Guild Wars 2

So, as we all know there is a very large population of thieves who are done with d/p. We are tired of playing it, we are tired of seeing it, we are tired of it being the only usable set we have for pvp. I propose we do some changes to get s/d up to where it can actually be competitive as a thief set. Yes this will include a small nerf to d/p but it is needed and it won’t kill the set so it’s fine.

To keep you out of suspense, the nerf will be a 10-20% damage reduction to shadow shot. It blinds, it chases, and it crits for 4k? Yeah no, this will help to keep it more in line as a utility rather than a spammable burst skill.

Now for the proposed changes to make s/d at least usable, and hopefully one day, great again.

Sword 2:
-Jump cast trick re-enabled. This was critical for s/d’s chase ability as well as for letting the user dictate whether they wanted an escape route or a chase move.

-Return is instant cast. However, it is not a stunbreaker and it can’t be used if dazed, knocked down, stunned, etc. This will allow s/d to be fast enough with it’s movements to keep up with the other builds out there and allow it to effectively mitigate damage through positioning.

-Sword 3 is pre- loadable again. Part of what keeps s/d out of the meta is it’s lack of burst. If it can fs and then ls it can do some good damage but fs is not reliable when everyone and their grandmother has blocks, evades, blinds, invulns, etc out the window. Giving sword 3 an automatic cycle will do a ton for it’s competitive play ability.

-Remove skill queues, this causes so much skill lag and wastes so much ini for thieves. S/d is the worst culprit due to sword 3 being able to go off 3 times in a row from skill queues. If the queues are removed it will allow s/d to effectively manage it’s skill activation and initiative.

- Buff sword 2 damage by 10%, fs by 7%, and ls by 5%. Right now the set’s lack of damage outside of ls and the auto are causing it to be outclassed by just about every other set on thief. It needs some extra edge to it’s attacks and this should give it the little push it needs.

None of these changes should make s/d op and it will still be held in check by d/p as the set is a counter. But now it gives thieves an option to try a different kind of set and playstyle in this meta. S/d could have a place with a little bit of extra utility, reliance, and damage because it’s boonsteal could help really empower it vs many of the present builds. It just needs to not be outdamaged and outrun so easily.

Promote these changes, fight for these changes, and share these changes. Together we shall make s/d great again.

jump cast trick was dumb and should stay dead because it was a bug. I think if sword 2 port was instant but didn’t act as a stun breaker then s/d and s/p would become a whole lot more viable. maybe nerf the immob to 1/2 sec. to give sword more chase maybe make the return last only 5 sec.

imo major tactical strike buff, more heal on evade and #3 cycle or autohit rework by itself would be the best choice. The #2 return needs to stay the same, making it ~instant would massively dumb things down.

Atm the build has to be played 100% perfect(you need to dodge every meaningfull skill even if its qiuckness casted with 1/2 base casttime) to not instalose and even then it may get drained off by fields and instants.

Autohit rework ideas:
1) redo the on attack benefits. Think about it.. you rarely got to finish an autohit chain to get to #3 where all the benefits come from, it’s just too slow and you get barely anything at the end. Funny thing dagger gets all the benefits that would suit sword much better. 2s weakness/cripple does nothing at all while more endurance and 6s poison would help vs the massive overtime helaing that 99% your opponents rely on. At least make #2 do something special like move cripple from #3 to it.
2) make #2 hit twince like on dagger.
3) lower damage and speed up hitting process overall. (posibly with lowering aftercast even more)

if i was to redo sword i would buff auto dmg by 15% it to slow it to weak it rely on air sigil to even seem slightly useful.

sword 2 i change mech that you leap forward once. then for 1 first second of the skill it allow you keep leaping forward until shadow return set up get up max value of 4 leaps.

i change flanking strike mech that after you cast flanking strike hold the key to extend the eva frames by 1/2 second for each initiative consume.

biggest problem with S/D was shadow return was gave all of S/D it core def because flanking strike is not a safe move it has one of biggest punish frames on thief in order to fix that you either need to bring back stun breaker or dramatically redesign sword.

Have you guys even played S/D lately? Buffing sword auto would skyrocket the set into hilarity…after a steal and any sort of might being stolen while using marauder I’m hitting 3k to 4.5k auto attacks on most opponents. Any buff to that would cause a riot.

People say D/P is biggest utility build/set, but I just don’t see it when S/D is 10x more fluid with half the effort. The combinations of different openers>mid-fight combos you can do with S/D alone is enough to fight and kill anything without them knowing what happened.

I think the concept of S/D is what goes right over people’s heads so everyone thinks it’s awful, while D/P is much more straightforward and easy so it’s more popular.

All Matters,
That’s exactly why I didn’t touch the auto. Atm, it seems really solid and it’s damage is great (most I’d say atm is a 5% buff if even that went through). The reason it isn’t played though is because the set is slow and underperforming in it’s other skills. D/p has consistent speed, utility, damage, etc. on all it’s skills while s/d is meh on quite a few of it’s skills. S/d needs some buffs in order to be able to overcome d/p in usefulness.

Mad,
The way I think the set is supposed to be played is it does sustained damage with occasional bursts while relying on a few extra evades and heavy positional manipulation to beat foes. The #2 being so slow to respond hurts the set a ton. Making the return instant will allow the user to actively avoid damage via positioning instead of relying of stealth and evades like literally every set the thief has. I also don’t want a sped up auto because then everything plays the same as d/p. I agree with moving some of the effects of the auto around in order to give a more consistent reward with the set, but i also firmly believe the other skills on the set need more addressing than the auto.

I disagree with whoever said the jump thing was bad, it gave people who knew about it more variability in their playstyle and the heavy in combat mobility they needed to keep up the damage s/d needs to be putting out to kill. The current return time is good because it also allows thieves who mind what their position is to escape when things start shifting out of their control instead of only having 5 seconds to try to accomplish everything you need.

