Guild Wars 2

Questions:

Why did this build need a damage nerf? It was in no way OP (DD did need a reduction). Now auto attack is the only real source of damage.

Why don’t runes of the Mesmer affect daze duration when it says they should (I understand sigil of paralyzation not working)? Is this intended?

Why did the daze duration need to be reduced so much (especially with runes/sigil not working)? It was already difficult to get a good daze lock going, but now it’s basically an interrupt.

I just want to know what the point of all of this is. Especially in light of the non nerf to spike damage (I switched a while ago to avoid complaints and to avoid nerfs).

The daze needed toning down.

Before it rounded to 3 secs with mesmer runes so that you were able to let revelead expire and hit C&D again for a perma-locking.

Now tactical strike daze lasts a whole second less: that’s huge, even more since now the only way to deal damage is by auto-attacking.

The nerf to C&D was totally out of place, and they went to far with dancing dagger.

Tactical strike daze should have capped to 2.5 secs, now with 2 secs cap it’s too cheap, and we don’t have the damage/pressure to bring people down.

Flanking strike is still crap as before.

S/D was nerfed to the ground. It NEEDED a nerf ( just like FS needed a buff) , but a slight one, not THIS one.

Now it’s widely sub-par.

Yeah, pretty much what ^ said.
I disagree, though, that the daze should have been capped. Against competent players you weren’t going to completely dazelock them.

But yeah, they definitely went WAY overboard on this nerf.

I would be fine with a 2.5 second cap. Right now with runes not working it’s just way to short.

They just ruined and made absolutely useless this build. They used very little brain … making the game of thieves now poorer

I would be fine with a 2.5 second cap as long as the damage reduction were rolled back (or maybe just a 10% damage reduction on DD) and FS fixed.

I’ve been in love with S/D since like a week after launch. I’m going to keep playing it, but this saddens me.

Tactical Strike daze
They went about this the wrong way. The 2s daze was fine. The problem was that sigil of paralyzation (and maybe rune of the mesmer?) bumped it up to a 3s daze, which is far too much. That’s a near-permanent daze, and nigh impossible to counter. Any good player will break the first couple couple of dazes, but no one (except sword thief, ironically) can break a daze every 4s. The only counter was stability, which we could remove. Daze-locking in PvP is not good.

They should have fixed their screw-up in stead of nerfing a core skill of S/D. It’s still better than the 1s daze we used to have(in pre-release?), but this is going to hurt us. I agree with others that posted above, in that capping the daze at 2.5s would have been a more reasonable solution. I am not happy about this.

Dancing Dagger
A little heavy-handed, but I agree with this. The damage if it hit the target once was fine. Against one target or 3+ targets, this skill was balanced. The problem was its damage against exactly 2 targets. It would hit each twice, meaning it deals 672 base damage to each. Compare that to Backstab’s 806, and you’ll see the imbalance. Backstab can only happen once every 4s minimum, but you can spam DD three or four times in a row. Against Rangers or exactly two opponents, this skill was massively OP.

I’m always sad to see less damage for my build, but I’ll cope. This skill is still a fantastic Projectile Finisher (100% chance, AoE, spammable) and it’s a great ranged AoE cripple. It’s just no longer a damage tool.

Cloak and Dagger
Backstab burst was pretty OP. The damage was fine, the problem was that you could get the three-hit combo off in under a second (0.5s with Haste). However, for whatever reason, they chose to nerf CnD in stead of BS. This means that S/D and P/D are getting hurt as well as D/D, which I don’t think was warranted.

Let’s do a little math real fast. They dropped CnD by 33%, but raised TS by 10%. Before this patch, CnD + TS would do 815 damage (504 + (1.03*302)). Now, it does 680 damage (338 + (1.03 * 332)). This means that our single biggest attack combo deals 15.5% less damage. In contrast, CnD -> BS has been nerfed from 1334 to 1168, which is only 12.5%. We were nerfed harder than Dagger/Dagger.

That’s not good. I understand the nerf to DD, I understand the nerf to TS daze (although I think they did it wrong), but S/D damage was not too high. We already have no burst whatsoever and decent (at best) single-target damage. This was our one way to damage single targets, and now it does 15.5% less damage. I don’t see any reason for this, and I think this was out of line.

EDIT: Fixed math. S/D was nerfed by 15.5%, not 17%.

