Guild Wars 2

Always knew it was their intention for D/D to be a hybrid set that could work with either power, condi, or mixed build and that under-tuning poison unintentionally undermined the condi side, leaving Death Blossom to carry the whole set. Poison changes confirm that.

I’ll have fun experimenting with this when it hits live.

Yeah … would be nice if poison durations weren’t getting nerfed on Shortbow (yet again because oohh wow we can stack poison. Ironically, they nerfed it twice before so we wouldn’t have ridiculously long poison durations … well now there is hardly going to be poison uptime with a shortbow which is sad because due to poison damage formula changing due to stacking, it nets a damage loss without at least two stacks -.-)

And if Dagger Training didn’t have a 2 second baseline for poison stacking I think it would make investing into poison duration increase more worth it … otherwise with how our bleed stack fine and even more so with krait runes, it’s likely better to just stick to bleed stacking, which is sad. It would be really fun to have something else to try that was viable.

I can understand the reasoning behind the CD on poison, though, as then there would be no reason not to only spam 3 since it’s a multi-hit that has the highest chance of appyling it in a short period, applies very strong bleeding, and acts as an evade.

I just don’t think baseline weapon skills can be altered much without specializations changing them. The hybrid weapon concept just doesn’t really work for the thief because the initiative mechanic just allows for the spamming of one ability without using the rest (which is boring), since odds are some of the other skills will be for the other build portion of the hybrid – A condi D/D thief will rarely ever prioritize HS for damage over DB, and a power D/D build will really never find use for DB except maybe as a desperate evade.

There a number of builds I want to try. D/D using poison/bleeds in combination will be one of the first.

That said in theory DB is going to see a 10 percent boost to its raw damage not so? Dual wield skills all get a 5 percent boost and dagger got a 5 percent baseline boost or am I wrong in how that would work?

I go this http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgcB2AT8BWw~

babazhook.6805:

dagger got a 5 percent baseline boost

I’m not sure of that. I know they said that on the older preview video, but I didn’t see it in the newest notes.

DeceiverX.8361:

I can understand the reasoning behind the CD on poison, though, as then there would be no reason not to only spam 3 since it’s a multi-hit that has the highest chance of appyling it in a short period, applies very strong bleeding, and acts as an evade.

I just don’t think baseline weapon skills can be altered much without specializations changing them. The hybrid weapon concept just doesn’t really work for the thief because the initiative mechanic just allows for the spamming of one ability without using the rest (which is boring), since odds are some of the other skills will be for the other build portion of the hybrid – A condi D/D thief will rarely ever prioritize HS for damage over DB, and a power D/D build will really never find use for DB except maybe as a desperate evade.

Wait, what … how does the hybrid mechanic not work due to initiative letting you use the same skill over and over … … wat?

IMO, that’s the only reason it can even work. I don’t understand your logic with that. Also, the reasoning they made poison duration so low is because they catered Dagger Training towards burst thieves without really considering condi thieves and their need for multiple applications of poisons come next patch.

Seriously, if you go look at the new poison condi formula, you are going to be losing damage if you don’t maintain at LEAST two stacks. Dagger Training is hardly going to provide that, especially with DB spam which stacks bleeds nicely, sure. But 2 seconds of poison on 33% chance on hit, even with potent poisons + a runeset buffing poison duration isn’t even 4 seconds of poison, hell even if you went all out and added a poison duration sigil, that’s still not even 4 seconds of poison.

Between Potent Poisons (33%) A Runeset with poison increase (30%) and a sigil for poison duration increase (20%) totaling 83%, that 2 second baseline goes up to 3.66 which =/= 4 seconds or 4 ticks of poison. Good luck making dagger training useful in a condi sense, because it certainly won’t be and mug will hands down destroy it in terms of usefulness, even without sleight of hand.

There is no reason for them to make poison durations on thief so low with traits / shortbow weaponset. It’s absurd honestly and does nothing but completely prevent thief from even having the option to stack poisons even with a full poison duration setup trying to make poison stacking worth anything at all. Especially if you compare and contrast them to what kind of benefit to bleed stacking you get out of using krait runes vs poison increase.

