Guild Wars 2

Skeletor.9360:

The fact is that thieves need stealth to stay alive.

You have flooded the game with all kinds of stealth removal in such a blatant and bad way that you might as well get rid of stealth all together. Stealth needs to be reliable. It simply lasts too long and you have given these classes NO other survival method. So you end up with a bunch of cry babies about stealth which you crumble to and bring out the nerf bat.

The approach to balance stealth is way out of balance. Would you put in a remove all armor for 6 seconds skill that only stealth classes could use? Of course not…but yet you have done exactly that.

When Beta becomes non-beta will probably be the start of the end of the game as it was for Shadowbane. Soon as they introduced vampires….bloop bloop bloop…game over.

Here is a challenge to the game developers…ask people if they could choose a non-expansion server would they play on it. I know I would select that server over the bug fest that is approaching.

Do this poll as a sticky and you will be shocked at how many people dread the expansion.

So… you’re saying that stealth is too powerful, but then babies cry… but it shouldn’t be nerfed because thieves aren’t powerful enough? Who are “these classes” when you’ve only mentioned one?

To anyone else who is confused, I’ll explain what is going on. The thief forum is currently the one of the whiniest forums right now. What is going on is everyone is having a gigantic circle pity, where they each compound and reaffirm how bad each other feels until it goes to “END IS NIGH!” levels. Because of this you get a lot of aimless and nonsensical complaints on other forums, many times being factually incorrect or utterly myopic.

So, what is the real problem with the thief currently? Well, this comes from two sources. June 23rds hit thieves hard, due to Anet’s desire to end the dodge spam meta. Several key things were nerfed regarding thieves as a hope to balance out a class that could out-duel any other given perfect play.

#1: Initiative regen was nerfed slightly in many places. These several “slight nerfs” accumulate and make it so all but very specific specs had their functionality cut.
#2: The Acrobatics line was gutted so badly that it is unquestionably the worst line in the game. Again, fear of the perma-dodge meta.
#3: With the removal of damage stats of traits, the normally high offensive thieves are now more in-line with other classes as far as offensive stats go.

This has left thief without many options, given that thieves now have only a single viable defensive line: Shadow Arts. This has lead to thieves being more stealth dependent than ever before. With elite specializations comes the Sneak Gyro, a rather sub par skill but nonetheless useful in exactly one way: Detection Pulse renders all stealth tactics useless for a time. While this skill is useless against most classes, mesmers and thieves are hit quite hard by it. Mesmers, have alternative forms of defense and are capable of engaging at range.

Thieves don’t and can’t. Well, to a degree, anyway. They’ve still got blinds, immobilize, and weakness. But the important thing is, reveal tactics make shadow arts, our only viable defensive line, largely ineffective. The Daredevil helps to alleviate this, since it gives a bunch of dodge-based utilities that thieves had in the previous acrobatics line. While an overall boon, this has left thieves salty over the fact that our elite specialization traits are mostly just giving us back what was taken from us on June 23rd.

Overall, the best way to fix stealth dependent thieves is to make them less stealth dependent. Acrobatics needs to be twice as good as it is currently, and with global initiative regen removed a lot of skills need their initiative costs tweaked, and/or additional initiative regen given.

I’m fine with both. I can just cleanse chill.

It was in PVE. And that is 10k DPS, not damage. This is calculated with peak team conditions (25 might, 25 vuln, empowering warrior banners, ferocity increasing rev, maximum skill modifiers, etc. No rangers, though) as per the current optimal group compositions. If you want a more basic reference, going by the tooltips the staff is 437 and the dagger is 382. With maximum might and decked out in full zerker, the poison doesn’t compensate for the difference. Although when I think about it, I forgot to factor vulnerability into poison’s damage, so technically the dagger does 9,600 or so.

If you’re by yourself you’ll get much tamer numbers. As do all classes.

Has anyone tested if Alacrity affects initiative gain from the thief? This nees to be the case for the sake of PVE balance.

A thought occurs to me.

IF: Chronomancers are going to be meta…
THEN: Alacrity needs to affect initiative gain.

I’m not sure if anyone has tested this yet, but it needs to be the case. The optimal PVE group will always contain a chronomancer for quickness and alacrity. For alacrity to be fair, it needs to affect Initiative.

Several advantages currently.

#1: The auto attack does the most damage. Under peak conditions, I’m getting 9,493 DPS from the dagger auto, but 10,321 for the staff. Aside from brute force, the vulnerability is helpful and the reflects mean that ambient projectile damage is decreased.

#2: Weakening Charge does massive damage. It is more damage than sub 25% heartseeker, except it can be used at any amount of health. And it hits 5 targets. And it stacks endless weakness. It is difficult to get all 3 hits (you have to be in a sweet spot, or using haste, or standing against a wall), but once you’ve gotten the spacing down Weakening Charge obliterates anything in your way. For basic reference, this skill has a tooltip DPS of 822, whereas lava font and fireball has a tooltip DPS of 711 with persisting flames. Also it is a whirl finisher, so it does extra damage via burn, leeching bolts, poison bolts, etc.

#3: Debilitating Arc cures immobilize. That is a pretty big weakness for the thief, since immobilize renders natural dodging impossible (sans dash) and makes weapon dodging less effective due to being unable to leave a damage patch. This makes it the most reliable weapon dodge.

#4: Vault is a bit bugged at the moment, but I use its leap finisher to take advantage of various fields. Particularly the water field from healing seed. The difference is that when I do this with heartseeker I lose damage, but Vault maintains it.

Not sure if this isn’t meant to be, or just a feature. Unless it proves to be an actual problem I’m all for an endless swarm of horrors.

That’s the one problem with the way the Reaper is designed. Since it has no disengage, it has to be the most powerful in a straight up brawl. Otherwise, the Reaper will never be played. The class that beats the reaper will be played, since the reaper will automatically lose once seeing that class.

Though the current animation is a placeholder, the reason why they changed it is because the previous “dodge” was technically a skill, and it had several problems:

A)It rooted you after cast
B)It was stopped by daze
C)The jump was causing strange effects
D)The evade frames weren’t lining up properly.

I can’t pre-cast wells, though.

Has anyone actually done the numbers for this? I mean, has anyone sat down, cataloged the attack rate, base damage, and the sustained might/vuln stacks for the hammer?

Tie between reaper and the daredevil.

The reaper is that walking bruiser. I love the self-sufficiency and the damage, and also the movement debuffs. The weapon is awesome, the traits are awesome, and the shouts have been buffed to useable levels. I like the theme of a horror movie monster, and I love the AoE damage it brings.

The Daredevil is the opposite end. I like the martial artist theme, and I like how the class alternates between highly aggressive and highly defensive specs. The weapon is the new highest damage, the utilities are useful, the traits are diverse and strong, and the class as a whole is highly mobile. I love the AoE damage the staff bring, and the high amount of control the utilities bring.

I’ve never been one for the waif-ish kind. I like my women norn.

Somebody has to be last. As much as I’d like to think that there was some conspiracy going around about the devs smoking cigars and cackling around a dark table over how much they hate ranger, this simple fact cannot be ignored. Somebody has got to be last.

Hard to say. It really depends on if all the people who say they’ll quit their mains because rev is unfair really mean it.

I’m definitely rolling one, though.

Nocta.5274:

I don’t think merging EA with DF will ever happen because EA is too good to be a minor.

I agree on the whole idea tho, Thief is nowhnere near as bad as people are making it to be. We’re very good at what we do, and a slight push into a very few things would be enough to ease the complaints.

The complete absence of protection access is something that was probably a design choice at launch which should be re-evaluated. Maybe reworking acrobatics so its less based on vigor and more on protection access.

Protection on heal instead of vigor ? Stability on dodge instead of vigor ? ( that’s a scrapper trait already sadly )
Just throwing out ideas here, but there’s potential.

This actually deserves mention. Thieves were reworked awhile ago to be able to get protection. With the introduction of boon hate came the ability to steal boons, and the main way for thieves to do this was flanking strike. Now split into larcenous strike, though.

Boon stealing has been hit several times since then. First it was nerfing the boons stolen on flanking strike to 1. Second was splitting flanking strike into two skills, with larcenous strike stealing the boon. Third was increasing the overall initiative cost of the chain to 5 instead of 4. Fourth and finally was the butchering of the acrobatics line, which removed all of the previous benefits and replaced them with utter crap.

