Staff QoL changes to increase viability and effectiveness of daredevil for WvW squad play.

[Ban Daur.4831]

1. Vault / Staff 5
While Staff thief in smaller scale and GvG is quite viable but when the numbers increase and the number of random blinding fields and damage fields increase the ability to deliver damage becomes lot more difficult whitout high resistance and stability uptime. This of course applies to all dps specs but the problem whit staff thief Vault is that it has it's Evades frames at the start of the animation and not at the end of it where the damage it delivered. This means you can be blinded or hit by any random conditions as the damage is about to land. While having counter play to evade spam is healthy it would nicer that the end of the Vault was iframed insted. This also would make it so that staff thief would be encouraged to create distance first before vaulting again if the start of the animation was vulnerable instead.

TLDR: Vault / Staff 5 Move Iframes from the start to the end of the animation instead.

2. Weakening Charge / Staff 2
The tracking on this skill could use improvement for both PvE and WvW. Atm any sort of moving target rarely gets hit by all 3 strikes of the skill due to poor tracking. Just improving the tracking would solve it or changing the skill from a movement skill into non movement attack and maybe call it Weakening Flurry instead. Would personally love to have strong standing attack alongside the auto attacks.

TLDR: Weakening Charge / Staff 2 Improve tracking or remove the movement

Would changes like these to Vault and Weakening Charge be reasonable or would you change the skills differently or are they fine as they are?

[Lightsbane.9012]

thief's biggest problem with doing frontline damage is that it's too squishy to take any hits, unlike a warrior or something.   maybe if there's some sort of intense barrier generation?  in my experience jumping into the middle of an enemy group is insta-death, evade frames notwithstanding.

[bq pd.2148]

7 hours ago, Lightsbane.9012 said:

  maybe if there's some sort of intense barrier generation?

so more health? ele soon and guard already got their vitality boosting trait in their old vitality traitline (honor/water) for thief that would be acrobatics.
not sure we can even use acro properly for that, maybe replacing trickery if preparedness was baseline for crit strikes, acro, daredevil
 

11 hours ago, Ban Daur.4831 said:

TLDR: Vault / Staff 5 Move Iframes from the start to the end of the animation instead.

TLDR: Weakening Charge / Staff 2 Improve tracking or remove the movement

Would changes like these to Vault and Weakening Charge be reasonable or would you change the skills differently or are they fine as they are?

would like weakening charge without movement as long as it does not immobilize on use as that would get rid of the animation lock.

vault is still super locked, we cannot use any instant skills during vault, other animation locks will allow instant skills. would really like this changed so we can use assassin signet shortly before impact or just use shadowstep mid animation when we notice it might not be a great idea to land at the destination.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

12 hours ago, Ban Daur.4831 said:

TLDR: Vault / Staff 5 Move Iframes from the start to the end of the animation instead.

This is a no win scenario because one million percent you'd have loads of people complaining about the change, demanding to roll back and a lot of them even reporting it as a bug.

[Ban Daur.4831]

Staff thief is quite survivable whit the evades but practicing positioning and where you land your vault to deal damage to not instantly die yourself does take practice. You will never want to aim the vault where the main portion of enemy dmg is at as then you will die. You can hit the side of the enemy often or their tail while remaining in the vicinity of your healers/booners and dodging back out to your squad after dealing out your burst.

And yes any change of course will get some negative feedback as well but seeing how rare the spec is in squad comps it could use some changes to bring it's popularity and acceptance part of the roster. And these are not huge buffs/changes to the weapon just making it more functional in it's ability to deal damage from the "vault" so it can land damage before being hit by debilitating conditions like blinds, weakness and or hard ccs.

[Doggie.3184]

16 hours ago, Lightsbane.9012 said:

thief's biggest problem with doing frontline damage is that it's too squishy to take any hits, unlike a warrior or something.   maybe if there's some sort of intense barrier generation?  in my experience jumping into the middle of an enemy group is insta-death, evade frames notwithstanding.

Every solution to that problem was nerfed cuz people raged at how often we evaded.

In the current state of the game it's impossible for me to survive with staff in WvW zergs without a personal stability spambot on me but most zergs won't pair Firebrands and such up with a Thief because they find them useless. Daredevil needs to be self sufficient with defensive boons. We still have a 100% useless trait in 2nd row that needs changed to something useful: "Pulmonary Impact"~ which was pseudo deleted a long time ago and never replaced. Nice spot to put something.

Edited June 18 by Doggie.3184

[Lightsbane.9012]

yep...best bet is to play heal specter and hope someone realizes how useful you are.