That said, I unfortunately know exactly how I will be running my build post patch. Sure, I’ll play around on golems with poison duration increases and see on paper what can be done with it, but with my experience playing SB & D/D over the years, I already know that the durations are way too low and 2 seconds is a huge slap in the face for thieves on both Dagger Training and especially Shortbow #4

Arenanet seriously makes me sad any time they introduce thief changes. Be it nerfs or even the rare buffs we get. Pray tell we ever get a buff without a nerf.

>>Seriously, if you go look at the new poison condi formula, you are going to be losing damage if you don’t maintain at LEAST two stacks. Dagger Training is hardly going to provide that, especially with DB spam which stacks bleeds nicely, sure. But 2 seconds of poison on 33% chance on hit, even with potent poisons + a runeset buffing poison duration isn’t even 4 seconds of poison, hell even if you went all out and added a poison duration sigil, that’s still not even 4 seconds of poison.

You forget there a poison stack of 6 seconds on the AA. You will certainly be able to have 2+ stacks on. My gut feel given my experience with the 2 second torment on the AA of the mesmer scepter that 2 base will come from dagger training alone and sometimes 3. I wait to see. I am sure if it not enough it will get tweaked. See IP and the tweaks made to that.

Babazhook, have you considered that these changes go straight into SPvP where there are no food buffs ?

Also, condi duration reduction is a thing in WvW so food buffs are really not a selling point for that trait. I main SPvP, this is why I am so concerned about these changes and wanting to see something other than burst thief being viable in SPvP.

Edit: Three seconds baseline is necessary for SPvP and still would not be gamebreaking for WvW. -_- You’ve helped me bring up a good point though. This is another case of SPvP balance getting hurt because of Anet catering purely to PvE

And yes, dagger 1 chain ends with poison at the end, but we’re not going to be spamming 1 the entire time we’re fighting, it’s more just a filler between attacks / positioning for the next attack. I rarely find that I have time to try to utilize that in PvP, as easy as it sounds to talk about. Trying to pull off the entire chain usually involves someone kiting away, dodging, blocking, something. I’ll maybe go for it once or twice before swapping back to SB.

Jesiah.2457:

DeceiverX.8361:

I can understand the reasoning behind the CD on poison, though, as then there would be no reason not to only spam 3 since it’s a multi-hit that has the highest chance of appyling it in a short period, applies very strong bleeding, and acts as an evade.

I just don’t think baseline weapon skills can be altered much without specializations changing them. The hybrid weapon concept just doesn’t really work for the thief because the initiative mechanic just allows for the spamming of one ability without using the rest (which is boring), since odds are some of the other skills will be for the other build portion of the hybrid – A condi D/D thief will rarely ever prioritize HS for damage over DB, and a power D/D build will really never find use for DB except maybe as a desperate evade.

Wait, what … how does the hybrid mechanic not work due to initiative letting you use the same skill over and over … … wat?

IMO, that’s the only reason it can even work. I don’t understand your logic with that. Also, the reasoning they made poison duration so low is because they catered Dagger Training towards burst thieves without really considering condi thieves and their need for multiple applications of poisons come next patch.

It doesn’t work because it creates forced optimization by spamming individual skills per each build in the power/condi divide rather than using all of the skills of a kit together. It’s not about it not working for hybrids but not working for hybrids on the basis it breaks distinct power/condition builds and creates an environment that is unfun.

And no, Dagger Training has absolutely nothing to do with burst builds. The reworked DT only provides a chance to poison enemies for 2s on any dagger attacks, not just crits. Dagger Training at the moment gives 5% damage output. I do believe the short-duration poisons we’re looking at are meant for the heal cuts as they are removing the effect of poison cutting healing effectiveness for its duration and are splitting it into the heal cut will go into effect for a short period of time after each new time the target has been poisoned. Frequent re-applications of poison are meant to cut heals rather than deal DoT effects, just like how the condition functions now.

