Guild Wars 2

I just 100% completed Tangled Depths and got no reward. I was supposed to get Thief’s Cache etc.

A friend got his reward on a character that hadn’t got completion of central Tyria yet, so I guess I’m screwed.

Just got 100% map completion for Tangled Depths, and completing a Magus Falls map is supposed to reward a chest for my class (Thief’s Cache). Got nothing.

Is there something more I have to do other than the 100% completion or is this just bugged?

babazhook.6805:

One thing they might do to staff to make it a bit better is drop the 10 percent more damage when endurance full (the fact is a dd uses endurance a lot so this rarely comes into play) and switch that too something very much like the “add endurance when Ini used trait” this being “when wielding a staff gain 1 ini every 6 seconds.”

Since base INI is 12 and recharges at 1 per second it in essence 2 extra ini every 12 seconds. This gives that staff an added edge over other weapon sets in that it not as strapped for that initiative and will have an edge in endurance regen.

Err, it’s 10% damage when endurance is NOT full.

Tringsh.2380:

- Weakening Charge and Debilitating Ark I find myself not using at all and they don’t offer anything in combat.

Not using Weakening Charge is why you feel like you have bad damage. It is the highest DPS available to Thief in the entire game…

That plus Weakness, the best anti-power condition?

pola.5832:

Have you tried spvp yet? Im hoping it will be a good fighter, instead of a sneak in-sneak out assassin, or the classic +1 meta stuff im used to

Also, maybe a little offtopic, but do you think thief will be viable for raids, using staff? considering the dodges and everything

I would say that Staff Daredevil is absolutely the way to go for raids. Bosses in raids tend to have large hitboxes, and the beta one was no exception. That means that landing Weakening Charge will be very easy, and with all the damage modifiers from the traitline you should see some great numbers. I was getting something like 30k (10k x3) in the beta raid for each WC and 35-40k with each Vault should you want to evade something. Couple that with the constant Weakness generation for adds, an autoattack that’s as fast as Dagger but pretty much on-par with Sword auto damage while applying Vulnerability for the group and you got a winner on your hands.

Death Blossom: Extended evasion by 200 miliseconds toward the beginning of the ability.

Try it out! It feels much nicer now.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

In PvE, definitely Staff without a doubt. The AoE damage from Vault+Bound is just too hard to pass up. However, for a single target boss fight for instance, I’ll still take D/D only because of backstab and faster auto-attack.

Staff auto is as fast as Dagger. It’s actually about 3ms faster.

I can’t find any way to justify ever using D/D when the numbers on Weakening Charge, Vault and the autos are as high as they are along with their cast times, with far more multipliers than Trickery. D/x is pretty much a PvP weapon when people have got used to Staff.

D/D doesn’t have noticeably more dodges. Using Staff with Staff Master will get back almost as much endurance as landing Wild Strike during a standard rotation, while having another large damage modifier that Dagger cannot use. Also, if you are using Wild Strike so often that you begin to outpace Staff’s endurance regeneration by a large margin, then you are not rotating Backstab often enough and your DPS will be abysmal.

With either weapon, Endurance Thief and Channeled Vigor is more than enough to out-evade any encounter.

And yeah gin, you could, but it could be a good idea to open a fight with D/D secondary, land Backstab then swap to Staff with a temporary boost from RT and remain in Staff for the rest of the fight. Haven’t tried messing with that in the beta, but it’s a possibility. Panic Strike could still be useful for some stuff in HoT, though. Hell, I might even try taking Deadly Trapper and have some temporary self-might with Shadow Trap on my bar for when I’m alone.

Yes, Staff > everything else for Power DPS in PvE now.

Remove Trickery for Daredevil – you swap out the 10-15% average damage modifier for a 7%, a 10% and another 10% that’s up a majority of the time (4s after a dodge roll). Keep Bound going periodically for that bonus damage (plus it hits as hard as Cloak and Dagger) and use all your initiative on Weakening Charge (that hits harder than a <25% Heartseeker) or Vault if you need another evade for some reason and even that hits harder than Backstab. Fill it out with an autoattack chain or two (that are faster than Dagger and hit about 10% harder than Sword, becoming our highest DPS autoattack) that applies a good amount of Vulnerability, allowing you to remove Sundering Strikes and take Practised Tolerance for even more Ferocity (moreso in raids than Fractals/Dungeons because 10 people is so easy to get 25 Vuln). And remember that this damage is all AoE on 3-5 targets, opposed to Dagger’s maximum of 2 during autos, 1 most of the time.

