Guild Wars 2

from the patch notes:

Vital Shot: Increased damage by 24%.
Unload: Increased damage per shot by 26%.
Sneak Attack: Increased attack damage per shot by 25%.

Seriously? It’s not like thiefs lacked damage that they can throw on you in milliseconds whilst their venom has you immobilised, you had to increase their damage by a HUGE 25%.

Whatever happened to balancing things slowly, testing it, and moving it slowly up or down.

I’ve been hit by unload for over 1.2k a hot (times 8 isn’t it?), now that will be over 12k while rooted and unable to respond, followed no doubt by another 3-4 10k hits before I get to move.

If anyone needs me I’ll be on my venom thief insta-downing people in wvw with 2k toughness…

Pistol needed a buff. It was and still is bad because you lose out on so much utility. Sure, you can burst people down but they can do the same to you just as easily if not easier.

I am very happy for a thief buff for a change and look forward to running P/P and daredevil to see how it synergies this beta weekend.

Seriously? Things for thief were so bad that if a team with a thief lost the thief would be blamed simply because it’s underpowered.

Thief has no real way to wash conditions, is vulnerable to reveal, no good and consistent healing options, and the “elite” basilisks venom is a joke since it only last for a second. Since thief lacks in so many areas in addition to having situational requirements to get the most out of its damage as well as an initiative mechanic (if initiative is low then all your weapon skills essentially share a cooldown) then thief needs some good attack power to make up for it.

Seriously…?

Seriously…?

Well he’s not wrong, Thief didn’t really need more damage…they needed a buff to everything else..

It’s a damage buff to a weapon that’s almost never used as a mainhand outside of PvE. All this does is decrease how much DPS a thief loses when they use P/P over D/D to range a boss down. They still don’t have any AoE/Cleave that they had on this weapon before the June 23rd patch.

If you’re actually having trouble with thieves in a 1 v 1, this will make absolutely 0 difference to you.

wayneericgouin.9371:

Well he’s not wrong, Thief didn’t really need more damage…they needed a buff to everything else..

Have you tried in nearly all ascended in a lower zone trying to kill things? Some things take way too long to kill, maybe 10 or so seconds or even longer when just autoattacking to avoid triggering the mob’s interrupt or blind skills.

I don’t understand the logic here. Thief pistols were a very underwhelming, underutilized weapon set (main hand or dual wielding in particular, offhand had good utility). It needed a buff to be even considered viable and it got one.

Pistols STILL won’t out-damage thief back-stabs, so the thief isn’t getting any extra dps over what their top dps builds already provide. In fact, I doubt thieves will choose dual pistols over shortbow anyway, even with this buff, because the latter still provides more utility with spammable blast finishers.

What exactly is the problem here?

Wow

Thieves are NOT underpowered. A good thief should be able to have good sustainability and win most 1v1s on a point contest. I certainly can at least. And, read I said ‘most’ and not ‘all’.

They are indeed squishy in bigger fights but again with their stealth and tricks, mobility, should be able to withstand a short enough amount of time to assist their team in secure stealth stomps and secure rezzing.

Their POWER DOES NOT need a buff. I can get shot down with Basalisk venom without being able to do ONE skill to counteract it. Granted, these thieves MUST execute their opener perfectly, or THEY will get burst down, but no way do these skills need buffing, IMHO.

I’m not actually against the damage increase, I’m just saying of all the things they could have buffed for thieves why increase the damage of a weapon set when they could have done any number of other more beneficial changes. And you can’t honestly tell me that as a thief player your first thought is “I need more damage”

Celine.6857:

Wow

Thieves are NOT underpowered. A good thief should be able to have good sustainability and win most 1v1s on a point contest. I certainly can at least. And, read I said ‘most’ and not ‘all’.

They are indeed squishy in bigger fights but again with their stealth and tricks, mobility, should be able to withstand a short enough amount of time to assist their team in secure stealth stomps and secure rezzing.

Their POWER DOES NOT need a buff. I can get shot down with Basalisk venom without being able to do ONE skill to counteract it. Granted, these thieves MUST execute their opener perfectly, or THEY will get burst down, but no way do these skills need buffing, IMHO.

