Guild Wars 2

gavyne.6847:

Anything is viable this season honestly, competition is quite low at the moment since most people already got their legendary wings and didn’t bother with this season’s ranked play. I do think GS wielding reaper has a small “advantage” in that most other classes don’t have a clue about GS since it’s not used often. So you have the surprise factor until they learn how terrible & slow GS is.

With that said, I sigh and shake my head anytime I see a GS wielding power reaper in games. Because if I’m there on my condi reaper, I’m a direct counter to that poor sob and any stab he lets out gets corrupted into fear & condi stacks. Once stab is gone, then it’s just chain cc & condi stacks until QQ. No necro is easier to train down & kite than a GS wielding power reaper.

It’s a cannibalistic relationship between the builds, yes. The power build does stand a way better chance at fighting off Daredevils and in all likehood, DH’s, though. Power reaper gets all its damage and capability from boons, which it has worse access to than most meta specs, so the dependence on boon-hate from condi reaper will pretty much destroy power while in most cases not really doing much to the really guilty builds.

Such is the state of the game with so much boon nonsense, though. I’d prefer an environment with no boons and just class mechanics, but it’d defeat the purpose of most combo field use and would require a re-balance of the entire game inside and out, particularly elementalists.

GS needs to be used skillfully, and the build which uses it needs to be based on shroud and pretty much requires Speed of Shadows for the shroud swapping frequency bump. You can’t camp GS – it pretty much just won’t work if you do – but it has some absolutely amazing utility that is quite capable in the right hands and when weapon and shroud swapping properly.

Cynz.9437:

DeceiverX.8361:

Yay only for D/P users who never slotted the venom build. The changes hurt D/D power in PvP roughly the same as it did the VShare build itself in PvE.

Actually i play d/p in pvp and i don’t like the change. I do miss double stack of basi. Yes, you can give basi to team at begin but during the match you rarely get chance to share venoms with teammates.

Also “best” thieves left because of dp? Which would that be? If anything, june patch from last year and introduction of revs contributed to decrease of thieves and build variety/viability, not d/p. Why didn’t i see you spewing txoic bs when s/d was braindead?

Stop hating on d/p and go use that energy for something productive (e.g. getting HoT specs nerfed), ty.

So much backtalk from what was an off-hand remark about how the reasoning behind the decision had no desirable effect. You’re all taking me way too critically, here.

Anecdotal. Most non-D/P players didn’t make it to be recognizable as pro players because the builds weren’t good enough for the meta (boon bunker). Ask pros about good thieves they’ve dueled, and they should be willing to admit they’ve gotten massively out-played in fights by other non-meta players. If they don’t, they’re either a tiny minority at the pinnacle of skill and always were, or they’re lying.

S/D wasn’t brain-dead easy (okay, it was at launch when it was not a two-part skill, but D/D was by far the most overpowered thing in the game at launch) so much as it directly countered the boon meta in sPvP at the time when it was dominat after getting reworked, and thus made it an excellent +1. Boons were also way less common and spammable, so a thief that simply just jumped in and pre-casted FS for LS + BT would pretty much guarantee a dead enemy. Playing it well in strict combat outside of +1 wasn’t braindead, and Daredevil is way, way worse of a culprit than core Acro even before the nerfs. Even now, I think Acro is stronger and more braindead than it used to be due to massively-buffed passives.

I’ve tried to put forth effort to talk about the state of the game. I was suspended from 0 IP to 6 IP from saying class balance failed in the dedicated feedback thread while explaining the reasoning in a wall of text. There’s no hope in ANet listening or taking such efforts into consideration.

I’ve played almost every server. I’m currently sitting on TC as I went there for T2 fights and high-consistency small-scale about a year ago with my guild when the going was good and blobbing not excessive (and before HoT broke the game). Since I’m no longer interested in paying ANet any money due to poor game handling, and my guild all quit for the most part, I’m sitting there.

Mashing 3 won’t do much against skilled opponents from all the craziness flying around these days to prevent it (and most other skills in general) from working effectively (although it definitely used to), but half-brain-dead gameplay, particularly if I choose a thief of mine with Daredevil unlocked, pressing 3 every second or 2 usually wins me a fight.

Quite frankly, the middle tiers usually have better players. Most high-tier servers win by coverage and blobs over playing well, and we haven’t seen an actually skill-intensive scene in WvW since 2013.

If you run Daredevil you shouldn’t have issues with condi mesmer if you run EA. Clone scepter AA is really slow and often the clones are left up rather than shattered to apply torment. Blind pressure negates almost all of theirs, and SS’s got a 900 range teleport that can keep up with them that the clones can’t unless shattered. PU won’t negate the blind or port on SS, and a BV’ed SS will normally shut the mesmer down. It is to be noted that SS cannot be reflected as it is unblockable. Engineers and eles should thus be easy as well. Dash mid-projectile and carry through the DH traps, triggering them all and taking no damage since the first hit by the guard will be negated from the blind. Rangers you can infinitely pressure from steal and Shadow Shot having enough mobility to pressure GS and Staff movements, and blind their CC’s. Only the bunker build should give trouble due to the pet’s durability, but the bunker build is objectively overpowered from a stat perspective and if played well can only die from substantial lockdown and boon rip typically acquired from having multiple allies. Reapers should be cake unless they run mobility builds (nobody does), but even still they’ll have poor LF regeneration on such builds and suffer from being unable to land scythe due to the blinds. Warriors, and revs might be a “tough” matchup due to the resistance negating blind, but are otherwise fairly easy takedowns if stealth is used and mobility maintained. Other thieves can give you issues just because they’re probably doing something similar and negating your damage as well.

You can typically just sustain through most others’ damage via the blind pressure and a few dodges.

Even a low-function build like signets gets ramped into insanity with it. When you start hitting 8-12k on Shadow Shot (in some cases one-shotting unprepared eles with it), a lot of the details of skilled play really stop mattering. The skill damage coefficient is bonkers, and the quick-and-easy unblockable blind, teleport re-engage, and no stealth attack dependency with faster burst than D/D kind of nullify the purpose of taking anything else while tremendously lowering the level of skill needed to play to a degree where one can start winning.

thunderfall.8095:

I believe you misinterpreted the hidden buff. It would not prevent you from losing stealth. It would just function as a buff that replaces your auto attack with your sneak attack. You are still perfectly visible while you have hidden, and can be targeted.

I see. The way you have it worded suggests that you simply don’t lose stealth when making attacks.

Unfortunately with the ICD for stealth attacks I don’t know of a reason as to why anyone would want it, either :\ AA chains do more damage more consistently.

Again, it’s all builds.

D/P and staff? They’re fine. D/D? Rendered almost useless as a consequence when also paired with the BV change.

NuhDah.9812:

DeceiverX.8361:

Yay only for D/P users who never slotted the venom build. The changes hurt D/D power in PvP roughly the same as it did the VShare build itself in PvE.