Dacromir.6207:

I’ve been in love with S/D since like a week after launch. I’m going to keep playing it, but this saddens me.

Tactical Strike daze
They went about this the wrong way. The 2s daze was fine. The problem was that sigil of paralyzation (and maybe rune of the mesmer?) bumped it up to a 3s daze, which is far too much. That’s a near-permanent daze, and nigh impossible to counter. Any good player will break the first couple couple of dazes, but no one (except sword thief, ironically) can break a daze every 4s. The only counter was stability, which we could remove. Daze-locking in PvP is not good.

They should have fixed their screw-up in stead of nerfing a core skill of S/D. It’s still better than the 1s daze we used to have(in pre-release?), but this is going to hurt us. I agree with others that posted above, in that capping the daze at 2.5s would have been a more reasonable solution. I am not happy about this.

Dancing Dagger
A little heavy-handed, but I agree with this. The damage if it hit the target once was fine. Against one target or 3+ targets, this skill was balanced. The problem was its damage against exactly 2 targets. It would hit each twice, meaning it deals 672 base damage to each. Compare that to Backstab’s 806, and you’ll see the imbalance. Backstab can only happen once every 4s minimum, but you can spam DD three or four times in a row. Against Rangers or exactly two opponents, this skill was massively OP.

I’m always sad to see less damage for my build, but I’ll cope. This skill is still a fantastic Projectile Finisher (100% chance, AoE, spammable) and it’s a great ranged AoE cripple. It’s just no longer a damage tool.

Cloak and Dagger
Backstab burst was pretty OP. The damage was fine, the problem was that you could get the three-hit combo off in under a second (0.5s with Haste). However, for whatever reason, they chose to nerf CnD in stead of BS. This means that S/D and P/D are getting hurt as well as D/D, which I don’t think was warranted.

Let’s do a little math real fast. They dropped CnD by 33%, but raised TS by 10%. Before this patch, CnD + TS would do 815 damage (504 + (1.03*302)). Now, it does 680 damage (338 + (1.03 * 332)). This means that our single biggest attack combo deals 17% less damage. In contrast, CnD -> BS has been nerfed from 1334 to 1168, which is only 12.5%. We were nerfed harder than Dagger/Dagger.

That’s not good. I understand the nerf to DD, I understand the nerf to TS daze (although I think they did it wrong), but S/D damage was not too high. We already have no burst whatsoever and decent (at best) single-target damage. This was our one way to damage single targets, and now it does 17% less damage. I don’t see any reason for this, and I think this was out of line.

I appreciate you’ll keep playing it, but believe me : now this set is vastly sub-par.

Skilled opponents already took tons of times to be beaten, now we have less damage and less control, our dual is still broken and we’re left only with auto-attack ( which is also very slow).

overall, it’s not a valid alternative anymore: other classes skilled players, on competitive builds would totally destroy an S/D build anytime.

It’s sad because it was one of the best, skillful builds the thief had.

Probably they really want every thief to run with D/D or venom sharing P/D, in order to control that crappy, unbalanced mechanic which initiative is.

Im sorry but how is dodging tactical strike hard?

Considering a thief landed that first daze strike…

dodge before u get crippled by the third attack and it will be hard to get hit by cnd. That should give enough window to punish thieves and prolong the next daze strike.

dodge before cnd: count the auto attacks and after the 3rd strike, thief is sure to use cnd. Again, that gives enough window to punish thieves.

The nerf was uncalled for, this is our only counter to bunkers!! u might say its not fair, a thief shouldnt be able to lockdown a bunker and kill him by himself, bur dazelocking someone completely is hard to do against someone with brain, and killing a bunker with only auto attacks take a long time. Seriously this is the only weapon set that allows thieves to compete against guardians, wth.

Before, when I saw a guardian/other bunker on a point I ran right up, and started the long process of killing them. If they were good it would be a stalemate, and I’d just run if they got reinforcements. Now, having played some games after the patch, I see a bunker and move on to a different point. I feel completely helpless fighting them.

Something I didn’t realize at first would happen is that I also take way more damage now than before.

Nobody uses it, out of every thieves maybe less then 5% use the s/d so i don’t know what’s the fuss is about, they need to fix flanking strike to make it usable then we can all qq about nerfs.

Shouldn’t the fact that nobody uses it mean that it needs to be buffed?

Also, that’s probably one of the worst arguments ever.

