Guild Wars 2

The main point of this is to generate suggestions for the inevitable backstab update. So feel free to post what you think would be a fair change for back stab, mug, and CnD.

Rather than general suggestions, please try to keep them around these backstab and its closely related skills.

As you know, a backstab rework is coming.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Backstab-time-to-nerf/page/2#post601420

So how about making some suggestions on how it can be changed without being nerfed into the ground?

My opinion: Why not just nerf the raw damage, and add conditions to compensate?

As an example back stab currently has 403 base damage, and 806 base damage from behind. Instead of dealing double damage from behind, how about the normal 403 base and extra conditions?
maybe : 5 stacks of bleeding for 5 seconds (1062 base damage).
Or perhaps: 3 stacks of confusion (400 base damage a skill use) for 3~5 seconds
Not those exact numbers, but something along those lines. The result would be more damage in the end, but less initial burst. Bad point would be that condition removal can destroy the extra damage, that’s why I tried to keep the time somewhat shortish, with stacked conditions.

Fear: It might add too much to condition builds? Idk, tbh

Disclaimer: I didn’t put much time/math to find the right amount of condition stacks/duration, so they’ll obviously need rework. It’s the concept that I’m putting forth.

Unable to cast cnd while using steal along with steal not activating basilik venom should be good enough if anet ever fixes the rendering issues. Make it harder to execute, fix the rendering issues, and don’t nerf raw damage is how I would do it.

Adding conditions would not compensate any where near enough because backstab is primarily used in damage/crit based builds, which ususally involves no focus on condisions at all.

I agree with doomdesire here, as it’s pretty much word for word what I said in another thread and I’m sure has been suggested elsewhere.

Leave damage relatively, if not completely, untouched and remove the CnD/steal combo and have steal not apply venoms, or not apply basilisk.

This changes the available reaction time of the target from next to nothing to seeing the steal, seeing the CnD and the time needed for the thief to position.

The thief CAN however still do quick backstabs by traiting stealth on steal instead of mug, or using something like blinding powder to get a quick stealth, this however lowers the overall damage of the combo due to no mug or no CnD.

Yup, agree with these guys. I put my own thread about this, also. Simply making Steal override other skills so they can’t be used in parallel delays the spike combo to the point where another player can more easily react to it, and that would be enough. Damage needn’t be modified at all.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

Backstab itself is not OP. The damage, while high, is justified in most situations.

What is OP however is the “Backstab combo” consisting of Steal + Mug + Cloak and Dagger + Backstab + Assassin’s Singet and/or Haste + _Assassin’s Reward + all the various traits that proc when using Steal.

There is an awful lot more to the Backstab combo than Backstab itself. There are also much smarter ways to nerf it than simply adjusting the damage, which would completely ruin it in PvE.

I propose:

-Change Assassin’s Reward trait to something less “bursty”
-Don’t allow people to use Steal during a cast
-Nerf Mug slightly. It seems to deal an awful lot of damage in some specs.

Not everybody wants to play a condition Thief, really.. why want people conditions added to everything.

Backstab is completely fine as mechanic – theres just arguably to much in traits that supports that mechanic, which leads to a super strong hit, when every damage increase trait is taken (leaving the Thief completely useless but for that one hit).

While i don’t think that is a problem, Traits would have to be changed, not backstabbing.

Dagger is stabby stabby direct damage. We don’t need another condition master profession which can do nothing but that effectively.

That said, the Assassin’s Signet change was enough to bring backstabbing Thieves in line. Any other “Tweak” and Thieves simply won’t be able to compete with Warriors, Mesmers and Engeneers (even burst) dmg wise, while already having not even a thrid of their defesive (only stealth really), and close to zero utility (uhm.. Venoms, maybe..?).

/E:
It’s already pathetic that i “burst” only for 3k dmg with my backstab on a dmg Warrior with nearly 30k Health, just to be bursted away by said Warrior in 2 hits then.
And even if i manage to kill a bad one, then they just stand up from downed state, kill me, and walk away.
Not even talking about insta gibbing Engeneers from 1500 range, or Shatter/Phantasm Mesmers not even doing one step for their kills.

I also don’t want to think about our downed state, which is nothing but a little bit trolling for sPvP. But when does that crap actually get you up, compared to other professions? A 600 range teleport and a 2 second stealth (which starts on CD when getting downed), yeah… thanks.

