Guild Wars 2

I’m also having this issue. It’s kind of hilarious. At first I thought it was because I played before the patch finished downloading, but even after a full relaunch I have the issue.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

“5s or so” can also mean 15s.

What is actually means is a range of about 1-2s on either side. I don’t know all that many people who would agree that “or so” is shorthand for “tripling the baseline”.

I have no problem with it, but I wouldn’t mind it if it would change to be around 8s-10s.

It certainly can’t go above 10s, because even in the rosiest of scenarios you’ll run into problems with timing.

And again, there is really no balance reason for it in the first place. I chose 5s because it’s long enough to be a barrier for stacking (prevents a situation where you have two out simultaneously). That’s the floor for anyone who cares about abuse cases for Healing Seed, AKA a good place for compromise. I didn’t just yank that figure out of midair.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

15s is not long though. It becomes available before the next steal.

It certainly is too long, because 15s causes cooldown collision problems for any Improvisation users that also spec Trickery (AKA, most of them). It feels bad when it happens, and has no credible balancing reason behind it. In other words, it needs to go.

Healing Seeds cooldown ought not to be any longer than about 5s or so.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

When it was just a one-time use, it was fine. Now that you can use it twice, I see no problem with the CD.

No, when it was one-time use you could get a pair of them going back to back, because of the nature of the one-slot Steal. It wasn’t OP then, and it wouldn’t be OP now.

The one weird edge case of four rapid-fire Seeds in the new system — which isn’t much of an issue at all — can be squished with just a small CD. There’s no need for such a long one, protestations of contrarians notwithstanding.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If there is no CD:
Steal -> wait for Steal to recharge -> Healing Seed -> Healing Seed -> Steal -> Healing Seed -> Healing Seed = OP much.

Well, it’s got a half-second channel time, so besides being interruptable, you’re spending a lot of time just for stacking up a bunch of regen. You only need one Seed to get the benefit of a Water field.

I can see the purpose of a CD, but it doesn’t need to be as long as it is.

I’ve come to terms with it. DD is now the go-to dodge spec that Acrobatics used to be, but other options are viable now that stuff like Invigorating Precision is actually good.

Gaile’s faith in Support’s ability to make this right, was evidently misplaced.

I just got a reply back from them on my own situation (a more complicated one, since I also could not buy Gems in the normal manner either), and was told that the Support team “doesn’t have a way to interfere on what the developers intended mechanics”, as if I asked them to gift me a precursor instead of just asking them to honor a promotional price.

I am extremely disappointed by this.

Kocoff.7582:

I am surprised you say that. I think DD will greatly enhance S/P gameplay. Granted it obvisouly want have any traps involved, but a different playstyle? I have to disagree.

If you’re fishing for interrupts and not using traps — which is what you get when you drop DA for DD — it’s definitely a different playstyle. Might be OK-ish anyway, but we’re 100% theorycraft until such time as people can actually test out these new traits. DD does seem like a better version of the old Acrobatics, all things considered.

Oh well. I asked .you answered. Your build is interesting tho.

I tried CS/DA/TR, without the traps. the signet pop is truly welcomed.

You’re missing out if you don’t use traps, but agreed that the Signet pop is nice. I run Withdraw, Dagger Storm, a Trap (Tripwire or Needle), a Signet (Shadow or Infiltrator), and a Deception (any of them… they are all good). There’s a really good chance that Improvisation resets something useful there.

Worth noting: if Improvisation resets Traps, it also resets the Trapper’s Respite trait. That’s not worth much if you are using HiS, but it’s handy if you run Withdraw or Signet of Malice, since their cooldown is shorter than the trait’s.

Kocoff.7582:

I would like see your build with DD Line added into it if you don’t mind.

I’d never use Daredevil with this build; DD doesn’t have anything synergistic with traps. With Daredevil, you’d be looking at an entirely different playstyle; probably I wouldn’t even bother with Swords at all.

