Guild Wars 2

Crippling Talon
15 s recharge ½ s Activation time
Throw a dagger to bleed and cripple your foe.

Damage: 252 (0.75)
Crippled: 6 s
Bleeding: 8 s (1020 damage)
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
Range: 1,200

Dancing Dagger
3 Initiative ¼ Activation time
Throw a dagger that cripples nearby foes and returns to you.

Damage: 336 (0.5)
Miscellaneous effect Bounces: 3
Crippled: 5 s
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
Range: 900

In case you were thinking thief isn’t my main, its worse :P (not telling)

I have seen these get thrown at me a few times and wondered why they are kind of imbalanced. Would hate to see a thief getting a 3 point hitter like this, but its way over in the rangers favor when you compare these two skills. How often do they hit? and why the hell is a ranger’s dagger throwing better than a thief’s? lol

Peace

I will try to take this seriously.

First, lets fix your numbers. Thief, no gear dancing dagger tooltip damage is 163. Lets not count the possible bounce damage. Also, cripple is 3s. (this kinda helps your argument)

Ranger Crippling Talon. Tool tip damage is 242. Bleed is 8s(3 stacks) 1020 damage total. Range is 900. (you have it traited on your ranger)

Lets go over a few (perfect world) NUMBERS ONLY scenarios to help you understand the difference in skills and the reasoning behind them. With a base ini regen of 1/sec, the effective CD of Dancing Dagger is 3 seconds. You can use it 5 times in the 1 time the ranger uses Crippling Talon. 815 damage total.

Now 815 damage is less than the rangers 1322 in a 15 second time frame right? Well, here is where it gets tricky. Lets assume nothing misses/dodged/random flat terrain obstructed/out of range point blank….

The thief can use the skill 5 times in about 4secs (im being generous). That is 204 DPS.
The ranger can use his skill once every 15 seconds. 88 DPS. Quite the difference. Thief doesn’t look too bad now does it?

But you say, a thief would never spam Dancing Dagger 5 times in a row. Remember, numbers is all I am talking. But we can what if all day. You can’t cleanse direct damage like you can condi damage. What if someone cleanses the bleed right after it is applied. What if the first attack by both classes is dodged? Ranger does 0 damage, thief does 652. What if the dagger bounced to 3 targets? What if, what if, what if.

From a pure damage standpoint, which is why you made this thread, Dancing Dagger is better than Crippling Talon.

Now, with all that said, Initiative vs Cooldown skills is a whole different beast we don’t really need to go into. I can’t say “1 point of Ini is equal to 3 seconds of a weapon skill CD on another class”. It is too hard to compare them together to get a real, hard evidence application because as the situation/spec/gear changes, so does the value of Initiative. It is a tricky slope anet created with making thief the way they are.

From,
1000+ hour ranger and thief (each)

What did the 5 fingers say to the face!?

those figures were cut and paste from wiki… i rarely even see those two classes using these abilities and i rarely see ranger running dagger. i just dont see why there is this kind of skill difference to basically the exact same ability. sure make them different but this is weird…

Episode 15 explained a bit… not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD9Tvfk1pjk

infynity.5284:

i rarely even see those two classes using these abilities and i rarely see ranger running dagger.

Speaking from a PvE perspective. Dancing Dagger has it’s uses when you are forced out of melee, and especially in high level Fractals. The cripple is also very useful on Mossman and Archedeviner. Ranger PvE does not have much use for dagger, mostly there are more attractive options (warhorn/axe) whilst Thief D/D is one of their main sets.

Gathering from what I’ve heard/read about PvP D/D Thief is very risky so not run that much. However Dagger on Ranger is more useful, both for the cripple and evade (it’s a long evade).

infynity.5284:

i just dont see why there is this kind of skill difference to basically the exact same ability. sure make them different but this is weird…

Well ye :p They’re not the same, just similar.

infynity.5284:

those figures were cut and paste from wiki… i rarely even see those two classes using these abilities and i rarely see ranger running dagger. i just dont see why there is this kind of skill difference to basically the exact same ability. sure make them different but this is weird…

First, read what I quoted and ask yourself “If I never see it, why am I asking the question?”

Second, they are not the same skill. One is a bleed, one is direct damage. One can be cast over and over, another can’t.

