Guild Wars 2

Sick of seeing the same crap everywhere. Just making a few suggestions in regards to a few weapon sets and trait lines to bring back some of the old really fun and unique builds that never see play any more. Any feedback would be welcome.

Mainhand Dagger
Heartseeker
- Reduce the damage by approximately 5% (so power builds don’t lose out).
- Applies 3, 6 and 12 stacks of bleeding for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd damage thresholds respectively, all for 1 seconds.

Offhand Dagger
Dancing Dagger
- Applies 1 torment for 6 seconds.
Cloak and Dagger
- Remove the vulnerability.
- Applies AOE blind in a 240 radius when the skill would hit, even if it doesn’t (so missing isn’t completely ineffective).
- Refunds 2 initiative if it doesn’t hit.
- Increase the range to 170.
- Grants 4 s of swiftness on hit (to close in on the target).

Mainhand Pistol
Vital Shot
- Increase damage by approximately 34%.
Body Shot
- Remove the vulnerability.
- Reduce initiative cost to 3.
- Now chains to Backpedal when you successfully hit an enemy.
Backpedal
- Has a 1/4 s cast time.
- Costs 1 initiative.
- Shadowsteps you backwards or directly away from your target.
- Has a range of 450.

Dual Wield Skills
Unload
- Remove the might.
- Reduce initiative cost to 4.
- Chains to Reload when you successfully hit an enemy.
Reload
- Has a 0 s cast time.
- Costs 1 initiative.
- Applies AOE bind in a 120 radius.
- Is a blast finisher.

Critical Strikes
- Swap Sundering Strikes and Side Strike.
- Replace Side Strike with Mark of the Assassin.
- Replace Ankle Shots with Ricochet.
Mark of the Assassin
- Activate Assassin’t Signet when you strike a foe from behind or to the side (Identical to Assassin’s Signet).
Ricochet
- Pistol shots bounce to additional targets (Additional Bounces: 2, cannot hit the same target twice).

Arenanet has to stop nerfing Thieves’ core themes and playstyles. Recent patches just keep widening the gap between HoT and vanilla builds and weapon sets. Sometimes numbers (specifically with the vanilla weapon sets) aren’t enough, functionality of skills and traits have to be changed to bring these underutilised builds up to par.

I’d rather not have any of these changes tyvm.

What I’ve read is not that bad, although I’d like to have my extra vulnerability on CnD.
But in the end: can’t we just roll back the game to how it has been 2 years ago?

In case it’s unclear what I was getting at: A lot of these changes sound good but in the end it’s just more powercreep and it’s very uncertain where this game is headed.
I pretty much think that we can now hold a funeral for pvp and wvw.

I would definitely like at least a blind on CnD. The swiftness would be a nice touch too.

Cloak and Dagger
Damage increase: 20%
Range: 130 → 170
Vulnerability: 3 stacks(5s) → 5 stacks(4s)
Stealth (on hit): 3s → 4s
Blind (only when CnD misses): 4s to nearby foes on 240 radius. (Is not a smoke field).

There you go, fixed and not broken.

While I didn’t make changes to weapons, you can check my signature for my suggested overhaul of Critical Strikes.

I changed it to affect all direct damage instead of only critical damage… which I think would truly make it a much more viable choice for any Thief, not just precision Thief.

I also gave each traitline it’s own theme, so traits that affect the same discipline are concentrated into single lines instead of being spread across many.

@OP:
Pretty much need to disagree with everything on the list for being unnecessary power buffs that are really just too broken.

CnD doesn’t need a blind. Its issue is with consistency and not with punishing the enemy nor being safe enough. If the prospect of extra safety is desired, that’s what SA is for: durability/enemy punishment while gaining/staying in stealth. CnD needs to be a method of gaining stealth for all builds using OH dagger since it’s part of a weapon kit, and the main source of damage except on S/D comes from its stealth attacks.

Stratos.9375:

Cloak and Dagger
Damage increase: 20%
Range: 130 -> 170
Vulnerability: 3 stacks(5s) -> 5 stacks(4s)
Stealth (on hit): 3s -> 4s
Blind (only when CnD misses): 4s to nearby foes on 240 radius. (Is not a smoke field).

There you go, fixed and not broken.

Yeah, totally not broken for a skill to be bumped to 4-5k damage up to 6-7k when connecting such a skill usually follows with a backstab and mug damage.

Offhand dagger is fine.

This is like ele complaining that their fire overload doesn’t do as much damage as air overload so it needs a buff. Just because pistol offhand is overtuned relative to the other offhands doesn’t make the other offhands bad.

Everything will always look bad next to the optimal weapon.

Thief does not need more damage.

This would put dagger/dagger, which is already ahead of staff in PvE even further ahead as collateral damage, erasing staff builds from pve.

Zenith.7301:

Stratos.9375:

Cloak and Dagger
Damage increase: 20%
Range: 130 -> 170
Vulnerability: 3 stacks(5s) -> 5 stacks(4s)
Stealth (on hit): 3s -> 4s
Blind (only when CnD misses): 4s to nearby foes on 240 radius. (Is not a smoke field).

