Guild Wars 2

Ok, well I accidently started hijacking another thread on this forum so I thought I would start a new one about some balance revisions that we could use. I would encourage reading the whole thing before you say something is nerfed or buffed too much because I spilt some skills, made some baseline, merged others, and moved some of where the damage comes from.

I’ll start with weapon skills. I’ll talk about traits in a second.

Weapon Skills

Short Bow:

#1) Fine as is

Stealth Attack Fine as is

#2.1) Increase the projectile speed by 50% so we can use it from 500-900 more effectively. Think engi grenades.
#2.2) Fine as is

#3) Revert the evade frames

#4) Increase the poison per pulse to 4 seconds

#5) Increase the projectile speed but make it a higher arc. It’s really frustrating to have a short shot because of the arrow clipping wonky terrain.

Pistol:

#1) Remove bleeding and add 8 seconds of vuln. Vuln affects both condis and direct damage now, so this would be useful for both P/D and P/P.

Stealth Attack) 10 bleeds for 8 seconds now. 1.5 multiplier. The autoattack will improve the damage from your bleeds and combined with the duration and count increase, it should make up for the loss of bleeds on autos.

#2) Make the vuln last 8 seconds so it can cover the bleed burst or even a couple of unloads. Remove immobilize and add weakness for 3 seconds so P/X has some defensive capabilities.

#4) Fine as is

#5) Fine as is

P/D#3) 3 torment for 8 seconds.

P/P#3) No changes

Overall, I’m trying to move the condi damage to the set that uses it while making common attacks between P/P and P/D useful for both. Since pistols deal relatively low single target damage, I want it to increase damage over time making the sustained damage and bursts more dangerous from both sets. While the condi damage has been removed from the Auto Attack, Sneak Attack and Shadow Strike have been buffed at least an equivalent amount.

Dagger:

1.1) Fine as is
1.2) Fine as is
1.3) Fine as is

Stealth Attack) Fine as is

#2) Fine as is

#4) Remove the bounce and cripple. Improved damage to a 1.0 multiplier. Successful hit marks target yields a rollover skill for 10 seconds.
(#4.2): 2 initiative. Shadowstep to marked target. Instant cast. No damage. Lose 1 condition. Cripple your target for 3 seconds.

#5) Remove vuln. Replace with blind

D/D#3) Leave damage and bleeds unchanged. Total skill length (including pre/post casts) 0.75 second. Evade 0.5 seconds. Directional skill shot (like warrior’s GS #3). Slide/leap 300 in selected direction. Use the charr animation to make it less awkward looking.

D/P#3) Fine as is

D/P is in a great spot. D/D needs help. By making the D/D#3 a useful evasion, it becomes good for both power and condi. #4 having a gap closer helps D/D stick to their target like D/P while offering a condi removal as a tradeoff compared to D/P. Incidentally S/D would become masters of sticking to their target which is a fair trade-off since they lack the burst of D/X builds. P/D would see some fun combos from this as well. #5 would help the sustain of D/D, P/D, and S/D.

Sword:
#1.1)
#1.2)
#1.3)
#1.1-1.3) Reduce the pre/post casts to make the entire chain 2.0 seconds long. Reduce the coefficients to 0.65, 0.65, and 1.05 (this is actually a 2% increase to AA DPS). Leave the weakness and cripple duration at 2 seconds.

Stealth Attack) In PvP, revert the daze duration back to 2 seconds.

#2.1) Fine as is
#2.2) Fine as is

S/D#3.1) Fine as is
S/D#3.2) Revert to 2 boons stolen

S/P#3) Remove the windup before the hit.

Reducing the time of the auto chain allows you to maintain weakness and cripple uptime better and proc more effects which is important for a set that lacks the burst of our other close combat set. Incidentally, by removing/shortening the pre/post casts, it’s much less likely that you’ll be stuck in a weapon animation when trying to use a dual skill defensively. Larcenous Strike needs the 2 boon steal back since it’s no longer an automatic rollover from Flanking Strike. Remove the windup from pistolwhip so this skill can be used to reactively evade an attack or interrupt/punish opponents in close combat.

Traits

Traits and some of our baseline abilities is where I think our true problems lie.
First, steal should be dropped down to 25 seconds to close the distance between traited and untraited steal CD’s (SoH will have its 20% removed, but I’ll get there).
Second, Preparedness should be rolled into the baseline initiative for thief.
I’ll start off with trickery since it’s our core line

Trickery

Kleptomaniac is fine as is.

Flanking Strikes is fine as is.

Thrill of the Crime is fine as is.

Uncatchable is fine as is.

Bountiful Theft is moved to the Master Minor spot, but it no longer shares the boons (keep with me for a second). This now steals full duration and stacks encouraging you to more strategically choose between using it to enter combat or after the enemy has popped a nice CD.

New Trait: Altruistic Stealing: Whenever you steal a boon, share it with your allies (radius 240). This is to help S/D be more of a support brawler and bring bountiful theft back up. This should share full duration and stacks when you steal something.

Pressure Striking will have Bewildering Ambush rolled into it. It will now be Stealing applies (5) confusion for 8 seconds. Interrupting a foe causes (1) confusion for 8 seconds.

Trickster is fine as is. Individual Tricks need adjustment.

Lead Attacks is fine as is.

Quick Pockets will restore 1 initiative on weaponswap and reduce weapon swapping to 5 seconds.

Sleight of Hand will have its daze increased to 1.5 seconds.

New Trait: Armor Piercing Rounds: Pistol Shots Pierce. Vulnerability increases damage and condi damage by 1.5% instead of 1%. This is an amalgamation of Fragility and Lead the Wind . I Thought it also played nicely with the suggested changes to pistol. It also allows for better balancing due to part of it’s strength being position dependent.



Deadly Arts

Our Offensive Lines are in a decent spot and there will be minimal suggested changes.

Serpent’s Touch is fine as is.

Dagger Training should be changed to “Dagger attacks have a chance to inflict Poison (100%), Duration (6 seconds), ICD (5 seconds). This would allow for the offhand attacks to be more useful and the duration buff from potent poison to be more useful.

Mug is fine as is

Trappers Respite needs to drop the trap at the beginning of the heal

Lotus Poison is fine as is.

Deadly Trapper is fine as is.

Panic Strike is fine as is

Revealed Training is fine as is.

Exposed Weakness is fine as is.

Executioner is fine as is.

Improvisation is fine as is.

Potent Poison is weak. In the same tier for physical damage, you get executioner which buffs all outgoing physical damage if the requirements are met, and conditions aren’t even affected by exposed weakness, so any build you’re using this on is getting hit double. I think it should be changed to Poison deals increased damage (20%) and has increased duration (50%). Since we lack condtion variety (specifically burning) this would help bring up some damage to condi builds. Shortbow (with the proposed change) would actually be good area denial. This would also help make up for exposed weakness which is useless for condi builds. Dagger auto in condi builds would also become a decent threat (being able to put out 4.5 stacks if auto attacking continuously and an additional 2 from Dagger Training). This also makes up for the loss in condi duration from the line.

Critical Strikes

Keen Observer is fine as is.

Flawless Strike is fine as is.

Side Strike is fine as is.

Signets of Power is fine as is.

Unrelenting Strikes is fine as is.

Ankle Shots is fine as is.

Sundering Strikes should increase the vulnerability duration by of all outgoing vulnerability 33% (edit: in addition to it’s current effects), making it a choice between that or ankle shots for the proposed pistol and playing nicely with the suggested Armor Piercing Rounds.

Ferocious Strikes is fine as is.

Hidden Killer is fine as is.

Invigorating Precision is fine as is.

No Quarter is fine as is.

Shadow Arts

Our defensive lines need a little more help. Shadow Arts is functioning alright so there won’t be too many changes suggested (especially after giving CnD blind), but Acrobatics needs a lot of help.

Merciful Ambush is fine as is.

Concealed Defeat and Last Refuge are going to be merged and pared down. The new skill read “Create a Smokescreen (3 second duration) when your health reaches a certain level (25%). Deception abilities recharge faster (20% recharge reduction)."

Shadows Embrace is fine as is.

Meld with Shadows is fine as is.

Shadow Protector Will be moved down to Adept Tier

Hidden Thief will have the fall damage trait be merged into it. (blind on stealth will not come along for the ride as CnD blinds now)

Leeching Venoms is fine as is.

Fleet Shadow will be moved to Shadow Arts (since I’m trying to make the triggers/effects of each line distinct). It will read gain 4 seconds of super speed on entering stealth (not “gaining stealth” so this can’t be stacked with refuge, sorry).

Cloaked in Shadow will be eliminated. Since the proposed change to CnD makes it blind foes, the only skill that will technically see a nerf from this is using Shadow Refuge. Since it no longer pulsed though (to my knowledge), this should be minor.

New Trait: Choking Shadows: Blinding a foe Weakens them (4 seconds, 10 sec ICD). When combined this would pair nicely with Lotus Poison and hopefully be a choice on par with the other 2 GM traits.

Shadow’s Rejuvination is fine as is.

Venomous Aura should only share 2 stacks with your allies. Imo, it’s still holding base venoms back because of its ability to give out huge stacks of condis. Still has reduced CDs

Acrobatics

Expeditious Dodger should be 3 seconds

Pain Response should trigger on number of conditions (3) only, the same way Burning Fire does. Instead of gaining might on [type of] skill usage though, just have it remove all damaging conditions.

Vigorous Recovery should increase the duration of vigor on you by 25% as well.

New Trait: Explosive Speed: When you gain swiftness, gain 3 seconds of superspeed.

Feline Grace is probably the reason you’re skimming this. Ugh. Merge Endless Stamina into this. (Just keep reading)

Guarded Initiation should be changed to “Gain (1) stability (2 seconds) and Resistance (2 seconds) when striking a foe while above 90% health. This is honestly the auto proc to counter auto procs. If you’re tired of tempest defense, nightmare runes, mirror of anguish, reaper’s defense, etc… this is for you. ICD 10 seconds.

Hard to Catch is surprisingly fine. One of the previously worst thief traits went to one of the best thief traits.

Swindlers Equilibrium should be changed to “Reduce steal duration by 3 seconds on successful evasion” 5 second ICD. No weapon restriction.

New Old Trait: Fluid Strikes: Gain 5 endurance on hit. 1 sec ICD. This would keep your evasion high as long as you keep hitting your enemy while not benefitting you for simply dodge spamming since they didn’t like that.

Assassin’s Reward is weak. Remove it instead of monkeying with the numbers since it’s basically a worse copy of Invigorating Precision.

