Guild Wars 2

Bllade.1029:

Nike.2631:

Tabootrinket.2631:

To be honest, the problem you’re mentioning isn’t supposed to be ours.

You’re right. The problem on this side of the fence is having any concept of the level of effectiveness we’re supposed to be receiving. I get it the thief community is feeling a bit downtrodden after ages of being THE most despised of all professions. But GOOD DESIGN gives you a set of options that put you at the middle of the pack, not leapfrogging to the top spot.

It should be good enough a skilled player can win some of the time against other skilled players. That’s it. Not amazing. Sure as hell not stance dancing what they felt were three GMs worth of awesome. Oh, with another GM on top like a cherry.

Disappointment is the distance between bad expectations and reality. The bad expectations running rampant with “Oh, sure, just give us a triple GM and then 3 more GMs to pick from” is raw absurdity.

Could the Daredevil be better. Yes. Should it be better? Maybe, the data is kinda limited. Is it going to get THAT MUCH BETTER? Hell no. What gains are there to be made will be made within the framework we have now.

Give them some feedback and ideas they can use, because “We want 4 GMs instead of one!” doesn’t even pass the laugh test.

I understand exactly what you’re saying, but dodges aren’t GM worthy to begin with. These aren’t GM traits, they’re a core defensive mechanic.

Just because they’re in the GM trait line, doesn’t mean they’re GM worthy. So no, we’re asking for our core defensive mechanic and to have GM traits like everyone else.

Yeah, they’re the core mechanic of the elite spec. they’re not optional grandmaster quality traits that effect gameplay.

The ONLY way these could even be considered as grandmaster quality traits is if ANet admits that the entire core mechanic of Daredevil is ONLY 1 extra dodge. Without extra endurance regeneration. Legitimately adding 1 extra dodge per encounter no matter if it’s a 10 second fight or a 10 minute fight. We get only 1 more dodge by taking Daredevil.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Imagine if Warrior and Guardian has to actively use a skill or ability to survive, meaning all their passive healing and protection are active instead…that would make these profession a pain in the donkey to play. The player experience will go down the drain.

So if Thief has to rely on dodges to survive, there shouldn’t be a setback in their defense mechanic — that’s just design stupidity to spite the Thief profession for no reason.

By creating anti-stealth skills, Feline Grace needs to be restored.

Thief skills shouldn’t be self-punishing…no other profession have skills that punishes themselves.

Knocking people out of SR is a counterplay, however, with the new anti-stealth, SR becomes a joke skill that provides neither Shadow nor Refuge.

These are all great points. Thief’s riddled with skills that are self punishing, even Steal is useless in some of the more difficult PvE content because you need to stay at range. No other profession’s mechanics are outright useless in some encounters.

Since people complain about stealth making thieves too hard to fight in sPvP, restore feline grace and let us be a more nimble combatant than the 1 extra dodge DrD is getting.

I’ve taken the liberty to take my example UI a step further. Now it’s broken down into two images.

• In the first, you see what it looks like when you have a dodge selected
• In the second, you see what it looks like while selecting a dodge

This needs to be baseline for Daredevil so that we have the same access to Tier 3 Grandmaster Traits as all of the other elite specializations.

If you don’t move after you stealth they can spam the #1 skill where you were standing and still hit you on accident. You need to stealth and then change positions so that the attack doesn’t hit you.

If you are moving and they’re somehow staying locked onto you, make a quick video and report it as a bug.

As many people have pointed out already, the new Acrobatics line covers mistakes instead of helps prevent them.

Feline Grace was well received because it gave us the option to prevent what we desired to prevent from happening to us instead of giving us passives that only help in certain situations.

Tabootrinket.2631:

Nike.2631:

Does ANYONE here think they’re going to give not just one, but all three of the current GrandMaster effects as a freebie (which incidentally you CAN toggle outside of combat — what you can’t do and never will do is dance between 3 GMs mid-match…) and then write up/code/test 3 more Grandmaster scale benefits in the 30 days remaining before launch.

You are describing a fairy tale.

There’s still persuasive arguments and bargains to be made with the Devs in the eternal quest for buffs to a spec you want to play, but that? That ain’t one of them.

To be honest, the problem you’re mentioning isn’t supposed to be ours.
We’re talking about what should be done for the spec. The poor schedule isn’t supposed to be our own concern. We’re on the receiving end, we are the one who may (or may not) buy the expansion.
Specializations should’ve been worked on for months now. It’s not our fault, and it’s definitely not us who should bend over when they ended up with a rushed and flawed result.

