Guild Wars 2

A lot of people have commented on the DD being the class that got “A built in energy sigil” that is technically worse due to the fact that it only procs instantly at the start of the fight and never again … So what if they got another unique mechanic that played into them…

So I came up with this dumb idea: Shrug

Now Shrug would be our f3 ability and would be entirely unique to the DD and the style of ‘reckless’ situations they want to get themselves into.

What Shrug does is allows us to shrug off the damage we take, causing us to slowly take it over 10 seconds instead of immediately. In addition Shrug (Our f3) is an active that completely wipes all the Shrugged damage.

So, for an extreme situation: The enemy team attempts a stealth opener, you’re out in the open at mid point…. They all jump on you, CCing and bursting you. They do 40k damage to you instantly. Well, that 40k damage is dealt over 10 seconds due to Shrug so for the first second you only take 4k damage, not 40k. As such you’re then able to stun break, withdraw and Shrug the damage, completely clearing it.

It’s sort of like having a second health pool (Like having death shroud) except in some situations it’s weaker (low damage / 1v1s) and in others it’s much stronger (high damage 5v1’s).

It also plays into the acrobatic play style of avoiding big hits and when you fail to or get CCed the damage is dealt slowly enough you arn’t instantly taken out of the fight, you can stay in there and keep going OR if it was a big enough hit you can Shrug it. In addition it works with a stealthy DD build as taking Shrugged damage in stealth is far safer then out in the open.

That’s…not acrobatic at all. It’s literally facetanking!

Ignarel.7916:

That’s…not acrobatic at all. It’s literally facetanking!

It’s meant to be a way to solve the issue with evading 90% of attacks, then getting CCed and having a single grave digger connect, and instantly killing you. It’s staying power without giving DD a ton of protection and regeneration like DD eles.

I see that more of a berserker mechanic than one for the thief/DD :P

DD needs better endurance regen. An extra dodge is great and all, but it’s not worth an entire trait line. Anyone can just run Signet of Agility’s active and get the same results basically. It would be a fair thing to add more of it to the spec, but then it negates the purpose of Acro.

A buffed Acro and DD would be nigh unkillable, though when combined.

It’s pretty much a necessary evil for DD and Acro being bad individually as long as they’re designed around the same principles, which unfortunately means that all combinations of trait lines with the two combined will suffer from lack of damage or utility from trickery.

There’s no mechanically good solution for this spec in regards to its integration with the rest of the thief and as long as it overrides but simultaneously synergizes with Acro.

DeceiverX.8361:

I see that more of a berserker mechanic than one for the thief/DD :P

DD needs better endurance regen. An extra dodge is great and all, but it’s not worth an entire trait line. Anyone can just run Signet of Agility’s active and get the same results basically. It would be a fair thing to add more of it to the spec, but then it negates the purpose of Acro.

A buffed Acro and DD would be nigh unkillable, though when combined.

It’s pretty much a necessary evil for DD and Acro being bad individually as long as they’re designed around the same principles, which unfortunately means that all combinations of trait lines with the two combined will suffer from lack of damage or utility from trickery.

There’s no mechanically good solution for this spec in regards to its integration with the rest of the thief and as long as it overrides but simultaneously synergizes with Acro.

Yeah, DD and acro clash. SD and staff clash. Our elite spec is … not well implemented given our already available tools. My idea was mainly meant to add some forgiveness to a missed dodge, since we don’t have that as a DD. As a thief, we have stealth.

Plus it sounded cool in my head. Run around.. dodging stuff.. being extremely hard to kill while constantly swatting you with my stick…

I still would have preferred the elite spec to have focused heavily on benefiting from the revealed mechanic similarly to RT. Would have definitely synergized better with all of the reveal effects being released, and could have enabled the thief to change play styles entirely, especially given long-duration self-revealing effects and range be it from a rifle or class-implemented crossbow, gadget, etc.