No thanks; Throw Gunk is my second-favorite stolen skill behind Consume Plasma.

Acrobatics isn’t strong enough to support S/P anymore; the only trait really worth mentioning is Hard to Catch, and you can replace most of what you lose there with a utility skill like Infiltrator’s Signet or Roll for Initiative.

I’ve been experimenting with DA/CS/Trickery instead, and while not as good as S/P in its heyday, it’s fairly solid. You just need to make sure that you are picking the right traits to go together.

Trickery: Thrill of the Crime (need consistent Fury access), Trickster (turns Withdraw, RFI, and Dagger Storm into condi removal options), Sleight of Hand.
Critical Strikes: Invigorating Precision (gives you the sustain that Acrobatics no longer gives, and there’s no need for Hidden Killer).
Deadly Arts: Trapper’s Respite (sticks an unblockable Needle Trap on the end of your Withdraw… extraordinarily useful for duels, stacks with regular Needle Trap utility), Deadly Trapper (makes traps more deadly for you, available more often).

I like Withdraw for a heal, and Improvisation + Sundering Strikes as the floating trait options (I prefer those for my style, but they don’t have any particular synergy with the build, so alternatives are just fine).

It’s a fun build. I run it with Strength runes and sigils, since you have easy access to long-duration sources of Might.

Those responses from Support are very troubling. Honoring promotional pricing due to extenuating circumstances, is something that honest businesses do every day.

What’s the underlying issue? There’s clearly no technical reason for it. Are the Support people simply not empowered to do the right thing?

^ And also for me. Turns out that a Pistol Whip with ~3500 Power, 77% crit chance, and 182% crit damage will turn a whole lot of people into instant road pizza.

frans.8092:

True, I should have added the weapon preference. I don’t think that with a good source of vigor the 2 might stacks alone would be worth it compared to other food. And without Hidden Assassin you’re down to Inertia and Thrill of the Crime, Runes of Strength become less obvious.

I also run Sigil of Strength on my Sword. It’s pretty easy to maintain a rolling 6-7 stacks of Might out of combat, which ramps up to 12+ once things get going and the crits roll in. Power will frequently top 3k, and I don’t even use Power food. Spec looks something like this.

Is the duration bonus applies to might stacks that you steal/rip?

I’m not sure, and it’s hard to test, but it wouldn’t impact my inclination to pick BT in any case. If I had to guess, I’d say that it probably doesn’t.

One thing that it IS good for, however, is stacking AOE Might. Shortbow’s finisher spam means 35s duration stacks of 3x Might, as long as someone gives me a Fire field. If I throw on my bag-farming food (omnoms), duration goes up to 39 seconds, AKA one second short of the max.

frans.8092:

Or you could abandon the quest for perma vigor and settle for the food. Keep in mind that while perma-vigor can increase the might stacks from Inertia, having to go deep into Acrobatics and Trickery would deprive you of Hidden Assassin – which requires 5 (25) in Shadow Arts.

What the Christ is an S/P + SB spec going to do with 5 points in SA? I can’t stealth without utilities. Context, please.

Even if I dropped down to 3 Acrobatics (which is as low as you can reasonably go in an evade build) and ignored Vigorous Recovery completely, that’s still only ~50% Vigor downtime. The food’s endurance regen is still roughly only half of its effectiveness as long as you’re using Bountiful/SoH and pushing F1.

^ Pack runes are pretty solid, but you make a very poor assumption of 50% Fury uptime from the #4 slot. That is not happening in real life on a Thief (a profession that doesn’t rely on passive mitigation), with a 25% proc chance.

babazhook.6805:

Use MARJORIES chili.

The 3 stacks of might last 20 seconds base. It has an ICD of 20 seconds. Thus each heal with no further boon duration will give you three might stacks (105 power and 105 condition) for 29 seconds.

It also adds 50 power and 50 condition damage for 155 power total and 155 condition damage total.

