Guild Wars 2

My thread broken?

Daecollo.9578:

Because you have 12-15 Initiative, and your using flanking strike twice that is 8 initiative, then you use another attack and have 1 or 0 left, how exactly, pray tell, do you kill the target now? he has abilities that are not on cool-down, and if hes another thief, he has 12-15 initiative at his disposal ready to strike at you.

Dancing Dagger does little damage, might as well not use it, it costs too much initiative and most classes can remove a condition every 10 seconds for free.

Infiltrator’s Strike is VERY nice, but if your enemy is 901 meters away, you will do absolutely nothing and waste 3 initiative.

You “need” initiative to kill someone.

If you used FS twice and failed to remove the key boons, than you failed.
The main source of damage of a S/D thief, like or not, is the autoattack.
Who said that an autoattack should deal less damage compared to other skills? Many autoattacks in this game deal more damage that any other skill in the same bar. Just look at Necro’s dagger, Warrior’s axe, hammer and greatsword, Ranger’s sword, shortbow, longbow and greatsword and so on…
In many cases, autoattack is a source of damage, it isn’t something you use while all your skills are unavailable.

Flanking Strike is an utility, which also deals a bit more damage than autoattack, but its main scope isn’t empty life bars. So is Dancing Dagger. The nerf to its damage was a clear message; it is meant to be an utility, not a damage output skill.

If the enemy is 901 meters away, you closed the gap for 900 meters, so you are 1 meter away from your target. Pretty good, don’t you think?
You have on your bar 2 skills who are capable to close a gap or snare your enemy, plus the utilities and the other weapon set you have, most likely a ranged set (shortbow maybe?). So, a running target shouldn’t be a problem at all.

sorrow.2364:

Daecollo.9578:

Because you have 12-15 Initiative, and your using flanking strike twice that is 8 initiative, then you use another attack and have 1 or 0 left, how exactly, pray tell, do you kill the target now? he has abilities that are not on cool-down, and if hes another thief, he has 12-15 initiative at his disposal ready to strike at you.

Dancing Dagger does little damage, might as well not use it, it costs too much initiative and most classes can remove a condition every 10 seconds for free.

Infiltrator’s Strike is VERY nice, but if your enemy is 901 meters away, you will do absolutely nothing and waste 3 initiative.

You “need” initiative to kill someone.

If you used FS twice and failed to remove the key boons, than you failed.
The main source of damage of a S/D thief, like or not, is the autoattack.
Who said that an autoattack should deal less damage compared to other skills? Many autoattacks in this game deal more damage that any other skill in the same bar. Just look at Necro’s dagger, Warrior’s axe, hammer and greatsword, Ranger’s sword, shortbow, longbow and greatsword and so on…
In many cases, autoattack is a source of damage, it isn’t something you use while all your skills are unavailable.

Flanking Strike is an utility, which also deals a bit more damage than autoattack, but its main scope isn’t empty life bars. So is Dancing Dagger. The nerf to its damage was a clear message; it is meant to be an utility, not a damage output skill.

If the enemy is 901 meters away, you closed the gap for 900 meters, so you are 1 meter away from your target. Pretty good, don’t you think?
You have on your bar 2 skills who are capable to close a gap or snare your enemy, plus the utilities and the other weapon set you have, most likely a ranged set (shortbow maybe?). So, a running target shouldn’t be a problem at all.

Dual skills are not meant to be utility skills.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dual_wield_skill

Deadly Arts
Combined Training – Dual skills deal 5% more damage.

Critical Strikes
Combo Critical Chance – Dual skills have a +5% chance to critical hit.

4/5 are the utility skills.

Theres no point to use these traits for flanking strike because it does such low damage, Dual Skills ARE damage skills, otherwise they would not have traits dedicated to making them do more damage!

Since this seems to be not the case for most of them besides Death Blossom, I think these traits need a big change.

Daecollo.9578:

Dual skills are not meant to be utility skills.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dual_wield_skill

Deadly Arts
Combined Training – Dual skills deal 5% more damage.

Critical Strikes
Combo Critical Chance – Dual skills have a +5% chance to critical hit.

4/5 are the utility skills.

Theres no point to use these traits for flanking strike because it does such low damage, Dual Skills ARE damage skills, otherwise they would not have traits dedicated to making them do more damage!

Since this seems to be not the case for most of them besides Death Blossom, I think these traits need a big change.

Don’t generalize.
It was pretty obvious that Flanking Strike isn’t a damage skill.
Unload, on the other hand, is a damage skill. So is Pistol Whip in some aspects.
The fact that there are triats like those, doesn’t mean that all dual skills are meant to be damage skills. It doesn’t mean also that those traits are meant to synergize well with all dual skills.

sorrow.2364:

Daecollo.9578:

Dual skills are not meant to be utility skills.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dual_wield_skill

Deadly Arts
Combined Training – Dual skills deal 5% more damage.

Critical Strikes
Combo Critical Chance – Dual skills have a +5% chance to critical hit.

4/5 are the utility skills.

Theres no point to use these traits for flanking strike because it does such low damage, Dual Skills ARE damage skills, otherwise they would not have traits dedicated to making them do more damage!

Since this seems to be not the case for most of them besides Death Blossom, I think these traits need a big change.

Don’t generalize.
It was pretty obvious that Flanking Strike isn’t a damage skill.
Unload, on the other hand, is a damage skill. So is Pistol Whip in some aspects.
The fact that there are triats like those, doesn’t mean that all dual skills are meant to be damage skills. It doesn’t mean also that those traits are meant to synergize well with all dual skills.

Dual Skills are meant to be damage skills, if they were not, WHY is there traits dedicated to giving them more damage, that doesn’t make sense to a utility skill, and your counter-acting what you said before about the skill doing good damage, now its a utility skill?

