Guild Wars 2

I see a lot of rage on this skill now.

I wonder if any of these players can predict how any of their proposed changes affect the thief. As most of the post here are posted from a victims standpoint. And especially the one about “removing the evade on PW” is kind of funny.

I agree with one thing, and one thing only: PW is easy to spam for any new player to this class.

These fixes are no good for this set or anyone IMHO

• Lowering ini gain will not fix this problem (the thief will spam it 5x instead of 6x)
• Removing evade will break this set all together (his attacks will now rely 100% on utilities)
• Removing this stun will render this skill useless, and so the set aswell (you will not land any PW without IS anymore)

More reasonable fixes would be:

• Lowering damage in the beginning, increase damage of the last hits
• Split the skill in a stun part and flurry part
• Give it a conditional part (if hit in the front foe is blinded, if hit in the back foe is dazed)
• Recreate the skill into something completely new

This thread shouldn’t exist. No one should have to ask why [Pistol Whip] is overpowered; it takes nothing more than mere logic within the context of GW2 game-play as a whole. Asking “Why is Pistol Whip overpowered?” is admitting one’s own unfamiliarity with the most elementary mechanics of GW2 PvP.

Let me spell it out for you:

• GW2 has no dedicated healer/damage-mitigation class.
• Therefore, there’s no one to protect someone from damage that just pops up out of nowhere.
• [Pistol Whip] damage just pops up out of nowhere, moreover, the Thief also evade-tanks while attacking so there’s little that the player can do against the Thief once [Pistol Whip] is in effect.
• Combine this with Sleight of Hand, multiple teleports, blinds, no cool-down and absurd amounts initiative and you have something that breaks all of the rules that govern GW2 combat. There’s no one to heal back the damage incurred from multiple [Pistol Whip]s, personal healing is never enough and personal healing is already jeopardized because of the fact that [Pistol Whip] has a built in stun on top of Slight of Hand already being activated at will with no cast-time or visual cue.

You want a solution for [Pistol Whip]? You can’t handle the true solution for [Pistol Whip] because it’s built into the solution for the Thief as a whole; and the solution for Thief as a whole is just too much work for you, ANet. I can put in the work to solve the problems of this game all day long, but when it comes down to it, it’s just too much for you, ANet.

If you want to have a glimpse of what it would take to make Thief a class that properly participates in GW2 combat, then have a read: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Thief-The-Black-Sheep-5-8/first.

Swagg.9236:

Blood Pressure Intensifies

Swagg please, you’re going to give yourself a stroke and get an infraction.

Brutal Arts.6307:

Swagg.9236:

Blood Pressure Intensifies

Swagg please, you’re going to give yourself a stroke and get an infraction.

This game lies bleeding on the street and the developers just pass on by because picking it up and taking it to the hospital would be too much work. I’ll be the guy to take it to the hospital, even if it gets me infracted.

Vuh.1328:

Not pistolwhip related really, but one of the best ideas i’ve seen for thieves in general with the broken initiative system:

Acandis.3250:

I think if they just made it so every consecutive cast of the same skill costs + 1 (Eg. Cast 3 heartseekers in a row will cost 3 + 4 + 5) it’d go a long way towards the blind spam of the same skill.

Would also be nice if chill affected initiative regeneration.

But hell, I’m only a player with top competitive background, leave it to the bright minds of the balance team to dig us out of this meta.

Lol both Lux and I had this same idea earlier too :O Seems like it would be pretty cool

infantrydiv.1620:

Vuh.1328:

Not pistolwhip related really, but one of the best ideas i’ve seen for thieves in general with the broken initiative system:

Acandis.3250:

I think if they just made it so every consecutive cast of the same skill costs + 1 (Eg. Cast 3 heartseekers in a row will cost 3 + 4 + 5) it’d go a long way towards the blind spam of the same skill.

Would also be nice if chill affected initiative regeneration.

But hell, I’m only a player with top competitive background, leave it to the bright minds of the balance team to dig us out of this meta.

Lol both Lux and I had this same idea earlier too :O Seems like it would be pretty cool

Maybe some base initative costs could be changed a bit with a system like that

3 (!!) months after the patch, the community is complaining. These perception skills were probably adopted from Anet.

It’s op as stated above by many people, you can not allow stun/evade/big damage to co exist in one skill not to mention you can spam it. So I would like to talk about the potential balance. I guess the current solution you guys have in mind is to split it into two portion like flanking strike, plz don,t do that. It will not only make the problem remain unsolved but also make pw even stronger if the all the current stun evade slash component remains. You have to take out either stun or evade or both. Currently the game mechanics allow counter play for stun , but not much for evade while attacking. Do not make the same mistake twice like you nerfded s/d put created this new monster called s/p

Thief main since 3 day head start.

PW might be slightly too effective, but I think the main issue is it’s suffering from nerfing of other thief skills. I’ll explain with the phases of S/D in my experience over the course of the game’s existence as an example (from an sPvP perspective).

S/D started off pretty well with all the skills balanced versus each other in the set. Tactical Strike was a good daze, IS was a good gap closer/retreat, FS (the original) was decent but slightly underpowered due to its bugs, Dancing Dagger had decent damage and situational use, CnD had utility and decent damage. In the beginning you had to use all the skills to be effective with the set, each having its own usefulness in certain situations. I don’t remember the exact order of the nerfs, but the result is the same, so it doesn’t really make a huge difference. TS was nerfed, but due to how stuns and dazes used to work, it just meant the duration couldn’t be pushed higher than 2 seconds. After stuns and dazes were changed, in conjunction with the revealed time increase and the CnD damage nerf in PvP, the setup to TS is not worth the time or initiative when other skills are cheaper, faster, more effective, and more damaging. Dancing Dagger had its damage nerfed way too hard without buffing the utility to make it worth spending the initiative, even after the reduction . 9/10 times I use this now it’s by accident. FS was buggy, but was a decent evade for the initiative. The utility was increased then decreased, and the initiative was increased also making it overall a less effective skill than it used to be. IS has been made extremely clunky and difficult to use reactively now that it cues behind other skills. I don’t play high level tournaments often, but I can almost count the number of times I’ve run across an S/D thief since the last change (including WvW) because other sets are just more effective for the effort.

PW and its problems are following the same pattern. Headshot got its effectiveness reduced with the daze change. Since IS is so clunky to use now, it’s better to keep up the evade frames rather than trying to actually play the opponent and getting let down by a buggy feeling skill. If you nerf the utility of PW rather than just the damage, it’s probably going to push people out of the set as it similarly did with S/D.