That may work for some people, but not me. Marjory’s is expensive, the ICD conflicts with my heal (Withdraw), and I can’t use the condition damage effectively (S/P + SB). If I can ever buy a bowl without mortgaging Salma District, and the ICD drops to 15 seconds, I wouldn’t mind the boost.

Seems more like something that an SA-spec Thief with HiS would use.

EDIT:

As to the Orian stew, whil in my tests it build might slower then marjories the 40 percent increased recharge to endurance can not be overlooked. The might one gets from the dodge and power of inertia that the increased rate provides can not be overlooked.

You can easily overlook the endurance recharge boost once you realize that it doesn’t stack with Vigor.

frans.8092:

Hey, keep it friendly pal, the wiki page Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew on the food says the food gives 5 seconds might on dodge and I take their word over yours any day.

Confirmed that the wiki is correct. I tried these out post-patch with my Strength runes, and they are simply not worth it for the most part, even with the extended duration. The food needs to have a base of at least 10s or something before it starts becoming worthwhile. Flat stat food is better.

Permanent Vigor doesn’t exist, for thieves, and for the best vigor uptime in combination with you loose either the crit chance (for Sigil of Strength) or Hidden Assassin.

This isn’t technically true; you just need deep Acrobatics/Trickery and a source of boon duration from somewhere else in order to get access to perma Vigor.

PS: sorry, OP, but Runes of Strength are stupid good for us as a profession. You need to decide what’s more important to you: optimal DPS, or your bank account.

I don’t see the value in making a bunch of hidden rules that feel bad to the players when things “randomly” go on cooldown. Initiative is straightforward and pretty easy to understand.

Warlord.9074:

I have yet to die from a thief with this build but I am just saying It seems over the top. It’s super annoying. To be honest it makes the fight last a long time and its a lot of fun for such a long fight but it just seems over the top to me

It’s super-annoying that if I want 18,000+ health and 2200+ Armor, I have to actually itemize for it.

Have you considered using Rune of the Ogre as a stopgap? You lose a little ferocity and the 10% conditional multiplier, but gain perma-4% and uhhh… a rock dog. Way cheaper than Strength.

FYI, you can do plenty of work in a condi build with just exotics. P/D condi is so good right now you could probably get away with yellows, even.

Depends on your style. If you have existing sources of Might (like your Signets, from other people, blast finishers etc) and you’re going for max damage, there is no need to be rid of Scholar. Keep your health up, do the deeps, save some money.

It’s different if you have a build centered around Might (either for yourself, or blasting for other people). I run 2/0/0/6/6 and find Strength invaluable, since I have high Might access/uptime. My AOE Might blast finishers last for 35 seconds. Etc.

^ I do the mouse-swap on occasion, especially in situations where I need to act fast, but the quick turn always does a 180; it’s very useful to have available, esp for overland travel. Nice thing about it is that you can autorun, turn, withdraw, without changing your angle by accident.

Just be sure you’re not holding down mouse-move when you do it, otherwise the key does not work.

^ Best way is to map the quick-turn key to something. Mine is “U”, since it’s easy to press with my heal. Then just whip around with the mouse.

^ Your choice, but D/D is good. Gives you AOE for objective-clearing, and HS for overland travel.

Certainly seems that way in WvW, in terms of roamers. I don’t see a lot of backstabbers anymore.

The Hammer.5960:

Both make valid points, but lets face it guys, in large scale fights you’ll be dealing with almost perma stability and constant cleansing.

Well, condi cleansing and stability isn’t going to help you against a life leech from Leeching Venoms. Only things that stuff attacks (aegis, block, evade, blindness) will prevent the effect.

Since LV ignores Armor and scales directly with the recipient’s Power while healing with the Thief’s Healing Power, you can contribute a decent amount of damage/sustain even with the venom and strike limitations. It’s bonus damage for your side (even for your PVT people), plus a little bit of extra sustain.

Plenty of things to do with Shortbow while waiting on cooldowns to recycle.

