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Nomad.4301

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  1. If they REALLY had to nerf it like this, in a way that literally no-one was asking for, then they should've at LEAST doubled the duration to 60s, and made it also slow down the attack and cooldown speed of the affected siege by 66% so it works on all siege (shield generators anyone?) this would have at least made it feel more like a change of design and less of a straight up nerf for the sake of boon blobs. The entire purpose of a siege disabler was to stall a large zerg long enough to allow defenders time to rally, often times even with totally stopping the enemies siege it wasn't enough to stop them, boonballs can literally stand in 10 AC's worth of AoEs and melee down the gate if their rams were destroyed/disabled, blobs didn't need more help. Seriously, which of you trolled a Dev's boon blob with disablers? PS; Not to mention you could already avoid being hit with disablers by just spreading out your siege and/or using ventari bubbles to shield it.. So it's not like there wasn't already multiple counters.
  2. Bit of a rant incoming but here it goes.. Axe as a whole definitely needs some (ok a lot..) of work to have a place in my kit. It's overall a very boring weapon to use, effectively only having one real attack (3) which is virtually worthless without first spending HALF your initiative on a setup (2), which btw does almost no damage of its own unless you're point-blank with your target (good luck in any kind of PvP scenario) which entirely defeats the point in it being a 100% RANGED weapon. The extremely high initiative costs on the weapon means it's pretty much only usable in the hands of a M7 deadeye, and the weapon almost feels purpose build for this one niche role. Specter uses nearly its entire initiative bar on a single axe3 combo which ends up doing less damage then if you spent the same amount of initiative spamming Sc/D 3, whereas Daredevil doesn't get much out of the AoE cleave that it doesn't already get from staff, and I'm pretty sure spamming weakening charge still nets more DPS per initiative spent anyways, DD also doesn't even have shroud skills to fall back on when it runs out of initiative after 1 burst.. Which leaves deadeye (specifically M7, any other trait and you suffer the same aforementioned issues), single target rifle is still vastly superior in power damage over A/P, leaving cleave damage the only use for this weapon on the power front, which is at least superior to shortbow, possibly also staff with M7's initiative regen. A/D M7 condi deadeye seems to be the only build this actually works out on imo, purely because it is the only build that can actually maintain the absurd cost of the skills.. and even then I consistently bench higher on specter using Sc/p in single target fights while also having better CC utility and survivability, those 50% post-beta nerfs hit the build HARD. Mind you that's just PvE, the weapon in WvW (I don't play SPvP) is borderline useless especially post range nerf, owing mostly to its status as a pure ranged weapon it's vulnerable to every-single-possible reflect/block/bubble/wall/rock/tree/literally nothing (seriously the axes sometimes just vanish in mid-flight within range..) but also suffers from even-higher initiative costs in WvW as well as very sluggish cast times making your 11 initiative combo attack very easy to dodge/block/reflect etc.. This also means it's very bad against zergs with A/P being reflected back at you 50% of the time and blocked outright another 40%, you might be lucky that 10% of the time your axes land.. but they don't deal enough damage to down most targets (or even bring most to 50% hp) even if ALL axes land, which is fine except you literally can't follow up with another attack because landing that just took ALL of your resources and by the time you can launch another axe volley they're back at 100%... As for A/D, well it's basically a suicide weapon.. it's a melee teleport that ports you into the middle of a zerg/enemy for no good reason given axe is a 100% pure RANGED WEAPON and gives you nothing but a .5 second evade as compensation, seriously, there's a reason why other range weapon have skills that exclusively port you away from your target. The only reason you might want to enter melee range is to use Cloak and Dagger, but given the cost of axe skills you probably won't have the resources to use that anyways.. When you take into consideration the recent nerf to the range it makes the weapon almost unusable, because your target not only has to be in range of you they also have to be in range of your axes on the ground, which means all someone has to do to completely shut down an axe thief is keep moving in one direction and the axes will nearly always be out of range, even if the thief themselves if right on-top of you, GG. TL;DR: Overall, I find it to be quite a boring weapon, with minimal usefulness outside of 1 niche build in PvE. Maybe it could've been saved by also adding an off-hand axe alongside it. But alas, I gave all this feedback and more during/after the beta 3 months ago and so did dozens of others and yet nothing changed. I doubt this weapon can be salvaged because the basic concept of it is just bad, even if the weapon absolutely SHREDDED like it did on target dummies in the beta, it would still be boring and extremely clunky to use effectively, but as it stands right now i do more damage and have more fun with almost every other weapon in the thieves kit excluding P/P and shortbow. Oh and also this weapon feels like it was balanced with 100% quickness uptime in mind which makes it feels pretty lame in open world/solo, it also has very little synergy with either of the off-hands you can use it with.
