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Worst thief patch of my life


MindWipe.3028

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@reddie.5861 said:well warrior nowadays can run like a idiot and hit like a thief used to do back in core when every1 dmg was still normal :D.

tbh i just cant drop my thief no matter how much i try play warrior i always miss my thief :( but yes thief nowadays is like playing a naked character u deal normal dmg but u take a kitten load of dmg cus crits from people nowadays feel like backstabs back in core days.

This^ and I dont understand how arena net doesnt see this and I get to dislike a class but for people in the community to actually think thief is OP and not underperforming blows my mind. I get what ur saying as I left for few other classes but thief is what I've always known playstyle wise so I go back than get frustrated fast and just log out lol

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I have such a love-hate relationship with thief. My second-created character is a PvE DD. First thing I did after this update is switch back to core. 600 range steal are you kidding?

But in PvP, S/D thieves hard counter my Mes and sometimes chase me around the map knowing it. Almost impossible to avoid that initial steal that gives them every boon in the game, then they pick away at me between stealths that feel like forever. Even if it becomes a close fight, they activate their get out of jail card and finish me off with Dagger Storm. :cry:

If Anet was going to nerf thief in any way, why didn't they shave Dagger Storm? It feels so cheap every time. Thieves already have best-in-game disengage. They should use that strategically rather than cheesing Dagger Storm to turn fights they would have lost. Too much of a crutch.

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I like this patch enough to both come back from a break in the game, and even spend some money. Unblockable daze is very strong and the range nerf makes it interesting. I'm sure everything won't be perfect the first time through, but the general push toward cleaning up all existing skills including some core stuff has me optimistic. Also, those mesmer updates feel years overdue. I'm hoping we see some support for core deadeye thieves a little ways out that gives us non-glass cannon options.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@KrHome.1920 said:100% weakness uptime for free (minor trait)... 10% damage reduction from weakened foes. Further 10% damage reduction when you don't trait physical skills.

Perma weakness and another 20% damage reduction on top...

...but yea 600 range steal is a gamechanger because thieves have gapclosing issues (esp. when running dash which alone covers 450 distance). Thanks for the laugh! You can even use your superspeed dagger storm for gapclosing right next to tons of other options.

All the thieves feel hardcountered by pew pew rangers now because of.... because of what actually?

That buggy Sleight of Hand cooldown reduction sucks, but will be fixed in the next few days.

These Trait changes are pretty major kitten nerfs. To a spec that was already bad.It buffed my dumb condi build so it's not all bad.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@"KrHome.1920" said:100% weakness uptime for free (minor trait)... 10% damage reduction from weakened foes. Further 10% damage reduction when you don't trait physical skills.

Perma weakness and another 20% damage reduction on top...

...but yea 600 range steal is a gamechanger because thieves have gapclosing issues (esp. when running dash which alone covers 450 distance). Thanks for the laugh! You can even use your superspeed dagger storm for gapclosing right next to tons of other options.

All the thieves feel hardcountered by pew pew rangers now because of.... because of what actually?

That buggy Sleight of Hand cooldown reduction sucks, but will be fixed in the next few days.

Fun facts: Its not 100% weakness uptime or even anywhere close to it. Its 3 seconds of weakness for every dodge, which takes an average of 10 seconds to recharge. Its actually worse than the previous Weakning strikes which were 5 seconds of weakness on a 10 second timer. Additionally, the damage reduction trait is in the same line as the previously innate heal on dodge trait. As well as the trait that everones been picking since it gives much needed CDR and endurance. So not only is weakened strikes generally worse than the previous version (which you never picked), the minor trait it used to be (which was actually really good) is now something you have to give up an actually good trait for. And now the last fun fact. These Trait changes are pretty major kitten nerfs. To a spec that was already bad.

The damage add /reduction happens no matter the source of weakness. Thus if in DA and using steal or d/p you get weakness off the poison add. Staff and sword have inherent weakness adds. I do not consider the new weakening strikes "worse"{ as the old did not give a 7 percent damage boost. I much prefer 7 percent boost on dodge with 10 percent mitigation of damage then that extra second weakness with just the mitigation. It also much easier to achieve this on a dodge for a wider vareity of builds over getting it on just a crit. If using staff with staff mastery with a SOA and considering the endurance add on steal you get access to a lot of dodges and if using energy sigils or the endurance food in WvW there even more. You can keep weakness on an enemy for a long time.

Marauders resilience+weakening strikes+Unhindered Combat gives sources of 10+10 +10 damage reduction if wished. If in WvW using food you can get another source of 10.

Most people took havoc mastery before which was a 7 percent flat damage add. The new weakening gives you this 7 percent add as long as the foe as weakness on nad IMO is superior over taking the old Havoc given you also get the damage reduction. Just trait up other weakness sources.

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I think the best thing right now is joining an ele support group for dead classes because its here for thief now and I'm sure whatever the next thing the plebs whine about they will cave in to that too. I bet anet will try to lure us back one time with some kind of horrendous glitch like meteor's were except with a shortbow where it instantly kills people for a week. Then after that goes back to playing dead or being dead so ele's give us the info on that support group if any of you are still on life support we need those survival tips on how to not mess up that feeding tube and such.

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@babazhook.6805 said:

@"KrHome.1920" said:100% weakness uptime for free (minor trait)... 10% damage reduction from weakened foes. Further 10% damage reduction when you don't trait physical skills.

Perma weakness and another 20% damage reduction on top...

...but yea 600 range steal is a gamechanger because thieves have gapclosing issues (esp. when running dash which alone covers 450 distance). Thanks for the laugh! You can even use your superspeed dagger storm for gapclosing right next to tons of other options.

All the thieves feel hardcountered by pew pew rangers now because of.... because of what actually?

That buggy Sleight of Hand cooldown reduction sucks, but will be fixed in the next few days.

Fun facts: Its not 100% weakness uptime or even anywhere close to it. Its 3 seconds of weakness for every dodge, which takes an average of 10 seconds to recharge. Its actually worse than the previous Weakning strikes which were 5 seconds of weakness on a 10 second timer. Additionally, the damage reduction trait is in the same line as the previously innate heal on dodge trait. As well as the trait that everones been picking since it gives much needed CDR and endurance. So not only is weakened strikes generally worse than the previous version (which you never picked), the minor trait it used to be (which was actually really good) is now something you have to give up an actually good trait for. And now the last fun fact. These Trait changes are pretty major kitten nerfs. To a spec that was already bad.

The damage add /reduction happens no matter the source of weakness. Thus if in DA and using steal or d/p you get weakness off the poison add. Staff and sword have inherent weakness adds. I do not consider the new weakening strikes "worse"{ as the old did not give a 7 percent damage boost. I much prefer 7 percent boost on dodge with 10 percent mitigation of damage then that extra second weakness with just the mitigation. It also much easier to achieve this on a dodge for a wider vareity of builds over getting it on just a crit. If using staff with staff mastery with a SOA and considering the endurance add on steal you get access to a lot of dodges and if using energy sigils or the endurance food in WvW there even more. You can keep weakness on an enemy for a long time.

Marauders resilience+weakening strikes+Unhindered Combat gives sources of 10+10 +10 damage reduction if wished. If in WvW using food you can get another source of 10.

Most people took havoc mastery before which was a 7 percent flat damage add. The new weakening gives you this 7 percent add as long as the foe as weakness on nad IMO is superior over taking the old Havoc given you also get the damage reduction. Just trait up other weakness sources.

There are very few thief builds that dont reliably crit. And I cant think of any that actually would want weakening strikes over Escapists Absolution. Or even the physical trait. And sure, its no matter the source of weakness, but no weapon reliably adds weakness in PvP (Weakening charge is unreliable in PvP, the weakness on poison trait is not reliably enough triggered), and ultimately, its just not that great. The biggest problem (or rather, the 2 biggest problems), is the fact that condi-cleanse is so readily and easily available, that your weakness wont stick very often, and the fact that the best build for weakness, staff, got a severe downgrade with the new staff master trait.

Yeah, 30% damage reduction, conditionally. In exchange for losing the health on dodge. Additionally, 20% of it can easily be prevented from applying by the enemy. Which is pretty bad.

The problem is that Havoc Mastery was largely unconditional. It was just there. Weakness can just be cleansed, and you lose both ends of the weakening strikes trait.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@"KrHome.1920" said:100% weakness uptime for free (minor trait)... 10% damage reduction from weakened foes. Further 10% damage reduction when you don't trait physical skills.

Perma weakness and another 20% damage reduction on top...

...but yea 600 range steal is a gamechanger because thieves have gapclosing issues (esp. when running dash which alone covers 450 distance). Thanks for the laugh! You can even use your superspeed dagger storm for gapclosing right next to tons of other options.

All the thieves feel hardcountered by pew pew rangers now because of.... because of what actually?

That buggy Sleight of Hand cooldown reduction sucks, but will be fixed in the next few days.

Fun facts: Its not 100% weakness uptime or even anywhere close to it. Its 3 seconds of weakness for every dodge, which takes an average of 10 seconds to recharge. Its actually worse than the previous Weakning strikes which were 5 seconds of weakness on a 10 second timer. Additionally, the damage reduction trait is in the same line as the previously innate heal on dodge trait. As well as the trait that everones been picking since it gives much needed CDR and endurance. So not only is weakened strikes generally worse than the previous version (which you never picked), the minor trait it used to be (which was actually really good) is now something you have to give up an actually good trait for. And now the last fun fact. These Trait changes are pretty major kitten nerfs. To a spec that was already bad.

The damage add /reduction happens no matter the source of weakness. Thus if in DA and using steal or d/p you get weakness off the poison add. Staff and sword have inherent weakness adds. I do not consider the new weakening strikes "worse"{ as the old did not give a 7 percent damage boost. I much prefer 7 percent boost on dodge with 10 percent mitigation of damage then that extra second weakness with just the mitigation. It also much easier to achieve this on a dodge for a wider vareity of builds over getting it on just a crit. If using staff with staff mastery with a SOA and considering the endurance add on steal you get access to a lot of dodges and if using energy sigils or the endurance food in WvW there even more. You can keep weakness on an enemy for a long time.

Marauders resilience+weakening strikes+Unhindered Combat gives sources of 10+10 +10 damage reduction if wished. If in WvW using food you can get another source of 10.

