Guild Wars 2

three threads today? i’m on a roll with thief ideas! i just hope they’re all good >.> anyway!

so we all know the problem with vital shot. it’s fairly good as a condi attack, some WvWers would say too good, what with its super long bleeds that just keep getting reapplied. on the other hand, it has horrendous power scaling for that very reason. can’t shave off the condis, P/D would be nerfed too hard. can’t raise the raw damage, P/D would be too strong. as a result, P/P is left with an extremely weak autoattack.

so what if instead we changed the scaling? now i’m not even sure if this is possible, i don’t think it is, but what if the bleeding got reworked in a way that it’s pretty crap on its own, but really strong if you spec into it, and you did the same to the power scaling of the weapon? or maybe you could change the bleeding into torment, but shave the duration considerably, though that would probably be a bad idea.

ideally, what that would do is allow thieves to pick between speccing into condi and getting a strong bleed with hardly any power, or speccing into power and getting a strong hit with a condition that barely does anything (warrior rifle anyone? :P). however, that comes with its fair share of problems: a condi spec can still invest heavily into power and still have a third attribute to choose from (carrion is a popular choice for P/D), for example.

i do believe though that this is the route that needs to be approached. finding that fine balance between shaving just enough condi that condi thieves aren’t left without any option, while adding enough power to make P/P a more viable choice.

bonus suggestion! make the last attack on unload a blast finisher. do something about pistol shots triggering revealed mid-travel (see: using blinding powder or steal with hidden thief while autoattacking with a pistol). BAM, P/P now has access to sneak attack and it can happily use all six skills.

Reduce the initiative cost of Unload by 1.

With an appropriate initiative-slaved build, (current) Unload spam would be initiative neutral. New Unload spam would not be initiative neutral, but it wouldn’t matter because it’d wreck face for long enough to matter.

Sarrs.4831:

Reduce the initiative cost of Unload by 1.

With an appropriate initiative-slaved build, (current) Unload spam would be initiative neutral. New Unload spam would not be initiative neutral, but it wouldn’t matter because it’d wreck face for long enough to matter.

i stand by what i said in the other thread. what P/P needs is getting more use out of its other skills, not making sure unload is so strong it compensates the other 4 skills being useless for the set.

Imo, The bleed on Vital shot if it ever hope to get any sort of buff.

Take the bleed and put it on shadow strike, replace it with the torment on it and move the torment on to dancing dagger along with the cripple.

P/D doesn’t loose the bleed, just changes the location to a skill already used quite a bit,
p/p becomes a pure damage set now, and condi d/d gets a little love, and doesn’t really hurt s/d.

, and op, do you mean vital shot, the bleeding auto attack? or body shot, the 5 stack of vulnerability and immobilize?

BobbyT.7192:

Imo, The bleed on Vital shot if it ever hope to get any sort of buff.

Take the bleed and put it on shadow strike, replace it with the torment on it and move the torment on to dancing dagger along with the cripple.

P/D doesn’t loose the bleed, just changes the location to a skill already used quite a bit,
p/p becomes a pure damage set now, and condi d/d gets a little love, and doesn’t really hurt s/d.

, and op, do you mean vital shot, the bleeding auto attack? or body shot, the 5 stack of vulnerability and immobilize?

i meant vital shot. guess as a thief since BWE1, i’m too used to whining about body shot being useless :P (it’s in a good place now, IMO)

while i like where you’re going with this massive reshuffling of conditions, i feel shadow strike and dancing dagger would both need several stacks of their respective conditions to make a dent when comparing it to the high bleeding uptime vital shot currently has. the idea is to give P/P a good autoattack without nerfing P/D.

similarly, if you give too many torment stacks to dancing dagger (or too many bleed strikes to shadow strike), P/D can be too strong. just imagine (assuming shadow strike gets something like 4-6 bleeding stacks): sneak attack with basilisk venom from melee, shadow strike, steal, shadow strike, infiltrator signet, shadow strike. sure, that’s a burst setup, but that’s a pretty strong condi burst. you could even pop skale venom to cover the bleeds and add a little extra oomph.

and vital shot would be left without a “secondary effect”. as a rule, all GW2 skills have some sort of play to them, even if it is something as silly as “deals even more damage when X”. i can’t imagine one that would benefit both sets without being too strong for autoattacks.

