Guild Wars 2

Someone told me this, so I was wondering how true it was thank you.

If you use staff, AA is better DPS than Bound or Vault, since quickness doesn’t affect things with evade frames. If you know all three hots will land, staff 2 is a slight boost over pure AA, though.

If you use D/D power, CnD/Backstab is still your standard rotation. D/D condi varies a bit based on your condi duration. I need to test it more.

In all cases, pure AA is good DPS. However, there is usually a better option.

Most of the time you’ll be using AA, CC and mobility skills.

I find it hard to believe all these classes just use aa in raiding I mean seriously? That just doesnt make sense.

nah, thief still uses Bound for max dps. need to keep your damage mods up

and yeah it’s kinda dumb, but thief doesn’t use initiative to do more dps, except with Unload

Ryou.2398:

I find it hard to believe all these classes just use aa in raiding I mean seriously? That just doesnt make sense.

I’ve only seen a couple of raid bosses, but they seem to be more about the mechanics. You don’t typically stand in place for extended periods teeing off on the boss. For instance, whenever vale guardian spawns his blue teleport rings, I’m forced to evade. So I dodge backward, then immediately vault back into melee range. I also use vault frequently to leap over seekers and stay on the boss in the later phases.

It’s true you aren’t going to get much use out of staff 2, 3, and 4 in raids, though (although your utilities, heal, and elite skill come in plenty handy). But you have to keep in mind that thief doesn’t have cooldowns. They tend to spam attacks because they can. It’s how initiative works.

The problem is that all our weapon skills are spammable.
So whichever of these skills deals the highest damage we can just use over and over.
At the same time we used to complain that damage on initiative-heavy skills is bad for pvp, since we need the ini as a defensive ressource to stay alive at all.
So what they did is put the damage on AA and all other skills are either defensive or utility (or useless)
Its basically the easiest solution to a highly coplicated problem.

Yes and no.

As others have stated, you will use other skills for things like breakbars, or closing the gap. However, you will auto attack a lot. Bound dodge auto attack & fist flurry is the safest rotation atm. It does put out good dps.

If you want to put out higher numbers the rotation becomes a bit more complex, adding in two weakening charges into your attack rotation between dodges is an increase in damage. However, a lot of the time it’s hard to do because you also have to react to mechanics in the fight and it requires a lot of positioning knowledge to do this.

Here is an example of the advanced rotation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiw27PHvl5Y.

Ryou.2398:

I find it hard to believe all these classes just use aa in raiding I mean seriously? That just doesnt make sense.

Hammer Guardian is the same thing, we’re not alone in this.

Ryou.2398:

I find it hard to believe all these classes just use aa in raiding I mean seriously? That just doesnt make sense.

To explain in more detail since you didn’t seem to pick it up the first time..

On its own, Vault does more damage than auto-attacks do. The reason thieves auto-attack on raids is because raids typically have Chronomancers on hand who are maintaining 100% uptime Quickness. Quickness does not affect Vault, because Vault has an evade built in, and if Quickness affected it (as it used to affect similar skills) the evade duration would be reduced by 50% due to the faster animation. Thus, due to the constant Quickness uptime, you’re left in a situation where auto-attacks do more damage, as Quickness affects them.

Nocta.5274:

Ryou.2398:

I find it hard to believe all these classes just use aa in raiding I mean seriously? That just doesnt make sense.

Hammer Guardian is the same thing, we’re not alone in this.

Rev pretty much does this as well. With some recent changes it’s you throw in Precision Strike too but before that, only AA. Now, mostly AA.

So I’ve tested dps on golem several times, and every time I do, I get the most dps using the rotation of bound, vault, and auto attack chain X 2. I’ve done this with and without raid buffs (including quickness), and with and without 25 stacks vulnerability. I found, from least to greatest dps:

1. Staff AA
2. Staff AA with bound
3. Staff AA with bound and weakening charge (meta rotation)
4. Staff AA with bound and vault

Maybe some others can test this rotation to confirm.

Ryou.2398:

I find it hard to believe all these classes just use aa in raiding I mean seriously? That just doesnt make sense.

several people(a team) work hard every day in the office at ANet to reach perfect balance and make the game more fun through ability and skill modifications. I highly appriciate theyr efforts but you know…..