This thing is ridiculously overpowered from a mechanics standpoint.
I remember the nightmarish days of S/D thieves going through entire matches with perma-dodge and never getting hit while demolishing fights. I was so happy when feline grace and that troll build died.
Now they are coming back with a vengeance to bring Ragnarok to this game. This will usher in a new generation of troll players abusing the mechanics of this class. 1v1s will be completely dominated by zerker DDs with instakill combos that don’t even require a stomp.
I regret preordering.
I agree that there are a few strong ways to replenish your endurance with this spec, but I don’t think it will come close to being as bad as the old Feline Grace.
Three dodges only means you have one more dodge when entering combat, and one more dodge if you wait 50% longer than normal characters to regenerate it all. In a normal combat situation you probably won’t see yourself fill up that third dodge bar without a serious endurance regen spam build because as soon as you get a bar, you’ll likely use it. BY ITSELF the third dodge isn’t too troublesome. Spammy endurance regen is what we should worry about.
Speaking of endurance regen, the endurance traits aren’t too bad if you really take a look at them. They’ll definitely make for a dodge heavy build, but I don’t think they’ll bring about the apocalypse. One dodge on steal? Ok. If you’ve traited fully for steal recharge reduction that’s like one dodge around every 20 seconds. That doesn’t sound too menacing. The physical skill trait gives you 10 endurance, and one dodge sets you back 50. In order to give yourself one dodge back you’d have take all physical skills and use em all back to back. Your endurance recharges in the background so it’s probably closer to you having to use 4 and a 1/3 physical skills. I don’t think that this trait will enable permevade by itself, but it’s pretty good. The staff trait only works with that one weapon, so quick pockets won’t work with it. The trait gives you 2 endurance per initiative spent which means the most expensive skill on the staff – Vault – will give you a fifth of a dodge, and you don’t want to be spamming that since you’re vulnerable while in the air. It’s a strong trait, and with builds focusing on insane initiative regen it will be very strong, but I don’t think it can be any weaker without sucking. If they made the endurance regen only proc when you actually hit something with the the skill it would be perfectly fine IMO.
So yeah, this line will definitely give you a ton of ways to get very dodge spammy, but it’s not gonna be as easy as it was with Feline Grace. Besides, for all the work that would go in to making a full evade build they’d only succeed at kittening people off. That is these builds aren’t too efficient at killing people, just being immortal if played to perfection. If they tone down the damage/condi/boon duration of the enhanced dodges it shouldn’t be as infuriating if someone were to achieve this. Maybe add a lockout to these enhanced dodges for a few seconds if you take yourself to 0 endurance.
The real problem is with sigils and runes that restore endurance, but luckily those have some ICDs. Stamina in PvE is pretty funny with a glassy build. At some point, with all of the right settings you’d likely be overcapping your ability to regen endurance! Increase the ICDs of the runes and sigils and it wouldn’t be so bad. I dunno. It seems like a lot to go for just to troll people. I don’t ever see a perma dodge build becoming meta. A frequa dodge Daredevil build? Maybe.
Hope this at least alleviated some of your fears XD
. That said I have been weighing Acro against trickery for some time in MY own build and think acro will edge out trickery. The reason for this Is I am going to switch up to SOM as the heal and will lose an Immob break from withdraw. Don’t stop is a beautiful trait. Low cooldown and has saved me so many times. I just prefer to minimize the immobs and stuns that can be thrown my way and the intent is to have 2 immob breaks (rfi the other) along with the three stun breaks.