We’re not part of the team, we’re the customers.

^^ This.

Plus, we already have all 3 of the tier 3 major Traits available to swap outside of combat. It’s just done via a clunky UI barrier instead of it being streamlined into the normal functionality of the elite profession. We just want access to the same 3 Tier 3 traits that every other elite spec has access to. I guarantee they have dozens of theory-crafted grandmaster traits they scrapped to make room for the dodges. They just have to add those.

With the size of the changes some of the other profession mechanics have changed (Mallyx Rev for example) it’s not impossible for them to add a handful of trait options (4 total with Escapist’s Absolution and the 3 Tier 3s) and add a single UI toggle in the next 30 days. We just need to make them know that it’s a high enough priority.

As it stands the Daredevil was rushed and poorly developed. It’s missing baseline features that should be included at launch of HoT not 3 months later when they get to it.

I know that devs are real people. I understand that Karl’s probably putting in rediculous hours and working his kitten off to give us the best possible thing he can. We’re here to help the devs develop a competitive elite spec. We just need to keep reiterating what is needed because there’s no better system in place to let them know what needs to be changed.

Heya welcome back! Obviously my responses are just opinions so take everything we say with a grain of tasty tasty salt.

1) In PvE we’re taken mainly for skipping content. We’re quite good at speeding up a dungeon run by granting the party the ability to bypass large chunks of content. We’re not the highest single target DPS but we’re probably in the top 3 depending on comp. Dodge or die is pretty accurate.

2) Pretty much an accurate observation but we’re not useless. Quite often it’s more efficient for the thief to disengage even in team fights to go cap a point than it is for us to actually help in the fight. We’re easily one of the weaker 1v1 professions with our only real shining ability being that we can run away very well. Sadly this makes other professions more angry than if they’d lost to us and since the squeaky wheel gets all the grease, ANet has been consistently nerfing Thief way past competetive balance. We’re helpful in the sense that we’re mobile and much of the issues we have with 1v1s is more around OP builds of other professions than it just the Thief being too weak.

3) Animations are not being fixed, the bugged dodges are being fixed. The animations are remaining clunky and according to Karl’s most recent post we can expect to keep the Staff with the Hammer animations. The playstyle was already in existence until a very large nerf to the Acrobatics trait line 6 months ago. They essentially cut that trait line in half and made the other half the new Daredevil elite trait line. I used Acrobatics back in the day… It was nice…

4) That is pretty rough latency. You will suffer more from that as a Thief than any other profession, but in no way will it outright make it unplayable.

In regards to the profession seeming over-nerfed you are correct again. We were balanced around stealth being our primary sustain mechanic and in the current meta we’re out-stealthed by other professions who rely on it less. We were advertised as the king of 1v1s and in the current meta we’re the worst 1v1 profession. We were advertised as being the most evasive profession but they nerfed that so they could make room for Daredevil (even with Daredevil and Acrobatics we won’t be back to what we were pre-nerf)

Putting off new players to the profession is a good thing because we’re not lying. If a new player decides to play other professions they will have a better understanding of how great the game can be. We’re warning people of the actual reality of the current state of the profession.

Also as sad as it is, we were nerfed because the squeaky wheel gets all the grease and people complained about losing fights to a Thief. At a point, some of the nerfs were good and fair. They helped balance out the profession against the other professions and all was good in the world. The squeaky against Thief never stopped though. Just the other day I lost a few back-to-back 1v1s to a burn guard and he started saying in /map chat that Thieves were OP because it was difficult for him to kill me right away… He was complaining that it wasn’t easy enough but wording it as if I was OP.

The only way to recover from how hard we’ve been nerfed is to turn into squeaky wheels ourselves.

In regards to Channeled Vigor, I haven’t seen a single positive comment for that skill. I’ll heavily test it in BWE3 but if it’s still as underwhelming as it was in BWE2 will there be time to change it? Why is so much of this elite spec cemented into it’s current iteration against the view and opinions of the customers of the product? Making these adjustments we’re requesting will not make Daredevil replace Elementalist, Guardian or Warrior as the top 3 professions in sPvP even if they are using core traits only.

In regards to the “Shadowstep dodge” we only mean shadowstep in animation. The dodge will funtion exactly like a dodge only:

• This will all occur over the standard 3/4 second dodge length
• On first frame they will begin the standard dodge animation
• Immediately the particle effects for shadowstep will begin
• The character avatar will go invisible
• Near the end of the dodge the particle effects for shadowstep will begin again
• The character will reappear in the particle effects and finish the dodge animation

There’s no actual shadowstep happening so the bugs associated with shadowstepping wont occur. It’s just an animation change that lots of people think will be cool.