New Trait: Flashing Blades: Deal damage and blind nearby foes on successful evasion (radius 180, 5 sec ICD).

Don’t Stop is fine as is.

Upper Hand is currently weak. Make it remove 1 condtion and gain 1 initiative on successful evasion (5 sec ICD)

This has been reworked below in response to Daredevil

That’s it for now. I’ll add utility skill changes later (mainly focusing on tricks and venoms). If you think something is OP or UP, please give your reasoning why so we can have a discussion about it.

I disagree with CiS falling away completely, there are more ways to gain stealth than from using CnD as a D/D thief – I’d still like to have that trait. And Shadows embrace is not fine as it is – fear isn’t taken away from you now, so you can be feared out of your SA which you formerly could prevent and I still have to take at least 2 “defensive” trait lines in order to get rid of 70% of the conditions.
SA has been offensive and defensive before the patch, trickery still is and I think every line should be defensive and offensive at the same time so that no one has got a disadvantage for taking that line. And SA is still the best line for condi remove.
Also, your master tier has got no options for me as a solo roamer (the current line doesn’t really have either but I’d like that to be changed).
For the rest: Haven’t really read through all but you guys know that I’m a strong defender of the old SA line

Jana.6831:

I disagree with CiS falling away completely, there are more ways to gain stealth than from using CnD as a D/D thief – I’d still like to have that trait. And Shadows embrace is not fine as it is – fear isn’t taken away from you now, so you can be feared out of your SA which you formerly could prevent and I still have to take at least 2 “defensive” trait lines in order to get rid of 70% of the conditions.
SA has been offensive and defensive before the patch, trickery still is and I think every line should be defensive and offensive at the same time so that no one has got a disadvantage for taking that line. And SA is still the best line for condi remove.
Also, your master tier has got no options for me as a solo roamer (the current line doesn’t really have either but I’d like that to be changed).
For the rest: Haven’t really read through all but you guys know that I’m a strong defender of the old SA line

I actually didn’t realize fear was no longer taken off during stealth. I can see why they did it though; It seems like they wanted SE to basically only remove damaging conditions, so I don’t think that would get reverted. Proposed Dagger #4 was intended to help with this though. Moving the blind to CnD will cover most of the blind that you need (putting it at least on the board when comparing it to D/P, but for less ini).

As for Offensive/Defensive lines, Trickery is a utility line mostly. It does weird stuff that could be considered either. On the other ones though, for thieves in particular, they made a clear delineation between Offensive and Defensive lines with Invigorating precision being the odd man out (and mug I guess). I went forward with that theme in mind.

Master tier has hidden thief for solo roaming which would have the fall trait and allow you to enter into combat with stealth. Fleet shadow would also be a strong contender on D/D to Allow for better gap closing since you can’t cancel shadowshot like you can with D/P. If you have suggestions for the Master tier, I’d be open to them. Good conversation starters.

Maugetarr.6823:

I actually didn’t realize fear was no longer taken off during stealth. I can see why they did it though; It seems like they wanted SE to basically only remove damaging conditions, so I don’t think that would get reverted.

Still conditions eat me up, that while using SA and Trickery/trickster and 2 tricks – most tricks don’t really work with SR which is my main source for getting rid of condis and still SA only removes maybe 50% and that really slowly. So SA alone doesn’t work against condis and I don’t think that any other class has to take 2 “defensive” trait lines to get rid of condis. And all of them have got a higher health pool – so I don’t see why SE shouldn’t get reworked. Maybe to “Clear a condition every 1 or 2 instead of 3 seconds” and include priorities maybe, although being able to clear fear is really crucial, especially in SR – I mean it wasn’t automatically but you had to think to do it – don’t see why that needs to be punished.

Maugetarr.6823:

Proposed Dagger #4 was intended to help with this though. Moving the blind to CnD will cover most of the blind that you need (putting it at least on the board when comparing it to D/P, but for less ini).

I don’t really know how your proposed #4 skill is meant, to be honest – likely a language barrier. I’d like it to immobilize or/and interrupt and maybe that’s what you meant, I don’t know. I hardly use that skill because it’s wonky and costs too much initative for doing so little.

Maugetarr.6823:

As for Offensive/Defensive lines, Trickery is a utility line mostly. It does weird stuff that could be considered either. On the other ones though, for thieves in particular, they made a clear delineation between Offensive and Defensive lines with Invigorating precision being the odd man out (and mug I guess). I went forward with that theme in mind.

1% more damage for 1 point initative left – increase the initative thief has got (both are minor traits) – that’s pretty offensive and I like it – and I liked the might I got from SA before the patch, now it’s all defensive and someone who traits into every other trait lines has got an advantage over me (especially since SA is so weak defensive-wise).

Maugetarr.6823:

Master tier has hidden thief for solo roaming which would have the fall trait and allow you to enter into combat with stealth. Fleet shadow would also be a strong contender on D/D to Allow for better gap closing since you can’t cancel shadowshot like you can with D/P. If you have suggestions for the Master tier, I’d be open to them. Good conversation starters.

I don’t need hidden thief, I’m a D/D thief. It’s a useless trait to me.

Edit: Typos

Jana.6831:

Still conditions eatme up, that while using SA and Trickery/trickster and 2 tricks – most tricks don’t really work with SR which is my main source for getting rid of condis and still SA only removes maybe 50% and that really slowly. So SA alone doesn’t work against condis and I don’t think that any otherclass has to take 2 “defensive” trait lines to get rid of condis. And all of them have got a higher health pool – soI don’t see why SE shouldn’t get reworked. Maybe to “Clear a condition every 1 or 2 instead of 3 seconds” and include priorities maybe although being able to clear fear is really crucial, especially in SA – I mean it wasn’t automatically but you had to think to do it – don’t see why that needs to be punished.

Well simply limiting it to damaging condis could be seen as both a strentgh and a weakness. Yes, it won’t remove everything, but if you get condi bombed, instead of leaving you to melt in stealth, it will attempt to remove all the damaging condis from you rather than removing the utility condis. Yeah, this can leave you open to getting immobilized in stealth though and taking additional damage on top of what you have already. I guess it could be reverted, but I doubt it will happen which is why I didn’t suggest it.

Jana.6831:

I don’t really know how your proposed #4 skill is meant, to be honest – likely a language barrier. I’d like it to immobilize or/and interrupt and maybe that’s what you meant, I don’t know. I hardly use that skill because it’s wonky and costs too much initative for doing so little.

This is basically supposed to be an offensive version of Infiltrators Strike. First, I’ve removed the bounce and doubled the single target damage. If you hit with Dancing Dagger, you’ll get a rollover skill replacing dancing dagger. This rollover will shadowstep you to your foe and remove a condition. This is intended to help with D/D’s lack of gap closers and utility. This would also help with the fact that Shadow’s embrace no longer removes utility condis because it could be made up for those not being removed by using this skill instead.[/quote]

Jana.6831:

1% more damage for 1 point initative left – increase the initative thief has got (both are minor traits) – that’s pretty offensive and I like it – and I liked the might I got from SA before the patch, now it’s all defensive and someone who traits into every other traitlines has got an advantage over me (especially since SA is so weak defensive-wise).

The problem is though that SA is strong enough defense-wise that they can’t really put offense back into it. I would rather other classes have to make a choice between going offensive or defensive as well when they pick a line rather than getting both. As a replacement though, if you were going 2/0/6/0/6, you can now go full into Deadly Arts and get the damage boost. I think that’s also the reason they split the lines like they did since you get a full damage line now.

Jana.6831:

I don’t need hidden thief, I’m a D/D thief. It’s a useless trait to me.

I mean, it’s a free stealth attached to steal and with the proposed damage reduction on fall and stealth on fall it would increase your survivability.

Maugetarr.6823:

Well simply limiting it to damaging condis could be seen as both a strentgh and a weakness. Yes, it won’t remove everything, but if you get condi bombed, instead of leaving you to melt in stealth, it will attempt to remove all the damaging condis from you rather than removing the utility condis. Yeah, this can leave you open to getting immobilized in stealth though and taking additional damage on top of what you have already. I guess it could be reverted, but I doubt it will happen which is why I didn’t suggest it.

Yeah, I get what anet intended to do, I think they did the same with ele but isn’tworking for D/D thief, that’s why I’m always argueing about it.
I also like the idea that you can take trickster and tricks recharge faster and remove a condition. I mean it’s great on paper- in reality we all use more or less the same skills as everything else is “useless”, so these traits don’t really work for us.

Maugetarr.6823:

This is basically supposed to be an offensive version of Infiltrators Strike. First, I’ve removed the bounce and doubled the single target damage. If you hit with Dancing Dagger, you’ll get a rollover skill replacing dancing dagger. This rollover will shadowstep you to your foe and remove a condition. This is intended to help with D/D’s lack of gap closers and utility. This would also help with the fact that Shadow’s embrace no longer removes utility condis because it could be made up for those not being removed by using this skill instead.

That would be great, true. (Thanks for explaining it to me again)

Maugetarr.6823:

The problem is though that SA is strong enough defense-wise that they can’t really put offense back into it. I would rather other classes have to make a choice between going offensive or defensive as well when they pick a line rather than getting both. As a replacement though, if you were going 2/0/6/0/6, you can now go full into Deadly Arts and get the damage boost. I think that’s also the reason they split the lines like they did since you get a full damage line now.

See, that’s the problem: for a D/P thief all of this is no problem, for a D/D thief it is and that was why I meant that all lines should be both offensive and defensive – this is a difficult topic. I can one shot people (with D/D) with the traits availlable to me, I can outplay them with D/P without taking SA but as a D/D thief who roams I need defense – so anet has to find a balance between these one shot builds and those who want to play the class differently and also to find a balance between D/P and D/D who have access to the same traits. That’s why I really think that putting defense and offense in every line is the best way to go.

Maugetarr.6823:

I mean, it’s a free stealth attached to steal and with the proposed damage reduction on fall and stealth on fall it would increase your survivability.

I use CiS and my guild is always confused why they’re all stealthed after we jumped off of something. And I forget that I don’t use SA in PvE which makes me underestimate heigths. But honestly: It is a useless trait to me – both of them are, I’d rather have a might trait for that but then again I’d also like CiS and Shadow Rejuvenation and SE, so might would’ve to be a minor again.

Edit: Typos again.