SMH at people who want to throw away the unique utility that a Thief brings to a group (venomshare, spammable blast finisher, etc) in exchange for something you can get from literally anywhere (burst damage).

This is why the myth of Thieves being weak in group WvW persists; people don’t play them properly.

^ The venoms that use condi damage will use the value from the people you give them to (which generally will not be much), so yours is only relevant for yourself. But in the case of the heals from Leeching Venoms, it uses YOUR Healing Power stat for the healing portion of the leech.

Agreed about P/D condition-based; it’s very strong right now. You have a few good runesets to pick from, but Perplexity is especially good if you are skilled with Scorp/Tripwire for clutch interrupts.

I am personally experimenting with an S/P + SB build based around stacking Might with Strength runes. Current setup can be found here. It’s a touch too squishy at the moment, and I could use Shadowstep in place of a signet, but I like the performance so far otherwise.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Yes, BA is not about flexibility, it’s about applying continuous pressure because everytime you use it, you get “Mug, and Serpent’s Touch, and a shadowstep, and 2 initiative” plus 5 stacks of Confusion plus Thrill/BT if you spec for it.

SoH is also about continuous pressure, because it shaves 20% off the recast time of that entire birthday present, which includes all sorts of goodies. I am free to completely ignore the interrupt factor and just use Steal whenever it is off CD; the Daze still does something useful even if it’s not an optimal time to use it.

The difference is, SoH has an additional tactical use that BA does not. Since I am a human being with a brain, I can use whichever style best suits the fight. Sometimes that means fishing for interrupts while spamming boons, sometimes it means holding back and trying to stuff a heal, or stopping a stab stomp, or using SoH like a ghetto stunbreaker on a Warrior that just knocked me down. Etc.

I’m not arguing about which GM is better at running a marathon since there are many other ways to improve travel time rather than putting Steal in CD. For a cheap price of 6 seconds, you can travel for 900 units using a SB. So I’m not entirely sure why SoH suddenly a better choice for traveling.

You’re not arguing it because it’s devastating to your case. Overland mobility is an important part of playing a Thief in WvW, and trading SoH for BA hurts it. I just detailed how, and you have no answer for it.

Infiltrator’s Arrow is used alongside of — not in place of — normal travel with IMS. There is no replacement for permanent 33% movement speed, which is better than what SoS and Traveler’s can offer.

Well Confusion lasts 6.5s for me. The Confusion damage is added to autoattack damage and Mug damage, which is compounded by every action that the target makes. It’s part of applying constant pressure on the target.

I don’t care about your build. You can spec however you like. What I care about, is this ridiculous notion that BA is “1000x better than SoH”. I’d actually make myself weaker in a lot of scenarios by trading one for the other. Logically, you’d expect this to undermine your case, but logic isn’t a welcome guest here.

What is it that is like my mistake on PR then?

Your ignorance of mechanics that you don’t use. Not knowing PR’s ICD (you were off by a factor of 100%). Not knowing about the interaction between BT and SoH. Not knowing that dodge rolls only proc Confusion when there is a skill attached.

These are the sort of things you should be aware of before you make grand proclamations about BA (or anything else).

So why even swap SoH to BA if you’re a non-condi Thief? What’re you trying to accomplish by this swap if it’s nothing but “like being pelted with marshmallows”?

If I am with a P/D Trickery Thief, I can mitigate a lot of the disadvantages of losing SoH by leveraging that Thief’s AOE boons. It also adds an element of uncertainty and cover, because the target has no idea if the Confusion stacks are from the Sword Thief or the P/D Thief.

tl;dr, unlike some people, I actually change my loadout depending on the situation.

I said “in practice” while you insist on looking at paper. Do I really have to explain what that means?

The benefit from 300 condition damage is exactly the same in practice as it is on paper. You’re attributing magic powers to max Trickery that don’t exist anywhere. The “sync” is just a measly +112 damage per proc. This is a rounding error on most health bars.

lol, only 13 damage, really? We’re still talking about the condition called Confusion right?

