Guild Wars 2

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Shadowstep in CnD is needed that’s why CnD->Steal works very well. That combination should be in CnD. Then again, that’s just a lame idea because what I really want is a completely 5 different skills exclusive for D/D (and P/P) using the Dual-Wield mechanic.

That would make s/d way too broken. They should maybe give cnd blind.

Cynz.9437:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Shadowstep in CnD is needed that’s why CnD->Steal works very well. That combination should be in CnD. Then again, that’s just a lame idea because what I really want is a completely 5 different skills exclusive for D/D (and P/P) using the Dual-Wield mechanic.

That would make s/d way too broken. They should maybe give cnd blind.

There’s no damage benefit for S/D to go in stealth. Sure they get an extra mobility, but how is that broken?

Because a shadowstep is absurdly strong as a mechanic?

Like I’m sorry but the reason D/P is as good as it is is largely from reliable ranged stealth and the damage and port on Shadow Shot.

CnD shouldn’t copy D/P. End of story. It conceptually de-values D/P, and would do little to help D/D acrually be competitive.

All CnD needs is more reliability./accessibility A blind won’t help the thief land CnD and subsequently gain stealth through a million blocks and invulns, either. OOC or ranged stealth also does too much for the init cost of only 6, and further de-values D/P on the conceptual level.

DeceiverX.8361:

All CnD needs is more reliability./accessibility…

How exactly do you achieve that without shadowstep?

Even without the target’s defensive mechanics, CnD is not always a 100% hit. The only time it is reliable is when used with Steal.

If shadowstep is not an acceptable option, I would favor an instant cast CnD.

I don’t get the big fuss about this OH dagger kitten. If you want to shadow step play DP or Sword. D/D from watching the balance team is the “condi” set now, and in the grand scheme of things D/D is in a far greater position than S/X P/X.

Do you guys like playing condi D/D? No, but every other class has the same qualms you fellas cry on and on about.

Warrior Mace, Sword, LB
Mesmer Scepter, Staff
Anything Necro
Engi pistol
Ranger SB, torch
Rev Axe
Guardian Torch

All these are condi sets that dont get used in power. You’ll just have to adapt to the balance team’s vision.

Heck y’all could even run a hybrid build that utilizes all of D/D’s damage types. I’m sure one of you fellas can’t brainstorm a build to take FULL advantage of D/D, and since you fellas WvW mostly it’s easily attainable.

Azukas.1426:

You’ll just have to adapt to the balance team’s vision.

Nah. I have my own reasons to believe that what we discuss here in the forum has an influence on what they do. May it be minimal, but it’s still there. Otherwise, they would simply forget about the 10% heal increase on Withdraw, but we kept them reminded.

Their vision is unpopular just by looking at how many well known PvP players have left due to them forcing their vision on us. I will only trust their vision if a single Dev plays the current Thief very well and very smoothly. Since there’s no known Dev who plays Thief well enough, we’re the only source they got, thus they’re stuck with our vision.

And since each Thief player’s vision often conflicts, it is healthy to discuss it here. And even if we don’t agree with each other’s vision, at least the Devs can see for themselves our different perspectives. I don’t know about you, but participation is completely optional.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

How exactly do you achieve that without shadowstep?

Even without the target’s defensive mechanics, CnD is not always a 100% hit. The only time it is reliable is when used with Steal.

If shadowstep is not an acceptable option, I would favor an instant cast CnD.

So, my bug, you guys know about it. I couldn’t land any CnD, my chance to hit with CnD and steal was at about 0-50%
I haven’t really been in wvw lately but my hit chance should be back to ~70% even with all the blocks – I might test this further but you don’t really need steal to land it, although it’s a higher chance, granted.
I agree on your last post btw.

ETA: What CnD needs is blind on stealth. I’d be fine if it were via traits again, doesn’t neccessarily have to be on OH dagger. What I would like to see for CnD would be buffed to the damage it had a year ago and/or more vulnerability. Don’t think that would be a powercreep.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Azukas.1426:

You’ll just have to adapt to the balance team’s vision.

Nah. I have my own reasons to believe that what we discuss here in the forum has an influence on what they do. May it be minimal, but it’s still there. Otherwise, they would simply forget about the 10% heal increase on Withdraw, but we kept them reminded.

Their vision is unpopular just by looking at how many well known PvP players have left due to them forcing their vision on us. I will only trust their vision if a single Dev plays the current Thief very well and very smoothly. Since there’s no known Dev who plays Thief well enough, we’re the only source they got, thus they’re stuck with our vision.

And since each Thief player’s vision often conflicts, it is healthy to discuss it here. And even if we don’t agree with each other’s vision, at least the Devs can see for themselves our different perspectives. I don’t know about you, but participation is completely optional.

Actually no. Out of all the sub forums this one has it’s own players arguing on nerfing their own class to further their own bias/agenda towards weaponsets. It’s comical at best.

As for them listening to your vision…..they don’t give a kitten what your vision is. They are going to do wtf they want and as they see fit. Stop deluding yourself b/c they cherry pick nerfs from your own forum on your class while kittenting all over your hopes and dreams. The vocal select few of this forum need to do your entire class a favor and knock it off. Work together and only put positive/good ideas here that are void of weapon bias.

Until then you aren’t going to get kitten for your class but more nerfs and forever being a gutter tier class…because yes thief is gutter tier.

What’s your mission, Azukas? To shut all of us up cause you don’t play the class anyway?

And btw the cooldown idea came from 2 enraged guards, not from thieves.

Jana.6831:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

How exactly do you achieve that without shadowstep?

Even without the target’s defensive mechanics, CnD is not always a 100% hit. The only time it is reliable is when used with Steal.

If shadowstep is not an acceptable option, I would favor an instant cast CnD.

So, my bug, you guys know about it. I couldn’t land any CnD, my chance to hit with CnD and steal was at about 0-50%
I haven’t really been in wvw lately but my hit chance should be back to ~70% even with all the blocks – I might test this further but you don’t really need steal to land it, although it’s a higher chance, granted.
I agree on your last post btw.

ETA: What CnD needs is blind on stealth. I’d be fine if it were via traits again, doesn’t neccessarily have to be on OH dagger. What I would like to see for CnD would be buffed to the damage it had a year ago and/or more vulnerability. Don’t think that would be a powercreep.

This is a GOOD post. It nerfs nothing and actually has a nice idea to help OH dagger. You need to focus on OH dagger only.

I would say either up the vuln to 10 stacks on CnD. This helps all OH dagger sets w/out greatly OP’n them.

Nice post

Azukas.1426:

This is a GOOD post. It nerfs nothing and actually has a nice idea to help OH dagger. You need to focus on OH dagger only.

I would say either up the vuln to 10 stacks on CnD. This helps all OH dagger sets w/out greatly OP’n them.

Nice post

Wow, thank you
But actually this is pretty much the consens here – I think most of us just want back what we had – and that was a working D/D power set.
Problem with that is: overall powercreep, merged traits, deleted traits, nerfed sets and so on: In my opinion it’s impossible to work out a solution until we know what anet plans to do.
But: if you look a bit further than the thief forum, you’ll find that the PvP forum and also WvW forum are complaining about the lack of (class and “damage”) balance (the pvp forum is pretty intense when it comes to that) – so – the devs did pretty well with their gambeling how balance actually “should be” but if they want to keep the pvp and wvw crowd they will have to rethink “their vision” of how class balance should be (spoiler: they have no vision). We’re here to remind them of how this game once was. And, although it doesn’t seem so: we still believe in them.

