Guild Wars 2

bobross.5034:

There are a few bunker condition thieves out there, who get their damage through bleeds, either with p/d cloaking and then attacking, or with d/d and spamming death blossom. Both of these still rely on stealth for survivability, though they do stay up longer than other thief builds. The hard thing is they have to work twice as hard for kills, since they can essentially take twice the hits of typical thieves…so instead of 3 hits to death, it takes 6. So imagine a glass thief takes 5 seconds to win a fight or stealth/retreat. During those 4 seconds, the thief may have to react to 3 attacks and keep from dying….it’s doable. Take the same scenario and replace with bunker condition spec, this may take closer to 20 seconds to win, and during that time the thief has to avoid 12 attacks. The thief has to outplay the opponent for much longer to win, and if they fail, they still can’t take many hits, except they’re being forced to face many more hits. This is why thieves go with glass builds…even when they try to go condition tank, they usually realize that they’re still glass, just more of a hard-glass pistol than a glass cannon. In addition, as a thief you quickly realize that a thief condition/tank build does not compare to engies, necros, rangers or mesmers in terms of condition damage or survivability.

P/D thieves don’t really work harder than glass thieves for kills at all.
Not to insult P/D thieves, but P/D doesn’t work harder because well it cannot. There isn’t enough meaningful choices on the kit. The length of time it takes to kill doesn’t mean anything for its skill cap when it unfortunately has to rely on 2 buttons because it can rarely find situations that justify anything more.
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I don’t think there is anything wrong with our Stealth traits other than how much room they take up on our trait line.
Anet stated stealth was a short duration defense. I think most of stealth problems come from player experience. I think problems that don’t fall under that is when stealth deviates that ideology of being short, or get reapplied quick enough to be practically the same as extending the duration. That’s when it gets into cheeseball territory.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Daecollo.9578:

… you have less swings which increases its value on EVERY other attack in the game.

I’d rather have it stab once, really.

That would be preferred. Considering Sins signet, venoms and HK. Annoying enough knowing Sin signet active sucks for multi-hit.

Daecollo.9578:

It would be the SAME exact skill, just be split up and respond a lot faster. I feel that the two skills going together just makes the enemy know your coming, IF YOU SPLIT THE skill, it will not only increase synergy with other skills and increase the skill cap, you can artificially add more damage to it because now its a better attack. The synergy comes from taking the whip and throwing it away because it’s “In the way”.

And since you lowered the hit volume of it, you can buff Signet of Malice to heal for more since you have less swings which increases its value on EVERY other attack in the game. They could buff SoM right now. The Hit volume of PW and Unload can’t argue leaving SoM as it is when Hastes been nerfed. The only other utility skill that’s problematic with SoM is caltrops.

SoM is held back by the Old PW/Unload.
Maybe back with 50% haste. Their current speeds aren’t holding back SoM. The maximum speed is too low. Previously when you brought up SoM I said it has use when you get a lot of hits and brought up haste as part of that and caltrops. With the current maximum speeds it doesn’t matter it shouldn’t have any balance issues if SoM is buffed with the current skills. If anything the only reason SoM would have a problem is caltrops triggering the heal or use with Shadow rejuvenation (but I doubt that)

randomfightfan.4091:

That’s fine. I’m slightly perturbed at someone trying to tell me what I do and do not understand. Forgive me if while typing I do not take the time to go through every single strategy and use of a skill in my head in an attempt to be as brief as I know how.

Why I say what I say.
I ran S/P from late December/January until the quickness nerf as a response to all the S/D nerfs they had done in Nov and Dec. Noctis Assassin was still running S/D and then eventually converted to S/P because Rangers were and to this day are flipping annoying he probably had additional reasons but thats what I knew.
We ran Haste burst specs, we did well for what we were playing, he did team tourneys, I solo-que’d, ran into each other ocassionally and had good skirmishes. Run into Ackwin who I usually saw with P/D but knew he played S/P as well. Run into a couple other S/P thieves and their names escape me. Ran into more popular names which I’ll refrain and did just fine, good matches. Hgh engies? Couldn’t relate to the forums threat of them. Mesmers? Felt very even a little cheesy at times but whatever. Guardians? I could spec to deal with them albeit was a bit hit or miss at times. Ele’s? That was problematic but in terms of a team just fine. PvE? Throw Black powder and cleave took care of everything. Everything? everything Monsters attack frequency was so predictable you could PW through them all without qualm and save an ini. Well to this day you still can. Rangers? Still annoying but less than playing S/D at the time.

