Guild Wars 2

I’m not talking about the other nerfs here. See this post for my opinion on S/D changes.

I just want to talk about damage.

Arena net said they’re looking into Backstab damage. I and most players agree that it was a little high; the problem (in my mind) is not the amount of damage, it was the fact that you could get the three-hit combo off in under a second (blindingly fast with Haste) while your enemy was stunned.

In contrast, I’ve never heard anyone complain about S/D damage. The AoE is good, but the single-target is mediocre at best.

For both S/D and D/D, the hardest-hitting single-target attack was Cloak and Dagger followed immediately by the stealth attack (from behind for D/D). Let’s look at how this patch has affected that damage:

Dagger/Dagger
Before
Cloak and Dagger: 504
Backstab: 830
Total: 1334

After
Cloak and Dagger: 338
Backstab: 830
Total: 1168

Total Nerf: 12.5%

.

Sword/Dagger
Before
Cloak and Dagger: 504
Tactical Strike: 311
Total: 805

After
Cloak and Dagger: 338
Tactical Strike: 342
Total: 680

Total Nerf: 15.5%

.

So… S/D damage was nerfed harder than D/D. I understand nerfing D/D, and I think everyone can understand it (even if you disagree, or disagree with the scale of the nerf). However, I don’t think anybody sees a reason to nerf S/D, and definitely not to nerf S/D harder than D/D. This gets even worse when you realize that this was our only tool for damaging single targets (FS doesn’t count; it’s wonky and misses too often), but D/D still has Heartseeker untouched.

I have no idea what Arena Net was thinking here. It baffles my mind. It’s not a case of disagreeing but understanding their reasons, it’s a case of absolutely having no idea what they were thinking. I’d love a dev response explaining the reasoning behind this, because even if I disagree with the change (and trust me, I do) I’d really like to know why they did it.

.

EDIT: I’d like to explain in advance, for anyone trying to replicate my math. I use the numbers on the wiki, and I take into account the 3% increase in damage from CnD’s vulnerability (just for kicks, accuracy is good). Power scales linearly. A 10% increase in power is a 10% increase in damage across the board. The wiki numbers use 916 (base) power and the sPvP weapons. This math is applicable no matter what your power is.

CnD nerf was not ment to nerf D/D it was ment to stop thievs from whittling down people by only using CnD and staying near perma invis while doing so.

Fixeon.5076:

CnD nerf was not ment to nerf D/D it was ment to stop thievs from whittling down people by only using CnD and staying near perma invis while doing so.

Pls, delete this post, i don’t want to believe somone said something this silly.

regardless about what there aim to fix was, i had a post a little while back basically was a prayer to anet to not “fix” thieves by nerfing CnD thus ruining all ofhand dagger builds not just d/d….seems they done kittened this time, no argument thief needed some balance changes but honestly i was looking forward to being with backstab and playing some other fun builds ive been messing with…just..no motivation to now.. sadface

Mrbig.8019:

Fixeon.5076:

CnD nerf was not ment to nerf D/D it was ment to stop thievs from whittling down people by only using CnD and staying near perma invis while doing so.

Pls, delete this post, i don’t want to believe somone said something this silly.

Never kept 7 guys busy while killing them all one by one slowly? You would be surprised at how effective it was. I use to keep 10 people defending something stupid because they couldn’t kill me and every time they would try to leave I would make myself a threat to them. 1 person keeping 10 people busy and killing them is insanely OP.

EDIT: It was also very effective at taking out people on siege.

Fixeon.5076:

Mrbig.8019:

Fixeon.5076:

CnD nerf was not ment to nerf D/D it was ment to stop thievs from whittling down people by only using CnD and staying near perma invis while doing so.

Pls, delete this post, i don’t want to believe somone said something this silly.

Never kept 7 guys busy while killing them all one by one slowly? You would be surprised at how effective it was. I use to keep 10 people defending something stupid because they couldn’t kill me and every time they would try to leave I would make myself a threat to them. 1 person keeping 10 people busy and killing them is insanely OP.

WvWvW ? Hotjoin ?

Nothing to do here, sorry.

Fixeon.5076:

CnD nerf was not ment to nerf D/D it was ment to stop thievs from whittling down people by only using CnD and staying near perma invis while doing so.