Well since you’re trashing on d/p with your every post I have a suggestion. Why not create a new feed or ask the devs to make a forum entry for you entitled: “d/p thieves are op and need to be nerfed, they always beat me!” and post there something on topic whenever you feel sorrow…

They don’t always beat me. Quite frankly, only particularly good players using it tend to. The average D/P thief usually finds himself dead on the ground because he tries too hard to use backstab and I usually kill him while he’s in stealth setting up.

And in all seriousness, the quality of thief players since HoT has dropped so massively that I find them as typically being the easiest targets to kill while playing a greatsword reaper.

I hate it because I can play D/P and pretty much straight up not even try, and beat people by pressing 3 (although still not as bad as D/D condi). There’s no incentive to become a better player, fights are often trivial, and this skill is responsible for a huge divide in balance between weapon sets and the general state of the thief, also largely due to Shadow Shot.

D/P Daredevil’s dominance, historically and mathematically attributed to Shadow Shot, is a creeping cancer that’s made most of the best thieves in the game leave due to being pushed to non-viability in D/P’s wake.

Neat to see some others put out more formal ideas. That said, it has some pretty substantial problems :\

It looks absolutely ridiculously OP. Hidden is way too strong as a mechanic, especially if buffing stealth attack skills.

While Glyphs and longbow are neat (and I was an advocate for longbow on thief for years), I can’t agree with pretty much any implementation suggested.

The 1200 range increment isn’t a problem. Ranged burst from stealth in general is. Get rid of the stealth and there can be plenty of powerful and unique abilities on a ranged weapon for the thief. It’s just absolutely not allowed to burst at all costs.

D/P condi trapper is already bad enough as it is. We shouldn’t be encouraging this kind of play even more.

Not removing stealth while attacking from hidden and not losing hidden while using non-sneak attacks would just pretty much yield D/P SA playing nothing but Shadow Shot spam and stealth stacking that would do more damage than 50% HS and apply debuffs and mobility. You put a signature GM trait from Crit strikes on a Glyph. There’s a lot in this, that while fresh, doesn’t mesh nicely at all with the existing content in GW2.

What I got out of this idea was the prospect of absolutely astronomical damage at next to no risk while further remaining stealthed almost indefinitely. Daredevil is too safe as it is. We don’t need another idea that would make the thief pretty much invincible, particularly since this concept buffs D/P so much more than every other set.

Yay only for D/P users who never slotted the venom build. The changes hurt D/D power in PvP roughly the same as it did the VShare build itself in PvE.

Straegen.2938:

Better would be to take a handful over used traits/skills on each class and tone them down a tiny bit and take a handful unused traits/skills and buff them each quarter.

The meta should be telling ANet what needs balancing simply by looking at the top players and what they are and are not using.

And this is how balancing is typically done professionally.

Frequent and iterative tweaks to simply disrupt the meta out of being a rock-solid ideological construct promote healthy gameplay across the board.

Jeknar.6184:

joneirikb.7506:

As long as they’re “Equalized” I’m happy, either direction

I don’t really trust in equalizing by nerfing what is good instead of buffing what is bad. That’s Blizzard way of doing things and it does not work at all.

Nerfs and shaving are how MOBA and true-PvP games have to work. Infinite power creep destroys games; see every Asian/Korean grinder.

There’s so much powercreep from the elite specs and other bonuses such as new armor stats, runes, and food that no amount of reasonable buffing can be done to core lines without just blowing the whole game out of proportion.

If the differences are subtle it’s one thing, but Elites for the most part offer so much extra that buffing baseline isn’t acceptable.

The stealth attack ICD and move to 1 stack of BV gored D/D power (and to some extent S/D) into pretty much unplayability. VShare didn’t need a nerf, and baseline builds which benefited from the changes didn’t need a buff, either.

No.

1.) All dodges by default go backwards. Pointless to change that as that’s a core game mechanic and keeping character behavior control between classes and specs constant should be considered important.

2.) 1.75 is an insane coefficient and it would need to get massively nerfed if given weapon damage scaling. It already hits ridiculously hard at an upwards of 5k regularly, and in a build like mine, closer to 8k, which is ridiculous.

It shouldn’t have a leap finisher imho. It provides so much unnecesarry extra utility to OH pistol and rewards spamming for no reason, often rewarding thieves who can’t manage their initiative by still giving them stealth access and extra damage instead of punishing them for misplaying. Daredevil as a whole is stupidly easy-mode. There’s no reason to further buff the dodges when it’s the dodges and EA alone that make Daredevil as low-skill and easy as it is. S/P and P/P either should be re-examined if stealth access is essential, or more support given to builds which do not feature stealth access in general. I prefer the latter.

The effects of the change are as follows:
-No more might gain on venom use (DPS or group PvP viability loss)
-BV down to 1 stack from 2 (Nerf to OH Dagger, PvP use, and Break bar capabilities)
-Devourer Venom to 2 stacks from 3 (PvP/utility nerf)
-Affected-ally radius down by 33% (making it more difficult to affect allies without stacking)

So as a build, venomshare was nerfed massively, since the dependency on leech and CDR is still tied to the SA line, and a huge amount of its utility was just removed with no replacement.

The only thing which benefited from the changes is D/P meta Daredevil.

Lahmia.2193:

Famine.7915:

I’ve been finding classic vanilla power necro to be much more effective for wvw zerging and roaming than power reaper. Tried ot recently and realized how much I missed life blast. Makes thieves easy for the most part. I do miss the shroud 2 leap from reaper, but I manage. Still use reaper for condi of course.

Funny I’ve had the same feeling towards vanilla necro for backline wells. Having to pick between Blood Magic and Soul Reaping made me rethink using Reaper, considering how little it actually adds.

Which is precisely what elite specs were supposed to do: change the style of play. Nothing more, nothing less.

The sentiment of “I should choose this elite” should come from a stylistic preference based on what you want from the build, not just running what makes the build necessarily better at what it did.

The reaper is a much better front-line build and skirmisher than the core necro, but the core necro packs a much better bomb potential. The trades for the sustain and DPS bumps for the reaper can offset both BM and DM in its own way, while BM and DM can offset the gains from the reaper in another.

This should be the case in every elite spec and for all further elite specs. There should be no incentive to run an elite spec because it’s universally better. It’s why I think the reaper is the best-designed of all of them, and why I think the Daredevil and Berserker are by far the worst.

Static.9841:

This thread seriously confuses me. I don’t understand why anyone on F2P thinks they should have the same benefits as anyone who bought the base game and HoT regardless of what game mode that is and if the game is so “beloved” to you, why can’t you spend money actually buying it? The entitlement here is painful.

To say you can’t get anywhere in PvP without HoT specs is also a complete fallacy, because you absolutely can with core builds, but not if you suck as a player.

Lol, entitlement? Are you kidding me? The game is fundamentally flawed and is clearly restricted B2W in the form of the expansions, and you claim entitlement? The entire F2P concept is arbitrary.

I’ve spent probably close to a thousand bucks on this game, if not more. I built a $3000.00 computer solely to play this game with the highest possible fidelity on top of that. I don’t buy gold or legendaries. What I buy goes straight to ANet. AKA, around 10 years of a WoW sub + expansions at highest price. I had a tremendous amount of respect for ANet before HoT, and as such didn’t care about the money. I gave them what I thought they deserved because I support businesses and games I like.

