FrancisN.9276

This is a nice rework for 3rd and 4th staff skills. Now DD only need more boon generation to be on par with other dps class.

Single-target class with mediocre damage, and having to sacrifice 75% mobility for that mediocre damage, deserves a nerf hammer? I can write down more refutals, but since OP does not seem to play DE that much to understand these, it is kind of pointless. If anything, DE needs a cleave buff.

When I saw a disco ball as a legendary mace, a bow shooting unicorn as legendary bow, a ship canon with sail as a legendary rifle,... I knew they intended this game to be nothing serious. So, no surprise there.

There should be an UI icon to inform you that Ally Targeting is on, because in a fast-pace boss fight with lots of mechanics and everyone running around, it is hard to heep track of whether you are on Ally Targeting mode or Enemy Targeting mode.

Or I can play Reaper, enter Shroud, press 4 and everything starts to die while I sit unkillable on a pile of corpses. They need to bring Invigorating Precision back to be balanced with other current classes. As they say, if everyone gets buffed but you don't, it is equal to you getting a nerf.

Let's not forget Staff 2 (highest dps staff skill which you will definitely use a alot) force-move you closer to the enemy so much that if you use Bound, the dodge will reposition you too far away from the enemy to actually land that Bounding Dodger damage. The only way to land that dodge damage after Staff 2 is by backpedalling by at least 2 steps and then dodge toward the enemy - way too predictable in any competitive mode. Everyone can see that miles away and just walk slowly toward you so that your Bound will land way off mark.

As I play Daredevil, Bound and Impaling Lotus do not cause the camera to bounce up and down, but Death Blossom (dual daggers skill) does. This is quite disorienting when playing as condi daredevil because Death Blossom is its bread and butter. Is there a setting where I can turn this bouncy camera off?

That sounds more like an exploit than an intended gameplay. I don't mind this getting looked at by the balance team, so they don't nerf the wrong culprit like last time they did with Shadow Meld.

As a thief main, I am sure that everyone of us has gone through this problem on many thief builds. Playing a power dps Deadeye? Kneel and and spam rifle 3, repeat until target dies or you do. Playing power dps Daredevil? Bound and spam staff 2. Playing condi dps dagger/dagger Deadeye or Daredevil? Spam dagger/dagger 3. Playing condi dps Specter? Spam scepter/dagger 3. Playing alac healer Specter or quick healer Deadeye? Spam scepter/pistol 3... Though Initiative is a great system that gives a lot of gameplay freedom, it also engenders a spammy type of gameplay, leading to devs nerfing skills with good initiative value in the name of PvP balancing (looking at initiative cost for rifle 3, rifle 4, shortbow 5,... in PvP and WvW mode). Therefore, I have a suggestion to fix Thief profession in general (for core and all 3 especs): make all Thief's weapon skills Sequence Skills (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sequence_skill) Sequence Skills prevent spamming a single skill time and time again, leading to 3 gameplay outcomes: 1. Thief cannot just spam the most cost-effective skill over and over again. 2. No more abusing a single skill's effect, making it easier for devs to balance the number in the future. 3. Spicing up gameplay, so Thief has to go over several skills in a fight, even for PvE fights, to make playing Thief more interesting while retaining the freedom of the Initiative system. The downside is that, of course, devs have to put a Sequence Skill for every existing Thief weapon skills, which is A LOT of work. However, "a lot of work" right now for a whole lot less work in the future seems worth it unless they do not intend for the lifespan of this game to be much longer into the future. What do you think? Edit: Okay, I looked at Ranger's pet revamp in Nov 28 patch and that is A LOT of work. If devs can spare the same amount of commitment to fix Thief as they had for Ranger, my suggestion can certainly be made possible.

Do you even play thief? If you do, you must have notice the flashing "revealed" icon lasting for like 5s everytime you de-stealth. Thief cannot stealth again in that timeframe. And guess what, you can still retaliate even with autoattack when thief stealth because stealth is neither Block nor Reflect (the later has no counter play). With the lowest HP thief has among all classes, thief cannot afford to be hit as often as other classes.

I hope they put more effort in reworking daredevil in the 28th Nov patch, not just the changes they listed in the preview. This class has been neglected for so many years.

Really good point about the active defense and the possibility that reflect effect can be longer than the animation. But when I think about it, active defense for a class with all animation-locked skills is not exactly helpful. For example, you see your opponent begin that shooting animation so you press Dust Strike, but your character is currently locked in another weapon skill animation so the game cue Dust Strike to activate after the animation, which is already too late. The only way to fix Daredevil is to let it have certain weapon skills animation-cancel other weapon skills. Look at Specter Scepter/Pistol, weapon skill 3 has 2 stages and if you press skill 3 while in the middle of doing 2nd stage skill, it will cut 2nd stage short and transition back to 1st stage skill (which results in a loss of healing for that skill). Or they can be generous with us the same way they did for Guardian Greatsword 4 - the original animation takes 2s, but you can cancel right after the first 0.5s while retaining all the skill effects.

