Guild Wars 2

I’ve always been a fan of D/P. Before the Feb 26th patch, it was a strong,reasonably well designed weaponset that rivaled D/D. The only thing holding it back was shadow shot – it was worthless in the same way DB was for a Power/Crit D/D thief.

Now that shadow shot is working as intended (and frankly, amazing), no other weaponset can compare IMO. D/P packs everything a thief could ever want in a weaponset without being overpowered – the initiative costs compared to the utility of the skills is all where it needs to be to allow skill and experience to be the primary factor of how well the spec works.

With BP and 15 points in DA, thieves actually have a reliable way to mitigate melee damage that doesn’t rely on stealth->BS->evade->repeat. With shadow shot finally working, they have a way to approach a Ranged player without having to absolutely rely on stealth or take a beating on the way in. It is also a nice way to close melee gaps that doesn’t rely on spamming HS and doing kitten damage because your target might not be below 50% yet.

I only bring all this up because I’d love it if Anet could fix the issues holding back our other weaponsets. They’ve done -wonders- for my interest in the game just by finally giving me a fully working, well designed weaponset to use, so I don’t feel like I’m always spamming 1 or 2 abilities.

So Anet, how about looking at some of the issues plaguing our other weaponsets this month?

- Body shot needs to be completely redesigned – how about a 3 init ground target AoE with lowish damage that applies a low length cripple and is a blast finisher – boom, just fixed P/P. Blast finisher and cripple fix both problems P/P has – access to stealth and the ability to prevent melee from always being on top of you, and also prevent players with superior range (Ie, almost all of them) from constantly keeping you out of range.

- Flanking strike needs a tweak – why not give us both swings during the evade and increase the activation time to .75 seconds – this’ll give S/D thieves a way to actually use their evade, and do decent damage (which won’t be too OP since the activation time for the swings is so long that a thief cant use them to “Burst”).

- Pistol whip needs a tweak – Lower the Init cost and the total number of swings/damage the ability does. People should not be able to just walk or dodge roll out of the last few swings. Make the ability more of a sustained DPS tool than a silly Haste fueled burst tool, or the kind of attack that never hits more than half its swings without immob or player inexperience being involved.

- Get rid of DB already – CnD does poor damage (compared to its init cost) because it’s a utility, designed to get us into stealth. Dancing dagger is in the same boat. That leaves a D/D rogue with 1, and exactly 1 option to use for DPS when they can’t stealth, because you decided to put a conditions focused attack smack dab in the middle of a Power/crit direct damage set. Just change it already, its not good design. You might ask “But what about Condi thieves that like D/D?!”. My response would be “They need to learn how to play the game some time.” – that’s not meant to be rude, but taking an entire weaponset for 1 skill is very, very counterproductive. LDB rogues are 1 trick ponies – you always know exactly what they’re going to do, because they have exactly 1 option – there’s no skill or counterplay involved, and that’s the hallmark of a bad spec.

evilapprentice.6379:

- Get rid of DB already – CnD does poor damage (compared to its init cost) because it’s a utility, designed to get us into stealth. Dancing dagger is in the same boat. That leaves a D/D rogue with 1, and exactly 1 option to use for DPS when they can’t stealth, because you decided to put a conditions focused attack smack dab in the middle of a Power/crit direct damage set. Just change it already, its not good design. You might ask “But what about Condi thieves that like D/D?!”. My response would be “They need to learn how to play the game some time.” – that’s not meant to be rude, but taking an entire weaponset for 1 skill is very, very counterproductive. LDB rogues are 1 trick ponies – you always know exactly what they’re going to do, because they have exactly 1 option – there’s no skill or counterplay involved, and that’s the hallmark of a bad spec.

1. I respect your opinion but, have you played a condition thief? I run a condi thief and I disagree with your premise of how that build is played, and in fact I think that perhaps a condition d/d thief is an aspect of gameplay that you haven’t fully explored if all you think we do is DB spam.

2. That being said, I agree with your assessment that outside of CnD and DB a condition thief doesn’t have much use for the 1, 2 or 4 skill. Similarly, the burst back stab thief doesn’t have much use for the 3 and 4 skill. Neither builds are fully satisfied with this weapon set. Which brings me to…

3. There should be more than just one “viable” way to play a class. Burst dps thief is very popular, it is great at what it does. But for those players that prefer to do PvE more, in which there is a lot of value in AoE’s and crowd control, we don’t have a lot of options outside of the short bow and DB on d/d, esp if we are looking for condition damage. Anet didn’t give us much of a choice here. Which ultimately brings me to…

4. If a weapon set can be arranged where the AoE needs that apply condition damage outside of a short bow are met, I’d be more than pleased!

Silver.4798:

evilapprentice.6379:

- Get rid of DB already – CnD does poor damage (compared to its init cost) because it’s a utility, designed to get us into stealth. Dancing dagger is in the same boat. That leaves a D/D rogue with 1, and exactly 1 option to use for DPS when they can’t stealth, because you decided to put a conditions focused attack smack dab in the middle of a Power/crit direct damage set. Just change it already, its not good design. You might ask “But what about Condi thieves that like D/D?!”. My response would be “They need to learn how to play the game some time.” – that’s not meant to be rude, but taking an entire weaponset for 1 skill is very, very counterproductive. LDB rogues are 1 trick ponies – you always know exactly what they’re going to do, because they have exactly 1 option – there’s no skill or counterplay involved, and that’s the hallmark of a bad spec.