There you go, fixed and not broken.

Yeah, totally not broken for a skill to be bumped to 4-5k damage up to 6-7k when connecting such a skill usually follows with a backstab and mug damage.

Offhand dagger is fine.

This is like ele complaining that their fire overload doesn’t do as much damage as air overload so it needs a buff. Just because pistol offhand is overtuned relative to the other offhands doesn’t make the other offhands bad.

Everything will always look bad next to the optimal weapon.

Thief does not need more damage.

This would put dagger/dagger, which is already ahead of staff in PvE even further ahead as collateral damage, erasing staff builds from pve.

OH dagger isn’t fine. The problem is that the kit isn’t cohesive for power builds despite that being the original intent/function, and thus cannot compete with D/P to even a reasonable degree (only applicable due to current state of power D/D with the decimation from 7/26, it was passable before, although still needed skill reworks). Otherwise I agree with you; buffing its numbers will not affect anything; Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger need a redesign, and the damage from 7/26 needs to be undone.

DeceiverX.8361:

Otherwise I agree with you; buffing its numbers will not affect anything; Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger need a redesign, and the damage from 7/26 needs to be undone.

I can’t speak for WvW, but in PvP, I usully use DA/CS/T for the damage output (SA feels so weak). I know it lacks power compared to WvW, but I still feel that much of the problem comes from all of the passive defenses of other professions.

What is your take on passives, and what would you suggest for the Thief to become more of a competitive fighter in PvP?

Would it be to simply normalize the stats between PvP and PvE/WvW, giving more damage/sustain to PvP? Or to give counters against passives? Or something in addition to or something different entirely?

Kageseigi.2150:

Would it be to simply normalize the stats between PvP and PvE/WvW, giving more damage/sustain to PvP? Or to give counters against passives? Or something in addition to or something different entirely?

In case you missed it: The pvp team is kind of revolting right now. I don’t know too much about pvp but it might well be that some amuletts were taken out in protest this patch because there was nothing more the pvp team could do as they would have to work on the traits to which they don’t have access to.
So I guess we’re all sitting around with our popcorn on the lap and wait for something good to happen.
I mean, Karl is now the head of the balancing team…

Guys, the things I am suggesting are to create meaningful, thematic and competitive combinations of skills and traits between main and offhand sets for D/D and P/P. Currently the only set that achieves that is D/P, which has remained relatively consistent over the patches, as opposed to D/D and P/P.

I’m not trying to suggest powercreep, as many of the skills and traits I am mentioning have been nerfed into being almost worthless or removed entirely (specifically Dancing Dagger, Body Shot & Ricochet). What I believe I am trying to suggest is a compromise.

What Thieves used to have:
- P/P + Ricochet + hitting up to 5 targets + Signet of Malice + Invigorating Precision
- D/D + Blind on all stealth + Shadow’s Rejuvenation

What I am suggesting:
- P/P + Ricochet + hitting up to 3 targets + Signet of Malice + Invigorating Precision + Combination of Reload and Black Powder.
- D/D + Blind on only Cloak and Dagger + Extended Range + Swiftness + Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

When two weapon sets haven’t been used in many (if any) a game type in years, as opposed to another that hasn’t seen much change over that time, the idea shouldn’t be to nerf the most used weapon set, but to buff the traits and skills related specifically to the underused weapon sets.

How about we make it like in the olden days? SS damage is nerfed, initative costs increased.
CnD damage is increased (to what it has been).
SA gets might on stealth back, CiS moves from grandmaster to a lower tier, SE becomes a minor.

I have no idea about P/P actually.

ETA: And yes, the problem is that thief against any other class is crap, in most cases. But you won’t come around a D/P nerf if you want to balance thief vs thief – buffing all other sets would just lead to another powercreep as D/P really is powerful.

Kageseigi.2150:

DeceiverX.8361:

Otherwise I agree with you; buffing its numbers will not affect anything; Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger need a redesign, and the damage from 7/26 needs to be undone.

I can’t speak for WvW, but in PvP, I usully use DA/CS/T for the damage output (SA feels so weak). I know it lacks power compared to WvW, but I still feel that much of the problem comes from all of the passive defenses of other professions.

What is your take on passives, and what would you suggest for the Thief to become more of a competitive fighter in PvP?

Would it be to simply normalize the stats between PvP and PvE/WvW, giving more damage/sustain to PvP? Or to give counters against passives? Or something in addition to or something different entirely?

SA is weak in sPvP because it doesn’t provide sustain comparable to other professions and depends on stealth. Since stealthed targets do not contribute to point control, the trait line is of little purpose in the entire format, and since the damage on the thief is too low from sPvP stats based on the nature of how the thief acquires damage (scaling) to compensate for this deficiency, the entire profession has no role except to roam uncontested points; consider the purpose of the thief in sPvP without the shortbow: it has none, and even with the shortbow, is often rendered non-essential due to mobility options on other professions.

