Guild Wars 2

With balance changes in the works it’s time to put my 2c in on the PvE front, which on the thief forum… well I usually have the impression this place is more PvP / WvW roamer. So anyway, with all the formats stepping on each other’s toes I’ve been trying to brainstorm solutions to the terrible state of an open world HoT PvE thief without destroying things elsewhere.

Main area the thief is lacking: tanky melee aoe.

3 things need to come together: a decent area attack, damage mitigation and sustained recovery from wounds all at once. I stress: all at once (but there is ebb and flow to this, or should be for balance). Think about how you would take on 10-15 HoT mobs in a Verdank Brink night defense where you can’t slink away in stealth, you have to hold fast and kill wave after wave without faltering.

Now, those 3 elements already come together on a meditation hammer guardian, dagger well necro and greatsword ranger. Add their elite specs (Dragonhunter, Reaper, Druid) and all 3 get even better at wading into mobs and wrecking everything, so I’m just looking at getting my thief to the level of my other characters. I guess I have to do it somewhat subjectively, because I get my guardian, necro and ranger to do crazy stuff my thief can only dream of, which again just highlights those 3 areas, all of which the thief is failing at. So, number 1:

Melee AoE in the Core Weapon Sets

I read the thief section in

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/profession-balance-goals-for-the-winter-2016-update/

and honestly wondered if I was playing the same game. The dagger and sword autos do enough damage don’t they? I’m a fan of both and I’m going to start with daggers.

Dagger/Dagger

From a PvE point of view, D/D skills 1, 2, 5 and Backstab are great power moves that can take out 1-2 targets. What it needs is Death Blossom to be a bigger aoe power move (wait for it condi players!) with ~210 range, ~1s of evade frames and just raw power damage instead of bleeding. There could be some debuff conditions for flavour but I would add these through traits, keeping the move vanilla like the original GW1 version (which was straight area damage).

Condi dagger would be a new feature I’d add through a trait, and it would cause the dagger moves to flip over to condi variants. This trait would be Caltrops in Trickery, already taken by death blossom spamming condi thieves as it is, and it would also alter the other dagger skills to reduce their power damage and add damaging conditions instead, such as bleed, poison and torment.

By separating power dagger and condi dagger with a trait, the full weapon bars would become useful. As it is, there are a few lame skills depending on whether you’ve gone power or condi and this is entirely fixable.

Next is Dancing Dagger, slot 4, which I would replace with the Flanking Strike / Larcenous Strike combo. Note this keeps the combo for S/D but moves it along a slot from 3 to 4. Partly this is to open the boon stealing up to any X/D build along with the evade, partly this is to open the S/D dual skill up to something new. The throwing dagger thing would be gone of course… would anyone miss it? Well, not me. Players can get throwing daggers in utilities now.

Sword/Dagger

I just covered dagger 4 above. The “new” dagger 4 evade actually puts it in the same slot as the ranger’s dagger 4 evade, which is good for muscle memory in case anyone plays both (as I do).

I think of the sword as a bit more defensive than the dagger, what with weakness on the auto and the jump in / jump out nature of Infiltrator’s Strike. It’s a good candidate for additional sustain, as you’d find on other class’s weapon sets. I would increase the conditions removed to 2, and add a heal of ~900 on Infiltrator’s Return. This is somewhat like the minor supplemental heals you see on staves, the elixir gun and such and doesn’t depend on stealth or doing something dangerous and stupid.

The new S/D Dual Skill I’d go for would be a defensive skill called Blades of Steel… I’m not sure about the scope, so other than a defensive crowd-busting move I’m not certain. Perhaps it could be like an inverse version of Vault, where the damage happens first in a Cyclone Axe-style double-swing and then the somersault out to a ground target, landing without damage.

Supplemental Healing

Minor wounds should be replenishable without leaning on the 6 skill. Acro and Daredevil lines both offer options (heal on initiative spent and heal on evade) that should be decent in a big melee. “Heal on evade” in particular could be burstier and so here’s an idea:

Driven Fortitude would grant 10 stacks of a driven fortitude buff that you’d see on your status effects.

• Other players would see it too if they clicked on you, like virtues, boons etc.
• Each evade you succeeded would deduct a stack and grant you a heal. That is, X simultaneous evades would give you X heals, until you ran out of stacks (exhausting the trait for now).
• Each stack has its own 10s timer, so after 10s that stack comes back.
• This is similar to the current 1s icd, except allows for burstier replenishment and periods of exhaustion. Better for crowd-diving and then taking a breather.

And that’s my 2c on what the thief needs in HoT PvE to go brawling with crowds of mobs like I do on other classes. It’s a fair bit behind right now on aoe damage, mitigation and recovery but it’s fixable.

I’d encourage the devs to think about dedicating weapon sets to either fully power or condi and then using traits to flip them from one to the other. I think that has some real potential.

Wouldn’t a sword/pistol signet of malice build do a lot of what you’re asking for? Or, on the condition end, d/d with caltrops and whatever the condition daredevil dodge is called. That dodge does a fair bit of healing with signet of malice. Even with a single target focused build, thief does very well in HOT. You do so much single target damage, you can just kill mobs one after another without taking too much time.

Cirian.8917:

By separating power dagger and condi dagger with a trait, the full weapon bars would become useful. As it is, there are a few lame skills depending on whether you’ve gone power or condi and this is entirely fixable.

This idea has merit. I like it.

This is kind of where they were trying to push DT. The problem is that it can’t be 100% the way it is now, because then Death Blossom spam would be completely absurd dealing 3 bleed and 3 poison.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

Dagger Training Should apply poison to each auto attack at a 100% chance, and just the auto. Remove the bleed from Death Blossom, and put it on Dancing Dagger. Buff Dancing Dagger’s damage by 50% and remove the ability for it to hit the same target multiple times, and just have it hit the target and up to three nearby enemies.
Death Blossom should be reworked into a multi-hit evading lunge with better range than it has now, similar to Whirlwind Attack (Warrior GS3), at the cost of an additional initiative, giving the set more mobility and stickiness to compete with D/P and some evasion and disengage potential to keep it stylized in between S/D.

This improves power D/D through a better evade and more useful and consistent Dancing Dagger, and lets condi D/x get better and more reliable condition application while increasing the skill cap and not making it overwhelming with DD.

Your entire problem is invalid already.

Condi D/D Daredevil with signet of malice and mad king runes already fulfills your criteria of area attack, damage mitigation and sustained recovery from wounds.

I can absolutely engage 15+ mobs at a time using the build, and do it frequently.

Your issue isn’t that you want a build thief lacks. It’s that you want a tanky aoe damage build with massive crits and massive sustain at the same time. I’d argue that they’re mutually exclusive across practically every other class in the game. Staff is already quite good at AoE damage if you want to go power.

The entire point of d/d is that it’s a composite set, suitable for hybrids. I don’t know why everyone seems so keen on somehow splitting it off. Since the most recent update to deathblossom, every skill on the D/D bar has valuable uses in either power or condi variants of the build. Complaining that condi builds can only spam 3 is like complaining that power builds can only spam 5>1. The rest of the bar has situational, mobility, combo exploitation, or defensive utility.

This isn’t like pistol, where it has some fundamentally wasteful skills and a massive disconnect between the auto and dual skill. Dagger auto is a solid defensive, power, and condi applier depending on traits. Deathblossom is either a bread and butter condi applier, or a situational evade depending on build. heartseeker is either a bread and butter DPS finisher or a situational mability tool depending on build. Dancing dagger is a situational combo exploitation skill on either build. CnD is either an offensive enabler or a defensive positioning tool depending on build.

D/D already works for either build style depending on trait and gear selection.

We don’t need more boring weapons that simply dictate trait and gear choices by equipping them. Staff is a bit boring for this reason. Thief, and to a lesser extent revnant, are the only classes that don’t need their weapons designed around being purely power or condition damage skill sets because of the unique resource mechanics. I don’t know why people are so keen to put Thieves in the same boring box as every other class in the game.

Changing the fundamental function of deathblossom would be a massive mistake. It’s not a mobility skill because heartseeker is already a mobility skill. Deathblossom is a “sticky evade with bleeds” and enables the d/d condition build for that exact reason.

Could we cut the aftercast on it some? Sure. Could we look at further improving its evade functionality? Sure. Does it need to be a mobility skill? No. It would simply make it harder to use while adding nothing to the set.

Improving poison procs on daggers is a solid idea, as is looking at some functional improvements for what dancing daggers already does (ranged bouncing cripple/projectile finisher spam) but fundamentally changing the function or damage typing of dagger skills is just not a good idea. it’s a fantastic and functional set with a lot of diversity already that only needs minor trait tweaks. It doesn’t need an overhaul just so that people can spam crits with every skill on the bar.

I would staunchly argue MH dagger has no use for condition application and that the traits surrounding it in DA do not benefit using the AA or any other skill except further push an emphasis into repeated use of Death Blossom from damage reliability and safe-of-play mentalities.

Stating that Death Blossom has use on a power build and Dancing Dagger provides meaningful utility is similar to proclaiming that Body Shot has meaningful utility for MH pistol builds. You make the claim that there is a disconnect in P/P between its auto and combined skill, yet the only weak skill argued on P/P is Body Shot, and MH dagger has horrible synergy on its autos and 3 skill, even with DT. Actually, I’d argue Vital Shot has a more substantial impact on Power P/P than D/D’s auto-chain with D/D.

The reality of the matter is that these skills, while having some degree of situational use, have very little purpose outside if their extreme niche role and subsequently put an indirect emphasis on spamming 3 for condi D/D and 5 -> 1 -> 2 on power D/D. D/P is a more competitive set for no other reason than each of its skills have synergy with the rest of its kit and that all skills are useful and impactful, and as such, can take full advantage of the initiative resource mechanic. Shadow Shot 3spam is absolutely a problem on D/P, but it is absolutely not in the realm of problematic design corresponding to 3spam on D/D. Use of any other skill on D/D condi outside of Death Blossom is almost a blatant waste of initiative because simply, the skill vastly overshadows the rest in terms of its practical uses and opportunity cost per initiative. Further, D/D power gains very little benefit from using DB because most of the problems plaguing D/D stem from combinations of worse damage output, reliability, and stickiness compared to D/P, while being poor in regards to its overall reset potential and mitigation in regards to the blinds on D/P and mobile evasiveness on MH sword.

