Guild Wars 2

Before I’m out for the night: Please don’t forget that thief is a unique snowflake due to the initative system – our class has to be handled differently than other classes. (= it might be justified that we have to get our “utility” from traits).

They took most (or all) of the set specific traits away in June and that what remained was D/P.

I might even fix the forum bug with this post – woohoo!

Jana.6831:

Maugetarr.6823:

Another example to help clear up what I mean. Look at how relatively weak venoms are. The problem is that to make venoms any good, you are locked into a specific build and traitline. Venoms should be good untraited, and traits should add a little boost on top, not the binary nature of UP/OP when untraited/traited respectively that we have now.

It has always been like that – the weapons we have have got distinctive skills – you could either take that away or modify the traits. I don’t really oppose giving CnD blind, but that would be more “into the same direction” as if there were different equally useful traits. And yes, that’s my point, that’s why I’m saying D/P should sacrifice some of the utility and get it back from traits.

And that is my point as well: Look how “OP” D/P is as all traits add to the already good utility.
I don’t know too much about venoms, I have never used them – but as far as I know they’re pretty strong, so maybe turning half of it into traits was to prevent them being “OP” but that didn’t happen with D/P.

But that’s the thing. You keep advocating moving skills into lines that would make the lines mandatory and runs the same risk of being messed up as whats’s happened to D/D. D/P is well designed and well balanced. D/D is not. Your idea would be to take the utility from the set and do what with it? Headshot does nothing unless traited? BPS does nothing unless traited? Nerfing shadowshot damage is the only possible move that would be reasonable and honestly that doesn’t even need to be given back as a trait. Here’s the thing though. Until offhand dagger is given more utility, D/D isn’t going to be any better. It’s going to require a specific traitline to make it viable for you and that’s just not good for it. It needs to be able to stand on it’s own so multiple builds can be made for it. We already have problems with thief being locked into core lines to make it decent. We don’t need to keep locking ourselves into lines.

Maugetarr.6823:

Jana.6831:

Maugetarr.6823:

Another example to help clear up what I mean. Look at how relatively weak venoms are. The problem is that to make venoms any good, you are locked into a specific build and traitline. Venoms should be good untraited, and traits should add a little boost on top, not the binary nature of UP/OP when untraited/traited respectively that we have now.

It has always been like that – the weapons we have have got distinctive skills – you could either take that away or modify the traits. I don’t really oppose giving CnD blind, but that would be more “into the same direction” as if there were different equally useful traits. And yes, that’s my point, that’s why I’m saying D/P should sacrifice some of the utility and get it back from traits.

And that is my point as well: Look how “OP” D/P is as all traits add to the already good utility.
I don’t know too much about venoms, I have never used them – but as far as I know they’re pretty strong, so maybe turning half of it into traits was to prevent them being “OP” but that didn’t happen with D/P.

But that’s the thing. You keep advocating moving skills into lines that would make the lines mandatory and runs the same risk of being messed up as whats’s happened to D/D. D/P is well designed and well balanced. D/D is not. Your idea would be to take the utility from the set and do what with it? Headshot does nothing unless traited? BPS does nothing unless traited? Nerfing shadowshot damage is the only possible move that would be reasonable and honestly that doesn’t even need to be given back as a trait. Here’s the thing though. Until offhand dagger is given more utility, D/D isn’t going to be any better. It’s going to require a specific traitline to make it viable for you and that’s just not good for it. It needs to be able to stand on it’s own so multiple builds can be made for it. We already have problems with thief being locked into core lines to make it decent. We don’t need to keep locking ourselves into lines.

Reread my last post adressed to you – you skipped what I wrote.

ETA:

Jana.6831:

They took most (or all) of the set specific traits away in June and that what remained was D/P.

All other sets had to trait for their utility – maybe that was to balance them. D/P is the only set that never “needed” a trait line because all of its utility is on the set. All traits did was making this set stronger. As long as D/P remained, thief seemed fine – although we only had one build left. D/P has got twice as many utilities as other sets but no drawbacks. You can’t buff the other sets good enough (weaponwise) to create original sets – we had traits for that.
Just because you didn’t need traits doesn’t mean it’s really meant like this. Maybe they forgot about their initial premise and added D/P to the game without realizing what exactly they’ve done. And in June they forgot that all other sets are trait based.

ETA² – and before the traitline merge we still had stats tied to the lines, so certain lines have been favoured over others.
I hated the ferocity patch at first but later on acknowledged that it was probably the best that they’ve done – with some exceptions: Condis OP and thief being forced to go full glass (I don’t know why, my excuse: I have been a noob back then – and still am – I don’t know the numbers between the stuff that has been changed). So full glass means they had to take either DA or CS or both if they wanted to be viable. So nobody really noticed the utility D/P has as everybody was using the same traitlines anyway.

Jana.6831:

Maugetarr.6823:

Jana.6831:

Maugetarr.6823:

Another example to help clear up what I mean. Look at how relatively weak venoms are. The problem is that to make venoms any good, you are locked into a specific build and traitline. Venoms should be good untraited, and traits should add a little boost on top, not the binary nature of UP/OP when untraited/traited respectively that we have now.

It has always been like that – the weapons we have have got distinctive skills – you could either take that away or modify the traits. I don’t really oppose giving CnD blind, but that would be more “into the same direction” as if there were different equally useful traits. And yes, that’s my point, that’s why I’m saying D/P should sacrifice some of the utility and get it back from traits.

And that is my point as well: Look how “OP” D/P is as all traits add to the already good utility.
I don’t know too much about venoms, I have never used them – but as far as I know they’re pretty strong, so maybe turning half of it into traits was to prevent them being “OP” but that didn’t happen with D/P.

But that’s the thing. You keep advocating moving skills into lines that would make the lines mandatory and runs the same risk of being messed up as whats’s happened to D/D. D/P is well designed and well balanced. D/D is not. Your idea would be to take the utility from the set and do what with it? Headshot does nothing unless traited? BPS does nothing unless traited? Nerfing shadowshot damage is the only possible move that would be reasonable and honestly that doesn’t even need to be given back as a trait. Here’s the thing though. Until offhand dagger is given more utility, D/D isn’t going to be any better. It’s going to require a specific traitline to make it viable for you and that’s just not good for it. It needs to be able to stand on it’s own so multiple builds can be made for it. We already have problems with thief being locked into core lines to make it decent. We don’t need to keep locking ourselves into lines.

Reread my last post adressed to you – you skipped what I wrote.

ETA:

Jana.6831:

They took most (or all) of the set specific traits away in June and that what remained was D/P.

All other sets had to trait for their utility – maybe that was to balance them. D/P is the only set that never “needed” a trait line because all of its utility is on the set. All traits did was making this set stronger. As long as D/P remained, thief seemed fine – although we only had one build left. D/P has got twice as many utilities as other sets but no drawbacks. You can’t buff the other sets good enough (weaponwise) to create original sets – we had traits for that.
Just because you didn’t need traits doesn’t mean it’s really meant like this. Maybe they forgot about their initial premise and added D/P to the game without realizing what exactly they’ve done. And in June they forgot that all other sets are trait based.

ETA² – and before the traitline merge we still had stats tied to the lines, so certain lines have been favoured over others.
I hated the ferocity patch at first but later on acknowledged that it was probably the best that they’ve done – with some exceptions: Condis OP and thief being forced to go full glass (I don’t know why, my excuse: I have been a noob back then – and still am – I don’t know the numbers between the stuff that has been changed). So full glass means they had to take either DA or CS or both if they wanted to be viable. So nobody really noticed the utility D/P has as everybody was using the same traitlines anyway.

Requiring traits to make a weaponset viable is a poor design. It limits build choices.
They actually rolled a lot of the specific traits to baseline because they realized that it wasn’t good for build diversity. Combined training, dagger training (the original version), and shortbow training. I don’t know why they decided it was a good idea to basically bring back a sword damage buff. They should have made swindler’s equilibrium not require a specific weaponset and made sword base DPS competitive.

Here’s another interesting thing, D/D didn’t actually require SA before the specializations patch. I was using a 5/0/0/3/6 build quite successfully with it. The problem has always been that it needs some form of utility to make up for its distinct lack of utility. It still has that problem. Buffing offhand dagger is the better way to go as D/P already demonstrates the importance of utility in the set.

Trying to convince Jana that SA wasn’t mandatory or even more-useful to D/D over D/P before June is nigh impossible.

Trying to convince a variety of players Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger need to be changed to sport more potential utility is also nigh impossible, because many D/D condi players love their 3spam for damage and giving the set more utility on Dancing Dagger is unnecessary, removes flavor, and D/D condi already doesn’t need more buffs.