The only two things I can see to be improved;

-the attack speed/movements needs tuning. as the attack are powerful, the moves seems clunky and heavily telegraphed so it’s hard to get a decent burst against a keen eyed player or persistent aoe without using haste/quickness

-swindlers equilibrium needs rework, the perks of it sounds good but the effects of the trait isn’t very noticeable in practice.

MadVisions.4529:

snipples

I think if the immob was shortened or removed from #2 but the skill was made into an instant port then s/d and s/p would be way better. its the best change I can think of that is fixing something inherently wrong with how the set should function. the auto is completely fine, sticking to the opponent adds a risk reward factor.

The buffed immob on #2 feels really solid. Makes you able to set up combos way more relyably. Like #2 kick double gunk etc.. I used jump cast regularely and it was overall better than extra range, i dont want mesmers jumping with shield though so meh…

The return being instant would be stupid op. It is already the best positioning skill in the game. Jsüt los cast it if dp is camping you or whatever.

Thing is Its horrible Hard to dps certaim classes if they avoid your flanking strikes couse doing so maintains theyr defensive boons.

Speed up Sword Auto, speed up cast time of sword 2 and 3. Staff (a two handed weapon) does more damage than sword auto and hits way faster….

I think the dmg it self from s/d is pretty solid. At least in terms of wvw. It’s applying it that’s the hard bit. On some class’s you can burst with LS/steal and steal 5 boons and make a huge dent but others like scrapper or bunker druid they just laugh at you – just an example.

S/d has a very defensive play style and the most dmg come from AA and LS. And to access LS you need to hit FS (we all know this) so if anything I would slightly buff FS 5/10%. The autos hurt enough already and I feel that the aa is fast enough. Also let’s not forget how bad /d is. Dancing dagger is usless in a lot of areas due to random obstructions or out of range (doing tequtl west defence you can stand in melee range and using #4 and it will say out of range, go figure). And CnD needs some love for the amount of inative it costs to use.

As for the autos, if anything I would change either cripple or weakness to the 2nd chain. But even that would a bit too powerful.

You’re going about it all wrong, OP.

First we have to ban all maces and hammers from PvP, since they’re a threat to our security and our integrity. Then we need to systematically dismantle the the unfair status quo against thieves by lowering the number of wins required to advance in the ranking — and to triple how much is needed if someone rerolls, because Thief First.

After that we’ll add some nice damage breakers for Sword users, designed to help bolster the weapon’s usability — which the other players in PvP will pay for, of course, because we’ll impose a 20% buff on Thief players when decapping enemy points.

We’ll also just plain buff everything a sword can do because we said so.

(This response is made as an entirely sarcastic reply to the OP’s choice of thread title)

Sw/d is fine the way it is. Its a good 1v1 duelist build, it just cant dish out the same consistent damage to be affective. It was strong at killing bunker builds which is obsolete these days.

replace the 3rd aa condis with daze
C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKA

I feel like sword should be a cross between a Dodge and stealth build. I was never a fan of the stealth attack and think it should be more like backstab. Maybe a little less damage but 10 stacks of 7sec vulnerability and/or weakness. Either way it should do much more damage than it currently does.
The evade on flanking strike should be 3/4 second or init cost 3.

Stand The Wall.6987:

jump cast trick was dumb and should stay dead because it was a bug. I think if sword 2 port was instant but didn’t act as a stun breaker then s/d and s/p would become a whole lot more viable. maybe nerf the immob to 1/2 sec. to give sword more chase maybe make the return last only 5 sec.

It added a ton of depth and utility to the kit. A bug, maybe, but it made the sword a viable secondary weapon and gave it much-needed missing chace.

Frankly, I play sword almost entirely for IS/IR allowing me to teleport out halfway or almost entirely through a fight. With kitten duration on return I’d never touch sword ever again.

IR used to be instant and it was insanely overpowered. It’d be a no-cast 1200-range disengage + condi cleanse on initiative; that’s just way bonkers all things considered.

The best they could do is probably have Flanking Strike be split into different skills based on whether or not you have a target nearby; a small lunge for 3 initiative or something if you’re not close enough to a target to hit them with it – like only 300 range or so, (enough to close the gap as the target is just starting to run away) – while remaining as-is when a target is nearby.

DeceiverX.8361:

snipples

no, I don’t think the developers should spend time working on entirely new animations when something much simpler could be done that fixes the problem just fine.

I don’t know what you said about the return duration cuz your remark was kittenized.

Maybe switch Dancing Dagger to a shadow step since jump casting was removed from Infiltrator’s Strike. A gap closer would also be useful to D/D and P/D. If that is too drastic, it would be nice if Dancing Dagger applied Blind to give it some utility.

Dagger.2035:

snipples

that would be a cool change I guess. the teleport part. sounds kinda op at first but could work.

fluffdragon.1523:

You’re going about it all wrong, OP.

First we have to ban all maces and hammers from PvP, since they’re a threat to our security and our integrity. Then we need to systematically dismantle the the unfair status quo against thieves by lowering the number of wins required to advance in the ranking — and to triple how much is needed if someone rerolls, because Thief First.

After that we’ll add some nice damage breakers for Sword users, designed to help bolster the weapon’s usability — which the other players in PvP will pay for, of course, because we’ll impose a 20% buff on Thief players when decapping enemy points.

We’ll also just plain buff everything a sword can do because we said so.

(This response is made as an entirely sarcastic reply to the OP’s choice of thread title)

I appreciate the sarcasm, it was very clever and well placed with the title.

DeceiverX.8361:

Stand The Wall.6987:

jump cast trick was dumb and should stay dead because it was a bug. I think if sword 2 port was instant but didn’t act as a stun breaker then s/d and s/p would become a whole lot more viable. maybe nerf the immob to 1/2 sec. to give sword more chase maybe make the return last only 5 sec.

It added a ton of depth and utility to the kit. A bug, maybe, but it made the sword a viable secondary weapon and gave it much-needed missing chace.

Frankly, I play sword almost entirely for IS/IR allowing me to teleport out halfway or almost entirely through a fight. With kitten duration on return I’d never touch sword ever again.