Currently, the only boon stealing thieves have is on Bountiful Theft. The fall of S/D has means a two-fold hit, in that we are both subjected to stability and protection, and can no longer access it. I’m not a fan of just giving thieves stability or protection, but I am all for giving us more boon stealing. Given that Acrobatics might as well not exist at this point, it is the perfect place to add boon stealing. Just pick any trait to replace; they’re all garbage anyway.

BUG: Hunter’s Fortification doesn’t remove conditions on block. Tested it out with shelter a few times.

Now that I have some more realistic numbers I can finally start tackling this thing. I am not a super proficient guardian player, so my expertise on the following is limited. As always, these numbers are acquired via no gear in PVP, making them the tooltip or the “base” values of these skills. First, for reference:

Orb of Wrath: 237. 1200 range. 0.25 second activation time listed. Actual attack speed is 0.8 seconds.
Smite: 117 per impact. 16 total impacts. 200 radius. 1200 range. 6 second cooldown. 0.25 second activation time listed. Actual attack speed is closer to 0.5 seconds.

First, the longbow.

Puncture Shot: 317. 2 targets maximum. 1 × 2 cripple per hit. 20% projectile finisher. 1200 range. 0.75 second activation time listed. Real activation time is 1 second. Or rather, the auto attack speed is 1 second.

True Shot: 932. Pierces. 100% physical projectile. 1200 range. 4 second recharge. 0.75 second activation time listed. Actual activation time is closer to 1 second.

Deflecting Shot: 317. Does double damage if it destroys a projectile. 1 × 4 blindness on hit. 120 radius. 1200 range. Pierces. 100% projectile finisher. 10 second cooldown. 0.25 second listed activation time. Closer to 0.5 second actual activation time.

Symbol of Energy: 205 per pulse. 1 × 3 vigor for 4 pulses. 2 × 5 burning per pulse. 5 targets, 180 radius. Light Field. 1200 range. 15 second cooldown. Listed activation time and actual activation time seem consistent at 0.75 seconds.

Hunter’s Ward: 93. 559 on final impact. 2 cripple per hit. 4 hits. 5 barriers maximum. 6 second ring duration. 360 radius. 1200 range. Not listed, but creases a holding ring for anyone caught in the attack. 45 second cooldown. Listed animation time is 2.75 seconds. Actual animation time seems consistent.

Bow notes: At this point, I’m just glad the AA of the bow is higher than the scepter.

From the PVE perspective, the rest of the skills are there just to make up for the 3.7k DPS that smite has. But from other perspectives this weapon definitely has uses. Symbol of Energy and True Shot are the the DPS skills, where Deflecting Shot and Hunters Ward are more for control.

My first concern is that hunter’s ward takes way too long to activate. 2.75 seconds is enough time for even the most sleepy of players to realize what is happening and get out of the barrier. My only advice so far is to cut the activation time down by a second.

Virtues

Spear of Justice: 224. applies Justice debuff, which applies 1 × 2 burning per second for 6 seconds. Pierces. Unblockable. 1200 range. 20 second cooldown. 0.25 second activation time listed. Closer to 0.5 seconds.

Wings of Resolve: 84 heal per second with 0.06 scaling. 3890 active heal with 1.2 scaling. Cures immobilize. 240 radius. 800 range. 30 second recharge. 1 second listed activation time and actual time.

Shield of Courage: Grants Aegis every 40 seconds. On active, makes a shield of 180 radius for 5 seconds. 75 second cooldown. Listed as instant cast, but it is actually 0.25 second cast time.

Virtue Notes: Well, they’re fun. These are a vast improvement over their slower counterparts. It is fast enough to be used tactically. Not as tactically as the original virtues, but still.

The good news is that they aren’t dependent on other players being around, so on the solo side they are of a great help. This… is more of a PVP thing, since in PVE unless you happen to be specifically soloing, then you’ll be surrounded by a bunch of other people.

I only have a few small suggestions. Reduce the Animation Time of Wings of Resolve to 0.75 seconds, and make Shield of Courage a true instant-cast that doesn’t interrupt skills.

Traps. Note, all traps have a listed activation time of 0.5 seconds and a real activation time of 0.75 second. All traps have a trigger radius of 180 and an attack radius of 240.

TOOLTIP ERROR: Most traps affect a maximum of 5 targets, but this isn’t listed.

Purification: 50. 2,192 Initial heal. 6,413 triggered heal 0.25 initial heal scaling. 1 trigger heal scaling.. 1 × 6 blindness. 30 second cooldown. Hits 5 targets.

Fragments of Faith: 665. 1 × 6 cripple. drops 5 10-second long fragmetns which grant 8 seconds of aegis on contact. 45 second cooldown

Procession of Blades (x10): 1200. 25 second cooldown. Does its damage over the span of about 3.5 seconds.

LIght’s Judgement. 53 per pulse 1 × 1 revealed per pulse. 10 × 2 vulnerability per pulse.. 8 second duration, 1 second interval per pulse. 9 pulses total. 45 second cooldown.

Test of Faith: 798. 1 × 6 cripple. 8 second duration. Unblockable. Causes damage to enemies that cross its range. 30 second recharge.

Dragon’s Maw: 638. 1 × 4 slow. 6 second barrier duration. 90 barrier radius. 60 second cooldown.

Trap Notes: Though I’ll miss the bleed, the daze is still useful. It gives traps the ability to both ambush and be used tactically, which is what was really missing.

I’m hesitant to make any suggestions for an increase in strength. These numbers aren’t insignificant in any way, especially on skills that can be pre-cast to go off simultaneously. I guess light of judgement could use a 33% direct damage buff. Also, procession of blade’s actual damage duration is longer than its animation duration. Ideally they would be the same, so increase the rate that Procession does damage to make it match with the skill’s animation.

Traits. I’m not going to catalog these as much as just go over them.

Pierced Light: Fine
Dulled Senses: I’m not a big fan of the knockback thing. Unless I am missing something, the only knockback that guards get is on the Heavy Light trait. The vuln on cripple is decent for the dragon hunter, but for base guardian not as much.
Soaring Wings: Fine
Defender’s Dogma: Overall it is lackluster, especially considering it is just a far inferior version to Amplified Wrath. I’d change it so blocking an attack reduces the recharge of Wings of Resolve, or Blocking Causes Cripple, or something like that.
Hunter’s Determination: Fine
Zealot’s Aggression: Fine
Bulwark: Fine
Pure of Sight: Fine
Hunter’s Fortification. The first half of this effect is good. The second half… not so much. Much like unscathed contender, conditions are everywhere and used by everyone, so the frequency at which it is up is questionable. Still, with adequate cleanse in a PVE area it is useful, and the cleanse is good.
Heavy Light: I’m not that big a fan of this trait. Mostly because base guardian doesn’t play keepaway that much, so if an enemy is closing in I’m swapping to my melee set and bursting them down. Even as a dragon hunter, I don’t see much reason to keep an enemy that far at range. The stability could be useful if you’re going to swap weapons and melee immediately after.
Big Game Hunter: Fine

Overall, there are a handful of traits that are lacking. However I am not particularly creative, so I’m not sure how I should go about fixing them. I also don’t PVP that much, which is where most of the Dragonhunter’s utilities will be used. I’ll have to leave the traits up to someone else.

#1: Chronomancer. No one will forget the day this class steps foot on tyria. Particularly because that day will happen twice in a row, but twice as fast.

The chronomancer provides a lot. In particular, alacrity, quickness, and the ability to duplicate their entire utility bar and do it again. The end result being oodles and oodles of alacrity, quickness, slow, and other assorted buffs + debuffs. With 50% higher action speed and half the cooldowns, what used to be considered burst is now part of the standard damage rotation.

The others… not so sure. It really depends on the content, but the biggest potential game changers are Herald, Reaper, and Druid.

Sojurner.8234:

this is an important observation that I would have missed if not for playing tempest so long:

THE TEMPEST BUILD / WARHORN HAS NO RANGE CLOSING SKILL = OWNED BY RANGE ATTACKS

this is a critical flaw that will undoubtedly get exploited soon after release – please fix

Tempests can layer 4 magnetic auras on top of each other. Its 20 seconds of projectile immunity. Tempests still have things like burning speed and lightning flash, too, and not all tempest will take the warhorn. I’m not sure it is as big of a problem as it is being made out to be here.

Axialbloom.8109:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Stability on Overloads is great, but it REALLY needs to be a minor trait otherwise the other 2 master traits will NEVER see play.

This. It is mandatory.

On a theoretical level this wouldn’t be true, but on a practical one it is. While you can protect yourself with things Arcane Shield and Armor of Earth, the other two traits necessitate that you are using shouts (which can’t protect overloads) or you will be trying to spam protection anyway (warhorn + overload use). So, I do have an idea:

Swap the location of speedy and harmonious conduits
Give the damage bonus to speedy conduits
Maybe make speedy conduits give superspeed instead of swiftness.

