Guild Wars 2

babazhook.6805:

Ausfer.1853:

Kocoff.7582:

the Ricochet effect is mostly why Thieves picked the trait, not the other way around.

I would like to emphasize this for its truth. Karl seems to believe that most players preferred playing without riccochet, when that was not the case at all.

Now that I think about it, in all the time spent playing this game, I haven’t seen or heard anyone ever say that they preferred p/p without riccochet.

Well if you want an honest answer.

I spend 80 percent time in WvW. I spent 20 percent in Pve. In PVE it was always on. In WvW it was on around 30 percent of the time. I did not run a lof with zergs and it was a hindrance in 1v1 unless fighting a mesmer.

Wait how does it “hinder” you? You mean it was situational?

Karl McLain.5604:

Ricochet in its previous implementation is not slated to return at this time.
When the trait system was condensed, the standard was set in that each weapon set could only have one trait. Being that a player might want to receive increased damage from pistols, but not necessarily inherit the RNG bounce attacks from the secondary trait, this secondary trait was cut.
I will say though that pistols are something we’ll be looking to improve, being as they feel under-tuned at the moment.

-Karl

It is great to hear an official response on this! Beyond what you mentioned with consolidating traits, I imagine a random cleave effect didn’t seem like a design healthy enough to carry forward. Has any thought been given to having Ankle Shots—the current singular Pistol trait—make Pistol attacks pierce? Think Warrior’s Crack Shot trait, which does the same with Rifle.

And since we’re on the subject… could we get an official word on the hidden range increase to Pistols on Ankle Shots, and whether it’s intentional? It’s not listed in the tooltip, and weapon range increases through traits seem to be something that you guys have phased out on a design level (usually by adding to the weapon’s base range).

Thank you again for responding! P/P is something near and dear to many Thieves.

Sagat.3285:

babazhook.6805:

Ausfer.1853:

Kocoff.7582:

the Ricochet effect is mostly why Thieves picked the trait, not the other way around.

I would like to emphasize this for its truth. Karl seems to believe that most players preferred playing without riccochet, when that was not the case at all.

Now that I think about it, in all the time spent playing this game, I haven’t seen or heard anyone ever say that they preferred p/p without riccochet.

Well if you want an honest answer.

I spend 80 percent time in WvW. I spent 20 percent in Pve. In PVE it was always on. In WvW it was on around 30 percent of the time. I did not run a lof with zergs and it was a hindrance in 1v1 unless fighting a mesmer.

Wait how does it “hinder” you? You mean it was situational?

because when fighting solo against another my ricochets would strike moas and other creatures and draw them into the battle. Those critters tended to go after the guy that hurt them. in raoming you can not know when you were going to run into an enemy player and if you met where there a wolfpack or them running moas you soon ended up fighting them off. You just could not afford to waste that INI

Now it DID work nice shooting people on tower walls as it could bounce and hit people behind them manning acs that you could not normally target.

Karl McLain.5604:

Ricochet in its previous implementation is not slated to return at this time.
When the trait system was condensed, the standard was set in that each weapon set could only have one trait. Being that a player might want to receive increased damage from pistols, but not necessarily inherit the RNG bounce attacks from the secondary trait, this secondary trait was cut.
I will say though that pistols are something we’ll be looking to improve, being as they feel under-tuned at the moment.

-Karl

So did shortbow just disappear from the trait radar? There is one trait in the WHOLE game that deals with this weapon and it’s on a Ranger -.-

Sorry I know this is a pistols thread but I still feel like Sb got shafted. I know it’s a popular weapon to use but so are daggers and they got a whole rework.

if you want to play P/P play engi. ITs actually great, unlike thief, its never been good… ever

babazhook.6805:

Sagat.3285:

babazhook.6805:

Ausfer.1853:

Kocoff.7582:

the Ricochet effect is mostly why Thieves picked the trait, not the other way around.

I would like to emphasize this for its truth. Karl seems to believe that most players preferred playing without riccochet, when that was not the case at all.

Now that I think about it, in all the time spent playing this game, I haven’t seen or heard anyone ever say that they preferred p/p without riccochet.

Well if you want an honest answer.

I spend 80 percent time in WvW. I spent 20 percent in Pve. In PVE it was always on. In WvW it was on around 30 percent of the time. I did not run a lof with zergs and it was a hindrance in 1v1 unless fighting a mesmer.

Wait how does it “hinder” you? You mean it was situational?

because when fighting solo against another my ricochets would strike moas and other creatures and draw them into the battle. Those critters tended to go after the guy that hurt them. in raoming you can not know when you were going to run into an enemy player and if you met where there a wolfpack or them running moas you soon ended up fighting them off. You just could not afford to waste that INI

Now it DID work nice shooting people on tower walls as it could bounce and hit people behind them manning acs that you could not normally target.

How do you not reposition yourself? That’s seems like a minor issue. SB bounces as well at least with Ricochet you had a choice of untraiting it. If the bounces are not coming back at least make the range increase baseline. Crit Strike is too crit focused to benefit p/d at least in Trickery it was fine.