When they nerfed S/P in October I feel they nerfed it in relation to haste. Since that October Nerf S/P was more or less balanced in terms of Haste play, with a couple issues like retaliation blowing you to kingdom come. Which was kind of dumb considering if you were hitting multiple targets as S/P that was their fault not yours.
That and stability had people ignoring the hell out of pistol whip. Outside of that the set was pretty dam good. Could go against any of the other thieves, only qualm was when you ran into D/x with haste, and if they blew their haste then you could definitely beat that too. Good set. Quickness nerf to S/P was like quickness nerf to HB wars. Especially considering the skills are extremely similar.

When they nerfed Quickness it’s like they nerfed what they had already near perfectly balanced around quickness. Sinoctis doesn’t play anymore and I’m here playing less frequently, going through April with a burst S/D set before they nerfed that too with the Mug nerf :o.

PW was balanced for Quickness. Now it gets screwed up not really because it roots, the root means extremely little. With haste in it’s current state you can’t wear them down and then blow em up. You can’t see someone at 50%, haste and plow through them either. The skills too slow and doesn’t hit hard enough for the speed.

If they up the damage, you’ll wear them down better regardless of your spec and it’ll add up over time. Similarly when you use haste it’ll be more effective when you’re compressing higher damage. The hits that land will do more damage if they walk through it with stability.
On the other hand.
If they speed up the skill itself, you’ll stun more reliably can interrupt key skills with greater ease without resorting to headshot while you’re in melee range. You’ll get more hits in which means wearing them down easier. You can CC better for teammates in a venom spec, and feel more use out of your haste in a haste spec. You’ll get more hits off even if they walk through it with stability.

I don’t see a need to split a skill that until 2 patches ago was still a clear threat in pvp or wvw if you wanted to run it. Few professions could ignore hasted whips. Simultaneously you could run different trait lines back then because haste counted as a damage boost so you could run acrobatics, trickery, or DA. There is Cruuks build too I suppose that runs Shadow arts.

They should fix what they broke, we can’t go back to 50% quickness so making PW hit harder or faster would definitely help. As where it was before it only had a couple issues. I don’t think it needs seperation at all. I think they had it probably 80 or 90% balanced after October. Broke it with the quickness nerf hit it again with the mug nerf, and kinda sliced into it a fourth time by “fixing” inf strike.

Thing needs a damage buff 1) So it can properly wear down targets better since it doesn’t have 50% quickness to make up for lack of damage.
2) Because Mug isn’t nearly as strong, it’s additional damage out of S/P’s mouth.

It’s still “usable” in a venom spec and by usable I mean if you’re going to run venoms then you might as well take S/P. Since it does that arguably better than our other sets.

Seperation feels like saying “Here is a skill that functionally worked and was fine. We’re now functionally changing it, instead of bringing it back to where it was”.

All of the first 3 P/X skills are poor.

I wouldn’t expect Conquest to grow big on it’s own. There were plenty of people who didn’t play GvG in GW1. Not every format is for everyone, even if they brought GvG that would hold true. I also think GvG likely wouldn’t of taken off as well for as long if it was all the players had. Only some had it in them to play only 1/2 formats for the lifespan of gw1…though I doubt any really did just 2.

I wasn’t a fan of GvG in gw1. I found HA more interesting.
As far as e-sports I think it was relatively close but at the time that whole “e-sports” idea wasn’t really a factor. GW1 was kind of a pioneer imo.
Foefire kind of solves the old GvG issues by capture points serving to keep things rolling since people can win through them. If they brought back GvG and implemented capture points to prevent staleness maybe the format could work out better.

Conquest is fine. Just wish there was something to break the monotony inb4kegbrawl.
Have to take breaks from the game itself because if all i want to do is pvp I get burnt out on the 1 format with my 1-2 builds.

jportell.2197:

It’s more a question of why did defensive boon durations get shafted… And Power ones did not?

Because they said themselves before this game even launched they wanted an offensive game.
Secondly Conquest as a format demands offense be stronger than defense. If Defense grows stronger what happens is someone caps a point, they can sit on it for indefinite periods of time ticking 1 pt every second and the game stagnates due to a slow pace on a format that requires you to be able to flip nodes at a relatively quick pace or lose.

The scoring system itself favors defense over offense.