You could only use CnD every 3s (or 4s, depending on spec). That means that you would be dealing a paltry 40-53% of the damage you’d get from auto-attacking. It takes forever to kill someone doing that, and they should be able to heal through most of the damage easily. In addition:

A) The slightest screw-up on the part of the thief would leave them revealed for 3s.

B) This only works if your target stands there with a confused look on their face, waiting for the thief to show up.

This is a case where simply spamming AoEs will win you the fight, because you’ll deal more damage blindly spamming AoEs than the thief will by doing one attack every 3-4s. Additionally, you can use all of your blinds, snares, stuns, and whatnot, whereas they are limited to using only this one attack if they want to stay in stealth. If they get out of melee, they can’t keep it up.

The only heal they could use while doing this is horrible, and would only heal them for 3.2k every 15s (base). Their other two heals would make them skip an attack every 30s (lowering their damage to 36-46% of autoattack) or would make them evade backwards by 600", throwing them far out of melee range.

If anyone has ever died to this, they deserved to die. It’s a pathetically easy tactic to counter, and you get a good 20 seconds or more (if you’re a glass cannon that doesn’t heal and the thief has a non-stealth spec) to sit there and think about how to counter it.

This is not a valid reason for nerfing S/D.

Fixeon.5076:

Mrbig.8019:

Fixeon.5076:

CnD nerf was not ment to nerf D/D it was ment to stop thievs from whittling down people by only using CnD and staying near perma invis while doing so.

Pls, delete this post, i don’t want to believe somone said something this silly.

Never kept 7 guys busy while killing them all one by one slowly? You would be surprised at how effective it was. I use to keep 10 people defending something stupid because they couldn’t kill me and every time they would try to leave I would make myself a threat to them. 1 person keeping 10 people busy and killing them is insanely OP.

EDIT: It was also very effective at taking out people on siege.

Fair enough. That’s at least a valid argument for why CnD might need a change. However, a damage nerf does nothing to change this. As a delaying tactic, CnD/perma-stealth has not changed one bit. The only thing that has changed is its damage.

Fixeon.5076:

Never kept 7 guys busy while killing them all one by one slowly?

Nope. Pretty sure you haven’t, either. The stupidity involved on your target’s part is too great to overlook, I’m affraid. Furthermore, as others have stated, nerfing the damage as a fix to you exploiting the culling issue was not the goal here.

Good try, though.

Dacromir.6207:

Fair enough. That’s at least a valid argument for why CnD might need a change. However, a damage nerf does nothing to change this. As a delaying tactic, CnD/perma-stealth has not changed one bit. The only thing that has changes is its damage.

True and I shouldn’t have said it wasn’t to nerf S/D as it effects any build that uses CnD in any way.

Laika.8795:

Fixeon.5076:

Never kept 7 guys busy while killing them all one by one slowly?

Nope. Pretty sure you haven’t, either. The stupidity involved on your target’s part is too great to overlook, I’m affraid. Furthermore, as others have stated, nerfing the damage as a fix to you exploiting the culling issue was not the goal here.

Good try, though.

Give it a shot, you probably wont be able to kill any one any more but this is what you do. Your team wants to take… lets just say hills as an example. They are going to be attacking north gate. You head down to lowlands and pick on the camp (if your build allows it try to solo cap it) if people come along back up the road a bit and pull them out of range of the guards then keep ducking in and out of stealth using CnD, when they try to run off chase them down and put heavy spike damage on them and either kill them or get them to engage you. As soon as they engage you you start CnD ducking again. A fly is very annoying when it keeps landing on your arm even if it really isnt hurting you. You can build up a lot of people looking for you. They start to aoe you move off to the side let your stealth fade and start emoting at them get their attention. They charge you down you cloak again.

If you are keeping 7 guys busy in sPvP then you are not playing competitive people. If you are talking WvW the change doesn’t apply there.

Fixeon.5076:

Give it a shot, you probably wont be able to kill any one any more but this is what you do. [And other nonsense about killing people with CnD damage alone.]

You couldn’t kill anyone before either if they even just knew where to find their heal button.

CnD damage alone and using it to chain spam stealth was never a threat to kill people. This change was all about reducing the total damage in the Mug-CnD-Backstab combo.