I think i was never scared to loose a fight when finishing a Thief while being on low health, while i actually have to run away when downing a Warrior, Necro and so on, except if i have a stealth off cooldown in which i can finish them.

Thieves are already pretty mediocre. It’s simply a bandwagon to cry over them.
And honestly, squishy high dmg classes where always noob stompers, and noobs are the ones crying the loudest. Pretty much the only reason for all that Thief QQ.

Thanks for the constructive and polite replies guys.
Sorry if it was a bad idea, you all have good points.
I was hoping to increase the overall damage while reducing burst.
I hoped since d/d’s death blossom was already liked for the bleeds, it’d be ok to make backstab more condition oriented since thieves don’t have much option for melee condition attacks and steal interrupting your action still only brings it up to .75sec to use the chain without quickness (In the end, I just took the easy way out and tried changing the core skill.) But hey, that’s why I included its related skills too :p

For backstab I think the focus needs to be on making it a more complex and synergized ability. The simple “attack in stealth->big damage get” formula is too easy to break by trivializing the set-up. My suggestion would be to make backstab flow better into thief combat instead of making it an all-in attempt to end the fight. Things like daze and cripple are already thoroughly covered by sword. Applying vulnerability isn’t a bad idea, but since C&D is already applying vulnerability and is the commonly-used backstab setup, it seems a little bland.

My suggestion would be to follow suit with the dagger auto-attack and give back stab something that synergizes well with thieves but isn’t particularly common currently: endurance-on-hit. 50 % endurance on hit (25 % from the front), to be exact, one entire dodge. Thieves not only gain defense from dodge, but through acrobatics and trickery can use it to buff offense, do actual offense (via caltrops) or even heal. Dodge is good for everyone, and can further be synergized to be very powerful. This also gives D/D some good synergy with acrobatics that could be considered lacking.

With endurance from backstab the ability remains very powerful while being something that feeds into the thief’s battle rhythm without being the thief’s battle rhythm.

I think the Mug > CnD > Backstab combo should be kept, It’s rare enough as it is for thief skills to have good synergy. The issue is purely about damage numbers, rather than mechanic.

The damage should definitely be tuned down, but there should also be an option for high burst damage; I’d suggest
1) Cutting the damage from CnD and backstab, and
2) Change assassin’s signet to increase damage by X% (say 100%) of all attacks for 2 seconds on use with a 120 sec recharge time, moving it to an elite skill to replace basilisk venom.

The 2 – 3 min recharge time will force players to use it intelligently, instead of using it every 30 – 45 seconds whenever steal/basilisk/devourer is on up.

Slightly off-topic, but backstab is just a symptom to a much bigger issue in the game at the moment; The damage role in the GW2 trinity outperforms control and support in a lot of pvp scenarios. The finer mechanics like skill lockdown from interrupts, poison’s healing reduction, endurance slowdown from weakness, recharge slowdown from chill and especially combo fields in general are overlooked because focusing your target down is far more effective. This is akin to WoW arena when “cleave” teams are overly effective and created a 2 dimensional meta game. Was not fun.

Actually, I personally like the idea of replacing a portion of the damage with bleeds. Currently it may be used by crit/power builds rather than condition, but it would make the set as a whole more consistent because of how Death Blossom works. It would be, overall, more of a condition based set, and rather than using either Death Blossom or Cloak and Dagger depending upon build, you would rely upon CnD for the raw single target damage, and Death Blossom would be for AoE, dodging, or just for rapid spiking after CnD while the revealed debuff is preventing another CnD.
I’ve always hated having one of my attacks border on useless depending on my build, and this change would not only make both attacks useful to the same builds, but it would fix the issue of Backstab instagibbing certain people when you cheese the hell out of it.

There are a lot of professions out there that have higher bursts than thieves and also higher survivability, if they are to nerf thieves AGAIN thous profession should get the same treatment.

Volrath.1473:

There are a lot of professions out there that have higher bursts than thieves and also higher survivability, if they are to nerf thieves AGAIN thous profession should get the same treatment.

There are plenty of threads where you can debate about whether a change should happen, keep this thread open for suggestions on how to tune backstab to increase TTK without negatively impacting overall thief effectiveness.

Make Mug a knockdown for 2 sec instead of damage. Take away vulnerability from CnD, make it so it doesnt work with steal and instead of the vulnerability stacks, have it do like 3s of chill .

