its heal more in line with IP.

not that condi builds have a good reason to run acro in the first place. they probably want DA and trickery, and SA if they go for venoms. that leaves a choice between acro and daredevil. daredevil might not have a lot to offer in volume of traits, but the few traits condi users can benefit from are great, plus it gives access to impairing daggers. meanwhile acro… meh?

Actually there is(and more was) good reason to take Acro in a condition build .

dd/acro/da works well as does dd/acro/trickery. I used acro prior to the big patch because it gave health and a lot of dodges for the D/d set. In beta I ran tests with acro and the difference between traiting trickery and acro was not a lot.

Now it true many of the additions to DD make what is acro less desired from before patch but this is also true of power builds. If ACRO fixed i can forsee condition builds using it. Just as example HTC will refill endurance when triggered which can mean three more impaling lotus. This more condition damage loaded than one can get from BA or that extra 3 ini.

With the changes to Potent Poison the DA line is a little harder to give up in a condition build but i can certainly forsee someone going for maximum endurance for those dodges and that impaling lotus so as to increase condition damage and specifically in a d/d build and especially if the line is fixed.

it’s not just bewildering ambush, it’s caltrops on dodge as well, and bountiful theft gives you solid vigor uptime on top of stealing boons (to get rid of that resistance). then you have the reduced steal cooldown, which means endurance thief can be used more often as well.

not bringing DA is just out of question unless you’re running P/D condi, because dagger training + potent poison is a huge DPS increase.

which leaves acro competing with daredevil, which just isn’t happening.

IMO, acro should be a better defensive line, themed around vigor (and making your vigor do more cool stuff, like how other professions have “gain X benefit when you gain Y boon”), keeping the thief mobile, and defensive/utility benefits through dodging (whereas daredevil is all about using dodges offensively). the line in itself is already pointing towards that, it’s just grossly undertuned (swindler’s equilibrium being restricted to sword and only recharging one second, when trickery just outright takes those seconds off the max cooldown, for example) and clunky (pain response only removes 3 of the current 5 damaging conditions, only triggers if you let yourself get hit, and can be triggered when you don’t want it to, putting it on a long 20s CD)

to note: i’d still love a thief trait that cleanses one condition on shadowstep, which would be a perfect fit for an acro trait. i know it’s ridiculously strong, so make it a GM, and put assassin’s reward back on master tier where it belongs.

In all the suggestions about buffing acro I hadn’t really considered “extra vigor benefits” (heck, I myself invented a whole line around shadowsteps just to replace acro)

However, yeah, why not? What about “vigor also grants swiftness” or “reflect ranged attacks in a 1s ICD while you have vigor” or “When you gain vigor, reduce revealed by 1 second” or “lose 2 conditions every X second while you have vigor” or “gaining vigor also breaks stuns, and skills that grant vigor can be used while stunned”

So, like, you’d have this cadence, as you’d have a line that couldn’t give 100% uptime by itself, but similar to shadow arts, was built around “attack” and “defend” phases, only in stead of being invisible you’d just be rather hard to pin down even when you weren’t dodging?

If done right it could be a massive sustain line rivaling SA, and make taking two or three sustain lines actually pay off while nosediving your damage, or just give you real build options without DD for evasive specs.

Like, DD can empower builds to be basically immune to all slows, SA makes you immune to being seen… acro would make you highly resistant to stuns?

I was thinking pain response might work as a proc on vigor trait but then got to thinking it would not really help as you might gain vigor and not have any conditions on and proc the trait.

The types of benefits gleaned from a proc on vigor have to be the types one would always want but it a good suggestion. The problem of course if there too many or the boon/benefit too good they might make it harder to gain vigor in the first place and we back where we started. I think this the reason they dropped the missile avoidance thing if one gained swiftness.

Now given the Acro line inherently grants vigor on a successful evade and given escapists absolution clears a condition on a successful evade, what is the different between a proc on vigor condition cleanse over escapists resolution?

Why would it need a 10 second ICD attached. If it had a 1 second ICD, it would only ever be as powerful as escapist’s absolution, and then only because it’s combined with FG.

Well thats the point. it becomes the exact same skill. Meaning if I trait dd acro I clear 2 conditions on every evade. if one takes Acro line one aways has FG.

It a sort of power creep that can happen in that an evade does more and mrre stuff leading to a situation where a nerf called for because “hey on an evade the thief gets vigor, clears conditions, heals, avoids damage gets swiftness gets…..” and that too much.! nerf it!

Well you’d be taking 2 rather defensive lines at that point missing out on a lot of damage. You’d basically be making a bunker thief.

Indeed but it would lead to calls for a nerf and certain skills LIKE the withdraw heal would become even more powerful. RFI would all but supplant shadowstep and so on. There an overload of benefits on one game element. (evade)

Are you saying it would be bad if we could have another playstyle fulfilling another role? The thing is I don’t think it would be any more powerful than any other bunker spec because of the loss of damage. It wouldn’t even have the might stacking of the bruiser specs (i.e. cantrip D/D ele)

i was editing as you responded. In the last patch burning fires was changed so that eles no longer gain might on using a cantrip. If you read the eles threads many were finding that cantrips provided so many benefits when traited that is all people were taking.

What happnes if we stack too much stuff into one facet of play is we limit the build variety. “On evade” is getting enough events triggered off it. I think we are better served looking for another trigger type.

As example On using a teleport skill GAIN XXXX is much more desirable then more on evade type traits in acro.

The difference is we aren’t getting offense out of our defense, we are trading one for the other. We would lose key offensive multipliers and triggers like the 10% from DA, mug, and panic strike. It’s not like they nerfed the survivability of ele, they nerfed the offense while being so survivable. Stacking these skills would be like post nerf ele: very defensive, but not as overwhelming offensively. That said, I don’t think it would be anywhere near as strong because it lacks the might stacking and the majority of heals that ele has available. It would just have good resistance to condis, something that thief currently lacks right now. Also, since you mentioned giving up BT for trickster, that’s a significant loss of utility, reinforcing the idea that we are trading offense and utility to create a (potential) bunker spec.

