Guild Wars 2

First of all, Thieves that use P/D run a condition spec and the ones running P/P are burst spec.

So how does this change affect this particular builds?…

- P/D thieves use CnD to enter stealth and Sneak attack to stack up bleeds, and ocasional Head shot to interrupt something important. usually they carry around Caltrops and the trait Hard to Catch. If they wanted an Imob they would take the Devourer Venom…

- P/P thieves relie heavily on their initiative to Unload. the new Body Shot is a initiative sinc with insignificant trad off. Not to mention that the vulnerability stack (that a burst speced thief needs) was cut to half…

I thank the devs for trying to change something about the pistols but imo the change actually made the Pistol even less desirable in both situations (P/D & P/P) since it is more expensive, the thief gains nothing from the imob since the after-cast lasts almost as long as the imob not to mention the vulnerability nerf to 50% its just not worth it.
The previous version was better than this one.

Imo what should have been changed was the auto-attack.
The Pistol auto-attack must be the weakest in game… its is very slow, does very low dmg and the bleed is insignificant…

If Devs would have changed it a little bit, maybe ad a second and even third attack to it with the third being stronger and with a condi on it (burn for 2sec for example), make it fire faster, then I’m sure that both Condi speced thieves with P/D and bursty P/P thieves would be happy. Not to mention that the thieves might have had 2 more viable builds…

Just my 2 cents

There are already like 3 topics on this change. :P

Incurafy.6329:

There are already like 3 topics on this change. :P

Sorry I didn’t see them for some reason…

If a dev wants to delete this thread feel free to do so.

Volrath.1473:

The Pistol auto-attack must be the weakest in game… its is very slow, does very low dmg and the bleed is insignificant…

I think engineer pistol auto attack is weaker.
less damage and less bleeding duration but a small aoe.

But engineer pistol is made for condition builds while thief with p/p has a condition auto attack and a physical damage dual skill.

Volrath.1473:

P/D thieves use CnD to enter stealth and Sneak attack to stack up bleeds, and ocasional Head shot to interrupt something important

what?

fumcheg.1936:

Volrath.1473:

P/D thieves use CnD to enter stealth and Sneak attack to stack up bleeds, and ocasional Head shot to interrupt something important

what?

I stopped reading right there.

Body Shot can be situationally awesome.

Yes, Vital Shot is and always has been the problem with P/P (and to a lesser extent P/D), which I’ve posted about multiple times. The change to Body Shot wasn’t bad necessarily, just misguided and will do little for its problems. It is the worst autoattack in the game single-handedly creating the worst weapon set in the game for one specific reason- Initiative.

Let me elaborate. Unlike any other class in the game, Thieves use Initiative. This has the effect of pitting all of their skills besides #1 in direct competition with one another. That isn’t a problem when the primary source of sustained DPS is the autoattack and #2-#5 all provide various forms of utility, but that isn’t what happens with P/P.

Entirely because of Vital Shot’s weakness, Unload becomes your main source for not only burst but even for sustained DPS. This has the effect of rendering every other skill in the set into a near-useless state because they siphon resources you need to do basic, sustained DPS. That is why P/P has always been broken and remains so to this day and Vital Shot is 100% of the cause. I’ve been arguing about this since launch and there are still a lot of people that don’t get it.

Vital Shot needs to fire faster or hit harder with a longer bleed duration so that it can provide good sustained DPS on its own, with Unload being more utilitarian for burst support. I firmly believe they have simply mis-tuned its aftercast and it subsequently does less DPS than it is supposed to, destroying the entire set. No change they make to Body Shot short of making it egregiously OP will correct that problem. Buff Vital Shot Anet.

crouze.3078:

Volrath.1473:

The Pistol auto-attack must be the weakest in game… its is very slow, does very low dmg and the bleed is insignificant…

I think engineer pistol auto attack is weaker.
less damage and less bleeding duration but a small aoe.

But engineer pistol is made for condition builds while thief with p/p has a condition auto attack and a physical damage dual skill.

Engineer auto is arguably weaker (it’s probably comparable), but it’s less of a problem because they use cooldowns instead of Initiative.

Also, the fact that Engi pistol auto is so weak is further evidence corroborating that they have tuned the aftercast poorly for many ranged weapons (specifically Pistol an Longbow- they corrected the latter on Rangers but not on Warriors, and have yet to touch Pistols).

fumcheg.1936:

Volrath.1473:

P/D thieves use CnD to enter stealth and Sneak attack to stack up bleeds, and ocasional Head shot to interrupt something important

what?

xD you got me there i posted late at night and was thinking about a million things

tks for pointing out that mistake.

Body shot is decent if you have the initiative for it. It is a ok change as I at least think about using it depending on what I am fighting if that was the intent then they succeeded. I seen some other thiefs using it that I have fought also on my other classes. So the skill is getting used by p/d thieves.

oZii.2864:

Body shot is decent if you have the initiative for it. It is a ok change as I at least think about using it depending on what I am fighting if that was the intent then they succeeded. I seen some other thiefs using it that I have fought also on my other classes. So the skill is getting used by p/d thieves.

imo it is a waste of initiative. 4 init for a 1sec imob and 0.5sec after cast. that give you 0.5 sec to do whatever you can wile the target is still immobilized…

The only use I see in it would be to use Caltrops and spam #2 to keep the target in there but it can easily be countered with Stability, teleport, dodge and you would end up with zero initiative. cant see it synergise with any thing else wile solo playing.

with a team then you can use it to make it easier for your team to nuke the focused target but again you would end up with no initiative…

in my opinion it would be nice if it would had been the below:
2 seconds weakness
2 seconds cripple
1 second bindness

the only thing is see usage curently, is in an venom share build, with cond duration +100% spamming bodyshot and devourer and basilisk
full lockdown ^^, still not perma stun lock… still better than a kick in the head…
maybe with p/d