Guild Wars 2

Dagger Training
Dagger attacks have a chance to poison enemies.
Chance on Hit: 33%
Poison (2s): 168 damage, -33% Healing Effectiveness

The hit chance should be increase to 50% and base duration to 3 sec, using dagger MH dagger is not rewarding when building in condition damage especially since the overall damage output of poison is weak.

Potent Poison
Increased poison duration. Poison deals increased damage.
Damage Increase: 10%
Duration Increase: 33%

The dps increase is not encouraging changing your build for poison stacking it’s just the only direct condition GM, increase the damage to 20%

Pressure Striking
Enemies you interrupt are inflicted with torment.
Torment (5s): 239 damage

It’s just minimal dps increase,doesn’t feel rewarding and worth building CC for and it’s competing with Bountiful Theft and Trickster,increase to 4 stacks increase to 6 secs

Trappers Respite
Drop a needle trap when you use a healing skill.

The CD of the trait is impairing synergy with anything but untraited HiS and Skelk Venom with Trapper Runes, reduce CD to original 10 sec create a “lesser version” if necessary just like Caltrops has Uncatchable.

P.S: All conditions builds that don’t have great access to burning feels significantly weak compared to others and burst damage necro just transfers,weakens and corrupts.The new traits are good idea but they need to be rewarding enough.

Sagat.3285:

Dagger Training
Dagger attacks have a chance to poison enemies.
Chance on Hit: 33%
Poison (2s): 168 damage, -33% Healing Effectiveness

The hit chance should be increase to 50% and base duration to 3 sec, using dagger MH dagger is not rewarding when building in condition damage especially since the overall damage output of poison is weak.

Potent Poison
Increased poison duration. Poison deals increased damage.
Damage Increase: 10%
Duration Increase: 33%

The dps increase is not encouraging changing your build for poison stacking it’s just the only direct condition GM, increase the damage to 20%

Pressure Striking
Enemies you interrupt are inflicted with torment.
Torment (5s): 239 damage

It’s just minimal dps increase,doesn’t feel rewarding and worth building CC for and it’s competing with Bountiful Theft and Trickster,increase to 4 stacks increase to 6 secs

Trappers Respite
Drop a needle trap when you use a healing skill.

The CD of the trait is impairing synergy with anything but untraited HiS and Skelk Venom with Trapper Runes, reduce CD to original 10 sec create a “lesser version” if necessary just like Caltrops has Uncatchable.

P.S: All conditions builds that don’t have great access to burning feels significantly weak compared to others and burst damage necro just transfers,weakens and corrupts.The new traits are good idea but they need to be rewarding enough.

Good thoughts all around. One major issue of course is durations and the impact of removing condition durations from traitlines. The thief has one trait that will increase a duration and it specific to poison. I think we can compete with fire IF we see some boosts here in the base durations.

Needle trap off respite should at the very least be reset on an improv steal along with getting that cooldown reduction off deadly trapper. I have my doubts we will so it go back to the ten seconds proposed. It would be nice.

I have not found the loss of condition duration being a problem I only ever went full DA on power thief condition thief usually only takes Mug and Serpent’s Touch venoms are balanced around sharing I ditched those a long time ago the CD is annoying as well. The hit to SA is not that bad but CiS and Shadow Protector should be merged the fall trait should be not be mixed with anything.

Whoever made the new condition traits has good ideas they are just not rewarding enough and push a more aggressive style. I actually feel like going p/d and d/p if those traits are worth it I haven’t equipped a SB on condi thief since +2 years I might now if poison is worth it. That’s all they have to do make it worthy for a proper condition thief.

With a 10 sec ICD there is no need for Improvisation to affect it but yes the bonus of Deadly Trapper should apply again just put a lesser version if necessary. I do like the directions though they should think of bringing Trapper runes in PvP.

Trapper runes are fun and they are what make my P/P condi build work . It could not work without them. I had thought of going Condi with d/p for torment and p/d fpr bleeds and realized I could get both off p/p.

Pressure strike is not all that bad. I have had battles where I completely locked down an enemy in WvW with Pressure strikes even as I was loading on torments. getting that timing down does take skill and is rewarding when you pull it off.

babazhook.6805:

Trapper runes are fun and they are what make my P/P condi build work . It could not work without them. I had thought of going Condi with d/p for torment and p/d fpr bleeds and realized I could get both off p/p.

Pressure strike is not all that bad. I have had battles where I completely locked down an enemy in WvW with Pressure strikes even as I was loading on torments. getting that timing down does take skill and is rewarding when you pull it off.

Meh p/p is will lack the stealth uptime,reflects will counter hard etc but it’s possible-ish but that’s WvW. I’m aiming d/p for poison and torment and the possibility of a melee condition set if Dagger Training is improved that is. I am waiting on the next patch to balance things out and we will see if it can perform well in PvP.

Potent poison is ok but not worth dropping Improv for.
It should work like this:

-Increased poison duration. Increased condition damage.
-Damage Increase: All damaging conditions +10% while poison is active from Thief.
-Duration Increase: Poison length +33%, +10% duration to non-damaging conditions while poison is active from Thief.

That may be OP if it affects others condition damage. Having it affect only your personal condition damage would still be good. Alternatively, instead of a flat 10%, it could be 1% per stack of poison.

uglydan.1638:

Potent poison is ok but not worth dropping Improv for.
It should work like this:

-Increased poison duration. Increased condition damage.
-Damage Increase: All damaging conditions +10% while poison is active from Thief.
-Duration Increase: Poison length +33%, +10% duration to non-damaging conditions while poison is active from Thief.

