Guild Wars 2

Well, one plus side to all of it is people can’t say that thieves can’t be countered cause of stealth anymore. I guess we’ll still get qq until mobility gets nerfed too though.

Something I mentioned in the feedback thread that I forgot to mention here. Bounding Dodger should apply damage at the beginning and end. It’s not likely that both will hit, but it would help in team fights against multiple targets as well as being a strong 1v1 skill. This would allow the GM trait to be used both offensively and defensively.

It’s probably going to see the same level of playability as right now if nothing else changes to any of the other lines. Currently you can play S/D if you use pretty much only offensive lines. Use the old 2/6/0/0/6 as your model rather than 2/0/0/6/6. That said, it’s not easy, but at least it’s fun.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Vyce.2014:

Karl McLain.5604:

Amante.8109:

Let’s not forget that Mantras, once pre-casted, immediately start cooling down for future use

I believe this was fixed in the July 28th release. It’s possible that they could behave the exact same as mantras. At this time, we’re going with the theme that Distracting Daggers are something you can hold over your opponents for a period of time, and then it’s gone. We’d rather encourage using the daggers and getting those interrupts off, than simply holding the daggers for hours at a time.
Please feel free to let us know how they play during the next beta event. There’s quite a few ways to go with the ability and I’m not sure they have to behave exactly like mantras.

IMO the daggers should work like this…

-No cast time to activate. ALWAYS ON, 2x charges.
-Each dagger has an independant recharge timer of 25 seconds (reduced to 20 with physical trait).

Think of it like a Monk’s dash ability in Diablo3.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I don’t know why you have to make this skill function like a Venom or Mantra when you can just have it reload a dagger over time up to 3 daggers — like every 5 seconds. Just remove the required activation step, it is unnecessary. This way, you can control the number of daggers by increasing/decreasing the reload time.

Smart people think alike.

So this would be like building up dagger charges over time? Sort of like the skill getting its own independent initiative? Let’s assume each dagger charge is 8 seconds (25/3=8.333). So maybe 3 is the max and then you use all 3 in quick succession, basically it would take 24 seconds to reach 3 charges again. But if you have 3 and use 1 (leaving you with 2) you can wait 8 seconds and you’ll be back up to 3 (if I’m understanding this correctly). That would be pretty cool.

Aenesthesia.1697:

The problem seems to be you dont like playing a glasscannon, i’d suggest you roll a warrior then…

Rolled a maurader warrior.

I’d suggest watching the fights over home at the beginning then come back and talk about my thief’s unparalleled control and burst.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Karl McLain.5604:

Hey all,
here’s some other changes that happened today.

note: There was a bit of feedback that the auto-attack wasn’t up to snuff. We took a look today and decided that it was quite the case, being that damage on this weapon set is more localized onto the auto-attack.
Staff Strike: Increased damage by 5%.
Staff Bash: Increased damage by 18%.
Punishing Strikes: Increased damage by 20% per attack. Added a missile reflect skill fact.
Hook Strike: Increased damage by ~250%. note: The damage is still on the lower side for the weapon, but now deals more than practically zero. This ability is intended to set up high damage combos through crowd control, thus we’re trying to keep the damage lower than other from-stealth abilities.

Weakening Charge: This ability is now targeted, with the animation being cleaned up a bit. Distance traveled is slightly less, to increase the ease of landing multiple hits on a target. Reduced aftercast slightly (120ms).

Debilitating Arc: Included an evade fact. This ability continues to evade from the start of the ability.

Impaling Lotus: Removed the hidden initiative cost.

EDIT FOR BOLD!!!!!!

Baby steps towards the right direction — Thanks Karl.

By the way, are you also going to add “This ability continues to evade from the start of the ability” to all the Thief’s skill #3 (i.e. Death Blossom)?

QFT. Please take a look at the D/D dual attack. I know you’re busy, but this needs some help in particular, especially with so many revealing skills being added to the game.

Ideas for D/D & X/D

Karl McLain.5604:

Ricochet in its previous implementation is not slated to return at this time.
When the trait system was condensed, the standard was set in that each weapon set could only have one trait. Being that a player might want to receive increased damage from pistols, but not necessarily inherit the RNG bounce attacks from the secondary trait, this secondary trait was cut.
I will say though that pistols are something we’ll be looking to improve, being as they feel under-tuned at the moment.

-Karl

Hello,
Could pistols have a piercing trait added so it would require more tactical positioning, similar to Ranger Longbow? This thread contains a lot of ideas for bring some variety back to the thief traits and weapons. I mentioned putting a piercing trait in the trickery line.

Karl McLain.5604:

Weakening Charge: This ability is now targeted, with the animation being cleaned up a bit. Distance traveled is slightly less, to increase the ease of landing multiple hits on a target. Reduced aftercast slightly (120ms).

Please consider turning it into a directable slide like whirlwind attack. While I’m happy that this is targeted now, giving the weapon two different situationally useful evades and one of them being a directable slide would give the weapon a unique feel amongst the other thief weapons. S/X has a shadowstep on #2, D/X has a targeted gap closer #2, Staff could have a fun/evasive repositioning tool (differentiating itself more from D/X).

Thanks for the changes though!

