Guild Wars 2

I still remember roughly a year ago, when this ability did some pretty massive damage against targets with AI. The old Dancing Dagger would be god-send in today’s world that is populated by minion masters and spirit rangers.

Anyway, my point is that ever since that nerf a year ago, Dancing Dagger has become one of the least used Thief-weapon skills on all weapon sets. No Dagger off-hand build really makes frequent use of it and it’s hard to justify as a weapon skill.

For one, the 900 range and slow projectile speed really limit its ability to stop an enemy from fleeing.
Then you have the relatively high cost of 3 Initiative for which it provides very little.
And then there’s the thing that a Cripple really isn’t all that important to a Thief, having so many gap-closers and mobility skills.

So I really think this ability could use a review. Maybe add some more interesting utility to it, buff the damage and/or lower the cost. It would be great if all weapon-sets could at least get some practical use out of all their weapon skills.

dancing dagger was good as it was. never needed a nerf. it WAS one skill we could use in our worst situation. large groups. now with minion masters and spirit spammers …. we are stuck with short bow pew pew pew. dancing dagger WAS strong but i dont think they needed to scale it back at all. if anything like7-8%

It rustles my jimmies honestly. It’s nerfs like these that pigeon hole people to one build. two handed weapon combinations are DD,DP, PD,PP,SD,SP. DD I think gets hit the hardest of these because (autoattack included) either two or three buttons are used for it depending on build. If DD had a reliable #4, it wouldn’t seem like the stone solid and unchanging set it is, just from that one move being fixed. We would have a nice little ranged attack to add new tactics into play like, hitting a mesmer clone to bounce it to the player when they are on low health to finish them or if we semi-spammed it at an oncoming warrior, they’d think twice about charging in not because of the cripple, but because of the damage they’ve just suddenly noticed they are taking. As it stands now, they and everyone else (even other thieves) laugh at dancing dagger when hit by it.

To be fair, they did drop the initiative cost to 3 to compensate.

Still, it’s pretty terrible. The projectile finisher is probably the biggest selling point of the skill, and even that is overshadowed by better sources for combo finishers in dagger off-hand sets.

They could just make it so it does additional damage to non-player targets? I think that’d be a pretty cool concept.

Reduce bounces and increase dmg + projectile speed. Improve tracking. Might need ini increase

Im honestly trying to use dancing dagger in pvp situations, but half of time it gets obstructed by something that isnt even there, other half it just disapears into nowhere never reaching its target. So most of the time its just wastes 3 initiative.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

To be fair, they did drop the initiative cost to 3 to compensate.

… And then, ninja nerfed cripple duration from 5 to 3 seconds.

So, damage was lowered by 50%, cripple duration by 40%, and ini lowered by 1.

I might be terribly wrong, but it looks like anything but fair. But anyway, I expect the game to be balanced, not ,,fair", but this skill isn’t balanced – it’s absurdly underpowered.

I pretty much ONLY ever use it to chase down a fleeing opponent, and even then it’s a hit or miss skill at best, and its only use comes from the cripple

Well I’m just going to suggest the same thing I did a couple of months ago:

*Remove the bounce altogether

*Increase the projectile speed

*Keep the damage the same

*On hit they get a black border debuff similar to warrior impale

*On hit, you get a 10 second rollover skill called augury of death

*On activation of said rollover skill you shadowstep to and cripple your target for 3 seconds

Impale: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Impale_

Original Augury of Death: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Augury_of_Death

In most other MMOs a multi target repeatable snare would be an excellent skill and thieves shouldn’t discard it so readily just to suit the current status of SPvP.

Dagins.5163:

Rottaran Owain.6789:

To be fair, they did drop the initiative cost to 3 to compensate.

… And then, ninja nerfed cripple duration from 5 to 3 seconds.

So, damage was lowered by 50%, cripple duration by 40%, and ini lowered by 1.

I might be terribly wrong, but it looks like anything but fair. But anyway, I expect the game to be balanced, not ,,fair", but this skill isn’t balanced – it’s absurdly underpowered.

I put the “to be fair” part in because the OP claimed it to cost 4 initiative.

And there’s no need to be so antagonistic about it, especially when I agree with you that it needs a buff badly.

Stooperdale.3560:

In most other MMOs a multi target repeatable snare would be an excellent skill and thieves shouldn’t discard it so readily just to suit the current status of SPvP.

What are you saying, it’s an underestimated skill or should initiative be spend anyway on it because it would be a great skill in othet MMO’s?

