Great seeing that we’re finally getting new traits, although of all things Critical Strikes was the one trait line that didn’t need a new GM. New Adept and Masters ones more-so. I wish they showed a different example.
| Fort Aspenwood (NA): Sylvari Daredevil Thief Main: All Classes 80. | Please Remove/Fix Thief Trait: “Last Refuge.” “Hard to Catch” is a Horrible and Useless Trait. Fixed 6/23/15. Praise Dwayna.
The new trait looks solid, even if I probably won’t take it in a lot of situations (+20% vs <50% hp foes is so good). I think this will be a handy trait to swap to for tough fights in PvE if nothing else.
Actually i think its a terrible trait, 5% and only on critical hits, this mean a medium aa crit of 1500 will heal you for 75, and a bs of 5k will heal for 250 now you put this low hp sustain against a +20% damage under 50% hp wich is probably the best singe trait the thief even have?
Also you need to use a direct damage build in order to get some decent heal, wich means you wont survive in fights long enough to even use it properly, and if someone even try to use that thing in pve he deserve to be kicked out of the group.
Actually i think its a terrible trait, 5% and only on critical hits, this mean a medium aa crit of 1500 will heal you for 75, and a bs of 5k will heal for 250 now you put this low hp sustain against a +20% damage under 50% hp which is probably the best singe trait the thief even have?
While I agree with how the +20% damage to foes below 50% hp is probably one of the best traits if not the best trait, the grandmaster would have some purpose, at least with glass builds who have trouble surviving currently. I know I’ve been hitting players for 4kish with auto attacks (crits of course) recently which would be a 200hp heal, which is no small amount especially with the speed of the auto attacks. It comes down to if they add an ICD on the heal. You could see people coupling it with signet of malice and cluster bomb/daggerstorm in group engagements for some sustain within larger fights. If there is no ICD and you’re cluster bombing you could potentially get 800-1000 heal per clusterbomb (assuming around 5k crits with cluster bomb on around 5 people).
I disagree about making it a life steal. A lifesteal would be a bit op imo, since it’d basically be putting 5% more damage on our crits overall while healing us, so basically a 10% hp swing extra in a fight per a crit. I would at least see how well the trait works before making any changes like that.
Its definitely not a useless trait, however it would have been nice to see it in a different traitline. Critical Strikes is already a strong trait line which pretty much every thief takes anyways. You put this in Deadly Arts instead you’d maybe start to see some more trait distributions (though it’d be tough to explain why you’d adding a critical dependent trait in DA).
It will be interesting to see if any extreme cheese builds comes out of this, because I can almost guarantee you will see some. Even a cheese SB/SB evade thief could use this for even more annoyance.
People call me Hobo.
Violent Tendency [vT]
Ferguson’s Crossing Roamer
An interesting trait but considering Assassin’s Reward and Signet of Malice work in a similar fashion I don’t think it will do well in place of Hidden Killer or Executioner.
It might make way for some interesting cheese-builds, maybe using Pistol/Pistol or Shortbow. But it’s going to be a very niche ability.
Its a great trait competing against two build defining traits, not a bad effort but i doubt it will get a whole lot of use. Might be fun to see what kind of sustain we can put up with it + signet of malic + assassins reward. It does give me hope that maybe the other traits will be fun and well balanced though, personally i would’ve liked to see what they have in store for deadly arts and acrobatics, two lines with very lackluster grandmaster traits.
In my opinion, 5% is too low for a GM trait especially when it’s gated behind the probability of landing a critical hit.
Keep in mind that they are going to be changing Crit Damage also that will affect the effectiveness and appeal of this new trait.
As it stands, not enough reason to add points into CS.
http://sirvincentiii.com ~ In the beginning…there was Tarnished Coast…
Full set of 5 unique skills for both dual-wield weapon sets: P/P and D/D – Make it happen
PvE – DD/CS/AC – If that didn’t work, roll a Reaper or Revenant.
The one they mentioned for thieves seems meh, but I like the direction they’re going especially considering that this is only 8/40 of the new skills. There’s probably 1 new one per line per class. Hopefully a non-SA one is a condi removal.
Great seeing that we’re finally getting new traits, although of all things Critical Strikes was the one trait line that didn’t need a new GM. New Adept and Masters ones more-so. I wish they showed a different example.
All trait lines get one new GW trait so why shouldn’t Critical Strikes get one too?
In my opinion, 5% is too low for a GM trait especially when it’s gated behind the probability of landing a critical hit.
Keep in mind that they are going to be changing Crit Damage also that will affect the effectiveness and appeal of this new trait.
As it stands, not enough reason to add points into CS.
I’ve been using 30 in CS since I started, I don’t see any better option (for power play obviously)
Plus. April Fools.
I pulled out of CS line long time ago and put all points in to Trickery.