Stiv.1820:

If you are keeping 7 guys busy in sPvP then you are not playing competitive people. If you are talking WvW the change doesn’t apply there.

Hmmm guess your right just went into wvw and the numbers don’t change. Sucks to be a sPvPer I guess.

Maybe I should play WvW now

tac.2167:

Maybe I should play WvW now

That’s what I’m thinking. I really don’t want to have to grind gear sets and get my char to level 80 though…

@Dacromir
Very wrong math – you cannot compare two skills that are different i.e. Sword attack from stealth has a daze attached to it.
Please think before post. Raw dmg is one thing, additional buff/debuff/conditions also counts. Please take this into consideration before you start making “math”.

Uhh. When you’re talking only about damage then, yes, you can compare them.

@tac
Uhh, yes but does backstab give daze? No! So it is kinda normal for the sword to do less DMG. Again you can`t compare raw numbers on skils that do different things. It is simply wrong. In addition to that the DMG on sword from stealth has been buffed by 10%.
Does CnD dmg needed nerf? YES as it provided one of the most usable buffs in the game – stealth and it was hitting pretty hard.

If you didn’t play S/D prepatch you can’t understand how hard it got nerfed.

It was OP pre-patch daze locking is so not fun. Ofc it will be nerfed. It was the most OP thief build, tho only few used it.

Are you guys expecting for the broken/OP builds to stay? Really? You gonna cry about that?

Cal.1985:

It was OP pre-patch daze locking is so not fun. Ofc it will be nerfed. It was the most OP thief build, tho only few used it.

Are you guys expecting for the broken/OP builds to stay? Really? You gonna cry about that?

it was absolutely not OP.

A DAZE allows you TO MOVE. It’s not a vanilla rogue stun-lock, where you were sitting still while doing nothing.

If you are daze-locked to death is because you were standing still, not moving properly, not dodging, not kiting , not crippling/chilling the thief.

Basically, it was your fault.

I agree the build was a bit over the top, but now they actually nerfed 3/5 of the moves involved with this build, leaving only auto-attack and Inf strike untouched.

The only nerf this build deserved was a daze cap at 2.5 secs, and nothing else.

Cal.1985:

Does CnD dmg needed nerf? YES as it provided one of the most usable buffs in the game – stealth and it was hitting pretty hard.

Something that costs 6ini (1/2 of your standard pool) should hit hard. It has an obvious delay and animation too, so very easy to dodge… You miss once, even if you connect the second attempt, the fight has been decidedly unevened.

So, you are saying that a skill that is kinda hard to land (oh god forbit to precast it and steal, shadowstep ^^) and gives stealh should also be very high dmg one?

Hm sounds reasonable…

@Mrbig
The dancing dagger was OP we can all agree here, no point of bringing it up. The sword stealth attack was buffed by 10% (nothing I agree), the daze was lowered to prevent daze lockng. The CnD was nerfed due to the reason above.

So please tell me which nerf was not needed?

Daze got nerfed, dancing dagger got nerfed, c/s got nerfed. S/D uses those all. They use TS, but honestly I am not sure if it is diminishing returns, I have dazed with a pistol, pistol whip, and TS chasing guys. They keep running. The only thing the daze is really good for is interrupts, it is unimaginably good for that, however do you know for sure when someone will heal, or do a long cast, and be right on top of them to do that interrupt? Against a melee fighter who just stands right next to you spinning around, and just spamming buttons, you can mess with them, but only so often ranged will get hit run/wipe conditions. A backstab always does damage. A TS may or may not cause the person to be unable to move, along with the other daze moves. If it got changed and caused imob I am sure people wouldn’t even complain at all.

Cal.1985:

So, you are saying that a skill that is kinda hard to land (oh god forbit to precast it and steal, shadowstep ^^) and gives stealh should also be very high dmg one?

Hm sounds reasonable…

@Mrbig
The dancing dagger was OP we can all agree here, no point of bringing it up. The sword stealth attack was buffed by 10% (nothing I agree), the daze was lowered to prevent daze lockng. The CnD was nerfed due to the reason above.

So please tell me which nerf was not needed?

Dancing dagger was OP only vs 2 targets. Now is UP against 1,2,3….n target.

