How to nerf condi thief - by the creator of the meta build (plus some thoughts on other builds)

[Monarch.7241]

Yeah, lets broke even more already broken class. Why dont just erase it ? Get tf out of there. When thief start to have 20k health with zerker neck in ranked, then you can compain about anything related to it, PERIOD.Instead of screaming how OP a broken class is, why dont you just learn how to play ?Just imagine what kind of outcry it would be if the thief had a legit traits like the rest of the professions and the swipe was really swiping (knockback).Oh boii, I cant imagine what kind of topics I would see then, from elementalists and Warriors that toss 30k with single punch that cant oneshot a thief. This will be just sad to watch.

[mortrialus.3062]

Just going to echo in here what I said in CMC's PvP balance megathread.

The problem with Condition Thief is that unlike other condition builds across the other professions, all of thief's weapon sets are 100% designed to to only be really strong from a power perspective and naturally very few of the skills have damaging conditions built into them in any way.

The way it becomes condition thief is entirely from traits, which sort of brute force it into a condition build in a way you don't really see in other classes to the degree you do on thief. Traiting so that specific skills do condition damage or augmenting their Condi damage further is one thing, a classic example is Duelist's Deception makes Mesmer Pistol Skills bleed. But condition thief only directly augments Steal, a skill that has absolutely no business doing 7.5k in poison damage and enough confusion to do 1k damage on use due to its instant nature with as little counter play possible for any skill to have. To put this into perspective a lot of people think the pistol Phantasm does too much bleed damage but not only does the mesmer have a cast animation the Phantasm has a 3s channel while it ramps up the level of damage that condition thief can do instantly. Confusing Images takes 3seconds when you include the precast to ramp up that many confusion stacks.

And a condition daredevil will do the same amount of damage as the Scepter+Pistol combo, which takes 4 seconds to complete entirely, instantly and unblockable to boot, sans about 1k power damage the mesmer will do.

And the other traits it uses tend to random proc off any skill on any weapon set. They can proc off daggers, swords, shortbow, pistols, rifles. Getting hit with a dagger 4 might be 1k poke damage in condis, or it might be 3.5k Condi bomb because Deadly Ambish proc'd, which later caused Panic Strike to proc, which caused more poison to proc.

The best course of action is to remove all the traits that put condition damage onto steal, sit down with thief and decide regarding dagger and sword "Okay this one is the dedicated condition weapon. This one is the dedicated power weapon."

And if they won't do that they need to make all the on proc traits less broad and more specific and take all the condition damage steal can be buffed with away from steal and move it into specific weapon skills.

Rather than Steal having 6 stacks of confusion, have a trait that gives Larcenous Strike 4 stacks of confusion.

Or Rather than being able to stuff Steal with 7.5k poison damage, have a trait that gives Heartseeker 3k in bleed stacks and if the target is below 50% health 4k damage in poison stacks instead.

And of course addressing Sword2+Dodge spam.

That way there's a lot more counter play to condition thief and how it does damage to you aside from just climbing into stuff it can't port to. Players would have actual skills to look out for and counter. And it's also a lot more precise and reliable for skilled thief players to land.

[babazhook.6805]

@"mortrialus.3062" said:Just going to echo in here what I said in CMC's PvP balance megathread.

The problem with Condition Thief is that unlike other condition builds across the other professions, all of thief's weapon sets are 100% designed to to only be really strong from a power perspective and naturally very few of the skills have damaging conditions built into them in any way.

The way it becomes condition thief is entirely from traits, which sort of brute force it into a condition build in a way you don't really see in other classes to the degree you do on thief. Traiting so that specific skills do condition damage or augmenting their Condi damage further is one thing, a classic example is Duelist's Deception makes Mesmer Pistol Skills bleed. But condition thief only directly augments Steal, a skill that has absolutely no business doing 7.5k in poison damage and enough confusion to do 1k damage on use due to its instant nature with as little counter play possible for any skill to have. To put this into perspective a lot of people think the pistol Phantasm does too much bleed damage but not only does the mesmer have a cast animation the Phantasm has a 3s channel while it ramps up the level of damage that condition thief can do instantly. Confusing Images takes 3seconds when you include the precast to ramp up that many confusion stacks.

