Guild Wars 2

So, I’ve been mostly PVEing it up. I’m just now getting near 80.

I’m pretty casual., did a bit of PVP, it was fun, wrecked some faces, got wrecked by some people who were better than I was ect ect.

I’m going to start with a blurb about PvP in general.
I found that every single profession in the game has the potential to be a face rolling train of ridiculous. I think it’s pretty easy to do on a Thief, but it’s still pretty fun. I couldn’t really say anything is OP or not. The only things that I hate in PvP are chain knockdowns / stuns. I can’t stand it. Nothing else really bothers me.

Okay on to the Thief.
This may be controversial, but I’m just going to lay it out there.
Dagger Dagger is confused. I know everyone is in a big fuss right now about how people popping signets and stacking might for crazy face wrecking burst damage. I get it.

But hear me out.

Most of the Dagger Dagger kit, is all about Big Power and Big Crits. Only two parts are about condition damage. The poison from the “1” skill and the bleed from the “3” skill.

This confuses me. Here you have this awesome kit for a cat and mouse Burst Damage kind of build. Then you have these crappy DoT’s in there. Sure I could stack condition damage and crit% and rack up as many bleeds as possible, then your stealth opener sucks, and your heart seeker sucks, and your ranged slow does low damage, and your cloak and dagger doesn’t hit hard. It’s a massive waste.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to change up the “1” and “3” attack from the Dagger/Dagger combo?

For example, give the Dagger “1” attack the same debuffs that the Sword “1” attack has. Then make the Dagger/Dagger “3” attack like the Sword/Dagger “3” attack,

Then change the Sword “1” attack to apply poison/bleeds, and change the Sword/Dagger to the leaping death blossom, and the Sword Stealth attack into a massive Bleed.

That would give at least those two weapon sets a much more complete feel. I’d actually be interested in a condition damage build if that were the case.

Next up Pistols.
I think Pistol/Pistol is boring. I have less than zero interest in using Pistol/Anything, at all. If I’m going to use a ranged weapon I’d just rather use the Short bow. That’s my personal taste. I probably won’t show any interest in Pistol/Pistol unless the focus changes to bleeds.

Sword/Pistol
Okay right now, for PVE there isn’t any point in using anything else. Massive damage from “1”, with a chain slow / blind. Combined with the “5” skill.. the entire game is easymode. The 15% nerf to Pistol Whip was massively needed, though now PVE is even easier since 3 auto attacks is almost as much as Pistol Whip now. This kit currently gives incredible damage with nearly endless damage avoidance in PVE. This is another reason I feel the Sword should focus on condition damage. I know I sound like a Dagger Dagger fanboy, but I’ve actually been using Sword/Pistol almost exclusively. I think that because of the fact that the Sword does AOE damage, it should do less than the Dagger, or at least do damage in a different way (DoT).

The Sword/Pistol “3” move should be reworked. I would suggest some means of granting a small short aoe stealth without the heal or something. If not that, I suggest an active parry style attack which dazes and causes a tremendous bleed in retaliation.

Short Bow.
I think it’s in a good spot.

Okay so you might be wondering… Hey guy… Why all the crazy ideas.

The answer is simple. I like structure. If I want to build a condition damage build, I should be able to do so without waste. Now I don’t care if Daggers and the Short bow focus on Power/Crit, or if Swords and Pistols focus on power and crit. I really don’t care. But, each weapon should focus on something.

Offhand Dagger is for stealth/cat and mouse. I love it.
Offhand Pistol is for control and defense. I love it.

Mainhand Sword is for big crits, CC and AOE…. okay…
Mainhand Dagger is for huge crits, some dots and a little aoe? okay…
Mainhand Pistol is for ranged mediocre crits with some dots and zero aoe… okay…
Shortbow is for ranged AOE, and mobility. I love it.

See what I’m saying? Why not clean that up.
Mainhand Sword is for AOE / Bleeds and control.
Mainhand Dagger is for Massive Single Target Burst.
Mainhand Pistol is for Ranged Single Target Bleeds.

Give me something that I can really work with here.

Cookie cutter builds are always going to exist. I’m not saying endorse them, I’m just saying.. lets not muddy the water by making people wonder “Why should I care that my dagger applise a laughable bleed?” or “If I need Dagger/Dagger for a condition build, why do I care about cloak and dagger? My backstab is lame… why doesn’t my kit feel complete?”