C&D costs half your ini bar, it’s totally reasonable if it hits hard.

The daze nerf was totally unneeded.

Overall:

Dancing dagger nerfed TOO hard
C&D nerfed TOO hard
Tactical strike nerfed WITH NO REASON AT ALL.

Lowering skills base damage is NEVER a good choice, because it punishes VERY HARD balanced builds in order to punish SLIGHTLY extreme builds.

Cal.1985:

So, you are saying that a skill that is kinda hard to land (oh god forbit to precast it and steal, shadowstep ^^) and gives stealh should also be very high dmg one?

Hm sounds reasonable…

The damage was nothing excessive, no matter how you attempt to sensationalize it. Mug is a much bigger problem, being a 10 point trait that can do comparable damage and is neigh impossible to dodge. Also, so you think it’s balanced that every 45 seconds I can have a better chance to land it, so it being hard to land is ok? C&D was not the problem by any stretch of the imagination.

Cal.1985:

The dancing dagger was OP we can all agree here, no point of bringing it up…

…So please tell me which nerf was not needed?

Dancing dagger was OP. 50% nerf was far too much. No lowering of it’s initiative cost was insult to injury. Balance team did nothing to compensate, and that’s the worst part. I’d be fine if Dancing dagger was cut by 50%, but it’s initiative should be cut as well. If you can justify 4 init on low damage and a meager snare, who’s fooling who?

Cal.1985:

@Dacromir
Very wrong math – you cannot compare two skills that are different i.e. Sword attack from stealth has a daze attached to it.
Please think before post. Raw dmg is one thing, additional buff/debuff/conditions also counts. Please take this into consideration before you start making “math”.

Read the post. I am not saying that TS should have higher damage than BS. I’m saying that in a move that appears to be an attempt to lower D/D burst, they lowered S/D burst even more.

S/D has always done less damage than D/D. In this patch, they made both do less damage. S/D damage was lowered more than D/D damage.

Cal.1985:

So, you are saying that a skill that is kinda hard to land (oh god forbit to precast it and steal, shadowstep ^^) and gives stealh should also be very high dmg one?

Hm sounds reasonable…

@Mrbig
The dancing dagger was OP we can all agree here, no point of bringing it up. The sword stealth attack was buffed by 10% (nothing I agree), the daze was lowered to prevent daze lockng. The CnD was nerfed due to the reason above.

So please tell me which nerf was not needed?

Cal.1985:

It was OP pre-patch daze locking is so not fun. Ofc it will be nerfed. It was the most OP thief build, tho only few used it.

Are you guys expecting for the broken/OP builds to stay? Really? You gonna cry about that?

I’m not talking about the daze nerf. I can understand that. S/D honestly had too much dazing, too easily. I think it was a little heavy-handed (down to 2s seems right for me, and that’s still -33%), but I’ll cope.

What I"m saying is that the damage of S/D was nerfed, and I don’t see why. S/D is already our lowest-damaging weapon set. It has good AoE damage, but the single-target is extremely weak. CnD → TS was our only skill combo that did even half decent single-target damage, and they dropped it by 15.5%.

Nerfing the daze makes sense to me. I may not like it, but I understand. However, nerfing S/D damage confuses me, because I have literally never heard a single person complain about the damage, and it’s already our lowest-damage weapon set.

You should add mug for calculations for BS. Drops the nerf to 9-10%.
And for S/D you should consider next action. As in what can D/D do after backstab. And what can S/D do after tactical strike.

Dacromir.6207:

However, nerfing S/D damage confuses me, because I have literally never heard a single person complain about the damage, and it’s already our lowest-damage weapon set.

THE strangest part

S/D nerf was pretty painfull, and from what i mean is look :

D/D and S/D got arround same nerf in dmg % however, after this combo D/D has heartseeker a secondary damage skill which also closes gaps.

S/D has nuthing, only CnD>TS combo which dazes ofcourse but after dancing dagger nerf leaves you w/o any other burst capability since its strongest attack is autoattack.

The outcome? S/D lost more viability then D/D while D/D was strongest set.

Fix ? 3 ways.

