Guild Wars 2

There was a time, however brief, in which Fist Flurry + Palm Strike was a viable and powerful technique in the PVE world. However, those days have passed.

After way too long of a time, a realization came to me. The increase in damage from auto attacks on the thief meant that there was in increase in damage from haste. And also, by comparison, the advantage of Fist Flurry + Palm strike had gone down as well. So much so, that fist flurry is basically reduced to a highly conditional 2 second stun. Let me demonstrate:

Standing in the mists on my Daredevil, with absolutely nothing equipped but my skibbies, and no sort of anything that would modify any of my skills, I get the following damage values for the auto attacks of these respective weapons. Note, that these are base values, and as such are modified by effective power.

Staff Auto: (293 + 293 + 688) / 2.14 = 595 DPS
Dagger Auto: (284 + 302 + 391) / 1.68 = 582 DPS + 3.57 poison TPS
Sword Auto: (284 + 284 + 462) / 1.88 = 548 DPS

It doesn’t matter which one is highest right now. Just keep these numbers in mind. Now, lets look at the two “DPS” skills in question: Haste and Fist Flurry + Palm Strike.

What haste does is, for 6 seconds, grants you quickness. This means that you’ll do 1.5x AA damage for 6 seconds. Since the listed values up there are damage per second, this means that Haste will add the additional amount of damage:

Staff: 1,785
Dagger: 1,746 + 10.71 bleeds
Sword: 1,644

And since it will do this every 60 seconds, you can consider this a DPS boost applied every 60 seconds. So, taking how much damage it does and dividing the time between doing it we can get the additional DPS that haste does:

Staff: 29.75
Dagger: 29.1 + 0.18 poison
Sword: 27.4

Keep in mind these are base values, and scale directly with effective power. If you have an effective power of 10k, then these will be 10x higher.

Now, as for our dear, dear Fist Flurry. This is the value that we have now:

Fist Flurry 995
Palm Strike 465
Pulmonary Impact: 872 (365)*

*This is where things get complicated, since Pulmonary Impact cannot crit, it cannot scale with effective power. However, I have a workaround. Standing in full berserker gear at a level 80 zone, while under the effects of fury I have a scaled crit damage of 268.7 (including traits), and a critical chance of 82.3%. No food or outside buffs. Using a very simple formula, this gives me a crit mod of 2.388. Now, you’re probably wondering why I’ve done this. Well, the logic works like this: since Pulmonary impact can’t crit, it is effectively doing damage equal to base damage / crit mod, since all other attacks have the crit mod. Since I get a resting crit mod of 2.388, this means that the scaled damage for Pulmonary Impact will be 365.

With that all out of the way, the total activation time as measured by a stop watch about twenty times or so is 2.5 seconds. This means the skills inflict about 730 DPS.

“But wait!” You say, failing to realize time and again that you should wait for my entire explanation before sounding off like a doofus, “That looks plenty high. What’s the problem, BRA dawg?”. Well, consider that if you weren’t doing Fist flurry, you were probably doing an auto attack. And this means that really, you are only doing an additional damage of

Staff: 135
Dagger: 148 – 3.57 poison
Sword: 182

And since you did this once every 22.5 seconds, then this comes to a total additional DPS of

Staff 6
Dagger: 6.6 – 0.16 bleed
Sword: 8.1

Yep. That’s it. If you have an average DPS of 595 with staff auto attacks, throwing in an extra fist flurry + palm strike nets you a DPS of 601. That’s all it gives you.

“But wait!” you say, forgetting your place again you insolent little… anyway. Yes, you are probably saying that it fulfills the niche of being a “stun” whereas haste just adds damage. Well, that’s where other techniques come in.

Ignoring our high stunning elites, if we were to compete our utilities on a slot for slot basis, there are already utilities that can do what palm strike does, but better.

#1: Haste. If you’re going for damage, haste adds more in any situation in which you do not have guaranteed permanent quickness. Which, I’m sorry to say against those “elitists” who insist that every party has a quickness spamming Mesmer, is not going to happen, because combat is complicated and quickness falls. A lot.

