Guild Wars 2

Dear community

as a thief main since headstart who used to play d/d until i started to play tPvP on a more serious base, i want to start a CDI aiming to make (power) dual daggers viable in competive PvP.

as a start i will list the problems that i think are the most important ones.
the set consists of 2 power skills, 1 condition skill and 2 utility skills which are situational.
d/d compared to d/p brings less survivability, less group utility and almost the same amount of damage.

going into stealth requires less initiative than a smoke/leap combo but is also a bigger risk. c&d off a high ranked pvp player is very difficult because it can be anticipated and is the only way to get the d/d damage rotation off.

now i will talk about the 5 weaponset skills:

auto attack
the auto attack was always strong and i never had a problem with it. the poison is very useful especially against warriors.

heartseeker
a very strong skill in the right situation. useless when used the wrong way.

death blossom
a condition skill in a power set. the bleeds can easily be cleansed as its only one type of conditions. the evade is very unreliable compared to other evading skills (FS or PW). The raw power damage is very weak and i have yet to come across a power d/d thief using this skill in an actual fight pressing its button on purpose and not on mistake.

dancing dagger
i remember using this skill on headstart against players on walls in WvW hitting bouncing 2,5k crits. then they nerfed the damage and now im hitting around 1k in tPvP which is about the same as a shortbow auto attack which costs no initiative at all. the only nice thing about this skill is the 100% finisher which is still meh at the end of the day.

cloak and dagger
offhand dagger stealthing skill. the damage used to be strong until they nerfed it. the skill is slow and can easily be dodged by a good player. a thief closing in on you is a big “telegraph” for trying to stealth.

how can these skills be “fixed” in a way that d/d can become a viable spec?

death blossom
remove or decrease bleeds/duration and increase the damage so that this skill can actually crit for around 4k. make it a reliable evade the same way you did it with flanking strike. as death blossom kind of roots you instead of moving to your target this skill would be more balanced. maybe increase the intitiative cost again.

dancing dagger
either unnerf the damage or give this skill a secondary effect like 20% chance to strip a boon.

cloak and dagger
either unnerf the damage or make the skill animation a bit faster. thief closing in would still be a sign of trying to stealth.

now i ask you, what should be the role of this weaponset? for me it is supposed to be a quick burst weaponset for taking down single enemies in teamfights or helping out on far nodes.

maybe some traits could be changed aswell as the efficiency of d/d relies on shadow arts to stay alive.

Please post your constructive feedback on how to make power d/d a viable spec for tPvP. Please do not post QQ about other specs. The purpose of this thread is to talk about d/d and not about how strong s/d s/p or runes of strength are. thank you.

If this thread gets good and constructive feedback i will also make a CDI for the Pistol/Pistol weaponset which is by far the worst weaponset the thief has.

looking forward to your posts

I doubt Anet is looking into making S/D stronger or Shadow arts more popular, so your goal seems very unlikely

but, you have the right idea, a more reliable #3 with increased direct dmg is the way to go.

I do think un-nerfing Cloak and Dagger in sPvP is warranted. It was done to nerf a very specific build and play-style, one that has been irrelevant for over a year now.

The same applies to Dancing Dagger even if it was rather effective against builds with minions and pets. But frankly I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It definitely needs something to make it more appealing.

Death Blossom just needs a complete redesign. And mobility is something D/d sorely lacks and I think that might be a good place to start.

But let’s be honest here. NOTHING is going to happen. Nada. We’re two years into the game and I don’t recall ANY skill undergoing to fundamental redesign.

Instead of making Death Blossom power based, why not making Dancing Dagger condition based? Like cripple + torment.

Moreover, I’d suggest making CnD grants 2 seconds of Fury (for the backstab), in addition to the un-nerfing.

Dancing dagger applying torment would help for p/d condi specs but i dont think they need any buffs because they already have access to torment. And that build is already considered “cheese”. The problem with death blossom is, as i said, that its the only condition skill in a power set and even for condition specs it sucks.

