User:Reason.decrystallized/Why Repeating Strike is Bad

What You Can Do with a Sin, or Why Repeating Strike is Bad
There are a lot of ways that you can suck in Guild Wars--some are more obvious, some are less; some are more popular, some are less. Builds with Repeating Strike are some of the more popular and less obvious ways to fail. Let's see why.

We'll start by taking a look at a basic Repeating Strike bar: [build prof=Assassin/any DaggerMastery=11+1+1 CriticalStrikes=12+1 DeadlyArts=6+1][Golden Fox Strike][Golden Fang Strike][Repeating Strike][Way of the Empty Palm][Critical Agility][Optional][Optional][Optional][/build]

Now you may be wondering, why is this bad? You have IAS, limitless energy, three optionals for utility or overpowered PvE skills, DW, a four-second recharge on the chain, the ability to swap out Wild Strike for Golden Fang Strike to break stances, and one strike for +27 damage every .89 seconds, which translates to roughly 30 armor ignoring + ~1.12 * dagger attack damage per second. Good, right?

Wrong.

To see why, let's look at a standard Moebius Strike/Death Blossom Build: [build prof=Assassin/any DaggerMastery=12+1+1 CriticalStrikes=12+1][Golden Fox Strike][Golden Fang Strike][Death Blossom][Moebius Strike][Critical Agility][Critical Eye][Optional][Optional][/build]

Moebius Strike has a cycle, and like any cycle the total time is activation time (one regular attack at .89 seconds) + recharge time (2 seconds), so 2.89 seconds. In those 2.89 seconds, you will hit once with MS @ + 33 damage, twice with DB @ + 43 damage, and auto-attack once, which might dual strike. so in 2.89 seconds, we have 119 bonus damage and 4-5 dagger hits, AND 86 AoE damage. This translates to ~41 armor ignoring damage and ~1.38-1.73 * dagger attack damage per second--more than 33% more damage, not counting the fact that this build scores more critical hits (due to critical eye) AND does higher base weapon damage due to higher mastery. Most importantly of all, however, due to Death Blossom's AoE, you will deal almost 30 armor-ignoring damage per second to everything around you.

Additionally, having 4-5 dagger hits every 2.89 seconds rather than a set 3 every 2.67 seconds gives you more adrenaline for using skills such as "Save Yourselves!" or Brawling Headbutt, more hits for damage boosting skills like Conjures, Orders, or Strength of Honor, and more opportunities for Critical Agility to refresh. On top of all this, if MS or DB fails to hit, all that is necessary is to wait 2 seconds and try again; miss with repeating strike and you're out of commission for at least 15 seconds.

Recap
MS/DB spam gets: far and away more armor-ignoring damage per second; armor-ignoring AoE damage; more dagger attacks meaning more base weapon damage, more bonus damage from conjures and similar skills and more adrenaline; no god-awful long recharge time if an attack happens to miss/get blocked/etc. There is absolutely no reason to use Repeating Strike over MS/DB, which is why every build that uses it will get deleted.