1. I respect your opinion but, have you played a condition thief? I run a condi thief and I disagree with your premise of how that build is played, and in fact I think that perhaps a condition d/d thief is an aspect of gameplay that you haven’t fully explored if all you think we do is DB spam.

2. That being said, I agree with your assessment that outside of CnD and DB a condition thief doesn’t have much use for the 1, 2 or 4 skill. Similarly, the burst back stab thief doesn’t have much use for the 3 and 4 skill. Neither builds are fully satisfied with this weapon set. Which brings me to…

3. There should be more than just one “viable” way to play a class. Burst dps thief is very popular, it is great at what it does. But for those players that prefer to do PvE more, in which there is a lot of value in AoE’s and crowd control, we don’t have a lot of options outside of the short bow and DB on d/d, esp if we are looking for condition damage. Anet didn’t give us much of a choice here. Which ultimately brings me to…

4. If a weapon set can be arranged where the AoE needs that apply condition damage outside of a short bow are met, I’d be more than pleased!

I’ve played nearly every spec of thief, even the ones that look dreadful on paper (and play equally dreadfully). In every MMO i’ve pvped in, I’ve been a spec junky – I tend to get bored easily, and try new specs constantly. I ran P/D D/D conditions (0/0/30/20/20) for a long time when it first became super popular.

If you’re condition D/D in SPvP, what weaponset abilities are you using outside DB to damage your opposition? Granted, with a carrion ammy, your HS and Backstab might hit for a non-trivial amount of damage (as opposed to if you were using a rabid ammy), but in that case you’re still not hitting anywhere close to “hard”, and you’ve got glass cannon defenses without glass cannon burst – every mistake will cost you 20%+ of your health against an experienced player. With the importance of condition cleansing in the current meta, your init expensive, long lasting bleed stacks will usually be cleansed WELL before they get a chance to do even half their listed damage.

I speak exclusively from a PvP perspective – I’d be happy with a PvP/PvE split on something like DB (Even an extreme one, where in PvE it was a conditions based attacked and in PvP it was a direct damage based attack). The problem is that since thief weaponsets tend to have 2 utility focused abilities out of 5, that leaves you with 2 abilities designed to do damage – when one of those runs completely counter to the rest of the weaponset…it gets really, really boring.

While I agree that DB is probably a great PvE Conditions ability (this is conjecture on my part, I don’t PvE), its silly that it is limiting PvP so much. Lets find a good middle ground – if that middle ground is an extreme split between PvP and PvE for DB, so be it.

Here’s another suggestion – add “only from stealth” abilities to things other than autoattack, in an attempt to make more thief weaponsets viable for both Condi and direct damage.

Here’s an example – change HS so that it also applies 3-5 of bleeding (or X stacks/seconds of other damaging condition Y) if used from stealth. Stop – don’t cry OP just yet, think about it a second. A power/crit build should never opt to HS over backstab – backstab is free and does more damage, adding a kittenty bleed to HS (kittenty since they’re power/crit focused, not condi focused) from stealth isn’t going to make it OP for those players. This change would allow condition D/D specs 2 things – More ways to stack conditions, and (in the case of D/D) something to do from stealth – it’ll simultaneously make CnD AND HS more useful for a D/D condi spec.

Maybe my example above doesn’t work 100% – it’s just a jumping off point. Anet could do something similiar to my suggestion and allow most weaponsets to be viable to both Condition and Power/crit focused thieves.

D/P was already the “King”.
It’s more efficient and fun to play now that all 5 skills are worthwhile.
Like the Shortbow it is “complete”.

ensoriki.5789:

D/P was already the “King”.
It’s more efficient and fun to play now that all 5 skills are worthwhile.
Like the Shortbow it is “complete”.

Yes. The entire second half of the post was a plea to “complete” our other weaponsets. Its supremely satisfying to play a weaponset that works, with options, that doesn’t feel OP.

D/P is undoubtedly stronger with a functioning shadowshot as well – its not just more efficient and fun, its better – it’s sometimes the superior choice over HS, even when your target is at low health AND you’re in melee range. It brings alot of split second decisions and tactics into play, which is very nice.

Ah alright, we are on opposite poles haha I don’t sPvP much so my 2 cents was based on DB as it pertains to PvE, so the “get rid of DB altogether” thing would’ve given me lots of aches and pains.

The HS off of stealth to apply bleeding is a very interesting idea. Currently the condition thief, while can rack up 12-15 stacks of bleeds, necros/engineers/rangers can rack up the same stacks of condition damage even faster. Said another way, condition thieves as they are now are inferior at using condition damage than other classes. And that hurts my soul.

Also, the gear that gives condition damage also comes with either power (carrion) precision (Rabid) or both (Rampager). As a full condition thief I have no idea how I’m supposed to take advantage of either the power or precision, if other skills become available to induce bleeding in addition to just DB off of d/d, where I can take advantage of the extra prec/power, I’m all for that!