Third, you CAN’T compare an initiative based skill with CD based skill due to the sheer nature of initiative (less you have, more value each point has). It is why thief has been the class with the most… “tweaks” over the life of the game. Trying to balance the actual value of initiative. They still haven’t got it right, but it is closer now.

A proper question would be something like Mesmer blink compared to Ele Lightning Flash (which has been discussed in detail many times).

Omnitek.3876:

Third, you CAN’T compare an initiative based skill with CD based skill due to the sheer nature of initiative (less you have, more value each point has). It is why thief has been the class with the most… “tweaks” over the life of the game. Trying to balance the actual value of initiative. They still haven’t got it right, but it is closer now.

Actually you can compare them. Just add up how many times you can use all the cooldown-based skills in a specific timeframe (least common multiple of the cooldowns will result in an integer number of uses for each skill). Then you can compare directly to how many skill uses are allowed by initiative in the same amount of time.

The reason initiative is harder to balance is because the mechanic allows you to use a single skill repeatedly. In terms of cooldowns, that’s like being able to reduce the cooldown for a good skill by not using the other (worse) skills. That means if a single thief skill is OP, its OP effect is multiplied because it can be used repeatedly. Whereas an OP skill for the other professions are naturally limited by its full cooldown.

Or put another way, an underpowered thief skill does not hurt a thief’s effectiveness (aside from reduced versatility), whereas an underpowered cooldown skill necessarily reduces your damage output. And a single OP thief skill is like getting 5 OP skills for the other classes.

Solandri.9640:

Omnitek.3876:

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you just gave the reason it can’t be compared in the same post..

take maul. it has a 6 second cd. now, let me cast it 10 times in a row, then have a 60 second cd. that would make maul extremely op. that’s the difference between initiative and standard cooldowns. you have to take a different mindset for each one. what can work with cooldowns will work drastically different with initiative.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

Solandri.9640:

Omnitek.3876:

-snip-

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you just gave the reason it can’t be compared in the same post..

take maul. it has a 6 second cd. now, let me cast it 10 times in a row, then have a 60 second cd. that would make maul extremely op.

You’re allowing both the thief and ranger to use just one skill. That’s going to favor the thief by definition. But you can’t look at just one skill – nobody plays the game using just one skill (well, except maybe bad thieves spamming Heartseeker).

You have to consider all 5 weapon skills together if you’re going to compare to initiative. If the game were balanced and all 5 skills each profession loaded were similarly powerful, the cooldown skills and initiative skills can be compared. For a simplified example, imagine if Maul were a typical ranger skill instead of our strongest. Imagine a skillbar filled with 5 Mauls, each with an independent cooldown. You can directly compare that to the thief initiative skills. Now switch it to 5 different skills instead of 5 Mauls, each with a different cooldown duration. The math gets a little more complicated, but they are still comparable.

The comparison only breaks down when one or more skills are OP, or (for the non-thief) one or more skills are underpowered. A pretty good argument could be made that that’s the case right now. But that’s a balance issue, not a game mechanics issue. The two mechanics (initiative vs cooldowns) are still comparable assuming balanced skills.

(Actually it’s 10 skills since you can swap weapons to take advantage of their independent cooldowns. Thieves are stuck with the same initiative pool for both weapon sets. Also, using cooldowns means some skills like Maul can be more powerful than others since they’ve each got their own cooldown duration. That’s not the case for initiative – you have to make all the thief skills roughly equal in power (relative to initiative consumed) or you’re going to have balance problems.)

that’s the difference between initiative and standard cooldowns. you have to take a different mindset for each one. what can work with cooldowns will work drastically different with initiative.

If all skills were balanced and equally powerful, the only advantage initiative would give you is some additional flexibility (can quickly use the same skill in succession if a situation warranting its use persists). Otherwise the “mindset” is the same for cooldowns and initiative – both simply limit you to spamming x non-autoattack skills per minute.

Dancing Dagger is there for the multi-target cripple and the damage is small. You can kite a small group of mobs in PVE with pistol/dagger but a ranger can’t kite anything with axe/dagger.

Both Crippling Talon and Dancing help to control melee engagement/disengagement and CT is better for that. You don’t mind the 15s cooldown, the damage is better, and you’re usually interested in one target (esp PvP).