IR used to be instant and it was insanely overpowered. It’d be a no-cast 1200-range disengage + condi cleanse on initiative; that’s just way bonkers all things considered.

The best they could do is probably have Flanking Strike be split into different skills based on whether or not you have a target nearby; a small lunge for 3 initiative or something if you’re not close enough to a target to hit them with it – like only 300 range or so, (enough to close the gap as the target is just starting to run away) – while remaining as-is when a target is nearby.

I am curious, why do you think having the instant port would be bad if it couldn’t be used for stunbreak or while cced? It wouldn’t be all that powerful outside of giving the thief a reliable disengage when in a bad position. It’s not like we are talking perma stunbreaks like the old return had. We can even slightly up ini cost if it’s needed but I don’t feel like it’ll be much of a problem.

And if instant ends up being too much then why not just make it like a 1/4 second cast time or something small like that? Atm it’s just too much cast time for so little gain imo. I feel if sword is going to be the duelist type build and focus on sustained combat it needs reliable disengage and it needs to be able to react extremely fast to any situation.

I was assuming “instant port” was referring to being able to be used during CC, as IR used to work exactly this way in the past; you’d teleport and stay CC’ed because it lacked a cast, which by far and large is how most (if not all?) instant-cast abilities work in GW2.

As far as the second remark, it’s already a 1/4s cast; this was done again solely to make the ability not instant-cast to prevent mid-CC retreats which was deemed overpowered. It’s extremely quick on the disengage; it just has aftercast frames which delay other skill uses thereafter for a shorter period. And the removal of these frames won’t really help the kit for its disengage potential since these occur after the teleport (and thus once you’re disengaged and hopefully out of range), anyways. It also already has a disengage range of 1200; the same as maxed shadowstep, so it’s actually very good at running away as it is. The problem with sword is its lack of capacity to apply pressure to literally anything else but a stationary boonbunker.

The kit lacks viability in most cases on the conceptual level due to the removal of the tempo of PvP and how FG allowed it to fully maximize this tempo-style play since HoT, paired with what’s just ineffective burst damage when looking at how much is necessary to down the new elites and given Marauder’s amulets and the likes where even damage builds are tankier than before.

It’s not strong in more open encounters because it lacks chase/vector-mobility potential unlike how it used to given jump-casts. The beauty and strength of the sword was that it could keep re-applying pressure and completely negate someone from disengaging it while it slowly whittled down their health. It was a duelist build with jump-casts because it could force a 1v1 to keep happening for a prolonged time.

The changes in sPvP to increase its engage range and immob duration help this, but it’s a far cry from being as utility-oriented as it was given the amount of -mobility effects, passives, blocks, resistance, and get-out-of-jail-free cards so many professions stack at the moment with the elites, which makes IS’s lockdown utility much less impactful, and given the state of PvP in general, something that’s relatively unattrative for both a team and the thief itself.

I wasn’t clear before, but I was trying to say that infil strike should be instant so you can precast pistol whip or flanking strike, and infil return cast time should stay the same. maybe lessen the duration of infil return to 5 sec so people can have more chase potential.

DeceiverX.8361:

I was assuming “instant port” was referring to being able to be used during CC, as IR used to work exactly this way in the past; you’d teleport and stay CC’ed because it lacked a cast, which by far and large is how most (if not all?) instant-cast abilities work in GW2.

As far as the second remark, it’s already a 1/4s cast; this was done again solely to make the ability not instant-cast to prevent mid-CC retreats which was deemed overpowered. It’s extremely quick on the disengage; it just has aftercast frames which delay other skill uses thereafter for a shorter period. And the removal of these frames won’t really help the kit for its disengage potential since these occur after the teleport (and thus once you’re disengaged and hopefully out of range), anyways. It also already has a disengage range of 1200; the same as maxed shadowstep, so it’s actually very good at running away as it is. The problem with sword is its lack of capacity to apply pressure to literally anything else but a stationary boonbunker.

The kit lacks viability in most cases on the conceptual level due to the removal of the tempo of PvP and how FG allowed it to fully maximize this tempo-style play since HoT, paired with what’s just ineffective burst damage when looking at how much is necessary to down the new elites and given Marauder’s amulets and the likes where even damage builds are tankier than before.

It’s not strong in more open encounters because it lacks chase/vector-mobility potential unlike how it used to given jump-casts. The beauty and strength of the sword was that it could keep re-applying pressure and completely negate someone from disengaging it while it slowly whittled down their health. It was a duelist build with jump-casts because it could force a 1v1 to keep happening for a prolonged time.

The changes in sPvP to increase its engage range and immob duration help this, but it’s a far cry from being as utility-oriented as it was given the amount of -mobility effects, passives, blocks, resistance, and get-out-of-jail-free cards so many professions stack at the moment with the elites, which makes IS’s lockdown utility much less impactful, and given the state of PvP in general, something that’s relatively unattrative for both a team and the thief itself.

Covering the instant cast thing,
That’s why I specified (Or thought I did) in my OP that they’d have to rig the skill’s function to not be able to be used while cced. So the port is able to be instant and highly responsive, but it is still countered by cc to avoid the op nature the skill had at that time.
My b on the cast time remark, for some reason I thought it was a 3/4 sec cast time so whoops on that.

My take on sword in the experiences I’ve had with it is that it thrives in the current meta due to a good deal of builds relying on boons like prot to keep them alive (especially strong vs ele) but it can’t reliably get off its damage due to needing to set up ls by hitting a target first with fs and the kit’s lack of damage on anything but ls and auto. I loved the jump cast and want to see it put back in in order to give the set more depth and style choice.

It’s not likely that anet will consider these types of changes but if they did, i certainly would love to see s/d back on the competitive scene.

Dinked around with Sword again recently, as both S/D and S/P.

Sword feels nice and hefty in its hits, good impact and nice damage, but it feels like I’m swinging a slab of lead around, not a blade. Faster attacks or a tighter and shorter animation sequence might help improve it, for as it is, it looks like we’re flailing more than hacking and slashing at something.