My suggestion: Change one of the venoms so that it applies x amount of charges of bleed, currently it adds poison and other meh conditions like chill and weakness. Condition thieves are happy. Change the animation of DB so that it still keeps its AoE damage, but has a more predictable evasion animation (it is ANNOYING as hell when you hit DB in a dungeon and all of a sudden you notice you were just a little careless and you fell off a cliff). This way burst thieves can primarily use DB primarily as an evasion tool

No thanks brah.
Swords are strong right now tbh, regardless if anyone wants to admit it, but the current state of boon removal is a kick in the balls.
Wish Dancing Daggers didn’t feel so expensive for what it does.
For the most part Swords are already powerful.
No idea wtf to do with body shot but your idea sounds like it steps on the toes of Dancing Daggers, and ankle shots even further. P/D does exist…

evilapprentice.6379:

- Body shot needs to be completely redesigned – how about a 3 init ground target AoE with lowish damage that applies a low length cripple and is a blast finisher – boom, just fixed P/P. Blast finisher and cripple fix both problems P/P has – access to stealth and the ability to prevent melee from always being on top of you, and also prevent players with superior range (Ie, almost all of them) from constantly keeping you out of range.

While I agree body shot needs something other than vulnerability (because the vuln’s utility to any spec does not outweigh its initiative cost) Giving it a cripple is a bad move. This would make it useful in P/P, but still wasted space in P/D

Honestly, how about making it conditional so it’s analagous to the conditional #2 on the dagger mainhand?

Body Shot:
If target has at least one boon, remove a random boon from your target.
If target has no boons, you gain X might for Y seconds.

With a rip and might stack, it becomes worth the initiative use on pistol sets, makes sure that the offhand provides unique functionality, and sits well in a condition P/D or crit P/P setup while having the same basic intended functionality of body shot, as a heavy debuff that focuses on increasing your damage to your target (but now works with conditions!) and helping teammates more effectively kill them (by ripping their boons)

However, there’s an interesting tradeoff, as to completely strip a target you’ll have to dump all of your initiative on the strips, and won’t have any left for damage or defense. However, it DOES allow you increased support options on the fly, and choosing what abilities to use on the fly and where to dump initiative is the point of the initiative system.

Not only that, depending on the balance numbers for the might it may just make boon duration a worthwhile thing to stack on a thief build and usher in a new breed of pistol support thieves with venoms+stripping.

PopeUrban.2578:

evilapprentice.6379:

- Body shot needs to be completely redesigned – how about a 3 init ground target AoE with lowish damage that applies a low length cripple and is a blast finisher – boom, just fixed P/P. Blast finisher and cripple fix both problems P/P has – access to stealth and the ability to prevent melee from always being on top of you, and also prevent players with superior range (Ie, almost all of them) from constantly keeping you out of range.

While I agree body shot needs something other than vulnerability (because the vuln’s utility to any spec does not outweigh its initiative cost) Giving it a cripple is a bad move. This would make it useful in P/P, but still wasted space in P/D

Honestly, how about making it conditional so it’s analagous to the conditional #2 on the dagger mainhand?

Body Shot:
If target has at least one boon, remove a random boon from your target.
If target has no boons, you gain X might for Y seconds.

With a rip and might stack, it becomes worth the initiative use on pistol sets, makes sure that the offhand provides unique functionality, and sits well in a condition P/D or crit P/P setup while having the same basic intended functionality of body shot, as a heavy debuff that focuses on increasing your damage to your target (but now works with conditions!) and helping teammates more effectively kill them (by ripping their boons)

However, there’s an interesting tradeoff, as to completely strip a target you’ll have to dump all of your initiative on the strips, and won’t have any left for damage or defense. However, it DOES allow you increased support options on the fly, and choosing what abilities to use on the fly and where to dump initiative is the point of the initiative system.

Not only that, depending on the balance numbers for the might it may just made boon duration a worthwhile thing to stack on a thief build.

I agree, I wasn’t really thinking about P/D – though a blast finisher is something unique, and making the shot an AoE ground target has some advantages over dancing dagger. It also solves all of P/P’s problems (no escaping melee, no stealth) without feeling too OP. Perhaps instead of a cripple, a very short duration chill (think 1s) or a microscopic immob (.5s), or even a 1.5s swiftness per target hit for the thief – those ideas might be OP though, haven’t given them alot of thought.

I do like your suggestion better however, the game needs more ways to strip boons – on demand boon stripping without a CD at range seems pretty powerful though – you could claim FS does something similar but its more expensive, has to be used in melee, and will take much longer (especially if you wait for the second swing). Though this gives P/P an awesome tool, it still leaves it without access to a snare (while ankle shots is nice, its on crit rather than on demand, weakening its tactical use) or stealth.

evilapprentice.6379:

PopeUrban.2578:

evilapprentice.6379:

- Body shot needs to be completely redesigned – how about a 3 init ground target AoE with lowish damage that applies a low length cripple and is a blast finisher – boom, just fixed P/P. Blast finisher and cripple fix both problems P/P has – access to stealth and the ability to prevent melee from always being on top of you, and also prevent players with superior range (Ie, almost all of them) from constantly keeping you out of range.

While I agree body shot needs something other than vulnerability (because the vuln’s utility to any spec does not outweigh its initiative cost) Giving it a cripple is a bad move. This would make it useful in P/P, but still wasted space in P/D

Honestly, how about making it conditional so it’s analagous to the conditional #2 on the dagger mainhand?

Body Shot:
If target has at least one boon, remove a random boon from your target.
If target has no boons, you gain X might for Y seconds.