Dagger Training is strictly speaking a horrible trait by design, putting an emphasis on RNG over skillful execution, and rewarding increased attack rate over all else for poison application. This leads to D/D being the target set due to Death Blossom being able to most reliably in terms of sheer probability trigger an effect of poison per cast on top of three bleeding, also boasting evasion. Per unit of time and initiative, Death Blossom in every single regard offers superior damage, defense, and utility for point control over all other skills on D/D for condition builds, and subsequently offers power dagger mainhand limited use because all associated benefits to D/D can be diverted into D/P with Daredevil, and all massive utility benefits from D/P override the paltry amounts D/D can provide in those very situational uses.

Heartseeker is a finisher. Its mobility advantage is limited unless spammed heavily (again, back to spamming), and is used for mobility often to disengage or avoid an encounter entirely HS is spammed because like Death Blossom, it offers a lot of desired utility (“Oh no, he’s getting away!”) and also a lot of damage (“He’s running away because he’s a low health, I need to finish him off!”), and is one of the best skills per initiative over the highest breadth of cases, and in all cases except for the case where < %25 target health within 450 range while not using a block effect or attacking back are all conditionally met, D/P’s Shadow Shot is objectively better. Does having a second mobility skill on D/P make it overpowered? No. Would changing D/D to not require a target and perhaps have a shorter-distance evading lunge make the set play differently? Absolutely. The skill is no longer “dive hard and punish them” like Shadow Shot, but instead “Avoid the incoming hit and follow up with something else” or “Disengage for the incoming hit and regain some distance as I’m being chased.”

Simply buffing those niche roles currently on D/D will not make the set more useful or impactful. It will only make certain fights and encounters more trivial dependent on build, and frankly, the buffs necessary to still make it competitive with D/P on power would be so obscene that a rework is completely necessary for the skill to gain a functional use and diversify which skills can be used when and the reasoning behind why they should be used. Creating ultimatums for players to need to ask themselves “what should I be doing right now?” by allowing for a variety of different and individually and unique options is from a game design perspective, how skilled play and strategy is defined in a competitive environment. This is why I completely believe DB and Dancing Dagger need reworks; both skills are marginalized and even skilled use of the skills provides a minimal-at-best impact on an encounter for power builds, or with Condition D/D, the best answer is almost always spam 3, because the benefits out of the other options are very easy to define.

D/D in its performance faces critical issues when being played by power builds; if your engage fails, you fail. Death Blossom in its current state, while providing an evade, does nothing to allow for the thief to properly overcome the effects of a negated engage. Its use lies solely in spamming while immobilized or under heavy fire, but innately provides no mechanism for the thief to recover from counter-burst, unlike the mobility, ranged CC, damage prevention and non-target stealth D/P can offer. Yes, it has a use. The problem is there is no benefit to ever even using the entire set compared to a vastly superior one. Power D/D’s style of play is identical to D/P’s at the moment, except it is less reliable with more require setup, more counters, lower damage output, worse utility, and worse performce per initiative with a less-desirable set of utility skills. D/D conditions is carried almost exclusively by Death Blossom. If they reverted Death Blossom to what it was, all merit condi D/D currently has would be thrown out the window. It’s cheesy, it’s spammy, and frankly, it’s unskilled. You could spread the condition application over Dancing Dagger and buff DT, you could buff the damage coefficients on DB and Dancing Dagger. The set would still be considered sub-par because it lacks no definitive style of play and is designed with poorer utility than what its competing sets offer. Death Blossom is not a sticky evade. Anyone getting “caught” by this skill is a horrible player that likely does not know he can move with asdw. D/D condi evasion only works so well because of DD’s evasion providing faster movement with stickiness (per the nature of dodge rolls) and because the format of sPvP focuses on staying in one location. Take a ranged kiting weapon against D/D conditions and the build becomes a hell of a lot weaker, because the the set cannot keep up.

As far as reduced aftercasts etc. goes, they’ve already done it. It’s why D/D condi 3spam is a thing; the aftercast is almost gone entirely. I’ve dove 60-man blobs with the skill and have not had any issues whatsoever staying alive. It’s basically the same thing as a dodge.

Giving the thief a diverse set of tools on a weapon is what makes the weapon successful, not just raw number tweaks. We have a mechanism that promotes spammy play when there are fundamental disparities between skills. As soon as one skill gets bumped up or knocked down, the ideology of the class simply shifts to the next best thing to spam. Pushing for a diversification of mechanics that all offer viable methods of play

Before I respond, I’d like to note that the majority of your argument here is centered around sPvP and WvW, which aren’t the focus of this thread. Further, expecting every build to be functional or valuable in every game mode is flawed thinking. I don’t expect condi D/D to ever live at top tier in PvP, or even to be modified to require “more skill” because, quite frankly, that’s not the focus of the build, and “more skill” is out the window anyway considering that every projectile attack in the game is target seeking anyway. Deathblossom’s skill requirement is about timing, same as heartseeker, not about picking the right spot on the ground to click.

Dagger auto provides both endurance and (non-proc) poison application, both valuable resources to the condi daredevil spec.

If you’re not using deathblossom since the last patch to free-evade ranged attacks, charges, and other such attacks, you’re playing suboptimally on the power build. You could be using that dodge for damage or condi cleansing in many cases. You yourself actually state ‘its basically the same thing as a dodge’

A 3 init dodge isn’t useful utility to you on a power build?

Dancing dagger is the weakest entry, and d/d’s analogy to body shot, but unlike body shot it is at the very least situationally useful due to its ability to proc 4 projectile finishers per use in rapid succession. This is handy for ranged condition application, panic self heals, massive condi cleanse, and a number of other uses. If you’re mostly soloing, then I can see how its multiple uses aren’t apperant. Situationally useful yes, but again, actually useful. I don’t dispute it could use some love, but it’s as good at situations it’s designed for as headshot is for what it’s designed for.

P/P is a massive comparative difference in design silliness. Unload has zero utility to condition builds. Zero. It provides no offensive or defensive benefit. It is literally a wasted button if you accidentally press it. Similarly, the auto’s low damage is completely worthless to power builds, which further compounds the initiative issues from P/P. You can actually deal damage with condi d/d by doing something other than spamming 3 due to dagger training, poison on auto, and dancing dagger. Hitting buttons that aren’t deathblossom can actually help you get to your target, or help you survive without completely flooring your damage or killing your attack chain becaue your attack chain relies on a very specific rotation of multiple initiative skills which must be executed in a specific order or your damage just starts to suck.

Body shot is just plain horrid due to its overly short condition duration for either build, and its utility simply doesn’t fit with p/p or p/d. Unlike dancing dagger, it isn’t even situationally useful as a slow, as if you’re running P/P you can already hit your target at its range, and if you’re running P/D you have dancing dagger if you’re trying to gap close. it’s apperant intended use is vulnerability application, but the vuln’s short suration and the skill’s init cost make it a waste of time. In addition, it only fires one projectile, which makes it useless for combo explotiation.

D/P has no better synergy than either power or condi d/d builds with a single exception, and that exception is black powder shot, which is a standout stellar skill and the only reason anyone picks up D/P. You’re not taking D/P for 3 or 4.

Headshot is just as situational as dancing dagger. You can’t spam it for damage, and its only value is as an interrupt. It has an extremely limited scope of use, but performs well in its intended role. Its dual skill is a working gap closer, which frees up initiative because you can ignore heartseeker until the Hp threshold it’s efficient, but even more situational than deathblossom.

I agree that dagger training could use a massive upgrade, and that upgrade alone would instantly fix a lot of things about D/D. Even from a power build standpoint the healing reduction of reliable poison would be extremely attractive. However, the primary fix to D/D is in making either dancing dagger or CnD stronger or cheaper skills, but not different skills. The ability to leap through a smoke field, hit a target, and still stealth, and the ability to borderline exploit the camera to stack stealth with no target are the only reasons D/P maintains its primacy.

Anet has left these behaviors alone because it’s all thief has left, but neither is intended design. if We’re going to leave D/P alone, I concur that D/D has to be brought up to its level, but at a core design level the functionality of d/d’s kit is just fine. Offhand dagger was simply reactively damage nerfed entirely too hard a long time ago and never reverted.

We’re getting damage coefficient changes to enhance autos, which means they’re seriously looking at initiative costs and opportunity costs. Bringing down the init cost of dancing dagger and returning the raw damage to cnd is really all the set needs.

PopeUrban.2578:

Condi D/D Daredevil with signet of malice and mad king runes already fulfills your criteria of area attack, damage mitigation and sustained recovery from wounds.

I can absolutely engage 15+ mobs at a time using the build, and do it frequently.

Sorry to go off topic, but would you please link the full build if you have time? I’ve been considering a condi DD for pve and I’d like to see how people are doing it before I go down that road.

Understood this thread is about balance in PvE. Open-world, more precisely, let’s look at what the OP was discussing wanting or needing.

- AOE
- Damage mitigation
- Damage recovery

My proposal encompasses all of those things with the proposed changes while not throwing the balance of D/D askew, and promotes a style of play within the lines of differences between D/P and S/D which makes sense thematically, buffs D/D condi for DPS and overall competitive use while increasing its skill ceiling, buffs power D/D for consistency which it lacks and is known to lack in sPvP and WvW, and lets the weapon combination combo better into others while not intrinsically nerfing D/P due to the thief’s existing innate weaknesses in sPvP while also balancing the skills around +1 potential and utility while keeping the skill design and usage similar to how they currently are designed around operating or have operated in the past.

Condi D/D is considered one of the better builds in sPvP the thief has. Why? Because it’s easy, spammy, evasive, and deals a solid amount of damage with bar-none the best bunkering capacity the thief has, paired with high mobility on shortbow for point control when fighting is not needed or map traversal for a contest is.

Right now, power D/D isn’t considered good in any format. Staff out-damages it in PvE. It lacks consistency and utility in PvP. It’s simply not as strong as D/P is in WvW.

Death Blossom does not really require timing on its usage. They almost completely removed the pre-cast and post-cast frames on it. You can literally spam the skill, and as long as you’re not missing out on frames to press the button, you WILL not take damage. It’s like saying dodge rolls require any particular amount of great skill. I’m sorry, but that is a core skill necessary to play the game as a whole, and the act of doing so does not merit any kind of reward. Also of note, heartseeker is not really a timed skill, either. You press a button and lunge at your foe to deal damage. Unless you’re calling “something under 25% health” as requiring any amount of skillful timing, in which case, the sheer contemplation of game balance is being taken way out of context.

