Guild Wars 2

Honestly yes, DD needed a nerf but don’t you feel it was a bit too much?
To compensate can we have it cost 3 init instead? or increase the damage a bit? or have it freeze target instead? or daze first target and cripple others?

Unreal! Freaking half! O.O

Ya, this is unbelievable. To make things worse, they also nerfed shortbow which was our only real option for sustained ranged fighting and kiting.

Its a huge nerf because it affects a lot of how some of us play and how things work together.

Very, very disappointed. Thief needs fixes, not nerfs.

If you fight against two characters prior to the nerf Dancing Dagger hits each player for 672 base damage plus a Cripple; for comparison Heartseeker against a target with less than 25% HPs deals 672 base damage.
Don’t you guys think it was a little over the top to deal more damage against TWO guys each than you could deal with Heartseeker against ONE guy?

my bad misread the patch note!

Barzahd.1647:

great now this skill is pretty much trash…guess I’ll go back to thief guild.

I understand that this skill needed a nerf but that’s too much…

I think you are thinking of the wrong skill here. Dancing Dagger is weapon skill that throws dagger at up to 3 targets and cripples them. Not your elite skill “Dagger Storm”.

I used DD mainly for cripple, and that’s what I will still use it for granted I’m still using a dagger of any sort. The cripple is much more rewarding than any damage it could do, unless there are two extremely squishy glass cannons 2 feet from each other, in which case one DD could really screw them over.

I think whoever came up with the idea to nerf the damage by 50%, forgot to nerf the initiative cost. Waste of initiative to use the skill now.

ViRuE.3612:

Barzahd.1647:

great now this skill is pretty much trash…guess I’ll go back to thief guild.

I understand that this skill needed a nerf but that’s too much…

I think you are thinking of the wrong skill here. Dancing Dagger is weapon skill that throws dagger at up to 3 targets and cripples them. Not your elite skill “Dagger Storm”.

my bad! totally misread the patch note! still a big nerf for a 4 ini skills :s

UnholyVicar.2056:

Haha I love the QQ on thief forum. I actually loled when I tried out dancing dagger. Asked a mesmer on the opposite team in tourns to be a test dummy (glasscannon). 1.7k crit fantastic. Time to reroll guys or play with skill.

I think Thiefs abused of it, it was indeed an imba skill (my opinion ofc), but I can only agree the nerf is a bit to huge.

I honestly agree that it should have had a damage nerf but I feel it should have had a utility buff to compensate.

i also agree that it costs too much initiative to be useful now ….

You basically killed DD for use in PVE. When facing two NPC’s close together, two DD plus a Death Blossom was enough to take them down, if not close to death. Now what’s the point of using it? You couldn’t just nerf the PVP aspect of it and not ruin it in PVE?

I have a feeling D/D was mostly what was looked at in regards to Dancing Dagger’s functionality. With D/D dancing dagger could be used primarily to slow enemies enough to get into melee range and use mainhand dagger’s potent attacks. The problem is that Dancing Dagger takes on an entirely different role in S/D. Sword #2 is an amazing gap closer and chasing skill so Dancing Dagger held the role of being the only thing on the skill bar that could be used for burst damage. So while post-nerf DD can still serve D/D as a ranged cripple with some AE capability, it no longer holds much of a role for S/D which doesn’t lack AE capability, chasing power, or even cripple application.

The same skill can mean vastly different things when applied to different weapon sets, skill balancing can’t be done just around a single weapon set. Perhaps a better solution would be to dynamically alter off-hand weapon skills depending on main-hand, sort of how dual skills work. If this could be done then #4/5 in S/D could mesh with S/D and #4/5 in D/D could mesh with D/D.

I think dancing dagger damage was fine.I only use it on venom build
they should nerf the damage for each bounce not a flat outright nerf.

Well…when I saw the patch notes I went…HAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. They nerfed most builds BUT the burst…and dancing daggers SHOULD be used for the cripple and closing the gap, not as a main damage source. I admit I used it aswell for some quick pewpewdaggerthrowingdamageofawesomesauce, and 50% is too much to make it usefull for 4 initiative!!!!

“we have data showing thieves hitting 4 instead of 2”

Smokey.8902:

You basically killed DD for use in PVE. When facing two NPC’s close together, two DD plus a Death Blossom was enough to take them down, if not close to death. Now what’s the point of using it? You couldn’t just nerf the PVP aspect of it and not ruin it in PVE?