With a rip and might stack, it becomes worth the initiative use on pistol sets, makes sure that the offhand provides unique functionality, and sits well in a condition P/D or crit P/P setup while having the same basic intended functionality of body shot, as a heavy debuff that focuses on increasing your damage to your target (but now works with conditions!) and helping teammates more effectively kill them (by ripping their boons)

However, there’s an interesting tradeoff, as to completely strip a target you’ll have to dump all of your initiative on the strips, and won’t have any left for damage or defense. However, it DOES allow you increased support options on the fly, and choosing what abilities to use on the fly and where to dump initiative is the point of the initiative system.

Not only that, depending on the balance numbers for the might it may just made boon duration a worthwhile thing to stack on a thief build.

I agree, I wasn’t really thinking about P/D – though a blast finisher is something unique, and making the shot an AoE ground target has some advantages over dancing dagger. It also solves all of P/P’s problems (no escaping melee, no stealth) without feeling too OP.

I do like your suggestion better however, the game needs more ways to strip boons – on demand boon stripping without a CD at range seems pretty powerful though – you could claim FS does something similar but its more expensive, has to be used in melee, and will take much longer (especially if you wait for the second swing). Though this gives P/P an awesome tool, it still leaves it without access to a snare (while ankle shots is nice, its on crit rather than on demand, weakening its tactical use) or stealth.

I feel like pistol offhand isn’t going to ever get a snare simply for the fact that it has black powder and headshot. Not that kiting isn’t an issue with it, but that I feel like Anet is fairly set in the flavor of the abilities. if anything what P/P needs is some kind of initiative discount or mobility tool added directly to unload. TBH I think simply granting swiftness and increased backpedal while channeling would do the trick, nopt be too overpowered, and give the ability a very unique and thief-flavored mechanic.

The bodyshot strip might be too powerful at its current initiative cost, but honestly I’d be completely willing to see the cost or cast time raised to allow a dump of initiative to boon strip. I think the initiative mechanic makes thieves the perfect candidate for a semi-spammable strip as such as they can’t choose to strip and then deal a bunch of damage, their strips directly limit their immediate damage potential.

PopeUrban.2578:

evilapprentice.6379:

PopeUrban.2578:

evilapprentice.6379:

- Body shot needs to be completely redesigned – how about a 3 init ground target AoE with lowish damage that applies a low length cripple and is a blast finisher – boom, just fixed P/P. Blast finisher and cripple fix both problems P/P has – access to stealth and the ability to prevent melee from always being on top of you, and also prevent players with superior range (Ie, almost all of them) from constantly keeping you out of range.

While I agree body shot needs something other than vulnerability (because the vuln’s utility to any spec does not outweigh its initiative cost) Giving it a cripple is a bad move. This would make it useful in P/P, but still wasted space in P/D

Honestly, how about making it conditional so it’s analagous to the conditional #2 on the dagger mainhand?

Body Shot:
If target has at least one boon, remove a random boon from your target.
If target has no boons, you gain X might for Y seconds.

With a rip and might stack, it becomes worth the initiative use on pistol sets, makes sure that the offhand provides unique functionality, and sits well in a condition P/D or crit P/P setup while having the same basic intended functionality of body shot, as a heavy debuff that focuses on increasing your damage to your target (but now works with conditions!) and helping teammates more effectively kill them (by ripping their boons)

However, there’s an interesting tradeoff, as to completely strip a target you’ll have to dump all of your initiative on the strips, and won’t have any left for damage or defense. However, it DOES allow you increased support options on the fly, and choosing what abilities to use on the fly and where to dump initiative is the point of the initiative system.

Not only that, depending on the balance numbers for the might it may just made boon duration a worthwhile thing to stack on a thief build.

I agree, I wasn’t really thinking about P/D – though a blast finisher is something unique, and making the shot an AoE ground target has some advantages over dancing dagger. It also solves all of P/P’s problems (no escaping melee, no stealth) without feeling too OP.

I do like your suggestion better however, the game needs more ways to strip boons – on demand boon stripping without a CD at range seems pretty powerful though – you could claim FS does something similar but its more expensive, has to be used in melee, and will take much longer (especially if you wait for the second swing). Though this gives P/P an awesome tool, it still leaves it without access to a snare (while ankle shots is nice, its on crit rather than on demand, weakening its tactical use) or stealth.

I feel like pistol offhand isn’t going to ever get a snare simply for the fact that it has black powder and headshot. Not that kiting isn’t an issue with it, but that I feel like Anet is fairly set in the flavor of the abilities. if anything what P/P needs is some kind of initiative discount or mobility tool added directly to unload. TBH I think simply granting swiftness and increased backpedal while channeling would do the trick, nopt be too overpowered, and give the ability a very unique and thief-flavored mechanic.

The bodyshot strip might be too powerful at its current initiative cost, but honestly I’d be completely willing to see the cost or cast time raised to allow a dump of initiative to boon strip. I think the initiative mechanic makes thieves the perfect candidate for a semi-spammable strip as such as they can’t choose to strip and then deal a bunch of damage, their strips directly limit their immediate damage potential.

What do you think of Body shot being an AoE, blast finisher, and granting x seconds of swiftness per target hit? Per target hit would be an advantage to using it in big fights, it would be the limiting factor in one on ones, would be unique from Dancing Dagger for P/D, swiftness is still advantageous to P/D as well as P/P, and the blast finisher would still give P/P Stealth.

I still like the idea of boon stripping (again, sorely needed, and thief seems thematically and mechanically inclined to do so), but I think my suggestion fixes some big issues across both P/P and P/D.