That way we get practical options now. You can either go for the damage boost after overload (offensive), the increase in protection (defensive), or the might + weakness on shouts (mixed support). This is all done assuming that my other suggestions for those traits go through, of course.

I had to sleep, but now I can go through all of the skills again. As always these numbers are acquired in PVP with gear equipped, so these numbers are effectively the tooltip or base damage.

BUG?: Persisting Flames doesn’t increase the duration of overload fire.
BUG: Persisting Flames does snot work with Wildfire.
BUG: The ending dust cyclone of Earth Overload applies the protection of Hardy Conduit Per pulse, which allows it to single handedly stack 18 stacks of protection.
TOOLTIP ERROR: Dust Storm currently just lists a bunch of numbers for its description.
TOOLTIP ERROR: Water Globe does not list that it is a water field.
TOOLTIP ERROR: Eye of the storm has no target listing.

All overloads have the following properties:
20 second cooldown
Stun Break
4 second listed animation time
4.5 second actual animation time

Overload Fire: 355 per pulse. 1 × 3 burning per pulse. 1 × 12 might per pulse. 5 second duration. 1 second interval. Both a Fire Field and a Whirl finisher x 7. 10 Pulses in Total. 180 Range.

Overload Water: 392 Healing per pulse. 3220 healing on final pulse. 1 × 8 regeneration. 1 condi clenase per pulse. 1 second interval. 5 Pulses Total.

Overload Air: 302 Per pulse. 1 × 10 vulnerability per pulse. 360 Range. 360 Radius. Lightning Field. Duration: 4 seconds x3 targets. 17 Pulses Total. Upon Finishing completion, causes a temporary buff called Static Charge, which will give cause lightning to strike the next enemy they hit. It has the same damage as a single pulse of overload Air.

Overload Earth: 266 per pulse. 1 × 3 Cripple per pulse. 1 × 9 bleed per pulse 1 second of protection per pulse. 3 × 4 stability on activation. 1 × 4 immobilize on end. Blast Finisher. 5 targets. 240 radius. 9 Pulses Total:

Overload notes: Man I wish that weren’t a bug on Earth. That massive AoE protection on use actually justifies using it. Overall the overloads are better. The Stun breaks and standardized animation times are good, and they have improved to such a degree that I can see myself using any of the overloads instead of just Fire.

Fire Overload was nerfed a bit, but it is still superior DPS over the staff auto attack, so it is still optimal to use lava font -> Fire Overload -> Lava Font -> Other combos. Air Overload, however, saw massive improvement. The additional party members essentially add 5 more pulses to a single target, so clocking in at an incredible 1,476 tooltip DPS, Air Overload now melts face.

I can’t comment much on water overload. It is sufficient at what it does, and there isn’t much to say beyond that. Earth Overload saw massive improvements. Though I know it is a bug, I do wish Earth Overload would retain its massive protection stacking. After additional comments later, once this bug is fixed I would like something similar to be put into the game.

Warhorn Skills::

Heat Sync: 3 × 10 might. Shares boons. 600 range + radius. 30 second cooldown. 0.75 second listed activation time. 1 second actual activation time.
Wildfire: 211 Damage Per pulse. 8 Pulses. 180 × 600 range. Fire Field. 1 × 2 burning per pulse. 30 second recharge. 0.75 second listed activation time. 1 second actual activation time.

Tidal Surge: 323 damage. 1,302 base healing. 0.5 scale healing. 1 × 8 regen. 240 knockback. 35 second recharge. 0.25 second listed activation time. 0.5 second actual activation time.
Water Globe: 470 base healing per pulse. 0.24 scale healing per pulse. 4 pulses. 1 second per pulse. Water Field. 180 radius. 750 range. Unblockable(?). 35 second recharge. 0.5 second listed activation time. Closer to 0.75 seconds real activation time.

Cyclone: 288. 1 × 10 swiftness. 180 Pull. 9 Impacts, 3 targets at a time. 240 × 750 range. Unblockable. 25 second recharge. 1 second listed activation time. Closer to 1.25 seconds real activation time.
Lightning Orb: 115 per pulse. 1 × 10 vulnerability per pulse. 1/4th second per pulse. 300 radius. 1200 range. 25 second cooldown. 0.5 second listed activation time. Closer to 0.75 seconds real time.

Sand Squall. 5 seconds of magnetic Aura. 2 seconds of protection. Boon duration + 2 seconds. 600 radius. Blast finisher. Affects 5 targets. NOTE: Magnetic Aura is only on the caster. 30 second cooldown. 0.5 second listed activation time, but closer to 0.75 seconds real time.
Dust Storm: 96 damage per pulse. 2 × 10 bleeding per pulse. 1 × 2 blind per pulse. 5 impacts total. 5 targets per impact. 2 second interval per storm. 180 × 750 range. 30 second cooldown. 0.75 second listed activation time, but closer to 1 second real time.

Warhorn Notes: Overall not much has changed since last time.

Heat Sink and Sand Squall are good at what they do. Wildfire and Dust storm are this weird form of light control that persist long enough to be meaningful. Lightning Orb and Water Globe are basically inferior versions of wells, with Water Globe being especially difficult to use in any meaningful manner. Tidal Surge is better, now that it is much faster acting, and cyclone still doesn’t have a place.

As for changes, they are the same from last beta:

#1: Tidal Surge’s control effect is instant after cast.
#2: Water Globe is converted into a 180 × 750 area, and pulses a heal + condition cleanse in its entire area 4 times.
#3: Cyclone reflects projectiles for the length of its animation.
#4: Lightning Orb now hits all targets once, but discharges a large bolt that does 920 damage (at 100o power) and 8 stacks of vulnerability for 10 seconds.

Shouts now.

“Wash the Pain Away!”: 3560 First Heal, 1950 second heal, 980 third heal. 5 targets. 180 radius, 240 radius, 360 radius. 25 second cooldown. 1.5 second listed activation time. 2 second real activation time. 0.3 scale healing, 0.2 scale healing. 0.1 scale healing respectively.

“Feel the Burn!’ 266. AoE Fire shield for 5 seconds. 1 × 4 burning. 5 targets. 600 radius. 20 second cooldown. Instant cast.

“Flash-Freeze!”: 186. 1 × 3 chill. AoE Frost Aura for 5 seconds. 5 Targets, 600 radius. 25 second coodlown. 0.25 listed activation time, closer to 0.5 seconds actual time.

“Eye of the Storm!”: 5 seconds superspeed. Stun Break. 5 targets(?). 45 second recharge. Instant Cast

“Shock and Aftershock!” (x2): 398. Magnetic Aura for 5 seconds. 1 × 6 cripple. 1 × 2 immobilize. 5 targets. 240 blast radius. 600 range. 50 second recharge. 0.25 second listed activation time, closer to 0.5 seconds actual time.

“Rebound”: 2,132 Healing. 1.5 scale healing. Grants Aura if it ends. 600 radius. 75 second cooldown. 0.25 second listed activation time, closer to 0.5 seconds in actual time.

Shout notes: Not a lot has changed between weekends. So, my suggestions haven’t changed much, either. I’ll add on a few extras:

Feel the Burn: Increase damage by 33%.
Eye of the Storm: Should give Shocking Aura
Shock and Aftershock: Should be a blast finisher

The main thing holding these back are that most auras aren’t that good.

Special note goes to rebound. This trait is actually worth something now. It works as a nice panic button, and since it negates instead of just rezzing, it technically heals for a lot. Currently I don’t have any notes for Rebound.

Now traits. I won’t do much archiving, since there aren’t many numbers to list. Overall there has been great improvement. But, there are still a lot of traits that just aren’t that good.

Eye of the Storm: Fine
Latent Stamina: Increase the endurance gained to 15.
Unstable Conduit: Have these auras activate at the start of the overload, and not the end.
Speedy Conduit: Increase the duration to 10 seconds of swiftness
Tempestuous Aria: Have it grant a 20% reduced cooldown to shouts.
Harmonious Conduits: Fine
Earthen Proxy: Change it to be a 52% increase in protection strength, now cutting protection damage in half.
Hardy Conduit: Increase protection duration to 4.5 seconds base.
Imbued Melodies: Fine
Lucid Singularity: Fine
Elemental Bastion: Might be fine. I think the healing was doubled, which makes this quite a bit more useful.

Overall, the tempest is better off than it was before. That isn’t saying much, given how lackluster it was before. Still, though: Shouts, Warhorn, and Traits need buffs.