Mrbig.8019:

I appreciate you’ll keep playing it, but believe me : now this set is vastly sub-par.

Skilled opponents already took tons of times to be beaten, now we have less damage and less control, our dual is still broken and we’re left only with auto-attack ( which is also very slow).

overall, it’s not a valid alternative anymore: other classes skilled players, on competitive builds would totally destroy an S/D build anytime.

It’s sad because it was one of the best, skillful builds the thief had.

Probably they really want every thief to run with D/D or venom sharing P/D, in order to control that crappy, unbalanced mechanic which initiative is.

Yes, it’s sad that it’s hurting, but it’s still powerful. Don’f forget the spammable stun break. I haven’t tested it yet, but a Sigil of Paralyzation should take the daze up to 2s (which is still powerful). The damage is actually decent, and it’s AoE which is great. It still has great cripple.

I’m just going to have to adjust my stats so that they have more damage and less defense to compensate, and lament the days of the 3s daze. I ran with a 2s daze for quite a while before I discovered Sigil of Paralyzation, so I’ll be able to survive without it.

This nerf hurts, but S/D is still worth using. Barely.

The +daze duration sigil and runes aren’t working on tac strike right now. I don’t know if this is intentional though.

I agree that this is still usable. It just feels severely limited especially without runes/sigils.

tac.2167:

The +daze duration sigil and runes aren’t working on tac strike right now. I don’t know if this is intentional though.

I agree that this is still usable. It just feels severely limited especially without runes/sigils.

What? Screw that. Fixing or disabling the runes would be fine, lowering the daze would be fine, but both together is too much. That means they dropped the daze from 3s to 1.5s, which I don’t think was called for. 2s is just about right.

Now I’m all upset.

Anet doesn’t have the slightest idea of how to balance the thief. They’re doing everything to force us to throw away the sword as a weapon.

First PW nerfed by 15%. Then C&D -33% and DD -50% (which, as pointed out before, nerfs a lot more S/D than D/D), these numbers imo are really too high and “random”, what will be the next nerf? Any skill at -66% dmg? -75%?

Meanwhile, Backstab is untouched with its 2.399 skill coefficient, AND a little buff to the stealth ability of the thief.

Now, honestly: why anyone should ever bring a thief in tPvP? We’re pidgeon-holed in just 2 roles: burst with main hand dagger, or condition spamming. And, TBH, there’re now other classes who can cover these 2 roles way bettere than the thief.

Dacromir @Mrbigtac
Only those who love this build can understand the irritation to the current nerf. It’s funny that now the other thieves, surely burst, happy not to have been fundamentally affected by the nerf say: Well be honest your daze and your build was Op .. ahahaha
However, do not be discouraged! I wanted to ask you, you will continue to use this build? w

Turbolence.3842:

Dacromir @Mrbigtac
Only those who love this build can understand the irritation to the current nerf. It’s funny that now the other thieves, surely burst, happy not to have been fundamentally affected by the nerf say: Well be honest your daze and your build was Op .. ahahaha
However, do not be discouraged! I wanted to ask you, you will continue to use this build? w

I can answer you, if you don’t mind: why should we run again S/D?

1) Daze on Tactical Strike – gone from 2s base to 1.5s base. AND daze sigil and mesmer runes don’t work anymore on the daze. So we’ve gone from a 3 sec daze to a 1.5 sec daze. +10% dmg on Tact Strike isn’t even noticeable.

2) Dancing Dagger -50% damage. It was one of the most useful damage skill on S/D apart from autoattack, and the only ranged option without swapping set. The ridicolous part was that against 1 target the damage of the skill wasn’t a problem, and even against 3 or 4 targets it wasn’t that much of a problem (maybe nerf the dmg of 15/20% TOP). The real issue was the double damage against just 2 targets. Which is still higher than against 1-3-4 targets.

3) C&D – same as 2, a whopping -33% dmg nerf, which puts the damage output of the S/D build more and more subpar.

I don’t want now to make a detalied math count on how much damage S/D lost on average, but ofc it’s clear that it’s HUGE, as if this set needed it…

I am not going to continues using S/D at tournament level. It got nerfed WAY too hard for it to be worth using. Basically everything it did got cut in half.
I love the weaponset, but it’s just not viable. ANet way overdid the nerf.

