Guild Wars 2

Bumping this to advocate for a different start. I see posts highlighting casual players not knowing how to play conquest/rotate/play their role. Plays happening in just the mini-map but its not exciting/fun to see that from a perspective of an avg casual viewer.
We also have terrible matchups on most of our games (from both the perspective of pros and casuals) because of population base.

Lets just opt for a smaller game mode so we can finally fix:
-class stacking
-queue times(to some extent)
-support build diversity in the meta (counter-comping will be more emphasized in 3v3s)
-streams casting fights where more players are in view and plays are more obvious (rotational outplays are sometimes missed to the eyes of a casual)
-Easier balancing for devs
-we can still keep conquest

There are builds that can fight a top level acro staff thief: condi mes w/ scepter/shield+sword/torch (not the meta build), mallyx rev with some sustain gear and double swap sigils, dh(w/ los)
, DA thief, condi war w/ sword/shield+mace/sword or lb (don’t commit too much on landing mace f1s), any druid w/ NM (since pet fixes), and FA core ele (in an open field where they can kite).

These match ups don’t heavily favor one or the other and the outcome depends on some snowballing of outplays.
If you want to be able to take on any opponent in duels then you first have to adjust your build so that it doesn’t get hard-countered by anything. Working on mechanical precision comes after that. Try running the build I mentioned on your warrior, if you play it at its skill-ceiling, you won’t die to anything unless you get outplayed.

DeceiverX.8361:

tomwjd.8172:

and yet optimal ppl still run blinding powder on the meta build. This utility just helps the non meta builds that we have stay somewhat relevant atm which is good.

The high-end players don’t need BD because it’s a massive crutch tool that when played perfectly, the profession doesn’t need and can’t make much use of. What I am saying is that it causes bad players to be pretty much just as difficult to lock down as one which plays perfectly, since BD allows for huge mistakes and its low cooldown can be utilized more often than most CC abilities.

It is not because the high-end players don’t need BD.
When they run dp dash, blinding powder has more synergy than BD which gives them an uninterruptible stealth stack on a black powder, a quick spike w/ backstab, ability to apply instant blind w/o animation vs threatening skills, cover for mistakes or vulnerable frames, team synergy, etc… I’m sure you already know the potential of bp with dp.

On the other hand, thief not running offhand pistol actually needs BD to compete in the field of current meta.

You can argue that BD makes it harder to punish casuals who make mistakes, but so does dp, staff, dash, bound, pulmonary impact, EA, basically everything we received from HoT (with the exception of dp which was always great), but it is “balanced” given the current state of things.

I realized this guy is the one I was dueling earlier in WvW.
@Rapr, you run a trailblazer/dire condi war which has no power dmg pressure at all, its a given that you get countered by staff thief, just like how you counter many builds out there with that.

Against evasive thieves, I’d recommend running weapon sets that lets you proc adrenal health more reliably, mace f1 has an animation that is too easy to deny.

Tbh, running a condi build is basically asking to get countered by builds that have consistent condi clears (EA acro daredevil, mesmer, mallyx rev, CI war, etc); many power roamers pretty much adapted their builds vs condi because of the mundane condi encounters these days especially in roaming.

I’m not sure why anet doesn’t implement spvp profession balance changes to wvw as well, since its another game mode of pvp.

and yet optimal ppl still run blinding powder on the meta build. This utility just helps the non meta builds that we have stay somewhat relevant atm which is good.

Much better list but please do not listen to some of the ridiculous suggestions being made here about new sigil ideas, your new list looks much better than before so don’t ruin it by adding more gimmick/niche/abusable sigils,,, some of these guys don’t realize how the sigils they propose will get abused so hard by some class mechanics.

+1, basically OP summarized my thoughts.

CaptainShrimps.9143:

Why on-swap sigils should not be nerfed

1. Their effects are player-controlled rather than RNG.
Therefore their effectiveness is determined by player skill rather than a roll of the dice. I.e. a good player might consistently time a geo-doom swap between an opponent’s evade frames, achieving high effectiveness, whereas a bad player would miss a large percentage of them, achieving much lower effectiveness.

