Guild Wars 2

So it’s been a few days and I was curious how the changes to SoA are working out for everyone, especially those of us that play evade builds. I personally run d/d hybrid condi, and I am pretty happy with the extra cleanse vs giving up 50 endurance. I think if you are playing properly, the loss of the one evade is pretty negligible, while the condi cleanse is a big help. Thoughts?

Well thief did not need condi cleanse at all, bc auf evades. So in my eyes, nerf evades to buff cleanse helps beginners but weakens advanced players.

D/P suffers less from the endurance nerf then Staff. But Staff is no option anyways until they fix vault.

And advanced players know how to compensate this well enough and need in general lesser evades, because they now bett,er when its neccessary to evade and when not, while beginners don’t, so your arguement is rubbish imo.

However, I can understand your standpoint of view and thats why I think with this change to SoA in mind it would have been a greater change for the better of the Thief, when Anet would have changed back some Trait Changes back to their original effects, like Feline Grace to make Acrobatics great again as a little compensation for the reduced Endurance Regen from SoA

Staff has under Daredevil its own Trait, that lets you regain Endurance when usign Physicals with Brawlers Tenacity, so they surely have no Endurance Problems at all together with having 3 Dodges and Endurance Thief and especially Staff master, which lets you gain additional Endurance whenever you use a Staff Skill, so this is im again rubbish as arguement as Daredevils have more than enough options to gain just by their own mechanics constantly Endurance and if this is seriously not enough for you – kitten it, than put a freaking Sigil of Energy into your Staff to get 50% of your Endurance back every few seconds when you change to your Staff, if you aren’t doing that already.

The world won’t be doomed for you now by just having 1 dodge lesser. Even as advanced player you will find situations, where the increased condition removals will come in handy for you and where you will say then – good that Anet changed the skill, cause of the increased condition removal having saved your butt maybe, because unless you are traited and skilled for it, won’t dodges alone save you from conditions, unless you make constantly successful evades with Escapists absolution being in your build – but fact is, you can’t dodge always everything and sooner or later you will come to the situation, where you prefer to use a condition removal skill over a dodge, because you need the dodge for something far more dangerous.
The change with SoA is there for an evade build just an improved synergy that comes automatically whith evading alot, as SoA is naturally used to refill quickly your endurance and when you use it, you don’t think about in in that situation, if it is now good or bad for you, that the skill removed from you 1 or 3 conditions.

An real advanced player is able to adapt to the situation anyways and are able to change their playstyle based on the skill changes!

Im still somewhat getting used to the overall less endurance regen we have now, not just the SoA. In sPvP i cant just mindlessly spam dodges for mere movement alone anymore, since I now frequently find myself entering fights with <100% endurance.

Up until now SoA was more of a midfight “Oh-kitten-button” for me; more of a disengaging tool tbh. But once I have adjusted, I think I will be fine.

I feel like it’s still a buff though. Now SoA makes +1s easier against certain classes imo. Clearing weakness and blind at the same time without having to use Shadowstep for instance, is pretty nice.

Outside a few builds I made as tests such as DB build, I really did not find much of a need to dodge endlessly. I like the new Condition cleanse. I have even had the occassion to use it to counter an enemy rangers entangle freeing up multiple teammates from the same.

A very nice change and another way by which one can drop EA or UC inside of DD without suffereing too great a loss from the cleanses they offer.

That’s what i’ve been finding as well. The extra cleanse is REALLY nice a lot of the time, especially in wvw.

Keep in mind that in WvW it the best of both worlds. As per the patch notes the endurance changes were PvP only.

the endurance loss on S/D is noticable (together with c.vigor). The skill is still best in spot though.

Acro staff feels more or less the same as pre nerf if you take staff master over EA, so with the extra cleanse (and the option of purity/generosity sigils on staff) I’d say it’s been balanced fairly well tbh.

Can’t say I play any different on either D/P or S/D because of it.
It’s easier to blow the Signet now to just Cleanse whatever. There’s a “loss of skill” there of sorts, you could say, as now you no longer have to think about what condition came in last and maybe walking over some burn guard’s purge on purpose to make sure to cleanse that kitten burning.
But yeah… No biggie. I reckon the cleanses are a massive help to Core Thief though, so I’m happy about that.

While I love the added 2 condi clears on SoA, Anet has buffed an already very strong skill to the point where it is now almost mandatory to run it in every thief/daredevil build (from a WVW perspective). I know it has been nerfed with endurance regen in PVP.

Although this is a good change, I think build diversity is even a bit less now than it was before.