Azukas.1426:

I would say either up the vuln to 10 stacks on CnD. This helps all OH dagger sets w/out greatly OP’n them.

Azukas.1426:

…you aren’t going to get kitten for your class but more nerfs and forever being a gutter tier class…because yes thief is gutter tier.

The End.

Jana.6831:

What’s your mission, Azukas? To shut all of us up cause you don’t play the class anyway?

And btw the cooldown idea came from 2 enraged guards, not from thieves.

They’ve been planning something like this,for years. They just found a viable way.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

DeceiverX.8361:

All CnD needs is more reliability./accessibility…

How exactly do you achieve that without shadowstep?

Even without the target’s defensive mechanics, CnD is not always a 100% hit. The only time it is reliable is when used with Steal.

If shadowstep is not an acceptable option, I would favor an instant cast CnD.

My CnD rate is almost perfect as it is. I’ve only ever missed due to clutch blinds or abilities which reduce my speed just right. Backstab misses all the time due to all the passives which proc from CnD dealing so much damage in most cases.

I understand Jana had such issues of CnD “missing”, but I’ve never experienced this once. I’ve also never heard of anyone but Jana ever having this issue. If there’s a bug, it should be fixed, but frankly, because I’ve never once seen this happen before in the game, despite probably being one of the most active D/D power players, I’m going to say anything but a very rare, odd, and obscure bug is L2P, with people not standing close enough, or not realizing skill procs or abilities which can easily negate CnD’s blow with little warning.

Which is also why I favor DB turning into a gap closing evade instead of just an in-place one which applies conditions. Thus a D/D thief can catch up to escaping targets and land the CnD. S/D doesn’t use stealth, and P/D has Body Shot spam if it needs to catch up (it’s not meant to be a chasing kit) or disengage by Shadow Strike.

A shadowstep on CnD would turn D/D into a high-skill-ceiling set into one of the lowest in the game, offering effectively a free CC + port + stealth on 6 init with huge potential nuke afterwards. No thanks, I’d rather be underpowered than overpowered. If I wanted to be overpowered, I’d play condi mes or even arguably condi D/D.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Cynz.9437:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Shadowstep in CnD is needed that’s why CnD->Steal works very well. That combination should be in CnD. Then again, that’s just a lame idea because what I really want is a completely 5 different skills exclusive for D/D (and P/P) using the Dual-Wield mechanic.

That would make s/d way too broken. They should maybe give cnd blind.

There’s no damage benefit for S/D to go in stealth. Sure they get an extra mobility, but how is that broken?

Expect there is, the impact trait with the combined back side tactical strike dmg will be close to the same dmg as what back stab is.

EA is considered the better choice over ID. ID is taken mostly for WvW OH pistol builds which literally just spam 4 while running on-interrupt sigils.

Tac Strike is okay, but not worth the six initiative really in any respect. FS/LS hits harder, is typically easier to land since LS is unblockable, and the extra evasion and boon rip is way too good on such a build to really warrant stealth attacks’ use.

CnD use on S/D is typically done only in emergency defensive plays, or in rare interrupts on long-channeled abilities while the opponent doesn’t have stability. Tac Strike’s damage is so low even on interrupt with ID, it’s still substantially less damage than backstab, unless for some reason the player running D/x isn’t playing with a crit damage-based build.

That’s not to say CnD having a shadowstep is a good idea, though. It’d become overly-consistent while massively dropping the skill floor and still not fixing the main issues with OH dagger.

DeceiverX.8361:

~snip~
A shadowstep on CnD would turn D/D into a high-skill-ceiling set into one of the lowest in the game, offering effectively a free CC + port + stealth on 6 init with huge potential nuke afterwards. No thanks, I’d rather be underpowered than overpowered. If I wanted to be overpowered, I’d play condi mes or even arguably condi D/D.

Teleport + CC costs 3 init (see Infiltrator Strike) and 3 stacks of vulnerable cost less than 4 (see Body Shot 5 stacks for a cost of 4init), so let assume 2. That’s a total of 5 init to have teleport, CC, and 3 stacks of vulnerability, which leaves 1int cost for stealth.

That is the total cost of CnD after giving it shadowstep, ignoring for a moment the casting time cost.

IMO, it’s highly justified.

This really has nothing to do with players having a hard time landing CnD. It’s all about the nerfs that CnD had received without compensation in addition to the attempt to improve the D/D set.

1 init stealth is absurd when considering all those effects. Not to mention the teleport range was unspecified.

600 range teleport is not enough to engage with and too safe/easy to justify such cheap stealth and those effects.

Your justification also makes no sense. You’re adding effects of skills together and not adding initiative in a corresponding fashion. You’d be looking to 7 initiative baseline for CnD from your evaluated costs without even considering stealth (so + 1 to 8, just like BP/HS), but you also neglect that IS has an effective 15 second cooldown. To repeat a cast, IR costs 2 initiative, followed by another 3. You’d have to balance towards a cost of 5 + on the teleport alone, and the teleport isn’t even very good. In the end, you’d nee to justify CnD with such a powerful effect between 10 and 12 initiative. A full baseline bar seems kind of stupid considering it only yields 3s of stealth, and thus D/P would be better, but any less, and you’ve effectively combined four skills into the ability and lowered the skill floor tremendously. All that at six initiative, and I’d never do anything but press 5 to beat people. On the same note, D/P already does this with Shadow Shot, by pressing 3, except without the stealth. But I’ve said repeatedly Shadow Shot is overtuned.

Pretending that’s balanced is just foolish.

CnD doesn’t need to be buffed dramatically to offset its nerfs. It’s only ever seen two, one of which was indirect with the implementation of Revealed (which without it the thief was wildly overpowered) and one of them got half-reverted when the damage coefficient was normalized via a 16% damage cut, but the 33% nerf undone from sPvP. As a consequence to HoT’s defensive power creep, it needs to be made more reliable and cheaper is all. The problem with CnD is that half the time it’s wasted initiative because it gets negated, which negates all of D/D power. This is a 40-50% initiative loss at the start of a fight, and more resources (another 40-50%) need to be pushed to try a second time, which usually means the thief is struggling by then, and then has no tools to do anything afterwards.

This is also why a blind on CnD won’t do anything: the blind won’t happen, because the CnD never lands, and at that point, a trait from SA is just being put baseline into the weapon, which is definitive power creep.

To improve D/D, skills 3-5 all need reworks. CnD is almost where it needs to be. I’d argue that of all the OH dagger skills, it’sin better shape than most, and overall, isn’t a poorly-designed skill nor is it inherently in a bad place.

DeceiverX.8361:

1 init stealth is absurd when considering all those effects. Not to mention the teleport range was unspecified.

600 range teleport is not enough to engage with and too safe/easy to justify such cheap stealth and those effects.

