Guild Wars 2

Vital Shot and Body Shot.

This is the main problem, Vital Shot seems to focus on “condition damage” while Body Shot seems to focus on vulnerability.

Body Shots Vulnerability is not enough, Body Shot deals almost no damage at all and almost does as much as Vital Shot, but the Bleed is better damage then 1 stack of vulnerability and Body Shot costs 3 initiative…

Something needs to be done, you can’t focus on both condition damage and vulnerability.

Instead of applying vulnerability, body shot should set the target on fire.

Unload should add 4 stacks of bleeding to the target and do less damage, but still hit 8 times.

Either this, or it needs to be changed to be heavy on vulnerability and focused on critical hitting.

Duh, Body Shot is a situational support/debuf skill and a great way to get vulnerability up quickly so your buddies can tear down through that pesky boss or guardian more quickly. I hardly think that P/P can be described as ‘not viably’ just because you want the synergies to work differently. If Vital Shot were power-based, then Body Shot would basically become a necessary ramp-up skill, leading to a boring static rotation.

Daecollo.9578:

Vital Shot and Body Shot.

This is the main problem, Vital Shot seems to focus on “condition damage” while Body Shot seems to focus on vulnerability.

Body Shots Vulnerability is not enough, Body Shot deals almost no damage at all and almost does as much as Vital Shot, but the Bleed is better damage then 1 stack of vulnerability and Body Shot costs 3 initiative…

Something needs to be done, you can’t focus on both condition damage and vulnerability.

Instead of applying vulnerability, body shot should set the target on fire.

Unload should add 4 stacks of bleeding to the target and do less damage, but still hit 8 times.

Either this, or it needs to be changed to be heavy on vulnerability and focused on critical hitting.

Vulnerability is easy to stack and really adds up. I disagree about changing it, as it benefits both builds when correctly built and also helps everyone on your team do more damage against that target. It’s support based mainly, not for boosting your own damage so much as it is for others. Not everything is about self damage.

Also, unload is perfectly fine. It doesn’t need to do anything differently imo. It isn’t meant for condition builds, just like death blossom isn’t used in a burst dagger/dagger build really. If you want a condition based pistol build, you are better off with a dagger offhand anyways for spending your initiative on CnD and sneak attacking those bleed stacks up.

imo we need another weapons… like an axe. Anet added to many abilities in to 1 kit so we have like cond dmg, straight dmg, debuffs… but we have noo focus on one type of damage.

lighterdark.5307:

imo we need another weapons… like an axe. Anet added to many abilities in to 1 kit so we have like cond dmg, straight dmg, debuffs… but we have noo focus on one type of damage.

Maces/blackjacks/saps imo if weapons are added, as a support/CC heavy option. Our damage options are already very good.

Greatsword Warriors get a Vuln stack EVERY autoattack and 33% chance on a critical chance… for MORE seconds then body shot does.

We need something else, not a bad version of another specs utility.

P/P in my opinion needs much more control and lower initiative costs for Unload.

Vital Shot is fine and totally in line with other abilities that do similar things.

Body Shot is basically garbage. Its main use is to spam out a clutter condition to fight condition removal when you have big bleeding stacks. The damage it deals is sufficiently low, and the damage boost sufficiently minimal, that it will often represent a net damage loss for a 5 man team – it only pulls its weight if you have 5 strong damage characters dumping boosted damage non-stop for its entire duration, and if anything goes wrong you’d have been better of putting the initiative into Unload or Cloak and Dagger depending on off-hand.

It does, in theory, increase the speed at which you’ll complete legendary world encounters, in the situation where the legendary isn’t already pinned to 25 stacks already; using it also decreases the odds of you receiving a gold medal for contribution, since you’re trashing your own DPS to boost other people’s in what should be a trivial encounter.

Unload is usable but kind of meh. Its basic problem is that it was balanced around triggering a lot of procs in a short time from a high crit rate, but then before release every proc ability was given an internal cooldown. Without its best use case, the skill just isn’t very sexy anymore.

Unload just needs some minor tweaks to be good again (if the Earth Sigil did what it says it did, Unload would be excellent); Body Shot is a whole different can of worms and there’s no clear direction for what to do with it.

The main reason I made a thief was for P/P combat, and it sucks that it is the weakest build in comparison to others. It lacks control, yes it has a daze, yes it has a blind, but the cost of using those control effects severely reduces your damage.

It lacks control, and it lacks damage in comparison to heartseeker, bleed specced death lotus, and pistol whip.

It has no kiting potential as a ranged weapon, because it has no cripple (don’t you dare say ankle shots, because that is a poor excuse for a cripple (3 second cripple on a 10 second cool down), or any escape maneuvers.Maybe if they added shadow strike to the P/P kit it would allow for more kiting potential.

Overall I feel P/P needs an increase in damage, a decrease in initiative cost for headshot and blackpowder (only in P/P, if thats even possible), or a better escape mechanism. Hell, I would trade the bleed on vital shot, and have reduced stacks of vulnerabilty on body shot for more damage on unload and vital shot. That’s just my take, a perspective from someone who strictly plays P/P thief.

Ankle shots aint 3 seconds. Its 1 second. Bug or wrong tooltip.

I thought it was 1. I remember reading 1 when i was doing traits, I didn’t have time to look at the traits at the time of writing so i just used the wiki here’s the page.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ankle_Shots

P/P is perfectly fine for condition builds, i’m using D/D & P/P.