Look at the thread in my signature though, because you used one of my other ideas as a preferable trait in your example. I think it would be nice if we could build control/bunker thieves that are meant to survive in trade for our damage.

babazhook.6805:

Now given the Acro line inherently grants vigor on a successful evade and given escapists absolution clears a condition on a successful evade, what is the different between a proc on vigor condition cleanse over escapists resolution?

that’s why i said give escapist’s absolution to acro, as “cleanse condi when vigor is applied to you”. as a trait, EA makes a lot more sense on acro than it does on daredevil anyway, and in the situation it is on DD, it’s overshadowing two other really good traits because it’s downright mandatory.

meanwhile, if acro was designed to be the evade thief’s equivalent of SA, you’d be able to mold it a lot better to do what you want, with more than a single option for a given function.

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

PopeUrban.2578:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

Nike.2631:

Woaden.9425:

The issue now is that Acro needs a lot of love on it’s own, it can’t stand as its own line: Pain Response is a terrible condi clear (at the very least it needs to add torment and confusion), Guarded Initiation is useless, and the GM’s are outshined by minor-adept/minor-master traits in other lines, making the entire Acro line redundant on so many levels!

((looks at Assassin’s Reward))

((looks at raids being built around continuous unavoidable damage))

I can’t say I agree.

If you need continuous healing in PvE (I say PvE because you mention raids) Invigorating Precision is a better choice, in a better traitline, than Assassin’s Reward. The only time that Acro “stands as its own line” is gimmick situations like laser disarming in Aether fractal, and even then it will be made obsolete when Daredevil is live.

If you are going power certainly. If you are going condition in a unicorn build IP is a poor choice. IP needs high crits and high damage per crit. Assassins reward the damage is immaterial.

That all said without changes assassins reward does not warrant a GM trait. It needs a significant increase in its healing per INI and with its scaling to healing attribute.

It currently 69*INI +.05 healing and should be closer to 90 healing base and .15 healing. This would put its heal more in line with IP.

not that condi builds have a good reason to run acro in the first place. they probably want DA and trickery, and SA if they go for venoms. that leaves a choice between acro and daredevil. daredevil might not have a lot to offer in volume of traits, but the few traits condi users can benefit from are great, plus it gives access to impairing daggers. meanwhile acro… meh?

Actually there is(and more was) good reason to take Acro in a condition build .

dd/acro/da works well as does dd/acro/trickery. I used acro prior to the big patch because it gave health and a lot of dodges for the D/d set. In beta I ran tests with acro and the difference between traiting trickery and acro was not a lot.

Now it true many of the additions to DD make what is acro less desired from before patch but this is also true of power builds. If ACRO fixed i can forsee condition builds using it. Just as example HTC will refill endurance when triggered which can mean three more impaling lotus. This more condition damage loaded than one can get from BA or that extra 3 ini.

With the changes to Potent Poison the DA line is a little harder to give up in a condition build but i can certainly forsee someone going for maximum endurance for those dodges and that impaling lotus so as to increase condition damage and specifically in a d/d build and especially if the line is fixed.

it’s not just bewildering ambush, it’s caltrops on dodge as well, and bountiful theft gives you solid vigor uptime on top of stealing boons (to get rid of that resistance). then you have the reduced steal cooldown, which means endurance thief can be used more often as well.

not bringing DA is just out of question unless you’re running P/D condi, because dagger training + potent poison is a huge DPS increase.

which leaves acro competing with daredevil, which just isn’t happening.

IMO, acro should be a better defensive line, themed around vigor (and making your vigor do more cool stuff, like how other professions have “gain X benefit when you gain Y boon”), keeping the thief mobile, and defensive/utility benefits through dodging (whereas daredevil is all about using dodges offensively). the line in itself is already pointing towards that, it’s just grossly undertuned (swindler’s equilibrium being restricted to sword and only recharging one second, when trickery just outright takes those seconds off the max cooldown, for example) and clunky (pain response only removes 3 of the current 5 damaging conditions, only triggers if you let yourself get hit, and can be triggered when you don’t want it to, putting it on a long 20s CD)

to note: i’d still love a thief trait that cleanses one condition on shadowstep, which would be a perfect fit for an acro trait. i know it’s ridiculously strong, so make it a GM, and put assassin’s reward back on master tier where it belongs.

In all the suggestions about buffing acro I hadn’t really considered “extra vigor benefits” (heck, I myself invented a whole line around shadowsteps just to replace acro)

However, yeah, why not? What about “vigor also grants swiftness” or “reflect ranged attacks in a 1s ICD while you have vigor” or “When you gain vigor, reduce revealed by 1 second” or “lose 2 conditions every X second while you have vigor” or “gaining vigor also breaks stuns, and skills that grant vigor can be used while stunned”

So, like, you’d have this cadence, as you’d have a line that couldn’t give 100% uptime by itself, but similar to shadow arts, was built around “attack” and “defend” phases, only in stead of being invisible you’d just be rather hard to pin down even when you weren’t dodging?

If done right it could be a massive sustain line rivaling SA, and make taking two or three sustain lines actually pay off while nosediving your damage, or just give you real build options without DD for evasive specs.

Like, DD can empower builds to be basically immune to all slows, SA makes you immune to being seen… acro would make you highly resistant to stuns?

I was thinking pain response might work as a proc on vigor trait but then got to thinking it would not really help as you might gain vigor and not have any conditions on and proc the trait.

The types of benefits gleaned from a proc on vigor have to be the types one would always want but it a good suggestion. The problem of course if there too many or the boon/benefit too good they might make it harder to gain vigor in the first place and we back where we started. I think this the reason they dropped the missile avoidance thing if one gained swiftness.

Now given the Acro line inherently grants vigor on a successful evade and given escapists absolution clears a condition on a successful evade, what is the different between a proc on vigor condition cleanse over escapists resolution?

Why would it need a 10 second ICD attached. If it had a 1 second ICD, it would only ever be as powerful as escapist’s absolution, and then only because it’s combined with FG.

Well thats the point. it becomes the exact same skill. Meaning if I trait dd acro I clear 2 conditions on every evade. if one takes Acro line one aways has FG.

It a sort of power creep that can happen in that an evade does more and mrre stuff leading to a situation where a nerf called for because “hey on an evade the thief gets vigor, clears conditions, heals, avoids damage gets swiftness gets…..” and that too much.! nerf it!

Well you’d be taking 2 rather defensive lines at that point missing out on a lot of damage. You’d basically be making a bunker thief.