Maugetarr.6823:

Thief main since 3 day head start.

PW might be slightly too effective, but I think the main issue is it’s suffering from nerfing of other thief skills. I’ll explain with the phases of S/D in my experience over the course of the game’s existence as an example (from an sPvP perspective).

S/D started off pretty well with all the skills balanced versus each other in the set. Tactical Strike was a good daze, IS was a good gap closer/retreat, FS (the original) was decent but slightly underpowered due to its bugs, Dancing Dagger had decent damage and situational use, CnD had utility and decent damage. In the beginning you had to use all the skills to be effective with the set, each having its own usefulness in certain situations. I don’t remember the exact order of the nerfs, but the result is the same, so it doesn’t really make a huge difference. TS was nerfed, but due to how stuns and dazes used to work, it just meant the duration couldn’t be pushed higher than 2 seconds. After stuns and dazes were changed, in conjunction with the revealed time increase and the CnD damage nerf in PvP, the setup to TS is not worth the time or initiative when other skills are cheaper, faster, more effective, and more damaging. Dancing Dagger had its damage nerfed way too hard without buffing the utility to make it worth spending the initiative, even after the reduction . 9/10 times I use this now it’s by accident. FS was buggy, but was a decent evade for the initiative. The utility was increased then decreased, and the initiative was increased also making it overall a less effective skill than it used to be. IS has been made extremely clunky and difficult to use reactively now that it cues behind other skills. I don’t play high level tournaments often, but I can almost count the number of times I’ve run across an S/D thief since the last change (including WvW) because other sets are just more effective for the effort.

PW and its problems are following the same pattern. Headshot got its effectiveness reduced with the daze change. Since IS is so clunky to use now, it’s better to keep up the evade frames rather than trying to actually play the opponent and getting let down by a buggy feeling skill. If you nerf the utility of PW rather than just the damage, it’s probably going to push people out of the set as it similarly did with S/D.

Be prepared to face thousand of even more irritating P/D thieves. After that gets nerfed you will see a lot of twisting fang thieves. Playing without offhand.

First of all hello everyone,

I see a lot of people responding in a quite 1 sided way i.e. go play ele… OP pw stuns… I however decided to look into this skill in a more general manner. I have all classes except ranger at 80 and i have actively played thief, necro and warrior in sPvP while playing all classes in WvW. my opinion on pistolwhip is the following:

Pistol whip is OP vs some classes whilst being Balanced versus other classes. This is due to the amounts of stun breakers and access to stability varying alot between the different classes.

Classes against which pw is OP: Elementalist, Ranger and Necro this is due to their lack of stun breakers/stability and in a eles case the high cooldowns on skills.

Classes against which pw is balanced: Thiefs, Engineers, Mesmers This is because all these classes have quite a few relocation skills or other counters like stability,blinds and confusion.

Classes against which pw is weak (depending on the enemies build though): Warrior and Guardian. This is for the simple reason of them having massive accesibility to stability and retaliation. Especially retaliation rips pw thiefs to shreds.

Pistol Whip is a reasonable skill, Yes it stuns and does reasonable damage but it also locks the thief in place, besides this it doesn’t matter if he evades when u have 999 conditions on him especially confusion will teach the spammers to l2p (winks to the idiotic condition meta in wvw roaming) besides all this the animation is realy easily spotted, once you dodge a thiefs pw he just wasted 5 initiatve. Do this twice and he will have to fall back to utilities to prevent you from ripping him to shreds. Keep in mind though that the damage from a warrior eviscerate or gc guardian gs spin isn’t low either so i think the damage is more then reasonable and so is the evade since both just named classes have way more defensive stats and abilities.

I understand why some people really hate pistolwhip because there are quite a few thiefs out there spamming it with a initiative regen build. All i can say to you is Yes i feel sorry that you have a lack of stability/stun breakers but: once you learn the basics of the thief class you will spot the easy ways to anticipate when what is coming and you will easily dodge and counter 99.9% of all thiefs. The last 0.1% are the actual really good thiefs which you will only beat if you are a pro yourself. Besides that these thiefs wont be pw spammers in the first place.

I hope you guys can put my feedback to a good use

Greetings Smelly Stuff,

(\(\
(^-^)
(_(“)(”) Me Smelly? It’s the bunnies feet!

For starters I feel pistol whip is in a good state overall right now, and doesn’t necessarily need changed, but I offer a suggestion below to improve risk/reward.

Do you main a thief
Yes – I have 2 mains (ele is the other)

When do you feel pistol whip is unbalanced
When people don’t know how initiative works and how Pistol whip works. If you don’t know…

• You can dodge out of the flurry (even if you get stunned, you can reduce the damage you take by half if you do this)
• To damage a S/P from max melee range (or ranged) so you can just walk sideways to avoid PW (it messes with thieves psychologically when you’re at max melee range, because they could burn a shadow step to guarantee they get to you, but it seems like a waste to do so)
• You don’t know the attack vulnerability window during PW spamming (spam frequency to be reduced by suggested changes below)

If you don’t know those things, then you’ll potentially struggle. Given that countering pistol whip is independent of class, and class specific counters are just icing on the cake.

There is one scenario where Pistol seems too good, and that’s when Quickness is involved. The universal counters go away and you have to rely on teleports, invulnerability, or stun break + evades.

What would you do to change Pistol Whip to better fit the class/game?
I feel pistol whip is in a solid place. S/P & SB is like a simpler way to play the thief. It seems kind of like what Hambow is for the warrior imo, but obviously the thief doesn’t have as much area control, sustain, or CC.

If there were going to be a change to pistol whip, I would like to see the Pistol Whip and flurry split. Potentially splitting the cost to be 3/3 initiative, while still allowing for double tapping S/P 3 to get the existing effect. I’d like to see the flurry be queued regardless of whether contact is made or not.

There’s a couple of implications this would have.
1) Thieves would lose X initiative (my suggestion is 3 for the first half of the skill) when winding up the pistol whip, instead of losing 5 only after the stun hits. I like this because the skill could use a tad more risk reward, so that interrupts mean something and dodge cancelling/skill cancelling doesn’t save the initiative.
2) Being able to queue up the flurry has some major benefits. The major value given to the thief by splitting the skill is that the Pistol Whip stun can be followed by the auto attack chain which allows for kiting after the interrupt. The other major benefit is that the flurry can be saved for Infiltrator’s strike, which will root the enemy for a full second instead of half a second from the stun.

These changes are more of an overall win than a straight nerf, straight buff, or complete revamp of the skill.

