Guild Wars 2

How would you guys feel about the Swindler’s Equilibrium giving a buff to sword damage? I mean, considering our survivability got slightly nerfed in acrobatics line and sword sorely lacks the burst damage of a dagger/pistol set, a buff to sword damage would be nice to bring it up to par. I mean, sword still works but winning a fight with it especially in pvp is an uphill battle and d/p just works far better for taking out enemies quickly and efficiently without sacrificing burst or damage by running Shadow Arts instead of Acrobatics while Sword for Shadow Arts is just not that great considering you have to hide in stealth for it to work properly allowing your enemy to recover while you lack the damage necessary to pop back out and immediately punish them.

If you noticed all damage buffs in the thief defensive trait lines have been removed.

This wasn’t done accidently….

Sword doesn’t need a damage buffs. I’m perfectly fine hitting 5k auto’s with decent weapon-inherent survivability.

The problem isn’t that damage needs upped, it’s that defense needs upped. Scaling the damage upward would only pigeonhole people even more. Not everyone wants to be a glass cannon.

Perhaps then some Protection procing on successful evades similar to Ranger? Would add more incentive to successfully time your dodges.

Buff:white=Thief:black.

dmg is fine. LAc strike 12k auto attacsk 5k and 3rd auto attack 7k.This isnt the problem.You need more surivivable utilities and anet shove it all.

I think the damage on sword is fine too. The only adjustments I would like to see on the sword are as follows:

- Reduce the initiative cost of Infiltrator’s Return to 1 ini. Now it no longer breaks stun the 2 ini cost seems a bit excessive to me.
– Change Pistol Whip as follows: Change the 1/2s stun to a 1/4 daze, remove the evade, but allow us to move while attacking with the sword. The main reason I do not use this skill, outside of PvE, is because it roots you in place. The thief shouldn’t have any such skills IMO, as it goes against their mobile, always moving, playstyle.

Everything else about the sword (traits aside) feels ok to me.

Rin.1046:

- Reduce the initiative cost of Infiltrator’s Return to 1 ini. Now it no longer breaks stun

sry?

also my openion on buffing non d/p builds:
- the stabbing autohit part and Larcenous shoud have faster execution time or some other way to allow it to hit more reliably like a 150 unit dash/jump(or this seems too op?? o.O).
- also flanking strike shoud turn in larcenous whan hit is evaded or blocked.
- C&D should give longer stealth
- Assassin’s reward should heal way more or get a 100% rework
- all abilitys that provide “evade” should start with cancel action when button is pressed. (really inportant! many times you are unable to evade things couse you are out of endurance but in mid animation so skill have to finish casting to start lets say flanking strike)
- deadh blossom should have bigger range
- thief needs some access to defensive boons.

all things in short i can think of in 3mins.

MadVisions.4529:

Rin.1046:

- Reduce the initiative cost of Infiltrator’s Return to 1 ini. Now it no longer breaks stun

sry?

What do you not understand? It used to break stun then they changed it so it no longer break stun, but the ini cost remained at 2.

Edit: Ok, it never technically broke stun, but it could be used to get out of range while stunned, and that was changed by adding the 1/2 second cast time. This was often just as good as a stun break.

Rin.1046:

MadVisions.4529:

Rin.1046:

- Reduce the initiative cost of Infiltrator’s Return to 1 ini. Now it no longer breaks stun

sry?

What do you not understand? It used to break stun then they changed it so it no longer break stun, but the ini cost remained at 2.

Edit: Ok, it never technically broke stun, but it could be used to get out of range while stunned, and that was changed by adding the 1/2 second cast time. This was often just as good as a stun break.

1/4 cast time, still feels like ages but it was necessary
would welcome that reduced ini cost and any defensive buff in acrobatics (even though that should be active defenses), generally a whole rework of quite some traits (fleet shadow… really? this is not a stealth line and it also gives you some swiftness already… doesnt make sense)

MadVisions.4529:

- all abilitys that provide “evade” should start with cancel action when button is pressed. (really inportant! many times you are unable to evade things couse you are out of endurance but in mid animation so skill have to finish casting to start lets say flanking strike)

This really needs to happen. I can’t count how many times I try to time a sword evade only for it to get delayed.

Tarkan.5609:

Rin.1046:

MadVisions.4529:

Rin.1046:

- Reduce the initiative cost of Infiltrator’s Return to 1 ini. Now it no longer breaks stun

sry?

What do you not understand? It used to break stun then they changed it so it no longer break stun, but the ini cost remained at 2.

Edit: Ok, it never technically broke stun, but it could be used to get out of range while stunned, and that was changed by adding the 1/2 second cast time. This was often just as good as a stun break.