Indeed but it would lead to calls for a nerf and certain skills LIKE the withdraw heal would become even more powerful. RFI would all but supplant shadowstep and so on. There an overload of benefits on one game element. (evade)

Are you saying it would be bad if we could have another playstyle fulfilling another role? The thing is I don’t think it would be any more powerful than any other bunker spec because of the loss of damage. It wouldn’t even have the might stacking of the bruiser specs (i.e. cantrip D/D ele)

i was editing as you responded. In the last patch burning fires was changed so that eles no longer gain might on using a cantrip. If you read the eles threads many were finding that cantrips provided so many benefits when traited that is all people were taking.

What happnes if we stack too much stuff into one facet of play is we limit the build variety. “On evade” is getting enough events triggered off it. I think we are better served looking for another trigger type.

As example On using a teleport skill GAIN XXXX is much more desirable then more on evade type traits in acro.

The difference is we aren’t getting offense out of our defense, we are trading one for the other. We would lose key offensive multipliers and triggers like the 10% from DA, mug, and panic strike. It’s not like they nerfed the survivability of ele, they nerfed the offense while being so survivable. Stacking these skills would be like post nerf ele: very defensive, but not as overwhelming offensively. That said, I don’t think it would be anywhere near as strong because it lacks the might stacking and the majority of heals that ele has available. It would just have good resistance to condis, something that thief currently lacks right now. Also, since you mentioned giving up BT for trickster, that’s a significant loss of utility, reinforcing the idea that we are trading offense and utility to create a (potential) bunker spec.

Look at the thread in my signature though, because you used one of my other ideas as a preferable trait in your example. I think it would be nice if we could build control/bunker thieves that are meant to survive in trade for our damage.

I reviewed all of those suggestions before. Look my premise is this. We have other skills and traits as theives that we should emphasize more then evade. this is for the sake of build variety. I think we are in a nice place with the ON EVADE traits as is and making vigor a trigger is just another on evade trait given we gain vigor on evade.

I really want to see other build types opened up and especially those that use ports. Lets add enhancements to an Infiltrators arrow, a long range steal port, an infiltrators signet , a shadowstrike. I do not think it wise we just load more and more benfits onto "on evade’.

I am not opposed to creating a bunker thief that can last forever while dealing little damage. I am against acoomplishing that endpoint based upon “on evade” and again the problem with “on vigor” is that vigor premised “on evade”.

now you can argue that bountiful theft gets vigor but you are not going to get an on vigor trait from acro unless you take acro which means you already get vigor when you evade

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

PopeUrban.2578:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BrunoBRS.5178:

babazhook.6805:

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

Nike.2631:

Woaden.9425:

The issue now is that Acro needs a lot of love on it’s own, it can’t stand as its own line: Pain Response is a terrible condi clear (at the very least it needs to add torment and confusion), Guarded Initiation is useless, and the GM’s are outshined by minor-adept/minor-master traits in other lines, making the entire Acro line redundant on so many levels!

((looks at Assassin’s Reward))

((looks at raids being built around continuous unavoidable damage))

I can’t say I agree.

If you need continuous healing in PvE (I say PvE because you mention raids) Invigorating Precision is a better choice, in a better traitline, than Assassin’s Reward. The only time that Acro “stands as its own line” is gimmick situations like laser disarming in Aether fractal, and even then it will be made obsolete when Daredevil is live.

If you are going power certainly. If you are going condition in a unicorn build IP is a poor choice. IP needs high crits and high damage per crit. Assassins reward the damage is immaterial.

That all said without changes assassins reward does not warrant a GM trait. It needs a significant increase in its healing per INI and with its scaling to healing attribute.

It currently 69*INI +.05 healing and should be closer to 90 healing base and .15 healing. This would put its heal more in line with IP.

not that condi builds have a good reason to run acro in the first place. they probably want DA and trickery, and SA if they go for venoms. that leaves a choice between acro and daredevil. daredevil might not have a lot to offer in volume of traits, but the few traits condi users can benefit from are great, plus it gives access to impairing daggers. meanwhile acro… meh?

Actually there is(and more was) good reason to take Acro in a condition build .

dd/acro/da works well as does dd/acro/trickery. I used acro prior to the big patch because it gave health and a lot of dodges for the D/d set. In beta I ran tests with acro and the difference between traiting trickery and acro was not a lot.

Now it true many of the additions to DD make what is acro less desired from before patch but this is also true of power builds. If ACRO fixed i can forsee condition builds using it. Just as example HTC will refill endurance when triggered which can mean three more impaling lotus. This more condition damage loaded than one can get from BA or that extra 3 ini.

With the changes to Potent Poison the DA line is a little harder to give up in a condition build but i can certainly forsee someone going for maximum endurance for those dodges and that impaling lotus so as to increase condition damage and specifically in a d/d build and especially if the line is fixed.

it’s not just bewildering ambush, it’s caltrops on dodge as well, and bountiful theft gives you solid vigor uptime on top of stealing boons (to get rid of that resistance). then you have the reduced steal cooldown, which means endurance thief can be used more often as well.

not bringing DA is just out of question unless you’re running P/D condi, because dagger training + potent poison is a huge DPS increase.

which leaves acro competing with daredevil, which just isn’t happening.

IMO, acro should be a better defensive line, themed around vigor (and making your vigor do more cool stuff, like how other professions have “gain X benefit when you gain Y boon”), keeping the thief mobile, and defensive/utility benefits through dodging (whereas daredevil is all about using dodges offensively). the line in itself is already pointing towards that, it’s just grossly undertuned (swindler’s equilibrium being restricted to sword and only recharging one second, when trickery just outright takes those seconds off the max cooldown, for example) and clunky (pain response only removes 3 of the current 5 damaging conditions, only triggers if you let yourself get hit, and can be triggered when you don’t want it to, putting it on a long 20s CD)

to note: i’d still love a thief trait that cleanses one condition on shadowstep, which would be a perfect fit for an acro trait. i know it’s ridiculously strong, so make it a GM, and put assassin’s reward back on master tier where it belongs.