  3. It did work like this in the Beta, it's part of how people were getting 60k benchmarks with condi DE. The thrown axes retain ALL their original properties when recalled, this includes acting as a stealth attack (even if you aren't stealthed) which will consume malice without needed to re-enter stealth, so you Axe 2,2,3,F2 Stealth,1,2,2,Extra 2 to cap malice,3 No need to stealth for the second round since recall will drain 7 malice. I'm not sure If I like how it works personally as it makes the axe rotation very finicky on DE and you really have to pay attention to whether or not you have a Cunning Salvo axe on the ground or you'll end up accidentally screwing up your rotation. Of course this also means recalling a Cunning Salvo Axe will apply revealed to you as well even if you aren't stealthed, which is... less than ideal outside of PvE.
  4. Yeah.. I mean the one thing I was kinda looking forward to with this weapon was using it on Deadeye and it would appear(?) to be totally broken on DE, the stealth attacks do not use up any malice and seem to just bounce off (literally you can see the axe bounce off the enemy and not explode) most targets dealing no cleave damage, which means you can't really use M7 and don't really have any reliable rotation with it right now. Oh and in WvW the axe 3 will ALWAYS miss ANY siege, making axe totally useless for clearing out siege of any kind. I don't Understand what that beta 3-4 months ago was even for if these problems are still here today.. I'd also like to mention I'm disappointed that the thrown axes do not inherit any effect from your legendaries, they are just plain wooden axes, they even already have the animations for it (Necro Axe 2).
  5. Funnily enough, if you have no target on Axe/Dagger the #3 skill actually just recalls all the axes to your position doing full damage to any target hit, ignoring the entire "teleport" function altogether. I wish the power version also worked like this 🥲.
  6. As I feared the weapon is basically unusable in WvW for group play, given it's a projectile almost all your axes get blocked / reflected and since your only real source of damage is the 3 skill you need to get 6 axes out ASAP to get any real damage on targets, the skills also cost a LOT to use when you consider you basically need to use 2-2-3 to get any decent damage out and that combo costs 9 initiative, this makes it pretty much unusable without Trickery / Maleficent 7 and REALLY unusable on specter with its reduced initiative. It might be OK in roaming, but we really don't need yet another specialized single-target roaming weapon when literally every other weapon for thief is already that.. Axe 2 does basically no damage unless you use it point-blank because it's a fan of 3 which given the 100% ranged nature of axe feels pretty bad, in other words the only reason to use it is to set up a Axe 3 combo. Axe/Dagger 3 also misses your target 50% of the time or more if either of you are moving, making it pretty bad for most WvW/PvP encounters (think trying to use S/D 3 on a moving target..) In the limited testing I've done so far in PvE the Condi damage is mediocre at best but the power damage (ESPECIALLY the AoE) is insane i was hitting 10k+ PER axe and they hit 5 targets each and there's 6 of them at a time, so the Power damage cleave is massive, but you run out of Initiative SO quickly without DE's Maleficent 7 making it of limited use on specter/DD. It would definitely benefit from a better way to enter stealth on power builds though (to dump malice), as the only way is to drop smoke and blast/leap though it with pistol.. It would honestly maybe be better if dagger OH was the power weapon, but then condi would have the same problem, and no-one wants to take stealth utilities in PvE. Overall, I would have liked to see an AoE focused weapon for Zerging or at least some better AoE for condi builds, got neither of those things really, given the issues with projectiles in comp modes and the lackluster condi damage in PvE due to being initiative starved all the time on specter (you can literally get 1 [2-2-3] combo off before running out and being forced back into shroud) I'd REALLY like to see a initiative Regen mechanic similar to pistol/pistol present on axe, otherwise using this as a main weapon for anything other than roaming/Power cleaving will suck. Also maybe a trait to grant unblockable for a few seconds after stealing/stealthing or something would make it better in zerg play.. Also something interesting I've noted is that the auto-attacks do MORE damage overall in power then the venomous axes (when combined with #3), with the caveat of taking longer to put out (6 autos vs 2 #2s), but the venomous ones OVERWRITE the auto-attacks, meaning for max power damage you actually don't want to use #2 at all, which seems like a bad design imo. Edit1 - After thinking about it, it honestly might feel better if it worked like rifle, where the stealth attack was the thing that recalled all the axes for the BIG damage and your #3 skill was somehow used to enter stealth (even briefly, think DE's stealth roll) that way you could combo it with other trait lines better, and it wouldn't be totally useless with Shadow Arts, this would also allow you to dump malice so DE would have a viable Cleave option and could run Axe/Pistol and Rifle.. Just a thought given how useless the current stealth attack is, it reminded me of when rifle was first added and Death's Judgement was the #4 skill and the stealth skill was some worthless junk. Edit2 - Noticed a bug with Cunning/Malicious Salvo (axe's stealth attack) it will apply revealed to you AGAIN when recalling the axe using #3 even if not-currently stealthed. Edit3 - Cunning/Malicious Salvo NEEDS to be piercing along with the other skills or you cannot effectively use it for AoE on a DE, since the attack gets body blocked by ANY other targets you don't dump your malice and can't use M7. Edit4 - Axe/Pistol 3 (Orchestrated Assault) does basically nothing when used without a target despite still consuming initiative, it would be really nice if it recalled the axes to your position instead if you currently have no target, that way it would still be useful for general AoE against weaker foes like Pocket Raptors that die too quickly to keep switching targets. Either change it or make it unusable without a target so you stop accidentally wasting resources. Axe/Dagger #3 already functions this way FYI. Edit5- It would be great if -once-finished- we could get some kinda of UI element to display how many axes are currently out similar to how malice is displayed, or at least an audio que or something when we hit 6, right now the tiny icon on the already overly bloated "buff bar" is easily overlooked and you spend too much time glancing at it in combat to see if you have 6 yet, unless you're really good at keeping track of how many axes you throw out I guess. The other new profession weapon have this problem as well.