Most people took havoc mastery before which was a 7 percent flat damage add. The new weakening gives you this 7 percent add as long as the foe as weakness on nad IMO is superior over taking the old Havoc given you also get the damage reduction. Just trait up other weakness sources.

There are
very
few thief builds that dont reliably crit. And I cant think of any that actually would want weakening strikes over Escapists Absolution. Or even the physical trait. And sure, its no matter the source of weakness, but no weapon reliably adds weakness in PvP (Weakening charge is unreliable in PvP, the weakness on poison trait is not reliably enough triggered), and ultimately, its just not that great. The
biggest
problem (or rather, the 2 biggest problems), is the fact that condi-cleanse is so readily and easily available, that your weakness wont stick very often, and the fact that the best build for weakness, staff, got a severe downgrade with the new staff master trait.

Yeah, 30% damage reduction, conditionally. In exchange for losing the health on dodge. Additionally, 20% of it can easily be prevented from applying by the enemy. Which is pretty bad.

The problem is that Havoc Mastery was largely unconditional. It was just there. Weakness can just be cleansed, and you lose both ends of the weakening strikes trait.

. Condition builds do not Crit. Builds that went Valkyrie for more health have lower Crits. Anyone that took PI over Escapists did not take escapists. Anyone that took staff mastery did not take Escapists. Escapists was a POOR condition cleanse and I dropped it in most of my builds for that reason as you had no control over whether or not you got an evade and you had no control over which Condition removed. When I played condition versus a thief relying on this trait , I woulkd laod my bomb and let him evade away to his hearts content while I stopped my attacks. Unless that thief traited up other cleanses he was dead and if he traited up other cleanses he might as well rely on those cleanses over EA.

Health on Dodge is about 500 per kick. 2000 more health means you need 4 successful evades to get the equivalent.There a multitude of enemy attacks that strike for 5k plus . If you manage to dodge it that 500 on evade not needed, if you take the hit I would rather get the health savings up front then have to rely on a successful evade later to get it back and, in any case, you can still take the new escpaists where a heal and cleanse combined if you not keen on marauders resilience.

I keep logs after every fight and went to my staff daredevil last night. The frequency of incoming hits that were fumbles went UP significantly simply because weakness much esier to apply and I do not have to swallow taking a hit first before I get that weakness on. Use a dodge to get the weakness on, then attack. Yes there a hit on damage out in staff and i feel the 6.5 percent loss on two of the staff skills unwarranted , but the sustain and survivability went up. The hit to damage on the traits themselves is around 3 percent over the old staff master/havoc build.

As to staff or swords or daggers sources of weakness via the poison or inherent traits they are no less relaible to apply weakness then was a build that missed the application because it did not get a crit in. Most power builds did not have crit rates of 100 percent.

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@babazhook.6805 said:

@"KrHome.1920" said:100% weakness uptime for free (minor trait)... 10% damage reduction from weakened foes. Further 10% damage reduction when you don't trait physical skills.

Perma weakness and another 20% damage reduction on top...

...but yea 600 range steal is a gamechanger because thieves have gapclosing issues (esp. when running dash which alone covers 450 distance). Thanks for the laugh! You can even use your superspeed dagger storm for gapclosing right next to tons of other options.

All the thieves feel hardcountered by pew pew rangers now because of.... because of what actually?

That buggy Sleight of Hand cooldown reduction sucks, but will be fixed in the next few days.

Fun facts: Its not 100% weakness uptime or even anywhere close to it. Its 3 seconds of weakness for every dodge, which takes an average of 10 seconds to recharge. Its actually worse than the previous Weakning strikes which were 5 seconds of weakness on a 10 second timer. Additionally, the damage reduction trait is in the same line as the previously innate heal on dodge trait. As well as the trait that everones been picking since it gives much needed CDR and endurance. So not only is weakened strikes generally worse than the previous version (which you never picked), the minor trait it used to be (which was actually really good) is now something you have to give up an actually good trait for. And now the last fun fact. These Trait changes are pretty major kitten nerfs. To a spec that was already bad.

The damage add /reduction happens no matter the source of weakness. Thus if in DA and using steal or d/p you get weakness off the poison add. Staff and sword have inherent weakness adds. I do not consider the new weakening strikes "worse"{ as the old did not give a 7 percent damage boost. I much prefer 7 percent boost on dodge with 10 percent mitigation of damage then that extra second weakness with just the mitigation. It also much easier to achieve this on a dodge for a wider vareity of builds over getting it on just a crit. If using staff with staff mastery with a SOA and considering the endurance add on steal you get access to a lot of dodges and if using energy sigils or the endurance food in WvW there even more. You can keep weakness on an enemy for a long time.

Marauders resilience+weakening strikes+Unhindered Combat gives sources of 10+10 +10 damage reduction if wished. If in WvW using food you can get another source of 10.

Most people took havoc mastery before which was a 7 percent flat damage add. The new weakening gives you this 7 percent add as long as the foe as weakness on nad IMO is superior over taking the old Havoc given you also get the damage reduction. Just trait up other weakness sources.

There are
very
few thief builds that dont reliably crit. And I cant think of any that actually would want weakening strikes over Escapists Absolution. Or even the physical trait. And sure, its no matter the source of weakness, but no weapon reliably adds weakness in PvP (Weakening charge is unreliable in PvP, the weakness on poison trait is not reliably enough triggered), and ultimately, its just not that great. The
biggest
problem (or rather, the 2 biggest problems), is the fact that condi-cleanse is so readily and easily available, that your weakness wont stick very often, and the fact that the best build for weakness, staff, got a severe downgrade with the new staff master trait.

Yeah, 30% damage reduction, conditionally. In exchange for losing the health on dodge. Additionally, 20% of it can easily be prevented from applying by the enemy. Which is pretty bad.

The problem is that Havoc Mastery was largely unconditional. It was just there. Weakness can just be cleansed, and you lose both ends of the weakening strikes trait.

. Condition builds do not Crit. Builds that went Valkyrie for more health have lower Crits. Anyone that took PI over Escapists did not take escapists. Anyone that took staff mastery did not take Escapists. Escapists was a POOR condition cleanse and I dropped it in most of my builds for that reason as you had no control over whether or not you got an evade and you had no control over which Condition removed. When I played condition versus a thief relying on this trait , I woulkd laod my bomb and let him evade away to his hearts content while I stopped my attacks. Unless that thief traited up other cleanses he was dead and if he traited up other cleanses he might as well rely on those cleanses over EA.

Health on Dodge is about 500 per kick. 2000 more health means you need 4 successful evades to get the equivalent.There a multitude of enemy attacks that strike for 5k plus . If you manage to dodge it that 500 on evade not needed, if you take the hit I would rather get the health savings up front then have to rely on a successful evade later to get it back and, in any case, you can still take the new escpaists where a heal and cleanse combined if you not keen on marauders resilience.

I keep logs after every fight and went to my staff daredevil last night. The frequency of incoming hits that were fumbles went UP significantly simply because weakness much esier to apply and I do not have to swallow taking a hit first before I get that weakness on. Use a dodge to get the weakness on, then attack.

Condi builds indeed dont. They are the "very few" builds that I mentioned. Even then, thats only somewhat true. A lot of them do, in fact, build crit. The only build that never builds crit is exactly chokebow. Oh and as for Valkyrie builds, the only Valkyrie builds that exist all use Hidden Killer and crit very reliably as well.

Escapists wasnt great, but weakening strikes was complete trash. Escapists at least saw a reasonable amount of play. Weakening Strikes was legitimately a "whoops, misclicked" trait. Again, if the 2 were in a traitline, you would never have picked weakening strikes over escapists absolution.

450, but yes. And 4 evades is achieved very, very quickly. And uh, no, the 500 is still very much so needed, because attacks that strike for 5k arent all of the attacks. The heal is just better than the upfront health of marauders resilience. The problem is that now you have to surrender the heal on dodge to get Brawlers Tenacity, which is neccessary to keep up evades on D/P. Staff cares less, but Staff isnt good.

No, it went up because a trait so terrible you never picked it before was forced upon you. The actual weakness generation, had you picked the trait for some reason before, went way down. And to make matters worse, the option you picked before is gone. You effectively lost damage, you lost sustain, and you gained nothing.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@"KrHome.1920" said:100% weakness uptime for free (minor trait)... 10% damage reduction from weakened foes. Further 10% damage reduction when you don't trait physical skills.

Perma weakness and another 20% damage reduction on top...

...but yea 600 range steal is a gamechanger because thieves have gapclosing issues (esp. when running dash which alone covers 450 distance). Thanks for the laugh! You can even use your superspeed dagger storm for gapclosing right next to tons of other options.

All the thieves feel hardcountered by pew pew rangers now because of.... because of what actually?

That buggy Sleight of Hand cooldown reduction sucks, but will be fixed in the next few days.

Fun facts: Its not 100% weakness uptime or even anywhere close to it. Its 3 seconds of weakness for every dodge, which takes an average of 10 seconds to recharge. Its actually worse than the previous Weakning strikes which were 5 seconds of weakness on a 10 second timer. Additionally, the damage reduction trait is in the same line as the previously innate heal on dodge trait. As well as the trait that everones been picking since it gives much needed CDR and endurance. So not only is weakened strikes generally worse than the previous version (which you never picked), the minor trait it used to be (which was actually really good) is now something you have to give up an actually good trait for. And now the last fun fact. These Trait changes are pretty major kitten nerfs. To a spec that was already bad.

The damage add /reduction happens no matter the source of weakness. Thus if in DA and using steal or d/p you get weakness off the poison add. Staff and sword have inherent weakness adds. I do not consider the new weakening strikes "worse"{ as the old did not give a 7 percent damage boost. I much prefer 7 percent boost on dodge with 10 percent mitigation of damage then that extra second weakness with just the mitigation. It also much easier to achieve this on a dodge for a wider vareity of builds over getting it on just a crit. If using staff with staff mastery with a SOA and considering the endurance add on steal you get access to a lot of dodges and if using energy sigils or the endurance food in WvW there even more. You can keep weakness on an enemy for a long time.

Marauders resilience+weakening strikes+Unhindered Combat gives sources of 10+10 +10 damage reduction if wished. If in WvW using food you can get another source of 10.

Most people took havoc mastery before which was a 7 percent flat damage add. The new weakening gives you this 7 percent add as long as the foe as weakness on nad IMO is superior over taking the old Havoc given you also get the damage reduction. Just trait up other weakness sources.