Most of what was said was just bug fixes.

There’s no question about it, the clunkiness of the dodges were a bug in BWE2. It’s obvious that you guys needed to get those fixed and, though we’re glad you guys fixed the bugs, you haven’t actually taken any of the feedback we’ve been giving you about how weak the profession is compared to the other elite specs.

The main concerns for the profession are:

1. Please make the dodge selectable outside of combat as if it was the revenant legend so that we can get an actual tier 3 trait line.

2. Add Escapists Absolution into Driven Fortitude and add it as a minor. The current state of the meta pretty much treats Thieves as witches and conditions can get applied to the Thieves low hp pool significantly more efficiently than we can remove conditions. Obv, we would need a new additional trait in tier 2.

3. Staff will likely not be taken as a primary weapon unless it’s tuned to fit the meta more accurately. As it stands it’s not as survivable as S/P, not as mobile kitten and doesn’t really have a place to shine outside of the testing bubble. It needs things like Vault’s distance increased and a darkness field on staff 4 to be able to compete against our other weapon sets for a position on our build. Applying weakness to a burning guard or a terragriff isn’t enough to make us able to survive the few hits we can’t avoid.

4. Adding 1 additional dodge without adjusting our baseline endurance regen to 7.5 over 5 a second is not nearly powerful enough to give us any more sustainability. If we’re to be in-the-thick-of-things we need more than 1 extra dodge. If a fight’s going to last 25 seconds and a S/P Thief is fighting a S/P Daredevil, the Daredevil will only have 1 extra dodge the entire time.

Look at what ALL other professions get from their elite spec minor:

• Tempest – New Weapon, New Skill Type, 4 new Overload abilities added to the already meta standard profession for all game content
• Berserker – New Weapon, new Skill Type Berserk Mode with many benefits and 7 new Primal bursts that can be toggled on and off for situational application of which burst style the Warrior wants
• Reaper – New Weapon, New Skill Type, New Reaper Form with 5 very competetive abilities
• Dragon Hunter – New Weapon, New Skill Type, 3 new Virtues
• Scrapper – New Weapon, New Skill Type, The ability to Rez/Stomp targets at range with a drone that can gain additional benefits from traits
• Chronomancer – New Weapon, New Skill Type, New F5 ability that allows Mesmers a massive array of abilities including using elites twice
• Herald – New Weapon, New Skill Type, New profession mechanic providing toggle-able mass party support

And then you have the Daredevil…

• Daredevil – New Weapon, New Skill Type, 1 additional dodge…

It’s so obvious that the dodges need to be rolled into the Daredevil elite spec minor as an out-of-combat selection box. All of the other elite specs have tier 3 traits that strengthen them further… we only have tier 3 traits that unlock the elite spec’s mechanics. I’ve attached a rough UI to show you how dodge selection should look.

Yeah that could be pretty neat. Basically anything but a 2+ second channeled heal as our in-the-thick-of-combat heal.

The optimist in me is hoping they are keeping quiet on the animation changes so they can reveal it at twitchcon.

Here’s to hope!

Bllade.1029:

Might as well keep this Feedback train rolling;

How do we feel about Staff #4? Any Suggestions?

How about Channeled Vigor the DD heal?

Consensus on Staff 4 is to make it take 1/2 second cast time and put down a darkness field that pulses blind for 3 seconds.

Not many people talk about the heal because they aren’t planning on using it. A 3 person cleave physical attack that heals you and if you hit someone returns endurance would be leagues above the weird super long channel skill we have now.

I wonder why DrD is getting such poor treatment from ANet. I wish we had one of the devs who were passionate about the profession or that ANet required their devs to communicate with the community.

Sitting in silence while we provide a ton of awesome/helpful feedback is just so lame. Even if 100% of our feedback is incorporated we wont be in the top 3 professions. We’re not asking for OP stuff, we’re asking to be competitive.

So Thief went from the 4th prof to the bottom 2 and you’re saying that’s alright?

Shouldn’t all professions be balanced in PvP though…

I think the best solution would be outside of our hitpoint pool. We need more defensive options aside from raw health or we run the risk of all profs eventually melding into each other.

Amante.8109:

I refer back to my original idea: [b]adjusting Staff #3 so that if it hits, your first use of Staff #2 in the next X seconds costs nothing.

I must have missed this suggestion initially. This is an outstanding idea. Not only does it solve the concerns some people have, it also feels like a Dual Skill. It kinda has a fighting game combo vibe to it.