You don’t need crazy amount of stacks on shadow strike, 2 stacks of torment for 5sec does it just fine,
For dancing dagger, one stack of torment is enough since it’s range and you can bounce it.
Yeah sure p/d might take a little hit, but it’s not like it would make it a bad set.
And let’s be honest, thief’s weapon sets took worse hits and survived. :P

And I kinda want to see the auto attack get the treatment that warrior rifle will be getting, x with a certain condition on target,
Initiative or endurance gain vs immobilized foes maybe, can call it cheap shot.

BobbyT.7192:

You don’t need crazy amount of stacks on shadow strike, 2 stacks of torment for 5sec does it just fine,
For dancing dagger, one stack of torment is enough since it’s range and you can bounce it.
Yeah sure p/d might take a little hit, but it’s not like it would make it a bad set.
And let’s be honest, thief’s weapon sets took worse hits and survived. :P

And I kinda want to see the auto attack get the treatment that warrior rifle will be getting, x with a certain condition on target,
Initiative or endurance gain vs immobilized foes maybe, can call it cheap shot.

P/D right now maintains damage by keeping at least 5-6 stacks of bleed on the enemy at all times. taking that away and saying that shadow strike would make up for it without any serious buff is silly. but like i said, any serious buff opens room for massive bursts, which granted might be better than the current “pew pew autoattack until you can sneak attack again” playstyle.

yes, dancing dagger bounces. it’ll hit the same target twice, at best (if it has anything to bounce off of, since unlike mesmer bounces, you can’t bounce from enemies to yourself and back to them). and honestly, D/D is a burst weapon, as someone that played D/D condi far too long, i just wish they’d make death blossom a power skill, and redo dancing dagger thinking of it as something useful (really useful, not “it’s kinda nice to range cripple people if you’re trying to catch up and your 5000 gap closers are on CD”) both for power and condi specs, but i digress.

I’m one if those few guys that want to see condi DD work, I really do. Unicorn build of the old days. :P

BobbyT.7192:

I’m one if those few guys that want to see condi DD work, I really do. Unicorn build of the old days. :P

i can’t see it truly working without destroying dagger mainhand, and i don’t want to see dagger mainhand destroyed. it’s our signature burst weapon.

so i just decided to give up on condi D/D and hope they finally step up and turn power D/D into the set it deserves to be, and then give us another condi weapon later.

The thing about thief though is that nothing truly ever destroys another option, because it’s always limited by initiative. D/D condi is possible without destroying dagger mainhand because the burst is all about saving initiative for the CnD in order to backstab, and then saving initiative again for the HS spam.

Besides, D/D condi is conditional in the way that it’s all about AoE. Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger work well only against multiples, and condis work better against multiples where you’re less likely to reach the stack caps. So there’s another limiting factor keeping D/D from being OP for both single targets and multiples.

“Giving up” on the condis of the D/D set would probably only cause people more concern, because it would essentially turn the playground into a desert with only one good option. Less build variation.

Most condition builds have low crit rates.

Most power builds have high crit rates.

A solution would seem to be to give a proc on crit effect to one of the skills outside of unload to make them more desirable to use. This would not increase the power of p/d condi by much at all.

As example keep number two the same and add an effect “on critical hit steal health”

On number 4 keep all the same and add “on critical stun for 1s”

Obviously these examples are just to get the idea out there.

Or they could just do the sensible thing and replace unload with a condi dual skill. And while they’re at it, replace death blossom with a power dual skill.

Also, vital shot and sneak attack need to have some sort of conditional restriction for when it procs a bleed on the target. Adding a long lasting bleed stack with every hit is too powerful.

Black Box.9312:

Also, vital shot and sneak attack need to have some sort of conditional restriction for when it procs a bleed on the target. Adding a long lasting bleed stack with every hit is too powerful.

vital shot is much slower than ranger SB (for example) though. and the power scaling is abysmal. those bleeds are really all the damage from the skill. sneak attack is pretty on par as a “condi backstab”, with the added benefit that it can be mostly avoided with a single dodge and still proc revealed on the thief, so i think it’s fine.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Black Box.9312:

Also, vital shot and sneak attack need to have some sort of conditional restriction for when it procs a bleed on the target. Adding a long lasting bleed stack with every hit is too powerful.

vital shot is much slower than ranger SB (for example) though. and the power scaling is abysmal. those bleeds are really all the damage from the skill. sneak attack is pretty on par as a “condi backstab”, with the added benefit that it can be mostly avoided with a single dodge and still proc revealed on the thief, so i think it’s fine.

IMO no autoattack of any kind should have a 100% condi proc. Condi builds are too strong right now due to the lack of ways to mitigate condi damage. Either the autoattack procs should go, or there should be ways to reduce condi damage/second taken.