There are
very
few thief builds that dont reliably crit. And I cant think of any that actually would want weakening strikes over Escapists Absolution. Or even the physical trait. And sure, its no matter the source of weakness, but no weapon reliably adds weakness in PvP (Weakening charge is unreliable in PvP, the weakness on poison trait is not reliably enough triggered), and ultimately, its just not that great. The
biggest
problem (or rather, the 2 biggest problems), is the fact that condi-cleanse is so readily and easily available, that your weakness wont stick very often, and the fact that the best build for weakness, staff, got a severe downgrade with the new staff master trait.

Yeah, 30% damage reduction, conditionally. In exchange for losing the health on dodge. Additionally, 20% of it can easily be prevented from applying by the enemy. Which is pretty bad.

The problem is that Havoc Mastery was largely unconditional. It was just there. Weakness can just be cleansed, and you lose both ends of the weakening strikes trait.

. Condition builds do not Crit. Builds that went Valkyrie for more health have lower Crits. Anyone that took PI over Escapists did not take escapists. Anyone that took staff mastery did not take Escapists. Escapists was a POOR condition cleanse and I dropped it in most of my builds for that reason as you had no control over whether or not you got an evade and you had no control over which Condition removed. When I played condition versus a thief relying on this trait , I woulkd laod my bomb and let him evade away to his hearts content while I stopped my attacks. Unless that thief traited up other cleanses he was dead and if he traited up other cleanses he might as well rely on those cleanses over EA.

Health on Dodge is about 500 per kick. 2000 more health means you need 4 successful evades to get the equivalent.There a multitude of enemy attacks that strike for 5k plus . If you manage to dodge it that 500 on evade not needed, if you take the hit I would rather get the health savings up front then have to rely on a successful evade later to get it back and, in any case, you can still take the new escpaists where a heal and cleanse combined if you not keen on marauders resilience.

I keep logs after every fight and went to my staff daredevil last night. The frequency of incoming hits that were fumbles went UP significantly simply because weakness much esier to apply and I do not have to swallow taking a hit first before I get that weakness on. Use a dodge to get the weakness on, then attack.

Condi builds indeed dont. They are the "very few" builds that I mentioned. Even then, thats only somewhat true. A lot of them do, in fact, build crit. The only build that never builds crit is exactly chokebow. Oh and as for Valkyrie builds, the only Valkyrie builds that exist all use Hidden Killer and crit very reliably as well.

Escapists wasnt great, but weakening strikes was complete trash. Escapists at least saw a reasonable amount of play. Weakening Strikes was legitimately a "whoops, misclicked" trait. Again, if the 2 were in a traitline, you would
never
have picked weakening strikes over escapists absolution.

450, but yes. And 4 evades is achieved very, very quickly. And uh, no, the 500 is still very much so needed, because attacks that strike for 5k arent all of the attacks. The heal is just better than the upfront health of marauders resilience. The problem is that now you have to surrender the heal on dodge to get Brawlers Tenacity, which is neccessary to keep up evades on D/P. Staff cares less, but Staff isnt good.

No, it went up because a trait so terrible you never picked it before was forced upon you. The actual weakness generation, had you picked the trait for some reason before, went way down. And to make matters worse, the option you picked before is gone. You effectively lost damage, you lost sustain, and you gained nothing.

Not my experience at all. Sustain went UP. I did not lose Escapists because I never took it. I would have LIKED to take weakening strikes but havoc mastery was better. I never took brawelrs tenacisty because havoc mastery was better for my build. I can now take Escapists and Havoc mastery and throw in a free weakening strikes while still getting the heal off the evade if I wished. . 2 sustain traits bundled into one can be deemed a loss of sustain.

Go to metabattle and even there few builds took Escapists.

Weakening strikes on dodge as a minor mastery is an upgrade over a 500 point heal on an evade in minor mastery. Now there some question as to placement of each trait and I am not going to make conclusions on that until I test further but the change to weakening stikes and placing it as a minor mastery IMO is a good thing.

At this point the only real NERF I take exception to is the range on steal. The rest I either do not see as nerfs and or can deal with.

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@babazhook.6805 said:

@"KrHome.1920" said:100% weakness uptime for free (minor trait)... 10% damage reduction from weakened foes. Further 10% damage reduction when you don't trait physical skills.

Perma weakness and another 20% damage reduction on top...

...but yea 600 range steal is a gamechanger because thieves have gapclosing issues (esp. when running dash which alone covers 450 distance). Thanks for the laugh! You can even use your superspeed dagger storm for gapclosing right next to tons of other options.

All the thieves feel hardcountered by pew pew rangers now because of.... because of what actually?

That buggy Sleight of Hand cooldown reduction sucks, but will be fixed in the next few days.

Fun facts: Its not 100% weakness uptime or even anywhere close to it. Its 3 seconds of weakness for every dodge, which takes an average of 10 seconds to recharge. Its actually worse than the previous Weakning strikes which were 5 seconds of weakness on a 10 second timer. Additionally, the damage reduction trait is in the same line as the previously innate heal on dodge trait. As well as the trait that everones been picking since it gives much needed CDR and endurance. So not only is weakened strikes generally worse than the previous version (which you never picked), the minor trait it used to be (which was actually really good) is now something you have to give up an actually good trait for. And now the last fun fact. These Trait changes are pretty major kitten nerfs. To a spec that was already bad.

The damage add /reduction happens no matter the source of weakness. Thus if in DA and using steal or d/p you get weakness off the poison add. Staff and sword have inherent weakness adds. I do not consider the new weakening strikes "worse"{ as the old did not give a 7 percent damage boost. I much prefer 7 percent boost on dodge with 10 percent mitigation of damage then that extra second weakness with just the mitigation. It also much easier to achieve this on a dodge for a wider vareity of builds over getting it on just a crit. If using staff with staff mastery with a SOA and considering the endurance add on steal you get access to a lot of dodges and if using energy sigils or the endurance food in WvW there even more. You can keep weakness on an enemy for a long time.

Marauders resilience+weakening strikes+Unhindered Combat gives sources of 10+10 +10 damage reduction if wished. If in WvW using food you can get another source of 10.

Most people took havoc mastery before which was a 7 percent flat damage add. The new weakening gives you this 7 percent add as long as the foe as weakness on nad IMO is superior over taking the old Havoc given you also get the damage reduction. Just trait up other weakness sources.

There are
very
few thief builds that dont reliably crit. And I cant think of any that actually would want weakening strikes over Escapists Absolution. Or even the physical trait. And sure, its no matter the source of weakness, but no weapon reliably adds weakness in PvP (Weakening charge is unreliable in PvP, the weakness on poison trait is not reliably enough triggered), and ultimately, its just not that great. The
biggest
problem (or rather, the 2 biggest problems), is the fact that condi-cleanse is so readily and easily available, that your weakness wont stick very often, and the fact that the best build for weakness, staff, got a severe downgrade with the new staff master trait.

Yeah, 30% damage reduction, conditionally. In exchange for losing the health on dodge. Additionally, 20% of it can easily be prevented from applying by the enemy. Which is pretty bad.

The problem is that Havoc Mastery was largely unconditional. It was just there. Weakness can just be cleansed, and you lose both ends of the weakening strikes trait.

. Condition builds do not Crit. Builds that went Valkyrie for more health have lower Crits. Anyone that took PI over Escapists did not take escapists. Anyone that took staff mastery did not take Escapists. Escapists was a POOR condition cleanse and I dropped it in most of my builds for that reason as you had no control over whether or not you got an evade and you had no control over which Condition removed. When I played condition versus a thief relying on this trait , I woulkd laod my bomb and let him evade away to his hearts content while I stopped my attacks. Unless that thief traited up other cleanses he was dead and if he traited up other cleanses he might as well rely on those cleanses over EA.

Health on Dodge is about 500 per kick. 2000 more health means you need 4 successful evades to get the equivalent.There a multitude of enemy attacks that strike for 5k plus . If you manage to dodge it that 500 on evade not needed, if you take the hit I would rather get the health savings up front then have to rely on a successful evade later to get it back and, in any case, you can still take the new escpaists where a heal and cleanse combined if you not keen on marauders resilience.

I keep logs after every fight and went to my staff daredevil last night. The frequency of incoming hits that were fumbles went UP significantly simply because weakness much esier to apply and I do not have to swallow taking a hit first before I get that weakness on. Use a dodge to get the weakness on, then attack.

Condi builds indeed dont. They are the "very few" builds that I mentioned. Even then, thats only somewhat true. A lot of them do, in fact, build crit. The only build that never builds crit is exactly chokebow. Oh and as for Valkyrie builds, the only Valkyrie builds that exist all use Hidden Killer and crit very reliably as well.

Escapists wasnt great, but weakening strikes was complete trash. Escapists at least saw a reasonable amount of play. Weakening Strikes was legitimately a "whoops, misclicked" trait. Again, if the 2 were in a traitline, you would
never
have picked weakening strikes over escapists absolution.

450, but yes. And 4 evades is achieved very, very quickly. And uh, no, the 500 is still very much so needed, because attacks that strike for 5k arent all of the attacks. The heal is just better than the upfront health of marauders resilience. The problem is that now you have to surrender the heal on dodge to get Brawlers Tenacity, which is neccessary to keep up evades on D/P. Staff cares less, but Staff isnt good.

No, it went up because a trait so terrible you never picked it before was forced upon you. The actual weakness generation, had you picked the trait for some reason before, went way down. And to make matters worse, the option you picked before is gone. You effectively lost damage, you lost sustain, and you gained nothing.

Not my experience at all. Sustain went UP. I did not lose Escapists because I never took it. I would have LIKED to take weakening strikes but havoc mastery was better. I never took brawelrs tenacisty because havoc mastery was better for my build. I can now take Escapists and Havoc mastery and throw in a free weakening strikes while still getting the heal off the evade if I wished. . 2 sustain traits bundled into one can be deemed a loss of sustain.

Go to metabattle and even there few builds took Escapists.

Weakening strikes on dodge as a minor mastery is an upgrade over a 500 point heal on an evade in minor mastery.

Sustain clearly went down, like its not even a question. You lost major amounts of heal on dodge, you lost major amounts of endurance regeneration, and you got nothing in return. The fact that you didnt lose absolution doesnt matter, because you did lose Fortitude. And uh, no, Havoc Mastery was better on a lot of builds, but on every single one where it wasnt you picked Brawlers Tenacity. Weakening Strikes wasnt even considered because of how bad it is. And sure, you can do that. However, this build is just worse than the previous option of Havoc Mastery (reliable 7% damage up instead of conditional), escapists, with the same minor trait. And the actually good builds are gone alltogether.