Daredevil staff changes look interesting, considering that Dust Strike finally has some use and DD can reflect projectile from a far-distant foe. However, Dust Strike animation is so short that its reflect hardly matters, while they remove projectile reflection from Punishing Strike which has 3x longer reflect effect. What worries me more is how smooth the animation transition for Debilitating Arc to Helmet Breaker will be. DD staff skills are currently all animation-locked with no animation cancelling (which is not the case for some other classes *cough* Guardian *cough*), meaning once you starts a weapon skill, you cannot react to anything else. Worse, Debilitating Arc has already had a long and clunky animation that makes you vulnerable to any attack that starts at the same time or 1 second after your trigger. And they made no mention whether the "leap" part of Helmet Breaker has evade iframe or not. This class is so squishy and high-risk that even a 0.5s evade on that skill cannot do much.

I used to think the same way until I built my Trailblazer D/D daredevil with more than 2300 toughness and Rune of the Undead. I thought that was the tankiest DD that can survive every OW content. Boy, how wrong I was when not taking into account 2 deadly drawbacks: 1. The daredevil dodge iframe not lasting the whole animation, 2. Many boss mechanic damage seems to base on health % and/or insta death, so the difference between 1000 and 2300+ toughness for those bosses only mean I can survive 1-2 minutes longer. Use your D/D condi daredevil to fight that giant spider in Auric Basin, or the champion Modern sniper guard in Tangled Depth, or the pistol charr guy in Bloodstone Fen,... They may change your mind about D/D condi daredevil being damned survivable. For any boss that can multihit/combo through the length of your dodge iframe, and if your signet of malice cannot keep up with that damage, you'd better disengage. Still, I agree that D/D condi daredevil in TB outperforms staff power daredevil in survivability by a huge margin.

Oh I see, so the Bound itself uses up the relic boon, and the next attack after that is not guaranteed to be critical. But when it has EVADE, it triggers twice, so after Bound damage, the next attack still crits.

I have, when Bound has EVADE, it triggers the relic boon effect, but when Bound does not evade an attack, it does not trigger relic boon effect. I have tested this with both non-attacking target (golem) and attacking targets and the results are consistent.

The description says "After DODGE ROLLING IN COMBAT or EVADING an attack, your next attack is guaranteed to be a critical hit". I tested this with daredevil Bound and Bound dodge roll does not trigger Relic effect boon unless it is an EVADE. Does this happen to everyone or just my mistake?

In order to make daredevil OP, you only suggest adding increased power when there is only 1 enemy nearby? Please, this is not even enough to bring daredevil on par with any CURRENT Guardian espec. At least, increase Invigorating Precision healing to 20% and make acrobatic give 100% more vigor effectiveness.

Daredevil can be power dps or condi dps. Deadeye can be dps, quick dps or quick heal (scepter + pistol). Specter can be dps, alac dps or alac heal. Overall, the thief can play a bit of everything but is average in all of them.

Switching back to Daredevil after playing Willbender feels clunkily painful. Take greatsword Willbender for example, every Willbender's greatsword weapon skill not only has no animation-lock, but also has animation-cancelling (GS4) and smooth animation combos (GS4 -> G2, GS4 -> GS2, GS4 -> GS3, GS2 -> GS3, GS2 -> GS5, GS3 -> GS2,... and together with 3 Virtues skills, there are tons of flowing combinations). Meanwhile, Daredevil's staff 2, staff 3 and staff 5 are all animation-locked, no cancelling. Staff 2 (biggest DPS skill) is also a forced movement skill. Staff 3 costs too much initiative for what it does - backward evade for a melee class that all of its sustainability depends on scoring hits against enemies. If only Daredevil's animations could see some changes to make them "flow" better.

What goes up, must come down. Be mindful that every buff you ask may provoke a (more sunstantial) nerf later. Right now, the thief espec that falls behind the most is daredevil, with its inability to self-boon reliably and the need to empty its endurance bar for higher dps. So if I can make a request, I would rather ask for daredevil to receive a buff in these departments.

On second thought, reducing Silent Scope stealth may hurt OW survivability in some build. For example, when kiting, the longer I can keep mobs' aggro off me, the more endurance I can regain to keep kiting, so even 1s of stealth, with or without superspeed, is valuable.

That does not bother me as much as the no-valid-line-of-sight bug and the visual bug on rifle 3. If they have the time, they should fix those obvious bugs first.

Thief gameplay is mostly reactive rather than rotational, but in its current state with Anet nerfing the already underperforming Deadeye while leaving the high-effort-low-reward Daredevil in oblivion, Specter is the only class that does not make you want to rage quit.

The initiative mechanic of Thief profession is really fun and quite liberating to use. I believe they compensate that by making Thief have the squishiest HP and defensive mechanics of all classes, which is fair. The unfair part is how low the non-cleave damage of this dps class is, getting hit constantly by the nerf hammer for no sensible reason.