Honestly, 50% nerf was too extreme without ANY initiative decrease

And please, whatever pvp whining that affects gameplay decisions, make it affect PVP ONLY! Do not destroy a skill that many people rely upon for dungeons.. it was a viable option when you pull aggro, now it just flushes your initiative down the toilet.

Fix this to only affect pvp whatever you do, but even there you need to readjust cost or some compensation

Why is it that devs never bother to do their own theorycrafting when the game is made or tests through beta to balance classes, then instead just nerf thief every single patch when people chose to play it and have time invested? Make other classes better, if need be; but never make a class worse.

Revert some of these changes or lose faith from the playerbase

Are people really that clueless, that they didn’t notice in what indirect way the backstab build was nerfed in sPvP?

never saw much of dagger throw in tpvp anyways and i never used it. it was a waste of init compared to getting a cnd backstab off

Akumetsu.8591:

never saw much of dagger throw in tpvp anyways and i never used it. it was a waste of init compared to getting a cnd backstab off

You used it after the Backstab combo in case there were two opponents; in that scenario it was the highest damage ability D/D had.

I pretty much exclusively play Sword/Dagger and Pistol/Pistol (lol). While I admit that Dancing Dagger might have been doing a bit too much damaging, halving the amount of damage it can do seems extreme and rather randomly applied. I really wouldn’t be surprised if they just decided it needed adjustment, slapped a random number on it, and called it a day. The main problem I have with nerfing it so bad is that now Auto-Attack is kind of the only viable means of damage I have. The only way for Dancing Dagger to do better than 1 swing of my sword now is if there are two enemies, and even then the damage increase isn’t necessarily great enough that I want to spend 4 initiative using it. What utility it has is already somewhat overshadowed by the fact that sword’s auto-attack does the same thing as it to begin with. The only advantage is has left really is ranged, and I can just switch to pistols for that. I’m really going to struggle to find much use for it at all now.

So I can’t use Dancing Dagger to dump my initiative into a burst attempt anymore. I just plain don’t have any burst options. Sword’s Auto-Attack still does good damage in a generous cone with a useful debuff, so I still don’t feel kittened, just not particularly mentally engaged either due to how easy and mindless it is to auto-attack. Shadow-step is still situtionally useful, flanking strike is still “okay” and cloak and dagger kind of lost its’ cheese. At this point I feel like I’d be better off just one-handing sword, offhanding pistol for the boring but still useful black powder, or just… finding a more mentally engaging game.

While we’re on the subject; I only use two abilities in pistols. Blackpowder is useful (albeit boring) when it works to just facetank an otherwise challenging situation. Its’ probably overpowered and yet the rest of the set is so underwhelming that I don’t even care. Unload does good, mindless damage from a range that compliments my power/crit build. Beyond that, the whole set could really use an overhaul.

now all leet play WARRIORS, best optimized not nerfed , always upgraded characters!….

Oh look, this skill is slightly to strong, lets nerf it by, hmm… 50 %!

Thought about switching to warrior, but it just doesn’t feel right thematically. Really, I wanted to be a dual sword wielding evasion based ninja-thing, but settled on offhanding a dagger since thief can’t dual-weild swords for some inexplicable reason.

I might go try mesmer if I can get over all the… butterflies. I’ll probably just quit playing though, and maybe poke my head in again next patch to see if things sound better or not. I know that sounds terribly QQ, but thief was my main character, I’m finding him boring to play, and I’m not that terribly invested in this game to begin with.

Imho, the nerf was needed and it doesent feel weak, for me at least, i can live with the dmg it does atm, I just would like its init cost to be reduced by 1 or the cripple condition increced by 1 or 1,5 sec to compensate for the high init cost.

other than that small detail im very happy with the changes to the thief profession.

Was hoping for a lot more for the Ranger though, also nothing was changed about bunkers unfortunately…

UnholyVicar.2056:

Haha I love the QQ on thief forum. I actually loled when I tried out dancing dagger. Asked a mesmer on the opposite team in tourns to be a test dummy (glasscannon). 1.7k crit fantastic. Time to reroll guys or play with skill.

Yet warriors can do almost that much damage with their greatsword auto-attacks, which also hits multiple targets albeit not at long range, and nobody complains…

And what do you expect using a glass-cannon as your test dummy?

