Guild Wars 2

Am I the only person rather upset, that dancing dagger now feels extremely weak and no longer feels like it does any real damage at all? I have no idea why it was reduced by 50%… There had been nothing wrong with it. If it was a matter of PVP, it could have been nerfed only for that, like I noticed a lot of other powers were.

Short answer: ppl qq about OP thief, doesn’t matter which skill we are talking about.

Long answer: I’m sure someone more mathematical than me will give a very detailed explanation of why they nerfed Dancing Dagger. Bottom line is it probably has to do with “balancing PvP.”

Dietere.3476:

Short answer: ppl qq about OP thief, doesn’t matter which skill we are talking about.

Long answer: I’m sure someone more mathematical than me will give a very detailed explanation of why they nerfed Dancing Dagger. Bottom line is it probably has to do with “balancing PvP.”

Well like I’ve said in my last post, then it could have been nerfed for PVP only. I saw a FEW Skills that were nerfed for PVP only for the other professions. PVE, it was hardly over powered, in fact it fit in line with the damage of the other abilities. There are a few abilities from other classes, that do nearly the same thing now, the 50% cripple speed, and do more damage on multiple targets…. so now I feel almost as if I need to switch weapons…

I believe that previous to this patch, Dancing Dagger alone could out-damage other skills whose only major purpose was damage, while also being a ranged multi-target crippling attack. It was just too good at too many things, so they decided to focus on its crippling aspect rather than its damaging aspect.

That focus (utility > damage) is pretty universal on off-hand weaponry.

EDIT: In regards to PvE: I could literally do more damage with dancing dagger on a ?/D setup than the main hand skills. At 900 range. While also applying crippled. While also hitting a secondary target. It especially invalidated using pistol main-hand, but was a pretty good offender with the sword as well.

I don’t understand this nerf at all. Surely the conditions in PvP necessary to make the old version scary damage were rare or indicative of low opponent skill. I haven’t played thief in pvp much but I’d expect only Rangers with heeled pets and a pair of tightly clustered (bad) enemies would really see its dps. Could a tourney player maybe shed some light on whether or not there was a need for it in high level play?

As far as pve goes it’s now essentially useless. Mobs don’t kite you, making it a perfect waste of initiative. It’s not even enough to deal with low health add mechanics. My DD play in pve is now utterly boring caltrops and DB spam whereas before I at least had another option. Maybe I could see this damage working if it applied bleeds as well as cripple.

I was getting Dancing Dagger crits of around 4.5k prior to the patch. That’s a ranged attack, that cripples and has a chance to hit the same target twice for 4k5. I believe that’s why Dancing Dagger was scaled down.

To be honest, when I crunched the numbers on Dancing Dagger it was just too good to be true. We got more damage per initiative than most of the melee range skills. However, cutting the damage in half was overkill. I’ve never seen an update chop down a skill so harshly.

Godsend.1643:

To be honest, when I crunched the numbers on Dancing Dagger it was just too good to be true. We got more damage per initiative than most of the melee range skills. However, cutting the damage in half was overkill. I’ve never seen an update chop down a skill so harshly.

Ha, remember when we thought the PW nerf was brutal? We had no idea what was going to happen…

Yeah, DD did need a nerf but 50% was way over kill.

DD used to do almost as much dmg as backstab. Now use it on 2 players next to each other. They will each get hit twice for that amount of dmg plus cripple for a measly 4 ini. So i do believe it needed a nerf. The skill is intended to be an utility, not a dmg skill.

And no, Backstab doesn’t do 20k+ unlike some believers.

Edit: grammer stuff

I really do agree with this thread, and to me it seems like Dancing Dagger wasn’t the only thing nerfed – I feel like I can only do 2/3 of the damage I did prior to the patch. I suppose this make sense with all the combos we can pull off, but 50% on Dancing Dagger was a bit much – I used to do around 3k, but now I can barely do 1.8k. It’s almost useless now, using four initiative to do microscopic damage only to cripple a few enemies for a few seconds. Makes the D/D combo seem much weaker.