Simply upping damage coefficients is a non-answer because then it overpowers the thief in PvE (already top-tier DPS) and makes the class overly one-dimensional in its power in WvW, which up until this recent patch, the thief as a whole was a well-balanced class aside from a few select small-scale builds, which typically were universal gear problems over class problems.

Passives ruined the game. At first, it was just Warriors with Defy Pain. It’s now so out of hand we have thief with invuln. If I had full authority over the game, I’d remove all passive and RNG effects from the game. Knowing exactly your enemy’s capabilities and calculating them out is essential to perform well in PvP environments. The best of the best players will pay attention to every skill use by their opponents and know the cooldowns of those abilities – even short ones – to identify exactly what to do and when while simultaneously reacting to the given battlefield. A passive with no indicator throws a monkey wrench into such calculations, and often throws too much chance into how to approach combat in general. Simply, they allow for sloppy play, and lower the skill floor while having a very ambiguous effect on the skill ceilings of various professions, making the game ultimately more difficult to balance when considering the effects of passives on low-level and high-level play.

To make the thief viable, as well as all other builds, stats need to be normalized to PvE/WvW exotic-values, which the rest of the game is largely balanced on. Professions with different allocations of boon access and scaling potential are difficult to balance when the stats swing to wildly; I can achieve 4k power, 240% crit damage, and another 70% bonus damage modifiers in WvW, netting backstabs well over 20k, but am hard-pressed to get even glassier builds to half of their health on a combo in sPvP, despite running the same builds on both thief and opponent. Further, I can run an ele way tankier in sPvP and have comparably better damage as to WvW, since the offensive stats are lower in sPvP and boons yield the same amount of stats, thus the percentage of value gained from boons is objectively better, so a boon-based build can get similar power values despite running gear with tremendously lower power values. The boon builds have dominated the scene for this sole reason; sPvP is in it of itself an imbalanced format that’s incompatible with the other two. Normalizing stats is the easiest solution, since splitting balance requires an examination of every skill change made independently and how those changes would affect format-specific play. We can run the numbers for WvW and PvE at the same time and know its result for the most part, but cannot do so as easily with sPvP and balance accordingly. Concepts and workarounds become increasingly more difficult as more of these changes are made, too, as format-specific skill and trait selection isolates many traits into niche purposes, which could have otherwise been reworked to fit all formats in mind from a conceptual and mathematical perspective.

If the stats are normalized, most issues with diversity in sPvP would dissolve. WvW has had more viable builds in small-scale than sPvP for years, the only exclusion being the existence of mathematically overpowered gear combinations like dire perplexity/TB and Durability runes. Undoing the recent change for the thief would put it among a leading aggression/decap class while indirectly nerfing pure sustain builds due to the influx of other, higher-yielding-damage stats. Previous amulets could subsequently make returns with little affect on balance, too, since such defensive amulets were taken away by the recognition that defensive stats were indeed too strong for the stat limitations of the format, for offensive options since the introduction of even Ferocity have been mathematically under-performing, exacerbated by the defensive power creep from HoT and beyond.

This isn’t a thief-exclusive issue, either. It applies to all scaling-based builds with few boons. This is the best possible change for the game as a whole, and further the thief is simply dependent on it for most of its class concepts to function properly.

DeceiverX.8361:

This isn’t a thief-exclusive issue, either. It applies to all scaling-based builds with few boons. This is the best possible change for the game as a whole, and further the thief is simply dependent on it for most of its class concepts to function properly.

Thank you for the insight. Hopefully, the devs will implement such a change :-)

It would be if the pvp team were the ones who balance this game – otherwise you just have more damage in pvp and fewer possibilities to buffer it as you can’t just mix your gear – which would then lead to the exact same scenario.
We could revert pvp to how it has been ~2 years? ago though.

ETA: I know that I’m not to be taken seriously, but anyway:
We’ve had groups of players 1 vs 1 ing around SM (castle in wvw) all the time – I see a few here and there still, but that’s rather rare – people avoid to duel each other nowadays as no one really can take the damage – we’re basically all thieves and hop in and out of all fights. Don’t think wvw is balanced as it isn’t. And the hopping in and out is the reason why it doesn’t really matter what class, build or gear you have as long as you’re good at escaping. You can however roll a warrior.

DeceiverX.8361:

Zenith.7301:

Stratos.9375:

Cloak and Dagger
Damage increase: 20%
Range: 130 -> 170
Vulnerability: 3 stacks(5s) -> 5 stacks(4s)
Stealth (on hit): 3s -> 4s
Blind (only when CnD misses): 4s to nearby foes on 240 radius. (Is not a smoke field).

There you go, fixed and not broken.

Yeah, totally not broken for a skill to be bumped to 4-5k damage up to 6-7k when connecting such a skill usually follows with a backstab and mug damage.

Offhand dagger is fine.