I prefer playing core specs. I actually hate every single elite by design except the reaper, and the elite specs as a consequence introduced so much arbitrary power for no reason that the game is no longer fun and diverse like it was. The fact I see four builds in a majority of encounters in WvW which before had literally everything is more telling than the meta-crawlers and bad balance in sPvP due to the amulet system. HoT is broken, and it broke GW2.

That’s where the real complaint is. It’s not that F2P players can’t win. It’s that GW2 sPvP and WvW are no longer actually fun because diversity is dead in the water and the elite specs are by far and large conceptual failures that are poorly implemented and in many cases, poorly designed. It’s not about entitlement. Quite honestly, 70% of ANet’s revenue at the time of releasing HoT, both before and after constituted gem purchases. ANet makes more than double its box sales from people who want to fund the game they’re enjoying. And ANet’s sales figures right now are the lowest in company history. I stopped buying gems cold with HoT. And I know many other people, people who spent probably $100 a month on this game who also did.

HoT killed the fun elements of sPvP and WvW. The game is totally broken and anyone who simply doesn’t like their profession’s elite is just in a position where either they deal with it or leave.

Telling passionate players that they’re entitled because they’re complaining because they don’t get the same enjoyment from the game before the expansion is foolish and ridiculous.

F2P claims for balance have validity as well from a marketing perspective. Nobody cares about PvP in P2W games because it’s not competitive and something other spectators might get interested in getting involved in. GW2 right now isn’t worth it, both before and after paying for the game. It freezes trial players and makes them run for the hills by being horrible and standing so little chance, and keeps those who may have been interested dissuaded from playing because they’re forced into a specific build in most cases.

Ropechef.6192:

at one point the channeled skills would in fact lose target upon the entering of stealth etc.

it was adjusted some time ago so that channeled skills such as rapid fire, ghastly claws and other skills would in fact follow target to the channels completion regardless. As long as the channel was started before the target entered stealth.

What you are complaining about was actually implemented to do exactly what its doing intentionally, approximately 2 some odd years ago.

No. It has been this way since release.

The only thing different is that if you play with action camera, you can shoot channeled abilities without a target in the direction of your camera, and if the player has a good idea where the stealthed target is, may track them down without a target.

Otherwise, channeled abilities have always tracked stealth if casted before stealth application.

Lol wow.

How the hell do people possibly dream this could be balanced.

No, just no.

No more passives, thanks. IR is one too many, and there are too many as it is in gw2.

I’m going to have to disagree with a massive portion of this list for reasons that the proposed changes are insubstantial, not warranted, or do not actually address weak builds and would further set ahead the ones which are already dominant.

Even Shadow Shot needs more of a nerf than just a bump to 5 init.

Carighan.6758:

DeceiverX.8361:

I disagree. Roles reduce diversity in the end since there will be optima and people will not only get forced into builds but into builds within roles and vice versa. Typically speaking, diversity is a big boon for any given game, and was a major selling feature of this one.

And this is different than from what we had before how exactly?
There have been optimal builds to run just the same, only now some of these optimal builds happen to heal more than others. That’s literally it.

Diversity in MMORPGs is mostly a marketing thing, anyhow. Yes at lower levels of play you can “play however you want”, but you can do so just the same in a role-based game (what is inherently different about having 15 healing specs vs 15 damage specs, btw, ignoring that the healer will still have access to some damage specs anyhow?).
At higher levels of play, there is “doing the proven best thing” vs “intentionally gimping yourself”.

Joxer.6024:

Yea, I don’t do math. Sadly my only experiences/data is based on being told “Oh, your a condi druid, we want heals or Your a Chrono but don’t tank, bye bye”
Again as I stated, these are my experiences and hopefully don’t reflect on raids as a whole. From what I have read most have great luck with not only their class but raids as well.

This is nothing new, btw. The very same existed since release and in every other MMO with player customization.
It just so happens that now your optimal spec is a healing spec, or a boon sharing spec, instead of always a damage-centric spec.

But even before that, if you bring inferior-damage-spec over optimal-damage-spec, well, you’re gimping yourself and by extension the party/raid.

Oh and another big change is that now we have content where it remotely matters whether you intentionally kitten yourself. Didn’t exist in the past so even if you played the worst possible damage setup (Condi PvE Mesmer comes to mind) then as you could still just AA everything down, overall few people would care. Now, bosses can wipe you, and HoT as a whole is more difficult as it is built around the idea that we’ve been here for 3+ years.
In turn, this means that now it might at times matter whether your setup fits the class you’re playing.

But, make no mistake, this “class role” and “optimal spec for class” existed just the same. Just there was nothing to measure it on, much.

And ultimately the prospect of having all-damage and such is still a role. Whether or not it is enforced by the game is another story.

Reality is the requirements of having that damage or the environment in which as you said, it matters, ultimately reduces diversity more. Community-based ideological roles for the sole reason of speed clearing is a stark contrast to the requirements set on raiding groups.

While there’s always going to be optima, the better way to look into gameplay balance is to examine viability and ensure that everything is viable, and to study the mechanisms behind why something is optimal and try and combat the mechanism than blanket-nerf the culprit class or conversely blanket-buff everything else.

All adding roles does is constrain viability while doing nothing to affect the theoretical existence of optima. It is on this pretense I argue roles are a bad design feature; being barred from a party by playing out of the confines of the optima is not a flaw in game design associated with the roles or lack thereof but rather a flaw with the community likely caused by a flaw in another system elsewhere, such as what implicates the community to push for fast clear speeds (stale/unresponsive content, rewards scaling, etc.).

None of the meta roaming builds have “real” hard counters. That’s why they’re cheesy and popular to begin with.

They’re stupid, poorly-designed and/or poorly implemented build ideas. The ghost thief is poorly-designed because D/P + SA stealth stacking is poorly-designed.

Because profession balance devs don’t actually care about the state of WvW or really the state of the game in general aside from the health of PvE and raids.

If they ever once considered WvW balance we wouldn’t have dire/TB gear, durability runes, perplexity runes, boon-sharing, damage mitigation food, skill coefficients that effectively got double normal profession skills from HoT on the new weapons, massive passive defense increases… the list goes on.

It’ll become increasingly more unpleasant to play as time goes on. I’m hoping there’s some good competition in this department soon enough, frankly.

Rotteny.8743:

Invictorum.7643:

Correct me if Im wrong, but wasnt Ele experiencing this type of thing a while back, where their boon stacking made them absurd?

That would be the celestial d/d ele of old and there is a whole page in this thread about this comparison.

Or any boon-heavy build, really. Boons themselves if stacked excessively are massively overpowered, and get more overpowered the more raw stat points you have in gear, which increases more with HoT amulets and celestial gear.

Like ele, though, the druid/ranger’s core kit is weak. This puts an unnecessary dependency on boons to function, which shouldn’t be there, and thus makes anything not building into the OP sustain build totally fair and reasonable, but over-synergy with it becomes totally ridiculous.