I prefer the control play that Trickery gives than the power play that CS gives.
The only reason I took CS is for the Executioner trait, but through practice, having an extra 3 initiatives plus the cooldown reduction of Steal ended up dealing more damage that Executioner. Executioner does nothing at the first 50% health of your target and most profession has a trigger effect when below the 50% health threshold that further negates the bonus you get from Executioner (i.e. Valorous Defense, Earth’s Embrace).
http://sirvincentiii.com ~ In the beginning…there was Tarnished Coast…
Full set of 5 unique skills for both dual-wield weapon sets: P/P and D/D – Make it happen
PvE – DD/CS/AC – If that didn’t work, roll a Reaper or Revenant.
Let’s pretend that between base HP and various healing, it takes 30,000 points of damage to drop your target. That means you could potentially heal a maximum of 1500 health, if every single one of your attacks were crits. At 70% crit (Full GC with SoA, Lyssa, and Accuracy), you’ll see an average healing of closer to ~1100. 1100 health for a glass cannon for a grand master trait. That would be underpowered even if the trait wasn’t competing with Hidden Killer (which can define a build) and Executioner (Thief’s best damage trait for GC’s). Considering it is competing with those traits, I can’t imagine this trait being worth slotting.
PW vs AI builds (since you’re not getting 3 targets with brains to sit in a full PW) and SB detonate spamming make the numbers work a bit more favorable, but it still compares extremely poorly to executioner. A GM trait that reads “Works well with Detonate spam” isn’t very attractive.
If you’re a thief and haven’t
pre-ordered HOT at this point,
save yourself the money and don’t bother.
Without going into actual numbers, on paper, it seems that the shortbow would benefit from this the most I’d think, to give it more sustain
Hardly a 5% heal on crit hits can give you that sustain you’re looking for. If this heals on both regular hits and crit hits, it won’t be too bad.
http://sirvincentiii.com ~ In the beginning…there was Tarnished Coast…
Full set of 5 unique skills for both dual-wield weapon sets: P/P and D/D – Make it happen
PvE – DD/CS/AC – If that didn’t work, roll a Reaper or Revenant.
Great seeing that we’re finally getting new traits, although of all things Critical Strikes was the one trait line that didn’t need a new GM. New Adept and Masters ones more-so. I wish they showed a different example.
All trait lines get one new GW trait so why shouldn’t Critical Strikes get one too?
I didn’t say it shouldn’t I just think they should of used a different trait line for the Thief example. Most Thieves use 30 CS as it has the best GM traits of the entire class; I woulda preferred seeing something that finally made the other lines more interesting.
| Fort Aspenwood (NA): Sylvari Daredevil Thief Main: All Classes 80. | Please Remove/Fix Thief Trait: “Last Refuge.” “Hard to Catch” is a Horrible and Useless Trait. Fixed 6/23/15. Praise Dwayna.
Yes because obviously Thieves who put 30 points into CS are looking for… sustain…
All this is going to accomplish is make the 10/30/30 Thieves so much more annoying to play against. Leading to more Thief QQ, and more completely unjustified nerfs down the line.
I’m expecting better from the other Traits lines but I know I shouldn’t…
What they need to be doing is reduce Thief’s reliance on Executioner by increasing Thief base damage by 10% across the board and reducing Executioner bonus by 10%, and compensating with some peripheral effect to keep it worthwhile as a Grandmaster.
Yes because obviously Thieves who put 30 points into CS are looking for… sustain…
All this is going to accomplish is make the 10/30/30 Thieves so much more annoying to play against. Leading to more Thief QQ, and more completely unjustified nerfs down the line.
I’m expecting better from the other Traits lines but I know I shouldn’t…
The nerf was already announced even before they revealed this new trait (see future Crit Damage changes).
http://sirvincentiii.com ~ In the beginning…there was Tarnished Coast…
Full set of 5 unique skills for both dual-wield weapon sets: P/P and D/D – Make it happen
PvE – DD/CS/AC – If that didn’t work, roll a Reaper or Revenant.
Let’s pretend that between base HP and various healing, it takes 30,000 points of damage to drop your target. That means you could potentially heal a maximum of 1500 health, if every single one of your attacks were crits. At 70% crit (Full GC with SoA, Lyssa, and Accuracy), you’ll see an average healing of closer to ~1100. 1100 health for a glass cannon for a grand master trait. That would be underpowered even if the trait wasn’t competing with Hidden Killer (which can define a build) and Executioner (Thief’s best damage trait for GC’s). Considering it is competing with those traits, I can’t imagine this trait being worth slotting.
PW vs AI builds (since you’re not getting 3 targets with brains to sit in a full PW) and SB detonate spamming make the numbers work a bit more favorable, but it still compares extremely poorly to executioner. A GM trait that reads “Works well with Detonate spam” isn’t very attractive.