Warkupo.1025:

Thought about switching to warrior, but it just doesn’t feel right thematically. Really, I wanted to be a dual sword wielding evasion based ninja-thing, but settled on offhanding a dagger since thief can’t dual-weild swords for some inexplicable reason.

I might go try mesmer if I can get over all the… butterflies. I’ll probably just quit playing though, and maybe poke my head in again next patch to see if things sound better or not. I know that sounds terribly QQ, but thief was my main character, I’m finding him boring to play, and I’m not that terribly invested in this game to begin with.

I roll a bunch of different professions with my bf, but my main solo (level 80) character is a thief. I only pve with it and I’ve never been in a dungeon (yet). I know I’m not a “normal” player, but I agree with you. All the nerfing prior to this never really bothered me…but now…it’s a kitten taking aggro when you’re solo and running for your life and need to throw out a couple daggers to slow down + do decent damage for survivability.

I did just get S3 Seasons though….

Volrath.1473:

Imho, the nerf was needed and it doesent feel weak, for me at least, i can live with the dmg it does atm

The question is: What are you using as main hand with the /D combo? Dancing Dagger was S/D’s primary (only) burst skill and P/D’s primary (only) AE skill, with much more situational use for D/D. The major nerf was not to D/D.

Incidentally, the shortbow t1 has the same cast time and range, and does the same jumping (albeit with one less jump), but is free. It actually does more damage than Dancing Dagger. So the difference is 4 initiative for a cripple.

TheAmpca.1753:

Honestly yes, DD needed a nerf but don’t you feel it was a bit too much?
To compensate can we have it cost 3 init instead? or increase the damage a bit? or have it freeze target instead? or daze first target and cripple others?

You don’t compensate nerf. That would be against the idea of a nerf :P It was nerfed because it was op. Damage is still great compared to a lot of stuff other classes have. You can still do a total 3k dmg on each target hit when you use it on 2 guys standing next to each other.

Tulisin.6945:

With D/D dancing dagger could be used primarily to slow enemies enough to get into melee range and use mainhand dagger’s potent attacks.

Except I rarely ever used it for that. You have Shadowstep, Heartseeker and Steal as better and more reliable gap closers. People tend to just evade dancing dagger when you’re chasing them anyway, while Heartseeker is a 100% 450range closer to the enemy for 1 less initiative.

Killyox.3950:

TheAmpca.1753:

Honestly yes, DD needed a nerf but don’t you feel it was a bit too much?
To compensate can we have it cost 3 init instead? or increase the damage a bit? or have it freeze target instead? or daze first target and cripple others?

You don’t compensate nerf. That would be against the idea of a nerf :P It was nerfed because it was op. Damage is still great compared to a lot of stuff other classes have. You can still do a total 3k dmg on each target hit when you use it on 2 guys standing next to each other.

You’re right in pointing out that it still does damage. The problem is that the damage Dancing Dagger does isn’t worth it at all if you have one opponent, and only slightly better than the first strike of your auto-attack when you do. It’s not really worth the initiative for sword or pistol, and its’ really not worth the initiative for dagger who still has actual damage abilities. So you have another costly utility skill that’s kind of sub-par at best.

Dancing dagger is for cripple so you can get on your target, I could care less about the damage, i wish they would remove the damage and increase cripple time or lower to 3 int.

Pirhana.8935:

Dancing dagger is for cripple so you can get on your target, I could care less about the damage, i wish they would remove the damage and increase cripple time or lower to 3 int.

Which just demonstrates the gap in logic about how different mainhands use this ability differently. You use it primarily for the cripple with dagger mainhand, while it was used primarily for the burst damage with sword mainhand. You’d be having the same complaints if their balancing measure was to remove cripple, since it’d no longer serve in your capacity while still being useful to other weapon sets.

Tulisin.6945:

Pirhana.8935:

Dancing dagger is for cripple so you can get on your target, I could care less about the damage, i wish they would remove the damage and increase cripple time or lower to 3 int.

Which just demonstrates the gap in logic about how different mainhands use this ability differently. You use it primarily for the cripple with dagger mainhand, while it was used primarily for the burst damage with sword mainhand. You’d be having the same complaints if their balancing measure was to remove cripple, since it’d no longer serve in your capacity while still being useful to other weapon sets.