And a condition daredevil will do the same amount of damage as the Scepter+Pistol combo, which takes 4 seconds to complete entirely, instantly and unblockable to boot, sans about 1k power damage the mesmer will do.

And the other traits it uses tend to random proc off any skill on any weapon set. They can proc off daggers, swords, shortbow, pistols, rifles. Getting hit with a dagger 4 might be 1k poke damage in condis, or it might be 3.5k Condi bomb because Deadly Ambish proc'd, which later caused Panic Strike to proc, which caused more poison to proc.

The best course of action is to remove all the traits that put condition damage onto steal, sit down with thief and decide regarding dagger and sword "Okay this one is the dedicated condition weapon. This one is the dedicated power weapon."

And if they won't do that they need to make all the on proc traits less broad and more specific and take all the condition damage steal can be buffed with away from steal and move it into specific weapon skills.

Rather than Steal having 6 stacks of confusion, have a trait that gives Larcenous Strike 4 stacks of confusion.

Or Rather than being able to stuff Steal with 7.5k poison damage, have a trait that gives Heartseeker 3k in bleed stacks and if the target is below 50% health 4k damage in poison stacks instead.

And of course addressing Sword2+Dodge spam.

That way there's a lot more counter play to condition thief and how it does damage to you aside from just climbing into stuff it can't port to. Players would have actual skills to look out for and counter. And it's also a lot more precise and reliable for skilled thief players to land.

What condition thief are you talking about? Why do people persist in doing this? S/d condition is NOT condition thief and any issues with s/d condition thief are not the same as issues with any other condition build.

The other main Condition builds present are SB , PD builds and d/d builds. All of these have conditions inherent in the weapon .P/d as example has conditions available on every single weapon attack. Why do you transpose the fact that s/d does not have these same things to condition builds in general?

Removing the condition adds from traits and putting them into weapons will make things worse. When a person takes a trait to add a condition he gives another trait up. If the condition adds are all put into the weapons then said thief can take traits they normally would not take because they need they no longer need that extra condition add. I play a number of hybrid builds just as example. When looking at each trait so as to see what I want to make stronger in said build I have to tradeoff between condition type traits and power type traits. IfI choose the power type traits I will do less damage from conditions overall then a thief going condition that takes all Condition traits.

Take this away by throwing conditions all on the weapons and there no advantage to a condition build.

Conditions traits have to remain. There has to be those choices in the traits trees.

[mortrialus.3062]

@babazhook.6805 said:

@"mortrialus.3062" said:Just going to echo in here what I said in CMC's PvP balance megathread.

The problem with Condition Thief is that unlike other condition builds across the other professions, all of thief's weapon sets are 100% designed to to only be really strong from a power perspective and naturally very few of the skills have damaging conditions built into them in any way.

The way it becomes condition thief is entirely from traits, which sort of brute force it into a condition build in a way you don't really see in other classes to the degree you do on thief. Traiting so that specific skills do condition damage or augmenting their Condi damage further is one thing, a classic example is Duelist's Deception makes Mesmer Pistol Skills bleed. But condition thief only directly augments Steal, a skill that has absolutely no business doing 7.5k in poison damage and enough confusion to do 1k damage on use due to its instant nature with as little counter play possible for any skill to have. To put this into perspective a lot of people think the pistol Phantasm does too much bleed damage but not only does the mesmer have a cast animation the Phantasm has a 3s channel while it ramps up the level of damage that condition thief can do instantly. Confusing Images takes 3seconds when you include the precast to ramp up that many confusion stacks.

And a condition daredevil will do the same amount of damage as the Scepter+Pistol combo, which takes 4 seconds to complete entirely, instantly and unblockable to boot, sans about 1k power damage the mesmer will do.