Why do we have traits to increase the damage by a mere 5% and critical chance by a mere 5% to one attack if the damage is not significant?

Daecollo.9578:

Dual Skills are meant to be damage skills, if they were not, WHY is there traits dedicated to giving them more damage, that doesn’t make sense to a utility skill, and your counter-acting what you said before about the skill doing good damage, now its a utility skill?

Why do we have traits to increase the damage by a mere 5% and critical chance by a mere 5% to one attack if the damage is not significant?

Because those traits are not minor. You are not forced to pick those traits, you pick them only if they are worth using in your build. This doesn’t mean that a trait should be always useful to your specific build.

sorrow.2364:

Daecollo.9578:

Dual Skills are meant to be damage skills, if they were not, WHY is there traits dedicated to giving them more damage, that doesn’t make sense to a utility skill, and your counter-acting what you said before about the skill doing good damage, now its a utility skill?

Why do we have traits to increase the damage by a mere 5% and critical chance by a mere 5% to one attack if the damage is not significant?

Because those traits are not minor. You are not forced to pick those traits, you pick them only if they are worth using in your build. This doesn’t mean that a trait should be always useful to your specific build.

Then, tell me why they are there then, nobody is forced to pick any trait, but I am saying these are traits (master ones at that.) dedicated to make these skills stronger and do more damage, if the traits are not doing much damage, then why have traits designed to make them do more damage?!

Master (X) Combined Training Dual skills deal 5% more damage.
This is the final master trait of the power tree, the FINAL master trait, and it is DEDICATED to making Flanking Strike (a dual skill), a low damage utility skill, do 5% more damage.

Master (IX) Combo Critical Chance Dual skills have a +5% chance to critical hit.
This is the second to final master trait of the precision tree, and it is DEDICATED to making Flanking Strike (a dual skill), a low damage utility skill, have 5% more chance to critical.

These are MASTERY traits, they should be in line to similar traits, I will use warrior as an example, since the developers themselves said they would be using warrior as an example for all classes since its the most balanced.

Master Slashing Power Greatsword and spear damage is increased by 10%.
(power tree.)

Master Forceful Greatsword Gain might on critical hit with a greatsword or spear. Greatsword and spear skill [sic] recharge 20% faster.
(precision tree.)

Obviously this is not balanced, dual skills are not balanced around being a utility skill, they are meant to be high damage skills.

Dual skills are a wide concept.
Two traits aren’t a proof that all dual skills are meant to deal high damage. That’s not logic.
It’s like saying that because warriors have a trait which doubles the Physical utility skills damage, Physical skills are meant to deal damage, so all Physical skills should be reworked to deal high damage. This logic is heavily flawed.

sorrow.2364:

Dual skills are a wide concept.
Two traits aren’t a proof that all dual skills are meant to deal high damage. That’s not logic.
It’s like saying that because warriors have a trait which doubles the Physical utility skills damage, Physical skills are meant to deal damage, so all Physical skills should be reworked to deal high damage. This logic is heavily flawed.

Forceful Greatsword and Slashing Power make the Warrior’s Greatsword “Utility Skills” do significant damage, and all there other attacks as well.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Whirlwind_Attack Utility Skill – Gap Closer, Whirl Finisher.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bladetrail Utility Skill – Range Cripple.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rush Utility Skill – Gap Closer.

With the two traits above, these skills now do significant damage, way more so then auto-attack does. (I play an 80 Warrior as well as an 80 Thief.)

Physical Skills are Utility skills are well, each of them stuns/cripples/knocks down, all of those in my mind are utility skills, the trait merely turns them into doing significant damage as well as bringing utility.

So by your own words! Flanking Strike, AS proof by your own post, does not deal enough damage.

It’s because it isn’t its main purpose!

I give up. You’re right. I hope that developers will listen to you and implements the change you proposed, so I can faceroll people while running my favourite weapon set.

IMHO, Flanking Strikes’ primary issue is it’s pointlessly long animation.
If it were changed to a shadowstep that dealt it’s damage in two hits that happen simultaneously I’d bet that it’s effectiveness would effectively double.

Something like,
“You shadowstep behind your target, striking with both weapons. The first attack removes 1 boon.”

I’d doubt that even if they removed the evade window that most S/D Thieves would really care as that build seems more oriented to Daze locking anyway. The supplimentary damage would just be what the weapon combination would need imo.

I think Flanking Strike needs to be our I win button (unblock-able, striping all boons from target and giving them to thief, healing for 20k, and hitting 40k dmg an 2600 toughness target). Yes sounds about right.

Now being serious, all Flanking Strike needs is improved target tracking and maybe 0.25 – 0.5s animation time reduction. 0.25s should be perfect.

whirl? NO too OP… Shadowstep? yes
What needs to happen is that the first dagger strike needs to be a low damage boon stripper that’s hard to hit. Make it have a cast time like shadowstrike.

IF you hit with the first strike the 2nd strike is a high damage attack that will hit if you hit with the first attack.

…. if it had a built in shadowstep.. what would be the point of infiltrator’s strike?

Daecollo.9578:

…. if it had a built in shadowstep.. what would be the point of infiltrator’s strike?

^^This.

I would like just to add that making hard hitting skill that is impossible to avoid collides with skillful game concept. For example CnD+steal+bckstab combo.

Daecollo.9578:

…. if it had a built in shadowstep.. what would be the point of infiltrator’s strike?

A shadowstep “animation” to replace the exaggerated evade animation.
It would still be melee ranged (130), just using more class fluff instead of useless acrobatics.

Half the time between the first and second hit.
BAM, flanking strike is now awesome.