Death Blossom’s horrible damage, slow animation, pitiful movement, and medium-high initiative cost is a complete waste of initiative on power D/D. One auto will do better damage. Your dodge rolls will be substantial enough for most mitigation. If you’re outnumbered, you need to use that initiative to straight up end or leave the fight. Simply put, DB is only ever useful to buy time on a point in sPvP after coming to terms with the fact you’re going to die because your swap is on cooldown, and you’re getting low on initiative fast, and you’re being ganked, and you don’t have nearby allies. AKA, you’ve either made massive misplays, or your opponents played really well and you were doomed to begin with. To say Death Blossom has absolutely ANY substantial merit outside of completely and totally niche scenarios that will not change the outcome of a fight on a power D/D build is pretty much completely false because in almost every possible circumstance there is an objectively superior action. Dodging does quite frankly nothing if you’re incapable of actually escaping combat, because as a thief, particularly on D/D, you’re not winning a 1v1 if immediately following your engage your target is not on the ground.

Having put over three thousand hours solely into D/D power thief, I think Dancing Dagger is a much better and more useful skill than Death Blossom for power builds. The 900/1200 (jumped) range gives D/D some tagging utility and ability to hinder enemies engage in combat against your allies through the cripple, as well as cleanse conditions through light fields (although guardians are mostly out of sPvP right now, so all you’re really benefiting from is fire fields these days, which are useless for power as it’s just a 1s burn). That said, the skill itself is very inconsistent in that again, it is only needed if you are incapable of successfully committing to a +1 and winning the fight, if your ally really needs a cleanse that badly and is capable of winning a fight given one, and you happen to just be there, with spare initiative, at range, not being focused, and there happens to be a light field also there, and there are two targets, as if there are more or less, it’s either a waste (just hard engage and CnD, the combat movespeed penalty will cause you to take a damage loss and reduce your engage potency and put you on less initiative for reduced damage), or you’re drawing aggro unnecessarily and you and your ally are probably going to die. What do I use this skill for? When I play in WvW, I don’t run a shortbow, since S/D covers the same landspeed but with better cleansing and disengage, evasion, reliability, and cleave, so I use Dancing Dagger primarily to get tags for bloodlust stacks in blob fights, damage Burning Oil, Cannons, and the likes because it’s my only ranged option, or if I misplay by missing a jumped Infil Strike target fleeing me, and use the skill out of desperation to attempt to get the down on a very low health target successfully beginning to escape, like a nike warrior. Otherwise, this utility also carries no benefit and I simply do not use it.

Unload has excellent synergy for P/P condi venoms. One unload can bulk-apply two venoms. For 6 initiative, you get a massive condi bomb applied absurdly quickly. Additionally, Unload has synergy with Sinister, Carrion, and Viper gear, because it offers the highest-damage power coefficient skill the thief has access to on what is a correspondingly low-cost ability per initiative. Getting a clutch 3-5k burst can be huge on condition builds, particularly as it acts as a solid pressure skill on P/P interruption during a period when say, a warrior or guardian uses a stability effect, berserker stance, healing signet active, Mally rev’s resistance, etc. I ran P/P conditions for a while, and found myself using this ability more than expected. A friend of mine has been running P/P condi venoms fairly successfully since 2012. In the instance of small group fighting, the build is extremely strong.

P/P PvE DPS is “bad” because of the “low” auto, and no other reason. In a recent thread, I mathematically showed that P/P power provides similar or better solo-DPS to a longbow ranger at max range which is not allowed to dodge for its 10% damage bonus. Otherwise, including any situation where another target stacks vulnerability, might, etc., the thief does better. For a ranged weapon, not only is the damage intended to be lower than melee (and thus is not considered optimal for those who run speed clears which is frankly the only environment it matters), but it manages to deal competitive or strictly better DPS than every other ranged alternative. Yes, the auto is weak in terms of a low damage coefficient and slow kill times if only the auto-attack is used, but our plethora of damage modifiers can offset this fairly well, to a point where the P/P thief’s AA chain can maintain almost the same DPS as a GS warrior’s AA chain. Of course, we all know Hundred Blades and Whirlwind Attack do huge damage and is what defines the warrior’s DPS. In the case of P/P thief, it is unload.

Body shot has very few uses, you’re correct. That said, P/D will not run Dancing Dagger to close a gap. Use steal, shadowstep, infiltrator’s strike, infiltrator’s arrow, surprise shot on swap, scorpion wire… anything. many P/D players will readily tell you Scorpion Wire, despite the horrific pathing, is better used than Dancing Dagger to force a gap close, otherwise the target is getting away, and many P/D condi players (primarily a WvW build due to the stealth dependency) also run D/P for sustained stealth and Shadow Shot for stickiness, or use Surprise Shot after a CnD via a shortbow swap and merely maintain proximity until they can swap back and re-engage with steal. If D/D got Death Blossom made into a skill that could result in stickiness, we’d see a more diverse pool of players using sets like P/D + D/D, allowing for better pressure maintenance without just needing to spend excess time waiting for cooldowns and chasing with shortbow. Body Shot’s limited utility only truthfully has one big and amazing feature; securing an elementalist stomp through spamming the immob so they cannot mist form their downed state into safety. Otherwise, you’re right in that the skill is horrible and has very few niche purposes and feels like a waste of initiative. But frankly, D/D players as a whole feel Dancing Dagger in regards to its raw utility purpose, provides similar of not worse as I mentioned above.

Headshot as situational as Dancing Dagger? Are you crazy? This skill destroys break bars. It can straight up deny many stacks of stability. It can prevent stomps. It can interrupt channels/CC from downed players. It can force a cooldown. It can lock someone without stability access out of a fight in a +1. It’s a physical projectile on an instant cast. It can deal massive torment damage for interruption P/P builds (not to mention perplexity stacking in WvW). It can run massive damage from Pulmonary Impact (something a ton of people are doing on D/P DD right now). I’m sorry, just no. Headshot is considered one of the best skills the thief has on any weapon. Its use has only degraded slightly because of the sheer number of reflects and invuln effects in the game’s PvP meta right now.

Shadow Shot being more situational than Death Blossom? I’m convinced you don’t even play thief. In the very few instances I’ve played D/P, I have single-handedly annihilated almost every D/P thief who has talked trash to me by using Shadow Shot alone. One of the people I trained to play thief got arrogant one day after beating me a few times playing D/P. I equipped an offhand pistol and beat him fifteen games in a row using a non-meta D/D-based trait and utility skill setup. I disabled the Auto-attack and used only Shadow Shot every single fight. I didn’t even stealth. Shadow Shot is the absolute best skill the thief has. It’s an unblockable gap close for four initiative with a teleport and blind that can’t be negated with the fourth highest skill damage coefficient the thief has on all weapons. I’m sorry, what? Thief is literally being carried by this skill in competitive PvP. This is the skill setting D/P so high above D/D. Black Powder post-nerf has been nerfed into “meh” in terms of raw effectiveness. What makes BP good is the stealth uptime/reliability because it can be used OOC and doesn’t depend on landing a hit to activate. Otherwise, the smoke field is considered mediocre, the damage is low, and the blind is short.

DT would not improve power D/D at all. Deadly Arts applies two stacks of poison for 10s on steal baseline. There’s your heal cut. The AA chain on MH dagger applies permanent poison, also heal-cut post-cleanse and allowing for some ultimatums to be made during Revealed; cut a heal with autos? Deal damage with HS? Disengage entirely? Mug is so much better on power for the sustain and raw damage (the coefficient is very high despite the inability to crit). D/D’s weakness is consistency and the capacity to +1 well. The +1 potential on D/P is infinitely better because the set has mobility built-in, something which D/D doesn’t have. D/D has to hard engage or use S/x as an alternate weapon, which prevents the class from +1’ing or roaming points in sPvP well with the lack of a shortbow; it becomes strictly worse than a mesmer at that point for +1’s due to the mesmer’s cooldowns on its teleports being so much lower and a 1200 range weapon enabling safer damage with less of a need to fully engage a point before moving to the next one, reducing travel time.

The current skills on D/D are what’s preventing the weapon from being more useful across the board and are hurting the ability for condition D/D to be played for both sustained damage in a fair and interesting way. Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger are just sub-par skills, and the skill ceiling is way too low on condi D/D with what is in my honest opinion not enough reward for playing on the offensive with venoms.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Cirian.8917:

By separating power dagger and condi dagger with a trait, the full weapon bars would become useful. As it is, there are a few lame skills depending on whether you’ve gone power or condi and this is entirely fixable.

This idea has merit. I like it.

Ditto. Really good suggestion. Btw I love the HoT mechanic where we can take a trait to change the functions of our dodge. Honestly I wanna see this in every single trait line for lots of skills, it will add so much diversity.

I play thief almost exclusively. I’ve played thief single early release, and I’ve repeatedly seen the same sort of ill fitting expectations on thief from both the player base and developers in terms of ‘skill’ and ‘weapon focus’

So, lemme get this straight. You’re campaigning for deathblossom to require ‘more skill’ than a dodge… but shadow shot is fine? You’re listing out situational uses of headshot without placing a corrolary to dancing dagger Basically saying "headshot is good at CC, and dancing dagger isn’t.

It’s good at combo exploitation. That’s its job. it’s not supposed to be good at CC.

Further, when you list ‘and thieves will just swap to X for Y utility’ you could use that logic to patch the weaknesses of any set.

Nobody is arguind that d/d is up to par. D/P is better than every other thief set. This has been true for a long time.

However, you’re still missing the point. "Skill is a nebulous concept that people like to bandy around like a badge of honor. No, it doesn’t take any more skill to any one skill than another. Don’t pretend it does. Using any part of D/P is not more challenging than pressing dodge or pressing deathblossom. You click a button. using any of the above skills is solely a matter of weighing the opportunity cost.

Your complaining that condition d/d is all about spamming deathblossom sounds like people who don’t play the class at all complaining about how easy it is for thieves to just spam 2 and win.

The fact is that simply spamming deathblossom is suboptimal for both survival and DPS. You can survive for about 12 seconds that way, and usually won’t do enough damage to kill anyone.

Since you seem to really want to turn this in to a PvP thread for some reason, I’ll bite.

Before HoT, I would agree with you. D/D was in dire need of help. With daredevil attached to it, it’s in a much better place. With a buff to auto damage and a buff to dagger training i think it’s in a good space. What you and every other thief that has ever posted on the subject fail to recognize is that every trait, and every thief skill related to D/D are all built, quite obviously, around running a hybrid build. You want enough power that heartseeker can push reliable damage under 50%, and enough condition damage that your bleeds and poisons can push it down that far.

Of course it sucks if you build it with nothing but power or condition stats. It isn’t and was never meant to do that. It’s purpose built as an attrition set. It just isn’t built very well due to multiple nerfs to the back end damage, lotus poison, lackluster dagger training, etc.