Sir Vincent III.1286:

What: New Trait – Assassin’s Aura
Description: Grant Assassin’s Aura to nearby foes. Attacks deal damage to foes with Assassin’s Aura as if their armor is equal to zero (doesn’t affect damage reductions from buffs).

Did you mean toughness and not armor ? I think with the damage formula we’d end up with a divide by zero problem with this.

Karl McLain.5604:

Traits:
This iteration was mostly bug fixes. I’ve seen a lot of feedback on how Escapist’s Absolution should be baseline. It is the case that we believe this trait is powerful enough that it should be a choice in the trait line between damage, survivability and utility, rather than just a given. Driven Fortitude’s healing allows for usefulness in all modes where you take damage, where EA’s condition removal is situationally useful in a combat scenario.

I just wanted to add something about this: I think you’re underestimating the value of removal. With all the passive procs in PvP game modes, removal is virtually a necessity on the low tier health pools. It can really be seen if you look at what appears to be the vast majority of ele’s taking water:top, top, top and thieves taking SA:Shadow’s embrace. The only way I’m getting away with not taking it is by using S/X, Signet of Agility, and Shadowstep for my clears, and if I get bad RNG on it that doesn’t remove a burning stack quickly enough, I’m either in downstate or running. Honestly this isn’t close to enough for WvW either, but I’m mainly doing sPvP anyway.

I think you’re also overestimating the usefulness of this heal trait. I would rather have a bump in endurance regen than this. To me, this is a very situational trait that I probably wouldn’t take given a choice, much like Invigorating Precision in the CS line.

Making the dodge traits selectable out of combat like revenant legends would be a much better route to go as well. Right now it seems like most people are going to pick Escapist’s Absolution, and the GM’s virtually all do the same thing, you just pick the one that fits your build: power, condi, or neither. So really the biggest choice you’re going to get is only in the adept tier.

Weakening charge: Instead of targeted like heartseeker, could you make this directable and have an evade like Warrior’s GS #3. I’ve been playing GS warrior a fair amount lately and the evasion and reposition would compliment the rest of the staff, especially in a teamfight. I think it would be better than tacking on an evade to vault. Also if you’re keeping the pass through, the directable targeting becomes really useful. So overall, the skill would look like: 0.75 second total cast time (including the after cast), 0.5 second evade, range 400 directable slide.

Bandit’s Defense: Could be made into a skill that has a rollover instead of being activated by the opponent. Right now this gets activated way too much by AI and really hurts in a teamfight or if an opponent with stability triggers it because it locks you into an animation that will get you killed quickly. Having it be a 1.5 second block that you can activate again for a knockdown or let expire after the duration is up would greatly improve the usefulness of it.

Staff Master: Remove the weapon requirement from it (and rename it) and this could be a nice general trait.

Edit: An afterthought: Staff really lacks utility. It has some burst damage, but it’s way underpar when compared to something like S/D. There’s no hard CC (except the stealth attack, but staff can’t stealth by itself) or boon hate or access to stealth.

Zero Day.2594:

MakubeC.3026:

At least we can all agree Thief resides at the bottom of the food chain right now.
That’s something because it means SOMEDAY we will get buffed a little (just as Rangers did a while ago). Sad thing is we may just switch places for worst class with Rangers again lol.

Depends on which forums you post this in…

Funnily enough, it seems like that’s not even being disputed really, but rather should the thief stay at the bottom because of their mobility. I mean looking through the state of thief in pvp thread, there’s very, very few people saying that the thief isn’t weak in a 1v1, most of the discussion and differences of opinion occur with some saying it should remain weak.

I play DA/CS/Tr maurader and pack runes, SoP with 2 signets. Blowing everything with a full signet build still isn’t a good idea, but the 2 dodges from Signet of Agility helps in a short fight, and infiltrator’s signet lets you use shadowstep as an emergency cleanse while retaining a stun break. Decently effective in comparison to the other builds I’ve played since patch, but this is really only because our defensive lines are mediocre while our offensive lines are in good shape. With S/D it has excellent time on target and alright sustain.

Stinja.9612:

None of that is there anymore but a single warrior GS spin can one shot you, Kappa.

Woah, woah, woah! To be fair, it’s not a 1 shot, more like a 4 shot.

No point in re-writing it

Here you go

Kocoff.7582:

TL;DR.

I actually like the SA line, I think it is in a much better position than than the other traits except Trickery which takes the crown. Still doesn’t mean that SA is perfect, and I am definitely open to changes.

Shadow Protector and Shadow’s Rejuvenation should be merged together, two heal traits in a row is a little much even for a line of sustain. The convergence of the two should give space to a new, useful trait.

Cloaked in Shadow… Shouldn’t even be a Grand Master trait. I know Blinding on stealth is what matters, but I am just baffled as to how they thought reduced falling damage on a GM trait was a good idea. Such a waste of potential. Cloaked in Shadow as it is now, is minor trait quality.

As for D/D players or x/D for that matter, I am sure we can all agree that the problem isn’t really the traits that cover them but the skills itself.

Cloak and Dagger should apply blind instead of vul. period. If this change is implemented, I can promise there won’t much of complains against this line.

Dancing Dagger is pretty great. I can’t think of a change I would add to it. Torment maybe? too much. Slow? idk.