Yeah this is an incredibly poor attempt at giving thieves some sustain out of stealth. 5% is just so low considering you give up executioner, which even if you had it would still provide poor healing at only 5%. I mean assuming you crit a 10k backstab you’re only healing for 500hp, which is ~1.36 seconds of healing signet. Even if you built a build around this with all the healing traits, sigils, runes, etc it’s not going to compare to the survivability of stealth. I’m sure some ultra-annoying troll builds will come out this that focus on stealth and healing but for normal play I just don’t see this trait doing anything.
Let’s pretend that between base HP and various healing, it takes 30,000 points of damage to drop your target. That means you could potentially heal a maximum of 1500 health, if every single one of your attacks were crits. At 70% crit (Full GC with SoA, Lyssa, and Accuracy), you’ll see an average healing of closer to ~1100. 1100 health for a glass cannon for a grand master trait. That would be underpowered even if the trait wasn’t competing with Hidden Killer (which can define a build) and Executioner (Thief’s best damage trait for GC’s). Considering it is competing with those traits, I can’t imagine this trait being worth slotting.
PW vs AI builds (since you’re not getting 3 targets with brains to sit in a full PW) and SB detonate spamming make the numbers work a bit more favorable, but it still compares extremely poorly to executioner. A GM trait that reads “Works well with Detonate spam” isn’t very attractive.
Yeah this is an incredibly poor attempt at giving thieves some sustain out of stealth. 5% is just so low considering you give up executioner, which even if you had it would still provide poor healing at only 5%. I mean assuming you crit a 10k backstab you’re only healing for 500hp, which is ~1.36 seconds of healing signet. Even if you built a build around this with all the healing traits, sigils, runes, etc it’s not going to compare to the survivability of stealth. I’m sure some ultra-annoying troll builds will come out this that focus on stealth and healing but for normal play I just don’t see this trait doing anything.
What I don’t understand is how this made it through QA. I learned about these new traits literally 20 minutes before I posted. It took 1 minute to do the math to figure out how bad this trait is, independent of the fact that it competes with Hidden Killer and Executioner.
Even with 0 knowledge of the CS line, it took 1 minute to point out just how bad this trait is. When you take into account the other GM options in CS, it downright insulting. Why does it exist? Why are the developers pretending like it’s something useful? Don’t kitten on my leg and tell me it’s raining.
If you’re a thief and haven’t
pre-ordered HOT at this point,
save yourself the money and don’t bother.
What I don’t understand is how this made it through QA.
I’d imagine in the same way the initiative passive buffs + active nerfs made it past QA. At least they didn’t have the nerves to come out and tell us this one is a “MASSIVE BUFF”.
why in the critical strike line? both GM traits there are used in builds, hidden killer in D/D and executioner in like every other build, cant they take some crappy GM to replace it with? or will we get a 3rd GM in critical strikes?
I’m not arguing!
I’m simply explaining why I’m right.
why in the critical strike line? both GM traits there are used in builds, hidden killer in D/D and executioner in like every other build, cant they take some crappy GM to replace it with? or will we get a 3rd GM in critical strikes?
Check the blog out, every trait line for every class will get one new gm trait, nothing is being removed
It may be there to supplement other healing utilities/traits/gear. It also depends if there’s a CD on the trait as well.
Healing Signet, Assassin’s Reward, Omnomberry Pie, Mug, Regen from various sources, and lifesteal from runes/sigils all adds up.
HS: 114 per attack
Assassin’s Reward: 69+ (not sure about the actual amount, going by wiki) per init spent
Omnomberry Pie: 325 (1 second CD)
Regen: 125+ per second roughly.
Sigil of blood: Base heal of 453 (2sec CD)
Shadow’s rejuvenation: ~353ish
You “could” add Rune of Vampirism for additional sources of Lifesteal, but there are better runesets. That would be 975 heal (5% chance when hit and 100% chance using a heal skill)
Granted, you may not be able to fit all those in, and have a viable build, but I bet that’s what they looked at when designing the trait itself. They didn’t want thieves to have so much access to healing.
I just hope i Never accidentally take this trait and forget to swap it out before combat Starts. Maybe the other 4 gm traits are less crappy. Deadly arts and acro Maybe interesting (They have no real competitors there)
The new thief gradmaster is likely even worse than the Elementalist “heal other 5% better but gain nothing yourself” trait. And the reaction to that has been toxic enough to warrant a dev response already…
Especially given that the new grandmaster is in the critical strikes line (that has the most important, damaging and build defining grandmaster traits) I very much doubt anyone will use it.
From what i read it seems you’re all scared that its only CS that’s getting the GM trait?
With 40 new GM traits being released and 8 profession its already safe to say that each profession is going to get 1 new GM trait in all 5 trait lines.