1/4 cast time, still feels like ages but it was necessary
would welcome that reduced ini cost and any defensive buff in acrobatics (even though that should be active defenses), generally a whole rework of quite some traits (fleet shadow… really? this is not a stealth line and it also gives you some swiftness already… doesnt make sense)

I don’t get why didn’t they just made Infiltrator’s return an instant like torch 4 on mesmers(u can NOT cast it while stunned, respects aftercast, has aftercast so act like a cast time skill except it has none.

MadVisions.4529:

Rin.1046:

- Reduce the initiative cost of Infiltrator’s Return to 1 ini. Now it no longer breaks stun

sry?

also my openion on buffing non d/p builds:
- the stabbing autohit part and Larcenous shoud have faster execution time or some other way to allow it to hit more reliably like a 150 unit dash/jump(or this seems too op?? o.O).
- also flanking strike shoud turn in larcenous whan hit is evaded or blocked.
- C&D should give longer stealth
- Assassin’s reward should heal way more or get a 100% rework
- all abilitys that provide “evade” should start with cancel action when button is pressed. (really inportant! many times you are unable to evade things couse you are out of endurance but in mid animation so skill have to finish casting to start lets say flanking strike)
- deadh blossom should have bigger range
- thief needs some access to defensive boons.

all things in short i can think of in 3mins.

Making the thrusting skill 150 range movement skill would really help landing the skills. especially since they have a narrow hit-cone. and you have to stand in place to hit someone who is moving around :/ . But then it would suppress dodge rolls during the cast like other movement skills so the cripple should move to skill 2 instead. that would help too

C&D does need some kind of a buff but id prefer a blind.

Assassin’s reward, death blossom need a buff indeed. (death blossom is like the only condi dmg skill on the weapon set wth?!)

cancel action stuff is also a good idea on evade skills

Rain.9213:

considering our survivability got slightly nerfed in acrobatics line and sword sorely lacks the burst damage of a dagger/pistol set, a buff to sword damage would be nice to bring it up to par. I mean, sword still works but winning a fight with it especially in pvp is an uphill battle and d/p just works far better.

Edit: opened a new thread about this beacuse this doesn’t entirely fit the topic.

—The problem is D/P does his burst dmg and then can leave, so they have to survive for a very short duration then they can switch to bow for cleave or go stealth. While S/D has no real burst and you do autoattack for damage if you autoattack in a team fight and do some flanking strikes u still die really fast. If you go shortbow or try to melee more carefully then u are nearly useless for your team.

—Sword autoattack is countered by blinds and blocks because even a warrior hits faster with sword (even without the attack speed increase trait or the haste trait they all have). A double hit for half dmg each on first autoattack would help a lot against their main counters while not helping much against other classes.
Dagger autoattack -in contrast- hits super fast which helps proccing sigils and has a powerful effect on each hit. (double hit, endurance gain, poison+weakness).
After running some autoattack tests on D/P vs S/D half of the time Sword half of the time Dagger wins so Sword doesn’t even have a stronger damage over time than Dagger.(Also note: too much RNG effects in the game)

—Sword has 2 attacks that do OK dmg then you do a more powerful 3rd hit with some short(2s :/ ) but useful condis. Dagger has 3 really quick hits at the start (that you can finish before sword lands a second hit). And what happens when in a fight?: your auto chain resets because you obviously have to use other skills or face pauses, Sword goes back to the weak start of the chain while Dagger gets to proc both of their sigils instantly with their quick hits and almost ignore blinds and aegis.

////Solution////: make the first attack double hit and move cripple to second attackto help land the third, and improve survivability to help staying in teamfights(for example Assassin’s reward could become a trait that heals you each time you evade with a 0.75 sec cooldown per 5 heals so during a good dodge roll if you avoid 7 things you get healed for 5 of them and the next time you dodge you can also be healed for 5 of them. Thus you are still encouraged to evade a lot of stuff at once but it can’t heal for absurd amounts.) Maybe 200 heal per evade but it would need some testing. Moreover Cloak and Dagger should get a buff because its way-way more risky to use than the smoke field+leap combo, possibly an aoe blind could be added when it hits or increased stealth time on it.

Kicker.8203:

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////Solution////: make the first attack double hit and move cripple to second attackto help land the third, and improve survivability to help staying in teamfights.

Moreover Cloak and Dagger should get a buff because its way-way more risky to use than the smoke field+leap combo, possibly an aoe blind could be added when it hits or increased stealth time on it.

this

Kicker’s got a good point. I really hope a dev sees this are there are some good ideas popping up in here.