The end result of splitting the skill into a chain is that you create more risk reward. More risk in that initiative is used immediately preventing you from dodge cancelling to save the initiative and allowing interrupts to be meaningful against Pistol Whip.

I still would recommend increasing the net cost to 6 initiative with a 3/3 split. More reward in that if you a smart about using pistol whip and don’t just spam it, you can get more benefit from the skill by using its chain out of sequence.

I’d recommend against a complete overhaul of the skill, because it’s solid, a staple skill in all formats I feel, and can be countered via positioning (as mentioned above), conditions, or other means specific to classes.

I only spam PW when I’m 100% sure my opponent can’t counter it (out of dodges or stunbreaks). I myself run with 2 stunbreakers slotted, because one proper counter can take me down in seconds.

I see a lot of squishy berzerker players running around without a proper escape skill. So I punish them with IS PW steal PW. This kills all squishy players that can’t counter this skill.

I somtimes open on a Necromancer, finding myself rooted in a sea of wells while the necro escapes in death shroud. PW is a great set against the phantasm/minion/spirit spamming around which is one reason im still running this set everywere I go.
While IS is used and you are crippled/immobilized/chilled, its nearly impossible to land a PW. And against some classes having blocks and stability, you are wasting your initiative by using PW. Engineer is a hard counter against PW. And to be honest, the hardest counter to PW is a patient and smart foe. A foe that is waiting to strike you right after PW ends, or kites/dodges your opener like a boss.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Arkantos.7460:

I main thief, playing a s/p , sh build without stealth

PW is imbalanced because the evade on flurry is bugged, it Need to be blurr to get worked right.
The damage is ok after all theese sword nerfs.

split the skill into 2 skills
1 Close-range stun and 1 flurry attack
separating means give more Option to ingame combat for thief with only 12 initiative …. and build viability

by the way , why are we talking about PW again? John Peter already promised us the separating idea of this skill

Pistol whip is just the tip of the iceberg. The problem is the fact they reduced all thief cool downs by 33% last patch. When thief was already single handedly responsible for knocking any other berserker roamer class out of the meta due to the s/d thief build which was hardly nerfed at all. It was utter madness. The work of mad people who really really must have no idea.

This game have ZERO skill because of power creep. It is all just SPAM SPAM SPAM. Spam attacks, spam evades, spam invulnerabilities. Everything is such a joke and all they do is continue the power creep. Literally that is all they have done since dhuumfire – power creep. Result = a dead pvp game.

• Base Regen —-———————————- .750 => 1.00 (+33%)
• Opportunity —-———————————1.00 => 0.25 (-85%)
• CS VIII (Untraited, Traited)
  Signet of Malice (1)
  17 —-———————————- .118 => .059 (-50%)
  14 —-———————————- .143 => .071 (-50%)
  Infiltrator’s Signet,
  Signets of Agility
  and Shadows (3)
  30 —-———————————- .067 => .033 (-50%)
  24 —-———————————- .083 => .042 (-50%)
  Assassin’s Signet
  45 —-———————————- .044 => .022 (-50%)
  36 —-———————————- .056 => .028 (-50%)
• Acro IX
  2 every 10 sec —-——————- .200 => .100 (-50%)
  Acro XII
  3 every 9 seconds —-————— .333 —-—- .333 (NC0%)
• Trick V
  3 every (?) seconds
  0 35 —-—————————- .086 => .057 (-33%)
  5 33.25 —-———————— .090 => .060 (-33%)
  10 31.75 —-———————— .094 => .063 (-33%)
  15 30.5 —-————————- .098 => .066 (-33%)
  20 29.25 —-———————— .103 => .068 (-33%)
  25 28 —-—————————- .107 => .071 (-33%)
  30 27 —-—————————- .111 => .074 (-33%)
  w/XII 21.5 —-————————- .140 => .093 (-33%)
  Trickery XI
  4 on heal
  Signet of Malice (traited) — .286 --—— .286 (NC0%)
  Signet of Malice —-————- .235 —-—- .235 (NC0%)
  Withdraw —-————————- .250 —-—- .250 (NC0%)
  Hide in Shadows —-————— .133 —-—- .133 (NC0%)
  Infiltrator’s Signet (Passive)
  1 every 10 seconds —-————- .100 —-—- .100 (NC0%)
  Roll For Initiative
  6 every 60 seconds —-————- .100 —-—- .100 (NC0%)
  Roll For Initiative (Traited)
  6 every 48 seconds —-————- .125 —-—- .125 (NC0%)

Where is your Initiative regen boost ?

Pistol whip, in my opinion is balanced. It is hard to land attacks by itself.

However, combine it with Shadowstep and you get Mace/GS warrior. Shadowstep and pistolwhip is too overpowered with each other.

I guess thats what you call “balancing” for thieves. People just whine on the forum about thief meta specs until they get nerfed into the ground. Same was true for S/D, so say goodbye to S/P for the upcoming patch.

I wish the same was true for any other class…

I won’t offer any suggestions because I think the situation is more complicated that it seems. I will just explain some of my experiences.

Firstly, I main elementalist and spend a lot of my time in game dueling on Angz server. Fighting a thief is generally scary as a berserker elementalist for me as most players I encounter there are relatively experienced. Fighting a pistol whip thief I find to be borderline ridiculous. This is in a 1v1 situation where I have the advantage of being able to keep my eye on the opponent the majority of the time whereas in a tournament I do not and am at a large risk of sudden thief pressure due to their mobility around the map.

I find the skill alone not too difficult to avoid through dodges or countering however the problem escalates due to the ability to port. The thief does not lose much by wasting a pistolwhip at range. If I think he’s going to port pistol whip me I lose a dodge after which he can easily port pistol whip me. Using the typical build, forgive my numbers… I think his ability to do this is around once every 11 seconds.

So how do I counter the ports? When using fresh air scepter I blind the thief at range so the the stun doesn’t hit. With lyssa this is often difficult to do before the thief ports due to our shared range. Even when blinding the stun I’m then forced to waste dodge if I don’t move fast enough after he ports. Either way I will probably take some damage. Even when crippled or chilled and the thief has no ports he still can use pistol whip more times than my dodges regenerate. The 10 second chill from steal often results in game over after a lengthy fight for this reason because I cannot change to water for a removal and cannot change to air for a blind.

Then there is that moment where you do successfully avoid it and you have to wait one second to be able to damage them but often the thief just interrupts his skill and takes advantage of your unturned back in a hopeless attempt to damage them and proceeds to pistol whip you again.