DeceiverX.8361:

Jesiah.2457:

DeceiverX.8361:

I can understand the reasoning behind the CD on poison, though, as then there would be no reason not to only spam 3 since it’s a multi-hit that has the highest chance of appyling it in a short period, applies very strong bleeding, and acts as an evade.

I just don’t think baseline weapon skills can be altered much without specializations changing them. The hybrid weapon concept just doesn’t really work for the thief because the initiative mechanic just allows for the spamming of one ability without using the rest (which is boring), since odds are some of the other skills will be for the other build portion of the hybrid – A condi D/D thief will rarely ever prioritize HS for damage over DB, and a power D/D build will really never find use for DB except maybe as a desperate evade.

Wait, what … how does the hybrid mechanic not work due to initiative letting you use the same skill over and over … … wat?

IMO, that’s the only reason it can even work. I don’t understand your logic with that. Also, the reasoning they made poison duration so low is because they catered Dagger Training towards burst thieves without really considering condi thieves and their need for multiple applications of poisons come next patch.

It doesn’t work because it creates forced optimization by spamming individual skills per each build in the power/condi divide rather than using all of the skills of a kit together. It’s not about it not working for hybrids but not working for hybrids on the basis it breaks distinct power/condition builds and creates an environment that is unfun.

And no, Dagger Training has absolutely nothing to do with burst builds. The reworked DT only provides a chance to poison enemies for 2s on any dagger attacks, not just crits. Dagger Training at the moment gives 5% damage output. I do believe the short-duration poisons we’re looking at are meant for the heal cuts as they are removing the effect of poison cutting healing effectiveness for its duration and are splitting it into the heal cut will go into effect for a short period of time after each new time the target has been poisoned. Frequent re-applications of poison are meant to cut heals rather than deal DoT effects, just like how the condition functions now.

Dagger Training – 5% increased damage to daggers, definitely a bigger buff to burst builds than anything, check. Better uptime for poison / healing reduction on burst builds while doing something other than 1 spamming, check.

Now considering condi and even hybrid builds, they are going to have substantially less power, crit and crit damage … so that 5% does not scale nearly as well for condi / hybrid compared to burst, check. And considering condi builds rely on condi damage, which is what we would hope for from Dagger Training, that 2 seconds baseline is going to be negligible in terms of trying to stack poison for damage, check.

Totally seems catered to condi instead of burst. /sarcasm

Is this really so hard to grasp? I really don’t see why you are so against seeing Dagger Training go to 3 seconds so it’s actually worth something in more than one build type. I don’t see anyone arguing about SB#4’s incoming nerf (which makes no sense other than Anet mentality of here’s a new crappy GM trait, better nerf Shortbow, again!)

I’m willing to put money on it that DT will be shafted by Mug at this rate.

Jesiah.2457:

Babazhook, have you considered that these changes go straight into SPvP where there are no food buffs ?

Also, condi duration reduction is a thing in WvW so food buffs are really not a selling point for that trait. I main SPvP, this is why I am so concerned about these changes and wanting to see something other than burst thief being viable in SPvP.

Edit: Three seconds baseline is necessary for SPvP and still would not be gamebreaking for WvW. -_- You’ve helped me bring up a good point though. This is another case of SPvP balance getting hurt because of Anet catering purely to PvE

And yes, dagger 1 chain ends with poison at the end, but we’re not going to be spamming 1 the entire time we’re fighting, it’s more just a filler between attacks / positioning for the next attack. I rarely find that I have time to try to utilize that in PvP, as easy as it sounds to talk about. Trying to pull off the entire chain usually involves someone kiting away, dodging, blocking, something. I’ll maybe go for it once or twice before swapping back to SB.

I do not PvP. I do 90 percent Wvw and that torment AA at 2 seconds easily stacks three Torments on the mesmer AA. The difference of course it a 100 percent rather then 33 but then a DB is 3 attacks. Yes condition duration foods are a selling point as are runes and sigils like malice. Your suggestion that counter duration foods mean duration foods not used is simply wrong.

