Guild Wars 2

My opinion: it’s too slow for Thief. Looking at the damage values for the AA skill chains, only the 3rd part of the S/D AA chain is significantly better than D/P AA. And just barely, D/P 3rd AA skill gets 6s poison, compared to S/D 3rd AA skill getting 2s of weakness and cripple, which is nothing. And looking at activation times, not accounting for aftercast, D/P AA is twice as fast as Sword.

That being said, Sword 2 is better than D/P 3 (condi cleanse and disengage instead of blind is preferable), although it’s shorter-range. S/D 3, assuming you land the first skill, is actually amazing, it makes fighting DH possible. Of course getting that first hit is quite difficult.

My changes:

1. Remove aftercast on Crippling Strike and buff Sword AA damage. If they want it to be slower than Dagger, fine, but right now it’s too slow for a Thief. Rev at least has easy access to quickness to shorten the sword AA chain.
2. Switch Initiative cost for S/D 3, make the initial (blockable) attack cost 2 initiative and the second attack (unblockable boon-steal) cost 4. It’s clearly the better part of the chain so it should be the expensive one.
3. Extend Sword 2 to 900 range. It’s actually quite difficult to land it right now, 600 is not all that far.

I love S/D it has received quiet a few Nerfs since it’s prime, but Anet did do it service with smoothing out some of the aftercasts which sped up the AA chain and made it a little less clunky, it does need a little more love to be a viable weaponset in all game modes. I do use it with D/P in WvW as my main Set, it provides superior in combat mobility than SB for the slight reduction in ooc mobility, as well as much needed boonstrip against certain match ups..

I agree that another shave to Sword AA aftercasts will help it immensely.

I think they could shave 1 Ini off the Flanking strike and it would not make that chain OP, your idea does have merit since if the attack doesn’t land it’s a full wasted Initiative.

Infiltrator Strike would see a lot of love if it was increased to 900 units, but I don’t hunk that will ever happen since it has never been Touched since the early days of the game.

On top of your proposal I believe a rework of CnD is in need I am not certain what to do for it, and it is a big point of contention.

I think CnD needs some greater reward when successfully pulled off. As example double the vuln stacks to 6 or add “gain 2 seconds quickness” or some such.

If neither of these suitable the INI cost at 6 at least should be lowered. With the current number of blocks , evades and all that AOE which must be dealt with when trying to pull one of these off , an INI cost of 4 more reasonable if the rest of the skill remains the same.

I definitely think the biggest issue is the AA chain’s slowness. Like I mentioned Rev has access to Quickness, and also there’s the fact that they have an overall better sword AA chain, 3 guaranteed stacks of vulnerability per chain (which goes well with Focused Siphoning and Targeted Destruction, both of which are minor traits). With the vulnerability, traits (don’t forget Vicious Lacerations), and quickness Rev has a far superior synergy resulting in much bigger damage output. Part of the issue is Crippling Strike’s lame conditions, they could at least extend the condi duration to be longer than the length of the AA chain. So like 4s+. 2s is pretty insulting. Note that I’m not calling for Rev nerfs, like Thief they’re extra-reliant on AA due to their energy system (similar to Thief’s Initiative). In fact more so since Rev’s utilities rely on energy too. But Thief’s Sword AA is just not in a good place right now.

Sword 2 doesn’t need to be changed, that’s a suggestion that would make my life easier. Still I wouldn’t push for it, getting into/staying in 600 range is a L2P issue.

I’m serious about Sword 3 chain though, 4 initiative up front is too much.

I also think that Infiltrator’s Return should be a breakstun or at least be usable while CCed like Steal, but that it should consume 3 initiative as a result. Not really sure why it should be unusuable while stunned.

Huskyboy.1053:

I also think that Infiltrator’s Return should be a breakstun or at least be usable while CCed like Steal, but that it should consume 3 initiative as a result. Not really sure why it should be unusuable while stunned.

It used to be useable while stunned years ago got nerfed on December 10 2013 because too many bads cried about it too much even though it wasn’t even a real Stunbreak.

Admittedly, being instant cast was a little over the top. Although a neat approach to this might be simply allowing it to be instant-cast but increasing the cost of IR by 2 when stunned.

For Flanking/Larcenous initiative swaps, I will say this unfortunately can’t happen, and its split to make Flanking the expensive ability is definitely intentional. Flanking doesn’t turn until Larcenous unless the attack hits. It has a fairly small hitbox, so if cast without a target, it’d be very easy to chain near-permanent evasion, especially on Acrobatics + Daredevil, which would regenerate one of those initiative points with every evade and allow for more general-evasion, too.

The real problem with S/D is OH dagger. CnD is an under-performing ability game-wide at the moment, Dancing Dagger is never going to be any good until reworked entirely since it’s impossible to balance and make useful at the same time, and Tac Strike, while good, doesn’t justify using and likely wasting initiative on CnD which could be better-spent on evades and unblockable attacks.

900 range iStrike is definitely curious, especially since they removed the jump-cast iReturn cancellation which made the weapon be able to apply much more pressure; I’d have to play test it I think, as I can definitely see there being a valid argument about sword having too much disengage pressure.

DeceiverX.8361:

Admittedly, being instant cast was a little over the top. Although a neat approach to this might be simply allowing it to be instant-cast but increasing the cost of IR by 2 when stunned.