Your justification also makes no sense. You’re adding effects of skills together and not adding initiative in a corresponding fashion. You’d be looking to 7 initiative baseline for CnD from your evaluated costs without even considering stealth (so + 1 to 8, just like BP/HS), but you also neglect that IS has an effective 15 second cooldown. To repeat a cast, IR costs 2 initiative, followed by another 3. You’d have to balance towards a cost of 5 + on the teleport alone, and the teleport isn’t even very good. In the end, you’d nee to justify CnD with such a powerful effect between 10 and 12 initiative. A full baseline bar seems kind of stupid considering it only yields 3s of stealth, and thus D/P would be better, but any less, and you’ve effectively combined four skills into the ability and lowered the skill floor tremendously. All that at six initiative, and I’d never do anything but press 5 to beat people. On the same note, D/P already does this with Shadow Shot, by pressing 3, except without the stealth. But I’ve said repeatedly Shadow Shot is overtuned.

Pretending that’s balanced is just foolish.

CnD doesn’t need to be buffed dramatically to offset its nerfs. It’s only ever seen two, one of which was indirect with the implementation of Revealed (which without it the thief was wildly overpowered) and one of them got half-reverted when the damage coefficient was normalized via a 16% damage cut, but the 33% nerf undone from sPvP. As a consequence to HoT’s defensive power creep, it needs to be made more reliable and cheaper is all. The problem with CnD is that half the time it’s wasted initiative because it gets negated, which negates all of D/D power. This is a 40-50% initiative loss at the start of a fight, and more resources (another 40-50%) need to be pushed to try a second time, which usually means the thief is struggling by then, and then has no tools to do anything afterwards.

Comparing CnD to BP/HS and suggesting that CnD would cost 7 init makes your whole argument ridiculous. You’re forgetting that CnD has a hit requirement or at least a target while BP/HS doesn’t…I shouldn’t have to point out that obvious fact, but I digress. We never agreed about the existence of Revealed, thus this is another one we’ll never going agree on.

For starter, D/D and P/P need not share any skills with other weapon sets. They should have 5 unique skills each, so we can leave CnD to its current state since there’s a lot of people who like it as is. Talking about the current state of these weapon sets only leads to a cyclical and rehashed arguments that we all been heard before. So we’re simply talking about the same thing all over again.

There’s no way ArenaNet can maintain the usability of both D/P and S/D and buff D/D. At its current state, it cannot be done. They can only do so much with DB. D/D needs its own 5 skills independent from other sets.

Did any of you guys,think that maybe anet doesn’t want you abusing stealth anymore, and that maybe you should look into an evade power D/D set?

I dunno maybe I’m just at an advantage of being a 3rd party but it seems like D/D has decent evade frame up time while pumping out serious damage

Azukas.1426:

Did any of you guys,think that maybe anet doesn’t want you abusing stealth anymore…

Did you read the whole thread before asking this question? Because if you did, you wouldn’t be asking this silly question.

D/D evade frame may be nice, but the pre-cast and after-cast delays are not. Due to this, any player cannot skillfully evade anything unless the player has psychic power who can predict what will happen 2s ahead of time. Any player reacting to something will miss the evade opportunity due to these delays.

The only reliable evade is Pistol Whip because even if you fail to evade, your target will be interrupted and forced to dodge. If it only didn’t cost more than 50% of our resources to use.

Basing skills on others is how the very act of balance is done. I do not forget that CnD requires a hit to gain stealth. Frankly, though, the weakness of the kit is in its inability to deal with an opponent’s defenses, not in the skill requirement in landing a hit. CnD provides strictly more reward than BP + HS on the basis that it carries a larger risk and requires a certain degree of timing. Removing that risk element and reducing the required timing by putting a teleport into the skill ends up simply demanding that the some other element of skilled play be required. The dynamic of CnD requiring a risk for engagement isn’t the problem; its yield is objectively better than BP + HS when it comes to stealth, and can maintain it much better with less investment than any other weapon combo. The conceptual-level design is to open up a higher risk/reward style of play for aggressive players. The risk of getting into range is skill-driven, as most things in the game should be. The problem is that engaging in melee combat, the risk element of using CnD, is excerbated by a bigger problem in that it isn’t reliable enough to provide a reward.

The primary example being the prospect of fighting a guard. D/P does not need to try very hard to engage safely since it can get stealth at range/OOC and simply break aegis and backstab the guard. D/D thief, on the other hand, doesn’t get to engage on its terms, and thus the aegis from the guardian’s virtue is enough to stifle said engage. This is especially apparent when blocks and invulns are taken into account as well; D/P has the option to stealth and lose targeting while D/D is stuck with no options, because 5 doesn’t work against targets that they physically cannot hit for damage, and the remaining aspects of their kit are simply too poor to work with. I can kite a greatsword warrior indefinitely with D/P and S/x. The same cannot be said about D/D. Giving CnD a teleport alone will not fix OH dagger, and that’s where a bulk of the problems in the kit lie, since D/P is the superior chain-stealth set by design, because it’s not as an aggressive set.

ANet is never going to make five separate profession skills for each dual wield set for the thief. That’s asking for more than almost every profession, and you know as well as I do that they would absolutely fail in the design/implementation and we’d be even worse off than now.

And that’s the thing: ANet can rework D/D isolated from D/P, and quite frankly, S/D is no longer very usable considering the fix to the IS bug. I’ve proposed this before. With tweaks to CnD’s reliability, moving condition pressure and normalized AoE damage onto Dancing Dagger from DB, and enabling Death Blossom to be a mobility tool with some re-distributed/new coefficients would certainly fix D/D without affecting any other sets into a problem state. The issues with D/D power is that it has poor options available at almost all times except for CnD/Backstab, cannot chase or disengage, and suffers from inconsistency on CnD, thus making the entire kit weak compared to the rest. This same change also boosts P/D’s viability slightly, by giving it slightly more condition pressure, and unifies the dagger kit’s design to have mobility-oriented skills all on skill 3, while also boosting the necessary skill requirements for D/D condi, and could further enable DT buffs as the skill floor would get raised tremendously. This all objectively improves D/D power without at all affecting D/P’s or S/D’s performance.

DeceiverX.8361:

Basing skills on others is how the very act of balance is done. I do not forget that CnD requires a hit to gain stealth. Frankly, though, the weakness of the kit is in its inability to deal with an opponent’s defenses, not in the skill requirement in landing a hit. CnD provides strictly more reward than BP + HS on the basis that it carries a larger risk and requires a certain degree of timing. Removing that risk element and reducing the required timing by putting a teleport into the skill ends up simply demanding that the some other element of skilled play be required. The dynamic of CnD requiring a risk for engagement isn’t the problem; its yield is objectively better than BP + HS when it comes to stealth, and can maintain it much better with less investment than any other weapon combo. The conceptual-level design is to open up a higher risk/reward style of play for aggressive players. The risk of getting into range is skill-driven, as most things in the game should be. The problem is that engaging in melee combat, the risk element of using CnD, is excerbated by a bigger problem in that it isn’t reliable enough to provide a reward.

I don’t get you. If CnD has a high risk, then why did you entertain the idea of making it cost 7 init? However, contrary to your perception, there is no “high reward” in CnD, just high risk, thanks to all the nerfs.

BP+HS has no risk but is rewarded by a chance to extend stealth beyond 3-4 seconds. HS will also place the Thief in a more favorable position before going in stealth. All these rewards are not present in CnD.

Sorry but I’m done. Your comparison practices don’t even make any sense, thus it’s difficult to take it seriously. Calling CnD a high risk/high reward is nothing but laughable.

DeceiverX.8361:

Frankly, though, the weakness of the kit is in its inability to deal with an opponent’s defenses, not in the skill requirement in landing a hit.