Azure.8670:

if you want to play P/P play engi. ITs actually great, unlike thief, its never been good… ever

Anything works in WvW/PvE.

Sagat.3285:

babazhook.6805:

Sagat.3285:

babazhook.6805:

Ausfer.1853:

Kocoff.7582:

the Ricochet effect is mostly why Thieves picked the trait, not the other way around.

I would like to emphasize this for its truth. Karl seems to believe that most players preferred playing without riccochet, when that was not the case at all.

Now that I think about it, in all the time spent playing this game, I haven’t seen or heard anyone ever say that they preferred p/p without riccochet.

Well if you want an honest answer.

I spend 80 percent time in WvW. I spent 20 percent in Pve. In PVE it was always on. In WvW it was on around 30 percent of the time. I did not run a lof with zergs and it was a hindrance in 1v1 unless fighting a mesmer.

Wait how does it “hinder” you? You mean it was situational?

because when fighting solo against another my ricochets would strike moas and other creatures and draw them into the battle. Those critters tended to go after the guy that hurt them. in raoming you can not know when you were going to run into an enemy player and if you met where there a wolfpack or them running moas you soon ended up fighting them off. You just could not afford to waste that INI

Now it DID work nice shooting people on tower walls as it could bounce and hit people behind them manning acs that you could not normally target.

How do you not reposition yourself? That’s seems like a minor issue. SB bounces as well at least with Ricochet you had a choice of untraiting it. If the bounces are not coming back at least make the range increase baseline. Crit Strike is too crit focused to benefit p/d at least in Trickery it was fine.

Say what? The critters still chase you and the last thing I needed was to have a person downed as I was trying a finisher and have 4 moas pecking at me and yeah you do not always have the INI for a smoke field.

Ricochet was pointless 1v1. It accomplished nothing. It really did not do a lot in 1v2 or even 1v3 or even if roaming with a group if the other group not compact enough to hit. Bountiful theft worked much better here.

Indeed I would often use da/cs and then acro with the old feline grace in a p/p build under the old system as I found it more effective when roaming and you pumped out more single target damage. Steal is not all that great in a p/p build as you want to stay at range and kite as much as you could. I tended to use steal to chase.

SB has an evade and infiltrators arrow. P/P only has your feet to move you around and dodges. You can not compare the two.

Again in WvW i tended to off ricochet off more often than on.

While babaz’s point made sense, agro’ing random mobs while fighting…

Does this now mean they’re trying to balance for 1v1’s?

Like, it was a trait, if you were roaming, don’t take it… People that zerged with P/P got screwed hard, in PvE people got screwed. So turns out it was for the benefit of 1v1’s (that’s not even remotely a game mode)?

Is their justification really about 1v1’s?

And if I recall, now all that’s left for ranged AoE is SB auto and cluster bomb…

Honestly, I think Ricochet has been pretty overrated in the grand scheme of things. It was a FUN trait, but not a very good one, and there is a meaningful difference there. A random cleave proc means that Ricochet ranged from anywhere from situationally useful to complete garbage you were wasting a trait pick on (and remember, you used to have to PAY to switch them…)

It’s obvious at this point that they removed it during the big trait revamp because it didn’t fit their current design philosophy, and I can’t say I blame them. The mistake they made was not putting something else in its place, and I hope that’s rectified soon. P/P’s multi target damage has always been terrible, and without Ricochet it’s even worse.

Zero Day.2594:

While babaz’s point made sense, agro’ing random mobs while fighting…

Does this now mean they’re trying to balance for 1v1’s?

Like, it was a trait, if you were roaming, don’t take it… People that zerged with P/P got screwed hard, in PvE people got screwed. So turns out it was for the benefit of 1v1’s (that’s not even remotely a game mode)?

Is their justification really about 1v1’s?

And if I recall, now all that’s left for ranged AoE is SB auto and cluster bomb…

No I do not think they removed it for that reason. I think as they said it because they needed to cut the Pistol traits down in the revamp. I also agree that while it was fun it was overrated in many cases . They way it worked with SOM is why so many liked it that being the healing as much as the damage given the set itself has little in the way of ports/evades and ways to defend oneself.

The loss of the health from PT and the health gains from the ricochet using SOM and IP gave it some ability to sustain itself while now it very very fragile.

Hopefully when they rexamine the set this can be looked at. The fly in the ointment is how to boost p/p without doing the same to other sets using a pistol wherein p/p makes no real gains on those sets

babazhook.6805:

Hopefully when they rexamine the set this can be looked at. The fly in the ointment is how to boost p/p without doing the same to other sets using a pistol wherein p/p makes no real gains on those sets

One commonly echoed suggestion is to redesign Unload so it has a Ricochet-esque effect baked in. That would keep the effect constrained to P/P without, say, making P/D ridiculous (and make no mistake, P/D is THIS CLOSE to being legit, and Impaling Lotus + Impairing Daggers alone might do it).

Honestly, I think Ricochet has been pretty overrated in the grand scheme of things. It was a FUN trait, but not a very good one, and there is a meaningful difference there. A random cleave proc means that Ricochet ranged from anywhere from situationally useful to complete garbage you were wasting a trait pick on (and remember, you used to have to PAY to switch them…)

Well, if they wanted to bump it up, nobody would complain. Like maybe make it 100% chance to ricochet up to three times. But they removed it, and now pistols had no AoE.