That’s all I’m saying.
I’m all for balance and making everyone happy.

I just really feel like the weapons are just all over the place.
I should be able to look and go, okay I’m a melee guy and I want to kitten crit faces. So I’ll wrap my build around these melee weapons, and supplement it with these ranged weapons and focus my stats on Power/Crit. Or I really want to bleed face holes from afar, so I’ll wrap my build around these ranged weapons and support it with these melee weapons just incase and I’ll stack Condition Damage/duration.

That way you don’t feel like you should have condition damage/duration AND power and crit and some survivability.

Make sense? I mean I really see what you were trying to do “Lets find ways to make it so players can use any weapon with any stats and find a way to make it work” I get it… but each attack would need to apply a dot in order for that to really work, and that would be pretty lame IMO.

Anyways, that’s my 2 cents. Run with it or burn it as you see fit!

EDIT: For the record, My ideas could suck. They’re just ideas. The point of my feedback is for the purpose of each weapon to be clear.
EX: MH Dagger=Focus Stat X, OH Dagger = Stealth / Openers
EX: MH Pistol=Focus Stat X, OH Pistol = CC / Defense
EX: MH Sword=Focus Stat X
EX: Shortbow=Focus Stat X

That way I can clearly customize a build around my own style without feeling like I’m not using my class to it’s fullest.

yeah add to that the fact that trees like trickery give you a sometimes worthless stack of condition damage. hastened replenishment is one of the greatest trait points to be paired up with withdraw, but then you’re stuck with weapons and a style that would use the condition damage. i agree with your basic ideas and would add that trait (minor, major) choices needs to be unlinked with specialization points for stats, with perhaps more freedom on which stats you boost, maybe a minor/major set of choices could make sense with 2 or 3 packages of points to place in whichever pair of major and minors you wanted.

I kind of understand why they put Condition Damage and Power in the same tree. The problem is that there really isn’t much support for a Condition Damage build… it feels like it was tacked on afterwards so all of the Condition damage abilities/traits are in odd places.

I’d really really like to use a Condition Damage build, but I really don’t like the D/D “3” ability and I despise main hand pistol as it is.

This is why you’re a complete scrub (as you have mentioned). The D/D kit was made to give players the opportunity on exploring different builds than the “I’M SO OP GLASS-CANNON” build. The reason bleed and poison comes in effect is so players don’t max out crit and power and believe they’ve evolved into a pro. The D/D weapon set is to make an all-rounder thief, a true thief, that doesn’t just try to assassinate players. If you’ve played around with different builds, you’d understand the concept of each skill in each weapon kit. I’ll tell you this right now, majority of thieves who went glass cannon can never understand the true potential of playing a pvp thief. If you want full damage, go back to pve.

Also, shortbow needs extreme reworks

I’d like to hear your justification for shortbow reworks, Lan. It is simultaneously extremely powerful and malleable in the right situation while being generally boring to use and weak outside of those situations. It has great synergy and generally balanced initiative costs for what it does. It is easy to use at a basic level while having probably the highest skill cap of any thief weapon for advanced play. Shortbow seems to be the perfect weapon, if somewhat slow/boring just due to projectile travel time.

The only change I’d take on a Shortbow is slightly faster travel time on Cluster Bomb. Sometimes it arcs sooooo long.

Then again, I look at the Shortbow as a shotgun (just like the Engineer’s rifle) in comparison to the Ranger and Warrior ranged options. Get in, pump what you need out, get out.

I’m curious what the high skill cap on the SB is. I don’t disagree it has one, I just like to learn tricks I may not be savvy to.

The reason shortbows require reworks is because of how flexible the weapon can be, due to its synergy with other weapon sets and the weapon kit itself. The shortbow not only allows a thief to escape much easier due to its 3 and 5 (aside from the utility skills a thief has), it also gives a thief kiting capabilities with the chance of adding more damage onto the oponent. The initiative cost for a shortbow, as you’ve mentioned, is quite generous on a thief. The bonus effect from firing the shortbow from stealth also seals the thief’s escape as well. In other words, the shortbow is practically perfect for a thief with any build, whether they be going for a full offensive thief who can stack full offensive utility skills and require a quick getaway escape, or they can go for a support thief who’s main objective is to disrupt the enemy. Forget the high level usage of a shortbow, a player who understand the basic concept of the shortbow is capable of contributing much more than a thief who understands the advanced concept of going melee. I’m saying the shortbow requires rework because it’s too powerful of a ranged weapon kit on a class that was (or should) be designed for melee combat. Giving this much survivability to a thief with one weapon kit is simply too unbalanced, and I’m saying this as a thief myself.