I really like the ideas. I would also add that SE should also remove weakness condition because a long duration of it can both neutralize thief’s damage pressure while reducing effectiveness of their important defense that is dodge… also using withdraw with trickster trait should remove the condi BEFORE the heal is applied, right now when we have poison condi and use traited withdraw, the healing portion is effected by poison despite it being cleared…also healing coefficient needs to get increased by 10% as promised…
Revealed training trait needs to remove a damaging condition upon being revealed with an ICD of at least 6 sec on top of the 200 power increase because atm it is out shined by panic strike. Also we dont want reveal utilities and passive traits from other professions to simply hardcounter us (soft counter is ok). Its hilarious to easily condi stack as an engi then put a 10+ sec reveal on the thief as they melt…

Some nice ideas flowing here. I’d like to add that trait relocations can be just as important as trait changes. For example, I kind of dislike how the adept and master tiers of many specilizations have very obvious choices, a result of either alternatives sucking or being overshadowed by a very strong choice that you can’t build without.

There are a lot of traits that don’t see the light of day because their effects don’t stack up to their neighbor(s). Makes it annoying when trying to build something new and different.

I really like most of this. Anet, listen the kitten up. These ideas would bring thief up to par with the other classes imo.

I like most of these ideas, although I believe Flashing Blades would be a bit too powerful; maybe set a 10s ICD. I would also like to see SE reverted. Without it being able to remove all types of conditions, thieves can be very easily locked down with spam condition builds and it forces you to use utilities such as shadowstep and withdraw to clear them. Also, the 10% increase in healing to withdraw would be nice too.

Regardless, lets keep this topic bumped so that hopefully one GM will see this and utilize the advice.

:D Added to the changer list.

Have a free bump.

These are some very interesting ideas overall. I have some suggestions though.

1) I think there would be too much poison application (duration wise) with these changes. Poison in particular is strong having a long duration as it makes healing less effective too. On the other hand, the damage from poison is not very strong.

Based on this I would change:

[Short bow] Choking Gas: Increase the poison duration per pulse to 3 seconds. Increase from 1 to 2 stacks of poison applied per pulse.

• Currently the 2 seconds of poison this applies is very short, and the damage from one stack of poison is lackluster.

[Trait] Dagger Training: Dagger attacks inflict 2 stacks of poison for 3 seconds. (5s ICD)

• A guaranteed proc chance greatly helps offhand dagger skills to get more of a use from this trait.

[Trait] Potent Poison: Poison you apply lasts 33% longer and deals 25% more damage.

• The current +33% poison duration from this trait is fine. Increased poison damage from +10% to +25% because poison could use more of a damage increase.

2) With the changes to steal and the Trickery line, I think Sleight of Hand would be a little underwhelming (only making steal daze for 1.5s). Instead, it could look like this:

[Trait] Sleight of Hand: Stealing dazes the target for 1s. When you steal a boon from your target, you also transfer a condition to them.

The Uncatchable trait is a bit weak too. This could be due to Caltrops being easy to avoid and weak in general, along with this trait’s version of Caltrops having such a small radius. It could have an added effect to look like this:

[Trait] Uncatchable: Leave behind Caltrops when you dodge. Immobilize foes for 1s when you cripple them. (10s ICD)

• The immobilize on cripple would synergize well with Caltrops to make them a bit stronger.

3) Ankle Shots in the CS line could have a better cripple up time since none of our pistol skills apply cripple.

Also you left out the Practiced Tolerance trait in the CS line. I think the current version of it is fine but it should be renamed.

4) The Cloaked in Shadow GM trait could be replaced with this instead:

[Trait] Cloaked in Shadow: Blind nearby foes and gain 2s of stealth when you swap weapons while in combat (becomes 3s with Meld with Shadows).

• It would be nice to immediately be able to use your stealth attack from the weapon you just switched to, especially weapons that don’t have easy access to stealth. This would be strong competition with Shadow’s Rejuvenation.
• This would synergize extremely well with the new Quick Pockets trait in the Trickery line, maybe too well. If so this could just have an ICD added.

5) The Acrobatics line seems like it needs a little work still. Some traits seem too strong and some seem too weak. Here are a few examples:

• The Vigorous Recovery trait now increasing the duration of vigor by 25% would be redundant. We already have access to permanent vigor possibly without this trait, as we should. Elementalists have a single adept trait that grant them permanent vigor all by itself, and thieves should have equal/better access to vigor.

• The suggested Explosive Speed trait would be too strong with so much uptime on superspeed. The Don’t Stop GM trait in this same line would be much less attractive with this trait available in the adept tier, since superspeed overlaps the portion of Don’t Stop that reduces the effectiveness of cripple and chill.

• Pain Response removing all damaging conditions and granting regeneration on a 20 second cool down would be too strong for an adept trait.

I have a forum topic with suggested changes to the Acrobatics line that might help. You can find it here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Proposed-Acrobatics-Trait-Changes

Raiden.1375:

Abridged Poison Comments (5001 chars)

Interesting ideas. My goal though was to get back the duration on poison that we used to have. Choking gas in particular is one that I think needs longer duration poison so we have better area denial. I’m in agreement with you that even with the proposed buff to potent poison a single stack wouldn’t be very much damage, but with the large duration increase, if they took all the pulses it would be quite a dangerous skill. Leaving it at 1 stack for a longer period would be more useful for pushing bunkers off point since sitting in the skill would kill their sustain. A poison based thief should get significant more dangerous the longer you fight them, which is why I wanted less burst from poison while having more sustained damage. With these changes a D/X build could upkeep about 6-7 stacks of poison, but not be able to burst it onto the opponent unless they used a utility like spider venom on top of it. I like your ideas, I think we just have different goals in terms of ramp up and sustain. I don’t want to see thieves turn into just another condi bomb.

Sleight of Hand strength

While I do agree that this version of sleight of hand is a little underwhelming, I hesitate to add too much utility to it lest it become a manditory trait again. I think fiddling with the duration would be the best thing to do, possibly even extending it to 2 seconds so it could cover a round of auto attacks.

The Uncatchable trait is a bit weak too. This could be due to Caltrops being easy to avoid and weak in general, along with this trait’s version of Caltrops having such a small radius. It could have an added effect to look like this:

Uncatchable: Leave behind Caltrops when you dodge. Immobilize foes for 1s when you cripple them. (10s ICD)

• The immobilize on cripple would synergize well with Caltrops to make them a bit stronger.

That would be a good addition. I didn’t really think to change them since they’ve basically been the same since launch, but we have fewer dodges now with the vigor nerf and can’t extend condi duration via lines, so this seems like a reasonable and thematically fitting buff.

3) Ankle Shots issue

That is an interesting quandry. Since it’sa damage boost you wouldn’t use caltrops with it most likely so your cripple uptime would be poor. I would rather change the trigger condition to weakness because then it would play well with the suggested body shot giving you a reason to use all of your skills on P/X. If you took the proposed choking shadows also, you could actually have a fairly decent amount of weakness uptime on the opponent.

Practiced Tolerance name

Agreed. Vicious Precision maybe?
—-

4) The Cloaked in Shadow GM trait suggestion

I like it, but I think it would be too strong even without the quick pockets change. Without an ICD it could be the new PU spec, and with any reasonable ICD I think it would become the nerfed version of kit refinement where it’s sort of a happy accident when it procs. I was looking at adding some sustain while killing some of the endurance regen of foes, especially when combined with a blinding CnD if you can bait out dodges.
—-

• The Vigorous Recovery trait now increasing the duration of vigor by 25% would be redundant. We already have access to permanent vigor possibly without this trait, as we should. Elementalists have a single adept trait that grant them permanent vigor all by itself, and thieves should have equal/better access to vigor.

Well, the idea was to do something that synergizes well with the new FG and Withdraw. This would put withdraw at a 33% vigor uptime and FG at 5 seconds on proc leading to a much better vigor uptime from a single line than we have now. On the other hand, I wanted to bring back something that stacked with vigor with the proposed fluid strikes. So while we wouldn’t have it all with one trait like eles get, our potential (and hopefully actual) endurance regen would be higher. I agree that endurance regen should be top priority for the line which is why fluid strikes can grant up to 5 more endurance per second on top of vigor.

• Explosive Speed concern

I based this on the potential uptime on superspeed that fresh air ele has. Since this is in a defensive line, and we’re supposed to be the kings of mobility the uptime seemed reasonable especially when everyone except necros seems to have permanent swiftness in combat now. It would significantlyhelp with repositioning too since dodges are more precious now.

• Pain Response Concern

Yeah, this CD should probably be at 30 seconds, but since it only offers regen, I think the burst removal of the damaging conditions is fine.

Good discussion!

TwoShanks.4827:

I like most of these ideas, although I believe Flashing Blades would be a bit too powerful; maybe set a 10s ICD. I would also like to see SE reverted. Without it being able to remove all types of conditions, thieves can be very easily locked down with spam condition builds and it forces you to use utilities such as shadowstep and withdraw to clear them. Also, the 10% increase in healing to withdraw would be nice too.

Regardless, lets keep this topic bumped so that hopefully one GM will see this and utilize the advice.

I thought about that too for flashing blades, but the successful evasion part limits its power as well as the radius being 180 (I based the damage and radius in my head off of warrior’s reckless dodge).

I’m also trying to attach another condi clear to a dagger weapon skill, so both daggers and swords would have the option. I think that would help with the problem of getting locked down by the utility conditions.

AFAIK the healing on withdraw/oversight is a bug that needs to be fixed so I didn’t mention it, but when I address utilities, I’ll make sure to put it in.

tomwjd.8172:

I really like the ideas. I would also add that SE should also remove weakness condition because a long duration of it can both neutralize thief’s damage pressure while reducing effectiveness of their important defense that is dodge… also using withdraw with trickster trait should remove the condi BEFORE the heal is applied, right now when we have poison condi and use traited withdraw, the healing portion is effected by poison despite it being cleared…also healing coefficient needs to get increased by 10% as promised…

If anything, I think the acro line should remove weakness since it affects endurance regen (fleet of foot removed it IIRC).

Revealed training trait needs to remove a damaging condition upon being revealed with an ICD of at least 6 sec on top of the 200 power increase because atm it is out shined by panic strike. Also we dont want reveal utilities and passive traits from other professions to simply hardcounter us (soft counter is ok). Its hilarious to easily condi stack as an engi then put a 10+ sec reveal on the thief as they melt…

Well, as I was talking about with Jana, I’m hesitant to give an offensive line defensive capability and vise versa because I think it’s an important choice to make. I wouldn’t mind giving it more offensive capability though.

Maugetarr.6823:

• Poison Duration Concern(Quotes trimmed due to character limit and improving readability)

Well with the changes I suggested, poison would still be able to be applied quite generously in duration, especially with Potent Poison. Also since poison damage is so low, I would hardly call my suggestion a condition bomb. I just think the durations you suggested are a bit overkill, and they would have a diminished return being so long since a condition cleanse would remove any sustained threat it might bring.

