Jugglemonkey.8741

Well, that's mostly because it isn't right. With 25 might a celestial build is going to be sitting on roughly 2.5k power and 1.5k condi damage, which is roughly where a marauder or trailblazer build respectively would start with no might at all. Dedicated builds will always deal more of their damage type than a celestial build can, but a celestial build will sometimes deal more total damage between power and condi, and that's the real issue. For instance, my trailblazer specter can get 7k total condi ticks and my cele build only gets 4k ticks, but when you factor in the skill that applies condi hitting for 3k power damage per use the cele build will out DPS the trailblazer.

Definitely. Personally I don't like the fact that celestial is the best option for roaming when it's supposed to be a jack of all trades type armour, but I honestly don't care whether they did what I suggested or not. I just think that out of all the suggestions put forth, changing might to a flat % buff is probably a better change than removing the expertise and concentration from celestial. I personally think that most of the really problematic cele builds are strong not simply because of celestial gear but because of celestial gear plus other compounding profession balance issues. The build Sahne references is strong primarily because of the interaction between daredevil bound and the reworked shadow arts tree, it is already very strong on marauder and trailblazer, it just happens to be strongest on celestial for the reasons he mentions. You could make a similar argument about celestial harbingers, elementalists of all elite flavours, willbenders, specters, etc etc: the base profession is already strong without celestial, celestial is just the icing on the cake.

Oh yeah, you're 100% right here, we had a chat about our build choices for this on another thread. I guess I usually take the view that if cele is busted on something then odds are it's already strong on marauder/trailblazer too. The problem with boons is that celestial will always be OP with them and useless without them. Frankly I wonder if it wouldn't be better to remove might altogether (or change it to a flat % buff) then rebalance all skill power coefficients to compensate, keeping the balance of power roughly the same for most specs but reducing the power gain specifically for boon stacking builds like celestial.

That just means you aren't throwing enough asura at once.

This build is beatable if you're good at timing knockdowns and fears for the end of dodges and you use skills to deny stealth where possible. That said it is really is dumb how strong it is, although it's not actually celestial that makes it strong, it's just as obnoxious on trailblazer too. I normally don't play it unless I'm fighting a cele harbinger or something like that, it's fair game at that point I figure.

Sounds about right xD

This. I'd try not to temper expectations based on the currently existing traits, and assume that something new is coming in their place. May be good, may be bad, but it'll be a change either way, hopefully.

Ha, you beat me to it xD

It all depends on might stacks now, if you can maintain 25 might you'll actually do more damage than a viper build with no might because you'll have the same condi damage but better crits. That's why celestial is so strong in WvW roaming right now. There are better runes and gear sets for fractals and raids, but if this is just for open world then I would take aristocracy runes if you're going full celestial on daredevil. The minor daredevil trait weakening strikes will spam weakness, the runes give might when you apply weakness meaning if you put a strength sigil on your daggers you're going to be on 25 might with roughly 90% might duration just by alternating dodge and dagger 3. Take the lotus dodge for more bleed and torment, and spam dagger 2 with full might stacks to finish stuff faster. Fireworks runes are also a good choice if you want something that will be useful on all the thief elite specs, you'll still get might from the tune but also move speed and an easier time capping fury.

Honestly it depends what elite specs you are running, and what duration thresholds you want to hit. Something you need to take into account with condis is that damage is only applied every second, so if you want extra damage from more duration you need to make sure you have enough to hit the next full second's tick. For example, if your main condi applying skill applies 2s of poison, you want 50% or 100% extra poison duration to get more damage. Having 90% means your condis drop off before the tick and you get no more damage than if you had 50%. Taking a full set of duration gear (viper, trailblazer or celestial) with +duration runes (thorns for poison etc) and trickery for the expertise from lead attacks is enough to get to 100%, so think about that as you make your gear choice. You don't need crit chance on core, daredevil or specter but it's pretty important for deadeye to get at least 50% crit after fury as crits fuel your malice generation on initiative costing skills (assuming you're running pistol/dagger and spamming repeater, the multi hit nature of the skill means 30% base crit chance is plenty). I'd probably go rabid armour with trailblazer trinkets and viper weapons for deadeye and see how you go, you'll want expertise infusions to get 100% condi duration though because of the loss of duration from rabid. Specter and deadeye both benefit nicely from full celestial because they can both self buff to 25 might. Specter relies on battle/strength sigils with shroud proccing the on swap sigil along with a few shroud autos, deadeye gets might from strength sigil, sneak attacks (deadly arts, middle choice top option) and from getting max malice with maleficent 7 (deadeye grandmaster, top choice). Specter also performs strongly on trailblazer and on ritualist gear. kittenredevil with dual pistols is very strong on celestial or trailblazer right now, using the smoke fields from pistol 5 along with the bound dodge to get leaps for stealth. Viper, grieving, sinister, carrion and plaguedoctor are all good but not really worth making a full build out of because they either lack enough vitality or enough expertise compared to celestial and trailblazer. Better to mix and match these stats into a celestial/trailblazer base.