That may be OP if it affects others condition damage. Having it affect only your personal condition damage would still be good. Alternatively, instead of a flat 10%, it could be 1% per stack of poison.

I’m think they are pushing the poison stacking with the line I doubt something like that would be in DA. It’s just that poison is so low and no one will slot spider venom and needle trap for temporary poison. As long as MH dagger can be a poison stacking weapon it has potential push the weapons the utilities won’t cut it.

Let’s say that we should be like guardian with burn not asking for 4k poison but it needs good numbers since we only maintain bleed and a bit of torment confusion is not frequent.

Sagat.3285:

babazhook.6805:

Trapper runes are fun and they are what make my P/P condi build work . It could not work without them. I had thought of going Condi with d/p for torment and p/d fpr bleeds and realized I could get both off p/p.

Pressure strike is not all that bad. I have had battles where I completely locked down an enemy in WvW with Pressure strikes even as I was loading on torments. getting that timing down does take skill and is rewarding when you pull it off.

Meh p/p is will lack the stealth uptime,reflects will counter hard etc but it’s possible-ish but that’s WvW. I’m aiming d/p for poison and torment and the possibility of a melee condition set if Dagger Training is improved that is. I am waiting on the next patch to balance things out and we will see if it can perform well in PvP.

trapper runes give the stealth. I get just as much as the p/d condi build. It pretty locked into that set though otherwise a no go zone.

I agree. I was looking forward to experimenting with a more condi-oriented build for D/D with the condi changes, but alas it’s a bit underwhelming. I think most of it is due to the loss of condition duration. I think it’s arguable that Bleed and Poison should both be buffed a bit at baseline. If not, the traits you mentioned should be improved a bit.

That said, don’t forget that condi thieves can lean on utilities a lot as well to help supplement their total damage output.

The DPS increase for Potent Poison should definitely be higher than 10%. 20% or 25% seems more appropriate.

What gets me with potent poison as a GM trait is on the adept line Engie can take a trait that adds 50 percent duration to ALL conditions.

I think potent poison needs 25 percent more damage along with 50 percent duration. It is after all only for one condition type. Otherwise improv always the better bet in a condi build for the stuff you steal and the resets you can get on venoms and the like

babazhook.6805:

What gets me with potent poison as a GM trait is on the adept line Engie can take a trait that adds 50 percent duration to ALL conditions.

I think potent poison needs 25 percent more damage.

What? Jesus that’s ridiculous. It’s like they have no paradigm whatsoever for designing and balancing traits.

Einlanzer.1627:

babazhook.6805:

What gets me with potent poison as a GM trait is on the adept line Engie can take a trait that adds 50 percent duration to ALL conditions.

I think potent poison needs 25 percent more damage.

What? Jesus that’s ridiculous. It’s like they have no paradigm whatsoever for designing and balancing traits.

yep it called Chemical rounds and only applies to pistols but pistols IS the condition set and can deliver poison , fire, bleeds and confusion as damage conditions.

They also can get immobilize , blinds and cripples. Now given it pistol only one might argue it not OP but when you compare to the GM trait potent posion the latter should stack up more favorably.

As a condi thief, I completely agree with most of what you’re saying. My only addition would be to have Potent Poison do +10% damage and +10% duration for each unique condition on the enemy. Then it’s not only buffing poison, but also every other condition you stack on; since I typically have Poison/Bleed/Cripple/Confusion/Torment/Vulnerability stacked on at any given time, and could easily add Immobilize/Immobilize, that’d be a significant increase to my condition up time- thus an increase to my overall damage.

Einlanzer.1627:

I agree. I was looking forward to experimenting with a more condi-oriented build for D/D with the condi changes, but alas it’s a bit underwhelming. I think most of it is due to the loss of condition duration. I think it’s arguable that Bleed and Poison should both be buffed a bit at baseline. If not, the traits you mentioned should be improved a bit.

That said, don’t forget that condi thieves can lean on utilities a lot as well to help supplement their total damage output.

The DPS increase for Potent Poison should definitely be higher than 10%. 20% or 25% seems more appropriate.

I only build damage in utilities currently only because of Trapper Runes I used to before in PvP but in the long run I relied on p/d and steal for damage similar to a power thief. SR and Shadowstep are locked if I’m not running s/d third is usually an utility like scorpion wire,BP etc. The same way I never used SB as a secondary set on condi due to the swap sigils being too good.

I never understood why all venoms have same CD but Leeching Venoms is gated to 1 strike,why a rune made me remember thief had traps etc. It’s all on them to make the spec more attractive,diverse and maybe competitive.

babazhook.6805:

What gets me with potent poison as a GM trait is on the adept line Engie can take a trait that adds 50 percent duration to ALL conditions.

I think potent poison needs 25 percent more damage along with 50 percent duration. It is after all only for one condition type. Otherwise improv always the better bet in a condi build for the stuff you steal and the resets you can get on venoms and the like

Never messed with engie so never saw that trait before. Now I really want that for thief poisons.

This update really kind of pushed us down to the bottom of the pack. It’s not that thief even got worse, it just seems that the changes to thief were interesting and thought-out ideas to make it better, and all the other classes kind of went ape-kitten with their op condi’s.

I guess the thinking behind it is poison should be lesser duration/damage since it negates healing, and that makes sense i’m okay with that, but the base durations just seem so low for dagger poison applications. If you need to break out of a fight for even a few seconds to regroup yourself, poison wears off and they’ll heal. Really pushing the poison DA line to be about keeping almost non-stop pressure to get any use out of it.