(I need to drag my Guardian out of hiding again and see if the thief Sword AA sequence reminds me of the Guardian one with good reason or not ….)

In terms of generalized improvements:

• Autoattack sequence: tighten up the animations and make the sequence a bit faster. It’s a hard-hitting weapon, yes, but it also looks lumbering and slow. That doesn’t befit thief, and the speed boost will more than make up for damage (like how Dagger can outclass Staff in a Power build through speed alone). However, the inflicted Weakness and Cripple are huge benefits to a low-HP class and, used right, can be great for kiting foes around and mitigating a fair bit of damage taken, so overall I’m OK with it.
• Infiltrator’s Strike: perhaps in addition to shadow-stepping to the target, it should position us behind them. This would help exploit Crit builds, maybe some runes, and make more sense if someone wanted to quickly pop of Cloak and Dagger too, resulting in very nice synergy. Still don’t like the 15s window of it being unusable until Infiltrator’s Return is used, though, as I prefer to use this as a gap closer or to open a fight, which basically means either a 15s cool-down or a long walk. Can’t say we should remove the chained skill, but perhaps come up with a better implementation.
• Flanking Strike (Sword/Dagger): honestly, the original version as a single attack was better and didn’t leave two of our attacks “on cool-down.” Sure we could save it for a time to use Larcenous Strike, but … now we no longer have an evade! It has already functionally been reverted to the pre-2013 version sans the attack split, so just re-combine it and keep the Evade, which is the only true addition.
• Pistol Whip (Sword/Pistol): no real complaints here, and that long Evade is pretty nice. Still not a fan of attacks that effectively root you, though, but that’s just me.

I don’t think sword screams out with any one thing holding it back. It took some nerfs, and then has just been power creeped out over the past couple years.

The most obvious difference post-HoT is that your match-up against D/P thief has gone from a hard fight that was still largely skill based to one D/P simply dominates. Part of this has been the weakening of dodge spam (which is how S/D fought extended stealth), but the bigger issue is how S/D’s offense depended a lot on fishing with Infiltrator’s Strike and punishing when you hit the immobilize. Now that’s hard countered by Unhindered Combatant (or Debilitating Arc on staff)…meaning you really don’t have a threat to win with and you’re mostly just waiting until you make a mistake and die.

That to me means it needs power shifted elsewhere in the kit – 3 to 5 on S/D are marginal to weak, and only 4 is good on S/P (as you have no synergy with 5). Fixing that is a pretty big ordeal because it means turning those skills into the focus of their respective kits, which is not an easy thing that needs small number changes.

Developer Turampu-San will make Swordu-Daggu great again, but only if you voted for him!

I’m going out of the box this time:
its also quiet early in the morning so bare with me.

Add a trait that gives +vit while wielding a sword.
somewhere along the lines off + 250 vit would be ideal.
This would open up diversity in are amulet choice, mainly Seekers, and zerkers.
I.e: Wurm (random life rune) 175 + trait 250 = 425, which would be around 16k life.
I.e: Seekers + leadership (random boon rune) Trait = 250 vit which is around 14k-15k life and 100% boon uptime
Mara’s gives you 560 vit and 17,245 hp. which obviously could be a problem with this trait. (your looking at the ballpark of 19k-20k life)
I doubt people would use the other options of Barbian or Valk so they shouldn’t be to big of a concern.

Obviously this is done using Pvp numbers, and are mostly rounded sums

My suggestion would be
-reduce iniative of flanking strike to 3
-increase speed of auto attacks by 10%
-increase range of larcenous strike to 200

All Matter Fecal, D/P has more utility than S/D due to the reliable Blind, Daze/Stun and out-of-combat stealth, easy enough. It also allows for much bigger plays because of these differences.

For the topic S/D… Aside of it losing a lot of its mobility and potential with the “bugfix” to Infiltrators Strike. Which dumbed down the set, as well as heavily nerfed it. I think the real issue isn’t with Sword, but with the off-hand Dagger.
Poison on Dancing Dagger and a short Blind on Cloak and Dagger would go a long way for S/D, D/D and P/D. Both of these Conditions don’t need to be high in duration/stacks (4 second Poison for 1 or 2 stacks, 2 second Blind or something) but would be beneficial both to Power and Condi oriented builds due to their effects while still being in line with the Thief archetype.

I think for S/P, there’s way bigger issues. Ini management can be a kitten, but it’s manageable after some practice. Still, it’s a big thing that makes it far from in-line with D/P (S/D suffers from this to a lesser extent).
Headshot’s absolutely fine, but S/P doesn’t inherently get a lot of value out of Blinding Powder. Not much to do about it without probably harming D/P. If they’d let it pulse faster again, that’d be great but it would still be OP.

On a final note, don’t nerf D/P for the sake of S/D (or anything else, really). Rather put some effort into getting them both in line and viable for different playstyles.
You don’t stabilize by shooting yourself in the foot, you know… Try it some time if you got your doubts!

EDIT:
Oh right, the thing about skill queuing really is an ‘L2P’ issue. Try to keep your calm better, I’d say… It does happen to me that I get too trigger-happy on the Flanking Strike (especially against Blocks…), but I always feel like zn idiot then because I spammed my skill, when a single tap would suffice.

Vornollo.5182:

All Matter Fecal, D/P has more utility than S/D due to the reliable Blind, Daze/Stun and out-of-combat stealth, easy enough. It also allows for much bigger plays because of these differences.

For the topic S/D… Aside of it losing a lot of its mobility and potential with the “bugfix” to Infiltrators Strike. Which dumbed down the set, as well as heavily nerfed it. I think the real issue isn’t with Sword, but with the off-hand Dagger.
Poison on Dancing Dagger and a short Blind on Cloak and Dagger would go a long way for S/D, D/D and P/D. Both of these Conditions don’t need to be high in duration/stacks (4 second Poison for 1 or 2 stacks, 2 second Blind or something) but would be beneficial both to Power and Condi oriented builds due to their effects while still being in line with the Thief archetype.