2. They open up options for counter play.

To illustrate my second point: Some classes are naturally countered by others due to the difference in speed. For example, thief is a natural counter to warrior because warrior has no skills fast enough to hit thief between evading/blinded/blocking intervals, meaning thief can simply evade/blind/block everything the warrior attempts to do on reaction. Warrior can acquire some level of counter-play in this matchup by using on-swap sigils such as sigil of agility (to speed up skills in order to hit the thief during vulnerable frames) or sigil of hydromancy + intelligence (for an instant attack, also to hit the thief during vulnerable frames). This is just one example among many (another one would be a necromancer using geomancy+doom sigils in order to hit a mesmer between invulnerable/evade/block frames).

+1.

taking away mechanical depth is just uninteresting, at least imo…
It rewards those who use it correctly while punishing those who just swaps carelessly. Devs can tweak these sigils if they are nerfing air/blood/fire sigils but the instant on swap nature should be retained.

Also, please no +endurance on hit/crit/vigor sigils…

Hm, not sure how I would feel if they changed on crit sigils… which is like an indirect nerf to ammys w/ precision.

Stand The Wall.6987:

why did they even change vault? why redo the whole animation when it was fine? I suppose I should stop being surprised at some point in time… but then stuff like this happens.

Check this one out lol. Previously, this wasn’t an issue, even weapon-swap cancel doesn’t work with it anymore while all the other leap finishers in the game can do it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Video-Revert-back-Vault/first#post6509346

-NewVault

The new vault mechanic is not reliable at all compared to the older one even after taking out the quickess interaction from it. It gets stuck on the slightest obstacle in-front of the user when the previous vault had no problems jumping over it.

You can’t even weapon-swap cancel vault anymore either which is basically butchering another depth of player interaction with a game mechanic. I believe vault is the only leap finisher that cannot be weapon-swap cancelled in the game atm, even Scrapper’s Rocket Charge can be kit-swap cancelled. Believe it or not, a lot of staff thieves utilized the vault-cancelling to move through terrain in both PvE and PvP. Ex: travelling around w/o hitting mobs to avoid getting into combat. It was a nice mechanic that players had control over which allowed the weapon set to compete w/ short bow as well.

A dev confirmed that the current vault interaction is buggy so they will look into that.

I don’t like the Upper Hand change as well. The trait promotes reactive playing when compared to the other passives in the line, and we were seeing a bit more build diversity in pvp as well.
Instead of nerfing Upper Hand, they should of targeted the passives in the traitline like Instant Reflexes and harsher nerf to Hard to Catch.

It was mostly the power variant of acrobuilds that were hit w/ this change; the mechanical difference of power acro vs condi acro is that power acro builds had to actively engage in auto attack trades even w/ less weakness application(DA minor trait) while watching and timing their skill evades to actually finish off opponents because they can’t rely on burst dmg gained from Deadly Arts.
The condi d/d builds on the other hand didn’t need to make themselves vulnerable by autoattacking; they could just channel deathblossom and dodge back to back while letting the frequent condi applications finish off the opponent.

To discourage playstyle like this, Anet could of just nerfed the bleed application on deathblossom while increasing the power coefficient to help power d/d varients in the process. I don’t mean to kill off condi d/d builds with proposals like this, balance changes can be done so that risk/reward playstyle can be promoted; an example would be to add stronger bleed application on the auto-attack sequence of the dagger+add torment/bleed on Dancing Daggers (kinda makes sense thematically too) while lessening it on deathblossom. This would advocate more active playing even for the d/d condi builds, not just chaining evades back to back while still getting rewarded.

Frankly, I’m tired of balance patches killing off effectiveness of different builds in the meta…
Having build diversity as a profession can help address class stacking as well. This is relevant especially for thieves because having more than one in a team can be a big disadvantage even before the match starts, at least in season 5, the other thief swapped to acrobatics which had a different role compared to DP dash and could supplement the team balance.

Terrorsquad.2349:

Not hard to understand: a skill able to hit up to 5 allies/targets is not meant to be as strong meant for 2 or 3 targets, so that’s already a balance-issue.

Certain builds right now in Conquest cannot be defeated in a 2v2 with Druid, like Necro/Druid in Conquest is one of the strongest setup together.

Let me give you an example based on current 5v5 balance in a 2v2 match:

• Team A: Thief and Thief
• Team B: Druid and DH

Who wins with the current balance of Conquest? Do you see the problem?
2v2 and 3v3 will need it’s own balance-team since Anet does not want matchmaking based on classes (for example getting 2 Thieves on a team) so you’ll most likely get a Thief and Thief comp vs OP comp.