Body shot can’t become a blast finisher that is silly.
Same as those suggestions that want to make Inf strike a leap finisher.
Trying to throw stealth on everything wtf, it’s not healthy.

ensoriki.5789:

Body shot can’t become a blast finisher that is silly.
Same as those suggestions that want to make Inf strike a leap finisher.
Trying to throw stealth on everything wtf, it’s not healthy.

Why not, exactly?

Inf strike is already an amazing ability, it certainly doesn’t need leap finisher attached as well (you’ll see my opinion on the matter in that thread too).

Body shot is currently utter garbage – it needs some way to be fixed. As far as stealth goes, P/P needs it – it currently has utter crap for defensive options. 9 initiative to stealth isn’t exactly a bargain either – it’d just be a nice option for P/P to have. Condi builds could use it to gain stealth for Sneak attack, power/crit builds could use it to open up gaps. I don’t see how a low-ish damage blast finisher would “break” P/P or P/D – both specs are 1 trick ponies. Why not throw them a bone?

Solution is “simple”. Make Body Shot a 1 initiative skill keeping the stats as they are currently. It’ll be a kind of replacement 1 skill for power specs due to the low cost, ease of vulnerability stacking and higher base damage, and for condition specs it’ll be a very strong projectile finisher applier skill if you got access to a fire, poison field or chaos field.

It’ll be an unique skill in that it’s a spamable hard projectile finisher. Well maybe 1 initiative cost is too little so make it 2 maybe.

I’m P/P SB and I NEVER use body shot, what a complete waste of time and initiative.

grometsc.2375:

Then you dont understand its uses imo…Its my opener on just about any class. Open with that on any thief, and within secs he is spamming HIS without ever landing a hit on me, and due to its “cast time” I will interrupt that as well against other thieves. You just dont understand how effective that ability is…I would like a .5sec daze, but the interrupt is just amazing when used correctly though.

What? Who uses HiS in response to getting a tiny amount of vulnerability stacks? XD

stof.9341:

grometsc.2375:

Then you dont understand its uses imo…Its my opener on just about any class. Open with that on any thief, and within secs he is spamming HIS without ever landing a hit on me, and due to its “cast time” I will interrupt that as well against other thieves. You just dont understand how effective that ability is…I would like a .5sec daze, but the interrupt is just amazing when used correctly though.

What? Who uses HiS in response to getting a tiny amount of vulnerability stacks? XD

yep..I read it is headshot….Bodyshot is meh at best lol

I’d like some way of applying burning on Pistol 2. I’m finding that condition builds simply can’t apply enough pressure to bunkers without making use of all 3 damaging conditions: bleed, poison, and burning.

But it’s probably never gonna happen. =/

I liked the idea of gaining might instead of applying vulnerability though. Then it won’t be as useless as it is now for condition builds.

I really like P/D condition thief in spvp.

evilapprentice.6379:

What do you think of Body shot being an AoE, blast finisher, and granting x seconds of swiftness per target hit? Per target hit would be an advantage to using it in big fights, it would be the limiting factor in one on ones, would be unique from Dancing Dagger for P/D, swiftness is still advantageous to P/D as well as P/P, and the blast finisher would still give P/P Stealth.

I still like the idea of boon stripping (again, sorely needed, and thief seems thematically and mechanically inclined to do so), but I think my suggestion fixes some big issues across both P/P and P/D.

I just can’t see body shot as an AoE attack. It’s thematically defined as a single target attack with a high degree of accuracy used for increasing your own damage or that of allies. It’s one to the chest that knocks a bit of wind out of your foe so to speak.

It’s important to be mindful of current abilities, as Anet’s entire balance history has shown that while they may make core changes to skill functionality, they always attempt to keep the same role on the skill in question.

Take for example the update to Shadow Trap, the core function of the skill remained intact (a way to shadowstep to a foe that triggered a trap) or the GW1 change to Hundred blades (it went from an attack that hit foes near your target to a buff that made sword attacks do AoE damage.)

Also, it’d be redundant and stepping on the toes of shortbow, which has the already well defined role as the thief AoE ranged weapon, and already has an amazingly good spammable blast finisher on 2 where as pistols are expressedly single target with a trait to occasionally bounce.

- Pistol whip needs a tweak – Lower the Init cost and the total number of swings/damage the ability does. People should not be able to just walk or dodge roll out of the last few swings. Make the ability more of a sustained DPS tool than a silly Haste fueled burst tool, or the kind of attack that never hits more than half its swings without immob or player inexperience being involved.

Yeah, and I think that 100blades should have immobilise, haste and shadow step on the same skill. After all, people shouldn’t be able to just dodge roll away from the last swing!

Get rid of DB already – CnD does poor damage

Last time I checked it critted 5-7k on my semi-defensive thief build.

Master of Timespace.2548:

- Pistol whip needs a tweak – Lower the Init cost and the total number of swings/damage the ability does. People should not be able to just walk or dodge roll out of the last few swings. Make the ability more of a sustained DPS tool than a silly Haste fueled burst tool, or the kind of attack that never hits more than half its swings without immob or player inexperience being involved.

Yeah, and I think that 100blades should have immobilise, haste and shadow step on the same skill. After all, people shouldn’t be able to just dodge roll away from the last swing!