When using a dagger in mainland your ability to counter all of this is greatly reduced. You have to rely on static aura which becomes a game of dodge after you’re both stunned or he’ll just pistol whip you again. Trying to damage the thief in melee range is too dangerous and your damage is comparably low to his. When not taking fresh air your chances of success are even less because you will lack the damage to scare the thief from entering melee and pistol whip you and the thief will simply out sustain it by switching to bow, making you waste your cool downs and then butchering you with pistol whip ports.

Ofc you can take focus, arcane shield and lightning flash. Lightning flash doesn’t stun break so the thief simply interupts pistol whip and uses 2 if you’re close enough or ports and repeats. Arcane shield is usually broken by the fast hits with pistol whip and does not damage the evading thief, only serving as a stun break and preventing 3 of 9 hits from pistol whip. When the thief sees earth 5 he simply dodges or evades in our chance to damage him and does the same with our water daze then proceeds to destroy. If we’re lucky enough to hit with gale he either stun breaks and dodges or ports away before we damage him.

Please remember this is what it’s like to fight only one pistol whip thief in a 1v1 situation. In a tournament it’s a lot worse.

laquito.5269:

I guess thats what you call “balancing” for thieves. People just whine on the forum about thief meta specs until they get nerfed into the ground. Same was true for S/D, so say goodbye to S/P for the upcoming patch.

I wish the same was true for any other class…

Because 85% of the people who writes on the forum have no idea about how the game mechanism works.

Easy way
- Enemy player kill me !! —-> Hmm enemy must play OP class because i am pro !!! —-> Click on GW2 forum and make topic " Warrior is OP please nerf!!! Thief is OP please nerf !! "

Hard way for 85% players.
- Enemy player kill me !! —-> Hmm he is so good and absolutely outplay me.I’m so bad.. —-> I have to go practice more and improve my game skill !!

The responses in this thread are funny.
The base INI regen was increased to aid thieves who didn’t spec regen. If you did due to needs the regen wasn’t majorly increased for ya.
Anyways S/P should be fine any issues in /P kits are going to stem from D/P holding the offhand hostage so P/P and S/P find themselves relying heavily on their dual attack balance wise to set them apart. You can see this easily in 2012 when shadowshot rooted after the teleport but D/P was still gaining continual popularity. Reality being D/P is decent without shadow shot whereas we saw literally multiple times last year (haste Nerf, Stun change) and even in 2012s PW Nerf, S/P relies more than D/P on its dual. The same is true for P/P this will ALWAYS be true until /P is modified without fear of D/P to be of greater use. Otherwise, deal with it.

Back to lurking.

The problem is basically: Big reward no Risk

Reward: interrupt, 0.5 stun, big damage, evade

The risks should have been:
1.Initiative cost: 5. ATM its only 5sec to regen it, can actually be spam 3-4 in a row. so very small.
2. Roots: enemy can’t react after coz of stun and thieves evades (all but aoe or something). enemy can’t even pre cast a spell to hit right when the thief teleports to him because stun of course is an interrupt. risk again is very small.
3. Telegraphed = easy to avoid: so this risk is wasting initiative, which is smaller risk the putting skill on long CD, but this is negated even more with teleports. With port every 11sec on avg, you pre-cast the skill so the Telegraphed is negated completely.
4. Stability – thief steal 2 boons every 21sec, if he teleported with steal then having Stability on will only bump him, as he is now immune to cc also.

There are ez solutins to each of those problems, I am sure that the balance team will choose the best ones (and that it will happen very soon):
1. increase skill ini cost
2. return ini regen to normal
3. change stun to immoblize
4. return steal CD to normal
5. reduce damage
6. remove evade (bug anyhow- its not mentioned in skill description)

I would also add that it seems the thief class reflects the state of the game perfectly as the more cheesy it gets the more the game… but I don’t want to ruin a constructive thread.

Eiland.1405:

I would also add that it seems the thief class reflects the state of the game perfectly as the more cheesy it gets the more the game… but I don’t want to ruin a constructive thread.

If anything, it’s warriors, decap engies and condispam necros that reflect the state of the game. You’re failing to see the root problem, thief is just a symptom of it.

laquito.5269:

Eiland.1405:

I would also add that it seems the thief class reflects the state of the game perfectly as the more cheesy it gets the more the game… but I don’t want to ruin a constructive thread.

If anything, it’s warriors, decap engies and condispam necros that reflect the state of the game. You’re failing to see the root problem, thief is just a symptom of it.

I totally agree. I also meant that the thief state is just a symptom, I wish it was the only problem, but unlike those other classes thief has never not been viable in pvp only the viable builds changed.
And so it’s funny/sad to follow the thief meta build changes to see at what state the game is at.

laquito.5269:

Eiland.1405:

I would also add that it seems the thief class reflects the state of the game perfectly as the more cheesy it gets the more the game… but I don’t want to ruin a constructive thread.

If anything, it’s warriors, decap engies and condispam necros that reflect the state of the game. You’re failing to see the root problem, thief is just a symptom of it.

Nah, I’d say a not spammable but consistently… reusable evade weapon ability with no hard cooldown is definitely a staple of some stinky cheese. Fighting a character where for almost literally 70% of the fight (when he hasn’t teleported away for you waiting on init regen, and you’re not hitting him anyways… the good thieves who exploit the kitten out of their ability to teleport everywhere as well as evade everything.) they’re evading… I get kittening sick of the “evade evade evade evade”. That’s what kittenes me off about thief. People support, or rather THIEVES support their ability to evade so kitten much due to low defenses but kitten… That’s not fun… Landing everything I have and you’re sitting in evade frames, then teleporting out is exhausting… If your defenses are so terrible, maybe they can find a way to make your defensive trees and abilities a little stronger so they can actually save you, but evading everything is not the proper way to balance it. It’s infuriating. Especially if you play a non mobile class like Power Necro. It’s just a game of chase… Half the time you can’t even get LF against a kitten thief who uses S/P+SB…

ronpierce.2760:

Nah, I’d say a not spammable but consistently… reusable evade weapon ability with no hard cooldown is definitely a staple of some stinky cheese. Fighting a character where for almost literally 70% of the fight (when he hasn’t teleported away for you waiting on init regen, and you’re not hitting him anyways… the good thieves who exploit the kitten out of their ability to teleport everywhere as well as evade everything.) they’re evading… I get kittening sick of the “evade evade evade evade”. That’s what kittenes me off about thief. People support, or rather THIEVES support their ability to evade so kitten much due to low defenses but kitten… That’s not fun… Landing everything I have and you’re sitting in evade frames, then teleporting out is exhausting… If your defenses are so terrible, maybe they can find a way to make your defensive trees and abilities a little stronger so they can actually save you, but evading everything is not the proper way to balance it. It’s infuriating. Especially if you play a non mobile class like Power Necro. It’s just a game of chase… Half the time you can’t even get LF against a kitten thief who uses S/P+SB…

I’ve explained it in the other pistolwhip whine thread, but I’ll say it again: The need for thieves to play pistolwhip derives from this ridiculous tank meta. Thief isn’t the root problem, only a symptom and a consequence of it. I agree that its a strong build, borderline OP, but if it wasn’t for them, the meta would be even more tanky. S/P is the only thief build (and probably the only roaming/dmg meta build) that can reliably put pressure on the enemys bunkers, of which teams usually have 4/5 in this meta, and survive in this AoE spam (thanks to the evade frame).

