Guild Wars 2

I have some thoughts about thieves dagger / dagger skill, Death Blossom.

First of all … the bleeding duration. Ten seconds base is just too long to actually be effective. Sure, it meshes nicely with +% condition duration, but really … anything more than 5 seconds in a competitive environment becomes more and more of a waste simply due to passive condition removal. You’re only going to see effectiveness with it against inexperienced players.

Second of all … it’s evasive duration. Out of all the evade skills thief has such as short bow #3, sword / dagger #3, and then dagger / dagger #3 … this is the only skill that doesn’t evade immediately upon using the skill, furthermore, it doesn’t even evade for the entire duration of the skill compared to it’s counter parts. Even pistol / dagger is superior because it’s a very fast animation and it shadow steps you away from target, most times, reliably.

And last of all, it’s reliability in use … the movement it has seems like it could use a little bit of work. Sometimes it’s really hard to judge when and where to use it because of player movement. You could cast it right next to them, but if they simply move away or are in movement while you cast, it tries to attack as if they were still right next to you even though they’ve already moved. It doesn’t seem to have a similar feel to it that heart seeker does. Not that it should behave the same way, but it’s behavior sometimes feels a bit erratic and makes it hard to judge what an optimal distance to use it actually is.

Suggestions that likely will never be implemented and I’m really just wasting my time here on the forums … are as follows:

1. As far as bleed stacking is concerned. Cut duration in half and do one of the two following things. Either 2x bleeds per hit landed … or … 1x bleed and 1x torment per hit landed, both at 5 seconds. I’m sure people would cry super OP and imba if the latter were chosen, but truthfully, thieves have issues with layering conditions competently anyway.

2. Evasive time needs either of the following. Either make the 1/4th of a second evasive duration start the moment you dump initiative into using the skill … or … simply make the evasive time match the skill itself. I don’t mind the 1/4th second duration … what I do mind, is draining initiative, starting the attack, and then being CC’d before I’m actually evading, thus wasting initiative for 0 damage.

3. I don’t know what to suggest for it’s movement issues. Really, if the first two were fixed up, I wouldn’t say that the last issue is really that much of an issue. It just sometimes behaves irrationally. It’s the combination of everything that makes it so much less effective in PvP overall.

Final notes unrelated to death blossom, but still dagger offhand. How about giving #4 a little love? Like a short duration stack of … something? I can’t remember the last time I actually used that skill. It’s just … bad.

I’d like to see death blossom be a power based attack which stacked vulnerability and crippled a target for maybe 1-2 seconds. Keeping its evade it would allow D/D thieves to latch onto a target, apply lots of vuln and keep them crippled while the team could then focus that target as well.

You know, they really might as well just go full damage route, I don’t even know why thieves have this illusion of being capable of being a condition based class and actually being competent. Compared to some classes, say even warrior, thief just doesn’t have the proper traits / full setup in weapon skills to pull off a reliable condition build, mainly in terms of pressure.

I just finished screwing around on a warrior. Un#@$%‘ingbelievable … 19 stacks of bleed with just sword auto attack alone & a rabid amulet w/ earth sigil & bleed on crit trait … 3k toughness, and almost 19k health. If I try to pull that off on thief, it won’t have 3k toughness, it certainly won’t have almost 19k health, and I also certainly can’t pull off 19 stacks of bleeding on a godkitten auto attack.

The amount of work required to get that many stacks of bleed on thief requires use of utility skill caltrops, dodge caltrops, and death blossom spam. And I’m not going to be able to apply burning AND torment on top of all of that, with a playstyle of “LOL I HOPE THIS GUY KEEPS STANDING IN THIS CIRCLE OF CALTROPS!” which are roughly 1/3rd as lethal as the burning aoe from warriors that is on an 8 second CD.

Thief, if it ever wants to have hope of being viable with condi, needs to have some things changed around for them, because as they are now, they’re pathetic in terms of damage / pressure with condi. Have to struggle to layer, but really, you can’t layer enough to really do good pressure.

Warrior? Vuln, bleeding, burning, cripple, torment, solid application rotation too. You’re not ever really scraping by for layers unlike thieves, oh, and … burning.

As well as Death Blossom being changed … a nice start would also be having the first “double swing” of dagger mainhand #1 apply 1x bleed per hit landed. So at least you can do 2x bleeds, 1x poison per chain, and if lucky, 3x bleeds because of an earth sigil proc.

Or hell, I’d be fine with Wild Strike having the +10 endurance replaced with 1x stack of torment, or maybe even a random condition between bleed / torment / confusion. Why 10 energy? Thieves already have more than enough endurance regeneration & evade spams from other sources.

Some of Arenanet’s design choices just … make me freakin’ sad and horrendously disappointed. -.-

DB is a terrible skill and thief condi is weak as all hell.

Here’s ANet logic: hay gaiz let’s put a condi attack on a raw damage set trololo

Here’s an idea! Take the bleeding from DB, and put it on unload. And then, are you ready for this? You take the damage from unload and you put it on DB.

Now you have one full power set, and one full condi set.

