Exitus.3297

I've personally always saw Smoke Screen as a low-key busted skill if you looked at what it did. It was basically an overpowered version of Black Powder with a 25 second cooldown and projectile deflection to boot. The only issue with it was the fact it was a line on the ground, so there was no practical use for it (in PvP). Now that it's a ring, I immediately knew it was going to see some use. It's a very strong skill. I don't doubt that ANet is going to increase the cooldown on it very soon to be more in line with the Necromancer's Well of Darkness. I say this because Well of Darkness functions similarly without the benefit of projectile deflection and being on a 35 second cooldown (although it can be traited for protection and life siphon so there's that). EDIT: Specified things that seemed too vague.

Another: Even the Odds doesn't add the stacks of might on a stealth attack.

Add this to the list: Basilisk Venom grants 2 stacks now (this may be intentional but its not in the patch or the tooltip).

Just as a heads up.

Well in this case yes. Before Heart of Thorns was even released that is what D/P played: Deadly Arts, Shadow Arts and Trickery. It was pretty fun at the time. Seeing all of the new healing/life siphon on Shadowsteps, Blinds and Stealth attacks, which D/P has quite a few of, it stands to benefit from all of it even from a non-support standpoint. I don't think it's a complete accident.

The name on the title was pretty much exactly what I was thinking. I'm glad they did something with Traps, but I'm disappointed they ignored the one key thing a lot of DrD mains were literally screaming about in forums for literal months. Based on the new Life Siphon effects in Shadow Arts, it looks like they want D/P Thieves to be picking up Shadow Arts instead.

I see what you are suggesting. It's interesting, but you gotta remember that the whole point of the high ini cost is that there needs to be a cost on the reliable source of stealth, whereas Cloak and Dagger is meant to function they way you are suggesting Black Powder should in the sense it is very efficient at the cost of reliability. I would personally lean more toward making Black Powder just more reliable to use defensively against Melee instead of being used almost exclusively for stealth. Maybe bringing back the Blind application rate or even increasing the size of the field a little. EDIT: That is assuming that BP needs to be changed at all. It may be wiser to focus on bigger fish before addressing an ability that has basically been fine for awhile (in the sense not many people are complaining about it). TBH, offhand Pistol abilities in general may need to be looked at.

I regularly used to use Basilisk Venom on D/P Daredevil even when Dagger Storm got power-creeped. I honestly would prefer Impact Strike because the play-making potential is really good (that and I like punching things), but it whiffs too often.

Sorry, but none of the above. I don't get why ANet felt the need to change the class skill to begin with. Not every elite spec needs it's class skill changed. Mirages get a new dodge mechanic, and Daredevils were meant to be similar. Heck, Scrappers got a ranged finisher/revive skill and their class skills were completely untouched. The best thing ANet could do in the short-term is just revert it back to normal, at least until they can come up with a tradeoff that actually makes sense. EDIT: Grammar, as per usual...

The Lotus Poison trait in Deadly Arts says 10 second recharge, but after quite a bit of testing, the cooldown is actually 15 seconds. (This may already be known by other's but this is news to me.)

Trust me, we know.

I'm okay with this. EDIT: I should probably add I'm not too worried about it since the Daredevil trait rework.

One thing that came to mind as you said this was making it so that Lead Attacks stacks to 30 or something and last like 25ish seconds, but then make each individual stack worth 0.5%. You would still only build 1 stack per initiative used and it would be stackable out of combat. This would make it harder to build up, but generally more consistent. If the issue before was that Thieves were entering fights with all 15 stacks all of the time, this would in my opinion be a good middle ground between being stackable out of combat (so the initiative doesn't feel wasted) while also solving the issue of opening a fight fully loaded with the 15% boost (unless the Thief wants to literally sit around for like 20ish seconds spending initiative just to build it up which would just seem odd to me). Another thing that came to mind is making Preparedness baseline (the 15 total initiative trait) and just replacing it with something else. Not sure what but it is an idea, Apologies if these seem silly. I'm just spitballing here.

Or should ANet just give something else back in return? I don't mean to necro an old issue but it was a hot topic at the time and it isn't discussed anymore. A friend and I were talking and it came up, which is what lead to me asking. Something that came up during that conversation that Lead Attacks should be stackable out of combat but still keep the 10 second duration because they made a point about how the 15 stacks could just be kept up forever with little management (I'm not at all suggesting this, I'm just saying it came up). Either way, where does everyone else stand on this nowadays?

Just used it myself last night. It's pretty busted.

I can queue but I will get "Queue abandoned" issues after about a minute. Still can't enter a match.