I’m sorry, but you’re not exactly giving constructive feedback here. If you actually read his suggestion, he is saying to reduce the number of swings on pistol whip and the damage and cost proportionally. The fact that people can’t dodge through would be a side effect of the shorter animation time.

I’m not suggesting that this is a great idea, but attacking strawmen isn’t going to help move the conversation forward.

Get rid of DB already – CnD does poor damage

Last time I checked it critted 5-7k on my semi-defensive thief build.

Let me guess… WvW?

PopeUrban.2578:

evilapprentice.6379:

What do you think of Body shot being an AoE, blast finisher, and granting x seconds of swiftness per target hit? Per target hit would be an advantage to using it in big fights, it would be the limiting factor in one on ones, would be unique from Dancing Dagger for P/D, swiftness is still advantageous to P/D as well as P/P, and the blast finisher would still give P/P Stealth.

I still like the idea of boon stripping (again, sorely needed, and thief seems thematically and mechanically inclined to do so), but I think my suggestion fixes some big issues across both P/P and P/D.

I just can’t see body shot as an AoE attack. It’s thematically defined as a single target attack with a high degree of accuracy used for increasing your own damage or that of allies. It’s one to the chest that knocks a bit of wind out of your foe so to speak.

It’s important to be mindful of current abilities, as Anet’s entire balance history has shown that while they may make core changes to skill functionality, they always attempt to keep the same role on the skill in question.

Take for example the update to Shadow Trap, the core function of the skill remained intact (a way to shadowstep to a foe that triggered a trap) or the GW1 change to Hundred blades (it went from an attack that hit foes near your target to a buff that made sword attacks do AoE damage.)

Also, it’d be redundant and stepping on the toes of shortbow, which has the already well defined role as the thief AoE ranged weapon, and already has an amazingly good spammable blast finisher on 2 where as pistols are expressedly single target with a trait to occasionally bounce.

I agree on the point about the theme, but at this point, I think that may need to be ignored a bit to finally fix body shot – people have done the math, body shot is a waste of initiative. Trying not too change its core design too much is just a waste of time – Condi builds have no use for vuln, and power/crit builds get more from spamming Unload (even in most PvE scenarios where 5 players are attacking 1 mob).

P/P desperately needs an escape tool that can’t be abused, and access to stealth. The only other option besides for access to stealth is some kind of damage absorbing/reducing ability – thief is too kitten squishy to have zero defensive capabilities.

My suggestion isn’t necessarily the best, but the core idea needs to be implemented – escape and defensive tools for P/P that aren’t completely useless in P/D. Whats the point of a Ranged Direct damage build that can’t reliably escape melee, and is consistently outranged by other ranged players? Yes, they could use their utilities, but that’s universal to every class. If you look at ranged weapon options on every other class, you’ll see they have at minimum 1 (and usually more) tools to temporarily snare/root/stun/kb/whatever melee that closes with them or ranged that attempt to out-range their weapon. Currently, P/P has nothing of the sort.

I’m new to the thief class, sorry if these are dumb questions. With 15 in DA and d/p, all I see is the ability to poison on steal and then that poisoning results in an additional 3 seconds of weakness. I don’t see how 3s of Weakness every 45s mitigates a significant amount of damage. Most builds are crit builds anyway, and weakness only affects non-crits, so it’s surprising weak in pvp in many cases. Is this presuming a Venom build (Spider Venom) with the Venom cd reduction? That would make more sense, but that seems to narrow the options, and it’s still only affecting 5 strikes, so, functionally, say 7-8s total of weakness?

What am I missing?

Xynn.2748:

I’m new to the thief class, sorry if these are dumb questions. With 15 in DA and d/p, all I see is the ability to poison on steal and then that poisoning results in an additional 3 seconds of weakness. I don’t see how 3s of Weakness every 45s mitigates a significant amount of damage. Most builds are crit builds anyway, and weakness only affects non-crits, so it’s surprising weak in pvp in many cases. Is this presuming a Venom build (Spider Venom) with the Venom cd reduction? That would make more sense, but that seems to narrow the options, and it’s still only affecting 5 strikes, so, functionally, say 7-8s total of weakness?

What am I missing?

Last strike in dagger auto attack chain (lotus strike) poisons for 2 seconds, which activates the lotus poison trait.

Weakness also reduces endurance regen, which means less dodging. Combined with all your blinds, you can keep someone missing more than half their attacks, and any of those that aren’t crits have a chance to do 50% damage.

So you are talking about something totally different than stealth, don’t die, try to backstab, repeat. You are saying that using the various blinds together with weaken, the Thief can actually melee and complete a Dagger 1 chain. I’ve never tried that, everything I read seems to be bp/hs and then hit for a ton, which I just can’t pull off in pvp so far, the fights get too hectic and too much aoe.

Is there a blind rotation or priority system? is it basically dagger 3? I know these are very beginner questions, I’ve been 100% pve until recently. Some guildies are starting to play a little pvp and I always like to play in groups. If you need any fractal/dungeons/pve help I can pay you back haha

Xynn.2748:

So you are talking about something totally different than stealth, don’t die, try to backstab, repeat. You are saying that using the various blinds together with weaken, the Thief can actually melee and complete a Dagger 1 chain. I’ve never tried that, everything I read seems to be bp/hs and then hit for a ton, which I just can’t pull off in pvp so far, the fights get too hectic and too much aoe.