So overall, you lose the 3 extra base initiative, and a Steal Daze/initiative gain, plus some group Vigor. In exchange, you get an enormous DPS boost, a huge increase in self-survivability from all the endurance and evade frames, large amounts of Weakness uptime and steady Vulnerability application with good duration.

It boggles my mind how anyone can say that Staff has bad damage and won’t be a preferred choice for raids etc.

Weakening Charge hits harder than a <25% HP Heartseeker on 5 targets and simply requires positioning, and is easily repeatable against AI creatures. The autoattack hits harder than Sword and is faster than Dagger while applying Vulnerability, while hitting 3 targets. The DrD line has a 7% and 2 10% modifiers that are going to be active pretty much all the time while using Bound (that hits as hard as Cloak and Dagger in a 5 target AoE). A rotation can be spaced out with Vault to keep doing enormous AoE damage while evading key attacks. Staff Master will constantly resupply you with endurance. You can then bring Fist Flurry->Palm Strike and Impact Strike -> Uppercut for CC phases (4 seconds of hard CC and however much a Launch is worth, seems to be a hell of a lot). In situations where you need lots of passive healing over time, Invigorating Precision is more than enough to keep you healthy with very little team support if any. Channeled Vigor with the shorter cast time will be the best heal skill in the game for us.

Daredevil is THE PvE/damage line and Staff is THE power damage weapon. D/D is obsolete for PvE.

Norn usually copy Human. The Norn in the video definitely had a new animation on the first and second as well as the third skill.

Fantastic changes, Karl! Vault is now looking absolutely perfect and Weakening Strikes is in the exact right spot to benefit all kinds of builds and is just robust in general. The QOL finishers are great, too.

Any word on potential changes to Dust Strike? It’s not really a big deal at this point considering how robust the rest of the specialisation has become, it’s just that I would find a PBAoE far more lucrative to use over the other available skills than in its current implementation.

Thanks for all the hard work!

MasterBlaster.6827:

dlonie.6547:

Iris Ng.9845:

dlonie.6547:

Did anyone test Headshot on a breakerbar? How bad was it?

I love my thief, but yeah, it sounds like they won’t really be bringing much to raids. Much sad.

I heard from [SC] that staff Daredevil is quite good. /summon Tobi and Nat.

ears perk up

Really? M-m-my thief? He’s not…dead?

Don’t toy with me like this.

Staff 2 is about the same dmg as a sub 25% HS, you get a 29,5% modifier instead of the 15% initiative modifier and your dodges will deal around 15k. So yes, daredevil <3

Didn’t test it myself, but the staff auto is apparently doing more dmg than dagger auto as well.

I tested the Staff auto. It loops one sequence (Staff Strike -> Staff Bash -> Punishing Strikes -> repeat) every 2.04 seconds, while Dagger and Sword are at 2.07 and 2.52 for their chains respectively. On top of this, it also hits harder than Sword by about 10% in total.

So along with all the damage modifiers from Daredevil’s traitline and the damage on Bound and the damage from Vault + Weakening Charge + autos, it’s the absolute best damage weapon Thieves will have in the game by a large margin. It’s going to be the raid go-to.

Along with that damage they will also have some nice bouts of CC with Palm Strike + Impact Strike, good mobility since they are free to take Shortbow secondary (some future fights may require fast movement, who knows), and good self-survivability. The only thing I would ever take damage from in the Vale Guardian fight is the constant AoE pulse of slow damage that got healed up by teammates. Otherwise, the huge amount of evasion was fantastic.

symke.3105:

Auesis.7301:

Picture shows how far we got as a 9-man team, myself playing Daredevil. Our 9th DCd immediately afterwards, causing us to call it a night and to try again with a full 10 tomorrow.

