I don’t recall any threads on the thief boards asking for buffs to BP’s casting animations or huge increases to AA damage, though. Frankly, most thieves just want to get meaningful hits in on non-dominant weapons or be able to sustain better in what was a bunker-heavy meta. The changes really don’t do anything to address these issues. I feel as though the changes to BV and the passive invuln in Acro were half-baked attempts to resolve this, although again, these implementations doesn’t solve as many problems as they needs to.
A lot of the changes seem completely arbitrary for PvP and seem mostly PvE/Raid-driven, with PvP as a backdrop excuse to blanket the blame for changing PvE metas.
Quickening Screech would be nice if the bird didn’t sit there for five seconds flying around doing figure-8’s while you try and convince the *&^%$ing to attack when you need it to.
d/p is weak tbh, d/d is way better… free access to stealth with… What more could u want?
[Laughing/Facepalm gif]
+1; proper gif response.
I’ve beaten an overwhelming majority of D/P players proclaiming skill when beating me while I play D/D by subsequently equipping an offhand pistol and three-shotting them with Shadow Shot when we fight again. And then again. And then again. No stealth, backstab, or heartseeker needed.
D/P is about as skill-less easy-mode as the class gets.
Shadow Shot is the most efficient skill in the game, the most reliable blind in the game, and offers huge damage on basically no cast time. Shadow Shot against a single-hit skill is always objectively better to use than Death Blossom. Black Powder also has niche defenses, and if you run P/P, the projectile finishers can permablind people. The nerf to BP needed to happen. It used to be border-line invuln when you positioned properly. I played a P/P healing power bunker build concept briefly and could out-blind a Hundred Blades the way it used to be. The skill is potent for its mobile/re-castable smoke field, anyways. Rejuv is amazing on literally any thief build using any amount of stealth. It’s free initiative and massive healing. There is no downside and frankly this and SE alone pretty much justify the entire SA line. Rejuv counters damage already taken and incoming condition ticks, and being in stealth helps mitigate future damage via not being targeted if you properly disengage. Evades are not retroactive fixes for incoming damage. Since DB also deals damage, it can’t be used for disengages and damage avoidance, either.
Again, we have two entirely different concepts at play here: SA is anti-sustained damage, Acro is anti-burst. Daredevil is both. Just like how CS is critical damage, DA isn’t. Daredevil is also both. Acrobatics is a new concept because of the active defense/re-positioning and evades in combat that GW1 lacked. Again, SA is sustained damage mitigation and recovery and Acrobatics is preventative anti-burst. We can’t compare the traits from GW1 to GW2 because the entire class is intended to be functionally different. ANet’s own words include making the thief different from GW1’s Assassin. We’re inspired to fit the archetype, but that is not in our core design philosophy.
No other traitline until DD modified dodges and evasion so heavily. I wouldn’t call it odd. I’d call it the recognition of why we have low base health pools and the initial understanding of the power behind dodge rolls and evasion. No other class is supposed to be as agile. But since DD does this as well, they gutted it for balance reasons since ANet was inept at coming up with a better concept. Old Acro + DD would be way overpowered.
Weakening Strike already exists in DA through Serpent’s Touch and Lotus Training. DA is the debilitating conditions line. Again, this is just DD being better versions of what we have now.
Comparing the benefits of Rejuv on D/P to Death Blossom on D/D doesn’t make sense. Rejuv offers sustained damage mitigation, damage recovery, and condition damage negation all while allowing for the setup or burst or unnoticeable re-positions and target breaking while Death Blossom is counter-burst via an evade and nothing else, and in the instance of a trap like Maw/area denial skills, actually hurts the thief more upon use. These are two completely different types of defense with two substantially different purposes. It is for this reason we have two offensive trait lines – DA and CS – and two defensive ones – SA and Acro – because the types of offensive and defensive strategies employed are substantially different.
SA works fine for x/D and is not at all unique or particularly conducive to any shortcomings of D/P. The problem with x/D is that x/D itself is strictly worse than D/P in regards to its stealth reliability, and since SA is stronger than Acro, (especially now with DD covering Acro and offering plenty of damage close to DA and CS), and stealth is a strong mechanic, it’s just intrinsically optimal to play D/P over all other weapons.
Yes, the thief lacks build diversity, but it’s not because the traits in SA are not expansive enough – it’s because the traits in CS and Acro are horrible and simply not as good, and the weapon skills on D/P are also objectively better than the rest, and D/P coincidentally offers very good synergy with both lines. As I mentioned above, if you want a different style of play, pick a different trait line or weapon set. S/D offers such engage potential; you can engage off of S/D and swap into whatever other weapon desired. If the other weapons and trait lines aren’t as appealing, the responsibility lies in buffing those under-performing weapons and trait lines. And you’re right; DD killed diversity due to ANet’s ineptness at coming up with a new idea. That said, Acro/SA was used in the past on more resilient builds. This proposal simply doesn’t fit within what SA is supposed to offer – sustained damage mitigation/sustained fight suppoty with an emphasis on stealth and deception – and due to the very aggressive nature of the concept and my aforementioned explanation as to why the ability does nothing unique for other weapons and potentially reduces build diversity, I would argue the concept belongs in an entirely new trait line/Elite specialization.
As far as shared venoms being baseline, it’d just be too strong to make baseline. Trust me there. The notion of Poisons and Venoms is more applicable to DA than SA, and is why I suggested it, as it would allow a venomshare build to use stealth for the investment of DA utilizing the support of SA. Picking trait lines should come with apparent drawbacks. Obviously then it misses out on Tr and DD combined, but this is reasonable for what a build is trying to accomplish if it is trying to fulfill a niche. I am still concerned it would be too strong, however, but that’s another topic.
They used to exist. It was just overwhelming because a build like CS/SA/Tr had huge amounts of initiative regeneration access to the point where it never really got low so long as it critted at a decent rate. The resource was almost non-existent in the hands of good players.
All I can see as being reasonable is bumping Kleptomaniac to baseline and reducing its base cooldown (and getting rid of the cooldown reduction on Sleight of Hand) for better sustained initiative use. Preparedness might be excessive and wouldn’t really help us for fights lasting much longer than a few seconds, and makes thieves think more about their approaches to a fight.
D/P is the set that can go by without SA the easiest.
Only because of Daredevil’s Bounding Dodge and Escapist’s Absolution. In the case where BD and EA aren’t used, I would disagree with this statement entirely on the basis that D/P has initiative management concerns for fights lasting much longer than a few seconds, or must use Rejuv to regain his initiative. The thing is, Shadow Shot can so easily offset this such that I do not think it is even necessary for the thief to use stealth or backstab, for with the same initiative cost, a D/P player can do more damage more reliably by doubling-up Shadow Shot and then using Steal for HT for free stealth to either disengage or backstab, pumping out substantially more damage in the same unit of time for what is still not much initiative.
Rejuv isn’t part of the D/P play style. It’s a cornerstone to SA as a whole because it’s one of the few actually good ( and I mean absolutely amazing) traits the line has. Yes, D/P has some initiative concerns, but in the scope of the incoming changes and the nature of Daredevil, it needs just as much initiative to gain stealth as D/D, except it can do so out of range, out of combat, and simply, it can always gain the stealth.
D/D isn’t an option unless you play conditions. CnD is so objectively bad in the current state of the game through invuln and blind spamming (not even including blocks because let’s just assume the thief can overcome a CnD via BV) that it’s not even worth the initiative to cast; better run Blinding Powder or Smoke Screen for the reliable stealth.
And crit strikes has use for anything not used for crits? Is Acrobatics useful for a stealth-based or crit style of play? CS/Acro/SA cover different bases and handle diversity through picking a line and then allow for customization tweaks within it. That’s the purpose of trait lines; they revolve around a common theme and style, and there are some different options within.
Should some of these options overlap? Certainly. But only to the extent of basic concepts, like curing a condition through different means, or enabling more damage or different types of utility. We already have a huge issue where Trickery and even DD are considered “mandatory” for basic functionality. The trait lines are this way because there is too much variety and too many objectively good things in these trait lines. DD and Trickery can be traited and built in many different ways with a very distinct style in each one. Almost all of them are high-performance and offer a lot of completeness to the thief. Putting strictly more styles into one trait line will not help the thief but ultimately cut diversity even more, or result in the same exact identity crisis we have now. Yes, we need some overlap, but simply adding better/more effects to trait lines way out of their element in style of play won’t help resolve the weapon identity or trait identity crises we have. If this occurs for all trait lines, then the ones with the best stacking potential will simply be selected, and D/P will pretty much remain the chosen set because its weapon skills are unanimously the best the thief has on a given set.
I can say now that as a D/D player, I would never take the proposed suggestion over Rejuv if I was intending to play so aggressively. I’d instead just run Rejuv and play D/P because it would be objectively superior. D/P, and SA as a whole have synergy together due to capitalizing on high stealth uptime. D/D is much more aggressive in nature and focuses on bursts of stealth for short durations while in melee combat. If I want to be aggressive, I’m going to go in with a bang or pick a trait line concept that rewards aggressive play – like Crit Strikes or DA – rather than bunker stealth as per what SA pushes for with intermittent periods of non-stealth. Teleporting follow-up is better on a short cooldown for D/P because it could BP + leap = (3s) → Leash-Backstab for free → disengage BP → leap (3s) and do it again without ever needing to use initiative for Shadow Shot, whereas to gain stealth on D/D, you’d need to sustain for that re-stealth or disengage and sit around doing nothing for several seconds waiting on a free gap close. Plus, then if the target does teleport after the free leash, D/D gets screwed and D/P can just Shadow Shot to double-up on closing the gap. Actually, I’d argue this buffs D/P even more than D/D or any variant, because it could just universally double-up on gap-closing to a point where it’d be next to impossible to escape D/P, making it offensively and defensively superior to D/D.
Passive VA is too strong. The build is already very scary in the right hands for fight-based builds rather than point-sustain ones (you see this in WvW a ton and saw it in courtyard in the past). Again, AOE sharing with attached sustain and sustain from leeching venoms is just too much from how safe the build would be and how much damage it would contribute. Maybe if they made the venoms apply damage based on the condition damage of the person applied as it used to be, but this really shuts down condi venoms hard, which I think is a more fun and interesting builds to play as and against. Passive stealth-sharing-sustain-DPS out of one trait line seems like too much, which is why I raised the concern about it above. The split to DA is to make people commit for such a build, but my concern about its strength and safety of play still stands. Particularly since BV is being made to make the next incoming attacks unblockable.
I’m not sure if we can proclaim differences just yet.
sPvP is moving glassier which is amazing for mesmers as a whole. Squishier targets = shatter is better overall = mesmer does better against more classes. If the thief counters the mesmer, it’s fine, so long as the mesmer can do well for itself. The DH aggressively counters the thief (though I am a bit worried about BV changes potentially countering DH a little bit too much due to their low health pool and dependency on Aegis), and the signet necro countered the d/d celestial ele. I think it’s safe to say signet necro and DH are not blatantly overpowered as much as say the current tank mesmer and d/d celestial ele. If the thief counters the mesmer in a similar fashion, we’ll see some tweaking into the future to maybe level the playing field a little, but overall, the concept of counters is fair so long as the class being countered has a definitive place and reasonable level of power.
The mesmer also has gotten buffed in its core traits substantially since the period where thief did aggressively counter the mesmer, and the Chronomancer has lots of nice tools to help out with this as well in the hands of a good player. Self-shatter is huge; even if the thief is stealthed and you can’t generate substantial clones or target and shatter him 100-0, baseline self-shatter allows a mesmer to slip in for a few thousand damage, and overall trait and weapon improvements since might allow the mesmer a much better fighting chance than before. The thief really hasn’t been buffed in its core since, either, so it’s not like the bonuses are trading off of each other.
We’ll have to see what else comes in the notes. I don’t think it’s really going to be that bad or as bad as people are freaking out about. The thief is getting a big boost (imho the damage increases are overkill as to what they really needed to be, and the problems with the thief lie in much different places than where they are addressing them). It’ll definitely be a different game, but I don’t think it’s fair to proclaim the mesmer is just going to be made useless as a consequence. It’s too early for that from the changes we know about, and the meta hasn’t gotten time to adjust.
In wvw I believe you require SA? I don’t wvw much on Thief, I did on Mesmer because one shots.
Nah. WvW you can honestly get away with almost anything. There’s no real meta aside from GvG-style fights, and if you know what you’re getting into, you can predict how to act.
I still roam, periph, and front-line zergs playing DA/CS/Tr signets on D/D + S/D. I ran an Acro/Tr/DD P/P build and a SA/CS/DD staff concept recently on a separate thief and also got fair results depending on matchup. Obviously my operating skill on these concepts wasn’t peak, either, as I’ve been playing the same D/D signet build concept since release.