And yet I used it as D/D in PVE as my primary AoE on <4 targets, since DB sucks for non-condition specs. So his statement is nothing more than his personal opinion. The nerf was definitely overboard, and I feel we got hit twice:

- Fixed a bug that caused many piercing, boomerang, and bouncing projectiles (those that hit more than 1 target) to continually increase in damage the more targets they hit.

- Dancing Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 50%.

for S/D, Dancing Dagger was my main method of doing burst damage when presented with the correct situation to utilize it. My auto-attack already crippled enemies, so I was never really utilizing dancing dagger for that aspect. I have a 25% movespeed and a shadow-step anyway, so its’ not like people where outrunning me to begin with. I really could care less that DD can still cripple for four initiative.

DD nerf + CnD nerf has left my S/D pretty much regulated to auto-attack status if I ever want to do damage. It’s boring and I don’t like it.

The point of dancing daggers is that it bounces between 4 targets.
Its damage for a bouncing skill, considering it can be used 3 times in a row, was absolutely insane. Just imagine 3 DD used on a guy who is ressing his mate… That was absolutely crazy.

Now it is inline with the other bouncing skills, fair nerf after all.

Just to put things into perspective:
Shortbow’s auto attack does about 134 damage according to the build editor, and bounces 3 times, while costing no initiative.

Dancing Dagger does 122 damage per hit and bounces 4 times, adds a cripple, and costs 4 initiative.

Ranger’s (lol) Axe auto attack does 122 damage per hit and bounces 3 times.

Do you think an ability I have to pay for to use should be weaker than options I have available to me with an auto-attack? Do you find that just pressing 1 for every battle is fun?

These changes suffer from bad game design in more than a few ways; damage is just the easiest to analyze.

the random swinging of the nerf hammer hit DD pretty hard.
while it totally missed Mug, Backstab, Heartseeker
and anything else that actually needed balancing.

Warkupo.1025:

Just to put things into perspective:
Shortbow’s auto attack does about 134 damage according to the build editor, and bounces 3 times, while costing no initiative.

Dancing Dagger does 122 damage per hit and bounces 4 times, adds a cripple, and costs 4 initiative.

Ranger’s (lol) Axe auto attack does 122 damage per hit and bounces 3 times.

Do you think an ability I have to pay for to use should be weaker than options I have available to me with an auto-attack? Do you find that just pressing 1 for every battle is fun?

These changes suffer from bad game design in more than a few ways; damage is just the easiest to analyze.

You are right on this one, this skill is still viable in a way, but just not worth using for that innitiative, or if you can just swap weapeon.

I think Anet lowered Dancing Dagger’s damage by so much because it was being used for it probably isn’t meant to do. I know that whenever I see two people or more, my first thought is usually “Spam them to death with Dancing Daggers”. If specced right, that can hit up to 5k-7k when bouncing off targets (it’s not strong if it didn’t have multiple targets to bounce). Maybe it was meant to just be a multi-target cripple, not a damage ability?
Maybe it’d be more balanced if they lowered it to 3 initiative because it’s just used for cripple now, and 4 seems to cost a lot for such a cripple attack.

Stin.9781:

Warkupo.1025:

Just to put things into perspective:
Shortbow’s auto attack does about 134 damage according to the build editor, and bounces 3 times, while costing no initiative.

Dancing Dagger does 122 damage per hit and bounces 4 times, adds a cripple, and costs 4 initiative.

Ranger’s (lol) Axe auto attack does 122 damage per hit and bounces 3 times.

Do you think an ability I have to pay for to use should be weaker than options I have available to me with an auto-attack? Do you find that just pressing 1 for every battle is fun?

These changes suffer from bad game design in more than a few ways; damage is just the easiest to analyze.

You are right on this one, this skill is still viable in a way, but just not worth using for that innitiative, or if you can just swap weapeon.

Kind of? Its’ current viability is still really situation dependent.

Dagger primary has heartseeker to hone in on enemies and close distance quickly. Sword has Infiltrator’s Strike to quickly pop up next to an enemy, immobilize them, and can even cripple them with auto-attack from there. Pistol Shoots bullets, so it already doesn’t need to chase people very much to begin with.

that’s not counting the various other ways every thief has to close distance. Without its’ damage component, Dancing Dagger has a really hard time distinguishing itself as very important.

kenshinakh.3672:

I think Anet lowered Dancing Dagger’s damage by so much because it was being used for it probably isn’t meant to do. I know that whenever I see two people or more, my first thought is usually “Spam them to death with Dancing Daggers”. If specced right, that can hit up to 5k-7k when bouncing off targets (it’s not strong if it didn’t have multiple targets to bounce). Maybe it was meant to just be a multi-target cripple, not a damage ability?
Maybe it’d be more balanced if they lowered it to 3 initiative because it’s just used for cripple now, and 4 seems to cost a lot for such a cripple attack.