Just trying to think out of the box here. What if CnD went in a bit of a different direction? Again, this is just a conceptual thought. The following changes as a whole would be…

1. Remove all damage from CnD.
This will allow Stealth stacking while still requiring the Thief to actually strike the target. But the main purpose for this is for the next step to be acceptable.

2. Make CnD unblockable.
This will allow the Thief to gain Stealth even if a target is actively blocking. Because CnD no longer does damage itself, being unblockable won’t make it overpowered.

3. Applies a new effect that enhances the next attack.
This effect cannot be stacked. It will be removed on the next attack that hits or is blocked/evaded.

As for what the effect actually does, well, that’s up for discussion. Possible examples…

A. Add 1.25 to the coefficient of the next attack (or whatever would make up for the removed damage of the successful CnD).

B. Double the direct damage of the next attack.

C. Double the condition damage of the next condition application.

D. Double the duration of the next condition/CC application.

Or perhaps it could apply the proper option(s) based on which skill was used while the effect is active. Backstab could use either A or B. Dancing Dagger could use A or B plus D. Or something along those lines.

Anyway, just trying to figure out how to improve D/D without actually changing it too much.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

DeceiverX.8361:

Basing skills on others is how the very act of balance is done. I do not forget that CnD requires a hit to gain stealth. Frankly, though, the weakness of the kit is in its inability to deal with an opponent’s defenses, not in the skill requirement in landing a hit. CnD provides strictly more reward than BP + HS on the basis that it carries a larger risk and requires a certain degree of timing. Removing that risk element and reducing the required timing by putting a teleport into the skill ends up simply demanding that the some other element of skilled play be required. The dynamic of CnD requiring a risk for engagement isn’t the problem; its yield is objectively better than BP + HS when it comes to stealth, and can maintain it much better with less investment than any other weapon combo. The conceptual-level design is to open up a higher risk/reward style of play for aggressive players. The risk of getting into range is skill-driven, as most things in the game should be. The problem is that engaging in melee combat, the risk element of using CnD, is excerbated by a bigger problem in that it isn’t reliable enough to provide a reward.

I don’t get you. If CnD has a high risk, then why did you entertain the idea of making it cost 7 init? However, contrary to your perception, there is no “high reward” in CnD, just high risk, thanks to all the nerfs.

BP+HS has no risk but is rewarded by a chance to extend stealth beyond 3-4 seconds. HS will also place the Thief in a more favorable position before going in stealth. All these rewards are not present in CnD.

Sorry but I’m done. Your comparison practices don’t even make any sense, thus it’s difficult to take it seriously. Calling CnD a high risk/high reward is nothing but laughable.

BP + HS is a slow and predictable means of acquiring stealth. It’s easy to interrupt, and easy to know where the thief will be. The best thieves in the game will tell you that, and the best players in the game will tell you that the easiest time to kill a thief is immediately following the dropping of BP, and typically, it’s not hard to know where a thief which just used BP + HS is located. Many of the best do not stack stealth via one BP unless they’re way far from an encounter. This is often how I also kill other thieves, and how most other good players kill thieves. This isn’t debatable, either, since most reputable players have been very vocal about voicing this when giving tips and insight.

Bad D/D players would end up pressing 5 until it landed, with no worry over chasing or skilled play. I despise Shadow Shot for this same reason, and do not want the integrity of the weapon set I prefer to play most to be degraded to such an extent for something which does not actually fix the core of the problem.

As opposed to BP + HS, CnD is harder to predict, and much harder to know if, when and/or how you’re going to be hit next if it does land. A thief using it could potentially immediately backstab and land it, because the thief would have no aftercast from HS, and would already be on top of their foe to make it land. The thief could also wait two seconds… or three… or maybe closer to four with SA.

If it were to be given a teleport, it’d logically have to see an increased initiative cost. I have zero interest in providing the thief with drastic power creep to strictly match HoT, but rather re-designs and tweaks to try and nudge its performance potential there. The risk is high by engaging your foe. The reward is high by allowing unpredictability and the possibility of rapid-succession attacks, and a rapid burst pattern if desired. D/D’s stealth attack options and setup are very logical and were well-balanced for the core game. HoT’s power creep demands some increase in reliability, but not necessarily safety or ease-of-use in play. Nobody, including ANet, the posters on the forums, and the likes, should be trying to justify compromising the integrity of other weapons/classes in their design as well as the underlying mechanics of the game in the name of demanding more power. Increased demands for power got us in the sad state we’re in. More of it will solve nothing.

Kageseigi.2150:

DeceiverX.8361:

Frankly, though, the weakness of the kit is in its inability to deal with an opponent’s defenses, not in the skill requirement in landing a hit.

Just trying to think out of the box here. What if CnD went in a bit of a different direction? Again, this is just a conceptual thought. The following changes as a whole would be…

---

1. Remove all damage from CnD.
This will allow Stealth stacking while still requiring the Thief to actually strike the target. But the main purpose for this is for the next step to be acceptable.

2. Make CnD unblockable.
This will allow the Thief to gain Stealth even if a target is actively blocking. Because CnD no longer does damage itself, being unblockable won’t make it overpowered.

3. Applies a new effect that enhances the next attack.
This effect cannot be stacked. It will be removed on the next attack that hits or is blocked/evaded.

---

As for what the effect actually does, well, that’s up for discussion. Possible examples…

A. Add 1.25 to the coefficient of the next attack (or whatever would make up for the removed damage of the successful CnD).

B. Double the direct damage of the next attack.

C. Double the condition damage of the next condition application.

D. Double the duration of the next condition/CC application.

---

Or perhaps it could apply the proper option(s) based on which skill was used while the effect is active. Backstab could use either A or B. Dancing Dagger could use A or B plus D. Or something along those lines.

Anyway, just trying to figure out how to improve D/D without actually changing it too much.

I’ve thought of similar things, but then you need to ask yourself, does this really make it fair and fun to fight against, and how complex should the skill be for those while learning to fight against it?

While I’m in the minority playing signet power, I can’t in good faith advocate getting much more damage on a given attack. Getting ramped damage would reduce the amount of fair counterplay to the actual abilities like backstab itself; imagine if you did Steal -> CnD -> BV (Unblockable) -> Stab for huge extra damage. It’d likely one-shot a lot of people and give them really no tell as to what was going to happen. Albeit a small period of time, there is the (imho) obvious tell of a thief engaging you and you losing a chunk of health immediately before it stealths to know it was D/D, and that it’s probably going to backstab you very soon. Imagine a thief that dropped Mug and went CS/Tr/DrD for damage instead, and maybe even dropped SoH. You’d have no conditions, and no damage taken, and then a second later, would be on the ground 100-0’ed. Despite the fact that I leave my enemies with very little time to live as it is, I can’t in good faith approve of anything that in one single, individual attack with very little or no tell does so much damage. I’d be more infuriated than anything if I just suddenly fell over dead and had no time to react.

Idea, mostly because I know Anet will never remove their power creep, make CnD unblockable keep Ini cost boom CnD becomes more viable. kitten idea but it’s an idea

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Idea, mostly because I know Anet will never remove their power creep, make CnD unblockable keep Ini cost boom CnD becomes more viable. kitten idea but it’s an idea

It’s a tough nut to crack, and honestly, this isn’t outlandish to suggest. One side of me says it’s fine – it was pretty much unblockable when BV had two changes by default – but the other half of me still struggles with the “is it fun/fair?” question. Strictly unblockable abilities are very strong, and the lack of a cooldown on a high-damage ability would allow thieves to spam CnD to kill players who rightfully should earn blocked attacks.

