Guild Wars 2

When evaluating these two skills I was always convinced Furious Retaliation was superior in most scenarios, especially when solo roaming.

After all it provides Fury, which is a 20% increase in Critical-Strike chance, it works from all directions and doesn’t overlap with Hidden Killer. In fact is has quite a positive synergy in that it only triggers when you’d typically start using Heartseeker over Backstab, which is exactly when you’d want Fury.

However there are also downsides.

• It only lasts for 10 seconds and I’ not sure what the internal cooldown is.
• It can overlap with other sources of Fury, which might not happen much when solo-roaming but does occasionally in team-fights.
• It can trigger unintentionally at times when you accidentally target a pet or a Phantasm or simply another target that you’re not currently pursuing.

• Side Strike on the other hand has negative synergy with Hidden Killer as they partially overlap.
• It also doesn’t work on frontal attacks, which happen quite often when fighting Warriors with D/P.
• But then again it doesn’t have any of the downsides mentioned above.

So what is your take on Furious Retaliation vs. Side Strike?

The ICD on Furious Retal is 30 seconds. Fury stacks duration, so overlap isn’t a big deal in my opinion. Easier to make a build around Fury access than it is to decide what the impact of Side Strike is.

Another consideration is people who spec Acrobatics or itemize for boon duration: I get 13s from Furious Retaliation for example, not 10s.

Interceptor.2653:

The ICD on Furious Retal is 30 seconds. Fury stacks duration, so overlap isn’t a big deal in my opinion. Easier to make a build around Fury access than it is to decide what the impact of Side Strike is.

Another consideration is people who spec Acrobatics or itemize for boon duration: I get 13s from Furious Retaliation for example, not 10s.

and if you take 10 points into trickery for thrill of the crime you can get some really respectable up-time on fury even with no outside sources of it.

The only problem I have for side strikes is you’re not always guaranteed to be behind the target all the time. In PvP/WvW Furious Retaliation is just the better way to go.

I’ve always chosen side strike over furious retaliation. Why? Because furious retaliation isn’t 100% up time (not even 50%), it can be stripped, you can get cc’ed while wasting precious fury duration, and its the same investment as side strike. Side strike is for side and back, and even though it is 13% less than fury, it still is on ALL the time and you’d be surprised how often a thief can sneak up on someone’s back.

Also FR only applies to 1 target you get below 50%, so you can have multiple people to fight and it only helps you 1/x of the time. Side strike can’t be removed either.