Daecollo.9578:

ensoriki.5789:

To what purpose.
Go run S/P.
Tell me the issues you actually get with it.

Stability, retaliation, the wind up of pistol whip, and the damage you deal considering that wind up. You’ve really done nothing to the issues PW has.
Instead it has everything that is problematic but it’s seperated for completely arbitrary reasons.

Then you have the BP which is primarily just a stomp or combo field for your other weapon set. When using it for S/P itself generally the loss of damage due to it’s low base number screws you over for the initiative cost.

But how does seperating PW into two skills that work exactly the same as now with the only change being they are seperate remedy it’s faults? The moment you boosted up the damage you already gave PW a significant benefit and just made it more rewarding to land it. Seperating it at that point is just adding arbitrary flexibility.
If it’s more rewarding to land your PW there isn’t an issue.
If it’s easier to land the stun then there is less issue.
But seperating the skill doesn’t actually make landing the PW itself easier anyways which was the main qualm in terms of responsiveness.

It does make it easier, now I can Infil-strike and immediately go to the damage portion of Pistol whip for example, or steal and immediately go to the damage portion.

You don’t understand how simple synergy can make all the difference.

I get the synergy, I feel it’s completely the wrong direction to go.
In other words, split it to ignore whats wrong with it. Will split 100b into two skills next so you don’t get fully screwed if they dodge.

To what purpose.
Go run S/P.
Tell me the issues you actually get with it.

Stability, retaliation, the wind up of pistol whip, and the damage you deal considering that wind up. You’ve really done nothing to the issues PW has.
Instead it has everything that is problematic but it’s seperated for completely arbitrary reasons.

Then you have the BP which is primarily just a stomp or combo field for your other weapon set. When using it for S/P itself generally the loss of damage due to it’s low base number screws you over for the initiative cost.

But how does seperating PW into two skills that work exactly the same as now with the only change being they are seperate remedy it’s faults? The moment you boosted up the damage you already gave PW a significant benefit and just made it more rewarding to land it. Seperating it at that point is just adding arbitrary flexibility.
If it’s more rewarding to land your PW there isn’t an issue.
If it’s easier to land the stun then there is less issue.
But seperating the skill doesn’t actually make landing the PW itself easier anyways which was the main qualm in terms of responsiveness.

Why seperate a skill that has worked fine since Launch and the only reason it has issues is because they’ve nerfed it essentially twice.

Warriors.
Long version: Imo warriors are simplistic compared to other professions. Not as efficient atm but their core is simplistic in that they don’t have as many inherit options that everyone else has. All their mechanic grants them is a single skill that has to be powered up by attacking. Every other profession has more. When warriors are good they’ll be good with less options than everyone else unless reworked and I think that’s more “scary” to think about than the necromancer. When the warriors relatively small pool of options equates to everyone’s larger pool.

There isnt anything wrong with the stun other then it taking forever to come out.

Why take unload if you can take a /P mesmer.
Straight damage skills don’t make sense with initiative. Srs. HS works because it’s conditional dmg, Shadow shot because it has utility functions.
I’d Scrap body shot unload and reverse Shadow strike.

Lol seems like you want condi specs bad.
P/x needs revision.
Tripwire is useful so is ambush the other 2 are pretty poor.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Mrbig.8019:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Shadow-Refuge is definitely a very strong utility, but makes the game really interesting and not that predictable. I think without shadow-refuge, the thief loose much viability for a team.
But in general I agree with stealth being a problem. It should be decreased slightly in its duration.

I can agree with that.

But you also have to think that shadow refuge is a MUST HAVE for any thief and, as you said, the thief will lose too much viability without it, meaning its a SINGLE SKILL which makes the class viable ( even S/D doesn’t really offer that much in terms of team utility).

It’s pretty much the same with mesmers, forced to bring IoL and Portal + random stunbreaker mostly because other u-skills are , yes strong, but not on par.

With the thief that’s is not even the case: there’s nothing as strong as shadow refuge, you’re basically a moron if you don’t pick it and are severely hampering your team capabilities.

Back in beta an engi could stack 20 + secs of stealth ( now there’s a cap ) with smoke fields+blasts, i believe it’s time to nerf shadow refuge+ shortbow and balance the thief profession better, because currently we’re helded back by these things ( devs will always say, regarding thief sucking, " but hey, they have massive mobility/AoE + massive AoE stealth, they’re fine !!! " when in reality, we’re not).