And the other traits it uses tend to random proc off any skill on any weapon set. They can proc off daggers, swords, shortbow, pistols, rifles. Getting hit with a dagger 4 might be 1k poke damage in condis, or it might be 3.5k Condi bomb because Deadly Ambish proc'd, which later caused Panic Strike to proc, which caused more poison to proc.

The best course of action is to remove all the traits that put condition damage onto steal, sit down with thief and decide regarding dagger and sword "Okay this one is the dedicated condition weapon. This one is the dedicated power weapon."

And if they won't do that they need to make all the on proc traits less broad and more specific and take all the condition damage steal can be buffed with away from steal and move it into specific weapon skills.

Rather than Steal having 6 stacks of confusion, have a trait that gives Larcenous Strike 4 stacks of confusion.

Or Rather than being able to stuff Steal with 7.5k poison damage, have a trait that gives Heartseeker 3k in bleed stacks and if the target is below 50% health 4k damage in poison stacks instead.

And of course addressing Sword2+Dodge spam.

That way there's a lot more counter play to condition thief and how it does damage to you aside from just climbing into stuff it can't port to. Players would have actual skills to look out for and counter. And it's also a lot more precise and reliable for skilled thief players to land.

What condition thief are you talking about?

THE ONE LISTED FIRST THING IN THE OP YOU PEDANT

Why do people persist in doing this? S/d condition is NOT condition thief and any issues with s/d condition thief are not the same as issues with any other condition build.

The other main Condition builds present are SB , PD builds and d/d builds. All of these have conditions inherent in the weapon .P/d as example has conditions available on every single weapon attack. Why do you tranpose the fact that s/d does not have these same things to condition builds in general?

If you are getting that wrong how could you be on the correct path as far as conditions builds concerned?

I talk primarily about SD Daredevil because that's what is relevant and because unlike you I'm not a pedant who talks about irrelevant gold tier builds like PD. But what I talk about regarding SD Daredevil is 100% true across every thief build. Stuffing steal/swipe with loads of instant cast poison damage and confusion is unhealthy design. Making condition thief of all stripes reliant trait procs that are potent enough to brute force all of the noncondition damage weapons into effectively being condition damage weapons is unhealthy. And that's true across all weapons and all elite specializations and every condition build thief you could ever come up with and design.

Shortbow has conditions with Cluster Bomb and Choking Gas. Both of which are mediocre sources of condition damage outside of the on proc traits from Deadly Arts. Choking gas can ramp up, especially if you stack the field, but as a field with a very slow travel time as a projectile, a slow condition ramp on its own, it is really much more of a zoning weapon than a weapon for dedicated fighting.

And then you come in, like a pedant, and scream "BUT WHAT ABOUT PD THIEF?!" as if it currently has any relevance to the current meta and what is currently most effective for ranked thief right now.

[Sir Vincent III.1286]

@"birdboy.6509" said:

2. Panic strikeProblem: no ICD means that you can continue to apply poison by spamming sword 2 ( I believe this to be the main reason why people detest this build so much )Solution: Give it a 5 second ICD to prevent poison from being applied if someone were to spam it. This is particularly devastating to the condi deadeye build, that spams the rifle immob for poison.(this also prevents the immobilize on 50% targets poison to also proc if you infil strike to a 50% target. basically: before: Infil strike to 50% target - apply 4 stacks from panic strike. after: infil strike to 50% target only 2 stacks applied.)

Panic Strike already have a 30s ICD, then you want to add another ICD? That makes no sense.

The way Panic Strike should function is to apply poison and immobilize when the target falls below 50% keeping the 30s ICD. This way, the poison cannot be applied just by applying immobilize. This will remove the Sword #2 "spamming" from the equation.