One stack of might, 35 condition damage, 2.625 damage per stack of Confusion, ~13 damage for the whole BA payload.

Where would you like to go now? Let’s go on as many irrelevant tangents as possible. We’ve already established that even kitten Might builds can’t reach 25 stacks of sustained Might solo, and your retort of “at least one stack” has nearly no impact on BA whatsoever.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Stuffing #6 is contrary to your freely using Steal for Thrill/BT. You can’t have both.

And also Mug, and Serpent’s Touch, and a shadowstep, and 2 initiative. Life is about choices. I don’t always need the boons 100% of the time in combat; weighing the opportunity cost is part of the deal.

The point is that SoH fits into both styles: spamming as soon as you get Steal off cooldown, as well as tactical use. BA does not have that flexibility; it’s a simplified decision tree because you hack two branches off of it.

My point is, when you’re engage in a fight, you can either use Steal for the buff or for interrupt and often times the CDR doesn’t matter because Steal will just sit there waiting for you to use it, mainly to interrupt #6.

My point is that you need to read the things I am typing. I rely on SoH for overland mobility.

I have 30% boon duration, and Steal is on a 21.5s cooldown. Thrill gives 13s of IMS, and I regen enough endurance during that period to get three dodge rolls (21s * 5%), which is another 7.8s of IMS. Those math wizards amongst us will note that this is 20.8s of IMS uptime during a 21.5s cooldown, or a brief 0.8s window without IMS.

If I slot BA instead of SoH, that IMS downtime balloons to nearly 4s. Now I need to get endurance regen, or pop my heal for Vigor, or splat a bunny rabbit.

All so that I can maybe hurt some idiot for ~800 damage during a 5 second Confusion window. My autoattack hits harder than that. Hell, MUG hits harder than that, and it heals me too.

Why am I kicking dirt on my mobility and combat parameters so that I can be a homeless man’s Mesmer?

We’ll just have to agree to disagree on that.

You’re free to feel that way, but in reality, my build is not subject to your approval in any case.

Why would you call it my “mistake” is beyond me.

I didn’t call it a mistake (your mistake was on another issue), I just said that it was a “tell” that you never actually used it. Because if you did, you would have known. This is the hazard of pontificating about a subject on which you are not sufficiently familiar.

I disagree. Continuously applying pressure is a tactical advantage. What’s restrictive is saving your SoH for stuffing #6, it denies you from having the buffs from Thrill/BT.

Confusion pressure from a non-condi Thief is like being pelted with marshmallows. Even something as dumb as having Mug available sooner after the initial Steal has a bigger impact on the fight, never mind the boons. Saving or not saving is situational.

I said, “1000 times better in practice,” and yes it’s convenient to ignore that one too.

No no. you said this:

“The new GM trait for Trickery is 1000 times better in practice since it actually sync with the condition damage you get from Trickery”

Put more simply, you said “X since Y”. Well, Y is a problem. The condition damage “sync” is a funny joke, not an argument.

Even at 1 stack of might, BA still benefit from it compare to SoH that never benefits whatsoever.

You’re just changing the goalposts at this point, seeing as how your original argument went nowhere. One stack of Might adds a whole 13 damage to a shot of BA. Hell, SoH makes Serpent’s Touch available more often, which does more “damage” due to the healing penalty it gives. And Might works on that, too!

Pardon me for not calling a press conference over 13 damage.

Dee Jay.2460:

Runes of Balthazar should be much better. If meshes well with Withdraw and gives you reliable access to Burn, an incredibly powerful condition that P/D Thieves otherwise lack.

I wouldn’t say it meshes well, I’d say it’s hilariously awkward. The fact that the AOE procs at the end of the Withdraw dodge roll makes it really clunky to use in real-world situations. You either have to create space and back-turn roll into someone, or cancel the roll with a weapon swap.

Signet of Malice is better for it, but SoM has a casting time and isn’t generally something you want to put on cooldown.