Although I do play S/P, I find it a lot less appealing and fun than S/D was, but in the end the only people to blame, are those who whined about S/D for months and subsequently got it nerfed, just like D/D burst got nerfed before S/D (yet again because of massive whine). I guess you realize those patterns in thief “balancing”?!

There would be a lot less S/P Players if there was no need for a “bunkerbuster”, but thanks to the meta (and the past nerfs to thiefs bursting potential) thats not possible anymore. Frequent evades on a weaponset might not be the ideal way to balance a class’ defensive abilities, but as long as they don’t do a complete overhaul of the Shadow Arts traitline, it’s the only way to reliably avoid damage as a thief (keeping in mind that Berserkers Amulet is OBLIGATORY for them).

laquito.5269:

I’ve explained it in the other pistolwhip whine thread, but I’ll say it again: The need for thieves to play pistolwhip derives from this ridiculous tank meta. Thief isn’t the root problem, only a symptom and a consequence of it. I agree that its a strong build, borderline OP, but if it wasn’t for them, the meta would be even more tanky. S/P is the only thief build (and probably the only roaming/dmg meta build) that can reliably put pressure on the enemys bunkers, of which teams usually have 4/5 in this meta, and survive in this AoE spam (thanks to the evade frame).

Although I do play S/P, I find it a lot less appealing and fun than S/D was, but in the end the only people to blame, are those who whined about S/D for months and subsequently got it nerfed, just like D/D burst got nerfed before S/D (yet again because of massive whine). I guess you realize those patterns in thief “balancing”?!

There would be a lot less S/P Players if there was no need for a “bunkerbuster”, but thanks to the meta (and the past nerfs to thiefs bursting potential) thats not possible anymore. Frequent evades on a weaponset might not be the ideal way to balance a class’ defensive abilities, but as long as they don’t do a complete overhaul of the Shadow Arts traitline, it’s the only way to reliably avoid damage as a thief (keeping in mind that Berserkers Amulet is OBLIGATORY for them).

I began playing s/p because I was tired of losing to warriors and guardians all the time when I played d/p. I was looking for a build that had high stuns and damage and s/p was exactly what I needed to win the fight against these plate wearing classes. I miss d/p, but will not go back to it due to the warriors that I constantly come across in spvp. Just simply trying to run the counter build to what I see most in the matches and right now that’s warriors and engi.

Luto.1938:

I began playing s/p because I was tired of losing to warriors and guardians all the time when I played d/p. I was looking for a build that had high stuns and damage and s/p was exactly what I needed to win the fight against these plate wearing classes. I miss d/p, but will not go back to it due to the warriors that I constantly come across in spvp. Just simply trying to run the counter build to what I see most in the matches and right now that’s warriors and engi.

Essentially thats the problem. The other weaponsets either dont deal enough damage anymore (S/D) or are counterproductive to point contest and still get you killed unless you’re really good (D/P). Everybody and anything is running tanky builds, which still deal an insane amount of damage to a thief, because he’s pidgeonholed into berserkers amulet. A soldier amulet Warrior will easily hit me with up to 6k with a single skill on his bow.

This basically leaves us with S/P that can give those bunkers a run for their money.

Do you main Thief?
Yes, along with ele.

When do you feel that Pistol Whip is unbalanced? (scenarios would be great)

It’s ONLY unbalanced in a tPvP scenario due the weapon set mobility, and combined with other factors.(immobilize, quickness and trickery build) Personally I feel it just really suits the role of a thief in tPvP. Maybe too much. However in any other scenario duels/roaming whatever it’s far from unbalanced imo. So please don’t ruin the skill because of tPvP only. Possibly split it between PvE and PvP.

How does it feel unbalanced compared to other class mechanics?

Overall the skill isn’t OP but it lacks flexibility. Having the stun and evade split would make it a much more interesting set to play with and increase it’s skill cap. Again this is from a WvW PoV though.

What would you do to change Pistol Whip to better fit the class/game?

Split the initiative cost in PvE and PvP. Keep the PvE cost as it is and increase the ini cost in PvP by one. Also split the skill in two. More flexibility makes for more interesting gameplay.

Eiland.1405:

There are ez solutins to each of those problems, I am sure that the balance team will choose the best ones (and that it will happen very soon):
1. increase skill ini cost
2. return ini regen to normal
3. change stun to immoblize
4. return steal CD to normal
5. reduce damage
6. remove evade (bug anyhow- its not mentioned in skill description)

Do you realise that 21s steal with boon rip requires 30pts in trickery line? The reduced cd on steal is not for free.

PW roots the player so without the evade, it’d be a suicide skill.

ronpierce.2760:

Nah, I’d say a not spammable but consistently… reusable evade weapon ability with no hard cooldown is definitely a staple of some stinky cheese. Fighting a character where for almost literally 70% of the fight (when he hasn’t teleported away for you waiting on init regen, and you’re not hitting him anyways… the good thieves who exploit the kitten out of their ability to teleport everywhere as well as evade everything.) they’re evading… I get kittening sick of the “evade evade evade evade”. That’s what kittenes me off about thief.

Maybe try not wasting your cd’s when you know he is evading? Timing and reactive play would help instead of spamming skills the moment you see a thief near you.

Think a lot of this is a L2P issue as it hasn’t been really part of the meta so people don’t know how to counter.

Don’t know if I’d call pistol whip OP but it sure as hell is terrible game design

I main thief but I never use s/p. Why? Because it’s extremely boring and one dimensional. There is no satisfaction to be had in pressing 3 over and over again and there’s no satisfaction to be had in playing against it either, even less so

I really recommend you watch this video devs, it only takes 5 minutes and honestly it can save the PvP in this game if you embrace it

Yes, I main a Thief.