Personally if C&D gave blind and a few seconds of resistance I would be happy.

Fixes that I think could bring D/D up to par without making it overpowering:

1) Blind instead of vuln on CnD (as seems to be the general concensus)
2) Remove the bounce and cripple from Dancing Dagger. Improve the projectile speed by 50% and the damage to a 1.0 multiplier. On successful hit you get a rollover for 10 seconds that shadowsteps you to your target and cripples them (range 900, instant cast, 2 initiative, 4 second cripple, no damage). This would allow for D/D to stick to target better and eliminate spam (hopefully) with the rollover. Dodging the dagger allows for counterplay so the shadowstep can be instant.
3) Make deathblossom a directable skill like warrior’s GS #3 (range 300 slide, 0.5 second evade, 0.75 second cast time including pre/post cast). D/D has poor weapon evades. Leaving the damage and bleeds where they are is fine as long as the evasion becomes useful. The fact that it’s a skill shot helps D/D unicorn builds from becoming OP.

Probably just keep playing DA/CS/Tr. I don’t see any of those getting nerfed, and AFAIK, they’re trying to figure out how to nerf the overperforming sets of other professions right now. I will enjoy playing my warrior on the side though.

Coronit.9432:

T raw.4658:

uglydan.1638:

Ghost trap only works against the feebleminded. There’s also a reason why you rarely see p/d in pvp. It only finds its footing in WvW. As to the weaponless p/d video, again, I highly suspect that opponents weren’t exactly top shelf, or had sub-optimal builds with little to no condi clear.

We have a differing of opinion. You look down on p/d and on anyone that enjoys the playstyle. That’s fine. Arrogance isn’t really a virtue but again, to each their own. If your input swayed the devs in any way, I’d be concerned, but it’s your personal opinion and I’m fine with that.

I’m sure you’re a thief god while playing d/p, like 90% of everyone else.

Quote: “Either way its not happening and you are doing yourself a disservice by playing p/d condi.”

A disservice? What is this, the video olympics? Last I knew, I played this game for enjoyment. You’re making it sound like I’m training for some E-sport, and that by playing a spec you believe is inferior, I won’t even get the bronze medal. I haven’t stepped into the pvp lobby even once, all the way back to beta 3 years ago. I solely play WvW. Sorry, I’m not one of the “elite” that finds solace in excelling in pvp.

1. The people who died to the weaponless Dire+Perplex thief weren’t scrubs and they were running Meta Dueling builds. I believe Mango (I may be wrong) made the video to emphasize how broken Dire+Perplexity is. He succeeded in spades.

P/D condi doesn’t see play in tournaments due to stealth being horrible for conquest and the thief’s actual role. Anet has also kept certain stat combo’s and runes out of PvP so there is that as well too. Could you run p/d condi in a tournament? Absolutely! As long as you have SB as your OH and SA to assist your teammates it can be viable. You’ll miss out on group stealth tho.

Yes I’ll say it again. You do yourself a disservice by running on p/d condi. Yes I know its at the weakest it’s ever been, but it still carries bad play. I’m not looking down on you persay….its the simple truth. I play every weapon set a thief offers in all types of ways. I’ve even done off the wall things like front line a thief in a zerg busting group. I’ve tried D/P condi.

At the end of the day its your game you play how you want. You are entitled to your opinion and should voice it as you see fit. You do need to understand a few things though. You only play WvW and you only play a build that the majority of players deem skilless and OP. I in fact have been on record stating I don’t consider P/D Perplexity Thieves thieves at all. I’ve played the build extensively and can with 100% certainty say its Broken. It’s not that i’m looking down on you I just honestly don’t consider you a thief player.

Though if they’d change condi damage like i’ve outlined above I’d change my stance.

Well written, you get a +1 from me for this ^^

The only thing I´m disagreeing is to set burn back to only stack time. Some classes are depending on that damage-condition and an ele just overwriting all the time cause of so much burn inflicts is just unfair to builds like condi-guard. Not sure how much the scaling and numbers would have to change though.

I sort of agree with this part. I don’t mind the current formulas, but individual skills need to be gone through and adjusted. Bleed, poison, and torment applications could probably be lengthened. Right now their damage isn’t overwhelming (for the most part, from a PvP perspective), so a slowly building stack of long conditions is fine. It still allows for counterplay. Burn makes sense as a short, intense application, but some skills offer too many stacks for slightly too long. Reducing the length or number on individual skills would probably be the better route for burning. When I find myself complaining about dying to a condi build, the damage breakdown usually had a huge amount of burn damage while the other damaging conditions only played a relatively minor role.

evilapprentice.6379:

Kocoff.7582:

I am going to side with Alchemyst here OP. Althought your suggestion is just as reasonable, I believe the true purpose of this skill is actually setup, a bait to be more precise.

They should have renamed it “Bandit’s Bait”. Now I did not pay sufficient attention during BWE to see if Bandit’s defense successfully interrupts Warrior’s GS#3, because GS#3 also acts like an evade.

I don’t think Thieves should see it as an Interrupt, simply because it’s not. Every 8-10 seconds, this skill give you the opportunity to burst your target down/ or recuperate those precious seconds for your next Withdraw.