Bllade.1029:

Make the initial part of the ability cost 3 initiative; the flip ability a follow up gap closer that costs 1 and gives some sort of benefit, but you only get the flip ability if you actually contact a target with it. Kills two birds with one stone.

I can’t tell if our feedback is even being listened to – this is a fine solution to #3’s split.

Just accept that #3 is a defensive move. When you don’t want to use it defensively just don’t use it. Much like S/P and not spamming #4 unless you need to interrupt, don’t spam #3 on staff if you don’t want to dodge away.

Don’t worry. After HoT drops you’ll get a 2+ second heal that wont ever see play either.

Amante.8109:

In the interests of consolidating feedback (and Karl hopefully seeing it), I’m going to copy and paste a post I just made in another thread about the essential changes Daredevil still needs to perform as designed and advertised:

I only quoted the beginning to save space. Karl – Look at this post a few times. This is what we need as a profession.

The only thing this post is missing is distracting daggers being an autorefresh skill that never needs to be precast (basically not a weaker mantra).

This is a perfect consolidation of Daredevil’s complaints. Even with these changes Daredevil won’t be an outright stronger profession than all other professions, it will just help us be something aside from the weakest profession in the game.

Don’t worry guys, we have stealth!

:)
:|
:(

uglydan.1638:

Staff is crap.
DD traits are weak.
DD utilities uninspired and mediocre.

DD is a mass of cut and paste of existing abilities. Other professions are getting new ideas and abilities, where we get refreshes (and weak ones at that).

We need a new dev who has a clue and interest in the profession.

If there weren’t other things coming in HoT that I wanted, I would’ve asked for a refund (and still might).

The Daredevil dev is responsible for:

• Tempest
• Dragon Hunter
• Daredevil

Cyrus.4105:

I appreciate that you’re trying to consider balance in every move you make by introducing ‘if’ and ‘ors’, making us choose what we want to give up in order to gain x y and z thing, but nearly every other class out there (and especially the elite specs) operate on ‘and’.

This 100%.

It’d be nice to be able to do something more than help skip content in a group setting. It’d be nice to have a fair chance in a 1v1 against any other profession if the players were of equal skill. It’d be nice to be able to be an in-the-thick-of-things fighter like Daredevil’s supposed to be.

As it stands, Staff is looking like it’ll be one of the lowest utility/survivability weapons , we wont have a Tier 3 Major Grandmaster trait in Daredevil outside of the base spec mechanic and our utilities will all be balanced as if we were in the Elementalists spot balance wise.

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.

I’m sure there’s a way to make it function different but equal to mantras. I’ve seen many suggestions that are all pretty cool that change how the ability functions while still being true to it’s intent. The current iteration is just a worse version of an already existing Mantra. Which is why there are so many suggestions asking at the very least to make it work like a mantra.

Mantra of Distraction takes 2 3/4 seconds to cast – Distracting Daggers takes 1/2 seconds to cast (this is the only place that seems like an upgrade)

Mantra of Distraction has 2 charges and can be traited for 3 – Distracting Daggers has 3 charges

Mantra of Distractions charges last forever (negating the longer casting time since they just precast it before a fight) – Distracting Daggers last for 25 seconds

The Mantra has a 5 second cooldown between uses – Distracting Daggers has a 1 second cooldown between uses

The Mantra is an instant interrupt – Distracting Daggers is a projectile

The Mantra has 1,200 range – Distracting Daggers has a 900 Range

The Mantra causes 1 sec Daze – Distracting Daggers has a 1/4 sec Daze (This is massively underpowered since the new defiance bar is based on the time duration of the CC that hits the mob)

Robert Gee.9246:

EDIT: Even if the defiance bar is not vulnerable to CC, the conditions will still apply for the purposes of triggering traits.

Does this mean that a daredevil with Impacting Disruption trait who would have interrupted a skill will still apply Pulmonary Impact? If not, that trait is useless against mobs with the defiance bar.

Additionally – Duration of the CC is a huge oversight for short duration interrupt professions such as Thief. It’s just another game mechanic that is a huge advantage for Ele and a huge disadvantage for Thief. Do we really need more buffs to Ele?

With this implementation, a Thief can use an elite Basalisk Venom to reduce the Defiance bar 2 seconds or an Ele can use a utility skill Frost Bow that can reduce the Defiance bar 10 seconds…

I was thinking Daredevil would be the interrupt/break bar profession since they’re getting so many interrupt skills but with the defiance bar going off CC duration that’s completely out of the question. Disrupting Dagger pretty much only interrupts but now we have to use all 3 daggers to reduce the Defiance Bar by 3/4 sec.