Believe me, i tried all the builds and d/d condition maybe used to be good on release but with all the buffs to “real” condition classes it cant compete anymore. So it would be best to make it a power skill.

C&d giving fury is a nice idea just 2 seconds are not enough when stealth lasts 4 seconds.but i dont think it will solve the problem of a too high risk for a mediocre reward. Still thank you for your feedback!

nerf heartseeker to do massive damage on 33% rather then 50%. Then allow for thieves to get a trait that grants them 2x strikes from stealth, but the second strike depletes 6 initiative (to prevent ezmode lolwut spam)

Boost the new trait in critical strikes; regain 10% of crit damage rather then 5%.

Give CnD a slightly wider attack range so it is slightly easier to land during the heat of battle. Animation slowed down accordingly to make sure it is properly telegraphed but still usable for competitive play.

my 2 cents as a thief player.

Prysin.8542:

nerf heartseeker to do massive damage on 33% rather then 50%.

heartseeker was nerfed a long time ago to do “massive” damage at 25% health instead of at 33%. the damage it does at 50% isnt that high if you are facing your opponent and not being light armor glass cannon. imo heartseeker is fine.

Prysin.8542:

Give CnD a slightly wider attack range so it is slightly easier to land during the heat of battle. Animation slowed down accordingly to make sure it is properly telegraphed but still usable for competitive play.

the c&d hit range is not as small as you think. you can cast it and flank-hit somebody and it will work. using cloak and dagger in the heat of a teamfight is not hard when people pay less attention. it is hard to land in a 1vs1 or a 2vs2.

making the animation slower would be a hard nerf for the skill no matter how far/wide the hit range is. a dodge evades an attack no matter how big it is.

the precast right now is 1/2s. lowering it to 1/4 might solve the problem a bit.

unnerfing the -50% damage nerf for dancing dagger and the -33% damage nerf for cloak and dagger would be very nice.

meh maybe buff 3 (3 spam every weapon set?)

buff 4 or 5? …. kitten no obvious reasons.

The reason why d/d is sub par in spvp is the fact that the sword has a AoE cleave due to that it is way easier to hit with the auto chain in addition the sword does more damage especially if you factor in that it hits multiple targets in the cleave cone, but even the single target damage with the sword is better since it is easier to hit with it (quite often you can just walk away from dagger attacks).

This is only one example of where this game is messed up balance wise AoE attacks are outdamaging single target attacks this should never be the case… (insert AoE spam rant here).

D/D was originally meant to be a hybrid set, this is the reason why we have deathblossom and a 100% 4 target projectile finisher on it. However people didi not get that and started making one shot builds (which led to lots of complaints), so the balance team im a act of infinite wisdom decided to nerf all the weapon skills that do not actually contribute to those one shot builds (deathblossom, dancing dagger and cnd), by doing so they almost ruined the set effectively removing D/D from the balance equation.

To bring the set back the nerfs to dancing dagger and deathblossom need to be reverted, the special rule for cnd in spvp needs to go, period, it never should have been there in the first place the problem was always to high crit multipliers (for all proffessions) and not the base damage.

To make the set good, the evade on deathblossom would have to cover the whole duration, why that is not so is another of those wise balance decisions, D/D is the only thief weapon set without a disengage mechanic (and we all know what happens to thieves in a prolonged toe to toe fight) it needs the evade much more than any other weapon set.

All of this will never happen, though. Actually none of this will happen. The balance team is streamlining the game for a “meta game” and if you want to know what that is look at warriors and guardians.

Sadly it’s true with the aoe cleave. There is just too much of it. Back in gw1 there were far less cleaves than in gw2. Although the sword is regarded as sutained dps the damage can still be quite bursty..

As for d/d hybrid i dont think that it couldve worked just because of how the skills were designed. When specing into rampagers the direct damage is too low and the condition damage isbt high enough either while having no armor. It only works if you bring enough def and heals to make it work eg som, caltdrops etc.

