Guild Wars 2

its clear that this patch adresses mainly the Sword/Dagger builds and i am not disappointet about the results. but with anet selling us the acrobatics traitline and embellishing trickery, there is a huge waste on potential in the particular traits.
if the S/D obeys and uses Acro and trickery, there is a obvious overbuff on swiftness and vigor.
expeditious dodger (no choice)+ pack rune (as well, no alternative)+ dash (srsly, no S/D takes bound)= 21sec swift on every single dodge. (and passive pack rune and active thrill of crime swift)
now about vigor.. bountiful thefts 10 sec vigor on a theoretical 20s cooldown is not great, but good. but now even vigor gets way overbuffed by feline grace (again, no choice) in addition. not to mention the buffed amounts of boonsteal now.
this doesnt seem well conceived… correct me if im wrong

You already get perma swiftness with dash, some of us still play da/ttick/dd. Tbh I don’t know why people would go both acro and daredevil because it seems to much of a waist. Daredevil alone with vigor has more then enough dodges, pare this with brawlers tenancy and signit of agility I see no reason so take acro. Unless you want that passive evade thing.

Well. Swiftness was already a 100% uptime with dash alone, I dont see how this is gamechanging.
And vigor…Someone did the math for this, i believe its like 1 dodge in 25 seconds from feline grace.(+1,25% regen) It aint ‘overbuffed’
The boonsteal is pretty nice. Now that we are buffed and reaper is nerfed, it might become an actual combat role for some scenarios.

Tested S/D extensively yesterday as it is by far my favorite build to run. I found that running Trickery, Acrobatics, Daredevil provided a lot of survivability, but many of the traits seam redundant. Taking Acrobatics and Daredevil is a waste of a trait line, and because Daredevil is the new improved Acro trait line there is no reason to take Acro.

Another point to make is that running with rune of the Pack is redundant and not really needed as you’ll already have 100% swiftness uptime without it. I tested both Rune of the Daredevil and Strength and found that the Strength rune seamed to offer the best trade off.

Keep in mind that the focus of a S/D build isnt the same as D/P. It isn’t your job to shadowtep in spike damage and leave, it’s more of a boon stealing, decap/roamer. Rely on your Infiltrator’s strike / Return for CC and survivability, Larcenous strike + Bountiful theft to steal boons off enemies.

It’s not that it gave more than 100% swiftness uptime to dash; uptime was already high enough that adding on 2 more seconds doesn’t matter.

It’s that with the correct food buff or a rune of the pack, it now adds 100% swiftness uptime to bound or lotus.

But that in and of itself, only matters if you are using Acro to solo harder content in PvE or play open world. (which thiefs do play PvE btw; only talking in a context where PvP is the end all be all doesn’t fly).

The buff isn’t strong enough to create new Acro builds, but Anet buffs are rarely ever game changing.

You do not have to overlap skills. I was always using dd/acro in my SD build. This build was using PI and structured around lots of interrupts.

Acro then allowed full time vigor/regen/swiftness and that extra Condition cleanse with upper hand for more INI fuel.

I can now switch out UC for bounding. I will still have near to full time swiftness and can garner the extra damage off bounding.

With Havoc mastery this gives 7+ 7 plus potential 10(bounding) plus potential 15(LA) percent more damage while keeping that vigor swiftness and regen.

As to Acro as a standalone line over DD , I do not see it yet. It might work but than every class has that issue.

babazhook.6805:

I can now switch out UC for bounding. I will still have near to full time swiftness and can garner the extra damage off bounding.

With Havoc mastery this gives 7+ 7 plus potential 10(bounding) plus potential 15(LA) percent more damage while keeping that vigor swiftness and regen.

this is exactly what im testing atm.. with acros mobility and cleanse s/d could use bound instead of UC. but if it comes to the roaming (which is s/ds main role) u will always look back to the dash

babazhook.6805:

As to Acro as a standalone line over DD , I do not see it yet. It might work but than every class has that issue.

Probably never. What makes Acro work at all is the synergy with DD and the dodge skills and the high energy bar that DD provides which nets you higher energy regen from the vigor and vigor buffs.

It’s just too much to lose to ever get rid of D/D.