#2: Bandit’s Defense. This is an extremely useful skill. First, it is a block. Second, it is a stun break. Third, if you do block an attack, Reflexive strike is a 2 second knockdown which does just as much breakbar damage as Palm Strike. This skill fills many niches in a build.

#3: Impairing Daggers. The still only has 398 DPS, so over the course of 25 seconds you will lose about 8 points – 0.96 poison ticks off of your DPS. But, it has three advantages. First is that it does 50% more breakbar damage than the other skills. Second, as a combo finisher it comes with other effects. Third is that it is a ranged skill. And as a ranged skill, it is capable of being used while disengaging or chasing an enemy, which are periods where you would normally not be doing any DPS at all, which compensates for the loss that it would provide.

Keep in mind, to come to the defense of Fist Flurry, several things need to happen.

A) Be engaged in melee at all times. No disengaging or chasing.
B) Permanent Quickness
C) Enemy has permanent immobilize and slow
D) Fighting against only a single enemy, as Fist Flurry does not cleave
E) Be requiring no additional utility to the degree where a 1% gain in DPS is preferable to every other utility the Thief has.

And that just plain isn’t going to happen.

“But what” shush. I know you’re talking to talk about crit rates. And again, this is something I’ve worked out. The additional damage that pulmonary impact inflicts becomes more valuable as the crit mod decreases. But, at what point will it become equal to something like haste? There’s a simple formula for that:

0.5 × 6 x AA damage x Crit Mod / 60 = ((584 – AA damage) x Crit Mod + 874 / 2.5) /22.5

Sole for crit mod. First, with Staff auto

29.75 Crit Mod = -0.49 Crit Mod + 15.54
Crit Mod = 0.518

Since the lowest critical damage modifier is 1.02, it is impossible for one to match the damage of another.

With all that, Fist Flurry has found itself out of a job. While the boost to auto damage for thieves was definitely a good update, this has had the unfortunate effect that skills that used to be used for damage before now find themselves not being used at all. Chief among those is Fist Flurry, but also Impact Strike (380 DPS, assuming 3.5 second activation time).

So with this, I will say two things.

#1: Many skills need buffs to their damage to make them worthwhile again. In particular, Impact Strike, Pistol Whip, Fist Flurry/Palm Strike, Flanking Strike/Larcenous Strike, and maybe even Pistol Whip need a buff. If skills do not receive a buff to DPS, then they need to receive a buff to utility of some kind (I.E. Fist flurry causing a 2 second daze).
#2: Until then, I will have to bury Fist Flurry until the day that the devs shine on it.

So, one last uppercut, for memories. I will miss this very fun and thematic skill very much.

My questions would be:

1. Did you time until PI went off adding the additional second to the attack time over the 1.5 listed?

2. Did you add the damage possible from AA during PI execution to the FF/PS/PI overall damage?

3. Why are your numbers so much lower than wiki-PI = 1940?

4. Did you account for the 5 attacks in 1 second proc’ing some sigils? Because no AA hits 5 times/sec.

1. The timings for the attacks are as follows:

Fist Flurry 1.5 seconds
Palm Strike: 1 second
Pulmonary Impact: 2 seconds after palm strike.

As for the whole damage, no I did not include the delay time for pulmory impact in the overall damage time. This is because Pulmonary impact doesn’t eat up any additional animation time when it is ticking away, allowing for consecutive action. Effectively, PI is a power based condition.

2. Because of this, the entire damage of the Fist Flurry + Palm Strike + Pulmonary Impact trio is wholly contained in the 2.5 second animation time that the two skills have. Auto attacking during the time Pulmonary takes to activate doesn’t actually add damage to the fist flurry combo, moreso than it just means that Palm Strike’s full damages has a delayed effect. It is far easier to compress all the damage done by the combo into its animation, rather than complicating it with throwing in additional attacks that will just return the same result anyway.

3. The inaccuracy of the wiki has been troubling as of late. A lot of the information is info that was acquired from tooltips during the beta release, and as such doesn’t reflect a true “base value”. Rather, the wiki shows the stats of these skills while in Knights Gear.