This is like ele complaining that their fire overload doesn’t do as much damage as air overload so it needs a buff. Just because pistol offhand is overtuned relative to the other offhands doesn’t make the other offhands bad.

Everything will always look bad next to the optimal weapon.

Thief does not need more damage.

This would put dagger/dagger, which is already ahead of staff in PvE even further ahead as collateral damage, erasing staff builds from pve.

OH dagger isn’t fine. The problem is that the kit isn’t cohesive for power builds despite that being the original intent/function, and thus cannot compete with D/P to even a reasonable degree (only applicable due to current state of power D/D with the decimation from 7/26, it was passable before, although still needed skill reworks). Otherwise I agree with you; buffing its numbers will not affect anything; Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger need a redesign, and the damage from 7/26 needs to be undone.

I agree the theme is mixed, but then again that’s not unique about a thief weapon. Ranger shortbow, ranger mainhand axe, necro staff (power based auto with condi based marks), mesmer staff phantasm.

The list goes on. They don’t seem to realize hybrid weapons suck. They’ll always be less optimal than pure weapons because the stat you’re invested in won’t benefit all the skills.

But people use offhand pistol not for this thematic discord.

People use offhand pistol because it’s OP. I mean, why bother with a skillshot like cloak and dagger, when you can just plop a black powder and heartseek through it without needing to hit anything to gain free and frequent access to stealth.

Then there’s the fact that black powder is super cheap for how strong it is, it’s virtually a blind field with nearly permanent uptime if you want it to. Blackpowder gives you stealth, black powder guarantees stomps, black powder punishes people who try to melee you, black powder foils downed skills. List goes on.

Then you got headshot, a spammable interrupt to make you the best interrupt class in the game, since you don’t need a cast time to recharge your interrupt like a mesmer mantra, and you don’t need to sacrifice utility slots saved for precious stunbreaks/condi clear for it.

Pair that with shadowshot, cheap Phase Traversal that does 4-5k damage and blinds your target.

I mean, how can any other offhand compete with offhand pistol when so much strong utility and offense is packed into that single weapon.

You’d be asking for power creep if we made another weapon optimal over offhand pistol.

These are some Hillary Clinton tier suggestions

I wonder if a simple 3 seconds of Stealth on Cloak and Dagger (without needing to hit something) would help Dagger/Dagger enough.

It would be a pretty cheap way to enter Stealth compared to Black Powder. It could be stacked 3 to 4 times if you commit all of your initiative, similar to Black Powder. But it would be lacking the combo field and Shadow Shot to assist in melee or gap closing, so it wouldn’t be trying to mimic Dagger/Pistol.

It would give a bit more flexibility, however, in that you don’t have to commit to stacking Stealth at the beginning like you do with D/P. You can CnD once, then if you can’t get in position for a Backstab, just CnD the air again to gain 3 more seconds.

If my calculations are correct, and you’re running with Preparedness, then you can stack a total of 12 seconds of Stealth… the same amount you can get with D/P.

I’m very happy to see people brainstorming here, but just a few things to keep in mind.
- I am speaking primarily from a PvP and WvW viewpoint here, I know that D/D is used a lot in PvE and achieves top tier DPS, so any ideas involving increased damage to its optimal “rotation” should be advised against.
- If there is any criticism to be made, I’d appreciate it to be constructive and specific.
- I understand there are problems involving other classes and their traits and skills, but they belong in their respective forums.
- I did not make this topic to discuss crazy major overhauls to GW2’s attribute system, but small, relatively realistic changes to skills and traits for the thief, specifically dual wield pistols, daggers and the critical strikes trait line.

D/P has remained relatively unchanged over the years (in regards to dual wield and offhand skills) and has constantly been in use in PvP and WvW. This leads me to believe that it is regarded as a “balanced” and decent weapon set in the scheme of things.

Kageseigi.2150:

I wonder if a simple 3 seconds of Stealth on Cloak and Dagger (without needing to hit something) would help Dagger/Dagger enough.

It would be a pretty cheap way to enter Stealth compared to Black Powder. It could be stacked 3 to 4 times if you commit all of your initiative, similar to Black Powder. But it would be lacking the combo field and Shadow Shot to assist in melee or gap closing, so it wouldn’t be trying to mimic Dagger/Pistol.

It would give a bit more flexibility, however, in that you don’t have to commit to stacking Stealth at the beginning like you do with D/P. You can CnD once, then if you can’t get in position for a Backstab, just CnD the air again to gain 3 more seconds.

If my calculations are correct, and you’re running with Preparedness, then you can stack a total of 12 seconds of Stealth… the same amount you can get with D/P.

I’m sorry but I don’t believe that would be a wise change for the following reasons:
- Flavour wise, it sort of takes the “Dagger” out of “Cloak and Dagger”
- You could achieve permanent, uninterruptible (albeit after the first CnD) stealth with just the /D, Meld with Shadows and Shadow’s Rejuvenation, without any help from utilities, stealth skills or runes, something even D/P can’t achieve. It would be the old Infusion of Shadow all over again, which isn’t a good thing.

