Death's Retreat is vastly underrated

[Zacchary.6183]

For shits and giggles, I decided to go to Siren's Landing and solo the Champ Horrid Illusion while I waited for Guild Missions to reset. I'm pretty sure I am not the only one who has achieved a solo kill on this since the fight is fairly straight forward. It quickly follows you and passively applies a stacking DoT within melee range every second. What makes this fight a nightmare is that trying to melee it is bound to kill you since you have to leave melee for the DoT to disappear. And since its ground movement is FAST, trying to leave melee distance is nigh impossible without ample access to aggro distractions and teles. This led me to believe that this was one of the harder champs to solo, save for a select few builds.

So I thought, "Let's give it a shot" and died twice using my normal attack choices before switching tactics to purely using Death's Retreat and Judgement. That, combined with M7, resulted in me building up malice for Death's Judgement without running out of initiative or endurance. Fighting it took a while, but it died. I simply had to lure it to the shore at the bottom of the reliquary and use the same evasion patterns I use in wvw against melee to take it down.

What I got out of this entire experiment though was the realization that Death's Retreat, out of all DE rifle skills, is probably the most busted of them all. It's damage and poison might by minuscule, but it still crits and produces malice which imho is the most important aspect of it. It's near instantaneous cast time of 1/4s could easily put you out of harms way assuming you activate it before the hit lands. Almost like a twitchy dodge but without the Evade hitsplash. And finally, Death's Retreat initial hit radius is 50 units outside of melee distance, so the best way to use it is the same way you would use p/d's Shadow Strike but with a little more play to it.

What do you think?

[UNOwen.7132]

Its clunky, slow and not very effective. If you want to run away its ok when chained (but inferior to shortbow 5), and if you want to build up malice, just repeatedly cripple your enemy with skirmishers shot.

[kash.9213]

@UNOwen.7132 said:Its clunky, slow and not very effective. If you want to run away its ok when chained (but inferior to shortbow 5), and if you want to build up malice, just repeatedly cripple your enemy with skirmishers shot.

Sorry to hear you have a hard time with it, keep at it though.

[Sir Vincent III.1286]

To be honest, I no longer use Death's Retreat since Meld with Shadows is enough to make a gap. However, I would use it in case of emergency, for instance when I got careless and was surrounded. Other than that, I'd like to keep my initiatives in dealing damage.

However, Sniper's Cover is the best when dueling with other ranged mobs -- all their projectile turns to smoke.

[DeceiverX.8361]

It's a usable skill in the PvP modes and I guess open-world champ soloing because it provides powerful niche utility when used appropriately, but I don't think it's underrated. It's a less-strong version of IArrow and as such gets about as much credit as it should.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

combined with cripple spam its pretty op.

[Curennos.9307]

I just wish they'd unlock it from forcibly retreating directly away from your current target (is there a way to do that with a setting somewhere? O.o)

[Zacchary.6183]

@Curennos.9307 said:I just wish they'd unlock it from forcibly retreating directly away from your current target (is there a way to do that with a setting somewhere? O.o)

Nope. It is directly away. You can actually use this to your advantage though. Getting right up on your target will allow you to rapidly change the direction of where you'll be going. And with enough awareness you can confine a fight to a spot.

[Taobella.6597]

i think death retreat should be removed on rifle. that my biased view on it.

[Yasai.3549]

It costs too much and for good reason.

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

It's a decent skill, the cleanse is very useful too. The only thing that bugs me is that of you do use it for the cleanse it basically forces you to disengage, but you can't have everything.

[Lightsbane.9012]

it seems not many of you have played thief in wvw. it shows.

[kash.9213]

I set to not select target on right click and pick a corner for dead space to de-target and play a lot de-targeted off and on with max speed camera pan so skills like flanking strike and death's retreat stay more under control and move with the rest of the build.

[Platanos.8107]

@Curennos.9307 said:I just wish they'd unlock it from forcibly retreating directly away from your current target (is there a way to do that with a setting somewhere? O.o)

Yes...but you have to play in action camera. I don't know why they made it so you can only turn without targeting in action cam.EDIT: I forgot that this was meant in conjunction with a kneel + dodge that I talk about below. You can only retreat in the direction you want if you untarget. Action cam just allows you to change the direction of your Death's Retreat and RFI when you are still kneeling.

Also some more fancy things you can do about death's retreat.

You can queue a Death's Retreat in the middle of Withdraw or RFI without needing to unkneel at all (your skills flip during RFI or withdraw, and reflips once it finishes). So enemy in your face -> RFI, Death's Retreat to be at 1200 range again.

