Wait… 0?
I put in $1.00 for the download.
That may not seem a lot to you, guys, but I’m insanely poor, and struggling to get a job.
I don’t know about other people, but it surely means a lot to me. Thank you so very much for that! It made my day.
I wish you the best of luck in finding a new job, and I hope it will be one that you enjoy.
Hello!
I’ve been slowly working on a theme inspired by each and every class on Guild Wars 2, and it’s finally complete.
The download is available for free on BandCamp through the link, you just have to input zero as the price.
First of all, I’d like to say that I love the concept of the Daredevil. The Bo Staff is my favorite martial arts weapon, the concept of throwing punches, kicks, combos and counters during a fight is very exciting (especially in GW2), and I always loved the frenetic no-stealth flashy acrobatic gameplay of a D/D trickery Thief.
It should come as no surprise that the Daredevil instantly made me fall in love. I definitely want to main a Daredevil, and so I’ll list everything I noticed that about it that made me feel sad – as in it was so good in theory, but not so much in practice.
Dodges:
All the dodges had me so excited! The animations looked great, and they all seemed so useful! But then, I tried them, and they all felt slow and clunky. The real problem is, they break the flow. It has a wind-up before going out, then the animation, and you’re frozen for some time after it ends. Why have dodges with cast times/channeling?
Impaling Lotus – This one is interesting: you can dodge while dodging. If you spam the dodge button, you’ll end up doing another dodge during the dodge, thus climbing higher and wasting more endurance. It’s one for the price of two! (This was still the most responsive dodge for me, probably because it has no chanelling. Also, it uses one initiative in combat. I believe it’s a bug.)
Dash – Feels more like a “run away”, disengage-ish dodge. If you miss the direction, you can screw yourself so easily… My suggestion would be to let us change direction during this one, even if slowly (after all, you’re running like a madman). By the way, he seems to be holding the weapon, but it disappears.
Bound – My favorite before using it. Couldn’t do it. You’ll NEVER land this on your opponent. I get it, maybe it’s more of an anti-zerg dodge or something – but in a 1v1 situation, whichever way you dodge, you won’t hit the person you’re fighting. Plus, you are stuck in place. It doesn’t seem to travel the 300 distance.
Finally, I feel the 3 bars end up effectively as one extra dodge per fight. It feels like it recharges slowly, and the signet that “refills” your endurance actually only fills two thirds of it. Even with the staff endurance regeneration trait it still didn’t feel right. I believe it’s because I didn’t manage to use the dodges effectively during combat, as they’d just put me out of range, having to run back into the fight and eating up all the damage as I do it (or use an extra dodge to get back in).
Physical Skills:
Love them! But I have some small gripes with each one, hahah. Hope you’ll bear with me for a little longer.
Fist Flurry – kitten , this one’s exciting! Beat up your opponent with many punches, and you have 5 seconds to follow up with a finishing blow! This works well as a combo skill. But the animation made me sad… I was playing on a Human, and it looks like the kitten has no idea how to throw a punch. He curls his wrists inward and wiggles his bent arms at the enemy. Why not some straight punches? The palm strike looks great, though – just wish it had a bit more impact.
Bandit’s Defense – Great skill. The animation looks great too, except for one detail – it instantly snaps back to the idle pose in the end.
Impairing Daggers – Why does this use initiative?
Distracting Daggers – I found it unusable, due to having to take a long time to equip it, then not having enough time to wait for the right move to use it on.
Impact Strike – Why is this a combo skill? You have less than a second to use the next one. Basically a skill that you need to spam the button to use. You can’t time it differently, like you can with Fist Flurry.
Channeled Vigor – …this came out of nowhere, right? It has nothing to do with the rest of the theme. Heck, it’s just Guardian’s Empower animation (which I really dislike on the male Human, but that’s my opinion). The skill itself, I felt was good, but the rest of it made me forget about the effect… :c
Staff:
Why that recycled pose? It had so much potential! Why not have this (http://massivelyop.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Weapon-Skill-5-Vault-1024x576.jpg) as the idle stance? I’d love it right away if it was the case.
Gameplay-wise, I actually liked the staff, though I feel it could be a bit faster. After playing for about an hour only using staff, I switched to dagger/dagger and it felt like I had quickness. Still, I agree that it doesn’t provide the frontliner sustain that the class promised.
To sum it up my impression of the Daredevil in a word, I’d use rushed. Most of the animations are recycled, and one of it’s core mechanics feels very clunky. But mainly, it was the animations that let me down. It seems to me you guys are struggling with the release date, not being able to do it all, and just putting out whatever is at hand. If that’s the case, I wish you had waited longer to reveal it, or gone for a later date. For the first time in all these years, I felt like someone there didn’t care about what they were doing, like we’d just accept whatever was thrown out, and it was very sad. :/
Again, I loved the Daredevil’s concept, and I’m saying all this because I want it to be a great class (it made me want to main a Thief after 3 years of being a bunker-style Guardian!). I hope you’ll get it right by October 23. (Also, I had a blast using Aureate staff and pretending I had a spear!)
Cheers from a faithful player! (Get it? Get it? c:)
P.S. – Loved the sound effects on the skills!
(edited by Nick Kaedalus.9526)