DeceiverX.8361:

Trying to convince Jana that SA wasn’t mandatory or even more-useful to D/D over D/P before June is nigh impossible.

Trying to convince a variety of players Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger need to be changed to sport more potential utility is also nigh impossible, because many D/D condi players love their 3spam for damage and giving the set more utility on Dancing Dagger is unnecessary, removes flavor, and D/D condi already doesn’t need more buffs.

Well, I’d honestly love to see the bleeds on Deathblossom be removed and the set made to be cohesive, but I don’t think that should be done until we get a mainhand melee weapon focused on condition damage. They could do something like a bandit specialization and give it an axe and and wells (poison fields, etheral fields, fire fields) and put just a spinning deathblossom in that for a high condi application. Then D/D could be unified.

This was my thought process for the substantial buffs to Dagger Training and Potent Poison, buffing DB’s evade to cover a bigger distance, and putting the bleeds on Dancing Dagger, removing the bounce, and upping its damage by 50%, as it’d unify the evade as an evade/reposition on all combinations, make P/D a devastating condi set (bleed on auto + torment/disengage on 3 + bleeds on 4 with some chase potential), and allow D/D condi using DA to deal better condition damage due to poison’s high coefficient, but at a higher risk than just spamming 3.

The community doesn’t know what it wants, though. D/P players don’t want 3spam nerfed, D/D condi players don’t want 3spam nerfed, D/D power players proclaim using DB as an evade should be a one-click-wonder evade and want a teleport on Dancing Dagger to make the set a D/P clone.

DeceiverX.8361:

This was my thought process for the substantial buffs to Dagger Training and Potent Poison, buffing DB’s evade to cover a bigger distance, and putting the bleeds on Dancing Dagger, removing the bounce, and upping its damage by 50%, as it’d unify the evade as an evade/reposition on all combinations, make P/D a devastating condi set (bleed on auto + torment/disengage on 3 + bleeds on 4 with some chase potential), and allow D/D condi using DA to deal better condition damage due to poison’s high coefficient, but at a higher risk than just spamming 3.

The community doesn’t know what it wants, though. D/P players don’t want 3spam nerfed, D/D condi players don’t want 3spam nerfed, D/D power players proclaim using DB as an evade should be a one-click-wonder evade and want a teleport on Dancing Dagger to make the set a D/P clone.

D:

….I want a teleport on Dancing Dagger…. it would help D/D and P/D (and S/D to some extent) imo….

However, I wanted to make pistol autos more of a power set with vuln instead of bleed and then add more bleeds to the sneak attack (2 bleeds per hit instead of 1) since half of the shots are dodged anyway. Poison on P#2 would help too for both power and condi. Like I said though, I don’t want to remove the bleeds from deathblossom before we have an alternative because people have worked hard on gear and stuff.

There’s lots of discussion to be had though on different routes outside of overnerfing our successful sets though.

I’m just very much against the notion of dealing damage while not being able to take any. I’d be okay with leaving the bleeds on DB only if they made it a 900-range gap close evade that always went the full distance so that it couldn’t be spammed for damage, thus requiring more cohesive buffs elsewhere to OH dagger.

P/D can’t have a teleport gap close, so no-go on Dancing Dagger. The engage→disengage combo potential would be way too strong, especially when combined with the ease of stealth access and SA stacking with naturally tankier gear.

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m just very much against the notion of dealing damage while not being able to take any. I’d be okay with leaving the bleeds on DB only if they made it a 900-range gap close evade that always went the full distance so that it couldn’t be spammed for damage, thus requiring more cohesive buffs elsewhere to OH dagger.

P/D can’t have a teleport gap close, so no-go on Dancing Dagger. The engage->disengage combo potential would be way too strong, especially when combined with the ease of stealth access and SA stacking with naturally tankier gear.

To be fair, the dancing dagger rollover is 2 initiative, so a full combo would be 3 for DD, 2 for rollover, 6 for CnD, 4 for shadowstrike, totaling 15 in all. If you dodge the Dancing dagger, they don’t get the rollover. That’s potentially a strong burst, but it’s clearable and there’s no sustained bleeds from autos anymore, but there is poison on P#2 so overall I think it would balance out nicely.

It’s not like the disengage/engage makes sword overwhelming (in its current state) and I think the teleport rollover on Dancing Dagger (after hit) would offer the same counterplay that sword has.

DeceiverX.8361:

Trying to convince Jana that SA wasn’t mandatory or even more-useful to D/D over D/P before June is nigh impossible.

True that. But I do wonder why you don’t remember my arguments for that.
Here’s why (already said it plenty of times):
D/D has to be melee = aoe and condis = SE and CiS
D/P could/can go in and out of melee/aoe, they have the blind on SS (and pistol 5). Only thing D/P “needed” out of that line was SE which was covered by spending 2 points in that line. (the extra initative could be gained by either SA or T)
Since they’ve got more access to stealth they also drew/draw a bigger benefit out of SRej – so all “SA IS OP NERF” cries actually meant D/P, in my opinion.

ETA: Counterquestion: if it never has been like that, that the sets of thief (except D/P) had to get their utility from traits, then how come only D/P was halfway viable after June 23th?

Ive Run D/D physical since release and I eat D/P for Breakfast even when the perma stealth was very much a thing. Do I have to work hard to keep close to my enemy, yes.
Ive come to believe that the D/D set is much more reliant on your utilities. While D/P is a bit more self sufficient 1 through 5 skill.

As for D/P getting nerfed…I must say it is annoying fighting a D/P Thief. But then again so is a S/D kittenets the fight. But S/D has been in and out of the lime light while D/P has always been the “Go To” weapon set for many. I think D/P feels a bit more cheesy. But this game is full of cheese sooo…

If the true problem has been with D/P then Ya, Nerf It. I changed my mind a bit reflecting on this issue. I don’t D/P that often but remember the easyness factor of using #3 For Closing the gap, the sense of security that black powder brings both from blinding and easily accessible stealth. The Question would be how do you nerf it without destroying it? I would Love to see a bunch of D/P S/D D/D, heck even S/P.
There was a time when D/P and S/D were 50/50 pop. even just having 2 major builds was nice instead of everyone and their mother running d/p.

From the above conversations:

I think that’s why we need to keep suggesting improvements though rather than nerfs to our own sets. There was a time when I ran S/D +D/P and it worked decently back then. However, S/D and D/D have shown themselves to be heavily trait dependent which is why I want them to have improvements that rectify that.

Some of the things we suggested made it into this patch, like sword autoattacks, Bandit’s Defense rollover, and improvements to basilisk venom. I’d rather keep giving them constructive ideas because they’re pretty good at bringing the nerf hammer down on things that need it (and sometimes don’t). That’s why I really shy away from saying they could remove something from a functional set in the hopes of maybe getting it back later (acro stands out here). That’s my hesitation with Deathblossom even though I don’t like it; I want to see the replacement first before I say yeah, go ahead. Shadowshot is an example of this. The rest of the set has damage, so shadowshot doesn’t need it.

DeceiverX.8361:

Gibimo.2193:

babazhook.6805:

I think we can all agree off hand dagger needs a gimmick and one that will help p/d s/d and d/d but what is that Gimmick?

It can not ignore that there three weapon sets that are in fact suffering nor do I personally think duplicating something one of the other two helps a lot.

Now s/d might see a bit of a boost come tomorrow and we might well see more s/d but we also have to realize if the gimmick something that does too much to help s/d relative to d/d , then s/d could become the nect d/p.

P/d in my opinion is in as bad a spot as d/d. On the server I play my own wvw on I certainly see more d/d power users then p/d thiefs.

I think we should just wait a bit, see the changes that happen tomorrow, measure the impact they have on exisiting x/d sets and then rethink from scratch.

yeah I can’t agree more for that off hand dagger need a gimmick.
I think the main problem of off dagger is its stealth is too passive and defensive.
It needs effective gap closer for main hand to use it properly and requires high skills to use it aggressive. which is directed to the pressure problem.
thief can take some defensive options but not like this.

I don’t think gimmicks would solve the problem. Then you just end up with spam.

I disagree completely that OH Dagger’s stealth is passive and defensive. You can’t just reset a fight and sit in stealth at a distance licking your wounds like you can with D/P; you need to play aggressively in order for the skill to land to get the stealth. The problem is that getting this skill to land is dreadfully difficult with all the invulns going on right now, and D/P’s control is just so much better that once it’s engaged it functions better in melee from a defensive perspective via BP and Shadow Shot’s fast blinds, and interruption on Headshot.

The big question is how to make D/D effective while not gimmicky/spammy for both its power and condition options, and to define a style and purpose for the set that isn’t just objectively better/worse than D/P.