Shadow Arts is more than just stealth, they can add traits that takes advantage of shadow step. D/P’s advantage over other melee weapon set is its ability to stick to the target. What if we get a trait that grants shadow step on our attacks every 3s?
I’m going to ignore the balance concern with 3s teleports because it’s very, very, very overpowered. What makes D/P strong is Shadow Shot, and basically giving out one for free so rapidly is a huge balance concern.
Numbers are tweakable.
Thing is, this would just still be used by D/P, and still make D/P even better than it is now, on the principle is basically saves D/P four initiative to engage for a backstab. Other weapon sets would still require additional setup, despite the free teleport being “nice”.
But you have to look at what D/P has to sacrifice to get this. D/P will have to give S.Rejuv for this…which I don’t believe will be a good tradeoff. Thus as I’ve mentioned, this trait will be appealing to non-stealth builds.
The only way to fix other weapons is through the other weapons themselves. No adjustments to traits, unless awkwardly specific, would do anything, in which case, those traits are either front-loaded and accelerate one set too much, or are strictly worse, making the set even worse than it was before due to stacking extra dependencies.
“Fixing” the weapon skills will not create diversity. SA will always be a stealth trait line unless they stop making it so.
SA is meant for stealthy play almost exclusively. Don’t like/use stealth? Don’t play SA.
The diversity goal is tossed out the window and the 3 traits I listed above will always be picked no matter what. Why pick Venom Aura if SA is stealth exclusive? Why pick “Stealth Survivor” over S. Rejuv? Why pick Leeching venom over Shadow Protector?
Shadow Arts should not be stealth exclusive. It should give traits for both stealth and non-stealth builds. As of right now, the only non-stealth build going SA is venom share — which is out of place since venom has no correlation with Shadow Arts…it is more of a Deadly Arts than Shadow Arts. Shadow Art should support both stealth and shadowstep for non-stealth.
Despite D/P sacrificing Rejuv, so does every other thief using the ability. D/P already has the best synergy with the SA line as a whole. Okay, so maybe this trait can let D/D hard engage, but it still has stealth access reliability problems which D/P doesn’t, and D/P’s weapon set abilities are innately still better while not in stealth, which is what really matters if playing a stealth-based build, unless you’re never actually leaving stealth to begin with.
SA will only be “required” (it isn’t so much anymore with DD) so long as D/P is the best weapon set and trait lines like CS and Acro are bad, as well as if the concepts behind the styles of play behind sheer +1 against a lot of pressure-based builds are hard-countered aggressively. DA/Tr/DD and DA/SA/Tr are considered the best because Trickery is a required trait line that even builds using CS and Acro need, DD is just power-creep on every trait line and offers similar utility capacity to SA except with more evasion and damage, and DA provides a lot of much-needed damage and control to compensate and round-off the other lines. Putting more power in SA and more dependency here will not resolve build diversity on a greater level – all it does is let the same trait lines function slightly differently, and frankly, the meta will evolve to favor one of these builds in the end, anyways, leaving not only other trait lines, but traits within those lines as being unnecessary, leading to the same potential diversity we basically have now, except on the same weapons and trait lines.
I would be okay with changing DA to include poison and venom builds, but I fear it might make the trait line too strong. I think ANet’s balance ideology here was to offset venomshare with stealth, because team-wide venom application scaling with the thief’s condition damage where the thief never needs to engage in combat/be seen is kind of broken as a concept.
You can’t kill anything right now because right now everything is a tank. It’s the reason the thief absolutely sucks in the current meta – it has no build alternatives to dealing high damage, so it subsequently dies to pretty much everything because nothing else dies.
With changes to amulet stats, and a squishier PvP format in general after the incoming changes, going full-shatter will be much more rewarding. Don’t believe me? Play WvW, where offensive stats actually mean something (which is what they’re trying to make sPvP reflect better). A mesmer can pretty much burst down anything except for a sentinel war during Rampage. Mind Wrack regularly hits over 5-6k per clone against squishier targets.
A lot of sPvP mesmers are singing doom and gloom over the nerfs without realizing that the entire format is going to be moving to targets with less sustain and innate defense. This will likely buff shatter mesmer substantially when people actually start dying. Yes, if you just shatter willy-nilly, it will probably get blocked or invuln’ed. Yes, I also think there are too many block and invuln effects in the game right now. That said, overcoming that hurdle is important, and the mesmer does offer a lot of potential point control and team mobility that will be absolutely essential to the changing way sPvP will be played.
The big issue is that currently steal gets huge cooldown reduction from the combination of Trickery passive CDR and Sleight of Hand’s 20%. Without SoH, the cooldown is over 25s. Trickery still needs to be made appealing, and I think a 20% reduction to steal is pretty just. A lot of other classes have very similar sacrifices/benefits out of the “profession” line, and the overall loss is 5s or 20%. A 32% reduction is much more substantial than most others’, and by making thieves sustain in combat better innately with initiative, the Trickery line still has its initiative-handy aspects and very desirable utility, but doesn’t pigeon-hole all builds into running it into what are benefits that are simply way too good to live without.
Shadow Arts is more than just stealth, they can add traits that takes advantage of shadow step. D/P’s advantage over other melee weapon set is its ability to stick to the target. What if we get a trait that grants shadow step on our attacks every 3s?
I’m going to ignore the balance concern with 3s teleports because it’s very, very, very overpowered. What makes D/P strong is Shadow Shot, and basically giving out one for free so rapidly is a huge balance concern.
Thing is, this would just still be used by D/P, and still make D/P even better than it is now, on the principle is basically saves D/P four initiative to engage for a backstab. Other weapon sets would still require additional setup, despite the free teleport being “nice”.
The only way to fix other weapons is through the other weapons themselves. No adjustments to traits, unless awkwardly specific, would do anything, in which case, those traits are either front-loaded and accelerate one set too much, or are strictly worse, making the set even worse than it was before due to stacking extra dependencies.
SA is meant for stealthy play almost exclusively. Don’t like/use stealth? Don’t play SA. It really is that easy, and if other styles of play aren’t considered or aren’t as good, then other trait lines for those styles (CS/Acro) need adjustments accordingly, rather than just making SA more generic, as then sub-builds within SA can be identified as superior and balancing just becomes even more difficult and the trait line just becomes even more of a dependency than it already is.
I don’t know if I agree with preparedness as baseline. If I had to change trickery, I’d reduce the base cooldown on steal to about 25 seconds and remove the cooldown reduction on Sleight of Hand, with the line when traited resulting in a 20s Cooldown.
I’d instead also put Kleptomaniac as baseline. This gives the thief better sustained combat potential with initiative if waiting to use steal, rather than using it almost entirely as an engage.
I’d then change Unrelenting Strikes in CS to give Fury on steal instead of the 90% health condition. It doesn’t really help CS’s early pressure and pushes AA damage too much and doesn’t really make sense with Ferocious Strikes. I’d also have HK remove a condition upon being Revealed to make it compete with the benefits of NQ and IP.
This way, CS can maintain the fury on engage it absolutely needs for bursting reliably, pushing out dependencies on ToTC and not needing Trickster, EA, or SE for a cleanse at the cost of a little damage but with bonus reliability, and all trait lines can end up sustaining better on initiative in the long run depending on how they choose to use Steal rather than simply just being innately stronger at burst/when on full initiative.
I would argue that Critical Strikes in a worse position than SA. That said, your suggestions are pretty sound and much more level-headed than what most people are proposing for SA to give.
The tooltips showed in the stream were reverse-calculated and coefficients were around 30% higher than prior. Dagger also offers worse AA DPS than the sword at the moment, so it makes sense they would buff it accordingly for PvE players.
@DeceiverX, Excellent post, very level headed.
I do my best. Unlike a bulk majority of the people I find playing the PvP formats in this game, I strive for wanting balanced and interesting gameplay rather than exploitive cheese demanding for more power because it’s not optimal at everything for the sake of bolstering a win rate and proclaiming “skill”.
I’m just gonna say now, D/P meta Shadow Shot (the strongest and most weapon-set-defining skill leading to the success of D/P) is already unblockable. BV on Shadow Shot already has the exact same potency and interruption potential for most thieves playing sPvP/those abiding to the D/P meta.
In regards to high-skill play, the only changes we should really see for BV are letting the thief get more damage in. This is scary not for interrupts but for reliability on say, Vault, which would then become an AOE unblockable nuke interrupt + gap close + evade when diving a team fight.
The thief’s interruption capabilities don’t really change much because the cast time on BV is about the same as most abilities’ cast times, if not longer. In order to get a meaningful “interrupt” on BV, the channel/cast needs to be > 1s + the reaction time needed for the thief to realize to cast BV + the duration of the necessary action and reaction of the thief player to close the gap.
Basically, you only need to be careful when a thief already has BV pre-casted. In which case, if you’re not getting interrupted, he’s not damaging you or really doing anything, since all thief abilities except for the bleed on dodge from Uncatchable and the confusion on Bewildering Ambush deal damage and thus will proc BV. If he’s damaging you, then he’s already lost the benefits to BV and you can do whatever channel/cast you feel while not taking the interrupt from BV.
I think Guardians will face huge issues regarding the changes more than the mesmer. Distortion and Blur are invuln effects and BV/unblockable skills subsequently do not penetrate invulns, and the charges still get depleted, plus the mesmer has a lot of disengage, and clones bodyblocking will also take charges. Any cleaving effects from the damage will also proc target-by-target with some tiebreaker conditions and not all simultaneously. Since guards rely so heavily on Aegis, have limited/poor disengage, and have a low-tier health pool, unblockable damage and CC in the form of backstab and the likes is much more potent to them. That said, DH directly hard-counters everything about the thief right now, so we’ll see if things get too out of hand.
As mesmers, I’d be worrying more about the 30% increase in damage per hit the MH dagger is getting due to PvE coefficients being sub-par and to keep MH dagger DPS competitive with the reworked sword. Clones are going to be very difficult to maintain with such big numbers.
As primarily a thief main (though I play D/D over D/P), I am worried about these changes. They’re not really what the thief needed (which was consistency across its weapon sets and some trait and utility changes to make its builds not be a massive cluster of “you need this or you will lose to anything”) and some slight tweaks (the class lacks meaningful utility in any sense of the word, so damage is about the only place with room for improvement on the current design core thief and Daredevil), and it might swing the balance of the game too heavily in favor of the thief in general, while not really fixing any fundamental issues the class is facing.
It’s definitely too soon to proclaim that the mesmer is now “food for thieves” – we don’t know the scope of the changes yet – and we also don’t know if this is okay. Changing away from the bunker meta puts a lot of power in the hands of the mesmer when fighting against most other classes. Go to smaller-scale WvW where the format features much higher offensive stats per unit of defense versus what is entailed in sPvP (DPS gear does astronomically more damage in WvW than in PvP, and defenses for tanks are similar), and the format rewards and puts emphasis on Chronomancers and mesmers, because they shut down a lot of other builds; they can burst harder than any other spec and offer a lot of team mobility and control of a fight, which depending on target prioritization, can swing the success of a fight massively. Since sPvP is taking a turn for offensive stats and removing pretty much the entire concept of the pure bunker tank, mesmers/chronomancers may potentially have a dramatic presence in high-skill groups for point control and counter-burst. Yes, the mesmer might end up being countered heavily by the thief, but so was D/D celestial ele by signet necromancer. I think we can all agree D/D celestial ele was definitively overly-strong, and that Signet necro wasn’t really a universally-amazing build. But signet necro definitely served its purpose and served it well. Obviously, nobody wants the mesmer to be OP, but if the thief counters the mesmer, and the mesmer can do well for itself in general, I’m not sure there’s a lot of room to complain. As long as things counter each other to a degree of fair limitations in the end (as DH and Scrapper aggressively counter the thief at the moment), we might be ultimately better off, and performances of each class can be rounded accordingly into the future.
I don’t want to be OP. Frankly, nobody should want to be OP in a game meant to be competitive and fun. Yes, I am concerned for the balance decisions being made by potential over-buffs to the thief in the wrong areas, but we’ll need to see how the game shifts in both its style of play and class composition to really make declarations about whether or not some classes can still be useful or if counters are too heavy-handed between classes.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
I’m more scared than anything for dagger getting a 30% buff to its DPH. D/P is already very strong for burst and relies heavily on the AA chain to deal its damage post-backstab, and our DPH on dagger is already pretty strong. What I fear is they’ll nerf skills and traits to compensate for overtuned damage coefficients. Frankly, I would argue with the 30% speed bonus, sword autos need to be toned down around 10%, staff needs better damage distribution, and dagger mainhand needs minimal love with most of the emphasis on buffs in regards to sheer damage bumps being put into offhand dagger.
Disappointing and unnecessary buff that further pushes us into D/P and rather skill-less play. The AA chain already hits harder than most other classes. I don’t understand why this was done.