I still think the best solution is to make Ankle Shots our version of Warrior’s Crack Shot (which makes their Rifle attacks pierce). I imagine that piercing shots on our Pistol attacks would be a lot more reliable—and easy to balance—than the RNG cleaving of Ricochet.

Ausfer.1853:

Kocoff.7582:

the Ricochet effect is mostly why Thieves picked the trait, not the other way around.

I would like to emphasize this for its truth. Karl seems to believe that most players preferred playing without riccochet, when that was not the case at all.

Now that I think about it, in all the time spent playing this game, I haven’t seen or heard anyone ever say that they preferred p/p without riccochet.

Implying…

Amante.8109:

babazhook.6805:

Hopefully when they rexamine the set this can be looked at. The fly in the ointment is how to boost p/p without doing the same to other sets using a pistol wherein p/p makes no real gains on those sets

One commonly echoed suggestion is to redesign Unload so it has a Ricochet-esque effect baked in. That would keep the effect constrained to P/P without, say, making P/D ridiculous (and make no mistake, P/D is THIS CLOSE to being legit, and Impaling Lotus + Impairing Daggers alone might do it).

i think Implaing lotus needs at least one more bleed stack. If bleeds/poison are to be the thiefs go to for condition damage with torment and confusion coming next in that order , than the ability to put on MORE stacks of those weaker conditions needed to compete with the burns and those that can get on way more confusion stacks.

let’s just face, ricochet was very handy in PvE, but it was not the main issue with the changes to pistols. Even the 10% damage increase was not a super major issue, because the one thing that has always hurt the build, and now hurts it even more, is INI cost to regen ratios. I know this is still about ricochet in here, but what’s the point in ricochet if you burn through all of your INI in just a few seconds? Yes you can steal to gain INI or even use Roll for INI, but in times of heavy single target damage, you will always find yourself sitting there with auto attack while waiting for recharge.

I love ricochet as much as the next, but it wasn’t for damage…it was for survival when using SOM. If you deal enough crit damage and can maintain enough INI, you would be golden in that area. With that said, I would prefer to see better INI recharge options for the set over getting ricochet back.

Karl McLain.5604:

Being that a player might want to receive increased damage from pistols, but not necessarily inherit the RNG bounce attacks from the secondary trait, this secondary trait was cut.

Usually, I dislike RNG, but in this case I wanted the RNG bounce over the damage increase
It was fun and, with some other traits, was used to make a cool gunslinger.
It was like Matrix. Dodge roll and bullets everywhere.

I think Babaz also means retaliation. There’s a trait that gives illusions retaliation. If mesmer also has this, then he can hit you hard back. With the bounce, it would hurt you more, then intended. Without the bounce you could focus main mesmer.

That being said, I used this trait a few times, and it was a hell of a lot of fun. Let me put it in bold: FUN. Isn’t that what the game is about? Getting +10% damage trait is barely fun except for speedruns, but this weapon is subpar dps, so it doenst matter on it anyway. Bring some fun into the p/p on thiefs Karl! Weither that’s ricochet or not xD Leave it up to you.

Karl McLain.5604:

Ricochet in its previous implementation is not slated to return at this time.
When the trait system was condensed, the standard was set in that each weapon set could only have one trait. Being that a player might want to receive increased damage from pistols, but not necessarily inherit the RNG bounce attacks from the secondary trait, this secondary trait was cut.
I will say though that pistols are something we’ll be looking to improve, being as they feel under-tuned at the moment.

-Karl

Imo, part of the issue is also that Shortbow is just amazing. One of the most versatile skillsets in the entire game even if just for Infiltrator’s Arrow. So it automatically wins ranged weapon set comparisons.

But even if the two were somehow comparable in utility, the greater issue is, I think, that Thief has poor AoE. Shortbow allows you to blanket an area and tag a lot of enemies or ping several players. What would make pistol most viable aside from a niche mechanic like Shortbow5, is a decent AoE melee weapon for Thief. So you could cleave in melee but burn single targets down from a distance. I’m hoping staff covers that niche but I’m not so sure yet.

Karl McLain.5604:

Ricochet in its previous implementation is not slated to return at this time.
When the trait system was condensed, the standard was set in that each weapon set could only have one trait. Being that a player might want to receive increased damage from pistols, but not necessarily inherit the RNG bounce attacks from the secondary trait, this secondary trait was cut.
I will say though that pistols are something we’ll be looking to improve, being as they feel under-tuned at the moment.

-Karl

Karl-

Suggestion.

-Switch the following traits; Flanking Strike with Ankle Shots.
-Remove bleed from Pistol 1.
-Update Ankle Shots to add two stacks of bleed to pistol one.
-Remove Pistol 1 as it currently is.
-Replace the current Pistol 1 with Repeater (pistol 3 w/o offhand) and adjust the cast time and damage.
-Increase the damage of Pistol #3.
-All pistol skills pierce.

