Guild Wars 2

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30% faster sword autos sounds wonderful! Basilisk is no longer the breakbar king (edit: nvm, still turns to stone and unblockable), but should be really interesting in PvP. I wish we got a few cooldowns reduced, but overall it looks good.

BV giving unblockable is finally a chance to tear into these bunkers.

Bandit’s defense is a rollover.

Withdraw is finally getting its 10%

Basilisk Venom attacks are unblockable.

Reduction in sword aftercasts so hopefully it doesn’t interfere with Flanking strike as much (+more weakness and cripple application).

Wow, decently impressed. Can’t wait to see some of the other changes.

Edit: A lot of these were forum suggestions, so pretty happy there as well. (crosses fingers for preparedness baseline)

Warhawk.7095:

BV giving unblockable is finally a chance to tear into these bunkers.

what bunkers? ö.ö

All I can say is. Brothers and Sisters, our time is now.

AikijinX.6258:

All I can say is. Brothers and Sisters, our time is now.

Staff damage being upped (why?), D/P improved via BV changes over all other weapons (why?), passive procs on evasion builds in Acro for full-on invuln (why?).

I feel like half of the changes were really good, and the other half are just incoherent. We’ll probably see the good changes undone and the bad ones further emphasized.

Very decent changes + other classes getting toned down. Thief becoming meta next season looks promising

warrior got HUGE HUGE buff

It’s sad we have no love for condi builds in pve, or for pistol.

DeceiverX.8361:

Staff damage being upped (why?), D/P improved via BV changes over all other weapons (why?), passive procs on evasion builds in Acro for full-on invuln (why?).

I feel like half of the changes were really good, and the other half are just incoherent. We’ll probably see the good changes undone and the bad ones further emphasized.

Staff definitely does not need more damage, yea kinda disappointed with the addition of more passives. Other changes were great though!

I want to know how big the buff to dagger AA is. I’m guessing 10-15%.

Tons of buffs here to thieves. Here’s the stuff that sticks out the most to me:

• Removal of tanky runes/amulets is inherently good for a burst class like thieves.
• DH trap burst nerfed
• AA DPS buffs
• Basilisk buff could make core thief a viable choice
• Thieves will now have the fastest stomp with Impact Strike after Quickness change

I think D/P is the biggest winner out of this, but just barely. This is both because of the BP aftercast removal and also because of the AA dps boost.

I’m curious to see how S/D compares to Staff after the changes. Considering the AA changes, I could see sword make a comback…

DeceiverX.8361:

Staff damage being upped (why?),

Staff damage is largely concentrated into vault which is fairly easily avoided. The autos lack the utility of the other melee weapon sets like poison, endurance regen, weakness, and cripple, while overall the set lacks interrupts and stealth. We’ll see if they’ve upped the utility of the set as well or just the damage.

D/P improved via BV changes over all other weapons (why?),

Because BV has been a pretty weak elite for a long time and the new elite pointed that out (1-2 seconds stun with an obvious tell with a 1 second cast time on a 40 second CD)

[P]assive procs on evasion builds in Acro for full-on invuln (why?).

Every class needs a passive? I don’t know on this one.

I feel like half of the changes were really good, and the other half are just incoherent. We’ll probably see the good changes undone and the bad ones further emphasized.

Overall I’m happy with the changes. I’m not attacking your questions, I’m just giving my perspective on why some of the changes have been made.

It is less than we hoped, more than we expected and aside from an unknown stealth change has no downsides. Solid B effort by ANet IMO.

Still going to have contend with ridonculously tough Tempests. Chrono teams won’t have ridiculous amounts of sustain and DPS. Scrappers are going to at least have a bigger window to kill them.

Unless stability gets a rework warriors will continue to suffer. They didn’t fix the Ranger briar pet so that thing will continue to stack a massive amount of bleeds/DPS. DH really didn’t get nerfed at all. The trap change is nice but they will still be melee killers. Revs CoR may still be a beast depending on how that “double hit” effected its damage.

Necro… seems to be sitting in a decent spot so not much here aside from the CB mechanic changes.