Ok, here’s the thing, if the wiki values are right, staff autos run at 1.17 mult/sec, sword at 1.15, and dagger at 1.12ish.
For reference, warrior’s axe auto runs at 1.38, ele’s lightning dagger auto at 1.32, and necro dagger at 1.33. The rough damage increase mention of 30% for sword puts it at 1.495 mult/second. Keeping them at the same ratios requires staff to be somewhere at 1.52 and daggers at 1.46. If staff isn’t increased, it would quickly fall behind in both sustained damage and utility.
Vault spam in particular is what causes staff to be so much better. D/D was used as the PvE set despite sword’s better AA damage on the basis that Backstab and Heartseeker increased the damage enough to vastly push out sword. Since Vault is so cheap and fairly fast to cast, I don’t think sword will end up beating the damage of staff in PvE, and certainly not the burst in PvP environments.
make the most reliable damage application on a melee set a ranged skill
Which is why I said to put DT to 100% on Autos and buff the poison duration. The most reliable and highest damage output shifts from Death Blossom to the AA chain. The bonus to conditions becomes extra.
Lotus training didn’t happen by accident. It was purpose built to synergize with deathblossom because being able to play all in defense while applying moderate condition pressure is what makes that build unique amongst its peers
Except that this isn’t really true. Bounding Dodge does more damage than Cloak and Dagger and also applies pressure while dodging and being evasive. Pulmonary Impact also does the same in that it’s delayed burst on interruption allowing the Daredevil building power to deal damage during its evasion and disengage. Lotus Training is just there to support condition-oriented play better in an offensive manner stylized to what the Daredevil concept is: spamming evades. Yes, it offers nice synergy, but that doesn’t mean this was the sole intention of the design. I see no reason why this dodge would be any less useful on P/D than D/D.
Having the bleeds on dancing dagger doesn’t make it more useful.
50% more damage on a given hit and more reliable and normalized casting damage, different AoE coverage, and better AoE condition coverage all sound like it makes the skill more useful. I seriously don’t think Dancing Dagger offers much on its own right now. This improves consistency and gives the thief within the confines of its melee set the ability to gain some kind of ranged skill that can actually do something other than apply pathetic damage, no gap close potential, no reset potential, while applying basically the worst finisher type in the game.
What [D/D] lacks is compelling and useful reasons to hit the other buttons. not requirements to hit other buttons.
And that’s the thing: The skills by design are really not useful for power builds, and Death Blossom is pretty much always a superior action on condition builds. No numbers tweaking would properly fix this without just shuffling the “well now it’s OP” or “well now it’s pointless to use” – referring to both skills and builds – statements around.
[Camera and targeting]
This is just part of what is required of skilled gameplay. I proposed point-and-click for targeting on the stark contrast that it is easier for people to use in terms of key angles for positioning. Personally, I would prefer it to always go straight or towards a target selected like DB, but I know some people may dislike this. The “attack while moving” thing is kept to keep it in line within what a good gap close offers without breaking the skill. Shadow Shot’s damage is cancel-able mid-cast for just the teleport to take effect, but no damage. I don’t want DB to allow stealthed users to get huge engage + evasion + a bulk sum of damage on impact, and nor do I really want them getting revealed too often because of it. Only when they fire the skill into a group of people while stealthed, because that’s just poor play, and not really now D/D should act; leave teleporting stealth engages to D/P, and give D/D some better escape and non-stealth engages.
That’s literally why we play the build because being evasive,not stealthy, and killing through pressure rather than spikes is fun.
And the changes I proposed continue to cater to that style. Is that not the point of condition builds? Apply pressure and maintain mitigation? There’s a reason the core condition stat setups all featured a defense stat and why it only initially had one damaging stat, but has semi-synergy with precision. The big issue I have is being able to deal damage while not being able to take any. People would freak out if mesmers got massive blue uptime increases. It’s basically the same thing. I also prefer evasive builds and frankly, I hate stealth. I play full-front-loaded burst and S/D as my alternate weapon; the instant I am stealthed, I am leaving stealth to get in my stealth attack, and move on. Then I sustain on S/D, because all sustaining options on D/D are horrible. I’m not competitive sPvP’er (I am obligated to play shortbow over S/D when I do, which is IMHO a boring set due to what is largely 3spam to stay on point if necessary or just fleeing the scene with 5spam). I’ve never run a defensive trait until Withdraw was made a Trick and Trickster got a condition cleanse, because I prefer active play rather than camping stealth waiting for an opportunity and passively sustaining and licking my wounds.
We don’t need to move the bleeds off. We don’t need to make deathblossom objectively worse
Except that’s the cornerstone to my argument; the skill is very strong. The design change doesn’t make the trait worse; it changes it. If they removed LS from S/D, we’d see a LOT more people playing S/D. It used to not have a second part. It used to evade while dealing damage, and dealt less damage. It was deliberately nerfed and put into two separate skills because the evasion was simply too much. It was nerfed because it was dealing damage while not taking any. It was trivial to play and not fun to play against. It even had a higher initiative cost This entire concept of dealing damage and evading for cheap initiative is nothing new, and frankly, has an extended history with players being upset over the fact that the concept doesn’t feel justified. I understand you might think it’s fun, but a massive portion of players do not think the concept is fun at all.
We’re not seeing competitive use of the build right now in PvP environments because as it stands, the Mesmer does the same thing, except with invulns (strictly better) while having a higher health pool and better group support. In PvE/raids, the DPS is not competitive with pure power, and even pure power Thief has completely been set aside from raid content, featuring instead the Revenant, since it offers better DPS in all forms, and objectively better group utility. D/D has been ditched in all other instances for the staff, because it is now the optimal DPS weapon. Hybrid approaches are dead last, due to conflicting interests within the Deadly Arts trait line between Executioner (what made the thief ranked highly in the past for DPS to begin with) and Potent Poison, as well as DA giving more synergy to power builds for PvE DPS via RT, which if used in a hybrid, scales exponentially less than a power build when taking into account damage modifiers.
D/D will likely never be optimal in group environments again so long as D/P and staff keep getting buffed and D/D does not see substantial changes. Simply, if you’re not running huge amounts of burning or poison, condition damage options in PvE will be sub-par, too. In PvP environments, the set lacks meaningful utility for power. In sPvP the class itself isn’t durable enough or doesn’t deal enough damage to remove a bunker from play like other bunkers can while not providing group support, or carries risk of CC-locking from AOE effects to become the solo-mid bunker (we’ll see what becomes of the upcoming changes, however), and in WvW, the condi build over-performs for its ease-of-use. It still lacks meaningful utility, though. Just one ability is carrying the set and hindering its future development. We saw the same thing with the changes to stealth and the implementation of Revealed, too, due to the massive balance problem that was once Cloak and Dagger spam. I certainly remember it. Bursting a foe with infinite stealth uptime was totally absurd.
What you’re proposing is a direct nerf to initiative utility, and a massive shift in the playstyle of the build.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean here. As in, it will cost more initiative to get the same result? Again, this is why I stress the importance of the changes to DT to push the AA condition damage into being something really menacing. Pushing the damage to the AA also leads you to getting back more endurance for synergy with Lotus Training. You still have your evasion on the reworked Death Blossom. You just need to create an opening now to deal objectively better potential damage with an increased reliability. We’ve agreed the weapon set is much more aggressive-oriented than D/P. Condi players should be taking the same amount of risk power players are to do so to stack damage, then, and should be rewarded more for taking those risks. This needs to happen because these two build options carry the same skills. Unless you have some other suggestion to change Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger to remove the simultaneous damage + utility on conditions and bolster the utility options for power builds to be comparable in core performance measures to D/P, these types of changes are necessary to accelerate D/D as a weapon set into becoming more useful overall.
The playstyle of the build, as a condition player, is pretty much just use 3 or a dodge roll, whatever is available, when a dodge is needed (and in many instances, not even this kind of decision-making is necessary). The damage is free. Any such build concept in my humble opinion deserves a playstyle change – actually, that’s a large reason why I made my proposal the way I did – to remove this style of play that many argue is not fun to play against, which has resulted in the nerfs of many similar concepts and builds over the years, and has had many people as a consequence be very happy with the conceptual shift, but left many devastated by overnerfing additional associated concepts or values as well. We’re in a multiplayer game. We need to make sure that our opponents are also having fun, just as much as we are, otherwise there are no opponents to be had.
They just take a fun spec and make it an initiative management nightmare while replacing what made it fun with something that displays an even less coherant identity than it already has.
I already discussed the notion of “fun” above. The identity of D/D condi exactly is what? All I gather is border-line braindead 3spam, having played it, played against it, and having watched people play it. Kind of like the old Infusion of Shadows allowing for players to press 2 for infinite casts so long as there was a smoke field, or more generally, MH dagger’s association with spamming heartseeker very skill-lessly. Which, by the way, was also nerfed in its damage thresholds because it was also agreed upon bu the community that a “one-button-build” was not fun to play, play against, unimaginative, and definitely too strong for how easy it was. And yet, we still have HS spammers who still successfully give MH dagger a bad name.
We need to make power D/D better. We need to give condi D/D more compelling reasons to hit the other buttons.
And this is what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to buff condi D/D’s potential damage while reducing the spam, and I’m trying to buff power D/D’s utility. If we can’t change skills 3 and 4 because of extremely niche uses, and buffs to CnD are out the window for balance concerns, we’re left in a deadlock. Either the kit gets changed, or it never improves conceptually as long as people want to play either build. The initiative mechanic allows for spammy play. Making the thief decide on what the optimal move is at a given moment is how to offset this. This is the opportunism I mentioned as my perception of class ideology above. Otherwise the decisions are trivialized and the other skills become apparent wastes of valuable initiative.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
Further, if they remove a lot of defensive amulets, I could potentially see the thief becoming the next bunker with something like D/D Sentinel in durability runes running Acro + Trickery + DD due to the massive evasion D/D offers right now with buffed death blossom. Many chained evades on D/D + endurance regen on dagger auto + Daredevil’s spammable dodges and big heals, good condition cleansing (1x per second like Diamond Skin ele, except all the time), permanent vigor, and tons of initiative regeneration, full block on Bandit’s defense, and then a 2s invuln when things get bad would potentially make the class overly-difficult to kill without outnumbering it.
That plan will not go well, considering they are removing the Sentinel amulet and durability runes. All that while at the same time nerfing the sigil of energy to give a paltry amount of vigor :p
Where did they announce/confirm all of this? o.o
As a side note, I am glad people are starting to finally realize just how overpowered Shadow Shot is.
Jana and I rarely agree, but I think D/P’s strength lies almost solely with this ability. I’ve won a lot of fights playing D/P when D/P players talk trash about me losing a fight while playing D/D. I’ve never had to use anything but Shadow Shot for kills, not even stealth, when against these players.
perhaps, but don’t nerf its ability as a spammable gap closer. shadow shot is my favorite skill in the entire game. and I play ele more than I play thief. It’s what defines d/p for me, more than stealth camping.
My personal problem with this skill is the low initiative cost for very high unblockable damage. The gap close is necessary utility for the weapon, and something I’d like to see similar on D/D. I get that, and I also get the blind (although I think it should be on a shorter duration. It’s the combination of low cost + huge damage + unblockable + blind + 900 range gap close (what steal used to be until not long ago) + no cooldown that makes me scratch my head and wonder why and how people claim the skill is reasonable as it is, or don’t understand why many areas of the base thief cannot be buffed. Shadow Shot, Vault, and Infil Arrow are pretty much holding the class back from getting improvements, because these high-impact and frankly spammable abilities are just overtuned, but used in competitive environments because not only are the rest of our options innately weak, but the nature of competitive play is playing what is usually the dirtiest and most overpowered builds and tactics employable. If people wanted fair fights in competitive scenes, the thief wouldn’t be used to traverse the map at lightning speed to cap an uncontested point while the enemy tries to catch up, and there wouldn’t be a focus on stacking invuln effects.
Whether or not ANet would buff the thief after nerfing SS as the OP implies is a whole other story and is really the concern. I think most people outside of FoTM scrubs would stand behind some nerfs to the cheese in their favorite classes if promised buffs overall to improve the viability of the class in general.
As far as dedication to D/D, I am in the same boat with Jana. We disagree about most things thief-related, but at the end of the day, this is the set I play and I refuse to play D/P. You’ll sooner see me playing another class (I am enjoying reaper a lot) or another game before I move primarily to D/P, because I think the set is boring and very cheesy in the way it currently can play and operate.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
Staff damage being upped (why?),
Staff damage is largely concentrated into vault which is fairly easily avoided. The autos lack the utility of the other melee weapon sets like poison, endurance regen, weakness, and cripple, while overall the set lacks interrupts and stealth. We’ll see if they’ve upped the utility of the set as well or just the damage.
