Guild Wars 2

Body Shot, while having uses to support your allies is lack luster. Its initiative cost is high, its cast time is high and other professions have better ways to consistently stack vulnerability. This leads Body Shot to be a largely ignored ability.

This suggestion is to change Body Shot to something new

Enter: Blunderbuss

Blunderbuss-Shoots several bullets in a single shot, each shot causes vulnerability.

Shots are spread out in a cone shape with a 65 degree angle from the player using “blunderbuss”.

Damage: (per shot) 130
(2 stacks of) Vulnerability: For 5 seconds (per shot)
Combo Finisher: Projectile
Range: 900
Initiative Cost: 4 (its powerful so I feel it needs to have a higher cost then 3)
Number of shots: 7

It gives main hand pistol thieves “AoE”, vulnerability, some really, really good burst damage when used at point blank range and can be used strategically in P/D, P/P.

This will synergize with the following abilities

Steal
Shadowstep
Shadow Trap
Infiltrator’s Signet

Please note the numbers are rough and may need to be adjusted…130 may be too high for several shots if you activate it at point blank range vs a single target.

I like the thought process here. It might need a little tweaking, like maybe only 5 shots, but I do like where your head is. Especially compared to what we have now.

That is a VERY neat idea. This would synergise SO well with Shadow Strike (dagger off-hand). Blast with a plethora of vulnerability at point-blank and then escape to range to continue dishing out bleeds, perhaps throw a Dancing Dagger after you’ve gotten away to keep them crawling. Brilliant idea.

It would also help the P/P thief be less reliant on “unload” spams because lets face it, P/P is boring. Spam unload, use head shot on a channeling ability, occasionally drop black powder, spam more unload.

P/D is less boring but this would definitely give it more versatility.

Are you aware that the engineer’s Rifle 3 skill is “Blunderbuss”? It works just like the skill you described, except your proposed thief version has about a 3 times greater effective range, applies up to 14 stacks of vulnerability as opposed to the engie’s 6 stacks of bleed (even less if outside of melee range), is a projectile finisher, and is both more powerful and costs less initiative than unload.

I’ll give you that you probably didn’t put too much thought into exact numbers, and I do want to see a better Body Shot or replacement for it, but a blunderbuss skill just doesn’t fit on a pistol, let alone on a thief.

Which part of “Please note the numbers are rough and may need to be adjusted” wasn’t clear? I find comments like “I’ll give you that you probably didn’t put too much thought into exact numbers” rude.

P/P, D/P thiefs need AoE, this gives them AoE.
I didn’t realize the engineer actually has Blunderbuss as an ability however the mechanics are vastly different…vastlty different.

Engineer’s blunderbuss doesn’t shoot several individual shots which do the same damage at any range with a cone firing pattern from the user (thus causing more shots to hit the target the closer they are)

A Blunderbuss is a oversized pistol that shoots buck shot, it’s not a rifle and is the precursor to the shotgun. It isn’t a rifle so that argument is totally moot.As for not fitting the thief:

“Steal
Shadowstep
Shadow Trap
Infiltrator’s Signet”

It fits perfectly. If you meant fitting the role of the thief, thief itself doesn’t fit the thief. The thief we currently have is more like an Assassin. So again, point moot.

I know you’re trying to be helpful but this came across as passive-aggressive nay saying for the sake of nay saying. I suspect you didn’t read anything but that stats and the name.

I like the idea, but I would tone the number of shots as most cone skills in the game have 5 or 3 shots, and 2 vulnerability per shot in something spammable that hits so many times would be terribly overpowered (basically you could reach the 25 cap using just 6 initiative, that’s insanely OP).

I though something similar when I designed my ideal Rifle for thieves (a rapid fire skill that resulted on a cone spreading 5 bleeding bullets).

If it were 5 shots and 1 vulnerability per shot (and combo finisher 20% like other cones), I think it could work at 3 initiative. You lose the “always 5 vuln.” from body shot (not that it were a game changer anyway, and you still apply all of them at close range) but add more damage at point blank, and the opportunity to strike AoE (which is good in events because each enemy you hit adds to event participation, forcing us to use Dancing Dagger and shortbow).