Not sure, they might have done a lot for the bunker meta in pvp (runes) but not for wvw – so we’re still trapped in the mindless meta. I might finally have to switch to basilisk venom – I’m gonna miss daggerstorm.
Other than that the changes don’t sound as if they’re enough to bring the game back on track.
I would be fine with it if they’d promised to observe balance closely and throw in more patches more frequently (if needed – and I bet they will still be needed).
But maybe there is more to come – I really hope there is.

ETA: And the question still is what tehy’re going to do about stealth and reveal – I don’t really feel like watching the stream – did they say anything about it?

This makes me wonder how many bunkers will give up trying to bunker & become a bunker killing thief

Biggest buff for us is the removal of most tanky amulets, honestly. This stuff is really nice, though.

I love my thief, but have mixed feelings based solely on this preview. While thieves have been left out of the pvp meta for some time now as other classes powercreeped us out, I wonder if powercreep is the best way to fight powercreep. Ideally, I would have just loved to see a tone down of all other professions across the board except for us, warriors, and non-trap guardians. While I welcome buffs to my favourite class, I just hope we don’t become the cheese class next season. I don’t want to see 2+ thieves in every team and/or for everyone to jump on a thief bandwagon like some professions this season, nor do I want to see people have legitimate complaints about us being OP. What I want I guess is balance across the board. Maybe it’s not so much the buffs we received, but the nerfs or lack of buffs other classes recieved in comparison that makes me worried (and yes I know we have been constantly nerfed throughout the ages, but that is still not a justiably good reason for us to be vengeful). Anyways, I will reserve full judgement until I see the rest of the patch notes. Hoping for a better meta than this one next season.

Maugetarr.6823:

DeceiverX.8361:

Staff damage being upped (why?),

Staff damage is largely concentrated into vault which is fairly easily avoided. The autos lack the utility of the other melee weapon sets like poison, endurance regen, weakness, and cripple, while overall the set lacks interrupts and stealth. We’ll see if they’ve upped the utility of the set as well or just the damage.

D/P improved via BV changes over all other weapons (why?),

Because BV has been a pretty weak elite for a long time and the new elite pointed that out (1-2 seconds stun with an obvious tell with a 1 second cast time on a 40 second CD)

[P]assive procs on evasion builds in Acro for full-on invuln (why?).

Every class needs a passive? I don’t know on this one.

I feel like half of the changes were really good, and the other half are just incoherent. We’ll probably see the good changes undone and the bad ones further emphasized.

Overall I’m happy with the changes. I’m not attacking your questions, I’m just giving my perspective on why some of the changes have been made.

Staff damage is already the best the thief has, and all they stated was that they were going to up its damage. Nothing about utility purposes. Honestly, the staff has so much damage right now that more utility would just make the weapon unanimously dominant at everything. And it already comes close.

Passive procs makes me upset in general. Not only does the game have too many overall, but we’re supposed to be a class that doesn’t really use them. We’ve never had them outside of LR (which people hated). Acrobatics is meant to be the evasion-based line, and static invulns are really upsetting.

Further, if they remove a lot of defensive amulets, I could potentially see the thief becoming the next bunker with something like D/D Sentinel in durability runes running Acro + Trickery + DD due to the massive evasion D/D offers right now with buffed death blossom. Many chained evades on D/D + endurance regen on dagger auto + Daredevil’s spammable dodges and big heals, good condition cleansing (1x per second like Diamond Skin ele, except all the time), permanent vigor, and tons of initiative regeneration, full block on Bandit’s defense, and then a 2s invuln when things get bad would potentially make the class overly-difficult to kill without outnumbering it.

Sword AA frequency – best change!
Bandit’s defense – yess!
What I didn’t really find fun is that passive evade trait(Instant Reflex) and Vigorous Recovery, these should be changed into:

• Empowering Shadows(new): Shadowstepping grants a stack of might for 10s. (or fury for 4s)
  and
• Power of Inertia(“new”): successfully evading an attack gives you 1 stack of might for 4 seconds.(no IDC hence the short duration)
  Reasoning: evading a lot of cleave in teamfight going to boost up your fight damage while trait staying mediocre in 1v1 situations.)
  Reasoning: non stealth based thief melts without endurance.