I don’t know if the right way to go about it by nerfing SB, but maybe buffing other weapons to give them mobility and blast finishers or more ways to survive. Currently SB can do all this for the thief; be very mobile around a map, stealth you with pistol 5 and SB 2, tons of evade, and good damage in team fights. The reason it seems so good is because no other weapon set can compare. And no other weapons have as much synergy as the SB do.

The same goes for D/P. That is the perfect example of how a weapon set should be. Using every single weapon skill together at all times.

At launch all 4 of our melee weapon sets S/P, S/D, D/D and D/P were used. S/P, S/D and D/P used all of their skills, D/D didn’t use death blossom. Somewhere along the lines Anet has nerfed things to the extent that S/D which previously used everything but very sparingly used FS, uses primarily FS and doesn’t use Dancing dagger and sparingly Cloak and dagger. Going from 4/5 or 5/5 skills to 3/5 or 4/5 depending on how you look at it.D/D used 4/5 now uses 3/5…not that it is being used. S/P still gets use of all it’s skills but you don’t even get rewarded for getting PW’s through it’s considerably long wind up time, being walked through if they have stability, or that half the skill can be walked out of after the stun. That’s if retal doesn’t kill you. How did we go from 4 sets that were all usable and outcried OP by the world to essentially 2 sets where 1 uses less skills than it did before…
/balance.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Harrier.9380:

It’s not D/P or S/D that need rework to make other sets viable.

It’s P/P and S/P that need to be reworked, because as of now both of them rely on spamming either Unload or Pistol Whip over and over. It needs to go.

Then you would have to buff P/P and S/P to near gamebreaking levels to bring them in line with D/P and S/D. Unlimited Evades should not be possible on any class. Condition Removal and Regeneration should not be possible to the extent that a Thief has it. I’m not talking about huge nerfs, just changes to discourage the current meta.

I only want what is best for the Thief, since I fell in love with P/P and S/D, but I do have to stand back and take an unbiased approach at this. Key word meaning “Balance”. If you find that S/D and D/P are balanced, then you are severely mistaken. You have to look at it like a scale

Weak : P/P S/P P/D | Balanced : N/A | Strong : S/D D/P D/D

They both have to be moved into the center for overall balance.

There aren’t unlimited evades and S/D had more evasion pre-buff. Lazy to check but if I’m remembering correctly S/P has more actual evasion time than S/D but it’s less practical due to the wind up and clunkier since you have to cancel your PW forcibly before you can dodge.

S/P is not in the same tier as P/P in the slightest. S/P only really became problematic to run after the quickness nerf and many thieves still presume that somewhere Venom Share will be useful and S/P is arguably the best at it.

S/P doesn’t even need anything but number changes unless they plan to throw in QOL changes like getting past Stability/retaliation or making PW’s stun come out faster.

The set itself uses all its skills has always used all it’s skills even before it’s first nerf, and likely will continue to use all it’s skills if they give it minor tweaks. Probably the 1st or 2nd most well put kit we have in terms of how the skills are put together if it weren’t for them dropping multiple nerfs to it that added up.
Still better than P/P that thing needs a rework imo.

Oh and D/D is trash. CnD nerf, DD nerf, Mug nerf, Haste nerf, Death blossom not even used, wtf is strong about D/D, Shortbow nerf, P/ not usable, so it struggles to get targets to ~50%. Shadow arts bruising? Other classes are more efficient.

Harrier.9380:

It’s not D/P or S/D that need rework to make other sets viable.

It’s P/P and S/P that need to be reworked, because as of now both of them rely on spamming either Unload or Pistol Whip over and over. It needs to go.

Go where? S/P probably needs the smallest tweaks of any thief set to go back into prominence. It was usable all the way until the quickness nerf and utilized all of it’s skills.

They effectively already exist via small-target Gtaoes, and it’s unlikely any actual skills will be added to the game outside of an expansion.

Seems to be the case, though it doesn’t seem to be very conducive to team play does it?

But it is? Well if you disagree I suppose you can try running Venom Share by yourself and seeing how well that works. These support skills are aoe but they still require co-ordination and an eye.

There’s plenty of support in GW2 but like I said it’s either underperforming and needs adjustment (Ranger Spirits) or can be somewhat problematic to use (Geyser) or in the worst case scenario it’s random (Elixirs).

I wish they would explain how thief went from 4 melee sets at launch to arguably 1.

