(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
Thinking it over, I can see some rationality in their change, just not exactly in their lazy half-finished approach to it.
I’ve always thought that CnD offered easier access to stealth than it probably should. Thieves should have frequent access to stealth, but every 3 seconds is a little excessive. Possibly even every 4 seconds.
But because CnD specifically offers so much stealth, the whole class is balanced around the assumption that you WILL have that degree of access to stealth regardless.
Shadow Arts in general is a perfect example of this.
So if you don’t have x/D on at least one weapon set, you’re kinda screwed.
They should simply have compensated us for this change. Given some of the promised mobility or something so the class in general would not still NEED that extra stealth.
D/D and P/D also rely COMPLETELY on CnD for their regular damage, and they shouldn’t. The problem there is mostly that Heartseeker is only good against dying targets and Body Shot is just a costly Combo Finisher.
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
Ah, Thief Dungeon guides are a good one. I’ll be sure to avoid acronyms as well; considering I have all the time in the world to write it out it’d just be lazy anyway.
I know of some areas where a Thief specifically can do awesome things in dungeons, like using Shadow Refuge to let the group skip certain enemies entirely.
Some months ago, Rangers received a heavy nerf because of a very poorly thought out change when they “fixed” an animation bug no one knew of, resulting in drastically reduced speed for the shortbow and a REAL animation bug that reduced its effectiveness when combined with Quickening Zephyr.
The Ranger forums blew up as badly as these for weeks.
To this day they’ve not been compensated.
Anet is run by a bunch of children incapable of admitting when a mistake has been made.
This ham-fisted nerf won’t be fixed by them.
Basilisk venom is inferior to the Devourer venom right now.
Detailed comparison:
CD – 45s(BV), 45s(DV). The same cd time.
Cast time – 1s(BV), instant(DV). DV is better than BV.
CC duration – 1.5s(BV), 2s(DV). DV is better than BV.
Number of applications – 1 hit(BV), 2 hits(DV). DV is better than BV.
Type of CC – Stun(BV), Immobilize(DV). BV is better than DV.
Conclusion: 3:1 in Devourer venom favor. The only thing Basilisk is better than Devourer is that it stuns the target instead of immobilizing it. I don’t know how can someone compare Basilisk venom to a Moa Morph if it is inferior even to the utility skill (Devourer venom).
Don’t forget that Devourer Venom is properly affected by +Condition Duration, as well as Residual Venom and Venomous Aura due to the ability to stack.
And the fewer applications are actually a detriment if you have Leeching Venoms.
I’ve started work on the site, though I can’t say how long it’ll be before it’s ready.
Any opinions would continue to be helpful.
To help practice my art skills I’m also working on little GW2 Thief focused web comics for the site, but that definitely won’t be a real focus of the site.
I’ll also be sketching diagrams to go with various tips where helpful.
…Venoms don’t scale with Condition Damage.
Can anyone understand what that error log is saying? My guess is the patch may have installed itself incorrectly and requires re-installation of the game.
I’d like to avoid that if possible though because the game doesn’t allow you to install directly to removable drives for some reason.
I’d have to find some way to clear a bunch of space on my computer, re-install it onto the C drive, then copy it back over to the removable drive.
Using the skill ONE SINGLE TIME after changing it would have made such an issue apparent.
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
Seriously, just cripple/chill/immobilize the bird and they’re 100% defenseless long enough for even a Bunker to kill them. You can’t even use a utility to break out.
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
More accurately, it would be something along the lines of;
“Damage was too low in PvE, so we’ve reduced the recharge on Shadowstep by 5 seconds.”
“Backstab no longer deals double damage from the back.”
I minimized the game to write that last post, and after opening the game up, as soon as I pressed a direction key, the game froze again. But instead of un-freezing, I quickly got an error message. I’ve pasted it below, removing some of the less important bits and censoring the IP/Name.
