Guild Wars 2

Pistol Whip – 0 skill required to use. Forces Stun Breakers Dodges once target is out Pistol Whip finishes the job. 1 Skill that has a stun and great channel damage tied to it. Put it on a cooldown 15 seconds at least.

Phantasm build – Stupidy knows no doubt as pets do too much damage over its life time. Killing them is not an option. Low cooldowns. Mesmer kites / LOSes let the pets do all the work. Is this a joke? if it is – a poor made one.

100 Blades – lawl?

Seriously some classes have to work really hard to be effective in PvP while other classes can just win with gimmicky mechanics. How did this get to live?

I half expected this to be a good post. And I do sincerely hope you mentioned 100 Blades sarcastically and for the pure irony.

I agree on the phantasm and pw part, 100b is just too easy to avoid for it to be of any proper use. Only way it is dangerous is in a clash where you get chainrooted/knocked down and a warrior suddenly appears and frenzyslashes your face off.

Phantasms do too much damage, i agree. And pistolwhip needs to either
1: Get rid of the stun
2: Drop the damage
3: have some sort of cooldown.

Right now it’s a spammable interrupt move with one of the highest damages in the game.. it’s a bit ridicilous. Even though i usually don’t have any troubles with thiefs personally, if i do get caught by one and i have my breaker/invul on cd i just get eaten alive in 1,5 second. :l Even with tank builds it hits for like 6k + >_>

If getting caught without an escape up is the only time you die to pistol whip, isn’t it working as intended?

If there is counter play, but not a HARD counter so it is situationally effective but not god mode impossible to beat. Sounds like it’s perfectly balanced.

Personally I don’t have any problems with pistol whip, and the signet of illusions nerf makes AoEing phantasms down a very viable option if you dodge the first attack; that “low CD” isn’t any lower than guardian greatsword spin or dragons tooth.

Gigawatt, let’s say that my stability, and stun break are both off CD. Thief runs up, hits PW, I pop stun-break, he just PWs again. Wasted stun break. Let’s say I pop my 80 second CD, 6-sec duration stability. He dodges twice, pops stealth, my stability falls off, he PW spams me.

You don’t have to be caught without your CDs to die to PW thieves -every- time, and that’s the problem.

Only one I really agree with is the Pistol Whip. Two buttons to win most of the time. One class doesn’t have enough stun breakers to deal with it. You need a long duration stability (Rampage as One, for instance) to do anything against them. But I’ve been saying this is more of a problem than HSS for a couple of weeks now.

Phantasm build – yes they do a lot of damage, but they are AI, and phantasms are pretty squishy. LOSing the duelist/warlock if you’re too far away as a melee causes it to run right up to you; kill it, then kill the Mesmer. You have more tools at your disposal than just your traits and skills. Every other phantasm is melee, so just kill them. Bring a condition removal, and use windows that phantasms are on CD to put the hurt on the Mesmer.

100 Blades is only powerful if the Warrior catches you off-guard, or you didn’t bring any sort of condition removal, stun breaker, stability, or immunity or they all are on CD. I bring all four, and just tear those glass cannon warriors apart. Many times I’ve killed a warrior and only taken 2-3k damage from them in 1v1 situations.

That said, -every- game has gimmicky classes and specs. Problem with gimmicky builds is that they are so simplistic that if they aren’t blatantly OP they are easily countered.

are we playing same game?

PW has only .5 second stun, and it PLANTS the thief during animation. you can just dodge..

Except with Haste that .5 stun is more than enough to lock someone down until they’re dead?

Are you new to MMO’s? There will always be flavour of the month classes in class based games like this because perfect balance is incredibly difficult to achieve

Don’t worry, eventually your class will be completely overpowered as well

The only problem with pistol whip is it grants evasion.

It is spammable, CCs, and makes the user invulnerable. That’s the same problem I have with Blurred Frenzy. 2-3 seconds of invulnerability with a built in stun/immobilize. Its slightly worse with BF, since even if you dodge the skill, there’s likely to be a Phantasm somewhere nearby still wacking away at you.

So even if you predict the move, dodge it, or eat it and chug a stun breaker, what can you do? You can’t counterattack. This isn’t like a warrior’s HB where you can follow up with your own burst. Where’s the cost and risk to using these skills?