What you get. An awesome animation on Pistol #1. Basically, thief will be a true gunslinger. Always unloading on someone either with #1 or #3. With the introduction of DD, they can get additional defense with the new dodge and access to stealth.

Slight nerf to P/D as Ankle Shots will be required thus they can’t take Uncatchable or TotC.

Karl McLain.5604:

Ricochet in its previous implementation is not slated to return at this time.
When the trait system was condensed, the standard was set in that each weapon set could only have one trait. Being that a player might want to receive increased damage from pistols, but not necessarily inherit the RNG bounce attacks from the secondary trait, this secondary trait was cut.
I will say though that pistols are something we’ll be looking to improve, being as they feel under-tuned at the moment.

-Karl

If I may, I have a proposal:
Bring back Ricochet as part of the auto of the pistol.
With the new tech that allows a shot to bounce to targets behind the initial target, it could be made a lot more stylish, and the angle restriction would make up for having a certain second target.
For that matter, why not something to the tune of a bounce with Pistol 2 and 3 when you’re targeting stunned or blinded targets on other pistol attacks? It’d make Pistol 4 and 5 feel more valuable by far, since as it is, with P/P there’s really very few reasons to use them in the average fight—blinds and stuns are useless against big bosses, and right now you’re just plain better off avoiding and kiting enemies instead of skirmishing with them, which is what 4 and 5 are useful for.
That change would give pistols the boost they need right now, bring back the stylish fun of bouncing shots, and make two abilities that are currently a waste of initiative when used on P/P have a purpose without needing to change offhand pistol for other weapons.

Edit: It’s worth mentioning, part of this idea is that pistols would never get more than a single bounce, which I think is a reasonable balance between awesome and practical. If that isn’t enough, one could always set up ricochet to be an effect on Vulnerable targets, since that’s probably the most reasonable condition for a target that is set-up.
Then you could have shots bounce off of every vulnerable target, but never hit the same target twice—effectively making it an AoE that only hits Vulnerable targets, and can be blocked as a projectile. That seems like a reasonable tradeoff, and it would make the pistol a really interesting, high-skill weapon.

Karl McLain.5604:

Ricochet in its previous implementation is not slated to return at this time.
When the trait system was condensed, the standard was set in that each weapon set could only have one trait. Being that a player might want to receive increased damage from pistols, but not necessarily inherit the RNG bounce attacks from the secondary trait, this secondary trait was cut.
I will say though that pistols are something we’ll be looking to improve, being as they feel under-tuned at the moment.

-Karl

Hi Karl – thanks for finally giving us a response on this topic that didn’t consist of something vague like the oft quoted ‘purity of pistols’ answer we were left with last time.

If limited to a single trait per weapon set though, I (and apparently a lot of other people) do feel you may have made the wrong call, given the loss of Ricochet is a far greater damage loss than Ankle Shots provides in exchange, especially given both the fact that the damage boost REQUIRES your opponent to be crippled and provides a chance of crippling them for 3s of every 8….and is the only way that weapon set has of crippling someone.

To further compound why people may think it’s a waste of time, let me list the names of thief skills that apply cripple and the duration of it:
Slot skills:
- Tripwire, 5s, 30s CD. Reasonable if impractical like most traps.
- Caltrops, 10s, 30s CD. Good uptime, but still only 1/3 of the time.
- Dagger Storm, 2s per application, 8s duration, applications between 1 and 8 depending on distance, 90s CD. Elite skill, but cripple mostly drops off nearly as soon as it’s done, requires you to be on top of someone/thing for max benefit.

Weapon sets:
- Dagger offhand skill 4, 3s cripple on 3 random targets within range of each other. Spammable, but no big burst skill to utilise the brief damage boost bar maybe the stealth unload if you manage to land a 5 at point blank followed by a 1.
- Shortbow 3. 2s, assuming you’re on top of them, 1/4s lost to the animation, followed by more to weapon swap and pressing relevant attacks meaning it’s basically useless for the purposes of this.

Thoughts on the above
In both cases for weapons, swapping to P/P to use Unload then also means you’re stuck not able to capitalise/set up on another weapon inflicted cripple until your weapon swap has cooled down twice, unless the random trait one kicks in.

In the case for both weapons and skills – they nearly all require us to be point blank to apply, the only exception being dagger 4, which is counter to the weapon being ranged.

The fact the pistol range increase is a ‘hidden’ benefit of Ankle Shots is also a strange choice given most other classes seemed to get their range talent rolled in to baseline – this makes this trait REQUIRED to even consider the weapon set, but it’s even more unpredictable in practice than Ricochet was as a result of the ICD on it, leading to the uptime/actual use of the damage bonus being negligible.

Also odd it’s removed for being too RNG to use well, yet our damage boost is now dependent on a random trigger of a condition we can’t apply easily with the set (leading to less up time vs the trigger of Ricochet), alongside we get Shortbow 1 (random bounces), Dagger 4 (…random bounces….) and one of the new DD physical skills got it too.