Softspoken.2410:

I believe that previous to this patch, Dancing Dagger alone could out-damage other skills whose only major purpose was damage, while also being a ranged multi-target crippling attack. It was just too good at too many things, so they decided to focus on its crippling aspect rather than its damaging aspect.

That focus (utility > damage) is pretty universal on off-hand weaponry.

EDIT: In regards to PvE: I could literally do more damage with dancing dagger on a ?/D setup than the main hand skills. At 900 range. While also applying crippled. While also hitting a secondary target. It especially invalidated using pistol main-hand, but was a pretty good offender with the sword as well.

Your edit is the problem with the nerf though. Dancing Dagger was viewed in a bubble as being “too good”, but by nerfing it without considering how that nerf affects each individual weapon set there’s a large ripple effect that hurts a lot of viable builds. There’s nothing wrong with an off-weapon skill having a burst damage focus, especially when some primary weapon skills don’t have a burst damage focus. S/D was a good pairing with S primary providing the mobility and sustainability while D offhand provided burst and reactive play.

At the very least, the costs of this skill need to be re-evaluated in light of its role change from a burst damage ability to a purely utility-based skill. All affected weapon sets also need to be re-evaluated, because these changes can’t be made in a vacuum.

This thief saw me come out of stealth by him and immediately went dancing dagger. Im pretty new to the game but, all i had to do was attack him with heartseeker a couple times and he was down. It seems very week from when i started a couple weeks ago.

The ONLY reason Dancing Dagger was doing high damage (and burst) was because it had the ability to bounce to the same target twice. When there’s 2 people next to each other and no-one else, that’s the only time when Dancing Dagger will out damage other abilities. Against 1 target, any ability designed to be primarily a damage ability will be better, and no, Dancing Dagger did not do anywhere near as much damage as a backstab. Against 3-4 targets, Clusterbomb does more.

The only change this skill needed was to remove its ability to bounce to a target that it’s already hit. Instead, they decided to just nerf the damage (50%!?!), I’d say because it was easier than changing the mechanic of the skill.

This is sort of alarming because it shows that ANet isn’t willing to put effort into balancing the game properly and will make do with simple band-aid fixes and leave it at that.

It’s an offhand skill offhand skills are 90% of the time utility only. /thread

WereDragon.6083:

It’s an offhand skill offhand skills are 90% of the time utility only. /thread

Prior to the nerf, 50 % of off-hand skills were purely utility oriented with the other 50 % being solid damage skills. Now, 75 % of off-hand skills are purely utility oriented, including half (50 %) of the /dagger offhand skills.

You can’t use statistics to support a change that made those statistics true, and you especially can’t use statistics to support anything if you’re going to say “90 %” of 4 skills.

Now, if you want to argue the intent of off-hand skills is to be purely utility oriented, fine, but that is a poor design decision that templates skill setups too heavily and will result in even less build diversity.

There’s really no question that DD was OP and due for a nerf, but it would have been better to alter its mechanics to do less damage after each bounce rather than a straight 50% loss of damage. It is now pretty sad against single targets and mediocre (especially compared to caltrops) against multiple targets.

DD and CnD were utility, probably they weren’t meant to dealt that kind of damage, so, after all, both nerfs were fair.
No bouncing skill deal as much damage as DD used to deal, so, considering that it can be used more time in a row, you clearly see that DD needed an huge nerf.

Now it still deals more damage than the average bouncing skill.

My Thief cried at first when DD got nerfed.

But it really needed it, and I still use Dancing Dagger.

Compare the damage of Dancing Dagger to Headshot and Black Powder(Pistol Offhand). Stupidly high compared to it, even after the nerf. I still use Dancing Dagger for damage when there’s two enemies next to each other, but now I don’t just spam it even against a solo enemy like I used to.

The damage of Dancing Dagger was the same as phase 2 Heartseeker. It needed the nerf for that kind of damage at ranged that can cripple AND bounce.

I actually think it’s good where it is right now. Compared to the damage Pistol offhand does, it’s still way better. And it’s still great to use when two targets are next to each other. It should not be a major damage source, but a utility. Pistol Offhand is a great example of what utility is, and dagger offhand is getting close to it.