(boon duration should be added somewhere in acro line)

• Assassin’s reward can also be removed or reworked (rework ideas: heal for ~150 per successful evade with a 1s ICD per 6 evades which would mean u can heal 150*6=900 every sec but only if you evade 6 attacks.) Or simply merge current Assassin’s reward with Swindler’s equilibrium or something.

CiS at master tier…

Good job on the sword change.

I reserve judgement until i played of course but this could be good.

Not impressed …
but well …
lets wait if there will be more.

best regards!

B.V Elite change: Much needed. Edit: No more having to attempt a steal burst on a Guardians Block via bountiful theft only to STILL be troll blocked with their trait. Now when people see us load our venom they will rightfully be afraid instead of thinking “( It’s okay guys it’s just Bassi Venom no big deal)”
Thief version of blur: Pretty nice. Hopefully the ICD is short and the animation looks nice

DH Trap Nerf: Overly Needed

Elementalist Nerf: Needed

Amulet Nerf: Cele Ele No Moar(My elemental Brothers and sisters lend me your tears, i’m thirsty)

Scrapper Nerf: Sorry but you’re not king of stealth, know your place.

Mesmer Nerf: Honestly never really knew or cared to find out what alacrity was, so I’ve been fighting mesmers how i always fought them. Made no difference to me.

Was actually impressed with the changes overall. My concern is having acro with really long cooldowns on some traits but hopefully it overall allows us to stay in fights for a bit longer.

Would have liked a slight pistol auto attack increase and prepareness baseline but we’ll see how things pan out.

Oh and Grouch posted changes to runes/sigils/amulets: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Upcoming-Changes-to-PvP-Runes-Sigils-Amulets/first

Durability & Mercy runes are gone
Soldier’s, Settler’s, Celestial, & Sentinel amulets are gone as well
New amulets detailed in the post seem to have a blend of damage and defensive stats

DeceiverX.8361:

Further, if they remove a lot of defensive amulets, I could potentially see the thief becoming the next bunker with something like D/D Sentinel in durability runes running Acro + Trickery + DD due to the massive evasion D/D offers right now with buffed death blossom. Many chained evades on D/D + endurance regen on dagger auto + Daredevil’s spammable dodges and big heals, good condition cleansing (1x per second like Diamond Skin ele, except all the time), permanent vigor, and tons of initiative regeneration, full block on Bandit’s defense, and then a 2s invuln when things get bad would potentially make the class overly-difficult to kill without outnumbering it.

That plan will not go well, considering they are removing the Sentinel amulet and durability runes. All that while at the same time nerfing the sigil of energy to give a paltry amount of vigor :p

AikijinX.6258:

Now when people see us load our venom they will rightfully be afraid instead of thinking “( It’s okay guys it’s just Bassi Venom no big deal)”

Because the game needs more skilless, braindead, AIDS…

Fleet Shadow changed to Instant Reflex (gain evasion for 2s when struck below the health threshold –50%, 40s CD).

This is still inferior to Vigorous Recovery or Pain Response. However, it can trigger the “on evade” traits so it’s not too bad — but still inferior to VR.

Upper Hand – Changed to give regeneration when you evade an attack (in addition to the initiative gain). Cooldown also reduced from 3s to 2s.

This change is actually nice, but the fact that it’s competing with Assassin’s Reward and Don’t Stop, it’s still not a good pick. If I want heal, I’d go for AR. The initiative gain is not that great even with a reduced ICD. If they really want this to be desirable, they should apply the ICD on regen but allow 1 initiative per evade without ICD. If that would be the case, I’d definitely take it for my P/P build.

Withdraw healing has been increased by 10%.

Is this a 10% on top of the 10% we should have received before, or this is just a bug fix?

Pretty lame to add it as a “balance chang”e seeing that they didn’t change this skill at all from the time when it should have received the 10%.