Though I like the pure aggression of bound and lotus, I think I like Dash a lot, too.

What I like to do in PVE is equip dash, then spam all my dodges then using agility signet, spam agan, then the heal skill, more dodges. At the end I have 50 seconds of swiftness and I’m half way to my destination.

Most weapons do. Infiltraitor’s Arrow, Cloak and Dagger, and Black Powder all cost 6 initiative. The only one that doesn’t is Vault. With how things are now, I think the initiative cost of Infiltraitor’s arrow and Cloak and Dagger should be reduced to 5. Black Powder is pretty strong, so I am hesitant to reduce it, especially after Bound works correctly.

That is more of a base thief issue, though.

babazhook.6805:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Tabootrinket.2631:

On a personal and vague note, I think that the staff kind of lacks gap closing features to stay in the face of the ennemies.
For a weapon destined to be “used recklessly”, it has more the feeling of a pistol/dagger, than a dagger/pistol, providing more way out than way in.

This is a thought that I had. It isn’t reflected in the numbers, since according to them vault is about as good as Infiltraitor’s Strike and Heartseeker at maintaining engagement. Though it is currently bugged, I have toyed around with another suggestion, and I think that since so many others feel that way it is time to make it:

Increase the distance of Vault to 800/900 range.

I think this will do a lot for the skill, considering that weakening charge is our close range DPS move. I’m fairly certain that the longer range of vault would be counterbalanced by the higher initiative cost. While heartseeker doesn’t go as far, it also doesn’t cost as much initiative.

The problem is a higher Initiative cost makes trickery all but mandatory in a DD build. One utility using half of ones INI is just not a good idea.

Too many builds are being forced into trickery to get that extra INI. I do not think the heavy hitter of the DD line should force that as well. Right now at 5 INI I can manage a DD build no trickery. At 6 not so much.

now another fix is to take away preparedness and make 15 ini baseline so we can afford those high INI skills but if that does not happen I think this suggestion a bad one.

I’m not suggesting that we increase the initiative of vault. I’m saying that as an engagement move, the higher initiative cost is already balanced for more distance.

EDIT: NEW BUG FOUND: Impaling Lotus is tagged to be a “combat only” trait. However, this trait activates regardless of whether you are in combat or not.

In another thread, I suggested that driven fortitude and escapists absolution be merged and baseline, due to how necessary escapists absolution is to all game modes. This can lead to a fix. If there was another trait which granted us more healing in the empty master slot (or a defensive boon like protection), then your troubles might be over.

That, or we switch the positions of EA and driven fortitude, and then double the healing that driven fortitude gives. that is also an option.

Luclinraider.2317:

Just a request:

Anyone else feel that Evasive Empowerment needs a longer duration? Even if it’s just a second increase, at least that gives us enough time to get our skills off.

Yeah. My suggestion is 5.75 second duration, at the start of the dodge instead of the end. This gives thieves a unique damage buff for 5 seconds, which is enough to combo it with many skills instead of just half of one.

The reason why such a long duration? It is exclusive with brawlers tenacity and weakening strikes. Brawlers Tenacity contributes greatly to our endurance gain, so without BT we won’t have as may dodges to make use of Evasive Empowerment. Likewise, weakening charge cuts enemy endurance regen to 75% and damage output to 87.5%, making it both offensive and defensive. The endurance regen cut is hard to quantify, but quite frankly an 87.5% reduction in enemy damage throughout the entire fight is better than 2 seconds of 10% more damage for very small portions of time.

Tabootrinket.2631:

On a personal and vague note, I think that the staff kind of lacks gap closing features to stay in the face of the ennemies.
For a weapon destined to be “used recklessly”, it has more the feeling of a pistol/dagger, than a dagger/pistol, providing more way out than way in.

This is a thought that I had. It isn’t reflected in the numbers, since according to them vault is about as good as Infiltraitor’s Strike and Heartseeker at maintaining engagement. Though it is currently bugged, I have toyed around with another suggestion, and I think that since so many others feel that way it is time to make it:

Increase the distance of Vault to 800/900 range.

I think this will do a lot for the skill, considering that weakening charge is our close range DPS move. I’m fairly certain that the longer range of vault would be counterbalanced by the higher initiative cost. While heartseeker doesn’t go as far, it also doesn’t cost as much initiative.

Third exception: when used against a wall, it is also very easy to hit with all 3 attacks. And now it is time for math. As always these values are taken from an equipmentless character in PVP, so these are effectively the tooltip damage values.

BUG: Impaling Lotus activates whether you are in combat or not.
TOOLTIP ERROR:Debilitating Arc lists its evade time twice.
TOOLTIP ERROR: Distracting Daggers currently does not list the ICD between thrown daggers, nor the 1/4 second activation time to actually throw the dagger
TOOLTIP ERROR: With Brawler’s Tenacity, Distracting Dagger has the endurance gain listed, but actually throwing the daggers gains no endurance. Distracting Daggers (the equip skill) is the one that gains endurance.
TOOLTIP ERROR: The impact strike chain doesn’t display how long you have between attacks before the skill goes on cooldown.

Reference Numbers:
Dagger Auto: 198, 302, 302. 1 × 6 poison, 10 endurance gain. 2.1 seconds total. 2 targets
Backstab: 426. 853 from behind. 1/4 second activation time listed (closer to 1/2 second IRL)
Heartseeker: 355, 533, 710 per respective health levels. 3 Initiative cost, leap finisher. 0.75 second activation time listed (though I’m getting 0.9).
Sword Auto: 284, 284, 462. 1 × 2 cripple, 1x 2 weakness. 3 targets. 2.5 seconds total.
Unload: 1,136. Projectile Finisher (20%). 1.5 seconds listed time, 1.8 seconds actual time.

Staff Strike: 215
Staff Bash: 254
Punishing Strikes: 516, 4 × 8 vulnerability, reflects missiles, x1 whirl finisher
Total Auto Attack Chain time: 2.25 seconds (3 trials of 20 attacks). 3 targets.

Hook Strike: 254, 2 second knockdown. 0.75 second listed activation time.

Weakening Charge (x3): 822. 1 × 2 weakness per hit. 5 targets. 450 range. 3 initiative cost. Listed activation time: 1/2 second. Total animation time: 1 second. x3 whirl finisher

Debilitating Arc: 391, 1 × 6 cripple. Cures immobilize. 0.5 second evade. 400 distance. 3 targets. 4 initiative cost. Real animation time: 0.75 seconds.

Dust Strike: 235 1 × 5 blind, 3 impacts, 3 targets, 600 range. 4 Initiative cost. 1/4 second listed animation time. Total animation time: 0.8 seconds. Note: The animation time listed is the delay before the blind. Everything else is animation and aftercast. At point blank range this skill can hit twice.

Vault: 879. 5 Targets. 180 Radius. 600 Range. Leap Finisher. 5 Initiative Cost. 3/4ths second listed activation time. Can’t get an accurate reading of real animation time, but I"m assuming it is one second due to the numbers I did get.

Staff notes:

This is much better. The auto attack of the staff now has a base DPS of 428-437, as compared to sword’s 412 and Dagger’s 382. This makes the staff auto have the highest base damage out of any weapon before factoring in vulnerability. The animations are much smoother, the skills are much faster, there’s less aftercast, and the weapon can output massive amounts of damage.

My only suggestion for the staff is to make vault accurate to its ground targeting reticle.

Physical Skills

Fist Flurry (x5): 995. 1 × 5 vulnerability per hit. 130 range. Single Target. Listed Animation time: 1.25 seconds. Actual animation time is closer to 1.5 seconds. 20 second recharge.
Palm Strike: 465. 2 second stun. 130 range. Singlee target. Animation time 1/2 second (unable to adequately test). Causes Pulmonary Impact
Pulmonary Impact: 872. Cannot crit.
Total animation time: 2-2.25 seconds

Bandits Defense: Stun Break. 1 second block. Actual block time is longer, however I cannot adequately test that. 15 second cooldown. Causes Reflexive Strike when blocked in melee range.
Reflexive Strike:199 damage. 2 second knockdown. 0.5 second animation time.

Distracting Daggers: 0.5 second activation time. 25 second cooldown.
Distracting Dagger: 146. 1/4 second daze. Increases cooldown by 10 seconds. 1 second ICD. 1/4 second cast time. 900 range.