D/P improved via BV changes over all other weapons (why?),
Because BV has been a pretty weak elite for a long time and the new elite pointed that out (1-2 seconds stun with an obvious tell with a 1 second cast time on a 40 second CD)
[P]assive procs on evasion builds in Acro for full-on invuln (why?).
Every class needs a passive? I don’t know on this one.
I feel like half of the changes were really good, and the other half are just incoherent. We’ll probably see the good changes undone and the bad ones further emphasized.
Overall I’m happy with the changes. I’m not attacking your questions, I’m just giving my perspective on why some of the changes have been made.
Staff damage is already the best the thief has, and all they stated was that they were going to up its damage. Nothing about utility purposes. Honestly, the staff has so much damage right now that more utility would just make the weapon unanimously dominant at everything. And it already comes close.
Passive procs makes me upset in general. Not only does the game have too many overall, but we’re supposed to be a class that doesn’t really use them. We’ve never had them outside of LR (which people hated). Acrobatics is meant to be the evasion-based line, and static invulns are really upsetting.
Further, if they remove a lot of defensive amulets, I could potentially see the thief becoming the next bunker with something like D/D Sentinel in durability runes running Acro + Trickery + DD due to the massive evasion D/D offers right now with buffed death blossom. Many chained evades on D/D + endurance regen on dagger auto + Daredevil’s spammable dodges and big heals, good condition cleansing (1x per second like Diamond Skin ele, except all the time), permanent vigor, and tons of initiative regeneration, full block on Bandit’s defense, and then a 2s invuln when things get bad would potentially make the class overly-difficult to kill without outnumbering it.
I see your primary problem with deathblossom and we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. I’d agree with you in a game in which the majority of abilities were skillshots, but the fact of the matter is that every non-aoe skill in the game is by default target seeking, and melee skills are target seeking and cones.
Deathblossom’s low innate damage is the tradeoff for its evade utility. The damaging condtion (bleed) at only 3 stack applications per use is easy to mitigate. If Deathblossom was in stead a highly bursty white damage skill I’d agree with you that it doesn’t have sufficient drawbacks in realtion to its strengths. What you find "boring’ and “unskillful” many people, myself included, actually find fun. I took the time to really dig in to the build. I have played it in PvP before HoT, when it was far worse.
It’s not a strong meta contender, and you can cheese with it, but it’s not equipped to cheese in high level play. It’s not as simple as “hit button get good damage and evades” if you hit deathblossom for an evade, and you deal less than two strikes of damage, you have wasted initiative. Your view of the build versus the reality of playing it is an insurmountable obstacle to this particular conversation.
I’m going to drop it as many of your views seem to be asking for thief to have less situational skills. That’s the point of the initiative mechanic. It allows thieves to repeat skills for specific effect. Initiative exists to allow spamming. A well designed thief set has five extremely situational skills, which can be repeated in the situations they’re good at. The assertion that condi d/d has nothing to offer but deathblossom is just plain false. The assertion that condi D/D relies on repeated use of deathblossom as a core damage skill is true.
You see that as a problem. I don’t. I feel that with some slight alteration d/d typifies what a good thief set should be. It has adequate tools for damage, stealth, evasion, and access to debilitating conditions.
The specific numbers and application? yeah, you and I agree they need a bump to get up there with D/P, which means that their primary issues are in skills 3-5. We also agree that 3 is an extremely appealing and useful skill. This leaves 4 and 5 as the problematic options.
Offhand pistol is typified as a highly defensive weapon. You’ve got an interrupt and a blind field. So how do we make offhand dagger attractive, without placing it in a largely homogenous and uninteresting role? My thought is that it should be primarily offensive.
The core function of CnD is crucial to any */D build, so that stealth needs to be there, but where can we go with it to make it as attractive in its role as black powder? I think the old damage coeficient was pretty great, but if we’re worried about damage blowouts… what about an immobilize? That’s a particularly nasty condition, but due to the way CnD works it’s not something you’re likely to spam. It’s interesting support as well. Another option is to make it cleanse debilitating conditions (but not damage conditions). That would make it superbly reliable, and give it a secondary function that adds dynamic usefulness to multiple sets and adds build diversity by potentially allowing */D builds to take something in place of where they generally get that cleanse.
The Core function of Dancing Dagger is a scaling AoE that exploits combo fields, but is a marginally effective gap closer against single targets. Problem is that it isn’t a great gap closer, and its mechanics (which are interesting, the bounces) prevent giving it too much love. How do we reinforce the offensive feel of offhand dagger while keeping the unique (to thief anyway) nature of its bouncing projectile finisher spam? Well, let’s make it unblockable for a start. Now, let’s also make it remove some endurance from the target, say 25? Since that endurance removal isn’t useful for PvE, we can special case that effect as a breakbar hit, giving d/d a solid breakbar buster, unique in that you can really go to town on multiple breakbars with it in the right situations. In PvP, endurance is a highly valuable defensive commodity to everyone. The ability to choose to open by shutting out dodges, thus forcing the opponent to dodge the skill, or open with damage is compelling. The ability to spam it at a fleeing target to ensure they’re open to a scorpion wire, stun, or other ability seems compelling.
If you REALLY must change deathblossom to require “more skill” (for the record, I still don’t think that’s a meaningful distinction compared to any other skill in the game) Simply make it move targeted, like a dodge. In this manner it becomes, literally, a skill shot, and has a bit more versatility as an evade on power builds while requiring “more skill” on condi builds.
I also really do think DT as an auto-poison is valuable, however it could easily be constrained to a 1s ICD to prevent it from overly buffing deathblossom. This would increase auto uptime effectively almost the same effect as adding it to the auto, but would also add a bump to the other skills for condition builds, and add much more powerful and reliable healing debuffs/cover conditions to the power kits. This would also buff D/P, true, but with the proposed changes the offhand dagger seems to have enough compelling pros that it remains a strong contender, if we simply bring down shadow shot’s damage a little, as well as its init cost, to reinforce its use as a gap closer.
Just a few quick things. CnD getting a cleanse might be a bit too much, and doesn’t really increase the innate reliability of the skill. Removal of a control condition + DoT on stealth via SA every four seconds might be a bit much, also when considering the passive healing and initiative regeneration in stealth. A big problem with CnD is that you spend six initative to maybe get a stealth. The general issue in sPvP is that there are so many blocks, blinds, invulns, and immunity effects that actually landing the skill itself is rather problematic to do. Upon landing, though, it is worth the initiative cost as it is now, so I question if it’d just be too punishing giving it more condition removal baseline. I think we just need better condition cleansing options in general within our core traitlines. Acro offers a bit of solace for condition players, but D/D power is pretty much obligated to run DA or CS as its first line for damage, control, and reliability. Putting a cleanse in DA would probably be out-of-place and make the line even further emphasized for use as it is. CS is very niche and doesn’t offer a lot, so I think the best option would be to put a cleanse on HK. Also recall S/D has a built-in cleanse, too, so having two built-in cleanses on a weapon set + hard CC + evasion + unblockable damage + high coefficients would probably just be a little excessive compared to D/D.
Now, BV’s new-found unblockable attack feature announced earlier today can help this immensely, although getting a cast of BV in the thick of combat while not stealthed can be very difficult (as to make CnD and backstab unblockable), and this change benefits D/P more than D/D because of it. I don’t expect you to have known this information or have posted about it, but I’m simply speculating on the future of D/D.
Endurance removal on DD would be too strong. The importance of dodge rolls is huge, but potentially grabbing a full dodge roll from other players is overly-devastating. Consider ranger pets, mesmer clones, necro minions, turret/gyro engineers, and spirit weapon guardians getting punished for just having summoned creatures, or having two people on a point defending. One could deny dodges almost infinitely with the skill alone, and again I don’t think this is the direction the class should go into.
I perceive initiative as completely different, and frankly I think this perception has to do more with the core design ideology of the thief rather than what may be occurring now. My opinions were that each skill should be low-impact due to the lack of cooldown, but have a diverse breadth of use-cases. Knowing when and what to use will define the class’s success, because none or very few of the skills have any kind of set rotation or combo; stealth attacks cover that kind of play for us if we’re investing into damage, but the nature of stealth and the thief is to be tricky, so simply disappearing and deciding against using a stealth attack to make your opponent blow cooldowns is part of playing well. With a wide breadth of use-cases for each skill, but each with a lower impact than other classes (also why we have lower stats), the thief needs to be opportunistic and make difficult decisions on which skills to use when, but still has the capacity to use a skill twice in a row if the opportunity arises. Having deeply situational skills with limited breadth of use-cases causes the entire opportunistic style of play, and frankly, most justification of the class having innately lower stats than others, to simply not make sense.
I think soft CC and control abilities should affect break bars more in general. They currently don’t really do anything at all and are usually wasted investments unless with particularly large groups of players, and this would be a QoL buff to not only thieves but a ton of classes and builds that don’t have spammable CC. A lot of the “good” soft CC effects such as fear, immob, weakness, and blind, have short durations comparable to stuns, anyways.
In my original proposal, I mentioned the reworked death blossom as having an interface like Whirwind Attack, which is as you described, a skill shot. This ups the skill cap, and by changing the bleeds to Dancing Dagger, gives condi D/D cheaper or same-cost bleeds at range, hitting multiple targets (better AoE coverage and control on MH dagger for condi builds), but not having them built-in to an evade such that yes, the skill can be casted repeatedly, but makes a condi thief need to decide, just as much as a power build does, if they can afford to deal damage right now or need to save or spend the initiative doing something else entirely. It also gives D/D condi better evasion and mobility, which it lacks right now. That’s the whole point: up the skill cap for D/D condi and up the utility use for D/D power. Maybe our entire discussion was pointless because this didn’t reach you, but that is the justification in a nutshell behind my proposal.
DT being made to work on all dagger attacks would probably be a bit much. I liked it on the AA alone because it changes the style a bit between D/D power and condi; you could buff the poison duration here and you’d be fine, too. It lets D/D condi get optimal damage playing a bit riskier, but gives them some endurance regeneration synergy on the AA chain and much more condition burst without needing to just dump all their initiative into spamming DB, while still carrying the risk associated of being in melee combat and not dealing damage in the process of evading. This was also the motivation behind the Dancing Dagger changes, as the damage is inherently safer and hits multiple targets, but requires more of an initiative dump to match the damage a dagger MH build could do from playing riskier in melee. It puts DB as just a general-purpose useful utility for re-positioning and evading on both builds, increases stickiness for melee, but also enables better kiting and mobility with innate synergy with Dancing Dagger for a quick disengage and bleed + cripple. This doesn’t become OP, in both kiting or damage output, though, because of restrictions of number of uses via the initiative mechanic, as well as making such an evasive build need to frequently leave the capture point in sPvP.
Maybe this will put us closer to the same page.
I don’t think there’s much of a purpose to reducing SS’s initiative cost. Cutting the damage and the unblockable aspect would do it, as it still closes gaps. As it is, the skill needs a little bit of damage loss (like 10%) just because it’s so freaking strong.
Daredevil just feels a little clunky compared to the smooth as butter old school thief, and I don’t like that you need to take these fancy new dodges as grandmaster traits just to be able to have 3 dodge rolls (which is really nice).
Funny you mention this. One of my guild members actually doesn’t slot the GM traits because he thinks the revealing nature of Bound and the over-shooting potential on Dash lead to excessive clunkiness in combat. I love Dash, but dislike overall the style of play DD brings with it, so I continue to run core thief.
I just believe core Thief has alot more damage potential to offer.
Only while not running staff. DD even out-damages Flawless + PT + NQ on crit strikes when staves are used, and if Flawless isn’t used, the margins are actually still quite small between Havoc Mastery and Bounding Dodge’s bonus damage, as Ferocity-based damage is less substantial than regular damage modifiers.
Even a 10-25% outgoing damage increase via cooldown reduction for a party is substantial enough to keep the class in Raid content. Ranger/Druid does and always has done very little personal damage yet is and has been used because of the damage bonuses it can apply for the rest of its party. CDR on healing effects and the likes is still extremely useful.
Staff damage being upped (why?), D/P improved via BV changes over all other weapons (why?), passive procs on evasion builds in Acro for full-on invuln (why?).
I feel like half of the changes were really good, and the other half are just incoherent. We’ll probably see the good changes undone and the bad ones further emphasized.
As a side note, I am glad people are starting to finally realize just how overpowered Shadow Shot is.
Jana and I rarely agree, but I think D/P’s strength lies almost solely with this ability. I’ve won a lot of fights playing D/P when D/P players talk trash about me losing a fight while playing D/D. I’ve never had to use anything but Shadow Shot for kills, not even stealth, when against these players.
