Hello, Everyone!
Thieves have had a long history of not being able to stand firm in the face of fierce adversaries, and the shadows were always an alluring refuge for the feeble. With the arrival of the Daredevils, we thought it’d be different…
It seems the idea behind Daredevil is to give Thieves more tools to fight without relying solely on stealth. An extended endurance bar aids this purpose, but alone is not enough. In fact, in the past, we have effectively seen the third consecutive dodge in the form of Feline Grace, the Master Minor trait in Acrobatics. I would actually argue that Feline Grace in its original form was stronger than the extended endurance bar of the Daredevil. Because Feline Grace refunded about half of the endurance used on dodges, thieves were already able to consecutively dodge 3 times without an extended endurance bar, and 6 times through the use of Signet of Agility (even more with Superior Sigil of Energy). With the extended endurance bar that the Daredevil brings, Signet of Agility will only give the Thieves two extra dodges, down to 5 consecutive dodges, because its active effect only restores 100 endurance, and they are no longer being refunded.
One can even argue that an extended endurance bar is the only profession mechanic that thieves received through this Elite Specialization. I bring this up because thieves have to spend skill points to fully unlock Daredevil before they can enjoy the new dodge abilities (outside of sPvP, of course). Having to choose one of three Grandmaster traits that enable the full extent of the dodge mechanic feels off, in comparison to the effects that other Elite Specializations have gotten. What the current Daredevil fails to do is create a new playstyle for the Thief. It hasn’t inherently enabled them to do anything that they previously haven’t already been able to do through the aforementioned trait in Acrobatics, Feline Grace, before the Specialization rebalancing—in short, it feels as though it’s just a “return to form.” And, unlike other Elite Specializations, the Daredevil is the only one that does not interact with its class’s primary mechanics (in this case, Steal or Initiative; I feel Stolen Endurance is a bit of an afterthought) or give it something entirely new (such as Celestial Avatar, Function Gyro, Facet of Nature). Additionally, I feel that there isn’t enough interaction between the other class mechanics and the endurance bar. The ability to dodge is inherent in GW2’s combat system; it’s one of the things that makes it unique as opposed to other, more static games. However, while the Daredevil does grant players the ability to have more up-time on their dodges, it doesn’t create any more meaningful interaction between the player and their endurance bar. Chronomancers are aware of their fifth Shatter; Guardians are more aware of their new Virtues’ effects; Druids more aware of their new Celestial Avatar form, etc. A Daredevil player does not need to be any more aware of their supposed new class mechanic than they are on any other class, or have been in the past before changes to Acrobatics.
Since it’s obviously too late to reiterate from the ground up, and if dodging is to be the Daredevil’s special mechanic, then I strongly believe that all three of the new dodges should be made baseline for all Daredevils, and that each dodge should be able to be toggled during or before combat in a manner akin to Elementalist’s Attunements. Being able to toggle dodges without changing traits would help the Daredevil feel more thematically whole, as each dodge would then feel more like a profession mechanic addition, and compliment the extended endurance bar in a manner befitting the Elite Specializations, and feel more even when compared to, say, the changes to Guardian’s Virtue through Dragonhunter. It would create moments where players would be able to think things like, “Well, I can spend this 50 endurance on removing this Cripple, and then another 50 to get in close and do some damage.” Further, it would open the Grandmaster traits to carry more interesting effects that interact with the class as a whole, as “dodge and get this buff” feels somewhat lacking.
On the subject of greater interaction with the endurance bar, I would suggest that we increase the effectiveness of the Daredevil’s Physical skills based on endurance, similarly to how Warrior Physical skills can be increased in effectiveness through Peak Performance, as I feel it creates an interesting dynamic between the player’s decision to dodge versus saving their endurance to use a skill, similar to the Warrior’s choice of using their Burst skill, even if not many Physical skills on the Warrior see much use in the meta. To that end, I feel this suggestion could be made baseline or merged with Brawler’s Tenacity.
As an afterthought, I’ve noticed that Superior Sigil of Energy does not return 75 Endurance (50% of the Daredevil’s endurance); it will only restore 50 endurance (33% of the Daredevil’s endurance). On the matter of endurance regeneration, we know that endurance regenerates at 5 endurance (5%) per second, but is this truly the case for the Daredevil? Does the Daredevil have an endurance regeneration of 5 or 7.5 per second? With that in mind, I took up the task of observing several Daredevil videos on the web and noticed that they all regained one bar of endurance in 10s. In short, Daredevil has an endurance regeneration of 3.33% per second.
This plays into one of my my initial points, that the Daredevil’s supposed profession mechanic of an extended endurance bar is weaker than the original form of Feline Grace (returns 15 Endurance on dodge – which effectively increased the thief’s base endurance regeneration from 5% to 6.5%). It doesn’t seem that many endurance regeneration tools actually restore endurance based on a percentage, which means that having the extended bar is actually more ineffective during an actual fight, because there will be fewer opportunities for a Daredevil to actually receive benefit from their extended bar, and in some ways it is negating their ‘new’ mechanic altogether. For example, you have your third consecutive dodge, but if endurance regeneration doesn’t restore based on a percentage of the total endurance capacity, in most fights the Daredevil will only see that effect at the start. The idea behind the Daredevil’s mechanic seems to be that they are able to dodge more often than other classes, but it requires even more resources (traits, utility skills, etc.) to see the full effectiveness of the Elite Specialization’s purpose.
Because of its extended endurance bar, if the Daredevil does not reach maximum endurance at the same rate as any other profession, it serves as something as a placebo enhancement. In practice, it would only mitigate ‘over-regeneration,’ in which an external application of enhanced endurance regeneration is not wasted, which is already rare in most situations because players are encouraged to dodge often. Endurance regeneration is at a point where a normal Thief effectively only gains +1 Dodge by slotting in the Daredevil specialization, which, as another poster already pointed out, is rather underwhelming. I feel that Daredevil’s base endurance regeneration should be higher to compensate for its own extension.
We’ll leave the weapon staff out of this discussion. Our focus here is the Daredevil itself. Please tell us what you think!
(edited by Halcyon.5340)