They’ll have to make every class + every class work vs every class + every class.

“Not hard to understand: a skill able to hit up to 5 allies/targets is not meant to be as strong meant for 2 or 3 targets, so that’s already a balance-issue.”

-Give me specifics since most team fights you see in conquest are 2v2, 3v3, or uneven matchup of sorts anyway.. 5v5 can happen (fighting for a cap at a crucial moment) but is rare since that leaves two caps in the map uncontested which calls for some plays, so actual 5v5 doesn’t even last very long to even call it a 5v5. With that said, the skills that the current meta builds run seems to be balanced around smaller fights anyway.

“Certain builds right now in Conquest cannot be defeated in a 2v2 with Druid, like Necro/Druid in Conquest is one of the strongest setup together.”

-I can already think of different profession combinations/builds that will be able to beat the druid+necro duo in a 2v2. An example: Thief+rev on non-traditional “meta” builds.
Saying these kind of things as if they are factual statements that will ALSO apply in a 2v2 deathmatch w/o a node shows how narrow-minded some people in the community have become when it comes to builds and pvp.

“Let me give you an example based on current 5v5 balance in a 2v2 match:”

• Team A: Thief and Thief
• Team B: Druid and DH

-In conquest, Team B will most likely win (force the thieves to disengage or die and win the node) Yet, in a 2v2 matchup w/o a node, you’ll be surprised to see how effective thieves can be customized to do actual team fighting.
If 2v2/3v3 is introduced, Anet should tailor their ranked matchmaking to avoid class-stacking anyway to mimic proleague rules, not to mention its so much easier to do w/o making the queue times too long in a smaller game. The issue that arises from getting rid of class-stacking in matchmaking right now is that it would make the queue times too long with the given playerbase. We already have to deal with the disparity of ratings in a team to have faster queue times, which would probably be alleviated naturally if 2v2/3v3s ranked were implemented.

“They’ll have to make every class + every class work vs every class + every class”

-More like they will do class balance so that a profession does not completely rely on another role to be “viable.”
Examples:
-Necro relying on a competent support to become an actual threat.
-Ele having only one strong role which still relies on another role to make a strong impact in a game.

What you describe of “balance so that every duo is strong vs every duo” sounds great anyway, why shouldn’t anet have a goal in terms of pvp profession-balance??
Do you think that every ele player in the community are happy to have only one strong role in pvp and deserve bashing by his/her teammates if they are running something other than the meta build?
How about the necro-mains who wants to solo q or dare I say,, solo-roam in wvw

Terrorsquad.2349:

I don’t get why people would think having 2v2/3v3 would save the game.
Seems I need to repeat myself over and over: game is balanced around 5v5, look at the skills and the traits.

2v2/3v3 would work if it would have it’s own balance-team, which is not going to happen as Anet already has enough work for the 5v5 in Conquest.

I’m totally up for 2v2/3v3 but I’m being realistic, knowing alot of top-notch devs already left Anet, it’s either not coming or it’s coming with lots of balance-issues due skills/traits being balanced for 5 targets/allies.

Not sure what you mean by "skills/traits being balanced for 5 targets/allies.. A skill being able to target up to 5 targets doesn’t make it unusable in a 2v2/3v3.

“Game is balanced around 5v5, look at the traits/skills.”
Almost every profession can be customized for a 2v2/3v3 matchup w/o a node, you just don’t see these different builds because meta is around 5v5 conquest which kind of forces 1-2 builds per profession, kind of sad when you think about the limitation it imposes on us to be competitive. If a deathmatch ranked is introduced, you can be tailoring your build depending on what your teammates are playing to promote synergy while considering the opponents/matchup at the same time.

2v2 and 3v3 ranked qeues sounds so fun.

great points made by OP about the game mode being easier to spectate/casted by the viewers as well as shortening qeues and solving a lot of issues from ranked conquest such as class stacking (unfortunate 2+ thieves in your team), solo q vs team q argument, and disparity of rating in a match because of the system’s faulty endeavor to find 10 people to start a pvp game w.o long qeues from a population that is the current pvp community… Seriously, tfw former advocates of gw2 pvp scene (ppl in leaderboard, proleagues, content producers and streamers, etc) goes around saying that pvp is dead..