I think for S/P, there’s way bigger issues. Ini management can be a kitten, but it’s manageable after some practice. Still, it’s a big thing that makes it far from in-line with D/P (S/D suffers from this to a lesser extent).
Headshot’s absolutely fine, but S/P doesn’t inherently get a lot of value out of Blinding Powder. Not much to do about it without probably harming D/P. If they’d let it pulse faster again, that’d be great but it would still be OP.

On a final note, don’t nerf D/P for the sake of S/D (or anything else, really). Rather put some effort into getting them both in line and viable for different playstyles.
You don’t stabilize by shooting yourself in the foot, you know… Try it some time if you got your doubts!

EDIT:
Oh right, the thing about skill queuing really is an ‘L2P’ issue. Try to keep your calm better, I’d say… It does happen to me that I get too trigger-happy on the Flanking Strike (especially against Blocks…), but I always feel like zn idiot then because I spammed my skill, when a single tap would suffice.

Well, poison on dagger attacks and a short blind on Cloak and Dagger can be obtained through traits in Deadly Arts and Shadow Arts, respectively.

OH dagger needs a much more substantial rework than baseline CiS on CnD and some extra poison.

I’ve said it many, many times, and I’ll keep saying it: CiS does absolutely nothing for the health of OH dagger or any kit using OH dagger except condi P/D thief since it’d act as a cover condition. Especially now, it has almost zero defensive value and does nothing about the biggest issue CnD faces which is inconsistency and lack of reliability. Unfortunately, OOC/non-on-hit stealth is overpowered.

Dancing Dagger is just generally a terrible skill and needs a massive rework with the kits in mind.

You used to take s/d because of the extra dodges you would get. With the new daredevil elite spec, you don’t need more dodges.
I think S/D is lost forever

I feel like sticking poison on Dancing Dagger would be more than sufficient. Not every skill on your bar needs to be a monster – niche utility skills actually work really well on thieves since you can funnel initiative into your powerhouses most of the time, and the niche skill costs you nothing.

Cloak and Dagger is the one you want to be powerful. We’re long past the days in the first few months when it was a powerhouse because people couldn’t move or dodge worth a kitten . Stuff like baseline CiS would be nice, but wouldn’t really fix it; doing something like dramatically speeding up the animation would solve a lot of the consistency problems but could easily make it overbearing.

I feel like CnD doesn’t need a single big buff, but a bunch of small ones that together add up to a lot – drop the initiative cost by 1, baseline CiS, increase the stealth duration by a second – that make it a bit more reliable and a bit more powerful, without giving it a single dimension that becomes oppressive. That’s a lot harder to sell than a single, big number fix, but I think that’s the only way to eventually make it healthy yet powerful.

Two fixes to S/D that would make it more relevant, are return Infiltrators return to pre nerf state, so it no longer has a Cast time like it used to be, reduce Larcenous Strike Initiative cost like it used to be, and add something to either Dancing Dagger or Cloak and Dagger.

I’ll just repost this (since it’s a long post) regarding an overhaul of OH dagger.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Off-hand-Dagger-Discussion-Thread/first#post6427223

No-cast-time IR is just way too strong, particularly with Daredevil, since it’d allow an Acro/Daredevil an effective stunbreak/disengage on average once every 3s

I do not like the idea of Poison on dancing dagger simply because d/d already has poison on the AA.

Slow would be my own preferred skill here added to the cripple as it would help either power or condition builds and has an impact that I feel understated. A slow of 1 or 1.5 seconds would do it. This would help counter those with access to the Boon quickness and allow the X/d player to take advantage of lower “reaction time” to get a few more attacks in beforre they are countered .

On The CND it my belief the INI costs are too high. Drop it by one and increase vuln stacks to 5 stacks. Add one second to base stealth. This latter to address the issues with the cooldown on attacks from stealth. It hard enough to pull off a CND so lets give the thief a bit more time in stealth to set up that attack. Yes this means 5 seconds if traited SA but that longer base stealth for this skill only will bring it a bit closer to d/p and its stacking of stealth.

It’s been mentioned over and over but, really unless buffs are insane like over 50% increase to aa (it’s slooooow, dagger can keep up, no problemo, and if it can, what’s 10% going to do? suddenly another viable weapon set on the same level? d/p lives on aa. It’s such an ini saver), a gap closer with considerable damage and spammability and extras (did I say extras?) compared to shadow shot, or on demand stealth (sitting!) (did I say sitting?) or even the ability to stealth stack with CnD (mind you, even if that was allowed, it would still be under par to d/p stealth sitting as you still need to hit, now if it had a range of 600-900, all is fair) anet will really have to look over why d/p is meta and why meta is meta for majority of thieves to even take a glance at s/d. And majority of what I said are crazy and the playerbase probably won’t like. Heck, I don’t like it, even if I main s/d.

Dagger auto attack outperforms sword auto attack by ~7.5%. Staff auto attack without staff mastery is nearly the same as sword, but applies vulnerability which puts staff above sword and dagger (if you only auto attack and hit all attacks).
With quickness the the difference between sword and dagger drops to ~4.4%. Doesn’t that suggest, that sword after cast is actually better than dagger? (Assuming that quickness reduces activation time, but not after cast. No idea how exactly quickness works :s)

fun fact: pistol whip is a dps loss compared to auto attack, even with the lead attacks trait (trickery trait-line).

DeceiverX.8361:

No-cast-time IR is just way too strong, particularly with Daredevil, since it’d allow an Acro/Daredevil an effective stunbreak/disengage on average once every 3s

100% agree here. At most I think you can argue for evade frames on the activation of IR – that makes it still a proactive skill and not a get out of jail free card, but also removes the really demoralizing case of using it in response to a telegraphed stun and getting hit during the animation.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

reduce Larcenous Strike Initiative cost like it used to be

You think Larcenous Strike is too weak? I feel like it’s super strong when I actually get to use it. I’d personally look closer at Flanking Strike – that’s the weak point of the combo and not worth the initiative at all.

babazhook.6805:

I do not like the idea of Poison on dancing dagger simply because d/d already has poison on the AA.

