Dust Strike changes make me SO SAD

[Charybdizs.7490]

When the patch notes preview said Dust Strike will now reflect projectiles I got really excited, because it felt like that'd make for fun baseball games with projectiles. Unfortunately, it comes at the expense of everything I liked so much about dust strike before. I really don't think these additional changes were necessary.

 

Then:  It had a COOL ANIMATION. You actually kicked up dust into your opponent's eyes to blind them!

Now:  It's a weird float? Why is my staff floating? I'm a thief, not a revenant.

 

Then:  It was a mid range blind attack

Now:  It has extremely tiny range and I basically have to be standing on my opponent to make it work. It doesn't even look right!

 

It could have reflected projectiles JUST FINE without any of that being changed. Now it breaks the brawler class fantasy AND it is strictly worse at its original purpose. And it looks stupid too! Please revert this! It's not very fun at all! 😭

 

 

[FrancisN.9276]

The reflect window is so tiny that you most likely end up wasting your initiatives and eat those projectiles at the same time. Devs made this skill without taking into consideration the average latency of internet connection when playing MMO. In order to fix Dust Strike, it has to have 2 things:

1. Ability to animation-cancel over other weapon skills, even autoattacks, the same way as dodging does. Everytime I need Dust Strike, I am in the middle of another attack and the 1s Dust Strike queued after said attack animation just renders it useless.

2. Longer reflect window, even a 0.5s longer is better than this, considering an average MMO ping is around 70-100ms.

[rjinx.1378]

Honestly, if ANET made staff 4 a channel skill (3 up front to use, 1 or 2 initiative per second channeled), and the skill affect radius grew in size the longer you channeled, it'd be fantastic.

[Antycypator.9874]

I think this is skill is pretty good — it does many things at once: not-the-worst damage (around player, not just in front of you), blinds and reflects projectiles. I would leave it be as it is, or nerf damage a little bit and make that reflect last longer on it's own (power budget or smh).

But I really hoped Dust Strike to be like old short-ranged attack, but now with additional reflect.

[Charybdizs.7490]

too bad that TINY reflect came at a loss of the virtually 50% projectile reflect that staff 1-2-3 had. That actually meant so much for survivability in a crowd.

It was COMPLETELY usable, too. All you had to do was pause your chain for a split second. I remember waiting on my combo chain to reflect the sniper in Kaineng Overlook and feeling super cool, like a jedi.

[Geriatrics.5823]

Punishing Strikes died for this 😞

[Psycoprophet.8107]

I donno really seems like there is 0 devs in the gw2 that has any passion or even a favorable view of thief. Dust strike could have kept its ranged blind while creating a small aoe smoke field that lingered for 3 secs that reflects all projectiles is 180 range infront of thief. The skill would actually retain its past usefulness and make the reflect now more viable without making the skill op. This was just off top of my head and sounds better to me than what their team implemented. I honestly can't wait for a new decent mmo to release, this games dev teams passions seems to be on a downward slide for while now.

[FrancisN.9276]

Good news! We may have a dev reading through this thread, because there is someone "confused" at every post here 😂

Edited December 11, 2023 by FrancisN.9276

[vardeleanu.8972]

Don't forget the vulnerability : before it was 5-8 stacks per hit, now it's 0. They just straight up removed it and everyone seems to have forgotten it, but it was a really nice way to quickly get some vulnerability stacks in PvE when needed or a nice bonus for PvP, not to mention it was the only ranged attack on staff and helped a lot if for example you were playing deadeye and needed more malice for your stolen skill to give stealth. They nerfed it to the ground and added reflect as an excuse, also removing the reflect from the auto attack for that too.

Edited December 16, 2023 by vardeleanu.8972

[Metze.2849]

I think the idea of the new dust strike as a defensive skill is good, but it should be reworked. Compared to the old dust strike, which played very well overall, it feels like a nerf. Range reduction, damage reduction and no vulnerability stacks.

The duration for reflecting projectiles is too short and as a result hard to handle. It seems to me that quickness additionally shortens the reflection duration.

The new dust strike would benefit from one additional ability.
Examples:
-If all 3 hits hit, a boon is stolen
-If all 3 hits hit, a condition is cleansed
-Causes vulnerability
-More damage