1.Flanking strike fix(if it becomes viable with better integrated 2nd hit S/D could work)
2. Sword autoattack buff. However its strongest thief autoattack weapeon allready, so i doubt this actin woud be taken.
3. Add bleed/poison or sth like that to tactical strike, or autoattack chain, with equal to 25% of TS/autoattack chain damage, bringing back same damage, but with less burst.

I like how they also nerfed the Daze such that the Sigil of Paralyzation doesn’t apply to the daze anymore (oh and forgot to mention that in the patch notes).

I’ve swapped away from S/D until they at least buff or fix one of it’s skills (i.e. Flanking Strike, aka “Oh look I’ve moved myself 15 units off my target”).

Cal.1985:

@Dacromir
Very wrong math – you cannot compare two skills that are different i.e. Sword attack from stealth has a daze attached to it.
Please think before post. Raw dmg is one thing, additional buff/debuff/conditions also counts. Please take this into consideration before you start making “math”.

What you are saying does not apply.

OP is not comparing D/D Damage to S/D Damage. He’s making a comparison of D/D damage pre and post patch, and a comparison of S/D damage pre and post patch.

A change intended to lower D/D’s raw spike DPS had a higher % change on S/D players, who are not considered Spike damage powerhouses (because they aren’t). That is the point of this post, and a big source of frustration for PvP thieves.

S/D is currently unplayable, like every other power/crit build, unless you go totally glass cannon, unviable by default.

Very good work with this patch.

Adein.2031:

I like how they also nerfed the Daze such that the Sigil of Paralyzation doesn’t apply to the daze anymore (oh and forgot to mention that in the patch notes).

How closely have you actually tested this? I’ve heard several people mention it, but I wanted to test to be sure. I recorded some video of me using the daze on PvP golems and sparring NPCs. I slowed it down to 10% speed, and the daze icon lasted a little over 19 seconds with Sigil of Paralyzation. I replicated this several times. I’d peg the daze duration as ~1.95s with the Sigil. You may want to test this yourself more closely.

Mrbig.8019:

S/D is currently unplayable, like every other power/crit build, unless you go totally glass cannon, unviable by default.

Very good work with this patch.

It’s still playable. You still get a spammable stun break, great mobility and gap closing, and frequent 2s dazing. It’s still our most defensive weapon set by far. You just need to adapt to the lower damage, and maybe bump up the damage on your gear a bit to compensate.

Yeah you could do that or…

You could just go back to the over played D/D BS build since that’s obviously what ANet want.

Dacromir.6207:

Mrbig.8019:

S/D is currently unplayable, like every other power/crit build, unless you go totally glass cannon, unviable by default.

Very good work with this patch.

It’s still playable. You still get a spammable stun break, great mobility and gap closing, and frequent 2s dazing. It’s still our most defensive weapon set by far. You just need to adapt to the lower damage, and maybe bump up the damage on your gear a bit to compensate.

No, it’s not. At least, not at tourney level.

S/D is not competitive anymore.

Dacromir.6207:

Adein.2031:

I like how they also nerfed the Daze such that the Sigil of Paralyzation doesn’t apply to the daze anymore (oh and forgot to mention that in the patch notes).

How closely have you actually tested this? I’ve heard several people mention it, but I wanted to test to be sure. I recorded some video of me using the daze on PvP golems and sparring NPCs. I slowed it down to 10% speed, and the daze icon lasted a little over 19 seconds with Sigil of Paralyzation. I replicated this several times. I’d peg the daze duration as ~1.95s with the Sigil. You may want to test this yourself more closely.

Mrbig.8019:

S/D is currently unplayable, like every other power/crit build, unless you go totally glass cannon, unviable by default.

Very good work with this patch.

It’s still playable. You still get a spammable stun break, great mobility and gap closing, and frequent 2s dazing. It’s still our most defensive weapon set by far. You just need to adapt to the lower damage, and maybe bump up the damage on your gear a bit to compensate.

I tested with mesmer sigils and got nothing. I didn’t slow the video down, I just eyeballed it, but 43% (10 points in DA) should push the daze over 2s, and it doesn’t.Visually, I saw no difference between 33% longer daze and no daze duration increase (just in case DA’s condition duration doesnt apply for some reason), and 33% should be easily identifiable even visually.