Straegen.2938:

Choppy.4183:

Wait, what? Glassier druid builds are extremely powerful in the hands of a skilled player. To the point that I’ve pretty much resigned myself to accepting I have no counter for them as a vanilla warrior in small scale wvw (and I’m ok with that, I don’t think they should be nerfed).

Seriously, if you play druid and assumed going glassy is weak, you should have a second look at that. Staff/gs and staff/lb can be extremely effective if played right.

This. Pure Bunker Druid is a beginner face roll build that is pure effective cheese (what most of us fight). However, good players take those same bunker capabilities and wrap it in a power crit quickness build. They don’t bunker nearly as well but plenty for a good player. They can do very heavy spike with quickness (20k ish to medium armor in a few seconds). Get close and they just stealth/distance. Tough fight, lead enemies to a fight spot near water where they are basically unkillable.

I’ve never massively struggled against a power-built ranger or druid on a class I’ve been up to snuff playing. This includes glass cannon D/D thief and power reaper. I’ve been taken by surprise and sniped, and that’s fine, because not paying attention is my fault and I’m running glass. But any actual fight versus power and I’ve had no issues.

Close and even overall matches where each player wins and loses some? Absolutely. A guildmember of mine is an excellent ranger/druid, and I hover around 50% with him, a little more some days, a little less others.
But not in the history of the game in WvW have I struggled and continuously lost against a power/crit ranger or druid.

A good player on the bunker build, like Quickcry, I have no answer to except matching cheese designed to counter it, which shouldn’t be the only answer.

I disagree. Roles reduce diversity in the end since there will be optima and people will not only get forced into builds but into builds within roles and vice versa. Typically speaking, diversity is a big boon for any given game, and was a major selling feature of this one.

I think people are just satiated with the fact there’s something new to do for those who like to dungeon/raid in PvE. Given the launch population and demographic, I’d bet there would be more criticism about the move than praise, and I think a dungeon redesign/rework would have been seen in a more positive light than 10-man raids.

My own perceptions, though. I can’t speak for a majority since the nature of the subject is all subjective with next to no data supporting any claim’s merits.

Neither are correct.
25% SA 10% Dash 10% food.

Which really is .75 * .9 * .9 = .6075 or roughly 39% reduced damage.

tobascodagama.2961:

Realistically, given all the ways Thieves can buff Steal, there was never going to be a Better Steal for the Elite Spec. What Thieves didn’t have was a way to play effectively that doesn’t require constantly resetting fights with Stealth. DD is all about giving us that, and I think it’s been quite successful.

They could have gone in so many other more interesting directions, though. Compare the new mechanics behind the reaper to the Daredevil and it’s quite obvious that the reaper is better-designed by a huge margin.

To me, the Daredevil is the result of ANet either not having any ideas on what to do or simply not having put forth the time to make it well-designed.

OriOri.8724:

@Xyonon that might be true for Engies, but a tempest did a DPS test and they found that perma alacrity + quickness from a chrono was less of a boost to their damage than either Druid or Warrior buffs were.

That’s based on the mathematics of coefficients, cast times, and the likes, and how the party group is made and what skills are used. Quickness, for example, doesn’t affect the DPS on Meteor Shower.

apharma.3741:

ANet have dug themselves into kitten two fold.

1) If they nerf elite specs to a reasonable level as to not completely outclass core specs it makes a lot of current HoT content much much more difficult. Some breakbars in raids need a pretty heft CC commitment from classes as well as various support given from elite specs and the damage increase.

So just nerf raids right? Well it’s not that simple. Raids are at a good spot right now, the hardcore have had several months of pushing the limits on them and doing 5 man runs. The more casual or less skilled have managed to persevere enough to get kills and feel they have accomplished something. Nerfing raids will have an outcry from a lot of people because raids were meant to be hard however leaving them at this level while nerfing classes would be disastrous for a lot of parties. It would also further push groups to 1 kind of meta and that it where you’d probably have 1 chrono, 1 rev, 2 PSEA wars, 2 druids and 4 thieves. Thieves would be interchangeable with necros for condi management and eles on large target bosses and that’s it.

2) A lot of the current nerfs to balance elite specs were to core skills/traits. I’m sure you’ve realised this but I explain for others. When another elite spec comes along they either have to design it in a way where they don’t interact with those nerfed skills/traits or they will end up kind of useless where there’s no middle ground. There would also be issues where elite specs overlap where if they continue the current trend you will end up with one elite spec winning out and the other being garbage.

If they had instead addressed the elite spec and altered the problem at that level then there wouldn’t be a problem with elite specs being added on, but they didn’t.

It’s a two-fold process, though. They can afford to nerf raids and break bars to correlate nicely to any elite spec nerfs. The only reason thieves would become such an important aspect of raids is because they buffed thief DPS by over 30% to match the powercreep from HoT, since DH was out-damaging it prior solely on trap damage. The class was kick-on-join and since the devs pay attention to PvE, they made the easiest and laziest change they could in spite of the rest of the game by just buffing thief AA damage by 30 to 40%. I was and still am opposed to this change because it solved nothing and ultimately masked a real, definitive problem.

The simple matter is ANet doesn’t want to nerf the elite specs. They know at the end of the day that’s what sold the expansion. PvP and WvW losses attributed to it will either cause free players to leave or generate more expansion sales. Financially, ANet’s not too happy with the post-HoT outcome, so they’re going to try and monetize wherever they can. HoT content is widely not well-received, with elites being the expansion’s saving grace.

And that’s one of the fundamental flaws of the elite spec system: overlapping trait configurations or class roles without paying very strict attention to balance is inherently a bad idea. There will always be an optimum in something. Always. There was/is in the berserker meta, despite it not being necessary. It’s not that other things aren’t good, it’s just that they’re not necessarily the best, and that alone makes people freak out for whatever reason. No game will ever be perfectly balanced, and that’s a fact either people need to realize, or go back to playing mathematically unsolvable ones to the negative infinite magnitude, or random-victor ones Rock Paper Scissors. That said, there is a massive difference between perfect balance and the state of relative balance, often identifiable as effective yields within the scope of diverse play. Basically, the more different configurations which can achieve a set benchmark of performance within a certain range of each other, the better. GW2 fails pretty miserably in this area at most levels of play and most scenarios, and quite honestly many make-or-break factors in performance are coming from un-fun mechanics which need to be evaluated when considering profitability.

The sad fact that the profession balance team is the only factor which contributes to what we get in this area is still a truth which ANet has confirmed itself. It’s silly, because those in other departments will have much better ideas or even quantitative or qualitative data of the numbers behind diverse play and their effective yields due to their intrinsic familiarity with their own gameplay systems.

It’s not that bad thieves spam stealth.

It’s that bad thieves get carried by spamming stealth and doing the same FoTM cheese build that every other player does.

And that most other players, like those who spam stealth and get carried by spamming stealth, are effectively doing the same with whatever broken mechanic is in their respective classes or whatever easy-mode FoTM build is being used (See: bunker chronomancer last year).

All classes are equally guilty of having some really broken mechanic or build. That’s what defines how most people play in the PvP formats because there is an incentive to get free wins and direct dis-incentive to lose versus just not winning or gaining marginally less progress.