Picking a heal for Balth is sort of like deciding whether you want to be kicked in the kitten or punched in the face.

It’s also a very cheap rune-set.

Cheap for a reason, in my estimation.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

It’s often a gg also when they refuse to take action because they don’t want to take Confusion damage. Often I’ve seen it puts them into a panic mode.

Irrelevant. The original point was about stuffing a #6, which is almost universally devastating. Confusion stacks are not nearly the same threat, especially without itemization. I’ll take an interrupt of an important skill nine times out of ten over mind games.

CDR is a miss and hit especially when spec with SoH. You don’t want to just use it as soon as it goes out of cooldown — even for Thrill/BT.

Often times, Steal just sits there out of CD because you don’t want to waste that precious Daze that can be used as an interrupt.

Might be hit or miss for you, but it’s not hit or miss for me. I use Thrill for overland travel (IMS is better than Traveler’s or SoS), and Steal is also the primary source of Vigor/Might/Fury for me. Since I don’t run CS or deep DA, I do need the offense. You’d better believe that the extra 5.4s seconds matters. Especially since I am main Sword, and gap-closers are pretty important.

I’ll run Bewildering when I am with my P/D partner, if he is running Thrill/BT, since I can benefit from the AOE on his Steal, and adding another 5 stacks of Confusion from a weak source doesn’t matter (the target won’t know who the Confusion stacks are from).

But otherwise, SoH on my S/P build. Interrupt and CDR are too good.

How so? You can’t daze a stabilized target.

Just like with your mistake on Pain Response’s ICD, this is a tell that you don’t actually use the Sleight of Hand + Bountiful Theft combo. Stealing someone’s Stability and ending a stomp is a big deal; I did this twice last night, just roaming.

Unlike SoH, where you find yourself saving that Daze, BA encourages you to use Steal as soon as it’s out of cooldown.

BA’s “encouragement” is a result of having fewer tactical options available. This is not an advantage, it’s a restriction.

More like 100% of a time.

Not unless there is a skill-based effect attached to the dodge roll.

Yes, that’s what I said. It’s 1000x better because;
1) BA has a potential to pacify the target for 6s.
2) It actually deals damage.
3) The worth of BA compounds depending on what your target do.
4) 1500 Cond Damg + stacks of might simply sky rockets this trait

No no. This is what you said, as another reminder:

""The new GM trait for Trickery is 1000 times better in practice since it actually sync with the condition damage you get from Trickery"

You are saying something very specific here, something that is not supported by the facts. Dealing an extra ~112 damage is what “the condition damage you get from Trickery” lends you. That is not one thousand times better; it’s not even better than extra damage from a faster-recycling Mug.

My respond is within the context of WvW where 25 stack of might is easily achieved. You used WvW as your basis, why is it ridiculous?

A lone Thief cannot possibly maintain 25 stacks of Might. At best, my sustainable level is 6-7 out of combat and 10-12 in combat. I need fire fields or specific party members to get any more than that. You are detailing a small group or a blob, which by its nature changes the whole equation of the worth of the Grandmaster traits.

I get why Bewildering is attractive: it’s an Easy Button™ that doesn’t require a lot of thought, and can fool enemies into making bad decisions. And even still I’d take SoH in specific situations, because of the CDR and the Daze.

^ We have pretty good Regen uptime in Acrobatics with Pain Response, but everyone seems to think that’s just a condition removal trait, for some reason. There are potential broken combinations if they don’t carefully watch our effective Healing Power ratios.

I am not talking about PvP. Grimwolf derailed the thread into PvE.

Scribbles.3974:

if it scaled with hp, it would be so much better

The word you are looking for here is “overpowered”. Unless they made the ratio uselessly small.

if your going pve for this and only pve, then sure, possibly, with signent of malice/pistol whip, but once that boss comes around and you dump all your sustain into crits, that 50-89 healing is really gonna help you…

This trait is worthwhile if for no other reason than that it erases incidental damage that will put you under the Scholar threshold. For larger healing needs, that’s why you combine it with other sources, like food/leech/SoM/AR.