- Crash <—*
Fatal Error: Fatal disk-error (1117) on read,
App: Gw2.exe
Pid: 5432
Cmdline:
BaseAddr: 00400000
ProgramId: 101
Build: 17368
When: 2013-03-28T00:27:28Z 2013-03-27T20:27:28-04:00
Uptime: 0 days 0:24:53
Flags: 0
- System <—*
Name: —-——-
IpAddr: —-———
Processors: 4 [GenuineIntel:6:10:9]
OSVersion: Windows 6.2 (64 bit)
- System Memory <—*
Physical: 1210MB/ 3979MB 30%
Paged: 1852MB/ 5131MB 36%
Virtual: 2175MB/ 4095MB 53%
Load: 69%
CommitTotal: 3279MB
CommitLimit: 5131MB
CommitPeak: 3585MB
SystemCache: 1134MB
HandleCount: 25279
ProcessCount: 50
ThreadCount: 903
- Process Memory <—*
Private: 1197MB
WorkingSet: 855MB
PeakWorkingSet: 1136MB
PageFaults: 3062743
[DbgHelp.dll is C:\windows\SYSTEM32\dbghelp.dll]
[DbgHelp.dll version 6.2.9200.16384 (64/32-bit compatible)]
- Error Logs <—*
Model ‘0×0071f7’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ggtalrtrunr
Model ‘0×010832’: Can’t link child ‘0×00df9a’ to parent bone ‘root’, there’s no bone with that name. Linking to root instead
Model ‘0×010832’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00df9a’ from parent bone ‘root’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×0070a3’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugtidlewlkb
Model ‘0×054cb0’: Missing anim or fallbacks: rgtrunfidl
Model ‘0×00720d’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugetalk
Model ‘0×00dc97’: Missing anim or fallbacks: zeropose
Model ‘0×006eda’: Missing anim or fallbacks: wgtalrtwlkb
Model ‘0×00720d’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugetalk
Model ‘0×00720d’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugeshrug
Model ‘0×00720d’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugetalk
Model ‘0×00720d’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugetalk
Model ‘0×07cfbe’: Can’t link child ‘0×00e734’ to parent bone ‘fxtip’, there’s no bone with that name. Linking to root instead
Model ‘0×07cfbe’: Can’t link child ‘0×00e72f’ to parent bone ‘fxtip’, there’s no bone with that name. Linking to root instead
Model ‘0×07cfbe’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00e72f’ from parent bone ‘fxtip’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×07cfbe’: Can’t unlink child ‘0×00e734’ from parent bone ‘fxtip’, there’s no bone with that name.
Model ‘0×00720d’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugetalk
Model ‘0×00720d’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugeshrug
Model ‘0×00720d’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugetalk
Model ‘0×054cb0’: Missing anim or fallbacks: rgtrunfidl
Model ‘0×00720d’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugetalk
Model ‘0×00720d’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugetalk
Model ‘0×00720d’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugeshrug
Model ‘0×00720d’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugetalk
Model ‘0×00720d’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugetalk
Model ‘0×00720d’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugetalk
Model ‘0×00720d’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugeshrug
Model ‘0×00720d’: Missing anim or fallbacks: ugetalk
Disk read failed with error 1117 (incomplete): file ‘D:\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.dat’
Disk read failed (1117): file ‘D:\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.dat’
- DirectX Device Info <—*
VendorId = 0×8086
DeviceId = 0×0166
Version = 9.17.0010.2867
Description = Intel® HD Graphics 4000
Compat = 0×00000040
VidMem = 1664 MB
This issue is much more elaborate than I thought.
First of all, the first time I logged in after the patch, for a couple minutes none of the UI menus were working properly; the inventory/character screen and such would only display the text and literally nothing else. It was just invisible. Though I didn’t think so before, apparently the two issues are linked.
Once again I logged in earlier and attempted to talk to an armor vendor. It didn’t freeze immediately this time but instead after I attempted to click on one of the armor pieces.
I decided to keep messing with the movement keys for a bit to see if, when I restarted and went back in, my character would actually be in a different place. Indicating it was only the screen that had frozen as was mentioned.
That was not the case.
After about a minute, the game un-froze all on its own and my character was in exactly the same spot. Nothing had changed.
A couple minutes later I had run through town, and all the other players were showing up as only nameplates. The characters themselves were not rendering.
I thought this might be related to the new culling, so I tried going into the options menu to change it.
When I did, the menu was screwed up in the same way I mentioned before; only the text was displaying.