In all the suggestions about buffing acro I hadn’t really considered “extra vigor benefits” (heck, I myself invented a whole line around shadowsteps just to replace acro)

However, yeah, why not? What about “vigor also grants swiftness” or “reflect ranged attacks in a 1s ICD while you have vigor” or “When you gain vigor, reduce revealed by 1 second” or “lose 2 conditions every X second while you have vigor” or “gaining vigor also breaks stuns, and skills that grant vigor can be used while stunned”

So, like, you’d have this cadence, as you’d have a line that couldn’t give 100% uptime by itself, but similar to shadow arts, was built around “attack” and “defend” phases, only in stead of being invisible you’d just be rather hard to pin down even when you weren’t dodging?

If done right it could be a massive sustain line rivaling SA, and make taking two or three sustain lines actually pay off while nosediving your damage, or just give you real build options without DD for evasive specs.

Like, DD can empower builds to be basically immune to all slows, SA makes you immune to being seen… acro would make you highly resistant to stuns?

I was thinking pain response might work as a proc on vigor trait but then got to thinking it would not really help as you might gain vigor and not have any conditions on and proc the trait.

The types of benefits gleaned from a proc on vigor have to be the types one would always want but it a good suggestion. The problem of course if there too many or the boon/benefit too good they might make it harder to gain vigor in the first place and we back where we started. I think this the reason they dropped the missile avoidance thing if one gained swiftness.

Now given the Acro line inherently grants vigor on a successful evade and given escapists absolution clears a condition on a successful evade, what is the different between a proc on vigor condition cleanse over escapists resolution?

Why would it need a 10 second ICD attached. If it had a 1 second ICD, it would only ever be as powerful as escapist’s absolution, and then only because it’s combined with FG.

Well thats the point. it becomes the exact same skill. Meaning if I trait dd acro I clear 2 conditions on every evade. if one takes Acro line one aways has FG.

It a sort of power creep that can happen in that an evade does more and mrre stuff leading to a situation where a nerf called for because “hey on an evade the thief gets vigor, clears conditions, heals, avoids damage gets swiftness gets…..” and that too much.! nerf it!

Well you’d be taking 2 rather defensive lines at that point missing out on a lot of damage. You’d basically be making a bunker thief.

Indeed but it would lead to calls for a nerf and certain skills LIKE the withdraw heal would become even more powerful. RFI would all but supplant shadowstep and so on. There an overload of benefits on one game element. (evade)

Are you saying it would be bad if we could have another playstyle fulfilling another role? The thing is I don’t think it would be any more powerful than any other bunker spec because of the loss of damage. It wouldn’t even have the might stacking of the bruiser specs (i.e. cantrip D/D ele)

i was editing as you responded. In the last patch burning fires was changed so that eles no longer gain might on using a cantrip. If you read the eles threads many were finding that cantrips provided so many benefits when traited that is all people were taking.

What happnes if we stack too much stuff into one facet of play is we limit the build variety. “On evade” is getting enough events triggered off it. I think we are better served looking for another trigger type.

As example On using a teleport skill GAIN XXXX is much more desirable then more on evade type traits in acro.

The difference is we aren’t getting offense out of our defense, we are trading one for the other. We would lose key offensive multipliers and triggers like the 10% from DA, mug, and panic strike. It’s not like they nerfed the survivability of ele, they nerfed the offense while being so survivable. Stacking these skills would be like post nerf ele: very defensive, but not as overwhelming offensively. That said, I don’t think it would be anywhere near as strong because it lacks the might stacking and the majority of heals that ele has available. It would just have good resistance to condis, something that thief currently lacks right now. Also, since you mentioned giving up BT for trickster, that’s a significant loss of utility, reinforcing the idea that we are trading offense and utility to create a (potential) bunker spec.

Look at the thread in my signature though, because you used one of my other ideas as a preferable trait in your example. I think it would be nice if we could build control/bunker thieves that are meant to survive in trade for our damage.

I reviewed all of those suggestions before. Look my premise is this. We have other skills and traits as theives that we should emphasize more then evade. this is for the sake of build variety. I think we are in a nice place with the ON EVADE traits as is and making vigor a trigger is just another on evade trait given we gain vigor on evade.

I really want to see other build types opened up and especially those that use ports. Lets add enhancements to an Infiltrators arrow, a long range steal port, an infiltrators signet , a shadowstrike. I do not think it wise we just load more and more benfits onto "on evade’.

I am not opposed to creating a bunker thief that can last forever while dealing little damage. I am against acoomplishing that endpoint based upon “on evade” and again the problem with “on vigor” is that vigor premised “on evade”.

now you can argue that bountiful theft gets vigor but you are not going to get an on vigor trait from acro unless you take acro which means you already get vigor when you evade

Well, I think we’re in general agreement about direction, just disagreement about scope and path, which is fine, just hard to reconcile.

I do believe that evading is something that requires a bit of skill. (Unless you have to much evades, but I don’t think that it is that case). Mmm I think it would be nice if Acrobatics got some kind of condition cleanse on gaining vigor, but maybe that is a bit too overpowered. Maybe replace Guarded Initiation by a trait that cleanses conditions? I think it would help having Acrobatics being picked again.

These are just examples of trigger procs we can use rather than all on evade or stealth.

Fleet shadow. On using shadowstep skill gain 3 seconds super Swiftness.

Vigorous recovery. Gain 7 seconds vigor and cleanse one condition on heal.

Guarded initiation. Add on clearing one of indicated conditions gain 2 INI.

Assassins reward add if poisoned receive 20 percent more healing from assassins reward for ten seconds or

If receiving poisoned burned or torment gain 5 stacks might for ten seconds added

Now I am not suggesting these be the ones used, I am suggesting we look at alternatives that give benefits that not all centered on stealth or evade.

A third way allows more iterations of builds.

babazhook.6805:

These are just examples of trigger procs we can use rather than all on evade or stealth.

Fleet shadow. On using shadowstep skill gain 3 seconds super Swiftness.

Ah, something that triggers off shadowstep is something I can support.

Vigorous recovery. Gain 7 seconds vigor and cleanse one condition on heal.

I like this one too.

Guarded initiation. Add on clearing one of indicated conditions gain 2 INI.

We don’t really need anymore Initiatives. I rather see improvements when we’re not using initiatives (i.e. Autoattack)

Assassins reward add if poisoned receive 20 percent more healing from assassins reward for ten seconds or

If receiving poisoned burned or torment gain 5 stacks might for ten seconds added

This effect doesn’t reflect the name of the trait.