Reasons people liked ricochet?
1. it benefited thinking about positioning (something thief needs to do anyway given we’re the most fragile class by a huge margin)
2. made it easier to evade around the mass of AoE from other classes when paired with Shadowshot from d/p in pvp,
3. kept things interesting as a result of not being predictable for either us OR opponents in PVP.
4. it triggered often enough to be a significant damage boost, and dealing with mesmers, necro and ranger pets

Pistol Auto Attack comparison
One major thing that desperately needs sorting for Pistols is the auto attack – Necro Sceptre 1 does the same thing but better – 900 range without a talent, longer bleed of 6s vs 4s talentable to be 12s, possibly higher base attack damage at the same intervals – my Necro is too low for me to confirm that part atm. Necro does also apply Poison but lets compare and show what it leads to
after 6s:
Thief gets 12 attacks – caps at 7 stacks of bleed. (7 conds)
Necro ALSO gets 12 attacks, 9 applying bleed, 3 applying poison
– untraited caps at 9 bleed, 2 poison. (11 conds)
– traited caps at 9 bleed, 3 poison (12 conds)
After 12s
Thief gets 24 attacks – still caps at 7 stacks of bleed. (7 conds)
Necro gets 24 attacks, 18 applying bleed, 6 applying poison
– untraited caps at 9 bleed, 2 poison. (11 conds)
– traited caps at 17 bleed, 3 poison (20 conds)

The sad thing is, I’m pretty sure Necro does more direct damage with those attacks too. The sceptre then also grants a ranged placeable aoe bleed option, followed by a “does more damage the more conditions on the target” single target option.

General notes
We basically went from having a selection of viable if not great weapon sets we could tweak and build around for different situations to basically d/p (maybe s/p too) + shortbow for movement as our only real options

I think ultimately what we don’t get is what your vision for Thief as the profession developer seems to be – our ranged options are basically non-existent right now, both seemingly tuned for melee range given the utilities required to make the trait for one even slightly usable and the complete lack of traits available for the Shortbow, but neither really providing the damage or sustain/survivability required to thrive at that range. I have yet to come across a single thief player who uses Shortbow as their main weapon, unless a boss in a fractal or dungeon has massive AoE, at which point their use feels so undertuned.

When was this trait removed? I quit the game a year ago because of all the nerfs thief had. I would like read the game update for this change.

It was removed with the changes to the trait system so….June I think? Somewhere around then.

I enjoyed ricochet, but it did have its problems. I’m glad to see that the devs are looking into boosting p/p. It is a fun set, and it looks even more fun for HoT. I just hope they come up with a good solution to the weapons problems. I rather likes the suggestion a player made to make unload an aoe cone and boost the auto attack’s direct damage.

They did not give us any information about this change. We had to fight three months and a couple of infractions to know why this was removed? Really?

I really don’t understand why we have to fight to get an answer.

Here an off the wall suggestion which some thieves might not like.

The way I see it we can only really play around with the first three skills. #2 and #3 are prime candidates for a change in effects.

Now Unload the heavy hitter but what if….

Number two was called “Lock and focus”. Vulnerability removed and put on Unload with “50 percent chance to load vulnerability on hit” under unload trait.

Number two gains this effect in addition to the immob and damage. Lock to your target. For the next 6 seconds range of all pistol shots to that target increased to 1200. All shots will hit that target even if stealthed.

babazhook.6805:

Here an off the wall suggestion which some thieves might not like.

The way I see it we can only really play around with the first three skills. #2 and #3 are prime candidates for a change in effects.

Now Unload the heavy hitter but what if….

Number two was called “Lock and focus”. Vulnerability removed and put on Unload with “50 percent chance to load vulnerability on hit” under unload trait.

Number two gains this effect in addition to the immob and damage. Lock to your target. For the next 6 seconds range of all pistol shots to that target increased to 1200. All shots will hit that target even if stealthed.

So… you want it to be an ability that is arbitrarily a prerequisite to using any of the other Pistol abilities?
All that means is that Pistol will be useless half of the time and the other half of the time will be well below average because an entire skill is wasted on just making it average for a little while.
Not to mention it’d be a pointless Initiative sink.

Plus, it’s not the design paradigm, so it’s unlikely anything like that will happen outside of a Utility.
Weapon skills in GW2 all physically DO something so they feel rewarding.

Karl McLain.5604:

Ricochet in its previous implementation is not slated to return at this time.
When the trait system was condensed, the standard was set in that each weapon set could only have one trait. Being that a player might want to receive increased damage from pistols, but not necessarily inherit the RNG bounce attacks from the secondary trait, this secondary trait was cut.
I will say though that pistols are something we’ll be looking to improve, being as they feel under-tuned at the moment.

-Karl

While there’s only room for exactly one “specific weapon trait” per weapon, we’ve seen traits that interact with multiple weapon types…

Could we get a “Ricochet” put back in if it added a random chance for an additional bounce to pistol, off-hand dagger #4, and shortbow? Then it wouldn’t be a “specific weapon trait” but instead modifies all our ranged weapons .

Nike.2631:

Karl McLain.5604:

Ricochet in its previous implementation is not slated to return at this time.
When the trait system was condensed, the standard was set in that each weapon set could only have one trait. Being that a player might want to receive increased damage from pistols, but not necessarily inherit the RNG bounce attacks from the secondary trait, this secondary trait was cut.
I will say though that pistols are something we’ll be looking to improve, being as they feel under-tuned at the moment.