Few did, yes. But there were a fair amount that did. On the other hand, over the course of Daredevils entire history on Metabattle, there had never been even a single build that picked Weakening Strikes. Its actually impressive how little it was picked, to my knowledge few traits have been that useless. And now we got a downgraded version of it as a minor. Thats pretty shit.

Nah, its a severe downgrade. Whatever weakness you apply gets cleansed real quick anyway, and even if it did, its useless against condis (your biggest weakness), and even if you are fighting a power build, and they dont cleanse it off, its not gonna give you the damage resistance that the heal does in the long run anyway.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@"KrHome.1920" said:100% weakness uptime for free (minor trait)... 10% damage reduction from weakened foes. Further 10% damage reduction when you don't trait physical skills.

Perma weakness and another 20% damage reduction on top...

...but yea 600 range steal is a gamechanger because thieves have gapclosing issues (esp. when running dash which alone covers 450 distance). Thanks for the laugh! You can even use your superspeed dagger storm for gapclosing right next to tons of other options.

All the thieves feel hardcountered by pew pew rangers now because of.... because of what actually?

That buggy Sleight of Hand cooldown reduction sucks, but will be fixed in the next few days.

Fun facts: Its not 100% weakness uptime or even anywhere close to it. Its 3 seconds of weakness for every dodge, which takes an average of 10 seconds to recharge. Its actually worse than the previous Weakning strikes which were 5 seconds of weakness on a 10 second timer. Additionally, the damage reduction trait is in the same line as the previously innate heal on dodge trait. As well as the trait that everones been picking since it gives much needed CDR and endurance. So not only is weakened strikes generally worse than the previous version (which you never picked), the minor trait it used to be (which was actually really good) is now something you have to give up an actually good trait for. And now the last fun fact. These Trait changes are pretty major kitten nerfs. To a spec that was already bad.

The damage add /reduction happens no matter the source of weakness. Thus if in DA and using steal or d/p you get weakness off the poison add. Staff and sword have inherent weakness adds. I do not consider the new weakening strikes "worse"{ as the old did not give a 7 percent damage boost. I much prefer 7 percent boost on dodge with 10 percent mitigation of damage then that extra second weakness with just the mitigation. It also much easier to achieve this on a dodge for a wider vareity of builds over getting it on just a crit. If using staff with staff mastery with a SOA and considering the endurance add on steal you get access to a lot of dodges and if using energy sigils or the endurance food in WvW there even more. You can keep weakness on an enemy for a long time.

Marauders resilience+weakening strikes+Unhindered Combat gives sources of 10+10 +10 damage reduction if wished. If in WvW using food you can get another source of 10.

Most people took havoc mastery before which was a 7 percent flat damage add. The new weakening gives you this 7 percent add as long as the foe as weakness on nad IMO is superior over taking the old Havoc given you also get the damage reduction. Just trait up other weakness sources.

There are
very
few thief builds that dont reliably crit. And I cant think of any that actually would want weakening strikes over Escapists Absolution. Or even the physical trait. And sure, its no matter the source of weakness, but no weapon reliably adds weakness in PvP (Weakening charge is unreliable in PvP, the weakness on poison trait is not reliably enough triggered), and ultimately, its just not that great. The
biggest
problem (or rather, the 2 biggest problems), is the fact that condi-cleanse is so readily and easily available, that your weakness wont stick very often, and the fact that the best build for weakness, staff, got a severe downgrade with the new staff master trait.

Yeah, 30% damage reduction, conditionally. In exchange for losing the health on dodge. Additionally, 20% of it can easily be prevented from applying by the enemy. Which is pretty bad.

The problem is that Havoc Mastery was largely unconditional. It was just there. Weakness can just be cleansed, and you lose both ends of the weakening strikes trait.

. Condition builds do not Crit. Builds that went Valkyrie for more health have lower Crits. Anyone that took PI over Escapists did not take escapists. Anyone that took staff mastery did not take Escapists. Escapists was a POOR condition cleanse and I dropped it in most of my builds for that reason as you had no control over whether or not you got an evade and you had no control over which Condition removed. When I played condition versus a thief relying on this trait , I woulkd laod my bomb and let him evade away to his hearts content while I stopped my attacks. Unless that thief traited up other cleanses he was dead and if he traited up other cleanses he might as well rely on those cleanses over EA.

Health on Dodge is about 500 per kick. 2000 more health means you need 4 successful evades to get the equivalent.There a multitude of enemy attacks that strike for 5k plus . If you manage to dodge it that 500 on evade not needed, if you take the hit I would rather get the health savings up front then have to rely on a successful evade later to get it back and, in any case, you can still take the new escpaists where a heal and cleanse combined if you not keen on marauders resilience.

I keep logs after every fight and went to my staff daredevil last night. The frequency of incoming hits that were fumbles went UP significantly simply because weakness much esier to apply and I do not have to swallow taking a hit first before I get that weakness on. Use a dodge to get the weakness on, then attack.

Condi builds indeed dont. They are the "very few" builds that I mentioned. Even then, thats only somewhat true. A lot of them do, in fact, build crit. The only build that never builds crit is exactly chokebow. Oh and as for Valkyrie builds, the only Valkyrie builds that exist all use Hidden Killer and crit very reliably as well.

Escapists wasnt great, but weakening strikes was complete trash. Escapists at least saw a reasonable amount of play. Weakening Strikes was legitimately a "whoops, misclicked" trait. Again, if the 2 were in a traitline, you would
never
have picked weakening strikes over escapists absolution.

450, but yes. And 4 evades is achieved very, very quickly. And uh, no, the 500 is still very much so needed, because attacks that strike for 5k arent all of the attacks. The heal is just better than the upfront health of marauders resilience. The problem is that now you have to surrender the heal on dodge to get Brawlers Tenacity, which is neccessary to keep up evades on D/P. Staff cares less, but Staff isnt good.

No, it went up because a trait so terrible you never picked it before was forced upon you. The actual weakness generation, had you picked the trait for some reason before, went way down. And to make matters worse, the option you picked before is gone. You effectively lost damage, you lost sustain, and you gained nothing.

Not my experience at all. Sustain went UP. I did not lose Escapists because I never took it. I would have LIKED to take weakening strikes but havoc mastery was better. I never took brawelrs tenacisty because havoc mastery was better for my build. I can now take Escapists and Havoc mastery and throw in a free weakening strikes while still getting the heal off the evade if I wished. . 2 sustain traits bundled into one can be deemed a loss of sustain.

Go to metabattle and even there few builds took Escapists.

Weakening strikes on dodge as a minor mastery is an upgrade over a 500 point heal on an evade in minor mastery.

Sustain clearly went down, like its not even a question. You lost major amounts of heal on dodge, you lost major amounts of endurance regeneration, and you got nothing in return. The fact that you didnt lose absolution doesnt matter, because you
did
lose Fortitude. And uh, no, Havoc Mastery was better on a lot of builds, but on
every single one where it wasnt
you picked Brawlers Tenacity. Weakening Strikes wasnt even considered because of how bad it is. And sure, you can do that. However, this build is just worse than the previous option of Havoc Mastery (reliable 7% damage up instead of conditional), escapists, with the same minor trait. And the actually good builds are gone alltogether.

Few did, yes. But there were a fair amount that did. On the other hand, over the course of Daredevils entire history on Metabattle, there had never been even a
single
build that picked Weakening Strikes. Its actually impressive how little it was picked, to my knowledge few traits have been that useless. And now we got a downgraded version of it as a minor. Thats pretty kitten.

Nah, its a
severe
downgrade. Whatever weakness you apply gets cleansed real quick anyway, and even if it did, its useless against condis (your biggest weakness), and even if you are fighting a power build, and they dont cleanse it off, its not gonna give you the damage resistance that the heal does in the long run anyway.

weakening strikes seems pretty good tbh, no icd on that (yet) i personally use to take havoc mastery but now its kinda meh, I do like escapest fort change. so the only sustain you lose is, if you take brawlers then you lose condi/heal per dodge. but you get 20% recharge on heal (assuming you run channaled vigor)

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@"KrHome.1920" said:100% weakness uptime for free (minor trait)... 10% damage reduction from weakened foes. Further 10% damage reduction when you don't trait physical skills.

Perma weakness and another 20% damage reduction on top...

...but yea 600 range steal is a gamechanger because thieves have gapclosing issues (esp. when running dash which alone covers 450 distance). Thanks for the laugh! You can even use your superspeed dagger storm for gapclosing right next to tons of other options.

All the thieves feel hardcountered by pew pew rangers now because of.... because of what actually?

That buggy Sleight of Hand cooldown reduction sucks, but will be fixed in the next few days.

Fun facts: Its not 100% weakness uptime or even anywhere close to it. Its 3 seconds of weakness for every dodge, which takes an average of 10 seconds to recharge. Its actually worse than the previous Weakning strikes which were 5 seconds of weakness on a 10 second timer. Additionally, the damage reduction trait is in the same line as the previously innate heal on dodge trait. As well as the trait that everones been picking since it gives much needed CDR and endurance. So not only is weakened strikes generally worse than the previous version (which you never picked), the minor trait it used to be (which was actually really good) is now something you have to give up an actually good trait for. And now the last fun fact. These Trait changes are pretty major kitten nerfs. To a spec that was already bad.

The damage add /reduction happens no matter the source of weakness. Thus if in DA and using steal or d/p you get weakness off the poison add. Staff and sword have inherent weakness adds. I do not consider the new weakening strikes "worse"{ as the old did not give a 7 percent damage boost. I much prefer 7 percent boost on dodge with 10 percent mitigation of damage then that extra second weakness with just the mitigation. It also much easier to achieve this on a dodge for a wider vareity of builds over getting it on just a crit. If using staff with staff mastery with a SOA and considering the endurance add on steal you get access to a lot of dodges and if using energy sigils or the endurance food in WvW there even more. You can keep weakness on an enemy for a long time.

Marauders resilience+weakening strikes+Unhindered Combat gives sources of 10+10 +10 damage reduction if wished. If in WvW using food you can get another source of 10.

