Guild Wars 2

TL;DR
D/D and Staff need better gap closing ability. Slightly increase the range of Vault, and add something (up for discussion) to Dancing Dagger.

Side Note: CnD should probably also get blind, but that’s a different topic.

Longer Version
Hello everyone. I want to talk a bit about melee gap closers. S/X and D/P both have respectable options for closing the gap to either engage or chase an opponent. Shadow Shot is a fantastic chasing tool, and does good damage as well. Sword is a little bit awkward, but Infiltrators Strike/Return has the benefit of being usable outside of it’s max range, as well as immobilizing and cleansing conditions. Now that the good options are out of the way, let’s talk about the others…

D/D
This set has one, very poor gap closer. Heartseeker has half the range of Shadow Shot, and you only really want to use it when your target is <25%. HS has it’s place, though, so I recommend adding some effect to Dancing Dagger to assist with gap closing. Any ideas? You could add a flip teleport, but I think we could come up with something more unique.

Staff
Staff is a good weapon, but the range on Vault leaves something to be desired. I’d up it to 800 range (maybe 900 if nobody complains).

D/D could certainly use a rework. That would be amazing.

But seeing as how I got hit by a 10k damage vault yesterday, no.. It doesn’t neem more range. It needs its evade frames removed, or its damage lowered. Then maybe we’ll talk range.

I’d gladly take a small DPS hit for more range on Vault. But just because it does a lot of damage, that doesn’t mean it should have poor range. There’s a good reason D/P is still preferred over Staff. It’s harder to stick to your target, and Vault is extremely telegraphed.

Gun Flame Has insane damage, and is a long range attack, but it is not complained about that much because of how telegraphed it is. 800 range Vault isn’t going to break anything.

I still think D/D dagger as a pull would work real nice. It remains in all respects as is with its bouncing cripple but gets a second skill cascade on hitting first target. If you hit first target you get a 1200 pull. It pulls enemy to you rather than you to him.

This also makes it very advantageous to a port as sometimes you do not want to port (ie into AOE or traps) . If 3 ini added to the pull portion it would not be spammed. Still dodgeable blockable. (dancing dagger would than cost 3+3)

Zodryn.4216:

I’d gladly take a small DPS hit for more range on Vault. But just because it does a lot of damage, that doesn’t mean it should have poor range. There’s a good reason D/P is still preferred over Staff. It’s harder to stick to your target, and Vault is extremely telegraphed.

Gun Flame Has insane damage, and is a long range attack, but it is not complained about that much because of how telegraphed it is. 800 range Vault isn’t going to break anything.

gun flame https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Gunflame-needs-adjusting/first#post5987021

I’d rather increase distance on staff 3 then range on vault. Vault itself is already a hard hitting aoe skill with evade, it does not need more reasons to be used over other staff skills.

Lower dps on vault would affect thief in pve, which might not be of interest for you but other thieves do play pve as well.

I think simply decreasing the initiative cost of dancing dagger to 2 would actually be pretty helpful. It could also become a rollover skill where on successful hit, gain a teleport that costs X initiative (4?) with 900 range and deals the same or more damage as shadow shot. This would help emphasize D/D’s burst style gameplay and make it more of the "assassin’ type weapon set that the thief D/D set should be.

Reducing cloak and dagger initiative to 5 and adding a blind would also help, the risk needs reduced and the reward needs increased, but as you said that’s a different topic.

As for staff, I don’t think it really needs anything else. I wouldn’t mind having Dust strike become a higher range but other than that I think it would make more sense for it to stay as a more “in your face” set. The design they were going for with staff is a melee semi-bruiser, and I think staff already fits that fairly well.

Thanks for the input. So here are a few ideas for Dancing Dagger, which everyone seems to agree needs some love.

• Keep it as is, but reduce initiative cost to 2

• Flip skill: teleport to target

• Flip skill: pull target

• Flip skill: teleport target to you (less wonky than pull, and less annoying for target)

• Flip skill: long range leap to target

• Flip skill: immobilize target

People seem reluctant to give Vault more range. It is certainly very strong, but more range will not make other staff skills less used, since none of them are competing as a gap closer for the set. It also won’t make you hit harder, and will be largely unnoticed by opponents. The low range just feels very awkward at times, especially when it snaps your landing point back slightly for no reason. People complained about the range back in beta, but I guess they just got used to it.

Edit: Also, a 5% nerf to AA and Vault damage are probably warranted, and we would still have top tier PvE DPS, if you want a trade off for more range.