I agree. but to make sure gimmicks wasn’t meant to make D/D stealth spammy.
Thats too drastic.
There could be better gimmick which is not spammy and also solve the problem.

Padd.1479:

That’s just a bad argument. D/D is played completely differently than D/P and I would argue that Staff is even stronger.

D/D has very good aspects in it, cheap stealth access, throwing crippling daggers that deal good damage or evade while dealing damage and applying bleed.

It’s simply not viable in this meta as a pvp weapon set.

Ask for a buff for D/D not for a nerf of other half decent weapon sets.

Maybe new acro traitline will offer things that make D/D more viable, let’s hope because let’s face it…. Two daggers look kitten.

tell me you did not JUST SAY throwing daggers good damage. As it is it has damage scaling lower then pistol auto attack if it doesn’t bounce………. did you not realised its damage was nerfed by 50% in a patch and that its initiative cost is now 4………. it is completely a poormans cripple currently and barely lasts long. As it is ‘Dancing Dagger’ needs a rework. maybe even switch its cripple onto death blossom and change it to something blind that transfer 1 condition to match necro dagger offhand fixes a big problem on teef dagger right there..

‘Cloak in dagger’ by far needs the most touch up maybe give a it a short shadow step on stealth increases invunl stacks to 5 and make them last longer.

A weaponset that is OP would dominate other classes and professions. If it does this than it should be looked at. If it better then the other weapons of a current professions sets in all cases than those weaponsets are undertuned.

If DP as example (I am not saying this the case) can not beat any other class then bringing it down as other weapons brought uop will not help any of those weapons defeat any other class.

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m just very much against the notion of dealing damage while not being able to take any. I’d be okay with leaving the bleeds on DB only if they made it a 900-range gap close evade that always went the full distance so that it couldn’t be spammed for damage, thus requiring more cohesive buffs elsewhere to OH dagger.

P/D can’t have a teleport gap close, so no-go on Dancing Dagger. The engage->disengage combo potential would be way too strong, especially when combined with the ease of stealth access and SA stacking with naturally tankier gear.

In putting the bleeds onto dancing dagger in d/d you still want to turn D/d condition into a ranged weaponset. Your proposals give no reason to select d/d over p/d in such a case.

DB works because it applies lots of bleeds up close and personal. It is not immune to damage as you suggest. It is very easy to avoid a DB as the range so limited and it very easy to drop AOE where the DB spammer WILL land as you know where he will land.

In order for any thief using a condition build to apply damage at melee range they need a means of mitigating damage. Unlike a power set that can get in and out spiking 8k of damage at a time a condition build takes along time to output that type of damage and no thief can survive a long time trying to apply it. Thats why they need some combination of stealth/range or evades. P/d already has stealth/range covered.

D/d condi works because of evade and rapid application. added to that the GM trait impaling is PREMISED on applying damage on evade. Just as bounding dodger is. It too has limited range and it too works by evading while dealing damage. There nothing wrong with that concept.

Were d/d condi as faceroll easy as you suggest it would be dominating the meta. it does not because it has weaknesses. In applying damage it really no different then using shadowshot and bounding to avoid damage even as it applied. Shadowshot used 4 times in a row will apply far more damage then a DB used 4 times in a row. Rather then evade your enemies attacks you blind him. Why is one ok and the other not?

Your personal dislike of a style of combat gets in the way of a sober assessment of the skill.

you seem to believe nerfing D/P will bring back D/D it wont.

the reason D/P is so good is the utility and mobility, nerfing that wont give it to D/D it’ll just push the profession back into being unviable, and just like All this time being unviable it didn’t expand our Viability anywhere else.. they just simply buffed D/P.

this is Arena net, They’ll nerf it and Leave you unviable or make it ur Meta build, welcome to thief

Nerfing dp would be a good idea coz it would make sd and sp viable. And dp would still be good as well. D/d still wont be viable bcoz its utter crap. Thief will be still necessary to take for its mobility

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m just very much against the notion of dealing damage while not being able to take any. I’d be okay with leaving the bleeds on DB only if they made it a 900-range gap close evade that always went the full distance so that it couldn’t be spammed for damage, thus requiring more cohesive buffs elsewhere to OH dagger.

P/D can’t have a teleport gap close, so no-go on Dancing Dagger. The engage->disengage combo potential would be way too strong, especially when combined with the ease of stealth access and SA stacking with naturally tankier gear.

In putting the bleeds onto dancing dagger in d/d you still want to turn D/d condition into a ranged weaponset. Your proposals give no reason to select d/d over p/d in such a case.

DB works because it applies lots of bleeds up close and personal. It is not immune to damage as you suggest. It is very easy to avoid a DB as the range so limited and it very easy to drop AOE where the DB spammer WILL land as you know where he will land.

In order for any thief using a condition build to apply damage at melee range they need a means of mitigating damage. Unlike a power set that can get in and out spiking 8k of damage at a time a condition build takes along time to output that type of damage and no thief can survive a long time trying to apply it. Thats why they need some combination of stealth/range or evades. P/d already has stealth/range covered.

D/d condi works because of evade and rapid application. added to that the GM trait impaling is PREMISED on applying damage on evade. Just as bounding dodger is. It too has limited range and it too works by evading while dealing damage. There nothing wrong with that concept.

Were d/d condi as faceroll easy as you suggest it would be dominating the meta. it does not because it has weaknesses. In applying damage it really no different then using shadowshot and bounding to avoid damage even as it applied. Shadowshot used 4 times in a row will apply far more damage then a DB used 4 times in a row. Rather then evade your enemies attacks you blind him. Why is one ok and the other not?

Your personal dislike of a style of combat gets in the way of a sober assessment of the skill.

D/D condi doesn’t become a ranged weapon set with these adjustments when paired with the changes I’ve suggested to Dagger Training in other threads (we’ve had this discussion). This bumps MH dagger’s melee condi potential up dramatically, and Dancing Dagger functions in melee or close-proximity range, anyways. Dancing Dagger is easily-avoided through movement because the projectile is so slow. This just gives P/D more bleed access as the “dedicated” condi set without needing trait investment, but gives D/D better condition access overall through poison, which then gains superior mobility and stickiness over P/D by yielding much more damage at a higher investment cost by traiting into DA.

If I said D/D condi could potentially get four times better DPS than it has now, with better mobility, and a higher skill-cap, why is there justification to complain?

You can’t compare power and condition builds from their style of play and ignore their stat differences by discussing the merits power has over conditions. Of course berserker power does more burst damage to squishy targets than a carrion condi player. The carrion condi player ignores toughness and doesn’t need to stealth and is also innately tankier from the defensive stat advantages condition sets and builds offer. These are two completely different styles of play and ideologies with massively different figures. And being innately tankier while dealing damage at a lower risk makes no sense.

There’s a massive difference between blind and evasion, considering single-target blind applies to one hit and can be cleansed mid-attack, while the evade gets on-trigger effects from traits and negates all incoming attacks for the duration, and the opponent has no say in the matter for the evade duration. You can get hit by area denial, but at that point it’s the fault of the thief for having DB’ed into it. You’re also comparing DB to Shadow Shot, the already-single-strongest skill the thief has from a damage : initiative : time : reliability perspective (when considering realistic cleansing rates etc.) Bound frequency is lower than DB usage, too, and bound has a longer aftercast/downtime than DB does. Thieves are complaining this skill is overtuned in its damage. Justifying your argument stating that DB doesn’t deal as much damage as one of the single most powerful skills in the game and subsequently is not needing damage placement moved elsewhere is innately flawed logic.

The build is easy, and a lot of people do play it. It’s just not “meta” because the best-of-the-best define the meta, and the best-of-the-best play cheesier/numbers-wise better tanks for bunkering at the top-tier and need the thief as +1’ing and uncontested caps. Old bunker mesmer or D/D condi thief? Old bunker mes certainly did a hell of a lot better and required a hell of a lot less skill. D/D celestial ele once nailing the rotations is the same. We should be promoting more skillful play game-wide, and not reducing the game down to boring and thoughtless spam. So the masses follow the leads of the professional players and play other things. Those who innovate, though, are playing this build because it’s simple to use and extremely, extremely strong and can actually help carry games in a role the thief normally cannot do anything with: playing on point. With pugs, this capability is massive.