Right now on my P/D set I find myself repeating always the sequence Blam-Blam-Blam(this third one was added recently in a ninja patch)-Slash-Blamblamblamblam-Blam-Blam-Blam-Slash… With ocasional Dancing Dagger spam when I want to damage multiple targets chasing me.

A change like this one would make me use 2 and 3 more often when my opponents catch me instead of using 5 to stealth and repeat the chain.

As long as I still have my vuln-stacker at 900 range, do as you like.

I apologize if I did sound somewhat insulting because that was definitely not the intent of my post. Perhaps I could have been more constructive, so let me start over.

I don’t feel that a multi-target attack that performs best at close range fits on the thief’s pistol due to its single target long range nature. Frankly, the only thing the pistol has going for it over a melee weapon is the fact that you can be at a safe distance. Being close enough to use a skill like this one in turn takes away from the range advantage of every other pistol skill, and seems to make an offhanded dagger seem kind of pointless considering it gives you 3 skills designed to keep you at range. I could see it’s usefulness as a skill to transition into a different weapon, but that’s about it.

That’s just me though. It’s apparent to me that other feel differently.

what if pistols unload formula is changed,

(like the game i played 10 years ago)

(base weapon damage x enemies total armor)/ 500
the skill cannot be modified by critical hits, power, might etc.

eg. [1000 × 2600(armor)]/500 = 5200 damage
[1000 × 1800(armor)] = 3600 damage

the gist is, the more armor the enemy has, the more damage unload will produce, the lesser armor the lesser the damage

Devinchi.2756:

I apologize if I did sound somewhat insulting because that was definitely not the intent of my post. Perhaps I could have been more constructive, so let me start over.

I don’t feel that a multi-target attack that performs best at close range fits on the thief’s pistol due to its single target long range nature. Frankly, the only thing the pistol has going for it over a melee weapon is the fact that you can be at a safe distance. Being close enough to use a skill like this one in turn takes away from the range advantage of every other pistol skill, and seems to make an offhanded dagger seem kind of pointless considering it gives you 3 skills designed to keep you at range. I could see it’s usefulness as a skill to transition into a different weapon, but that’s about it.

That’s just me though. It’s apparent to me that other feel differently.

I’ve played a ton of P/D and I can tell you this set feels incredibly comfortable in close range. You described it as a long range weapon, but really, when you play a Thief, the concept or distances where you play changes a lot compared with other professions (and in this game, true long range means 1200, and the Thief currently is a Rifle away of gaining that).

You always have tools to scape and asuming you know how to move, you survive a lot even though you’re using ranged weapons at close range.

This set primary weapon is the CnD (your only melee attack) followed by Sneak Attack combo to stack Bleeds, and you spend a lot of time at close range to use that combo.

When I need to open distances I usually roll backwards and spam Dancing Dagger, as it has decent damage and cripples in AoE, but there are many moments when I wish to have a bit more of direct damage for that ocasional burst when your enemy is close, or you’re swarmed, and you want to finish it fast.

Aditionally, as others said, many skills on the Thief bar put you close to your enemy, and while the Shortbow has the bomb-spam for swarm situations, the Pistol needs something for those situations.

As a last point, it would be useful when destroying objects (totems, weapon racks, etc) as currently you’re forced to change to your second set as most of Pistol damage comes from bleeding. Having a cone skill to spam it and damage those items without changing sets would be useful.

In a P/P set you need to maintain a bit more of distance than with P/D (that set is Unload spam no matter what, Black Powder is more useful with melee sets, BS damage+damage increase/initiative isn’t worth it at all, and usually you prefer to outdamage your opponent with Unload rather than interrupt his heal with HS), but changing BS so it’s more damaging than Unload ONLY if you’re at point blank because it is a cone, and gives you some multi-target damage for events would help when opponents try to swarm you, or in PVE when you want to spam it on an specific enemy to finish him.