Really, I think the best approach for the skill is to revert the BV/VA change (since it also nerfed VShare), and just reduce the initiative cost to four. This gives D/D a better once-per-combat engage without totally hard-countering builds that should earn their defenses, like running a shield on warrior or guardian.

Of course, that still doesn’t change the fact OH dagger needs changes for DB and Dancing Dagger, too.

If a thief spams it they just dumped all ini into it and won’t have to many disengage options,it also still doesn’t get around all of the invulns running around. And it procs reveal so it wouldn’t allow restealthing on spamming it.

Yea, but it’s still on a 1.25 coefficient with lots of potential scaling. If I saw a chrono blocking, I’d forgo the backstabs entirely and just kill it by mashing 5, revealed or not.

I mean, contemplate this for a moment happening three consecutive times, even if you got out-played and the enemy dodged a BV’ed mug or something and then popped the block to avoid the backstab. Why not just go for CnD more?

DeceiverX.8361:

I’d be more infuriated than anything if I just suddenly fell over dead and had no time to react.

Ah, so your concern is having a Thief entering Stealth and 1-shotting a target without giving any notice?

There must surely be tweaks that could be made to the concept in order to give acceptable notice. Perhaps one of the following….

A. Reduce CnD’s damage coeffient to 0.25, and add an additional 1.0 to the next attack’s damage coefficient. This would disallow any Stealth stacking, but it may still be weak enough to allow it to be unblockable while giving the target some notice between the CnD and Backstab.

B. Add a 1/4 second daze to CnD. At least it will give a visual notification to the target that something hit them. This would make up for the lacking daze from Sleight of Hand. It would also add a bit more utility to CnD.

C. Add a 1 second Blind to CnD for the same reason as above.

D. Give CnD a slight aftercast delay before Stealth is applied. Even if it is used in conjunction with Steal, at least the target would be able to see the Thief briefly before it vanishes.

Hmm, just curious… would Stealth-stacking even be acceptable as a D/D Thief. It would still require successful strikes to stack, which may not be so simple in a combat situation. It would probably just be annoying to others because the Thief can stay hidden for longer. Other than that, I don’t see any reason for it to not be able to do so.

Ps. Does Meld with Shadows even affect CnD? I thought they fixed the “perma-Stealth” ability of well timed CnD’s last year.

More along the lines of the fact that such a tremendous hit would reduce available counterplay even on the passive effect levels. Traits which apply passives at health thresholds only when on an attack made after being below that threshold. If you OHKO a warrior running Defy Pain, it won’t actually proc. The same is said for other abilities. It’s not so much important to keep the thief visible but moreso for the opponent to know he’s being put in combat with one. The incoming damage from CnD is a pretty blatant tell as to what the thief is building and how he’s trying to play. If he doesn’t hit with CnD-level damage on engage, how does one necessarily discern what the build is, or recognize he’s being hit at all in larger-group battles? I certainly know when I take a skill for 7-10k, even in group play. A random surprise 30k could be kind of game-breaking and make it overly-difficult in that context.

Now, I hate passives. I really do. I wish all of them would be removed from the game. That said, some professions are dependent on them and many are intertwined with the profession. Contemplate warrior without any passives, or a necro not having Last Grasp. They’re a pain, but kind of important to the professions. Denying them this on top of making the thief just more difficult to read in terms of its damage is a little harsh. Plus, let’s not also forget the potential problems that could come with rangers taking huge damage reduction due to Bark Skin and similar abilities, either. The whole deal is a two-way street.

A still kind of resides in that haze of “what did I just get hit by/how should I react to this?” or non-noticeable damage in group contexts. I’m not trying to shut anyone down so much as get people thinking on this, and why it’s such a tough nut to crack. I’ll be honest and say this has been a hot topic for discussion (one which I’ve been heavily involved in) for a while. We don’t want any balance blunders favoring the thief excessively just as much as we don’t want the thief to be totally left in the dust.

B and C again don’t really solve the core of the issue. It’s just extra punishment tha also kind of invalidates a SA trait.

For D, an aftercast doesn’t really help, either, since at times that speed is just a strict dependency.

MiS does… sort of. If you have excellent timing, you can chain-stealth CnD. If they fixed it, I’ve forgotten; I’m still able to do it, and I’ve seen many continue to do so. They changed MiS a while ago so that it only applied after losing the “Stealth” effect to prevent D/P from just permanently being in stealth by getting refunded the initiative every HS, but the one or two frames that keep the thief invisible after it ends are still there, per my testing in game now (took a while because I’m not used to 4s stealth duration, so my timing was laughably bad there) such that the thief can still chain it with D/D.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Azukas.1426:

Did any of you guys,think that maybe anet doesn’t want you abusing stealth anymore…

Did you read the whole thread before asking this question? Because if you did, you wouldn’t be asking this silly question.

D/D evade frame may be nice, but the pre-cast and after-cast delays are not. Due to this, any player cannot skillfully evade anything unless the player has psychic power who can predict what will happen 2s ahead of time. Any player reacting to something will miss the evade opportunity due to these delays.

The only reliable evade is Pistol Whip because even if you fail to evade, your target will be interrupted and forced to dodge. If it only didn’t cost more than 50% of our resources to use.

So why is D/D condi thief a thing and regarded as extreme cheese/powerful?

Maybe you need to reevaluate your build and come up with a new game plan.

Personally if I was going to run a D/D thief it would be marauder/zerker with Acro, Trickery, and Daredevil. Extreme evade uptime for days with all that D/D damage.

DeceiverX.8361:

A still kind of resides in that haze of “what did I just get hit by/how should I react to this?” or non-noticeable damage in group contexts.

In your opinion, what would be an acceptable “amount of notification” for a potential lethal attack? I guess that’s the issue that needs to be pinned down.

With your previous example, using Steal-CnD-Basilisk-Backstab can hit hard and fast. But it will be even faster with Flanking Strikes traited for quickness. How much time does that even give an unexpecting opponent before it has already suffered all of that damage?

I must confess… I don’t have too much pity for passives that don’t get a chance to take affect. I don’t know if it’s because I feel like the Thief would deserve to bypass the passive if it has set up a perfect engagement with a very risky build, or if it’s because as a glassy Thief myself, I’ve suffered insta-downs with little time or tells in order to avoid it… especially in hectic combat.

Oddly enough, I cannot remember the last time a Thief has been able to insta-burst me down from 100%… even while caught completely by surprise with Basilisk… even when running with the Berserker amulet. Your Signet Thief may be able to do it, but those are very rare. However, I’ve suffered insta-downs from other professions including Guardians, Revenants, Warriors, Engineers, and invisible Mesmers.

What’s especially annoying are DH trap stacks at completely empty points. Alas, let your guard down for just a moment, and that’s all it takes. It wouldn’t be so bad if Dragon’s Maw didn’t make Roll for Initiative worthless (it’s literally my reflexive save skill)… by the time I notice, it’s too late for Shadowstep to save me. Haha, and then there’s that DH pull into the traps. Good times… good times :-P

Yeah, mostly L2P issues on my part, but it still makes me want to be able to return the favor ;-)

Who knows? Maybe Anet just needs to give everyone a Thief Proximity alarm that goes off whenever an enemy Thief is within a range of 1,000. There will be no excuse then! :-D

DeceiverX.8361:

I understand Jana had such issues of CnD “missing”, but I’ve never experienced this once.