Kicker.8203:

Nerfing dp would be a good idea coz it would make sd and sp viable. And dp would still be good as well. D/d still wont be viable bcoz its utter crap. Thief will be still necessary to take for its mobility

How would nerfing d/p make a increase to sd and sp viability, it wouldnt so and sd dont work because of meta reasonkng ur just lowering a viable build to be as unviable as all of them which would push the thief out of meta and make it considered garbage, ur issueing anets approach, nerf it til its just as bad as the next build.. other proffessions will still faceroll you for usjng a bad build…

I question if you actually know what viability is or if u think its to do emwith equalling builds with one another of the same profession which is completely untrue, being viable means the build stands up to other professions competitvely which neither sp or sd does pushing dp to that same level wpuld destroy the profession..

Wake up, sd or sp will never be buffed anet dont want us to be using those weapons and they will carry on intending to ensure it will never happen, love dp or reroll he other builds arnt coming back they had all last season where dp was awful to give us a different build and they didnt they simply sat theee leaving us waiting for zerker meta to buff DP

Drayos.8759:

Wake up, sd or sp will never be buffed anet dont want us to be using those weapons

That’s sure how it looks like.
But know what?! the only reason why thief finally was buffed was because it was completely out of the meta : a reason to nerf D/P (as it’s the most viable build we’ve got – see the OP) – and hey, guess what set most profited from the buffs – right D/P – who would’ve imagined?

Surprised this thread is still alive.

Don’t know if this has already been mentioned. But to put things in context, don’t most classes only have 2-3 viable weaponsets, with one rising above the others?

Following this suggestion, I guess every class should have it’s main weaponset nerfed?

Also replying to the post directly above, with thief only having two offhands the dagger buff would have either benefited D/P or D/D more. With D/P being the more likely candidate for obvious reasons.

Expecting the Sword or Staff buffs to affect D/P or D/D doesn’t make sense. You could argue that dagger mainhand got buffed more than Sword mainhand or Staff, but that’s not the same as arguing that D/P got buffed more than the rest of the weaponsets.

Edit:

Will say though that pistol mainhand got shafted. Although it’s always been shafted and that’s not something I necessarily agree with myself.

DeceiverX.8361:

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m just very much against the notion of dealing damage while not being able to take any. I’d be okay with leaving the bleeds on DB only if they made it a 900-range gap close evade that always went the full distance so that it couldn’t be spammed for damage, thus requiring more cohesive buffs elsewhere to OH dagger.

P/D can’t have a teleport gap close, so no-go on Dancing Dagger. The engage->disengage combo potential would be way too strong, especially when combined with the ease of stealth access and SA stacking with naturally tankier gear.

In putting the bleeds onto dancing dagger in d/d you still want to turn D/d condition into a ranged weaponset. Your proposals give no reason to select d/d over p/d in such a case.

DB works because it applies lots of bleeds up close and personal. It is not immune to damage as you suggest. It is very easy to avoid a DB as the range so limited and it very easy to drop AOE where the DB spammer WILL land as you know where he will land.

In order for any thief using a condition build to apply damage at melee range they need a means of mitigating damage. Unlike a power set that can get in and out spiking 8k of damage at a time a condition build takes along time to output that type of damage and no thief can survive a long time trying to apply it. Thats why they need some combination of stealth/range or evades. P/d already has stealth/range covered.

D/d condi works because of evade and rapid application. added to that the GM trait impaling is PREMISED on applying damage on evade. Just as bounding dodger is. It too has limited range and it too works by evading while dealing damage. There nothing wrong with that concept.

Were d/d condi as faceroll easy as you suggest it would be dominating the meta. it does not because it has weaknesses. In applying damage it really no different then using shadowshot and bounding to avoid damage even as it applied. Shadowshot used 4 times in a row will apply far more damage then a DB used 4 times in a row. Rather then evade your enemies attacks you blind him. Why is one ok and the other not?

Your personal dislike of a style of combat gets in the way of a sober assessment of the skill.

D/D condi doesn’t become a ranged weapon set with these adjustments when paired with the changes I’ve suggested to Dagger Training in other threads (we’ve had this discussion). This bumps MH dagger’s melee condi potential up dramatically, and Dancing Dagger functions in melee or close-proximity range, anyways. Dancing Dagger is easily-avoided through movement because the projectile is so slow. This just gives P/D more bleed access as the “dedicated” condi set without needing trait investment, but gives D/D better condition access overall through poison, which then gains superior mobility and stickiness over P/D by yielding much more damage at a higher investment cost by traiting into DA.

If I said D/D condi could potentially get four times better DPS than it has now, with better mobility, and a higher skill-cap, why is there justification to complain?

You can’t compare power and condition builds from their style of play and ignore their stat differences by discussing the merits power has over conditions. Of course berserker power does more burst damage to squishy targets than a carrion condi player. The carrion condi player ignores toughness and doesn’t need to stealth and is also innately tankier from the defensive stat advantages condition sets and builds offer. These are two completely different styles of play and ideologies with massively different figures. And being innately tankier while dealing damage at a lower risk makes no sense.

There’s a massive difference between blind and evasion, considering single-target blind applies to one hit and can be cleansed mid-attack, while the evade gets on-trigger effects from traits and negates all incoming attacks for the duration, and the opponent has no say in the matter for the evade duration. You can get hit by area denial, but at that point it’s the fault of the thief for having DB’ed into it. You’re also comparing DB to Shadow Shot, the already-single-strongest skill the thief has from a damage : initiative : time : reliability perspective (when considering realistic cleansing rates etc.) Bound frequency is lower than DB usage, too, and bound has a longer aftercast/downtime than DB does. Thieves are complaining this skill is overtuned in its damage. Justifying your argument stating that DB doesn’t deal as much damage as one of the single most powerful skills in the game and subsequently is not needing damage placement moved elsewhere is innately flawed logic.

The build is easy, and a lot of people do play it. It’s just not “meta” because the best-of-the-best define the meta, and the best-of-the-best play cheesier/numbers-wise better tanks for bunkering at the top-tier and need the thief as +1’ing and uncontested caps. Old bunker mesmer or D/D condi thief? Old bunker mes certainly did a hell of a lot better and required a hell of a lot less skill. D/D celestial ele once nailing the rotations is the same. We should be promoting more skillful play game-wide, and not reducing the game down to boring and thoughtless spam. So the masses follow the leads of the professional players and play other things. Those who innovate, though, are playing this build because it’s simple to use and extremely, extremely strong and can actually help carry games in a role the thief normally cannot do anything with: playing on point. With pugs, this capability is massive.

There are hardly any d/b spams builds that I see. Your claiming it just easy and that why you do not like it shows bias against it and that where you coming from. that IS elitism as Jana suggested on another matter. I suggest d/p is easier to use.

I suggest you read what the skill is. It is called “an evasive attack”. All professions have evasive attacks. Why are you not lobbying against them all?

An elementalist has three in total A ranger 5. A thief has 4. None are OP as you claim. Revenants have two and so on.

With the thief PW is not OP. It is not used all the time because the PW is used in sync with other skills in a power set.

Flanking stikes has the exact same evasion time as does DB and inflicts damage. You can get a whole lot of damage off flanking strikes but you do not seem to have the same issues with flanking strikes.

The reason flanking strikes not spammed is because s/d users have better sources of damage in the set and s/d users can be caught quite easily between the frames of the evade by enemies in the know. In fact it even easier to catch a DB user as you can act before the evade frame finishes.

The exact catching between frames can be done with D/B. D/B is spammed more often because it does the most condition damage in the set. The AA is used less frequently because it does less condition damage. If you are trying to get conditions on an enemy you have to do it as quickly as possible especially as a thief. That is the nature of the thief with his burss attacks in power and that the nature of the thief with his condition attacks.

I would point out I play an s/d thief with 3100 armor , 18+k health and attack of 2800 (wvw numbers) that can generate almost at will three seperate sources of 10 percent damage mitigation on top of that. He also has an evasive attack. Why is that not op?

Lastly you seem not to understand how a d/b build works in conditions. It is not the evades that give it the sustain. it is the HEALS of SOM and it one of the few builds where people will choose SOM and one of the few builds where an investment in healing will help the thief.

As to your problems with Spam. I would note that in the meta builds there a d/p thief outlined there. In the text of the build describing its rotations it finishes with “spam 4 heartseekers”. Where are all the power users complaining about HS spam?

DB is not an issue.

The Fix to d/d should look at 4 and 5.

Midi.8359:

Surprised this thread is still alive.

Don’t know if this has already been mentioned. But to put things in context, don’t most classes only have 2-3 viable weaponsets, with one rising above the others?

Following this suggestion, I guess every class should have it’s main weaponset nerfed?

Also replying to the post directly above, with thief only having two offhands the dagger buff would have either benefited D/P or D/D more. With D/P being the more likely candidate for obvious reasons.

