Guild Wars 2

I’m liking the staff so far, but compared to all of our other weapons, ability 3 is a bit lackluster.
4 ini, remove cripple and immobilize. 1/2s evade. weak damage.

Ok.. it’s a utility skill .. fine. However although there is no mention of a cast time, the evade doesn’t take place until after you strike with staff, so there is a delay on it, which can really mess you up and becomes unreliable.

For a melee weapon , I was hoping for a little more survivability built into the weapon.
S/P can pistol whip – evade plus good damage
S/D larcenous strikes – evade plus damage (can also stealth with CnD)
D/D death blossom – evade plus condi damage (meh) – (can stealth though)
D/P shadow shot – shadowstep away and blind – (can stealth at will with bp and hs)

Against regular mobs and other players, all melee is ‘ok’ , but when fighting bosses like in fractals, not having extra evades or stealth mechanic to fall back on is not nice. If I time my dodges wrong, or if I’m overzealous with bounding leap for example, I can find myself relying on a #3 skill (with a bit of a delay) to save my butt and no stealth if I’m really in trouble.

It’s a damage weapon, I get it , but content is getting harder now, and we can’t rely just on our dodges to get through things (just wait until raids). We need better survivability on staff. Period.

Sparrow.5936:

I’m liking the staff so far, but compared to all of our other weapons, ability 3 is a bit lackluster.
4 ini, remove cripple and immobilize. 1/2s evade. weak damage.

I agree. I personally don’t use Staff #3 since I can already cleanse cripple and immobilized using Unhindered (Dash). It’s a waste of weapon skill slot and a waste of initiatives.

Yas, plz. I never use it. Another cursed 3 skill.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Sparrow.5936:

I’m liking the staff so far, but compared to all of our other weapons, ability 3 is a bit lackluster.
4 ini, remove cripple and immobilize. 1/2s evade. weak damage.

I agree. I personally don’t use Staff #3 since I can already cleanse cripple and immobilized using Unhindered (Dash). It’s a waste of weapon skill slot and a waste of initiatives.

One does not always use Dash as a Grandmaster.

Galandil.9641:

One does not always use Dash as a Grandmaster.

I use staff 3 quite a bit because I use Dash. I get that the skill is a little f’d up but it’s in a weird useful way for me. Aside from it’s base effects it contributes a little to healing on evade along with any other evade modifiers you have going on and the shorter evade distance is actually what I like about it, especially on HoT maps and the new Borderlands where I need to evade but still remain in the kill box and not fly off a cliff.

I do agree having the evade proc after the strike is annoying but it can be timed well enough. I hope it stays how it is for the most part but I wouldn’t throw a fit if it was changed based on the majority of peoples feedback, I would just assume I’m missing something and take every ones word for it.

My point was that for me #3 is mainly a skill that negates immo/cripple almost always, ofc a lot more useful when not using Dash since it overlaps that functionality with the trait.

Im pretty sure it removes immobilize and applies cripple, not remove both. I could swear on occasions I have had cripple and its not removed it.

Yeah staff #3 applies cripple. It doesn’t cleanse cripple.

Personally I’d find this skill more useful with a daze rather than a cripple. It would feel useful against break bar, and would provide a safer dodge against mobs with an AoE interrupt.
(And with impacting disruption it would be so satisfying)

Tabootrinket.2631:

Personally I’d find this skill more useful with a daze rather than a cripple. It would feel useful against break bar, and would provide a safer dodge against mobs with an AoE interrupt.
(And with impacting disruption it would be so satisfying)

I like this idea, it would make staff synergise with its own trait much better. I dont feel adding a cripple does anything for me unless im trying to gtfo and I have enough access to dodges and vault to do that.

am i the only one that feels the skill is really weird when used to evade? just something about its animation. i always mess it up.

as for buffing it, give it daze and leap range

In pve I find that this skill and dash hard to use resoucefully. What I mean is, both are great at getting out of harms way, but they both move so fast it’s hard to actually get and “evade” and so traits don’t proc. It W’s also quite tricky use it in pvp as well (on pvped Las weekend). Might be a case that I just need to time them better.