Turbolence.3842:

Dacromir @Mrbigtac
Only those who love this build can understand the irritation to the current nerf. It’s funny that now the other thieves, surely burst, happy not to have been fundamentally affected by the nerf say: Well be honest your daze and your build was Op .. ahahaha
However, do not be discouraged! I wanted to ask you, you will continue to use this build? w

not at tournament level.

it got nerfed way too hard ( and there was no need, it should have been buffed while decreasing daze cap to 2.5 secs, since FS is still not working as it should).

And even more, this is also a huge meta shifting ( altough this meta was still not discovered), since now bunkers rule supreme, unless you have a necro on your party.

Basically, now they changed the thief with a necro in the current meta, unless exaggerately skilled.

Mrbig.8019:

Basically, now they changed the thief with a necro in the current meta, unless exaggerately skilled.

And of course, if that player is exaggerately skilled as you say, he’d be a lot more efficient/useful playing a necro.

Galandil.9641:

Mrbig.8019:

Basically, now they changed the thief with a necro in the current meta, unless exaggerately skilled.

And of course, if that player is exaggerately skilled as you say, he’d be a lot more efficient/useful playing a necro.

Well, some people is more proficient with a certain class.

But yes, on equal skill floor, the necro would be more useful in a team than a thief.

Turbolence.3842:

Dacromir @Mrbigtac
Only those who love this build can understand the irritation to the current nerf. It’s funny that now the other thieves, surely burst, happy not to have been fundamentally affected by the nerf say: Well be honest your daze and your build was Op .. ahahaha
However, do not be discouraged! I wanted to ask you, you will continue to use this build? w

Yes, the 3s daze was OP. I state that above. I think it was lowered too much (2s seems best to me), but I’ll cope. Other than that, there’s nothing OP about S/D. Sure, we’re hard to kill, but we have the lowest damage of all weapon sets.

I’m not sure if I’m going to keep using it in sPvP. It’s been hurt quite a bit. I still like the playstyle of S/D, but I need to see if I can raise my build’s damage in other ways enough to compensate for the damage nerf we got. I’m probably going to have to change it. They nerfed my specific build even worse by giving me -10% boon duration, which hurts since I"m a boon-heavy build.

It’s still fantastic for WvW and PvE.

What is this obsession with S/D?

ANYTHING that uses Dagger Offhand got nerfed. Stop having tunnel vision.

shrewd.5319:

What is this obsession with S/D?

ANYTHING that uses Dagger Offhand got nerfed. Stop having tunnel vision.

The difference is how much we rely on skills.

For S/D, CnD → TS is our only tool for single-target damage. The majority of that damage comes from CnD.

For D/D, you can also use Heartseeker for single-target. Also, the majority of stealth sequence damage comes from the stealth skill, rather than CnD.

For P/D, the stealth sequence is the best single-target damage skill. However, P/D is a condition build, so the majority of stealth sequence damage comes from the Sneak Attack bleeds.

Of the three sets, S/D’s single-target damage got hurt the most, and we have no other single-target damage skills to rely on.

Also, S/D had the lowest damage of all thief weapon sets to start with. Nerfing S/D damage more than P/D or D/D damage doesn’t make sense. They also cut our daze in half, which sucks because the daze was central to our build. I understand why they did it (and reluctantly agree), but it still really hurts the build.

Well, Dacromir, the problem however is the fact that now (bug? intended? we never know with anet…) the sigil/runes do not function, if not, we’d have a 2.25 secs daze instead of a 1.5 sec.

And that would be fine, imo. However, due to the problem with sigil/runes, now we can use other sigils/runes, trying to improve a little the damage on the set. But I feel that doing so is similar to swimming against the current, too much effort for a very little reward.

Galandil.9641:

Well, Dacromir, the problem however is the fact that now (bug? intended? we never know with anet…) the sigil/runes do not function, if not, we’d have a 2.25 secs daze instead of a 1.5 sec.

And that would be fine, imo. However, due to the problem with sigil/runes, now we can use other sigils/runes, trying to improve a little the damage on the set. But I feel that doing so is similar to swimming against the current, too much effort for a very little reward.

Yes, IMO, a 2s daze is perfect. So if they’d make it so that using sigils or runes gave us the 2s daze, I’d be fine. I’m already used to using the sigil. But 1.5s is way too low. I understand lowering it from 3s, because that was too kitten high. However, they’ve swung from that end of the spectrum to the opposite, rather than settling in the middle (2s max).

