Guild Wars 2

The point I’m trying to make is that Withdraw is far more beneficial for PvP with the condition clear, gap opener and built-in evasion on top of an instant cast. Channeling for that long is a death sentence on a Thief heal skill.

Aside from that, I’d also like to suggest that Dust Strike be a circular AoE blind around the user rather than a line, as well as being quicker. It would fit in to “get stuck in to a group of enemies” vibe of the weapon a lot more.

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. 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.

Personally, I’d like to see a split. If Pulmonary Impact itself is nerfed, then Palm Strike is also nerfed and it takes up a utility slot, so it’s not fair on Palm Strike, especially when you need to land Fist Flurry.

I’d give Palm Strike its own version of Pulmonary Impact that is able to critically hit (with a fairly reduced base damage), and the traited version remain uncrittable with lower base damage.

My main concern is making Palm Strike rewarding to land. I suppose the flip side would be to make Palm Strike easier to land, which would mean speeding up Fist Flurry’s cast time, but I think that’s boring.

D/D is currently the best DPS weapon for PvE. In WvW it used to have a place but then Cloaked in Shadow became Grandmaster and I’ve never seen it used there since (D/P is just much better, period).

PvP, it’s been years since it ever showed up seriously.

Here’s a few good ones:

Imryldyeen
Bramblethorne
Dredge Pillar
Gnarled Walking Staff
Eagle’s Perch
Kodan Staff
Lionguard Staff
Sovereign Pillar
Vigil’s Honor Staff

Fenda.1398:

Did we watch the same stream? The Autoattack chain was lower than dagger and sword iirc.

I ripped the VOD and timed it. The auto chain takes about 2.05-2.15 seconds (can’t tell exactly when it will cycle but aftercasts seem tiny so I think the sequence might be around 2.2-2.3 per second).

So comparing all 3 melee weapon auto chains, we have (all using Vampirism + Marauder like Karl presumably was):

Dagger: 1786 @ 2.07s
Sword: 2281 @ 2.52s
Staff: 1891 @ 2.2-2.3s

With Staff Master the damage will exceed Sword, else it’s probably a little bit lower than Dagger’s auto DPS when you’re doing nothing but attacking constantly. However, in a PvP situation, that’s never going to happen.

Shinjiko.1352:

I fall into the crowd that feels like our class mechanic wasn’t really changed.

This suggestion sounds great. All the people crying it sounds OP to allow us to change dodges… If it’s allowed out of combat or with a high cool down like 60s+, how is that any different from opening the trait window and changing it? It would just be a QoL addition if it was only allowed out of combat.

I do agree giving us other grandmasters and these would be op. But the option to change dodges on the fly OUT OF COMBAT would be rather nice. That way we’re not getting all of them, as we’d be locked into the one we choose in combat.

I love the idea of zipping around the map dashing then when I want to fight, since generally thieves pick their fights anyway, I could switch to a more suitable dodge. If i’m dashing about and I get stealth attacked then it’s my own fault for switching to that dodge and that would leave me at a disadvantage. So we’d still need to be careful choosing.

So you want to be able to choose the dodge out of combat but don’t want new GMs because (sensibly) you know it would be OP.

What if I told you that you could just open the trait window and click the other dodge GM while out of combat?

You already know that it seems, but I mean…it’s maybe one click more? It’s directly attached to GMs, putting it on the UI as a new button would never happen.

It definitely hits more than a Backstab. Currently in Marauder in HOTM and my Backstab shows 1,897 while Vault was closer to 2,000 on PoI.

The thing that makes that okay is the fact that it has a long-ish cast time and is extremely, extemely obvious to dodge, blind or interrupt. I mean, there’s stabbing someone from invisibility, and then there’s leaping in the air, spinning like a Beyblade, over a second or so. >.> Also the Stealth attack has pretty much zero damage so there needs to be some kitten good damage on the weapon somehow. It’s got S/P and S/D to compete with.