Expecting the Sword or Staff buffs to affect D/P or D/D doesn’t make sense. You could argue that dagger mainhand got buffed more than Sword mainhand or Staff, but that’s not the same as arguing that D/P got buffed more than the rest of the weaponsets.

---

Edit:

Will say though that pistol mainhand got shafted. Although it’s always been shafted and that’s not something I necessarily agree with myself.

I didn’t argue that S/D should’ve been buffed because of the dagger buff – and I didn’t speak about the D buff anyway – but thanks for assuming that I expect sword to be buffed because the dagger buff.

But what I wanted to respond to: I don’t know too much about other classes, but I played D/D although it wasn’t the meta, yet it was still halfway viable. I guess most people play what’s “best” – one explanation why there’s little diversity. Question is if that’s really what a game design wants/should aim for.
In june 3 of our sets have been taken away, don’t know if S/D is viable again, but the other 2 aren’t.

Ye most other classes (from my perspective) don’t have more than one or two viable weaponsets. I would say that D/D is still halfway viable, but that’d be talking halfway as halfway from completely useless to meta relevant.

Also you can take that as my assumption if you’d like. You said that the buffs favored D/P. Or more exactly that “guess what set most profited from the buffs – right D/P.” So I went and did an exhaustive cover of every weaponset buff.

My way of thinking was like this since I wasn’t clear enough:
Buffs favored D/P, means buffs favored D/P more than D/D, S/D, Staff, P/P, etc.
But D/P didn’t get any major buffs over D/D (They both share the auto buff).
Thus saying D/P profited the most from these buffs doesn’t make sense.
But one could argue that Dagger mainhand profited more than Staff/Sword/Pistol.

I will say that it seems as if D/P profited more than D/D from the buffs. But that’s only because D/D is unviable at the moment (Or half viable, which to me is the same as unviable. Bunker condi thief is half viable to me. I can win games with it. I can carry games with it. But at the end of the day, I can also do better on other weaponsets). In reality D/D auto’s got the same damage buff D/P auto’s did.

Anyway I’m being pedantic about a really meaningless thing. In the end I think D/D needs buffs or some changes. I don’t think nerfing D/P is the answer because Staff is pretty much on par or with D/P (From my perspective). And nerfing D/P to be worser than Staff just makes everyone go to Staff. Then we’ll have to nerf Staff because it’s the top of the food chain. Then what? After Staff gets nerfed to be worser than D/P we all go to back D/P again?

Or just nerf everything to the level of D/D? (Because if we keep on nerfing D/P and Staff, then S/D or maybe even P/P will rise to the top. Not D/D). But in that case why not just buff D/D in the first place.

This is plain silly, you’re saying D/P has to be nerfed because you like to play DD or SD? DP is fine, if you feel like DD is weak, maybe you need to learn to play the class and not ask Game administrators to nerf other playstyles because you don’t know how to play? Get outta here child.

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

D/D condi doesn’t become a ranged weapon set with these adjustments when paired with the changes I’ve suggested to Dagger Training in other threads (we’ve had this discussion). This bumps MH dagger’s melee condi potential up dramatically, and Dancing Dagger functions in melee or close-proximity range, anyways. Dancing Dagger is easily-avoided through movement because the projectile is so slow. This just gives P/D more bleed access as the “dedicated” condi set without needing trait investment, but gives D/D better condition access overall through poison, which then gains superior mobility and stickiness over P/D by yielding much more damage at a higher investment cost by traiting into DA.

If I said D/D condi could potentially get four times better DPS than it has now, with better mobility, and a higher skill-cap, why is there justification to complain?

You can’t compare power and condition builds from their style of play and ignore their stat differences by discussing the merits power has over conditions. Of course berserker power does more burst damage to squishy targets than a carrion condi player. The carrion condi player ignores toughness and doesn’t need to stealth and is also innately tankier from the defensive stat advantages condition sets and builds offer. These are two completely different styles of play and ideologies with massively different figures. And being innately tankier while dealing damage at a lower risk makes no sense.

There’s a massive difference between blind and evasion, considering single-target blind applies to one hit and can be cleansed mid-attack, while the evade gets on-trigger effects from traits and negates all incoming attacks for the duration, and the opponent has no say in the matter for the evade duration. You can get hit by area denial, but at that point it’s the fault of the thief for having DB’ed into it. You’re also comparing DB to Shadow Shot, the already-single-strongest skill the thief has from a damage : initiative : time : reliability perspective (when considering realistic cleansing rates etc.) Bound frequency is lower than DB usage, too, and bound has a longer aftercast/downtime than DB does. Thieves are complaining this skill is overtuned in its damage. Justifying your argument stating that DB doesn’t deal as much damage as one of the single most powerful skills in the game and subsequently is not needing damage placement moved elsewhere is innately flawed logic.

The build is easy, and a lot of people do play it. It’s just not “meta” because the best-of-the-best define the meta, and the best-of-the-best play cheesier/numbers-wise better tanks for bunkering at the top-tier and need the thief as +1’ing and uncontested caps. Old bunker mesmer or D/D condi thief? Old bunker mes certainly did a hell of a lot better and required a hell of a lot less skill. D/D celestial ele once nailing the rotations is the same. We should be promoting more skillful play game-wide, and not reducing the game down to boring and thoughtless spam. So the masses follow the leads of the professional players and play other things. Those who innovate, though, are playing this build because it’s simple to use and extremely, extremely strong and can actually help carry games in a role the thief normally cannot do anything with: playing on point. With pugs, this capability is massive.

There are hardly any d/b spams builds that I see. Your claiming it just easy and that why you do not like it shows bias against it and that where you coming from. that IS elitism as Jana suggested on another matter. I suggest d/p is easier to use.

I suggest you read what the skill is. It is called “an evasive attack”. All professions have evasive attacks. Why are you not lobbying against them all?

An elementalist has three in total A ranger 5. A thief has 4. None are OP as you claim. Revenants have two and so on.

With the thief PW is not OP. It is not used all the time because the PW is used in sync with other skills in a power set.

Flanking stikes has the exact same evasion time as does DB and inflicts damage. You can get a whole lot of damage off flanking strikes but you do not seem to have the same issues with flanking strikes.

The reason flanking strikes not spammed is because s/d users have better sources of damage in the set and s/d users can be caught quite easily between the frames of the evade by enemies in the know. In fact it even easier to catch a DB user as you can act before the evade frame finishes.

The exact catching between frames can be done with D/B. D/B is spammed more often because it does the most condition damage in the set. The AA is used less frequently because it does less condition damage. If you are trying to get conditions on an enemy you have to do it as quickly as possible especially as a thief. That is the nature of the thief with his burss attacks in power and that the nature of the thief with his condition attacks.

I would point out I play an s/d thief with 3100 armor , 18+k health and attack of 2800 (wvw numbers) that can generate almost at will three seperate sources of 10 percent damage mitigation on top of that. He also has an evasive attack. Why is that not op?

Lastly you seem not to understand how a d/b build works in conditions. It is not the evades that give it the sustain. it is the HEALS of SOM and it one of the few builds where people will choose SOM and one of the few builds where an investment in healing will help the thief.

As to your problems with Spam. I would note that in the meta builds there a d/p thief outlined there. In the text of the build describing its rotations it finishes with “spam 4 heartseekers”. Where are all the power users complaining about HS spam?

DB is not an issue.

The Fix to d/d should look at 4 and 5.

I suggest a build gets improvements to its viability and that the prospect of playing well gets rewarded. This isn’t elitism; this is trying to promote a competitive environment where skill matters. If I said all D/D players are innately bad players and deserve to die more often, that is elitism. In the name of defending your argument, you’re resulting to attempting to tarnish my name via false proclamations about my personality to belittle my argument. I’m stating a simple fact: D/D condi is a build with an extremely high potency with a very low barrier of entry with little interaction to and from opponents and very little depth in play; it is easy because it doesn’t allow the player to really do anything except press 3 for optimal results. As a consequence, unless the build catapults into becoming blatantly overpowered, it will never be optimal due to its extremely limited skill ceiling and relatively fixed level of reward. D/D will never see meaningful changes or improvements on the sheer basis that the skills as is are poorly-designed.

Not all professions have “evasive attacks”. the engineer, necromancer, and guardian do not, and most other classes which do have such skills (warrior, ranger, revenant, ele) have access to them at the shortest possible cooldown of 8s, and except for the ranger, only have access on one weapon, and these skills usually hover over 15s cooldowns. Do realize one Wild Strike with MH dagger on the thief will yield the same evasion uptime as these skills due to the endurance regeneration. Two for the ranger. Unless you wish to tell me that the thief’s MH dagger attacking twice every 9s is comparable to the use of Death Blossom for evasion uptime, these effects are not comparable, because that’s what you’re comparing Death Blossom’s uptime to, not to mention a bulk majority of the skills mentioned do not deal damage during the evade but instead at the end of the evasion frames.