I would rather see it as;

“Deals +1% damage depending on your endurance level” (i.e. 35% Endurance adds 35% damage)

Sir Vincent III.1286:

babazhook.6805:

These are just examples of trigger procs we can use rather than all on evade or stealth.

Fleet shadow. On using shadowstep skill gain 3 seconds super Swiftness.

Ah, something that triggers off shadowstep is something I can support.

Vigorous recovery. Gain 7 seconds vigor and cleanse one condition on heal.

I like this one too.

Guarded initiation. Add on clearing one of indicated conditions gain 2 INI.

We don’t really need anymore Initiatives. I rather see improvements when we’re not using initiatives (i.e. Autoattack)

Assassins reward add if poisoned receive 20 percent more healing from assassins reward for ten seconds or

If receiving poisoned burned or torment gain 5 stacks might for ten seconds added

This effect doesn’t reflect the name of the trait.

I would rather see it as;

“Deals +1% damage depending on your endurance level” (i.e. 35% Endurance adds 35% damage)

A hundred percent more damge is a lot of damage

babazhook.6805:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

babazhook.6805:

These are just examples of trigger procs we can use rather than all on evade or stealth.

Fleet shadow. On using shadowstep skill gain 3 seconds super Swiftness.

Ah, something that triggers off shadowstep is something I can support.

Vigorous recovery. Gain 7 seconds vigor and cleanse one condition on heal.

I like this one too.

Guarded initiation. Add on clearing one of indicated conditions gain 2 INI.

We don’t really need anymore Initiatives. I rather see improvements when we’re not using initiatives (i.e. Autoattack)

Assassins reward add if poisoned receive 20 percent more healing from assassins reward for ten seconds or

If receiving poisoned burned or torment gain 5 stacks might for ten seconds added

This effect doesn’t reflect the name of the trait.

I would rather see it as;

“Deals +1% damage depending on your endurance level” (i.e. 35% Endurance adds 35% damage)

A hundred percent more damge is a lot of damage

That’s why it’s a “reward”. Besides how often will we keep it at 100% when Bound rolls out? It’s a good trade-off situation when you can trade Bound for more damage.

Or for balance purposes, they can tweak that number so that it will only give a max of 50% damage…maybe “+0.5%” rate.

The point is, it’s better be rewarding enough, worth picking up over Don’t Stop.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

babazhook.6805:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

babazhook.6805:

These are just examples of trigger procs we can use rather than all on evade or stealth.

Fleet shadow. On using shadowstep skill gain 3 seconds super Swiftness.

Ah, something that triggers off shadowstep is something I can support.

Vigorous recovery. Gain 7 seconds vigor and cleanse one condition on heal.

I like this one too.

Guarded initiation. Add on clearing one of indicated conditions gain 2 INI.

We don’t really need anymore Initiatives. I rather see improvements when we’re not using initiatives (i.e. Autoattack)

Assassins reward add if poisoned receive 20 percent more healing from assassins reward for ten seconds or

If receiving poisoned burned or torment gain 5 stacks might for ten seconds added

This effect doesn’t reflect the name of the trait.

I would rather see it as;

“Deals +1% damage depending on your endurance level” (i.e. 35% Endurance adds 35% damage)

A hundred percent more damge is a lot of damage

That’s why it’s a “reward”. Besides how often will we keep it at 100% when Bound rolls out? It’s a good trade-off situation when you can trade Bound for more damage.

Or for balance purposes, they can tweak that number so that it will only give a max of 50% damage…maybe “+0.5%” rate.

The point is, it’s better be rewarding enough, worth picking up over Don’t Stop.

Well even 50 percent a bit high. Can you imagine the damage from a p/p unload at range with a 200+ crit damage bonus?

In any case the point made is that we can use other triggers then evade and stealth and make for varied and fun builds. Premising everything good that can happen to us on doing a successful evade becomes very much like putting all of our most reliable defense in SA. It lessens diversity of builds.

You know, now that Daredevil is shaping up to be a good “almost must have” line, with a lot going for it, it makes me happy that Acro isnt as strong as it used to be. Why? Because eventually we will have a second elite spec, hopefully Rifle-sniper based, and this will offer some interesting game play differences. Lacking Daredevil, future elite specializations will not have the amount of mobility or defensive options afforded by the DrD line, and as such, they can have their power placed in other areas.

For example, it may not be entirely unreasonable for a Sniper rifle set to have a 2,500 range, 3 second cast time shot, due to lacking the defensive and mobility options to constantly outrun other players. Maybe the Sniper line has more stealth synergy, which DD completely lacks.

It could be centered around sneaking into a good map position and +1ing people from a long distance, and make projectile reflects/destroy very important. Utility skills would be interesting to imagine though. Maybe thief’s version of turrets, to make a defensible holding position? Turrets with a heavy cc focus, giving the Sniper the ability to entrench? Thematically I’d love to see sturdy “Special Operatives” as the “turrets,” thieves from the “thief guild” with special tasks they perform regularly and on command.

6 pages so far.. and there are 3 points getting repeated over and over in many sifferent ways.. but the points are clear so far:
1- daredevil is getting better if compared to 1st BWE, but still there is a long road till it can be called a good class. The proper description right now would be a fun class(period).
2- staff is greatly underpowered if compared to any weapon set. Again, it is fun.. but that is it. You can see lots of thieves saying d/p this…. s/d that… p/p this…. d/d that… some showing builds and tips but its a common idea that staff is not very rewarding.. auto attack is not strong.. skill 3/4 could use a tweak.. there are some ideas but it is clear that ghe weapon set misses something..
3- we need a better way to clear condi… the “remove a random condi on evade” is good on theory since we have one extra dodge.. but it can be countered quite easily by just stop attacking…
Again there are some good ideas on this but right now.. the spec is extremely weak due to lack of condi clear… anywhere you go there are tons of condi being applied.. pve…pvp…wvw even more.. and with no condi clear.. it is just impossible to survive for long enough..
Come on ANET.. give thieves some love

The funny part about all that is, I’ve ran the numbers a few times, and the staff is the highest damaging weapon thieves will have. It has the highest base auto attack, the highest DPS attack, the highest per-initiative damage, the highest AoE damage, and the highest modifiers attached to traits. All at the same time.