There are multiple sources of torment. They all have varying durations. When multiple stacks are put on the taregt does not know that half the stacks are 10 seconds duration and half the stacks 3. All he sees is total stacks and when they are ticking he can not premisea potential cleanse around “well half these stacks are only three seconds”. He can not afford to just let them tick. This is the same with poison. Being able to put 2 stacks of poison on that last 20 seconds with a skill that than goes on a 20 second cooldown does not do more damage then a skill that adds two stacks of poison with 2 seconds duration on a 2 second cooldown. In fact , because of cleansing that longer duration would do less damage.

Now two stacks of poison is going to be about 300 damage give or take ticking each and every second. If one assumes 2000 condi damage build and 16 stacks of bleeds, this 300 damage per tick extra is about 15 percent more damage which will be obtained while those bleeds applied. (t16 stacks of bleeds is being genorous. The percentage increase will be higher) Applying them does NOT take away from your bleed potential. 15 percent more damage per tick can not be ignored.

OK maybe you wont have full uptime of that 2 poison stacks in the 21 seconds it takes for your mug to work again but 300 damage per tick going half the time is still more total damage then mug and coming with this is inhibiting the enemies heal.

Mugs only real advantage is the heal NOT The total damage and if a person can maintain high health or is at full health when Mug off cooldown then even that component of mug is wasted. Certainly there some advanatge in having a source of “spike” damage which happens all at once but that is situational and MUG in a condition oriented build does much less overall spike damage then in a power build.

Dagger training is something that will work throughout the entire battle on each and every attack and not “every 21 seconds” . That is its advantage.

Jesiah.2457:

Dagger Training – 5% increased damage to daggers, definitely a bigger buff to burst builds than anything, check. Better uptime for poison / healing reduction on burst builds while doing something other than 1 spamming, check.

Now considering condi and even hybrid builds, they are going to have substantially less power, crit and crit damage … so that 5% does not scale nearly as well for condi / hybrid compared to burst, check. And considering condi builds rely on condi damage, which is what we would hope for from Dagger Training, that 2 seconds baseline is going to be negligible in terms of trying to stack poison for damage, check.

Totally seems catered to condi instead of burst. /sarcasm

Is this really so hard to grasp? I really don’t see why you are so against seeing Dagger Training go to 3 seconds so it’s actually worth something in more than one build type. I don’t see anyone arguing about SB#4’s incoming nerf (which makes no sense other than Anet mentality of here’s a new crappy GM trait, better nerf Shortbow, again!)

I’m willing to put money on it that DT will be shafted by Mug at this rate.

Are you reading the new DT? The 5% damage is removed and the new DT gives a chance to apply poison on all dagger attacks. The 5% damage modifier has just been rolled in as baseline.

I think you’re in the minority in terms of wanting dagger to be a condition weapon. I play D/D for its hyper-aggressive burst and no other reason. If it moved to hybrid/condi, I would quit the thief because D/P and P/D are overpowered and cheesy, and I don’t enjoy S/D or S/P very much.

Let me state I’m not against putting the poison on a 3 second cooldown, but am saying I understand the short duration because it’s meant to act as healing disruption over DoT which I think is what you’re really failing to grasp, and is likely designed to act as a means of giving P/D a little bit of extra access to poison. Granted, mug is still better as a trait IMHO because of the heal, and yes, DT could see improvements, but I would not discount the intent of the trait. The 5% damage got rolled into baseline because every dagger mainhand thief and their mother ran the trait as a master, and frankly, with the reduction on traits, and it only providing 5% damage, it’s too weak and too specific to be made into a trait, and nobody complains about the damage coming out of the thief but the stealth and blinds.

Just because the thief is getting a bit more access to poison does not mean it is intended to be stacked for damage – it still has the heal cut, and smaller bursts of poison = designed for heal cutting with the change to how the heal cut is working, whereas long-duration poison is meant for DoT effects.

Dagger mainhand does not really have anything to do with conditions, so acting like it’s a surprise that it’s not being made into a condi weapon is kind of silly. It was designed as a power weapon just like the staff on the mesmer is primarily a condition weapon. Yes, it has a skill which deals with the opposite-type scaling, and that skill can be huge, but it does not mean that every trait and benefit should primarily focus on bolstering the effectiveness of one skill. You have MH pistol as a condi weapon for the thief. D/D has some hybrid potential, but only through Death Blossom, due to its multiple stacks of long-lasting bleeds + evade on a fairly low initiative cost.