Recognizing this from before, I tried pressing H to see if the character menu was the same.
The moment I pressed H, the game froze yet again.
I tried waiting it out to see if it would un-freeze itself again, and indeed after about a minute it did.
And more than that, after it unfroze all the menus looked normal again and the other players slowly started to render.
First of all, I wasn’t trying to say the Might outdid the hundreds of lost Power as well, that is insane. I clearly said it was simply better than Expose Weakness. It’s not like that lost Power just goes to nothing anyway, you get an equal number of other stats instead.
Second, it DOES allow you to stack Might at least 6 times. I said exactly that as well. And this is AFTER that Reveal nerf.
Third, You’re trying to compare Hidden Assassin alone against both Expose Weakness and Dagger Training. If you got Hidden Assassin, you’d get to choose another trait in place of Dagger Training, and since Dagger Training blows relative to many other traits it wouldn’t be hard to come out ahead in that regard.
I’ll even give examples. All these Shadow Arts traits grant more than 5% overall damage;
Infusion of Shadow
Hidden Thief
Leaching Venoms
Patience
And Venomous Aura assuming you also took Leaching Venoms.
That’s just comparing raw damage.
Dagger Training is only a valid choice within Deadly Arts because somehow most of the other traits in there manage to be even worse.
Hell, even Venomous Strength combined with Quick Venoms and 3 Venom skills would only barely grant over 5% overall damage, unless you also have a lot of +Boon Duration.
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
I think it would be worth elite status if they simply removed the activation time, like the other venoms.
Then it would be unique in the ability to stop someone instantly. You could do all kinds of things with it then, like stopping a 100b Warrior in his tracks the moment he immobilizes and jumps on you, or stopping someone mid-heal to finish them.
If you instead went even further into Shadow Arts, it’s worth noting that Hidden Assassin is actually superior to Expose Weakness.
With Hidden Assassin you can very easily maintain at least 6 stacks of Might even without any +Boon Duration, which is roughly equal to a constant +10.5% damage.
Shadow Arts has other traits as well that are far superior to +5% damage on daggers.
That would be a waste regardless; the venom only lasts about as long as the stun from pulling them.
It is 1… 1 freaking second on a combo that is still so ridiculously powerful no other class can match it. People here are QQing about still being really powerful.
Except the Warrior’s Axe auto-attack.
I’m dead serious, check the wiki.
Backstab is far, far from the best damage in the game. People just hate it because they don’t see it coming.
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
I said “nearly” permastealth. The 3 seconds of being revealed before they can stealth again is not enough. So the additional second gives other classes a way to react better.
A maximum of 50% up-time on stealth is near-permanent?
Ah this thread is comedy gold. So you can’t faceroll anymore and have to time your attacks better?
You’re a real genius, man. They left alone things that needed nerfing, and nerfed things that didn’t need it. As usual.
Next time you feel frustrated about getting trolled by some Thief in PvP abusing perma-stealth, just think back to your precious Thief nerf from this patch and be relieved in the thought that your teammates in PvE are now significantly more of a burden.I’ve met good, bad and annoying thieves. The annoying ones are those that nearly permastealth. That 1 second finally gives other classes a better chance at fighting back.
No, No it doesn’t! That’s exactly what they did NOT do.
3 second reveal already made perma-stealth impossible if they actually tried to attack. But they don’t. That’s HOW they perma-stealth. They avoid Revealed by just precasting CnD so it hits as soon as the stealth ends.
All this did was further harm productive playstyles that actually attempt to do something, particularly in PvE.
Thieves are still 100% as capable as before at screwing around in perma-stealth or resetting a fighting when it looks bad for them.
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
Ah this thread is comedy gold. So you can’t faceroll anymore and have to time your attacks better?
You’re a real genius, man. They left alone things that needed nerfing, and nerfed things that didn’t need it. As usual.
Next time you feel frustrated about getting trolled by some Thief in PvP abusing perma-stealth, just think back to your precious Thief nerf from this patch and be relieved in the thought that your teammates in PvE are now significantly more of a burden.