Staff Daredevil is MONSTROUS as a DPS role in the raid. Should you require it, you can take Invigorating Precision to lose some Ferocity in exchange for self-sustain over time (which is key in this particular boss fight). Apart from that, going all-in with DA/CS/Daredevil and running a rotation of Bound, Weakening Charge and auto chains puts in serious work. On top of that, Shortbow secondary gives some fairly important burst mobility for this fight, as you need to be in a certain place at a certain time if another teammate can’t make it.

There’s also some really nice utility for this fight in particular. Burst CC from Physicals, nice amounts of Immobilise to manage certain adds and so on.

One thing to note is that with 10 people fighting a boss you don’t need Sundering Strikes as the Vulnerability cap will always be met, allowing a choice of Practised Tolerance instead to put your DPS up further.

If the next few fights require more group healing etc, we won’t do a great job of that, but we can keep ourselves up very well and do insane DPS while we’re at it.

I swapped to Daredevil and never looked back.

Does that mean only Thief’s elite spec will be viable for raids?

Maybe not. Alacrity could make Venomshare viable for a condi spec, as the cooldowns are the main thing making it a lame choice. VS also has the mass break from Basilisk and the group heal/Might which can be handy as a buffer. The CDs can reach 19s-ish with Alacrity as far as I know, which is reasonable.

Terra.8571:

Edit: I’d also like to mention I don;t know where daredevil dps currently is and that will be a massive influence on whether thieves get raid spots. Right now, the old d/d thieves will struggle/ be a burden on the team.

D/D is a thing of the past. Weakening Charge hits almost as hard as Backstab without Staff Master and can be used almost consistently, the auto chain is slightly faster than Dagger and hits harder than Sword and the DD line provides a 7% mod, a 10% mod and another 10% mod that’s up for double the duration of the old Evasive Empowerment, thus benefiting more attacks. Daredevil DPS is going to be absolutely killer for raids.

babazhook.6805:

Just a question and I am sorry if this answered before but to any that might have tried it.

Does Fist Flurry double up the Pulmonary Impact off the chain if successful with the traited skill Impacting disruption?

It would seem you should get two Pulmonary impacts off the chain if you managed an interrupt. Is that correct?

Yes, it stacks.

Serious Thought.5394:

As long as Havoc Master gives me my 7% damage on Staff, I’m happy.

Also, Karl- do the buffs take place during the dodge then start timing off or do the buffs happen after the dodge?

So I dodge, does my bound do 10% more damage THEN the buff timer starts or does my bound do tooltip damage then I get my damage buff?

Evasive Empowerment activated after the dodge, so I would assume it’s the same here

These changes are looking great, the reliable damage buffs are heavily welcomed!

I definitely agree with the idea of Weakening Strikes further reducing damage rather than another condition.

I’d also like to continue advocating the idea of Dust Strike becoming a PBAoE, and Vault getting some form of evasion. Other than that, this is looking like smooth sailing!

This was with a pretty bad comp and no Chronomancers for Quickness/Alacrity, and I was 1 of 2 Daredevils. The wipe was caused because someone didn’t stand in the right spot, and then we spent 1-2 minutes trying to get people back up and get momentum going again. We would have had plenty of time on the clock otherwise.

30k+ Vaults were not uncommon and Weakening Charge was easily getting 9k on each small hit, so 6 times when using it twice each way was something like a minimum of 54k damage after Evasive Empowerment, so damage is fine.

Mobility works nicely for the fight, as you can substitute someone else that screws up and can’t stand where they need to. Had Shadowstep slotted for that and saved wipes numerous times. The Physical skills are great for Breakbars.

If not using Daredevil, I would consider Venomshare instead. With Alacrity from Chronomancers you will have very good Venom uptime, getting huge condition damage, leeching damage and group healing, plus a shared Basilisk Venom will annihilate Breakbars. Sinister Venomshare and Berserker Daredevil are both big contenders for a condi DPS/utility and power DPS slot respectively.

Druid doesn’t use the Staff as a melee weapon, all they are asking for is the default Staff wielding animation. That’s far more reasonable than asking for a new stance. /shrug

Some updates on my previous thoughts and how they have evolved from BWE2:

Animations

Even with placeholders, everything is a lot smoother. I don’t really care about the idle or running animation, honestly. Everything else in this specialisation needs priority over just looks.