4. Sigil procs are meaningless to the skill. Most sigils have a cooldown of at least 1 second, many are much longer, and the sigils would’ve gone off with the cleaving auto attacks of the melee weapons anyway. You’re not going to get a statistically significant higher proc density from fist Flurry, and even if you did, the slow attack speed of palm strike would’ve immediately counterbalanced any advantage gained.

Fist flurry is 1 second cast, palm strike is 1/2 second… The whole animation takes 1.5 seconds, not 2.5.

Lesson of the day: the tooltips for the activation times for skills in this game are lies. All of them.

The total animation time includes 3 components, only one of which is actually listed.

#1: The activation time
#2: The animation time
#3: The aftercast delay

Put these together, and you get the total animation time. For this particular post, I sat down with a stop watch and timed First Flurry + Palm strike again and again, 20+ times. And each time, the total animation time came back as 2.5 seconds (average. Sometimes it was 2.42 sometimes it was 2.61, etc).

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Lesson of the day: the tooltips for the activation times for skills in this game are lies. All of them.

The total animation time includes 3 components, only one of which is actually listed.

#1: The activation time
#2: The animation time
#3: The aftercast delay

Put these together, and you get the total animation time. For this particular post, I sat down with a stop watch and timed First Flurry + Palm strike again and again, 20+ times. And each time, the total animation time came back as 2.5 seconds (average. Sometimes it was 2.42 sometimes it was 2.61, etc).

https://youtu.be/Lme-42fmOa8

The slight aftercast of the palm strike isn’t relevant to how much damage it does. The total time for full damage is ~3.55 seconds, without the pulm proc the full damage takes ~1.55 sec. There’s a very slight delay if you want to use skills immediately after palm strike, but it’s not very relevant.

Edit: after watching the footage I found a peculiar bug where pulm proc didn’t do damage. Anet??

That aftercast time is actually quite substantial. It is nearly equal in length to the animation going inward for the palm strike. You stopped your clock when palm strike did damage, but this isn’t the entire time of the animation. You should’ve stopped the clock after you gained the ability to begin a second attack, which is about the time the incinerators appear in your hands again.

You also started your clock not when you pressed the key, but when the animation after pressing the key begins. This delay exists and adds more time for the skill to take effect. Your video is easily off by 0.75 seconds because of this, and when I take a stop watch to your video I’m getting 2.4 seconds from button press to weapon retraction, easily.

EDIT: Just tried another experiment. Instead, I did a stopwatch time for the entire proper animation at 1/4ths speed. I’m getting times of 9.2 seconds. Divide it by four, and you get around 2.3 seconds animation time.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

That aftercast time is actually quite substantial. It is nearly equal in length to the animation going inward for the palm strike. You stopped your clock when palm strike did damage, but this isn’t the entire time of the animation. You should’ve stopped the clock after you gained the ability to begin a second attack, which is about the time the incinerators appear in your hands again.

You also started your clock not when you pressed the key, but when the animation after pressing the key begins. This delay exists and adds more time for the skill to take effect. Your video is easily off by 0.75 seconds because of this, and when I take a stop watch to your video I’m getting 2.4 seconds from button press to weapon retraction, easily.

EDIT: Just tried another experiment. Instead, I did a stopwatch time for the entire proper animation at 1/4ths speed. I’m getting times of 9.2 seconds. Divide it by four, and you get around 2.3 seconds animation time.

Actually, I wasn’t trying to weapon stow immediately after. I did it well after I could have done more attacks. The actual aftercast of palm strike is less than 1/2 a second if I’m guessing, but I’d have to test it to be sure. I’m pretty sure it’s less than CnD length, which is 1/2 second.

Also, I don’t know whether you’re using a stopwatch by hand or not, which throws off time.

The innate skill delay in the game is irrelevant. It’s not the actual animation time of it. Button press to animation start =/= the animation time. Animation start to animation finish is animation time. By that logic, every animation in the game is literally different because of everyone’s different ping, which is not the case. Animation time does not have to do with the button press to animation start delay.

Technically, the innate skill delay isn’t just the lag. It is the setting time for which the skill will take place. It is extremely short (1/10th of a second, at most), but it is present for every skill that doesn’t automatically chain into another. With thieves, sometimes the setting will bug out, and it’ll take half a second before a skill activates. It isn’t lag, because additional inputs can still be read and processed in this time, like changing direction.