Playing deathblossom well in PvP does not permit you you simply spam 3. You’ll be out of initiative without much damage applied, and you’re literally only going to kill people too stupid to count to three. Playing deathblossom daredevil in PvP is 100% about evasion, and playing toward nothing but evasion. It is about reading your opponents and knowing which attacks are safe to suck up while you auto, and which attacks you need to evade with DB, or your dodge, so that you have enough endurance and init remaining to HS out a fleeing target, swap to SB and disengage, cnd to reposition, dancing dagger to lifsteal, cleanse, or apply bonus conditions, and a multitude of other factors. You need to track and keep enough reserve end to cancel out of bandit’s defense. As you said, anyone can just spam 3. The fact is that you’re going to suck if you just spam 3. This is true for D/D, and the only reason it isn’t true for D/P is because of the attached blind.

We don’t need some sort of extra trait to flip dagger skills, and the fundamental function of those skills is solid. They need some coefficient changes. Dagger training needs to be improved. Dancing dagger and CnD need a buff. Heartseeker is in a good place, assuming a buff to dagger training.

Froptimus.6741:

PopeUrban.2578:

Condi D/D Daredevil with signet of malice and mad king runes already fulfills your criteria of area attack, damage mitigation and sustained recovery from wounds.

I can absolutely engage 15+ mobs at a time using the build, and do it frequently.

Sorry to go off topic, but would you please link the full build if you have time? I’ve been considering a condi DD for pve and I’d like to see how people are doing it before I go down that road.

Actually you’re ON topic!

Here’s the PvE build I use:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVn8MBNPhFmCePB0PhlWCbeEuCfhaBgDwCwrMcHmDA-TRyBABAcIA2b/h+0H4lyP0PBA3fEAgUJoHPAANV/JAwBg5nf+5nf+mf+5nf+5DA-e

The jewelry on it is my “baseline” but I’ll often swap one or more pieces for settler or viper stuff depending on my party composition and what I’m doing for content.

I don’t usually run this in raids as it pays for its great suriviability and multitarget utility by being less good at single target DPS, so I switch to a venomshare build for raids so I can use most of the same equipment.

Important PvE tricks for the build:

Bunch up foes! Your Signet of Malice heals scale your survivability based directly on how many enemies you can bunch together. deathblossom strikes three times on up to 5 targets, which is a 2130 heal each use if you can get 5+ enemies together. Get melee to follow you on to ranged attackers, etc.

Be careful with bandit’s defense. Practice hitting and then immediately canceling it as letting it block and kick in large groups of mobs can get you stuck in the kick animation and killed. The low cooldown, however, makes it a great stunbreak. just practice dodging as soon as you use it to cancel the block so you can stunbreak without getting stuck in that kick animation in situations where it would be bad for you.

Your elite is a burst heal thanks to mad king runes. Each bird strike counts as an attack for the purposes for signet of malice. This means, like deathblossom, it is more effective at healing you the more targets are around. Swap to another elite if you want to use it more often, just remember the rune cooldown is 45 seconds, so you probably won’t want to use your 40s elites like BV right on cooldown. Personally I usually keep Daggerstorm on the bar as this is an aoe build, and daggerstorm is powerful healing and stability already. The MK runes also provide substantial bleed duration as well as a good source of power, which is going to make your backstab from stolen stealth worth using, and is going to make your heartseeker actually hit for damage worth their initiative.

This build has zero problems taking on up to 20 or so enemies, and is effective in pretty much any dungeon or fractal situation with very few exceptions. If you find melee to be a problem with some dungeon bosses and range it out. For bosses with shields like Thurmanova fractal you’ll want to keep a pistol in your bag, as you can’t deathblossom those targets, so you’ll want to play p/d for those encounters so you can still stack decent amounts of bleeds while using your dodge caltrops and lotus dodge daggers. You could also spam SB at close range for the same effect, but Its overall less single target condition damage. Provided you’re not in the zerg donuts in DS you should be able to solo most things with it. Feel free to vary up the sigils. I like the blight/purity sigils, but other people in my guild that have picked up the build use a variety of stuff for personal playstyle.

Good luck!

I’d prefer to see more effective conditions on thief autos rather than just more damage. Like, how about lifesteal on dagger auto? How about adding cripple to pistol auto? How about slow on sword auto?

I think there are a lot of ways to enhance our autoattacks to make them more viable without just loading them with more damage in a way that would increase our sustain, but also optionally increase DPS depending on build choices.

We don’t need damage, we need sustain that doesn’t reuire us to blow out init. It seems like they get that we blow a lot of init for sustain, so how about putting the sustain on the auto in stead of more damage? if we go with the classic thief model of out sustain largely coming from delivering debilitating conditions to the enemy, it would also make us more desirable in parties maybe?

PopeUrban.2578:

I play thief almost exclusively. I’ve played thief single early release, and I’ve repeatedly seen the same sort of ill fitting expectations on thief from both the player base and developers in terms of ‘skill’ and ‘weapon focus’

So, lemme get this straight. You’re campaigning for deathblossom to require ‘more skill’ than a dodge… but shadow shot is fine? You’re listing out situational uses of headshot without placing a corrolary to dancing dagger Basically saying "headshot is good at CC, and dancing dagger isn’t.

It’s good at combo exploitation. That’s its job. it’s not supposed to be good at CC.

Further, when you list ‘and thieves will just swap to X for Y utility’ you could use that logic to patch the weaknesses of any set.

Nobody is arguind that d/d is up to par. D/P is better than every other thief set. This has been true for a long time.

However, you’re still missing the point. "Skill is a nebulous concept that people like to bandy around like a badge of honor. No, it doesn’t take any more skill to any one skill than another. Don’t pretend it does. Using any part of D/P is not more challenging than pressing dodge or pressing deathblossom. You click a button. using any of the above skills is solely a matter of weighing the opportunity cost.

Your complaining that condition d/d is all about spamming deathblossom sounds like people who don’t play the class at all complaining about how easy it is for thieves to just spam 2 and win.

The fact is that simply spamming deathblossom is suboptimal for both survival and DPS. You can survive for about 12 seconds that way, and usually won’t do enough damage to kill anyone.

Since you seem to really want to turn this in to a PvP thread for some reason, I’ll bite.

Before HoT, I would agree with you. D/D was in dire need of help. With daredevil attached to it, it’s in a much better place. With a buff to auto damage and a buff to dagger training i think it’s in a good space. What you and every other thief that has ever posted on the subject fail to recognize is that every trait, and every thief skill related to D/D are all built, quite obviously, around running a hybrid build. You want enough power that heartseeker can push reliable damage under 50%, and enough condition damage that your bleeds and poisons can push it down that far.

Of course it sucks if you build it with nothing but power or condition stats. It isn’t and was never meant to do that. It’s purpose built as an attrition set. It just isn’t built very well due to multiple nerfs to the back end damage, lotus poison, lackluster dagger training, etc.

Playing deathblossom well in PvP does not permit you you simply spam 3. You’ll be out of initiative without much damage applied, and you’re literally only going to kill people too stupid to count to three. Playing deathblossom daredevil in PvP is 100% about evasion, and playing toward nothing but evasion. It is about reading your opponents and knowing which attacks are safe to suck up while you auto, and which attacks you need to evade with DB, or your dodge, so that you have enough endurance and init remaining to HS out a fleeing target, swap to SB and disengage, cnd to reposition, dancing dagger to lifsteal, cleanse, or apply bonus conditions, and a multitude of other factors. You need to track and keep enough reserve end to cancel out of bandit’s defense. As you said, anyone can just spam 3. The fact is that you’re going to suck if you just spam 3. This is true for D/D, and the only reason it isn’t true for D/P is because of the attached blind.

We don’t need some sort of extra trait to flip dagger skills, and the fundamental function of those skills is solid. They need some coefficient changes. Dagger training needs to be improved. Dancing dagger and CnD need a buff. Heartseeker is in a good place, assuming a buff to dagger training.

I do think Death Blossom, if it is going to deal substantial condition pressure, should require “more skill” to execute than a dodge roll. If it’s just an evade? They should be about equal, and the skill should come from deciding which to use based on its effects and what the caster can predict into the future. Flanking Strike requires more skill to use than a Dodge roll. Nobody seems to be complaining that using Flanking Strike is too hard or that it should be easier to evade with. A dodge is a one-button immunity effect and a reposition. If a build had infinite dodge rolls, it would be the single strongest build ever conceived in this game. Period. Death Blossom, as per all evade skills, should require more thought in its use in regards to if it should be used as an evade effect or a source of damage, the ranges on these skills, reposition uses, etc. As it is now, there is no reason not to use it immediately as soon as danger approaches. What made Acrobatics prior to the nerfs a “fair” trait line was the simple fact that it had a predetermined tempo and peak dodge rate. A S/D thief could never exceed a fixed number of consecutive dodges while dealing damage, and in most instances of team-fighting, would not be able to get more than three consecutive evades overall when FS flipped to LS. As an opponent, knowing when to attack defined the success against S/D, and S/D thief the success against the opponent by knowing when the opponent will attack and how to react accordingly. The build was incapable of killing while evading. Sometimes taking a blow was necessary to start winning a damage race or preventing a combo in the future. D/D condi Daredevil almost doesn’t have this feature. It not only does substantial (not optimal) damage while evading, but also doesn’t really have a fixed number of evades that can be predicted by a skilled opponent. All he can do is keep track of resources, but as soon as the thief runs low, he can shadowstep out and reset entirely or shortbow 5 to a safe location if the death really matters that much and there’s nobody there to rotate. Either way, trying to bait all of a D/D condi DD’s evades while staying on point and winning the damage race simply isn’t a feasible strategy when not playing the huge block/invuln meta we have right now. For how easy the build is to play (basically two buttons aside from basic movement), and how low-risk the build is (the best evasion uptime in the game), while having none of the other detriments of other thief builds reliant on stealth (causing point control loss) and better defense (you don’t really need power or crits to bunker), yes, I do think the build, for what it is, lacks depth and skilled play potential. My proposal isn’t about nerfing D/D condi directly as to make it worse but to increase the amount of skill potential and overall intrigue of the class and remaining weapon skills. Right now, it’s very limited.

I never argued Shadow Shot was fair. I actually said it was overpowered. I also never said D/P required any more skill to use than D/D. I’m arguing the opposite; D/P is objectively better at everything, and subsequently, as all strong builds are, used more commonly in competitive environments.

