How do you feel about Daredevil's new Dust Strike so far?

[FrancisN.9276]

Maybe I have not been using it correctly, but after a couple of months of running daredevil, new Dust Strike feels worse than its old version:

- 4 initiatives for 1s reflect with internet latency of 70-200ms is too unreliable and too expensive.

- The loss of 600 range blind + vulnerability limits the number of approaches I can take in a fight.

- Trading the new initiative-costly Dust Strike for the loss of reflect on the old Punishing Strike (free reflect AA skill that lasts for 2/3 of the whole combo length while also does decent damage) significantly reduces survivability.

What are your thoughts on this now that you have played with it for sometime after the patch?

Edited February 27 by FrancisN.9276
Correcting the topic title

[Blind.4162]

If you look at the history, they also decreased the blind. Besides, why would you think ANet would actually buff the thief? It's their mission to completely destroy it.

November 28, 2023	This skill now reflects projectiles and strikes foes in a circular area instead of in a frontal cone. Increased the total power coefficient from 0.6 to 1.8 in PvE only.
February 25, 2020	Competitive content update: (Competitive split) Increased vulnerability stacks from 5 to 8.
April 19, 2016	This skill now applies 5 stacks of vulnerability per hit. Fixed a bug that caused this skill to strike more than once. Fixed a bug that caused this skill to blind for only 3 seconds instead of the full 5 seconds.
October 23, 2015	Heart of Thorns release: Dust Strike has been added to the game.

[Szymon.5369]

It's bad and effectively can't even reflect projectiles now.

[Vidit.7108]

I managed to collect a lot more fire eles in sunqua than i could with the auto but it's not really easy to use. You kind of end up spamming it to get the reflect effect to go off at the correct time since the animation isn't great at telegraphing it. If you dedicate a lot of time to learning how to use it could be effective but compared to just about every reflect in the game it's unreliable and burning valuable resources at the same time. I think that one trait on warrior shield might be worse but in a different way.

[Antycypator.9874]

Pros: more damage than old Dust Strike, hits 5 targets around you, better protection from projectiles than 3rd AA strike.

Cons: weird animation, it requires good timing to actually catch some projectiles.

For PvE it's really good skill, especially for AoE blind. Staff is a melee weapon anyway, if you need to travel short distances, just use Vault.

[Geriatrics.5823]

I much preferred the old Dust Strike in pretty much every way, and Punishing Strikes reflected more consistently than the new Dust Strike ever does. The Punishing Strikes change in particular was a brutal nerf to survivability, but I've accepted that the devs don't understand why range or "free" survivability are important on a non-stealth thief weapon.

Taken together, the changes were pretty bad for Staff outside of PvE where reflects aren't very relevant and Dust Strike got a damage bump.

Edited February 27 by Geriatrics.5823