Karl, the changes you’ve made so far are very appreciated. Like many people, I’m hoping that Daredevil gets us out of the niche we’re in where we’re taken in PvE to skip content and PvP to run away from fights (lol…).

The main problem with Daredevil is the same main problem as Thief. We’re balanced against new players who don’t understand profession mechanics to the point where we struggle against every other profession in PvP.

Here are a few outstanding concerns for the spec:

Usability Fixes
Pulmonary Impact breaks Stealth. I’m sure this is a bug but I’m letting you know here.

We need the ability to dodge while stealth without revealing ourselves. Please make it so that anyone who has Impaling Lotus or Bound uses the normal non-damaging dodge while Stealth.

Elite Spec Mechanic:
So far, it seems like we get the short end of the stick with how our dodges are granted to us. Looking at all of the other elite specs, in addition to the new weapon and skill types, they all get the entire new mechanic suite.

• Reaper gets a whole new Reaper Shroud
• Chronomancer gets the Very powerful Continuum Shift
• Revenant gains Facet of Nature
• Dragon Hunter gets a new suite of Virtues
• Berserker gets Berserker Mode and Primal Bursts
• Tempest gets Overload for their attunements

The Daredevil ONLY gets 1 additional dodge from the tier 1 Minor Trait. The combat dodges really are our elite spec’s mechanics. They should be a baseline offering for anyone who goes Daredevil so that we may have powerful Tier 3 Major Traits to choose from.

If you really don’t want us to switch in combat, at least give us the ability to chose the dodge via a selection button similar to the Revenants Legend button. It can sit to the right of our F2 skill and will just be a manual change when we want to change dodges.

The other elite specs have some pretty powerful Grandmaster Traits to chose from that I feel like we’re missing out in the grand scheme of the elite spec.

Staff 4 – Dust Strike
This ability on staff is probably the one I’ve seen the most concerns for. As it stands, I’m not exactly sure when Staff would be better than our other weapons for World PvE, World Bosses, Dungeons or Fractals.

Understanding that we should have less access to stealth while using a Staff, many people still think that we need the ability to blind far more often than this ability allows. The best suggestion I’ve seen is a medium sized Darkness Field that pulses Blind in a rectangle stretching out 600 units from where the Daredevil casts it.

The tool tip would read something like:

• Shadow Strike (no longer Dust Strike, we’re using our Shadowstep “magic” for the ability now)
• Cast Time: 1/4
• Initiative: 4
• Damage: 235
• Blindness (2 sec): Next outgoing attack misses
• Number of Targets: 5
• Pulses: 3
• Interval: 1 sec
• Combo Field: Dark

Although the version I made is just a weaker version of the Reaper’s #4 on Greatsword, many Thieves feel that a blind field on Staff is a requirement for most content. The Dark Field instead of a Smoke Field can fit thematically with Thief and will still not give us access to on-demand stealth on staff.

Staff 5 – Vault
Vault is getting to a great place now. Like many other people I feel like this ability can be augmented a little more so we have a second Weapon Set option other than Shortbow. Vault is how we do that.

Here is the suggested Vault tool tip:

• Vault
• Cast Time: 1/2 (as many have said, the 1 second cast is too telegraphed to be used competetively)
• Initiative: 5
• Damage: 875
• Number of Targets: 5
• Radius: 180
• Combo Finisher: Leap
• Range: 800

A longer range and shorter cast time will let people chose between Shortbow and Staff as a second weapon set – It’d be nice to finally have an option after 3 years lol.

Channeled Vigor
Obviously the best heal to design for Daredevil would have been Withdraw, lol. I think a heal that would fit better with the in-your-face-dodge playstyle than a channeled heal would be something similar to Elementalist’s Arcane Brilliance.

Proposed style of heal that I think people would love:

• Renewed Vigor
• Casting Time: 1/2 sec
• Cooldown: 20 sec
• Physical. Slam the ground, damaging foes in the area and healing yourself. Heal for more and gain Endurance if you hit an enemy.
• Damage: 300
• Heal: 3,275 (same as Signet of Malice)
• Healing Increase if you Hit a Foe: 50% (similar to Ele’s but doesn’t scale as high)
• Endurance Gain if you hit a Foe: 75
• Range: 120
• Number of Targets: 3
• Combo Finisher: Blast (Alternatively you can make them spin and do a whirl finisher if blast’s too strong)

Distracting Daggers
Most people who’re offering feedback think this skill needs additional work even after the BWE 3 changes. Many people are proposing Mantra usage but I think that’s too weak since Mesmers have the ability to insant daze on their mantra and we’re throwing a projectile. Plus copying another skill style 1:1 just seems lazy to me for some reason. I like the Mantra concept as imspiration but I think we can grow on it instead of copy it.