Whether or not a skill has situational “use” is irrelevant. I could design a skill that caused and instantaneous death to an opponent, regardless of all evades, invulns, distoration, blocks – it just straight up one-hit kills the target – that can only be used on Tuesdays when the number of seconds passed in the day is divisible by six, and can only be used when the value of Traveler Runes on the Trading Post is below or above certain mean and medium values. I could keep on adding conditions to make this skill have miniscule use Just because it could win a tournament game with a massive play to OHKO a bunker at full does not mean that the skill is well-designed or even remotely useful overall. What matters is the ability for that skill to be used in a breadth of scenarios and creating an environment where deciding between skills requires quick and smart decision-making. Dancing Dagger and Death Blossom have so few “opportune” moments that the skills are either under-performers or simply the decision to use the skill is incredibly obvious. Hyper-niche roles for skills is not successful design for the thief. It’s why D/P is the strongest set and most-selected for competitive PvP, and frankly, why the thief’s use of its skills is often so limited in PvE paired with the class’s limited capacity for support or self-sustain. All of the skills on D/P can be used in wildly different scenarios, they can be used and worthwhile to use in strictly more scenarios, and offer what are objectively superior benefits to the utility measures D/D has. D/D is not fine just because of an arbitrary declaration that its concept makes sense or the claim that it’s competition is superior, and therefore irrelevant for comparison. D/P isn’t so strong that the thief is dominating anything; the thief is an under-performer as a class through flawed design on other weapons and a game scene which does not allow the thief to play the way it was designed to/needs to, and D/P offers the class the best tools to help offset this. Unless ANet removes a bulk majority of the invuln and block effects in the game, the thief will continue to play poorly, particularly D/D. Like I said, you could buff the skills to obscenity, and until they reach a low-skill-ceiling build that allows it to compete in the current competitive environment design through exploitation of an overtuned ability that has relevance within the confines of the dominant play strategy (fixed via Capture and hold innately favoring tankier specs with more invulns), such as how D/D condi plays now, the set, from a design perspective, will be horrible and will lack depth of use because of the lack of breadth of use cases its skills encompass with meaningful results.

I’m complaining about D/D condition because I have played D/D for so long and tried the build. It’s too easy, it’s unfun, and frankly, arguing the build is “fine” is like arguing that chained invulns on the Chronomancer on the release of HoT + GW and associated bugs to various Chrono abilities were “fine”, or arguing that D/D celestial ele was “fine”. It’s gimmicky, boring, offers next to no dynamism and frankly, if balanced around, destructive to the rest of the weapon skills, class, and associated trait lines.

Actually, I’ve also vouched for Heartseeker daamge scaling adjustments AND the removal of Fire/Air sigils from the entire game as a whole, because Fire/Air procs on HS spam actually lets the build succeed much more than it should. Fire got nerfed slightly, but air remains, and the burst potential and lack of options to counter the sigils and subsequent bonus damage from HS is also poor design rewarding unskilled play more than it should.

Yes, if all that is done is pressing 3, then D/D condi will not do that great in the long run. I consider using dodge rolls at appropriate tempo and times between skill use and taking advantage of what Daredevil offers in regards to very high dodge frequency with overdone synergy for this skill (mentioned above) as necessary skills to play the game in general. Not dodge rolling gets you killed anywhere on any class no matter how strong if your opponent is competent.

The opponents will be able to need to count to five even if it is spammed completely :P Assume Trickery is required (because it is) for 15 initiative (3 uses with three initiative left over) + natural initiative regeneration during the skill uses will carry five consecutive casts. It will also deal fairly good damage, considering on engage you need to consider the free stacks of 5 confusion from Trickery (and potentially two stacks of poison as well from DA, though Acro is used more commonly for vigor + DD endurance + DB spam), and if mandatory dodge rolls are used to cover initiative regen/cooldowns as all classes require, you’ll be dealing Bleed/Torment/Poison on each dodge and 3 bleed on each DB cast. Given a Carrion Amulet (nothing for sigils or runes), your DB will deal 3k damage. Your base dodge rolls start doing close to 1.5k from DD, and a few hundred to a few thousand damage from Caltrops. This isn’t paltry considering you’re evading during the process of dealing this damage, it ignores toughness and protection, and once applied, ignores blocks.

If you spec hybrid on D/D, you will suck. The skills and traits are not there. Your damage, both power and conditions, will drop exponentially based on how the thief is designed via damage modifier stacking, and you gain no utility or durability benefits, and any associated with going hybrid will be innately superior when building into one stat.

What makes the entire “hybrid” concept work in sPvP is boons and other classes carrying intrinsically better stats and modifiers. Might affecting condition damage and raw damage; protection giving huge penalties to incoming raw damage but not condition damage, massive heals through high coefficients on healing abilities or frequencies paired with disparities offset through the gain of other boons such as might to allow for say, celestial, to be so strong (on top of the amulet being mathematically imbalanced, as is Marauder, as was Minstrel, Viper’s, etc. We’re not designed trait-wise, boon-wise, and stat-wise to build hybrids. If our hybrid capabilities were not just innately poor through our core class design, we’d have seen P/P hybrid be mainstream a LONG time ago, because mathematically it’s just better and has been better than D/D for a long time.

My proposal is also not flipping skills on traits. Imho, that idea is overly-complicated and would remove future endeavors into letting hybrid builds potentially do better in regards to say, future elite specializations or coefficient and trait adjustments. My proposal is tweaks and adjustments to the way the skills currently deal damage and operate while moving the same effects elsewhere on the set to allow for both builds to have all of its skills be individually usable in a wider variety of circumstances while not providing D/P any more superiority.

As for your second post, debilitating conditions, unless you mean DoT effects, will not make the thief useful or desired in parties. Check the necromancer boards/Nemesis’s “theories” behind changing the prior PvE meta regarding debilitating conditions. None of what he says actually holds, especially now, because most bosses completely ignore debilitating conditions’ effects, such as chill, immob, weakness, etc. Damage and CC is the only thing that matters in PvE, and buffing the thief auto into being excellent at this will not fix the class or its usefulness in competitive environments due to the lack of support it provides the rest of its party. Even sustain buffs won’t really change much for the thief because it gets gibbed so quickly, and IP is extremely powerful as a sustained healing skill, particularly on staff.

Maybe, just maybe, DT could be reworked to say, provide poison on the autos to bump condition DPS for D/D thief and as such allow for Death Blossom to be changed away from being the condi-hybrid skill for damage on D/D to a better evade, and Dancing Dagger could be made into more substantial condition burst with a shorter cast time and lack of animation lock to let the thief justifiably have really good condition damage performance and internal build variety. Kind of like the exact thing I mentioned doing above, for the stated reasons above, because just buffing D/D condi DPS on autos and keeping the set as is will just deadlock the set into condition play over power and subsequently hybrid play.

Seems to bear a big similarity to what I mentioned doing above.

I see your primary problem with deathblossom and we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. I’d agree with you in a game in which the majority of abilities were skillshots, but the fact of the matter is that every non-aoe skill in the game is by default target seeking, and melee skills are target seeking and cones.

Deathblossom’s low innate damage is the tradeoff for its evade utility. The damaging condtion (bleed) at only 3 stack applications per use is easy to mitigate. If Deathblossom was in stead a highly bursty white damage skill I’d agree with you that it doesn’t have sufficient drawbacks in realtion to its strengths. What you find "boring’ and “unskillful” many people, myself included, actually find fun. I took the time to really dig in to the build. I have played it in PvP before HoT, when it was far worse.

It’s not a strong meta contender, and you can cheese with it, but it’s not equipped to cheese in high level play. It’s not as simple as “hit button get good damage and evades” if you hit deathblossom for an evade, and you deal less than two strikes of damage, you have wasted initiative. Your view of the build versus the reality of playing it is an insurmountable obstacle to this particular conversation.

I’m going to drop it as many of your views seem to be asking for thief to have less situational skills. That’s the point of the initiative mechanic. It allows thieves to repeat skills for specific effect. Initiative exists to allow spamming. A well designed thief set has five extremely situational skills, which can be repeated in the situations they’re good at. The assertion that condi d/d has nothing to offer but deathblossom is just plain false. The assertion that condi D/D relies on repeated use of deathblossom as a core damage skill is true.

You see that as a problem. I don’t. I feel that with some slight alteration d/d typifies what a good thief set should be. It has adequate tools for damage, stealth, evasion, and access to debilitating conditions.

The specific numbers and application? yeah, you and I agree they need a bump to get up there with D/P, which means that their primary issues are in skills 3-5. We also agree that 3 is an extremely appealing and useful skill. This leaves 4 and 5 as the problematic options.

Offhand pistol is typified as a highly defensive weapon. You’ve got an interrupt and a blind field. So how do we make offhand dagger attractive, without placing it in a largely homogenous and uninteresting role? My thought is that it should be primarily offensive.

The core function of CnD is crucial to any */D build, so that stealth needs to be there, but where can we go with it to make it as attractive in its role as black powder? I think the old damage coeficient was pretty great, but if we’re worried about damage blowouts… what about an immobilize? That’s a particularly nasty condition, but due to the way CnD works it’s not something you’re likely to spam. It’s interesting support as well. Another option is to make it cleanse debilitating conditions (but not damage conditions). That would make it superbly reliable, and give it a secondary function that adds dynamic usefulness to multiple sets and adds build diversity by potentially allowing */D builds to take something in place of where they generally get that cleanse.

The Core function of Dancing Dagger is a scaling AoE that exploits combo fields, but is a marginally effective gap closer against single targets. Problem is that it isn’t a great gap closer, and its mechanics (which are interesting, the bounces) prevent giving it too much love. How do we reinforce the offensive feel of offhand dagger while keeping the unique (to thief anyway) nature of its bouncing projectile finisher spam? Well, let’s make it unblockable for a start. Now, let’s also make it remove some endurance from the target, say 25? Since that endurance removal isn’t useful for PvE, we can special case that effect as a breakbar hit, giving d/d a solid breakbar buster, unique in that you can really go to town on multiple breakbars with it in the right situations. In PvP, endurance is a highly valuable defensive commodity to everyone. The ability to choose to open by shutting out dodges, thus forcing the opponent to dodge the skill, or open with damage is compelling. The ability to spam it at a fleeing target to ensure they’re open to a scorpion wire, stun, or other ability seems compelling.

If you REALLY must change deathblossom to require “more skill” (for the record, I still don’t think that’s a meaningful distinction compared to any other skill in the game) Simply make it move targeted, like a dodge. In this manner it becomes, literally, a skill shot, and has a bit more versatility as an evade on power builds while requiring “more skill” on condi builds.

I also really do think DT as an auto-poison is valuable, however it could easily be constrained to a 1s ICD to prevent it from overly buffing deathblossom. This would increase auto uptime effectively almost the same effect as adding it to the auto, but would also add a bump to the other skills for condition builds, and add much more powerful and reliable healing debuffs/cover conditions to the power kits. This would also buff D/P, true, but with the proposed changes the offhand dagger seems to have enough compelling pros that it remains a strong contender, if we simply bring down shadow shot’s damage a little, as well as its init cost, to reinforce its use as a gap closer.