They might as well be posted here if for no other reason that the thief forum most certainly goes neglected. Last time devs were there other than I believe to try and qualm pve complaints about 4s reveal was so Roberta Honda could talk about how she is able to kill thieves on her Ranger. With the community there being pleased that they can be killed.
Lol wot. Other then that it was Jon Peters talking about making headway for Pistol/Pistol back in December.
Good luck OP.

Stealth is fine in short durations. 3-4s without problem.
Long term the game would probably be better off if stealth didn’t stack in duration (with the stealth increased on blast finish) and SR was more of a revive than a long duration stealth.

However it’s not a huge issue any stealth changes would ideally come in with general thief improvements so not to kick the class into the curb.

GW2 philosophy seems to be that you help each other and yourself simultaneously or just yourself.
Which I suppose is fine, there are multiple supportive abilities that would help the lord but some just aren’t practical to take. Ranger spirits weren’t paper and a tad stronger than stone spirit could help protect the lord. If Npc’s have strong co-efficients on attacks/heals than Banners boost them significantly. Engineers have boosts they can throw on the lord with elixirs but they’re random so that becomes unreliable.
Staff Ele’s can throw geyser on him to try and keep him up but he’ll likely move out of it.
I doubt they’re going to change their current skill dynamic and throw in new wrenches into balance because of Foefire.

I don’t think Lord healers was set in stone but a statement to show that the Lord’s current defenses are inadequate. Throwing in single target skills changes the game.

There is plenty of stop Players can do to assist a lord but some of them are pretty weak atm, and in addition the Lord is just too easy to dispatch as an individual and so to remedy that he needs better support when players aren’t there to baby sit him, hence giving him healers.

In all games I go for mobility and fast attacks over anything else.
Almost quit gw1 if it wasn’t for the release of the Assassin.

You mean as in Rush being indistinguishable from bulls charge?

There’s a couple things poison is bringing.
When a Dagger/Dagger, S/D or P/D thief does down a target, stomping isn’t always a practical situation. You can alleviate that a bit with a Shadowstep stomp granted you screw up your escape options more.
Dancing Dagger before put some crazy pressure downed targets and the person rezzing. With Poison it’s going to put some of that pressure back for DD thieves (though making it poison downed targets with a 50% restriction may require some revision) on downed targets. The poison is fairly negligent to the actual person reviving so it’s not going to wipe them out in all likelihood, but it will help secure stomps for /D that can’t just black powder anyone.
Dropping the initiative to 2 can definitely cause more pressure than now as well. However time is obviously a factor and with the animation speed and the velocity of the projectile itself you spend a considerable amount of time just chucking daggers. In other words to get that projected 50% damage increase, you spend 2x more time chucking dancing dagger. Not very ideal. If they increased the velocity of DD’s toss with what you’re suggesting then sure np but oddly enough cripple isn’t that strong a condition for thieves to apply given our amount of gap closers already and lack of trait synergy. The double-triple condi’s DD would be putting out would cover other teammates effects in a team fight as well with the bounce making it apply to multiple targets. Which ideally works perfect for S/D and P/D specs and gives D/D something to do. after a gank.
Only thing is that at 2 ini the cross-play would be great but atm the velocity of dancing daggers sucks.

Tulisin.6945:

Rafahil.2857:

Assassins Reward is a lousy trait really. The heal is too little to make a difference that warrants it as a trait. Would be ok I guess if it was there in place of Last refuge, but that’s another issue all together. Assassins Reward needs either better base healing or better healing power scaling.

While I’m not opposed to Assassin’s Reward getting a boost or rework, the effectiveness of the trait varies highly with weapon and combat doctrine. A lot of thieves run heavily frontloaded ambush-style builds that are necessarily going to burn a ton of initiative and then need healing when they have none. Conversely, S/x builds work great with AR since they are much less frontloaded and have the initiative to burn at a later time. Both PW and FS serve as spammable evades that now, thanks to Assassin’s Reward, can be used to heal up in an emergency. AR also works well for shortbow, cluster bomb is a great initiative dump for healing and disabling shot can function as a spammable healing evade.

It isn’t nearly powerful to rely on for a full heal, but it gives a lot more longevity to builds that don’t blow their load in the first five seconds of a fight.