-Karl

While there’s only room for exactly one “specific weapon trait” per weapon, we’ve seen traits that interact with multiple weapon types…

Could we get a “Ricochet” put back in if it added a random chance for an additional bounce to pistol, off-hand dagger #4, and shortbow? Then it wouldn’t be a “specific weapon trait” but instead modifies all our ranged weapons .

Wouldn’t need to be a random chance. For an entire trait, a certain extra bounce would put it at a level where it’s just a bit worse in every way than a Mesmer trait, which seems to be how Thieves work.

Slowmelt.8547:

babazhook.6805:

Here an off the wall suggestion which some thieves might not like.

The way I see it we can only really play around with the first three skills. #2 and #3 are prime candidates for a change in effects.

Now Unload the heavy hitter but what if….

Number two was called “Lock and focus”. Vulnerability removed and put on Unload with “50 percent chance to load vulnerability on hit” under unload trait.

Number two gains this effect in addition to the immob and damage. Lock to your target. For the next 6 seconds range of all pistol shots to that target increased to 1200. All shots will hit that target even if stealthed.

So… you want it to be an ability that is arbitrarily a prerequisite to using any of the other Pistol abilities?
All that means is that Pistol will be useless half of the time and the other half of the time will be well below average because an entire skill is wasted on just making it average for a little while.
Not to mention it’d be a pointless Initiative sink.

Plus, it’s not the design paradigm, so it’s unlikely anything like that will happen outside of a Utility.
Weapon skills in GW2 all physically DO something so they feel rewarding.

Err no you did not read what i said. All pistol traits will work as they do now. Unload will get boosted. All that the suggestion does is mark a taregt so that target can be hit at a longer range and hit if it stealths. There is no need to use it unless you want the Immob. Few use body shot in any case.. As to pointless I am thinking of mesmers and stealth in particular. mark him unload on him. His stealths and clones do not remove him as the target. same with cloaking on engie. Mark him unload on him through stealth. No current ability is removed and something is added. This does not make it “arbitrary” when using other when using other weapon skills. All it does is give a boost to range and track through stealth.

babazhook.6805:

Slowmelt.8547:

babazhook.6805:

Here an off the wall suggestion which some thieves might not like.

The way I see it we can only really play around with the first three skills. #2 and #3 are prime candidates for a change in effects.

Now Unload the heavy hitter but what if….

Number two was called “Lock and focus”. Vulnerability removed and put on Unload with “50 percent chance to load vulnerability on hit” under unload trait.

Number two gains this effect in addition to the immob and damage. Lock to your target. For the next 6 seconds range of all pistol shots to that target increased to 1200. All shots will hit that target even if stealthed.

So… you want it to be an ability that is arbitrarily a prerequisite to using any of the other Pistol abilities?
All that means is that Pistol will be useless half of the time and the other half of the time will be well below average because an entire skill is wasted on just making it average for a little while.
Not to mention it’d be a pointless Initiative sink.

Plus, it’s not the design paradigm, so it’s unlikely anything like that will happen outside of a Utility.
Weapon skills in GW2 all physically DO something so they feel rewarding.

Err no you did not read what i said. All pistol traits will work as they do now. Unload will get boosted. All that the suggestion does is mark a taregt so that target can be hit at a longer range and hit if it stealths. There is no need to use it unless you want the Immob. Few use body shot in any case.. As to pointless I am thinking of mesmers and stealth in particular. mark him unload on him. His stealths and clones do not remove him as the target. same with cloaking on engie. Mark him unload on him through stealth. No current ability is removed and something is added.

So the ability that is already a pointless initiative sink should become a pointless initiative sink you have to use to unlock the buffs that Pistol/Pistol badly needs.
Instead, we need a baseline range increase and a real mechanical improvement… not a finicky, complicated, situational and difficult-to-use anti-stealth measure.

Slowmelt.8547:

babazhook.6805:

Slowmelt.8547:

babazhook.6805:

Here an off the wall suggestion which some thieves might not like.

The way I see it we can only really play around with the first three skills. #2 and #3 are prime candidates for a change in effects.

Now Unload the heavy hitter but what if….

Number two was called “Lock and focus”. Vulnerability removed and put on Unload with “50 percent chance to load vulnerability on hit” under unload trait.

Number two gains this effect in addition to the immob and damage. Lock to your target. For the next 6 seconds range of all pistol shots to that target increased to 1200. All shots will hit that target even if stealthed.

So… you want it to be an ability that is arbitrarily a prerequisite to using any of the other Pistol abilities?
All that means is that Pistol will be useless half of the time and the other half of the time will be well below average because an entire skill is wasted on just making it average for a little while.
Not to mention it’d be a pointless Initiative sink.

Plus, it’s not the design paradigm, so it’s unlikely anything like that will happen outside of a Utility.
Weapon skills in GW2 all physically DO something so they feel rewarding.