I know myself and many others are incredibly frustrated by how the patch turned out, so I figured posting ideas for how you feel the patch SHOULD have looked for Thieves would be a slightly more constructive way to vent some frustration. I’ll start with my own;
Thief
- Mug: Changed to Cripple the target of your Steal for 5 seconds instead of damage.
I rather keep the dmg portion thanks.
I’m sure you would, but Mug is the real culprit behind the majority of Stealth, CnD and Backstab nerfs we’ve recieved.
I know myself and many others are incredibly frustrated by how the patch turned out, so I figured posting ideas for how you feel the patch SHOULD have looked for Thieves would be a slightly more constructive way to vent some frustration. I’ll start with my own;
Thief
- Stealth:
- Revealed always applies after breaking stealth.
- Stealth duration now refreshes rather than stack on multiple applications.
- Backstab: Now removes 1 Boon on hit.
- Mug: Changed to Cripple the target of your Steal for 5 seconds instead of damage.
- Death Blossom: Now applies Evasion closer to the start of the animation.
- Pistol Whip: Now deals 20% more damage.
- Corrosive Traps trait:
- Applies the correct vulnerability duration with Shadow Trap.
- Now applies vulnerability with Ambush Trap.
- Vulnerability duration increased from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.
- Shadow Trap: Shadow Pursuit now activates instantly.
- Healing Seed skill:
- Increased radius slightly.
- Now displays the combo field ring.
- Caltrops:
- Reduced duration from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.
- Now indicates its radius.
- Steal skill: No longer initiates autoattacks.
- Uncatchable trait:
- Now displays an active combat area to both allies and enemies.
- Increased effective radius by 50%.
- Basilisk Venom skill:
- No longer immobilizes targets in addition to stunning them.
- Now activates instantly.
- Haste skill:
- Increased duration from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.
- Removed Endurance penalties (similar improvements for other classes).
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
But you can use Death Bloss…. that’s a condi skill.
So yeah, I concur, if you’re not lining up for a backstab, it’s pretty much HS or #1 spam. >.>
This post alone illustrates the kind of short-sightedness I’m talking about. You completely discount D/D because you’re CnD Backstab combo isn’t as effective as it used to be. And you completely discount the possibility that D/D can be used for anything other than CnD/Backstab.
My D/D evasion build is proof positive that there are more uses to D/D than just CnD/Backstab. And even if it weren’t, CnD still works. It’s not as effective as it used to be (i.e. it’s not as overpowered), but it still works. You’re striking me as the kind of guy who wants it all without having to work for it.
How is your DB spamming a more valid and less gimmick playstyle than CnD > Backstab spam? You use even fewer attacks and with significantly less effort.
Is no one else having this issue? It happened again earlier when I attempted to talk with one of the dungeon armor vendors to preview some armor.
It started happening immediately after downloading today’s first patch.
I’m running Windows 8 if that matters.
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
It was a really stupid nerf that hurt PvE thieves…
This nerf hasn’t hurt my PvE thief at all.
I’m going to repeat something I said back when life-steal food was “nerfed” (i.e. balanced): if you build your character around a single skill, trait, boon, or consumable then you’re setting yourself up for a aggravation should the day come your gimmick build nerfed.
What else should you do with a D/D Thief, spam Heartseeker? The set has a distinct lack of options built in on a fundamental level.
The most frightening aspect of this to me is that they have some morbid aversion to ever undoing a change they’ve previously made, as far as I’ve seen.
If they decide later to fix the chain stealth exploits, we’re just going to end up with something far worse like full 4 second Reveal any time you unstealth.
Or following the established trend, they might “fix” chain stealth by removing Vulnerability from CnD.
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
…revealed apply to us even if we leave stealth without doing any damage.
That wasn’t as much of a nerf as this was.
I concur.
No idea what they were thinking.
Since installing the patch today, I’ve been getting constant random crashes.
The whole game just freezes. I can still move my mouse, but I can’t minimize the game. I can Ctrl+Alt+Del to open the task manager and minimize the game in the process, but I can’t actually click anything and the cursor still looks like the in-game one.
I have to restart my computer each time to fix it.
It happens very quickly after logging in, but seems inconsistent in what triggers it. It happened a few times as I attempted to activate one of my attacks in Heart of the Mists while fighting dummies, so at first I assumed it would only happen if I fought. But then I tried going to Lion’s Arch to check out the new weapon skins, and immediately after opening and then closing back down my map it froze again.