Most people took havoc mastery before which was a 7 percent flat damage add. The new weakening gives you this 7 percent add as long as the foe as weakness on nad IMO is superior over taking the old Havoc given you also get the damage reduction. Just trait up other weakness sources.

There are
very
few thief builds that dont reliably crit. And I cant think of any that actually would want weakening strikes over Escapists Absolution. Or even the physical trait. And sure, its no matter the source of weakness, but no weapon reliably adds weakness in PvP (Weakening charge is unreliable in PvP, the weakness on poison trait is not reliably enough triggered), and ultimately, its just not that great. The
biggest
problem (or rather, the 2 biggest problems), is the fact that condi-cleanse is so readily and easily available, that your weakness wont stick very often, and the fact that the best build for weakness, staff, got a severe downgrade with the new staff master trait.

Yeah, 30% damage reduction, conditionally. In exchange for losing the health on dodge. Additionally, 20% of it can easily be prevented from applying by the enemy. Which is pretty bad.

The problem is that Havoc Mastery was largely unconditional. It was just there. Weakness can just be cleansed, and you lose both ends of the weakening strikes trait.

. Condition builds do not Crit. Builds that went Valkyrie for more health have lower Crits. Anyone that took PI over Escapists did not take escapists. Anyone that took staff mastery did not take Escapists. Escapists was a POOR condition cleanse and I dropped it in most of my builds for that reason as you had no control over whether or not you got an evade and you had no control over which Condition removed. When I played condition versus a thief relying on this trait , I woulkd laod my bomb and let him evade away to his hearts content while I stopped my attacks. Unless that thief traited up other cleanses he was dead and if he traited up other cleanses he might as well rely on those cleanses over EA.

Health on Dodge is about 500 per kick. 2000 more health means you need 4 successful evades to get the equivalent.There a multitude of enemy attacks that strike for 5k plus . If you manage to dodge it that 500 on evade not needed, if you take the hit I would rather get the health savings up front then have to rely on a successful evade later to get it back and, in any case, you can still take the new escpaists where a heal and cleanse combined if you not keen on marauders resilience.

I keep logs after every fight and went to my staff daredevil last night. The frequency of incoming hits that were fumbles went UP significantly simply because weakness much esier to apply and I do not have to swallow taking a hit first before I get that weakness on. Use a dodge to get the weakness on, then attack.

Condi builds indeed dont. They are the "very few" builds that I mentioned. Even then, thats only somewhat true. A lot of them do, in fact, build crit. The only build that never builds crit is exactly chokebow. Oh and as for Valkyrie builds, the only Valkyrie builds that exist all use Hidden Killer and crit very reliably as well.

Escapists wasnt great, but weakening strikes was complete trash. Escapists at least saw a reasonable amount of play. Weakening Strikes was legitimately a "whoops, misclicked" trait. Again, if the 2 were in a traitline, you would
never
have picked weakening strikes over escapists absolution.

450, but yes. And 4 evades is achieved very, very quickly. And uh, no, the 500 is still very much so needed, because attacks that strike for 5k arent all of the attacks. The heal is just better than the upfront health of marauders resilience. The problem is that now you have to surrender the heal on dodge to get Brawlers Tenacity, which is neccessary to keep up evades on D/P. Staff cares less, but Staff isnt good.

No, it went up because a trait so terrible you never picked it before was forced upon you. The actual weakness generation, had you picked the trait for some reason before, went way down. And to make matters worse, the option you picked before is gone. You effectively lost damage, you lost sustain, and you gained nothing.

Not my experience at all. Sustain went UP. I did not lose Escapists because I never took it. I would have LIKED to take weakening strikes but havoc mastery was better. I never took brawelrs tenacisty because havoc mastery was better for my build. I can now take Escapists and Havoc mastery and throw in a free weakening strikes while still getting the heal off the evade if I wished. . 2 sustain traits bundled into one can be deemed a loss of sustain.

Go to metabattle and even there few builds took Escapists.

Weakening strikes on dodge as a minor mastery is an upgrade over a 500 point heal on an evade in minor mastery.

Sustain clearly went down, like its not even a question. You lost major amounts of heal on dodge, you lost major amounts of endurance regeneration, and you got nothing in return. The fact that you didnt lose absolution doesnt matter, because you
did
lose Fortitude. And uh, no, Havoc Mastery was better on a lot of builds, but on
every single one where it wasnt
you picked Brawlers Tenacity. Weakening Strikes wasnt even considered because of how bad it is. And sure, you can do that. However, this build is just worse than the previous option of Havoc Mastery (reliable 7% damage up instead of conditional), escapists, with the same minor trait. And the actually good builds are gone alltogether.

Few did, yes. But there were a fair amount that did. On the other hand, over the course of Daredevils entire history on Metabattle, there had never been even a
single
build that picked Weakening Strikes. Its actually impressive how little it was picked, to my knowledge few traits have been that useless. And now we got a downgraded version of it as a minor. Thats pretty kitten.

Nah, its a
severe
downgrade. Whatever weakness you apply gets cleansed real quick anyway, and even if it did, its useless against condis (your biggest weakness), and even if you are fighting a power build, and they dont cleanse it off, its not gonna give you the damage resistance that the heal does in the long run anyway.

You're not making a very convincing argument. While anecdotal evidence is still anecdotal; at least Babazhook played around with the changes and gave his two cents. Meanwhile your counter-arguments have been "Uhhh, No." without providing any sort experience or context of your own, I see mostly theory-crafting.

The swipe range is buggered, but the other changes not so much. Previously, healing on thief has never played a big role in my fights, I always ran Acrobatics over Daredevil anyway, because you're always better off just trying not to take a hit to begin with. Once you do take a solid hit, it's your que to gtfo. Usually when you do take a hit, 500x3 HP is not going to be enough to survive the next two. It's still going to be 2 or 3 hits to kill you(simplified for the points sake).

With the potential for DR stacking and extra health, I'd rather choose being able to survive potentially 5 hits compared to the old 3 hits I could take, where I had a CHANCE to MAYBE survive 4 if I had a sufficient amount of dodge opportunities. Not to mention how healing itself becomes more valuable with flat out DR's.

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@Turk.5460 said:

@Turk.5460 said:It sure hurt my S/D Daredevil build, but the range nerf on Steal/Swipe doesn't really affect me with D/P Daredevil.

Am I the only one that imagines the unblockable steal with sleight of hand in sword builds being really nice? That's what I'm planning on testing.

I mean, the big question in this case is, when does the unblockable matter? If youre using Sleight of Hand, you want to be interrupting. But the only time youd be interrupting someone who is blocking is if they have Aegis. Which, as it so happens, already gets ripped by bountiful theft every time, so the unblockable is totally useless. The only time this combination would matter is against channeled block. And my question is, do you
really
want to be wasting your steal to stop a channeled block? Especially as the one weaponset that has a way to bank a nasty hit against channeled blocks.

Here's where it will be useful w/SoH, interrupting the channeled defenses (at least from abilities I see commonly used in WvW)

Shield Stance (Warrior Shield)Crystal Hibernation (Rev Shield)Warding Rift (Rev Staff)Echo of Memory (Chrono Shield)Illusionary Counter (Mesmer Scepter)Shelter (Guard Heal)Static Shield (Engi Shield)

These skills are relied on by their casters as temporary relief or stall while more of their kit comes off of cooldown. They don't expect to get interrupted (and immediately pressured upon the interrupt) while channeling these. I expect a lot of those players to panic when this happens, especially Revs and Warriors.

Mmm... you may have the best point to defend the Unblockable Steal. I'd say basilisk venom... but well, Basilisk venom has a lengthy activation time.

Trouble is, a lot of the other classes still have a relatively easy time facing down thieves until our the balance team gets a better idea what to do with the rest of our kit.

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@TwiceDead.1963 said:

@"KrHome.1920" said:100% weakness uptime for free (minor trait)... 10% damage reduction from weakened foes. Further 10% damage reduction when you don't trait physical skills.

Perma weakness and another 20% damage reduction on top...

...but yea 600 range steal is a gamechanger because thieves have gapclosing issues (esp. when running dash which alone covers 450 distance). Thanks for the laugh! You can even use your superspeed dagger storm for gapclosing right next to tons of other options.

All the thieves feel hardcountered by pew pew rangers now because of.... because of what actually?

That buggy Sleight of Hand cooldown reduction sucks, but will be fixed in the next few days.

Fun facts: Its not 100% weakness uptime or even anywhere close to it. Its 3 seconds of weakness for every dodge, which takes an average of 10 seconds to recharge. Its actually worse than the previous Weakning strikes which were 5 seconds of weakness on a 10 second timer. Additionally, the damage reduction trait is in the same line as the previously innate heal on dodge trait. As well as the trait that everones been picking since it gives much needed CDR and endurance. So not only is weakened strikes generally worse than the previous version (which you never picked), the minor trait it used to be (which was actually really good) is now something you have to give up an actually good trait for. And now the last fun fact. These Trait changes are pretty major kitten nerfs. To a spec that was already bad.

The damage add /reduction happens no matter the source of weakness. Thus if in DA and using steal or d/p you get weakness off the poison add. Staff and sword have inherent weakness adds. I do not consider the new weakening strikes "worse"{ as the old did not give a 7 percent damage boost. I much prefer 7 percent boost on dodge with 10 percent mitigation of damage then that extra second weakness with just the mitigation. It also much easier to achieve this on a dodge for a wider vareity of builds over getting it on just a crit. If using staff with staff mastery with a SOA and considering the endurance add on steal you get access to a lot of dodges and if using energy sigils or the endurance food in WvW there even more. You can keep weakness on an enemy for a long time.

Marauders resilience+weakening strikes+Unhindered Combat gives sources of 10+10 +10 damage reduction if wished. If in WvW using food you can get another source of 10.

Most people took havoc mastery before which was a 7 percent flat damage add. The new weakening gives you this 7 percent add as long as the foe as weakness on nad IMO is superior over taking the old Havoc given you also get the damage reduction. Just trait up other weakness sources.

There are
very
few thief builds that dont reliably crit. And I cant think of any that actually would want weakening strikes over Escapists Absolution. Or even the physical trait. And sure, its no matter the source of weakness, but no weapon reliably adds weakness in PvP (Weakening charge is unreliable in PvP, the weakness on poison trait is not reliably enough triggered), and ultimately, its just not that great. The
biggest
problem (or rather, the 2 biggest problems), is the fact that condi-cleanse is so readily and easily available, that your weakness wont stick very often, and the fact that the best build for weakness, staff, got a severe downgrade with the new staff master trait.