D/D just needs better mobility on it (rework DB and DD) and either improved consistency or reduced initiative use on CnD. D/P is clearly meant to be more of a set which stays stealthed for an extended period of time between each attack, while D/D’s kit is more or less built entirely on commitment. Since we don’t have the stats to sustain, and Rejuv is but just one trait, I see no reason to force the viability of D/D solely into building for Rejuv. Giving the set more mobility and faster evasion on better engage/disengage would still let it sustain or reset a fight when landing CnD is just not possible, while not overtuning CnD and stealth as a whole for the kit.
I feel like they couldn’t decide on making D/D play like an assassin spec or a sustained fighting one. It had and still largely has the burst of assassination, but the concepts for CnD and DB being so sustained-fight-oriented make me think ANet’s intentions are different. D/P is definitely the “camp stealth until I’m ready” set with BP + HS allowing for lower-risk stealths at a higher initiative cost, “requiring” the set to play more temp-heavy (or just spamming Shadow Shot because it’s so strong, that works too, though I don’t think that was the desired design intent for D/P). BP still has use post-burst, though, as it also offers the thief a bit of safety with the blinds, and if timed reasonably well, can be used for a getaway.
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They balance PvE for party contribution, attributing supportive bonuses as bonus damage dealt by the supportive class.
Balancing DPS to all be similar is a notion that makes no sense. Rangers historically (only now not true because of the incoming damage to pets changes) had lower AA DPS than even mesmers. What makes classes used in PvE is their ability to provide the entire party with more damage than it had before. It’s why ranger/druid is good. It’s why mesmer is now very useful. It’s why PS is used on warrior, and why boons play such a critical role as to allow other players to just keep dealing damage.
This is Anet. You cannot deny that they have some sort of grudge against Mesmer and everything they do (which isn’t much) and tend to overnerf.
Clearly you have never played or really paid attention to the thief to make this claim. Thief is objectively the most nerfed class in the history of the game. Like all classes, however, some of these nerfs were completely justified, despite crying from people who claim certain aspects of the class were “fine” when in all honesty they were just blatantly overpowered.
Heard this said over, and over, and over again.
So I’ll respond the same as I did in the past, over, and over, and over again.
Quantity < Quality.
If they had nerfed it just once at the start really really well, then Thieves wouldn’t have this drum (MOST NERFS EVER FOR ALL TIME OMFGDKFKJH@*Y$*!!) to beat.
Funnily enough the one and only time Thieves have truly suffered wasnt from being nerfed to hard, but rather because everybody else got buffed to much.
~HoT Meta 2016
Just saying that the few weeping over some kind of proclaimed grudge ANet has to mesmer isn’t really justified. The thief has been nerfed more frequently, nerfed more substantially, buffed fewer times, and given less compensation in the act of nerfs. I said it above and I’ll say it again that many of these changes were justified. I’m not crying boo-hoo like many other people about cheesey and low-skill/risk : high reward builds and traits getting substantially toned down. It was on the thief. It’s still there. And I continue to vouch for reworks and subsequently nerfs to the thief’s cheese to make the class more interesting to play and more rewarding for skilled players. I’m saying the mesmer/chronomancer has comparatively gotten more done to it to improve its gameplay, and that I endorse nerfs, no matter to what class or build, if something has a very low skill floor and a very large minimum reward.
There are a lot of core design principles wrong with the mesmer and thief (as I mentioned) which cause balance concerns and leave them in sad shape at particular things because those concepts don’t get reworked, and numbers tweaks don’t really do anything to offset them. ANet realizes that shatter’s burst is the best in the game per unit of time, and that they subsequently need to keep sheer DPS down a bit to compensate. The greatsword won’t get its AA damage buffed until it’s made into an actual projectile that can be reflected rather than a pseudo-projectile that still gains bonus range from physics. Sword DPS won’t be raised heavily because it has a powerful defensive mechanic built-in on a low cooldown as well as passive boon removal on the AA chain.
Mesmer is also seemingly in the same position that the thief is undergoing. I wrote an extended post in the past regarding why the mesmer doesn’t want high stealth and evasion uptimes as the thief has; ANet has a tendency to nerf classes with stealth access substantially in everything but the stealth, even when the stealth isn’t or wasn’t a core feature of a class or build, pushing the class into selfish stealth-oriented designations. I’m frankly surprised that Scrapper is likely going to stay the way it is this iteration (let’s be honest, Scrappers are overpowered, too). I doubt it will for long, though.
As far as the thief hasn’t been suffering. I don’t know what to make of that statement. The thief has has more “use” to sPvP than the mesmer over time, yes, however a bulk portion of that use extends solely from shortbow 5 and Shadow Shot. The class’ most prominent players state things like “Avoid combat” or “You’ll die 1v1 against pretty much everything.” I don’t think it’s fair to make a comparison of “suffering” here or proclaim the thief hasn’t been this whole time. The thief’s role has boiled down to running away at the first indication of a fight, and +1’ing is just a role designed for “winning harder” in what is a close matchup or matchup the thief can understand as the opponent having blown his cooldowns. Mesmer’s use has been limited because the thief hard-countered the class and nothing can out-run the thief in regards to uncontested point control, so the thief has been a staple which at one point shut mesmers out as a consequence. Prior to the D/P PS meta on the thief (before they changed traits up), mesmer wasn’t selected because it simply wasn’t able to compete with what was at the time a very overpowered hambow warrior and post-nerf an even more overpowered D/D elementalist. It simply hasn’t been top-tier and hasn’t hard-countered anything too aggressively in the meta like signet necro to be considered really important to take.
Like the thief, the mesmer isn’t meant to hunker down and hold a small-area point, nor is it meant to have very high landspeed. As such, its weaknesses stem design-wise in sPvP. Take a mesmer out into WvW where there’s no need to stay in such a small area, you have the freedom to stealth/blink, etc., and you’ll find the class functions actually extremely, extremely well.
They tried to make the Chronomancer (and Daredevil) better at point control. They failed on the Daredevil outside of D/D condi 3spam, but arguably went a little bit overboard on the Chronomancer, and implemented the concept of wells, support, CC, and mitigation in the wrong ways such that number tweaking will likely lead to the class remaining either very overpowered or very weak because something will just do the role better.
The possibility of straight up removing the Celestial Amulet from sPvP has been recognized and considered by ANet. This could allow for a tone-down on Chrono (and hopefully every other Elite Spec) while potentially not removing the class’s purpose from sPvP because it won’t be too heavily out-classed by D/D tempest and the likes.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
I missed it when using SB in a zerg when I tried to make a build with DrD work <— that failed because I want CiS and need SE.
@ Zero: That was a joke – all good =)
If you are building for WvW zergs…. all I will say is marauders armor and weapons, soldier / cavalier trinkets, double staff, invigorating precision and daredevil runes. The sustain and dps vs grouped enemies is unreal.
Why would I use double staff?
Intelligence Sigil + Daredevil Runes + Quick Pockets leads to a very high uptime on continuous or near-continuous use of Vault between evades while not losing the crits from running IP, and lets you get endurance refunded every swap for more evades.
As for your second post, debilitating conditions, unless you mean DoT effects, will not make the thief useful or desired in parties. Check the necromancer boards/Nemesis’s “theories” behind changing the prior PvE meta regarding debilitating conditions. None of what he says actually holds, especially now, because most bosses completely ignore debilitating conditions’ effects, such as chill, immob, weakness, etc. Damage and CC is the only thing that matters in PvE, and buffing the thief auto into being excellent at this will not fix the class or its usefulness in competitive environments due to the lack of support it provides the rest of its party. Even sustain buffs won’t really change much for the thief because it gets gibbed so quickly, and IP is extremely powerful as a sustained healing skill, particularly on staff.
Maybe, just maybe, DT could be reworked to say, provide poison on the autos to bump condition DPS for D/D thief and as such allow for Death Blossom to be changed away from being the condi-hybrid skill for damage on D/D to a better evade, and Dancing Dagger could be made into more substantial condition burst with a shorter cast time and lack of animation lock to let the thief justifiably have really good condition damage performance and internal build variety. Kind of like the exact thing I mentioned doing above, for the stated reasons above, because just buffing D/D condi DPS on autos and keeping the set as is will just deadlock the set into condition play over power and subsequently hybrid play.
Seems to bear a big similarity to what I mentioned doing above.
I play thief almost exclusively. I’ve played thief single early release, and I’ve repeatedly seen the same sort of ill fitting expectations on thief from both the player base and developers in terms of ‘skill’ and ‘weapon focus’
So, lemme get this straight. You’re campaigning for deathblossom to require ‘more skill’ than a dodge… but shadow shot is fine? You’re listing out situational uses of headshot without placing a corrolary to dancing dagger Basically saying "headshot is good at CC, and dancing dagger isn’t.
It’s good at combo exploitation. That’s its job. it’s not supposed to be good at CC.
Further, when you list ‘and thieves will just swap to X for Y utility’ you could use that logic to patch the weaknesses of any set.
Nobody is arguind that d/d is up to par. D/P is better than every other thief set. This has been true for a long time.
However, you’re still missing the point. "Skill is a nebulous concept that people like to bandy around like a badge of honor. No, it doesn’t take any more skill to any one skill than another. Don’t pretend it does. Using any part of D/P is not more challenging than pressing dodge or pressing deathblossom. You click a button. using any of the above skills is solely a matter of weighing the opportunity cost.
Your complaining that condition d/d is all about spamming deathblossom sounds like people who don’t play the class at all complaining about how easy it is for thieves to just spam 2 and win.
The fact is that simply spamming deathblossom is suboptimal for both survival and DPS. You can survive for about 12 seconds that way, and usually won’t do enough damage to kill anyone.
Since you seem to really want to turn this in to a PvP thread for some reason, I’ll bite.
Before HoT, I would agree with you. D/D was in dire need of help. With daredevil attached to it, it’s in a much better place. With a buff to auto damage and a buff to dagger training i think it’s in a good space. What you and every other thief that has ever posted on the subject fail to recognize is that every trait, and every thief skill related to D/D are all built, quite obviously, around running a hybrid build. You want enough power that heartseeker can push reliable damage under 50%, and enough condition damage that your bleeds and poisons can push it down that far.
Of course it sucks if you build it with nothing but power or condition stats. It isn’t and was never meant to do that. It’s purpose built as an attrition set. It just isn’t built very well due to multiple nerfs to the back end damage, lotus poison, lackluster dagger training, etc.
Playing deathblossom well in PvP does not permit you you simply spam 3. You’ll be out of initiative without much damage applied, and you’re literally only going to kill people too stupid to count to three. Playing deathblossom daredevil in PvP is 100% about evasion, and playing toward nothing but evasion. It is about reading your opponents and knowing which attacks are safe to suck up while you auto, and which attacks you need to evade with DB, or your dodge, so that you have enough endurance and init remaining to HS out a fleeing target, swap to SB and disengage, cnd to reposition, dancing dagger to lifsteal, cleanse, or apply bonus conditions, and a multitude of other factors. You need to track and keep enough reserve end to cancel out of bandit’s defense. As you said, anyone can just spam 3. The fact is that you’re going to suck if you just spam 3. This is true for D/D, and the only reason it isn’t true for D/P is because of the attached blind.
We don’t need some sort of extra trait to flip dagger skills, and the fundamental function of those skills is solid. They need some coefficient changes. Dagger training needs to be improved. Dancing dagger and CnD need a buff. Heartseeker is in a good place, assuming a buff to dagger training.
I do think Death Blossom, if it is going to deal substantial condition pressure, should require “more skill” to execute than a dodge roll. If it’s just an evade? They should be about equal, and the skill should come from deciding which to use based on its effects and what the caster can predict into the future. Flanking Strike requires more skill to use than a Dodge roll. Nobody seems to be complaining that using Flanking Strike is too hard or that it should be easier to evade with. A dodge is a one-button immunity effect and a reposition. If a build had infinite dodge rolls, it would be the single strongest build ever conceived in this game. Period. Death Blossom, as per all evade skills, should require more thought in its use in regards to if it should be used as an evade effect or a source of damage, the ranges on these skills, reposition uses, etc. As it is now, there is no reason not to use it immediately as soon as danger approaches. What made Acrobatics prior to the nerfs a “fair” trait line was the simple fact that it had a predetermined tempo and peak dodge rate. A S/D thief could never exceed a fixed number of consecutive dodges while dealing damage, and in most instances of team-fighting, would not be able to get more than three consecutive evades overall when FS flipped to LS. As an opponent, knowing when to attack defined the success against S/D, and S/D thief the success against the opponent by knowing when the opponent will attack and how to react accordingly. The build was incapable of killing while evading. Sometimes taking a blow was necessary to start winning a damage race or preventing a combo in the future. D/D condi Daredevil almost doesn’t have this feature. It not only does substantial (not optimal) damage while evading, but also doesn’t really have a fixed number of evades that can be predicted by a skilled opponent. All he can do is keep track of resources, but as soon as the thief runs low, he can shadowstep out and reset entirely or shortbow 5 to a safe location if the death really matters that much and there’s nobody there to rotate. Either way, trying to bait all of a D/D condi DD’s evades while staying on point and winning the damage race simply isn’t a feasible strategy when not playing the huge block/invuln meta we have right now. For how easy the build is to play (basically two buttons aside from basic movement), and how low-risk the build is (the best evasion uptime in the game), while having none of the other detriments of other thief builds reliant on stealth (causing point control loss) and better defense (you don’t really need power or crits to bunker), yes, I do think the build, for what it is, lacks depth and skilled play potential. My proposal isn’t about nerfing D/D condi directly as to make it worse but to increase the amount of skill potential and overall intrigue of the class and remaining weapon skills. Right now, it’s very limited.