Weakening Charge

Seems perfect now.

Debilitating Arc

After playing with this for some time, I feel like this puts you out of place too often when using it the way it’s meant to be used. Maybe this could be a directional skill like Whirlwind on Warrior GS? That or you could have a secondary follow-up skill like Flanking Strike -> Larcenous Strike to close the gap that you create and can’t really close in any good way other than Vault, which is expensive.

Dust Strike

Even with a low cast time, this is still a filler skill that I will never use proactively. It desperately needs to be a circular AoE around the user with some kind of field (Dark or Smoke) to be worth using over other skills.

Physicals

Channeled Vigor will be a fantastic heal at 0.75s. Even with increased damage on Fist Flurry/Palm Strike, it’s still very, very difficult to land all hits of Fist Flurry to be rewarded with Palm Strike. I feel like, in order to make this a worthy contender for a slot on your bar, the requirement for Palm Strike should be the final hit instead of all 5. That, or Pulmonary Impact should be able to crit (on Palm Strike only).

Bandit’s Defense is still awkward when it locks you in place after a block. I feel like Reflexive Strike needs to be a rollover skill like Revenant Sword 4 or Chronomancer’s Shield Phantasm and Bandit’s Defense can be a full duration block.

Evasive Empowerment

It’s good now, but in practise 2 seconds is just short of getting good mileage. I would suggest a bump to 3 seconds.

Vault

Definitely needs to evade, but the cost needs to stay at 5. The distance bug has been acknowledged, but I would still say that maybe an increase to 800 would allow more versatility with the set (that puts it in line with Jump Shot).

Grandmasters

I’m inclined to agree with the general sentiment, despite thinking otherwise early on. After seeing the kind of power that other Elite Specialisations are bringing in to the game, I believe that the 3 dodge types need to be selectable outside of the Grandmaster slot and then we can have GM-worthy traits in their place. That, or all the other Elite Specialisations need to be toned down a little.

I respect the concern for balance, but it seems like none of the other devs do.

I’m not a balance expert, but I imagine there are some good options like the old Power of Inertia (Might on dodge roll or perhaps on evade for a Daredevil GM?), some kind of bonus effect for activating Leap or Whirl finishers, things like that? Just throwing suggestions out there, because I feel like a proper choice of GM will give a much-needed edge against the hideousness that is Scrapper, Chronomancer etc.

Thanks for the hard work so far!

Staff melts the Vale Guardian. Shadowstep mobility is perfect for the one-shot AoE avoidance. Burst CC from Physicals is good for breakbars. Plenty of dodges and self-sustain from generic Daredevilness.

Overall, very happy with it.

Our guild were so close yesterday as a 9-man, and having a 10th today would have nailed it for us, but of course the tiny window that they open it today has absolutely no warning so we’re screwed out of it, being EU and all.

Grats, I guess.

In those few moments where you opened it up, we almost got a full group inside but not enough.

If you’re going to temporarily open it like this, can you please at least give a warning? It feels rather unfair that we’ve been sitting around for 3 days hoping for something to happen and then we’re given no notice when an attempt is made.

At least open it one more time for a few minutes with some notice. We’re dying to help give feedback here. That, or just tell us that you are not trying again so that we can go to bed?

They had to get you in to the downed state in the first place. The fight was already lost, so the Thief gets to finish it quicker before moving on. Why would that be immensely unfair?

RedSpectrum.1975:

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Would you say this ability is fair?

Knowing that any any minute a thief can stomp me and i have absolutely zero ways of countering/fighting against it, really infuriates me.

Doesn’t it only stomp you if the final hit would have downed you anyway? It’s not like I can use this on someone with full health and stomp them if all hits connect.

Correct – you have to be extremely lucky to land this combo properly.

Neither were for condition damage. They were used for cripple zones and ranged immobilises to slow down Seekers. I’ve since taken off Caltrops as our ranged/mobile team can keep cripple up just fine.

Impairing Daggers is still used to take down breakbars along with Impact Strike.

Picture shows how far we got as a 9-man team, myself playing Daredevil. Our 9th DCd immediately afterwards, causing us to call it a night and to try again with a full 10 today.