Your best option is to heal/buff up and try to time when the invulnerability ends so that you can counter, but against a smart opponent who has dodges/stun breakers you won’t get your CC/burst off and suddenly its PW/BF to the face again.

But in the end, this is a team game. You can’t run an entire team of thieves and mesmers in a tourney and hope to beat a well-designed team composition. I wouldn’t shed a tear if ANet nerfs some of these skills, but outside of dueling I have no problems with them.

^ the evasion is annoying, breaking the stun and shooting the thief only to have him teleport back to you with skill 2.

as a well specced necro with plague form as elite i had a thief try to pw spam me to death, he succeeded eventually, and by eventually i mean his pw spam eventually had a total amount of hits on me of 44 and only a 10k damage total from it in comparison to the number of times he used it. Shame my team didn’t come to help out at the point till after I was dead and the thief capped it.

You seriously complaining about 100 blades? Even a mentally challenged can dodge that or find ways to avoid that.

I think HB is a perfect example of a BALANCED skill. Hits very hard, but as others pointed out, it can be countered by all classes and the warrior is left planted in place, on CD and ready to get ripped.

Thief/Mesmer on the other hand have abilities that have no downside. What is the downside to a Spammable finisher that increases dmg as the target’s HP goes down, and LEAPS the player to his target? What is the downside to using an attack that not only does damage/inflicts a condition, but also spawns an illusion that will do all the rest on their own?

The issue is how easy it is to be competitive with some classes where others have a high requirement of skills to be competitive.

Sure you can avoid Hundred blades, but if you get cought or make 1 mistake you’re below 50% or dead. And it only has 8 sec CD.

So what happens is that average Joe will choose Theif, Warrior ( & Mesmer?) rather than grinding on an elementalist etc.

Don’t get me wrong, Ele are strong with the right skills and spec, but if not – you’re gonna have a bad time..

Pistol whip is actually quite hard to land the full damage. it has a very slow lead up, a target can just walk out of 2/3 of the dmg (even accounting for the 1/2 sec stun). The real problem is haste (which can allow 2 very quick PW in a row, doing heaps of damage, or a very quick HB hit). Phantasm mesmers are very hard to beat right now, i agree they need a nerf on damage or less phantasm HP or something?

Reinhart.2703:

Pistol Whip – 0 skill required to use. Forces Stun Breakers Dodges once target is out Pistol Whip finishes the job. 1 Skill that has a stun and great channel damage tied to it. Put it on a cooldown 15 seconds at least.

Phantasm build – Stupidy knows no doubt as pets do too much damage over its life time. Killing them is not an option. Low cooldowns. Mesmer kites / LOSes let the pets do all the work. Is this a joke? if it is – a poor made one.

100 Blades – lawl?

Seriously some classes have to work really hard to be effective in PvP while other classes can just win with gimmicky mechanics. How did this get to live?

all of these points you mentioned are easily countered and honestly not that big of an issue.

nothing to see here

Animosity.5231:

Except with Haste that .5 stun is more than enough to lock someone down until they’re dead?

oh, so once every 60 seconds we can dominate then? ive used pistol whip, its not for me, but guess what, its easy as pie to dodge, takes quite a bit of practice on landing it, roots you, very short stun, and if we pair it with haste, we usually die after as we have no endurance to dodge ourselves.

haste+PW is gimmicky, but PW alone isnt.

and lol at 15 second CD, you obviously dont know how thieves work if you suggested that

Stop be so dumb, and call for nerf on thins you dont understand how it works.

The soul of the problem is not pistol whip or HS spam, the problem is quickness it need to be removed from the game.

Everything gimmicky come with quickness attached. Same with HB(yet hb deal 3 times more damage than PW) you will never hit without quickness.

Gigawatt.5217:

If getting caught without an escape up is the only time you die to pistol whip, isn’t it working as intended?

then give every class a way to destroy someone without an escape so it’s even across the board. That’s basically what the OP is getting at, that certain classes have a way to capitalize much more on someone with no escapes with less skill required to boot.

ilJumperMT.4871:

are we playing same game?

PW has only .5 second stun, and it PLANTS the thief during animation. you can just dodge..

and then they can just use it again?