And frankly, I don’t see any indication of Pistol Whip receiving any more QQ than any other Thief ability. To me this sounds like selective reading.

That’s not to say there aren’t issues with it.

Pistol Whip is mechanically similar to Blurred Fenzy, an attack a lot of Mesmer builds build around. Pistol Whip is essentially a spammable form of Blurred Frenzy with an added stun.

Pistol Whip was never all that popular until recently. The stationary nature of it combined with the long after-cast often made it problematic to use. But in the recent meta people have adapted and it’s become quite useful and popular, especially for its ability to cleave and interrupt frequently.

Thief abilities are always going to be difficult to balance because they can be spammed, unlike other classes.

Imo an ability that stuns, evades and deals respectable cleave damage is difficult to balance, especially when Initiative management has become easier than ever for Thieves.

I don’t really have a seamless solution. You could further increase the cost to make it less spamable, but I’m not sure if that would really fix anything. And honestly, it’s already quite costly.

You could reduce the amount of attacks from 9 to….say 8 or 7 but that would require changing the animation.

You could remove, nerf the stun, but that would make it too similar to Blurred Fenzy.

Bazzoong.7145:

Thief main since beta, if that is important.
PW is not unbalanced it mirrors other chained sword skills of other professions (blurred frenzy, hundered blades e.g.).

It is indeed well known that blurred frenzy stuns and can be spammable.
Seems you do not main a mesmer (if that is important).

Allie Murdock.8152:

• Do you main Thief?

No

Allie Murdock.8152:

• When do you feel that Pistol Whip is unbalanced? (scenarios would be great)

Honestly I am trying to find a particular case when it can be considered balanced but I do not see…

Allie Murdock.8152:

• How does it feel unbalanced compared to other class mechanics?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pistol_Whip
Hope this helps…
-Spammable
-Stuns
-Hudge damage
-Evade
(I must admit….it does provide neither protection nor stability)

Allie Murdock.8152:

• What would you do to change Pistol Whip to better fit the class/game?

To put it back in line with other classes:
Remove control it has on foe and the spammable capability.
Make the cost in initiative doubled for each thief skill repeated in less than 5 sec.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Additionally, if you feel Pistol Whip is exactly what it needs to be, I would like you to say so in this thread.

Already answered : I do not main a thief

Dee Jay.2460:

Yes, I main a Thief.

And frankly, I don’t see any indication of Pistol Whip receiving any more QQ than any other Thief ability. To me this sounds like selective reading.

That’s not to say there aren’t issues with it.

Pistol Whip is mechanically similar to Blurred Fenzy, an attack a lot of Mesmer builds build around. Pistol Whip is essentially a spammable form of Blurred Frenzy with an added stun.

…

You could remove, nerf the stun, but that would make it too similar to Blurred Fenzy.

So if we remove one of its strenghts (stun), it will be similar to a spammable skill of the mesmer. That would be for sure much much much overnerf.

Hope people are seeing what is the problem now

I main Thief,PW is completely useless skill in spvp for pve is great,there is no chance to complete full cycle only if you use bv+devour venom, this game is full of ppl who play pvp and think they should be immortal and when they die because of lack of skill they come here and cry how something is OP
PS: if thief caught with pw you should delete your character!

Nice thread Allie, do more like these people appreciate it.

I main engineer.

Regarding PW: As engineer with protection injection I can win most 1v1’s vs PW reliably. But in general I do not think the “OP” factor is in 1v1 scenarios. Do take in mind that they do wreck any other zerker build in 1v1’s but that is not unique to PW (D/P and S/D both murder most other zerker classes).
The thing about PW is that it has an incredibly low risk (Port in and out + Evade when attacking) and a very high reward (pretty insane damage when a target cant move away if they are for example immobilized). Besides this PW is probably the best downstate cleave a team can have. The range of PW is rather large and when something goes down (especially light armored targets) rezzing it will be at a very high cost for the enemy. A thief can go in and potentially daze the person that is rezzing and put out an enormous amount of cleave on the downstate player and his team while evading all cc and other forms of damage.
A good example of how SP shines in downstate situations is the 1v2 shad did (not taking away that he’s the best thief in EU currently).

I would not know how to balance this problem but I’m sure this thread will have plenty of suggestions.

It’s all about the initiative regen buff. That alone made thieves as a whole ridiculously strong in some of their builds (not only PW, people).
By adding +33% init regen, you effectively and greatly increased their room for mistakes as all of their weapon attacks are spammable. Now all thieves ignore initiative regen traits becouse they don’t need them anymore; and focus on other buffs/utilities through traits (ex. trickery line), making that initiative regen buff even more of an indirect buff.
This is only going to get worse with double sigils unless something is done to remedy this.

Shameless offtopic request: remove hundred blades and put a movable attack while your are at it. kkthxbai.

I wrote a post months and months ago how PW and Evade are OP. But most thief players rejected what I said and associated my observation with a l2p issue.

The problem with PW has always been the same. Its evade. Evade has no counter, there are no skills that can bypass the evade mechanic.

We have unblockable skills for blocks, weakness for dodge spamming but absolutely nothing for evades. For a skill like blurred frenzy, its not as bad since it has a static cooldown. With thief, since their play style is unorthodoxed compared to the other classes it creates a huge issue that is difficult to resolve.

Anet wants thief to be unique, were it exists outside of many of the game play rules. The class has lots of uncounterable mechanics: There is only one anti stealth mechanic (sic em), no counter to evade, chill does not affect initiative and interrupting weapon skills doesn’t put them on cooldown.

Some people like to compare initiative to weapon cooldowns, but its not the same. Other classes do have a way to lower their weapon cds, but its very specific and static, they have no way to actively lower cds like thief does.

I don’t feel like there is any real solution to pistol whip, since any change will likely affect the class entirely. Most of the issues that players have a problem with is related to the foundational mechanics of the game rather than the thief class itself.

From a more objective perspective, the current state of PW thief isn’t much different than hambow warrior, decap engi and necromancer. All of those classes (builds) have a lighting fast offensive rotation with little to no room in breaking their defenses down. By the time anyone has done enough to get through their defense, their offensive rotation starts again which allows them to recover their health and inevitably beat their target.

I don’t feel Anet should pick and choose which of these type of builds should be nerfed, but if they are going to do one then they should do them all. Their needs to be more penalties for failing. Instead of no penalty which causes the player to just use the skill again until it finally makes contact with the target.