Staff Daredevil is MONSTROUS as a DPS role in the raid. Should you require it, you can take Invigorating Precision to lose some Ferocity in exchange for self-sustain over time (which is key in this particular boss fight). Apart from that, going all-in with DA/CS/Daredevil and running a rotation of Bound, Weakening Charge and auto chains puts in serious work (seemingly a margin higher than D/D). On top of that, Shortbow secondary gives some fairly important burst mobility for this fight, as you need to be in a certain place at a certain time if another teammate can’t make it.

There’s also some really nice utility for this fight in particular. Burst CC from Physicals, nice amounts of Immobilise to manage certain adds and so on.

One thing to note is that with 10 people fighting a boss you don’t need Sundering Strikes as the Vulnerability cap will always be met, allowing a choice of Practised Tolerance instead to put your DPS up further.

If the next few fights require more group healing etc, we won’t do a great job of that, but we can keep ourselves up very well and do insane DPS while we’re at it.
I swapped to Daredevil and never looked back.

RE: Vault.There was a data-mined target option that will make ground-target skills center on your highlighted target, so don’t worry about that. Don’t make it a mechanic when it will be a choice.

I have to agree that it definitely needs evade frames, but going up to 6 Initiative again will be FAR too expensive.

Picture shows how far we got as a 9-man team, myself playing Daredevil. Our 9th DCd immediately afterwards, causing us to call it a night and to try again with a full 10 tomorrow.

Staff Daredevil is MONSTROUS as a DPS role in the raid. Should you require it, you can take Invigorating Precision to lose some Ferocity in exchange for self-sustain over time (which is key in this particular boss fight). Apart from that, going all-in with DA/CS/Daredevil and running a rotation of Bound, Weakening Charge and auto chains puts in serious work. On top of that, Shortbow secondary gives some fairly important burst mobility for this fight, as you need to be in a certain place at a certain time if another teammate can’t make it.

There’s also some really nice utility for this fight in particular. Burst CC from Physicals, nice amounts of Immobilise to manage certain adds and so on.

One thing to note is that with 10 people fighting a boss you don’t need Sundering Strikes as the Vulnerability cap will always be met, allowing a choice of Practised Tolerance instead to put your DPS up further.

If the next few fights require more group healing etc, we won’t do a great job of that, but we can keep ourselves up very well and do insane DPS while we’re at it.

I swapped to Daredevil and never looked back.

Agree. The map is far less interesting with the completely flattened danger. Bring back those snipers and scale up what you scaled down.

Oh noes, the content designed to be the hardest in the game by an enormous margin also recommends the best available equipment! How unusual!

SB 1 and Dagger 4 are arcing projectiles. Based on height, they can land further than the designated distance. It’s just how the physics of the game works. At ground level you can get 100-ish, with some slight elevation you can get another extra 100 or so.

Firearms for all classes don’t use arcing projectiles, instead firing in a straight line. This means they don’t get any bonus distance.

The Wizland.8435:

Actually, I’ve played thief for 37 hours.

Invigorating Precision alone is enough to keep Thief standing. The healing is absolutely no joke. It’s enough to keep you immortal. I barely need to pay attention when soloing Arah while using it.

So you lose a bit of Ferocity and some personal Fury in exchange for offensive survivability no other profession could even dream of.

I’ve been so concerned about maintaining a balancing act, but…yeah. Nobody else on the dev team seems to care about it. Karl either needs to talk some sense in to them or needs to let go like the rest of them.

Screw it. Give BD a full 2-second block with a 10s CD, allow a dodge toggle with proper GM traits, make EA baseline with DF, make Vault a full evade with 5 ini, give Dust Strike a Smoke Field.

I don’t care anymore.

I feel like Debilitating Arc should have a quick rollover skill that allows you to bounce back in to combat right after you get pulled out, even if it’s just a leap with possibly another evade frame.

Penguin.5197:

I liked what Huang said about stealth on the twitch stream.
Irenio: Stealth is something that you haven’t really been able to counter, its just been a one sided opportunity for whoever can stealth
Rubi: I don like stealth to be countered
Irenio: Yeah, people who have stealth always say that

Like he said, a lot of you thieves want to protect stealth from being countered at all but really it gives a huge advantage in any battle when you are helpless to stop it.