Take away direct damage from backstab front hit, have it cause something like 10 stacks of bleeding at high duration, and poison at high duration. This adds synergy to condition builds,

Teerwik.1650:

Make Mug a knockdown for 2 sec instead of damage. Take away vulnerability from CnD, make it so it doesnt work with steal and instead of the vulnerability stacks, have it do like 3s of chill .

Take away direct damage from backstab front hit, have it cause something like 10 stacks of bleeding at high duration, and poison at high duration. This adds synergy to condition builds,

Trust me, a backstab thief would much rather have knockdown with steal rather than damage. Knockdown would just make even more QQ because now they really have no chance. Warriors can still pop endure pain, however(which even works against the current backstab builds, any warriors out there)

Sneak attack is the condition stealth opener, backstab should remain the same and the Mug/CnD/Backstab combo should be negated by stopping CnD precast working with steal/mug. I wouldn’t be against an increase in revealed time either just as long as we had a more obvious visual to identify when we can stealth again.

I did suggest a new trait called Smash and Grab for the acrobat tree in beta or after launch sometime for a Knockback on steal trait. Knockback (not knockdown) would be a handy feature that couldn’t be followed up with a backstab or tactical strike because the target would be out of melee range.

How about instead of backstabbing your opponent, you give him a reach around, because at the rate the nerfs are coming in for thieves, you’re not going to be able to do much else.

First of all, to the OP, this thread is a great idea. ANet has shown appreciation of constructive feedback in the past. So if we can crowd source some good ideas such that the non-glass cannon PvP thieves don’t get screwed in the process of rebalancing, then that would make me a very happy thief. The idea of reducing burst via an Assassin’s Signet nerf was a largely popular one in these forums prior to ANet changing it, so let’s continue that trend.

Doomdesire.9365:

Unable to cast cnd while using steal along with steal not activating basilik venom should be good enough if anet ever fixes the rendering issues. Make it harder to execute, fix the rendering issues, and don’t nerf raw damage is how I would do it.

I’m glad to be seeing these ideas popping up, because I think it’s the way to go. I think there are two things they could do.

1) Make it so you can’t use Steal while Cloak and Dagger is casting
2) Make it so Steal cancels the Cloak and Dagger cast

I’m not sure which of these would be preferable. I think they would both get the job done, but it would just depend on which is easier for ANet to implement.

Paranoid.9542:

Adding conditions would not compensate any where near enough because backstab is primarily used in damage/crit based builds, which ususally involves no focus on condisions at all.

I agree. Turning Backstab into a condition ability would force a lot of people to have to collect a whole new gear set since Backstab thieves focus on Precision and Crit Damage. It also goes against the flavor of Backstab, in my opinion. The Hidden Killer trait , for example, would be killed off completely for D/D builds.

If they were going to shift around damage, they could potentially nerf Backstab and buff the Double Strike -> Wild Strike -> Lotus Strike chain. But I feel like the damage for all these moves is in a good place. As people have said before me, it’s the combo of Basilisk Venom + CnD + Steal + Assassin’s Signet + … + Backstab that is OP.

jayem.2630:

I think the Mug > CnD > Backstab combo should be kept, It’s rare enough as it is for thief skills to have good synergy. The issue is purely about damage numbers, rather than mechanic.

The damage should definitely be tuned down, but there should also be an option for high burst damage; I’d suggest
1) Cutting the damage from CnD and backstab, and
2) Change assassin’s signet to increase damage by X% (say 100%) of all attacks for 2 seconds on use with a 120 sec recharge time, moving it to an elite skill to replace basilisk venom.

The 2 – 3 min recharge time will force players to use it intelligently, instead of using it every 30 – 45 seconds whenever steal/basilisk/devourer is on up.

These changes, as is, would severly cripple PvE Backstab thieves though, which is precisely the kind of thing we’re trying to avoid. When it comes to thieves, ANet has so far done a pretty admiral job of balancing PvP which leaving PvE unscathed. Let’s hope they continue.

It doesn’t need a rework. This is a number tweak issue.

Mug/CnD/Backstab currently has a 5.4 Power ratio for the full combo:

Mug: 1.5x
CnD: 1.5x
Backstab: 2.4x (1.2x on frontstab)

So where do you pull off the damage, and how much?

I agree with the sentiment to re-work Steal to break up the instant CnD hit, though that’s a whole lot more work than a number tweak.