If this is a 10% on top of the 10%, then I’ll applaud this change

Autoattack damage for sword not changed but the frequency has increased. Overall damage increased by about 30%.

I hope that this change applied to after-cast delay.

Black Powder has its aftercast removed.

Very nice. +1

Dagger autoattack damage increased.

By how much?

Bandit’s Defense, you can now block for the full duration of 1.5s.

Does this mean the KD triggers for every block? Still, the animation of the KD needs to be faster.

Staff got some damage increase as well.

Meh.

The overall changes are pretty nice, sword could come back into the meta and we’d have 3 viable sets. Although I think Staff is one of the hardest sets to play, against decent players at least.

All this in a much different, less tanky meta, but I’m still skeptical about Acro, will have to see the rest of the changes and whether they reworked the entire traitline, including baseline traits.

No more cele. No more cele! NO MORE GOD kitten CELE!

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Fleet Shadow changed to Instant Reflex (gain evasion for 2s when struck below the health threshold –50%, 40s CD).

This is still inferior to Vigorous Recovery or Pain Response. However, it can trigger the “on evade” traits so it’s not too bad — but still inferior to VR.

Upper Hand – Changed to give regeneration when you evade an attack (in addition to the initiative gain). Cooldown also reduced from 3s to 2s.

This change is actually nice, but the fact that it’s competing with Assassin’s Reward and Don’t Stop, it’s still not a good pick. If I want heal, I’d go for AR. The initiative gain is not that great even with a reduced ICD. If they really want this to be desirable, they should apply the ICD on regen but allow 1 initiative per evade without ICD. If that would be the case, I’d definitely take it for my P/P build.

Withdraw healing has been increased by 10%.

Is this a 10% on top of the 10% we should have received before, or this is just a bug fix?

Pretty lame to add it as a “balance chang”e seeing that they didn’t change this skill at all from the time when it should have received the 10%.

If this is a 10% on top of the 10%, then I’ll applaud this change

Autoattack damage for sword not changed but the frequency has increased. Overall damage increased by about 30%.

I hope that this change applied to after-cast delay.

Black Powder has its aftercast removed.

Very nice. +1

Dagger autoattack damage increased.

By how much?

Bandit’s Defense, you can now block for the full duration of 1.5s.

Does this mean the KD triggers for every block? Still, the animation of the KD needs to be faster.

Staff got some damage increase as well.

Meh.

Disagree on your take on vigorous recovery. Any taking the Acro line will have pretty well full time Vigor meaning Vigorous recovery redundant. This vigor coming off feline grace. My current builds that use Acro take pain response and still have full time vigor or near to it.

Upper hand giving regen and INI gain is very usable over Assassins reward. It not predicated on spending INI for the heal.

This will greatly enhance d/d Condition builds and S/d builds S/d will be using the AA attacks more (as well as S/p) meaning they can build around having full time Regen /vigor with supplemental INI gain off Upper hand.

I can see taking IP in the CS line along with the new Upper hand and evade trait. Regen uptime will be high in a CS DD Acro build using staff. With the sheer number of evades this would mean full time vigor and close to full time regen with the build fueling ongoing INI and endurance.

P/P would be ill served by Upper hand as there no evades inhrent in the weapon set. it my opinion that to fully leverage this trait the weapons with inherent evades are best suited.

CrimsonNeonite.1048:

The overall changes are pretty nice, sword could come back into the meta and we’ll have 3 viable sets, but I’m still skeptical about Acro, will have to see the rest of the changes and whether they reworked the entire traitline, including baseline traits.

(firstly, I’m assuming the three viable sets you speak of are Staff, Dagger/Dagger and Sword/Pistol, feel free to correct me)

these changes aren’t bad, but unless I’m mistaken, the 3 viable sets are all melee direct damage sets. a class with two mandatory traitlines and only one type of viable weapon set (direct damage melee) isn’t exactly a well designed class.

we need preparedness baseline.
we need a viable ranged set.
we need a decent condition set.

we need variety. and this patch doesn’t seem to be bringing anything to support that.

stof.9341:

DeceiverX.8361:

Further, if they remove a lot of defensive amulets, I could potentially see the thief becoming the next bunker with something like D/D Sentinel in durability runes running Acro + Trickery + DD due to the massive evasion D/D offers right now with buffed death blossom. Many chained evades on D/D + endurance regen on dagger auto + Daredevil’s spammable dodges and big heals, good condition cleansing (1x per second like Diamond Skin ele, except all the time), permanent vigor, and tons of initiative regeneration, full block on Bandit’s defense, and then a 2s invuln when things get bad would potentially make the class overly-difficult to kill without outnumbering it.