• Sleight of Hand Trait

The daze duration isn’t really the problem. The main reason people take this trait currently is to interrupt enemies, and to reduce steal’s cool down. After this change it would only have the interrupt part, and increasing the daze duration doesn’t really help with that. Compared to Quick Pockets or the new pistol GM trait(if I use pistols), I wouldn’t see a reason to take this anymore. If transferring a condition would be too strong it could just remove a condition instead, or maybe steal an extra boon or something.

• Ankle Shots Trait

I don’t think a P/P user will take the SA line though, as it hardly offers any support for them since they don’t rely on stealth much. Also, you have to keep in mind this trait is competing with Practiced Tolerance(10% of precision is converted into ferocity), which is quite good and always applies on any weapon set regardless if your opponent is crippled or not.

• Cloaked in Shadow Trait

Yeah I agree to an extent. However, it needs be strong to compete with Shadow’s Rejuvenation, and you won’t be able to take SR with this. Because of that I don’t think this is quite on par with PU. If 3 seconds of stealth is too long, the duration could maybe be decreased to 1 second instead(2 seconds with Meld with Shadows). This would make it so you have to use the stealth attack fairly quickly if you are going to, and it wouldn’t be so much for sitting in stealth. (Again, you can’t take SR with this, so sitting in the stealth wouldn’t be as powerful anyway)

• Vigorous Recovery Trait

This could be a minor help if you don’t take Bountiful Theft, but I still don’t like it and don’t think its necessary with the new Feline Grace.

• Explosive Speed Trait

I suppose that is a fair comparison. Though with this trait there is hardly a reason to take the Don’t Stop trait, as it would have an uptime close to 100%, and completely ignoring cripple/chill overlaps and is superior to only making them 50% less effective.

• Pain Response Trait

A 30 second cool down would be more reasonable, but I prefer just removing 3 conditions on a 20 second cool down like it is currently. Also, only triggering when you have 3 damaging conditions on you isn’t necessarily better. Burn guardians probably won’t ever have 3 damaging conditions on you, but they will be able to put out massive damage still with only one.

These weren’t the only qualms I had with the proposed Acrobatics trait line here though.

Your proposed Guarded Initiation would still be very situational, and it doesn’t seem very powerful either.

Another thing that stands out is merging Feline Grace with Endless Stamina makes for a very powerful Master/Minor trait. On top of that, your proposed Fluid Strikes trait in the Grandmaster/Minor spot is about as strong as the old Feline Grace was alone. Even further, keeping Hard to Catch as it is so it can easily be taken with these 2 traits would allow for even more dodges than before the June 23 patch.

The suggestions for the Acrobatics in my thread don’t have these problems, and they would help fix Acrobatics so it would be a solidly strong trait line again. You don’t have to take my suggestions if you don’t want to obviously, but I don’t think Anet will bring back even more dodges in Acrobatics than there were before.

Raiden.1375:

• Poison Duration Concern(Quotes trimmed due to character limit and improving readability)

Condi bomb was overstating it. I think we’re just not seeing eye to eye on the ramp up and duration which is fine really. I like a slower ramp for condis, but they last longer, and you favor shorter, higher damage output. I settled on 50% duration though because previously the line buffed all condis 30% and now the trait just buffs 1. While the dagger auto saw an increase in poison duration because of this, nothing else did to my knowledge, so poison should be lengthened a little more to make up for the difference.

• Sleight of Hand Trait

Again, while I agree that leaving the 1 second daze was too weak, I’m not sure about adding too much utility to it. Actually I thought it would still get taken for heal interrupts and combined with bewildering ambush/pressure striking would see lots of use still. Additional boons stolen might be the way to go or maybe just converting a boon to a condi (which would be a nice slight of hand).

• Ankle Shots Trait

Well the deception recharge-smokescreen/hidden thief – fall trait/choking shadows is what was in my head since and pistols have ample access to blind and my proposed changes put weakness on body shot too. Also if they take DA, they’d get lotus poison triggering it from steal.

• Cloaked in Shadow Trait

I get where you’re coming from on this too, I just wanted to see some out of stealth defenses too in the line that made sense thematically in the line. Shadowshot, BPS, and the proposed CnD would all trigger this allowing for some additional defense in the line when other professions reveal you.

• Vigorous Recovery Trait

The other possible option in my head for this was to make it remove cripple and weakness when gaining vigor because they removed fleet of foot. The idea in you thread is a little stronger mechanically.

• Explosive Speed Trait

A 5 sec ICD might be a useful addition as then it really would be on par with the ele one. (Yeah they finally removed the ICD from fresh air, but it’s still limited by attunment recharge, so 5 seconds seems reasonable to guard against abusing buffs from allies like guard symbols)

• Pain Response Trait

I mean condi mesmers, rangers, necros, and engis came to mind when I gave it the 3 condi qualification. That would basically ensure that their autos don’t trigger it. For limited condis, I think the change to upper hand would cover it.

Well, about merging FG and ES, there’s a couple of ways to look at it. ES either gets you a dodge ~1 second earlier or it provides 1 extra dodge every 40 seconds over regular vigor. To me it’s mediocre, so rolling 2 currently mediocre traits into 1 would make a single decent trait (which isn’t too strong I don’t think).

While fluid strikes could be powerful, I think in actuality the time off target and the way attacks land before and after the ICD would keep it in check. As soon as you back off someone, it stops benefitting you so its usefulness is entirely dependent on how aggressive you are. If it proves a little strong (or perhaps even weak during actual play) the endurance returned could be adjusted up or down. I used 5 as my starting number because of the dagger auto chain which yields 5 endurance per second as well (10 every 2.02 seconds).

Finally, yeah my Guarded Initiation is situational, but it was designed to let you drop into a fight and burst someone, like maybe into a blind well or ranger trap (as well as those auto procs I mentioned originally ).

[/quote]

Maugetarr.6823:

• Poison Duration Concern

I guess I’m not seeing how the ramp up over time will be better then, other than maybe against someone with little to no condition cleanses. Even someone with just a decent condition cleanse ability will be able to stop any build up potential over time you might achieve, making the durations an overkill with not much more effectiveness added. With my suggestion you would probably still be able to permanently apply poison too. At least we both agree that the current short bow #4 poison is too weak etc.

• Ankle Shots Trait

Eh, even if Shadow Arts was viable for P/P somehow, they would have to take it and Deadly Arts just to get a decent weakness application to be able to use one trait from Critical Strikes that might barely be better than its Practiced Tolerance alternative, which works with any weapon set. They wouldn’t even be able to take the new Pistol GM trait in Trickery then either.

• Explosive Speed Trait

That would help having an ICD. I just wouldn’t take Don’t Stop still though because I could take this instead from the adept tier and get very similar results. Don’t Stop hardly seems worthy of GM now with this in the adept tier.

• Dodge Amount

You might be right about there not being more dodge access than before, but there would be about equal access. This is mainly due to a problem with Hard to Catch though. It will just about never actually give the full 100 endurance, since you probably won’t ever get stunned right when you completely run out of stamina. It can potentially go off when you are full on stamina pretty easily(a stealthed thief opens on you with basilisk venom for example), thus only being a stun break on a 30 second cool down.

Raiden.1375:

• Poison Duration General Agreement

Woohoo! General agreement on an internet debate.

• Ankle Shots Trait

You could be right. Overall Ankle shots is sort of a weird trait because P/P lacks cripple output without this trait and the damage is only 30% uptime on 10% damage for a specific weapon set. Maybe they should just note the range increase and have it be a permanent +5% damage to pistols. Boring yes, but at least decent for pistols.

• Explosive Speed Trait

It’s still useful for the immobilize immunity which would allow you to dodge (gaining superspeed) and effectively cancel out the cripple you receive instead.

• Dodge Amount

Yeah, I know the endurance regen is there, but I don’t usually count it because you don’t have control over it. You have some control over FG and would have control over Fluid Strikes, but HtC has a very wide range of power that spans from awesome to “meh.”

Hidden Killer – Add Unblockable.

Putting an ICD of 5 seconds on POISON apps via dagger training is a bad idea and far worse than what we have now. You are pretty well limiting a build to 2 stacks of poison and are boosting the uptime of poison and stacks of poison to an off hand dagger user to be the equal of the D/D user which is bad design.

Simply extending durations to dagger training will not add anything in the way of meaninful extra damage simply because we limited by INI .

Having “higher poison uptime” does not really help a condition dagger build in any meaningful way and simply favors sets that are not dagger focused over the pure dagger build. Dagger training SHOULD work best for the set that uses dagger in each hand just as poison should favor a build focused on conditions.

Dagger training needs a slight uptweak in duration to 3 seconds coupled with increasing the application rate to 50 percent from 33. INI restirctions will still limit the number of total stacks poison that can be garnered from this trait . The fact that the AA is “Free of INI” is not an issue here as those that rely on dagger in mainhand are generally power builds so will not get a lot off the poison ticks while those that might go and try D/D in a condition build are not going to stick around for any length of time using the AA on the weaponset as they can not slug it out toe to toe in such a manner without blinds which the set does not have.

With 100 percent poison duration if one JUST uses AA with dagger current form you can peak around 10 stacks of poison( Doing this is suicide however against any competent player). Half of the stacks and more come from the AA chain itself rather than dagger training.

Using D/D and DB 100 percent duration one can rarely get on more than 4 stacks before INI is out or you have to stop spamming those DBS for other reasons. This is STILL more then 2 stacks on a 5 second ICD. With a one second duration increase and a 50 percent app rate this can push towards 7 stacks same which is much more reasonable.

Sundering strikes.

Again I have tested this a lot using P/P. Initially I thought durations the issue but it is not in reality. Increasing durations will not add any meaningful stacks simply because of INI limitations.

In order for sundering strikes to be add meaningful damage over the other traits one needs an attack that maximizes the number of stacks per INI used. Again while the AA of any weapon set INI free it not practical to use this on most weaponsets as a vulnerability source.

Thus the fastest way to add stacks in the current setup is with an attack like unload on the p/p set. The problem of course is INI is gone before you can get enough stacks to make the damage from said stcks noticeable and once your INI gone it hard to take advantage of all those stacks you managed to put on.

Suggestion.

keep as is. 50 percent chance to add vulnerability with a 5 second (1 second lower) duration BUT make it apply two stacks rather than one on a proc. This will heavily favor a p/p build for those stacks but this a good thing and will help make that set more viable.

Since virtually all other attacks outside the AA chain on all weaponsets are single attacks for the same amount of INI they will get no where near the potential of the p/p set for said stacks yet will get a significant boost over the current trait.