Is there a blind rotation or priority system? is it basically dagger 3? I know these are very beginner questions, I’ve been 100% pve until recently. Some guildies are starting to play a little pvp and I always like to play in groups. If you need any fractal/dungeons/pve help I can pay you back haha

Basically, yeah – you don’t spam stealth, you use it on occasion. Typical opener is shadow shot; now that its been fixed, it’s amazing. You complete a Dagger AA chain while they swing off the blind (hitting you once, maybe twice), and follow up with a Black powder – now they’ve got weakness and need to make a choice – try to bail out of the smoke ring (either slowly by just walking, or with a dodge, eating precious endurance). While they’re doing this, you’re (probably) completing another AA chain, hitting them with another stack of weakness. Then you HS for stealth (and if you’re lucky, a little damage), sit in stealth a bit to regen health and Init (in 25/15/30/0/0), then go for the backstab. From there it’s a judgement call based on their HP, what class they are, etc etc… But the focus of the spec is most certainly not entering stealth as much as possible – you simply can’t afford it when BP-> HS costs 7 init (You need 9 total to access stealth, then have 2 returned for Infusion of shadow)

It’s alot about judgement calls. You’ll find that the new shadow shot can be superior to HS in alot of situations, even when HS would do more damage for less Init – the attached blind can be life saving, and the damage occurs faster the closer you are to your target – in melee range, a shadowshot will hit before an HS completes. You need to learn when to use BP, or when shadowshot will get the job done. When HS is appropriate, or when the init would be better saved for headshot. There’s also judging when its worth it to interrupt your dagger AA chain – You want that weakness and poison from lotus strike going off as much as possible, but you need to weight it against whats coming towards you – sometimes its worth it to interrupt with a needed interupt/blind/whatever, other times its worth it to eat the strike and finish your chain.

It’s a lot more interactive then D/D IMO.

I’m not aware of why Shadow Shot prevented people from playing Dagger/Pistol Thief, can anyone tell me (I don’t play Thief)?

At some point during the animation, (I cannot remember if it was the shot or the stab) you were rooted momentarily when it went off. At least that’s what I seem to recall regarding it.

i am looking for the spvp queen
did you saw her ?

timecookie.8570:

I’m not aware of why Shadow Shot prevented people from playing Dagger/Pistol Thief, can anyone tell me (I don’t play Thief)?

After the shot hit, you were teleported to your target and rooted for .5-.75seconds during and after the stab animation. It was a gap closer that rooted the user…meaning you generally had to HS Afterwards just to keep in melee with your target. It no longer does this.

don’t shadow shot then, use infiltrator, steal if you were close enough
shadowshot could be a waste of initiative in some cases. Wanting to bp-hs and not have the initiative is like caught with pants down for a d/p thief.

Thank you for the information.

So what is the D/P Thief about? What traits are essential?
Infusion of Shadow (+2 initiative when stealthing)?

I have seen Steal>Black Powder>HS>Backstab working good as a kill move. Is there few tips you can give me other than this?

evilapprentice.6379:

Silver.4798:

evilapprentice.6379:

- Get rid of DB already – CnD does poor damage (compared to its init cost) because it’s a utility, designed to get us into stealth. Dancing dagger is in the same boat. That leaves a D/D rogue with 1, and exactly 1 option to use for DPS when they can’t stealth, because you decided to put a conditions focused attack smack dab in the middle of a Power/crit direct damage set. Just change it already, its not good design. You might ask “But what about Condi thieves that like D/D?!”. My response would be “They need to learn how to play the game some time.” – that’s not meant to be rude, but taking an entire weaponset for 1 skill is very, very counterproductive. LDB rogues are 1 trick ponies – you always know exactly what they’re going to do, because they have exactly 1 option – there’s no skill or counterplay involved, and that’s the hallmark of a bad spec.

1. I respect your opinion but, have you played a condition thief? I run a condi thief and I disagree with your premise of how that build is played, and in fact I think that perhaps a condition d/d thief is an aspect of gameplay that you haven’t fully explored if all you think we do is DB spam.

2. That being said, I agree with your assessment that outside of CnD and DB a condition thief doesn’t have much use for the 1, 2 or 4 skill. Similarly, the burst back stab thief doesn’t have much use for the 3 and 4 skill. Neither builds are fully satisfied with this weapon set. Which brings me to…

3. There should be more than just one “viable” way to play a class. Burst dps thief is very popular, it is great at what it does. But for those players that prefer to do PvE more, in which there is a lot of value in AoE’s and crowd control, we don’t have a lot of options outside of the short bow and DB on d/d, esp if we are looking for condition damage. Anet didn’t give us much of a choice here. Which ultimately brings me to…

4. If a weapon set can be arranged where the AoE needs that apply condition damage outside of a short bow are met, I’d be more than pleased!

I’ve played nearly every spec of thief, even the ones that look dreadful on paper (and play equally dreadfully). In every MMO i’ve pvped in, I’ve been a spec junky – I tend to get bored easily, and try new specs constantly. I ran P/D D/D conditions (0/0/30/20/20) for a long time when it first became super popular.

If you’re condition D/D in SPvP, what weaponset abilities are you using outside DB to damage your opposition? Granted, with a carrion ammy, your HS and Backstab might hit for a non-trivial amount of damage (as opposed to if you were using a rabid ammy), but in that case you’re still not hitting anywhere close to “hard”, and you’ve got glass cannon defenses without glass cannon burst – every mistake will cost you 20%+ of your health against an experienced player. With the importance of condition cleansing in the current meta, your init expensive, long lasting bleed stacks will usually be cleansed WELL before they get a chance to do even half their listed damage.

