I really feel like there are both positive and negative things about this spec. Personally I think the lack of stealth with this spec creates a high(er) skill cap amongst the current thieves and will separate who really knows the class. However I dislike the fact that sword / dagger will be the future meta for DD seeing as Acrobatics took a decent nerf pre Heart of Thorns to pave a clearly visible path for Daredevil. I myself prefer dagger / pistol and short bow. I feel like taking away the stealth aspect of thief somewhat takes away from the initial draw that most people had when making it their main class. The staff skills to me feel like they need tremendous work and more responsive skills.
Also, regardless if it’s a “learn to play” spec in order to be good, I feel like it’s heavily outmatched when it comes to 1v1. I fully understand that it is capable of winning with ease against the average player and simple enough to use in PVE to make a valuable addition in a team. I feel it is outmatched at higher levels of play, namely 1v1, and will remain there. I obviously main thief and would like to see it shine. These new changes are certainly a step in the right direction. However a small suggestion, increase the damage mitigation. I like the direction of applied weakness making an opponent do less damage to you, however I am curious to see if it will be enough to make a difference. Also instead of making the condition removal based on evades, seeing as that requires being attacked and sometimes you just need to breathe from a fight, make them based on the evasions period. A static 1-2 condition removal every evade regardless if it was successful or not. Now I know that the idea is to “reward” evades with an end result, in this case condition removal, however instead of making the reward survivability, introduce utility. It would be nice to see maybe a healing power increase on successful evade or perhaps a super speed buff. Something that doesn’t make your “reward” for timing an evasion correctly simply staying alive longer. This spec revolves around evades and should benefit them in every way possible.
I’ve heard countless talks about simply not using the grand master traits of this spec to give you the edge in Daredevil in order to 1vX properly. I strongly dislike cutting my given abilities in order to make my class a success and would prefer a better solution. Which seems to be the direction you’re going. I know it’s still in beta, however I still show concern for it because I’d like to stay a thief main.
I also understand that nerfs / “balancing” needs to take place within this spec, however I find it hard to fall for when we’ve let several classes be extremely well rounded over the past three years with few “balancing” features. Everyone playing at a higher level of pvp or even pve understands and can easily identify these classes. In closing, I’d rather have thief / Daredevil strong come launch, and take some hits, rather than it starting weak and staying there due to people who don’t understand it constantly berating it into the nerf zone until it’s “fixed”. I like the changes and I hope to see more in the future.
There are many things here that I agree with. Due to thief losing one of their key mechanics then the trade off has to make it amazing or why would someone consider bringing a DD into pve now? Very understandable that the spec is new but that doesn’t mean that suddenly the damage will become much better or things such as the GM trait will become useful. For two events the traits were useless so since this is the final BWE that’s kind of troubling.
If things were out of hand it could be much easier to fix and many people won’t be thinking about quitting their classes. Than starting the class very weak and begging for some support to become useful.