I think someone needs to start a pool to pick next weeks “OP build of the week”. Choices cannot be previous builds (decap engi last week, pw thief this week). Maybe if ANet can get on board so we can have prizes like “forum ban tickets” so the winner can dole out bans to the forum QQer’s they find most annoying. I know I would have a very hard time deciding :P

KarsaiB.9475:

Oh and btw, all the bundles are broken as hell. Especially whirl.

Yes and Skull Fear is broken too! 3 second fear that is unblockable! GG

This reminds me of the time when EU/low tier players were crying about heartseeker/quickness spam while in NA we were (literally) laughing at it.

Though, S/P has never been terrible. A little background: IIRC, there was a point after Steal got nerfed before quickness and trick changes where I played S/P. I was able to win the majority of duels with Caed (the most important part of thief—how well you do against the enemy thief/glass). But when it came to put it into practice, hitting 3x targets with retal (which was like 75% of the time) would kill yourself. So pretty much you were forced to strictly avoid aoe’ing with PW whenever possible unless you had a deathwish. I died 3-5x more often than D/P (I usually died 0-1x/game with D/P) with ~23k+ retaliation dmg at the top every single time.
But, from my understanding, retaliation was nerfed since then only dealing iirc ~33% on 3x retal instead of ~120% hp.
Another contributing factor was the damage of Thief dropped drastically with the Trickery changes. The game is a LOT slower-paced now as opposed to d/x being “all-in”. S/P tends to thrive in these drawn-out fights, resulting in it becoming relatively stronger despite the quickness nerf.

One of the main things though, is the playstyle difference between NA and EU. I used to joke to Caed about how he played too “European” and died 4-5x more often than he should. EU tends to very rarely use their shortbow from my observation, and NA tended to use shortbow the majority of the time, supporting our team and only going in with melee when the opportunity was presented. (An example being how Caed and most other players had trouble against Mesmers while I had no issues by playing defensively with my shortbow)
This was one of the main issues I had when transitioning to the newly buffed S/D. I used shortbow way too much and didn’t have the stealth and burst support from d/p to back it up. Tightening up my animation cancels and dodge frames, it became a non-issue as I completely dropped the shortbow all-together (mainly due to the Sword#2/swap cancel out of combat trick for EXTREME map control on top of energy sigils and quick pockets) and started playing hyper aggressive.
It’s my opinion that this trend still carries on today and since the majority of EU/low tier players tend to rarely leave melee range playing far more aggressive, S/P becomes the more effective set whereas D/P is designed to be more burst/opportunity based mainly utilizing the shortbow.

That’s my theory, at least.

I main (mostly power) necro, thief being a good alt.

Yes, two opposites. On necro, I get countered cz of no stability and main defensive move DS#3 cant fear during evade. I have to purely relly on my team to help me if thief overextends, rezzes mostly dont work cz blind or cleave. Offtopic, but why cant DS refil to 10-20% out of combat? Respawning with 0% makes u a sitting duck, only adding to snowball effect.

OK, now my thief PoV. Its the traits and sword#2 (and lyssa -.-). I only started performing as good as on main when i switched to meta 10/30/0/0/30. Free backstab every 20s + all other good stuff. Why is sword/dagger easier with same traits&everything? The sword#2. It removes punishment for overextending in teamfights. Unlimited get-out-of-jail card.

Like d/p is lately also 3-spam ( 3-11-3-11…) for the blinds but on sword u get both gap-closer and a even better retreat.

IDEA: Maybe shorter range on sword#2 retreat, like 600 ? And smaller cost for attack but bigger for retreat?

Going to signal boost this part of Allie’s post since a lot of people are ignoring parts of what she asked for:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, try to answer these questions:

• Do you main Thief?
• When do you feel that Pistol Whip is unbalanced? (scenarios would be great)
  • How does it feel unbalanced compared to other class mechanics?
• What would you do to change Pistol Whip to better fit the class/game?

ronpierce.2760:

Here’s a good consideration.

" •Putrid Explosion: This ability is no longer unblockable."
Because it “Didn’t make sense and had no counterplay.” It’s an EXPLOSION… On an ai that has to be near you (and we all know how brilliant AI is)… Fast forward to thief.

A warrior can hold his tiny shield in front of his face and block a Backstab in that position. Makes sense yeah.

ronpierce.2760:

Pistol whip – Randomly swinging your blade around makes you evade every attack. #Logic. Counter play to someone evading everything? Quit the game and wait for a better one. Check.

Evade doesn’t prevent Retaliation damage and Pistol Whip does a LOT of low damage hits.

Swagg.9236:

This thread shouldn’t exist. No one should have to ask why [Pistol Whip] is overpowered; it takes nothing more than mere logic within the context of GW2 game-play as a whole. Asking “Why is Pistol Whip overpowered?” is admitting one’s own unfamiliarity with the most elementary mechanics of GW2 PvP.

Let me spell it out for you:

• GW2 has no dedicated healer/damage-mitigation class.
• Therefore, there’s no one to protect someone from damage that just pops up out of nowhere.
• [Pistol Whip] damage just pops up out of nowhere, moreover, the Thief also evade-tanks while attacking so there’s little that the player can do against the Thief once [Pistol Whip] is in effect.
• Combine this with Sleight of Hand, multiple teleports, blinds, no cool-down and absurd amounts initiative and you have something that breaks all of the rules that govern GW2 combat. There’s no one to heal back the damage incurred from multiple [Pistol Whip]s, personal healing is never enough and personal healing is already jeopardized because of the fact that [Pistol Whip] has a built in stun on top of Slight of Hand already being activated at will with no cast-time or visual cue.

You want a solution for [Pistol Whip]? You can’t handle the true solution for [Pistol Whip] because it’s built into the solution for the Thief as a whole; and the solution for Thief as a whole is just too much work for you, ANet. I can put in the work to solve the problems of this game all day long, but when it comes down to it, it’s just too much for you, ANet.

If you want to have a glimpse of what it would take to make Thief a class that properly participates in GW2 combat, then have a read: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Thief-The-Black-Sheep-5-8/first.

+100 dude.

S/D is still OP too. It still would shut out mesmer and ele. S/P thief shuts down ele, mesmer and necro. In solo q really necro is terrible right now because in team fights you often just get wrecked by the S/P thief who you can’t kite or dodge because you can’t see it coming.