PopeUrban.2578:

I see your primary problem with deathblossom and we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. I’d agree with you in a game in which the majority of abilities were skillshots, but the fact of the matter is that every non-aoe skill in the game is by default target seeking, and melee skills are target seeking and cones.

Deathblossom’s low innate damage is the tradeoff for its evade utility. The damaging condtion (bleed) at only 3 stack applications per use is easy to mitigate. If Deathblossom was in stead a highly bursty white damage skill I’d agree with you that it doesn’t have sufficient drawbacks in realtion to its strengths. What you find "boring’ and “unskillful” many people, myself included, actually find fun. I took the time to really dig in to the build. I have played it in PvP before HoT, when it was far worse.

It’s not a strong meta contender, and you can cheese with it, but it’s not equipped to cheese in high level play. It’s not as simple as “hit button get good damage and evades” if you hit deathblossom for an evade, and you deal less than two strikes of damage, you have wasted initiative. Your view of the build versus the reality of playing it is an insurmountable obstacle to this particular conversation.

I’m going to drop it as many of your views seem to be asking for thief to have less situational skills. That’s the point of the initiative mechanic. It allows thieves to repeat skills for specific effect. Initiative exists to allow spamming. A well designed thief set has five extremely situational skills, which can be repeated in the situations they’re good at. The assertion that condi d/d has nothing to offer but deathblossom is just plain false. The assertion that condi D/D relies on repeated use of deathblossom as a core damage skill is true.

You see that as a problem. I don’t. I feel that with some slight alteration d/d typifies what a good thief set should be. It has adequate tools for damage, stealth, evasion, and access to debilitating conditions.

The specific numbers and application? yeah, you and I agree they need a bump to get up there with D/P, which means that their primary issues are in skills 3-5. We also agree that 3 is an extremely appealing and useful skill. This leaves 4 and 5 as the problematic options.

Offhand pistol is typified as a highly defensive weapon. You’ve got an interrupt and a blind field. So how do we make offhand dagger attractive, without placing it in a largely homogenous and uninteresting role? My thought is that it should be primarily offensive.

The core function of CnD is crucial to any */D build, so that stealth needs to be there, but where can we go with it to make it as attractive in its role as black powder? I think the old damage coeficient was pretty great, but if we’re worried about damage blowouts… what about an immobilize? That’s a particularly nasty condition, but due to the way CnD works it’s not something you’re likely to spam. It’s interesting support as well. Another option is to make it cleanse debilitating conditions (but not damage conditions). That would make it superbly reliable, and give it a secondary function that adds dynamic usefulness to multiple sets and adds build diversity by potentially allowing */D builds to take something in place of where they generally get that cleanse.

The Core function of Dancing Dagger is a scaling AoE that exploits combo fields, but is a marginally effective gap closer against single targets. Problem is that it isn’t a great gap closer, and its mechanics (which are interesting, the bounces) prevent giving it too much love. How do we reinforce the offensive feel of offhand dagger while keeping the unique (to thief anyway) nature of its bouncing projectile finisher spam? Well, let’s make it unblockable for a start. Now, let’s also make it remove some endurance from the target, say 25? Since that endurance removal isn’t useful for PvE, we can special case that effect as a breakbar hit, giving d/d a solid breakbar buster, unique in that you can really go to town on multiple breakbars with it in the right situations. In PvP, endurance is a highly valuable defensive commodity to everyone. The ability to choose to open by shutting out dodges, thus forcing the opponent to dodge the skill, or open with damage is compelling. The ability to spam it at a fleeing target to ensure they’re open to a scorpion wire, stun, or other ability seems compelling.

If you REALLY must change deathblossom to require “more skill” (for the record, I still don’t think that’s a meaningful distinction compared to any other skill in the game) Simply make it move targeted, like a dodge. In this manner it becomes, literally, a skill shot, and has a bit more versatility as an evade on power builds while requiring “more skill” on condi builds.

I also really do think DT as an auto-poison is valuable, however it could easily be constrained to a 1s ICD to prevent it from overly buffing deathblossom. This would increase auto uptime effectively almost the same effect as adding it to the auto, but would also add a bump to the other skills for condition builds, and add much more powerful and reliable healing debuffs/cover conditions to the power kits. This would also buff D/P, true, but with the proposed changes the offhand dagger seems to have enough compelling pros that it remains a strong contender, if we simply bring down shadow shot’s damage a little, as well as its init cost, to reinforce its use as a gap closer.

Just a few quick things. CnD getting a cleanse might be a bit too much, and doesn’t really increase the innate reliability of the skill. Removal of a control condition + DoT on stealth via SA every four seconds might be a bit much, also when considering the passive healing and initiative regeneration in stealth. A big problem with CnD is that you spend six initative to maybe get a stealth. The general issue in sPvP is that there are so many blocks, blinds, invulns, and immunity effects that actually landing the skill itself is rather problematic to do. Upon landing, though, it is worth the initiative cost as it is now, so I question if it’d just be too punishing giving it more condition removal baseline. I think we just need better condition cleansing options in general within our core traitlines. Acro offers a bit of solace for condition players, but D/D power is pretty much obligated to run DA or CS as its first line for damage, control, and reliability. Putting a cleanse in DA would probably be out-of-place and make the line even further emphasized for use as it is. CS is very niche and doesn’t offer a lot, so I think the best option would be to put a cleanse on HK. Also recall S/D has a built-in cleanse, too, so having two built-in cleanses on a weapon set + hard CC + evasion + unblockable damage + high coefficients would probably just be a little excessive compared to D/D.

Now, BV’s new-found unblockable attack feature announced earlier today can help this immensely, although getting a cast of BV in the thick of combat while not stealthed can be very difficult (as to make CnD and backstab unblockable), and this change benefits D/P more than D/D because of it. I don’t expect you to have known this information or have posted about it, but I’m simply speculating on the future of D/D.

Endurance removal on DD would be too strong. The importance of dodge rolls is huge, but potentially grabbing a full dodge roll from other players is overly-devastating. Consider ranger pets, mesmer clones, necro minions, turret/gyro engineers, and spirit weapon guardians getting punished for just having summoned creatures, or having two people on a point defending. One could deny dodges almost infinitely with the skill alone, and again I don’t think this is the direction the class should go into.

I perceive initiative as completely different, and frankly I think this perception has to do more with the core design ideology of the thief rather than what may be occurring now. My opinions were that each skill should be low-impact due to the lack of cooldown, but have a diverse breadth of use-cases. Knowing when and what to use will define the class’s success, because none or very few of the skills have any kind of set rotation or combo; stealth attacks cover that kind of play for us if we’re investing into damage, but the nature of stealth and the thief is to be tricky, so simply disappearing and deciding against using a stealth attack to make your opponent blow cooldowns is part of playing well. With a wide breadth of use-cases for each skill, but each with a lower impact than other classes (also why we have lower stats), the thief needs to be opportunistic and make difficult decisions on which skills to use when, but still has the capacity to use a skill twice in a row if the opportunity arises. Having deeply situational skills with limited breadth of use-cases causes the entire opportunistic style of play, and frankly, most justification of the class having innately lower stats than others, to simply not make sense.

I think soft CC and control abilities should affect break bars more in general. They currently don’t really do anything at all and are usually wasted investments unless with particularly large groups of players, and this would be a QoL buff to not only thieves but a ton of classes and builds that don’t have spammable CC. A lot of the “good” soft CC effects such as fear, immob, weakness, and blind, have short durations comparable to stuns, anyways.

In my original proposal, I mentioned the reworked death blossom as having an interface like Whirwind Attack, which is as you described, a skill shot. This ups the skill cap, and by changing the bleeds to Dancing Dagger, gives condi D/D cheaper or same-cost bleeds at range, hitting multiple targets (better AoE coverage and control on MH dagger for condi builds), but not having them built-in to an evade such that yes, the skill can be casted repeatedly, but makes a condi thief need to decide, just as much as a power build does, if they can afford to deal damage right now or need to save or spend the initiative doing something else entirely. It also gives D/D condi better evasion and mobility, which it lacks right now. That’s the whole point: up the skill cap for D/D condi and up the utility use for D/D power. Maybe our entire discussion was pointless because this didn’t reach you, but that is the justification in a nutshell behind my proposal.

DT being made to work on all dagger attacks would probably be a bit much. I liked it on the AA alone because it changes the style a bit between D/D power and condi; you could buff the poison duration here and you’d be fine, too. It lets D/D condi get optimal damage playing a bit riskier, but gives them some endurance regeneration synergy on the AA chain and much more condition burst without needing to just dump all their initiative into spamming DB, while still carrying the risk associated of being in melee combat and not dealing damage in the process of evading. This was also the motivation behind the Dancing Dagger changes, as the damage is inherently safer and hits multiple targets, but requires more of an initiative dump to match the damage a dagger MH build could do from playing riskier in melee. It puts DB as just a general-purpose useful utility for re-positioning and evading on both builds, increases stickiness for melee, but also enables better kiting and mobility with innate synergy with Dancing Dagger for a quick disengage and bleed + cripple. This doesn’t become OP, in both kiting or damage output, though, because of restrictions of number of uses via the initiative mechanic, as well as making such an evasive build need to frequently leave the capture point in sPvP.

Maybe this will put us closer to the same page.

I don’t think there’s much of a purpose to reducing SS’s initiative cost. Cutting the damage and the unblockable aspect would do it, as it still closes gaps. As it is, the skill needs a little bit of damage loss (like 10%) just because it’s so freaking strong.

CnD:
perhaps cleanse is too strong, but to be honest its core mechanic of ‘hit person, get stealth’ isn’t sufficient to justify its cost specifically for the reasons you mentioned. The changes in today’s cast do muddy things significantly, however.

Bleeds, DB vs DD:
That’s just it though. Shuffling lackluster bleeds over to DD completely changed the feel of both skills. At this point your just turning condi DD in to a ranged weapon. Would it be effective? Probably. But would it be fun? no. The entire point of deathblossom is that it piles bleeds while evading. Taking the bleed makes it worse on condition builds, and no more useful on power builds. Having the bleeds on dancing dagger doesn’t make it more useful. It just means you don’t have enough initiative. Lotus training didn’t happen by accident. It was purpose built to synergize with deathblossom because being able to play all in defense while applying moderate condition pressure is what makes that build unique amongst its peers What you’re proposing is taking an insteresting skill, and making it boring, and taking a lackluster skill and making it necessary. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have to make a snap decision between evade and three bleeds. It’s only three bleeds The entire point of the spec, which was deliberately reinforced by the design of daredevil, is that is can spam evades whilst applying aoe conditions. What it lacks is compelling and useful reasons to hit the other buttons. not requirements to hit other buttons. What you’re proposing isn’t a choice. It’s paint by numbers reactionary skill design. Hit this button to evade, hit this button to deal damage. Those are choices but they’re not valuable choices. They’re predetermined outcomes that over-emphasize initiative management with little user input, and make the most reliable damage application on a melee set a ranged skill. Further, it then becomes a carbon copy of playing a sword build, where balancing between heavy DPS and evasion is the centerpiece of the playstyle. I see no reason to homogenize weaponsets in this manner. The way deathblossom functions and what it does is unique, valuable, and fun.

