Guild Wars 2

When I hit 80 and started to WvW, people told me P/P was weaker than other weapon builds such as Backstab and Pistol Bleeds. Problem is, I didn’t want to do what everyone else was already doing.

Been playing WvW for about a week now, and feeling pretty good about sticking to my guns. I don’t see a lot of P/P Thief WvW vids out there, so I decided to post my own to entertain some of you.

I still have much to improve, and this video is not meant to show off. Until I can kill 3 level 80s by myself in a single fight, I don’t consider myself pro. Rather, I’d like to gather constructive feedback about my gameplay from the real Thief pros out there, so I can eventually do just that: reach my goal of being able to kill 3 level 80s at once.

Notes First P/P WvW vid from me. Not much to say, posted it for entertainment purposes.

Notes: 2nd video released; this one is just me playing with my friends who are relatively new to GW2. Starts out with 1-2 scenes on ganks and a big fight, and then turns into 3v5, 3v6 fights.

Regarding Music: Guess 90’s rap isn’t what people like to hear. I can’t only put in in-game sounds because when FRAPS records it also records what’s being heard on Skype, and also the music I have on while I’m playing. However, I’m up to suggestions on what type of music everyone enjoys. Hopefully some neutral music, but if mainstream music like Justin Bieber is what everyone wants, I can accept that too.

Unload Usage: I’ve been getting some flak about only using Unload, despite having already explained that I have already tried to incorporate the other P/P skills but they are indeed too lackluster. Let me clarify one more time why I use Unload exclusively, since in my honest opinion, it is the only decent P/P skill.

Unload vs Body Shot: Unload costs 5 initiative, Body Shot costs 3. The question now becomes whether the 5 stacks on vulnerability (roughly 5% increase in damage to the target) and saving 2 extra initiative is worth sacrificing about 75% of the damage an Unload would have otherwise done. The answer is no. 5% increase in future damage does not make up for the 75% loss of damage an Unload would have otherwise done.

Unload vs Headshot: Unload costs 5 initiative, Headshot costs 4. The question now becomes whether the 1/4 second daze effect on Headshot and saving 1 extra initiative is worth sacrificing about 75% of the damage an Unload would have done. The answer is no, since that 1/4 second daze effect is negligible in the case of a non-spike build. When used to interrupt a healing skill for example, I believe the daze delays the enemy’s heal for around 3 seconds. 3 seconds on a non-spike build does not give me enough time to burst him down before he gets off the heal skill again.

Unload vs Black Powder: Unload costs 5 initiative, Black Powder costs 6. The question now becomes whether or not Black Powder’s potential stacks of blind are worth sacrificing about 75% of the damage an Unload would have done, and also an extra initiative. The answer is no. Black Powder only stacks blinds if the target is within the field of powder, which is your current location. Other than that, it blinds once. This skill is worthless against ranged enemies and casters.

Hence, if my logic holds, Unload remains the most efficient and effective P/P skill. I refuse to lower my effectiveness just so that people stop hating on the 3 spam. If there is a more effective way to play P/P Thief, or if my logic on the above skills is flawed, I have no objection if someone sincerely explains so.

There was a general consensus that P/P skills sucked except for the medicore Unload, up until my video was posted. Many people were even expecting a future buff to the P/P skills. I don’t see why this has suddenly changed with the release of my video.

Not a bad video. The music wasn’t what to my taste but overall not bad mate. Only recommendation would be to learn to keybind the rest of your skills as in many instances you stutter step as you try and find the skill to use. You also used skills not needed in a few of them but other than that, it looks like a neat build.

What is your build? Gear/traits/runes?

Headshot and Black Power are amazing abilities. You can use them both offensively or defensively. Also, I didn’t see food or consumable buffs up, those will help out too!

Wow, very nice. Care to share your build? : )

i use P/D but swap to P/P for Unload and head shot there is nothing wrong with that

Been getting some good feedback. However, I’ve also been getting some flak about only using Unload, despite having already explained that I have already tried to incorporate the other P/P skills but they are indeed too lackluster. Let me clarify one more time why I use Unload exclusively, since in my honest opinion, it is the only decent P/P skill.

Unload vs Body Shot: Unload costs 5 initiative, Body Shot costs 3. The question now becomes whether the 5 stacks on vulnerability (5% increase in damage) and saving 2 extra initiative is worth sacrificing about 75% of the damage an Unload would have otherwise done. The answer is no. 5% increase in future damage does not make up for the 75% loss of damage an Unload would have otherwise done.

Unload vs Headshot: Unload costs 5 initiative, Headshot costs 4. The question now becomes whether the 1/4 second daze effect on Blackpowder and saving 1 extra initiative is worth sacrificing about 75% of the damage an Unload would have done. The answer is no, since that 1/4 second daze effect is negligible in the case of a non-spike build. When used to interrupt a healing skill for example, I believe the daze delays the enemy’s heal for around 3 seconds. 3 seconds on a non-spike build does not give me enough time to burst him down before he gets off the heal skill again.