Also, your math doesn’t make any sense – 15% of 1.5s is .225, resulting in a a 1.725 long daze. Unless of course you have 15 points in DA, and it applies for you.

Things might just be buggy now – I’ve seen people complaining how poor the leeching venoms scaling buff is, but kitten if I know from personal experience, since leeching venoms heals me for the same exact amount for me regardless what my power is when testing in the mists.

evilapprentice.6379:

Dacromir.6207:

Adein.2031:

I like how they also nerfed the Daze such that the Sigil of Paralyzation doesn’t apply to the daze anymore (oh and forgot to mention that in the patch notes).

How closely have you actually tested this? I’ve heard several people mention it, but I wanted to test to be sure. I recorded some video of me using the daze on PvP golems and sparring NPCs. I slowed it down to 10% speed, and the daze icon lasted a little over 19 seconds with Sigil of Paralyzation. I replicated this several times. I’d peg the daze duration as ~1.95s with the Sigil. You may want to test this yourself more closely.

Mrbig.8019:

S/D is currently unplayable, like every other power/crit build, unless you go totally glass cannon, unviable by default.

Very good work with this patch.

It’s still playable. You still get a spammable stun break, great mobility and gap closing, and frequent 2s dazing. It’s still our most defensive weapon set by far. You just need to adapt to the lower damage, and maybe bump up the damage on your gear a bit to compensate.

I tested with mesmer sigils and got nothing. I didn’t slow the video down, I just eyeballed it, but 43% (10 points in DA) should push the daze over 2s, and it doesn’t.Visually, I saw no difference between 33% longer daze and no daze duration increase (just in case DA’s condition duration doesnt apply for some reason), and 33% should be easily identifiable even visually.

Also, your math doesn’t make any sense – 15% of 1.5s is .225, resulting in a a 1.725 long daze. Unless of course you have 15 points in DA, and it applies for you.

Things might just be buggy now – I’ve seen people complaining how poor the leeching venoms scaling buff is, but kitten if I know from personal experience, since leeching venoms heals me for the same exact amount for me regardless what my power is when testing in the mists.

Ur maths are brilliant… daze is not a condition, so its not affected by deadly arts; before,the sigil of paralyze or mesmer runes were giving 3 secs duration to daze,and i believe its intended coz daze cant stack in duration, so the devs must have built an internal mechanic that makes this 2 items affect daze without making it stack, but for this to be visible,the sigil and the runes must have been coded to provide a substancial increase.
Misinformation is the mother of all whiners, how many ppl have already came to this forum complaining about s/d daze not stacking and been reduced from 3 secs to 1.5 secs?? many, many, many…
Im preparing a thread on misinformation, in a couple days will be ready, ull have a blast, whiners!!

@Eduardo

So can you clarify what the new daze duration is using either the sigil of paralysation or the mesmer runes since the latest patch?

I heard they have virtually no effect now and as such are now useless, but I haven’t had time to test and won’t for another couple days.

Dacromir has already done that: its 2 secs, he saw 1.95 secs. For better gauge, probably someone with fraps record it and then count frames, i dont have fraps, so i wont do it. Problem here is that most ppl “eyeball”, and ive never heard of this scientific method before. Its just normal in forumers. Does the higgs bosum exists? sure, ive eyeballed it…

No probs, I came in this thread a bit late and should’ve scrolled up a bit.

Cheers for pointing out the answer.

Eduardo.4675:

evilapprentice.6379:

Dacromir.6207:

Adein.2031:

I like how they also nerfed the Daze such that the Sigil of Paralyzation doesn’t apply to the daze anymore (oh and forgot to mention that in the patch notes).

How closely have you actually tested this? I’ve heard several people mention it, but I wanted to test to be sure. I recorded some video of me using the daze on PvP golems and sparring NPCs. I slowed it down to 10% speed, and the daze icon lasted a little over 19 seconds with Sigil of Paralyzation. I replicated this several times. I’d peg the daze duration as ~1.95s with the Sigil. You may want to test this yourself more closely.

Mrbig.8019:

S/D is currently unplayable, like every other power/crit build, unless you go totally glass cannon, unviable by default.

Very good work with this patch.