This will act to boost both SB and P/P relative to other weaponsets as Vulnerability stackers making them have much more utility. (the mulitple attacks off the unload skill and the SB aoe attacks are key here)

babazhook.6805:

Dagger Training/Poison Durations

Good points about Dagger Training. I agree it should probably benefit you more while using two daggers, and with a 50% proc chance instead of 33% it should be more tolerable for using it with only an off hand dagger.

babazhook.6805:

Sundering strikes

Good point about this trait as well. Changing this trait to extend the duration of vulnerability instead of applying it would also limit this trait to only being useful on a pistol build. Currently it’s good for any weapon set mainly for group offensive support.

Maugetarr.6823:

Pistol:

Stealth Attack) 10 bleeds for 8 seconds now. 1.5 multiplier. The autoattack will improve the damage from your bleeds and combined with the duration and count increase, it should make up for the loss of bleeds on autos.

P/D#3) 3 torment for 8 seconds.

These changes seem like they would over compensate for the switch from bleeds to vulnerability on pistol auto attacks. The new Sneak Attack applying 10 stacks of bleed instead of 5 on top of increasing the duration of them all to 8 seconds from 4 would be too much compensation. Increasing either the duration or number of stacks would be good but not both.

Increasing the torment stacks applied from Shadow Strike to 3 on top of increasing the duration of them all to 8 seconds from 5 is also a bit much.

Maugetarr.6823:

#2) Make the vuln last 8 seconds so it can cover the bleed burst or even a couple of unloads. Remove immobilize and add weakness for 3 seconds so P/X has some defensive capabilities.

I also don’t like the weakness change on this too much. The current immobilize is nice defensively for kiting and offensively for preventing someone from running away, or making them stand in caltrops etc.

Pressure striking I prefer as a source of torment rather than another of confusion. The key to a condition build like the thief that relies is a variety of conditions that act as covers for underlying condition stacks. Added to this the number of said stacks is also very important and pressure striking works very nice with a build that also uses Skale to apply torment.

While s/d has a limited source of interrupts most would not take pressure strike in such a build as they would glean little benefit from condition damage type traits.

What should be done however is it should add 4 stacks of 5 seconds rather than three simply because an interrupt is hard and expensive to pull off in terms on INI from a weaponset.

I think the only trait that really needs work in trickery line is the Quickpockets and I really like Maugeterrs proposal on this.

I am very ambivalent about putting piercing rounds on the trickery trait line. This will tend to lock down p/p builds to CS/Trickery . Armor pierce is better suited being fitted into CS line somehow.

Increasing the daze on SOH would be nice but this trait tends to do pretty well on its in for that lower cooldown on the steal.

babazhook.6805:

Sundering strikes.

Again I have tested this a lot using P/P. Initially I thought durations the issue but it is not in reality. Increasing durations will not add any meaningful stacks simply because of INI limitations.

In order for sundering strikes to be add meaningful damage over the other traits one needs an attack that maximizes the number of stacks per INI used. Again while the AA of any weapon set INI free it not practical to use this on most weaponsets as a vulnerability source.

Thus the fastest way to add stacks in the current setup is with an attack like unload on the p/p set. The problem of course is INI is gone before you can get enough stacks to make the damage from said stcks noticeable and once your INI gone it hard to take advantage of all those stacks you managed to put on.

Suggestion.

keep as is. 50 percent chance to add vulnerability with a 5 second (1 second lower) duration BUT make it apply two stacks rather than one on a proc. This will heavily favor a p/p build for those stacks but this a good thing and will help make that set more viable.

Since virtually all other attacks outside the AA chain on all weaponsets are single attacks for the same amount of INI they will get no where near the potential of the p/p set for said stacks yet will get a significant boost over the current trait.

This will act to boost both SB and P/P relative to other weaponsets as Vulnerability stackers making them have much more utility. (the mulitple attacks off the unload skill and the SB aoe attacks are key here)

I think duration should exceed stack application. Reason being thief is not a good frontline type of profession and with the removal of ricochet, you are not going to get a group vulnerability count that noticeable. Additionally sundering strikes has 3 limitations right off the bat as it is now; initiative, critical hits, and quick hits. Without maintaininig those 3 the trait is next to useless. Now if the duration was say 8 seconds (1 stack) you could pop out an unload, or pistol whip, or even death blossom on a hybrid build to get a few stacks up there and then back down a little bit or conserve your initiative spenders for a moment, not to mention condition/vulnerability duration becomes much more relevant since higher base durations take the best advantage of them.

If the trait was higher stacks lower duration all it would promote is the repeated use of skills like unload and pistol whip without any thought to setting up afterwards. Honestly given the stack amount and sources of vulnerability on thief, I think this trait should give 10 seconds of vulnerability on 50% of critical hits. Makes setting up combos much more effective and you would be able to either get a steady flow of 12+ stacks or you could reach 25 if you risk draining your initiative but atleast then your allies can benefit from that.

babazhook.6805:

Dagger Training and Poison Uptime

I am going to disagree with you a bit on this one. Basically, I took Lotus Strike’s effect and put it into a proc across all dagger skills. What this changed for a poison dagger thief was to basically add an extra autoattack per 2.5 chains. With a condi thief seeing virtaully all the autoattack damage relying on this last skill, I thought it would make an excellent addition to their auto damage while also strengthening the intermittent dagger rhythm you would get in a P/D setup. The part I disagree with though is that dual daggers should see more of a benefit from this skill than P/D. I think they should equally benefit from picking up this trait.

babazhook

Sundering strikes concern

I did not word this properly (although I think NinjaEd got what I meant). It should increase the duration in addition to it’s current effect, making the effect that it provides 8 seconds. I will edit my wording. This would allow for the proposed P/P auto attack to put out 12 vuln as well as work nicely with the vuln bursts from body shot and Unload.

babazhook

Pressure Striking Preference

The change he was to basically unify Bewildering Ambush into it. If taken with SoH, it would potentially increase the damage of BA by 20% in addition to giving you long single stacks of a condition that punishes you for attacking the thief (and thematically made more sense to me). It is simply a matter of preference.

Raiden

Compensation concern for P/D

Well, I got to these numbers partly on what I’ve seen for other classes, but partly on also whats available to us currently. I’ll explain using Bleed Seconds (number of bleeds*length of bleeds*number of targets)/Intiative cost.

Deathblossom: 3 stacks*10 seconds*3 targets/4 initiative=90BleedStacks/4 ini=22.5 (potential)
SB: 4*3*3/3=12 (potential)

Sneak Attack (is a little tricky because you need stealth, so it either costs a utility or minimum of 6 initiative): 10*8*1/6=13.3

Yes this reasoning is in an Ideal situation against stacked targets (such as someone rezzing an ally), but at the same time what I’ve found when playing P/D is you’ll often land only 2-3 of the sneak attack shots against a decent opponent meaning that realistically you’re only dealing about half of the full damage (like realistically landing the other ones mentioned here). Sneak attack should be a dangerous attack since it requires stealth. Yes, your gear set can be safer than a power set, but the attack can also be reflected or transferred back making it decently dangerous in itself.

As for the buff to torment on P/D, I based it on mesmer scepter potential since those are also single target attacks. At its base duration and CD, Illusionary Counter puts out 5 torment for 8 seconds on a 10 second CD that can be used at range (and produces a clone that also gives a small amount torment). That’s a potential TormentSecond of 5*8/10=4. A traited scepter can be 5*8/6=6.66. If we equate initiative to seconds of CD, we get 3*8/4=6, but this skill needs to be used in close combat and limits it’s reuse by shadowstepping you away.

Overall, while these may seem strong still, keep in mind that with vuln on the auto, the damage from the set will require you to either go into close combat or use a utility to gain stealth. At range it sets itself up for an increased burst from these attacks. Overall I wanted to increase the risk of the set while increasing the potential reward from it (slightly).

Raiden

Weakness over Immobilize

My intentions for P/P to get it stronger in a longer fight. While weakness wouldn’t help the set kite, it would cut the opponents damage output while simultaneously increasing yours with the vuln. In addition, it would cut the endurance regen making it harder for people to dodge as often.



I appreciate the back and forth discussion guys

Edit:

magi

Hidden Killer – Add Unblockable.

I think this would be too strong as it eliminates the counterplay to stealth attacks (yes, there is counterplay no mater how much people want to say there isn’t).

A while ago I suggested that HK should also add +50% crit chance while having the status “revealed” similar to how Death Perception and Unsuspecting Foe work. It was met with mixed reviews so I did not include it again. The idea was to make HK useful for both D/X and S/X while allowing you to trade a little precision for Vitality.

Well as a poison using theif who has been using the current iteration of dagger training I am going to have to disagree with you on your suggestion. It WILL mean less poison damage and will become less useful to any build that wishes to focus on daggers delivering poison.

An ICD favors those that use poison to inhibit healing and not those that wish to use poison as a main source of damage as they build up stacks. With an ICD one can only apply 2 stacks every 5 seconds. That does not work for a poison build. Even with full duration of 100 percent posion off dagger training is limited to 4 stacks (predicated on no cleanses) which does not cut it when compared to the other traits at that spot.

3 (or MAYBE 4 base) seconds durations with 50 percent app rate results in poison being a much better damage source. (I think 3 is the minimum the duration should be meaning 33 percent adds 1 second off potent with the existing potent poison)

To potent poison I think your suggestion reasonable. I was thinking perhaps one option would be to keep as is but add “on applying posion to an enemy tansfer one existing condition” but yours works as well. 25 percent might be more in line with what needed albeit I am sure the powers that be worry on the effect on Venemous Aura.

babazhook.6805:

Well as a poison using theif who has been using the current iteration of dagger training I am going to have to disagree with you on your suggestion. It WILL mean less poison damage and will become less useful to any build that wishes to focus on daggers delivering poison.

An ICD favors those that use poison to inhibit healing and not those that wish to use poison as a main source of damage as they build up stacks. With an ICD one can only apply 2 stacks every 5 seconds. That does not work for a poison build. Even with full duration of 100 percent posion off dagger training is limited to 4 stacks (predicated on no cleanses) which does not cut it when compared to the other traits at that spot.

3 (or MAYBE 4 base) seconds durations with 50 percent app rate results in poison being a much better damage source. (I think 3 is the minimum the duration should be meaning 33 percent adds 1 second off potent with the existing potent poison)

To potent poison I think your suggestion reasonable. I was thinking perhaps one option would be to keep as is but add “on applying posion to an enemy tansfer one existing condition” but yours works as well. 25 percent might be more in line with what needed albeit I am sure the powers that be worry on the effect on Venemous Aura.