It would be reasonable to assume the Thief would still be stabbing. But the benefit of stealth without landing CnD is a big one. At what cost would it be reasonable? Evidently 6ini and landing an attack cost too much.

Jortakk.6792:

- You could achieve permanent, uninterruptible (albeit after the first CnD) stealth with just the /D, Meld with Shadows and Shadow’s Rejuvenation, without any help from utilities, stealth skills or runes, something even D/P can’t achieve. It would be the old Infusion of Shadow all over again, which isn’t a good thing.

If Meld with Shadow’s did not affect CnD (I don’t know if it currently does), then you shouldn’t be able to maintain permanent Stealth without utilities, similar to D/P.

With 15 initiative, and at a cost of 6 initiative per CnD, even with Shadow’s Rejuvenation, you should still only be able to get 4 CnD’s before running out of enough initiative to remain in Stealth… as long as Meld with Shadows is made to not affect CnD, just as it doesn’t affect combinations.

The uninterruptible Stealth is true, however, with the introduction of a blast finisher on dodge, that point became rather moot, not to mention the blast finisher on Blinding Powder. However, the initial CnD would still be interruptible just as the initial Heartseeker through Black Powder is.

And again, the D/D set itself has no shadowsteps or instant gap closers, so it is the set that needs longer Stealth uptime compared to everything else.

Not to mention that Stealth on demand would be a tremendous help to all off-hand Dagger sets. S/D would gain much greater sustain and tactical ability. P/D would gain more viability by not needing to ever get within melee range to apply pressure with Sneak Attack. In fact, it may cause a resurgence in x/D builds.

Zenith.7301:

I mean, how can any other offhand compete with offhand pistol when so much strong utility and offense is packed into that single weapon.

You’d be asking for power creep if we made another weapon optimal over offhand pistol.

I think a lot of people realize this, and wouldn’t be opposed to shaving of something like shadow shot on dagger pistol. The problem with D/D is all of its skills minus auto attack and heart seeker are unreliable.

You can have different rather than straight power creep.

Deathblossom for example is supposed to be a utility dodge, but is unusable due to it’s animation. A simple change to make it more like a bound or dash dodge, rather than a 3 part bounce would greatly benefit the set as it could be used in many different ways. A change like that wouldn’t be stronger, or more powerful, it would just needs to be functionally different and reliable than its current state. Currently right now it only serves a purpose as a a stalling mechanism for endurance so you can do what you actually wanted to do; close or widen the gap between a target.

the might on p/p is fine since its irrelevant. everyone blocks, evades, reflects, immunes, obstructs and can easily line of sight the shots. also the damage on p/p with 25 stacks of might isnt great. sure decent opening burst but poor sustained dmg.

i think we need more time to analyze p/p before changing anything.

Kageseigi.2150:

I wonder if a simple 3 seconds of Stealth on Cloak and Dagger (without needing to hit something) would help Dagger/Dagger enough.

It would be a pretty cheap way to enter Stealth compared to Black Powder. It could be stacked 3 to 4 times if you commit all of your initiative, similar to Black Powder. But it would be lacking the combo field and Shadow Shot to assist in melee or gap closing, so it wouldn’t be trying to mimic Dagger/Pistol.

It would give a bit more flexibility, however, in that you don’t have to commit to stacking Stealth at the beginning like you do with D/P. You can CnD once, then if you can’t get in position for a Backstab, just CnD the air again to gain 3 more seconds.

If my calculations are correct, and you’re running with Preparedness, then you can stack a total of 12 seconds of Stealth… the same amount you can get with D/P.

People have been proposing hit-less CnD for years, and despite being heavily invested in D/D power, I actually do not think it is a good idea. D/D’s kit by concept is around having tools to deal with foes while out of stealth, such as through extra evasion on DB and mobility impairment on Dancing Dagger. The problem is both of these skills are underwhelming, and in most cases are objectively worse in every way even when combined to simply using Shadow Shot.

CnD has been fine for years up until the advent of the amount of defensive power creep from HoT. Whiffing it until HoT was pretty much either caused by poor play or substantial lag. Those in the thread who play along with me can verify that even in HoT my consistency is very high to a point where I can claim on my own accord that the skill itself isn’t flawed in its design.

The condition of being close to the target to gain relatively cheap stealth is something that defines D/D and made it previously the golden balanced standard. There was high reward for a risk, and all classes/sets should carry this to some extent on their major abilities.

I’ve always stood against this proposal because I am a strong believer that stealth should be a temporary ability used to throw opponents off rather than just getting free resets. Extended stealth isn’t fun to play against, and is harder to counterplay. Good thieves do not need more than a second or two to take advantage of having stealth, and others shouldn’t feel oppressed when a thief goes poof. There’s a skill in hitting stealthed players, but that’s only possible within a very brief window, and the better they are, the harder it is to do.