Thieves are not what I’d call underpowered as a class, but pistols were underpowered as a weapon set. Just because a class is decent in and of itself, that doesn’t mean that broken and useless weapon sets should remain broken and useless.

Agemnon.4608:

wayneericgouin.9371:

Well he’s not wrong, Thief didn’t really need more damage…they needed a buff to everything else..

Have you tried in nearly all ascended in a lower zone trying to kill things? Some things take way too long to kill, maybe 10 or so seconds or even longer when just autoattacking to avoid triggering the mob’s interrupt or blind skills.

Actually yes, p/p I have found to be extremely OP in PvE. I made a sylvari thief just for p/p and I was astounded at how just one Unload would blast mobs to smithereens (spelling ? LOL).

And please note my above comment was for PvP and general ‘thief’.

Thieves always 3-4 hit me in spvp and I can’t even see them, that’s too much hits I guess so they needed the buff to insta gib me next time

LOL I can’t believe there’s already a complaint thread about thief getting a buff, and PISTOL no less.
You people realize that a 25%+ buff to a skill that has a base damage of 134 is needed for it to even be noticeable?

Not to mention one of the accompanying traits for pistols got nerfed (-150 range reduction) AND is now bugged to reduce auto-attack damage by 25%.

Overall Pistol/Pistol has been and still is the weakest option for a thief in any given game mode.

Also realize that when fighting a P/P thief they have almost no defenses outside of whatever utilities they took and that #3 Unload is the only useful damaging skill on their bars which costs 5 initiative to use.

People were getting killed by p/p thieves? Wth?

Wryscher.1432:

People were getting killed by p/p thieves? Wth?

No, they did get a buff but they are still lacking when it comes to trait compatibility. But we’re getting there.

Notsoperky.4291:

Whatever happened to balancing things slowly, testing it, and moving it slowly up or down.

Anet doesn’t care about balance, they only stir the meta and then replace their mistakes with a new group of unbalanced skills. They approach class balance like a mad scientist experiments.

A ranger told me today that with the new patch he could stack over a minute of protection. It’s like nothing at all was tested.

Notsoperky.4291:

from the patch notes:

Vital Shot: Increased damage by 24%.
Unload: Increased damage per shot by 26%.
Sneak Attack: Increased attack damage per shot by 25%.

Seriously? It’s not like thiefs lacked damage that they can throw on you in milliseconds whilst their venom has you immobilised, you had to increase their damage by a HUGE 25%.

Whatever happened to balancing things slowly, testing it, and moving it slowly up or down.

I’ve been hit by unload for over 1.2k a hot (times 8 isn’t it?), now that will be over 12k while rooted and unable to respond, followed no doubt by another 3-4 10k hits before I get to move.

If anyone needs me I’ll be on my venom thief insta-downing people in wvw with 2k toughness…

You’re kidding right? I’ve eaten 3 different thief’s in PvP since the patch dropped. So, either I was lucky and they where all really bad thief players, I’m better than I thought, or you’re over reacting.

Not every class can be the best at everything. My ranger is great VS most, but mesmers and thieves eat her for fun. On the other hand, my warrior has very little problems vs these, I find Mesmers more difficult to deal with on my warrior. One day I’ll figure out how to fight good mesmers and win, but today is not that day.

This. Right here. Is why we can’t have nice things.

This types of threads are the reason, thief is in the state it’s in.

P/P has always been regarded as weak/underwhelming; the removal of the ricochet trait only make matters worse. This buff isn’t even enough to compensate for the lack of ricochet.

no problem. ill just burst you once on my condi necro and let you melt. probably wont need to use my condi cleanse or any 3 of my condi transfers at all.

Thief damage is even pretty low on d/p and d/d. The only thing thief got left is mobility, a bit stealth and mediocre damage which can only burst glass builds, almost no survivability.

Play a bruiser accordingly for one time in pvp and you will realize how bad thief is since the specialization patch.