Look : Against single target

Infiltrators strike 1.5 snare, gap closer, can be falowed up by condition/stun removal for 2 innitiative.

Dancing dagger 3 seconds snare. No gap closer nuthing else.

It completely lost its value against single target, Against 2 targets its ok now against 1/3/4 its meh.

I do not want to post this?

lol @ people who never used dancing dagger. anet broke dagger off hand – cloak is too much init to use more than once and dancing daggers is now utterly worthless. nerf was a bit too much especially for not making it cost less init OR buffing our health pool. thief is supposed to be a squishy class that gets in does a ton of damage and gets out. we should all just reroll warriors now because they get higher armor, more damage, and faster stomps or lets all go back to noob pistol whip =(. now that D/D is meh for direct damage what set should i play? oh and btw – to people who play other classes and think thieves are ridiculously overpowered – auto attack is meh, heartseeker is useless unless they are below 25% (so please stop complaining about heartseeker spam only nubs HS spam), death blossom is great…if youre doing condition build, dancing daggers used to be our only nonstealth high damage now its crap (and dont forget it only used to be good against 2 non tanky targets, any more than that and you would have been better off using your init for something more damaging), and cloak is only useful when an enemy is imobilized or stunned because cost of getting into stealth using it and backstabbing is only practical maybe once in a fight because A. cloak is half the total init bar and B. we need to get behind the target (smart people just keep randomly turrning and moving away from where they think we are). so i think the 50% nerf on dancing dagger completely broke offhand. imo what they should have done is nerfed the base damage of it by a bit and made it so that if it hits a target it has already hit it does reduced damage. that way you cant exactly use it to burst 2 ppl down but it still does a good amount of damage. 600 total damage to 1 target if it bounces and hits them again is a waste of init, better off auto attacking.

Stin.9781:

kenshinakh.3672:

I think Anet lowered Dancing Dagger’s damage by so much because it was being used for it probably isn’t meant to do. I know that whenever I see two people or more, my first thought is usually “Spam them to death with Dancing Daggers”. If specced right, that can hit up to 5k-7k when bouncing off targets (it’s not strong if it didn’t have multiple targets to bounce). Maybe it was meant to just be a multi-target cripple, not a damage ability?
Maybe it’d be more balanced if they lowered it to 3 initiative because it’s just used for cripple now, and 4 seems to cost a lot for such a cripple attack.

Look : Against single target

Infiltrators strike 1.5 snare, gap closer, can be falowed up by condition/stun removal for 2 innitiative.

Dancing dagger 3 seconds snare. No gap closer nuthing else.

It completely lost its value against single target, Against 2 targets its ok now against 1/3/4 its meh.

Please, don’t manipulate reality in order to make your arguments look founded.

Infiltrator’s Strike is 1s immobilization on 5 initiative (you need to return back in order to use it again), while Dancing Dagger is a 5s snare (10s potentially if it bounces between 2 targets) and it bounces also, all this in 4s initiative.

Probably that skill wasn’t mean’t to do high damage but it was meant to be used to snare the opponent to don’t let him escape the fight. Have you guys never thought about this? That probably you can have also utility skills on your weapon bar other than damage skills?

Can they just tell us how they want us to play and do away with the Nerf fest ?

I don’t PvP or WvW , so don’t give a crap how skill work in them.

kenshinakh.3672:

I think Anet lowered Dancing Dagger’s damage by so much because it was being used for it probably isn’t meant to do. I know that whenever I see two people or more, my first thought is usually “Spam them to death with Dancing Daggers”. If specced right, that can hit up to 5k-7k when bouncing off targets (it’s not strong if it didn’t have multiple targets to bounce). Maybe it was meant to just be a multi-target cripple, not a damage ability?
Maybe it’d be more balanced if they lowered it to 3 initiative because it’s just used for cripple now, and 4 seems to cost a lot for such a cripple attack.

Or they could just make it so that, when bouncing, it cannot hit the same target more than once.