I’m not sure why PW was mentioned. PW is a poor-performer because of its pre-cast/post-cast frames which leave it neither evading or dealing damage, locked in an animation. Remember how Death Blossom used to be bad? Yea, the same is still said about P/W, except it’s even worse than DB used to be, because those frames are longer than even the old DB’s.

FS/LS isn’t spammed because it can’t deal damage while it dodges. LS has a huge animation with its wind-up longer than the entirety of Death Blossom’s whole animation. It also costs more initiative. And yes, it isn’t spammed because it needs to deal damage from another source not on its evade. That’s literally my entire proposal’s reasoning to bring D/D condi’s damage up and move its damage off of the evade: every other class and build in the game needs to take a brief moment to deal damage. D/D condi doesn’t. Also, Death Blossom has near-seamless aftercast animations now. They buffed it. There’s a reason it saw a sudden huge jump in people playing the build, and it has very little to do with Lotus Training.

Those stats on S/D thief don’t mean much. Care to discuss your crit damage and outgoing damage modifiers? The thief has horrible power coefficients, so it really comes down to how you modify your damage. My stab thief spikes at 4k power and 251% crit damage with an additional 70% extra damage modifiers on 19k health in WvW, despite the 2.2k armor. And that’s the weakest build the thief has and is one of the weakest builds in the game (signets). My condi thief each DB if not cleansed does over 9k, with almost 24k health at 3100 armor, ignoring toughness and mitigation entirely. Your S/D thief might be “durable” and “evasive” but it means nothing if it hits like a wet noodle.

SoM is also an extremely weak heal. P/P unload gets the biggest benefit from the effect because it has a positive hits per initiative cast, and Withdraw is still better healing per unit of time. Even with infinite initiative using DB the healing from SoM is marginally better than Withdraw, and it gives no cleanse, evasion, and the heal has a pitifully long cast time. Frankly, you’re better off with CV in every way, so claiming D/D condi succeeds on the heal is untrue.

D/P is a set which promotes unskillful play, I have mentioned that in this thread on behalf of suggesting nerfing Shadow Shot. HS spam works because of fire and air procs letting the damage ramp off of Shadow Shot, quickly cutting people down to < 50% letting HS spam ensue. HS spam is attributed to fire/air procs, which, by the way, I have vouched for nerfing, and still would like to see removed. Otherwise, HS spam is worse than AA damage. Shadow Shot is better damage than HS when the target is > 25%, though. D/x also has no damage outside of Backstab, Shadow Shot, and HS, as OH pistol is utility on 4 and 5. It’s why D/D power players are complaining: our 3 and 4 do no damage and poor utility and 5 is just weak relative to the synergy so many effects have with BP. It’s not so much that CnD is weak but BP is crazy strong and our other options (3 and 4) which are big enablers for D/P to succeed are so poor and subsequently need tweaking to close that gap. CnD is strong, but it’s all D/D power has, and when CnD can’t be used, power players have no options but to spam HS because it’s the “best choice” – just like DB is on D/D condi – except HS doesn’t evade while it does damage, and that’s a big difference.

I have repeatedly asked for more granular damage staggering to HS to remove spam, asked frequently for the removal of fire/air sigils from the game entirely, and nerfs Shadow Shot in the past. I’m a bit different from most people, as I have mentioned, in that I care for engaging and spam-free play. I chose the thief because it didn’t have rotations, which in most cases, is glorified spamming of buttons to boost APM to make rotations happen better/faster. I encourage skillful play and play D/D signets on this basis; if I lose a fight, I am encouraged to improve to the point where I can overcome the enemy via skill. The gibbing is for ending fights faster for those who are inattentive to their surroundings to notice me (as I do not engage from stealth, playing D/D signets), have skills on cooldowns (me playing opportunistically), or simply lack the speed or resource management to keep up and stunbreak when necessary (punished for not keeping up to pace and/or paying attention). I expect the best out of my opponents when I win and lose and expect the best from myself. Expecting anything else implies that the game should not be seen as competitive and demeans the entire notion of requesting for balance adjustments, for then logically it could be argued the game could be considered balanced in any state regardless of number disparities or potential logical concerns with balance.

This whole argument you’ve raised about abilities being strong isn’t even relevant, though. Your objections stemmed from a disagreement of concept making D/D “ranged” yet you have failed to provide evidence that such a style would be advantageous over fighting in close proximity or conversely that fighting in close proximity would imply a definitive disadvantage versus a distance, especially considering that the “ranged advantage” is not a valid argument on principle that the numbers disagree with you and as such the claim would imply that using Dancing Dagger as is on a power build makes D/D a “ranged” set when it is certainly not so due to the horrible tracking the skill has and terrible damage coefficient.

Jana.6831:

Drayos.8759:

Wake up, sd or sp will never be buffed anet dont want us to be using those weapons

That’s sure how it looks like.
But know what?! the only reason why thief finally was buffed was because it was completely out of the meta : a reason to nerf D/P (as it’s the most viable build we’ve got – see the OP) – and hey, guess what set most profited from the buffs – right D/P – who would’ve imagined?

this is my point here, its Pointless to ask for nerfs to D/P

Cause this will be the events

“nerfs DP with the aims to bring more viability to the Thiefs Weapon sets as a whole”

“promises loads of remakes to Traits Utilites and weapon sets to buff Thief as a Whole and Not just one Weapon set”

“leaves us unviable for 3 months”

“buffs D/P again”

u will achieve nothing attempting this route, this is exactly what Arena net does to proffessions, Nerfs their top sets to their unviable sets.. then just rebuffs em later on when they prove to get too unviable, to actually fix the problems with how forced professions are into weapon sets and builds is to rework SO MUCH of the core professions that arena net will never bother.

10 Professions each with inherited problems in their core professions and mechanics, to redo this now would take them thousands of man hours, they’d be better off Releasing 1 Extra Traitline with the Elite Specialization, Deleting core Proffessions and Starting from scratch releasing New Traitlines every 6 months til its rebuilt.

majority of professions are so broken buggy and imbalanced, that I doubt arena net could actually fix the core professions, this is why the elite specializations have taken the meta so well, because they’ve been released without all the glitchs and bad mechanics the Core professions suffer, some of the core profession problems may shine through on some professions

For example the Thief.

Daredevil is great for the thief, Extra dodges Longer Dodges and things, however the Limited Weaponset choices from base thief has transferred into Daredevil because of how Reliant the thief is on Mobility and Burst Damage.

Just leave thief alone, Specially where nerfs are concerned, being restricted to 1 build to be viable is better then turning into Garbage Warrior 2.0.

Midi.8359:

My way of thinking was like this since I wasn’t clear enough:
Buffs favored D/P, means buffs favored D/P more than D/D, S/D, Staff, P/P, etc.
But D/P didn’t get any major buffs over D/D (They both share the auto buff).
Thus saying D/P profited the most from these buffs doesn’t make sense.

The traits were also buffed and it suited D/P best.
I guess with that you’re not confused anymore.

Midi.8359:

Or just nerf everything to the level of D/D? (Because if we keep on nerfing D/P and Staff, then S/D or maybe even P/P will rise to the top. Not D/D). But in that case why not just buff D/D in the first place.

Because it’s not that simple – read the edited OP which has got a summary of most we’ve discussed in this thread. Or better: from my point of view.

Nins.9854:

This is plain silly, you’re saying D/P has to be nerfed because you like to play DD or SD? DP is fine, if you feel like DD is weak, maybe you need to learn to play the class and not ask Game administrators to nerf other playstyles because you don’t know how to play? Get outta here child.

The reasons for this are in my OP, also in the thread – just buffing the other weaponset isn’t enough to bring them on par with D/P. But I don’t object to them being buffed.
And I kind of guess I know how to play.

And finally Drayos.8759 :
Yes, let them destroy their own game – they’re halfway there anyway – having only 2 viable sets is boring – for any class. Even if the other sets were buffed D/P would still be the strongest. And D/P has always been our top set – it has never been nerfed to the ground – because it’s pretty hard to do so.

And yes, it seems as if anet messed up – back in June and again with Hot – I don’t think this was intention, they just had better things to do than balance. I doubt that people are really happy to learn that the set they used while leveling and liked isn’t viable in any of the “endgames” of pve, wvw or pvp. And that’s why I say: destroy it (D/P) and rebuild the whole class – that probably is for all classes we have. I never minded that D/D was harder to play, I actually didn’t get for a long time that I chose the hardest to play class with the hardest to play weapon set – but I want at least be able to pull it off, if even with a slightly bigger effort (= things were fine before June and before February even more).