You can check the gameplay out here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKHdpbyNpVU&feature=plcp

And the build is in the description!

So you rely on your basic auto attacks, and the occasional stealth sneak attack? Sure, sounds fine to me if you like being bored as hell watching your character auto attack.

Also if that’s the case there’s no need for the 2nd Pistol since it doesn’t have any condition abilities on it.

Just face it, P/P is not okay in its current condition. And just because you can make your auto attacks look a little stronger doesn’t mean that it’s fun to play.

I don’t see p/p has a “build” as such (as odd as that may sound). for me, it’s more of a secondary set with support abilities. I never use it as my primary attack… more the one I use “in addition”.

- Body Shot is garbage, need to revamped completely. My suggestion would be to either change it to a cripple or a knockback, or make it an AoE (obviously not as good as Shortbow, but good enough to justify actually taking P/P over Shortbow in some situations)
- There is no synergy between Vital Shot and Unload. Either the Vital Shot bleed needs to be removed to allow P/P to go straight Power/Precision/Crit damage, or Unload needs to be given a bleed to allow P/P to be a real Condition Damage build. The latter would be the easier solution, though I personally would prefer the former.
- Headshot needs either a initiative reduction, or have the cost removed altogether and given a cooldown. Because right now it’s just really lackluster for all setups, rarely worth the cost to use.

Headshot not worth it? Are you for real haha, I cant count how many times I’ve used it to daze people to death while bleeding or interrupted cast heals so that they die a few seconds after. Al tho the ini cost is pretty high for it, but they way i’m using it it should defo stay at that cost :P

I guess it compliments my bleed build a lot. I’m rarely ever use Unload, only to combo with regeneration pretty much.

Headshot is an interrupt. Not sure how many times i’ve used it to stop someone executing a downed player. It is hilarious to watch them try again without figuring it out.

Cempa.3645:

P/P in my opinion needs much more control and lower initiative costs for Unload.

I’ve had moderate success in PVE using unload with crit/initiative skills. usually able to chain4-5 before having to do any other ability.

Damage is still kinda lackluster but in some instances it beats the hell that is melee range.

I’m actually pretty happy with P/P – however I think it’s much more situational and wouldn’t use it all the time like I do D/D.

RE: Unload – previously in the beta, the Earth Sigil did not have a cooldown. At an 80% crit rate (Fury + Rampager’s) you’d get an average of 4 bleeds from a single Unload, which was quite powerful.

Now the Earth Sigil has a two second cooldown, so you’ll get at most one bleed from an Unload; they’re also unaffected by condition duration, which further hampers the proc.

Basically Unload used to be a proc machine, now it’s just a damage dump.

Body Shot is hard to figure, because you don’t want it to step on other skills. P/P would love to have it cripple, but P/D already has Dancing Dagger in slot 4 and it would be totally redundant, so that’s straight out. Any sort of hard CC is off limits for reasons that should be obvious. Any sort of big damage ability is just going to compete with Unload, and whichever is better would get used; a DoT ability wouldn’t be very distinct from Vital Shot.

The niche that would be most valuable would be a 120 AoE attack – add burning or bleeding or keep the vulnerability or whatever. The AoE would give it a much different use case than Unload that’s valuable with either off-hand, but doesn’t step on the big GTAoEs and particularly the blast finisher that defines the Short Bow. See the Engineer’s Explosive Shot as a template for the functionality.

i think the problem with P/P is that it feels weak. D/D is better for condition, S/any is better power, and SB can lay that poison field + that AoE that deals a lot of damage + mobility.

P/P could be the ranged power build, but it’s not strong enough for it.

A must have weapon for A-net to implement:
Kyoketshu-Shogei.
This weapon can be best seen in the move Ninja Assassin.
http://www.amazon.com/Weapon-Ninja-Assassin-w-Chain/dp/B004XK27BS

Also used by Hattori Hanzo in samurai warriors

Hanzo Hattori in Samurai Warriors uses a Kusarigama, which is far cooler than just adding a chain to a knife.

i agree, Pistol/Pistol is the weakest weapon set.

On these forums I have found 2 good videos of P/D and the other P/P. What amazes me is the Traits they use:

A) They work
B) They do not buff Condition Duration OR Pistol!

That is why I have failed at making Pistol work, I always began with putting 30 into Critical Strike which also buffs Condition and Pistol!

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoY6alUmiP3dy9E9JFBXBj694rkNsaFoZnirGfA;T4AgyCpogxAjAGrPOYkwsWYswxjtHPQmeA

Yyyyyyyyyyyyep.

I’m so sick of using a shortbow I could puke.

And this game is so in need of balance tweaks that, while I love a lot about it, I can hardly motivate myself to play it at all any more.

I do pretty well with Pistol/Pistol. It is my main weapon set.

When players get close I switch to Dagger/Dagger.

The set up works well in a group. To each their own though.

its not that p/p is terrible its just our other range weapon is only used for its combo finisher and its ability to teleport..

even hitting 3 targets with the auto attack on sb is not great dps, the pistols auto attack is woeful, but the stealth attach and unload are ok… number 2 skill could do with a tweak, spamming some vuln will rarely do more damage that unload spam even in a dungeon… think of it this way

everyone else does 25% more damage for a short while but you do almost none… and have no Init to play with… ugh so much wrong with the pistol and shortbow :/