More importantly, 50% speed feels incredibly underwhelming in practice. Considering the duration to recharge ratio, I don’t think the penalties are even necessary now.
I want to enjoy this game. I really, really do. But the people in charge of making changes are just so wildly incompetent, it truly disturbs me.
You’re taking CH for Burst not dps lettuce be serious.
And 2 seconds of completely unpredictable 50% burst once every ~45 seconds is worth a Major Trait?
I don’t think many people took it before, when it was literally twice as strong as it is now.
It might let you get off 1-2 extra attacks, and not even for free; you’ll just be burning initiative faster as well.
A huge fan of quickness, this does really suck but let’s not forget this is still a 50% damage increase. I still wouldn’t trade it for any of the other t2 traits.
A 50% damage increase for 2 seconds on a 30 second cooldown. Even if it triggered instantly every 30 seconds that’s still only a net 3% damage increase. In reality, with a solid 70% crit chance it would still only have a pitiful 7% chance per strike of triggering, creating a significantly larger gap than 30 seconds.
As we played with the stealth changed mentioned in the SotG, we recognized that in conjunction with the change to culling this was an unpredictable change to make. We also felt that it was too big of a hit to these stealth professions, so we ended up pulling that change in favor of just increasing revealed duration by 1 second.
Congratulations on completely destroying the PVE D/D rotation. I can tell this game doesn’t give two kittens about PVE, and PVP is the only priority.
God, and THAT. Backstab is already the only > 25%, less than 3-4 enemies attack D/D has, and is already tedious in PvE for that reason. Now the build has even more empty auto-attacking.
As we played with the stealth changed mentioned in the SotG, we recognized that in conjunction with the change to culling this was an unpredictable change to make. We also felt that it was too big of a hit to these stealth professions, so we ended up pulling that change in favor of just increasing revealed duration by 1 second.
So… WHY did you increase Revealed by 1 second? That is actually worse in my opinion.
Was there some morbid sense of obligation to nerf stealth in SOME way?
You also failed to alter Mug, despite that being the real problem here. Backstab itself already does mediocre damage at best relative to the difficulty in pulling it off, and now you’ve reduce the frequency with which it can be used further.
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
The true OP nature of Thieves is the degree of stupidity they invoke in other people.
I seriously can’t count how many times I’ve hit someone with 1-2 Heartseekers before the person dies, only to have them shout some variation of “LAWL HS SPAM FAIL!”
The only leap Thieves have is Heartseeker. You can only use it 4-5 times back-to-back due to the cost, and it takes roughly 3 of them to equal the travel distance from another class, like the Ranger’s Swoop. If you blow all that initiative on leaping you’ll have none left to defend yourself, and travel less than twice the distance of another class’ leap in at least twice the time.
Swoop has a base recharge of 12 seconds.
It takes 12 seconds for a Thief to regain enough initiative for 3 Heartseekers.
At the very least they have to make the evasion last the entire animation. Especially for the cost. Right now it only lasts like half the animation somewhere in the middle. Even if the evasion were just frontloaded on the animation that would at least allow you to time it properly.
I still want death blossom to be more useful to burst thieves…
As an “evasion tank” thief I don’t really care what you want done with Death Blossom; I’m happy with it just the way it is.
And other people don’t like it exactly as is.
This has been such a productive conversation…
I may not believe that it was intended for D/D to be used with a condition damage focused build, but I have nothing against anyone doing it. It’s not like I’m actively trying to destroy that option.
I just think something needs to be done to make it more useful to a direct damage build.
If there’s some way to make it work better for direct damage without ruining it for condition damage, I’d be all for it.
What if they simply increased the direct damage dealt by it? It wouldn’t be nearly as big a boost for condition specs since it would scale less with their stats, so I don’t think it’d be overpowered on them.
I’m pretty sure they don’t. I can recall times when I’ve tried to Steal toward a target on a ledge only to stop at the wall beneath and have it go on recharge without getting the item skill.
Are you sure that any teleport works that way? Because in WvW it’d allow you to just pop right inside a keep, or at least up onto the wall simply because an enemy is there.