Bandit’s Defense is pure a bait, reversal mechanism, not in any way an interrupt. Like, you don’t run away with 1k hp hoping the skill will save your skin. Again, I still think adding the evade you suggested is reasonable, but it is certainly not necessary.

I vote we drop the OP/Alchemyst debate and focus on what Maug brought up.

Regardless of the intent of the skill, in its current form its much too easily triggered by AI/Random attacks in big team fights, making both the Block and Setup portion of the skill unreliable.

Since Anet has clearly designed DD to be a “team fighter”, we should be asking Anet to design the skill as Maug described earlier in the post.

I think I put this into my feedback in the feedback thread, but that filled up so fast it probably got buried.

evilapprentice.6379:

Maugetarr.6823:

It should just be a 1.5 second block that has a rollover skill and blocks everything until it ends or you use the knockdown. That way you can choose to use it defensively or offensively and it doesn’t get triggered by all the AI running around.

I like the auto-fire KD as an element of counterplay, but I do agree with you that AI severely reduces the effectiveness of the skill.

I like your suggestion of a 1.5s block with a rollover on block, rather than forcing the KD to fire on melee block.

I think it should have the same cast time so you would still be vulnerable if you chose to use the knockdown, but I think that would help both sides in terms of play/counterplay. I thought it was a cool skill too when I was trying it during the games I played during BWE, but every little thing set it off and it ended up being more detrimental in teamfights since you were locked into the channel. Knocking down jagged horrors became frustrating.

It should just be a 1.5 second block that has a rollover skill and blocks everything until it ends or you use the knockdown. That way you can choose to use it defensively or offensively and it doesn’t get triggered by all the AI running around.

This order is based both on the time it would take to kill them and their relative threat if left unengaged. This is from a majority PvP perspective. Some of the higher priority stuff doesn’t mean that they’re the most dangerous, but will make it up to the top because the fight will be decided quickly allowing you to move to the next target.

1) Thief – Not exactly the most dangerous opponent, but if they’re the +1 when I get to the fight they need to be removed from the fight. Generally, if they’re around 2/3 health, an S/D burst is enough to down them.
2) Glass/cele staff ele – rare in PvP, but needs to be taken out quickly or could decimate your team in a short time. Luckily they die fast if glass and can’t ignore you at least if they are cele.
3) Mesmer – A pretty big threat. Depending on the build it can interrupt stomps and they usually have a safe stomp, turning the fight. You can at least keep them tied up so they can’t CC rezzes or burst down a teammate.
4) Power Rangers – Depending on their skill, they can actually be a pain to fight with all their CC, but they need to be taken out early or else your teammates are going to constantly eat 7k rapid fires, probably turning the fight.
5) Burn Guards – You’re probably going to need another teammate helping you focus this because of the sheer number of blocks and heals, but if they aren’t taken out early your team might run out of cleanses.
6) Necros – You just can’t let them snowball. They can interrupt stomps also and some of their AoE hurts. If they’re distracted by other people, picking them off isn’t too bad, but 1v1 they can be monsters.
7) Engi- CC is really annoying. Sometimes they’re a big threat, sometimes they’re the CC for setting up other teammates’ burst. Semi-squishy depending on their particular build, but sometimes I’ll see an elixir s use, then an auto proc elixir s, then into a gear shield, so finding a window can sometimes be hard.
8) Warrior – Capable of good burst, sustain, and CC. They can be dangerous to engage in a teamfight with all the cleave. From my perspective both playing as and against warrior, sometimes they’ll down thieves by accident while going after someone else.
9) Bunker guards-they can be annoying because they’re so supportive, but they’re one of my last targets because of the sustain and focus you’ll need.
10) D/D cele ele-grab a friend, because they’re going to need to be focused. 2 of these on a point rotating at slightly alternating times is a nightmare. Yeah, the threat level should put them higher on the list, but the sustain bumps them way down because it’s going to take a concerted effort to kill them, dodge all their hard hitting attacks, and dodge everyone else’s incoming attacks.
11) Condi Rangers-can be a threat, but going in to attack them will lead to them evading everything while you burn to death. They’re a big time commitment to down, so they’re last on my list.

1200 range probably just isn’t going to happen anytime soon on the thief. If you read the PvP forums, according to non-thieves, thief is finally in a good place now that it can’t 1v1 most things. That’s fine though because we’re so good at running away. None of our other skills can be buffed as long as we have shortbow, so changes to our other ranged set would just be absurd.

Poxxia.1547:

So .. what does this tell me?
Unfortunately what I read into this, is that the vast majority of thieves posting here, has no intention of giving something up in order to be able to 1vs1. In that regard, I find the request to be selfish and not based on creating more diversity in the game, but only more diversity for themselves and their preferred class.

When the evaluation of the past state was “decent”, I don’t see any effort in trying to see things “from the other side”. The same quality, that some thieves demand of other players/classes.

Therefore I can’t see any reason to contribute anymore. There is no point in arguing, when the respect isn’t mutual.
Bye.

I’d be willing to give up our protection, regen, stability, and aegis to get so ability to stick around in combat. They could also strip all of our offensive traits out of our defensive lines. That seems like it would be a fair trade. I mean if I take a line like acro to get more dodges, the 10% damage and might on dodge should definitely be stripped out. Maybe they could lower our base health a tier too.