If the venom changes stick (I doubt they will due to break bars), it may actually be best to see the skill just be made unblockable in general. This way it sees a blend of elements from Shadow Shot and BP while carrying more risk due to a non-safe engage/access (invuln/evading characters can turn around and try to slaughter the thief as always, which is fine), and can respond to the power creep from HoT (as I sincerely doubt they’ll nerf OP defenses any time soon, because people love their crutches).

What D/D lacks is mobility to keep up the unrelenting attacks and stickiness that the set requires to function in order to be close enough to land CnD. Further, the set lacks meaningful disengage, with other sets like S/x and P/D have built-in, and D/P and X/P has through chaining stealth via leap finishers. DB being changed to an evade that lunges forward with the bleeding component removed would enable the set to be much slipperier if failing a CnD or not being able to land one, and the condition option needs less safe play to rack up conditions. As a compromise, Dancing Daggers should be reworked to no longer bounce require 4 initiative, get 66% increased power-based damage, and apply to a target and up to two others nearby, applying cripple and a few stacks of poison. This pushes D/D condi into a throwing-dagger-themed build, but ups the skill cap in PvP environments since the damage and evade are de-coupled while having great synergy and increased potential damage output due to the effects from Potent Poison. With Impairing Daggers, D/D condi thief can take on the form of a more more conventional rogue/ninja poisoner/knife-thrower with poisons with some slippery defenses and escapes rather than sheerly an acrobat/sustainy-build that somehow just evades everything and makes people bleed all over the place in the process for no good thematic reason.

Scryeless.1924:

the might on p/p is fine since its irrelevant. everyone blocks, evades, reflects, immunes, obstructs and can easily line of sight the shots. also the damage on p/p with 25 stacks of might isnt great. sure decent opening burst but poor sustained dmg.

i think we need more time to analyze p/p before changing anything.

Unload has 30% more damage than backstab even without the might. It’s fairly easy to achieve numbers of close to 25-30k unloads in WvW with the right build. True facts, though, is that nobody these days actually plays truly offense-focused builds, because comparatively to spamming defenses and playing condi, they’re not as good and can’t be facerolled due to their difficulty.

P/P only has problems because of the amount of projectile hate in the game. Otherwise the set is actually very, very strong to a point that without it I think it’d warrant a nerf, particularly with DrD’s Bounding Dodger for stealth access.

DeceiverX.8361:

People have been proposing hit-less CnD for years, and despite being heavily invested in D/D power, I actually do not think it is a good idea. D/D’s kit by concept is around having tools to deal with foes while out of stealth, such as through extra evasion on DB and mobility impairment on Dancing Dagger. The problem is both of these skills are underwhelming, and in most cases are objectively worse in every way even when combined to simply using Shadow Shot.

I’m actually starting to get curious about the actual purpose of Stealth, and what advantages remain in it.

Hiding is the main thing, I suppose, at least without Shadow Arts. Stealth Attacks hardly seem to be very effective anymore.

With Shadow Arts, it grants condition removal, health/initiative regeneration, damage mitigation, and a speed boost.

While I don’t play D/D much anymore, when I do, I find that the main problem is getting close enough to land a CnD, meaning that I require Steal and Infiltrator’s Signet combinations just to land CnD to gain Stealth. So for me personally, a better gap closer than Heartseeker on the actual set would be helpful. That’s one reason I would favor Stealth on demand… to gain a speed boost and be able to close the distance with a good chance to avoid getting hit.

Or perhaps find a way to add a combination between two D/D skills to enter Stealth that would cost more than CnD by itself. Or at least a skill granting Swiftness or Superspeed to add closing/kiting/escaping ability.

And speaking of speed, I’m curious to know what your opinion is of adding a baseline speed boost to the Thief profession? Perhaps not the full 25% that Signet of Shadows offers, but something that does give an inherent boost to the combat mobility of the Thief. It would affect D/D, so it may fit into this thread.

Ps. To go back to the subject of non-Stealth with D/D, what are effective techniques? With D/P, I can use Shadow Shot to blind (avoid damage) and get into position for auto-attacks plus Headshot to interrupt. But I don’t even know where to begin with non-Stealth combat with D/D… at least as a power Thief. Death Blossom doesn’t seem as effective or as easy to control as Shadow Shot, and Dancing Daggers doesn’t seem reliable against defenses.

I mean, I know that most people will tell you that D/D is just 3 spam, but there is more to it than that. Albiet its a simple rotation.