Also, hopefully anet can buff thieves in other areas that are needed so they aren’t so reliant on it anymore.

We want to keep Stealth not easily turned off by the press of a button because our only Core meaningful source of condition removal, healing and damage reduction is WHILE IN STEALTH. Nobody cares about opportunity. They care about not being ripped to shreds in an instant because of the low health pool, medium armor and no decent source of defensive boons.

The answer is NOT to just give people the ability to “stop Thieves doing anything” with a utility skill. It’s to rebalance Thief abilities so that Stealth isn’t something we need to rely on as a crutch to survive more than 5 seconds in a team fight.

The CD doesn’t start until the Gyro is finished or you detonate it. So no, it’s not permanent. Not even close.

It’s hilariously awful.

Nocta.5274:

Auesis.7301:

It ain’t competing with Elixir X or Supply Crate.

It’ll be a nice way to break GvG stealth openers, I guess.

It is competing. The stealth / reveal drone is their elite.
I’m not sure they’re gonna run this, especially since Elixir X is just so good these days.
AoE Moa > Aoe reveal

That’s exactly what I meant. Elixir X and Supply Crate are too good, so it’s not competing.

15s is fine. I would like if it operated the same as the new Chronomancer Shield 4 and Revenant Sword 4 where you could keep blocking until you decide to activate the 2nd part when you need it (the knockdown). However, it’s not the end of the world, since it does keep blocking ranged attacks.

It ain’t competing with Elixir X or Supply Crate.

It’ll be a nice way to break GvG stealth openers, I guess.

It’s far better now. Even against an ENORMOUS target like Lupicus, it was a pain to get all 3 hits to land with the distance you traveled. You had to readjust yourself constantly in order to get good mileage out of the skill’s damage. It felt terrible.

Now you can direct exactly where you want the skill to go, it can hit up to 5 enemies, and you actually have a somewhat more decent chance of landing more than 1 hit.

The damage bump to Staff Strike, Staff Bash and Punishing Strikes is looking great. Also good to know that the reflection is intentional.

Weakening Charge now sounds perfect, especially with the jump in possible targets.

Overall, Staff’s pressure is looking far more positive. Now I’d just be interested in a possible change of Dust Strike (PBAoE) and the final version of Vault (whether it has evade frames or not).

I read a good suggestion today.

Dash

This animation looks terrible, at least on humans. It would look much better if it used the Shield Bash/Bull’s Charge/Burning Speed animation instead. That would look like a proper, solid dashing move underneath the effects already put on the dodge.

These changes are looking good. I still feel like Staff’s autoattack could do with a small damage bump, but we’ll have to see how things play out now.

Animations

Something I thought I’d still keep emphasising is that I’d like to see more work on the animations of Staff. It just doesn’t feel even remotely Thief-y apart from the cool somersault on Vault. The spin on Punishing Strikes is useful but doesn’t look right. Maybe copy the Revenant’s third Staff attack which has a proper Bo Staff-style animation on it, but keep the same damage + vulnerability + aftercast etc? Debilitating Arc also looks really wonky and could do with a new animation. If Dust Strike became PbAoE (as I hope for if you read below), I’d like to see something nice for that as well, else I still wouldn’t be very happy with the recycled Silverwastes shovel animation on the line version.

Other than Staff, I’d like to see Finishing Blow’s jump cleaned up. Rather than have the weird hand raise for the finisher, I’d maybe like to see just the jump, slowed down to match the cast time. That would look far cleaner after the Uppercut.

Weakening Charge

Weakening Charge becoming targeted with movement through the target, as you have written it, would be literally perfect. It’s exactly what the skill needs. The bump in target count is great as well.

Dust Strike

The lower cast time is great but I still maintain that Dust Strike needs to be a PBAoE instead of a line on top of that. It fits the gameplay of Staff much more.

Physicals

The Physical changes are looking good. I still think the Pulmonary Impact on Palm Strike (and only Palm Strike) should be able to crit as a reward for being able to hit with all of Fist Flurry (which is very difficult in PvP engagements).

Evasive Empowerment
This change is perfect (and also the exact thing I suggested so thanks for listening if that was part of it haha).