I know I haven’t put up the utilities yet, but my idea was to put spider venom down at a 20-25 seconds CD, which is why I reduced venomous aura to 2 stacks only. This would allow you to burst poison more frequently while keeping long stacks at somewhere around 5-7 with autos, Dagger Training, potent poison, and additionally +2 that you get from steal when taking the DA line. That number seemed reasonable as poison has a reduced healing effect. (total:7-9 continuous, burst 15 max from self)

About transferring condis, skelk poison should actually transfer 1 condi per succesful strike. I think that would make it a strong contender as a heal (along with a 30 second CD).

Maugetarr.6823:

Dagger Training and Poison Uptime

Good points, I partially agree on this one. I think your version would feel a little weak for a main hand dagger user considering they can already achieve permanent poison up time from the auto-attack chain, but for a P/D user it would feel much better. Maybe it could be changed to your version except the number of poison stacks it applies corresponds to the number of daggers you are wielding. If you are using D/D it would apply 2 stacks of poison for 5 seconds (5s ICD), but if you are using D/P or P/D it would only apply 1 stack. This should help D/D a bit more for condition builds which it needs compared to main hand pistol condition builds.

Maugetarr.6823:

Sundering strikes concern

That sounds better, thanks for the clarification. Though it’s not a big difference, I think 25% extra vulnerability duration would be more fitting for a master tier trait since it also applies a decent amount of vulnerability itself.

Maugetarr.6823:

Compensation concern for P/D

It’s hard to say for sure because P/D would feel much different with auto attacks applying vulnerability instead of bleeds, but technically speaking with these changes P/D has the possibility of being much more of a threat than it is currently. In practice that may be different to where these extra compensations are needed, but I think there’s a good chance that the currently suggested bleed stacks/duration would be too much. Sneak Attack being able to deal 1k+ damage per second from 10 stacks of bleed for 8 seconds(able to be increased to 12 seconds with Runes of the Krait alone) seems too strong. The added vulnerability would make the bleed damage tick for even more. I think making Sneak Attack inflict 10 stacks of bleed for 4-5 seconds baseline would be better with these changes. As for Shadow Strike, I think just increasing the torment stacks to 3 would be fine, keeping the same 5 second duration.

Maugetarr.6823:

Weakness over Immobilize

Weakness would work pretty good compared to the immobilize in 1v1s, but the immobilize is especially useful to lock someone down in group fights as well. I think the immobilize overall is better to have, but weakness would have a few cases where it would be nice as well.

Maugetarr.6823:

Hidden Killer

I think the new No Quarter trait is a good alternative to Hidden Killer now for people that don’t use a main hand dagger. It’s even good for main hand dagger users too, kind of outshining Hidden Killer for most builds in my opinion. Hidden Killer could maybe have an added effect that increases stealth attack damage by 10%.

babazhook.6805:

Well as a poison using theif who has been using the current iteration of dagger training I am going to have to disagree with you on your suggestion. It WILL mean less poison damage and will become less useful to any build that wishes to focus on daggers delivering poison.

An ICD favors those that use poison to inhibit healing and not those that wish to use poison as a main source of damage as they build up stacks. With an ICD one can only apply 2 stacks every 5 seconds. That does not work for a poison build. Even with full duration of 100 percent posion off dagger training is limited to 4 stacks (predicated on no cleanses) which does not cut it when compared to the other traits at that spot.

3 (or MAYBE 4 base) seconds durations with 50 percent app rate results in poison being a much better damage source. (I think 3 is the minimum the duration should be meaning 33 percent adds 1 second off potent with the existing potent poison)

To potent poison I think your suggestion reasonable. I was thinking perhaps one option would be to keep as is but add “on applying posion to an enemy tansfer one existing condition” but yours works as well. 25 percent might be more in line with what needed albeit I am sure the powers that be worry on the effect on Venemous Aura.

Thing is the current form of dagger training isn’t reliable with its current duration and restrictions and the lack of control over this trait imo is a bad thing. Thief is about precision (not the stat), same reason I never liked improvisation pre patch because the idea of an effect being a low % doesn’t fit the quick thinking playstyle I’ve come to love with thief. They could increase the duration a little bit and the proc chance but then it starts to get very strong very quick and as a trait alone, you would probably start to see 5+ stacks easily from it (which is rather high). Remember this is 1 trait and its only method of utilization is cycling the auto attack or death blossom. Other users (such as s/d or p/d) can’t make use of this trait and I’m in the same boat as a lot of other thieves suggesting to remove weapon restricted traits and open them towards all weapon sets.

I think they should go along the lines of something a little simpler but that benefits any sort of dagger usage and the same goes for potent poison to benefit a condition build as a whole. Something like

[Dagger Training] Gain increased damage and condition duration for each dagger equipped. Off hand dagger skills refund 1 initiative if they land (dancing dagger would be limited to 1). Damage increase 5%. Condition duration increase 5%.

[Potent Poison] Increase condition duration by 15%. Poison deals an additional 15% damage.

This way these traits gets a little more versatility for condition or power builds, d/d gets a nice buff and becomes more rewarding for the higher risk all the while p/d gets a little bonus for the bleeding and torment and stealth (d/p gets a little too but not much). Potent poison sees a little bit of nerf to poison duration but with some reworks to the current cooldowns and durations of existing poison applications it would make quick stacking much more potent rather than trying to focus solely on poison which will now be better complimented by its bleed and torment partners. Not to mention DA lost its 30% condition duration which was never re-instated properly and hurt condition builds a lot. Some increases to poison could be:

-Choking Gas: Increase to 3.5 seconds
-Lotus Strike: Increase to 7 seconds
-Spider Venom: Reduce cooldown to 30 seconds.
-Serpents Touch: Increase to 12 seconds.
(make up for potent poison duration nerf, over 50% is a lot).

An ICD on dagger training helps OH dagger but it would still be underwhelming as there would be no way to make it potent and the current version of it depends on constantly cycling the auto attack and death blossom and doesn’t even last long enough to put a dent anywhere. The auto attack already has poison and death blossom has bleeds, there could be much more to benefit here than just 1 condition and 1 playstyle.

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Well as a poison using theif who has been using the current iteration of dagger training I am going to have to disagree with you on your suggestion. It WILL mean less poison damage and will become less useful to any build that wishes to focus on daggers delivering poison.

An ICD favors those that use poison to inhibit healing and not those that wish to use poison as a main source of damage as they build up stacks. With an ICD one can only apply 2 stacks every 5 seconds. That does not work for a poison build. Even with full duration of 100 percent posion off dagger training is limited to 4 stacks (predicated on no cleanses) which does not cut it when compared to the other traits at that spot.

3 (or MAYBE 4 base) seconds durations with 50 percent app rate results in poison being a much better damage source. (I think 3 is the minimum the duration should be meaning 33 percent adds 1 second off potent with the existing potent poison)

To potent poison I think your suggestion reasonable. I was thinking perhaps one option would be to keep as is but add “on applying posion to an enemy tansfer one existing condition” but yours works as well. 25 percent might be more in line with what needed albeit I am sure the powers that be worry on the effect on Venemous Aura.

About transferring condis, skelk poison should actually transfer 1 condi per succesful strike. I think that would make it a strong contender as a heal (along with a 30 second CD).

Remove ice drake venom, no one uses it and chill is very odd for a thief to apply thematically, add [Karka Venom] Transfer condtions with your next 3 strikes. Number of conditions transfer 1. Cooldown 40 seconds.

:)

NinjaEd.3946:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Well as a poison using theif who has been using the current iteration of dagger training I am going to have to disagree with you on your suggestion. It WILL mean less poison damage and will become less useful to any build that wishes to focus on daggers delivering poison.

An ICD favors those that use poison to inhibit healing and not those that wish to use poison as a main source of damage as they build up stacks. With an ICD one can only apply 2 stacks every 5 seconds. That does not work for a poison build. Even with full duration of 100 percent posion off dagger training is limited to 4 stacks (predicated on no cleanses) which does not cut it when compared to the other traits at that spot.

3 (or MAYBE 4 base) seconds durations with 50 percent app rate results in poison being a much better damage source. (I think 3 is the minimum the duration should be meaning 33 percent adds 1 second off potent with the existing potent poison)

To potent poison I think your suggestion reasonable. I was thinking perhaps one option would be to keep as is but add “on applying posion to an enemy tansfer one existing condition” but yours works as well. 25 percent might be more in line with what needed albeit I am sure the powers that be worry on the effect on Venemous Aura.

About transferring condis, skelk poison should actually transfer 1 condi per succesful strike. I think that would make it a strong contender as a heal (along with a 30 second CD).

Remove ice drake venom, no one uses it and chill is very odd for a thief to apply thematically, add [Karka Venom] Transfer condtions with your next 3 strikes. Number of conditions transfer 1. Cooldown 40 seconds.

:)

I did try out a chill based thief using Grenth , Ice drake and Ice sigils and it was not ALL bad but with the changes to duration in ice drake (even with the extra strike) the loss of 30 percent duration on the DA line and all I just do not see it as usable current form.

It does work to an extent in a venom build using Venomous aura but there much better choices for venoms (skale, Spider) meaning to take ice you give up a condi cleanse utility or drop skale or spider.

As there more condition sources added to the game , forcing one into utilities that better cleanse conditions , our ability to use those utilities drops as there no room for them. A venom that transfers a condition would seem ideal here and help open up more build types. (I intended much the same with adding that to potent poison)

NinjaEd.3946:

babazhook.6805:

Well as a poison using theif who has been using the current iteration of dagger training I am going to have to disagree with you on your suggestion. It WILL mean less poison damage and will become less useful to any build that wishes to focus on daggers delivering poison.

An ICD favors those that use poison to inhibit healing and not those that wish to use poison as a main source of damage as they build up stacks. With an ICD one can only apply 2 stacks every 5 seconds. That does not work for a poison build. Even with full duration of 100 percent posion off dagger training is limited to 4 stacks (predicated on no cleanses) which does not cut it when compared to the other traits at that spot.

3 (or MAYBE 4 base) seconds durations with 50 percent app rate results in poison being a much better damage source. (I think 3 is the minimum the duration should be meaning 33 percent adds 1 second off potent with the existing potent poison)

To potent poison I think your suggestion reasonable. I was thinking perhaps one option would be to keep as is but add “on applying posion to an enemy tansfer one existing condition” but yours works as well. 25 percent might be more in line with what needed albeit I am sure the powers that be worry on the effect on Venemous Aura.