I really should’ve made some videos of it – but everybody told me that I was nuts – so I actually believed it (halfway).

You can imagine it like this: You run towards a thief and use CnD and steal (my chance to hit another class with that combo was 50%, thieves 0%/ CnD without steal: 0% against other players), they move and you miss, although they’re still in range and didn’t evade. In case you were lucky and landed a CnD and turned around to BS (which takes me less than half a second) the enemy would already be out of range, without a dodge or anything. So I would have needed a gap close for both attacks and still miss.
The game looked rather normal (it was often hard to see any telegraphed skills) just that I seemed much slower than everybody else.

And I would also love to know why it was “only” me.

Anyway in general: My hit quote is back to how it has been, I think. But now the problem is the sustain of the other classes and the damage they dish out and the reveal skills – so yeah, anet probably won’t step away from their powercreep, but I guess it’s no solution to add more powercreep that cries for more powercreep then again.

I still think the 3 traitlines thing won’t work out in its current form – I guess most lines of all classes need a rework – best way to stop powercreep as people have to chose one thing or the other but can’t have everything (like it is right now).
And depending on what anet wants to do with their game/balance/traits I can’t really say what my thief needs in order to compete. Actually that’s their job.

Just to add: PvP and wvw have got nothing in common anymore. But Deceiver can explain that better than me.
Also: the PvP team made a bogus balance by adding and removing amuletts/runes – we still have all of it in wvw.

Kageseigi.2150:

DeceiverX.8361:

A still kind of resides in that haze of “what did I just get hit by/how should I react to this?” or non-noticeable damage in group contexts.

In your opinion, what would be an acceptable “amount of notification” for a potential lethal attack? I guess that’s the issue that needs to be pinned down.

With your previous example, using Steal-CnD-Basilisk-Backstab can hit hard and fast. But it will be even faster with Flanking Strikes traited for quickness. How much time does that even give an unexpecting opponent before it has already suffered all of that damage?

I must confess… I don’t have too much pity for passives that don’t get a chance to take affect. I don’t know if it’s because I feel like the Thief would deserve to bypass the passive if it has set up a perfect engagement with a very risky build, or if it’s because as a glassy Thief myself, I’ve suffered insta-downs with little time or tells in order to avoid it… especially in hectic combat.

Oddly enough, I cannot remember the last time a Thief has been able to insta-burst me down from 100%… even while caught completely by surprise with Basilisk… even when running with the Berserker amulet. Your Signet Thief may be able to do it, but those are very rare. However, I’ve suffered insta-downs from other professions including Guardians, Revenants, Warriors, Engineers, and invisible Mesmers.

What’s especially annoying are DH trap stacks at completely empty points. Alas, let your guard down for just a moment, and that’s all it takes. It wouldn’t be so bad if Dragon’s Maw didn’t make Roll for Initiative worthless (it’s literally my reflexive save skill)… by the time I notice, it’s too late for Shadowstep to save me. Haha, and then there’s that DH pull into the traps. Good times… good times :-P

Yeah, mostly L2P issues on my part, but it still makes me want to be able to return the favor ;-)

Who knows? Maybe Anet just needs to give everyone a Thief Proximity alarm that goes off whenever an enemy Thief is within a range of 1,000. There will be no excuse then! :-D

The way I see it isn’t so much about time but that an attentive player should be able to determine how to react to what they’re being hit by if they’re quick. If a bunker druid attacks you and maybe RF’s for at most a few thousand damage, the response you give is going to be different from if you suddenly lost most of your health from an offensively-built GS warrior. Your reaction speed is going to be the same, but the decision made should be different. The thief playing D/D offers significant awareness to the enemy as to what exactly is happening; they take a substantial portion of damage from CnD, the thief disappears, and they understand they’re being hit hard by a power D/D thief. If there’s only a little bit of damage dealt or none at all, it’s harder to discern what exactly they’re up against. Quickness certainly speeds this up and makes it harder to make the decision (though one fast kill every 60s with no swiftness is imho pretty meh imho, not to mention it won’t begin until after CnD lands unless you come with Mug from behind), but careful attention and being ready for such effects allows players to have the opportunity to understand a need to immediately stunbreak and dodge when they lose a large chunk of health quickly. Panic reactions and the safety of the dodge can let the player responding catch up and make the decision then. If all of the damage ends up front-loaded, it becomes harder to even understand the fact a panic dodge is necessary. If you take minimal damage from someone, odds are you’re not going to consider them much of a threat of death from their other sources of damage. If a massive-burst thief only CnD’s for a few hundred damage, it’s difficult to discern really how much the backstab would hit for. Especially if you’re already engaged in combat with someone else, you have stuff like regen and healing being applied, and may not be able to tell at all really how much damage you took. Was it 200 or 500? That could mean the difference between a thief in soldier’s versus full berserker’s, which obviously changes things, while as right now, you’ll definitely know and feel the difference before the huge nuke (or not) comes in.

sPvP makes things massively different from WvW, mind you. There’s around a 40% damage loss minimum just being in sPvP as opposed to WvW. Relative damage loss as a comparison to enemy sustain/defense from just a numbers perspective ends up being greater than 60% depending on the build. This makes the thief very hard to burst with in sPvP and much more viable in WvW. If you’re not getting bursted by thieves in sPvP, it’s because simply put, in most cases they just physically can’t do it.
Other classes have superior coefficients, which lets them get more relative damage in sPvP, as well, and tied with better boon access, typically means reaping way better benefits.

It shouldn’t so much be a strict matter of speed but knowing what to expect. You don’t know whether that DH is bunker or full burst until you try to engage or vice versa. As you mention, however, this is tough to call, and there are facets of the DH which really shut you down, almost irrespective of reaction timing. When huge burst is at hand, I think it important to give opponents the relative important information to have enough time to both have the capacity to react physically and if they succeed in doing so, have information on how to start winning. It’s not so much about disliking the possibility of killing someone in one hit so much as it is important to give them the knowledge that it could happen. If they’re slow to react, then it’s their error. But processing a huge amount of numerical data coming from multiple sources based on a constantly-fluctuating health bar while focusing on the action on screen and preventing other actions is a lot to ask for. Having such tremendous demands and expecting the average player to recognize slight nuances as such is a little bit too much, and in my opinion, is largely what makes builds OP.

Typically when you fight someone for a long time of roughly equal skill, you’ll see an ebb and flow of wins and losses on both sides; you learn from each other in a back-and-forth matter, piecing together strategies and trends as you try and figure each other out. If one side gives the other his build and associated strengths and weaknesses, however, while the other says nothing, the player who reveals anything will be at a distinct disadvantage, even if his build is objectively good or even better than the other’s. While we should be striving for balance, what most commonly determines the outcome of encounters is knowledge. Playing against the class you know best is often the easiest, because you have the foresight to know how to react given certain things. You’ll know what constitutes damage from a bunker or berserker, and what to expect next.