Initiative

• You have 5 Death Blossoms before you run out of initiative
• If you steal you’ll get one more death blossom
• You can 3 spam from shortbow if you get caught in it and your swap is on cool down * Upper Hand is really important, and while you probably will not notice the heals from regeneration, it’s nice to have when you are low on heath
• Roll for initiative will give you 3 Death Blossom’s if you use it to evade an attack. 2 if you just use it and don’t get an evade.
• If you are not worries about 6 stacks of confusion, then go ahead and run Quick Pockets. it will allow you to make use Lotus Training, while using shortbow, then you can swap to dagger to regain some initiative and go right into Death Blossoms

Endurance

• Honestly, most of your damage is going to be coming directly from Endurance with Uncatchable, and Lotus Training. As such it is the most important thing to maintain.
• You have 3 evades, before you need to refresh your endurance with either withdraw or your signet. But you’ll also be gaining Vigor which will speed this up.
• Your physical skills should be granting endurance when used. and you should be running 2 physical skills. Bandits defense and Impact Strike is what i run, but other people run Impairing daggers.
• Every 30 seconds if you are stunned you will regain your endurance and break stun with Hard to Catch. this is extremely useful in 2v1s or when focused in a team fight.

Weakness

• Three successive stuns in a row. You will break the first automatically, the second and third you can break with Roll For initiative or Bandit’s Defense. then you are pretty will screwed you get stunned again. This is why Dragonhunters suck to fight on this build.
• The stuck bug and immobilize. Granted, Anet seems to have mostly fixed the stuck bug, but immobilize is still a problem. Rangers in theory should be very dangerous, but so far they have not given me too much trouble.
• Unavoidable damage. Some stuff is just not fair, like damage that cannot be avoided. So far the biggest culprit for me is the crazy long duration energy field scrappers place down.

Actually using the build

• Generally you want to follow this rotation. Steal to enemy, Dodge away, Death Blossom to land on top of enemy, dodge away, Death Blossom, Dodge away, Death Blossom, Withdraw, Death blossom, Roll for initiative, Death blossom, dodge, Death blossom, dodge, Death blossom, dodge etc.

• In practice, you’ll probably start out spamming Death Blossom, then spamming Dodge, then hitting roll for initiative, to spam more Death-blossoms, then Withdraw to spam more dodge.

• Steal>dodge: Easy to do, just steal to the enemy and press dodge at the same time. you’ll come out of the steal and drop caltrops at their feet.

• Deathblossom>Dodge: Again easy, but you can’t do it if you rapidly press 3 and dodge. you need to press 3 once, then dodge once. otherwise you’ll do two death blossoms. you’ll land on your enemy and drop caltrops at their feet.

• Choking Gas>Steal>Dodge: From Short bow, drop choking gas, steal as it casts, then dodge away. This will apply poison, caltrops, and of course your lotus projectiles which count as finishers. Choking gas does not last long. its actually pretty sad how long it lasts, so you’ll probably only get one dodge through it.

• Choking gas>Swap>Death Blossom> Death blossom: From shortbow, drop choking gas, swap as it casts, death blossom twice. Sometimes you can string a dodge onto the end of it. but normally choking gas does not last long enough.

• You want to control Far forcing multiple people to try and kill you. you are not meant to kill, you are meant to contest and to be the most annoying pest you can be.

Dealing with Rangers

• Easy fight unless they are bunker. In that case they take forever to kill.
• Save withdraw for when they immobilize you

Dealing with Revenants

• Power Revs, Free bags. The only thing they really have that can hurt you is their Main damage sword attack. And if you are running Sage’s amulet you will be fine. That being said I’ve fought soem Revs that surprised me with how long they lasted and how close they came to killing me.
• Condi Revs, (for those rare occasions) Watch out for them when the reverse your condi’s on you. They can copy all of your condis back onto you when they swap legends, and it is unavoidable. I’ve never seen it miss.

Dealing With Elimentalists

• Bunker, Annoying but not a threat.
• Fresh air, Unavoidable damage. Be careful. you have the advantage, but they have Air overload which while the individual strikes can be avoided, there are just to many of them and one strike hurts really bad. Elementalists also have a stun chain on air, which if they get you with it, they can get a full air overload on you.

Dealing with Warriors

• Pretty much a stalemate. They have to much condi cleanse for a thief, because we only deal in maybe three or 4 condis (torment, Bleed, Confusion, and maybe Poison), and our only dangerous one is bleed. so as long as they clear the bleed they will survive. If a warrior is at low health when you fight him, use Impact strioke, and heart seaker to spike him down, otherwise he will heal right through your condis

Dealing with necromancers
For the most part, they are easy wins. Sure they have fear, but fear can miss. What you really need to watch out for is a single condi burst from signet of the Locust. If they use it correctly It can kill you in two ticks and you can only clear one condi at a time.

Dealing with Guardians

• Traps suck, Traps suck Traps suck. three traps on top of each other break right through your stun break potential, even if you make them miss with a dodge. because for some reason the dazes don’t freaking miss. If a DH is already on point, the best you can do is bait out his already layed traps, then sucker him into wasting his second wave of traps. if you manage this without getting dazed you can win, but DH’s are hard counters to you.

Dealing with theives

• Power Thieves. OMG dodnt stop dodging!!!!. It only takes one good combo to kill you. Luckelly its hard for them to get it off, but all they really have to do it hit you with basalisks from stealth or Impact strike and you are screwed. If you can make them waste those you have the fight. If they get the drop on you you are pretty much boned.