The calculator is DEFINITELY wrong.
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYWn0MBVmiNOBGOBkmiFaCbLPlA2TzVwN4IULAMhiAA-ThRBABXt/o8DP9B5dGAA4RAQp6PmpEkMA6jB-e

Fully decked out in Ascended gear + consumables etc, Vault hits for 4,064 according to that. I tried to find a way to make that number from the tooltip from the PoI (it was 1,957 with Marauder amulet apparently, plus I would guess Power runes like Vampirism) but couldn’t.

From what I saw, Weakening Charge is perfectly fine. It has a reliable path and attack output, unlike the hideous early version of Death’s Charge.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYWn0MBVmiNOBGOBkmiFaCbLPlA2TzVwN4IULAMhiAA-ThRBABXt/o8DP9B5dGAA4RAQp6PmpEkMA6jB-e

All-out damage for PvE purposes, including Ascended. These values can’t be right…Vault with 4k+ base damage?

Bojoo.7819:

It all sound incredible great so what’s the problem? Without Daredevil we have 1 viable build, d/P, and 2 shody ones s/d, p/d.

It’s a problem for some people because they want everything without realising how good they’ve got it already. The GM choices are BEYOND GM-worthy.

Professions don’t REQUIRE changes to Fx. I guarantee you that Engineer will have no changes to its Toolbelt mechanic, either.

Vornollo.5182:

@Auesis S/D would indeed get a bit too crazy I think (I’d like to try it though).
PvE-wise, I haven’t the foggiest to be honest. I didn’t even think about that side of the game (sorry!). Doesn’t take away the fact that you make a valid point.

No problem, that usually happens. Especially in that huge rework suggestion thread, pretty much everything was so PvP-centric that they would have totally broken PvE for Thieves and made them worse than Necros if they ever got their way.

Basically, Trickery has a nice amount of group support with its Vigor at about 50% uptime and good Initiative management with the low Steal cooldown plus gaining it back on Steal, and a fair amount of Quickness from Flanking Strikes. One of the biggest benefits is Lead Attacks, which is usually at 10% but CAN stay at 15% sometimes.

If we were to use DD instead, and Staff Master were to be like you suggested, then we could trade off our group support, Steal benefits/Initiative sustenance and Quickness for some decent static damage boosts and more selfish benefits in the endurance etc, while having a more interesting rotation to try and keep up with the old one, incorporating dodges and such. I don’t think it would completely match Trickery damage-wise but it would be a very close match and a more fun alternative.

Yeah, this would see a lot more use opposed to the condition removal if it could benefit more weapons. Not necessarily better, but more lucrative at least. It would also mean that DD could be a competitive PvE line vs. something like Trickery while using Dagger or Sword.

The initiative-endurance conversion should definitely be reserved for the Staff else it would be crazy (I can’t imagine how much more evasion S/D would get on top of its superior mobility to Staff already).

A straight Stealth is too strong. CnD can get away with it as it’s a melee, but Dust Strike would be a bit too far. Smoke Field is fine since there’s a Leap right on the weapon set and you could also use Bound if you wanted to. If they DID put a Smoke Field on it, I would probably suggest increasing its cost to 5 or even 6 initiative, though.

I’m thinking perhaps a straight line Smoke Field, a bit like Smoke Screen, pointing towards where the opponent is, but only lasting for like 2 seconds.

If there’s one part I like, it’s the sound effect of the twirling. It’s REALLY slick. It just needs to be attached to the spin that Revenant uses and it’ll be perfect from my perspective.

Revenant’s version can be seen here:

https://youtu.be/0zvfijc3SN4?t=11m

You already have Ascended armor/weapons, so if the desired stat changed for some reason you can always throw them in the MF.

Save laurels/commendations/fractal relics/any other tokens for anything else. It’s just a good idea in general to save what you get for now.

The Revenant’s version is much smoother imo. Just use that.

There are differences but we don’t know if it will make affect the gameplay.