  7. If this doesn't have un-blockable on the skill 3 (or it doesn't count as a projectile at all) then it will be a pointless addition, because it will either be bad in competitive modes (due to reflects, block etc..) and in PvE thief will always default to whatever weapon has the highest DPS benchmark, so if this ends up being better in PvE then RIP scepter (or dagger/staff if power), if not then RIP axe, assuming it gets no use in PvP/WvW (outside of single target roaming which thief already has MANY options for weapons) due to axe being entirely projectile based it will end up just like sword useless in PvE and limited to single-target roaming in competitive. So in short this is either a better weapon for DPS then what we have, and everyone will switch to it by default or it'll be worse and nobody will use it thus becoming sword 2.0, because it's a projectile based ranged-only weapon its usefulness in WvW will be greatly diminished by all the projectile hate messing up your spinning axes even WITH piercing. Interestingly enough the Axe 3 skill(s) tooltip doesn't state that it's piercing or hits more than 1 target, and they never showed them using axe on more than 1 target so who knows if your big combo move is even an AoE or not 🤷‍♂️. I REALLY want this to fill the WvW AoE DPS zerg niche for thief and AoE Condi for PvE, as I can't see any other point in it existing other then to replace already existing weapons (thanks initiative) if it does end up being higher DPS, guess we'll see tomorrow. Edit* Upon re-watching the stream it looks like all the #3 skill does it recall your axes duplicating the damage and effects of the original attack that put down the axe plus 2 stacks of torment per axe and immob for 5+ or 33% more damage per axe + weakness, the 3 skills doesn't have any of its own damage. Also interesting to note the axe put down by the stealth attack gave the thief revealed, despite not having stealth active, which I hope is a bug..
  8. I was hoping that this would be a ranged cleave sort of deal and .. maybe it is? It would be the one thing thief really doesn't have (outside of slow and clunky Shortbow skills) in its kit. It would be really nice to make theives actually able to do something in WvW zergs for once, unfortunately this looks to be more condi-focused (basing this on the skill 2 which appears to be a condi skill)? Conditions are generally bad for cleave (especially in PvP/WvW), I'm going to assume the axes are projectiles also which really sucks for WvW given the SEVERE projectile hate there, not to mention how reflects could mess with the whole "recall your axes" thing, I guess we'll find out if they're piercing, since the video shows a "ranged" weapon exclusively in melee and vs a single target when it looks like it would be better for cleaving. Animations look to be copied from ranger/mesmer which is meh.. If they make this weapon balanced around a non-specter then we can assume it will have higher initiative costs which ironically will make it bad for the one build that uses torment-based damage, if they balance it around the lower initiative pool of a specter then it will potentially be too spammable.. really they just need to remove the reduced initiative on specter 🤷‍♂️. Also can't express just how much I dislike "hybrid" weapons like D/D, they try to be both condi and power but regardless of their damage it just feels bad to have half your skills be useless unless you're using something like celestial that can take advantage of both.
  9. Thief relic is more reliable, hell even Isgarren is probably better (especially on DD) just because the effect only lasts 6 seconds and not many professions have 3+ 20s CD skills they can use to keep this up 100% (which is probably the point) Most of the relics are pretty terrible (on thief and in general) because so many of them require using an elite skill, which thief doesn't really use on CD since they're all situational. Still haven't found one good to use with my condi builds because of that.