S/D already has cripple on the AA! The main argument for poison (and not slow) is how it behaves if it hits two targets, especially what it does if it hits two targets with condition duration. Poison has a nice, solid effect if it only hits a single target, but if it bounces between two it doesn’t do a whole lot more (a little bit extra DoT). It’s nice for the healing reduction up front. Slow would be totally fine on a single target, but I think starts to go bonkers on multiple targets – even a 1s slow, if it’s bouncing between targets, turns quickly into 2s on 2 targets, spammable every 3s long term…add a bit of condition duration, and you’re looking at a skill that can maintain 100% slow uptime on a couple targets. With cripple on top, that’s looking pretty obnoxious.

babazhook.6805:

On The CND it my belief the INI costs are too high. Drop it by one and increase vuln stacks to 5 stacks. Add one second to base stealth. This latter to address the issues with the cooldown on attacks from stealth.

Yeah this is what a good start would look like. What makes CnD tricky is how intertwined its power is with the rest of the kit. For instance, the longer immobilize on Infiltrator’s Strike is a big boon for CnD on S/D, since it sets up your target to make CnD easy to land – that just ends up not being super attractive since S/D doesn’t have any tools to capitalize on it (none of the other skills involved hit hard).

Or, put another way, if the set-up / control tools are better, and the payload more attractive, CnD doesn’t have to be all that much better.

Ensign.2189:

DeceiverX.8361:

No-cast-time IR is just way too strong, particularly with Daredevil, since it’d allow an Acro/Daredevil an effective stunbreak/disengage on average once every 3s

100% agree here. At most I think you can argue for evade frames on the activation of IR – that makes it still a proactive skill and not a get out of jail free card, but also removes the really demoralizing case of using it in response to a telegraphed stun and getting hit during the animation.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

reduce Larcenous Strike Initiative cost like it used to be

You think Larcenous Strike is too weak? I feel like it’s super strong when I actually get to use it. I’d personally look closer at Flanking Strike – that’s the weak point of the combo and not worth the initiative at all.

babazhook.6805:

I do not like the idea of Poison on dancing dagger simply because d/d already has poison on the AA.

S/D already has cripple on the AA! The main argument for poison (and not slow) is how it behaves if it hits two targets, especially what it does if it hits two targets with condition duration. Poison has a nice, solid effect if it only hits a single target, but if it bounces between two it doesn’t do a whole lot more (a little bit extra DoT). It’s nice for the healing reduction up front. Slow would be totally fine on a single target, but I think starts to go bonkers on multiple targets – even a 1s slow, if it’s bouncing between targets, turns quickly into 2s on 2 targets, spammable every 3s long term…add a bit of condition duration, and you’re looking at a skill that can maintain 100% slow uptime on a couple targets. With cripple on top, that’s looking pretty obnoxious.

babazhook.6805:

On The CND it my belief the INI costs are too high. Drop it by one and increase vuln stacks to 5 stacks. Add one second to base stealth. This latter to address the issues with the cooldown on attacks from stealth.

Yeah this is what a good start would look like. What makes CnD tricky is how intertwined its power is with the rest of the kit. For instance, the longer immobilize on Infiltrator’s Strike is a big boon for CnD on S/D, since it sets up your target to make CnD easy to land – that just ends up not being super attractive since S/D doesn’t have any tools to capitalize on it (none of the other skills involved hit hard).

Or, put another way, if the set-up / control tools are better, and the payload more attractive, CnD doesn’t have to be all that much better.

The duration of slow does not go up just because it hits more targets. Each taregt takes the one second hit. if the thief wants to use all his INI using Dancing dagger he will not be doing a lot of damage. At the same time a slowed target taking 50 percent more time to activate a given skill , meshes nicely with the nature of S/d which is get in with short sharp burts and get out before facing the inevitable counter.

The Slow on traps that the DH gets is a full 4 seconds before durations added. Yes it goes on cooldown but there no INI burned so the DH can freely use other weapon skills to take advtantage. i do not think 1 or 1.5 seconds unreasonable.

babazhook.6805:

The duration of slow does not go up just because it hits more targets. Each taregt takes the one second hit.

So we’re clear, in the best case scenario (fighting two opponents), Dancing Dagger hits them both twice. Thus instead of hitting with a 0.6 coefficient and applying a 3s cripple, it effectively hits both with a 1.2 coefficient and applies 6s of cripple (to both targets).

Slow stacks duration, so in that ideal case (a 1v2, 2v2, or 3v2) Dancing Dagger would apply 2s (if 1s base duration) or 3s (if 1.5s base duration) of slow to both targets. You could spam that out to apply a lot of slow very quickly, since DD has a very short activation time and cheap initiative cost.

That’s one the big constraint on Dancing Dagger, and why it is so hard to balance – what can you do to it to make it more useful in against a single target, without making it go bonkers against two targets? It’s why poison (which stacks duration, so two stacks isn’t much better than one stack) and blind (where you only kind of care about stacking duration) are the conditions that make sense here – they’d be good vs one target but not scale up appreciably against two – and poison is a lot more thematic.

Ensign.2189:

babazhook.6805:

The duration of slow does not go up just because it hits more targets. Each taregt takes the one second hit.

So we’re clear, in the best case scenario (fighting two opponents), Dancing Dagger hits them both twice. Thus instead of hitting with a 0.6 coefficient and applying a 3s cripple, it effectively hits both with a 1.2 coefficient and applies 6s of cripple (to both targets).

Slow stacks duration, so in that ideal case (a 1v2, 2v2, or 3v2) Dancing Dagger would apply 2s (if 1s base duration) or 3s (if 1.5s base duration) of slow to both targets. You could spam that out to apply a lot of slow very quickly, since DD has a very short activation time and cheap initiative cost.

That’s one the big constraint on Dancing Dagger, and why it is so hard to balance – what can you do to it to make it more useful in against a single target, without making it go bonkers against two targets? It’s why poison (which stacks duration, so two stacks isn’t much better than one stack) and blind (where you only kind of care about stacking duration) are the conditions that make sense here – they’d be good vs one target but not scale up appreciably against two – and poison is a lot more thematic.

