Guild Wars 2

P/D thief here, was running around in WvW today and during some downcombat I pondered the skill “Body shot” I think it’s almost unanimous that the skill is worthless, not even worth it as an initiative dump.

So why don’t we hand it a little bit of that boon-hate A-net wanted to work into the game lately. Nothing as amazing as the sword three, but perhaps a one to two boon drop off when used.

The skill has a three Init cost, meaning a trickery thief can fire it 6 times in succession and be completely drained of Init A non trickery thief can get off around 4 with decent regen timing before being 100% drained. Now of course the init cost and boonstrip can be adjusted for balance and perhaps we can even grab a trait or two that boosts it up.

This would take a worthless skill and make it rather nice for alot of off D/D builds, not to say I hate my D/D breatheren but it would draw people off such a cookie cutter build as well.

Tell me what you all think i’d love some suggestions, adjustments and any other ideas, perhaps an Anet dev will catch

Maybe it converts a boon on the enemy into vulnerability, that way sword remains defensive boon-hate while pistol is the offensive version.

Also, have they changed unload to allow you to move? (I haven’t played P/P for a long time)

Super Riceman.8702:

Maybe it converts a boon on the enemy into vulnerability, that way sword remains defensive boon-hate while pistol is the offensive version.

Also, have they changed unload to allow you to move? (I haven’t played P/P for a long time)

I don’t remember it ever not letting you move, although I haven’t played the class since launch even in the videos before launch it was shown you could move while using unload.

I tested, it does let you move but to me it seems kind of weak still.
Maybe it should break stun since it costs as much initiative as Infiltrator’s Strike + Shadow Return.

Body Shot should convert one boon on the enemy to 3 stacks of vulnerability

You can still move while unloading…

I still think that body shot should be your autoattack (with less vulnerability, 1 stack of 5sec per shot) and vital shot should be the #2 (with more bleed).

IMO, makes the set better for both p/d (dump ini on #2 to stack more bleeds and cover them with aa vulnerability for harder cleansing) and for p/p (increase overall dmg with more vul stacks without draining ini for the unloads)

Boom removal on a spamming ranged skill sounds a bit OP.

@ILobo Body Shot was indeed the auto-attack with 1 stack vuln (like other auto-attacks) during early stage of the game. Then stealth attacks came (I hated that day, it meant that stealth was no longer “a verys econdary thing” like they promised and instead would be the only way to get access to all of your potential), and Pistol Stealth Attack was a 5*Bleed attack, so they made the auto-attack apply Bleed (moving Vital Shot to #1 and changing cripple with bleeding) so P/D users could have their auto-attack synergy with the stealth attack.

I’m a P/D myself and I can tell you that moving the bleeding from the auto-attack would hurt the set a lot. You want all your initiative to use CnD all you can to then use Sneak Attack. Moving bleed to the #2 slot would hurt the set as it would need to waste initiative, so while favoring P/P, it would hurt P/D.

Personally I would love to use P/P because I love the aesthetics more than P/Ds but when you play it for a time you get bored of all the 3333333333. I agree that Body Shot needs a change for the set to be more appealing, but switching it with Vital Shot would hurt P/D.

My opinion is that the real fix would be to make Body Shot synergize with Black Powder (a great skill but only for melee users). My personal sugestions for it that I’ve posted other times are:

- Change Body Shot to a spread*5 attack (each shot applies 1 Vuln), and make the damage if you hit with all shots better in damage/initiative than Unload (Unload total damage would still be higher than Body Shot of course) so if you play it in close range it’s more effective in damage/initiative and damage/time as it’s one shot. There are precedents of spread*5 shots recharging in 6 seconds which is a good replacement for 3 initiative when you compare skills in most sets, so it goes in line with existing attacks. It synergizes with Black Powder as you’re risking yourself going closer, so you cover your assault with a blinding field. It also synergizes with the traits you use to optimize Unload as it would be a multi-hit skill too.

- My favorite sugestion from the ones I have because it would make P/ excellent for group support, and allow diversity for P/P so they can be Berserkers or Carrions (like D/D berserker backstabbers or carrion dodge bleeders) would be to change Body Shot to a melee range shot that pushes your target a bit (as it is a melee range attack you can’t abuse the effect as the opponent moves from you and you can’t continue to push him unless the gap is closed), and generates a Blast Finisher (it’s a strong charged shot and the recoil produces the Blast Finisher, the blast itself doesn’t damage and occurs some frames after the hit so it doesn’t break stealth when doing the combo). This would allow P/P to go Carrion and use Black Powder more often if they want to (the exchange with P/D is that P/D gets way cheaper stealth access while needing to go close), and aditionally makes any P/ Thief excellent for combo trigering. Not as good as Shortbow as you would need to stand in the field, but good enough to be team-friendly.

Aditionally, while not related to the main topic (Body Shot) I would consider (not really sure about this but could be interesting) adding a 0.5 per bullet Weaknes to Unload (for 4 seconds total). Unload is a skill that for 5 initiative is nice but feels like it could do more than just “decent but not really great” damage. Adding Weakness that you can maintain only if you keep shooting gives the skill a defensive side and would limit the times an opponent can dodge (which is what really kills Unload) so even if Body Shot gets a boost, you would consider using either skill on different situations.

body shot is AMAZING what are you guys missing? lol….. no no just kidding. the ONLY time its amazing is when a small team is fighting a huge boss in PVE and you want to get them to 25% vulnerability whicfh is alot of dmg when 5 players are constantly attacking. the one skill stacking 25% could be hundreds of thousands of dmg depending on what boss (wizard etc). but other than that never waste the intiative lol

Problem is that while those situations are good for BS, most times the cap of 25 stacks is reached anyway so even then BS is useless.

yup so true. thats why i said small groups :P

For its cast time and initiative cost, honestly, we’ve been saying for a while that it should remove (but not steal) a random boon.

lLobo.7960:

You can still move while unloading…

I still think that body shot should be your autoattack (with less vulnerability, 1 stack of 5sec per shot)

Consider that the necro axe auto attack already does 2 stacks of Vulnerability for 7 seconds. I’d honestly take one use of the necro auto over current Body Shot, at least it’d do more DPS than our auto attack.

The only way I can see Body Shot continuing to work as a Vulnerability application tool would be to significantly shorten the duration and increase the intensity so it could be used to set up a single attack. Say 25 stacks for 1.75 seconds instead of 5 stacks for 6 seconds. You could conceivably rotate it with Unload to some effect at that point.