There was an outstanding proposal someone made where this ability is always “on” and it would auto recover a dagger after X seconds of using it.

Yet another proposed tool tip:

• Distracting Dagger
• Casting time: Instant
• Internal Cooldown: 1 sec
• Damage: 146
• Daze (1/4 sec): Unable to use skills.
• Range: 900
• Max Stacks: 3
• Recovery Time Between Daggers: 12 sec (not sure how to word this)

Essentially, what you have is an ability that functions as follows:

• Start with 3 stacks of Distracting Daggers instead of needing to precast it
• The internal cooldown between uses makes sense now
• After using a Distracting Dagger you have to wait 12 seconds to get a new stack that auto-regenerates

Escapist’s Absolution
This should be added to the Tier 2 Minor Trait Driven Fortitude.

We’re easily the squishiest profession in the game. We have less sustain than every other profession and we don’t have the highest DPS. The only advantage a Thief has today is that we can run away very well.

Daredevil is supposed to make us more survivable in combat. We need more access to condition removal as a baseline of the elite spec.

Fun Concerns
99% of the Dardevil community wants to know… Can we get confirmation on whether or not you guys are planning on changing the animations to something more similar to the Monkey King animations? Including the flip on jump and the flip on stealthed non-damaging evade.

Again, thanks for your work Karl. The Elite Spec’s really coming along.

It’s still not working 100%

I did 3 invasions after the fix. On the first two, at the end of the event I lost the stacked buff showing how many events I completed and got the blooms. On the third event the stack remained when the timer hit 0 and I got no reward chest. I waited on the map for about 10 minutes hoping that It’d trigger but it did not.

Everyone in my party got credit for the third event and according to map chat I was the only person who didn’t get the reward.

babazhook.6805:

depends on how the shadowstep works. If it requires a target I would prefer the dash as I would rather use dash to move around the battlefield rather then always engage.

It would only look like a shadow step. It would functionally be what it is now. (minus the dodge delay of course)

After reading other people’s suggestions I agree that daredevil’s 3 dodges should be moved to a drop down like the Revenant’s legends and should be given as default out of the box with the first minor trait.

The Grandmaster Tier skills should be bigger for the elite specialization instead of the baseline of the ability.

Hope I’m not too late to provide feedback. Much of what’s been said already I agree with but I’m gonna go though item by item.

Staff
Staff Strike Chain Skills
I wish it inflicted a condition a little more in line with the evasion/control theme in the rest of the daredevil specialization. Maybe add something like projectile reflection or a short AoE protection to allies during the duration of the third skill?

I also think the animation needs tuning. Like most people I don’t think the staff should whirl in front of my characters hand, they should spin it like a martial artist.

Staff 2
This skill’s pretty neat. The AoE weakness is good but it feels a little short. This skill may end up like some of the less used thief skills where the best way to manage an encounter would be never to use this skill.

I think a short evasion should be added to this skill to make it a little more defensive.

Staff 3
I like this move a lot. It’s pretty great for what daredevil seems to represent.

The animation seems sped up, perhaps changing the dive backward to a shadowstep animation would make the transition smoother?

Staff 4
This move feels very weak compared to everything else on staff. Like others I think a rework of this skill is needed.

It should place a long & narrow smoke field in front of your character kind of like some of the newer combo fields. It should start under your character and if you dodge forward, you should get a blast finisher with bound. This would keep in line with the defensive nature of the weapon and would give people access to stealth the way we’ve been asking.

Staff 5
Great move but you can’t steal during it. I love that you can actually use it for jumping puzzles.

6-10 Skills
Channeled Vigor
This is my least favorite skill on the whole daredevil specialization. The channeling time was just way too long for the pay off. I understand that it’s not supposed to be interruptable but as it was this weekend all of the other heals for thief are better in pretty much all situations.

Bandit’s Defense
Great move. This will be on my bar most of the time. The animation looked a little weird, like my characters hands were kinda limp (human female).

This should be made available underwater.

Distracting Daggers
While I like this ability quite a bit, the casting time to equip them felt too long and the time they stayed available felt too short.