ETA: So in the end (I know of some warrior traits which have also been removed but didn’t look too much into the changes of the other classes) : What they have to do is to have a good look at all sets (not just thief) – examine their playstyle in all game modes and look what traits they’ve deleted = what the weapons needed. They can either buff the weapons so they have the utility they took from the traits, or introduce some more traitlines to chose from. Maybe the traitmerge really was was killed certain sets. As no matter what I do, I just can’t get the traits I need to make my set work again.

Srsly do you have to type out whole walls of text? This thread got boring ages ago because of the amount of text here, reading the terms and conditions on iTunes is more interesting.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Srsly do you have to type out whole walls of text? This thread got boring ages ago because of the amount of text here, reading the terms and conditions on iTunes is more interesting.

Then why are you still here? iTunes’ ToC got boring?

Nothing wrong checking up and scrolling past the huge post of text. I do this every other day to see if anything good to read is posted

“My preferred weapon set is in a bad place so everyone’s weapon set should be in a bad place” that’s how this whole sham of a thread reads to me, maybe if you spent more time trying to come up with constructive ways to improve d/d rather than just whining that d/p is more viable and should be made kitten as well something positive might come out of this thread

Kire.2364:

“My preferred weapon set is in a bad place so everyone’s weapon set should be in a bad place” that’s how this whole sham of a thread reads to me, maybe if you spent more time trying to come up with constructive ways to improve d/d rather than just whining that d/p is more viable and should be made kitten as well something positive might come out of this thread

That’s good as this is kind of how it’s meant – wouldn’t you do the same?
Btw: If you knew thief you’d know where the problems lie – and buffing D/D isn’t that easy.
But in the end, truth being told, every time I faced a D/P thief I was rolling my eyes and though “oh my, another noob thief”.

They don’t need to NERF D/P, they need to STOP BUFFING D/P…and start bringing the OTHER sets up to its level.

Jana.6831:

Kire.2364:

“My preferred weapon set is in a bad place so everyone’s weapon set should be in a bad place” that’s how this whole sham of a thread reads to me, maybe if you spent more time trying to come up with constructive ways to improve d/d rather than just whining that d/p is more viable and should be made kitten as well something positive might come out of this thread

That’s good as this is kind of how it’s meant – wouldn’t you do the same?
Btw: If you knew thief you’d know where the problems lie – and buffing D/D isn’t that easy.
But in the end, truth being told, every time I faced a D/P thief I was rolling my eyes and though “oh my, another noob thief”.

Thief as a whole is finally in an ok place after being shoved out of the meta since the specialization update last summer, and rather than seek to help d/d be brought up to the level of d/p you’d rather the whole profession be dragged down into the dumpster? You have a rather selfish and entitled way of approaching the situation. And when I bring up trying to help d/d improve your response is “that’s too hard let’s just make d/p bad as well”. Once again rather than being such a whiny little brat why don’t you take some time to think of things you’d like to see improved within the d/d weapon set

Kire.2364:

Thief as a whole is finally in an ok place after being shoved out of the meta since the specialization update last summer, and rather than seek to help d/d be brought up to the level of d/p you’d rather the whole profession be dragged down into the dumpster?

Thief isn’t in an OK place, D/P and staff are, maybe S/D but guess not.
Your set might be in an ok place, thief the class isn’t. So, why has thief been buffed? Right, because all builds were dead. How easy is it to kill D/P the set? Not easy, otherwise it wouldn’t have been the only set halfway viable after June. Those who sticked to this forum are D/P thieves (and me) – so all traits were modified to suit D/P best = even less chance for my set. If you had taken the time and at least read the first 2 pages of this thread – you’d knew where I’m coming from, but instead you chose to act like a

whiny little brat

Jana.6831:

Kire.2364:

Thief as a whole is finally in an ok place after being shoved out of the meta since the specialization update last summer, and rather than seek to help d/d be brought up to the level of d/p you’d rather the whole profession be dragged down into the dumpster?

Thief isn’t in an OK place, D/P and staff are, maybe S/D but guess not.
Your set might be in an ok place, thief the class isn’t. So, why has thief been buffed? Right, because all builds were dead. How easy is it to kill D/P the set? Not easy, otherwise it wouldn’t have been the only set halfway viable after June. Those who sticked to this forum are D/P thieves (and me) – so all traits were modified to suit D/P best = even less chance for my set. If you had taken the time and at least read the first 2 pages of this thread – you’d knew where I’m coming from, but instead you chose to act like a

whiny little brat

Post specialization patch and pre-HoT S/D was working alright still if you didn’t bother with the defensive trait lines, but that’s because Sword could cover up OH Dagger’s weaknesses when combined with quickness. Post-HoT our bursts could largely negated, so high damage+evasion staff and high damage+utility D/P became the obvious choices. We should be working on ways to make OH Dagger have more utility. Our defensive trait lines are in poor shape. You keep wanting to make our other sets trait dependent which is the opposite direction we should want to go. Breaking one of the working sets in hopes they’ll fix them all simultaneously is a bad idea.

No one used S/D anymore, so I guess it wasn’t working that fine.

And again: I guess we’re not the only class with this problem – the traitline merge kicked probably a lot of sets all around because no one thought of the use the traits had. So, we have now a fraction of the classes/sets we used to have. But hey, we have elites, right?

Again, I already wrote it: The traits are merged in a way I can’t benefit of them. How they’re now (in SA) only D/P can make use of them. So even if CnD were buffed the trait dilemma remains.

How I would redesign SA: SE minor, 50% speed increase minor, either might again (it did make sense) or Meld with Shadows minor.
Adepts : Last refuge, Merciful ambush, concealed defeat (although I’m pretty certain no one would ever use it anyway)
Master : Hidden thief, leeching venoms, CiS
Grandmaster : SRej, Resillence of Shadows (buffed to 50% again), Venomous Aura

2 Traits are missing: The falling damage trait and Shadow protector – both could be made baseline or put together with CiS still and Hidden Thief.

But I’m not too happy with this. The idea is to make offhand dagger viable again, not taking too much from DP and let those who want to play a support role do their thing without having every thief pressed into that role.

ETA²: Yes, that wouldn’t be a nerf to D/P, but a buff for every thief, especially P/D and D/D.

Jana.6831:

The traits were also buffed and it suited D/P best.
I guess with that you’re not confused anymore.

See this is where I would say “YOU’VE JUST ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD” if I was the extravagantly-haired protagonist of an anime focused around card games.

Again this is just being pedantic. Since I think D/P and D/D were equally buffed, and in the end there’s only two D/X weaponsets so you could say one benefiting more than the other is like the flip of a coin. But…

The trait buffs were to Acro/CS/SA. D/P uses none of these. Even the Shadow Shot bugfix was in CS which D/P doesn’t use.

Could say more but that would take away from the point. D/P just doesn’t use Acro/CS/SA. Even D/P off-meta variants stay within the realm of DA/Trick/Daredevil. I didn’t mention how the trait buffs don’t benefit D/P because I didn’t think you’d claim that they did. But they don’t. If anything D/D is more likely to use Acro/CS/SA than D/P is (For condi builds at the very least).

Also was going to respond to the second part of what you read (Gonna go ahead and say you’re right as it probably isn’t that simple. But I just wanted to see the strength of staff considered more). But then saw the post above. Quite frankly you can do whatever you want to SA and I think most D/P people who bought HoT wouldn’t care. I’ve seen a LOT of D/P builds and while they’re all different and have their own situational strengths and weaknesses. I have not seen one that runs SA over DA/Trick/Daredevil (Okay I have seen exactly one, but that was a venomshare build).

Jana.6831:

Kire.2364:

Thief as a whole is finally in an ok place after being shoved out of the meta since the specialization update last summer, and rather than seek to help d/d be brought up to the level of d/p you’d rather the whole profession be dragged down into the dumpster?