Impairing Daggers (x3): 597. 3 × 8 poison, 1 × 4 slow, 1 × 2 immobilize. 1/2 second activation time. 900 range. 25 second cooldown

Impact Strike: 199. 1 × 2 daze. 300 range. 1/2 second activation time. 40 second cooldown.
Uppercut: 598. Launch 0 (implied 2 second knockdown). 3/4s second activation time.
Finishing Blow: 532. 1.5 second activation time. Instantly kills enemies who are downed/will be downed by this attack.
Actual Length of this chain: 4 seconds

Channeled Vigor: 5,520 healing if endurance is not full. 7,320 healing if endurance is full. 3 pulses of 25% endurance each. Listed Activation time: 2.25 seconds. Actual activation time: 2.75 seconds. 1.5 scale healing power when endurance is full. 1.125 scale healing power when endurance is not full. 20 second cooldown.

Physical Notes: Fist Flurry and Bandits Defense are fine. For comparison, assuming full decked out zerker with 240% crit damage, Fist Flurry Does 810 to 912 scaled DPS, even without pulmonary impact being able to crit. Even if you don’t get all hits, the fists do up to 663 DPS. BTW this scale is basically me dividing pulmonary impact by crit damage and then calculating tooltip DPS normally.

I do have notes about the daggers, though. First of all, they should be 100% projectile finishers, to make them more useful and to put them in line with other thrown daggers. This will make the otherwise decidedly average daggers have more synergy. Second, with upcoming break bars, Distracting Daggers needs to be split between PVE and PVP. 1/4 second daze might as well not exist. In PVE only, increase this duration to 0.75 seconds daze.

Final Impact is the one that needs the most improvement. I’ve written about it before… and now I’ll do it again. In order for final impact’s unique ability to be used, you have to have_already won the fight_. Thieves are already excellent stompers, so there’s no need for that utility. Outside of the lackluster stomping power, the skill is lackluster overall. The aftercast on the skill is a second long, and leaves you vulnerable. The current DPS of this skill is 332, which means that as a stun it is wholly outclassed by something like basilisk venom. My suggestion for final impact is to reduce the after cast greatly (so you don’t linger there for literally a whole second), and then after doing that increase the direct damage of all of those skills by 50%. Then it will be worth using.

Traits. This is going to be done differently, since there aren’t many numbers to go by. I’m just going to give the suggestions trait by trait.

Evasive Empowerment: This trait isn’t good enough. The window of opportunity is too short (you can’t even get in the full Fists Flurry Combo). Increase the duration to 5.75 seconds, have it start at the beginning of the dodge so it synergizes with the dodge traits.

Weakening Strikes: much like lotus poison, this trait would be a lot stronger if it were by target instead of a single global ICD. However, as it is not exclusive with lotus poison, this isn’t necessary. It would just be nice.

Brawler’s Tenacity: Fine.

Driven Fortitude and Escapists Absolution: I’m putting these two together because these should be merged into a single trait, and kept as the master minor. Nothing else in the master tier will be taken because Escapists Absolution is necessary for PVP/WvW and a really big help in PVE. The other two traits might as well not exist. Conditions are everywhere in every game mode, so there’s never a situation where you won’t need Escapists Absolution. Driven Fortitude is alright, but it pales in comparison to what Escapists Absolution needs to do.

Staff Mastery: This trait is cumbersome and works against itself. Its first mechanic (endurance recovery) works to eliminate its second mechanic (damage bonus when endurance isn’t full). It is nonsensical. There are two ways to improve this trait. First is to remove the weapon requirement, and have it so it gives 10% damage when endurance is not full, no matter what. Second is to make it always give 10% bonus damage to Staff, regardless of how the endurance bar is.

Pulmonary Impact: Fine

Endurance Thief: Fine

Bound: Currently bugged, but you’re working on it

Dash: Fine

Impaling Lotus: There’s a fairly significant problem with this skill: The daggers fly gradually as you move through the dodge. This causes two issues. If you move out of range of an enemy, then you stop throwing daggers. If you move in range of a completely different enemy, you’ll end up throwing daggers at them. This skill needs much more control. To fix this, make it so all 3 daggers are thrown instantly at the location of the dodge, on the dodge, instead of being a targeting AoE that follows our toon around as they dance like a ballerina.

Also, increase the missile radius to 450 at least. Currently it is too hard to use, even with my suggestion.

Well, that is all for now. I’m working on very little sleep, and my vision is fuzzy, so the last thing I’ll do is archive the dodge skills that do damage. Pity me, for tomorrow I’ve got to work on the tempest and the dragon hunter.

Bound: 465. 5 targets. 180 radius. 300 distance traveled. 0.75 second evade. Blast Finisher. 5 targets.

Impaling Lotus: 50 × 3 damage. 1 × 8 bleed, 1 × 6 torment, 1 × 3 cripple. 3 Targets, 3 daggers, 360 missile radius. 300 distance traveled. x3 whirl finisher

BUG!!!: Vault’s range is incorrect. The actual maximum distance you fly and attack is much shorter than what is indicated on the ground targeting… target thing. It is actually pretty far back, so much so that if an enemy is just beyond the centermost green circle, Vault will not hit them.

BUG: Bandits defense still doesn’t display reflexive strike while it is on the hot-bar. Bandit’s Defense only displays reflexive strike when changing traits.

Tooltip Error: The Impact Strike Chain still displays an endurance gain for each portion of the skill when equipped with brawlers tenacity, even though uppercut and finishing blow do not actually give endurance on use.

Note: Evasive Empowerment activates after Bound/Impaling Lotus, and thus does not increase the damage done for them. Also, bound is a blast finisher now. Not exactly sure what is going on with that.

So far, it definitely feels less clunky than before. The dodges are smoother, the staff is smoother, and overall it feels like a QoL upgrade.

As for my personal project, I have experiment with weakening charge spam. Partially I am relieved: the skill will proceed to go through your target even after it slightly tracks. This means to get all 3 hits on an enemy, you need to be standing in a “sweet spot” which is just outside of manual melee range (the range in which your attacks hit when the button is pressed, as opposed to the range at which your auto attack starts going auto). My concern was that the skill would be too mindless, and you would be able to down players by hitting them for 7k a pop. But since it tracks through, it means that it is still possible to hit other players hard, but the careful positioning doesn’t make it a sure thing.

There are two exceptions to this. First is in PVE, enemies that have larger hitboxes are quite easy to spam weakening charge against. Second, while under the effects of haste, it is very easy to hit with all 3 hits of weakening charge at point blank range.

I’ll get to working on the numbers soon. So far, it is much funner than last time.

Agemnon.4608:

" Second worse case, someone made a neo-kitten clan and would dedicate themselves to spreading holocaust denial propaganda everywhere. Apparently it was popular, because for months I kept seeing the same chat macros."

That’s terrible, did they mean it or were they just roleplaying as bad guys? So you see a charr killing humans…but those humans are bandits and the charr the good guy. It’s a morally gray world we live in buddy.

I could invoke Poe’s law, but I’m pretty sure they meant it. The ignition rate and soil concentration of pesticides isn’t exactly standard “troll bait” if you know what I’m saying. This was also around the time that an antisemitic film was at its peak popularity, and I’m certain that those two facts were related.

Direct damage scales negatively with toughness, while condi doesn’t. Anet doesn’t take advantage of this too often, but it is possible to see enemies who have 5k+ armor in raids.

I find people are more evil than we give them credit for. Everyone assumes that people on the internet are mean because they don’t grasp that there is another person with feelings behind that glowing computer screen. That if there was a face staring back at them, then they wouldn’t troll or be harsh.

Maybe it is because I grew up and live in a poor neighborhood, but I find this exact level of mean-ness IRL. People don’t do mean things because they don’t realize you’re human. They do mean things because they realize you are human. Whether they have something to prove, are irritable to the air itself, or legitimate hate you for some reason, the notion that another person is feeling pain behind a screen brings them comfort or joy. Telling them “stop, you’re hurting me” just makes them hit harder. Every time they get a “you’ve been blocked” message, it brings them satisfaction to know that what they do works. Each time they find themselves banned, they congratulate themselves over a job well done.

GW2 isn’t even the worst of it. The worst case I ever saw was in another MMO wherein upon being angered by the moderation, the individual proceeded to log in and flame people on 30 separate accounts. This person made 30 accounts, just to yell at people. Each time they were muted or banned, 5 seconds later they were back and continuing their tirade. Second worse case, someone made a neo-kitten clan and would dedicate themselves to spreading holocaust denial propaganda everywhere. Apparently it was popular, because for months I kept seeing the same chat macros.