Does anyone else want to agree with me while pretending to disagree?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Pacifying their whole skill set is better though.

Not necessarily. If I stuff someone’s #6 and put it on cooldown for 5s, that’s very often a gg.

And I also rely on the boons from Thrill/BT, so Steal available more often is useful utility to me. And I can shut down a Stability stomp. Etc. It’s situational, and in no way some decision that is pre-destined to land on the BA side.

Confusion punishes dodge too.

Sometimes.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove here or why are you ignoring the base 65 damage of Confusion.

Then refresh your memory:

“The new GM trait for Trickery is 1000 times better in practice since it actually sync with the condition damage you get from Trickery”

BA is 1000x better than SoH in practice because it adds 112 damage to a Confusion stack. That’s what you said. That’s the value of a “sync”: 112 damage.

Let’s say you don’t itemized, but have access to might. At 25 stacks of might, that’s still 1175 Condition damage — you can’t ignore that either.

I’m running Runes and Sigil of Strength, with deep Acrobatics, and not even I can maintain 25 stacks of Might.

You are being ridiculous.

^ There’s more than one way to skin a cat, or sustain a fight. You hit like a feather with your +HP gear, or are reliant entirely on conditions. A build with sustain in it does not need to be balls-out max healing in order to be useful.

IP is the trait sustain option for the crit-based Thief that goes down CS. There’s undoubtedly a good reason why this trait 1) requires a crit and 2) doesn’t scale with healing power.

This is not a difficult concept to understand.

Lostwingman.5034:

Sustain is an aspect of survivability […]

Which is another way of saying that they are two distinct things.

[…] it is also a largely marginal and optional part. It is compensating for a shortcoming, the shortcoming being low damage output.

Nonsense. For some content, you cannot get enough damage output (certainly Executioner is insufficient) to increase your survival beyond what you’d be able to get with healing sustain, because you can’t get to the point where you can insta-blick bosses.

It sort of blows my mind that we just went through Healing Signet hell as a community, but there are people who still don’t understand how powerful it is to have in-combat healing. I completely understand why ANet is gun-shy about increasing the gain on this trait.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If the target refuse to take action, then Confusion is way better than Daze because it can pacify the target for 6s instead of 1s.

But even still, sometimes the Daze is better. The Daze itself only lasts 1s, but the interrupted skill is on cooldown for 5s.

If you put it that way, sure it looks bad, but Confusion has a base 65 damage per stack plus the condition damage bonus. To ignore the 65 base damage is convenient when making BA look bad because 112.5 really looks awful.

It’s not “convenient”, it’s the truth. This is what Trickery gives you. If you’re going to argue traitline synergy, this is what that “synergy” is worth. 112.5 damage per skill during the duration.

At 1500 Condition Damage, 5 stacks of Confusion is not something you can simply ignore.

The problem is that you have to itemize for 1200 of that. I can count on +100 from applied Strength, and a variable amount from Might stacks, but my gear is Zerker/Soldier/Knight, not Carrion/Dire.

Azure Prower.8701:

Headshot is more preferable though. Basilisk takes some build up and Scorpion Wire is unreliable. Both take up a slot and can be easily wasted.

Headshot is preferable from a convenience standpoint; BV and SW are preferable from a power standpoint, because you can throw more stacks of Confusion out there. Yes, it takes skill to make Perplexity #6 work without SoH, but the payoff is better as well, and that’s the way it should be.

mango.9267:

If you play the meta p/d dire build, you really won’t need p/p or d/p to interrupt. Sleight of hand is more than enough for interrupting your opponent, and the 20% chance of applying 3 stacks of confusion is entirely sufficient (keep in mind that a single sneak attack is already five hits).