They also clipped with the armor I was wearing. I don’t know if you guys would have to make new tech for this, but a slider that allows you to set how close/far the wrist pieces are from the forearm could help people look less silly. (bonus for adding it to shields and back pieces)

Fist Flurry
A pretty fun & simple skill. Pulmonary Impact is very cool. I’d like to see some things to modify Pulmonary Impact in some of the lesser used thief lines like acrobatics.

Impairing Daggers
I don’t know if I just like throwing daggers or what but this move felt great. It was cool to throw them into a crowd of mobs and see more than one guy take a dagger.

Impact Strike Chain Skills
I really enjoyed this elite. Since launch I’ve felt a little underwhelmed with Thief’s elites but now I have a new favorite. I do think the time between skills is a little short, maybe up it 1 or 2 seconds before you have to do the next hit.

Traits
Enforcer Training
Obviously a rename is coming, lol.

Evasive Empowerment
Nice trait, will def have it’s uses especially if staff get’s it’s smoke field on skill 4.

Weakening Strikes
I like how much it fits the support/control theme of daredevil.

Brawler’s Tenacity
Another good trait.

Driven Fortitude
The heal seems a little small, maybe lower the internal cooldown to 3/4 instead of 1.

Staff Master
Awesome effects on this trait. I love how it’s not just a raw 10% damage increase at all times. It makes for more dynamic play.

Maybe go through some of the other Thief damage traits and make them more like this at another time.

Escapist’s Absolution
Quite a few people I’ve talked to has said it’s too weak to put on a trait into. I’d probably rarely use it myself.

Perhaps adding a constant effect to it so people can still use it while not successfully evading. Something like granting 1 second of resistance that doesn’t stack in duration to dodge.

Impacting Disruption
I love this skill for general play.

I had a build based around it but I felt very ineffective against enemies with break bars. Maybe you could track when a successful interrupt would have happened to enemies with break bars and this trait could give Pulmonary Impact to them without interrupting them?

Endurance Thief
Outright an awesome ability.

Lotus Training
If the skill dodges get cleaned up, Impaling Lotus was functionally great. I think there should be some visual feedback that you’re throwing daggers because I felt like I had a spin animation and didn’t throw anything.

Like most people I disliked the animation. I think this one needs a whole new animation.

Unhindered Combatant
Again if cleaned up, the Dash skill is great.

I have a suggestion for this one’s animation. I think the name should be replaced by Shadow Dash and you just have a shadow step animation instead of the current running one. It’d feel thematically better and it’d take less time since there’s no real animation to create.

Bounding Dodger
Of the three this one’s my favorite dodge skill.

The animation’s way sped up feeling. I think it’d be easier to fit the whole animation into the amount of time a dodge takes place by making it an instand shadow step into the sky where they are going to slam down from. This way the whole animation would just be them slamming into the ground.

Final Notes

• The new dodges are an awesome concept. I really do think they need to be cleaned up in that they have aftercast animations and interrupt your movement when you use them.
• The staff animations are pretty lame right now. You guys need to mocap either a modern wushu martial artist (faster) with a staff or a shaolin kungfu martial artist (more realistic) with staff.
• The heal really feels out of place being a channeled skill.
• Staff #4 should put down a larger smoke field than pistol #5.

All of these ideas seem like they fit in a world where everyone should run berserker gear and faceroll content. I like that this beta zone requires groups to work together with AoE blinds and Weakness on staff so you don’t see groups of 10 people all get downed at the same time.

Bound’s also my favorite dodge and I don’t think a distance nerf would make it feel more powerful. It also gives Daredevils access to on demand stealth with pistol 5.

Hey Gaile,

Spectral Legion just made a recruitment video for this opportunity. Here’s a link to the video: https://youtu.be/MFJ0d2AWPco

It was 30 seconds in Premier Pro but for some reason YouTube shows 31 seconds… -_-

IMO – when a server’s full. Don’t allow new accounts, transfers or guests. All home accounts should still be allowed in on overflow servers.

Ironically, Guild Bounty tier 3 is WAY more difficult than a Guild Challenge. Depending on the targets of course.

JQ resident here. Can’t log into my HOME!

guardian.6489:

You sure it’s not easy because obviously there’s a ton of you guys? Though then again it’s Guild CHALLENGE so I guess maybe there should even higher tiers.

None the less, congratulations. What exactly did you have to do for it and how fun was it?

It was an event that would be at max 10 minutes.

I think we all assumed it was the first part in like a 5 event event chain that culminated in some large boss fight that scaled up to 75 people. Since scaling is in the game, it’s capable of getting difficult enough for groups of any size.

NetherDiver.6079:

Isn’t this guild rush?