SoA specifies 100 Endurance while Hard to Catch specifies 100%. Sigil of Stamina simply says it refills your endurance, which means it could be the same as HtC (it also claims to refill).

So perhaps SoA is actually just 100 while other things actually fill completely (up to 150).

Sneak Attack does not have 2465 theoretical damage. That is the TOTAL damage. 5 packets of 81 each.

This is the constant misconception. If Hundred Blades worked that way, it would have 12,978 base damage.

Well, if it works like any other combo skill, it’ll be active and available for a few seconds, so if you have Quickness and it will be too fast you can just hold off from pressing Finishing Blow for half a second or so and then use it.

Changing profession F skills isn’t mandatory for Elite Specialisations. The stuff we got is insanely cool and honestly I pity most of the other professions. We don’t need our F skills to change. The GM traits are a fantastic way to customise.

Something as simple as an increased Endurance meter is all we need. Look at Overloads for Ele. They are universally disliked and nobody wants to use them. An overhaul like that isn’t something I feel we need.

Almost definitely a bug. The tooltip has no initiative cost on it, just a cooldown. It’s probably because an earlier iteration of Daredevil used Initiative for new utility skills as well, which got changed and this was accidentally left behind.

You only regain endurance on Initiative if you use Staff. S/D or another set can’t get that benefit. The heal takes too long and will get you killed. Taking Acrobatics means you lose either Panic Strike/Executioner/Mug or all the Trickery buffs for Steal, sending your damage and/or other utility down the toilet.

That’s right, any disagreement is fanboyism. Way to invalidate your discussion.

From what I’m seeing, extra GM-level traits alongside these dodges would be stupid.

Maybe because the entire Elite Specialisation has been BALANCED around having dodges that can do frontstab damage or put down lots of conditions or remove chill/cripple and gain loads of Swiftness? “OR” being the key word.

Being able to swap what kind of dodge we have on the fly would be broken. It’s just right the way it is.

DD actually has far less endurance regeneration etc. than even the old Acrobatics/Feline Grace.

Overreactions always make me laugh.

It might be an engine limitation that finishing an enemy has to be a Finisher (hence a banner). /shrug

All I care about is the animation, whatever it ends up as, looking smooth. Right now it’s just a bit clunky.

It probably has a short duration where you can trigger the next part. That’s how all chains work.

5 seconds is probably about right. Maybe a bit less.

I think it would flow much better to instead take a shorter part of the standard finisher animation.

At the moment, it does a quicker version of the Finish where you put your hand up, lower it then jump and bring your hand down.

What if, instead, they cut it so that you only have the jumping part to bring your hand down? They can slow it down or speed it up depending on how that goes with the cast time, but I think that would look much better.

Donari.5237:

Ah right, I had a question drowned out in Twitch chat (to be expected).

As a 100% PVE Thief who almost never encounters Toxic Alliance, will that Elite finisher be worth my using?

Fist Flurry/Palm Strike + Impact Strike chain could be a DPS increase for PvE along with Bound. If you rotate like:

CnD + Backstab + 1 auto chain + Bound
Repeat

And then when Ini gets a bit low, use Fist Flurry/Palm Strike, Impact Strike -> Uppercut.

Put another 1 or 2 autoattacks in to the chain before Bound to save some Initiative while Impact Strike comes off CD.

Alternatively, you could pace out the rotation around just Fist Flurry, but I’m imagining that it would be better burst for shorter fights to include Impact Strike + Uppercut in there. Or, like others have said, you could actually use the finisher against new enemies if they have that downed feature!

Man, I’m so excited for PvE DD!

The only problem I have is that the 3rd hit of the autoattack looks a bit clunky. I would have preferred if it looked like Revenant’s chain all the way through.

Other than that, I’m really impressed! I can see myself using this in all modes, and new PvE rotations can be really fun!

Also the Finisher part should be cleaned up a bit. Have it so that it starts with the jump up instead of the arm raise in to the jump up, and if the animation has to be a little bit slower then do that. It will look much smoother that way.