Which is why I like where CnD’s damage is for the most part; it’s currently enough to mostly not remove players of their rights to learn about their opponents and provides them with the information needed to try and figure out how to approach their foe (obviously edge cases like the screen shot above exist, and getting the perfect number is hard, considering my build is also an edge case on what could be an edge case opponent, too), while providing enough damage and pressure to impact the fight substantially.

An opponent oblivious to an incoming D/D thief should be punished to an extent by getting jumped, and if he’s also unprepared, he may not react fast enough to the incoming attacks and thus die. And that’s fine. We don’t want to punish the person who sees the thief coming on the horizon, but doesn’t know anything about it, and is unsure whether to turn and burn on engage, get ready for mass cleanses or heals, an invuln, let it proc passives, etc. The player can be amazing but a lack of information or difficult-to-achieve information shouldn’t cause a death.

Thank you fo the information. With so much to take into consideration for fair balance, does the Thief have much hope of becoming competitive in sPvP as a fighter any time soon?

Personally, I’d be happy to maintain mobility without Shortbow… or at least not be stuck in it for 10 seconds after a swap. I miss the days of going D/x and S/D. But Shortbow’s mobility is too important to give up in order to decap points (if im truly trying to win a match)… especially since S/D (or any other set) doesn’t really improve my chances over D/P of succeeding in today’s combat. That is doubly so without access to Daredevil and Staff.

I suppose that’s all off-topic, though. I’m just getting tired of the constant and needless nerfs when the Thief is already in a weak position in sPvP relative to many other professions.

Somewhat confused here how exactly is the 1 sec icd on stealth attacks the death of the class. Does missing a stealth attack apply reveal??? As for the invul and aegis/blocks why would any thief waste a stealth attack on a target with aegis or an invul up do ppl not look for boon icons or ability tells isn’t the whole point of stealth to gain the upper hand or retreat. If someone pops an aegis/block or invul anticipating a stealth attack isn’t that just a good move on them and poor play by the thief if they attack?

Lalainnia.3598:

Somewhat confused here how exactly is the 1 sec icd on stealth attacks the death of the class. Does missing a stealth attack apply reveal??? As for the invul and aegis/blocks why would any thief waste a stealth attack on a target with aegis or an invul up do ppl not look for boon icons or ability tells isn’t the whole point of stealth to gain the upper hand or retreat. If someone pops an aegis/block or invul anticipating a stealth attack isn’t that just a good move on them and poor play by the thief if they attack?

You now have more or less one chance to land your backstab (or whatever stealthed skill). It takes a bit to get into stealth – we “work” for our burst which is then likely lost if a passive procs, the game bugs out (no valid path to target) or the enemy gets their boon elsewhere, which you can’t always predict. So yes, this hurt us even more – we’re often wasting all of our initative for nothing.
I also have to agree with Azukas for once: trying to hit stealthed enemies is now really a pain.

Jana.6831:

Lalainnia.3598:

Somewhat confused here how exactly is the 1 sec icd on stealth attacks the death of the class. Does missing a stealth attack apply reveal??? As for the invul and aegis/blocks why would any thief waste a stealth attack on a target with aegis or an invul up do ppl not look for boon icons or ability tells isn’t the whole point of stealth to gain the upper hand or retreat. If someone pops an aegis/block or invul anticipating a stealth attack isn’t that just a good move on them and poor play by the thief if they attack?

You now have more or less one chance to land your backstab (or whatever stealthed skill). It takes a bit to get into stealth – we “work” for our burst which is then likely lost if a passive procs, the game bugs out (no valid path to target) or the enemy gets their boon elsewhere, which you can’t always predict. So yes, this hurt us even more – we’re often wasting all of our initative for nothing.
I also have to agree with Azukas for once: trying to hit stealthed enemies is now really a pain.

Is this specifically about Warrior and Eng passives such as endure pain I really only see warrior passive being the main one as it really has no tell. Otherwise from my personal experiences thieves generally try to go for the +1kills or 1v1s and they get their back stabs or stealth attacks off anyway which in turn triggers said passives and it’s not like they can immediately renter stealth it mostly just stops the auto attack onslaught to come afterward.

Lalainnia.3598:

Somewhat confused here how exactly is the 1 sec icd on stealth attacks the death of the class. Does missing a stealth attack apply reveal??? As for the invul and aegis/blocks why would any thief waste a stealth attack on a target with aegis or an invul up do ppl not look for boon icons or ability tells isn’t the whole point of stealth to gain the upper hand or retreat. If someone pops an aegis/block or invul anticipating a stealth attack isn’t that just a good move on them and poor play by the thief if they attack?

This is why the nerf was more or less specifically a problem for D/D power; the set’s functionality when built power comes entirely from backstab, and requires an extra risk of getting up close out of stealth, landing the CnD to gain access, and still having the opportunity to land the backstab as well. Any passive proc of blocks, stealth, etc. negates pretty much the entire weapon set, since skills 2-4 are useless on engage with D/D.

D/P can still work since it has powerful skills on 3 and 4.

There are two further things to consider:
Backstab has a long aftercast delay, and the cooldown for backstab doesn’t start until after the aftercast, putting it closer to a 2s cooldown than 1s overall. This means players without SA get at absolute most, 2 backstabs per stealt, and that’s demanding absolutely zero wait time between gaining stealth and stabbing, which with the back/side condition on stab for the damage, is rare to happen, as a re-position is needed.

Again, D/P doesn’t suffer here as much, since if the backstab misses, it won’t be revealed, and can therefore try again via another BP + HS/Bound and thus never actually lose stealth. D/D doesn’t get this luxury, since it must leave stealth or have perfect timing on chained CnD, and not have any negation be on the target at that specific time in order to re-acquire it.

A big culprit here is Hunter’s Determination in the DH and similar traits. Mug will break their Aegis, BV will apply the CC and proc it, CnD might land if pre-casted before the fragments get absorbed, but then the guard has passive Aegis again and you can’t deal the damage, and you’re also in point-blank range. You’re forced into a burn-all-initiative disengage and weapon swap and physically cannot deal damage, even if the guard fails to play well or his traps were on cooldown from a prior engage. While backstab spamming should be discouraged, and could have been argued as a problem over a year ago, the powerful safety nets provided to professions and builds through HoT kind of negates the need for a cooldown in many respects, and especially in the case of D/D, the cooldown is overly-punishing.

Rending Shade, the supposed compensation, is also a terrible trait in an uncommonly-selected line with little benefit these days. It requires the stealth attack to land in order to steal boons. But stealth attacks landing is already now a huge problem in many cases, so the gains are totally missed.

DeceiverX.8361:

Lalainnia.3598:

Somewhat confused here how exactly is the 1 sec icd on stealth attacks the death of the class. Does missing a stealth attack apply reveal??? As for the invul and aegis/blocks why would any thief waste a stealth attack on a target with aegis or an invul up do ppl not look for boon icons or ability tells isn’t the whole point of stealth to gain the upper hand or retreat. If someone pops an aegis/block or invul anticipating a stealth attack isn’t that just a good move on them and poor play by the thief if they attack?

This is why the nerf was more or less specifically a problem for D/D power; the set’s functionality when built power comes entirely from backstab, and requires an extra risk of getting up close out of stealth, landing the CnD to gain access, and still having the opportunity to land the backstab as well. Any passive proc of blocks, stealth, etc. negates pretty much the entire weapon set, since skills 2-4 are useless on engage with D/D.

D/P can still work since it has powerful skills on 3 and 4.

