Guild Wars 2

Before the ICD on Backstab, this would be nearly unthinkable. However with the ICD thieves have to be smarter about when they land a Backstab. This change opens up a bit more versatility for a weapon set that is already suffering under the heavy defensive meta.

CnD is already init heavy, doesn’t have any significant damage and requires a thief to be up close and personal so I don’t see any balance issues. This change would make D/D a better performer even though it would still be behind D/P in effectiveness.

I don’t understand why it hasn’t been unblockable since the first HoT balance patch came out.

I honestly really hate this change, but ANet doesn’t seem willing to deal with the underlying issues ruining thief diversity so I think it’s the best chance we’ve got atm.

They should just increase CnD to give 4-5 secs of Stealth baseline and would help it alot

Cutting initiative costs would go a long way.
Unblockabke is tough because on the one hand, D/D power hinges entirely on CnD, but shield-wielders and people using blocks well would get countered innately.

The bigger issue underlying it is still HoT powercreeping defenses, though.

And even still, the kit will have questionable purpose given the nature of how poor skills 3 and 4 perform, especially when on the stealth attack icd.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

They should just increase CnD to give 4-5 secs of Stealth baseline and would help it alot

I quite agree. Drop one INI on cost Increase base stealth by 1 or 2 seconds and i think it good to go.

Many of these suggestions seem fairly reasonable – hope anet can look into it.

Just so long as only the stealth component is unblockable and not the entire attack. Power creep is real and we shouldn’t add to it if we can help it.

I’d reduce block spam before adding unblockable personally. I’d also like to eliminate some of the projectile hate people can utilize through their weapon skills alone (engineer mainly) and massive healing people can put out without healing power.

But that requires an actual balance patch to nerf and not just buff things to try and fix it.

more unblockable would wreck the roaming scene even worse than it is already. ppl wouldn’t take so many blocks if it wasn’t for spammy things in game like thief auto-attack

Raolin Soulherder.3195:

more unblockable would wreck the roaming scene even worse than it is already. ppl wouldn’t take so many blocks if it wasn’t for spammy things in game like thief auto-attack

With the difference that no one runs offhand dagger – so think again?

On topic: I agree with Deceiver – this game is a mess. An unblockable CnD might not change anything at all.

I do not think there going back from HOT. That powercreep on both sides is something we will have to deal with and when the new elite comes out perhaps we will see the current elite specs lose relative power simply because there a new kid on the block.

The problem is of course with any new weapon release it will have to be made attractive enough to compete with d/p (which staff did to an extent) meaning the other specs and in particular x/d fall further to the wayside.

I still run a p/d condition and a s/d power But i feel these two sets have more other things going for them to make them attractive over other sets. There is not a heck of a lot in d/d power over the d/p power.

Put CnD to 5 ini for 4 (or even 5) seconds base stealth and i can live with it. You can then better deal with that ICD and postion yourself better in combat for that backstab , something d/p takes for granted.

Bit of an old thread to respond to, but I used to be a pretty well respected Thief on the servers I played on, I gathered a bit of fame on Youtube too and was just getting into the GW2 GvG scene, but due to real life events I couldn’t play until they released HoT. After seeing what it had done to dagger offhand Thief, I basically quit the game.

I was -okay- rolling D/P in GvG’s because the meta build at the time just beat everything else, I ran a few GvGs with dagger offhand but not being able to sit in stealth for 50% of the time was deadly as opponent Thieves could easily pick me out, blablabla… to the point >

Making our only viable option (in wvw) to be D/P made me quit this game, I am the type of person that always hated meta builds and tried to do something unique, building my own build and somehow making it work, I feel they stripped thief from every bit uniqueness they could have, sure you have the occassional staff thief that performs well, but it’s also a build I don’t enjoy playing.

What I wanted to see happen to CND is NOT it being unblockable, I only wanted it to ignore boons, such as blind, aegis and so forth, that way people can still dodge it in a skilled manner, it would make dagger offhand 100% viable again, and totally NOT overpowered. Missing twice would still be fatal. What screwed me over a lot were the excessive amounts of blinds & aegis going around, 95% of them auto triggered by some stupid trait, if you watch my D/D video you can see how I had to spam #1 to cleans all boons and conditions, before landing CnD, which made me slow and predictable.

@D/D starts at 3minutes in, the reason I’m able to troll or take on a lot of opponents at a time, one time like a 1v7, simply because they were horrible, not with the build d/d being op at the time. This is prior HoT. I never felt Thief was OP, just annoying because people would reset fights.

Think making the strike grant stealth but not do damage or apply vulnerability if blocked (or invulned, etc) would be the way to go to keep things balanced. Also, a base stealth duration of 4 seconds. Think this would make CND a bit more competitive with d/p without being too overpowered.

If they remove the damage component from CnD then the set loses equal viability as then D/P retains superior damage potential as well.

As Laela mentioned, passives are a big issue, but there’s no proper resolution unless those passives get nerfed. A skillful blind or similar denial that isn’t on a passive shouldn’t be punished by CnD just hard-countering them and allowing bad D/D players to get free hits/stealth when inflicted prior.

The problem is that I don’t see how CnD is ever going to be a viable option again with all the passives flying around like never before. Unless it’s a 1v1 there is no place for CnD anywhere (and even then you need to outskill your opponent by a margin imo) .

Think of it as > when CnD ends, you get revealed for 2s, it’s already a gap in which you can counter back, you can also dodge the CnD, seriously, it’s one of the easiest skills to dodge.

You see people being punished by CnD, where as D/P gets free stealth that is almost unstopable with the dodge kitten. (which I don’t want to see nerfed, I just want other weaponsets buffed, Thief deserves it, sure in sPvP thief has a place. From an Esports perspective, things are fine as it is. D/P isn’t abused there and works great. I enjoyed watching some of the top tier players there.)

You’re largely correct in the state of the weapon which is why I largely gave up on the set/game as a whole. It’s bearable in some styles, largely contingent on the Daredevil, and in some encounters/matchups, but it’s very dependent on other aspects of the profession to cover for its blatant weaknesses. D/D can’t support itself unlike many other kits.

Sad fact is ANet’s rampant poor-design decisions – notably passives – can only be fixed by negating those decisions, not through changing and buffing other things.

The game is a mess, because its complete combat system has been neglected by Anets balance team for 4 years by now. Making changes there on a single skill for a single class won’t change anything, nor will it turn the class suddenly into a build diversity miracle.

This game needs like half a douzen fundamental changes to its combat system by now to make this game again more fun and not such a mess.
Beginning with the neccessary first two big steps being to redesign and rebalance the games complete condition and boon system.

That will be for all classes, all game modes, skils, traits, upgrades alike alot more important and impactful to change the game’s balance to the good.
Just fundamental changes like that are also able to shake up a game’s meta strong enough positively, that players realy get also the impression, that something has significantly changed in the game.
A change on a single class skill will change nothing in this game anymore!
Its way too late for this and peopel need to realize by now, that just skill and trait changes aren’t enough anymore to save this game to get it out of the by its developers self made imbalance grave which they continously digged deeper and deeper with each false decision they made over the last 4 years and their pure ignorance on all other important combat system relevant mechanics that play also a big role in game balance – not just only skills and traits – but very much also Upgrades, Invidual Class Base Health Values, Attribute Effects and Accessibility through removal of Gear Stats, Boons, Conditions and lastly Buff Food (which has nothing to search in WvW!! It should become finally PvE only items)

When Anet would look over consistently over all these things and not just only Skills and Traits, because it takes lesser time for them and is more convinient to do, then we would have a much better balanced game by now.