Guild Wars 2

Does anybody use hidden killer today?
I don’t know about the rest of the community, but I believe hidden killer its kinda weak for a grandmaster trait. Personally, I absolutely never use it because no quarter is a no brainer, and the new invigorating precision is very good aswell. I believe hidden killer should guarantee a hit because the logic is that you are taking your enemy by surprise, how can you block an attack when you don’t know where is it coming from? Watching a thief enter stealth should be synonym of extreme danger instead of making you just sit with your blocks/aegis. Plus it has no synergy whatsoever with any attack that hits multiple times.

My suggestions to revamp the trait would be any of the following:

A: 10s ICD, while in stealth, your next attack always critical hits, is unblockable and ignores the effects of blind.

B: 25s ICD, Entering stealth gives you 5 seconds of fury and your 5 next attacks are unblockable

C: 10s ICD, When entering stealth, your next attack is unblockable and applies 10 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds.

D: 100% crit chance and unblockable. Next time you would be revealed by an enemy skill, ignore it (20s icd).

E: When stealthed, your next stealth attack is unblockable and has increased damage based on initiative left (1% per ini).

Does it sound too op? I would like to hear suggestions.

Suggestion A would be OP – it would really be game breaking as stealth alone is pretty powerful and you can’t just dodge around in good hope. The passive blocks need to be further reduced, then BS will be fine again.
But you’re right, in comparison to no quarter Hidden Killer is weak. I have no real idea how to improve this yet, though, going to think about it.

ETA²: And yes, Option C is also OP

ETA: But to be honest, I’d like to know how anet is seeing the future of pvp/wvw – I killed a daredevil with CnD and backstab yesterday (in wvw), so we’re at pre ferocity patch damage wise again.

Jana.6831:

ETA²: And yes, Option C is also OP

I meant vulnerability instead of invul lol, my bad that would be horrible.

Alright, I wondered what “10 stacks of invulnerability” were
Vulnerability is best applied before a backstab – I still can’t stick around and do my AA chain so for now the stacks would be wasted.
But: no quarter or even executioner and panic strike work that well because all of us are mostly zerker anyway. Together with runes of the pack you have frequent backstabs. With hidden killer you can go theoretically bunker and still dish out big blows. Maybe that was how it was intended. Problem is that the whole game has changed.

I’d rather see it just remove a condition on Reveal to give HK an in-between of sustain and consistency rather than just pure damage like on NQ or pure sustain like IP. HK is amazing because it lets the thief run valkyrie or more bruiser-based, but a lack of ferocity kinda hurts this and usually makes NQ the more appealing option, anyways, from permanent fury. This also has good synergy with SA for cleansing DoT on stealth and control conditions on reveal, and bumps DA/CS as a valid combination for damage with such cleanses, rather than feeling the absolute need to run SA/DD since our condi removal utilities are horrible, and shadowstep typically needs use as a teleport/stunbreak and is on a long cooldown.

The “10 vuln” idea I’d rather see moved to CnD, and has been something I’ve been toying with for a little while as a concept, such that it applies three sets of 5 stacks of vuln with different durations as to promote leaving stealth quickly for extra damage but being slightly better than right now for trying to sustain with stealth. It also bumps OH dagger’s viability a little to get a bigger backstab/overall numbers, and lets P/D condi tick a bit more on its first and second ticks while maintaining more long-term stacked vuln between sneak-attacks, while not pumping D/P or just buffing CnD again due to BV’s unblockable nature. Ideally we should be trying to cut down on unblockable backstabs as much as possible, as that’s a little un-fun imho.

So revised CnD would be something like:
Applies:
5 vuln (6s)
5 vuln (2s)
5 vuln (1s)

So HK gets a cleanse dissuading the need for pushing into SE opening up CD/LR in SA or giving SA awesome cleanses from stealth, drops dependency on Trickster as a cleanse depending on build, bumps thief’s condition cleansing overall which is relatively poor, makes CS attractive, and helps D/D get some extra damage over D/P with its lower utility.

I use hidden killer only because I hate having a backstab not crit, but it is a very weak GM trait at this point in time.

A) still only applies to 1 skill.

B) Seems a lot more friendly towards other sets

C) could be good for all sets, just to add a rotation into your play style to leave them very open.

D) rather they not make revealed such an easy thing to apply for some professions. cough scrapper….

E) Again only really applies to 1 skill, although has a little thought behind it.

I’ve seen someone suggest it before on a thread I made, hidden killer should augment all stealth skills individually like making backstab 100% critical hit, and different effects for the other skills. Could be something like,

[Sneak Attack] Pierces
[Tactical Strike] Increase effects by 100% (10 seconds of blind or 4(3 in pvp) seconds daze.
[Trick Shot] Bounces up to 2 additional enemies.
[Hook Strike] Gain quickness for 2 seconds

I agree that Hidden Killer is generally weak and I would like to see something done to it. Unblockable would be nice start. Quick Pockets is also a very under-performing GM trait.

Straegen.2938:

I agree that Hidden Killer is generally weak and I would like to see something done to it. Unblockable would be nice start. Quick Pockets is also a very under-performing GM trait.

I have actually begun using QP in an s/d build. It just needs a slight tweak. Someone (Maugterr?) suggested when specced it lowers cooldown to 5 seconds on weaponswaps. I kind of think a better fix might be just adding one more ini or perhaps make it 2 ini and 5 second cooldown on weaponswap.

if we want to buff hidden killer i would love it to rip boons or maybe even corrupt them.