Thing is the current form of dagger training isn’t reliable with its current duration and restrictions and the lack of control over this trait imo is a bad thing. Thief is about precision (not the stat), same reason I never liked improvisation pre patch because the idea of an effect being a low % doesn’t fit the quick thinking playstyle I’ve come to love with thief. They could increase the duration a little bit and the proc chance but then it starts to get very strong very quick and as a trait alone, you would probably start to see 5+ stacks easily from it (which is rather high). Remember this is 1 trait and its only method of utilization is cycling the auto attack or death blossom. Other users (such as s/d or p/d) can’t make use of this trait and I’m in the same boat as a lot of other thieves suggesting to remove weapon restricted traits and open them towards all weapon sets.

I think they should go along the lines of something a little simpler but that benefits any sort of dagger usage and the same goes for potent poison to benefit a condition build as a whole. Something like

[Dagger Training] Gain increased damage and condition duration for each dagger equipped. Off hand dagger skills refund 1 initiative if they land (dancing dagger would be limited to 1). Damage increase 5%. Condition duration increase 5%.

[Potent Poison] Increase condition duration by 15%. Poison deals an additional 15% damage.

This way these traits gets a little more versatility for condition or power builds, d/d gets a nice buff and becomes more rewarding for the higher risk all the while p/d gets a little bonus for the bleeding and torment and stealth (d/p gets a little too but not much). Potent poison sees a little bit of nerf to poison duration but with some reworks to the current cooldowns and durations of existing poison applications it would make quick stacking much more potent rather than trying to focus solely on poison which will now be better complimented by its bleed and torment partners. Not to mention DA lost its 30% condition duration which was never re-instated properly and hurt condition builds a lot. Some increases to poison could be:

-Choking Gas: Increase to 3.5 seconds
-Lotus Strike: Increase to 7 seconds
-Spider Venom: Reduce cooldown to 30 seconds.
-Serpents Touch: Increase to 12 seconds.
(make up for potent poison duration nerf, over 50% is a lot).

An ICD on dagger training helps OH dagger but it would still be underwhelming as there would be no way to make it potent and the current version of it depends on constantly cycling the auto attack and death blossom and doesn’t even last long enough to put a dent anywhere. The auto attack already has poison and death blossom has bleeds, there could be much more to benefit here than just 1 condition and 1 playstyle.

That an interesting idea on dagger training but I really do not think 5 percent duration increase will help a lot. I assume you talking about all durations rather then just poison? 5 percent extra damage is exponentially better then 5 percent increase to condition duration.

We already had 5 percent extra rolled into daggers baseline. In power builds there are NO issues with daggers ability to inflict damage and I do not see why they need to be boosted damage wise yet again.

I still feel applying poison via dagger training is the way to go .

babazhook.6805:

NinjaEd.3946:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Well as a poison using theif who has been using the current iteration of dagger training I am going to have to disagree with you on your suggestion. It WILL mean less poison damage and will become less useful to any build that wishes to focus on daggers delivering poison.

An ICD favors those that use poison to inhibit healing and not those that wish to use poison as a main source of damage as they build up stacks. With an ICD one can only apply 2 stacks every 5 seconds. That does not work for a poison build. Even with full duration of 100 percent posion off dagger training is limited to 4 stacks (predicated on no cleanses) which does not cut it when compared to the other traits at that spot.

3 (or MAYBE 4 base) seconds durations with 50 percent app rate results in poison being a much better damage source. (I think 3 is the minimum the duration should be meaning 33 percent adds 1 second off potent with the existing potent poison)

To potent poison I think your suggestion reasonable. I was thinking perhaps one option would be to keep as is but add “on applying posion to an enemy tansfer one existing condition” but yours works as well. 25 percent might be more in line with what needed albeit I am sure the powers that be worry on the effect on Venemous Aura.

About transferring condis, skelk poison should actually transfer 1 condi per succesful strike. I think that would make it a strong contender as a heal (along with a 30 second CD).

Remove ice drake venom, no one uses it and chill is very odd for a thief to apply thematically, add [Karka Venom] Transfer condtions with your next 3 strikes. Number of conditions transfer 1. Cooldown 40 seconds.

:)

I did try out a chill based thief using Grenth , Ice drake and Ice sigils and it was not ALL bad but with the changes to duration in ice drake (even with the extra strike) the loss of 30 percent duration on the DA line and all I just do not see it as usable current form.

It does work to an extent in a venom build using Venomous aura but there much better choices for venoms (skale, Spider) meaning to take ice you give up a condi cleanse utility or drop skale or spider.

As there more condition sources added to the game , forcing one into utilities that better cleanse conditions , our ability to use those utilities drops as there no room for them. A venom that transfers a condition would seem ideal here and help open up more build types. (I intended much the same with adding that to potent poison)

I stopped using devourer venom for the same reason as well because they nerfed the base and the %duration. There’s no point in basically copying the same thing panic strike does and wasting a utility for it on a longer cooldown.

babazhook.6805:

NinjaEd.3946:

I think they should go along the lines of something a little simpler but that benefits any sort of dagger usage and the same goes for potent poison to benefit a condition build as a whole. Something like

[Dagger Training] Gain increased damage and condition duration for each dagger equipped. Off hand dagger skills refund 1 initiative if they land (dancing dagger would be limited to 1). Damage increase 5%. Condition duration increase 5%.

[Potent Poison] Increase condition duration by 15%. Poison deals an additional 15% damage.

That an interesting idea on dagger training but I really do not think 5 percent duration increase will help a lot. I assume you talking about all durations rather then just poison? 5 percent extra damage is exponentially better then 5 percent increase to condition duration.

We already had 5 percent extra rolled into daggers baseline. In power builds there are NO issues with daggers ability to inflict damage and I do not see why they need to be boosted damage wise yet again.

I still feel applying poison via dagger training is the way to go .

I agree that daggers don’t really need another 5% damage bonus since the last one was already rolled into daggers baseline. I also don’t think there needs to be 2 general condition duration increasing traits in the same line.

Not sure if you guys missed it, but what do you think about my last suggestions, including the one for Dagger Training?

Raiden.1375:

babazhook.6805:

NinjaEd.3946:

I think they should go along the lines of something a little simpler but that benefits any sort of dagger usage and the same goes for potent poison to benefit a condition build as a whole. Something like

[Dagger Training] Gain increased damage and condition duration for each dagger equipped. Off hand dagger skills refund 1 initiative if they land (dancing dagger would be limited to 1). Damage increase 5%. Condition duration increase 5%.

[Potent Poison] Increase condition duration by 15%. Poison deals an additional 15% damage.

That an interesting idea on dagger training but I really do not think 5 percent duration increase will help a lot. I assume you talking about all durations rather then just poison? 5 percent extra damage is exponentially better then 5 percent increase to condition duration.

We already had 5 percent extra rolled into daggers baseline. In power builds there are NO issues with daggers ability to inflict damage and I do not see why they need to be boosted damage wise yet again.

I still feel applying poison via dagger training is the way to go .

I agree that daggers don’t really need another 5% damage bonus since the last one was already rolled into daggers baseline. I also don’t think there needs to be 2 general condition duration increasing traits in the same line.

Not sure if you guys missed it, but what do you think about my last suggestions, including the one for Dagger Training?

Its a neat idea except that d/d isn’t the only condition set that can have dagger in the mix so I’d hate to see p/d punished when it already is underperforming in pvp (only works in wvw because of condi foods). There needs to be more welcoming traits for any weapon set, and d/d, although flawed, is our best hybrid weapon set and it’d be nice to see it succeed.

I know 5% damage =/= 5% condition duration but the durations on the conditions dagger applies are already fairly up there (6 sec poison, 10 second bleed). 5% is just an example anyways, the idea I was trying to put dagger training with was for either/or builds, or both for that matter. You can be strict power and would love that 10% bonus damage and rewarding CnD or you could be condition and appreciate that extra second of bleed in addition to the heavy ammo of dancing daggers in case you find a field to utilize it in. Remember its not exclusive to 1 condition type, so 10% would affect more than 2 skills which the power portion only sees.

Either way, I think our access to poison is present already but the removal of our 30% condition duration hit kitten top of the severe nerf to choking gas. If DT is kept as is it only promotes risky behavior with initiative spending and if it turns to an applicator with an ICD its either underwhelming or becomes too simple minded to put it to use in a condi burst. Dagger already has the conditions needed to function (minus swapping vulnerability with blind for CnD) as a condition set w/o the current dagger training, I much rather see a more skill based trait to bring some light to this weapon set.

NinjaEd.3946:

Raiden.1375:

babazhook.6805:

NinjaEd.3946:

I think they should go along the lines of something a little simpler but that benefits any sort of dagger usage and the same goes for potent poison to benefit a condition build as a whole. Something like

[Dagger Training] Gain increased damage and condition duration for each dagger equipped. Off hand dagger skills refund 1 initiative if they land (dancing dagger would be limited to 1). Damage increase 5%. Condition duration increase 5%.

[Potent Poison] Increase condition duration by 15%. Poison deals an additional 15% damage.

That an interesting idea on dagger training but I really do not think 5 percent duration increase will help a lot. I assume you talking about all durations rather then just poison? 5 percent extra damage is exponentially better then 5 percent increase to condition duration.

We already had 5 percent extra rolled into daggers baseline. In power builds there are NO issues with daggers ability to inflict damage and I do not see why they need to be boosted damage wise yet again.

I still feel applying poison via dagger training is the way to go .

I agree that daggers don’t really need another 5% damage bonus since the last one was already rolled into daggers baseline. I also don’t think there needs to be 2 general condition duration increasing traits in the same line.

Not sure if you guys missed it, but what do you think about my last suggestions, including the one for Dagger Training?

Its a neat idea except that d/d isn’t the only condition set that can have dagger in the mix so I’d hate to see p/d punished when it already is underperforming in pvp (only works in wvw because of condi foods). There needs to be more welcoming traits for any weapon set, and d/d, although flawed, is our best hybrid weapon set and it’d be nice to see it succeed.

I know 5% damage =/= 5% condition duration but the durations on the conditions dagger applies are already fairly up there (6 sec poison, 10 second bleed). 5% is just an example anyways, the idea I was trying to put dagger training with was for either/or builds, or both for that matter. You can be strict power and would love that 10% bonus damage and rewarding CnD or you could be condition and appreciate that extra second of bleed in addition to the heavy ammo of dancing daggers in case you find a field to utilize it in. Remember its not exclusive to 1 condition type, so 10% would affect more than 2 skills which the power portion only sees.