Taking away ricochet only to buff the damage doesn’t help the fact that it’s still relying on basically one skill.

Wow. Just….wow.

Check the thief boards. We don’t want this buff. It isn’t the change P/P needs and most arent happy about it. We want a fix to our broken and lacking core traitlines and MUCH needed development on daredevil.

Getting upset about P/P damage is so way off the mark it’s not funny.

Pistol thief has blown since launch. Give em a break. They finally get some buffs for pistol after 3 KITTENING YEARS and you’re complaining?

3 years of basically useless weapon set and you can’t even let them have this? Shame, shame, shame, shame.

Dahkeus.8243:

All this does is decrease how much DPS a thief loses when they use P/P over D/D to range a boss down.

^This

Lyger.5429:

This types of threads are the reason, thief is in the state it’s in.

^This

Hard to believe that with all the changes made this is your biggest concern OP?Do you main Mesmer by any chance?

L2P issue move on.

I really like how people that clearly have never (or at least not in the past 2 years) played a Thief talk about it like they actually know what they are talking about.
Buff on pistol damage means nothing as pistol skills are horrible. Thieves don’t need more damage, they need everything else.

wayneericgouin.9371:

I’m not actually against the damage increase, I’m just saying of all the things they could have buffed for thieves why increase the damage of a weapon set when they could have done any number of other more beneficial changes. And you can’t honestly tell me that as a thief player your first thought is “I need more damage”

My multi-nerfed D/D weapon set begs to differ.

Anyway, OP made laugh. That’s something.

On a more serious note: The buffs they gave out were relatively meaningless. I main a thief (D/D and P/P) and have several thousand hours of PvE play on it as well as 6 other 80s (everything but Engineer) with map completion (I’ve spent a fair amount of time playing. PvE Thief is not OP. PvE Thief is UP. There is not a credible argument here otherwise. Anyone who seriously plays a thief AND takes the skills they are forced to learn playing a thief well enough to not rage-quit the game (combat awareness, importance of positioning, when/how/who to engage/disengage, and how and when to dodge) into other classes knows this to be the absolute unequivocal truth. Any new PvE content ANet adds with HoT I will probably complete first on my thief and then on my other characters knowing I can pretty much roll my face across the keyboard and succeed.

I kept looking to see if this thread was necro’d – do people seriously think it’s still 2013?

I just want Ricochet back.

if you got killed by a p/p thief you are doing not just something wrong, you are doing everything wrong

I’m actually going to use pistol as a ranged weapon against single targets now. A little math.

With the 24% boost, the pistol has 203 direct DPS on auto. Trick Shot has 206 DPS. With only a 1.4% difference in direct damage, the bleed triggering exposed weakness makes it the superior choice.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m actually going to use pistol as a ranged weapon against single targets now. A little math.

With the 24% boost, the pistol has 203 direct DPS on auto. Trick Shot has 206 DPS. With only a 1.4% difference in direct damage, the bleed triggering exposed weakness makes it the superior choice.

It even better if you can get sneak attacks off. The damage is not far off from a full unload.

Notsoperky.4291:

Seriously? It’s not like thiefs lacked damage that they can throw on you in milliseconds whilst their venom has you immobilised, you had to increase their damage by a HUGE 25%.

If you’re getting abruptly killed by a thief… I PROMISE it’s not because they shot you with a pistol.

If anyone needs me I’ll be on my venom thief insta-downing people in wvw with 2k toughness…

Please do. Partially because it’ll give you some grounding in REALITY and partially because if they are magically vastly over-performing (hint: they aren’t) then mass migration to the flavor-of-the-month is the fastest wait to get it looked at.

OP: You were dying to pistol/pistol thieves? That’s a ‘learn to play’ situation suggestion right there.

How ever. Although main hand/dual pistols are far underwhelming and needed the buff. It’s far from what thieve really needed.

Thief survivability is quite lacking to the point we’re pigeonholed holed into the concept of ‘bursting the enemy down in a few seconds or face dying ourselves even quicker.’ Even that, most classes with tanky gear and attributes can shrug off what a thief can do. Furthered by the fact that all classes are in a position to burst down other players, plus they have the survivability options to fall back on.