…I honestly had no idea Mug had a 1.5 ratio before testing it; that number is totally ridiculous.

Grimwolf.7163:

Actually, I personally like the idea of replacing a portion of the damage with bleeds. Currently it may be used by crit/power builds rather than condition, but it would make the set as a whole more consistent because of how Death Blossom works. It would be, overall, more of a condition based set, and rather than using either Death Blossom or Cloak and Dagger depending upon build, you would rely upon CnD for the raw single target damage, and Death Blossom would be for AoE, dodging, or just for rapid spiking after CnD while the revealed debuff is preventing another CnD.
I’ve always hated having one of my attacks border on useless depending on my build, and this change would not only make both attacks useful to the same builds, but it would fix the issue of Backstab instagibbing certain people when you cheese the hell out of it.

So you want to change Autoattack, backstab, heartseeker, dancing dagger, and CnD in it’s direct dmg core design, to meet Death Blossoms focus on condition dmg?

Theres a reason Dagger is used by direct dmg Thieves – it’s the only weapon direct dmg Thieves can effectively use.
The very core idea of the backstab mechanic is the high direct dmg spike, and the complete Dagger setup is build around that, except the misplaced dual skill, Death Blossom.

Atm we got pistols as Condition weapon, with the misplaced direct dmg dual skill, and Daggers as direct damage weapon, with the misplaced condition dmg dual skill (and shortbow for a AoE hybrid + Sword which doesn’t really know what it want’s to be).

If we would change Backstab into condition dmg (which wouldn’t even make sense if you think about it + being basically a complete remake of the design core) then what would be left for direct dmg Thieves?
Spamming unload? Or, beware, pistol whip spam?

So please, don’t claim a change of daggers to condition dmg being “more consistent because of how Death Blossom works”, because it’s quite the opposite.

Daggers: The weapon of a Assassin, striking out of the shadows on a unawakittenget (whats wrong with that censorship unaware | target), for a fast and quiet death.

Daggers are designed for stabbing (not cutting, making the enemy bleed, or implying poisons etc., that are Knifes btw), applying fatal wounds (organs or other important parts) leading to a very fast and silent death. They are also desinged to be worn hidden.

Sure you can apply poison to your dagger, and sure the enemy will bleed (like it will after getting striked with really anything sharp or heavy), but thats not the point of the weapon we are talking about.
And for those who don’t care about all that stuff, it’s not how ArenaNet desinged Daggers in Guild Wars 2 in the first place.

If everything, Death Blossom should be changed to fit into the weapon set (Dagger/Dagger).

This isn’t a discussion on how to “fix” backstab (which isn’t broken), but how to change (remake) it to meet Condition dmg running Thieves to have even more options on the dispense of direct dmg Thieves (which only got Daggers – which, again, makes only sense as direct damage weapon).

BTW, CnD isn’t for “raw single target dmg”, it’s basically nothing but a perfect Backstab setup, giving stealth to you and vulnerability to the enemy, for even more direct dmg.

If Backstabbing builds (not backstab on it’s own, that would be ridiculous) is considered as to strong (which it isn’t in my humble opinion), then there are remakes to make. But not to the core, but more to the amplifiers given.

That being Traits like “Hidden Killer”, “Infusion of Shadow”, “Flanking Strikes”, “Mug”, “Long Reach” or “Side Strike”.
And with remakes, i don’t mean tweaks in the sense of tuning them down, or even nerfing them into uselessnes. If they are touched in any way, then if anything they have to be replaced by something equal in power, but being used in a different way.
A, design wise lame, example would be changing Flanking Strikes (5 % increased dmg when hitting from behind) into a trait which increases Damage by 5 % when hitting the enemy in the face (front).
That way it wouldn amlify backstabs, but would do more damage over all to compensate a little bit for the burst loss.
But again, such a change would be kind of uninspired, and more dmg when hitting a enemy into his guarded side would make as much sense as daggers doing dmg via conditions.
Just a example.

Flat out nerfs will straight up ruin the Thief, a profession that isn’t as strong as many seem to believe.
With squishy burst classes it’s a fine line. They are only strong because of their raw dmg, killing the enemy before they can do much. If that dmg is nerfed by only a little bit, going under that line, giving the enemy time to play, they end up completely useless, since they can’t compete in a “fair fight”.

Character limit

You will never see a backstab Thief staying in a up front fight with a Warrior. They simply have no chance of winning that fight.
All they have, is bursting them down before they can do anything.
If catched unluckily, their dead.