I see what you’re saying, but the standard reply (this came up in Beta on GW2Guru) is that no profession is designed to be strictly melee or ranged. An argument could also be made about it’s 900 range being the trade off.

I’m in the camp that knows how valuable the SB is, but am also trying to break from considering it mandatory. I’m not sure that requires tweaks to that weapon as opposed to looking at others, or even just learning how everything works together.

It’s true that ArenaNet wants all class to be flexible on melee and range, but I’ve not seen a class who’s ranged capabilities allows him with so much flexibility aside from a support guardian. A warrior with rifles would be considered a joke, and an elementalist or ranger going melee is purely suicidal. The biggest issue I would have is how easy a thief can escape with SB. I wouldn’t mind a nerf on 3 and 5, and frankly, they need a nerf.

I agree with the mobility on the sb being a problem…. I would not mind if they switched it to 8-10 initiative and increased the range to 1200. (I wish thiefs had all shortbow skills at 1200)

PsionicDingo: SB’s high skill cap comes from the fact that a skilled player can use it to:

1. Do very solid power-based damage with the main attack.
2. Have incredible targeted mobility with #5.
3. Spam #2 into combo fields to do chain AE buffs/conditions better than anyone.
4. Poison/weaken large groups and possibly heal themselves very well with Signet of Malice in the process with #4
5. Evade/cripple on demand with #3.

Now, all of these are pretty obvious assets of the shortbow, but the initiative management and timing required to utilize them all fully is only present in very high-level play. The nuance of these abilities means they’re strong in anyone’s hands, but a particularly skilled player can make them incredible. Thus, a high skill cap.

I don’t think D/D was ever meant to be about “in your face” burst damage, except heatseeker. It’s already the melee condition build. Even with Death Blossom doing somewhat large damage, it’s easily avoided and fairly slow.

The weapeons are good as they are, maybe exept anything that involves pistol as main hand, as i find it the only truly unplayable set, as other sets outperform it. no, the sword dont need conditions, the dagger is the all rounders weapeon and skill 3 dont need to be speced for conditions, you can just use it as an extra dodge in some situations, which i find perfect. Shortbow has very hight skill cap, as Lan said but, the thing is, w/o this weapeon i do not want to play WvW on thief… every single other ranged option is soo bad in WvW, its hardly reasonable to change SB on that end.

I think you should give pistol/pistol a chance. The 4 skill daze is very very very useful in PvE and WvW. Also the 5 option gives you a combo field that you can 3 in. 2 I don’t use very often, but I really should. When you run out of initiatives for 5 seconds or so, 1 can stack bleeds.
^I think rly nice? o.o

Well, Pistol/pistol got no reason to be better then pistol/dagger as it has gap making skill+ stealth, so you can stack conditions from 1 faster… other then that it dont match shortbow

pistol/dagger don’t have unload o.o also it’s 900 range

P/D doesn’t have unload, but P/D relies more on condition damage over power so this isn’t a big loss. It’d be nice for Unload to be able to carry a high-power P/P setup, but it is just mediocre, not amazing, at what it does. You can definitely make P/P work, but it isn’t hard to see why it isn’t a popular choice.

Minx.7521:

pistol/dagger don’t have unload o.o also it’s 900 range

I do not aprove so easily dodgable mediorce to low damage skill, compared to what thief got in other sets.

i do wish they would give thieves more dmg in p/p :|
i look over my shoulder and the ranger’s doing 6k crits … and i do 2.5k crit max :| it’s not very pleasant … if they made it stronger tho, people would complain :P

Well taking in mind that i with full physical burst can unload up to well 3-4k on glass cannon 3 times if with quickness and steal its around 17-18k combo on another glass cannon, but its weakness is no weapeon integrated runaway mechanism, Well blackpower could do the job but if you are spaming unloads you wont have initiative for that + easier to dodge and doesnt require stunbreaker as other viable builds do. It may not tottaly be awfull but its, not worth the exchange. Hell even spaming dagger trow between 2 targets does more damage then unload.