That plan will not go well, considering they are removing the Sentinel amulet and durability runes. All that while at the same time nerfing the sigil of energy to give a paltry amount of vigor :p

Where did they announce/confirm all of this? o.o

There’s a thread in the PvP forum for it.

Note that in the notes it mentions for Acrobatics " boost the regenerative ability of the thief and remove conditions more frequently."

None of the announcements do anything to remove conditions more frequently So I fully expect more changes forthcoming. I am very positive over these changes.

Warhawk.7095:

BV giving unblockable is finally a chance to tear into these bunkers.

Lol, balance team and their lack of intellectual capabilities. they think buffing an Elite skill will solve the problem yet there is nothing wrong to begin with. game is becoming dumbed down and non player skill involved.

Pathetic

DeceiverX.8361:

Maugetarr.6823:

DeceiverX.8361:

Staff damage being upped (why?),

Staff damage is largely concentrated into vault which is fairly easily avoided. The autos lack the utility of the other melee weapon sets like poison, endurance regen, weakness, and cripple, while overall the set lacks interrupts and stealth. We’ll see if they’ve upped the utility of the set as well or just the damage.

D/P improved via BV changes over all other weapons (why?),

Because BV has been a pretty weak elite for a long time and the new elite pointed that out (1-2 seconds stun with an obvious tell with a 1 second cast time on a 40 second CD)

[P]assive procs on evasion builds in Acro for full-on invuln (why?).

Every class needs a passive? I don’t know on this one.

I feel like half of the changes were really good, and the other half are just incoherent. We’ll probably see the good changes undone and the bad ones further emphasized.

Overall I’m happy with the changes. I’m not attacking your questions, I’m just giving my perspective on why some of the changes have been made.

Staff damage is already the best the thief has, and all they stated was that they were going to up its damage. Nothing about utility purposes. Honestly, the staff has so much damage right now that more utility would just make the weapon unanimously dominant at everything. And it already comes close.

Ok, here’s the thing, if the wiki values are right, staff autos run at 1.17 mult/sec, sword at 1.15, and dagger at 1.12ish.
For reference, warrior’s axe auto runs at 1.38, ele’s lightning dagger auto at 1.32, and necro dagger at 1.33. The rough damage increase mention of 30% for sword puts it at 1.495 mult/second. Keeping them at the same ratios requires staff to be somewhere at 1.52 and daggers at 1.46. If staff isn’t increased, it would quickly fall behind in both sustained damage and utility.

Passive procs makes me upset in general. Not only does the game have too many overall, but we’re supposed to be a class that doesn’t really use them. We’ve never had them outside of LR (which people hated). Acrobatics is meant to be the evasion-based line, and static invulns are really upsetting.

Further, if they remove a lot of defensive amulets, I could potentially see the thief becoming the next bunker with something like D/D Sentinel in durability runes running Acro + Trickery + DD due to the massive evasion D/D offers right now with buffed death blossom. Many chained evades on D/D + endurance regen on dagger auto + Daredevil’s spammable dodges and big heals, good condition cleansing (1x per second like Diamond Skin ele, except all the time), permanent vigor, and tons of initiative regeneration, full block on Bandit’s defense, and then a 2s invuln when things get bad would potentially make the class overly-difficult to kill without outnumbering it.

While this may happen, without access to protection, I doubt it would be that extreme, although I do dislike passive procs as well.

Awesome:

- I like the sword AA speed increase.
- Withdraw finally has that 10% increase.
- Black Powder streamlined a bit – after cast reductions are always nice.
- Upper Hand buff will do.