• if you steal from a thief save the stealth. use it about 5 seconds after they go stealth, 3 seconds later activate bandit’s defense as you come out of stealth, then kick them when they try to hit you. then dodge away and reset. Really good thieves will win 90% of the time against you, but most thieves don’t know how to deal with you. well now they do.
• another DD thief, LOL. interesting fight that takes entirely too long. If you are running Sages amulet and they are not you will win though.

Dealing with Mesmer

• For the most part I win these fight, but i’m not sure why. they have all of the tools to eat you alive. their elite (forget it’s name.) that is like 5 stuns in a row should be all they need, but it can be broken with a single stun break. so most of the time i go right through it.

• Power Mesmer: If their Shatter hits, it will hurt, but not kill you unless they get lcky and double shatter and both hit. (50% life each time) that’s rare.

• Condi Mesmer: A good condi burst can and you pretty quick. Like i said, Memser have all the tools to end you easily but they just…dont.

Dealing with Engineer’s

• Unavoidable damage with that stupid electric feild thing. whatever it is it gets me all the time. If i don’t get hit with it i win, if i do i loose. I think it’s spare capacitor, which dazes 4 separate times on a 1 second pulse. That’s probably it. i can deal with everything else in their kit, but that thing eats my face

Glitchy stuff

• Ground targeting stolen items when using the combat camera (my favorite way to play) Get wasted. they just disappear. the Ranger one and the engineer one just get wasted and its very annoying. I have no idea why this happens.

• Tapping Death blossom once, makes it acativate twice

• Tapping withdraw and sometimes nothing happens . ive taken to spamming it when i use it.

• Bandit’s defense is only supposed to block a couple of attacks, sometimes it will block full combos. (don’t rely on that though)

• Sometimes bandits defense will not activate when you tap it.

• You can delay The kick from bandit’s defense, but you can also use it (to no effect) in the middle of death blossom

• Each attack on impact strike can be delayed for about 1 second, so you can slip a Lotus or even a kick between each one.

• you can slip a heat seaker between bandits defense and the kick, then follow up with an impact strike and deal crit damage even if you have 12% crit chance. It works every time if you can time it right.

• obviously start impact strike before your opponent is dead, but try and slip in a heartseeker right before the last attack.

We’re power D/D thieves, not condi D/D thieves.

I’m gonna be honest with you emkelly,

The first day I picked up D/D condi, it was the easiest thing to play of anything I’ve ever tried in the game.

In most cases, I had to almost try to lose fights to die. I’ve petty much shelved the character because I find myself getting bored winning without much of a challenge. It’s basically condi mesmer, except not as OP, but less interesting to play since there’s basically no diversity in skill usage at all. Even on power, D/D’s crappy 3 and 4 have enough purpose and can be used to make some seriously big plays.

Scryeless.1924:

the might on p/p is fine since its irrelevant. everyone blocks, evades, reflects, immunes, obstructs and can easily line of sight the shots. also the damage on p/p with 25 stacks of might isnt great. sure decent opening burst but poor sustained dmg.

i think we need more time to analyze p/p before changing anything.

I do not think P/P has to be changed in any way. The only thing I would look at it a slight tweak in the duration of the vuln and immob on 2 otherwise it fine.

As to the might stacking people get fixated on unload and do not explore the rest of the sets potential. They tend to burn all the INI and unloads when the set has other viable options.

As example once might stacked the Headshot off 4 will generate a harder PI than any other weaponset.

Once might stacked, if specced for bounding dodger, that bound will hit significantly harder. If this used in conjunction with a BP , bound then sneak attack from stealth decent damge boosted by the might is inflicted coupled with enough might to make the bleeds meaningful

If the might stacked and one traited for Mug with PI and SOH your mug will hit much harder with full might and if an interrupt occurs the PI that follows will be significantly higher with that might.

One thing you can do is trait up flanking strikes from trickery (over TOTC) and stack might to steal to an opponent with said stacks. This can generate an interrupt for the PI proc and you then switch to an alternate weapon. If you attacked from the flank you will have quickness/fury for six seconds and the AA from any of staff s/x and d/x will hit much harder allowing for a significant burst.

I note a few power builds use impaling lotus for the cripples and to ensure there also a condition on the enemy. With might stacked you will get the bleeds and torments off this ticking higher.

Might stacks also increase the damage from fist flurry and impact strike.

If you are staying in p/p and just trying to stack might and spam unloads you are doing it wrong.

You can also completely forgo Unload entirely and run condi p/p with Bounding Sneak Attack and Head Shot to proc both PI and Pressure Striking. Combined with the interrupt sigils, it makes for a very interesting hybrid rupter set. Its also something that pairs well with s/p. There are a lot of interesting things you can do with p/p that don’t revolve around power unload spam.

d/d has slightly less diversity, but you do have your power d/d and condi d/d options, and those can be built slightly differently from each other.