Yeah, 30% damage reduction, conditionally. In exchange for losing the health on dodge. Additionally, 20% of it can easily be prevented from applying by the enemy. Which is pretty bad.

The problem is that Havoc Mastery was largely unconditional. It was just there. Weakness can just be cleansed, and you lose both ends of the weakening strikes trait.

. Condition builds do not Crit. Builds that went Valkyrie for more health have lower Crits. Anyone that took PI over Escapists did not take escapists. Anyone that took staff mastery did not take Escapists. Escapists was a POOR condition cleanse and I dropped it in most of my builds for that reason as you had no control over whether or not you got an evade and you had no control over which Condition removed. When I played condition versus a thief relying on this trait , I woulkd laod my bomb and let him evade away to his hearts content while I stopped my attacks. Unless that thief traited up other cleanses he was dead and if he traited up other cleanses he might as well rely on those cleanses over EA.

Health on Dodge is about 500 per kick. 2000 more health means you need 4 successful evades to get the equivalent.There a multitude of enemy attacks that strike for 5k plus . If you manage to dodge it that 500 on evade not needed, if you take the hit I would rather get the health savings up front then have to rely on a successful evade later to get it back and, in any case, you can still take the new escpaists where a heal and cleanse combined if you not keen on marauders resilience.

I keep logs after every fight and went to my staff daredevil last night. The frequency of incoming hits that were fumbles went UP significantly simply because weakness much esier to apply and I do not have to swallow taking a hit first before I get that weakness on. Use a dodge to get the weakness on, then attack.

Condi builds indeed dont. They are the "very few" builds that I mentioned. Even then, thats only somewhat true. A lot of them do, in fact, build crit. The only build that never builds crit is exactly chokebow. Oh and as for Valkyrie builds, the only Valkyrie builds that exist all use Hidden Killer and crit very reliably as well.

Escapists wasnt great, but weakening strikes was complete trash. Escapists at least saw a reasonable amount of play. Weakening Strikes was legitimately a "whoops, misclicked" trait. Again, if the 2 were in a traitline, you would
never
have picked weakening strikes over escapists absolution.

450, but yes. And 4 evades is achieved very, very quickly. And uh, no, the 500 is still very much so needed, because attacks that strike for 5k arent all of the attacks. The heal is just better than the upfront health of marauders resilience. The problem is that now you have to surrender the heal on dodge to get Brawlers Tenacity, which is neccessary to keep up evades on D/P. Staff cares less, but Staff isnt good.

No, it went up because a trait so terrible you never picked it before was forced upon you. The actual weakness generation, had you picked the trait for some reason before, went way down. And to make matters worse, the option you picked before is gone. You effectively lost damage, you lost sustain, and you gained nothing.

Not my experience at all. Sustain went UP. I did not lose Escapists because I never took it. I would have LIKED to take weakening strikes but havoc mastery was better. I never took brawelrs tenacisty because havoc mastery was better for my build. I can now take Escapists and Havoc mastery and throw in a free weakening strikes while still getting the heal off the evade if I wished. . 2 sustain traits bundled into one can be deemed a loss of sustain.

Go to metabattle and even there few builds took Escapists.

Weakening strikes on dodge as a minor mastery is an upgrade over a 500 point heal on an evade in minor mastery.

Sustain clearly went down, like its not even a question. You lost major amounts of heal on dodge, you lost major amounts of endurance regeneration, and you got nothing in return. The fact that you didnt lose absolution doesnt matter, because you
did
lose Fortitude. And uh, no, Havoc Mastery was better on a lot of builds, but on
every single one where it wasnt
you picked Brawlers Tenacity. Weakening Strikes wasnt even considered because of how bad it is. And sure, you can do that. However, this build is just worse than the previous option of Havoc Mastery (reliable 7% damage up instead of conditional), escapists, with the same minor trait. And the actually good builds are gone alltogether.

Few did, yes. But there were a fair amount that did. On the other hand, over the course of Daredevils entire history on Metabattle, there had never been even a
single
build that picked Weakening Strikes. Its actually impressive how little it was picked, to my knowledge few traits have been that useless. And now we got a downgraded version of it as a minor. Thats pretty kitten.

Nah, its a
severe
downgrade. Whatever weakness you apply gets cleansed real quick anyway, and even if it did, its useless against condis (your biggest weakness), and even if you are fighting a power build, and they dont cleanse it off, its not gonna give you the damage resistance that the heal does in the long run anyway.

You're not making a very convincing argument. While anecdotal evidence is still anecdotal; at least Babazhook played around with the changes and gave his two cents. Meanwhile your counter-arguments have been
"Uhhh, No."
without providing any sort experience or context of your own, I see mostly theory-crafting.

The swipe range is buggered, but the other changes not so much. Previously, healing on thief has never played a big role in my fights, I always ran Acrobatics over Daredevil anyway, because you're always better off just trying not to take a hit to begin with. Once you do take a solid hit, it's your que to gtfo. Usually when you do take a hit, 500x3 HP is not going to be enough to survive the next two. It's still going to be 2 or 3 hits to kill you(simplified for the points sake).

With the potential for DR stacking and extra health, I'd rather choose being able to survive potentially 5 hits compared to the old 3 hits I could take, where I had a CHANCE to MAYBE survive 4 if I had a sufficient amount of dodge opportunities. Not to mention how healing itself becomes more valuable with flat out DR's.

Anecdotal evidence is worthless compared to simple, mathematical analysis. But, for the record, I did test it extensively. It was as much of a severe downgrade as the analysis showed. You lost sustain hard. You gained nothing. Fights where before you had a chance to win if the enemy was careless became as much of an instant loss as others.

Right, but youre always going to get hit. There is no way to avoid all damage. And if you only get hit sometimes and evade most things, turns out healing on dodge is far more impactful than weakness. Youll also be getting a lot more than 500x3 hp. Even D/P, without any in-built evades, still has signet and channeled Vigor for endurance regen and a fair amount of, well, additional dodges.

But youre not gonna be able to potentially survive 5 hits compared to the old 3. If you died in 3 hits before, youre going to simply die in 3 hits again. The big hits, the ones that take off huge chunks of your health are the ones you want to avoid at all cost, stopping them via evades or interrupts. If you get hit by them, no amount of health or DR is going to save you. Its the small hits that matter. And in regards to small hits, being able to take 10 instead of 9 is a lot less valuable than being able to heal so much you can take 14 instead of 9, for example.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@"KrHome.1920" said:100% weakness uptime for free (minor trait)... 10% damage reduction from weakened foes. Further 10% damage reduction when you don't trait physical skills.

Perma weakness and another 20% damage reduction on top...

...but yea 600 range steal is a gamechanger because thieves have gapclosing issues (esp. when running dash which alone covers 450 distance). Thanks for the laugh! You can even use your superspeed dagger storm for gapclosing right next to tons of other options.

All the thieves feel hardcountered by pew pew rangers now because of.... because of what actually?

That buggy Sleight of Hand cooldown reduction sucks, but will be fixed in the next few days.

Fun facts: Its not 100% weakness uptime or even anywhere close to it. Its 3 seconds of weakness for every dodge, which takes an average of 10 seconds to recharge. Its actually worse than the previous Weakning strikes which were 5 seconds of weakness on a 10 second timer. Additionally, the damage reduction trait is in the same line as the previously innate heal on dodge trait. As well as the trait that everones been picking since it gives much needed CDR and endurance. So not only is weakened strikes generally worse than the previous version (which you never picked), the minor trait it used to be (which was actually really good) is now something you have to give up an actually good trait for. And now the last fun fact. These Trait changes are pretty major kitten nerfs. To a spec that was already bad.

The damage add /reduction happens no matter the source of weakness. Thus if in DA and using steal or d/p you get weakness off the poison add. Staff and sword have inherent weakness adds. I do not consider the new weakening strikes "worse"{ as the old did not give a 7 percent damage boost. I much prefer 7 percent boost on dodge with 10 percent mitigation of damage then that extra second weakness with just the mitigation. It also much easier to achieve this on a dodge for a wider vareity of builds over getting it on just a crit. If using staff with staff mastery with a SOA and considering the endurance add on steal you get access to a lot of dodges and if using energy sigils or the endurance food in WvW there even more. You can keep weakness on an enemy for a long time.

Marauders resilience+weakening strikes+Unhindered Combat gives sources of 10+10 +10 damage reduction if wished. If in WvW using food you can get another source of 10.

Most people took havoc mastery before which was a 7 percent flat damage add. The new weakening gives you this 7 percent add as long as the foe as weakness on nad IMO is superior over taking the old Havoc given you also get the damage reduction. Just trait up other weakness sources.

There are
very
few thief builds that dont reliably crit. And I cant think of any that actually would want weakening strikes over Escapists Absolution. Or even the physical trait. And sure, its no matter the source of weakness, but no weapon reliably adds weakness in PvP (Weakening charge is unreliable in PvP, the weakness on poison trait is not reliably enough triggered), and ultimately, its just not that great. The
biggest
problem (or rather, the 2 biggest problems), is the fact that condi-cleanse is so readily and easily available, that your weakness wont stick very often, and the fact that the best build for weakness, staff, got a severe downgrade with the new staff master trait.

Yeah, 30% damage reduction, conditionally. In exchange for losing the health on dodge. Additionally, 20% of it can easily be prevented from applying by the enemy. Which is pretty bad.

The problem is that Havoc Mastery was largely unconditional. It was just there. Weakness can just be cleansed, and you lose both ends of the weakening strikes trait.

. Condition builds do not Crit. Builds that went Valkyrie for more health have lower Crits. Anyone that took PI over Escapists did not take escapists. Anyone that took staff mastery did not take Escapists. Escapists was a POOR condition cleanse and I dropped it in most of my builds for that reason as you had no control over whether or not you got an evade and you had no control over which Condition removed. When I played condition versus a thief relying on this trait , I woulkd laod my bomb and let him evade away to his hearts content while I stopped my attacks. Unless that thief traited up other cleanses he was dead and if he traited up other cleanses he might as well rely on those cleanses over EA.

Health on Dodge is about 500 per kick. 2000 more health means you need 4 successful evades to get the equivalent.There a multitude of enemy attacks that strike for 5k plus . If you manage to dodge it that 500 on evade not needed, if you take the hit I would rather get the health savings up front then have to rely on a successful evade later to get it back and, in any case, you can still take the new escpaists where a heal and cleanse combined if you not keen on marauders resilience.