Great, then it becomes a Minor and gets a hugely increased ICD to compensate, and we have more whining posts about how we’re back to needing SA to reliably remove conditions.

You are all so smart.

You don’t need the dodges for an (almost) endless loop. Heartseeker + BP + Shadow Arts can handle that by itself if you can get 4 leaps with camera tricks.

It depends on whether Endurance regeneration uses a percentile or flat values. Considering everyone had 100 before, it wouldn’t be abnormal for it to just be 5 instead of 5%.

At least we know that skills have different ways of doing it. Signet of Agility gains a flat 100 Endurance while Hard to Catch gains 100% ie. up to 150.

Increasing the CD of such a potent condi removal just to make it a Minor is the death of that trait. STOP.

Do you have any idea how long we have waited for a really strong condition removal that doesn’t rely on SA? And you want to obliterate its CD because you want everything else at once? ARE YOU HIGH?!

Remember that Launch (the 2nd skill’s CC) is one of the only control effects that actually works on downed bodies. Not only can you finish a downed person faster in total with the Elite’s chain, you can also stop them using their #2 skill to counter you as you finish them due to that Launch (Thief’s instant cast teleport withholding).

I can see that being a way to just guarantee that someone already down actually dies. That or you target a nearby ally who is ressing them with the first hit, then launch and finish the body.

Knows Kungkitten

/15ch

Edit: Really? “F” + “u” is blocked?

To be fair, the interrupt trait is massively good, like Halting Strike. Off-hand Pistol would have a field day with that.

The way it looks, it’s not like Reckless Dodge on Warrior (where you get an effect after you dodge roll), it actually replaces the dodge roll with a full skill when you press the dodge button. That means that it should work the same way as Heartseeker through Black Powder (as it’s a single damage + leap finisher packet, same as Bound).

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

According to the blog, Karl design Daredevil traits and skills with evasion in mind rather than stealth. Ofc you still have an option of taking pistol offhand or utilities for accessible stealth.

This. The good thing is that he has designed it in such a way that it benefits other existing elements (we have good access to Smoke + Poison fields plus one Dark), so it’s not like you can’t mess around with Stealth combos – you can, just not with the weapon Daredevil comes with.

This is also why the Stealth Attack for Staff is so strong (2 second knockdown) – because Staff can’t readily enter Stealth by itself.

PvE damage spec purely trait-wise might not be as high if specced in to DD, but I think we can get kitten close, if not surpass it depending on rotation. If we take Deadly Arts, Critical Strikes + Daredevil, here’s what we lose from Trickery:

- Average of about 10% damage modifier
- Group Vigor
- Steal cooldown reduction
- Base 15 ini
- Some Quickness/Fury (Chronomancer will handle the first one, and No Quarter will handle the 2nd)

And gain:

- 3rd dodge
- The new dodge types
- 10% damage on next attack after each dodge or CD reduction on physicals + endurance gain (or Weakening Strikes, which may be very popular for harder content)
- 10% bonus damage on Staff (if we are going to be using it in AoE situations depending on how hard it hits) or 2k+ base damage on interrupts (for non-defiant mobs)
- AoE frontstab damage on dodge

I’m thinking that if we wanted to max out completely for PvE, then we do the standard D/D rotation, but instead of continuing the dagger chain (Double Strike + Wild Strike) we replace one or both with a dodge through the boss, doing that massive dodge damage, and THEN hitting C+D, which will benefit from a 10% damage boost. Alternatively, we could use Dash instead, dodge after a CnD and get 10% damage on the Backstab. We can also use a third utility slot (keeping the 2 signets) and have Fist Flurry, and use the Elite physical as DPS increases as well.

If using the Staff against multiple mobs, I imagine we’ll be dodging, followed by Vault or Debilitating Charge, and pacing out autos between dodges + the hard hitting initiative skills.

Also it’s worth noting that the Physicals hit like a TRUCK. I’m expecting Fist Flurry/Palm Strike and the Elite to be big benefactors for PvE DPS.