Concerned:

- Fleet Shadow – yuck, more passive death prevention traits.
- Basilisk venom – an unblockable one second stun that can be applied with any skill? I think a CD increase might accompany this at some point
- I don’t understand the need for a dagger AA increase. It already does great (balanced) damage.
- Hope that damage increase for staff is just the AA. I don’t think we need more reasons for Vault spam.

There are so many other things that need to be improved on Thief. I hope that this is but a drop in the ocean compared to the actual balance changes later in January

Simonoly.4352:

- Basilisk venom – an unblockable one second stun that can be applied with any skill?

Oh because one can activate basilisk venom and then hit you before you finish blocking.

BV needed a little something it didn’t really feel like an elite.

Even if sword is upped, as a melee choice, staff still trumps, no? unless you want to give up the range option to have both.

if that is all they are doing.. no one will run acro… still. Acros problem is that its utility doesn’t outweigh its non-damage buffs compared to the other lines. I think all lines have some type of damage multiplier (even shadow arts has siphon life with venoms).

AND all the other trait lines have good utility skills. Why would I take acro over deadly arts…… the buff to sword might change the game where having something like deadly arts would be too much damage (think diminishing returns)….

SB auto attack damage needs buff to either base damage or attack speed as well. I would personally prefer attack speed… but thats just me

Ya know…Fleet Shadow may be a good trait for people learning Thief for the first time. Thief is a really fast-paced squishy prof and as a result can have a bit of a rough learning curve, so I don’t think it’s all that bad.

But I doubt Acro will make it to meta.

so they finally changed bandits defense to a flip over. BV giving unblockable is just..gawd this studio. By the time you finish casting BV to counter a block the block will almost be over. “Nothing Can Save You” has that problem. Why not have BV to be an instant equip type elite similar to Shiro’s Enchanted Daggers or have steal make attacks unblockable, anything that instantaneously allows you to respond to blocks, why? because thieves die very easily and so have to always be active. We cant be sitting around waiting for things to end or skills to finish casting before we can act. This is the reason why thieves are in the hole they are in. Somehow the studio has failed to recognize this after 3 years

As for the changes they have listed in the live stream,, i wouldnt expect them in the final notes. This is exactly what they did before destroying feline grace. They said that Feline Grace would make Vigor 20% more effective in a stream just before the June 23rd revamp then what did we get?

Maugetarr.6823:

Ok, here’s the thing, if the wiki values are right, staff autos run at 1.17 mult/sec, sword at 1.15, and dagger at 1.12ish.
For reference, warrior’s axe auto runs at 1.38, ele’s lightning dagger auto at 1.32, and necro dagger at 1.33. The rough damage increase mention of 30% for sword puts it at 1.495 mult/second. Keeping them at the same ratios requires staff to be somewhere at 1.52 and daggers at 1.46. If staff isn’t increased, it would quickly fall behind in both sustained damage and utility.

Vault spam in particular is what causes staff to be so much better. D/D was used as the PvE set despite sword’s better AA damage on the basis that Backstab and Heartseeker increased the damage enough to vastly push out sword. Since Vault is so cheap and fairly fast to cast, I don’t think sword will end up beating the damage of staff in PvE, and certainly not the burst in PvP environments.

I love it how they include the 10% withdrawal as part of the changes… Man I could have sworn I’ve seen that change before…

Hmm

Acro changes are good – but not good enough to sway me away from DD.

Trick still needed for 95% of all builds.
DA’s utility still outclasses Acro, even with these changes.
DD beats Acro for survivability.

The DPS increases for Sword and Dagger mainhand is awesome.
Clean-up on animations too…

The Bandits Defence “fix” will be interesting – a bit vague but I hope it means the skill is now a flip-skill and doesn’t auto kick >: |. The amount of times I’ve blocked a Shield Bash, only to be Eviscerated during the kick animation… Arghh!

I’m more happy with the nerfs being handed out to the FOTM OP BS builds. Screw you Chronotank. You block? I Basi Venom.

