Guild Wars 2

Sword/dagger, more specifically flanking/larcenous strike have been gutted many times in the past. With the position thief is currently in, it would be more than fair to undo some of those nerfs and make the set viable again.

it would help thief fare better in the current meta, with the overabundance of blocks and boons from elite speces.

Two changes that would go a long way:

1. Alter the way larcenous works so its unblockable attribute isn’t practically useless. Some ideas that can fix this:

A) Make it so as long as flanking touches someone or something (even if the flanking is blinded/blocked/invuln’d), then larcenous is usable. I think this is the most needed/balanced option: flanking can still be evaded, while also able to punish blocks.

B) Leave it as is, but make both flanking and larcenous unblockable

C) Simply revert it back to how it used to be (can precast flanking and use larcenous afterwards at any time)

D) If changing flanking is not an option, then at least make the timer on larcenous longer so a block can be baited in between.

2. Petty straightforward: make larcenous steal 2 boons again.

It’s time we stop having fate in Anet since It’s from the first hot beta they didn’t talk to us about our thought on daredevil and even then they only changed staff animations

1. about the A) He means Flanking strike doesn’t flip if you use it out of range example or without a target while not hitting anyone else.
I like this option the most.

2. agree

+Flanking Strike should have a stronger effect ( maybe leave larcenous as it is in this case). This skill has the best tell while being ridiculously low dmg/ effect. Even if you can then use larcenous strike you have to land that too, which can be negated by simply running around the thief coz the skill has about a 90 degree hit cone or worse.

1957 vault base damage
622 flanking strike+1245 larcenous strike=1867 dmg
or 3 flanking strikes deal 1866dmg which is also still lower then vault dmg.
Flanking S should hit a lot harder to be viable

Kolly.9872:

It’s time we stop having fate in Anet since It’s from the first hot beta they didn’t talk to us about our thought on daredevil and even then they only changed staff animations

Daredevil has improved significantly since its first BWE actually.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Daredevil-updates-post-BWE-3-launch/first#post5580744

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/BWE-3-Daredevil-Specialization-Changes/page/2#post5495986

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/BWE-3-Daredevil-Specialization-Changes/first#post5491449

Edit: more changes, and clarification

Yep.
Undo infiltrator strike/return nerf (casttime)
Undo fs/ls nerf (2boons stolen, fs and ls unblockable)
Reduce aftercast on almost all sword skills
More dmg or control from tactical strike

Could help

As thief i disagree.

2 ripped boons was too much ( and have been nerfed ).
Also, pretend to activate a “burst skill” without hitting, was gross too.

With daredevil traits s/d is awesome ( the real problem are the other classes, but better asking for a nerf than returnto the old unbalanced style ).

Not to mention, S skill 2
off hand pistol skill 5
damage on off hand dagger 4

All nerfs were ok.
Actually the problems is both the meta and some of the other classes ( too cleave damage from tanky, zerk, condition, healers ) which wont allow us to play ( and i like a class which have to pay for every single mystake, but atm is way too over )

Domey.9804:

Yep.
Undo infiltrator strike/return nerf (casttime)
Undo fs/ls nerf (2boons stolen, fs and ls unblockable)
Reduce aftercast on almost all sword skills
More dmg or control from tactical strike

Could help

Yeah agree! infil return doesn’t need to have a cast time in order to prevent it from being cast from stuns(see mesmer torch 4).

dunno if flanking strike was ever unblockable but it should at least change to larcenous even if it misses or is blocked as long as it the target was within melee range.

reduce aftercast! very important, weapon evades suck because of aftercasts(and flanking strike has to cancel skillcast instead of queing it up)

Tactical strike is still split between pve and pvp. Apply the longer daze duration form wvw to pvp.

Shirlias.8104:

With daredevil traits s/d is awesome ( the real problem are the other classes, but better asking for a nerf than returnto the old unbalanced style ).

Actually, no. S/D is still worse than D/P or Staff and even those are rarely used because the other classes are so out of line. They won’t ever nerf the other classes so much and hard that thief will be viable from that because the elite specs are meant to be op in their philosophy.
p/p and d/d need some kind of utility buff instead of just numbers because they are spam weapon sets sadly and lack utility.
Thief needs some buffs overall and extra buffs for s/d, s/p, p/p and d/d.

Staff is as viable as it is largely because of the sustained damage provided by Staff Master. They could resolve the the damage issues of non-staff weapons by simply expanding Staff Master to effect all Thief weapons.

I wasn’t even aware of the tactical strike split, a tiny buff that definitely needs to be made.

limbeurt.9642:

I wasn’t even aware of the tactical strike split, a tiny buff that definitely needs to be made.

The devs forgot too. otherwise they would have merged them like they did with the other skills :/
I wish they listened