Unload vs Black Powder: Unload costs 5 initiative, Black Powder costs 6. The question now becomes whether or not Black Powder’s potential stacks of blind are worth sacrificing about 75% of the damage an Unload would have done, and also an extra initiative. The answer is no. Black Powder only stacks blinds if the target is within the field of powder, which is your current location. Other than that, it blinds once. This skill is worthless against ranged enemies and casters.

Hence, if my logic holds, Unload remains the most efficient and effective P/P skill. I refuse to lower my effectiveness just so that people stop hating on the 3 spam. If there is a more effective way to play P/P Thief, or if my logic on the above skills is flawed, I have no objection if someone sincerely explains so.

I liked this, it was nice to see a P/P pvp video.

Doctor Fu Manchu.4203:

Unload vs Black Powder: Unload costs 5 initiative, Black Powder costs 6. The question now becomes whether or not Black Powder’s potential stacks of blind are worth sacrificing about 75% of the damage an Unload would have done, and also an extra initiative. The answer is no. Black Powder only stacks blinds if the target is within the field of powder, which is your current location. Other than that, it blinds once. This skill is worthless against ranged enemies and casters.

I don’t know if you know this already, but Black Powder is a smoke field you can self-combo with. Because of that, if you use a projectile finisher through it (i.e. unload), it will actually stack blind on your target for each shot. Also, if you use a dagger main hand in your 2nd weapon set, you can switch to it and use heartseeker (a leap finisher) to get into stealth and run away or back stab. If you use the bow as your offhand and cluster bomb the ground, you AoE stealth.

That plus it really messing up melee combos is why black powder is actually a pretty good ability.

Not bad.

Im guessing 30 crits, 20 acro, 20 trickery, or something similar. A mix of valkyrie with either knights or berserker gear.

I use P/P for single target in dungeons, usually on bosses. Unload is sweet, but it sucks you have to spec for initiative regen or else p/p loses a lot of potency.

Cool vid, a few green arrows, but hey what to expect in wvwvw.
I kinda agree with you, only thing you can use head shot for is to interruption.. and u really have to time it right, I mean for the heals.
Dunno if signet of malice would be better due to Unload spam, you could try it.
Also as mentioned keybind your skills, it could save you a few seconds:)

You mention you are not the best, but you are certainly not the worse either, and good to see the P/P in action.

I dislike your personal taste in music, so i have to watch it on mute, which is like watching TV with no sound. its just not enjoyable. please just record game sounds, if we want to hear music we can play something we like.

otherwise i think your video shows you spamming 1 skill over and over and still doing well with your thief, which highlights one of the issues of the class that many posters on this forum try to pretend doesnt exist.

there should be short cooldowns on your skills to force thieves to use different skills to create a burst combo instead of 3-3-3-3 like you show in the video. they dont need to be long, like 5 second cooldowns so if you want to spam skills for burst you are forced to use multiple skills like everyone else has to.

Initiative exists because thief abilities have no cooldowns. If you want to add cooldowns, might as well scrap initiative altogether, and you would also have to rework every thief weapon skill. I dont see that happening lol.

I don’t know what build you’re using, but I have something that might be helpful.
I tried out a P/P build once, and one thing in particular that I found extremely effective was to stack my Precision as high as I could, and get the Critical Strikes trait that gives a 10% chance of Quickness on crit, combined with the weapon sigil for the 10% chance of Quickness on one weapon and +5% crit on the other.
The two actually stack, effectively giving you a 20% chance on crit for 2 seconds of Quickness on a 30 second cooldown. Better yet, since they’re separate, after triggering it once you still have a 10% chance to trigger it again within the next 30 seconds.
And that Quickness when it triggers will let Unload really rip someone inside out; you can throw out a couple of them before it wears off.
Shadow Refuge was obviously a solid skill choice, but a couple other good options combined with what I just mentioned would likely be Haste, and Signet of Agility for even more crit + endurance recovery after Haste wears off and sweet condition removal.

Doctor Fu Manchu.4203:

There was a general consensus that P/P skills sucked except for the medicore Unload, up until my video was posted. Many people were even expecting a future buff to the P/P skills. I don’t see why this has suddenly changed with the release of my video.

The consensus stands. P/P is mediocre just like your play. Also fix your recording software.

My recording software is FRAPS. Its not FRAPS that’s the problem. its the screen resolution of my monitor. Don’t like the content? No one’s forcing you to watch.

Regarding Music: Guess 90’s rap isn’t what people like to hear. I can’t only put in in-game sounds because when FRAPS records it also records what’s being heard on Skype, and also the music I have on while I’m playing. However, I’m up to suggestions on what type of music everyone enjoys. Hopefully some neutral music, but if mainstream music like Justin Bieber is what everyone wants, I can accept that too.

TSFH. ’Nuff said.

Or something with a good beat. Try to avoid using anything with lyrics. Kids play this game and surf forums…so yeah.