lately after all the patch (cough nerfs) and the upcoming one while its been harder and harder to fight against all the meta conditions/signet warrior/PU/HGH etc… i found myself looking at the thief roll as resemble more and more to a sniper roll.
sniper – looking for the weakest target, easiest, dangerous etc and try to take them out as fast as possible and retreat for another positioning for the next target
from wvw perspective i mean as our only weapon viable is the d/p (?) or d/d which is solo target and our SB as our blast finisher with group play.
if anet sometime in the future will buff the p/p set to more reliable and not just unload boring spam
so here are my suggestions:
1. vital shot – currently only viable on condition set so why not use it on power set.
open it to 2 skills – the first one bleed your foe and the second one do more dmg . with this both specs can do use for it and reduce cast time to 0.25 as now its 2 skills
2. body shot – good for sniper as it immobilize but as the dmg now for p/p is low you can benefit it but only in group fight as it cost too much initiative and give low duration of immobilize so its like cripple skill
3. unload – instead of just spam this skill i suggest we make it more interesting.
split it to 2 skills : the first will just unload 1 shot of 5 bullets (not 8 ) won’t be channelled and will cost 3 initiatives and maybe do bleed 5 stacks for 3 seconds and will be blast finisher .
as now the meta revolve around conditions. and after trying to win against signet warrior who can heals 800 per seconds so i need 10 bleed stacks to even start to do something to him
(also d/d ele hgh engineer etc
the seconds will be channelled for 3 seconds will cost 3 initiatives and do sniper shot which pierce and do more dmg the longer you stay channelled (1 second 50% dmg, 2 seconds 100% dmg, 3 seconds 150% dmg) and the range will be 1200 (and maybe trait which increase it to 1500)
skills 4+5 should stay more defense roll
with this set of skills the thief can act more freely from afar will have to choose wisely and should not spam as the p/p set is hight initiative cost but which benefit the user.
so the sniper have now the ability to go stealth with blast finisher+ BP look for a target and shot it the more time its stay channelled . the ini cost will be high so no spamming and will be acting more like kill shot . and its high risk high reward set like all other weapon set of the thief .
and also have the ability to go condition high ini cost with BP+unload +sneak attack which cost 9 ini and can put more pressure on the target
TL;DR
pls anet make the p/p set more interesting to use and not just unload spam. so maybe add sniper roll to the p/p set