[Sir Vincent III.1286]

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:It's a decent skill, the cleanse is very useful too. The only thing that bugs me is that of you do use it for the cleanse it basically forces you to disengage, but you can't have everything.

IMO, the cleanse is just there to give you a clean escape, but I wouldn't use it for that purpose. Too expensive to use for just cleanse.

[Zacchary.6183]

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:It's a decent skill, the cleanse is very useful too. The only thing that bugs me is that of you do use it for the cleanse it basically forces you to disengage, but you can't have everything.

IMO, the cleanse is just there to give you a clean escape, but I wouldn't use it for that purpose. Too expensive to use for just cleanse.

Basically. It would be sweet if it prioritized immob.

[Sir Vincent III.1286]

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:It's a decent skill, the cleanse is very useful too. The only thing that bugs me is that of you do use it for the cleanse it basically forces you to disengage, but you can't have everything.

IMO, the cleanse is just there to give you a clean escape, but I wouldn't use it for that purpose. Too expensive to use for just cleanse.

Basically. It would be sweet if it prioritized immob.

If you're going to be kiting your target, isn't Don't Stop a must have?

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:It's a decent skill, the cleanse is very useful too. The only thing that bugs me is that of you do use it for the cleanse it basically forces you to disengage, but you can't have everything.

IMO, the cleanse is just there to give you a clean escape, but I wouldn't use it for that purpose. Too expensive to use for just cleanse.

With antitoxin runes the cleanse is very significant. I normally run other runes, but swap to antitoxin if condi is getting me repeatedly. Withdraw cleanses movement impeding conditions and ensures I'm not wasting cleanses.

[Zacchary.6183]

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:It's a decent skill, the cleanse is very useful too. The only thing that bugs me is that of you do use it for the cleanse it basically forces you to disengage, but you can't have everything.

IMO, the cleanse is just there to give you a clean escape, but I wouldn't use it for that purpose. Too expensive to use for just cleanse.

Basically. It would be sweet if it prioritized immob.

If you're going to be kiting your target, isn't Don't Stop a must have?

Not necessarily, unless they inflict a bunch of conditions. Though I would recommend Hard to Catch more just in case of stuns.

[Sir Vincent III.1286]

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:It's a decent skill, the cleanse is very useful too. The only thing that bugs me is that of you do use it for the cleanse it basically forces you to disengage, but you can't have everything.

IMO, the cleanse is just there to give you a clean escape, but I wouldn't use it for that purpose. Too expensive to use for just cleanse.

Basically. It would be sweet if it prioritized immob.

If you're going to be kiting your target, isn't Don't Stop a must have?

Not necessarily, unless they inflict a bunch of conditions. Though I would recommend Hard to Catch more just in case of stuns.

Don't Stop automatically remove immob whenever you use Rifle #2. No need to cleanse it at all.

[Zacchary.6183]

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Zacchary.6183 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:It's a decent skill, the cleanse is very useful too. The only thing that bugs me is that of you do use it for the cleanse it basically forces you to disengage, but you can't have everything.

IMO, the cleanse is just there to give you a clean escape, but I wouldn't use it for that purpose. Too expensive to use for just cleanse.

Basically. It would be sweet if it prioritized immob.

If you're going to be kiting your target, isn't Don't Stop a must have?

Not necessarily, unless they inflict a bunch of conditions. Though I would recommend Hard to Catch more just in case of stuns.

Don't Stop automatically remove immob whenever you use Rifle #2. No need to cleanse it at all.

Oh yeah I nearly forgot about that lol.

[Sobx.1758]

I don't think it's underrated at all. It has a pretty clear purpose.

@Lightsbane.9012 said:it seems not many of you have played thief in wvw. it shows.

What do you mean?

[Lightsbane.9012]

@Sobx.1758 said:I don't think it's underrated at all. It has a pretty clear purpose.

@Lightsbane.9012 said:it seems not many of you have played thief in wvw. it shows.

What do you mean?

i mean you'd know how amazing of a skill it was when you need to get away from 50 things that can kill you instantaneously.

[Sir Vincent III.1286]

@Lightsbane.9012 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:I don't think it's underrated at all. It has a pretty clear purpose.

@Lightsbane.9012 said:it seems not many of you have played thief in wvw. it shows.

What do you mean?

i mean you'd know how amazing of a skill it was when you need to get away from 50 things that can kill you instantaneously.

I'm sure that most of the responses are coming from Thiefs who will never find themselves in that situation.