Tbh if there was a broom staff skin, I'd probably use it.

Well, what you're saying is correct if I was running the build you think I am, but by the sounds of it I'm not. I'm running this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PawAoqVlNwEZbsOGJecX3NbA-z1IY1o7/YaTBEoEITRQvChsFUS+AEufLVpsBA-w I'm already running withdraw and roll for initiative over smokescreen as I think smokescreen is a bad choice for this build, so the roots comparison between the two builds is incorrect. I actually have the same amount of root cleanse as you do because roll for ini and withdraw both remove root regardless of trickster and blinding powder along with antitoxin runes will also cleanse roots if you are fast enough. You are correct that roots counter the build in general though, which is why this build struggles more with a well played core necro specced into fear than it does with harbinger. I say that smokescreen is a bad choice for the build because all it does is compensate for the loss of initiative caused by not taking the shadow rejuvenation GM trait by allowing you to stealth without casting black powder. The problem is that because you're running P/P & P/P you don't have any way to capitalise on the extra smoke field except for using more dodges, which I already have an advantage over you in since you lack the vigor from bountiful theft. If you ran shortbow offhand then smoke screen would make far more sense, although I'd still argue that blinding powder is a better choice. I don't run P/P & P/P, I run P/P & shortbow as the long stealth from black powder > cluster bomb x2 > bound x2 allows for permastealth outside of combat and a full disengage inside combat, which largely deals with the build's lack of mobility when roaming solo. This along with your choice of smokescreen over blinding powder means I have both a stealth (and therefore cleanse) and an initiative advantage over your build, which is why I normally kill thief players running aristocracy runes with few issues. Because of my weapon choice I run strength and air sigils on my pistols instead of battle. Strength sigil can maintain 10 stacks of might comfortably as long as you keep attacking so I get the benefits of battle without needing the extra might duration or to swap weapons. Those 10 stacks plus the 3 from thrill of the crime plus 1-2 stacks from dodging means I'm going to be hovering around 10-15 stacks of might during a fight as long as I keep attacking, so a couple of unloads using the extra initiative means my build has just as much might as yours, especially considering that the synergy between aristocracy runes and weakening strikes still requires you to hit the target. I find initiative on stealth far and away more useful than protection on any build because of the flexibility it offers. Your build would lose to my build primarily because the extra initiative would allow me to precast bolas shot before every sneak attack to root you and force you to eat the burst, which puts a lot more pressure on you than the protection access would alleviate. Lastly, you're overestimating the value of the might stacks considering the strength of the build isn't burst, it's the fact it can keep 5-8 bleeds on a target constantly which overpowers an opponent's cleanses over time. Anything that builds into the sustain of the build is therefore going to be of more value than building into burst, which again is why I favour antitoxin over aristocracy. That extra cleanse is also really helpful vs harbinger which is why I mentioned the build in the first place.

You can get to 25 might with antitoxin runes and strength/energy sigils just by throwing an unload in during the reveal timer between stealth rotations. Aristocracy is great if you don't need much cleanse, but antitoxin is better if you do.

The cele dual pistol daredevil build that's floating around actually has a good matchup into cele harbinger, because it stays at range and applies constant bleed while passively cleansing everything the harbinger does. Bound + antitoxin runes + new shadow arts = up to 6 condis cleansed per stealth rotation, make sure to stand in the black powder as you sneak attack for even more blind spam. That said, that build is also utter cheese so probably isn't the best measure of things haha.

If they pit that extra damage on scepter 3 (either skill) that would be one thing, but removing damage from venoms to buff scepter auto is not going to achieve the stated goal at all.

Anet planned on releasing on steam, and then didn't. I don't doubt that youve got your share of stuff being blocked randomly due to world events (to which I and others are immensely sympathetic), but I think it's more about Anet making a plan then quietly abandoning it this time around.

Well, he evaded 3/4 of the skill and got hit by the last couple hits, it doesn't seem that strange to me tbh. You can see the "evaded!" message pop up, if he'd not have dodged he'd probably have been one shot there and then. Maybe if they sped up the animation slightly like they did to rapid fire it would be better (So you can dodge it all with one dodge, but damage otherwise remains the same).