I think they should add that 2 seconds of evasion on Haste as well. Just saying.

babazhook.6805:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Fleet Shadow changed to Instant Reflex (gain evasion for 2s when struck below the health threshold –50%, 40s CD).

This is still inferior to Vigorous Recovery or Pain Response. However, it can trigger the “on evade” traits so it’s not too bad — but still inferior to VR.

Upper Hand – Changed to give regeneration when you evade an attack (in addition to the initiative gain). Cooldown also reduced from 3s to 2s.

This change is actually nice, but the fact that it’s competing with Assassin’s Reward and Don’t Stop, it’s still not a good pick. If I want heal, I’d go for AR. The initiative gain is not that great even with a reduced ICD. If they really want this to be desirable, they should apply the ICD on regen but allow 1 initiative per evade without ICD. If that would be the case, I’d definitely take it for my P/P build.

Withdraw healing has been increased by 10%.

Is this a 10% on top of the 10% we should have received before, or this is just a bug fix?

Pretty lame to add it as a “balance chang”e seeing that they didn’t change this skill at all from the time when it should have received the 10%.

If this is a 10% on top of the 10%, then I’ll applaud this change

Autoattack damage for sword not changed but the frequency has increased. Overall damage increased by about 30%.

I hope that this change applied to after-cast delay.

Black Powder has its aftercast removed.

Very nice. +1

Dagger autoattack damage increased.

By how much?

Bandit’s Defense, you can now block for the full duration of 1.5s.

Does this mean the KD triggers for every block? Still, the animation of the KD needs to be faster.

Staff got some damage increase as well.

Meh.

Disagree on your take on vigorous recovery. Any taking the Acro line will have pretty well full time Vigor meaning Vigorous recovery redundant. This vigor coming off feline grace. My current builds that use Acro take pain response and still have full time vigor or near to it.

I agree about the redundancy if the build takes Channeled Vigor. I’m thinking about a build when DD is no longer the only Elite spec. If all we’ll have is Acrobatics and some new Elite that is not as evasive as DD, then this new trait is inferior as I’ve stated. With DD currently, I agree with you, but that wouldn’t be the case when DD phase out or the build is purely Core traits. VR is more reliable on triggering Vigor than FG since FG relies on evades, precise human reflexes, and acceptable network latency. Evading with Withdraw can trigger both VR and FG. Seeing that Withdraw is now getting its 10% heal buff, I personally be using Withdraw instead of Channeled Vigor.

Upper hand giving regen and INI gain is very usable over Assassins reward. It not predicated on spending INI for the heal.

This will greatly enhance d/d Condition builds and S/d builds S/d will be using the AA attacks more (as well as S/p) meaning they can build around having full time Regen /vigor with supplemental INI gain off Upper hand.

I can see taking IP in the CS line along with the new Upper hand and evade trait. Regen uptime will be high in a CS DD Acro build using staff. With the sheer number of evades this would mean full time vigor and close to full time regen with the build fueling ongoing INI and endurance.

I like the regen on Upper Hand. The problem with this trait is the ICD. Judging by the ICD, the regen will probably only last 1s-2s and without Healing Power and multiple stacks, this regen will be pathetically weak. Compare this to Driven Fortitude where DF heals for ~450 with 1s ICD, it will take 4 stacks of regen for 1s to get that much healing from a single evade. Not to mention DF is a minor Master trait and Upper Hand is a major GM. Once DD phase out and we no longer have access to DF using another Elite spec, UH as an alternative is not a reasonable choice. They need to go back to the drawing board on this.

P/P would be ill served by Upper hand as there no evades inhrent in the weapon set. it my opinion that to fully leverage this trait the weapons with inherent evades are best suited.

It’s only beneficial to my P/P build if this trait has no ICD on the initiative gain, thus if I evaded 3 times in a single dodge it should give me 3 initiatives. Netting 1 initiative per dodge is not a reasonable trait to pick for a GM slot. Even though P/P has no inherent evade on the weapon set, dodge and Withdraw are good enough.

Still waiting for more boon stealing here. But, the announced changes so far are good.