And what I think is the most ~ridiculous~ comment within your stated opinion is the fact that you think that being out of stealth for 20s renders your the dagger as an OFFHAND weapon, compeltely worthless…
Says sooo much about thieves defending stealth.
Have you seen what P/D and S/D have to work with?
I’ll start with P/D. Most common used skills in all P/D builds Sneak Attack and Cloak and Dagger.
Why 1S# Sneak Attack? So P/D users can stack as much bleeding as possible.
Why 5# Cloak and Dagger? Because Sneak Attack can only be activated through stealth.
Why don’t they rely on 1# Vital Shot? The damage and conditions are pathetic.
Why don’t they rely on 2# Body Shot? It’s damage is so low it’s not even worth the 3 initiative it costs to fire it.
Why don’t they rely on 3# Shadow Strike? It’s a melee range average damage escape skill. Only good as a space maker skill.
Why don’t they rely on 4# Dancing Dagger? Damage is too low to be an effective damage skill, it’s only good for crippling fleeing opponents.
To Summarize, all of P/D’s skills are too weak to be considered threatening, save for 1S# Sneak Attack. And 1S# Sneak attack can only be used in stealth.
Now on to S/D.
S/D’s a bit more complicated and not as reliant on stealth as P/D but it still still needs regular stealth to be effective.
First thing to understand about S/D, it’s ideal damage dealer is its auto-attack. This presents a problem to S/D users as Sword’s Auto Attack is about as basic as auto attacks get. They face the challenge of needing to score as many hits as possible to down their foes all while having to avoid as much damage as possible while in melee range to cope with Thief’s general squishyness.
How do the overcome this challenge? Their 1S# Tactical Strike. Tactical Strike is a rather low damage skills but it has the effect that if you hit someone from behind they’ll be dazed (while dazed a player can still move but use no other skills then stun breaks.) for 2 seconds (1.5 seconds in sPvP) and if you hit from this front, you’ll inflict a 5 second blind (let it be known that Blind is the condition equivalent to Aegis, it makes it so the victim will miss their next attack then wear off).
Tactical Strike allows S/D to perform as a control spec with the aim of scoring as many hits as possible while trying to prevent as many retaliatory hits as possible.
And as stated, Tactical Strike is a stealth only skills so Cloak and Dagger is essential in using Tactical Strike to its fullest.
Now I’ll got over the other skills.
2# Infiltrator’s Strike/Shadow Return. Infiltrator’s Strike makes you shadowstep to a target enemy and immobilize them for 1 second, then becomes Shadow Return.
Shadow Return is a stun break that shadowsteps you back to where you first cast Infiltrator’s Strike and removes 1 condition.
All in all, a good skill, but you won’t kill anyone with it due to its low damage.
3# Flanking Strike. A mid to high damage evade skill that whirls you behind your target and strike with an unblockable boon strip then a mid high damage strike.
Sounds awesome on paper, unfortunately the skill’s pathing is bad making it highly inaccurate and worthless against moving targets. Its evade also activates slow so it’s not viable as an instantaneous evade skill.
4# Dancing Dagger. I’ve already explained dancing dagger, S/D sees a bit more use out of it but it’s still low damage.
Now you may be thinking S/D sounds almost passable as a set without stealth which is almost true. It’s probably the most balanced stealth set, but there’s one problem, S/P.
S/P not only has everything S/D has only without stealth, with the exception that it trades stealth and boon strip for a burst attack.
What do I mean by it has everything S/D has? Well first they both have Infiltrator’s Strike/Shadow Return.
Now that’s out of the way, even though S/P doesn’t have stealth to access Tactical Strike, it can skill daze and blind all it wants with it’s last 3 skills.
3# Pistol Whip. Pistol Whip leads off with a half second stun then proceeds to assault the victim with flurry of slashes while invulnerable. Its like a rooted version of Blurred Frenzy with a stun.
4# Headshot. A quarter second spammable projectile that dazes. Not as powerful as tactical strike, but it’s ranged and a spammable interrupt.
5# Black Powder. Fires a blinding shot and creates a 4 second smoke field around the thief which blinds enemies in it every time it pulses.
So basically S/D and S/P and the same except S/D is more defensive and has stealth, and S/P is more offensive and doesn’t have stealth. If you remove S/D’s frequent access to stealth, S/D will become completely inferior to S/P and lose the the core of its play style becoming a completely pointless set.