I keep logs after every fight and went to my staff daredevil last night. The frequency of incoming hits that were fumbles went UP significantly simply because weakness much esier to apply and I do not have to swallow taking a hit first before I get that weakness on. Use a dodge to get the weakness on, then attack.

Condi builds indeed dont. They are the "very few" builds that I mentioned. Even then, thats only somewhat true. A lot of them do, in fact, build crit. The only build that never builds crit is exactly chokebow. Oh and as for Valkyrie builds, the only Valkyrie builds that exist all use Hidden Killer and crit very reliably as well.

Escapists wasnt great, but weakening strikes was complete trash. Escapists at least saw a reasonable amount of play. Weakening Strikes was legitimately a "whoops, misclicked" trait. Again, if the 2 were in a traitline, you would
never
have picked weakening strikes over escapists absolution.

450, but yes. And 4 evades is achieved very, very quickly. And uh, no, the 500 is still very much so needed, because attacks that strike for 5k arent all of the attacks. The heal is just better than the upfront health of marauders resilience. The problem is that now you have to surrender the heal on dodge to get Brawlers Tenacity, which is neccessary to keep up evades on D/P. Staff cares less, but Staff isnt good.

No, it went up because a trait so terrible you never picked it before was forced upon you. The actual weakness generation, had you picked the trait for some reason before, went way down. And to make matters worse, the option you picked before is gone. You effectively lost damage, you lost sustain, and you gained nothing.

Not my experience at all. Sustain went UP. I did not lose Escapists because I never took it. I would have LIKED to take weakening strikes but havoc mastery was better. I never took brawelrs tenacisty because havoc mastery was better for my build. I can now take Escapists and Havoc mastery and throw in a free weakening strikes while still getting the heal off the evade if I wished. . 2 sustain traits bundled into one can be deemed a loss of sustain.

Go to metabattle and even there few builds took Escapists.

Weakening strikes on dodge as a minor mastery is an upgrade over a 500 point heal on an evade in minor mastery.

Sustain clearly went down, like its not even a question. You lost major amounts of heal on dodge, you lost major amounts of endurance regeneration, and you got nothing in return. The fact that you didnt lose absolution doesnt matter, because you
did
lose Fortitude. And uh, no, Havoc Mastery was better on a lot of builds, but on
every single one where it wasnt
you picked Brawlers Tenacity. Weakening Strikes wasnt even considered because of how bad it is. And sure, you can do that. However, this build is just worse than the previous option of Havoc Mastery (reliable 7% damage up instead of conditional), escapists, with the same minor trait. And the actually good builds are gone alltogether.

Few did, yes. But there were a fair amount that did. On the other hand, over the course of Daredevils entire history on Metabattle, there had never been even a
single
build that picked Weakening Strikes. Its actually impressive how little it was picked, to my knowledge few traits have been that useless. And now we got a downgraded version of it as a minor. Thats pretty kitten.

Nah, its a
severe
downgrade. Whatever weakness you apply gets cleansed real quick anyway, and even if it did, its useless against condis (your biggest weakness), and even if you are fighting a power build, and they dont cleanse it off, its not gonna give you the damage resistance that the heal does in the long run anyway.

You're not making a very convincing argument. While anecdotal evidence is still anecdotal; at least Babazhook played around with the changes and gave his two cents. Meanwhile your counter-arguments have been
"Uhhh, No."
without providing any sort experience or context of your own, I see mostly theory-crafting.

The swipe range is buggered, but the other changes not so much. Previously, healing on thief has never played a big role in my fights, I always ran Acrobatics over Daredevil anyway, because you're always better off just trying not to take a hit to begin with. Once you do take a solid hit, it's your que to gtfo. Usually when you do take a hit, 500x3 HP is not going to be enough to survive the next two. It's still going to be 2 or 3 hits to kill you(simplified for the points sake).

With the potential for DR stacking and extra health, I'd rather choose being able to survive potentially 5 hits compared to the old 3 hits I could take, where I had a CHANCE to MAYBE survive 4 if I had a sufficient amount of dodge opportunities. Not to mention how healing itself becomes more valuable with flat out DR's.

Anecdotal evidence is worthless compared to simple, mathematical analysis. But, for the record, I did test it extensively. It was as much of a severe downgrade as the analysis showed. You lost sustain hard. You gained nothing. Fights where before you had a chance to win if the enemy was careless became as much of an instant loss as others.

Right, but youre always going to get hit. There is no way to avoid all damage. And if you only get hit sometimes and evade most things, turns out healing on dodge is
far
more impactful than weakness. Youll also be getting a lot more than 500x3 hp. Even D/P, without any in-built evades, still has signet and channeled Vigor for endurance regen and a fair amount of, well, additional dodges.

But youre not gonna be able to potentially survive 5 hits compared to the old 3. If you died in 3 hits before, youre going to simply die in 3 hits again. The big hits, the ones that take off huge chunks of your health are the ones you want to avoid at all cost, stopping them via evades or interrupts. If you get hit by them, no amount of health or DR is going to save you. Its the small hits that matter. And in regards to small hits, being able to take 10 instead of 9 is a lot less valuable than being able to heal so much you can take 14 instead of 9, for example.

Healing for dodge at 500 per is NOT that impactful. By your own words you claimed that it tkes 10 seconds to recharge a dodge. In a D/P set there no built in evades so you only get the dodge. Added to that a successful evade needed to get that heal. I am going to be generous here and allow two successful evades every 10 seconds. Thats around 100 heal per second. I get more off a regen running. 2000 health up fron will take some 20 seconds of your heal on dodges to make up for. This 2000 health up front does not even account for the 10 percent added mitigation of resilience . I am just comparing resilience directly to the old heal on dodge here and there absolutely no way you get more out of the old heal on dodge.

Marauders reslience is way ahead of the old heal on dodge in sustain.

So now we come to the new layout where one can add in the new weakening strikes. We will leave marauders resilience aside completely. One of two scenarios is true. The number of total EVADES you get out of a d/p build is going to come from dodges be it the regular dodge or that from utility. There none in the weaponset. You are not going to get an evade 100 percent of the time but I will assume you do. If you can in fact get 3 successful off in 10 seconds then you can also apply weakness three times at 3 seconds each for those 10 seconds. Even considering cleanses this is high weakness uptime just from a dodge. You get another 10 percent mitigation from that weakness added on top of the fumbles that WILL occur resulting in a hit that would tag you for 5000 hitting for 500. You need a lot of successful evades to make up that 4500 health savings. Not only that but you get 7 percent extra damage bundled in.

Contrary to your claims you WILL survive those big hits when an enemy has weakness on. You will also compromise their own ability to dodge as it halts endurance regen. Weakness is one of the most powerful conditions out there when fighting power specs and I will take 50 percent and even 30 percent weakness uptime on an enemy over 500 heal on a successful evade anytime. If they cleanse you apply again and the rate you can reapply weakness is always higher then the rate you can get a successful evade for a 500 heal.

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@babazhook.6805 said:

@"KrHome.1920" said:100% weakness uptime for free (minor trait)... 10% damage reduction from weakened foes. Further 10% damage reduction when you don't trait physical skills.

Perma weakness and another 20% damage reduction on top...

...but yea 600 range steal is a gamechanger because thieves have gapclosing issues (esp. when running dash which alone covers 450 distance). Thanks for the laugh! You can even use your superspeed dagger storm for gapclosing right next to tons of other options.

All the thieves feel hardcountered by pew pew rangers now because of.... because of what actually?

That buggy Sleight of Hand cooldown reduction sucks, but will be fixed in the next few days.

Fun facts: Its not 100% weakness uptime or even anywhere close to it. Its 3 seconds of weakness for every dodge, which takes an average of 10 seconds to recharge. Its actually worse than the previous Weakning strikes which were 5 seconds of weakness on a 10 second timer. Additionally, the damage reduction trait is in the same line as the previously innate heal on dodge trait. As well as the trait that everones been picking since it gives much needed CDR and endurance. So not only is weakened strikes generally worse than the previous version (which you never picked), the minor trait it used to be (which was actually really good) is now something you have to give up an actually good trait for. And now the last fun fact. These Trait changes are pretty major kitten nerfs. To a spec that was already bad.

The damage add /reduction happens no matter the source of weakness. Thus if in DA and using steal or d/p you get weakness off the poison add. Staff and sword have inherent weakness adds. I do not consider the new weakening strikes "worse"{ as the old did not give a 7 percent damage boost. I much prefer 7 percent boost on dodge with 10 percent mitigation of damage then that extra second weakness with just the mitigation. It also much easier to achieve this on a dodge for a wider vareity of builds over getting it on just a crit. If using staff with staff mastery with a SOA and considering the endurance add on steal you get access to a lot of dodges and if using energy sigils or the endurance food in WvW there even more. You can keep weakness on an enemy for a long time.

Marauders resilience+weakening strikes+Unhindered Combat gives sources of 10+10 +10 damage reduction if wished. If in WvW using food you can get another source of 10.

Most people took havoc mastery before which was a 7 percent flat damage add. The new weakening gives you this 7 percent add as long as the foe as weakness on nad IMO is superior over taking the old Havoc given you also get the damage reduction. Just trait up other weakness sources.

There are
very
few thief builds that dont reliably crit. And I cant think of any that actually would want weakening strikes over Escapists Absolution. Or even the physical trait. And sure, its no matter the source of weakness, but no weapon reliably adds weakness in PvP (Weakening charge is unreliable in PvP, the weakness on poison trait is not reliably enough triggered), and ultimately, its just not that great. The
biggest
problem (or rather, the 2 biggest problems), is the fact that condi-cleanse is so readily and easily available, that your weakness wont stick very often, and the fact that the best build for weakness, staff, got a severe downgrade with the new staff master trait.

Yeah, 30% damage reduction, conditionally. In exchange for losing the health on dodge. Additionally, 20% of it can easily be prevented from applying by the enemy. Which is pretty bad.

The problem is that Havoc Mastery was largely unconditional. It was just there. Weakness can just be cleansed, and you lose both ends of the weakening strikes trait.