SO excited to try this stuff out next week!

EDIT: I’m also messing about with possibly using Deadly Arts + Trickery + Daredevil in PvE. I’m not sure about the math, but an average of a 10% damage modifier is probably not as good as 355/505 Ferocity (23.6%/33.6% Crit damage for foes below and above 50% HP respectively) and the access to Fury + Vuln Stacking, but the 15 ini + Vigor is very nice. We’ll have to see!

It takes a lot to impress me. I only have 4 words.

ALL HAIL THE MCLAIN.

Takato.4976:

Wait… So when you do pick this new trait line, are you still able to pick “trickery” ?

I haven’t bought the game due to waiting for thief specialization so I’m unsure about how this honestly works…

So mesmer with Chronomancer can still pick illusions ?

And I’m also a little disappointed that this is pretty much what acrobatics should have been, but Ill wait until tomorrow to judge.

You can take 2 of any of the existing Specialisations plus Daredevil (3 total as normal). What you can’t pick is a second Elite Specialisation when they come in to the game. You can have 3 cores or 2 cores + 1 Elite. So yes, Trickery + Daredevil is possible and probably going to be popular.

If it becomes a minor, the ICD will absolutely increase. By a huge margin. It’s fine. Leave it. For the love of god.

IDICERI.4268:

Honestly feel we’ve got the best spec out of all the other profession(maybe chronomancer comes close). Sure it isn’t something new. The irony is that the spec looks like it will work better with any other weapon that isn’t the Staff or Shortbow because you don’t have a blinding field to combo stealth. If you really wanted, you can swap weapons and do that, though the staff does brings something new that thief hasn’t had an ample supply of, and that is weakness.

Yeah, Weakness plus the utilities bring some hefty hard CC, one of which is a low CD stunbreak + knockdown. I may finally end up removing Shadowstep from my bar for that as well as the Elite.

Daredevil is allowed to be super strong evasively BECAUSE it’s Elite. As in, you couldn’t take it with another Elite Spec down the line and have the best of everything ever. You can take Acrobatics whenever you want with anything because it’s a Core Spec. Acrobatics now has its own place in assisting with evasive playstyles but doesn’t hold you up completely on its own. FG was ridiculous. Was it overnerfed? Perhaps.

Also, DD does NOT have any Vigor. Literally none. Acrobatics and Bountiful Theft hold all the power over Vigor.

The way you hold it and the auto will be the same as Revenant for sure. The rest, I’m not so sure.

I’m going to take a guess and say that if Weakening Charge moves you forwards, then it’ll look like Revenant Staff 5 or Reaper Shroud 2.

Debilitating Arc would look a little like Ranger Sword 2, where you swipe in front and roll back.

Dust Strike might be a new one.

Vault may look like Engineer Rifle 5 (Jump Shot) without leaving a crater at the beginning.

Right, and when you use your cooldowns to avoid those dodges the Thief has no dodges to avoid your follow-up. GG.

Hard to Catch won’t be used. Acrobatics takes away too much from damage potential. Deadly Arts + Trickery is the way to go.

It’s going to be a nice DPS increase for PvE rotations but spamming your dodges to try and kill someone is a great way to get killed yourself. Dodging too offensively is the worst mistake a PvPer can make.

Just wait until the beta. I’d quite like an Elite Spec that isn’t nerfed to uselessness before anyone can even try it.

FYI, Reckless Dodge for Warriors ([&CKYFAAA=]) hits for only like 200 less. They have less dodging capabilities, but they make up for that with the damage output from other places plus the sustain from Stances and constant Regen. This is fine.

Shimekiri.1580:

Sorel.4870:

And it look likes it will greatly improve the state of S/D, S/P and P/P. Well done.

Actually it will do NOTHING to improve the state of P/P. It’ll keep it just as bad as it is, due to the lack of utility and 0 AoE. At best, it’ll make P/P a slightly more viable niche build for PvP.

Getting access to Leap Finishers on dodge with a Smoke field won’t help P/P?