[birdboy.6509]

@dDuff.3860 said:

@"birdboy.6509" said:snipCommon mistake of a casual: core thief isn't s/d, where s/d is weaponset.For example, take a look at DA/CS/Tr with d/p, steal+backstab do ~15k damage every 20 seconds. With "long reach" there will be instant untelegraphed 1800 gap closer (because you don't really need fury there). For more lul you may add infiltration signet, and enjoy 2700 insta gap closer with 15k hits.This alone makes suggestion nonsense. I'm not talking about point blank cluster bomb combined with steal, which can hit up to 10-11k.

Staff 3 is an instacast with an innate evade of 0.5 sec, where 0,5 sec is the aftercast of ability. Where is the "vuln" window? If you chain staff 3, you can chain up to 2 sec complete evasion, combine that with dodges, staff mastery, quick pockets and energy sigils, and you have around 6,5 sec of evasion every 10 seconds (yes, 65%-70% uptime).Adding a cast time to the ability that cleanses immobilize is weird, I agree, but without it we have what it is.As I said, cheapest way (what i actually expect), make staff 3 cost 5 initiative (or even 6 LUL), which will drastically affect those, who just spam it.

I've won 4 monthlies.. who's a casual?

• SD is the only viable core build
• When are you ever going to need to have a "2700 range insta gap closer" at the cost of other valuable traits and utilities? You wouldn't even be able to see your target at that distance nevermind line up a backstab and make sure you don't miss your steal. If you're playing like that you'd be lucky to land even one of your "15k every 20 second" combos that your saying core DP can achieve. And even if that was true, why have I not seen it in any kind of competitive game?
• You're still wrong about staff thief, and Anet just removed jump staff 3 in a hotfix a few hours ago, and increased the initiative to 6. You clearly haven't watched any of past MAT's or even played staff thief because you would know that there is a vuln frame in normal staff 3. Hence why all the good staff thieves only used jump staff 3.My mistake to even take you seriously for a moment, even though your DE gameplay you stream is very unimpressive I assumed you at least knew a little. Guess I was wrong.ttfn

[dDuff.3860]

Mate, your logic is insane ^^ perhaps, winning monthlies dealt damage to your ego, hefty psycho stuff :)We're speaking of suggested change — adding longreach trait, which you suggested — then you say

@birdboy.6509 said:why have I not seen it in any kind of competitive game?because guess what it isn't implemented, lol.Even then, as a thief, you utilize shadowstep to hit far distance spike when you need one. My argument, that in reality, even pure steal+backstab from core thief will happen from 1800 range, considering damage output potential of core dagger thief can be as overpowered, as 900+1800 = 2700 distance sword#2+steal every 11 sec on average.@birdboy.6509 said:My mistake to even take you seriously for a moment, even though your DE gameplay you stream is very unimpressive I assumed you at least knew a little. Guess I was wrong.ttfnYour mistake is thinking that winning monthlies makes your opinion valid by default. Your arguments prove lack of understanding and, apparently, mechanical weakness, however, I will be happy to see your impressive performance if you ever capable of showing some :+1:

[birdboy.6509]

@dDuff.3860 said:Mate, your logic is insane ^^ perhaps, winning monthlies dealt damage to your ego, hefty psycho stuff :)We're speaking of suggested change — adding longreach trait, which you suggested — then you say

@birdboy.6509 said:why have I not seen it in any kind of competitive game?because guess what it isn't implemented, lol.Even then, as a thief, you utilize shadowstep to hit far distance spike when you need one. My argument, that in reality, even pure steal+backstab from core thief will happen from 1800 range, considering damage output potential of core dagger thief can be as overpowered, as 900+1800 = 2700 distance sword#2+steal every 11 sec on average.@birdboy.6509 said:My mistake to even take you seriously for a moment, even though your DE gameplay you stream is very unimpressive I assumed you at least knew a little. Guess I was wrong.ttfnYour mistake is thinking that winning monthlies makes your opinion valid by default. Your arguments prove lack of understanding and, apparently, mechanical weakness, however, I will be happy to see your impressive performance if you ever capable of showing some :+1:

Obviously I know long reach hasn't been implemented I literally just suggested it - Is that seriously your comeback here? Or are you trying to sound witty? It's hard to tell through your broken English.