I have no idea why we can’t make this trade.

Edit: In addition, it’s not like thieves are asking to be made into one-shot beasts with enormous sustain in addition to it. There have been numerous threads talking about some sideways changes and buffs to traits and skills that are very weak. Here’s one from myself and one from a fellow thief Raiden.

Kydar Schattendolch.6879:

ZDragon.3046:

But being ablet to swap them mid-combat is just a no no.

Make it, that you can only swap when you are ooc and maybe disable swap while in PvP completly….Problem solved^^

I have an idea to improve “Bounding Dodger”.
There are complains, that DD is a spec which should stay in combat, but the benefit of this dodge doesn’t help you much, cause often you dont do any dmg, cause you dodge away from target. So, my idea is to inverse the animation for this one, so that the dmg is dealt at the start of the dodge.
1. You sill do dmg while/before dodging AND
2. you get some distance between you and your target.

Something like picture below^^

Honestly, it should deal damage at the beginning and end of a dodge. The likelihood of hitting the same person twice is really small, but it would be useful when dodging around in a brawl against 2+ people. Right now the trait is effectively reckless dodge + leap. Adding 2 hits + the leap would bring it from adept minor status on warrior to GM major quality on thief.

GrandHaven.1052:

I find 6k stupid. I main engi and a single grenade barrage on kitten soldiers gear does 6k on average with around 10 might.
Marauder does more than double that.
This makes no sense

Welcome to the thief.
Enjoy your stay.

Well, there’s a leap finisher too, but yeah, as far as I can tell it’s reckless dodge with a slightly higher coefficient.

Edit: Imo they should just use the mechanics that reckless dodge uses until they smooth out the unique dodges. We know they can tack effects onto different segments of the dodge roll based on dodgetrops and reckless. I’d actually really like to see damage at both the beginning and end of bound also to represent kicking off and landing forcefully.

Make it a forced enemy shadowstep to the thief.

Staff #2 should be a directional evade like warrior’s GS #3 so when you evade backwards with #3, you can dive right back in.

Staff #4 should be a melee range daze. Range 130, daze 0.5 seconds, 0.25 second cast, smoke field 2 seconds, up to 3 targets.

Staff #5 needs less hangtime (0.5-0.75 seconds) or needs to be more like guard GS #3 (in terms of function and even animation).

I appeciate trying to make some of the animations cool on the dodges and Staff #5, but it feels like the over the top flips is what led to the general clunky feel of this spec. Simpler, faster animations would make staff a deadly brawling weapon.

Apolo.5942:

Sadly this was predictable. The sorry state of warrior makes it simply not viable to play with out Defense and Discipline. You need a hell of a lot of added damage to overcome the 30% extra you get from strength.

I simply dont see warrior being anyting close to viable until they buff healing signet to compensate for the kitten load of added damage flying around after the patch.

As a thief main, discipline will seem largely mandatory (to me) until fast hands is baseline. That trait feels like it defines warrior when I play it, like kit/attunement swapping.

Leviathan.6327:

Maugetarr.6823:

Leviathan.6327:

Maugetarr.6823:

Leviathan.6327:

Unfortunately, the general consensus with the Daredevil in this beta is that the staff animations rank as one of the worst we’ve ever seen in any game (and after playing the beta myself, I’d have to agree). The character does not even look like they know fundamentally how a bo staff is supposed to function in battle, right down to how they wield it in their stance. It’s slow, clunky (word of the day, apparently), and just plain ugly. And yes, the players notice every detail.

It looks like anet could use some help in understanding how a bo staff actually works in combat. So rather than complaining, this thread seems to have been created with the intention of giving Anet some helpful, constructive tips on how they should be animating this fast, fluid, free-flowing fighting style. So let’s try to be as specific (and positive) as possible!

Here is a good video that demonstrates numerous staff-spinning techniques.

I’ll focus the 3rd hit of the auto attack chain with this post, because it doesn’t seem like anyone is happy with the magically spinning staff. This video demonstrates how the hands are supposed to move when you spin the staff like that (if Anet really wants the staff to spin in front of the character’s body in that manner). But to be honest, I would’ve much rather preferred a spinning strike like demonstration #5 at 2:46 in the video (and it should hit 5 targets within a 180 degree radius). But even #2-4 (starting at 0:51) would’ve been great, as well. Also importantly, look how fast he’s spinning the staff, and he’s actually using his hands, not “the Force” (because the floating staff seems to be spinning kinda slow). If you need to make new graphics similar to spinning helicopter blades while they twirl the staff, it would definitely help give the impression of speed which is what the Daredevil should be all about.

That 2 handed underarm spin would be great for AA3, and maybe even Bandit’s Defense as you would be blocking all the attacks with a fast defense then knocking someone down. It would still look awesome as a flurry with 1 handed weapons also.

And in addition to that two-handed whirling attack shown in the link there (your Bandit’s Defense comment reminded me), if they wanted to give Daredevils a little more sustainability, they could give them some blocking frames while the staff is being spun (similar to the ranger-greatsword auto attack granting several frames of evasion).

Animations like that would help make a blocking state more feasible, should they decide to implement something like that.