I never argued Shadow Shot was fair. I actually said it was overpowered. I also never said D/P required any more skill to use than D/D. I’m arguing the opposite; D/P is objectively better at everything, and subsequently, as all strong builds are, used more commonly in competitive environments.
Whether or not a skill has situational “use” is irrelevant. I could design a skill that caused and instantaneous death to an opponent, regardless of all evades, invulns, distoration, blocks – it just straight up one-hit kills the target – that can only be used on Tuesdays when the number of seconds passed in the day is divisible by six, and can only be used when the value of Traveler Runes on the Trading Post is below or above certain mean and medium values. I could keep on adding conditions to make this skill have miniscule use Just because it could win a tournament game with a massive play to OHKO a bunker at full does not mean that the skill is well-designed or even remotely useful overall. What matters is the ability for that skill to be used in a breadth of scenarios and creating an environment where deciding between skills requires quick and smart decision-making. Dancing Dagger and Death Blossom have so few “opportune” moments that the skills are either under-performers or simply the decision to use the skill is incredibly obvious. Hyper-niche roles for skills is not successful design for the thief. It’s why D/P is the strongest set and most-selected for competitive PvP, and frankly, why the thief’s use of its skills is often so limited in PvE paired with the class’s limited capacity for support or self-sustain. All of the skills on D/P can be used in wildly different scenarios, they can be used and worthwhile to use in strictly more scenarios, and offer what are objectively superior benefits to the utility measures D/D has. D/D is not fine just because of an arbitrary declaration that its concept makes sense or the claim that it’s competition is superior, and therefore irrelevant for comparison. D/P isn’t so strong that the thief is dominating anything; the thief is an under-performer as a class through flawed design on other weapons and a game scene which does not allow the thief to play the way it was designed to/needs to, and D/P offers the class the best tools to help offset this. Unless ANet removes a bulk majority of the invuln and block effects in the game, the thief will continue to play poorly, particularly D/D. Like I said, you could buff the skills to obscenity, and until they reach a low-skill-ceiling build that allows it to compete in the current competitive environment design through exploitation of an overtuned ability that has relevance within the confines of the dominant play strategy (fixed via Capture and hold innately favoring tankier specs with more invulns), such as how D/D condi plays now, the set, from a design perspective, will be horrible and will lack depth of use because of the lack of breadth of use cases its skills encompass with meaningful results.
I’m complaining about D/D condition because I have played D/D for so long and tried the build. It’s too easy, it’s unfun, and frankly, arguing the build is “fine” is like arguing that chained invulns on the Chronomancer on the release of HoT + GW and associated bugs to various Chrono abilities were “fine”, or arguing that D/D celestial ele was “fine”. It’s gimmicky, boring, offers next to no dynamism and frankly, if balanced around, destructive to the rest of the weapon skills, class, and associated trait lines.
Actually, I’ve also vouched for Heartseeker daamge scaling adjustments AND the removal of Fire/Air sigils from the entire game as a whole, because Fire/Air procs on HS spam actually lets the build succeed much more than it should. Fire got nerfed slightly, but air remains, and the burst potential and lack of options to counter the sigils and subsequent bonus damage from HS is also poor design rewarding unskilled play more than it should.
Yes, if all that is done is pressing 3, then D/D condi will not do that great in the long run. I consider using dodge rolls at appropriate tempo and times between skill use and taking advantage of what Daredevil offers in regards to very high dodge frequency with overdone synergy for this skill (mentioned above) as necessary skills to play the game in general. Not dodge rolling gets you killed anywhere on any class no matter how strong if your opponent is competent.
The opponents will be able to need to count to five even if it is spammed completely :P Assume Trickery is required (because it is) for 15 initiative (3 uses with three initiative left over) + natural initiative regeneration during the skill uses will carry five consecutive casts. It will also deal fairly good damage, considering on engage you need to consider the free stacks of 5 confusion from Trickery (and potentially two stacks of poison as well from DA, though Acro is used more commonly for vigor + DD endurance + DB spam), and if mandatory dodge rolls are used to cover initiative regen/cooldowns as all classes require, you’ll be dealing Bleed/Torment/Poison on each dodge and 3 bleed on each DB cast. Given a Carrion Amulet (nothing for sigils or runes), your DB will deal 3k damage. Your base dodge rolls start doing close to 1.5k from DD, and a few hundred to a few thousand damage from Caltrops. This isn’t paltry considering you’re evading during the process of dealing this damage, it ignores toughness and protection, and once applied, ignores blocks.
If you spec hybrid on D/D, you will suck. The skills and traits are not there. Your damage, both power and conditions, will drop exponentially based on how the thief is designed via damage modifier stacking, and you gain no utility or durability benefits, and any associated with going hybrid will be innately superior when building into one stat.
What makes the entire “hybrid” concept work in sPvP is boons and other classes carrying intrinsically better stats and modifiers. Might affecting condition damage and raw damage; protection giving huge penalties to incoming raw damage but not condition damage, massive heals through high coefficients on healing abilities or frequencies paired with disparities offset through the gain of other boons such as might to allow for say, celestial, to be so strong (on top of the amulet being mathematically imbalanced, as is Marauder, as was Minstrel, Viper’s, etc. We’re not designed trait-wise, boon-wise, and stat-wise to build hybrids. If our hybrid capabilities were not just innately poor through our core class design, we’d have seen P/P hybrid be mainstream a LONG time ago, because mathematically it’s just better and has been better than D/D for a long time.
My proposal is also not flipping skills on traits. Imho, that idea is overly-complicated and would remove future endeavors into letting hybrid builds potentially do better in regards to say, future elite specializations or coefficient and trait adjustments. My proposal is tweaks and adjustments to the way the skills currently deal damage and operate while moving the same effects elsewhere on the set to allow for both builds to have all of its skills be individually usable in a wider variety of circumstances while not providing D/P any more superiority.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
Yeah, instead of actual game content, we need another gimmick that we can redundantly grind the same areas to acquire or spend more real money on in the gem store.
I know I can’t wait for yet another “game feature” to bedazzle me with how cool it is, distract me from the lack of substance and get me to open up my wallet.
+1, exactly my thoughts on the subject.
And balancing mounted combat… ANet already struggles on the professions enough already.
Lol.
Just thinking about those 11k Autos in WvW just makes me shake my head for anyone to think of this as a reasonable balance bump.
Precisely why my expectations for the upcoming balance patch are set to none; the thief doesn’t need more AA damage. A lot of traits and weapon skills simply just need reworks.
It was clearly going to be an issue before they implemented it..
Story of almost every single elite specialization out there. I think all of them except Reaper are completely horrible ideas founded on principles of what are just bad/lazy/sloppy design.
ANet has pretty much ignored all concerns associated with the format since release, done many things that people actively didn’t want and requested against, defeated the purpose of playing in a small guild entirely in WvW, and pretty much designed maps that are awful to play in and consumables locked behind huge paywalls for guilds which trivialize combat with the release of HoT.
Not to mention the absurdity that is the state of class “balance” (more like imbalance) right now leading to unfun and unskilled gameplay.
Understood this thread is about balance in PvE. Open-world, more precisely, let’s look at what the OP was discussing wanting or needing.
- AOE
- Damage mitigation
- Damage recovery
My proposal encompasses all of those things with the proposed changes while not throwing the balance of D/D askew, and promotes a style of play within the lines of differences between D/P and S/D which makes sense thematically, buffs D/D condi for DPS and overall competitive use while increasing its skill ceiling, buffs power D/D for consistency which it lacks and is known to lack in sPvP and WvW, and lets the weapon combination combo better into others while not intrinsically nerfing D/P due to the thief’s existing innate weaknesses in sPvP while also balancing the skills around +1 potential and utility while keeping the skill design and usage similar to how they currently are designed around operating or have operated in the past.
Condi D/D is considered one of the better builds in sPvP the thief has. Why? Because it’s easy, spammy, evasive, and deals a solid amount of damage with bar-none the best bunkering capacity the thief has, paired with high mobility on shortbow for point control when fighting is not needed or map traversal for a contest is.
Right now, power D/D isn’t considered good in any format. Staff out-damages it in PvE. It lacks consistency and utility in PvP. It’s simply not as strong as D/P is in WvW.
Death Blossom does not really require timing on its usage. They almost completely removed the pre-cast and post-cast frames on it. You can literally spam the skill, and as long as you’re not missing out on frames to press the button, you WILL not take damage. It’s like saying dodge rolls require any particular amount of great skill. I’m sorry, but that is a core skill necessary to play the game as a whole, and the act of doing so does not merit any kind of reward. Also of note, heartseeker is not really a timed skill, either. You press a button and lunge at your foe to deal damage. Unless you’re calling “something under 25% health” as requiring any amount of skillful timing, in which case, the sheer contemplation of game balance is being taken way out of context.
Death Blossom’s horrible damage, slow animation, pitiful movement, and medium-high initiative cost is a complete waste of initiative on power D/D. One auto will do better damage. Your dodge rolls will be substantial enough for most mitigation. If you’re outnumbered, you need to use that initiative to straight up end or leave the fight. Simply put, DB is only ever useful to buy time on a point in sPvP after coming to terms with the fact you’re going to die because your swap is on cooldown, and you’re getting low on initiative fast, and you’re being ganked, and you don’t have nearby allies. AKA, you’ve either made massive misplays, or your opponents played really well and you were doomed to begin with. To say Death Blossom has absolutely ANY substantial merit outside of completely and totally niche scenarios that will not change the outcome of a fight on a power D/D build is pretty much completely false because in almost every possible circumstance there is an objectively superior action. Dodging does quite frankly nothing if you’re incapable of actually escaping combat, because as a thief, particularly on D/D, you’re not winning a 1v1 if immediately following your engage your target is not on the ground.
Having put over three thousand hours solely into D/D power thief, I think Dancing Dagger is a much better and more useful skill than Death Blossom for power builds. The 900/1200 (jumped) range gives D/D some tagging utility and ability to hinder enemies engage in combat against your allies through the cripple, as well as cleanse conditions through light fields (although guardians are mostly out of sPvP right now, so all you’re really benefiting from is fire fields these days, which are useless for power as it’s just a 1s burn). That said, the skill itself is very inconsistent in that again, it is only needed if you are incapable of successfully committing to a +1 and winning the fight, if your ally really needs a cleanse that badly and is capable of winning a fight given one, and you happen to just be there, with spare initiative, at range, not being focused, and there happens to be a light field also there, and there are two targets, as if there are more or less, it’s either a waste (just hard engage and CnD, the combat movespeed penalty will cause you to take a damage loss and reduce your engage potency and put you on less initiative for reduced damage), or you’re drawing aggro unnecessarily and you and your ally are probably going to die. What do I use this skill for? When I play in WvW, I don’t run a shortbow, since S/D covers the same landspeed but with better cleansing and disengage, evasion, reliability, and cleave, so I use Dancing Dagger primarily to get tags for bloodlust stacks in blob fights, damage Burning Oil, Cannons, and the likes because it’s my only ranged option, or if I misplay by missing a jumped Infil Strike target fleeing me, and use the skill out of desperation to attempt to get the down on a very low health target successfully beginning to escape, like a nike warrior. Otherwise, this utility also carries no benefit and I simply do not use it.
Unload has excellent synergy for P/P condi venoms. One unload can bulk-apply two venoms. For 6 initiative, you get a massive condi bomb applied absurdly quickly. Additionally, Unload has synergy with Sinister, Carrion, and Viper gear, because it offers the highest-damage power coefficient skill the thief has access to on what is a correspondingly low-cost ability per initiative. Getting a clutch 3-5k burst can be huge on condition builds, particularly as it acts as a solid pressure skill on P/P interruption during a period when say, a warrior or guardian uses a stability effect, berserker stance, healing signet active, Mally rev’s resistance, etc. I ran P/P conditions for a while, and found myself using this ability more than expected. A friend of mine has been running P/P condi venoms fairly successfully since 2012. In the instance of small group fighting, the build is extremely strong.