  10. Well here they are, and I have to say I'm quite disappointed at some of the Deadeye changes (and specter), Shadow Flare; DE's only AoE skill, now does a whopping 680~ base damage which is less than 1 rifle AA (about 760-880), If this skill was doing too much AoE damage, why not just nerf it in PvP? Isn't that literally the point of SKILL SPLITTING?? Also the OitC change makes no sense, it was already nerfed by 290% (lol) in PvP/WvW and a 10% damage buff in PvE amounts to basically nothing on a skill that has no damage scaling to begin with, it's literally been brought back to where it started.. As for the other nerfs, if the intent was to reduce the damage of Quickness DE, why does the rest of the class have to be gutted to bring that down? This is the laziest way to balance.. damage was the ONLY thing DE brings to the table outside of the "steal time" build, and it's finicky and annoying to play, so much so that you never see anyone playing it outside of WvW roaming or open world, these nerfs will quite possibly make it worse off then it was before the last patch. As for the specter changes, also really disappointed in those. For one, the *buff* to shadow sap does basically nothing to improve protection uptime, because of the 50% ally reduction and the fact that you can barely get 70% boon duration in FULL BD gear on a specter means that you get about 3 seconds of protection per cast on the other 4 group members, in other words you're STILL burning all your initiative to apply maybe 10 seconds of protection? Bear in mind a DPS rev can maintain party wide protection by just pressing 1 button and standing still for 6 seconds. Which brings me to the nerf to shadestep, as I mentioned thief has limited ways to increase Boon duration, you can get about 67% in full healing gear with the sigil only 57% without it, as opposed to the 80-100% you can get on most other supports in similar gear, yes you can still maintain alacrity on your sub with this nerf in FULL healing gear, but you need to spend significantly more time in the very subpar shroud to achieve this now, before you could spend 15 seconds in shroud at the start of an encounter and get 29s alacrity which gives you a nice buffer to focus on actually healing or applying other boons which you can't really do in shroud since shroud sucks, now you get about 16s from that, which means you you need to spend significantly more time NOT HEALING just to maintain alac. I get that this was suppose to make alac specter use more than just vipers gear, but this really also hampers heal specter, also wasn't the point in the Strength of Shadows buff to make the opportunity cost for taking the alac trait higher, since now running alac over SoS is a significant DPS opportunity cost? Something good would be to add a trait (probably in SA) that gives concentration based on Healing power or just flat concentration or you could just make shroud not completely suck.. TL;DR, 80% of these changes are bad and basically undo most of what the previous patch was trying to achieve.
  11. Are you accounting for the lack of available allies with which to share your venoms while testing on the golem? That accounts for a significant part of thief's condi DPS.
  12. It's interesting to note that in WvW/PvP the ally support only suffers a 25% effectiveness drop-off instead of the 50% in PvE, one of the few times where the competitive version is actually better. I think One of the biggest problems I had was the boons/healing from shroud applying around your "shrouded ally" instead of around you, which means if that player runs out of stack and you don't notice and swap your siphon, then you stop doing much of anything for your group.
  13. Anet is seemingly afraid of having to design more combo skills, which is why we got two 2H weapons for our elite specs. If they added Axe main and Off-hand that would be like what? 10 whole new skills they would have to make? Which is I guess too much effort for them to devote to thief. You can refer to the chart at the bottom of this page to see just how many skills each class has including E-Spec weapons, thief currently has 37[40]+14[15] including stealth skills and combo skills, ele has a whopping 80(105)+70 more than double most classes, so they have no problem designing new skills, just not for thief 🙃.
  14. Sadly I can't really test Condi DE with scepter properly because it's bugged and combo skills scepter skills don't give malice, because it's the only one I see potential in, since shadowsquall gives 25% poison duration per stack so you get over 30s of poison, which can stack up pretty high... if you could generate malice with anything other than Dagger4... the staff "malicious" attack is just 0.75 seconds of quickness per stack, which is basically useless in group content and not worth taking over rifle in solo content either (it's basically 4 seconds with all 7 malice). I see no point in using anything other than scepter with specter due to the baseline initiative reduction as well as specter being nearly 100% condi focused and staff and rifle being exclusively power. Rifle on DD also seems lackluster due to no longer having the mark mechanic or being able to gain stealth by dodging (unless you put down smoke and leap..) making it a subpar option, I mean.. Why use a sniper rifle without the sniper spec..? *going to edit in here and mention that Death's Judgement does less damage then a (non kneeling) rifle 3 when you use it on a un-marked target which is ALWAYS when using rifle on a non-deadeye*. I haven't tested scepter on DD yet but i can't imagine it being any better for condi then the already existing D/D 3 spam. Overall impressions of "weaponmaster" on thief is about what I expected a Meh/10. *edit - There is a potential WvW (PvP?) application for Daredevil I tried with Sc/D, that is a very troll'ish Cele build with high mobility and ranged attacks that spams evades and Twilight Combo, but if anything I would count that as a point against the weaponmaster system as this build is obnoxious as hell.
  15. We only have TWO off-hand options, the least amount in the game, it would really be nice to have something to combo with sword other than Dagger/Pistol..
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