Guild Wars 2

Hello, I’d like to have your opinion on what I think is really useless and wrong regarding thieves’ weapon skills.

Dagger/Dagger

The changes I’m proposing aim to both make the D/D viable again in SPVP and to improve one “useless” thief skill. The changes should not make thief OP in any case, since I think that the difficulty needed to play D/D in SPVP would still be a high barrier to the spread of a D/D build. This changes try to promote skillfull play.

• Dancing Dagger: it should really be changed. As it is now, it’s a waste of initiative. I don’t think that a boost in damage would actually help, but it could become something more focused on conditions, in order to let the D/D have more access to conditions rather than just spamming death blossom. Torment + Cripple would be appropriate, since we are talking about thieves. A proper rework is needed, but not a rushed one (for example it is needed to think about the bounces and the torment stacks).

• Cloak and Dagger: [SPVP] the skill damage should be reverted to its previous state, before the 33% damage nerf. That’s self explanatory: it has been nerfed because of the CnD+Steal+Backstab combo which used to “instakill” people. Now there are no more reasons to keep it like it is. CnD should reward people, in fact since it’s very difficult to land and it requires to be at close range (while D/P you have a blind, a leap, the HS damage and you always enter stealth without requiring any hit).

Pistol/Pistol

The changes I’m proposing here are very basic ones: we need to decide wheter this could be a condition damage set, or a power one. Since #4 and #5 doesn’t need a change, all of the focus is on Unload and on Vital Shot.

• Vital shot: I suggest to either convert this to a power based autoattack (leaving sneak attack untouched for what concerns bleeding application but slightly buffed to compensate the “condition nerf” in conditions build of vital shot) or to leave it as it is now.

• Unload: If vital shot has beend converted into a power based autoattack, then there should just be a slightly buff to it: add a very very little % chance for each shots to regain initiative with no cooldown. This should also compensate the critical strikes 15 points minor trait nerf, so that the P/P should see it’s ini regen properly buffed like devs wanted (passing from 0.75 ini/sec to 1 ini/sec). If vital shot has been untouched, then I suggest to completely change unload to a condition based skill (again: % of applying torment per shot could be an idea) in order to make the P/P a condition based set, properly competing with P/D but with less stealth dependence.

These are my thoughts. What do you think? I’m not talking specifically to thieves, also to other classes.

I think that Cloak and Dagger rewards the thief by stealthing him. That is a whole lot of reward. A revert of the damage nerf would be a really bad idea. Add torment to dancing daggers? Nope. Between the torment and the revert to the damage nerf of CnD, the DD thief would become an unholy terror.

havoc.6814:

I think that Cloak and Dagger rewards the thief by stealthing him. That is a whole lot of reward. A revert of the damage nerf would be a really bad idea. Add torment to dancing daggers? Nope. Between the torment and the revert to the damage nerf of CnD, the DD thief would become an unholy terror.

I’m quoting this because that last line made me giggle. Like, a lot. Hehehe.

That said, s/he’s right. These “proposed buffs” are bad. CnD had the 33% damage nerf because it was too strong. Revert it, and people will start using it too much again and it will just be nerfed. Just because people have stopped using something, doesn’t mean it’s okay to revert it back to its previous state. Stealth is reward enough. A good thief comfortable with their D/D build will be able to land CnD 9 times out of 10 (with a margin of error, because there’s always going to be someone better than someone).

I can agree that Dancing Dagger could use a slight damage buff. Slight. No torment, though. That’s… silly. Really silly.

:D I would love those changes… too bad they wont go through… Especially not CnD…

Let’s start with at least making Dancing Dagger not being obscured by a blade of grass sticking out of of the ground…