Condi S/D Daredevil is overperforming and overpowered.

I am a thief main, and I acknowledge this.

The reason I believe it is over-performing is the hyper-synergy of infiltrators strike and panic strike.

Panic strike by itself is not so problematic as other sources of immobile are reflectedable, easily dodged or los, or cost a utilitiy spot.

Infiltrator's strike teleports you to target, hits them and applies immobile.

Immobile is a condition that prevents movement, turning, and dodging.

This gives the thief plenty of time to do a lotus dodge and cover up the steal they already probably did.

Another problematic trait is the weakening strikes.

It applies weakness after each dodge, and this can make it much harder for power classes to fight back.

So, you have this class that can port in, dump condis on you while you are immobile, and port away as needed.

They keep you weakened so it is very hard to fight back in any scenario.

I reccomend changing two things because other condi builds require more than a monkey with feet behind the keyboard.

**1. Weakening strikes (minor master trait) no longer applies weakness on dodge, instead it reduced damage from foes with any condition, still applies 7% damage against weakened foes. (you get this from lotus poison or weakening charge)

2. Remove the immobile from sword 2 (infiltrators strike). Maybe replace it with chill or cripple. Also, infiltrator's return should only be available on a successful infiltrators strike. So if the miss the attack they can not port away.**

Revert ps to what it use to be, not poison everytime imho is triggered.

Something needs to be done about infiltrator's strike mechanically. I have trouble fighting it, but I can admit that is in part due to that I haven't dedicated any time whatsoever to trying to recognize the animation. My main beef with the skill is when it's cast from LoS and there's really no way I even have a chance of recognizing the animation because they're behind a wall. It gets worse when my opponent is playing a small race (I play mostly Charr, so >.>).

If they do remove the immob tho, def change it out for cripple and a short blind. And def rework the Weakness application - Weakening Charge at least has risk to it, but any hit after a dodge applying it is just ridiculous.

i still remember your posts of defending it

@Lighter.5631 said:i still remember your posts of defending it

feel free to quote them.

@Curennos.9307 said:Something needs to be done about infiltrator's strike mechanically. I have trouble fighting it, but I can admit that is in part due to that I haven't dedicated any time whatsoever to trying to recognize the animation. My main beef with the skill is when it's cast from LoS and there's really no way I even have a chance of recognizing the animation because they're behind a wall. It gets worse when my opponent is playing a small race (I play mostly Charr, so >.>).

If they do remove the immob tho, def change it out for cripple and a short blind. And def rework the Weakness application - Weakening Charge at least has risk to it, but any hit after a dodge applying it is just ridiculous.

You are not going to dodge infiltrators strike based off it's animation. The cast time is so small that there isn't even one listed in the tool tip. It is clearly not completely instant like steal but it is not remotely dodgeable on reflex you can only try to anticipate it and hope for the best or just chain evades back to back to back to back etc. like certain thief builds do and call it skill when some of those evades actually avoid stuff.

I agree with weakening strikes change (this also helps the bunker staff they want to have).

@"Crab Fear.1624" said:

2. Also, infiltrator's return should only be available on a successful infiltrators strike. So if the miss the attack they can not port away.**

Thieves occassionally cast IS without targeting. That's just asking for unnecessary mobility nerf, like mesmer's portal.

@ArthurDent.9538 said:

@Curennos.9307 said:Something needs to be done about infiltrator's strike mechanically. I have trouble fighting it, but I can admit that is in part due to that I haven't dedicated any time whatsoever to trying to recognize the animation. My main beef with the skill is when it's cast from LoS and there's really no way I even have a chance of recognizing the animation because they're behind a wall. It gets worse when my opponent is playing a small race (I play mostly Charr, so >.>).

If they do remove the immob tho, def change it out for cripple and a short blind. And def rework the Weakness application - Weakening Charge at least has risk to it, but any hit after a dodge applying it is just ridiculous.

