My Take on Thief Balances
spoken from a purely pvp perspective, could have simply disabled haste in pvp settings, and/or made it affect ONLY auto-attacks
we need to SEPARATE the skills in pve from pvp NOT nerf them to suit one at the detriment of the other, how do players NOT understand this at this point in the evolution of gaming as a whole?
Irony…. xD
…
I hate to be that guy who shouts “L2P”, but I’m afraid I have to here.
Haste + Pistol Whip is very powerful, there’s no denying that. However, it’s just like any other class’ massive burst combo (see Bull’s Charge + Frenzy + Hundred Blades from Warrior, Signet of the Hunt + Sharpening Stone + Quickness + Rapid Fire from Ranger, etc). It takes a sacrifice of sustained damage and/or utility to use, every class has a hard counter to it, and it leaves you highly vulnerable after it’s over.
I regularly laugh off thieves with Pistol Whip. I run S/D and P/D. If I see a S/P thief, I get S/D out and use Infiltrator’s Strike. The moment he pops Haste, I hit Shadow Return. They always blow 5? on a Pistol Whip, and some will spam the button and use it twice. Then it’s a simple matter of using either a stealth, a CC, a slow, or just dodging to keep them off of you for two seconds, and their powerful combo is gone. At that point, I have the upper hand.
(edited by Dacromir.6207)
Increasing the initiative cost of deathblossom would be a disaster. Playing a thief would consist almost entirely of autoattacks when running D/D…
spoken from a purely pvp perspective, could have simply disabled haste in pvp settings, and/or made it affect ONLY auto-attacks
we need to SEPARATE the skills in pve from pvp NOT nerf them to suit one at the detriment of the other, how do players NOT understand this at this point in the evolution of gaming as a whole?
This is the first suggestion i have seen about haste. I honestly this never crossed my mind, Thank you
thief is more then fine after this tweaks, Pistol 1 wont have its fire rate increased due to how strong Stealth 1 skill is.
The superior rate of fire was given to the ranger shortbow that deals the same damage per shot and bleed when flanking
See the relation/diference betewen the 2?
Superior rate of fire in pistol would mean= nerf to unload + nerf to Stealth 1 pistol skill when using it with off hand dagger
Many thiefs dont want that, mostly phisical damage pistol users like me
About Pistol Whip with haste:
Like most haste combos, they rely on CC you then burst, a CC breaker is a most, if u dont have one, u deserve taking the full burst.
(Ranger Shortbow/Rapid Fire is the only Quickness combo that doesnt rely on a CC but doesnt get close to 100blades nor Pistol Whip in terms of burst)
Gunnars Hold= Tuga Land
(edited by Sneakier.9460)
…
I hate to be that guy who shouts “L2P”, but I’m afraid I have to here.
Haste + Pistol Whip is very powerful, there’s no denying that. However, it’s just like any other class’ massive burst combo (see Bull’s Charge + Hundred Blades from Warrior, Signet of the Hunt + Sharpening Stone + Rapid Fire from Ranger, etc). It takes a sacrifice of sustained damage and/or utility to use, every class has a hard counter to it, and it leaves you highly vulnerable after it’s over.
I regularly laugh off thieves with Pistol Whip. I run S/D and P/D. If I see a S/P thief, I get S/D out and use Infiltrator’s Strike. The moment he pops Haste, I hit Shadow Return. They always blow 5? on a Pistol Whip, and some will spam the button and use it twice. Then it’s a simple matter of using either a stealth, a CC, a slow, or just dodging to keep them off of you for two seconds, and their powerful combo is gone. At that point, I have the upper hand.
I personally don’t have a problem in avoiding being PW. Especially on my mesmer but the point I am trying to make it really dumbs the game up. I dont think the problem lies within PW itself if you remove haste. Yes you blew your l2p call.
thief is more then fine after this tweaks, Pistol 1 wont have its fire rate increased due to how strong Stealth 1 skill is.
The superior rate of fire was given to the ranger shortbow that deals the same damage per shot and bleed when flanking
See the relation/diference betewen the 2?
Superior rate of fire in pistol would mean= nerf to unload + nerf to Stealth 1 pistol skill when using it with off hand dagger
Many thiefs dont want that, mostly phisical damage pistol users like me
About Pistol Whip with haste:
Like most haste combos, they rely on CC you then burst, a CC breaker is a most, if u dont have one, u deserve taking the full burst.(Ranger Shortbow/Rapid Fire is the only Quickness combo that doesnt rely on a CC but doesnt get close to 100blades nor Pistol Whip in terms of burst)
I dont see how changing the rate of fire on your 1 key would hurt the rest of the skills as they have completely different rate of fires
PW+Haste CC breaker.Because how the skill is designed the only good CC breaker is one that put you at a distance.