EDIT: As mentioned by babazhook above, it still does provide a solid source of damage (more than 5% for most condi builds in general), and it is also important to consider that under repeated AA chains with no interruptions, the dagger already has permanent poison uptime, implying that it will be very reasonable to maintain 3-6 stacks of poison at all times while attacking with duration food.

And frankly, the removal of condi duration food (both + and -) and baseline changes to condition durations would probably help condition builds more than hurt them, as well as saving everyone a ton of money with -40% being so expensive and +40% being so ridiculously overpowered in WvW. The effects are cancelled by each other and yet condi builds still run rampant in everything in except organized blobs where light and water fields are too common to make condi builds effective… because the blobs have structured themselves that way to avoid conditions, as condis were the meta near release and were stupidly overpowered in large-scale fights without dedicated mitigation efforts.

And so, Deceiver, you basically just supported what I’m saying. I didn’t read it all, and I’m sorry. But I’m getting at the builds are catered towards burst and they skimp out on anything condi related. So I mean, thanks for that.

Baba, how the hell did we get onto torment? I’m utterly confused by you. :l

Edit: Also, condi isn’t prevalent in “unorganized blobs” which I suppose you mean by that, zergs, because condi doesn’t stack. I’m sure you’re aware that’s going to change next patch, making those zerg condis a much more viable possibility.

Seriously though, Deceiver, even though you unintentionally supported what I was saying. I don’t see what the deal is with thief having condi options or even hybrid options. The potential is there, but Anet never makes changes or worthwhile things that improve on those facets of thief.

Also @ Baba, I actually run SB and D/D, quite successfully I might add, especially in WvW. The whole reason I even pointed out condi duration food vs condi duration reduction food is because it is a thing you run into, often, on both sides.

That means the trait shouldn’t be next to garbage-tier due to the fact there is condition duration food because there IS ALSO condition reduction food, so trying to act like the fact there is condition duration food is a reason a trait should be nerfed means you’re completely neglecting the fact there’s condition duration reduction, YOUR argument lacks logic.

If you’re worried about condition duration, run condition duration reduction, that freakin’ simple. Otherwise it just makes condition duration reduction worthless if you use a completely one track state of mind because people like you think it’s okay to think something should be nerfed due to one potential aspect that could buff it while totally neglecting another aspect that nerfs it …

Kind of like most burst thieves and their one track state of mind. “Whine whine, I’ll quit D/D if it’s not pure burst and nothing else. I already skip using DB in favor of heartseeker and using CnD + Backstab, but if … if they made it hybrid viable, SCREW D/D OMG.”

404, logic not found. I’m surprised I’m even here on the forums trying to discuss changes and give thieves some other direction to go for once rather than nothing but burst or bust.

Anet preaches all this garbage about build diversity, but then we have one track mind players who care about nothing but one build / playstyle so that build diversity is moot and gives Anet even more room to not even care about following their own philosophy that they don’t care about in the first place.

>>Baba, how the hell did we get onto torment? I’m utterly confused by you. :l

I got into torment because it has a 2 second base duration on the AA scepter and I was using to show I can stack three toments with that 2 seconds. If I can stack torment to three stacks I can do the same with poison. ( I tested this sometime ago when I traited a scepter based mesmer. He can actually get more stacks then this on using the AA with that low base but the remainder came from the clone generated)

That mesmer deals with the same foods on both sides and still stacks those 3 stacks torment with that 2 seconds base. It has the exact same duration of the dagger training poison.

I also got into torment because that mesmer has other sources of longer lasting torment just as the theif will have of poisons and those two or three stacks that can continously kept on top of those other longer lasting stacks are always ticking damage.

If one wants to focus on getting more poisons on there are other methods and sources that can be used. Whether it worth going those extra stacks is a different question and one which I will determine when I try for myself. Thatd said, as mentioned by deceiver, keeping poison on as a heal inhibit can not be discounted.