Some stuff that comes to mind for the new game mode:

- no respawn, smaller map, and limit to stealth stacking/add reveal mechanic to the match if stealth somehow end up abusive.

-Best out of three matches. if no one dies then team that did more overall damage wins. Allow build change before every match to customize synergy with teammate(s) and counterbuild opponents.

-Instead of a class balance that needs to encompass 5v5 conquest setting (decap, bunkering, rotation mobility, team fight potential, forcing specific builds/profession into certain roles, etc) the meta will revolve around a smaller-scale death match which I think will be easier to balance and at the same time bring more build diversity and less role forcing (eles not having a strong build outside of support).

-It will also be more straightforward to learn and casual-player friendly while still emphasizing deeper understanding of team synergy and combat/class mechanics to be successful. Right now, conquest demands so many elements from new players just starting to engage in ranked pvp. Things like rotations, role, mapawareness, matchup advantage, momentum after a teamfight, etc on top of learning their own profession and combat mechanics to simply hold their own against enemy players. Toxicity also arises because sometimes a more committed player’s rating will be at mercy of their teammates knowing how to play conquest or not.
We will also see less reportings of shady match manipulation and such…

Overall, this will bring healthier profession balance. Less hard-counters and pigeonhole-ing of roles to professions. pvp balance that revolves around conquest and nodes that need to be capped does not consider WvW balance either when it should since its another game mode that involves “pvp”.. (ex: dh gets nerfed because devs thought it was op on a node, meanwhile dh players in wvw suffer the consequences too)

This game has great potential to really show off it’s combat mechanics and build diversity but the current game mode is pulling it’s legs imo…

Stand The Wall.6987:

Saiyan.1704:

We all know how successful DTM on Courtyard was… you can’t just say “Add this!” and expect results.

Rule Mechanics

• 15m time limit
• Best of 3 rounds. Rounds lasts 5 minutes
• Lowest health player at end of a stalemate round loses that round

It’s whats needed… at the very least.

this is good but I would increase it even more, to 5 rounds 3min each. reset cd’s each round. it doesn’t take much for a match to start snowballing and once it does its spawn camp central.

Well unlike the courtyard in the past,, I was thinking 2v2 or 3v3 in a smaller map w/ no respawns. 3v3 on a timer or until the other team wipes. If timer ends and both teams are still up, whichever team did more damage wins.

i received a reply to my support ticket of the same issue, they are aware and working on a fix atm. Cheers

I’m not sure about 1v1s…. but ranked 2v2s and 3v3s would be super cool. This will even promote build diversity as well.

Don’t open your reward/title chests in a custom pvp server.
You won’t get ur titles and achievements. Seems like a bug.

So your supposed to be getting achievements when you open these chests along with title unlocks, but you can see in the video that I’m not getting anything when I’m opening them in a custom server.

agreed 100% with the points made by Kat, especially regarding the Skyhammer map.. So annoying to play as thief on that map.

Guide vs condi berserker:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpK25B_V-VE&feature=youtu.be

Fractal 100 challenge mote Ensolyss:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2xFAigpEwc

Recent Roaming video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnIWY0THuNc

Enjoy

This was a good change imo.
The roll evade only gave you a fraction of the 1/2 sec evade so it was gimmicky to use it anyway.
Now I don’t have to do an action after landing to cancel
the roll.

Hello all,

Skip to 9:25 mark for bs glitch.. Not sure if DH pull bug interacting with slope on the terrain (I didn’t get hit by spear of justice so probably not but I don’t see any other explanation)..

Hello team,

New vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnIWY0THuNc

Previous vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_1345496383&feature=iv&src_vid=KnIWY0THuNc&v=y0iiJ9P5v2E

Halloween wvw:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_3398185555&feature=iv&src_vid=y0iiJ9P5v2E&v=hGTaMA-t3TI

Personal favs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_2330696507&feature=iv&src_vid=O0sNGmi5Nww&v=Rp6-l9O4EkI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcWaS2X-8zc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd5hXynDSjE

Probably going to do mechanics/dueling guides next.. lmk if you have specific matchup requests :]

My new Halloween clip:

It is as you say, this build plays very much like an evasive brawler instead of the risk/reward big burst assassin type. That does not mean that it sticks to a strict rotation however, against great players you have to always evade/bait their cds before safely trading in melee distance otherwise you will almost always get out pressured. If you stick to a familiar rotation (can work against low skill tier players), better players will just read you like an open book and time their instants/skills into your vulnerability frames.