Pardon - IIRC, the actual strike has a bit more of a delay than the animation itself, so if you just watch for when the thief disappears and dodge when they do, it's not-insignificantly more deal-able-with. Hence my beef with that the thief can hide behind a wall and cast it, making it total luck on whether or not you time it right.

i think anet should just limit one or two builds for each class for pvp and concentrate on balancing of said builds and nerf everything else, clearly it's impossible to balance all possible play styles

If remove panic strike u will have no more thief in the meta plus the reason it’s so good is that new daredevil trait sync with infiltrated strike that’s about it

@Crab Fear.1624 said:

Also, infiltrator's return should only be available on a successful infiltrators strike. So if the miss the attack they can not port away.**

All gud but this ...

@Raiden The Beast.3016 said:Also, infiltrator's return should only be available on a successful infiltrators strike. So if the miss the attack they can not port away.**

This would make S2 an infinite gap closer lol

@Crab Fear.1624 said:I mean of course, inability to evade when they cover you in s**t thats disgusting.But what if we think, what makes condi builds viable when we kinda have skills that remove 3-5 conditions? - Ability to vomit a lot of conditins many times and thief hide damaging conditions behind cover conditions from an evade, most cleanses cant get onto them . I dont know how I would be able to remove that many conditions over and over without dedicating your build into it and being a free kill for power builds.tldr - being able to reapply/cover damaging conditions with ease is the problem, not just immobilize. (Just my opinion)

@"Crab Fear.1624" said:I am a thief main, and I acknowledge this.

The reason I believe it is over-performing is the hyper-synergy of infiltrators strike and panic strike.

Panic strike by itself is not so problematic as other sources of immobile are reflectedable, easily dodged or los, or cost a utilitiy spot.

Infiltrator's strike teleports you to target, hits them and applies immobile.

Immobile is a condition that prevents movement, turning, and dodging.

This gives the thief plenty of time to do a lotus dodge and cover up the steal they already probably did.

Another problematic trait is the weakening strikes.

It applies weakness after each dodge, and this can make it much harder for power classes to fight back.

So, you have this class that can port in, dump condis on you while you are immobile, and port away as needed.

They keep you weakened so it is very hard to fight back in any scenario.

I reccomend changing two things because other condi builds require more than a monkey with feet behind the keyboard.

**1. Weakening strikes (minor master trait) no longer applies weakness on dodge, instead it reduced damage from foes with any condition, still applies 7% damage against weakened foes. (you get this from lotus poison or weakening charge)

2. Remove the immobile from sword 2 (infiltrators strike). Maybe replace it with chill or cripple. Also, infiltrator's return should only be available on a successful infiltrators strike. So if the miss the attack they can not port away.**

Bad suggestion is bad.Your looking to heavily nerf power s/d to deal with condi.Its not rocket science put an icd on panic strike or simply remove the on immobile portion.or better yet revert it.

Holosmith is still priority #1 nerf focus imo.

There was this one time, where my buddy was sitting next to me watching me play my Holosmith. When I used Holographic Shockwave, he was launched off his chair a few feet into the air and hit the floor. He thought that I rigged a car airbag under the cushion as a prank. When I tried to explain to him that it was the Holographic Shockwave, he didn't believe me. That's when I knew that Holosmith needed to be nerfed.

Sometimes at night, when I hear strange things and think there is an invader in my household, I log into my Holosmith. This way if the invader enters the room, I can push Holographic Shockwave and knock him down, granting me plenty of time to put him into downstate.

Once I was defending Home against a hybrid condi mirage when a condi Daredevil +1ed, i melted in 2s.A mirage from my team:How the f did you die?Me:Not enough cleanses obviously.

I didn't blame anyone though, i just realised my teammate couldn't read a minimap and a status bar.

Adjust deadly ambush to provide 1 stack of poison every 7 sec (2 stacks with potent poison traited) and the problem is solved.

Just make d/p great again.