Jesiah.2457:

If I try to pull that off on thief, it won’t have 3k toughness, it certainly won’t have almost 19k health, and I also certainly can’t pull off 19 stacks of bleeding on a godkitten auto attack.

full dire set with 0,0,30,20,20 build yield 3k armor and 19k hp with 1500 base condition dmg and above 2100 condition dmg with food and corruption sigil
warrior sword aa is faster than the pistol aa but you need to be in range to hit it

Warrior sword also cleaves, neither dagger nor pistol cleave / pierce, I guess there’s ricochet but … that is still way less reliable than pierce in just about any given situation.

And I would say yeah, put bleeds on unload, but … thief already has a ranged condition option, shortbow. Has poison & bleeding built into it, with a blast finisher for weakness and a teleport with a small radius for a blind, situational for the blind, but has it’s uses. Wouldn’t it be a bit … mundane and on the lines of bad design … if all ranged options for thief were condition?

Perhaps a big part of the problem with pistol mainhand is it’s in traits that would seem like it’s built for raw damage, but it’s designed as if it were a hybrid, yet, the power portion of the damage is just low. Unload unload unload … ‘kay well that didn’t even do as much as one burst shot from a glass cannon rifle warrior.

Face it, D/D could use some love, and if it had a way to help layer / apply conditions with auto attack & had some changes to death blossom, maybe even D/D #4, then it could be a viable and competitive choice for thieves attempting to roll with condition builds. It would at least make it feel more worth a kitten considering our AA can’t even cleave, let alone apply up to 19 stacks of bleed. -.-

Mathias.9657:

DB is a terrible skill and thief condi is weak as all hell.

Here’s ANet logic: hay gaiz let’s put a condi attack on a raw damage set trololo

Have to agree here, while I like DB in PvE for it’s “evasion” attack, having a condi skill on a burst weapon set is rather meh.

Also, to the op, I rarely see any experienced thief using d/d in a competitive environment. The other options are just better.

To the latter part of the statement, yeah, my thoughts exactly. A couple of changes could really make D/D a much more reliable choice for condi, and it wouldn’t hurt the burst aspect either.

As it is now, the 10 second bleed, especially in a power build, is a complete waste of damage and initiative (most specifically in PvP). But if those bleeds / damage were to come through in half the time, but the same amount of damage output, it could become a valid choice perhaps even in both spectrums.

Instead of 3x bleeds at 10 seconds base. 6x bleeds at 5 seconds base (or as wishful thinking, 3x bleed & 3x torment for condi layering). So while you might not do a lot of immediate damage with #3 as a power build, you would have a way to put out a little extra pressure through condition damage while avoiding damage & being able to hit multiple targets at once. Though, thinking of having bleed & torment, could really just make the condi spam meta worse. I think it would probably be best to just go with 6x bleeds at 5 seconds, rather than 3x bleeds at 10, skip the torment idea.

It still wouldn’t be ideal for a power build, but it would definitely be better than it is now. It is a complete waste as it is now with a power build, and sub-par even as a condition build. I would argue that hey, why not just make it a full power based attack, but thieves are limited in reliable options for condi as it is, and taking that away would pigeonhole them (even if a negligible amount due to how bad condi thieves are) even further into the role of glass cannon, and nothing more.

I would just love for condi thieves to be competent in PvP, that’s all. They don’t need to be overpowered, they really only need a few small changes and I think they could work it pretty well. :/

What’s wrong with Death Blossom in a Power build? It does actually do Power-based damage, you know. Maybe it’s not strictly as efficient as a dagger between the shoulderblades, but it only costs 4 init and has no stealth or positional prerequisite. And despite the shortcomings of its evasion window, it does have evade frames. Plus you don’t need to spec in condition damage for a bleed to hurt, you know; your level does contribute a non-negligible amount of base damage.

Never understood the tears on this one. We have weapon swaps for a reason, you know.

I come from an sPvP perspective, but, seeing as how this topic solely pertains to thief, here I am on the thief forums. In PvE it’s not bad, but in PvP, it is bad. Honestly … though … I think I’ve stated that already.

All it does is wastes initative and makes you look like a scrub.

Master of Timespace.2548:

All it does is wastes initative and makes you look like a scrub.

Sad but true.
LDB is an AoE, condition based ability in single-target, power/crit weapon set. Just everything about it is wrong. Even evade on it is extremly unreliable. It only has its use in PvE, jumping in crowds of mobs.

I actually found it effective against petting zoo rangers, but fighting them is more like PvE than PvP (what proves my point above).

Maesk.8753:

Here’s an idea! Take the bleeding from DB, and put it on unload. And then, are you ready for this? You take the damage from unload and you put it on DB.

Now you have one full power set, and one full condi set.

I would really like to give it a try

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Some-thoughts-on-D-D-Dual-Skill-Death-Blossom/
I already made a post related to this that has been going for a while. =]

And P/D has always been the best choice for condi Thief.

Maesk.8753:

Here’s an idea! Take the bleeding from DB, and put it on unload. And then, are you ready for this? You take the damage from unload and you put it on DB.

Now you have one full power set, and one full condi set.

This would make logical sense.

Then again, it would also make logical sense for them to have Carrion Ascended Trinkets for us, but they have not after a year.

Leave Deathblossom as is thanks – it’s awsome in current form.