So when players say that the staff is low damaging or underpowered and it clearly isn’t… then I have to throw out their feedback as not being objective.

babazhook.6805:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

babazhook.6805:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

babazhook.6805:

These are just examples of trigger procs we can use rather than all on evade or stealth.

Fleet shadow. On using shadowstep skill gain 3 seconds super Swiftness.

Ah, something that triggers off shadowstep is something I can support.

Vigorous recovery. Gain 7 seconds vigor and cleanse one condition on heal.

I like this one too.

Guarded initiation. Add on clearing one of indicated conditions gain 2 INI.

We don’t really need anymore Initiatives. I rather see improvements when we’re not using initiatives (i.e. Autoattack)

Assassins reward add if poisoned receive 20 percent more healing from assassins reward for ten seconds or

If receiving poisoned burned or torment gain 5 stacks might for ten seconds added

This effect doesn’t reflect the name of the trait.

I would rather see it as;

“Deals +1% damage depending on your endurance level” (i.e. 35% Endurance adds 35% damage)

A hundred percent more damge is a lot of damage

That’s why it’s a “reward”. Besides how often will we keep it at 100% when Bound rolls out? It’s a good trade-off situation when you can trade Bound for more damage.

Or for balance purposes, they can tweak that number so that it will only give a max of 50% damage…maybe “+0.5%” rate.

The point is, it’s better be rewarding enough, worth picking up over Don’t Stop.

Well even 50 percent a bit high. Can you imagine the damage from a p/p unload at range with a 200+ crit damage bonus?

I have imagined it and it’s still not as good as Ranger Longbow with the same crit damage doing AoE damage at 1500 range. We have to look at P/P relative to other professions.

In PvP, if someone can force you to use your endurance, your damage goes down, but the reward comes in when you successfully get a jump on someone.

In any case the point made is that we can use other triggers then evade and stealth and make for varied and fun builds. Premising everything good that can happen to us on doing a successful evade becomes very much like putting all of our most reliable defense in SA. It lessens diversity of builds.

It’s not like they will give us passive defenses any time soon. It seems like we’re stuck with either evade or stealth. What I want to see more of is utilizing more shadowstep mechanic or shadowform mechanic — I mean honestly, all the tools they need to expand the Thief profession is in front of them already, instead, they want to innovate and create new technology, which is a waste of time.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The funny part about all that is, I’ve ran the numbers a few times, and the staff is the highest damaging weapon thieves will have. It has the highest base auto attack, the highest DPS attack, the highest per-initiative damage, the highest AoE damage, and the highest modifiers attached to traits. All at the same time.

So when players say that the staff is low damaging or underpowered and it clearly isn’t… then I have to throw out their feedback as not being objective.

yeah, damage is not the problem with daredevil. if anything, there’s too much damage and too little of everything else. it’s getting there, though. the evade on vault really helps, though i’d really like it to have more range (if not 900 like SB5, then 800 like engi rifle 5), even if that meant losing some damage on that skill.

now it’s mostly about skills 3 and 4 being tweaked/redone. i wouldn’t mind debilitating arc throwing you further away now that vault’s range is allegedly working right, and i’d like its offensive portion to be more interesting than a cripple (*cough*daze*cough*). as for dust strike, well 90% of the daredevil’s playstyle involves jumping around and doing circular AoEs to make up for the fact that half the time you have your back against the enemy for one reason or another (bound, vault, weakening charge, etc), so it would be only natural if dust strike was also a circular AoE.

Agree with the vault range. I’d absolutely love 900 range. Pretty please Karl.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The funny part about all that is, I’ve ran the numbers a few times, and the staff is the highest damaging weapon thieves will have. It has the highest base auto attack, the highest DPS attack, the highest per-initiative damage, the highest AoE damage, and the highest modifiers attached to traits. All at the same time.

So when players say that the staff is low damaging or underpowered and it clearly isn’t… then I have to throw out their feedback as not being objective.

Numbers are bound to change for balance, and they will. Mechanism is another story.
So what will happen when those numbers get toned down ? The weapon gets forgotten.

All the other weapons have a purpose ASIDE from the dps numbers that justify their use :
gap-closer, mobility, smoke field, CC, condi-cleanse, etc…

But the staff, as it is, gets outshined (mechanic-wise) by the other alternatives.

So what the staff needs, is something that will make it unique and/or a component that will make it at least on par with another weapon.

Among the propositions that would make it a unique weapon there’s :
the dark field on #4 -> It will provide blindness without the stealth bonus. Instead, it will synergize with the whirl as a combo to provide sustain while being visible.

Among the propositions that would make it on par with another weapon :
900 range on #5, so people could choose between this and the shortbow as utility-weapon.

Tabootrinket.2631:

Among the propositions that would make it a unique weapon there’s :
the dark field on #4 -> It will provide blindness without the stealth bonus. Instead, it will synergize with the whirl as a combo to provide sustain while being visible.

what’s with people’s obsession with giving dust strike a dark field? it won’t make its primary function of blinding the opponents any better, and weakening charge is too short of a whirl to create enough bolts to make it a useful combo. seriously, has no one used whirl finishers before? their benefits are minimal, the bolts are inaccurate, and short whirls (hi death blossom) don’t produce nearly enough bolts to make up for the previous two shortcomings.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Tabootrinket.2631:

Among the propositions that would make it a unique weapon there’s :
the dark field on #4 -> It will provide blindness without the stealth bonus. Instead, it will synergize with the whirl as a combo to provide sustain while being visible.

what’s with people’s obsession with giving dust strike a dark field? it won’t make its primary function of blinding the opponents any better, and weakening charge is too short of a whirl to create enough bolts to make it a useful combo. seriously, has no one used whirl finishers before? their benefits are minimal, the bolts are inaccurate, and short whirls (hi death blossom) don’t produce nearly enough bolts to make up for the previous two shortcomings.

Because the auto-attack has a 1s whirl in it.
blind + small-heals seems like a decent way to increase the sustain. The dark field will be initiative based and not on cooldown.
The problem you’re mentioning comes with the fact that our only source of dark field is a skill with high cooldown.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Tabootrinket.2631:

Among the propositions that would make it a unique weapon there’s :
the dark field on #4 -> It will provide blindness without the stealth bonus. Instead, it will synergize with the whirl as a combo to provide sustain while being visible.

what’s with people’s obsession with giving dust strike a dark field? it won’t make its primary function of blinding the opponents any better, and weakening charge is too short of a whirl to create enough bolts to make it a useful combo. seriously, has no one used whirl finishers before? their benefits are minimal, the bolts are inaccurate, and short whirls (hi death blossom) don’t produce nearly enough bolts to make up for the previous two shortcomings.