Never has there been a spec which just shuts out 90% of specs on its own. S/D and S/P thief all shut down every other zerker build. HGH engi, power negi, necro, power nerco, support ele, staff ele, shatter mesmer, phantasm mesmer, power ranger. All these specs just basically get deleted by S/P thief. You might as well just remove them from the game. Warrior never did that. Warrior can’t teleport around the map. Warrior doesn’t evade constantly. Warrior is a problem but thief is the thing shutting down about 15 balanced and viable specs on its own.

stof.9341:

ronpierce.2760:

Here’s a good consideration.

" •Putrid Explosion: This ability is no longer unblockable."
Because it “Didn’t make sense and had no counterplay.” It’s an EXPLOSION… On an ai that has to be near you (and we all know how brilliant AI is)… Fast forward to thief.

A warrior can hold his tiny shield in front of his face and block a Backstab in that position. Makes sense yeah.

ronpierce.2760:

Pistol whip – Randomly swinging your blade around makes you evade every attack. #Logic. Counter play to someone evading everything? Quit the game and wait for a better one. Check.

Evade doesn’t prevent Retaliation damage and Pistol Whip does a LOT of low damage hits.

so basically everyone should play guardian and warrior…. good joke

Do you main Thief?
Yes, I am one of the baddest thief you will ever find in EU.
I’ve been playing with my thief since launch(aka. Evisceratrix [permabanned])
I have mastered all weapon sets, and played a wide range of builds and variations.

When do you feel that Pistol Whip is unbalanced? (scenarios would be great)
To me, personally I think Pistolwhip is unbalanced, due to the Dodge capability, the animation is sometime glitched(like standing on place but actually casting the skill)
There are hidden secrets about Pistolwhip, and how to totally dominate in PvP with it.

-When you cast pistolwhip you are dodging all the attacks until the animation ends.
-While doing the animation, you gain initiative from trait, and from seconds, so the ini regeneration is quite you know
-Pistolwhip damage is way too high for the cost of 5 initiative, I’ve tested builds, and I still hit 5k – 7k with only 20% crit dmg
-the stuns on pistolwhip is horrible and just plain horrible and should be removed even if its 0.5ms, for some reason its like 1s or (gives big disadvantage on other classes)
-even my little sister could kill an elementalist as long as I tell her to press button 3 all the time

to sum it all up why its unbalance due to
-stun
-dodge
-huge damage
-gives big disadvantage to players (skilled or un-skilled)

How does it feel unbalanced compared to other class mechanics?
Pistolwhip destroys the fun… its like back in the spam 2 heartseeker era.
one skill, 10 dead bodies

What would you do to change Pistol Whip to better fit the class/game?
-To keep pistolwhip balance either you could do these

V1
-Remove Stun
-keep the damage
-Increase initiaive cost to 7
-remove the dodge

V2
-Keep stun
-increase initiative cost to 7
-remove the dodge
-minimise the damage 20%

V3
-Increase initiaive cost to 7
-keep dodge
-remove stun
-minimise the dmg 20%

V4
-Increase initiative cost to 7
-remove dodge
-remove stun
-keep the damage

V5
-increase initiative cost to 8
-increase damage 20%
-remove dodge
-remove stun

V6 (HARD MODE)
-increase initiative cost to 8
-no changes

I like how liewec said about the vulnerability, but confusion? nope..

its a good idea to give pistolwhip a condition effect like vulnerability, imagine, you’re being slashed, lets be realistic, if you get slashed, do your armor remain intact? nope.. you
become vulnerable.. lol

anyways, I can’t be bothered writing things down in formal way.

Sinister.5792:

Do you main Thief?
Yes, I am one of the baddest thief you will ever find in EU.
I’ve been playing with my thief since launch(aka. Evisceratrix [permabanned])
I have mastered all weapon sets, and played a wide range of builds and variations.

When do you feel that Pistol Whip is unbalanced? (scenarios would be great)
To me, personally I think Pistolwhip is unbalanced, due to the Dodge capability, the animation is sometime glitched(like standing on place but actually casting the skill)
There are hidden secrets about Pistolwhip, and how to totally dominate in PvP with it.

-When you cast pistolwhip you are dodging all the attacks until the animation ends.
-While doing the animation, you gain initiative from trait, and from seconds, so the ini regeneration is quite you know
-Pistolwhip damage is way too high for the cost of 5 initiative, I’ve tested builds, and I still hit 5k – 7k with only 20% crit dmg
-the stuns on pistolwhip is horrible and just plain horrible and should be removed even if its 0.5ms, for some reason its like 1s or (gives big disadvantage on other classes)
-even my little sister could kill an elementalist as long as I tell her to press button 3 all the time

to sum it all up why its unbalance due to
-stun
-dodge
-huge damage
-gives big disadvantage to players (skilled or un-skilled)

How does it feel unbalanced compared to other class mechanics?
Pistolwhip destroys the fun… its like back in the spam 2 heartseeker era.
one skill, 10 dead bodies

What would you do to change Pistol Whip to better fit the class/game?
-To keep pistolwhip balance either you could do these

V1
-Remove Stun
-keep the damage
-Increase initiaive cost to 7
-remove the dodge

V2
-Keep stun
-increase initiative cost to 7
-remove the dodge
-minimise the damage 20%

V3
-Increase initiaive cost to 7
-keep dodge
-remove stun
-minimise the dmg 20%

V4
-Increase initiative cost to 7
-remove dodge
-remove stun
-keep the damage

V5
-increase initiative cost to 8
-increase damage 20%
-remove dodge
-remove stun

V6 (HARD MODE)
-increase initiative cost to 8
-no changes

I like how liewec said about the vulnerability, but confusion? nope..

its a good idea to give pistolwhip a condition effect like vulnerability, imagine, you’re being slashed, lets be realistic, if you get slashed, do your armor remain intact? nope.. you
become vulnerable.. lol

anyways, I can’t be bothered writing things down in formal way.

First time PW has same DPS as AA chain(AA chain make cripple and weknes and ofc cost ZERO initiative)

Secondly increase initiative cost on 7 or 8 ? This is best joke in this topic Looks like you have not played the thief in life

Lordrosicky.5813:

And if people QQ about PW and auto attack chain not having much DPS difference then the auto attack should be nerfed because that is also too strong. Auto attacks shouldn’t do massive damage

Yeah, thieves shouldn’t do damage at all in fact.

stof.9341:

Lordrosicky.5813:

And if people QQ about PW and auto attack chain not having much DPS difference then the auto attack should be nerfed because that is also too strong. Auto attacks shouldn’t do massive damage

Yeah, thieves shouldn’t do damage at all in fact.

Yes you’re right !!! Thief is TANk/HEALER/SUPPORT class no Assassin class