. Condition builds do not Crit. Builds that went Valkyrie for more health have lower Crits. Anyone that took PI over Escapists did not take escapists. Anyone that took staff mastery did not take Escapists. Escapists was a POOR condition cleanse and I dropped it in most of my builds for that reason as you had no control over whether or not you got an evade and you had no control over which Condition removed. When I played condition versus a thief relying on this trait , I woulkd laod my bomb and let him evade away to his hearts content while I stopped my attacks. Unless that thief traited up other cleanses he was dead and if he traited up other cleanses he might as well rely on those cleanses over EA.

Health on Dodge is about 500 per kick. 2000 more health means you need 4 successful evades to get the equivalent.There a multitude of enemy attacks that strike for 5k plus . If you manage to dodge it that 500 on evade not needed, if you take the hit I would rather get the health savings up front then have to rely on a successful evade later to get it back and, in any case, you can still take the new escpaists where a heal and cleanse combined if you not keen on marauders resilience.

I keep logs after every fight and went to my staff daredevil last night. The frequency of incoming hits that were fumbles went UP significantly simply because weakness much esier to apply and I do not have to swallow taking a hit first before I get that weakness on. Use a dodge to get the weakness on, then attack.

Condi builds indeed dont. They are the "very few" builds that I mentioned. Even then, thats only somewhat true. A lot of them do, in fact, build crit. The only build that never builds crit is exactly chokebow. Oh and as for Valkyrie builds, the only Valkyrie builds that exist all use Hidden Killer and crit very reliably as well.

Escapists wasnt great, but weakening strikes was complete trash. Escapists at least saw a reasonable amount of play. Weakening Strikes was legitimately a "whoops, misclicked" trait. Again, if the 2 were in a traitline, you would
never
have picked weakening strikes over escapists absolution.

450, but yes. And 4 evades is achieved very, very quickly. And uh, no, the 500 is still very much so needed, because attacks that strike for 5k arent all of the attacks. The heal is just better than the upfront health of marauders resilience. The problem is that now you have to surrender the heal on dodge to get Brawlers Tenacity, which is neccessary to keep up evades on D/P. Staff cares less, but Staff isnt good.

No, it went up because a trait so terrible you never picked it before was forced upon you. The actual weakness generation, had you picked the trait for some reason before, went way down. And to make matters worse, the option you picked before is gone. You effectively lost damage, you lost sustain, and you gained nothing.

Not my experience at all. Sustain went UP. I did not lose Escapists because I never took it. I would have LIKED to take weakening strikes but havoc mastery was better. I never took brawelrs tenacisty because havoc mastery was better for my build. I can now take Escapists and Havoc mastery and throw in a free weakening strikes while still getting the heal off the evade if I wished. . 2 sustain traits bundled into one can be deemed a loss of sustain.

Go to metabattle and even there few builds took Escapists.

Weakening strikes on dodge as a minor mastery is an upgrade over a 500 point heal on an evade in minor mastery.

Sustain clearly went down, like its not even a question. You lost major amounts of heal on dodge, you lost major amounts of endurance regeneration, and you got nothing in return. The fact that you didnt lose absolution doesnt matter, because you
did
lose Fortitude. And uh, no, Havoc Mastery was better on a lot of builds, but on
every single one where it wasnt
you picked Brawlers Tenacity. Weakening Strikes wasnt even considered because of how bad it is. And sure, you can do that. However, this build is just worse than the previous option of Havoc Mastery (reliable 7% damage up instead of conditional), escapists, with the same minor trait. And the actually good builds are gone alltogether.

Few did, yes. But there were a fair amount that did. On the other hand, over the course of Daredevils entire history on Metabattle, there had never been even a
single
build that picked Weakening Strikes. Its actually impressive how little it was picked, to my knowledge few traits have been that useless. And now we got a downgraded version of it as a minor. Thats pretty kitten.

Nah, its a
severe
downgrade. Whatever weakness you apply gets cleansed real quick anyway, and even if it did, its useless against condis (your biggest weakness), and even if you are fighting a power build, and they dont cleanse it off, its not gonna give you the damage resistance that the heal does in the long run anyway.

You're not making a very convincing argument. While anecdotal evidence is still anecdotal; at least Babazhook played around with the changes and gave his two cents. Meanwhile your counter-arguments have been
"Uhhh, No."
without providing any sort experience or context of your own, I see mostly theory-crafting.

The swipe range is buggered, but the other changes not so much. Previously, healing on thief has never played a big role in my fights, I always ran Acrobatics over Daredevil anyway, because you're always better off just trying not to take a hit to begin with. Once you do take a solid hit, it's your que to gtfo. Usually when you do take a hit, 500x3 HP is not going to be enough to survive the next two. It's still going to be 2 or 3 hits to kill you(simplified for the points sake).

With the potential for DR stacking and extra health, I'd rather choose being able to survive potentially 5 hits compared to the old 3 hits I could take, where I had a CHANCE to MAYBE survive 4 if I had a sufficient amount of dodge opportunities. Not to mention how healing itself becomes more valuable with flat out DR's.

Anecdotal evidence is worthless compared to simple, mathematical analysis. But, for the record, I did test it extensively. It was as much of a severe downgrade as the analysis showed. You lost sustain hard. You gained nothing. Fights where before you had a chance to win if the enemy was careless became as much of an instant loss as others.

Right, but youre always going to get hit. There is no way to avoid all damage. And if you only get hit sometimes and evade most things, turns out healing on dodge is
far
more impactful than weakness. Youll also be getting a lot more than 500x3 hp. Even D/P, without any in-built evades, still has signet and channeled Vigor for endurance regen and a fair amount of, well, additional dodges.

But youre not gonna be able to potentially survive 5 hits compared to the old 3. If you died in 3 hits before, youre going to simply die in 3 hits again. The big hits, the ones that take off huge chunks of your health are the ones you want to avoid at all cost, stopping them via evades or interrupts. If you get hit by them, no amount of health or DR is going to save you. Its the small hits that matter. And in regards to small hits, being able to take 10 instead of 9 is a lot less valuable than being able to heal so much you can take 14 instead of 9, for example.

Healing for dodge at 500 per is NOT that impactful. By your own words you claimed that it tkes 10 seconds to recharge a dodge. In a D/P set there no built in evades so you only get the dodge. Added to that a successful evade needed to get that heal. I am going to be generous here and allow two successful evades every 10 seconds. Thats around 100 heal per second. I get more off a regen running. 2000 health up fron will take some 20 seconds of your heal on dodges to make up for. This 2000 health up front does not even account for the 10 percent added mitigation of resilience . I am just comparing resilience directly to the old heal on dodge here and there absolutely no way you get more out of the old heal on dodge.

Marauders reslience is way ahead of the old heal on dodge in sustain.

So now we come to the new layout where one can add in the new weakening strikes. We will leave marauders resilience aside completely. One of two scenarios is true. The number of total EVADES you get out of a d/p build is going to come from dodges be it the regular dodge or that from utility. There none in the weaponset. You are not going to get an evade 100 percent of the time but I will assume you do. If you can in fact get 3 successful off in 10 seconds then you can also apply weakness three times at 3 seconds each for those 10 seconds. Even considering cleanses this is high weakness uptime just from a dodge. You get another 10 percent mitigation from that weakness added on top of the fumbles that WILL occur resulting in a hit that would tag you for 5000 hitting for 500. You need a lot of successful evades to make up that 4500 health savings. Not only that but you get 7 percent extra damage bundled in.

Contrary to your claims you WILL survive those big hits when an enemy has weakness on. You will also compromise their own ability to dodge as it halts endurance regen. Weakness is one of the most powerful conditions out there when fighting power specs and I will take 50 percent and even 30 percent weakness uptime on an enemy over 500 heal on a successful evade anytime. If they cleanse you apply again and the rate you can reapply weakness is always higher then the rate you can get a successful evade for a 500 heal.

Quite the opposite. It is that impactful. It just doesnt seem that way because its hard to notice its effect. Youre right, normally it takes 10 seconds to recharge a dodge. However, add the endurance on steal from the mastery, the endurance regeneration from channeled vigor, and the endurance regeneration from brawlers tenacity, and you get a fair amount more dodges. Saying that 2 successful dodges per 10 seconds is "generous" is just a bad joke. Thats not generous, thats vastly underestimating it. Realistically, youre looking at around 5-7 dodges per 10 seconds. More if you swap over to Shortbow out of panic, but I dont count that. You dont get 2000 health, you get 1500, and its outclassed in just 10 seconds, so yknow. Not great.

Nah, its way behind. Like, not even comparable. The 1500 extra health you get is outclassed in just 4 dodges. Which, since you start with 3, and you also have 3 seperate ways to get bursts of endurance, happens very quickly. And it just keeps falling off harder and harder as the time goes on. Now, the damage resistance is putting up a much better fight. But even it loses. Even if all the damage you took was physical damage (doesnt work on condis), and even if all of it was within range, if you take your whole health in damage ,thats just 1700 extra health. Thats another 3 dodges and the healing on dodge wins out again. And 7 dodges is hardly difficult for a fight to achieve. And this is perfect scenario. Realistically, it performs much worse.

Its high weakness uptime in theory, but Ill let you in on a little secret. See, all 3 common Core/DD Thief builds have very high weakness uptime. Sword straight up has 100% weakness uptime if it wants, Dagger has 40% baseline without doing anything and staff has weakening charge. You probably didnt know that, because weakness is useless and you dont even notice its effects. Its also part of why weakening strikes was so awful. You couldve picked it on dagger thief and had a near 100% weakness upkeep. But its bad, so you didnt. Also, you need to check your math. If a hit crits for 5000, then if its a full marauder build, youre gonna be reducing that by half, since its not a crit, then by half, since its a glancing blow (leaving you with 1250), and then that gets reduced by 10%, leaving you with 1125 damage. Course, compared to the weakness you probably already had, all you got was that 10%. Pretty bad when its put like that, no? 125 is less than a single dodge.

Unless they immideatly cleanse. Or have Resistance. Or arent even crit-based. Or use conditions. But none of that even matters, because were comparing the 10%. That is the only thing that matters. And no, Weakness is the worst condition no matter who youre fighting. Its the only one thats just basically never useful. Cripple at least sometimes helps with enemies running from you. But then again, we already know that. Thief already has 40-100% weakness uptime baseline. Its just so useless noone even really thinks about it. Its just there, does almost nothing, and thats that. The heal on dodge is vastly superior compared to the weakness, especially because weakness can just be cleansed and rendered irrelevant ontop of being far too conditional.

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