As for the interface, I’d honestly prefer to completely avoid ‘ground targeted melee rush’ It’s awkward in every skill that uses it, and in the case of thief who has the ability (and thus expectation) to use it multiple times in succession it’s unnecessarily cumbersome. Imagine attempting to do a chain of three deathblossoms with a ground targeted skill. You need to select a precise ground target, while in a motion that accelerates you upward and through the air. Ground targeting for abilities that use it is specifically done in a manner that doesn’t require rapid camera shifts like that in most cases because it’s not just slightly, but massively more complex from an input perspective than other options. There is no reason to make the class even harder to play than it is. Staff doesn’t suffer from, this because its ground targeted ability is, smartly, an ability that delivers its damage at the point of impact. Abilities that deliver damage along a line, like deathblossom, are extremely cumbersome if you have to use them multiple times. Personally I think the current targeting is just fine. There’s a limitation there that makes it slightly less usable as a dodge. I merely posited new targeting since you seem to have a deep distaste for the core mechanism of deathblossom in particular, and the core gameplay of condition D/D in general.

I get it. You don’t like spamming evades while applying dots. I do. people that play condi D/D do. That’s literally why we play the build because being evasive,not stealthy, and killing through pressure rather than spikes is fun. Splitting the skill in two fundamentally changes the core play of condition D/D in to something unrecognizable and I don’t think that’s acceptable.

We don’t need to move the bleeds off. We don’t need to make deathblossom objectively worse. If It were that horribly OP, thieves would be highly desired right now in ranked play and raids. They’re not. What they need are buffs to underperforming skills, not nerfs to existing ones that actually good enough to use. What you’re proposing is a direct nerf to initiative utility, and a massive shift in the playstyle of the build.

We need to make power D/D better. We need to give condi D/D more compelling reasons to hit the other buttons. Gutting deathblossom and making the most effective condi application a ranged ability do neither of those things. They just take a fun spec and make it an initiative management nightmare while replacing what made it fun with something that displays an even less coherant identity than it already has.

make the most reliable damage application on a melee set a ranged skill

Which is why I said to put DT to 100% on Autos and buff the poison duration. The most reliable and highest damage output shifts from Death Blossom to the AA chain. The bonus to conditions becomes extra.

Lotus training didn’t happen by accident. It was purpose built to synergize with deathblossom because being able to play all in defense while applying moderate condition pressure is what makes that build unique amongst its peers

Except that this isn’t really true. Bounding Dodge does more damage than Cloak and Dagger and also applies pressure while dodging and being evasive. Pulmonary Impact also does the same in that it’s delayed burst on interruption allowing the Daredevil building power to deal damage during its evasion and disengage. Lotus Training is just there to support condition-oriented play better in an offensive manner stylized to what the Daredevil concept is: spamming evades. Yes, it offers nice synergy, but that doesn’t mean this was the sole intention of the design. I see no reason why this dodge would be any less useful on P/D than D/D.

Having the bleeds on dancing dagger doesn’t make it more useful.

50% more damage on a given hit and more reliable and normalized casting damage, different AoE coverage, and better AoE condition coverage all sound like it makes the skill more useful. I seriously don’t think Dancing Dagger offers much on its own right now. This improves consistency and gives the thief within the confines of its melee set the ability to gain some kind of ranged skill that can actually do something other than apply pathetic damage, no gap close potential, no reset potential, while applying basically the worst finisher type in the game.

What [D/D] lacks is compelling and useful reasons to hit the other buttons. not requirements to hit other buttons.

And that’s the thing: The skills by design are really not useful for power builds, and Death Blossom is pretty much always a superior action on condition builds. No numbers tweaking would properly fix this without just shuffling the “well now it’s OP” or “well now it’s pointless to use” – referring to both skills and builds – statements around.

[Camera and targeting]

This is just part of what is required of skilled gameplay. I proposed point-and-click for targeting on the stark contrast that it is easier for people to use in terms of key angles for positioning. Personally, I would prefer it to always go straight or towards a target selected like DB, but I know some people may dislike this. The “attack while moving” thing is kept to keep it in line within what a good gap close offers without breaking the skill. Shadow Shot’s damage is cancel-able mid-cast for just the teleport to take effect, but no damage. I don’t want DB to allow stealthed users to get huge engage + evasion + a bulk sum of damage on impact, and nor do I really want them getting revealed too often because of it. Only when they fire the skill into a group of people while stealthed, because that’s just poor play, and not really now D/D should act; leave teleporting stealth engages to D/P, and give D/D some better escape and non-stealth engages.

That’s literally why we play the build because being evasive,not stealthy, and killing through pressure rather than spikes is fun.

And the changes I proposed continue to cater to that style. Is that not the point of condition builds? Apply pressure and maintain mitigation? There’s a reason the core condition stat setups all featured a defense stat and why it only initially had one damaging stat, but has semi-synergy with precision. The big issue I have is being able to deal damage while not being able to take any. People would freak out if mesmers got massive blue uptime increases. It’s basically the same thing. I also prefer evasive builds and frankly, I hate stealth. I play full-front-loaded burst and S/D as my alternate weapon; the instant I am stealthed, I am leaving stealth to get in my stealth attack, and move on. Then I sustain on S/D, because all sustaining options on D/D are horrible. I’m not competitive sPvP’er (I am obligated to play shortbow over S/D when I do, which is IMHO a boring set due to what is largely 3spam to stay on point if necessary or just fleeing the scene with 5spam). I’ve never run a defensive trait until Withdraw was made a Trick and Trickster got a condition cleanse, because I prefer active play rather than camping stealth waiting for an opportunity and passively sustaining and licking my wounds.

We don’t need to move the bleeds off. We don’t need to make deathblossom objectively worse

Except that’s the cornerstone to my argument; the skill is very strong. The design change doesn’t make the trait worse; it changes it. If they removed LS from S/D, we’d see a LOT more people playing S/D. It used to not have a second part. It used to evade while dealing damage, and dealt less damage. It was deliberately nerfed and put into two separate skills because the evasion was simply too much. It was nerfed because it was dealing damage while not taking any. It was trivial to play and not fun to play against. It even had a higher initiative cost This entire concept of dealing damage and evading for cheap initiative is nothing new, and frankly, has an extended history with players being upset over the fact that the concept doesn’t feel justified. I understand you might think it’s fun, but a massive portion of players do not think the concept is fun at all.

We’re not seeing competitive use of the build right now in PvP environments because as it stands, the Mesmer does the same thing, except with invulns (strictly better) while having a higher health pool and better group support. In PvE/raids, the DPS is not competitive with pure power, and even pure power Thief has completely been set aside from raid content, featuring instead the Revenant, since it offers better DPS in all forms, and objectively better group utility. D/D has been ditched in all other instances for the staff, because it is now the optimal DPS weapon. Hybrid approaches are dead last, due to conflicting interests within the Deadly Arts trait line between Executioner (what made the thief ranked highly in the past for DPS to begin with) and Potent Poison, as well as DA giving more synergy to power builds for PvE DPS via RT, which if used in a hybrid, scales exponentially less than a power build when taking into account damage modifiers.

D/D will likely never be optimal in group environments again so long as D/P and staff keep getting buffed and D/D does not see substantial changes. Simply, if you’re not running huge amounts of burning or poison, condition damage options in PvE will be sub-par, too. In PvP environments, the set lacks meaningful utility for power. In sPvP the class itself isn’t durable enough or doesn’t deal enough damage to remove a bunker from play like other bunkers can while not providing group support, or carries risk of CC-locking from AOE effects to become the solo-mid bunker (we’ll see what becomes of the upcoming changes, however), and in WvW, the condi build over-performs for its ease-of-use. It still lacks meaningful utility, though. Just one ability is carrying the set and hindering its future development. We saw the same thing with the changes to stealth and the implementation of Revealed, too, due to the massive balance problem that was once Cloak and Dagger spam. I certainly remember it. Bursting a foe with infinite stealth uptime was totally absurd.

What you’re proposing is a direct nerf to initiative utility, and a massive shift in the playstyle of the build.

I’m not entirely sure what you mean here. As in, it will cost more initiative to get the same result? Again, this is why I stress the importance of the changes to DT to push the AA condition damage into being something really menacing. Pushing the damage to the AA also leads you to getting back more endurance for synergy with Lotus Training. You still have your evasion on the reworked Death Blossom. You just need to create an opening now to deal objectively better potential damage with an increased reliability. We’ve agreed the weapon set is much more aggressive-oriented than D/P. Condi players should be taking the same amount of risk power players are to do so to stack damage, then, and should be rewarded more for taking those risks. This needs to happen because these two build options carry the same skills. Unless you have some other suggestion to change Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger to remove the simultaneous damage + utility on conditions and bolster the utility options for power builds to be comparable in core performance measures to D/P, these types of changes are necessary to accelerate D/D as a weapon set into becoming more useful overall.

The playstyle of the build, as a condition player, is pretty much just use 3 or a dodge roll, whatever is available, when a dodge is needed (and in many instances, not even this kind of decision-making is necessary). The damage is free. Any such build concept in my humble opinion deserves a playstyle change – actually, that’s a large reason why I made my proposal the way I did – to remove this style of play that many argue is not fun to play against, which has resulted in the nerfs of many similar concepts and builds over the years, and has had many people as a consequence be very happy with the conceptual shift, but left many devastated by overnerfing additional associated concepts or values as well. We’re in a multiplayer game. We need to make sure that our opponents are also having fun, just as much as we are, otherwise there are no opponents to be had.

They just take a fun spec and make it an initiative management nightmare while replacing what made it fun with something that displays an even less coherant identity than it already has.

I already discussed the notion of “fun” above. The identity of D/D condi exactly is what? All I gather is border-line braindead 3spam, having played it, played against it, and having watched people play it. Kind of like the old Infusion of Shadows allowing for players to press 2 for infinite casts so long as there was a smoke field, or more generally, MH dagger’s association with spamming heartseeker very skill-lessly. Which, by the way, was also nerfed in its damage thresholds because it was also agreed upon bu the community that a “one-button-build” was not fun to play, play against, unimaginative, and definitely too strong for how easy it was. And yet, we still have HS spammers who still successfully give MH dagger a bad name.