P/P PvE DPS is “bad” because of the “low” auto, and no other reason. In a recent thread, I mathematically showed that P/P power provides similar or better solo-DPS to a longbow ranger at max range which is not allowed to dodge for its 10% damage bonus. Otherwise, including any situation where another target stacks vulnerability, might, etc., the thief does better. For a ranged weapon, not only is the damage intended to be lower than melee (and thus is not considered optimal for those who run speed clears which is frankly the only environment it matters), but it manages to deal competitive or strictly better DPS than every other ranged alternative. Yes, the auto is weak in terms of a low damage coefficient and slow kill times if only the auto-attack is used, but our plethora of damage modifiers can offset this fairly well, to a point where the P/P thief’s AA chain can maintain almost the same DPS as a GS warrior’s AA chain. Of course, we all know Hundred Blades and Whirlwind Attack do huge damage and is what defines the warrior’s DPS. In the case of P/P thief, it is unload.
Body shot has very few uses, you’re correct. That said, P/D will not run Dancing Dagger to close a gap. Use steal, shadowstep, infiltrator’s strike, infiltrator’s arrow, surprise shot on swap, scorpion wire… anything. many P/D players will readily tell you Scorpion Wire, despite the horrific pathing, is better used than Dancing Dagger to force a gap close, otherwise the target is getting away, and many P/D condi players (primarily a WvW build due to the stealth dependency) also run D/P for sustained stealth and Shadow Shot for stickiness, or use Surprise Shot after a CnD via a shortbow swap and merely maintain proximity until they can swap back and re-engage with steal. If D/D got Death Blossom made into a skill that could result in stickiness, we’d see a more diverse pool of players using sets like P/D + D/D, allowing for better pressure maintenance without just needing to spend excess time waiting for cooldowns and chasing with shortbow. Body Shot’s limited utility only truthfully has one big and amazing feature; securing an elementalist stomp through spamming the immob so they cannot mist form their downed state into safety. Otherwise, you’re right in that the skill is horrible and has very few niche purposes and feels like a waste of initiative. But frankly, D/D players as a whole feel Dancing Dagger in regards to its raw utility purpose, provides similar of not worse as I mentioned above.
Headshot as situational as Dancing Dagger? Are you crazy? This skill destroys break bars. It can straight up deny many stacks of stability. It can prevent stomps. It can interrupt channels/CC from downed players. It can force a cooldown. It can lock someone without stability access out of a fight in a +1. It’s a physical projectile on an instant cast. It can deal massive torment damage for interruption P/P builds (not to mention perplexity stacking in WvW). It can run massive damage from Pulmonary Impact (something a ton of people are doing on D/P DD right now). I’m sorry, just no. Headshot is considered one of the best skills the thief has on any weapon. Its use has only degraded slightly because of the sheer number of reflects and invuln effects in the game’s PvP meta right now.
Shadow Shot being more situational than Death Blossom? I’m convinced you don’t even play thief. In the very few instances I’ve played D/P, I have single-handedly annihilated almost every D/P thief who has talked trash to me by using Shadow Shot alone. One of the people I trained to play thief got arrogant one day after beating me a few times playing D/P. I equipped an offhand pistol and beat him fifteen games in a row using a non-meta D/D-based trait and utility skill setup. I disabled the Auto-attack and used only Shadow Shot every single fight. I didn’t even stealth. Shadow Shot is the absolute best skill the thief has. It’s an unblockable gap close for four initiative with a teleport and blind that can’t be negated with the fourth highest skill damage coefficient the thief has on all weapons. I’m sorry, what? Thief is literally being carried by this skill in competitive PvP. This is the skill setting D/P so high above D/D. Black Powder post-nerf has been nerfed into “meh” in terms of raw effectiveness. What makes BP good is the stealth uptime/reliability because it can be used OOC and doesn’t depend on landing a hit to activate. Otherwise, the smoke field is considered mediocre, the damage is low, and the blind is short.
DT would not improve power D/D at all. Deadly Arts applies two stacks of poison for 10s on steal baseline. There’s your heal cut. The AA chain on MH dagger applies permanent poison, also heal-cut post-cleanse and allowing for some ultimatums to be made during Revealed; cut a heal with autos? Deal damage with HS? Disengage entirely? Mug is so much better on power for the sustain and raw damage (the coefficient is very high despite the inability to crit). D/D’s weakness is consistency and the capacity to +1 well. The +1 potential on D/P is infinitely better because the set has mobility built-in, something which D/D doesn’t have. D/D has to hard engage or use S/x as an alternate weapon, which prevents the class from +1’ing or roaming points in sPvP well with the lack of a shortbow; it becomes strictly worse than a mesmer at that point for +1’s due to the mesmer’s cooldowns on its teleports being so much lower and a 1200 range weapon enabling safer damage with less of a need to fully engage a point before moving to the next one, reducing travel time.
The current skills on D/D are what’s preventing the weapon from being more useful across the board and are hurting the ability for condition D/D to be played for both sustained damage in a fair and interesting way. Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger are just sub-par skills, and the skill ceiling is way too low on condi D/D with what is in my honest opinion not enough reward for playing on the offensive with venoms.
I just hope that they will shave Power scalling a bit instead of nerfing base damage. Base sword damage might even need a slight buff, it’s the incredibly high power scalling that makes it ridiculous.
There is no such thing as “base damage” in GW2. All skill damage is dervied solely from a weapon’s innate damage stat (universal to all classes), the user’s power, and a skill coefficient that gets multiplied by the other two. Damage modifiers are thrown into the mix, and then the whole thing is divided by the target’s armor.
So really, what you’re asking for is nerfing the Rev’s sword damage coefficient, which, seeing as it’s the only thing that changes on a class-by-class basis, is exactly what they’re doing, because the coefficient (damage) on MH sword autos for the revenant were/are too high.
That being said, CoR seriously needs to be toned down, and Cruel Repercussion reworked.
I would staunchly argue MH dagger has no use for condition application and that the traits surrounding it in DA do not benefit using the AA or any other skill except further push an emphasis into repeated use of Death Blossom from damage reliability and safe-of-play mentalities.
Stating that Death Blossom has use on a power build and Dancing Dagger provides meaningful utility is similar to proclaiming that Body Shot has meaningful utility for MH pistol builds. You make the claim that there is a disconnect in P/P between its auto and combined skill, yet the only weak skill argued on P/P is Body Shot, and MH dagger has horrible synergy on its autos and 3 skill, even with DT. Actually, I’d argue Vital Shot has a more substantial impact on Power P/P than D/D’s auto-chain with D/D.
The reality of the matter is that these skills, while having some degree of situational use, have very little purpose outside if their extreme niche role and subsequently put an indirect emphasis on spamming 3 for condi D/D and 5 -> 1 -> 2 on power D/D. D/P is a more competitive set for no other reason than each of its skills have synergy with the rest of its kit and that all skills are useful and impactful, and as such, can take full advantage of the initiative resource mechanic. Shadow Shot 3spam is absolutely a problem on D/P, but it is absolutely not in the realm of problematic design corresponding to 3spam on D/D. Use of any other skill on D/D condi outside of Death Blossom is almost a blatant waste of initiative because simply, the skill vastly overshadows the rest in terms of its practical uses and opportunity cost per initiative. Further, D/D power gains very little benefit from using DB because most of the problems plaguing D/D stem from combinations of worse damage output, reliability, and stickiness compared to D/P, while being poor in regards to its overall reset potential and mitigation in regards to the blinds on D/P and mobile evasiveness on MH sword.
Dagger Training is strictly speaking a horrible trait by design, putting an emphasis on RNG over skillful execution, and rewarding increased attack rate over all else for poison application. This leads to D/D being the target set due to Death Blossom being able to most reliably in terms of sheer probability trigger an effect of poison per cast on top of three bleeding, also boasting evasion. Per unit of time and initiative, Death Blossom in every single regard offers superior damage, defense, and utility for point control over all other skills on D/D for condition builds, and subsequently offers power dagger mainhand limited use because all associated benefits to D/D can be diverted into D/P with Daredevil, and all massive utility benefits from D/P override the paltry amounts D/D can provide in those very situational uses.
Heartseeker is a finisher. Its mobility advantage is limited unless spammed heavily (again, back to spamming), and is used for mobility often to disengage or avoid an encounter entirely HS is spammed because like Death Blossom, it offers a lot of desired utility (“Oh no, he’s getting away!”) and also a lot of damage (“He’s running away because he’s a low health, I need to finish him off!”), and is one of the best skills per initiative over the highest breadth of cases, and in all cases except for the case where < %25 target health within 450 range while not using a block effect or attacking back are all conditionally met, D/P’s Shadow Shot is objectively better. Does having a second mobility skill on D/P make it overpowered? No. Would changing D/D to not require a target and perhaps have a shorter-distance evading lunge make the set play differently? Absolutely. The skill is no longer “dive hard and punish them” like Shadow Shot, but instead “Avoid the incoming hit and follow up with something else” or “Disengage for the incoming hit and regain some distance as I’m being chased.”
Simply buffing those niche roles currently on D/D will not make the set more useful or impactful. It will only make certain fights and encounters more trivial dependent on build, and frankly, the buffs necessary to still make it competitive with D/P on power would be so obscene that a rework is completely necessary for the skill to gain a functional use and diversify which skills can be used when and the reasoning behind why they should be used. Creating ultimatums for players to need to ask themselves “what should I be doing right now?” by allowing for a variety of different and individually and unique options is from a game design perspective, how skilled play and strategy is defined in a competitive environment. This is why I completely believe DB and Dancing Dagger need reworks; both skills are marginalized and even skilled use of the skills provides a minimal-at-best impact on an encounter for power builds, or with Condition D/D, the best answer is almost always spam 3, because the benefits out of the other options are very easy to define.
D/D in its performance faces critical issues when being played by power builds; if your engage fails, you fail. Death Blossom in its current state, while providing an evade, does nothing to allow for the thief to properly overcome the effects of a negated engage. Its use lies solely in spamming while immobilized or under heavy fire, but innately provides no mechanism for the thief to recover from counter-burst, unlike the mobility, ranged CC, damage prevention and non-target stealth D/P can offer. Yes, it has a use. The problem is there is no benefit to ever even using the entire set compared to a vastly superior one. Power D/D’s style of play is identical to D/P’s at the moment, except it is less reliable with more require setup, more counters, lower damage output, worse utility, and worse performce per initiative with a less-desirable set of utility skills. D/D conditions is carried almost exclusively by Death Blossom. If they reverted Death Blossom to what it was, all merit condi D/D currently has would be thrown out the window. It’s cheesy, it’s spammy, and frankly, it’s unskilled. You could spread the condition application over Dancing Dagger and buff DT, you could buff the damage coefficients on DB and Dancing Dagger. The set would still be considered sub-par because it lacks no definitive style of play and is designed with poorer utility than what its competing sets offer. Death Blossom is not a sticky evade. Anyone getting “caught” by this skill is a horrible player that likely does not know he can move with asdw. D/D condi evasion only works so well because of DD’s evasion providing faster movement with stickiness (per the nature of dodge rolls) and because the format of sPvP focuses on staying in one location. Take a ranged kiting weapon against D/D conditions and the build becomes a hell of a lot weaker, because the the set cannot keep up.
As far as reduced aftercasts etc. goes, they’ve already done it. It’s why D/D condi 3spam is a thing; the aftercast is almost gone entirely. I’ve dove 60-man blobs with the skill and have not had any issues whatsoever staying alive. It’s basically the same thing as a dodge.
Giving the thief a diverse set of tools on a weapon is what makes the weapon successful, not just raw number tweaks. We have a mechanism that promotes spammy play when there are fundamental disparities between skills. As soon as one skill gets bumped up or knocked down, the ideology of the class simply shifts to the next best thing to spam. Pushing for a diversification of mechanics that all offer viable methods of play
This is kind of where they were trying to push DT. The problem is that it can’t be 100% the way it is now, because then Death Blossom spam would be completely absurd dealing 3 bleed and 3 poison.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
Dagger Training Should apply poison to each auto attack at a 100% chance, and just the auto. Remove the bleed from Death Blossom, and put it on Dancing Dagger. Buff Dancing Dagger’s damage by 50% and remove the ability for it to hit the same target multiple times, and just have it hit the target and up to three nearby enemies.
Death Blossom should be reworked into a multi-hit evading lunge with better range than it has now, similar to Whirlwind Attack (Warrior GS3), at the cost of an additional initiative, giving the set more mobility and stickiness to compete with D/P and some evasion and disengage potential to keep it stylized in between S/D.
This improves power D/D through a better evade and more useful and consistent Dancing Dagger, and lets condi D/x get better and more reliable condition application while increasing the skill cap and not making it overwhelming with DD.