Dagger offhand is still my go-to choice. Pistol offhand’s utility is good like Dagger offhand, but the damage doesn’t come close to what dagger offhand offers. Pistol Offhand is too much effort for too little gain compared to Dagger Offhand(And this is after the DD nerf).

CnD is next for a nerf on damage. It’s gotta happen to keep it in check. It’s too good.

Honestly, when it comes to the Dancing Dagger nerf, I wouldn’t be upset about it if they REDUCED the initiative cost along with the MASSIVE damage reduction. It’s just not worth the initiative any more, AT ALL!

sorrow.2364:

No bouncing skill deal as much damage as DD used to deal
…
Now it still deals more damage than the average bouncing skill.

So are we arbitrarily comparing DD to non-thief skills due to a shared attribute (bouncing) or for your “average bouncing skill” comparison are you merely comparing DD, shortbow auto attack, and downed-state auto attack?

Either way it is a largely meaningless statement. It is like saying that “sneak attack applies more bleeds than the average bleed-applying skill”, “Choking Gas applies a longer poison than the average poison skill”, or “Pistol Whip does more damage than the average evade skill”. You can’t pick an arbitrary attribute of a weapon skill and then compare it to other professions in a vacuum.

Tulisin.6945:

sorrow.2364:

No bouncing skill deal as much damage as DD used to deal
…
Now it still deals more damage than the average bouncing skill.

So are we arbitrarily comparing DD to non-thief skills due to a shared attribute (bouncing) or for your “average bouncing skill” comparison are you merely comparing DD, shortbow auto attack, and downed-state auto attack?

Either way it is a largely meaningless statement. It is like saying that “sneak attack applies more bleeds than the average bleed-applying skill”, “Choking Gas applies a longer poison than the average poison skill”, or “Pistol Whip does more damage than the average evade skill”. You can’t pick an arbitrary attribute of a weapon skill and then compare it to other professions in a vacuum.

Bouncing skill are a specific skill type when talking about damage, because they can potentially deal its damage 2 times on the same target in a short period of time, that’s why most bouncing skill have very low damage.
Dancing Dagger was the only exception to this rule and you’ve seen what happened.
That’s why comparing bouncing skills in terms of damage makes sense, as makes sense comparing the damage of two channeled skills with its channel time.

Honestly a 50 percent nerf is pretty much unprecedented and most unwelcome. I invested on a sigil of fire for my offhand dagger and now its
pretty much a wasted 3 gold. I have very little use for this skill now.

Thanks dev team! Any chance you can give me my money back?

Too drastic!

goofparade.5862:

I invested on a sigil of fire for my offhand dagger and now its pretty much a wasted 3 gold.

I don’t see how, considering that sigil procs aren’t tied to the weapons they’re slotted to. Unless you’re arguing that off-hand dagger was the only dagger you ever used and now you’ve stopped using daggers entirely.

Actually being relatively new to gw2 I assumed the sigil was, but thanks for pointing that out. I still use DD to some extent but am not happy about the amount of nerfness here. I think 25 percent would have sufficed.

goofparade.5862:

Actually being relatively new to gw2 I assumed the sigil was, but thanks for pointing that out. I still use DD to some extent but am not happy about the amount of nerfness here. I think 25 percent would have sufficed.

It might’ve been due a mechanical change (less damage per target hit, etc), failing that a power/cost adjustment would’ve been reasonable (half damage, half initiative cost). A straight damage nerf with no change in cost was out of line and has done genuine harm to some previously fairly well balanced setups.

Excuse me, i seem to recall a redpost saying that the nerf’s would come with equal compensation for other things. Acutally, here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Backstab-time-to-nerf/page/2

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted you guys to know we’re looking at this specifically right now. We will probably bring down the raw spike DPS for some builds, but we’ll be careful to increase other areas to compensate.

I fail to see exactly how theif was compensated for the fact that EVERY dagger dps skill has been nerfed several times.