Yeah. I’m hesitant to put block frames on the weapon, but it could definitely use more evade frames. Staff 2 should be more like warrior GS 3. Staff 5 should be more like guard GS 3. The animations could then be tweaked to fit so actual bo staff attacks after their functionality is fixed.

I’m not sure why one would be hesitant to add some blocking frames to the staff considering that a staff in itself can be utilized as a great defensive weapon. Which is essentially what the AA3 would be if they turned it into a short whirling defense type of move.

Fundamentally, blocking and evading function the same way. They negate damage. Unless you’re referring to the fact that there are some moves that are unblockable (or that some skills proc on block or evade). But I still think it would make sense to add some block frames to AA3 because it should be able to deflect attacks (maybe projectiles, too. I dunno, I’m not focused too much on the mechanics right now) while hard hitting unblockable moves can still power through that defense. I do agree that there should be more evades in the moves, though. Vault, especially. Vaulting high into the air like that is supposed to be like making yourself airborne to avoid damage (at least that’s what I imagine a staff vault would be).

Anyway, I don’t wanna stray too far from the thread’s intended purpose, which is to focus on the animation aspects of the Daredevil. There are plenty of other threads that dive deeper into the core mechanics of the specialization.

Probably because I always think of blocks in terms of the reactive ones which leave you open to the next attack. Look at stuff like counterblow, illusionary counter, illusionary riposte, and counterattack. I’ll admit, this is probably more of a knee jerk reaction to how reactive blocks feel, so if it were simply frames that blocked added to the skills, it would probably be fine. In fact that would likely be easier to balance on the AA3 because it wouldn’t trigger the on-evasion traits.

Lyger.5429:

Just wanted to devs to have a mental note about reworking acrobatics on base thief. With the DD spec acro has sorta lost it’s identity. I suggest perhaps looking a improving shadow steps with acrobatics (maybe rename). Since thief has so many forms of shadowsteps augmenting them with the trait line could open new ways to play.

This sounds familiar

Leviathan.6327:

Maugetarr.6823:

Leviathan.6327:

Unfortunately, the general consensus with the Daredevil in this beta is that the staff animations rank as one of the worst we’ve ever seen in any game (and after playing the beta myself, I’d have to agree). The character does not even look like they know fundamentally how a bo staff is supposed to function in battle, right down to how they wield it in their stance. It’s slow, clunky (word of the day, apparently), and just plain ugly. And yes, the players notice every detail.

It looks like anet could use some help in understanding how a bo staff actually works in combat. So rather than complaining, this thread seems to have been created with the intention of giving Anet some helpful, constructive tips on how they should be animating this fast, fluid, free-flowing fighting style. So let’s try to be as specific (and positive) as possible!

Here is a good video that demonstrates numerous staff-spinning techniques.

I’ll focus the 3rd hit of the auto attack chain with this post, because it doesn’t seem like anyone is happy with the magically spinning staff. This video demonstrates how the hands are supposed to move when you spin the staff like that (if Anet really wants the staff to spin in front of the character’s body in that manner). But to be honest, I would’ve much rather preferred a spinning strike like demonstration #5 at 2:46 in the video (and it should hit 5 targets within a 180 degree radius). But even #2-4 (starting at 0:51) would’ve been great, as well. Also importantly, look how fast he’s spinning the staff, and he’s actually using his hands, not “the Force” (because the floating staff seems to be spinning kinda slow). If you need to make new graphics similar to spinning helicopter blades while they twirl the staff, it would definitely help give the impression of speed which is what the Daredevil should be all about.

That 2 handed underarm spin would be great for AA3, and maybe even Bandit’s Defense as you would be blocking all the attacks with a fast defense then knocking someone down. It would still look awesome as a flurry with 1 handed weapons also.

And in addition to that two-handed whirling attack shown in the link there (your Bandit’s Defense comment reminded me), if they wanted to give Daredevils a little more sustainability, they could give them some blocking frames while the staff is being spun (similar to the ranger-greatsword auto attack granting several frames of evasion).

Animations like that would help make a blocking state more feasible, should they decide to implement something like that.

Yeah. I’m hesitant to put block frames on the weapon, but it could definitely use more evade frames. Staff 2 should be more like warrior GS 3. Staff 5 should be more like guard GS 3. The animations could then be tweaked to fit so actual bo staff attacks after their functionality is fixed.

Leviathan.6327:

Unfortunately, the general consensus with the Daredevil in this beta is that the staff animations rank as one of the worst we’ve ever seen in any game (and after playing the beta myself, I’d have to agree). The character does not even look like they know fundamentally how a bo staff is supposed to function in battle, right down to how they wield it in their stance. It’s slow, clunky (word of the day, apparently), and just plain ugly. And yes, the players notice every detail.

It looks like anet could use some help in understanding how a bo staff actually works in combat. So rather than complaining, this thread seems to have been created with the intention of giving Anet some helpful, constructive tips on how they should be animating this fast, fluid, free-flowing fighting style. So let’s try to be as specific (and positive) as possible!

Here is a good video that demonstrates numerous staff-spinning techniques.