You might be saying that such a system is necessary for competitive play, and you’re right, it is. The problem is that more important for competitive play is the game be balanced, which GW2 is certainly not.

Swagger.1459:

The op plays thief so maybe he/she can learn something and improve instead of complaining about Druids and their mythical “7-8k auto” and “warriors that run away and reset fights”… This thread is about personal gameplay issues, not any Druid design issues…

The 7-8k auto thing is definitely a… demonstration of some sort of lack of understanding, however the OP’s plight of thief vs the sustain druid is fairly valid.
Does that mean it’s OP? No, because that claim is only from one profession/build perspective. That said, the number of ways to deal with the sustain druid build is very much build-dependent and are vastly outnumbered to the number of matchups which favor the druid.

In the context of WvW, this is probably the most difficult matchup for any given thief. There isn’t much of a L2P argument here. I’ll be glad to likely either win or come close to beating any power-built ranger/druid. I don’t care how good they are; in a few fights, if I need to get my bearings, I’ll start tightening that gap massively. The sustain build, however, I have no answer for, unless they just absolutely suck. Depending on builds, and assuming the druid’s rotations are upheld properly, the existing sustain druid is actually mathematically impossible for some thief builds to kill. It doesn’t matter how well the thief plays; it’s literally impossible for the killing blow to be performed in many cases. At best, in these cases it turns into a stalling game where neither kills each other.

And that’s a definite problem. Two people running around infinitely sustaining isn’t fun.

The ranger/druid at its core needs changes. As it is, it does suffer from a lot of pointless or unnecessary dependencies, the pet mechanic punishes more aggressive/synergy-based play styles, the profession lacks certain stats as a result of dependencies or simply lacks accessibility, and is susceptible to a lot of enemy mitigation and control while having comparably few tools to do so itself. The druid’s push to raw healing exacerbates the fact that the tools aren’t designed well to enable good performance and diversity.

That still doesn’t justify the current sustain druid build dominating small-play WvW.
Just because it’s not good at other things doesn’t mean it deserves to be overpowered in something else. That’s the same justification that thieves were trying to give absolutely broken dynamics of their profession years ago (and some still do) because of their lack of purpose in large-scale combat, which also still holds. Things like Mug critting were and still would be overpowered, and justifying that because “well the class is only good at small scale so it’s not a problem” is a ridiculous and border-line pathetic excuse for trying to justify not improving the game – and likely the rest of the class in the future – for other people (although this unfortunately never happened to the thief since nobody at ANet plays it or seemingly likes it).

I’ll mention now that until HoT I was a thief/ranger dual main (I will admit I did lean more towards thief). I posted a lot of suggestions on the ranger CDI, and almost all of them except the proposals about changing the dynamics of the pet were implemented. The ranger CDI got us halfway to where the profession needed to be, but HoT broke the entire game’s pre-existing balance. Rangers weren’t free bags before then. If you think they were, you’re a fool. They were capable; not strong, but capable, just like the thief, but have some intrinsically poor concepts laying behind them which should be the target and basis for class changes. Those changes can’t be made without accepting the fact that some facets of the class – like what fuels the sustain roaming druid (in my opinion, boons and bark skin) – need to be re-looked at and in all likelihood, nerfed or replaced.

Saying the build isn’t OP – it is – isn’t going to get anyone anywhere. Denying its strength won’t help the ranger/druid in the areas it actually needs it, since ANet solely balances for either what’s used in the meta or PvE. This is why it’s not a problem with the druid itself – the kit has its fair share of disadvantages when it comes to looking at some builds in comparison to core ranger – but the sustain build is factually out of hand, and something does need to be done.

Which is why I asked above – from those who in all honesty are more versed in the intricacies of ranger builds (I only play power on anything) – what kinds of changes should be made to fix the problem at hand?

KickzNGigglez.4958:

P.S. axe is trash

In PvE, sure. It doesn’t do a lot of sustained damage. In PvP environments? I think it’s a whole other story.

I’ve largely dropped staff for it because of the burst LF gain and the fact it chunks people for around 1/3 to 1/2 their max health and offers non-projectile ranged attacks which is huge in terms of all the projectile hate, which is pretty amazing.

A/F engaging with Spinal Shivers will deal massive damage in most cases and rip boons. Cast claws for another huge burst, which often procs Chill of Death dealing another huge burst and another round of boon stripping and chill.

6.38 damage coefficient output + 12s chill with a six-boonstrip (+1 more and a stacked cripple from feast) at range that can’t be reflected, all done in a matter of a few seconds is absolutely insane when used on the right targets.

I use it everywhere as a power reaper because I don’t give a kitten about the PvE meta.

Twilight(4) and Grasp(5) are probably the best weapon skills accessible to the necromancer. Their only downsides are their long cooldowns, and GS suffers overall from a fairly weak 1-3 due it its sluggishness, particularly on the third hit of the AA chain.

I rarely use Gravedigger(2); unless I’m desperate or I can guarantee it will land. Usually I save it to punish an enemy who commits to melee. Use 3 for LF gain when I need it and as it’s convenient, since it generates a nice burst of LF, and I run a shroud-heavy build.

Since I run SoS, I can hop in and out of shroud almost 50% more often than those who take soul marks and can maintain substantial landspeed. This enables some very potent CC-heavy skill combos like Grasp → Shroud mid-pull → Infusing Terror → Executioner’s Scythe → Soul Spiral → Fear from IT release →

If they don’t flee→ Shroud release → CttB → (maybe Gravedigger depending on stunbreak use/class) → Death Spiral/Twilight → 2-part AA’s → Shroud → Death’s Charge to catch up.

If they flee → Death’s Charge → RSAA maintaining pressure via boosted mobility from SoS until Grasp is ready again.

Mind you, those are more or less ideal combos should at the moment of PvP there be no reason not to keep following that skill path. Players can be unpredictable, and as such you need to adjust what you’re doing to respond to what they’re doing. You can’t CC-train a warrior running lots of stability or a guardian off cooldowns who runs RF and the likes.

I at one point for duels ran Spectral Grasp for even more CC-combo ridiculousness

Yup; it’s lazy, and does nothing except add cheesy powercreep to match that of what came from HoT.

The only well-executed Elite imho is the reaper. It fundamentally changes how necromancer plays, does it well, and doesn’t really add a lot of power over the core necro; it just changes where its power lies.

Chronomancer is almost there, but it feels more along the lines of mesmer with shield and wells than a new way of playing. It just added CS as an additional shatter, rather than changing how the class plays.

DH is different, but poorly-executed and just straight power-creep.

The rest, imho, are poorly done and executed, like the daredevil.

Rotteny.8743:

I belive he meant the cd on the thief traps. All of them have 30s or more of cd.

Then his math is way off. It’d be something closer to 10s of stealth every 30s – or 33% uptime at its worst ,since traited traps go down to a 24s CD.

I’d be hard-pressed to believe a dev is or has been interacting with Teef.

If one has, I’m pretty concerned with the way your guild sees engaging or reasonable gameplay mechanisms, and how the underpowered and the overpowered things things have not been addressed.