You can shadowstep somewhere only if there is a smooth path somewhere leading directly from where you’re standing to where you’re targeting, that would not require you to either swim, jump or fall to cross. No matter how long that path would actually be.
I’ve never found Infiltrator’s Arrow useful for simply moving for the reasons you’ve stated, but it can be ridiculously useful for avoiding minutes of round-about pathing over to certain ledges and such.
It also becomes much more useful inside a fight, where everyone moves much slower.
Being a mobility skill, that condition removal has always seemed weird as hell anyway. It might be better to move that condition removal onto another skill, and do as the OP suggested and reduce the recharge and increase the return timer.
You always have to choose between using the skill to move around like you’re supposed to, or save it to remove some conditions. Those two things don’t seem to me to have much in common.
I’ve been looking things over, and assuming you have Hidden Killer, Cavalier armor combined with Berserker trinkets and all Ruby jewels seems like a very solid choice.
It may have Toughness placed above Power, but with all Berserker trinkets that extra defense is actually preferable.
For further optimization to take advantage of the Crit Damage rounding, I’d make the two rings Cavalier, and the hands and boots Berserker.
-EDIT-
And after searching, it’s looking like Cavalier armor does not exist. You can only find it on trinkets.
Soldier could be an effective alternative. You would lose out on 16% critical damage, but you would gain an extra 4.5% total damage which is only a mild overall loss, but you would also gain even greater defense. It may very well be an even better option than Cavalier.
-EDIT-
Yay, another terrible mistake on my part. Only crappy gems can go in armor, not Jewels. I’ll have to rethink this.
For the armor itself, Scholar runes seem like they’d be a solid choice.
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
Ah… I see where I went wrong. My math had an error in it assuming that 100% crit damage would equal 4x damage on crit, when in fact it would be 3×. So yeah, you would need around 200%, not 105%, for Precision to beat out Power.
100% crit damage would make 21 Precision add about 0.75% overall damage, compared to 20 Power adding 1%.
I was only slightly wrong in my value of crit damage vs Power. You’d need an 80% crit chance for them to be equal.
Gain from crit damage = Crit Chance x Crit Damage.
80%(0.8) Crit Chance x 1%(0.01) Crit Damage = 0.8%(0.008) damage gain.
1% Crit Chance = 16 Power.
20 Power = 1% Damage
16 Power = 0.8% Damage (16/20 = 0.8)
This means you need 27% crit chance for the crit damage in Ruby Jewels to be superior to a raw Power bonus, such as from runes or something. At the very least, if you have at least this much crit chance then you could see the Ruby Jewels as allowing you to double-dip in Power for an absolutely massive bonus.
With ~27% crit chance, even before considering the extra Precision, each jewel grants the equivalent of 40 Power; 2% extra overall damage. If you have it in every piece of armor plus trinkets, 12 slots, that would be the equivalent of 480 Power, or 24% more damage.
The jewels themselves would grant 8.6% crit chance, making the base amount you need before getting the jewels only ~18.4%.
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
Well, I had a long post including my testing and results, but kittening cat jumped on my keyboard and deleted it all, so I’ll summarize.
I was wrong, power scales at 20 per 1% damage increase. You would need 105% crit damage for Precision to be better than Power for raw damage, and 75% crit chance for crit damage to be better.
Also rounding botches up itemization of crit damage on gear.
1% crit is equal to 12 in another stat most pieces, 14.4 on chest, and 16 on head and legs. It’s supposed to be 16 before rounding.
When I said 32 before that was a total dur on my part; I already knew it was 16 but got it mixed up in my head and botched that entire line of math.
Also, for some reason Ruby Jewels itemize crit damage ridiculously well, granting 3% crit damage in place of a mere 15 in another stat. More than 3x its normal value. This means that in upgrade slots, with the availability of Ruby Jewels, crit damage easily outscales all else in terms of raw damage with a mere 24% crit chance.
Basically, unless there’s a particular rune effect you want then you should absolutely use Ruby Jewels in every possible slot, which if you want some defensive stats would likely mean taking those stats on the armor itself. In particular, I would definitely avoid crit damage on the head and legs since they scale the worst.