I understand the deal with the ranger. Which I agree. Hate + rapid fire usually only one skill use before haste is gone and doesnt require a CC to avoid.
thief is more then fine after this tweaks, Pistol 1 wont have its fire rate increased due to how strong Stealth 1 skill is.
The superior rate of fire was given to the ranger shortbow that deals the same damage per shot and bleed when flanking
See the relation/diference betewen the 2?
Superior rate of fire in pistol would mean= nerf to unload + nerf to Stealth 1 pistol skill when using it with off hand dagger
Many thiefs dont want that, mostly phisical damage pistol users like me
About Pistol Whip with haste:
Like most haste combos, they rely on CC you then burst, a CC breaker is a most, if u dont have one, u deserve taking the full burst.(Ranger Shortbow/Rapid Fire is the only Quickness combo that doesnt rely on a CC but doesnt get close to 100blades nor Pistol Whip in terms of burst)
I dont see how changing the rate of fire on your 1 key would hurt the rest of the skills as they have completely different rate of fires
PW+Haste CC breaker.Because how the skill is designed the only good CC breaker is one that put you at a distance.
I understand the deal with the ranger. Which I agree. Hate + rapid fire usually only one skill use before haste is gone and doesnt require a CC to avoid.
It would hurt because anet would balance the increase DPS that skill 1 would be doing
And having at a stun breaker/condition removal is slowy becoming the meta game, i been saying this since beta 1
Gunnars Hold= Tuga Land
thief is more then fine after this tweaks, Pistol 1 wont have its fire rate increased due to how strong Stealth 1 skill is.
The superior rate of fire was given to the ranger shortbow that deals the same damage per shot and bleed when flanking
See the relation/diference betewen the 2?
Superior rate of fire in pistol would mean= nerf to unload + nerf to Stealth 1 pistol skill when using it with off hand dagger
Many thiefs dont want that, mostly phisical damage pistol users like me
About Pistol Whip with haste:
Like most haste combos, they rely on CC you then burst, a CC breaker is a most, if u dont have one, u deserve taking the full burst.(Ranger Shortbow/Rapid Fire is the only Quickness combo that doesnt rely on a CC but doesnt get close to 100blades nor Pistol Whip in terms of burst)
I dont see how changing the rate of fire on your 1 key would hurt the rest of the skills as they have completely different rate of fires
PW+Haste CC breaker.Because how the skill is designed the only good CC breaker is one that put you at a distance.
I understand the deal with the ranger. Which I agree. Hate + rapid fire usually only one skill use before haste is gone and doesnt require a CC to avoid.
It would hurt because anet would balance the increase DPS that skill 1 would be doing
And having at a stun breaker/condition removal is slowy becoming the meta game, i been saying this since beta 1
You’re probably right.
Condition removal is needed. Full Wipe of all conditions? Probably not
i’m confused. did you claim (in your original post) that Pistol Whip has evasion? it has the opposite of evasion. it roots you in place! what are you talking about?
It stuns and during the damage portion is gives you evasion. If you dont believe me go try it in pve or against another thief. Like the mesmer
it doesn’t give evasion during the damage portion. i’ve been whacked repeatedly while channeling the swings. you’re just wrong about this.
refrence: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/53941-does-pistol-whip-cause-evasion/
unless i have missed some patchnotes….
refrence: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/53941-does-pistol-whip-cause-evasion/
unless i have missed some patchnotes….
i havent used Pistol Whip in PvE in a long time, so maybe it works against opponents who just stand in front if you and swing with melee attacks at your front arc.
i do however play sPvP every night. and i know with 100% certainty (from personal experience) that while i am channeling the swings from Pistol Whip I don’t auto-evade attacks from enemy players when i’m channeling this. so if it does evade attacks, there are major restrictions on which ones it evades. i’m taking the full force of projectiles, AoE attacks, and melee from the side/rear when im doing this.
refrence: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/53941-does-pistol-whip-cause-evasion/
unless i have missed some patchnotes….
i havent used Pistol Whip in PvE in a long time, so maybe it works against opponents who just stand in front if you and swing with melee attacks at your front arc.
i do however play sPvP every night. and i know with 100% certainty (from personal experience) that while i am channeling the swings from Pistol Whip I don’t auto-evade attacks from enemy players when i’m channeling this. so if it does evade attacks, there are major restrictions on which ones it evades. i’m taking the full force of projectiles, AoE attacks, and melee from the side/rear when im doing this.