Err no you did not read what i said. All pistol traits will work as they do now. Unload will get boosted. All that the suggestion does is mark a taregt so that target can be hit at a longer range and hit if it stealths. There is no need to use it unless you want the Immob. Few use body shot in any case.. As to pointless I am thinking of mesmers and stealth in particular. mark him unload on him. His stealths and clones do not remove him as the target. same with cloaking on engie. Mark him unload on him through stealth. No current ability is removed and something is added.

So the ability that is already a pointless initiative sink should become a pointless initiative sink you have to use to unlock the buffs that Pistol/Pistol badly needs.
Instead, we need a baseline range increase and a real mechanical improvement… not a finicky, complicated, situational and difficult-to-use anti-stealth measure.

I suggested a change to the number two skill which has no real utility in current p/p builds. That does not preclude other enhancements and no I do not see it as “difficult to use” anymore then hitting a target with the number 2 skill now is “difficult” and weapon skills are already situational. head shot is "situational’. heartseeker is “situational” and some dozen other weapon skills i can name.

Nor is it “complicated” any more then “sic em” or the channel of RF complicated.

Difficult to use? Just how hard is it to hit a target for you with a skill? See mesmer. Shoot mesmer. mesmer stealths. Shoot mesmer. real hard.

Karl McLain.5604:

Ricochet in its previous implementation is not slated to return at this time.
When the trait system was condensed, the standard was set in that each weapon set could only have one trait. Being that a player might want to receive increased damage from pistols, but not necessarily inherit the RNG bounce attacks from the secondary trait, this secondary trait was cut.
I will say though that pistols are something we’ll be looking to improve, being as they feel under-tuned at the moment.

-Karl

while I’m not sure if the removal of ricochet was a good idea or not, I’m pretty chuffed to know that Pistols are being looked at, thanks for the heads up.

And the heavenly choir sang, HALLELUJAH

Karl McLain.5604:

Ricochet in its previous implementation is not slated to return at this time.
When the trait system was condensed, the standard was set in that each weapon set could only have one trait. Being that a player might want to receive increased damage from pistols, but not necessarily inherit the RNG bounce attacks from the secondary trait, this secondary trait was cut.
I will say though that pistols are something we’ll be looking to improve, being as they feel under-tuned at the moment.

-Karl

Dear Karl,

I’m going to try to be as blunt and polite as possible…

First: I accept your explanation, as it’s rational and based in logic. Thank you for taking the time to come here and explain. However, why wasn’t this said 3 months ago when ricochet disappeared and it was pertinent? Instead we were fed some bogus line about ’purity of pistols". This is a perfect example of why players complain about lack of ANet communication.

Secondly: I think you guys seriously missed the boat on the pistol traits. I have no ‘meta data’ to point to, but in my experience, no thief picked a RNG pistol cripple trait, ever. It was super weak and competed with way better traits. Especially when there is a weapon sigil available that does the same thing, but better.

Last but not least: From a generic game stand point, it would make a lot more sense to me if you provided a direct single target damage increase option, or a less direct damage but increased multiple-target role players could choose from (ala build diversity, something your game severely lacks). Prior to ricochet’s removal, we had this option.

For a game that toted “play as you want”, you guys sure love to delete, nerf, and limit things to the point of being a 1-trick pony. (D/P). Telling us our bullets can’t ricochet while at the same time being fine with guns that shoot poison and glue makes us pull our hair out. Do you understand why so many of us are frustrated now?

Baseline range of 1200.

Return Opportunist or reduce init for Unload if you don’t change the 1245 skills.

While balancing, keep in mind WvW group play is very different than PvP. Please take the time to send a P/P thief into large scale combat not just camp flipping.

Keep in mind that P/P is useless if you can’t keep the target in range. Part of what makes melee thief dangerous is that it’s hard to get out of his range. It’s easy to get out of P/P range, even with immob from panic strike and cripple from Ankle shots. I’d give anything for a knockdown or longer daze.

If you can find a way to get burning into the mix…

Please keep in mind that P/P thief has much less invisibility on average because the traits/utils that fit that style require sacrifice for other utils. I don’t particularly want more stealth. I’d rather have some other way to stay alive. I can’t keep firing if I’m dead.

Random idea: some sort of Quick Draw ability that reduces swap time.

Pistols are being looked at? Is that what passes for hope?

Simple, double the bleed on the AA, bump the damage on 3 (or lower the init), and the same for 5.

Why is this so hard?

Black Frog.9274:

Random idea: some sort of Quick Draw ability that reduces swap time.

Honestly? It’s dumb that we even HAVE swap time.
Because of the way Initiative works, if you consider both weapon sets, other professions are actually LESS limited than we are by the cooldown system. The only thing Initiative does for us is being able to spam a single ability over and over… and that leads to our having one spammy damage ability and a bunch of almost-never-used situational crap on almost every weapon set.
At the very least, if we’re going to have all these situational abilities, we should get a minor somewhere that makes weapon swap no-cooldown.

Trickery is a good place for that, actually. The extra Initiative becoming baseline and Trickery giving a fast swap would be nice.

The only problem with that is on-weapon-swap abilities, and they can just be given a reasonable ICD easily enough.

Black Frog.9274:

I listed many more damage traits than just ankle shots. They’re also in more than one line. What about them? Why haven’t you factored that in?