Black Powder + Whirling Axe...
whirl finishers not beneficial?
Its all about making up synergy so it works.

Tabootrinket.2631:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The funny part about all that is, I’ve ran the numbers a few times, and the staff is the highest damaging weapon thieves will have. It has the highest base auto attack, the highest DPS attack, the highest per-initiative damage, the highest AoE damage, and the highest modifiers attached to traits. All at the same time.

So when players say that the staff is low damaging or underpowered and it clearly isn’t… then I have to throw out their feedback as not being objective.

Numbers are bound to change for balance, and they will. Mechanism is another story.
So what will happen when those numbers get toned down ? The weapon gets forgotten.

I don’t buy it. The idea that staff is inadequate because in the future the staff may be nerfed just doesn’t make sense. You’re have to remember, the staff isn’t just max deeps. It is max deeps in every category: per initiative, on auto, at base, overall, and against multiple targets. For the staff to fall out of use, it would have to see every single category hit.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Tabootrinket.2631:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The funny part about all that is, I’ve ran the numbers a few times, and the staff is the highest damaging weapon thieves will have. It has the highest base auto attack, the highest DPS attack, the highest per-initiative damage, the highest AoE damage, and the highest modifiers attached to traits. All at the same time.

So when players say that the staff is low damaging or underpowered and it clearly isn’t… then I have to throw out their feedback as not being objective.

Numbers are bound to change for balance, and they will. Mechanism is another story.
So what will happen when those numbers get toned down ? The weapon gets forgotten.

I don’t buy it. The idea that staff is inadequate because in the future the staff may be nerfed just doesn’t make sense. You’re have to remember, the staff isn’t just max deeps. It is max deeps in every category: per initiative, on auto, at base, overall, and against multiple targets. For the staff to fall out of use, it would have to see every single category hit.

Here’s the thing, a single weapon isn’t supposed to supplant every other weapons (as you suggest the staff does). And each weapon is supposed to add a different “playstyle” compared to the others.
The staff as it is, doesn’t really provide what the others don’t. And that’s the main problem.
So as it is, the numbers in the staff weapon will either make it superior or inferior to other weapons which shouldn’t be the case. You should choose the staff (as you choose other weapons) because it provides another kind of tools, not because it makes the others obsolete.

((shrug)) I wasn’t planning on running staff on my daredevil because staff’s low number of hits per action doesn’t make it a great weapon in conjunction with Assassin’s Reward.

Karl McLain.5604:

Here’s a couple other updates that had been in the works and are now in testing.

• Vault: Reduced aftercast by 80ms. Added a 500ms evade at the start of the ability.
• Distracting Daggers: Projectiles from this ability are now counted as 100% projectile finishers.
• Impairing Daggers: Projectiles from this ability are now counted as 100% projectile finishers.
• Weakening Strikes: This trait now grants 10% damage reduction when being struck by a weakened foe, in addition to weakening foes on critical hit.

Has the design team factored in the effect of retaliation when using staff. Given that the thief health pool is one of the lowest, retal will wreck thief in team fights.

Assuming a team fight, 3v3. The potential of retal damage is 6,300 over just 1 single AA chain (6 total hits from AA chain). This is compounded by 2,100 damage if we use 1 weakening charge. If its a 5v5, you could see 5,250 retal damage just from 1 WC.

Pistol Whip and Unload have the same issue.

Unless the intent is to avoid combat and backcap then everything is fine. That is one solution to the retal issue.

…along with whipping a staff around wukong-style I really want to be yelling “your martial-arts are pig-dung!” at the screen…

SUPERIOR RUNES OF THE DAREDEVIL

(1) +25 Condition Damage
(2) +10% weakness duration
(3) +50 Condition Damage
(4) 25% chance when struck to inflict weakness for 5 seconds. (Cooldown: 20 seconds)
(5) +100 Condition Damage
(6) 7% of Condition Damage is converted to Toughness.

My suggestion for enhancing Weakening Strikes would be to make the trait also grant the user 1 stack of Might when applying weakness with a CD of 3 seconds. This buffs the trait for both power and condi builds.

I do belive the Staff can carve its own niche with a few tweaks. One thing to look at is Staff mastery. While recognizing that so very many will take escapists absolution , were that trait not so needed in a given build , staff mastery does have the benefit of adding endurance when using INI.

Now the problem here is dagger/x can do this too and while understanding a person will not be doing AA from dagger in mainhand all the time, a single cycle of this will return as much endurance as will using up 5 INI doing a vault on the staff.

With that in mind the INI return on this skill might do well with a tweak upwards to where it 3 points per ini spent. This means that most INI using skills will return more endurance then the AA on a dagger\x set which I think fair given the dagger does not need INI at all to generate that endurance.

I think when all said and done a staff user should be able to generate more endurance off the DD line then would a dagger/x user.

Tabootrinket.2631:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Tabootrinket.2631:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The funny part about all that is, I’ve ran the numbers a few times, and the staff is the highest damaging weapon thieves will have. It has the highest base auto attack, the highest DPS attack, the highest per-initiative damage, the highest AoE damage, and the highest modifiers attached to traits. All at the same time.

So when players say that the staff is low damaging or underpowered and it clearly isn’t… then I have to throw out their feedback as not being objective.

Numbers are bound to change for balance, and they will. Mechanism is another story.
So what will happen when those numbers get toned down ? The weapon gets forgotten.

I don’t buy it. The idea that staff is inadequate because in the future the staff may be nerfed just doesn’t make sense. You’re have to remember, the staff isn’t just max deeps. It is max deeps in every category: per initiative, on auto, at base, overall, and against multiple targets. For the staff to fall out of use, it would have to see every single category hit.

Here’s the thing, a single weapon isn’t supposed to supplant every other weapons (as you suggest the staff does). And each weapon is supposed to add a different “playstyle” compared to the others.
The staff as it is, doesn’t really provide what the others don’t. And that’s the main problem.
So as it is, the numbers in the staff weapon will either make it superior or inferior to other weapons which shouldn’t be the case. You should choose the staff (as you choose other weapons) because it provides another kind of tools, not because it makes the others obsolete.