People are probably connecting because of the group lamentation of the nerfs and the overall state of the profession.

Jim Hunter.6821:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I still stand by the fact that the meta roaming Druid is OP. It takes a degree of skill to play but it is much the same as old school Cele Ele and many people agree. Almost anyone that doesn’t agree is a Druid main.

almost everyone that does agree are players that have 0 experience playing a druid.

I might main a druid but I play every class and I don’t even run the bunker build everyone is complaining about. I’m not defending it because a nerf would affect me in any way. I just understand how it works and I have been trying to share that knowledge with people who are clearly clueless (lol 8k staff auto).

Any proposals on how to shave down the effectiveness of this build without affecting much else? Anyone asking for nerfs to the core of the druid or ranger must not be aware of how the class functions without this build, but this build is certainly an issue when it comes to raw effectiveness.

Like PU condi mesmer, D/D condi daredevil/ghost trapper, and the cele bunker, the sustain BM/NM Druid is OP at one thing, but is so strong in that aspect that it isn’t fun or even particularly fair to play against, and in many people’s eyes, not even fun to play because of it.

So what’s the cut to be for how to properly bring the build into line with the rest of the game’s small-scale performance without affecting other builds?

UmbraNoctis.1907:

So backstab works against thief mechanics? Stealth attacks work against thief mechanics?

Yes, actually. The only build backstab/stealth attacks was actually an import part of was power D/D, which is so worthless with the ICD on stealth attacks and re-changed BV + massive HoT defensive power creep that it’s effectively no longer functional. Weapon skills and the AA chain on D/P and other weapons out-damage backstab, and Daredevil pretty much invalidates the defensive gains from stealth since it’s just an objectively-improved SA.

As far as the condi trapper cancer build, It’s primarily offhand pistol stacking stealth (typically D/P, surprise surprise), however the traps are nothing to sneeze at considering DA enables so much more trap use via the needle trap on heal. You end up in situations where traps are being pushed out every few seconds as a result, with the target never breaking stealth.

ANet will not nerf its precious stealth-stacking D/P builds, though, since they even decided to give Daredevil a leap finisher on dodge for whatever stupid reason they thought of.

WvW needs three rune nerfs or more preferably outright removals:
Perplexity’s passive confusion
Durability – everything about it
Trapper – No stealth.

Stealth and superspeed together are more or less what break everything. I see little reason for thief traps to deal damage since the point is to stealth -> trap CC someone -> punish on power builds. Trapper runes kind of break this and reward more players for just camping stealth. The super-speed advantage is more potent and logical for trappers, anyways, as triggering a trap should provide the caster a mobility advantage in some way in most cases.

Alexander.6250:

DeceiverX.8361:

You’re doing the equivalent of trying to make a berserker thief a healer and are saying it’s relatively weak when compared to a druid.

Condi thief isn’t going to get you optimal damage in PvE. If you’re playing for optimal damage in that environment, you need to optimize for it on the build-profession level rather than just how you want to deal your damage. There’s zero diversity in an optimal scheme, because it’s optimum, which is defined as “greatest degree attained or attainable under implied or specified conditions” and thus entails only one (via -est suffix) solution.

On the first thing: I’m just trying to make a condi thief do condi, so that’s totally not the same.

The whole point of this post is that the only way to play thief in PvE is to go non-condi. Other professions can choose between normal dmg, condi dmg or hybrid, and one of these is going to be better in certain situations. When it comes to thief there is just such a huge gap in damage basically reducing you to 1 choice.
I wouldn’t mind running a sub-optimal build, but there are limits.

I know in PvP/WvW it’s a totally different story. But I’m a PvE player, and I don’t like PvP balance issues holding builds back in unrelated content.

And about the numbers: Those are absolutely not ‘optimal dps’ numbers or anything, I just equipped similar gear on different professions and checked what they could do with it, to get a good comparison. (it’s also the sustained average dps from a 2min fight, so not burst dps)

If you’re only getting 4900 damage per second on average, you’re doing something wrong. Just on poison ticks alone with shortbow on a poison build I can get my thief to permanently maintain over 5k DPS.

There is only “one choice” for the thief in PvE (which means nothing since optimal builds are not a requirement to complete the content) because when it comes to DPS, it’s the best in the game because of how the class is designed to get all its power damage from scaling modifiers on otherwise low damage coefficients. Blame ANet for boosting dagger and staff AA coefficients by such massive amounts after HoT to make the thief have any purpose in PvE at all, since before the bumps, the class was literally useless in groups. This was stupid from both PvE and PvP perspectives, and shouldn’t have been done, but ANet doesn’t know how to balance things very well. Condi can’t see damage increases without substantial kit changes because it’d otherwise be massively overpowered in the competitive formats; conversely to you, I only play the competitive formats unless absolutely required otherwise, and I do not like the current totally non-sensical PvE balance getting in the way of what should be a very interesting and dynamic gameplay experience. Just because you want boosts for PvE if something isn’t performing so well doesn’t mean they’re justified in general.

Conditions shouldn’t ever be near-optimal damage either on theoretical principles alone – not until three offensive stats are required to get them to mirror power. There’s no reason why I can roll around on a condi thief with almost 25k hp and 3k armor and still 100-0 most players in a matter of seconds while never getting hit for damage to begin with.

Jana.6831:

Chaba.5410:

“instead of actually fixing the issues from SPvP, you guys took the lazy approach and just removed them from the game mode”

As far as I understand, since the sPvP and balance teams are two different teams, the only thing the sPvP team has control over is which sigils/runes/amulets are available. Removing that rune from sPvP wasn’t done by the balance team. I wouldn’t call the sPvP team lazy, but responsive.

That said, we need the balance team to look into the issue.

QFT

This is the truth of it, though, at least in this respect.

Balance team unfortunately has the reigns on everything that actually matters and for whatever reason is too afraid to go deleting game-breaking content because people will whine, despite the current content breaking the game and causing many to just silently leave. The sPvP and WvW teams have no control over the in-game content without trying to break the thick-headed-ness of the rest of the game.

LilBiM.3581:

I have been casually following this trend. First of all I wish to say that I agree with the OP for the following reasons:
1) Commander Gear + Commander Weapons + Boon Duration food + Durability Runes on ranger results in some ridiculous returns on investments for rangers. All of a sudden Zephyr speed is pushing out almost 6 seconds of Quickness, you AND your pet have 25 stacks of might, you have swiftness for 2mins, fury for 1min and a half, regen for 2mins and protection and resistance up practically every time you get bursted and for extreme lengths of time.

2) Staff AA – It is interesting how much damage you can do in a short period of time with a pet swap, 6 seconds of quickness, 25 stacks of might and fury + F2 pet skill, during this burst of yours this skill can not be reflected or destroyed since it is not a projectile. In-fact you have quickness for so long that even if your opponent spammed both dodges they’d still get creamed by 50% of your ‘aim-bot’ damage train. If they stealth it does not matter either since Staff AA is a channeled skill and will continue to cleave great chasms of HP off yourself for several AAs later.