• Core DP is unseen because it is bad and taking long reach wouldn't change that. You basically proved my point that long reach wouldn't make it OP by saying that you can already shadowstep to add that kind of distance to your burst. The fact that the build is virtually unplayed currently proves that.
• To tell me that I have lack of understanding when you've been proven wrong in every comment you've posted so far makes you look seriously deluded bud. Sure winning monthlies doesn't mean I'm automatically right, but it does mean that I'm not a "casual" as you called me - and I probably know a little bit more than you.

We are talking about how to make DP dash viable again, and your points refuting my suggestion were all incorrect. The long reach trait would not affect any other thief build, and would be a huge step towards bringing back our beloved spec.Unless you'd like to offer an actually constructive and factual suggestion I think we're done here.

[babazhook.6805]

The problem with Condition Thief is that unlike other condition builds across the other professions, all of thief's weapon sets are 100% designed to to only be really strong from a power perspective and naturally very few of the skills have damaging conditions built into them in any way.

How does this statement suddenly turn into "I was talking about s/d condition" . It most clearly states otherwise. ALL does not translate to s/d. 100 percent is not 20 percent. The statement is just false and you get upset when called on it?

You then go on to elaborate suggesting Bewildering Ambush and the Poison on steal traits be removed. These two traits have been used in Condition builds since rollout and were never an issue and suddenly they are and through some bit of Chicanery this about "s/d or mostly s/d" and not other builds?

What absolute nonsense. To the point about what is meta in ranked PvP. That is immaterial. Ranked PvP is a small percentage of the player base and what they want should not be dictated to the rest of the game.

The OP spoke to two specific issues regarding Condition builds that being S/d spamming the Immob for poison adds and to a lesser extent Rifle doing the same He then suggested fixes that do not address this. Ifg the issue is about s/d or mostly s/d then the solution needs should be specific to s/d and not to skills that have been used for years on other builds.

I agree with him that changing the immob on s/x is not a solution as this needed on power builds but that does not suggest panic strike can not be looked at instead with fixes like changing the poison add on Immob to a 2 stacks Vuln add on immob just as example.

Poison on steal has been there since rollout. There absolutely no need for it to be suddenly removed and further to that the suggestion that Condtion adds be removed from traits and integrated into weapons instead is a bad suggestion. It would lead an increase in power for all condition builds as they could focus traits on sustain and defensive utilities rather then having to pick traits that boost condition damage.

[dDuff.3860]

@birdboy.6509 said:

@dDuff.3860 said:Mate, your logic is insane ^^ perhaps, winning monthlies dealt damage to your ego, hefty psycho stuff :)We're speaking of suggested change — adding longreach trait, which you suggested — then you say

@birdboy.6509 said:why have I not seen it in any kind of competitive game?because guess what it isn't implemented, lol.Even then, as a thief, you utilize shadowstep to hit far distance spike when you need one. My argument, that in reality, even pure steal+backstab from core thief will happen from 1800 range, considering damage output potential of core dagger thief can be as overpowered, as 900+1800 = 2700 distance sword#2+steal every 11 sec on average.@birdboy.6509 said:My mistake to even take you seriously for a moment, even though your DE gameplay you stream is very unimpressive I assumed you at least knew a little. Guess I was wrong.ttfnYour mistake is thinking that winning monthlies makes your opinion valid by default. Your arguments prove lack of understanding and, apparently, mechanical weakness, however, I will be happy to see your impressive performance if you ever capable of showing some :+1:

Obviously I know long reach hasn't been implemented I literally just suggested it - Is that seriously your comeback here? Or are you trying to sound witty? It's hard to tell through your broken English.