It’s still playable. You still get a spammable stun break, great mobility and gap closing, and frequent 2s dazing. It’s still our most defensive weapon set by far. You just need to adapt to the lower damage, and maybe bump up the damage on your gear a bit to compensate.

I tested with mesmer sigils and got nothing. I didn’t slow the video down, I just eyeballed it, but 43% (10 points in DA) should push the daze over 2s, and it doesn’t.Visually, I saw no difference between 33% longer daze and no daze duration increase (just in case DA’s condition duration doesnt apply for some reason), and 33% should be easily identifiable even visually.

Also, your math doesn’t make any sense – 15% of 1.5s is .225, resulting in a a 1.725 long daze. Unless of course you have 15 points in DA, and it applies for you.

Things might just be buggy now – I’ve seen people complaining how poor the leeching venoms scaling buff is, but kitten if I know from personal experience, since leeching venoms heals me for the same exact amount for me regardless what my power is when testing in the mists.

Ur maths are brilliant… daze is not a condition, so its not affected by deadly arts; before,the sigil of paralyze or mesmer runes were giving 3 secs duration to daze,and i believe its intended coz daze cant stack in duration, so the devs must have built an internal mechanic that makes this 2 items affect daze without making it stack, but for this to be visible,the sigil and the runes must have been coded to provide a substancial increase.
Misinformation is the mother of all whiners, how many ppl have already came to this forum complaining about s/d daze not stacking and been reduced from 3 secs to 1.5 secs?? many, many, many…
Im preparing a thread on misinformation, in a couple days will be ready, ull have a blast, whiners!!

I was under the impression that daze was treated as a condition, my bad.

When I tested the Mes runes, I was getting absolutely no additional time (I don’t need a stopwatch to tell the difference between 1.5s and 1.995s); considering my experience with leeching venoms, I’m assuming the code was just buggy (I tested shortly after the patch was applied, and have not retested recently), not purposefully spreading misinformation.

Eduardo.4675:

evilapprentice.6379:

Dacromir.6207:

Adein.2031:

I like how they also nerfed the Daze such that the Sigil of Paralyzation doesn’t apply to the daze anymore (oh and forgot to mention that in the patch notes).

How closely have you actually tested this? I’ve heard several people mention it, but I wanted to test to be sure. I recorded some video of me using the daze on PvP golems and sparring NPCs. I slowed it down to 10% speed, and the daze icon lasted a little over 19 seconds with Sigil of Paralyzation. I replicated this several times. I’d peg the daze duration as ~1.95s with the Sigil. You may want to test this yourself more closely.

Mrbig.8019:

S/D is currently unplayable, like every other power/crit build, unless you go totally glass cannon, unviable by default.

Very good work with this patch.

It’s still playable. You still get a spammable stun break, great mobility and gap closing, and frequent 2s dazing. It’s still our most defensive weapon set by far. You just need to adapt to the lower damage, and maybe bump up the damage on your gear a bit to compensate.

I tested with mesmer sigils and got nothing. I didn’t slow the video down, I just eyeballed it, but 43% (10 points in DA) should push the daze over 2s, and it doesn’t.Visually, I saw no difference between 33% longer daze and no daze duration increase (just in case DA’s condition duration doesnt apply for some reason), and 33% should be easily identifiable even visually.

Also, your math doesn’t make any sense – 15% of 1.5s is .225, resulting in a a 1.725 long daze. Unless of course you have 15 points in DA, and it applies for you.

Things might just be buggy now – I’ve seen people complaining how poor the leeching venoms scaling buff is, but kitten if I know from personal experience, since leeching venoms heals me for the same exact amount for me regardless what my power is when testing in the mists.

Ur maths are brilliant… daze is not a condition, so its not affected by deadly arts; before,the sigil of paralyze or mesmer runes were giving 3 secs duration to daze,and i believe its intended coz daze cant stack in duration, so the devs must have built an internal mechanic that makes this 2 items affect daze without making it stack, but for this to be visible,the sigil and the runes must have been coded to provide a substancial increase.
Misinformation is the mother of all whiners, how many ppl have already came to this forum complaining about s/d daze not stacking and been reduced from 3 secs to 1.5 secs?? many, many, many…
Im preparing a thread on misinformation, in a couple days will be ready, ull have a blast, whiners!!

mesmer’s runes and sigil of paralyzation NEVER stacked their effects on TS daze.