The staff provides large AoE damage, a feature that isn’t present on any other thief weapon. Also massive weapon stacking and the ability to innately cure immobility.

Well, S/P should provide large AoE damage, so that’s not unique to staff. They both have blind, evade, AoE, and CC on stealth attack. Staff also has weakness and immob break though, while S/P has interrupts.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Tabootrinket.2631:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Tabootrinket.2631:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The funny part about all that is, I’ve ran the numbers a few times, and the staff is the highest damaging weapon thieves will have. It has the highest base auto attack, the highest DPS attack, the highest per-initiative damage, the highest AoE damage, and the highest modifiers attached to traits. All at the same time.

So when players say that the staff is low damaging or underpowered and it clearly isn’t… then I have to throw out their feedback as not being objective.

Numbers are bound to change for balance, and they will. Mechanism is another story.
So what will happen when those numbers get toned down ? The weapon gets forgotten.

I don’t buy it. The idea that staff is inadequate because in the future the staff may be nerfed just doesn’t make sense. You’re have to remember, the staff isn’t just max deeps. It is max deeps in every category: per initiative, on auto, at base, overall, and against multiple targets. For the staff to fall out of use, it would have to see every single category hit.

Here’s the thing, a single weapon isn’t supposed to supplant every other weapons (as you suggest the staff does). And each weapon is supposed to add a different “playstyle” compared to the others.
The staff as it is, doesn’t really provide what the others don’t. And that’s the main problem.
So as it is, the numbers in the staff weapon will either make it superior or inferior to other weapons which shouldn’t be the case. You should choose the staff (as you choose other weapons) because it provides another kind of tools, not because it makes the others obsolete.

The staff provides large AoE damage, a feature that isn’t present on any other thief weapon. Also massive weapon stacking and the ability to innately cure immobility.

AoE damage exists on shortbow. Sword permits to cure conditions. With shortbows we can also port away… we don’t really lack tools to cure immobility.
The difference between staff and other weapons isn’t significant (except again for numbers).
Adding something like a dark field would truely give the staff a unique tool that isn’t existing on other weapons in another form. It’s in my opinion, the last bit missing to complete it as a tool to sustain damage while remaining visible.

I still fail to see how significant Dark Field could make anything better…yeah something is better than nothing but the whirl bolts arent accurate even if somethings on top of you, and even aoe or single target blindness still would suck. Smoke field would be better if it lasted shorter.

hell even a Smoke screen with shorter duration but same effect would be nice if it shoots away from you….would make more sense than 3 impacts that are seperated from each other like revanant’s Echoing Eruption

I think that Staff need skills to reflect missiles or an skill or utilitie to evade while hiting an enemy. Staff should have one skill focused on this, or make the 4 staff create a smoke screen during 1s or 2s can be a good idea. Consider it because staff thief is so vulnerable now.

Nike.2631:

…along with whipping a staff around wukong-style I really want to be yelling “your martial-arts are pig-dung!” at the screen…

SUPERIOR RUNES OF THE DAREDEVIL

(1) +25 Condition Damage
(2) +10% weakness duration
(3) +50 Condition Damage
(4) 25% chance when struck to inflict weakness for 5 seconds. (Cooldown: 20 seconds)
(5) +100 Condition Damage
(6) 7% of Condition Damage is converted to Toughness.

I dunno if condition damage would be good for a daredevil rune. I mean, the “official” daredevil weapon is staff, right? Wouldn’t +power be more fitting?

That said I really would want the set as you have it with condition damage, just dunno if calling it daredevil runes would seem right.

PopeUrban.2578:

Nike.2631:

…along with whipping a staff around wukong-style I really want to be yelling “your martial-arts are pig-dung!” at the screen…

SUPERIOR RUNES OF THE DAREDEVIL

(1) +25 Condition Damage
(2) +10% weakness duration
(3) +50 Condition Damage
(4) 25% chance when struck to inflict weakness for 5 seconds. (Cooldown: 20 seconds)
(5) +100 Condition Damage
(6) 7% of Condition Damage is converted to Toughness.

I dunno if condition damage would be good for a daredevil rune. I mean, the “official” daredevil weapon is staff, right? Wouldn’t +power be more fitting?

That said I really would want the set as you have it with condition damage, just dunno if calling it daredevil runes would seem right.

No, that’s good feedback. I’m probably biased by my preference for using Thief as the platform for condi-bunkers. With staff being more of a power weapon you’re probably on the right track.

Nike.2631:

…along with whipping a staff around wukong-style I really want to be yelling “your martial-arts are pig-dung!” at the screen…

SUPERIOR RUNES OF THE DAREDEVIL

(1) +25 Condition Damage
(2) +10% weakness duration
(3) +50 Condition Damage
(4) 25% chance when struck to inflict weakness for 5 seconds. (Cooldown: 20 seconds)
(5) +100 Condition Damage
(6) 7% of Condition Damage is converted to Toughness.

SUPERIOR RUNES OF THE MEDI-GUARD is more fitting. :P

Okay. Since a lot of thieves, myself included, think that DrD could use some better endurance regen traits, I have a suggestion that I think would reconcile the problem of DrD and Acro being too powerful in conjunction with each other if that happened.

Take Feline Grace and just roll it into Enforcer Training. Yes. I know. That means we basically got acrobatics as our elite spec, but honestly, the other minor and major traits synergize much better with what acrobatics should have been. So let’s just strip the 1 trait people used to take acro for, use it to round out Daredevil in a balanced way, and retheme Acro around mobility instead.

Unhindered combatant is already a better version of Don’t Stop and Expeditious Dodger. The lines just have too much overlap for the decent skills and DrD is more cohesive as a whole.

So as much as I don’t like it, I think thief would benefit overall by moving FG and just replacing acro as a whole.

Haven’t seen any update in about a week. I sincerely hope Staff is getting some nice changes, especially to 2, 3, and 4.

I’ve already voiced what I’d love to see on page 2, and I’m hoping it was at least considered. I don’t want the set to provide any fields, but at the same time I don’t want it to suck so bad compared to the current sets that in the long run, it turns out to be another P/P wreckage.