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
-Edit- Me and my stupid math, making yet another critical error that nullifies all of it. Just forget what was here before.
And in saying that you would need 200% crit damage for Precision to be > Power, how much Power do you think you need for a 1% damage boost?
I’m going to have to test this directly to be certain, because it would have to scale ridiculously fast for that to be the case.
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
You can get crit damage without Power from runes. you’re also fully capable of getting Precision without Power, which at higher levels of crit damage is optimal.
Of course, a Precision item without Power just has a defensive stat or Condition Damage instead, which won’t help your offense more than Power would.
But yeah, you’ll end up with a fair amount of Power regardless simply due to stat itemization.
I suppose it was a spectacularly critical point I failed to mention, that with most gear there is no way to focus effectively on Precision or crit damage without also focusing on Power.
This would mostly be for when choosing runes and traits.
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
And shortbow is great here and there but it by itself is no more useful to a condition thief than it is to a direct damage thief, just how daggers are no less useful to a direct damage thief than they are to a condition thief.
Not to mention all the other builds of thieves that don’t just pigeonhole themselves into one or the other named builds.
Yes, yes it is more useful to a condition damage thief. The only real attack in the set is Cluster Bomb, which is all about the bleeding. Direct damage thieves only use it for the utility because they’ll never kill anyone with it. Not unless the enemy is dumb enough to die to auto-attacks before you die.
P/D is full-blown useless to direct damage thieves because all the attacks are bleeds, just like D/P is useless to condition damage thieves.
By the way, stop trying to argue that people are only trying to make this change for the sake of their own build at the expense of others. Technically you’re only trying to keep it as is for the sake of your own build at the expense of others. That argument is insane.
Glass houses and such.
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)
I’d like to note that on Cavaliers gear power is a secondary stat. If your trying to maximize you damage you don’t want to use Cavaliers. It would be better to Mix Valk/zerker/soldiers for defense. Reason being is you Crit damage is based off the amount of power you have. Power will always be more important then crit damage (at some point I’m sure they might even out but with the gear available power out weighs crit damage)
Just keep that in mind when using cavaliers gear toughness in the primary stat and power/crit damage are secondary.
Actually, Crit Damage is better than Power if you have at least a moderate amount of Precision. Once you get enough Precision, Power is only still useful to invest in because its needed for taking out structures and for some consistency in damage.
Once you reach a little under 25% crit chance the two break even. Any more than that and Crit Damage is better.
Specifically, for the same stat allocation enough Power to get you around 0.45% extra raw damage would get you 2% Crit Damage. If 25% of your attacks are crits, that is 0.5% extra overall damage.-Edit- Wait, that’s off… I need to look again at how much Power grants 1% damage, because my math on that here is wrong.
-Edit- Okay, I can’t seem to find any exact numbers on it, but I seem to have given Power roughly half the value I should have, which is significant.
Odds are Crit Damage should be universally better once you have at least 46% crit chance, which is somewhat significant but still easily reached by a Precision stacking build.
Also worth noting is that Precision becomes superior to Power once you have at least around 60% Crit Damage.So would it be possible to run a build that doesn’t rely on precision and crit. damage. So basically PvT gear and accessories and traits focused only into power and survivability. From what you said about the crit damage being better once you reach 46%. As of right now, my build only gives me 37% crit chance 95% crit damage, 44% from behind, and about 50% once I factor in nourishments. From your info, am I losing power because my base crit. chance is lower than 46%?
No, because that much crit damage makes every bit of Precision you have far more valuable than Power against living targets (not structures).
Except condition builds aren’t just about condition damage they are also about the utility of other conditions.
I’m not saying condition damage builds wouldn’t get anything good out of Deadly Arts, I just don’t think they’re the real focus of the tree. Damage-focused thieves get good use out of Shadow Arts and Acrobatics, but those certainly are not damage-focused trees.
My point is that direct damage thieves benefit MORE from it than condition damage thieves, by design. Especially with daggers.
I think the best solution would be to replace the bleeding with Poison. It would give the daggers better synergy with Deadly Arts, and improve the defensive component even more assuming you have Lotus Poison. Multiple hits of AoE Weakness would be absolutely beautiful.
(edited by Grimwolf.7163)