I would just like to point out that more thieves should welcome any fun/working build varieties that we currently have (aside from the trapper ghost thief gameplay). We are already limited in terms of having reliable weapons; sometimes the weapon set that we want to enjoy are viewed as gimmicky or just inferior. We shouldn’t advocate only one type of thief gameplay but rather be more open-minded about it.

Duels vs a proleague DH:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OL2kVQeyps&index=3&list=PL8S4B4-r-QfS2M3Nkbc74XWDhSvobX4zE

Yes, definitely. In outnumbered fights, staff master is still a good trait but as soon as consistent condi pressure makes presence in the fight, EA will outperform staff master especially since you are always evading things from the focus fire.

Updated with new outnumbered video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0sNGmi5Nww&list=PL8S4B4-r-QfRB3EQ8noX-krPgplP5V98Z&index=1

Zui.9245:

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

just because you win against someone doesnt mean they are bad. maybe youre just a lil better than them. or they having a bad day. i was in a match when i defending a home point but i decided to type something to my team then a thief came and burst me while im not looking and died. then he type in chat noob. did that make him good and me a bad player? we won that match also.

Thief never beats a DH that’s not kittened and who is paying attention. If you’re kittened, you’re bad. If you’re not paying attention, you’re probably bad. It’s a very safe assertion that any DH that dies to a Thief 1v1 is bad.

A Thief will never kill a DH if the Thief is just a little better than the DH. The DH has to be bad for the Thief to win. And honestly, most extremely subpar DH players will still manage to win against even excellent Thief players. You have to be REALLY bad to die to Thief while on DH.

In your case, you were not paying attention to the map and your surroundings, AND you were typing and as such practically “AFK” while being bursted. Maybe you’re not a bad player overall, but at that moment your play was indistinguishable from that of a drooling idiot with zero awareness and zero mechanical skill, which is synonymous with saying that at that moment, the ONLY reason the Thief won was because you were playing poorly.

Lol what is this black and white generalizing… ugh. Normally I don’t enjoy embarassing people but would you be down to be featured in my daredevil guide vs dragonhunter video?? I wanna make you eat your own words; we can do side nodes or foefire mid 1v1s and show you ways that dh can be outplayed and lose to a thief,

Hey team,

Some daredevil duels:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNLv0a25lak&list=PL8S4B4-r-QfQPMTzY3v2bLOP7HNc9q0dz

Outnumbered clips:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp6-l9O4EkI

Still new at producing content so please excuse the austere quality of the videos,
I hope you guys like it.

Straegen.2938:

Most strong meta builds in PvP beat the thief in 1v1 fights. Really good players with optimal builds can do well with the thief but just know you are taking a knife to a gun fight.

Staff, D/P, Bound and Dare Devil runes is one of the better builds for straight up fights right now but decapping is an issue.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAW4an0MBlOhFmCOOBkmiFkiirBCgHorqygPYu9n/9H-TpRBQBX4gAMmyAA4BAAw9HewFAQDHBAA

Bound, Vault, Bound, Vault. Get into trouble, switch to D/P and BP, Bound for stealth. Stay and stealth until your health returns. You can also drop a big Backstab out of that combo. Handles condi well and plenty of HP to buffer big shots. Players that dodge Bound/Vault well need to be hit from stealth with either Backstab or a stealthed Vault. Using the other staff skills takes a bit more practice but will improve overall play in time.

Please don’t listen to his advice regarding staff bound build having a weaker match up vs most meta builds.
Also, sticking to a “rotation” consisting of vault and bound spam will get you nowhere against mechanically skilled players, you will just be exhausting your dodges and initiative quicker while you take damage during the vulnerability frames of the vault animation..