If you really just want to run between nodes in WvW and not engage in any combat, try running this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PagAQRlNwEZbMLmJecT9vKA-zRJYjR1/ZkpqqXpqkPEB5fjqAA-e It's a variation on my scouting/roaming build. I usually don't run minstrel anymore since the last patch made DE stupidly hard to catch by default, but if you don't play PvP modes much the minstrel gear will keep you alive. If someone chases you, target them as you run and alternate between dodging and rifle 4. Between antitoxin runes, Embrace of Shadows and Don't Stop you will cleanse up to 6 conditions per dodge and 2 conditions per rifle 4, so escaping from condition roamers isn't going to be a problem. Dodging gives you stealth and SA gives you gives you 3 initiative per stealth, which fuels your rifle 4 to build distance along with 3s superspeed per dodge to maintain that distance. Mount as soon as you can do so. Weapon swap if you need more endurance to dodge or if you get stuck with a long immob and can't dodge to cleanse. Portal is a last resort: If they keep chasing, place portal, run to the max port distance then portal back and run in the opposite direction again. Even the most infuriated roamers tend to give up chasing after one or two rounds of that. If someone really will not give up then run to your commander and use kneeling rifle 2 to spam immob while your zerg runs them over, then /dance on their corpse.

I imagine this will get hotfixed sooner or later, so don't get too dependant on it.

That's true, I hadn't considered no expacs. At this stage of the game it kinda feels like most that play have them tho, might be wrong about that. I was thinking something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PaABoqprlFw0YbMJ2IW8OuPVA-zRIYxGBmGG67Q4CB2jEoJFgiHAA-e You lose the damage from lead attacks and fury uptime from thrill of the crime, but you gain blind spam both up close and on your target along with payback making thieves guild uptime almost permanent. It'll struggle if you can't kill an enemy with 1-2 unloads tho since it also loses quick pockets and kleptomaniac, so would need testing on that front. Edit: You'd have more access to sneak attacks too on this which might make up for the lower damage. So a rotation something like kill>sneak attack>mark>unload>kill>repeat might work nicely against trash mobs. Edity edit: So I played the above build for a while and settled on this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PaABoqprlVweYaMJmJW8OuvVA-zRIYR0wfG9IBaSBo4DSY0bpKlNA-e Using cantrips to get stolen skills for stealth/ini feels really good on this build, you get the trash mob killing potential but you can also sustain your attack against veterans etc by dumping malice correctly. Felt pretty good to play all round.

When I read the OP, my first thought was the deadeye P/P open world build with SA over trickery. If you stealth after every kill, that's 3 ini back per kill which might make trickery entirely redundant.

Just gonna leave this here

You can't just randomly equate an offensive stat and a defensive stat and then tell me that your math is undeniable lol. I wouldn't have a problem with keep buffs being removed (except the 25% move speed, I kinda like that) but your argument makes about as much sense as a café serving tuna fish in a fruit salad then giving me funny looks when I complain that's not what I ordered.

Yes, they did. But go fight a few rounds vs a harbinger on core S/D and you'll see what the other posters in this thread are getting at.

Exactly this. I'd prefer they reworked daredevil into something that isn't core thief 2.0 and then buffed acrobatics by adding things from current daredevil like the weakness application on dodge etc so it covers the same niche as current daredevil. That way core specs have really solid defensive specs and the elite specs actually do their job as alternative ways to play. Taking the third dodge off of feline grace then returning it with daredevil was all kinds of lazy, the fact they didn't change swipe to be different from core steal until the spec had been out for years shows how badly thought out it was. Edit: sticking to the original topic, some of the stuff in acro is actually good in a niche way but the spec in general just has not aged well with the power creep in the game. Swindler's equilibrium is a great trait. Guarded initiation and Don't Stop along with swiftness on dodge and sword 2 have really good synergy with antitoxin runes for cleanse that doesn't depend on stealth. The 300s traits would be decent on any other class that isn't designed to rely on hit and run tactics, unfortunately this is thief so they just feel ineffective for the most part (instant reflexes Vs ranger rapid fire.... Yeah). Some stuff is just plain outdated, like why would you ever spec for vigor on heal when feline grace and fireworks runes exist, and regen on evade is an awful effect for a grandmaster trait when you get the same boon for free in other places. In what way is that playstyle defining? If you were gonna rework acro instead, there is so much room for new stuff. The minor traits in acro are largely just fluff, they could be compressed into one good trait that gives swiftness on dodge and improves vigor and have other effects in the other two slots. The first set of trait choices in acro are equally bad, you could remove all three without issue. The second set of trait choices has swindler's equilibrium, keep that, and keep guarded initiation only if it is moved to no longer compete with swindler's. Grandmaster traits, don't stop is the only really good choice. That's two minor traits and six major traits that you could change to something entirely different that doesn't depend on dodge/evade without killing builds that currently rely on acrobatics, 8/12 traits in the line are completely replaceable.