Guild Wars 2

These are some changes I thought would suit the Critical Strikes core specialization line and I think some people will like it, especially those who enjoy pistols! I have all the traits shown, but the ones with changes I have (Changes) in brackets in the first column. Let me know what you think! Oh and you will have to go to the wiki to see what the traits were like before (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_Strikes).

I moved Ankle Shots and Practiced Tolerance to the Adept tier and removed Flawless Strike so AS and PT don’t compete with Ricochet or Sundering Strikes respectively in the Master tier. I gave Ankle Shots a little 5% damage boost because I know a lot of us thought that 10% was not sufficient and moved pistol’s range increase bump to Ricochet.

I moved Signets of Power to the Master tier and added the effect that its passive effects are applied to nearby allies for 5 seconds when activated to add some flavour and give it a little boost since it is in a higher tier. Infiltrator’s Signet will have to have some magic done with it, as that won’t transfer well, maybe some cooldown reductions similar to Alacrity.

I added Ricochet back! ’Nuff said. Plus I used the trait photo from Invigorating Precision cause that was supposed to be Ricochet (clearly).

This pretty much destroys the entire valkyrie signets concept, and stealth attacks aren’t counted as occurring while revealed, BTW, so HK also becomes nerfed into oblivion.

The intent was good to bring back riccochet, but these changes pretty much kill any possible D/D or signet build attempt.

DeceiverX.8361:

This pretty much destroys the entire valkyrie signets concept, and stealth attacks aren’t counted as occurring while revealed, BTW, so HK also becomes nerfed into oblivion.

The intent was good to bring back riccochet, but these changes pretty much kill any possible D/D or signet build attempt.

I wasn’t trying to avoid changing existing builds, my goal was to squeeze Ricochet back in while cleaning up the Master tier so there are more “better” choices, because currently there is not a huge incentive to choose anything other than Practiced Tolerance.

Whether my idea for Hidden Killer is good or not depends on the person. I agree it would be better to be left the same for people using dagger mainhand and valkryie stats. However, is the current HK better than my idea for any other mainhand weapon? I would venture to say it is not. Sword’s meaty attacks are it’s dual wield skills, not Tactical Strike so that crit chance while revealed would be more useful. Sneak Attack (pistol stealth attack) only benefits from the first strike out of stealth, making HK useless for mainhand pistol users. For the sake of that trait being useful for a more varied amount of builds, I changed it. Sacrificing one build for the good of many others is a worthy trade-off.

Also, I do not quite understand what you mean by Signet builds being destroyed. Is that because of HK or moving Signets of Power to the Master tier? I think it is better suited there in a Master slot, unless Practiced Tolerance is 100% necessary for that build you had in mind (which I don’t think it is).

It’s a rather hypocritical double standard, though. You’re belittling dagger mainhand’s options to provide better support to sword or pistol mainhand which already have strong options in CS through No Quarter and IP. If anything, NQ and IP would still remain better options due to the increased damage NQ has from the ferocity bonus/permanent fury and the lack of dependency on critting its stealth attack, and IP’s much better sustain from sword cleaves and Pistol’s rapid attack capabilities.

You sacrificed more than just one build. You sacrificed an entire mainhand weapon and its two secondary options altogether for negligible gains at best, while completely and utterly removing any kind of viability of one of those particular subsets. You’re “creating” just as many if not fewer builds than you’re removing, and the way these builds play is near-identical to what they currently are whereas the ones your sacrificing have no substitute. You’re also deadlocking gear choices for the subsets of the builds you’re removing even more so than they already are, even further reducing available diversity.

If you’re playing signets, you’re playing for maximum damage. Period. PT will yield similar damage to the might gain from signets based upon the setup you’re creating, thus again destroying the purpose of signets since one could just run PT and free up three utility slots with strictly better utilities. So yes, this fundamentally destroys signet builds by design and makes the entire set of utility skills completely pointless aside from IS because it’s a low-cooldown stunbreak/shadowstep that’s already used on non-signet builds.

These changes genuinely do more harm than good and would offend a lot more thieves than you think P/P thieves trying for 100% crit rate unloads from stealth utilities would appreciate, especially considering NQ still yields better damage and then isn’t dependent on wasting utility skills. P/D power is a joke and wouldn’t gain anything from this trait, and condi builds wouldn’t be in CS to begin with.

id drop critical strikes for acro if they had restored feline grace like it used to be
i use sword MH and even with the changes above i would choose old feline grace over critical strikes.. so its not that amazing for other weapons..

it just happends to be that thief is no so squeezed into D/P or D/D build not saying the rest are kittenty builds now but with Dagger MH u have the major advantage over any other MH weap

Ok that clears it up a bit, I didn’t know what you meant from your first post at all. I can move Practiced Tolerance to the Adept tier and then move Sundering Strikes back up to the Master tier to clear up that issue, because those two should be separate as they are both flat damage boosters. I was going for increased usage when I made that HK change, but I see now that those niche builds that use HK would be totally eliminated just for a playstyle that would very similar to people who chose No Quarter, not to mention there would be less damage. Thanks for the input ^^