There are two further things to consider:
Backstab has a long aftercast delay, and the cooldown for backstab doesn’t start until after the aftercast, putting it closer to a 2s cooldown than 1s overall. This means players without SA get at absolute most, 2 backstabs per stealt, and that’s demanding absolutely zero wait time between gaining stealth and stabbing, which with the back/side condition on stab for the damage, is rare to happen, as a re-position is needed.

Again, D/P doesn’t suffer here as much, since if the backstab misses, it won’t be revealed, and can therefore try again via another BP + HS/Bound and thus never actually lose stealth. D/D doesn’t get this luxury, since it must leave stealth or have perfect timing on chained CnD, and not have any negation be on the target at that specific time in order to re-acquire it.

A big culprit here is Hunter’s Determination in the DH and similar traits. Mug will break their Aegis, BV will apply the CC and proc it, CnD might land if pre-casted before the fragments get absorbed, but then the guard has passive Aegis again and you can’t deal the damage, and you’re also in point-blank range. You’re forced into a burn-all-initiative disengage and weapon swap and physically cannot deal damage, even if the guard fails to play well or his traps were on cooldown from a prior engage. While backstab spamming should be discouraged, and could have been argued as a problem over a year ago, the powerful safety nets provided to professions and builds through HoT kind of negates the need for a cooldown in many respects, and especially in the case of D/D, the cooldown is overly-punishing.

Rending Shade, the supposed compensation, is also a terrible trait in an uncommonly-selected line with little benefit these days. It requires the stealth attack to land in order to steal boons. But stealth attacks landing is already now a huge problem in many cases, so the gains are totally missed.

I 100% agree with that at the same time most of these passives have long cds hunters determinations cd should be something up for review for a cd increase imo based off everything you stated. That time frame though I’m pretty confidant a thief could reset the fight to their advantage at the same time the DH could have called for help depending on how and what they’re teammates are doing.

Lalainnia.3598:

DeceiverX.8361:

Lalainnia.3598:

Somewhat confused here how exactly is the 1 sec icd on stealth attacks the death of the class. Does missing a stealth attack apply reveal??? As for the invul and aegis/blocks why would any thief waste a stealth attack on a target with aegis or an invul up do ppl not look for boon icons or ability tells isn’t the whole point of stealth to gain the upper hand or retreat. If someone pops an aegis/block or invul anticipating a stealth attack isn’t that just a good move on them and poor play by the thief if they attack?

This is why the nerf was more or less specifically a problem for D/D power; the set’s functionality when built power comes entirely from backstab, and requires an extra risk of getting up close out of stealth, landing the CnD to gain access, and still having the opportunity to land the backstab as well. Any passive proc of blocks, stealth, etc. negates pretty much the entire weapon set, since skills 2-4 are useless on engage with D/D.

D/P can still work since it has powerful skills on 3 and 4.

There are two further things to consider:
Backstab has a long aftercast delay, and the cooldown for backstab doesn’t start until after the aftercast, putting it closer to a 2s cooldown than 1s overall. This means players without SA get at absolute most, 2 backstabs per stealt, and that’s demanding absolutely zero wait time between gaining stealth and stabbing, which with the back/side condition on stab for the damage, is rare to happen, as a re-position is needed.

Again, D/P doesn’t suffer here as much, since if the backstab misses, it won’t be revealed, and can therefore try again via another BP + HS/Bound and thus never actually lose stealth. D/D doesn’t get this luxury, since it must leave stealth or have perfect timing on chained CnD, and not have any negation be on the target at that specific time in order to re-acquire it.

A big culprit here is Hunter’s Determination in the DH and similar traits. Mug will break their Aegis, BV will apply the CC and proc it, CnD might land if pre-casted before the fragments get absorbed, but then the guard has passive Aegis again and you can’t deal the damage, and you’re also in point-blank range. You’re forced into a burn-all-initiative disengage and weapon swap and physically cannot deal damage, even if the guard fails to play well or his traps were on cooldown from a prior engage. While backstab spamming should be discouraged, and could have been argued as a problem over a year ago, the powerful safety nets provided to professions and builds through HoT kind of negates the need for a cooldown in many respects, and especially in the case of D/D, the cooldown is overly-punishing.

Rending Shade, the supposed compensation, is also a terrible trait in an uncommonly-selected line with little benefit these days. It requires the stealth attack to land in order to steal boons. But stealth attacks landing is already now a huge problem in many cases, so the gains are totally missed.

I 100% agree with that at the same time most of these passives have long cds hunters determinations cd should be something up for review for a cd increase imo based off everything you stated. That time frame though I’m pretty confidant a thief could reset the fight to their advantage at the same time the DH could have called for help depending on how and what they’re teammates are doing.

The real issue again pertains to D/D’s lack of capacity to really reset a fight well without burning other important cooldowns like Shadowstep which are typically needed mid-fight, anyways. Most passives have similar or even shorter cooldowns than what the thief has for options to reset. Typically the success of a reset comes from slowly rotating other timers to make things like elite utilities on cd while other effects are also on cooldown. The highly-committal nature of D/D doesn’t really jive well with this philosophy, unfortunately, which again, is why this change really exacerbated the weakness of D/D while not affecting skilled D/P play very much, and thus, is worth re-evaluating the change entirely, since it largely failed in its objective and had huge undesired collateral.

If there is going to be a 1s CD on stealth attacks, then stealth attacks should either deal way more damage or be unlockable, since they were originally balanced around having no CD.

Remove CD Anet. At least let us know if you read player oppinions…

All the other classes would kill for a 1s ICD.

Svarty.8019:

All the other classes would kill for a 1s ICD.

Would all the classes also kill for being stripped of every single defense/heals and passives but dodges?
We are talking about class here that got stripped everything but pretty much dodges for the sake of supposed of high dmg and mobility (stealth is not viable since revs and engis can spam reveal on demand, thief has 1 block lel). Meanwhile every other class (but ele maybe) pulls out way higher dmg, often in AOE!!! form, can defend point and some can rotate just as fast really as a thief (sup revs/mes).

No other class has so many requirements for measy 3k dmg (average backstab dmg in pvp) but thieves and they get punished on top of it for other classes having instant or passive blocks/invuls/blinds.

They should just abolish Revealed since that’s the only way to justify the ICD on stealth attacks. They added Revealed to prevent a chained backstabs, well with ICD, you can’t do that anymore, so no reason to keep Revealed. This way Thieves can use stealth as a form of effective and reliable defense mechanic as it was first intended.

Removing revealed doesn’t solve the problem and only buffs D/P further ahead than the rest. Drop BP and just bound/HS spam to victory.

I know you’re adamant about removing revealed, but it’s an essential part of the game currently for general profession balance across more than just the thief, too.

Removing revealed would massively cut the skill floor on the thief (and it’s already ridiculously low as-is on the daredevil) and would do literally nothing to improve high-skill play potential.

Revealed is nothing but shackles that hinders the evolution of the Thief profession. They can figure out what happens to other professions but Thief seriously doesn’t need this self-inflicted nerf. Thief is heavily burdened by this lazy feature compared to other professions thus it needs to be abolished. Otherwise, there will be no meaningful progress for the Thief profession.

They can avoid this issue by creating Elite specs like DD, but they have to face the fact that Thief is a specialist in Shadow Arts…how can you be a “specialist” if you’re purposely revealing yourself…it makes zero sense.