Why? No one knows. It’s complicated, and if we did know then psychology would be respected as a real science. I see the occasional off comment on the forums and in map chat, but overall it isn’t that bad. It isn’t a constant stream of unending obscenity, threats, viruses and scams. You have to dig through the good to find what is bad, and not vice versa.

Zenith.7301:

Warrior has 170 to all stats, plus another 150 power to allies, on top of the only reliable and best group rez tool, War Banner (which might be worth a kitten in actually challenging content). It’s going to be brought.

I said above I’d replace the guardian with 2 spirit/spotter rangers, but the reason you would bring Guard is Communal Defenses aegis spam.

I mean phalanx strength specifically. With might taken care of, Axe/X will see more use.

Jana.6831:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Stealth is the best aggro management tool in the game. An invisible ally has no further attacks launched at them. Considering this, shadow refuge can be considered a 10 second immunity to targeted attacks, affecting up to 5 people. Also in shadow arts anyone in stealth gets a 25% damage reduction.

Unless the NPCs still follow you while you’re stealthed – common in wvw. Also it doesn’t protect the other members or your party if they aren’t thieves who are traited in SA (you made it sound like it would protect everybody)

It is very easy to stealth allies. Blast finisher in a smoke field, shadow refuge, blinding powder, and merciful ambush all do it. Likewise, I’ve found in dungeons that enemies will frequently not attack NPCs that are running with you. Why? Don’t know. If you are referring to Resilience of Shadows, I’m certain that applies to all stealth effects, even to other allies, given its wording.

Jana.6831:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

My glass cannon thief carries pugs. And not by soloing content. The defenses it provides are so strong it can keep a group of random, uncoordinated players alive through thick and thin.

If people know shadow refuge, that is. If they’re uncoordinated to start with… good luck with that.

But in general you’re right, if I will buy HoT and participate in raids I likely will still be doing so as a zerker thief (in the end I survive in wvw zergs already, don’t think that it can get worse) but all of that doesn’t mean that anet shouldn’t rework thief as they’ve proven to not care about our class by introducting reveal stuff and not giving us anything in exchange, so I don’t really count on them thinking about thief when designing new content.

Shadow Refuge is actually good for uncoordinated players, too. Stealth immediately causes the enemy to de-aggro and target someone else, which is enough to save most players lives.

That said, I do think base thief could use some buffs. Mostly the acrobatics line, but a few tweaks to sword, offhand dagger, and deathb lossom.

Amante.8109:

This is patently false. There is no such thing as an argument so ironclad that it is impossible for anyone who hears it to potentially misunderstand it.

One doesn’t lead to the other. The whole point of communication is make sure people understand your ideas. If that isn’t the point of communication, then what is the point of communication. You can judge how good of a communicator someone is by how well other people understand what they are trying to convey.

You’re so wrapped up in your own head you’ve completely lost pace of the conversation. Lets retrace how this has gone. In response to someone else, I started with the following statement:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

It is precisely because of these reasons that I do not want our grandmasters to become some kind of additional mechanic. If we get the option to toggle between what dodge we want on the fly…

Which I brought up by myself. I had already heard this kind of sentiment earlier, and someone later posts up an argument for this kind mechanic. So this isn’t unheard of, and this isn’t directed at anyone necessarily. Then shalien comes in and dumps a superiority complex fueled load asking what I am talking about. I respond to shalien clearly outlining everything I am talking about. Then you come in proclaiming that I grabbed this notion from nowhere while dumping a no true Scotsman about how the only people that matter are making the real suggestion. I respond explaining the outlandish communication limitation, then talked about what you had elaborated on. See, normally this is the point where the conversation takes a turn and we start talking about things such as the the absolute power stance of the DD, or how prospective changes might influence the overall balance of things in the future. Instead, you ignored all of that then vomited a condescending loaded question at my way.

For reference, shalien’s suggestion regarding mechanics in this thread is here, where you will notice that there is an absence of any specifics at all, outside of “rolling it into the elite spec mechanic”. I don’t even know who you are. You come into this thread with an ego over how I am willfully misunderstanding a post of unknown authorship, unknown location, and unknown content, accusing me of purposefully misunderstanding someone else that is not you.

Amante.8109:

People making invalid arguments do not in any way diminish those making similar but valid arguments. This is why you are being accused of straw-manning in the first place.

Except that’s not how it works, at all. You are accusing me of making things up from thin air (to do… what? be a hipster?). I am clearly not. I have proof that I am clearly not. That is the entire subject, and it ends there. I am not “diminishing similar but valid arguments” when it is very plainly elaborated on, sometimes in list form, what I am talking about. I am diminishing similar but invalid arguments to what you may have stated.

The world doesn’t revolve around you. If someone is talking about something that is similar but different from your idea, then it probably isn’t your idea. What you quoted me doing in the past isn’t shalien elaborating on his idea at all. It is ego in 3 sentences.

Shalien.9018:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Amante.8109:

I have been very clear over a period of weeks—as have many other major proponents of decoupling the dodges, such as Shalien—that the proposed toggle should definitely not be usable in combat. We have repeatedly used the Revenant Legend UI as a point of comparison, as it’s a good example of how to do this sort of thing correctly: they can only switch Legends while out of combat and not in an active SPvP match.

At this point I can only assume willful ignorance on your part, as you keep bringing up the in combat point, seemingly to misrepresent the argument. This is a type of informal fallacy that as known as a Straw Man: misrepresenting your opponent’s argument so it is easy to tear apart; this frees one up to not respond to any salient points an opposing argument may have made.

I will ask you yet again: assuming the dodges maintain their current utility and power—which is something I would say we all want—what is it about one additional trait that would take the Daredevil from its current (arguably underpowered) state, to one of being overpowered? I’m eager to hear your reasoning.

The biggest problem about calling it all a straw man is that the real man is standing right behind you. Likewise, if you make a post the burden is on you to make sure everyone understands. Don’t just say “Oh, it is implied that I have elaborated on it somewhere else in the forum”. No, it is not implied. You have to add those 2 or 3 sentences that explains exactly what you mean, or else any ambiguity is on your head.

You are misrepresenting my argument. My argument was that making all 3 dodges available on the fly makes the Daredevil OP. This is the informal fallacy called the Loaded Question: you’re making incorrect assumptions and then pressing for an answer that would validate this assumption. Given how much I’ve just written on the subject, I can only assume it is willful ignorance at this point.

Nah man. You’re legit reaching for straws. Whatever logical fallacies you want to say other people are using, you’re the one not understanding what’s going on. Multiple people have tried to tell you this now and you insist that everyone else is wrong.

At some point, a teacher has to stop focusing all their effort on one student who’s not getting the subject material.

It’s not our responsibility to try to make you understand what’s happening. We’ve tried many times to help you and not only do you refuse to try to comprehend the conversations being had – you also think that every person on this forum who disagrees with you is in the same camp.

What utter hypocrisy.

#1: It is your responsibility to make sure I understand. If you’re talking to someone, you have to make sure they know what you are saying. Otherwise you are horrible at communicating.

#2: I do understand what is going on. There are several things going on, and since you don’t understand I will explain it to you: There are players who just look at the mechanics other classes have and say “Hey, I want this now because it looks like they got more!”. They are wrong to think like that. It is jealous balancing and it gets nowhere. The the class is not robbed somehow because you aren’t happy with where things are placed. And yet, you are so myopic that you think that because someone disagrees with your one true way that it means they can’t comprehend your thoughts. Not once have you proven that a deficiency in the class is intrinsic to having our grandmaster tier be dodges. You’ve just proclaimed yourself right and look down upon anyone who disagrees.

#3: The bandwagon fallacy is the informal fallacy of irrelevance. It doesn’t matter how many people you have to pat each other on the back over a job well done. Fact is not up for a popular vote.

#4: I demand proof. Where have I misunderstood something? Because last I checked, each time someone has added new information I have expanded or commented on that new information.

Kill.3458:

Nike.2631:

Kill.3458:

So thief’s survivability is regulated to other people because we can’t mitigate damage ourselves? We already have super limited party support outside of SR and Venome share so i’m not sure what your on about?

Not Thief. EVERYBODY. If you’re not bringing healing in some form, then party wipe.

That healing can be coming from the thief. Everybody has options to self-sustain that go beyond dodges and your simple self-heal. But somebody is gonna have to actually bring those things in the future, either for themselves or for their teammates so those teammates can stay in hard hitting configurations.

The Thief is not being singled out and the Daredevil is not being singled out. “You won’t be able to dodge all the damage” is a very broad statement and it impacts every profession and party composition in particular. Because if you can’t dodge it all you’ll either need extra heals from yourself or the guy next to you. And you might want to look at where you can squeeze in a little more Toughness.