Which means 1 new for Deadly Arts which is the one im really keeping my fingers crossed for that is more worth while and actually “Deadly”, I want to see Impale back.
You guys need to get good at switching targets to a little critter mid fight. LOL
5% of one of those 500,000 crits to a rabbit would be a nice little heal =P
You guys need to get good at switching targets to a little critter mid fight. LOL
5% of one of those 500,000 crits to a rabbit would be a nice little heal =P
Oh my god, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this.
You guys need to get good at switching targets to a little critter mid fight. LOL
5% of one of those 500,000 crits to a rabbit would be a nice little heal =P
Yeah. When I first read the trait, I was pretty excited about potentially getting some good healing out of it. It’s a shame that on closer inspection, it just doesn’t really stack up. +20% extra damage to any target before 50% health is just way too good for a sporadic small heal. Might be useful for big AOE stuff. Maybe for WvW zerg fights?
Seems like it might be a bit more balanced if it was put up to 10% of crit damage.
I think it may have some use, but it will probably just add the troll factor with SA d/p wvw builds that 1 spam a lot between backstabs. You would have to to think of it as sustain added on to rejev, pie lifestealing, and possibly even malice if you use those.
And yes, the possibility of full healing off ambient creatures is troubling.
Yeah. When I first read the trait, I was pretty excited about potentially getting some good healing out of it. It’s a shame that on closer inspection, it just doesn’t really stack up. +20% extra damage to any target before 50% health is just way too good for a sporadic small heal. Might be useful for big AOE stuff. Maybe for WvW zerg fights?
Seems like it might be a bit more balanced if it was put up to 10% of crit damage.
I don’t even see it being good in zerg fights because 900 range is a killer. Even if you stealthed into the enemy zerg the damage you take is going to far outweigh the small heals. In my mind any situation where it could be useful you’re either not taking damage so heals aren’t needed or your taking too much damage and the heals are useless.
Well, let’s compare those two traits :
20% more damage on a target under 50% HP. On average, it counts as a plain +10% damage on all hits more or less. This causes the HP differential between you and your target to increase 10% faster then.
5% damage becomes healing. This trait causes the HP differential between you and your target to increase 5% faster.
Except, it’s only on crits XD So even if you get 5% damage as health for every single attack, I’d still value it as twice as bad as Executioner. Let’s not even mention the fact that you typically attack tanky targets and they take very little damage from you while you get hurt a lot since you built glass canon (who doesn’t with CS trait line maxed ?)
Yeah. When I first read the trait, I was pretty excited about potentially getting some good healing out of it. It’s a shame that on closer inspection, it just doesn’t really stack up. +20% extra damage to any target before 50% health is just way too good for a sporadic small heal. Might be useful for big AOE stuff. Maybe for WvW zerg fights?
Seems like it might be a bit more balanced if it was put up to 10% of crit damage.
I don’t even see it being good in zerg fights because 900 range is a killer. Even if you stealthed into the enemy zerg the damage you take is going to far outweigh the small heals. In my mind any situation where it could be useful you’re either not taking damage so heals aren’t needed or your taking too much damage and the heals are useless.
Yeah. 900 does limit it’s usefulness. I keep hoping they’ll give thieves a 1200 range weapon, or a trait to change Shortbow to 1200.
I could see it stacking decently with Assassin’s Reward if you were intent on making some kind of bunker thief, but I have a feeling that most people who roll a thief have a damage-dealing mindset (I certainly do). If you’re going 30 deep into Critical you are getting Executioner.
The real benefit of this trait is that people who select executioner have a method of switching to sustain for hard fights where survival is going to be more important than damage. I could even see myself using this during a boss fight until the boss starts getting to half, disengage, switch to executioner, and then coming back in. Maybe that’s more micro-management than most people would want to bother with, but it’s an option at least.
For WvW, there will be more qq for builds like X/30/30/X/X. Healing in stealth and healing outside of stealth. GG
It’s a grandmaster trait. You either choose shadows rejuvenation or the new one. Can’t have both.
Invigorating Percision is in the Critical Strikes, Shadow Rejuvenation is in Shadow Arts. It is entirely possible to have both of them using x/30/30/x/x
The new trait is just bad. CS has 2 powerful grandmaster traits. Nearly every single thief build uses one of them. And the new trait?
Just assume you deal 25k dmg to an enemy, to bring it down. And you have a crit chance of 60%. So 15k dmg is crit dmg, and so you have a healing of 750 hp.
The problem is, without Executioner, your target may live just a second longer. And in this second, he can deal you more than 750 dmg. Or the heal is ready or something like that.
Even in a p/p build, i dont think i would touch this.
Would have prefer this trait in another line instead of Critical Strikes. It doesn’t hold a candle to Executioner or even Hidden Killer – not even for “glass builds.” It feels very much like it was intended for casuals and not as a meta-changer.