It’s not a unbalance, it’s a trade off.
And people never understood that. In no game i have ever played so far (and that being many).
All you need to do is sticking together, CC’ing the glass cannon, or burst them before they burst you.
You simply can’t expect to win a 1vs1 as squishy against a single target burst Thief, as much as you can’t expect to kill a Necro with conditions, or a Tank guardian as support.

Why i take my time to type that wall of text?
Because i read QQ about stealthy burst characters/classes since over 10 years, and I’m honestly sick of seeing fun and balanced classes getting nerfed into oblivion.

It is statistically impossible that every dev on earth managed to get exactly that archetype overpowered in their game.
What is possible, and actually very so because it would show why it’s constant, is that the majority of people simply don’t understand that specific game mechanics.

I see people crying about Thieves being able to stomp in stealth and backstab dmg. Then i see them posting a video where a Thief downs their ally with his raw burst and stealthing right next to them. Then they watch how their ally gets stomped, while just staying still, waiting for the Thief to reappear behind them for the next backstab combo as example of how "O"P Thieves are, instead of learning to cast AoE’s around their downed ally, casting unteargeted interrups (AoE fears, whatnot) and so on. And if nothing helps and the ally dies, trying to protect themselfs, being prepared for the, by that time very low on health, Thief, to simply finish them of after they missed their backstab, because you know how to time a dodge roll or disable.

Also why do people stop attacking when a for example rooted Thief stealthes? He is still freaking rooted, so just kill him for QQ’s sake.

I mean… really?

It’s not the class, it’s the people.

You forgot about the auto attack, which also applies condition damage.
And if Daggers really are the only effective direct damage weapon, then think about that for a moment. And think about the fact that the Thief rune boosts condition damage, and that many of the utilities apply conditions.
By far, Backstab is the odd one out in that case where as you’re trying to claim the opposite and that it would be easier NOT to make that change.
I can understand if you personally do not want condition damage to be the overarching focus of the daggers, but that’s a personal opinion with no basis in what would be for the greater good of the class as a whole.
And there is the sword main hand for direct damage. It may suck now, but if changes were made to daggers then there’s no logical reason the sword could not be brought up to par.

Also, it’s kind of a side point, but your argument about real world knives and why they don’t fit as “condition damage” when translated into the game is bizarre. Knives kill people through blood loss. Exclusively.
Hell, the only logical way any such weapon would not kill a person through loss of blood is if either their head were cut off or they suffered massive organ trauma, neither of which could be reasonably managed by a knife. Getting killed by a knife is always a slow death, too. Because they leave only shallow wounds that bleed out slowly. Contrary to what you see in movies, even if someone were stabbed in the neck it would take some time to bleed out.

I agree with:
1: steal interrupts the current action
2: steal not applying basilisk venom
3: nerfing mug slightly maybe 10-15% less dmg

Nihlus.9724:

First of all, to the OP, this thread is a great idea. ANet has shown appreciation of constructive feedback in the past. So if we can crowd source some good ideas such that the non-glass cannon PvP thieves don’t get screwed in the process of rebalancing, then that would make me a very happy thief. The idea of reducing burst via an Assassin’s Signet nerf was a largely popular one in these forums prior to ANet changing it, so let’s continue that trend.

jayem.2630:

1) Cutting the damage from CnD and backstab, and
2) Change assassin’s signet to increase damage by X% (say 100%) of all attacks for 2 seconds on use with a 120 sec recharge time, moving it to an elite skill to replace basilisk venom.

These changes, as is, would severly cripple PvE Backstab thieves though, which is precisely the kind of thing we’re trying to avoid. When it comes to thieves, ANet has so far done a pretty admiral job of balancing PvP which leaving PvE unscathed. Let’s hope they continue.

Not necessarily. The combined damage of a CnD + backstab could be on-par or lower than Pistolwhip without destroying PvE viability, especially with the Hidden Killer trait, a PvE thief can skim some crit % for power and crit damage.

“It’s not a unbalance, it’s a trade off”

That is the sentence of the day. It IS a trade off. Everything is put into attack. Everything. That means they have no defense, which turns even TANK warriors into extremely damaging weapons against glass cannon thieves. I always see complaints about Glass cannon thieves doing high damages to tanks, and that is the point of a glass cannon build, to cancel out tank builds and everything inbetween, just like a tank build cancels out a glass cannon build.