Using staff/dp, you actually have the strongest build for 1v1s against any profession+builds at top level play in an open field. But in actual pvp, you want to use staff/sb so you can still fulfill decaps, both weapon sets provide really nice mobility on their 5 skill and the sb also provides vertical movement.
With staff, you also become a strong 1v1 fighter so if someone comes to prevent the decap or defend the node, it can be favorable for your team if you actually engage in the 1v1 as long as the node is yours or neutral and you are confident that you are going to win. (Btw nothing can outrun you to the node except another thief using dash/sb, but you will wreck dash builds anyway)
If you get +1ed, its also easy for you to disengage as long as you have your shadow step or have enough ini for vaults. The only disadvantageous matchup for you is dragonhunter, but even that matchup might be favored for staff thieves now because of the recent dh nerfs.

You can run either acro or da, the choice is yours.
If the enemy team doesn’t have condi comps, you can use staff master trait, but even then I prefer EA because of the ability to cleanse weakness and blinds.
If you have trouble with condi chronos but want to improve on the matchup, I can make a 1v1 node fight video guide against them using both DA and acro variant.

Regarding dhs, check out my youtube channel for staff only side node 1v1 guide against dragonhunters.

Urejt.5648:

weak example of a build because it was duel vs dh without zerk amul and bow.

Here are some matchups against diff DH builds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4OIvVyujAg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJnOLtlr_rM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiO0FZOAG-A

Hello team,

Halloween casual group roaming:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGTaMA-t3TI

Previous:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0sNGmi5Nww&index=15&list=PL8S4B4-r-QfRB3EQ8noX-krPgplP5V98Z
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp6-l9O4EkI&list=PL8S4B4-r-QfRB3EQ8noX-krPgplP5V98Z&index=2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giSl8GFmr8s&index=3&list=PL8S4B4-r-QfRB3EQ8noX-krPgplP5V98Z

Duels vs a proleague Dragonhunter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OL2kVQeyps&index=3&list=PL8S4B4-r-QfS2M3Nkbc74XWDhSvobX4zE

Staff Daredevil & Build tips:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpo_yXO8dDU

I hope you enjoy.

Lexander.4579:

high quality fights right there but doesnt it feel odd playing with such low mobility on thief?

especially when running DA instead of acrobatics you dont even have consistent swiftness while both spvp and wvw are more than just dueling and in both modes thief heavily relies on its mobility

also funny how you still end up having to run d/p all the while already having a melee weapon set and sacrificing a huge chunk of mobility, i guess thief just doesnt work without d/p anymore lol

regardless, that was some high skill staff play

If you are used to playing with dash but made the transition to play with bound, this video might show you some ways to make up for the loss of mobility:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d949Z_faQEQ

Vault still has some pros over infiltrator’s arrow:
-Cannot be interrupted
-Can jump over terrain configuration that would otherwise give you “no path” error.
-Will clear a condi as you evade attacks aimed at you

For pvp, I use Staff and shortbow (The video shows some Staff only duels). If you want to try staff in actual pvp game, you can use DA over Acro but I find that with acro, I can carry soloqs easier. In team fights, DA staff performs better if you have decent support. I haven’t really tested the viability of staff in actual inhouse against proleague teams but in duels against them on nodes (Both DA and Acro), it performs really well the more proficient you are at it.

The only unfavorable match up for you in a node fight would be dragon hunters, especially if they are paladin ammy. Anything else, you should be able to win the 1v1 with enough pressure to keep the node at least neutral until you win the fight or make them disengage.

Sure thing thx for letting me know

Hello team, I just started my channel and will be posting content that encompass Daredevil 1v1s and roaming clips. Come check it out if you are interested.
I’m also new to producing videos and editing in general so please show mercy if you are somebody who likes seeing flashy/cool effects when watching fan content.

Depending on what build you are running and how proficient you are at it, daredevils have the potential to be the toughest 1v1 fighters currently, don’t let anyone tell you that daredevil suck at 1v1s.

Heres the dueling guide vs DH:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC8LkOMUchg

You can use pulmonary impact trait or weapons like P/P to make the match up easier, but I really don’t like changing my traits or build for every different encounters. I rather stick with one thing that works universally for consistency, so I’m more interested in builds that are versatile and have no hard counters.

My build and some commentaries about roaming/1v1s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpo_yXO8dDU

If you want to see dueling guides vs any other builds/professions, please let me know and I’ll make one for you.