I speak exclusively from a PvP perspective – I’d be happy with a PvP/PvE split on something like DB (Even an extreme one, where in PvE it was a conditions based attacked and in PvP it was a direct damage based attack). The problem is that since thief weaponsets tend to have 2 utility focused abilities out of 5, that leaves you with 2 abilities designed to do damage – when one of those runs completely counter to the rest of the weaponset…it gets really, really boring.

While I agree that DB is probably a great PvE Conditions ability (this is conjecture on my part, I don’t PvE), its silly that it is limiting PvP so much. Lets find a good middle ground – if that middle ground is an extreme split between PvP and PvE for DB, so be it.

Try Traits: 10-0-0-30-30

D/D and D/D with Sigil of Geomancer, Sigil of Stamina on both and initiative spam traits

Skills: Caltrops, wall of shadows, optional

Benefits:

• Dodge EVERY SINGLE ATTACK ( you won’t get hit )
• Easily spam 20+ AoE bleeds
• sPvP.. you’d be surprised how easily it is to 3v1 and win (personal record is 5v1 vs 2 theif, warrior, ranger and engi.. but you prob won’t believe me )

google.3709:

Try Traits: 10-0-0-30-30

D/D and D/D with Sigil of Geomancer, Sigil of Stamina on both and initiative spam traits

Skills: Caltrops, wall of shadows, optional

Benefits:

• Dodge EVERY SINGLE ATTACK ( you won’t get hit )
• Easily spam 20+ AoE bleeds
• sPvP.. you’d be surprised how easily it is to 3v1 and win (personal record is 5v1 vs 2 theif, warrior, ranger and engi.. but you prob won’t believe me )

That sounds like the cheapest and probably most effective thief build I’ve read. With Withdraw, Sigil of Stamina, bowl of orrian truffle and meat stew, expeditious dodger, vigor on healing, feline grace, and bountiful theft, you’ve become a dodging machine.

With Withdraw + hastened replenishment, quick recovery, quick pockets, kleptomaniac, and preparedness, you will never run out of initiative.

sword/pistol is still good for spvp mostly because of sword 2 and the survivability it gives you, but also the stuns, dazes, evades, and blind stomps that it gives. last hit of autoattack does 4.8k~ish with crit on squishy under 50% hp depending on how you trait( i do 10/30/0/0/30, yeah you read that right) pistol whip does around 7-9k on squishies. Rangers and necros have soooo much trouble running away from a sword thief and the fact that they don’t have stunbreakers make pistol whip that much better.

edit: Even if they do have stunbreakers, sword 2 plus another pistol whip and steal,get most of your init back.

evilapprentice.6379:

- Get rid of DB already – CnD does poor damage (compared to its init cost) because it’s a utility, designed to get us into stealth. Dancing dagger is in the same boat. That leaves a D/D rogue with 1, and exactly 1 option to use for DPS when they can’t stealth, because you decided to put a conditions focused attack smack dab in the middle of a Power/crit direct damage set. Just change it already, its not good design. You might ask “But what about Condi thieves that like D/D?!”. My response would be “They need to learn how to play the game some time.” – that’s not meant to be rude, but taking an entire weaponset for 1 skill is very, very counterproductive. LDB rogues are 1 trick ponies – you always know exactly what they’re going to do, because they have exactly 1 option – there’s no skill or counterplay involved, and that’s the hallmark of a bad spec.

Heck no!

As a condition D/D thief DB may be my core attack but thats not the only reason I went D/D, also what part of the D/D set makes you think its a power crit set up any more than it is a condition set up?

Auto attack gives poisons, if you’ve not got 100% crit rate the lower damage rapid strikes are actually against crit damage (granted who runs a crit based thief without near 100% crit rate)

Heartseeker works just as well regardless, even a rabid condi thief can get the big burst of damage out of it for finishers, as well as the gap closing ability that is handy at times, specially as a condi thief thats not tied to melee range to deal all damage.

Deathblossom, primarily condition damage but is still 3 AoE hits that a crit/power build could utilize in those times where they could do with it.

Dancing dagger is just as useful regardless of the build

CnD is also useful regardless of build, the backstab is less potent for a condition build but is still a decent hit with low power thats basically a small bonus if you used stealth as a defensive mechanism rather than a core offensive one.

Just because you don’t like DB doesnt mean it doesn’t fit nicely in the set for others.

The fact that you claim to have played every spec yet think a D/D condi thief is a 1 trick pony makes me think you’ve missed far more than you think you have.

The other moves you mention wouldn’t hurt to be tweaked but probably not in the ways you mention.

Body shot would be great if the vulnerability didn’t wear off by time you finished applying 25 of them, increasing the duration so you can apply the stacks and get some actual attacks off would make it great, though I assume they limited it so that a thief can’t just keep a stack of 25 up permanently while also attacking.

Flanking strike could do with a speed/reliability increase, the sword swing is far to slow behind and the evasive spin can often throw you off randomly, the concept is still fine it just needs tweaking to increase the usability.

Though can’t comment on pistol whip, having never really used it, I dare say it is again intended that the last few hits are against an unstunned target, though dodge rolling out of them is a bit annoying, having the strikes drain endurance might be a better effect than making it a spamable thing instead.