I ended up taking speed of shadows since i wasn’t running warhorn. The ability to get in and out of Reaper shroud really fast combined with lower reaper shroud skill cooldowns ended up turning it into a really fun playstyle around building life force and shredding people. It SEEMS to work well against its condi reaper counterpart. Though its so telegraphed evade spamming builds can be annoying (Staff thieves…you HAVE to land chill on them)
Speed of Shadows is much better on the reaper than core necromancer, I agree, particularly for WvW. Flickering shroud and using GS as filler for high DPH and control at melee opens up a lot of doors for safer heals and utility casts. I actually run this with Reaper’s Onslaught for a build focusing on very heavy mobility and strictly better shroud uptime, since you can proc Life Reap more often, and any stray kill will reset Death’s Charge’s cooldown to nothing and will reset your stability and scythe much more quickly. In small groups, one kill simply leads to another which leads to another, and soon enough that thief realizes he will have trouble outrunning you with the amount of resets you’re getting, and even while not getting them, you still have much higher base mobility than expected.
@Topic: I’d argue there’s too many quick-access invuln effects in the bunker meta of sPvP right now to make GS as good as it could be. That said, Nightfall and Grasping Darkness are very powerful abilities when used correctly, and the auto-attacks are extremely potent; you can deliver absolutely devastating burst by flickering out of shroud, since GS 1 and GS 2 have extremely high DPH. I’ve flickered shroud after stacking might to hit people for 8-10k with each of these abilities in WvW, and these can be secured through one well-played Grasping Darkness.
What makes the greatsword so good in PvE (Gravedigger) is imho the worst skill the GS has for PvP environments. It’s simply too slow, and honestly, the damage dealt isn’t much better or at a much shorter timing than autoing with the GS or autoing in Shroud. Trying too hard to use this ability in PvP will just get you killed, despite the amazing damage. I prefer only to use it when someone is ressing a downed target; neither are moving, and it delays the res time since the downed target will proc the CD reduction, and it can potentially drop the resurrecter as well or simply force them to stop and step back while you cleave the downed target rapidly. Nightfall is also really nice for stomps as it’s functionally a bigger, badder black powder.
Daredevil just feels a little clunky compared to the smooth as butter old school thief, and I don’t like that you need to take these fancy new dodges as grandmaster traits just to be able to have 3 dodge rolls (which is really nice).
Funny you mention this. One of my guild members actually doesn’t slot the GM traits because he thinks the revealing nature of Bound and the over-shooting potential on Dash lead to excessive clunkiness in combat. I love Dash, but dislike overall the style of play DD brings with it, so I continue to run core thief.
Last I checked, Soul Marks only makes marks unblockable, not giving vuln on autos, and the staff pierces baseline.
Edit: Oh, you’re comparing all three skills. I read “and” and assumed you were implying soul marks, still. Seeing as this thread’s on Reaper, the piercing is null and the Reaper gets such good vuln access already I’m not really buying it as much as I would on base necro.
They’re used so heavily because frankly in this sPvP meta, anything unblockable is awesome. Half the reason thieves ran S/D and run D/P is because LS was unblockable and Shadow Shot is unblockable, and both deal substantial damage.
Different builds for different purposes. I primarily play WvW, and unless you’re a backline well-o-mancer, soul marks is pretty atrocious. Mobility is absolutely king in the format, whereas sPvP puts an emphasis on stagnation. Since all mobility effects except for swiftness do not give bonus movement speed while in shroud, 25% in shroud on top of 30% cooldown reduction on shroud itself is huge for flickering in combat for applying utilities or critical weapon skills. In the case of the reaper (what this thread is discussing), 25% move speed will make a much bigger difference than unblockable marks, particularly since you’re locked into melee. I’d rather lose my might than movespeed on my reaper, because at least might can be re-built very easily and it won’t change my ability to receive damage very much. Swiftness is a whole different beast to get, and unless you’re reliant on other players, you’d be needing to flicker shroud to get it, which at a 10s CD, lets a mesmer or S/D thief infinitely take your mobility, which is the only edge that matters to kill them.
Boon theft on the other hand is a much different beast. A thief stealing 25 might is a bad, bad thing lol. He can keep the stability and swiftness :P
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
This is Anet. You cannot deny that they have some sort of grudge against Mesmer and everything they do (which isn’t much) and tend to overnerf.
Clearly you have never played or really paid attention to the thief to make this claim. Thief is objectively the most nerfed class in the history of the game. Like all classes, however, some of these nerfs were completely justified, despite crying from people who claim certain aspects of the class were “fine” when in all honesty they were just blatantly overpowered.
…if they want to rip bunker meta why no changes with druid? Like, no nerfs at all?
Its gonna be as always. Small buff to scepter that wont change anything in pve nor pvp(maybe breaking some scepter trait in the process), and to compensate, Alacrity will be nerfed to the ground cuz people yell at their favourite scapegoat.
One hope is that their last nerf(Well of precog) was reasonable… long casting time sucks but given the noise every druid and rev was making i was expecting wells to be destroyed..maybe just maybe they wont destroy alacrity too.
Read the thief changes, it seems they want to over buff (AA damage buff, better evade, stronger acrobat traits for survivability) thieves to make the bunker meta go away. We are going back to the days that Mesmers are free kill for thieves.
Frankly, the AA damage on thief being adjusted isn’t a big concern. Mesmers got eaten alive from the burst damage and stealth countering clones/shatters and not the sustained damage from thief auto-attacks. The initiative mechanic is designed as a whole to reduce the need to use auto-attacks as filler between skills. Frankly, most of the thief community is really upset by the change to attempt to “fix” the thief, because this is quite frankly the exact opposite of what is necessary for the class to function more consistently within sPvP. I have a hunch buffing thief AA damage is only to improve their viability in Raids, because at the moment they have zero purpose in Raids at all, and only bring damage to the table.
As far as Acro being buffed, I’m worried. I’m not worried because I think Acro is already in a good place or is even remotely threatening on its own – no, it’s largely considered to be the absolute worst trait line in the game – I’m worried that buffs to Acro will synergize too well with Daredevil and make Daredevil builds overpowered. They could give Acro a passive invuln and it’d still be considered bad. Daredevil, on the other hand, is every thief trait line combined and arguably improved, because most of the thief traits are just bad. Acrobatics when it was used (before it was completely and totally decimated to make room for Daredevil), had a pretty strict tempo to its evasion. S/D was used to offset this a bit, but its evasion couldn’t be spammed much. Daredevil can bring on lots of spammy evades, and with a tempo boost for more sustained dodges, I fear this combination could make Acro/DD thief the next chrono-bunker in terms of raw immunity/durability uptime. If Acrobatics gets stability, it definitely will.
I’m hoping mesmer finds its place and they don’t go overboard with the scepter. Dire perplexity scepter in WvW is probably the second strongest roaming build in the game and is very easy to play. That said, it’s kind of horrible otherwise. I hope we see the mesmer gameplay shift to becoming high-risk/high-reward with a high skill ceiling to make big plays into the future. It has low personal DPS but has the burst damage and some durability effects with distortion on top of a lot of trickery and deception and lots of support to compensate for the low personal DPS.
Frankly, I’d like to see the mesmer fit into a role between the thief and something with better sustain to allow for some solid map movement and control but allow for the class to be played skillfully, and let skilled counterplay beat the class. It can’t be too mobile/bursty at range for +1’s as then the thief is pushed out of its role, but its deceptive style and variety of skills to make big plays with such as absorbing a big bomb with distortion, really nuking a bunker with a shatter combo, stripping boons, or getting random team shuffles with portal and turning the table on a fight via alacrity and quickness allow for some huge plays to be made, particularly if the meta shifts to not be so durable. Frankly, the Chrono bunker is out of place in style and isn’t really fun to play as or against compared to what the mesmer’s concept offers.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
No way should traps pulse. Trapper runes are already crazy strong for stealth access and damage on traps, and needle trap is very high-impact from its immobilize and low cooldown. Traps should be made circles rather than lines, however.
Scorpion Wire just needs its pathing fixed. It’s already extremely strong when it lands and has a very short cooldown. The problem is it never lands.
Reflexive strike is just weird. All retaliating blocks work like this, though, so I’m not certain adjusting for just the thief is reasonable. The auto-suicide is kinda frustrating. Honestly I find this skill’s best use for projectile deflection. I think it’d be better if it just did this and got re-named to “Snatch Arrows” or something, so that the thief didn’t get locked into an animation from a stray melee AOE. Just my opinion, though.
Withdraw could probably face a cooldown reduction and I don’t think people would care that much. The healing isn’t substantial and a slight cooldown reduction (to 15s as it was would potentially make people re-consider Trickster, though. Bountiful theft is very strong, but so is Trickster’ed Withdraw. I could see this happening, but I’m not really sure if it’s necessary or if more evasion uptime is the answer.
HiS should just cleanse Confusion and Torment as well. Before torment was added to the game, it was meant to cleanse all DoT conditions. Since Confusion also now DoT’s, I’d lump it in that category as well. Then it has some really good use, and the cooldown is justified, as it also heals, stealths, and applies regen.
Upping the HP coefficient on SoM seems completely reasonable.
DA needs many changes for venom/condi builds to be better. Death Blossom spam is frustrating to play against and very easy to play. I’d rather see the skill cap raised on D/D condi and have better synergy with poison to make the build more devastating rather than an annoyance built on spamming 3. DT should apply poison on only Autos but at 100% chance, move bleed on DB to Dancing Dagger, make DB’s evade more mobile. D/D power becomes better through mobility and a stronger evade on DB, and D/D condi gets potential damage bumps from much better poison stacking and a skill cap increase because it needs to then be vulnerable to attacks, but is still then also kitted with an evade to deal with it.
Crit Strikes needs a LOT more help for viability. Cleanses would probably be a good place to start – such as putting a cleanse on HK to make the trait worth taking over NQ when building damage and be competitive on sustain against IP. It also lets the thief get some better options for cleansing overall than feeling forced into running DD or SA.
Actually, the CiS/RoS swap is a pretty neat idea. Might leave for some room for improvement on SA, but I’m uncertain. Venoms could/should probably just be consolidated and buffed. Otherwise, SA is in a good spot as it is. Lots of defensive utility, but nothing screaming OP. SA and DD combined make for a ton of condition cleanses, so I don’t think there’s really much needed here or potential to improve.
Acro… should honestly just be deleted so that the evasion style doesn’t compete with Daredevil. They can’t be strong individually otherwise they’ll be OP combined, and they can’t be strong combined because then they’re weak individually. This shouldn’t have gone past the developers when conceptualizing DD to begin with, which is sad.
Trickery needs some abilities like Preparedness made baseline, 10s Fury uptime on steal should be put into CS replacing Unrelenting Strikes such that ToTC is also replaceable. This synergizes better with NQ since it’ll be permanent in combat via critting, anyways, or just help HK builds deal more reliable damage post-burst, and help IP builds sustain better for longer after engaging.
DD needs some damage toned down. Bounding Dodge + Staff Master + HM provides close to the best damage modifiers in the game for a trait line, on top of all of the extra utility and durability the DD has innately. Change Escapist’s Absolution to have no ICD but only work on a dodge rather than just evades, so that the skill cap increases but dodge potency itself raises dramatically on a per-use basis.
Weapons:
Shortbow is fine, if not too good relative to the other weapons. Better condition application on daggers via the DT change would keep this as a utility weapon with a fair degree of balance.
Can’t put a smoke field on staff. Vault/Bound through Dust Strike would just replace BP + HS on D/P and provide better damage and stealth. Vault damage should come down by around 10%. Right now it’s absurd and contributing to the “needlessly high damage skills on elite specializations ruining PvP balance” effect with HoT.
CnD really just needs better reliability. There are so many blocks and invulns right now that it never lands and feels like a waste of initiative. I fear making it unblockable might be too much for some builds such as Guardians who depend on blocks and aegis, but making it penetrate invulns would just be way too strong, which is where the real issue lies.
Armor pierce baseline on backstab would be ridiculous. The issue with the skill these days isn’t the damage but the fact there are so many invulns and blocks you just don’t land it at all, which is why D/D is so functionally poor; you get blocked/invulned out of CnD, and then when it finally lands and you’re stealthed, your opponent is back to being invuln or blocking. I think with all the power creep we’re seeing and overpowered burst skills added in HoT people are forgetting on what damage should be considered reasonable. If we were to get armor piercing, put it on a utility skill or something for a few attacks or a short duration, just so there’s some sense of commitment to perform that kind of burst.
Signet is awesome. When outnumbered, it’s a second heal.
Speed of Shadows is an amazing trait. Frankly, I think the other options in SR are underwhelming. I don’t think I’d want swiftness so much (boon removal) as just getting 25% speed in shroud as baseline. You’re still slower than swiftness, as a necro should be for the most part, but you’re not just lumbering around trying to play catch-up if you’re not spec’ed into SR, which is already a very, very strong trait line prioritized in a lot of builds due to its Grandmasters.
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