Ok but read what I just said what exactly does the thief bring that TRULY contributes to this group survivability? Stealth (primarily SR) with help from the Shadow Arts tree? Most classes can stealth/group stealth so outside of the regen we don’t bring much. If we get loaded on condi’s, we die, boss does a big unevadable move after sending out a series of AoE’s and we are somehow too far away to receive some kind of protection, we die.

The thing about thief survivability in PvE up to this point is that it is almost entirely been relegated to dodging mechanics well and timing your attacks. We’re now finding out that that will not be the case in HoT especially in Raid Content.

Your solution suggests again that the thiefs survivability hinges on the group which is true, but guess what people flub up and if a thief flubs up its usually an immediate game over for the thief…

Stealth is the best aggro management tool in the game. An invisible ally has no further attacks launched at them. Considering this, shadow refuge can be considered a 10 second immunity to targeted attacks, affecting up to 5 people. Also in shadow arts anyone in stealth gets a 25% damage reduction.

You wouldn’t want to heal anyway. Druids take care of that. What you can do is contribute to projectile management (dagger storm and smokescreen), endurance recovery (bountiful theft + signet of agility), blind spam (pistol, smokescreen), near permanent weakness and cripple (sword auto, additional traits/skills), ninja rezzing (shadow arts), stealth shenanigans in general, boon stealing (when removing enemy might/fury/quickness/retaliation), and my own personal favorite: evade tanking.

That whole “you can’t dodge it all” thing is propaganda. The amount of active defenses between classes varies exponentially, so the amount to which our class can “dodge” is not nearly the concern. Likewise, aside from group support the thief can have very high personal healing that scales up depending on how many enemies you can hit. With Signet of Malice and Invigorating precision, you’ll easily be recovering 700 HP per attack, giving thieves a massive amount of regen.

So, taking in a weapon dodge every 4 seconds + additional dodges via utilities and endurance + highest endurance recovery in the game… think about the other classes. Is the elementalist really going to do better? I know for certain that when dungeon running my ele dies a whole lot more than my thief. After arcane shield and burning retreat, I have to sit back and hope that my range keeps me alive. Mostly it doesn’t, given champ’s unnatural attraction to me. Is guard going to do better? know for certain that my guard dies in dungeons far more than my thief does. Sure, the guard can run mace/shield with retreat, shelter, and renewed focus for a lot of personal blocks, but then what else is the Guard doing other than trying to stay alive? Paltry group heals and a condi cleanse?

My glass cannon thief carries pugs. And not by soloing content. The defenses it provides are so strong it can keep a group of random, uncoordinated players alive through thick and thin.

Going from the OP’s build:

#1: I’m not sure Evasive Empowerment is worth it. If the skill only applies to regular dodges, then the 2 second damage boost won’t be good at all. Unless there is heavier modifications to the build, I’d take weakening strikes for 50% weakness uptime against a single target. That weakness is good against the initial counter-burst and reduces their dodges (which is what they’ll do after being hit with a pre-cast basilisk venom).

#2: Unless it is experimentally shown otherwise, I’d try Bounding Dodger first. With evasive empowerment, infiltraitor’s strike, shadowstep, signet of agility, and roll for initiative all together I’m not sure another source for removing even more immobilizing conditions will be worth it. You can always go for more offensive power, though.

#3: Another option for more offensive power would be to take unhindered combatant, but replace shadowstep with bandits defense. BD is a stunbreak + block on a 15 second cooldown, but the most important feature is that if it blocks in melee range it counterattacks with a 2 second knockdown. This is surprisingly good, since after your initial volley they’ll counter-stun and burst, but BD completely ruins that and sets them up for a second volley. You’d have to sacrifice some mobility for it, though.

Either way, strongly consider running Bandits Defense, as it is highly versatile and one of the best stun breaks in the game. If not over shadowstep, over infiltraitor’s signet. If you take it over the signet, I’d still suggest Bounding Dodger for more offense. Bounding dodger might be good because after the initial burst, it is highly likely they will evade before counter attacking, to which you can simply evade right back on top of them.

Those are my notes on the OP’s build. As for my build… I’m going to test the new staff in PVE.

Staff + P/P
DA/CS/DD
Full zerker and scholar gear
Signet of Malice, Assassins Signet, Signet of Agility, Filler utility (either Fists of Fury or Smoke Screen, unless something else is needed), Dagger Storm.

I haven’t clocked down the animation time, but from the numerical side Weakening Charge looks quite powerful. Now that it tracks and hits 5 targets, the total damage of this skill might be insane. AoE perma weakness + 10% so long as I have the sense to use Bounding Dodger appropriately. The current equivalent would be if we could heartseeker spam an enemy while getting maximum damage at at all health ranges, except do more damage and in an AoE while stacking massive amounts of weakness.

Currently I’m clocking Fists of Fury as higher damage than haste. Without the trickery line to bolster it, FoF will replace haste as the highest damaging utility. On the flip side, if blinds are needed, Smoke Screen combos well with the whirl finishing nature of the skill. I haven’t decided on the off-hand yet, but I am thinking P/P. I can use black powder then weapon swap, and let the whirl finishers take care of blind spam.

Once I can confirm its usage in PVE, then I’ll start theorycrafting PVP specs. I’m thinking DA/Trickery/DD with Basilisk Venom + Devourer Venom + Infiltraitor’s Signet + other utilities (I’m thinking Hide in Shadows and FoF, but Bandits Defense and Withdraw are both good options). The goal is to aggressively pursue and disable my opponent while hammering away with weakening charge. After they’ve blown their stun break (basi), condition cleanse (Devourer), counter-stun (Infil), and dodges (Mug or my respective dodge skills), they won’t have much to deal with the remaining Serpent’s Touch, Panic Strike, and Fists of Fury.

The remaining utilities are quite in the air. Hide in shadows gives access to hook strike and cleanses some damaging condis, and FoF is for more damage. Bandits defense just plain rocks so it is an option, and for more open specs Withdraw has better tactical use. I haven’t PVP’ed in awhile so all of these are up in the air.

I really wish that escapists absolution was baseline, though. Having those condi cleanses while also having access to Impacting Disruption or Staff Mastery would open up worlds of pain.

I like the necro because it is low maintenance to play. Its a big ole bag of HP that can out endurance a lot of enemies. It has some unique (but not super useful ATM) utility, too.

Personally I find the scrapper traits to be a mixed bag. Some things are good, but most things are just kind of weird.

Function Gyro: I am not a big fan of “win moar” abilities. If you are using this to stomp an enemy, then the enemy is already dead and thus this contributed nothing to your victory. Basically this serves as an alternate to stealth/blind/invuln stomping, and I suppose if you trait for it and are in a 2 vs. 1 situation this might help if you want to distract the other player. As a rezzing utility it is alright, since it allows you to simultaneously rez and fight without occupying a slot. This is the best use of the Gyro, since rezzing an ally helps you to win. But… since it is on a 30 second cooldown, you may find yourself involuntarily blowing your rez on a stomp.

Recovery Matrix: This isn’t bad. I do wonder if it triggers multiple times for something like the healing turret.

Shocking Speed: This is a gimmick. The 10 second ICD really kills a lot of the synergy, and personally I just don’t find superspeed to be all that useful.

Stabilization Core: Necessary for Gyro stomps, and it helps with gyro heals. While necessary to make use of the function gyro, I’d argue it is inferior to recovery matrix, due to the situational usage of the function gyro.

Decisive Renown: Half of this trait is a win moar trait. There’s little reason to get boons after your opponent is already dead. I guess if you’re fighting off-point it can help you get to an objective faster, and it can give a bit of extra umph to a hammer train. But the situation this requires to be useful is that you are killing opponents and simultaneously losing, and that is quite rare. The revival half is better, since downed allies means you’re losing and the might + superspeed would help there.

Expert Examination: This trait is solid. The scrapper gets a lot of dazes, and it really helps to add on the pressure.

Mass Momentum: I feel like this traits use will be kind of gimmicky, but not too bad. The toughness to power is alright, and up to 5 stacks of might under stability is alright. Add them together, and they’re better than alight (particularly when ran with Juggernaut.

Rapid Regeneration: This is pretty good. It lets the scrapper become even more tanky, given the amount of superspeed it can get. Each “burst” of speed counts as a 1.4k heal on top of everything else.

Impact Savant: This trait is worse than it looks. The stun duration isn’t as good as you’d expect, since most of what the Juggernaut does is daze, but it does help with Thunderclap. Likewise, if it only works on incoming stuns, then the massive number of dazes, knockdowns, fears, and taunts will be unhindered. If this trait affected all control effects then it would be utterly brutal, but with how specific it is now it is hardly noticeable.