Both mesmer runes and the sigil brought TS daze to 3secs, without stacking.

Sigil of paralyzation increasing daze was a bug, and mesmer runes increase TS daze to 2.66 secs, which become 3 secs to to game rounding over 0.5 secs intervals.

Now mesmer runes are not even working in order to make TS daze from 1.5 secs to 2 secs.

Well, it wouldn’t change very much, since the set is not competitive anymore.

It was the only good set we had to give good anti-bunker builds in tPvP: now good luck killing perma-stability guardians and eles and wells necros.

evilapprentice.6379:

I tested with mesmer sigils and got nothing. I didn’t slow the video down, I just eyeballed it, but 43% (10 points in DA) should push the daze over 2s, and it doesn’t.Visually, I saw no difference between 33% longer daze and no daze duration increase (just in case DA’s condition duration doesnt apply for some reason), and 33% should be easily identifiable even visually.

I’m assuming you meant mesmer runes here, not sigils. It may be that those are broken (I’ll test when I get home today), but Sigil of Paralyzation definitely pushes the daze up to 2s (1.95s by my measurement, assuming there’s slight delay for the daze icon showing up). Condition duration does not apply, because stun/knockdown/daze/etc are counted as control effects as opposed to conditions.

evilapprentice.6379:

Also, your math doesn’t make any sense – 15% of 1.5s is .225, resulting in a a 1.725 long daze. Unless of course you have 15 points in DA, and it applies for you.

Yeah, math has always been wrong with the Sigil. With a 2s base, it raises the daze to 3s even though it looks like it should go to 2.3s. My theory is that the sigil actually applies a 30% bonus in stead of 15%, and that Arena-net’s rounding is wonky so that it always rounds up. That would explain 2s → 3s (2.6s, rounded up to 3s) and 1.5s → 2s (1.95s, rounded up to 2s).

I just started using S/D after the patch and I find it to be the best weapon set we have available. I can’t imagine how effective it was before the patch.

Dacromir.6207:

evilapprentice.6379:

I tested with mesmer sigils and got nothing. I didn’t slow the video down, I just eyeballed it, but 43% (10 points in DA) should push the daze over 2s, and it doesn’t.Visually, I saw no difference between 33% longer daze and no daze duration increase (just in case DA’s condition duration doesnt apply for some reason), and 33% should be easily identifiable even visually.

I’m assuming you meant mesmer runes here, not sigils. It may be that those are broken (I’ll test when I get home today), but Sigil of Paralyzation definitely pushes the daze up to 2s (1.95s by my measurement, assuming there’s slight delay for the daze icon showing up). Condition duration does not apply, because stun/knockdown/daze/etc are counted as control effects as opposed to conditions.

evilapprentice.6379:

Also, your math doesn’t make any sense – 15% of 1.5s is .225, resulting in a a 1.725 long daze. Unless of course you have 15 points in DA, and it applies for you.

Yeah, math has always been wrong with the Sigil. With a 2s base, it raises the daze to 3s even though it looks like it should go to 2.3s. My theory is that the sigil actually applies a 30% bonus in stead of 15%, and that Arena-net’s rounding is wonky so that it always rounds up. That would explain 2s -> 3s (2.6s, rounded up to 3s) and 1.5s -> 2s (1.95s, rounded up to 2s).

Yeah, I never bothered with para sigil because I liked Mes runes and wanted my weapons free for other things.

I don’t understand the rounding issue though – the only condition I’ve ever monitored the duration closely was bleeding. Bleeding doesn’t round, you get exactly the time you expect, though it only ticks on the second, so 5.9 seconds of bleeding does the same damage as 5 seconds.

Even though bleeding is a condition, and daze is a control effect, I would have assumed Anet would treat them the same (the duration you get is the sum of your base and multipliers), rounding them up or down seems silly, especially with an effect like daze or stun.

It’d be a hell of a lot easier in Anet was more transparent on their design, but for now we’re just left to guess.

Thorp.7982:

I just started using S/D after the patch and I find it to be the best weapon set we have available. I can’t imagine how effective it was before the patch.

It was the best Thief build at tournament level play, which says a lot.