Thank you for the clarification and sorry for being a scumbag.

And of course, you’re both right about the healing reduction can’t be discounted, but this patch overall seems more hurtful than beneficial to condi thieves, especially considering the SB #4 nerf which is totally unnecessary. The initial reason of nerfing the duration in the first place was to prevent excessively long durations of poison stacking, which was fair.

But this is completely different. Not only are we going to have petty up time with it, we’re losing damage due to these changes as well. We as condi thieves, because burst thieves obviously do not care about poison damage at all.

But yeah, come changes … we’ll see, how no one uses Dagger Training in favor of mug due to how weak it’s going to be overall and how excessively niche it will be with those kinds of numbers.

Meanwhile engies will have a passive hard counter to shadow arts and thief in general.

Jesiah.2457:

Thank you for the clarification and sorry for being a scumbag.

And of course, you’re both right about the healing reduction can’t be discounted, but this patch overall seems more hurtful than beneficial to condi thieves, especially considering the SB #4 nerf which is totally unnecessary. The initial reason of nerfing the duration in the first place was to prevent excessively long durations of poison stacking, which was fair.

But this is completely different. Not only are we going to have petty up time with it, we’re losing damage due to these changes as well. We as condi thieves, because burst thieves obviously do not care about poison damage at all.

But yeah, come changes … we’ll see, how no one uses Dagger Training in favor of mug due to how weak it’s going to be overall and how excessively niche it will be with those kinds of numbers.

Meanwhile engies will have a passive hard counter to shadow arts and thief in general.

Well I expect dagger training WILL be niche compared to Mug but that because it heavily favors d/d training and d/d sets become niche .

One other point. Spider venom still remains as a choice in a a d/d build. Due to the fact it just extended durations before it seemed a waste to stack one after the other. With changes one will get 6 strikes of 6 seconds. One tactic you might use is having this loaded on the utility slot and as soon as the enemy uses his cleanse to get rid of the poisons and bleeds load this up and reapply quickly. In theory you should have 8 poison stacks and 6 bleeds in two Db’s.

Spider venom will be a lot more popular with P/D, not D/D as it’s far easier to apply using sneak attack for “condi burst”.

As Deceiver said, D/D favors burst builds rather than anything condi related. And honestly I’d much rather keep caltrops for area control in conquest and against npcs in Stronghold, they’re infinitely more effective than venoms, especially when playing solo like in WvW.

Venomshare is the only way poison venom will shine, and at that point, taking a GM trait to buff one utility that is easily countered by the spam of condition cleaning is hard to consider over caltrops which at least reapply to anyone trying to contest a node / area.

Poison stacking will only be effective for thieves if they can keep reapplying them which with how heavy condition cleansing is, especially in high level gameplay, will be much less effective than simply placing caltrops down on a point. If anything, Anet has done a fantastic job at making passive play more rewarding than active play.

I mean take pve for example. Caltrops can stack bleeds consecutively to multiple targets where as venoms only affect one target or is spread thin between multiple targets and then it’s on CD, there is no prolonged duration such as caltrops. Bleeds just win hands down for thieves, which is why I was hoping Dagger Training might get a little love to see it become more viable rather than only being for burst thieves who want more uptime and some-crazy-how want to sacrifice something that’s good like mug for simply that.

Three seconds base really isn’t asking too much. Considering taking a GM trait (which is honestly in need of a buff to either damage or duration, hell maybe both, to be considered GM quality) and a runeset buffing poison duration on top of that would only push it up to 5 seconds, which then gives it room to stack and be used as a potential damage gain (which would still be questionable vs Mug) rather than a more than likely damage loss.

This would work better for condi builds and of course does not work for burst builds since they won’t want to stack that trait & a runeset. But anyway, if Dagger Training comes with the 5% listed damage as I previously saw advertised, then I think it would more appropriately benefit both variations of thieves, and of course burst thieves wouldn’t complain about 1 second more uptime on poison either.