3) Pets with 25 stacks of might, Fury and Swiftness and Regen are not only hard to kill if you’ve spent the last damage rotation creaming the first pet before the Ranger diligently swaps it out for the next pet but it also hits you hard if you don’t focus it down.

4) Ranger Stealth. It seems as though even if you manage to pierce the seemingly ludicrous protection up-time, weather the 25 stacks of might on both it and it’s pet and managed to carve 50% of a Ranger’s HP off they can either 1200 range away with Ancestral Grace into a smoke cloud from their pet or go Celestial Avatar and quickness walk away from you in a diligent direction. Of course if you take Greatsword on ranger you have another option for increasing the distance between you and the enemy, so add satisfying 1100 range on top of that and the scary thing is gone. But that’s not really necessary because of the next thing we’ll talk about…

5) Heal As One. 16s. 7000hp heal. That copies boons and distributes those nice boons you’ve been getting from all those shouts and those traits (Clarion Bond, Zephyr’s Speed, Resounding Timbre and Brutish Seals). Due to it’s low cool-down it’s always up and always ready to turn that modest 12 stacks of might into an Orrian Gorilla of 25 stacks of monstrosity.

So when are all done with it you end up sitting on a nice 3300 power (might + bloodlust stacks), 3300+ armor (ignoring boons), 50% crit chance, +180% crit damage. That’s only on yourself, not your pet. Both you and your pet have access to 25 stacks of might, stability (10 stacks at a time if you so desire), Fury, Regen, Swiftness, (6s on 15s cool-down) Quickness, Protection and Resistance… all by yourself… and all of which you can spread around freely like Santa Claus with Heal As One.

Any-one who thinks that because Ranger ’wasn’t good’ for ‘insert duration of years’ and therefore ‘it is now time to let Rangers have a free run’ is being completely daft to the reality of what this really represents. Not only is this over-powered but it is disrespectful to other players to imply that this is some-how OK. The fact of the matter remains that I have not talked about the passive healing granted by taking Druid and Natural Healing, the fact that you also have access to a massive condition cleanse (this build does not compromise anything to gain damage), nor have I made any comparisons to what was unacceptable for other classes but seems to completely pass through customs (with much heavier luggage mind you) every 4 months when it’s in the company of a Druid.

Second of all:
Let’s stop deflecting by bringing other classes into this discussion. They will get their own spot-light in a discussion labeled precisely for them, all in due time.

Thirdly:
Should we even need to talk about this thing in a group? Do we even need to at this stage?

In essence, what I said originally; the problem is boons. Any boon build is typically seen as pretty overpowered. Celestial ele had/has godawful base stats and traits to back them, but was OP solely because boon stacking as a gameplay mechanic is overpowered.

It’s the same reason scrappers are so strong. Unfortunately, when it comes to counterplay, the application mechanisms in the druid are the best in the game, reducing counterplay pretty massively.

Druid as a profession is whatever. Playing against a berserker or DPS built-druid is typically fair for all parties involved. This roaming sustain bunker thing is out of hand, and is out of hand only because it simply stacks more boons than any configuration that plays cohesively with a damage build.

Alexander.6250:

Once again people I’m talking about PvE builds, NOT WvW builds, NOT PvP builds. There is a huge difference in effectiveness.

And unfortunately saying the thief “underperforms” in PvE in the build concept that is objectively overpowered in the PvP formats and thus saying the profession when built in such a way is “weak” is going to get you nowhere.

You’re doing the equivalent of trying to make a berserker thief a healer and are saying it’s relatively weak when compared to a druid.

Condi thief isn’t going to get you optimal damage in PvE. If you’re playing for optimal damage in that environment, you need to optimize for it on the build-profession level rather than just how you want to deal your damage. There’s zero diversity in an optimal scheme, because it’s optimum, which is defined as “greatest degree attained or attainable under implied or specified conditions” and thus entails only one (via -est suffix) solution.

I’m not really sure what you’re playing for a build, but those numbers across the board are pretty abysmal. Condition thief can do way better than 4900 DPS on its own (I’ve pushed something like 12k when solo in the limited time I played one), and it scales better in groups by having a 30-poison + 20-torment 30-bleed dump via shared venoms, and caltrops which none of the other classes mentioned can boast, which is absolutely insane, considering this damage comes from utility skills alone.

In essence, you’re effectively playing wrong and not playing the right build while not mentioning what your content goals are aside from “PvE”, which could mean everything from hardcore speed clear raids to open world.

Conditions themselves are wildly overpowered to the point where most of WvW is considered a joke these days since in anything but the biggest of blobs it’s really the only competitive way to play outside of tank/sustain druid.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

2 words….permanent stealth

A lot of players don’t like that cheese build, and it doesn’t kill anyone that has half a brain. It’s fun to dink around with especially with a few friends but isn’t a good build and is easily counter able.

Oh shush, you know how much of an advantage SA gave you when we dueled :P

It’s a strong dueling trait line if played with camping stealth, which is thus dependent on abusing OH pistol, particularly through D/P. Otherwise, it has next to no overall purpose.

Daredevil took away its redeeming facets and Acro is now a tough competitor as a generic defensive line and has much more to synergy with Daredevil since it potentially enables double-dipping and stacking evasion into ridiculousness.

Without Daredevil, it’d still be a very usable trait line and one taken in most builds. Nothing’s really nerfed SA – if anything, the ICD buffed it relative to other lines since that extra 1s is huge – it’s just that the daredevil is so massively powercreeped and builds so easily into spamming evasion that the gains from SA are negligible.

I’m not really certain I can agree. Basing OH pistol’s utility based on Daredevil’s Bound is short-sighted.

When the next round of power creep comes to the thief in the form of the next elite specialization, what then? Will all X/P players, particularly S/P, find themselves at a loss since the new shiny will prevent them from gaining stealth access and thus be stuck with a not-as-viable kit? Then what? Ask for changes to make BP just innately give stealth? Then what of OH dagger? This is obviously a slippery slope.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Kageseigi.2150:

DeceiverX.8361:

All ranged attacks cannot shoot from behind the player casting them.

I just did a quick test with the Shortbow to be certain.

When standing still…
1, 3: Shoots where you are facing (without target) or rotates to face target, then shoots (with target).
2, 4, 5: Rotates to ground target, then shoots.

When moving…
1. Shoots where you are facing (without target) or does not do anything at all if facing away from the target (with target).
3. Shoots where you are facing (without target) or rotates to face target, then shoots (with target).
2, 4, 5: Shoots wherever you ground target without rotating… at any angle, actually.

So basically, the auto-attack is the only skill, at least in my experience, that you have to manually face the target (when moving) before it will activate. Sadly, it won’t even do a quick turn-around to shoot like Disabling Shot does :-(

All Ground target Aoe attacks can be placed in any direction, SB isn’t the only one weapon to do that, he was referring to the AA and number 3 since they are the only non Ground target Aoe skills

Correct. Couldn’t make this claim due to forum suspension.

Abilities which require a target on any ranged weapon will not land if used when not facing the enemy. The same is said for disabling shot’s projectile. The evade is a separate mechanic.