Just because you have a plan doesn’t mean it’s always going to work.

Glass cannon is supposed to deal massive damage. Tank is supposed to have massive defense. If this is the case, and you’re the tank, it’s time to play offensive. People never realize that a glass cannon thief probably has horrible vitality, and horrible toughness. You probably do as much damage to them on your “tank build/non glass cannon build” than they do as much damage to you, simply because they have poor defense.

The faster you learn that, the faster you will be able to cope with glass cannon thieves.

I want to make another post, without making it seem like spamming (yeah right, I’m the guys who spams walls of text).

First of, i want to say that i highly appreciate this thread, the thematic, and theory crafting in general.

Secondly, please stop the condition remake thing, as i pointed out in my other posts, thats just totally against the design core of the Dagger Thief.

After thats out of the way, we have to clear up one thing first.
Is backstabbing Thief actually an issue, and if so, what makes it one?

That requires a lot of data.
We can’t make a decision based on – There are many burst Thieves, but not so many bursts of X Class, and these burst Thieves rock, so burst Thieves are OP.

Burst Thieves run 100 % on burst, they sacrifice everything for that burst.

So we have to create builds which do the same for every other class and compare numbers on damage peaks, and over all damage over set time periods.

After we got that numbers, we have to compare what the classes still can do other than bursting with that builds, and compare the defensive stats (Thief for example has stealth, mobility, and incredible low HP and Toughness).

So let’s say for example Engeneers would come out slightly above Warriors damage wise, then it wouldn’t make them OP when Warriors on the other hand would have more HP, Toughness, mobilty and support while doing that slightly lower damage.

So there would have to be rankings. Which stat or effect is how important.
For that, you could use numbers from 1 (weak/unimportant) to 10 (strong/important).

So X amount of Vitality would have to be a 10 – 1, same for toughness (also classifying dmg stats and numbers later on for the complete comparison).
A little bit trickier is classifying “effects”. For example, which number gets stealth? How do we classify mobility? What about certain buffs or blocking abilities?
….

After all that hours of work, i honestly think Thief would probably come out in the middle of the field.
And if ANet has dasingers which are worth anything, then they are probably doing exactly what i have listed above in this post – and they probably came to the same conclusion. Thats why we don’t se posts like “Oh hell yeah, we have to nerf that thing”.

They know the Thief is actually fine, but they see that burst Thief is popular, compared to playing burst on other classes, which is due the Assassin theme of the Profession, and because Thieves can’t do much else.
And they see all the QQ in the forums.

So all the nerfs we will see coming, are probably only a case of “we have to do something, it doesn’t matter if it needs to be done”.

If I’m worng, please ArenaNet, send me over that data, and i will analyse it objectively again. Just because i love good analyses way more than i like playing a Thief and having fun while doing so

But i can’t imagine theThief profession being up front so far, to deserve all that QQ and nerfes it’s getting. Even if i subtract something from my estimation for possible bias of playing mainly Thief, he wouldn’t be even on the first place.

Adding on to my other post(sorry edit not working…) about glass cannon and tank cancelling it out, I would just like to say that

If you’re a tank build, if you can get away from the first chain, you have this. That’s how it cancels out. Glass cannon will always get the first strike, after all, he’s glass cannon, offensive. You’re a tank, a defensive build. You’re supposed to survive the damage, and he’s supposed to make sure you don’t. His way of doing that is the dps burst, your way isn’t just to stand there staring at him herpy derping. Evade, endure pain when he gets in range, the temporary armor I see, reaper of grenth, knockdown(that’s where you become offensive, which is what I mean above. Stop him before he can get you, if you can), evade, dodge, it all works. Keep in mind a thief is predictable. As soon as he gets in range and after you see him activate the signet/venom you know he’s about to start the chain. That’s when YOU immediately pop endure pain, evade, dodge, try to knock him down before he can start it. Force him to waste his basilik venom and assassins signet on the air, and even if he gets that one backstab on you(never keep your back to him, BTW, never evade forward, evade backwards), it won’t be nearly as bad if the steal and CND does not hit. If you can pull that off, you win. It’s over for him. His only option is escape or death. In this case, use your immobilizations, additional knockdowns, whether it is to keep him rooted. If he’s rooted, he will probably go stealth, keep hitting him, he’s still rooted, just not invisible. IF you can survive that first salvo, then it’s over, you win, and it’s really as simple as survive the steal and CND, which by doing so prevents effective backstab.