Adaptive Armor: This trait, however, is what makes other classes jealous. A straight up 20% reduction to conditions and up to 500 armor (maximum 24% reduction to direct damage on full GC) makes this class incredibly tanky.

Final Salvo: The problem with this trait is that gyros are sub-par. The lightning field is nice to combo through personally, but I’m not sure that a localized superspeed pulse and a combo-only lightning field will be that useful.

Perfectly Weighted: I’m not sure how many evade skills the engi has. The stability is half decent against spammers who just load up controls or zergs, but tactically I’m not sure how useful it will really be. The 10% on hammer damage is good, though.

Overall, I don’t like them that much. The master tier is good, and adaptive armor is an excellent trait, but the rest of the traits are best described as “some weird thing that sort of does stuff in places”.

Personally I found several problems with it.

#1: The trait line is sub-par. This is the big one, because you have to take the trait line to be a tempest. The traits are extremely focused, in that they deal with a handful of specific things. This means that they don’t have good synergy with other specs, and aren’t any QoL upgrades as a whole. With how good fire/air/water/arcane are, there is a lot to sacrifice without a lot to gain by going into the tempest line.

#2: The warhorn lacks the necessary tools for the ele. Sure it has some nice buffing effects, but what keeps the ele alive is high movement speed, high control, and high blocks. Dagger off-hand has mobility and control, focus has control and blocks. Warhorn has just buffs, which leaves the ele relatively helpless. This creates the rare “glass buffer” situation. It is rare because it doesn’t work.

#3: The shouts are average. Many of the things they try to do are already accomplished by the arcane line in PVE and the cantrip line in PVP. They work to spread auras around, but auras aren’t that good.

#4:Overloads are tricky to use and are situational. In PVP frequent attunement swapping is how the elementalists exists, and it goes contrary to that nature. In PVE overloads aren’t as bad, but will still be frequently interrupted.

End result, the only thing in the tempest line that I want to use is Fire Overload in PVE, and that is it. I don’t want the traits, weapon, utilities, or the mechanic.

I do have a few comments. First, on the composition as a whole:

#1: Why guardian? The guardian looks redundant in this spec: Fury comes from the herald/ele, a ton of group quickness comes from the chronomancer + herald, chrono brings reflects… what is there after that? If the guardian is just a condi cleanser, then that role can easily be fulfilled by a Scrapper or a Reaper, who will bring blind fields and either condition or direct damage respectively. Thieves/Daredevils can bring stealth, blind spam, and group vigor + endurance regen. Rangers/Druids provide more unique damage buffs and burst healing + cleanse.

#2: PS warrior might not be necessary. The warrior banners are good, but the might stacking capabilities of the chrono + herald are already sufficient to cap. Staff ele makes it easier, too.

Those points aside, I do share Iris Ng’s concerns. I am fairly certain that the two teams are going to have to split to different objectives. While the comp you listed is good for melee stacking a boss, if something strange were to happen, such as limitless elites spawning from particular areas, then you might need two different types of teams. A DPS team and an alternate objective team.

Rauderi.8706:

I’m a bit surprised at the Druid support (20%). o_O

Considering the community’s kneejerk reaction to “git gud no helz” and “zomg not wow trinity stahp”, I would’ve assumed a healing-heavy spec to get thrust to the bottom. (Right on top of Dargonhurrdurr.)

I got my biggest squees from Reaper and Herald, though.

The community reaction is selectively biased in two ways. First, people who don’t like the druid are more likely to say something. Second, people who do like the druid aren’t as likely to say something due to the hostility of the druid haters. After all that, a lot of people are looking forward to all that healing.

Personally, what I’m looking forward to the most is a tie between the reaper and the daredevil.

Reaper: It is full of so many things the necro wanted. A melee shroud, a weapon with good utility and damage, and a trait line that is mouth-watering. The shouts are meh, and I feel like I’m trying to force them into builds instead of actually using them, but nobody is perfect.

Daredevil: A lot is in flux with this class ATM, but once polished I’ll pick it up and never put it down. This is the only elite spec where I like everything: utilities, traits, weapon, and theme. It has a lot of things that the thief needs, and if I’m doing the numbers its damage should be sick.

It only seems like many of the elite specializations are stronger because they provide some kind of new or missing utility that the class needs. I.E. Daredevil gives the thief more dodges and a block. Depending on the situation, an elite spec won’t always be better.

Amante.8109:

I have been very clear over a period of weeks—as have many other major proponents of decoupling the dodges, such as Shalien—that the proposed toggle should definitely not be usable in combat. We have repeatedly used the Revenant Legend UI as a point of comparison, as it’s a good example of how to do this sort of thing correctly: they can only switch Legends while out of combat and not in an active SPvP match.

At this point I can only assume willful ignorance on your part, as you keep bringing up the in combat point, seemingly to misrepresent the argument. This is a type of informal fallacy that as known as a Straw Man: misrepresenting your opponent’s argument so it is easy to tear apart; this frees one up to not respond to any salient points an opposing argument may have made.

I will ask you yet again: assuming the dodges maintain their current utility and power—which is something I would say we all want—what is it about one additional trait that would take the Daredevil from its current (arguably underpowered) state, to one of being overpowered? I’m eager to hear your reasoning.

The biggest problem about calling it all a straw man is that the real man is standing right behind you. Likewise, if you make a post the burden is on you to make sure everyone understands. Don’t just say “Oh, it is implied that I have elaborated on it somewhere else in the forum”. No, it is not implied. You have to add those 2 or 3 sentences that explains exactly what you mean, or else any ambiguity is on your head.

You are misrepresenting my argument. My argument was that making all 3 dodges available on the fly makes the Daredevil OP. This is the informal fallacy called the Loaded Question: you’re making incorrect assumptions and then pressing for an answer that would validate this assumption. Given how much I’ve just written on the subject, I can only assume it is willful ignorance at this point.

The damage variance of weapons is 10%. In order for ascended gear to be a requirement, the raid would have to be tuned so that a full exotic party would fail the majority of the time by sheer RNG alone.

So either the raids are designed in such a way that players will automatically fail by RNG, or this is an overestimate. I’m hoping for the latter, considering that across all my toons I currently have 53 ascended weapons that I would have to make. At 100 gold each, its basically 2 more legendaries.

Skill dissonance is part of what killed City of Heroes. The PVP skills, to be balanced, were altered so much from their PVE counterparts that it made PVP almost entirely foreign. This made a large wall between PVE and PVP, since players essentially had to learn two different games. The end result, most people didn’t bother with PVP.

That’s part of why the devs are so afraid of having skill splits.

Random Wax Orc.7695:

Watch Anet put ridiculous masses of Silk into new HoT crafting bags right after you invest.

That tweet about Ascended being required for Raids has to be complete nonsense, unless the new (infused) versions of ascended armor have an undisclosed extra feature, or if new non-AR infusions are being released with HoT. The 5% increase in stats otherwise is meaningless, considering it is nothing compared to the power differential between casual and meta builds.

Pretty much this. Due to how weapon strength works, ascended gear offers less of an advantage overall than the variance in damage. If ascended gear is to be required, then this would mean that the raids are tuned to fail the vast majority of the time due to RNG alone.

I’m glad it is all poppykitten because otherwise this would be utterly ridiculous. I myself have 7 different toons, and I would have to make multiple ascended sets for each of them depending on their prospective builds. With each ascended set costing anywhere from 600 to 1000 gold, I’ll basically have to buy 4 legendaries to put my new toons in the raid.

For the overworld, I’ve found this to be sufficient for most things, particularly silverwastes:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAR8cnsIClphtqBmqBUrhlUDicAlIAlf4EdD9LrZ7A-TBSBwAUuoCFV+FRJ4N1fmt/AKdPIM/B4JFAA-e

This isn’t optimized in any way, and the utilities are mostly best suggestions. This is kind of a mix between shatter and pure phantasm. The shatters provide large AoE damage while the phantasms can take down a tough single target. The phantasms each have a 12 second cooldown, so they’ll recharge from fight to fight.

The build isn’t mandatory in any way. Mental Anguish can be taken over imagined burden for stronger shatters. Focus can be taken over greatsword or off-hand sword for greater movement speed. The utilities are situational, and should be swapped out when something else is needed. Shattered Strength can also be taken over Phantasmal Haste if you’re dealing with a bunch of weaker monsters instead of a few big ones.

I know I said it years ago, but I still want swimsuits.