The best case scenario you outline rarely happens . 1s slow (or 1.5) is still less then the slow we get off traps via the DH. If it indeed bounces back on a clustered target this no different really then multiple targets hit by a single trap and being slowed .

Dancing Dagger is also a projectile after all and there a whole lot of reflects blocks and other projectile hate that would further lessen that overall application of slow. The argument you make against it is much like the argument against “Headshot” spam , something which has a much greater impact when it does work and which generally only works against a very limited type of player. Dancing Dagger also has a noticeable tell and is rather slow as far as projectile speed goes.

I get 4 seconds slow off impairing daggers, this INI free. In order to get that off Dancing in MOST cases at 1 second base I have to burn off up to twelve INI. . None would have to be blocked or dodged or reflected.The former can be done on a 20 second cooldown meaning up to 8 seconds slow in 20.

I want to see the weaponsets more DIFFERENT then more the same so the feel is different.

I am reminded of the original blizzard games where humans fighting orcs and when you looked at the skills across the board, they had different names but in virtually all respects did the same things. I do not think this leads to diversity. (which is also why I am not fond of PORT skills on off hand dagger suggested just because PORT skills work so well on other sets)

In my vision when you give up off hand pistol you give up easy access to blinds. When you give up main hand dagger you give up easy access to poison. When you do this you get something else and in this case it slow. I think it a better way to go then “we use different weaponsets but have access to all the same things”

Slow is the way to go. We will agree to disagree.

Agreed, the Poison and Blind wouldn’t “fix” Off-Hand Dagger. But it’d be a nice place to start and work up from, plus they’re useful regardless of wether you build for Power, Condi or a Hybrid build. Heck even a support build benefits of those conditions given the right niche.

As for not wanting poison on Dancing Dagger because you can trait for it, really? Dagger Training is a very poor trait when compared to Mug, or even Trapper’s Respite. If it’d actually add a 33% chance to poison with any weapon (even if you’d put it on a 10-15 second ICD or something), now then it might be interesting. D/D already has plenty of poison application with the AA chain and both Dancing Dagger and CnD are too ini heavy to try and get value out of it. In PvE against high-Health NPC’s, sure. Not in a PvP setting, or against low-health NPC’s in PvE though.
Don’t even get me started on Cloaked in Shadows, which is in an even worse state when you consider it’s a Grandmaster trait nowadays. What a joke.
Thief’s traits issues are worth a topic on their own, per trait almost…

To reply about D/D already having plenty of Poison application on AA, so therefor Dancing Dagger shouldn’t get it… P/D and S/D don’t have that luxury, plus D/D’s playstyle wouldn’t change a bit because of it, regardless of the build you’d run with it, I think.

Also, let’s not speed up or increase the damage of Sword AA. the ‘burst’ category is already excellently filled by Dagger mainhand and even Staff, I’d say.
Sword Mainhand is perfect to once again be that agile bruiser-ish weapon, without adding ridiculous (not to mention, uncalled for) powercreep. That’s why I’m advocating the poison on Dancing Dagger. It’s an indirect way of buffing Sword’s “damage”, by reducing the enemy’s healing potential, which is a lot more flavourful and interesting to play with. I’d gladly have them take away the slight damage Buff that they gave Dancing Dagger rather recently, in favour of a single stack of Poison that’d last 4 seconds.

In conclusion, there’s so many things wrong with Thief… Off-Hand Dagger would be a great (arguably, the best) starting point though.

Vornollo.5182:

Agreed, the Poison and Blind wouldn’t “fix” Off-Hand Dagger. But it’d be a nice place to start and work up from, plus they’re useful regardless of wether you build for Power, Condi or a Hybrid build. Heck even a support build benefits of those conditions given the right niche.

As for not wanting poison on Dancing Dagger because you can trait for it, really? Dagger Training is a very poor trait when compared to Mug, or even Trapper’s Respite. If it’d actually add a 33% chance to poison with any weapon (even if you’d put it on a 10-15 second ICD or something), now then it might be interesting. D/D already has plenty of poison application with the AA chain and both Dancing Dagger and CnD are too ini heavy to try and get value out of it. In PvE against high-Health NPC’s, sure. Not in a PvP setting, or against low-health NPC’s in PvE though.
Don’t even get me started on Cloaked in Shadows, which is in an even worse state when you consider it’s a Grandmaster trait nowadays. What a joke.
Thief’s traits issues are worth a topic on their own, per trait almost…

To reply about D/D already having plenty of Poison application on AA, so therefor Dancing Dagger shouldn’t get it… P/D and S/D don’t have that luxury, plus D/D’s playstyle wouldn’t change a bit because of it, regardless of the build you’d run with it, I think.

Also, let’s not speed up or increase the damage of Sword AA. the ‘burst’ category is already excellently filled by Dagger mainhand and even Staff, I’d say.
Sword Mainhand is perfect to once again be that agile bruiser-ish weapon, without adding ridiculous (not to mention, uncalled for) powercreep. That’s why I’m advocating the poison on Dancing Dagger. It’s an indirect way of buffing Sword’s “damage”, by reducing the enemy’s healing potential, which is a lot more flavourful and interesting to play with. I’d gladly have them take away the slight damage Buff that they gave Dancing Dagger rather recently, in favour of a single stack of Poison that’d last 4 seconds.

In conclusion, there’s so many things wrong with Thief… Off-Hand Dagger would be a great (arguably, the best) starting point though.

I want off hand dagger to play different then sets we already have and not just replicate the SAME things that other weaponsets do.

d/p has poison so lets give s/d poison. D/p has blind so lets give s/d blind is lazy game design. I want to play s/d because it different and not just a knockoff of all the d/p skills and abilities.

Poison and blind are bad ideas NOT because they would not be useful but because the other sets already do this to death. Even “steal 10 enudrance from first enemy struck” works better for me just because it helps change the gameplay from the d/p set which already poisons and blinds.