Please subscribe if you like, as I will be uploading more videos by next week.

agreed 1+ it indeed does seem like the aftercast downtime causes the trail to stop

Its pretty hard to avoid the toxic trail because even if you are max melee-ing, the aggro of mobs can be often erratic that they will just walk through you and drop toxic trail all over the ground. It would be fine if toxic trail only applied poison and torment but stacking weakness?? Weakness severely cuts down power dps while still promoting reapers / condi classes.

guy says something that might indicate that this bug can be reproduced consistently??

All of my videos are unlisted atm because I need to take care of irl stuff before I have time to edit and cut parts of the video where I’m not engaging anyone.
I’ve parted w/ defender runes and armor since long time ago because condi is abundant in wvw and armor is kind of worthless.

I do agree that defender runes are cancer and deserves to be nerfed like the perplexity rune.
The acro trick dd build mainly helps against fighting outnumbered or getting away from zergs :]
1v1s are easy and doesn’t matter if I’m acro or DA (w/o pulm because its not versatile against some condi specs) except maybe against the top DH players out there (in which case pulmonary impact or acro helps a lot).
Many thieves claim that they are struggling w/ 1v1s or encounters in wvw solo roaming when in actuality thieves are currently the strongest 1v1 profession atm in an open field setting, so I will be editing and doing a guide for 1v1 against each build out there.
Would you like to be featured in the video, Kool? :]

that sounds fun, i’m down.

I don’t see this as a nerf, its actually a huge buff that i’d really welcome. Good idea imo.

I agree that weakness is a really strong condition in comparison to others, and it is too passive/frequent in the current state of the game.

Ex. Protective ward (passive weakness AND protection boon) pretty much gives druids a single trait that they can use to brush off power builds, the cool down is also rather short combined with the long duration of protection and weakness.

please fix this, its preventing friends from completing their legendary collection

This also happens often right after a dodge roll or a movement skill when you press other action keys at the same time.
I was able to consistently reproduce this by using an /bow then pressing dodge during the emote animation, it wastes endurance but the dodge doesnt happen and you are suddenly stuck there as if you are immobilized.

Acro/trick/dd : 132/312/323 with staff and d/p marauder build is probably the strongest and most versatile dueling spec at the moment. If you can play this build to its potential, it has no counters, you either win or sustain forever against all builds played by the best of each profession.

You are upset about anet degrading the thief skill cap differences in PvE but the skill level gap range in PvE wasn’t big or significant to begin with; if anything, knowing where to “stack” or group stealth, knowing boss mechanics and when to dodge, knowing meta comps for speed clears and such were more important when gauging if some thief was worth their value in PvE.

For the record, the thief back in the day used two buttons for their dps rotation. The current meta thief still uses two buttons. The only difference is that instead of watching our initiative for modifier and pressing 5, we are now watching our energy meter and pressing dodge key. Thief was stupid easy back in the day and its still stupid easy to play thief in pve.
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I do agree that builds like perplex condi mesmer, perma evade/stealth thief and such are dumb but they still die/counterable if you know how to handle them, also they don’t offer anything to the team in proleague level spvp besides condi mesmer which still needs more interactions than something like raids or any other pve content.

I’m actually glad they improved thief AA because I can at least bring my thief to SV and certain encounters in the other wings. Strictly speaking of raids though, engineers and thieves are unfortunately not optimal for it. Its a sad truth and the devs should be blamed for it, but you can still make alts if you want to get into raid groups regularly. Since you mentioned ele, they press +2 more buttons compared to thief in their basic dps rotation if it counts for that rewarding feeling of pressing more buttons to be optimal.

As for vault, you will find more peace regarding it as a mobility/evade skill rather than a dps skill. In raids, I find vault actually valuable because it gives me more mobility than other professions. For example, I can stick to the boss and dps a bit longer before I have to start retreating to take updraft in gorseval fight or fulfill my cannon duty in sabetha fight. In pvp as well, you will find yourself getting punished for spamming vault but if you use it defensively or after cripple/counting enemy’s dodges, it is very rewarding.

The staff weapon itself is designed as a very defensive weapon; weakness application, immob clear, blind application, cripple for control, disengaging evade and another evade with high mobility that just happens to do spike dmg. Spamming 1 for damage is working as intended in my opinion.

The old school d/d dps build isn’t outshined by staff either if you are feeling nostalgia. I believe DA/CS/trick 233/321/211 build has more single target dps than staff and you get to incorporate skill 5 as well as positioning into your dps rotation. Its just a matter of choice.