LetoII.3782:

Power mes takes brains
Condi mes takes a character slot

Brilliant!

Fixing the forum (sorry, 10m post inverval).

Power reaper is an amazing duelist and don’t let people fool you on that. It’s also only been buffed since it launched. Condi got nerfed, but it was expected since it was totally broken.

People need to get out of the mentality of pretending Soul Marks, Decimate Defenses, and Blighter’s Boon are mandatory traits for power, need to stop thinking they need to run all shouts for whatever reason, and need to realize the GS is a very powerful tool in the right hands when played well, and that Gravedigger is absolutely terrible in PvP environments and in most cases not worth using.

Speed of Shadows carries reaper in combat because you no longer get outrun, and it boosts flickering shroud for mobility, defense, or proc effects dramatically. Simply, a reaper running SoS gets 50% more accessibility in a given fight to casting shroud, which makes a huge difference in those moments of “I need it now.” DD is unnecessary with Marauder and Death Perception and CV buffs damage and durability massively to offset this, and GS 1/4/5 are some of the best skills in the game when used well since it enables so much CC comboing and chill procs for CV and relative zone safety to deny a committed enemy its damage. Onslaught removes the effective timing of pre/post-cast animations, which doubles might generation from CV, and in group play, can mean the difference between having and not having stability or chain fearing the while enemy team, constantly resetting projectile deflection/blinds/chasing, whirls, etc.

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

Azukas.1426:

No.

The way it works now is perfect, and I would focus on reverting the nerfs to your SB instead of this. Get Cluster Bomb’s damage back, and the duration back on poison field. This would make your SB more than just a method for mobility.

As for the D/D brigade….sorry but the current viable iteration of D/D is condi. That build is on the same skill level as the current meta DH builds. Yes I just said Dagger Dagger build is low skill.

The condi version certainly is skill-less. The people defending otherwise are typically very, very poor players.

Which is why I vouch to remove the condition application from DB, make it a proper evade/re-positioning tool, and put conditions on Dancing Dagger, instead, with normalized power damage. Then fix this stealth attack nonsense, make CnD more consistent, and nerf Shadow Shot’s power coefficient.

If D/D had a disengage or more raw mobility over D/P, we’d see more viability and diversity, for D/P then serves as a better raw gank set with some more utility while D/D would get better combat prowess to justify taking it.

The problem with dancing dagger for applying conditions is it just turns D/D into a ranged condition set which we already have. Further to that unlike spike damage which one can get via power , a person applying conditions via dancing dagger needs to survive long enough for those conditions to do enough damage to prevail. d/d has no real survival mechanism.

The P/D set at least offers benefit to the condition user in that from stealth one can use sneak attack for bleed stacking. There no such thing on the stealthed d/d set. p/d also has the port away with torment.

There simply no way any would take a condition build under your scenario usind d/d.

The fact remains that with the AA closed to meaningful condition damage either via the AA chain or sneak attack , there has to be substantial condition apps from the other attacks in the set. If this limited to dancing dagger then you recreate the same problem , just shifting it to another location while removing survival meaning the set becomes useless.

If there a shift of bleed away from DB than the only way the set can be made to work in a condition build is if the following occurs ion some combination.

1>More poison/bleed stacks added to the AA chain. This is up close and personal and no thief, no matter their armor can survive long using AA attacks so there has to be better payoff then 1 stack of poison in an AA chain.

2>A condition app coming off DB in addition to the evade such as a weakness or a slow. A pure evade not enough. Adding another condition type (non damage type) allows meaningful choice.

3>Substantial stacks coming off the dancing dagger of damaging conditions. One or two stacks will just not do it. INI runs out too fast if relying one one skill to apply the damage doubly more so under your “DB is just an evade” scenario where INI burned just to survive.

4>More incentive to use CnD in a condition build.

I do agree with this sentiment for the most part. Don’t get me wrong in thinking that moving a few stacks of bleeding to DD would resolve everything. Frankly, I think it’d be a good opportunity to allow for more general poison application on D/D as a set by having DD poison and simply act as a normal AoE, rather than bounce.

I’ll go through my more fully-detailed rework.

They should cut the power coefficient damage on dagger and staff AA by 15% and have each auto in the MH dagger chain apply 1 bleed for a few seconds. DT Should just be buffed to apply poison on every dagger AA. I know I normally stand for de-coupling skills and traits, but this is one of those things where if they just made D/x apply more conditions baseline, (particularly poison since it has the best synergy with D/x), it’d end up either being oppressive. CnD vuln stacks could be bumped to 5 with duration bumped to 15s as a loss to the dagger AA damage. Death Blossom gets reworked into a mobility-based evade (think Whirlwind-like in function), and Dancing Dagger turns into a non-bouncing fan of knives that inflicts cripple for 8s and one stack of poison, with its power coefficient upped by 50% to normalize the skill’s damage and effects for power and condition players.

D/D then gets much, much deadlier in its potential damage throughput to beat that of P/D if played well (again the risk of being melee), but also sees its skill floor increase heavily such that it’s no longer evading while dealing immense damage, quite like the existing power counterpart. It brings to the table a much more aggressive style of play oriented on chaining skills such as DB and CnD for big gains in mobility and damage mitigation while ensuing pressure, to either stick to a target or disengage while offering a degree of ranged pressure and further mobility-oriented play via synergy with soft CC on Dancing Dagger. CnD (applicable to D/D and P/D) becomes more worthwhile for condition players as well, since boosted vuln application would enable better condition damage per tick, offsetting the penalties of simply not attacking.

So while P/D gets slight bonuses as well through Dancing Dagger and CnD changing, it’s fundamentally different in function in the end. It depends almost entirely on stealth or comboing teleports into Shadow strike for damage, while D/D wouldn’t.

P/D would end up as a safer kiting kit, but would feature lower potential damage yields and the weaknesses of not having an evade or melee pressure/cleave in its kit while also further lacking the poison application of the dagger.

As mentioned, there’s very little reason to need it. Quite frankly, I see it as a good thing as it rewards players who are smart and play into the weakness of an individual player by cornering the thief into a location which they can’t simply just escape from. This is one of the distinctions between a mediocre or good opponent from a great one.

If only Daredevil carried this similar risk.

Azukas.1426:

No.

The way it works now is perfect, and I would focus on reverting the nerfs to your SB instead of this. Get Cluster Bomb’s damage back, and the duration back on poison field. This would make your SB more than just a method for mobility.

As for the D/D brigade….sorry but the current viable iteration of D/D is condi. That build is on the same skill level as the current meta DH builds. Yes I just said Dagger Dagger build is low skill.

The condi version certainly is skill-less. The people defending otherwise are typically very, very poor players.

Which is why I vouch to remove the condition application from DB, make it a proper evade/re-positioning tool, and put conditions on Dancing Dagger, instead, with normalized power damage. Then fix this stealth attack nonsense, make CnD more consistent, and nerf Shadow Shot’s power coefficient.

If D/D had a disengage or more raw mobility over D/P, we’d see more viability and diversity, for D/P then serves as a better raw gank set with some more utility while D/D would get better combat prowess to justify taking it.