Assassin’s Reward is wonky and won’t heal you if you do not finish the animation. So if you dodge during your skill you don’t get healed. Which ends up making it problematic for PW when you may want to end PW prematurely and end up receiving no reward for the initiative spent…. As far as I’ve known AR works best with sets that have short animations so you get the heal on demand and not waiting 2s like if you took S/P. I guess it’s different with new S/D than it was for the old one (which was lengthy too) since I haven’t run it with new FS yet. Though I remember AR often not healing me if I cancelled FS with FS to chain evades or if dodged after the first hit or was interrupted…just nonsensical.

they should nerf banners after they nerf Off-hand mace.

Only changes I’d make to acrobatics making Assassin’s Reward activate instantly not after the skill and increase the healing power co-efficient. Merging Fleet of Foot with Sins retreat or Hard to catch and doing something to PR. Would hold out on Master trapper until Traps get a check.
Otherwise it’s a really good tree.

The stomp animation should be an anchor with the words “SUNK” appearing above the finished persons head.With a range greater than the normal on ground stomp.
If throwing a flag through someones body works, than gluing an anchor on their kitten does too.

There are a couple of times an S/D will not feel comfortable around a condi necro, but not if he’s running a Shadow arts build (which isn’t standard and hasn’t been since last year) since that excels at duels and has more sustainability than normal.

Archer Henchman.2534:

Why would I use dancing dagger for poison when I can use headshot to counter the heal entirely?
Stability is the clearest reason unless you take Bountiful theft, you can’t remove a boon with a /P set. As well Headshot is faster but it doesn’t snare which means spending initiative to gap close after the headshot. As well for bringing up condition options, headshot simply isn’t a factor since all /P sets have a significant (basically 100%) focus on power damage. D/D and P/D, gain better flexibility to achieve success with condi’s

If you want /D to be relevant again, revert the change to trickshot, to allow thieves a viable damage option at range. If you’re not running /P, you don’t have the ability to reset at range with triple or quadra self-stealth applications, nor do you have the ability to stay in melee range due to the lack of mitigation coming off black powder.
Well for 1) that just changes the shortbow dynamic and ignores one for P/ meaning our range options remains what it has always been for quite some time, one weapon.
2) Shortbow changes affect D/D the most but S/D and P/D are less affected due to Mid/long range options decreasing the pressure to have the shortbow.
3) it doesn’t actually make well /D better, it’s making an alternative weaponset better to make up for /D failings. Though I certainly understand where you’re coming from I feel it’s going around the issue.

This means when you go in for your combo, your targets have to be lower hp, and you’re severely penalized if you don’t capitalize on the weapon switch. The changes to trickshot and mug lowered both:
For sure both nerfs hurt hard, but well changing trickshot is indirectly augmenting D/D but isn’t really a factor for /D as a whole. It’s going around the main issue which is /D’s performance itself. Well intended as it is.

1) The rate at which a thief could attrition someone down into a range where spikes were possible (to the extent that a stutter stepping opponent cannot be hit), and

2) Narrowed the window wherein spikes were successful by removing 2k damage off the combo.

Since d/d’s weapon set cannot survive in melee vs most classes, and since the spike that it sets up has to put the thief’s team in a hugely advantageous position for it to secure a stomp (without powder blinding for stomps is much more difficult, and without headshot, preventing resses is far more difficult), switching into D/D from sb is a huge risk.
Thing is if /D inflicts poison it assists in giving purpose once you are in D/D itself. A flopped gank could mean near no way to recover since they’d just heal up. Often removing the poison from 5DA beforehand. It also allows you to exist better without any DA investment at all since you’ll have a poison option without chocking gas. Eg you can poke with trickshot, switch to /D and hit a DD regardless of whether they cleared your chocking gas from earlier or if you had even used choking gas. Simultaneously if you use P/D as your ranged set, since it’ll bring poison it fits in more with your power builds.
D/D meant that your ability to gap close and spike was higher than D/P, but your ability to stay in melee was far diminished.

As for dancing dagger itself, the cripple duration is low enough to give it negligible gap closing utility, and the initiative cost is too high to reapply it during a chase. Because of its bouncing nature, dancing dagger loses half of its effectiveness while being used to chase down a lone straggler. An alternative solution is to drop its initiative cost to 2 or 3, which would allow it to be used for combo-field projectile finisher application. Its damage would need to be lowered 33% if it was changed to 2, though.