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Raiden The Beast.3016 said:Also, infiltrator's return should only be available on a successful infiltrators strike. So if the miss the attack they can not port away.**

Lmao, true , would be beyond busted

i have been testing a lot of builds the past week, and condi daredevil was one of them. some things i figured out are:

I don't think condi daredevil is overperforming. if you talk about overperforming you have to compare builds to each other. compared to what is it overperforming? other thief builds? condi daredevil has a different role than s/d power or d/p thief in my opinion. the build is more similar to spellbreaker, holo, weaver and mirage, kind of a side node build, it just can't hold the node so it's better at aggressively trying to win a node from an enemy. is it overperforming compared to the other side noder? i don't think so. you can beat holo and spellbreaker if you dodge core skills that would otherwise kill you but it's quite hard against mirage and weaver.

there's also some simple counterplay against it. infiltrator's strike attack after the teleport has a casting time, like 0,5-0,75s, which can be dodged.high ground can be used because sword 2 can't teleport there. the thief will be forced to step on the node if he wants to decap it. if he's on the node sword 2 is rather bad.the build runs 1 stun break, if you know how to use cc you can force the stunbreak and pressure the thief on the 2nd stun (works with the above mentioned casting time on sword 2). if you're running condi yourself, after you applied enough conditions, stop attacking. the thief needs to dodge to remove conditions unless he spams sword 2 return and uses up all his initiative or wastes his stunbreak.

and something you shouldn't forget either: if your build isn't made for dealing with conditions you will have a hard time. people complain it's too much condi and they would have to adjust their build. well, that's normal for condi builds, it works the same with necro. and if the enemy team has a lot of condis, why don't you adjust your build?

I am so sick and tired of ppl tossing around nerfs for condi s/d that nerf everything except the actual root of the build.You want to nerf weakening strikes so that daredevil has no access to weakness outside of staff yet you fail to understand that no elite line is tied to it's weapon. What would happen if you wanted to play non staff daredevil? you would have a minor trait that would be half dead.Then you might argue that you are meant to synergyse the daredevil line with deadly arts to enable the damage modification of weakening strikes for non staff builds, in which case every non staff build will be deadly arts, trickery, daredevil, which is terrible (i mean it more or less was that for a long time and still is to a lesser extent, but the point is that such a change would cement a lack of build diversity for daredevil).

The issue of condi daredevil lies in deadly arts, not in acrobatic, not in daredevil, not in critical strikes but in deadly arts. Changing anything other than deadly arts would hurt other builds while having a minimal impact on the build you want nerfed, that then would need more nerfs that target the things which actually make build over preform.

So, what is it in deadly arts that causes s/d to be over tuned? I see 2 things sticking out: deadly ambition and panic strike. So the solution is to change one of these and nothing else. I already wrote about deadly ambition in another post, but panic strike might be a simpler fix in that they could just give the poison application part of the trait a icd of ~6 sec and be done with it. Or change the poison to another condition and be done with it. Or just delete the secondary part of panic strike and revert it back to what it was; a long cd long duration immobilize application.

EDIT: move this post to the thief subforum

lol more thief tears.... "I cant figure out how to beat (insert class and build here) so im gonna cry and hope anet will nerf it so I can kill (insert class and build here)."

@"rowdy.5107" said:lol more thief tears.... "I cant figure out how to beat (insert class and build here) so im gonna cry and hope anet will nerf it so I can kill (insert class and build here)."

I got a feeling there are going to be thief tears in the next update.

@Crab Fear.1624 said:

@"rowdy.5107" said:lol more thief tears.... "I cant figure out how to beat (insert class and build here) so im gonna cry and hope anet will nerf it so I can kill (insert class and build here)."

Are they not in every update?

@Alatar.7364 said:

@Crab Fear.1624 said:

@"rowdy.5107" said:lol more thief tears.... "I cant figure out how to beat (insert class and build here) so im gonna cry and hope anet will nerf it so I can kill (insert class and build here)."

I kind of like thief rn