Hmm if anything, I want to see a different animation. It feels like I’m throwing a piece of flying paper most of the time. I want to see a solid throwing form, a high speed projectile that on impact would feel like a ninja has just thrown their kunai on tree or something and the kunai went ZnNnnNNnnn, that image would require the skill to be a single target skill, with a small cast time that includes the thief flipping the dagger spinning it in air to hold it from its tip and throw it, the dagger on impact will deliver a great deal of damage, apply cripple and torment (regardless of how many stacks) and blood on hit animation, and the dagger would remain stuck on the target’s body where it hit for a short duration of time or until the torment is gone or something.

Remember, we are a single target profession, we are not meant for aoe.

No, please no. I don’t mind changing the animation and make it single target with higher damage, but making it does multiple condition as well? That will just make P/D to be OP as hell.

Uve gotta buff it in such a way where p/d isn’t buffed really BC p/d is strong enough, but give it something to help out melee playstyles like s/d and d/d. Definitely need to do something with it, bc atm I only use it as a ranged blind clear that’s obstructed half the time maugettarr had a great idea, but if p/d gets a spamable gap closer it will just b 343434=instawin I’m afraid. A skill that removed condi would b amazing tho

What would P/D do with a gap closer? Follow it up with #3? For #4 #3 #4 #3 lol blink?

Well, you could still block/blind/dodge the #4 projectile. The point of a 10 second rollover though is to maybe hit them while you’re right next to them, then shadowstep to them when they start to open a gap. I don’t think this would make P/D OP as that would require a fair amount of initiative to keep it up for meh amounts of torment. Once people learned how to play against it, it would probably have the same amount of counterplay as CnD.

If anything, D/D #3 should transfer a condition. It really needs some sort of rework. By giving the transfer to the dual skill, you specifically help D/D whereas giving P/D a transfer when they’re running in tanky gear probably would be OP.

Thanks for the feedback on this.

Sounds nice, I like it, fits the ‘assassin’ role.

“What are you saying, it’s an underestimated skill or should initiative be spend anyway on it because it would be a great skill in othet MMO’s?”

Pistol/dagger in PvE is entirely a kiting weapon set and it relies on dancing daggers to handle multiple targets. This separates it from pistol/pistol that has only single target damage and there’s no need to have two single target ranged weapon dps sets as one will be redundant. If dancing dancers is not fit for purpose as a multi-target snare in SPvP then suggest the changes that do make it fit that purpose. If a multi-target snare is never going to be useful in SPvP then it’s a straight case of “don’t break my PvE game just to fix your SPvP please!”

If dancing daggers + pistol auto shots do not do enough damage then I suggest the first thing to look at is, as usual, the awful pistol auto shot damage.

frans.8092:

What would P/D do with a gap closer? Follow it up with #3? For #4 #3 #4 #3 lol blink?

Shadow Strike is a very powerful dual skill for p/d crit thieves. The concept is to use it, after it ports you away it will deal pretty good damage, then by stealing back(Gap closer) you’re within range again to use it, it then ports away and does another strike of decent damage, you then proceed to do the same with infiltrators signet. 3 shadowstrikes from a zerker thief is enough to inflict massive damage into a target, while it is difficult to dodge bc the cast times are so low. Essentially nuking the target. Now imagine that with an extra gap closer, it would be unreal. High initiative cost and it wouldnt benefit other offhand dagger builds enough to be viable, so it would need to maintain a low init cost of 3-4. No, I was not reffering to condi p/d -_-

Yea, changing the d/d dual skill would be great too, especially bc d/d isn’t even meta for condi. Would be great to have a reason to use the skill. But this thread is abt the 4 skill so I’ll stick to that ;3

I have a solution to this, change dd to uppercut that knocks your enemy back and then they need to fix scorpion wire bug and make your toon say GET OVER HERE!! when it hits

Worst part is throwing daggers at people is just awesome in any game. It’s too bad we can’t actually make a build around throwing weapons. You could make a Dancing Dagger spam build in GW1 though. ;/

Dat signiture doggie XD I think I need to make one of them…

But why not just increase the damage, range and add imobilize to the skill and remove/reduce the bounce? What if the first hit imobilized, and the bounce crippled? p/d already has an imobilize so it won’t affect that much, s/d does have one with infiltrators strike, but this would be at an increased range(Give us an attack bigger than a 900 range -__- ) as well as a cripple, and d/d would be really happy to see this change, but at the same time I dont feel that it would overpower any offhand dagger builds. It would make the skill viable to use, but I would be strongly against increasing the initiative cost as it is pretty useful to throw and break aegis or remove blind. At the current moment that’s all it is… 3 init for a ranged aegis break or ranged blind clear…

Longer cripple duration (half a second, Idk), increased projectile speed.