In all seriousness, I just don’t want these changes to total into nothing but a damage loss for condi thieves trying to play condition damage with our hybrid toolsets. And I hate to see an already under performing / barely utilized shortbow get hurt even more than necessary with ridiculous Anet logic nerfs. -.-

I don’t think it’s all gloom and doom. They increased the poison duration on the AA to 6 seconds, which is longer than the AA chain, and the Dagger Training has a 33% application rate per strike, not per critical. I would imagine with that trait alone you’re going to generally maintain about 3 stacks of poison. That’s also not factoring in Caltrops, runes, condi duration, or any venoms. I wouldn’t be surprised if with the right build I’m pushing an average of 4 stacks of poison while also layering heavy bleed damage.

I think it’ll be viable. Or, at least, it’s intended to be viable and will be tweaked if it isn’t.

Jesiah.2457:

But I’m getting at the builds are catered towards burst and they skimp out on anything condi related.

If you’re referring to thief in general, its primary condition options need nerfs more than anything. I think this video speaks volumes. The opponents aren’t amazing, but they make reasonable enough plays for this video to have merit. Burst needs more love because it’s intrinsically weaker. Damage per defense, conditions are the best, and given time to ramp, sinister will out-damage even berserker on some builds/classes. Burst also requires more attentive tuning and is easier to tune since damage modifiers are easy to adjust, whereas conditions can only be changed through base durations and cooldowns without affecting all condition builds. And a 1s shave (one tick) off of a condition could imply huge nerfs of unintended scale.

Let’s not even go into the monstrosity that P/D itself is, or how P/P interrupt will be shelling out more condition damage than most sets in the game after the changes Wednesday.

Dire perplexity is the big culprit here, but to make claims that condi thief isn’t being given enough support is simply something I absolutely cannot agree with.

That video isn’t even a viable argument, those players were absolutely terrible. If that thief tried to pull that on me, he would get destroyed, hands down. There is no way a good player would allow that to actually defeat them. It’s as simple as paying attention, most of those idiots just stood in the caltrops and kept spamming through confusion.

I fight P/D & X with of course perplexity with my own D/D & SB build, and as annoying as they are to fight, I’ve yet to actually have one, even really well geared ones and decently played, take me down in WvW. Same in SPvP, which is where they definitely are not OP and are nearly hard countered by skills which nullify projectiles, or better yet, reflect them.

Perplexity runes are also available to everyone so that as well doesn’t count or support as part of your argument about condi thieves.

Also, I find it interesting that you bring up P/D which would not utilize DT at all and say that condi builds need a nerf basing your argument on P/D and a runeset when I’m simply requesting that a trait be worth taking in more than just a burst sense. :l Please

And now about giving up bountiful theft for pressure striking, that is also a pretty big tradeoff. Yeah it looks great on paper but that’s only on a skilled interrupt, which if you plan to stack condis then bewildering ambush might be considered over sleight of hand, (which ironically sleight of hand has a much better synergy with pressure striking than bewildering ambush does).

And since we’re talking about P/P as well, thieves give up a huge kiting skill from P/D #3 to take P/P which will make them much easier to fight, let alone they are even more vulnerable to reflect projectile mechanics.

Also, bountiful theft protects you from having steal blocked by Aegis, which is absolutely huge, especially since mug is an effective addition to even condi builds, not to mention affects like bewildering ambush. I wouldn’t honestly worry about P/P condi thieves being a thing, especially with the need for P/D #3 and the lack of condi synergy on P/P #3, it just won’t work very well.

My whole point here is that it would be nice to see a trait such as DT get a little love so it could be supported by condi thieves and overall be a worthwhile choice over mug. What’s more, you’d potentially see less P/D and more D/D and or D/P thieves trying it out (add pressure striking and bewildering ambush), which considering how “monsterous” P/D is to you, wouldn’t this be a nice change of pace?

Of course not, you hate seeing thieves get anything other than burst changes because burst thieves are squishy and 10k+ backstab crits aren’t OP at all. I’m really wondering if you aren’t even a thief player and more just another class who hates them like everyone else because they’re “OP” as everyone feels. That or you do play thief but you prefer to run without a lot of condi clear because you’re pure burst and so obviously condition builds are extremely hard and “OP” to deal with for you.