Ive been saying this for a long time, the balance patches take way too long. We need them every 1-2 months. Hire more people for the pvp balance team to speed processes up or move them from another team. As it is now is not enough.

Looking for more ideas/feedback and some words of a dev would be awesome

I’ve been barking up this tree for about 3 and a half eternities. I wish you the best, but they’re not going to change it. It’s been argued into the floor since launch and clearly there is no intention to change it. The original design of many skills were to be hybrid so that people of any type of build could utilize them. Unfortunately most hybrid skills / weapons are terrible, and there are entire weapons that are ruined because their design is hybrid. many classes, weapons, and builds are plagued by the problem of skills just not fitting the weapon or being akward. Like Pistol Pistol being high physical damage but the main attack and stealth attacks are bleeds (lolwut?) Ranger Axe, Necro Scepter 3, Guardian Torch, etc. the list goes on. A lot of these weapons (like Warrior S/S) can be used as a gimmicky weapon set, but are never seen in true competitive play because their one trick pony weapons that usually prey on a specific build type, or newer players.

Worse yet, because people have dedicated time investing in gear for specific weapons, gear, builds etc. Anet doesn’t want to change them and screw over PvE players that have spent large amounts of time investing in legendary, or ascended gear-sets. So the likelihood of these skills getting changed to be more practical, is slim to none, the bad designs are going to stay bad until we get the ability to modify weapons to change specific abilities with glyphs or something.

PvE and WvW are the main reason why PvP doesn’t see logical balance a lot of the time, because it would ruin peoples moronic builds because they invested time in getting the gear for it, moronic or not, Anet doesn’t want to upset them.

Jekkt.6045:

Looking for more ideas/feedback and some words of a dev would be awesome

what i meant was increase the current radius of CnD to make it easier. yes it is covering about 190 degrees and 130 range radius, however making that say 150 range would make it a LOT more reliable.

the best way to “fix” the imbalance between sword + X and DD would be to apply 0.5 second longer cast time on Chain #1. Making it ever so slightly slower, not slow enough to be useless in melee (speed comparison; Ranger GS AA is 0.5, 0.5, 0.75 , with a wide cleave and more then usable enough in melee range).

Also, sword chain 3 seems to hit a bit harder then it should. It could use a shave to bring it in line with similar AA chains. Thief sword AA chain 3 is infact nearly 20% higher then any other profession’s final sword AA, not to mention that the other two strikes are also higher. Since thieves are supposed to be “burst” and not “high sustained damage” this contradicts the design philosophy itself.

What DD needs is more “user friendlyness”. Playing DD thief myself, i find it to be manageable, after all i played ranger for almost 1 1/2 year before making my thief. So i am used to moving in and out of melee range all the time, however what ticks me off is the third and fourth strike.

Death Blossom is USELESS. Unless the enemy is slowed down, standing still or completely AFK there is almost 50% chance that the enemy will move too much for the 2nd strike to hit. Death Blossom isn’t that good, DPS wise. But i want my attacks to WORK when i use them, because they cost initiative to use.

The fourth strike is nearly worthless. It serves no purpose what so ever, other then occasionally ticking off some rangers or mesmers that moves around a lot. Make it apply 2 sec immob on each bounce. Hell even if they made it transfer a condition to the enemy (even if it didnt bounce as result of this), it would be better. In its current state it is about as useful as Warhorn 4 is to rangers. Meaning, it is a one trick pony.

Agreeing with sword auto and death blossom. A wider range for c&d would be fine but not at the cost of a slower attack animation because it already is slow imo.

Death blossom kinda needs a rework. It needs to be faster, evade better, hit harder and maybe reduce the hits it does (to make it faster).

The only way you will see a buff to dagger offhand is if sword mainhand is nerfed. Right now, S/D is the meta spec and ANET isn’t going to buff it.

for a good pvp balance arenanet should aim for multiple viable pvp builds and not just one. in a pvp encounter i want to have to find out which specs enemy players play. right now i can almost always tell what build they play just by looking at their class… imo that is very wrong and takes away a challenging part of pvp.