Likewise, when we’re talking about a time period of a few seconds, 1/2 of a second is a pretty big deal. It is the difference between the whole combo taking 1.6 seconds and 2.1 seconds. This time is important, because you can’t animation cancel into the next skill: you have to wait for this animation to finish before you can perform another attack, and thus this aftercast is as much a part of the animation.

Thankfully, Palm strike has a pretty big indicator of when you can begin an attack again. The animation doesn’t use the weapon, so the weapon will vanish for the entirety of the skill, and when the animation finishes the weapon will magically appear into your hands again (though technically it is slightly longer, since the withdrawing portion has the weapon displayed for slightly longer than you can actually use it).

The stopwatch I’m using is here. It is a simple watch: I just keep my mouse key on the start/stop button, then press it as soon as I see the display animation on the skill begin. My innate reaction time is a factor, which is why when I do it at regular speed I get 2.4 seconds, but at 1/4th speed I get 2.3 seconds.

Of course, this is straining at a gnat. If you recalculate using 2.3 seconds instead of 2.5 seconds, you get an addition of +9 DPS for staff attacks instead of +6.

Even with aftercast I’m still getting around 1.9 seconds, 2 seconds max, starting at button press to weapons reappearing.. (I’m using your stopwatch) So don’t really know what to tell ya.

im pretty sure the point of fist flurry is the stun. the damage is nice but secondary.

+1 for title name

Ding ding ding! You are correct about it all @OP. I have used haste since the AA buff in wvw, Pvp, and pve to much surprise and success.. It works wonders with flanking strikes + trickster (d/p) and if I need more fury I use pack runes. The synergy is insane. It’s great for serious spike damage and it also has the option for stun break and trained for a condi clear. This utility has serious options that come with it. I take it over blinding powder which is overrated imo given the current state of the strong counters to strath atm such as cc, AOE, reveal abilities, and general knowledge of how to counter it have increased. Haste is one of the most underrated skills for thief imho.

One build I had in WvW when we had that double cooldown on the trickery line flanking strikes was one where I got boon duration to 50 percent.

This gave two sources of 9 seconds fury and quickness with trickster traited. Coupled with IMprov , one could get a huge boost to damage if tricks recharged on a steal. I use the flanking strikes now out of trickery with s/d and am really liking it. I have not used that boon duration setup since our damage boost and might well consider it again.

Rip thievea in general my friend
A remnant of the past

It cycles faster than it takes a break bar to regen if you take the cooldown reduction. It’s rarely ever off my skill bar due to this reason and never part of a damage rotation, because I am saving it for that. The damage it does is a nice bonus, but really I could care less about it.

With Fists Flurry, Impact Strike, pistol offhand and the fact that Mordrem champions are weighted to give you Branch Bash off Steal, daredevil can consistently (or inconsistently depending on the non-Mordrem champion) break every single bar on champions scaled < 10 people.

The rotation is…

Fists Flurry + Palm Strike + Impact Strike + Uppercut + 1-2 Headshots to cover the difference

On the next break bar, it’s

Fists Flurry + Palm Strike + Branch Bash + 1-2 Headshots to cover the difference.

Impact Strike cycles before third bar is regened and the rotation begins again.

You are right, and also slow :P
Haste on both utilities and trait, with reductions on tricks has much more DPS. It is true both in pve and PvP, the burst when speced with this instead of thrill of the crime, is huge.

FYI bassi venom and headshot is enough to solo most breakbars scaled up to 5 people, + steal if it’s regenerative. Give it a try

Zlater.6789:

FYI bassi venom and headshot is enough to solo most breakbars scaled up to 5 people, + steal if it’s regenerative. Give it a try

I have, but I haven’t had that experience with it without venomshare. Basilik venom gets it down to roughly about half and the time investment to widdle down the remainder with headshots is a lot.

I might goof around with it some more to see if I am correct in that perspective.

Theoretically, with enough time, you can break a bar with just headshots, because even without additional initiative rate, the dmg amount beats the regen rate. It just takes ffffffooooorrrrreeeeevvvveeerrrr.