Dacromir.6207:

Galandil.9641:

Well, Dacromir, the problem however is the fact that now (bug? intended? we never know with anet…) the sigil/runes do not function, if not, we’d have a 2.25 secs daze instead of a 1.5 sec.

And that would be fine, imo. However, due to the problem with sigil/runes, now we can use other sigils/runes, trying to improve a little the damage on the set. But I feel that doing so is similar to swimming against the current, too much effort for a very little reward.

Yes, IMO, a 2s daze is perfect. So if they’d make it so that using sigils or runes gave us the 2s daze, I’d be fine. I’m already used to using the sigil. But 1.5s is way too low. I understand lowering it from 3s, because that was too kitten high. However, they’ve swung from that end of the spectrum to the opposite, rather than settling in the middle (2s max).

I think 2 sec base, 2.5 sec with sigil/runes would be perfect. A 2 second daze isn’t a whole lot.
Still can’t believe how hard S/D got hit.

Zunhar.4079:

Dacromir.6207:

Galandil.9641:

Well, Dacromir, the problem however is the fact that now (bug? intended? we never know with anet…) the sigil/runes do not function, if not, we’d have a 2.25 secs daze instead of a 1.5 sec.

And that would be fine, imo. However, due to the problem with sigil/runes, now we can use other sigils/runes, trying to improve a little the damage on the set. But I feel that doing so is similar to swimming against the current, too much effort for a very little reward.

Yes, IMO, a 2s daze is perfect. So if they’d make it so that using sigils or runes gave us the 2s daze, I’d be fine. I’m already used to using the sigil. But 1.5s is way too low. I understand lowering it from 3s, because that was too kitten high. However, they’ve swung from that end of the spectrum to the opposite, rather than settling in the middle (2s max).

I think 2 sec base, 2.5 sec with sigil/runes would be perfect. A 2 second daze isn’t a whole lot.
Still can’t believe how hard S/D got hit.

Nah, I ran with a 2s daze for a long time before I heard that Sigil of Paralyzation worked on dazes. 2s daze is still plenty powerful. If it was 1.5s base, 2s with sigil/rune, I could cope just fine. Obviously, I’d like more, but I’ve played with 2s for a long while and it’s very doable.

Or, alternatively, they could limit the +X% Stun upgrade to only actual stuns. So we could go with just the mesmer runeset, bringing the daze to 1.995 seconds for the +33% Daze duration, and freeing up a slot for another sigil, to raise somewhat the damage of the weapon set.

shrewd.5319:

What is this obsession with S/D?

ANYTHING that uses Dagger Offhand got nerfed. Stop having tunnel vision.

It isn’t tunnel vision, different weapon sets utilize the same skills in different ways to fill different roles. D/P, for instance, isn’t just a mashup of dagger and pistol skills, it plays completely differently than D/D or S/P, even though it shares skills with those weapon sets. The fact of the matter is that the dagger offhand changes hit some weapon sets much much harder than others.

Wilhelmryan.9203:

Im sorry but how is dodging tactical strike hard?

Considering a thief landed that first daze strike…

dodge before u get crippled by the third attack and it will be hard to get hit by cnd. That should give enough window to punish thieves and prolong the next daze strike.

dodge before cnd: count the auto attacks and after the 3rd strike, thief is sure to use cnd. Again, that gives enough window to punish thieves.

The nerf was uncalled for, this is our only counter to bunkers!! u might say its not fair, a thief shouldnt be able to lockdown a bunker and kill him by himself, bur dazelocking someone completely is hard to do against someone with brain, and killing a bunker with only auto attacks take a long time. Seriously this is the only weapon set that allows thieves to compete against guardians, wth.

It’s easy to dodge once or twice but, after that, say goodbye to your skillbar for the rest of the fight. The thief AND his target could spend the first few seconds dodging an posturing but initiative recovers much faster than endurance.

I, personally, don’t think the daze nerf is too much but I am definitely disappointed that there was no compensation in terms of additional damage or a bleed or something….anything. It was too good but, only taking the daze into account, it’s either too good or not really good enough. Not much of an in-between to work with there :-\

I don’t really mind the daze effect being reduced on CnD; That was obviously exploitable and probably needed a change. I don’t like that the damage is mostly gone from the ability. There’s really not a lot of reason to use it, and it was kind of difficult to set up to begin with.

I honestly get more use out of just going sword/nothing now. At least stab does damage.