Either way, I think our access to poison is present already but the removal of our 30% condition duration hit kitten top of the severe nerf to choking gas. If DT is kept as is it only promotes risky behavior with initiative spending and if it turns to an applicator with an ICD its either underwhelming or becomes too simple minded to put it to use in a condi burst. Dagger already has the conditions needed to function (minus swapping vulnerability with blind for CnD) as a condition set w/o the current dagger training, I much rather see a more skill based trait to bring some light to this weapon set.

I like the sentiment here. While I agree that D/D has the potential to be a condi set or a power set, I don’t think thief will ever be a hybrid class because we lack the might stacking that is available to all the classes that have had successful hybrid builds.

I don’t get the choking gas nerf either. Even if people stood in it for all the pulses, it still wouldn’t have been great because poison doesn’t stack duration anymore and SB is more of a utility weapon than anything. The duration nerf to the line was also pretty bad which is why I advocated boosting the base durations of a lot of the skills. I went with only increasing poison duration on potent poison because it fit the thief thematically and would have brought D/D up in terms of condi damage. Also any build in DA has at least limited access to poison through steal so boosting that was important. Finally both (potential) condi builds share an OH dagger so improving that was the basis for giving it an ICD with a decent duration.

NinjaEd.3946:

Its a neat idea except that d/d isn’t the only condition set that can have dagger in the mix so I’d hate to see p/d punished when it already is underperforming in pvp (only works in wvw because of condi foods). There needs to be more welcoming traits for any weapon set, and d/d, although flawed, is our best hybrid weapon set and it’d be nice to see it succeed.

Not sure how my suggestion would hurt P/D. With the current 33% proc chance from Dagger Training, it’s not very efficient trying to apply poison with offhand dagger skills since they all cost initiative compared to just auto attacking with a main hand dagger. A guaranteed proc chance on hit would greatly help P/D instead of mostly only helping main hand daggers. It would still be more beneficial to use D/D with Dagger Training too because it would apply 2 stacks of poison instead of 1, which makes sense because two poisoned daggers would be able to apply more poison than one.

NinjaEd.3946:

Either way, I think our access to poison is present already but the removal of our 30% condition duration hit kitten top of the severe nerf to choking gas.

I agree, mainly only Choking Gas got hurt from the poison stacking change/losing 30% condition duration from the DA line. This is probably because instead of compensating for the new changes, the duration of poison from CG was nerfed from 3s to 2s when just about every other source of poison was buffed. Now Choking Gas is incredibly weak because the poison up time is so short, and it can hardly ever apply more than 2 stacks of poison, which does about the same amount damage as the one stack of poison did before the patch.

Raiden.1375:

NinjaEd.3946:

Its a neat idea except that d/d isn’t the only condition set that can have dagger in the mix so I’d hate to see p/d punished when it already is underperforming in pvp (only works in wvw because of condi foods). There needs to be more welcoming traits for any weapon set, and d/d, although flawed, is our best hybrid weapon set and it’d be nice to see it succeed.

Not sure how my suggestion would hurt P/D. With the current 33% proc chance from Dagger Training, it’s not very efficient trying to apply poison with offhand dagger skills since they all cost initiative compared to just auto attacking with a main hand dagger. A guaranteed proc chance on hit would greatly help P/D instead of mostly only helping main hand daggers. It would still be more beneficial to use D/D with Dagger Training too because it would apply 2 stacks of poison instead of 1, which makes sense because two poisoned daggers would be able to apply more poison than one.

NinjaEd.3946:

Either way, I think our access to poison is present already but the removal of our 30% condition duration hit kitten top of the severe nerf to choking gas.

I agree, mainly only Choking Gas got hurt from the poison stacking change/losing 30% condition duration from the DA line. This is probably because instead of compensating for the new changes, the duration of poison from CG was nerfed from 3s to 2s when just about every other source of poison was buffed. Now Choking Gas is incredibly weak because the poison up time is so short, and it can hardly ever apply more than 2 stacks of poison, which does about the same amount damage as the one stack of poison did before the patch.

I apologize, I didn’t mean to say it would harm p/d, only that p/d would be punished by this trait for only having 1 stack vs 2 that d/d has. The point I wanted to get across was that p/d and d/d are our condition weapon sets atm, and to shed light on the related traits in DA there would almost be no reason to pick dagger training on p/d with that set up when trapper’s respite is an alternative.

Like I said earlier there needs to be less restrictions on specific weapon sets and open them towards others. If there are to be specific it would need more than just a single effect which many of the other traits on other professions like this follow (honed axes, axe mastery, quickening thirst, zealous blade, etc). Just because we don’t have cooldowns doesn’t mean they can’t get creative and make the weapon specific traits a little more appealing. They had the idea on ankle shots but the fact that pistols have 0 sources of cripple kind of slipped their mind as do most thief balance changes follow.

NinjaEd.3946:

I apologize, I didn’t mean to say it would harm p/d, only that p/d would be punished by this trait for only having 1 stack vs 2 that d/d has. The point I wanted to get across was that p/d and d/d are our condition weapon sets atm, and to shed light on the related traits in DA there would almost be no reason to pick dagger training on p/d with that set up when trapper’s respite is an alternative.

Like I said earlier there needs to be less restrictions on specific weapon sets and open them towards others. If there are to be specific it would need more than just a single effect which many of the other traits on other professions like this follow (honed axes, axe mastery, quickening thirst, zealous blade, etc). Just because we don’t have cooldowns doesn’t mean they can’t get creative and make the weapon specific traits a little more appealing. They had the idea on ankle shots but the fact that pistols have 0 sources of cripple kind of slipped their mind as do most thief balance changes follow.

Even still, compared to the current version of Dagger Training it would be punished much less. Also, with these changes I could definitely see taking Dagger Training over Trapper’s Respite, because more up time on poison is always welcome, especially on a set that doesn’t natively have poison on any of its weapon skills. Poison is also one of those conditions that can even benefit power builds pretty well. I also think applying poison is more interesting than just a flat 5% damage/condition duration increase.

I liked what I saw, though I would like to keep my three vuln on CnD. If anything, the duration can just be cut to 3s to prevent double-stacking like it can be currently. I have but one suggestion I made in another thread that I didn’t think much of at first, but has really grown on me and I don’t think it would break anything, which ties in nicely to what was said above regarding:

-Condition cleanses still feel weak
-HK needs a little bit of… something.

Unblockable is definitely way over the top, but HK for the most part, while awesome, doesn’t really feel fitting for a GM, and CS as a whole is not taken for the most part in competitive PvP builds and HK is considered sub-optimal in the dungeon meta. It enables valkyrie builds, but disables either SA or DA, which are arguably two of the best trait lines available (Trickery aside).

Giving HK a one-condition removal per stealth attack would put CS builds in a much better place, for now they can sacrifice SA’s remaining utility for extra damage/reliability, and still get a cleanse every few seconds, but at the cost of not constant cleansing, initiative regeneration, healing, extended stealth duration, etc.

A SA build then can build into CS for even better condition removal on par with guardians and eles, but at the cost of the damage and utility from DA; mug, Lotus Poison, Panic Strike, EW, Executioner are all very strong traits and would make this a very calculated decision with definite ups and downs.

I do like the general direction of these suggestions, though. Nothing seems out of line but everything looks pick-worthy.

DeceiverX.8361:

I liked what I saw, though I would like to keep my three vuln on CnD. If anything, the duration can just be cut to 3s to prevent double-stacking like it can be currently. I have but one suggestion I made in another thread that I didn’t think much of at first, but has really grown on me and I don’t think it would break anything, which ties in nicely to what was said above regarding:

-Condition cleanses still feel weak
-HK needs a little bit of… something.

Unblockable is definitely way over the top, but HK for the most part, while awesome, doesn’t really feel fitting for a GM, and CS as a whole is not taken for the most part in competitive PvP builds and HK is considered sub-optimal in the dungeon meta. It enables valkyrie builds, but disables either SA or DA, which are arguably two of the best trait lines available (Trickery aside).

Giving HK a one-condition removal per stealth attack would put CS builds in a much better place, for now they can sacrifice SA’s remaining utility for extra damage/reliability, and still get a cleanse every few seconds, but at the cost of not constant cleansing, initiative regeneration, healing, extended stealth duration, etc.

A SA build then can build into CS for even better condition removal on par with guardians and eles, but at the cost of the damage and utility from DA; mug, Lotus Poison, Panic Strike, EW, Executioner are all very strong traits and would make this a very calculated decision with definite ups and downs.

I do like the general direction of these suggestions, though. Nothing seems out of line but everything looks pick-worthy.

That’s an interesting idea. As I said I’m a little hesitant to put too much defensive capability into an offensive line. I think this could be fair though at least because it would be offset by having to pick between invigorating precision and this proposed change. It’s also self limiting by revealed and this would make it an alright choice for S/D builds. It would also restrict you from taking NQ which is a pretty powerful GM within itself.

Ok, given what we now know about Daredevil, I decided to rework some of my ideas for Acrobatics so it can stand on its own without overlapping with DD too much or pushing DD to ridiculous heights.

Basically, my idea is to offer 3 different types of enhancement that could be taken together as a single row or mixed. These are mobility enhancement(ME), brawling enhancement (BE), and effect mitigation(EM).

Adept

Expeditious Dodger: 3 seconds of swiftness on dodge.
ME: Fleet Shadow->Explosive Speed: Gain 3 seconds of super speed when you gain swiftness (8 sec ICD)
EM: Pain Response: Fine as is
BE: Vigorous Recovery: Gain 5 seconds of vigor on heal. When you gain vigor, lose a condition (5 sec ICD)

Master

Feline Grace: Fine as is
ME: Guarded Initiation -> Captive Transversal: When you shadowstep to a target, immobilize that target for 1.5 seconds (8 sec ICD)
EM: Hard to Catch: Fine as is
BE: Swindler’s Equilibrium: Reduce steal cooldown by 3 seconds on successful evasion. No weapon restriction (5 sec ICD)

Grandmaster

Endless Stamina: Fine as is
ME: Assassin’s Reward -> Swindler’s Transversal: When you shadowstep to your target, transfer 1 condition and steal 1 boon (8 sec ICD)
EM: Don’t Stop: Fine as is
BE: Upper Hand: Gain 3-5 endurance on hitting the opponent (1 sec ICD) (would need to be play tested to determine strength)

Ok. This supposed to be heavy on different mechanisms for condi removal since it’s a defensive line. I think with these changes, it could favor S/X, but not be limited to it (much like SA favors but isn’t limited to D/P). Some of the changes to my original suggestions were because of Raiden’s input along with the the previewed traits. My hope is that these changes could supplement Trickery or DD well while also allowing the line to stand on its own.