At these lower costs (esp 2, it could be used during p/d rotations in order to set up cripple for CnD without being a waste of initiative. It could also allow for S/D to be less reliant on Larcenous strike as an initiative dump in order to create functionality.
Definitely see your point and I think it’s a valid proposal. I thought about lower initiative, but does DD give you enough juice even at 2 ini to warrant it? Definitely for excess initiative if it’s 2 initiative you may feel like you have nothing to lose by chucking one out, but it should be potent enough that you’re not just throwing it out because you have excess ini lying about. In it’s current state it’s not offering much and at 2 ini it’s still not offering much but it’s offering it cheaply.

Poison acts as a functional counter-part to Headshots daze in terms of foes healing, and in some respects would be better due to Stability. It’s a DoT condition that works well for P/D to diversify that and push it past 5-1 play that is frankly embarrassing. Burning has limited purpose on S/D while poison’s secondary effect makes it transfer well to power specs and beneficial to condi specs.
Trait synergy with poison in Deadly arts also makes that an interesting line to invest in for benefit and even Potent Poison would look more ideal (still a terrible trait).

Burning is useful to condi specs and as some additional side-piece damage, but it has the least mileage and functionality with the thief as a whole and doesn’t really provide something that creates interesting choices. Additionally it puts DD much closer in damage to the iteration they purposefully nerfed.

Build Diversity
Brb P/D stops using 5-1 and can now include 4 to become a 3 button spec.
Brb bringing D/D back into limelight.
Brb S/D harass to make up for low damage and something to work with Trickery.
Brb wicked condition coverage with 15 DA. Maybe P/D can be a more credible secondary set against the almighty shortbow.

When is Dancing Daggers going to be more than a 80% of the time unfavorable niche skill in spvp? November? Do something to this skill. Not worth the initiative, and if isn’t worth the initiative than it’s not being used. If it’s not being used other skills get spammed more since there is excess initiative and nowhere to spend it. The mechanic doesn’t work properly if there are unused skills that aren’t worth the opportunity cost.

inb4suggestionforums (A.K.A slightly more read than thief forum)
inb4thiefforums (A.K.A unread)
inb4whocaresaboutthiefproblems

^ That’s because they decided to throw the boon steal from the FS evade which does Near no damage to LS which does the bulk of the damage. Hence LS is incredibly rewarding to hit, disproportionately so and lets you see a warrior at 6k health in shield block and say screw it and poke him death with LS anyways. Where as prior since FS did crap damage You’d have to blow 8-12 ini by no exaggeration to drop a warrior in Shield block dead, which may allow him to survive. Lulzy now that it happens for 4.
S/D needs boosts, LS is too rewarding.
Inb4Iamwrong.

It’s not the teleportation that is getting you bud.
It’s the stealth. This thief wasn’t exactly a genius he ate marks he didn’t have to. Outside of stealth you would’ve won this encounter. What screwed you over was not getting past the CnD’s. My Necromancer experience is extremly limited (read,5 games). Chaining fear into an immobilize or second fear and following up with Golem rush would help for instance. Eg. DS fear, cancel shroud he pops Shadow return, you fear mark. SR is down drop 3 marks on his kitten .

Though an actual necro player could likely be more useful :P.
General tip is to pop Shadow Return (the teleport that has an icon on his health bar) then follow with CC. If he creates distance you can close distance and that invalidates the positioning advantage of Shadow return. Inf strike can be evaded even after he warps to you there is a delay. Outside of that general CnD defense (same as D/D or P/D) would’ve helped you out more.

When I’m playing S/P thief instead of S/D, I’ll generally interrupt him after he inf strikes me if I didn’t dodge it. Stacking bleed and covering with poison will screw him over as well since Inf strike removes only 1, and he’ll have to dip into utils to strip it otherwise (unless he’s SA built).

Tactical strike isnt on demand. It has to be set-up via stealth ergo, CnD.
Unless someones dropping Blinding Powder, it’ll never be on demand.
It’s about as “on demand” as Backstab in a /D set. Which in terms of an actual interrupt, can be unwieldy at times.

MarkPhilips.5169:

I play Thief and i agree OH Dagger, after nerf, is horrible

BUT

FS + LS give too much for not big cost in initiative, you have good damage, evade, 2 boon stolen (with unblockable hit) and the only thing you have to do is spam #3 with dodge in the middle. Only for 4 initiative cost in total.

Too easy and too high reward for this action, anet need to smooth this action, increasing initiative cost or only 1 boon stolen or hit can be blockable or less damage.