Our stealth isn’t a credible factor to the class because now other classes have options to stealth as good or even better than thief. Leaving thieves with little to stand out in any more.

Thieves are in a bad position at the moment.

vaan.2308:

if you got killed by a p/p thief you are doing not just something wrong, you are doing everything wrong

For a second I thought this thread got necro’ed from 2013, and I’m not joking.

This has to be a joke thread, then again I heard people complaining IN-GAME that the thief buff was uncalled for cause their already “too OP” with their D/P weapon set (I kid you not thats what they said about our only decent pvp set)

Kill.3458:

This has to be a joke thread, then again I heard people complaining IN-GAME that the thief buff was uncalled for cause their already “too OP” with their D/P weapon set (I kid you not thats what they said about our only decent pvp set)

One of the map chats today – tried to avoid most others by staying logged out.

Lyger.5429:

This types of threads are the reason, thief is in the state it’s in.

Amen. They probably never even seen a Pistol Thief, they just see the word “Buff” mixed with “Thief” and rage, regardless of what it was addressing. We’re just hated through sheer discrimination. The Buff isn’t even going to make me use them still, till they actually rework the skills and hopefully return deleted traits in some manner. Damage wasn’t only problem with Pistol.

I’m not sure of the original posters intentions but from my perspective, having played thief for the better part of a year now is that I honestly wish the rare and minuscule buffs we get would be for anything other than damage. I understand that p/p has low damage outside of unload but I would rather anett buff anything else over giving us more damage.

To everyone who say thief’s not underpowered/is overpowered- just try playing one…

-edit: “try main-ing one”-

wayneericgouin.9371:

I’m not sure of the original posters intentions but from my perspective, having played thief for the better part of a year now is that I honestly wish the rare and minuscule buffs we get would be for anything other than damage. I understand that p/p has low damage outside of unload but I would rather anett buff anything else over giving us more damage.

After reading latest update info, I got the impression that either the team (person) responsible for Thief development is either sitting on some other changes and we will be getting them in short time, or other classes are developed by more competent developers.
I mean, getting just a few changes and most of them being a simple damage increase, is not a balancing act. It’s more of a PR attempt.
So, can we expect something more for our Thief, or have we just seen the maximum “our” devs are capable of?

I was fighting a thief in PvP who was doing 1.5K crit per hit from pistol unload, 8×1.5K = 12k damage for a full unload. I think it is way over the top.

Vague Memory.2817:

I was fighting a thief in PvP who was doing 1.5K crit per hit from pistol unload, 8×1.5K = 12k damage for a full unload. I think it is way over the top.

Boohoo i’m bad at PvP so I blame others for being more competent than me. I’ve seen worse from burst mesmers and guardians.

Hell, the other day a burst fire guardian teleported into our group dropped a fire field and proceeded to mow down myself and 3 other players in a matter of seconds with whirling wrath before we even knew what hit us. But yes lets blame the thieves while other classes get a free pass.

Vague Memory.2817:

I was fighting a thief in PvP who was doing 1.5K crit per hit from pistol unload, 8×1.5K = 12k damage for a full unload. I think it is way over the top.

Why would you stand in the entire unload?

I don’t think this guy has ever played thief before.. I’m calling bullkitten on this thread. If he can go into WvW and kill everyone no problem 1 random guy on the forums shouldn’t be an issue right?

I’m willing to fight the OP and defeat him on thief, on every class in the game I have (no ranger or necro). If he accepts this challenge (publicly here), I would also like someone to record the fights and post unedited full footage of every battle on this page.

If you would like to see someone ignorant get their kitten handed to them up vote this post and see if he takes up on it.

Vague Memory.2817:

I was fighting a thief in PvP who was doing 1.5K crit per hit from pistol unload, 8×1.5K = 12k damage for a full unload. I think it is way over the top.

To sum up,

The other day in pvp I discovered that if I don’t dodge, interrupt, or LoS strong channeled abilities, strong channeled abilities do a lot of damage to me.