If i use dash i wont use #3. With bound i will use #3 when its needed.

Btw what about staff #4 guys? Do you think adding a 2 sec smokefield would be too op or a nice buff?

Terimac.5871:

Btw what about staff #4 guys? Do you think adding a 2 sec smokefield would be too op or a nice buff?

I want the Smokescale’s Smoke Cloud skill as our Staff #4. I’d definitely use the skill more often if this is the case.

@ Sir Vincent III – I like the idea of a smoke field, but I’m not sure it promotes the type of play style intended for the daredevil. I would rather them buff the staff in some other fashion that would enhance our non-stealth combat, preferably in some kind of defensive manner.

@ OP – I agree this skill needs something changed. People who run the dash dodge trait simply never use this ability. For those that don’t use the dash dodge, it is very strange how it takes 1/4 a second or so before the evade frames kick in. This makes it completely unusable as a skillful dodge unless you’re dodging a hella long cast animation. Feels very clunky

I 1000% agree ..the #3 Skill looks, feels , and functions terribly.. It is by far the worst skill thief has as a whole. I have played daredevil exclusively in pvp since its earliest beta until now and this skill isn’t getting any better.. Please change it.

Fix ideas:
1) make next attack a guaranteed crit on successful evade,
2) restore 1 initiative on successful evade.
3) buff damage by 100%.

Meanwhile, don’t forget body shot, which exceeds all limits when it comes to uselessness.

Eisenwald.8562:

@ Sir Vincent III – I like the idea of a smoke field, but I’m not sure it promotes the type of play style intended for the daredevil. I would rather them buff the staff in some other fashion that would enhance our non-stealth combat, preferably in some kind of defensive manner.

I’m talking about Smoke Cloud not Smoke Field. If you’ve fought a Smokescale, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Make it a short Daze or Stun imo. It’s pretty much useless as it is now.

Stun breaks. Boom, useful.

Edit: Did not read thread, but decided title said all =P Sorry if off topic.

Right now, we all know that the staff is in a decent place, but does ened some improvements, mainly skill 3. I myself never use this skill because all the others are much better and I have dash.
The improvements I would like to propose are this
1. Remove the evade from skill 3 and add it to Weakening charge. Weakening charge having the evade instead would make a lot more sense, especially since it is quite a slow skill.
2. Speed up the animation of Weakening charge and decrease its aftercast
3. Thieves do not have access to stuns apart from pistol whip. A staff seems like the perfect place to give us this. Remove staff 3 and exchange it with a charge stun of 600 range.
“Charge forward with your staff and deliver a crushing blow to sun your foe”
This gives us a chance to land vaults and weakening charge.
4. I actually really like skill 4, it fires fast, does decent damage and blinds. I have seen some suggestions for a smoke field but for once I disagree with this as this weaponset does not need stealth, and it would just detract from its main use.
I saw a suggestion for a “Smoke cloud” which seems like a great idea.
“Create a cloud of smoke for the caster to hide within, evading and becoming immune to incoming conditions”.
Duration: 1.5s
Radius. Radius: 240
This allows us to deal with conditions and gives us a decent way to mitigate damage with the blind.
So these are my proposed changes. I think this would put staff in a very viable place and might begin to be the start of the much needed buff
Thank you

A Daze instead of Cripple on Staff #3 would be nice, and help it to better synergize with its own traitline.

If a Daze is added to Staff 3, then the Dodge Component becomes kinda superfluous unless fighting Multiple enemies. In fact, it’d be counter-intuitive as the Daze no doubt would be short in duration, meaning dodging away results in the Daredevil being unable to capitalize on an Interrupt.

I’d rather they moved the Dodge Component to Staff 2, and gave Staff 3 the Chain-Skill-on-Interrupt treatment where Interrupting an enemy with the first quick strike gives you access to another skill, such as an overhead strike that stacks Vulnerability and Cripples the target, or even a short-distance Knockback (Since you’d have to actively Interrupt a target with the Daze, a Knockback component wouldn’t be particularily OP even without CD) in order to add more CC to the Staff.

Just my two cents.

People would use that as a gimmick rather then a dodge skill