Let’s see the fight then between you and him. And since you’re so confident, why not let him use his weapons? I’d like to see the outcome.

I said this problem was amplified by dire perplexity, not because condi thief is overpowered. The issue is that the condi thief gets more out of this mixture than pretty much every other build in the game. While I’m supportive of nerfing the mixture instead of the condition application of thieves, I sincerely doubt ANet would be.

P/D can utilize DT off of SS, DD, and CnD. Dual wield skills count, and frankly, a lot of P/D condi thieves spam 3 for torment damage.

DT isn’t worth taking unless you’re playing a condition build. It gives absolutely no benefit to burst builds, because it doesn’t give 5% damage any more, and mug is just way better for DPS, seeing as in a given combo rotation, it accounts for somewhere around 13 – 25% of one’s damage dealt. But since it no longer gives 5% dagger damage, there is literally zero benefit to taking DT over mug as a burst build. DT is exclusively made for condition builds, seeing as Steal and Lotus Strike yields permanent poison uptime for the heal cut from D/D, anyways. You’re not making sense claiming DT has any purpose or serves burst builds in any way shape or form more than condition builds. You’re claiming blind favoritism with no real justification aside from the fact a pure damage kit doesn’t play optimally for condition builds.

I keep demonstrating how DT has very real potential to be more useful than mug as it is already for condition builds, and how the trait offers literally nothing to burst damage builds.

I played tanky healing power P/P interrupt once as a troll spec and I went undefeated in a guild tournament because it was too risilient. One of the later matches was a 54 minute duel between a celestial elementalist and my build, and I locked it out of every channel it had the entire match. With the stability nerfs, half a bar initiative takes out people with stab. Mind you, this was in sPvP where perplexity doesn’t even exist. I imagine stacking tons of confusion and now torment on this type of build will be absolutely stupid in skirmishes. P/P forgoes kiting, but gets interrupts and ranged blinds/blind fields. I find P/P much better than the rest of the thief’s options for surviving against pretty much everything but longbow rangers and mesmers.

Sorry, but P/D shadow arts is overpowered for any kind of fighting. It’s not used in sPvP matches because it uses stealth which prevents caps/decap efforts and throws itself off points. That said, any serious WvW player or fights sPvP server player will pretty much blatantly call SA P/D unskilled, low-risk/high-reward, and in many cases, ban them or refuse to fight. During the aforementioned tournament, I was required to remove P/D as a secondary set or otherwise get DQ’ed because it was banned from being an available choice in the tourney for it being too overpowered and too unfun to play against. Most sPvP servers will just ban players using Shadow Arts as a trait line because it’s corny and a crutch for bad players, and most skilled thieves will state that SA is a crutch trait line that dumbs the thief down – meaning our cleansing options, especially starting wednesday, are of course going to be limited as opposed to say, a guardian, warrior or elementalist.

DT causes condi builds to get some extra damage (yes, more than mug) at the cost of a small heal. I see no argument that can be made which supports burst damage getting more favoritism over condition builds because of this trait, or how having to make difficult decisions is a bad thing. That just implies the choices are balanced relative to each other. I’d have to experiment heavily with both once they go live to make a definitive statement.

DeceiverX.8361:

Let’s see the fight then between you and him. And since you’re so confident, why not let him use his weapons? I’d like to see the outcome.

First of all, I’m going to say this kind of statement is a lot easier than putting your money where your mouth is, obviously. And second of all, considering that kind of statement, I would definitely enjoy fighting him a lot more than I would enjoy fighting you and not just because of previous reasoning, but because it’s likely he’s a lot more of a challenge based on what I’ve gathered from “discussing” things with you – to which your response would probably be that he’s running an OP build to evade the possibility of your skill being questioned.

I don’t really have anything more to discuss with you, it’s not even a discussion, just you pulling random reasoning that doesn’t really support what you’re saying at all, and when that gets debunked, you pull out lame trash like above.

I should’ve known better than to try to have any form of a meaningful discussion on the internet as logic does not generally apply here. Silly me.