RE: Vault and evasion
I feel like evasion definitely needs to be part of the skill. For a weapon designed to engage multiple opponents with little to no Stealth, there aren’t many reliable evade frames to be found on it at all. S/D does a much better job at that. I would love if it were kept at 6 initiative but evaded for the majority or all of its duration. If evasion proved too strong, then I’d like to see initiative cost reduction.

An alternative would be to reduce Vault’s initiative cost to 5, give it evasion AND reduce its damage by a margin, giving that damage back to other skills, mainly the autoattack.

All in all I’m quite happy with what’s going down so far. Excited to see how Staff and the dodge rolls get cleaned up in future and looking forward to trying these changes!

rogerwilko.6895:

assassin.7895:

I think thief is in terms of DPS worse than warrior, engineer, ele, necro, and possibly revenant. Additionally mesmer, guardian has much better support.

really?

No.

In raids (if they are anything like other raids in other games) DD should be monstrous. Remember that soft CC also affects the breakbar, and we have loads of that (Blind, Cripple etc) as well as a couple of nice hard CCs now (Palm Strike + Uppercut). During burn phases (where bosses are controlled in to a state they can’t move, like Teq) we have enormous amounts of damage (that could be got through spamming Weakening Charge on Staff through a big hitbox or just backstabbing), we have Stealth utilities to res downed players safely, and various other things that Thieves usually do in PvE, mostly pertaining to blinding the heck out of trash etc.

I’m not sure if it’s intended behaviour, but Staff 1-3 (Punishing Strikes) reflects projectiles.

Thanks for the good work Karl!

Here’s my feedback from my other thread since we’re centralising everything here.

“General

Aftercasts on dodges and a few Staff skills are very clunky. A lot of tidying up needs to be done. There’s just a serious lack of fluidity when using the new dodges that NEEDS to be addressed.

Staff

Dust Strike is too slow to be a reactive skill. I would say it needs to come down to maybe 1/4s to be used properly.

I wouldn’t be against getting the autoattack damage up a bit more. Compared to S/D, it doesn’t feel like you’re gaining much at all, if anything, by using Staff instead. More damage vs. more mobility would be a fair trade between the two sets but in the auto chain we’re not really seeing that.

Weakening Charge needs tweaking on its aftercast. The way it locks you in place at the end of the animation is very awkward. Its damaging radius should also be increased by a fair margin since it’s very difficult to land even 2 of the 3 hits against a moving target.

Utilities

Palm Strike doesn’t feel rewarding to land. Fist Flurry’s strict requirements to reach it don’t really have much payoff. I would suggest either a slightly lower cast for Fist Flurry to more easily land it or just buff Palm Strike’s initial damage.

Channeled Vigor doesn’t make much sense, since you’re encouraged to be USING your endurance, not saving it up. I feel like the healing effects need to be reversed or there just needs to be a single healing value between the 2 current ones. Also, the cast time is just a tad too long – Thieves can’t be expected to hang around channeling a heal that isn’t much more potent than Withdraw’s healing (at non-full endurance). Consider bringing it down to 2 or 1.75 seconds.

Finishing Blow looks a little awkward. Maybe just take the last part of the finisher animation (the jump) and slow that down to make up the cast time.

Traits

Evasive Empowerment doesn’t give enough of a damage benefit to outweigh the Weakness uptime or Physical skill benefits. I would maybe change this so that you do 10% more damage for a tiny period of time (2 seconds) after a dodge roll instead. That way you can get off a couple of attacks for a bigger benefit. Or, just make the number bigger, I guess. That would be the cheap way out.

Escapist’s Absolution is mandatory for PvP. I think that nobody would take either of the other traits while this is a choice. Not sure what to do about that. Making it a Minor and swapping it with Driven Fortitude would probably mean a jump in the ICD which is NOT what this trait needs as the sole source of reliable condition removal for stealthless gameplay.

Impacting Disruption is strong, but not that strong. I feel like this is the reason why Palm Strike is unrewarding – because they use the same skill (Pulmonary Impact), and making it good for Palm Strike (crittable) means breaking this trait. I would suggest splitting them up. A crittable Pulmonary Impact for Palm Strike and some kind of Lesser Pulmonary Impact on this trait instead."