Thief isn’t in an OK place, D/P and staff are, maybe S/D but guess not.
Your set might be in an ok place, thief the class isn’t. So, why has thief been buffed? Right, because all builds were dead. How easy is it to kill D/P the set? Not easy, otherwise it wouldn’t have been the only set halfway viable after June. Those who sticked to this forum are D/P thieves (and me) – so all traits were modified to suit D/P best = even less chance for my set. If you had taken the time and at least read the first 2 pages of this thread – you’d knew where I’m coming from, but instead you chose to act like a

whiny little brat

Considering you yourself just pointed out 3 weapon sets that are viable or somewhat viable(d/p, staff and s/d) and 1 that isn’t (d/d) I will happily stand by my assertion that thief as a whole is in an ok place. (Notice I said “ok” again, not “good” or “great”). Just because your PERSONALLY preferred weapon set isn’t one of the currently viable ones doesn’t mean the class as a whole is in a bad place. Does offhand dagger need a rework? Yes. Could some of the traits use some tweaking? Absolutely. But the way you act you want the whole class to be torn apart and made unplayable until d/d is on par or better than d/p. That’s not either a wise or realistic path to take going forward in my opinion. And again I challenge you, rather than going waaah waaah d/p this and waaah waaah d/p that, trying coming up with an offhand dagger rework that would bring d/d forward

Kire.2364:

childish rant

Ok.

Midi.8359:

See this is where I would say “YOU’VE JUST ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD” if I was the extravagantly-haired protagonist of an anime focused around card games.

Again this is just being pedantic. Since I think D/P and D/D were equally buffed, and in the end there’s only two D/X weaponsets so you could say one benefiting more than the other is like the flip of a coin. But…

If you think so you don’t know either of the sets. So which trap did I activate – do you really think you emerged as top dog right now?

Midi.8359:

The trait buffs were to Acro/CS/SA. D/P uses none of these. Even the Shadow Shot bugfix was in CS which D/P doesn’t use.

Not so sure about that actually and even if D/P doesn’t use it – a lot of the traits are only of use to D/P and no other set – and that’s the point.

Ok, so on the rest we partly agree – and if you think a bit further you’ll hopefully get my point – we have 6 sets, 8 weapons and everything is tailored to match one, maybe 2, the third is able to pick some cherries here and there.

Look, you can say I don’t know D/D. It hasn’t been in the meta for ages and I haven’t bothered with it beyond playing it enough to learn that it’s immobile. As far as D/P goes however. I made my statement about the buffs with some facts or at least opinions to back them up. If mainhand dagger gets a buff, and three traitlines that D/P doesn’t use get a buff. Then at the very least both D/D and D/P got buffed equally.

It’s not that hard of a result to reach. For D/P you need Trick/Daredevil for reasons I shouldn’t have to explain. Then for the third one if you chose anything other than DA you loose out on a lot of damage since you don’t get Mug, Panic Strike/Revealed training, Improvisation/Executioner, and the +10% damage when opponent has a condi.

Anyway with that being said I’m stepping out of this conversation. Don’t know if I’m top dog or not. But definitely don’t care to stay long enough to find out.

u rant about the fact D/P being a Permanent build is a bad thing.. but really is it?

Unlike many professions u have no fear ur gameplay will suddenly change, u have no need to learn a dozen set ups and you can concentrate on a role which is permanent thing for the thief. there are lots of Successful MMOs which made it with 0 profession/Class Variety and had a Stapled build to the Profession/class itself, which people Always kept going at.

Where ur saying “oh my lord this is boring..” if the Stapled Meta was to ur favour and never changed u wouldn’t have a problem with it, but the people who don’t like it would kick up about nothing being on par, Just because u like ur Profession revolving around a Rotar of builds that come in and out of viability each 3 months doesn’t mean everyone does.

there is a limit of builds that u can physically create therefore on something so Rotational as a Meta you’d eventually “overplay” everything in the profession.

I enjoy the fact the Thief has no major or Sudden changes in gameplay, it means I can log on it play my stuff.. and Don’t feel like I have to relearn and adapt to everything the next time I log on, I feel like I’ve made progression in my capability with the profession and not just a build.

your saying PvE, but D/P isn’t even strong itself for PvE… U say WvW, but Staff is used a lot more in WvW… D/P is more as a sole topdog in SPVP on realistic terms and as u have said yourself.

Trying to buff D/D wouldn’t get it viable no matter what ur a Thief, your a Profession that works on high burst and high Mobility, u act as if the thief is the only profession that only sees one build continuously, this is because a thiefs Role in SPVP is very specialized and not mainstreamed to cover a mass of jobs.

That is good and bad, it depends if u like the thiefs Natural role, by the sounds of it, u don’t, thief is a Roamer… a +1 profession and a Decapper, it does the Rotations for its team while they bunker and distract enemies.

imho the high speeds the mobility and constantly moving around the map is what brings the fun, not how fast my top builds swap.

the thiefs role is what makes thief fun.. not strictly the Weapon set for me.. therefore I would be against anything coming top dog, would I be here shouting Nerf it? prolly not. they cant please 100% Of people.

it isn’t that D/D isn’t being buffed.. its the fact it ISNT D/P ur a mobility profession why would u in gods name think D/D would be APPLIED anywhere?… they cant just Duplicate D/P continuously into every build making all builds a mobility build cause u wouldn’t feel like ur doing anything different.

D/D and S/D will not Exist Properly in Meta or top tier PvP until the profession gets a bunker build, at the end of the day.. u need something that’ll change your role from a roamer to try and make immobile or evasion builds work properly, that’s ur problem.. not trait positioning…. the thief has Nothing for that style of play to back it up.

0 Sustain Set ups.
0 Bunkering Set ups.
0 on point fighter set ups.

Is that a bad thing? no… we don’t need them.. thief is a DPSer.. a roamer and a Decapper, what does any of that bring to us… Nothing.. just more irritations.

also by generic Role… we’re a burst Profession so Condi damage wasn’t a realistic thought really.

to make Offhand Dagger work they’d need to Overthrow Shortbow with it realistically, as Shortbow is the main thing.

If Off hand dagger held onto a

4 – Targetted Area Shadow Step,

5 – held a 5 Second Invisability.

this would release the Requirement of Shortbow.

Meaning you’d be able to make D/D + Staff Viable.

this giving you Vault and things for Initation Jumps etc etc, while using Offhand Dagger as a Route of mobility or Escape.

Would that be a bland revamp of off hand Dagger? most prolly.
Would it replace D/P at that stage, Yes, because Shortbows not really strong outside the mobility it provides so it’d easily be replaced by anything that gave the thief mobility.
Would QQ Arise on Shortbow and D/P not being meta? yes.
Wouild this conversation happen all over again? Yes.

Midi.8359:

Look, you can say I don’t know D/D. It hasn’t been in the meta for ages and I haven’t bothered with it beyond playing it enough to learn that it’s immobile.

It’s actually the most mobile set thief has, apart from that it hasn’t got a build in shadowstep – and yes, if you don’t know the set then why are you calling me wrong and said I “got trapped in your trap card” kind of silly, isn’kitten

And sorry, Drayos, but I really can’t with “ur enlizh”.

Oh, and btw – I am a wvw player I have no other role than to kill.

D/D isn’t justifiably mobile outside of HS spam, which is just MH dagger, and D/P offers better in-combat mobility from Shadow Shot. S/x is more mobile so long as there’s a target, and obviously shortbow is mobility king.

The only sets D/D is more mobile than are P/D and P/P, which are the worst for obvious reasons being that neither of these have a gap close or OOC movement abilities.

Midi.8359:

Again this is just being pedantic. Since I think D/P and D/D were equally buffed, and in the end there’s only two D/X weaponsets so you could say one benefiting more than the other is like the flip of a coin. But…

That’s actually one of the problems. The solution that ArenaNet comes up with not only helps D/D but also D/P. So in the end, the gap between D/P and the other sets are ever growing wider. To keep D/P in check, it needs to be nerfed.

The trait buffs were to Acro/CS/SA. D/P uses none of these. Even the Shadow Shot bugfix was in CS which D/P doesn’t use.

Could say more but that would take away from the point. D/P just doesn’t use Acro/CS/SA. Even D/P off-meta variants stay within the realm of DA/Trick/Daredevil. I didn’t mention how the trait buffs don’t benefit D/P because I didn’t think you’d claim that they did. But they don’t. If anything D/D is more likely to use Acro/CS/SA than D/P is (For condi builds at the very least).

Most of the build doesn’t use those either or the buff didn’t really made a difference to the build because they don’t take those traits anyway. So what you call a buff is not really a buff. Just because it didn’t buffed D/P doesn’t necessarily means that it buffed other weapon sets.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Midi.8359:

Again this is just being pedantic. Since I think D/P and D/D were equally buffed, and in the end there’s only two D/X weaponsets so you could say one benefiting more than the other is like the flip of a coin. But…

That’s actually one of the problems. The solution that ArenaNet comes up with not only helps D/D but also D/P. So in the end, the gap between D/P and the other sets are ever growing wider. To keep D/P in check, it needs to be nerfed.

Alternatively, they could buff the utility of offhand dagger and it wouldn’t buff D/P at all, plus it would close the gap between D/P and D/D + S/D + P/D.