Guild Wars 2

Please don’t forget about d/d thieves. After you moved CiS into grandmaster, you killed this weaponset. We need blind to stay alive and also healing because we need to sit melee. Landing cloak and dagger is hard and risky. At this moment CnD is high risk, low reward so please add blind to it. By giving thieves option to spam dodges all day long, its just frustrating to fight against us. I dont want to dodge 8-9 times in a row but you are forcing me to do that. Im not able to play stealth build anymore due to insane reveal spam everywhere which doesnt hurt other classes that much. Tone it down or something… I would remove it to be honest, especially scrapper with F5 (20s cd aoe 6s reveal) and Lock On (25s cd 6s reveal). This is just insane what you did to us… Maybe let me disable other classes whole defensive traitlines for few seconds with 20-25s cooldown? Huh? Sounds balanced? The most frustrating thing is that if im traiting for SA and some random aoe spammer reveals me, im not even able to clear conditions, need to burn my utility which is not always ready (50s cd, removing 2 condis). Think about it anet and ask yourselves whats our role in this game? Because for now its spamming dodges like crazy and running away most of the time. Btw why do we even have 4s reveal in pvp anymore? And did you noticed that after u nerfed pistol whip noone uses it?

Deceiver X, myself, and a few other thieves have been putting out many suggestions to try to bring D/D sa builds back into the game. Guess now all we can do is hope that anet is really being serious about the upcoming patch.

About reveal, not gonna lie I think all reveal skills should be removed and compensated by having stealth stripped on a blocked bs (no reveal applied and evade doesn’t affect it). Then adding blind to CnD as a minimum.

Some CD reductions may be in order for skills like that but depending on other changes Anet makes then they may not be necessary.

Yeah not sure why reveal hasn’t been made 3s again…

Dodge spam needs to not be our only reliable defense in the meta.

Yeah, guess you are now with the rest of us pushing for more sets than D/P to even be marginally useful without gimmick spam.

Terissimo.6852:

Please don’t forget about d/d thieves. After you moved CiS into grandmaster, you killed this weaponset. We need blind to stay alive and also healing because we need to sit melee. Landing cloak and dagger is hard and risky. At this moment CnD is high risk, low reward so please add blind to it. By giving thieves option to spam dodges all day long, its just frustrating to fight against us. I dont want to dodge 8-9 times in a row but you are forcing me to do that. Im not able to play stealth build anymore due to insane reveal spam everywhere which doesnt hurt other classes that much. Tone it down or something… I would remove it to be honest, especially scrapper with F5 (20s cd aoe 6s reveal) and Lock On (25s cd 6s reveal). This is just insane what you did to us… Maybe let me disable other classes whole defensive traitlines for few seconds with 20-25s cooldown? Huh? Sounds balanced? The most frustrating thing is that if im traiting for SA and some random aoe spammer reveals me, im not even able to clear conditions, need to burn my utility which is not always ready (50s cd, removing 2 condis). Think about it anet and ask yourselves whats our role in this game? Because for now its spamming dodges like crazy and running away most of the time. Btw why do we even have 4s reveal in pvp anymore? And did you noticed that after u nerfed pistol whip noone uses it?

He’s right, D/D build should be buffed, we don’t want to be forced to play with 1 brain dead build…

Ario.8964:

suggestions

I hope you are posting them on reddit
devs don’t look at the profession forums here

I think thief is fine. I would actually nerf some things and give thieves one additional dodge as baseline, so with daredevil traitline, they could have 4 dodges.
Oh and I would also remove ability for thieves to use daggers. Problem solved.

cryorion.9532:

I think thief is fine. I would actually nerf some things and give thieves one additional dodge as baseline, so with daredevil traitline, they could have 4 dodges.
Oh and I would also remove ability for thieves to use daggers. Problem solved.

#RipThief2k16

Terissimo I fully agree with you and wanted to say thanks for that S/D build you posted on youtube, that build has been a lot of fun and kinda sorta reminds me of the old dd 1vx fights i used to love so much
just hope they make my fav set viable again, but what really needs to happen is to tone down the power creep, most aoe skills hit harded than a BS (which is as we all know, single target, requires stealth and has to be from behind to do most dmg, well i can just hit 2 on ranger and deal almost twice the dmg on 1500 range, but yeah..

The change to Death Blossom’s evade frames was one of the worst things they could have done. It sucked as a skill, but keeping the condition application was not the necessary change at hand. I’ve been counter-arguing buffing evades to DB for years on the claim it’d result in 3spam cheese, and now it’s a competitive build. How the thief’s integrity for quick decision-making has degraded…

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.

