Guild Wars 2

By Terrible I mean, It’s been forever since Launch and this is still a really…really tough squeeze into the second slot. S/P + D/x works well, S/D + S/D, works well S/x + Sb works fine, D/P + Sb works fine. Can’t comment on P/D right now since it’s been updated and I’ll give it a fair whirl. If we can talk about an individual skill in Rush, can we talk about this entire weapon set?

It’s not like it’s beyond repair there are good foundations here. The body shot change was good if it was longer than after shooting some pistol shots I could capitalize with a melee set. Can do that now but the window of opportunity is extremely small. That being said just changing body shot doesn’t necessarily give this set precedence over P/D which can pull off the same swap.

This should be in the thief forum, not the sPvP forum. You also fail to mention that you speak about thieves, which may confuse some people here.

Back to topic:
P/P isn’t downright horrible, but it need some work to be competitive on the same level as the other weapon sets. What P/P really need is mobility. Anet said in a SotG (long time ago) that they want to make all weapon sets more mobile, but I have yet to see that happen… I’m thinking in the direction of adding an evade/roll (like roll for initiative and withdraw) to the #2 skill. The weapon set also need some work in pure damage numbers.

I gotta say that the buff to Ricochet made it more useful, but still not there. I’ve played around with a regeneration build which worked out pretty well, but not as good as any other set would do, with much more mobility and utility…

Anything that blind spams from range is not terrible, but why would anyone run P/P and P/D, as an example, with Spider venom, when they can go Engi and do it from a longer range with more damage and burns?

Sure you’d have disengage but Grenade engi can put confusion, poison, burn, bleeds, chill, blinds, and do that with 15 to 20 stacks of might throughout the fight.

Does anyone use P/P in Pve or WvW by any chance?

Geiir.7603:

This should be in the thief forum, not the sPvP forum. You also fail to mention that you speak about thieves, which may confuse some people here.

You could say that about multiple threads here. But I digress.

I think I alluded that it’s not so much as horrible but that there isn’t enough justification to take it. This weapon set is apparently in a far better standing in PvE. If anything it be just as alienating in the thief forum.

jmatb.6307:

Anything that blind spams from range is not terrible, but why would anyone run P/P and P/D, as an example, with Spider venom, when they can go Engi and do it from a longer range with more damage and burns?

Sure you’d have disengage but Grenade engi can put confusion, poison, burn, bleeds, chill, blinds, and do that with 15 to 20 stacks of might throughout the fight.

Does anyone use P/P in Pve or WvW by any chance?

I use it for the lulz. People doesn’t expect it, but it sucks. My sword auto attack is far more powerful. It is fun to use against ranged professions in combination with smoke screen (blocking all projectiles). They never react accordingly and I’ll end up killing them with unload spam, which is kind of embarrassing :p

I agree with you, I would choose any other ranged profession over P/P thief. It’s not exactly spamming blinds either. If we spam blinds then we are lowering our damage – a lot. I would rather have a thief dagger storming in smoke screen or black powder – not that’s AoE blind AND damage/cripple.

If body shot did burning, (call it burning shot maybe?) I think it would do wonders for P/D for condition thieves. It’s hard to say though for P/P … that set really has no synergies with itself, other than trying to stack some vulnerability, then #3 once or twice, but the initiative requirement to up that damage just doesn’t feel right compared to other weapon sets and their utility / immediate damage.

The set feels slow, has no mobility, and is easy to waste / burn your initiative with, as well as gets completely crushed by retaliation. Sneak attack is nice, but it’s easy to choose P/D over P/P because at least you have an out / disengage with shadow strike, which just got buffed.

P/D and maybe even P/P might be better off shifted in a condition direction rather than straight damage as thieves already have D/P, S/P, S/D, … Semi D/D for raw damage. Pistol / Dagger already is leaning towards condition based, and I think it would be nice to have more options towards condi.

I think the shadow strike buff is a neat little addition. Personally though I would’ve been happy to just see #2 changed to a burning type attack. Thieves would have some really strong condi pressure available to them, then. And if you ask me, burning feels quite like a requirement to be a strong condi spec.

1 application of burning is equivalent to 12.42 stacks of bleeding. D/D / Shortbow can stack 3 stacks of bleed at a time, and when you consider automatic condition removal, and RNG like 8% chance to convert incoming conditions to boons …

I’d say burning takes about 1/4th the effort (quite roughly really) to get the same damage out of 12+ applications of bleeding. Sure, bleeding can stack higher, but that really only works out in a team situation. Trying to stack 10+ bleeds solo is quite difficult against classes with consistent active condition cleansing, and burning would allow thieves to dish out some decent condi pressure.

The torment on Shadow Strike is nice, but I’d trade that for burning in a heartbeat.

Would be fun if the #2 on the pistol was a blast finisher.

p/p in spvp is super bad … in wvw is hillarious