I don’t know about you, but with the Fury uptime, I can run 100% crit chance with an Assassin set. With a basic berserker setup (2 pistols, armor, scholar, accessories) and NO utilities, not counting Fury, and no upgrades on the trinkets, you get 58% base crit chance. Add in the crit bonuses that are situational from Crit line (fury at 20, 5, 7) and you’re at 90% a good amount of time and 78% almost permanently. And that’s without food/utilities/buffs/sigils.

Let’s see the build you’re referring to.

Talking about running a berserker set, like almost everyone.(Not saying you can’t run assassins, if you so wished.) You’re at(58,33% crit chance with full ascended berserker gear.) 65% crit if/when you can stay behind/on the side of a target and at 85% if/when you can keep Fury up reliably.(Assuming solo content. Not a problem in world bosses f.ex.) What you’re not factoring in is the fact that we lost the utility to provide vulnerability with the Sundering Strikes trait(And to multiple targets with the Ricochet cleave, if it procced.), as we’re pretty much forced into Ankle Shots for the added range.(The damage increase being a negligible/unreliable boost on the side.) Pre-patch, I was running at around 67-68% baseline crit chance with the added base stats from the trait system(The stats might’ve been “scaled up” on the gear, but it didn’t buff back the stats you gained which aren’t present as the top-tier stat in your gear.), and at 72-73% crit chance for pistols, with the dual pistol specific trait, which also used to provide us the said 10% damage boost. This isn’t taking into account fury etc. which you could also have back then. The new fury talents are not a damage increase, but a QoL improvement as now we don’t need to rely on others to provide the buff for us, since we can buff it and keep it up ourselves. Now add to this cake everything else that has been previously said, such as the loss of Opportunist, rescaling of condition damage gimping the already subpar damage of our auto-attack even further(Since we’re running power builds.) and you’ll start to have a decently clear image of what’s happened.

There are many factors to take note of(And I don’t think I’ve listed even half of them.), but the fact is, our max DPS is lower than it used to be. I’ll grant you that maintaining Fury is easier in the current state of the game as we don’t need to rely on others to provide it/keep it up.

Slowmelt.8547:

Black Frog.9274:

Random idea: some sort of Quick Draw ability that reduces swap time.

Honestly? It’s dumb that we even HAVE swap time.
Because of the way Initiative works, if you consider both weapon sets, other professions are actually LESS limited than we are by the cooldown system. The only thing Initiative does for us is being able to spam a single ability over and over… and that leads to our having one spammy damage ability and a bunch of almost-never-used situational crap on almost every weapon set.
At the very least, if we’re going to have all these situational abilities, we should get a minor somewhere that makes weapon swap no-cooldown.

Trickery is a good place for that, actually. The extra Initiative becoming baseline and Trickery giving a fast swap would be nice.

The only problem with that is on-weapon-swap abilities, and they can just be given a reasonable ICD easily enough.

Won’t happen. Weapon Swap Sigils would easily be abused by this.
A lower cooldown option might be doable, but removed…simply will not happen in our life time.

P/P does need help, the only way for the devs to do this with out overtly power creeping other sets is to limit the changes to Unload. The sky’s the limit with what could be added, but at least it’s finally on the chopping block to be looked at, and hopefully improved enough to make it a decent selection instead of people just laughing at it as is done currently outside of PvE.

Ricochet was OP and P/P was dominating everything else, that’s why it was removed?

rogerwilko.6895:

Ricochet was OP and P/P was dominating everything else, that’s why it was removed?

It wasn’t OP but it gave them purpose and added some form of survival (Malice and IP) and fun. Opportunist along side of it was the crutch that made Pistols do enough damage to serve use over SB but required you to predictably channel spam Unload as your only form of damage since the AA and Body Shot were a waste of time. Although Opportunist also did make it possible to combo Black Powder if ever necessary. With both of those gone and 0 aoe there’s just not much reason to use it over SB which has so much universal use for utility, cc, damage, aoe and tagging.

Give us ricochet and opportunist back and I will be back in action.

but why was it removed?
it was considered unbalanced or?

They’ve already said in this very thread what the reasoning was. As much as people hated the “Purity of Pistols” answer before, I think it was a clumsy attempt to say the same basic thing: RNG cleave procs are not a great design, and it was something they decided not to carry forward when revamping the trait system. Simple enough.

The bigger issue remains not that Ricochet was removed, but that nothing was put in its place. Hopefully that is rectified very soon.

They can just make it 100% if RNG is so much an issue. Reduce the damage of the ricocheting bullets if it’s a problem.

Xovian.8572:

Won’t happen. Weapon Swap Sigils would easily be abused by this.

See:

The only problem with that is on-weapon-swap abilities, and they can just be given a reasonable ICD easily enough.

It’s really easy to fix.

Slowmelt.8547:

Xovian.8572:

Won’t happen. Weapon Swap Sigils would easily be abused by this.

See:

The only problem with that is on-weapon-swap abilities, and they can just be given a reasonable ICD easily enough.

It’s really easy to fix.

And something else they wont waste time doing.