Perplexity #4 is “when struck” now, not “on hit”. Usually that’s not a big deal because people run Dire and deep Shadow Arts anyway, but FYI you actually need to get smacked around to activate this.

Let’s not pretend that +300 condition damage from Trickery makes Bewildering Ambush some kind of must-have BIS pick. Confusion only has a 7.5% condi ratio in WvW: that investment of +300 only adds 22.5 per stack, or 112.5 damage for the whole Bewildering payload.

Someone is not a degenerate for looking at the 112.5 bonus damage, and deciding that they’d just assume take a Daze and another 5s off Steal’s CD. I run 30 Trickery as a Sword user, and I’ll go either way depending on who I am with.

I’d be more concerned about exploding like a rotten cantaloupe with that 12.5k health that you have. You have decent Armor, but nothing behind it. You are one good condi-bomb away from a waypoint home.

IMO you are better off putting 3 points down Acrobatics to get Fluid Strikes (which will replace the damage bonus from losing Exposed Weakness). That only represents a loss of 150 Power, which you can replace with Assassin’s Signet if you really care about a 6% drop in DPS. That gives you another 1500 health to play with, Pain Response, and a longer duration on your Fury/Might/Swiftness/Vigor boons.

I think you’re going to find that you need Feline Grace. Unfortunately that will mean speccing out of DA, but that line is kind of a mess anyway. Not sure that Revealed Training is worth it for what you are trying to do.

There’s a 30 second cooldown, and people might be avoiding it because they can’t leverage it. It’s good with Sword/Pistol, though.

Grimwolf.7163:

Holy Mother of God, man. You are not worth arguing with. Go on being a crappy thief, I have no reason to care.

And yet you keep replying and throwing insults, about a point that shouldn’t even be controversial. There ARE uses for IP (which have already been spelled out here: it’s not a difficult concept to grasp). To proclaim that the trait “does nothing for you” is to deny reality.

Grimwolf.7163:

Since you don’t understand

I understand your point perfectly. The problem is that your point is silly.

[…]I’m trying to say that healing isn’t everything.
Even if you’re goal is to survive more easily, it’s still bat-kitten crazy to sacrifice 20% damage for a trivial amount of healing that won’t even help you. If all you care about is staying alive and not doing anything else, you shouldn’t even be going down the Critical Strikes line in the first place.

Some fun facts that you just bulldozed over:

• It’s not a 20% damage loss: you only “lose” that damage on targets under 50% health.
• The healing could be higher, but it is not trivial. IP scales with the power tripod, and is returning 5% of your critical hit damage.
• “Staying alive” is not the goal. The goal is getting extra combat healing (because if you didn’t want combat heals, you wouldn’t spec in IP in the first place).
• For combat healing traits, you are limited to basically IP, LV, and AR. Signet of Malice and various life leeches help, but a lot of things go into a good omelet.

Obviously someone going down CS cares about damage, but that doesn’t mean healing is irrelevant. It’s niche, but it’s nonetheless useful. Your hyperbole is rejected.

Lostwingman.5034:

Killing faster is part of survivability though, that’s how Zerker works in PvE…

I said “sustain”, not “survivability”. Subtle but important difference between those two things.

Grimwolf.7163:

Dodging doesn’t heal you either, kitten. Try ignoring that.

“Dodge” is not a Critical Strikes Grandmaster trait. Here are your options for healing in the CS line:

1. Invigorating Precision
2. There is no Option #2.

It’s pretty silly to bring up Executioner as a retort, when it doesn’t contribute to sustain. If you don’t need extra healing, don’t pick IP. If you do, it’s basically your only choice in this line. Rocket science, it is not.

Grimwolf.7163:

It doesn’t matter what you pair it with, it’s still extremely weak relative to other traits. If you’re doing well pairing it with Malice, that’s because Malice is good. The trait does nothing for you.
You’d have to be insane to take this in PvE over Executioner.

Oh really? How much healing do you get out of Executioner? Doesn’t seem to be working for me, maybe I am doing something wrong.