CnD could be made unblockable and I don’t think people would care. A blind won’t help this set or the thief because CnD’s issues stem from reliability and not extra effects and defense in stealth. If you’re getting hit as soon as you enter stealth playing an OH dagger, you’re not dodging properly AND your opponent is good, so you should be punished. Shadow Shot already is, and there is so much block, blind spam, evasion, and invuln in the game right now that little would change. Shadow Shot is already unblockable, does more damage, always performs the teleport, and blinds. I see no reason why CnD should face such low reliability seeing as it costs more initiative and is a forced melee-range in-combat stealth versus BP can be used OOC or combo’ed off of Bounding Dodge for what is the same initiative cost due to lacking the need for HS’ing the leap. Anything more, such as “this skill cannot be negated via invulns/evades” or some kind of OOC stealth would be overkill and overpowered, as the set is designed to be used full melee, and there are some very balanced and reasonable abilities made around the invuln effect such as guard’s RF. I do fear the ability may be too strong against Aegis for guardians if implemented as unblockable, however, so I can see it taking a further damage nerf but applying substantially more vuln for a short duration to compensate for backstab, or just giving a damage modifier buff afterward for a subsequent attack, also buffing S/D’s burst potential via FS -> CnD -> LS. Also, DH massive-aegis-spam already hard-counters thief immensely, so getting into that Aegis could be very helpful. This leaves concerns with evasion S/D Daredevil dealing too much damage and getting a lot of condition removal/defense, though.

They can save S/D and S/P, maybe splitting PW would be beneficial and making FS, easier to proc.

Atm staff is superior, with much more fluid animation and more DPS (esp AA) chain, but I don’t think Power D/D has the utility right now for PvP, as it stands.

I think I just Solved a lot of the problem with D/D Thief: Add a quick invulnerability to conditions when a successful CnD hits. I like this idea because it is a reward for stepping into someones deadly aoe condition field. If they dodge your CND then you could be screwed. There is counter play both in dodging the CnD and also setting your condi aoe fields and then stun, immob the thief since he didnt land a CnD.

Now it could work to where it isn’t a complete wipe of existing conditions but stops the condi stacking/spamming for a brief moment in time.

in fact this route would be the easier route to balance rather than reworking all the classes, we could simply have one extra benefit attached to each weapon set for thief.

for D/P it wouldnt be shadow shot most likely due to being able to spam it. Black powder could have a condi invuln or removal instead.

There are many counters here

1. Thief runs out of initiative.
2. Dodging these abilities
3. set up aoe field then trap with cc before thief can use his condi invuln attack.
4. Revealed negates any of these invulnerable abilities.

But this would allow thief to pop in and sustain long enough to have a fighting chance. The time of invuln is key here as too much would be annoying to fight to little would not be worth it. I think this would atleast work for D/D thief considering how hard it is to land CnD compared to other abilities.

I would rather keep condition removal primarily attached to traits and utilities or supportive weapons in general across all classes because rather than solving the core problems, it would put emphasis on specific weapons to gain or lose viability based on the meta alone. Generally speaking, pushing away from invuln/immunity effects would be a healthy design decision for the game, and I don’t really think it has much of a flavor/design argument for the thief except for reduced effects for poison. That said, I do think we need more condition removal opportunities in other trait lines outside of SE, Trickster, and EA, and in particular, tied to under-used or under-powered niche utilities clearly overshadowed by others in regards to the current meta/styles.

Putting such immunity on x/P or CnD in general would put an excess of defense for other weapon sets; S/D would get immunity to conditions on top of a repeatable cleanse on top of extreme synergy with Daredevil/EA and potentially the Shadow Arts trait line. Being immune to conditions, hitting for damage, stealthing, removing a condition from SE, and cleansing a condition via an evade, and then potentially cleansing another condition on IR is just overkill on what is already a slippery and mobile build. For x/P, the lack of dependency on getting into melee range or just the overall hurdle of balancing the skill to be as fair as landing CnD would still push D/P over D/D.

They tried initially to incorporate Resistance to the thief in Acrobatics in the patch they gutted it as how they announced it in their preview concepts. Resistance was going to be given to the thief upon being revealed in GI, which was excellent for staying power. However, it was then changed to 90% health, and then changed to not give DoT mitigation due to expressed concerns of being overpowered. I partially agree with the decision on the basis that resistance is an extremely powerful effect and should be kept in check; the Revenant meta in sPvP is built around this boon entirely.

Pushing more stealth is also not the answer; the thief can never gain viability in sPvP if it is in stealth. Before HoT and the 6/23 changes, I ran a P/P + P/D healing power venom build bunker in sPvP. It was incredibly durable, to a point where I could out-sustain D/D ele, but also camped a lot of stealth in times of need, such that solo-defending a point was extremely difficult as eventually I’d lose the point from necessary stealth for cleanses. As such, pushing for high-stealth uptime will force the thief into the +1 role further and more people away from using the ability. If balance hinges on the ability to mitigate conditions on a weapon set by high stealth uptime, then our stealth-less options take a subsequent hit and we get nowhere for our solo fight capabilities.

We could put absolutely massive benefits to CnD and buff its ratio to absurdity and it’d still not be viable; the problems with D/D across the formats stem from its lack of reliability in landing and the utility the rest of the set has which pales in comparison to D/P and lower mobility than S/D. Getting in between the two is conceptually a design focal point, and pushing reliability on CnD and our backstab/stealth attack and overall usefulness of other skills will be what determines the success of the weapon set overall across what should be a constantly-changing sPvP meta.