I’ll focus the 3rd hit of the auto attack chain with this post, because it doesn’t seem like anyone is happy with the magically spinning staff. This video demonstrates how the hands are supposed to move when you spin the staff like that (if Anet really wants the staff to spin in front of the character’s body in that manner). But to be honest, I would’ve much rather preferred a spinning strike like demonstration #5 at 2:46 in the video (and it should hit 5 targets within a 180 degree radius). But even #2-4 (starting at 0:51) would’ve been great, as well. Also importantly, look how fast he’s spinning the staff, and he’s actually using his hands, not “the Force” (because the floating staff seems to be spinning kinda slow). If you need to make new graphics similar to spinning helicopter blades while they twirl the staff, it would definitely help give the impression of speed which is what the Daredevil should be all about.

That 2 handed underarm spin would be great for AA3, and maybe even Bandit’s Defense as you would be blocking all the attacks with a fast defense then knocking someone down. It would still look awesome as a flurry with 1 handed weapons also.

I played staff/DD for a few games tonight, but the issues with dodges and aftercasts made it frustrating enough that I couldn’t keep playing.

Staff
General: This isn’t good at running away or chasing really. It could be all the aftercasts and animations, but it has no stealth, shadowstep, or soft CC. It has very poor access to the only hard CC on the set. It’s got alright damage, but overall it’s pretty mediocre really.

1) A little clunky at base speeds. When given quickness, it actually felt pretty good. Even if the damage per hit needs to be lowered to keep the same DPS, the animation should be sped up 33-50%.

2) Put a 0.75 cast time on it and a 0.5 second evade. Make it aimable like warrior’s GS #3. Lower the damage, and put a cripple on it as well as the weakness. This set lacks solid chase options. The #3 is a gap creator, but #5 is extremely difficult to chase with. Having a directable dodge that could be used better offensively would make the set actually stand out from S/X by giving you choice in your dodges.
3)Have the evade frames start right at the beginning. A windup with a hit defeats the purpose of this skill. You can have open frames on the end where you can be hit, but precasts on evasion skills render them useless as evasion skills and weaken the set. Look at the overall picture S/P and Deathblossom for reference.
4)Negligible effect. I feel this would be much more useful as a skill that has CC attached to it or perhaps a set up for stealth. Keep it melee range if you’re worried about the overall strength, but I didn’t care to waste my initiative on it in this current state. Maybe as a melee AoE headshot that blinds and hits 3 targets. (Ie: range 130, 0.25 second daze, blind 5 seconds, 3 target cleave)
5) Animation is over the top and clunky. This set overall should play less like a hammer warrior and more like a GS warrior. It needs better mobility. I feel like this skill would do better as a leap similar to warrior’s sword 2 or Guardian GS leap with a powerful hit on the end. 0.5-0.75 cast at most. Making it function like earthshaker/jumpshot just doesn’t work well.

Traits
Dodges need to be fixed as stated.

The rest of the traits (which worked) were ok.
Utilities
The block utility doesn’t actually block some CC occasionally. I think this shouldn’t be a triggered CC, but rather a rollover to knock someone down. If you’re trying to use it in a fight against more than one enemy (including AI) it gets triggered way too easily. Have it be 2 seconds of block and during the block have a rollover skill that you can use to knock someone down, leaving you the choice of using it defensively or offensively.

The fist flurry is hard to land for what feels like little payoff.

The elite is cool, but having it go on CD if you use another skill in the middle makes it predictable. Giving it 5-7 seconds for the next part in the chain that doesn’t roll over would make it a lot more tactical to use at certain points in a short fight.

I’ll try to add more as the weekend goes on

Edit: I just wanted to say I’m not trying to be negative. I love the concept here, the execution just needs more time and polish.

Your second one is pretty close to how I build S/D. DA/CS/Tr works in sPvP which is where I do the majority of my play right now. Consider pack runes as well since they really compliment CS and Tr, especially when paired with No Quarter.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

AikijinX.6258:

2 red posts in our forums, shoot aren’t we lucky?
We’re obviously doing something right, keep it up boys…. and girls.

Only 2? You missed Gail’s post? Which means she also reads this forum.

Based on my observation, they are reading the forum related to the latest revealed profession, so we should not expect this to continue when the next profession is revealed.

Basically, last week and this week is all about Thieves.

To add the reference to your post.

I am just going to take this as we need to keep throwing ideas up to see what sticks. Honestly, a lot of the fixes that were suggested to fix acro and the general “on dodge” theme people wanted were mixed into DD (mixed feelings about this), so some feedback is getting through whether or not we get red posts.

I would rather have a daze in PW and have it start up immediately like blurred frenzy on mesmer. That way you could combo it better with infiltrators strike or use the evasion to actually dodge reactively. The extra initiative it costs in pvp would assure that it won’t get abused too badly, but that long windup just kills the skill for me. Remove the windup and have the gun hit be part of the flurry with multiple 0.25 second dazes instead.

That’s the same list I was thinking of. I put a request in the PoI thread to allow some spears and tridents to be used as staff skins. Some tridents are already staves or vise versa, we just need more.

I have one of every race. I favor my female Norn the most, followed by my Charr. My Human one is alright, but sorta boring, and while Sylvari thieves can look awesome, there’s just something that doesn’t play quite right for me. While I love my Asura thief, I just sorta burned out on Asura in general.