For Flanking/Larcenous initiative swaps, I will say this unfortunately can’t happen, and its split to make Flanking the expensive ability is definitely intentional. Flanking doesn’t turn until Larcenous unless the attack hits. It has a fairly small hitbox, so if cast without a target, it’d be very easy to chain near-permanent evasion, especially on Acrobatics + Daredevil, which would regenerate one of those initiative points with every evade and allow for more general-evasion, too.

The real problem with S/D is OH dagger. CnD is an under-performing ability game-wide at the moment, Dancing Dagger is never going to be any good until reworked entirely since it’s impossible to balance and make useful at the same time, and Tac Strike, while good, doesn’t justify using and likely wasting initiative on CnD which could be better-spent on evades and unblockable attacks.

900 range iStrike is definitely curious, especially since they removed the jump-cast iReturn cancellation which made the weapon be able to apply much more pressure; I’d have to play test it I think, as I can definitely see there being a valid argument about sword having too much disengage pressure.

It would be fun to test. And tbh I don’t think the disengage thing is a huge problem, D/P trades off the shadowsteps on the weapons for easy stealth, which also makes disengaging very easy. And ofc SB is the king of disengage weapons. I doubt S/D will ever become OP in that respect, though that won’t stop the QQ brigade.

The S is fine the D is the problem. Read into that what you will.

Straegen.2938:

The S is fine the D is the problem. Read into that what you will.

…. you and Jana with these comments…..

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Straegen.2938:

The S is fine the D is the problem. Read into that what you will.

…. you and Jana with these comments…..

“buffing the /D” is never a bad idea but it seems to be the prevalent concept for the Thief forum lately. Dancing Dagger feels more like a Halloween tonic than a skill although I like the bounce. CnD just feels like it a part of Stealth, I forget it’s own skill sometimes since I just use Black Powder for stealth which I mostly use for traveling.

kash.9213:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Straegen.2938:

The S is fine the D is the problem. Read into that what you will.

…. you and Jana with these comments…..

“buffing the /D” is never a bad idea but it seems to be the prevalent concept for the Thief forum lately. Dancing Dagger feels more like a Halloween tonic than a skill although I like the bounce. CnD just feels like it a part of Stealth, I forget it’s own skill sometimes since I just use Black Powder for stealth which I mostly use for traveling.

I see your mind is not in the gutter….

BlaqueFyre.5678:

I see your mind is not in the gutter….

Like I said, it’s never a bad idea and we’ve been all about the /P long enough. That’s why D/P set is on top right now, aint no fun if you only got one.

Sword aint the real prob.. maybe just boost a bit the time of weakness and cripple on AA 3.
Dagger oh is! they need to rework CnD and dacing dagger is usefull but its miles away from headshot atm.

I agree on the reduction of sword AA aftercast, its damage output is really underperforming compared to rev sword AA or even main hand dagger AA.

As for infiltrator’s strike, I’d rather have the ability to cancel the return than making it 900 range.

I’d reduce the cost of CnD as it is pretty risky, but also buff stealth attacks, which would make CnD indirectly more useful. Sword stealth attack is kinda trash, and with other weaponsets, backstab not nearly as good as it was after the 1sec ICD on stealth attacks, and all the blocks and evades. The sword stealth attack has to be changed to something actually useful and powerful, otherwise, stealth from CnD is pointless, and so is the whole skill for S/D. My opinion.

Dancing daggers is actually quite useful to kite I think, with ok damage, but could be revised a bit I guess.

Wonder when we can see them fixing other jump casts on other skills on other classes (like mesmer), considering they recently gutted another key thing that made S/D decent – jump casting IS.

This set is a joke compared to its predecessor.

That should even be an option (double tap or something ?) without jumping. It feels a bit clunky to me like this…

Pomdepin.7068:

I agree on the reduction of sword AA aftercast, its damage output is really underperforming compared to rev sword AA or even main hand dagger AA.

As for infiltrator’s strike, I’d rather have the ability to cancel the return than making it 900 range.

I’d reduce the cost of CnD as it is pretty risky, but also buff stealth attacks, which would make CnD indirectly more useful. Sword stealth attack is kinda trash, and with other weaponsets, backstab not nearly as good as it was after the 1sec ICD on stealth attacks, and all the blocks and evades. The sword stealth attack has to be changed to something actually useful and powerful, otherwise, stealth from CnD is pointless, and so is the whole skill for S/D. My opinion.

Dancing daggers is actually quite useful to kite I think, with ok damage, but could be revised a bit I guess.

Why not both? Extending the range even to 750 would be good, and I definitely think you should be able to cancel it. Now I think that should be the case with all 2-step skills, like Shadowstep, they shouldn’t just change IS, they should change all of them to be cancel-able.

Considering D/P will always be better, even if it’s nerfed and all of the nerfs S/D had got reverted, simply due to how the meta is and how other classes have been developed. There’s definitely room to improve on S/D as a good option in at least WvW.
But like others pointed out, it’s mostly the /D part that needs changes or full reworks. I’d love to see a Blind added to Cloak and Dagger and a short Poison to the Dancing Dagger bounces. An increased range to Infiltrator’s Strike would be great, I don’t believe the extra 300 range would develop an issue with disengage potential for enemy classes.
The increased Ini cost to allow Infiltrator’s Return to be used while stunned would be amazing as well (but not break stun), I’d be fully behind that!

I sometimes wish IS had a bit more range but adding Ini cost to it would make it feel more like a single use gap closer after using it for so long as a way to keep a group enveloped. I can afford to stagger it right now, the only problem I have is I can’t cancel the second phase to restart it at the moment .