Grimwolf.7163:

Also, it’s kind of a side point, but your argument about real world knives and why they don’t fit as “condition damage” when translated into the game is bizarre. Knives kill people through blood loss. Exclusively.
Hell, the only logical way any such weapon would not kill a person through loss of blood is if either their head were cut off or they suffered massive organ trauma, neither of which could be reasonably managed by a knife. Getting killed by a knife is always a slow death, too. Because they leave only shallow wounds that bleed out slowly. Contrary to what you see in movies, even if someone were stabbed in the neck it would take some time to bleed out.

Thats exactly what i said.

Thats the reason we don’t talk about knifes.
We talk about Daggers. They are different things.

Knife: Cutting, leads to heavy bleeding.
Dagger: Stabbing with the intention of hitting something that will result in a fast death.

As i mentioned, pretty much everything you do to a Human results in bleeding. But thats not the point of Daggers, as well it isn’t my intention to bleed someone out by punching them into the face with my fist, even if they may bleed most likely after that as well.

/E:

That is the sentence of the day.

Thanks buddy

BTW, you can delete your posts in case of double postings.

I for one would love to give backstabs an additional role, instead of doing only one big burst every 40 secs.

Right now the backstab suffers that it is pretty easy avoidable if you have halfway decent enemies and no hard CC as thief.
Due to that most ppl use it for max dmg and utilize it with a hard CC so they can pull off a high burst.

I for one would also love a more agile/dodgy role for the thief in the fray, doing several backstabs which dont get too bursty while evading and doging most hits.

All in all I think that crit/power builds suffer alot from bad weaponchoices for thiefs.
D/D and backstab are the only real viable way as Pistolwhip with haste is not really reliable. Hence I dont like the thought to make even backstab condition focused. Yet I like it that Deathblossom is, it gives condition thiefs a reason to use D/D and not only shortbow or pistol.

I would also love a better synergy between conditions and direct dmg, so that thiefs are able to utilize both equally good, without having insane burst on backstab or sick condition dmg… kidna like a 50/50 split… but thats just me.

If you’re going to put bleeding on anything, it should go on dancing dagger, but that’s neither here nor there since that skill isn’t even in question.

Before even touching anything else I would reduce the damage on Mug by at least 33%.

After touching Mug I would reduce the damage on Cloak and Dagger by 20%.

If there was still a problem I’d take some damage off of Backstab – but I suspect the first two changes would put things more or less in line.

(Code fixes aside)

Ensign.2189:

If you’re going to put bleeding on anything, it should go on dancing dagger, but that’s neither here nor there since that skill isn’t even in question.

Before even touching anything else I would reduce the damage on Mug by at least 33%.

After touching Mug I would reduce the damage on Cloak and Dagger by 20%.

If there was still a problem I’d take some damage off of Backstab – but I suspect the first two changes would put things more or less in line.

(Code fixes aside)

33% reduction on mug and 20% on CnD? you crazy

Eh… I posted how i would rework the thoef quite some time ago but basically…
I would turb cnd to an aoe with some form of evade. Then i would move stealthing to offhan daggers 3 ability so offhand dagger becomes stealthy and offhand pistol keeps its disruption. Oh and that head shot should deal Cnd levels of damage when you interrupt with it o.o

D/d, s/d, p/d becomes mug → 3→ backstab

D/d will lose burst in exchange for bleed, p/d will have to run up to the enemy, and s/d will need to have its 3 fixed so make the 2nd hit a shadowstep instead or somefing instead of “roll and hit the air”

Lots of stupid ideas to over compensate for people’s unwillingness to equip a stun break and get better reaction times.

Dee Jay.2460:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

Backstab itself is not OP. The damage, while high, is justified in most situations.

What is OP however is the “Backstab combo” consisting of Steal + Mug + Cloak and Dagger + Backstab + Assassin’s Singet and/or Haste + _Assassin’s Reward + all the various traits that proc when using Steal.

There is an awful lot more to the Backstab combo than Backstab itself. There are also much smarter ways to nerf it than simply adjusting the damage, which would completely ruin it in PvE.

I propose:

-Change Assassin’s Reward trait to something less “bursty”
-Don’t allow people to use Steal during a cast
-Nerf Mug slightly. It seems to deal an awful lot of damage in some specs.