Tldr: I’d recommend female Norn or male Charr.

PS: Norn snow leopard elite can be hilarious with its stealth in WvW if you care.

It would be nice if the 3rd attack channeled the momentum of the staff in more of a swinging motion. Sort of like a charr’s animation close to the end of 100 blades. Maybe there’s an actual staff move that’s more fitting, but I mention the 100b because of how fluid it is on charr.

@ kocoff: I think you’d have about the same condition cleansing if you kept SA as current D/P, but you’d be able to stealth differently. You could dodge roll through your BPS for stealth and also trigger the damage on dodge buff. You’d lose mug, but gain damage on interrupt, so you’ll really only be losing the health from mug if you time steals well (paired with SoH). You might have to worry about stealth on steal and this trait paired though because of the delayed damage. I’m not running traited condi cleanse on S/D currently, so I’ll be trying combinations of DD/Tr/DAorCS. Removal on evade with such a low CD and no restrictions on the removed condis should be able to keep up with their application.

Fixing Deathblossom itself would go a long way towards making D/D DD viable. Changing that skill to a Whirlwind Attack style skill with a 0.5 second evade at the beginning and a 0.75 animation overall would make the skill useful for both power and condi, and raise the skill floor and cap of the set.

Kocoff.7582:

I am hesitating between DA or Acro. I m am just mainly worried about the conditions to be honest. The rest I am pretty sure I can manage.

DD has excellent condition management just by itself, bordering on OP (theoretically). Removing conditions on evade should bring the sustain of S/D way up. Alternatively, if you didn’t take the condi removal, you could keep SA and take the damage on interrupt with D/P and make headshots hit for 2k.

Ok, given what we now know about Daredevil, I decided to rework some of my ideas for Acrobatics so it can stand on its own without overlapping with DD too much or pushing DD to ridiculous heights.

Basically, my idea is to offer 3 different types of enhancement that could be taken together as a single row or mixed. These are mobility enhancement(ME), brawling enhancement (BE), and effect mitigation(EM).

Adept

Expeditious Dodger: 3 seconds of swiftness on dodge.
ME: Fleet Shadow->Explosive Speed: Gain 3 seconds of super speed when you gain swiftness (8 sec ICD)
EM: Pain Response: Fine as is
BE: Vigorous Recovery: Gain 5 seconds of vigor on heal. When you gain vigor, lose a condition (5 sec ICD)

Master

Feline Grace: Fine as is
ME: Guarded Initiation -> Captive Transversal: When you shadowstep to a target, immobilize that target for 1.5 seconds (8 sec ICD)
EM: Hard to Catch: Fine as is
BE: Swindler’s Equilibrium: Reduce steal cooldown by 3 seconds on successful evasion. No weapon restriction (5 sec ICD)

Grandmaster

Endless Stamina: Fine as is
ME: Assassin’s Reward -> Swindler’s Transversal: When you shadowstep to your target, transfer 1 condition and steal 1 boon (8 sec ICD)
EM: Don’t Stop: Fine as is
BE: Upper Hand: Gain 3-5 endurance on hitting the opponent (1 sec ICD) (would need to be play tested to determine strength)

Ok. This supposed to be heavy on different mechanisms for condi removal since it’s a defensive line. I think with these changes, it could favor S/X, but not be limited to it (much like SA favors but isn’t limited to D/P). Some of the changes to my original suggestions were because of Raiden’s input along with the the previewed traits. My hope is that these changes could supplement Trickery or DD well while also allowing the line to stand on its own.

Sagat.3285:

I thought the new line was supposed to be optional and not the answer to everything. Revert the SA nerfs, improve Acro no Acro is not just Feline Grace.

Acro should be rethemed into something that enhances mobility. It’s already part way there, so with the replacement of a few skills and tweaks of others, it could be strong in a way that’s not a weaker version of DD. Some shadowstep traits would be cool.

DA: More damage is always good. Plus, when used with daggers + lotus poison and Weakening Strikes, you should be able to maintain high weakness uptime.

or

CS: Build with SoP and Signet of Agility and you’ll have great evasion, not to mention SoA could be worth clearing 1-3 condis when combined with the dodge trait.

but

Not Acro: Aside from HtC, DD does Acro, but better. Trickery provides 50% vigor uptime already, so doubling down on the same line would be a significant loss in damage for minor gains.

Hey Karl,

Could you ask the coders if it would be possible to allow Spear and Trident skins to be used on staves? There are so many awesome Trident and Spear skins that no one ever sees that would be awesome in melee. Some of the Trident skins are already staff skins, so it seems like it would be an awesome opportunity to put some more of the designer’s hard work to use.
Thanks!
~Maugetarr

(PS: Some ideas and discussion for improving acrobatics as well as base thief here)

Counter: Grab > Downthrow > side Arial > timed smash on edge

In all seriousness, DD does not have the passive endurance regen that acrobatics had. The weapon dodges have frames where you’re locked in the animation, but vulnerable. I would suggest using your short cast time skills once you start to see a dodge because a half second cast skill used in reaction to a weapon evade will usually land after the evade frames are over. Thieves that actually deal damage will be squishy enough that your autoattacks should be enough to force dodges.