It is likely it only from the front. As last night in spvp(and i play a lot of spvp) when i was showing my team how easy PW(which is is). Thief and I both PW eachother. Both took no damage until the last two strikes.
Pistol Whip- I have a huge problem with this skill and it being used with quickness. The skill is a very good opener but with quickness is become more than that. If Anet refuses to get rid of quickness than maybe one of these changes would work better.
-Quick CD (2sec)
-Remove the stun – The reason for this your "2’ key already gives you a snare, if you get the trait where if your target falls below 50% health, inflict snare for 4s
-Remove Evasion from skill
-Increase Initiative cost (6/7)
And you just made a useless skill by doing that, they increased the stun from how long it was before because it wasn’t good with only 1/4th a second of stun, so outright removing the stun alone would make it useless. If they get rid of the stun and evasion then they need to allow you to move during it and easily dodge out of it and possibly even speed it up a little, but honestly it wouldn’t feel like a pistol whip without a stun. Currently plenty of other classes can do Pistol Whip level of damage, it’s just the thief can get in and out the best while doing it.
I do like the idea of haste only effecting auto attack, if they do this though haste should last X amount of hits rather than a time limit though simply due to the fact if you’re stuck in a long animation attack when you proc it, you’ve pretty much completely wasted it.
EDIT: You shouldn’t have to trait to make a skill useful, you should trait to make a skill more useful. I think Thief is fine in terms a balance, Pistol Whip is powerful I admit, but a lot of classes have very powerful attacks as I stated before. People need to learn to bring stun removal and conditional removal, so many people don’t.
(edited by KaiserCX.7103)
Pistol Whip- I have a huge problem with this skill and it being used with quickness. The skill is a very good opener but with quickness is become more than that. If Anet refuses to get rid of quickness than maybe one of these changes would work better.
-Quick CD (2sec)
-Remove the stun – The reason for this your "2’ key already gives you a snare, if you get the trait where if your target falls below 50% health, inflict snare for 4s
-Remove Evasion from skill
-Increase Initiative cost (6/7)And you just made a useless skill by doing that, they increased the stun from how long it was before because it wasn’t good with only 1/4th a second of stun, so outright removing the stun alone would make it useless. If they get rid of the stun and evasion then they need to allow you to move during it and easily dodge out of it and possibly even speed it up a little, but honestly it wouldn’t feel like a pistol whip without a stun. Currently plenty of other classes can do Pistol Whip level of damage, it’s just the thief can get in and out the best while doing it.
I do like the idea of haste only effecting auto attack, if they do this though haste should last X amount of hits rather than a time limit though simply due to the fact if you’re stuck in a long animation attack when you proc it, you’ve pretty much completely wasted it.
EDIT: You shouldn’t have to trait to make a skill useful, you should trait to make a skill more useful. I think Thief is fine in terms a balance, Pistol Whip is powerful I admit, but a lot of classes have very powerful attacks as I stated before. People need to learn to bring stun removal and conditional removal, so many people don’t.
I agree. I do think the stun needs to be there. But i think the real problem is haste.
The last thing…may I repeat, the last thing you every want to do, is add a cool down to any skill with that initiative system. The whole purpose of initiative is not to limit the class but to formulate a different gameplay for a class that is based of ZERO cool down limits.
you can spam pistol whip 3 times, so you need 3 stun breaker to avoid most of the damage. likely you only have 1-2 stun breakers. you cant avoid pistol whip so much like you can with blurry frenzy or 100blades.
thief is more then fine after this tweaks, Pistol 1 wont have its fire rate increased due to how strong Stealth 1 skill is.
The superior rate of fire was given to the ranger shortbow that deals the same damage per shot and bleed when flanking
See the relation/diference betewen the 2?
Superior rate of fire in pistol would mean= nerf to unload + nerf to Stealth 1 pistol skill when using it with off hand dagger
Many thiefs dont want that, mostly phisical damage pistol users like me
About Pistol Whip with haste:
Like most haste combos, they rely on CC you then burst, a CC breaker is a most, if u dont have one, u deserve taking the full burst.(Ranger Shortbow/Rapid Fire is the only Quickness combo that doesnt rely on a CC but doesnt get close to 100blades nor Pistol Whip in terms of burst)
I dont see how changing the rate of fire on your 1 key would hurt the rest of the skills as they have completely different rate of fires
PW+Haste CC breaker.Because how the skill is designed the only good CC breaker is one that put you at a distance.
I understand the deal with the ranger. Which I agree. Hate + rapid fire usually only one skill use before haste is gone and doesnt require a CC to avoid.
generally only bad rangers use haste on rapid fire, good rangers use it with shortbow auto attack… which makes them do insane damage and add around 15 stacks of bleed :/