Make Flanking Strike unblockable instead of Larcenous Strike.

Make Cloak and Dagger put you into stealth without a target.

It’s called CLOAK and Dagger not DAGGER and Cloak, so why do i need to hit a person before going into stealth? dumb asf.

babazhook.6805:

I want off hand dagger to play different then sets we already have and not just replicate the SAME things that other weaponsets do.

d/p has poison so lets give s/d poison. D/p has blind so lets give s/d blind is lazy game design. I want to play s/d because it different and not just a knockoff of all the d/p skills and abilities.

Poison and blind are bad ideas NOT because they would not be useful but because the other sets already do this to death. Even “steal 10 enudrance from first enemy struck” works better for me just because it helps change the gameplay from the d/p set which already poisons and blinds.

Yes and no. There needs to be some overlap between kits; the reason for D/P’s dominance is pretty much solely because there’s really no competition. When you look at what makes certain kits viable or strong – and/or why a single one is dominating, the dominating factor needs to either be toned down, or have other kits provide similar functionality or have better, compensatory alternatives. All of the buffs to the dagger have pretty much come in MH form, and the game-state as it is really inhibits the OH skills from working effectively.

Poison on Dancing Dagger is abstracted into a greater problem of enabling heal cuts for S/D because it deals less sustained damage. Of course one can take DA for this for a heal negation on steal, but unlike D/P, the pressure isn’t constant which has a huge difference. In the case of D/D, the kit lacks engage and pressure potential like D/P has from Shadow Shot, and lacks consistency like SS and the AA chain provide, while also lacking stealth attack consistency/usability unlike again how D/P can SS from stealth and achieve great results even if the backstab misses.

That doesn’t mean that we need duplicate copies of abilities, however. If S/D’s counter-sustain game is bumped, it no longer needs the poison application to begin with. If D/D gets a better engage and CnD reworked to be consistent, and stealth-attack alternatives provided, it no longer needs massive buffs to CnD which end up breaking the skill itself.

It’s the same reasoning I identified in my linked post above.

Beautilation.7915:

Make Cloak and Dagger put you into stealth without a target.

It’s called CLOAK and Dagger not DAGGER and Cloak, so why do i need to hit a person before going into stealth? dumb asf.

Because that’s what the word ‘and’ means? What you suggest would be “Cloak or dagger” which is no longer even appropriate since ‘Cloak and dagger’ is an actual term which makes the name a pun.

It’d be impossible to balance this, anyways. SA would innately allow permanent stealth, and Imagine condi ghost thief with permanent stealth uptime without a target required or a leap finisher needed. It’d make D/D and in particular P/D condi totally overpowered and be the single most cancerous and boring kit to fight in the game – so bad, in fact, that I’d actually demand every profession in the game get a new class mechanic that acts as a 600-range character-following AoE reveal with a 75% or greater uptime.

I think the idea of “play different than existing content” is where Elite Specializations come in. Sadly we had our latest Elite Spec brought to us as a basic repackaging of past nerfs.
I want Thief to be looked at. So yes. , the sets should share the same flavour to some extent. S/D could/should have Poison to offset it’s comparatively low sustained pressure, not because D/P has it. I’d Like CnD to have a blind as a small form of active defense which would benefit D/D to a small extent as well as being overall useful to S/D and P/D, not because D/P has it. If I wanted anything from D/P, I’d simply play D/P. However, they play different, playstyle is a huge factor and just because there’s overlaps, doesn’t mean they are used in a remotely similar way.

As to the “10 Endurance” thing… D/* already “does that to death” so, frankly, I don’t even know why I tried to take that post serious, babazhook.

Making CnD stealth without a target is just silly for obvious reasons that have already been posted.
Maybe make CnD unblockable to make it more reliable, essentially also making CnD function as a better active defense. I feel like that would result in more outcry than it’s worth though, so I’d try the blind first (maybe make it so the blind doesn’t require a target..?).

Nothing we have in fact STEALS endurance. It just gains as more as the enemy remains with the same amount. I am talking more about REmoving endurance from en enemy so as to cut down on his dodges than about adding to your own. That said it was just a suggestion in line with others I suggested go here like slow or a PULL on first target hit.

I completely and entirely disagree with the notion that slapping poison and blind on OFF hand dagger is a solution. All you are doing is entrenching a problem that already exists, that being another weaponset dos it better.

The fundamental reason we fight is to inflict damage. Both s/d and d/d do that and the damage output of each set is not the issue when people chooseE to take d/p over s/d.
Making each weaponset the same is just nonsensical. Of course more people are going to take s/d if we make choosing it no different then choosing d/p.

I am sorry but the idea that off hand dagger should act the same as off hand pistol is lousy game design. Yeah it works but one might as well drop s/d entirely if when I play s/d I use the same strategy of “port to target , blind target, poison target attack target, Stealth” on both sets. When you do this then the defining aspect of any weaponset becomes Number 3 and the weapon with the best number 3 “wins out”.

>>>When you look at what makes certain kits viable or strong – and/or why a single one is dominating, the dominating factor needs to either be toned down, or have other kits provide similar functionality or have better, compensatory alternatives. All of the buffs to the dagger have pretty much come in MH form, and the game-state as it is really inhibits the OH skills from working effectively.

This statement in particular is just SO WRONG. If you break it down into its fudamental meaning it is saying In order to have balance we need to take the set that “works the best” and have other weapons act in the same manner . Taken to its logical extreme we might not as well have different weapon sets or for that matter different professions. It not a thoery of game design that I can agree with. (if this not your intent in the statement please clarify)

Obviously we can get more “balance” as all weapons have had their characteristics copied across , but that harly leads to diversity or a better game.

S/D and the way it plays should not be defined by one single skill at the 3 slot. If you want blinds take P off hand (or a trait) . If you want poison take D mainhand (or a trait). Lets make Sword MH and dagger OH give something different.

I really want s/d to work. If I wanted to play just another version of d/p I would take d/p.