Looks at the completed Guild Missions, not the activated ones.

Yeah, congrats folks. It was extremely easy, but we now get 5 commendations a week!

A digital painting of my thief, Shalien Ascendant, from Guild Wars 2.

She is walking up a shoreline after a long night fighting the undead in the sea of sorrows. I tried to show the exhaustion that would come after a multi-hour long fight. Much of her armor is broken and or missing.

http://kylemesa.deviantart.com/art/Sinking-the-Bone-Ship-358570783

Regina,

Will something be done for the guilds who already spent the influence and let you guys know that the UI was broken?

Acolytes [Aco] purchased and sped up the Guild Bounty with 330k influence – most of which was purchased using gems purchased with real money to be able to do the Guild Missions today. We started the Guild Bounty missions long before this announcement was made. We have hunted and defeated over a dozen Guild Bounties tonight, but with the UI broken we are unable to actually complete the triggered missions.

It’s a ton of fun and we don’t want refunds of our money or gems – but could we be refunded the influence since we spent hundreds of dollars for something that isn’t yet available? This was all queued and purchased before the announcement was made that the UI was broken. It’s likely that most of your reports came from our 40 members we had hunting down mobs without the hints and crashing when we tried to view the Active Missions tab.

Here’s a link to a screenshot of my guild panel open, showing Guild Bounties unlock being completed. It also shows how much influence we purchased and I have my inventory open to show that I actually received Guild Commendations.
http://imgur.com/PjLMUz5

This is a great update and we did have a ton of fun hunting and killing the mobs without hints. I just hope that we’re somehow compensated for the money, time and effort that we put into helping find this evil bug.

I think it’d be a little OP. IMO, it should be given to a profession more along the lines of a ranger.

Acolytes are recruiting, we’re a community based (this means no drama) WvW/PvX guild on Jade Quarry.

Check out our recruitment video and if you’re interested send me a PM in-game. My character’s name is Shalien Ascendant.

Heya!

Acolytes are now recruiting. We fit your criteria very well. Check out our new recruitment video and if you’re interested, send me a /whisper in-game.

http://youtu.be/22ziICE44EE

My character’s name is Shalien Ascendant

Just tested it on my Thief:

Worked on

• Dagger (either hand)

Never Worked on

• Sword
• Pistol (either hand)
• Shortbow

What about the Norn shaman armor? some of that stuff looks great but I can’t find it anywhere.

It was great – Thanks everyone who came out, we gave out stacks of presents, ecto, minis and dyes!

KyleQuest.4639:

ps… you should put a commander pin on Aco Claus so we can find him in LA easier

We’ll have one on Chacha during our next event!

http://youtu.be/osw41L_4jOs

Click here to watch our video!

The Acolytes will be hosting our first annual Acolytes Wintersday Celebration! Join us in Lion’s Arch tonight on Jade Quarry for some fun events, gift giving, and perhaps a visit from Aco Claus himself! We’ll be giving away unidentified dyes, ectos, mini-pets and more to everyone in attendance!! The event starts at 6:30 Central. The entire event will be streamed for those who can’t make it and still wanna celebrate with us! Our guild leader who’s streaming will be crafting their legendary dagger, incinerator live!

This will be our first big planned event, expect much more from us in the future!

*Live Stream URL*
http://www.twitch.tv/acolytesgw2

Check out our community!
http://www.acolytescommunity.com

I’ve spent over $4,000.00 on the gem store and gladly I’m no better off than my guildies who’ve spent 0 dollars in the gem store.

I look at the optimal farm spots and do a conversion of the gold-per-hour to dollars-per-hour. I hate farming and see it like work, I don’t wanna work for 6 dollars an hour, so I buy gems and play the way I want. (running fractals with friends, trolling enemies in WVW, Etc.)

The only real difference between me and most players is that I have a ton of cultural t3 armor skins, multiple toons with expensive dyes, a ton of character slots, a bunch of the cosmetic town clothes, Etc. I’m no better off than anyone else, and for that I think the Gem store works perfectly.

The Mad King has something to add to the topic:

https://twitter.com/TheRealMadKing/status/268379553418858496

I love ascended gear – the stat difference is too low for it to be a requirement and the fact that it’s non customizable means someone in exotic gear will be balanced instead of focused. That means they will do less DPS than an exotic spec’d in damage, have less HP than an exotic spec’d in HP and do less healing than an exotic spec’d in healing power…

I’m so glad that Guild Wars 2 is my game of choice. There’s no embarrassment the way WoW or CoD fans feel when they talk about their hobbies.