We need to make power D/D better. We need to give condi D/D more compelling reasons to hit the other buttons.

And this is what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to buff condi D/D’s potential damage while reducing the spam, and I’m trying to buff power D/D’s utility. If we can’t change skills 3 and 4 because of extremely niche uses, and buffs to CnD are out the window for balance concerns, we’re left in a deadlock. Either the kit gets changed, or it never improves conceptually as long as people want to play either build. The initiative mechanic allows for spammy play. Making the thief decide on what the optimal move is at a given moment is how to offset this. This is the opportunism I mentioned as my perception of class ideology above. Otherwise the decisions are trivialized and the other skills become apparent wastes of valuable initiative.

Glad I found some time to catch up.

I read the patch preview and the increased speed of the sword auto vis-a-vis weakness application on the 3rd hit should address some of the damage mitigation concerns I have on the thief. I always thought that auto chain already hit pretty hard… it might be pretty scary with the buff.

The impression I’ve always had with the thief is that’s it’s always “almost in a great place”, if only the last couple of tweaks could be identified.

It’s interesting that D/P came up a fair bit in this thread so far. I also consider it the premier loadout that doesn’t waste a single skill. It fills a different role to aoe melee though, which is what I’ve been missing on the core thief sets. Stress on “core thief”. You shouldn’t need to be a daredevil to dance your way through a crowd of mobs.

S/D and S/P somewhat managed it. In each case skill 3 is your evade but neither feels defensively solid for a variety reasons. I’m biased by the defense/recovery I get on other classes, certainly. I’m adamant that sword 1 and 2 are fuctionally solid, though seeing the guardian’s Smite Condition go from 1 to 2 conditions removed in the preview (now… I play this and I was fine with 1), I think there might be scope for Infiltrator’s Return jumping up to 2 conditions removed as well. I hope so. Whether or not a small ~900 heal has any scope for being added… heh.

PopeUrban.2578:

Froptimus.6741:

PopeUrban.2578:

Condi D/D Daredevil with signet of malice and mad king runes already fulfills your criteria of area attack, damage mitigation and sustained recovery from wounds.

I can absolutely engage 15+ mobs at a time using the build, and do it frequently.

Sorry to go off topic, but would you please link the full build if you have time? I’ve been considering a condi DD for pve and I’d like to see how people are doing it before I go down that road.

Actually you’re ON topic!

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Here’s the PvE build I use:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVn8MBNPhFmCePB0PhlWCbeEuCfhaBgDwCwrMcHmDA-TRyBABAcIA2b/h+0H4lyP0PBA3fEAgUJoHPAANV/JAwBg5nf+5nf+mf+5nf+5DA-e

The jewelry on it is my “baseline” but I’ll often swap one or more pieces for settler or viper stuff depending on my party composition and what I’m doing for content.

I don’t usually run this in raids as it pays for its great suriviability and multitarget utility by being less good at single target DPS, so I switch to a venomshare build for raids so I can use most of the same equipment.

Important PvE tricks for the build:

Bunch up foes! Your Signet of Malice heals scale your survivability based directly on how many enemies you can bunch together. deathblossom strikes three times on up to 5 targets, which is a 2130 heal each use if you can get 5+ enemies together. Get melee to follow you on to ranged attackers, etc.

Be careful with bandit’s defense. Practice hitting and then immediately canceling it as letting it block and kick in large groups of mobs can get you stuck in the kick animation and killed. The low cooldown, however, makes it a great stunbreak. just practice dodging as soon as you use it to cancel the block so you can stunbreak without getting stuck in that kick animation in situations where it would be bad for you.

Your elite is a burst heal thanks to mad king runes. Each bird strike counts as an attack for the purposes for signet of malice. This means, like deathblossom, it is more effective at healing you the more targets are around. Swap to another elite if you want to use it more often, just remember the rune cooldown is 45 seconds, so you probably won’t want to use your 40s elites like BV right on cooldown. Personally I usually keep Daggerstorm on the bar as this is an aoe build, and daggerstorm is powerful healing and stability already. The MK runes also provide substantial bleed duration as well as a good source of power, which is going to make your backstab from stolen stealth worth using, and is going to make your heartseeker actually hit for damage worth their initiative.

This build has zero problems taking on up to 20 or so enemies, and is effective in pretty much any dungeon or fractal situation with very few exceptions. If you find melee to be a problem with some dungeon bosses and range it out. For bosses with shields like Thurmanova fractal you’ll want to keep a pistol in your bag, as you can’t deathblossom those targets, so you’ll want to play p/d for those encounters so you can still stack decent amounts of bleeds while using your dodge caltrops and lotus dodge daggers. You could also spam SB at close range for the same effect, but Its overall less single target condition damage. Provided you’re not in the zerg donuts in DS you should be able to solo most things with it. Feel free to vary up the sigils. I like the blight/purity sigils, but other people in my guild that have picked up the build use a variety of stuff for personal playstyle.

Good luck!

That was an interesting read, thanks I’m not going to run it but it’s nice to know that it’s there.

I picked up a staff again after a long break from it to try D/D again, which is one of the reasons D/D has been on my mind. The staff gives vaulting on the spot for quite rediculous damage with evade frames thrown in, plus there’s another evade on 3 that breaks immob for good measure. I hadn’t realised 4 is a 600 range nuke because the description makes it sound quite fluffy and harmless, but it’s a blinding aoe nuke that doesn’t even need targetting to work great. So after playing this coming straight off D/D I was in this bizarre world wondering why Death Blossom is the way it is.

Now I proposed a way of switching between condi and power variants of Death Blossom via a trait (which I mistakenly called Caltrops from Trickery instead of Uncatchable but hopefully people followed). Some people liked that idea, which is great. It is very much how the daredevil changed the dodge functionality too, which I hadn’t thought of at the time. I still like the idea of a power variant and a condi variant for these iconic thief weapons.

Anyway, the travel aspect of Death Blossom I like as it is, where it somersaults you over the foe and has you land behind. That’s different to how the staff works with its ground target and helps to differentiate them. The endurance gain in the dagger auto chain (10 from Wild Strike) is another nice defensive boost that the dagger has over the staff that again differentiates them, and of course there’s the readier stealth access for single target elimination.

The idea I have in my mind for a power based Death Blossom is actually medium damage, high defense. So, not great against 1-2 targets but worthwhile over 4-5 certainly. What concerns me most is the initiative nature, being able to chain over and over, like it needs a 1s icd so that at the very least it has to be alternated with dodges or autos, like a revenant has small cooldowns on energy skills. I’m not saying cooldowns should be a general feature of thief weapon skills, but on certain problematic ones it could be a good idea to avoid degeneracy.

@Deciever
I see what you’re going at here, but the perception of the build as a one button wonder is only correct in the opening ten seconds of any given fight, assuming the user actually spams all their init down to nothing. In practice, 3 is a cor skill (just as CnD is a core skill for power builds) but I can’t wrap my head around what exactly you’re after i think.

Here’s the simple version of your proposal as i understand it:

1 – Increase poison via dagger training, e.g. every strike. leave trait unchanged, or possibly disabled for other dagger skills.
2 – Unchanged, has fundamentally valuable conditional properties that make it worthwhile on either build.
3 – Remove bleeds, making it less valuable for condition builds, making its value unchanged for power builds.
4 – Add bleeds, making it fundamentally better for damage. on condi builds and unchanged in utility for power builds
5 – Unchanged, via the argument that it’s valuable when it hits, and this justifies its function/cost.

Now, please correct me if i’ve misread wht you’re all about here.

The thing is, I think that the moderate condition damage deathblossom deals is a core function of the skill. I’ll also agree that blanket buffs to dagger training may enforce rather than discourage spam.

However, given its current function I don’t think DB needs changed at all, specifically because of the highly conditional nature of its damage, which is objectively worse than a dodge and situationally superior as an AoE. What I’m saying is that Deathblossom doesn’t need a nerf because _it isn’t that powerful compared to your opponent’s condition damage options.

I liken an all-deathblossom build in effectieness to an all-CnD pemastealth build. It’s trolly. People did it. It wasn’t ever really effective. having played condi D/D before hoT This was precisely the state condi thief was in.

Lotus was purpose built around condi d/d. Every single developer preview played lotus with d/d. I don’t recall ever seeing a pistol equipped. over multiple iterations and dodge fixes all of lotus’ properties were formed around its interactions with d/d.

Again, your assessment of Deathblossom is off the mark. It’s a worse version of lotus dodge at this point, made valuable because it uses a separate resource pool. It’s in a good place balance-wise. It doesn’t need to be fixed. It has the same situational value on a power build as cnd has on a condition build and that’s okay in my personal opinion.

You and I both, however, agree that the things around it need fixed. The big deal here is dancing dagger. Adding more condition damage to it does a disservice to power builds, so I don’t really view that as a valuable option. Its primary utility is closing/chasing and multitarget utility so I’d rather see it changed from that perspective. As a closer, it is phenominally weak, due largely to the laughable duration of its cripple. As a damaging ability it is useless. Its only saving grace is the situational property afforded by its multiple projectile finishers. How do we make it less situational as a damage ability, but not make it the new centerpiece of a 2 button condition build? Simply moving the bleeds from 3 to 4 doesn’t change anything about your issues with the build other than which button gets spammed right?

Here are some basic ideas that have added value for all */D builds off the top of my head, mix/match and adjust init cost to suit your personal comfort level:

Dancing dagger copies x conditions from the first target hit to all subsequent targets (so it’s a weaker version of epidemic in a sense) (damage, also makes it very interesting for p/d)

Dancing dagger “upgrades” conditions on a target (ex. if the target is crippled, it immobs, if a target is bleeding, it torments, if a target is dazed it stuns, etc.) (damage/utility, good in groups)

Dancing dagger bounces back to the thief after all targets, returning end for each hit. (sustain)

Or lowers steal cooldown/hit (utility)

Or grants HP/hit (sustain)

Or steals a boon/hit (Sustain/utility/groups)

Dancing dagger reflects projectiles along its path. (sustain/utility/skillshots)

etc. etc.

@Cirian: I don’t believe ICD is appropriate on thief skills. Flip skills are borderline unacceptable in the first place. The core design of thief is all about having a very limited pool of init, but being able to do whatever you want with it as long as you have it. Thieves are not revnants, and I don’t really believe thieves should be taking design cues from revnants due to the fundamental difference in how initiative is regained and spent versus how initiative is gained and spent.