At the same time they can improve OH dagger to balance this nerf.

Doesn’t need an ini boost.
Old FS wasn’t rewarding enough. New FS+LS is overfed and needs to come back to reality. Agree about /D.
S/D is getting overrated as hell though.

While people are talking sword.
Sword sets are all pure physical no condi damage and other than D/P scale the worst with their own class mechanic trait, brb zero condi damage to benefit from Trickery.

The vigor is not inherit to S/D and can be tossed on literally any thief set for the same effect. The only difference is a 4 ini cost which is brought into line with any other thief defense now that FS doesn’t cancel.

Nerf ranger shortbow 1.

S/D still needs buffs.
LS was overfed.

Varonth.5830:

The problem is still, the initiative system. A hybrid of ‘initiative’ and cooldown would be much better in my opinion.
The problem with the initiative system is, that it not only allows spamming the same ability over and over, but it actively encourages a thief to do so. Since all skills share the same resource, they basically battle for these resources. If one skill is just marginally better, then you will just keep on using that skill, because why wasting limited resources on something which does not do the job well.
Why should you throw a dagger on someone, if you can heartseeker/infiltrators strike jump spam him instead. Even if you miss with those 2 abilities, they place you next to the target, and allow you to keep hitting them with melee attacks.

Disregarding. Initiative is fine.

Post was hard to read but agree.
Weapon sets should be primary balance concern over things like banners, kick and turrets.

He’s saying that before their nerfs S/P and D/D were thieves best damage weapons and continue to output the most damage.
If I recall, that’s true. Since S/P’s damage numbers on 3 targets dwarfs everything easily, and D/D backstab chains dwarf everything single-target if some other posters calculations are correct.

Foddzy.6291:

P/P can be ignored because it is not a weapon set that has ever been widely used, this is “Anet-logick”. The “good” weapon sets, used by the good players of course, get all the attention.

Not sure if srs.
Considering That P/P once upon a time pre-release was good. Then they nerfed it.
Then there was release and they nerfed S/P, minor touched D/, then S/D, then /D, nerfed SB, and made P/D a worse secondary set that could only 5-1. Nerfed quickness hitting S/P, S/D and P/P again.It doesn’t matter if something was “good” or not. They do what they feel and you’re along for the ride brah.

P/P seemingly will never get movement.
Boost the damage on Vital shot, Headshot and Black powder. Let body shot return 1 initiative if it goes through a combo field so it’s cheaper for P/P to defend itself.

There are less builds viable/considered now then at release lol.
Release had D/D D/P S/D and S/P thieves all doing their thing. 8 months later its D/P.
Fantastic.
Warriors had frenzy supporting quite a few options now they dont.
For the sake of balance variety has gone down and now balance is between a few builds per profession. Its taken 8 months to move backwards from variety goals. If they start now maybe we can get options back and more in 4…hell maybe less I’m optimistic.

Complex builds aren’t going to be heavily rewarded since simplistic builds are intended to be able to be equivalent.

Demosthene.2195:

The only way to fix this garbage is to make it rip (not steal, just rip) a single boon

But that’s exactly what it did before and went underutilized? FS had issues with connecting both hits being hard and the reward for doing so being less than it should’ve been. Dropping it to one boon removal puts it right where it was before with the small difference in usability but overall reward being the same. No thanks jeff.

I agree OP, but inb4 other thieves.

1. build diversity
2. solo
3. Format to feel more engaging.

Someone mention thief pistol and what they’ve decided for the new condition.

EvilSardine.9635:

Yep. They need to increase the amount of initiative this uses.

No.

The old FS had uses but it was quite niche, and as much as I loved it truth be told no weapon sets should be niche. It is one thing for specific playstyles based off that weapon to be so but as a whole? FS did require some change.

I feel there is something that is not right with the current FS in how the dynamic has shifted between the 1st hit and 2nd hit in terms of utility, but S/D itself still isn’t where it should be, so I’m hesitant on attacking it. That also being said I’m not sure if what I think works either.
Optimal success for the set does not demand spamming FS, that’s rather unwise but the set does punish you less now for doing so. Just one of those things that happens.

Burst isn’t insane when your mode is about flipping possession of nodes into your favor. If you can’t do that quickly, then you snowball points. Weakness shouldn’t be near as strong as it was in gw1 or a thief drops choking gas, people don’t die quickly in a mode where you want quick deaths so you can flip nodes.