• Core DP is unseen because it is
  bad
  and taking long reach wouldn't change that, and even if it did what's wrong with a new thief build being viable? You argue from this biased perspective on thief that you have from playing a painfully average deadeye.
• To tell me that I have lack of understanding when you've been proven wrong in every comment you've posted so far makes you look seriously deluded bud. Sure winning monthlies doesn't mean I'm automatically right, but it does mean that I'm not a "casual" as you called me - and I probably know a little bit more than you.

my average is over your top any day with closed eyes :)

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

@dDuff.3860 said:

@"birdboy.6509" said:Dash Dagger PistolProblem: 600 swipe range makes it very difficult to +1 efficiently and land burst consistentlySolution: Add the "long reach" trait back into trickery. It was a trait that increased steal range back before HoT. Replaces lesser haste (this trait was clunky already since getting a stunbreak while hitting somebody is slightly counter intuitive.)Long reach: Increase steal or swipe range by 600. Your next attack will result in a critical hit.

Deadeye discrimination?So you want core thief to be able to have 1800 range steal, right? LULAlso, even lesser haste is bad, there's

master tier trait in trickery that procs 2 stacks of torment on interrupt. Even on condi builds this trait is trash and never worth taking. how about we switch this for something useful? considering it competes with "musthave" bountiful theft?

After all, bad suggestion still, because core thief doesn't need its steal range improved, and swipe shouldn't be 600 in the first place.900 range is a solid trade for relative value that unblockable brings.

As for the rest:Staff/staff has a redundant amount of evades, but in fact fixing 3+jump animation won't change that, adding precasts and aftercasts is the way (same as vault 5), or there's a cheap way — increase #3 ini cost.

After deadly ambition change, removing cripple from lotus dodge will make condi daredevil gameplay harder, without reducing its max potential (also will interact with spider venom application).

Replying to the bolded part; that trait is actually excellent on condi builds utilising shortbow with absorption and draining sigils in WvW. Before the trap rework I'd use the shortbow sneak attack to immob people in choking gas for the interrupts, it was a surprisingly effective spec on daredevil that allowed you to run high mobility with dash while also having a decent amount of ways to spike, and nothing on thief had better AoE downed pressure at the time. It's not worth much unless you build around it, but honestly that always made it one of the more interesting traits to make a build from.

[babazhook.6805]

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@dDuff.3860 said:

@"birdboy.6509" said:Dash Dagger PistolProblem: 600 swipe range makes it very difficult to +1 efficiently and land burst consistentlySolution: Add the "long reach" trait back into trickery. It was a trait that increased steal range back before HoT. Replaces lesser haste (this trait was clunky already since getting a stunbreak while hitting somebody is slightly counter intuitive.)Long reach: Increase steal or swipe range by 600. Your next attack will result in a critical hit.

Deadeye discrimination?So you want core thief to be able to have 1800 range steal, right? LULAlso, even lesser haste is bad, there's

master tier trait in trickery that procs 2 stacks of torment on interrupt. Even on condi builds this trait is trash and never worth taking. how about we switch this for something useful? considering it competes with "musthave" bountiful theft?

After all, bad suggestion still, because core thief doesn't need its steal range improved, and swipe shouldn't be 600 in the first place.900 range is a solid trade for relative value that unblockable brings.

As for the rest:Staff/staff has a redundant amount of evades, but in fact fixing 3+jump animation won't change that, adding precasts and aftercasts is the way (same as vault 5), or there's a cheap way — increase #3 ini cost.

After deadly ambition change, removing cripple from lotus dodge will make condi daredevil gameplay harder, without reducing its max potential (also will interact with spider venom application).

Replying to the bolded part; that trait is actually excellent on condi builds utilising shortbow with absorption and draining sigils in WvW. Before the trap rework I'd use the shortbow sneak attack to immob people in choking gas for the interrupts, it was a surprisingly effective spec on daredevil that allowed you to run high mobility with dash while also having a decent amount of ways to spike, and nothing on thief had better AoE downed pressure at the time. It's not worth much unless you build around it, but honestly that always made it one of the more interesting traits to make a build from.

Yes it really works well on SB. The main issue is the need to take one of the other two traits usually greater unless ones main weapon is SB. If I were to have an SB focused build, I would take this.