(edited by Einlanzer.1627)
P/P is garbage
1 2
My money is that Ricochet isn’t gone; it’s going to be part of the Elite Specialization (Rifle as added weapon) called Gunslinger. Yes, it sucks for pistol in the meantime, but fingers crossed it means great things are coming.
Skif F Galco (War) | Bas Flaith (Thf) | Rawr Doomshot (Rng) | Cheshire Glamourclaw (Mes)
If rifle is the specialization, I’m out. Played Thief forever, and I’d drop it like a bad habit. Please no rifle.
Oh Hey Girl – Troll Thief Extraordinaire Tarnished Coast – www.twitch.tv/iconikk
It is not garbage. It is very close to being inm the right place. INI has always been an issue with this set but people were using it prior to the patch in spite of that. Some of the suggested tweaks
1>return of the AOE in some form (pierce perhaps if not the old Ricochet) Thus change cripple in ankle shots to pierce keep the range and 10 percent damage as suggested below)
2>extending the base duration on Vulnerability number 2 to 5 seconds. Immob to 1.5. This because it remained flat even as we have no sources of boosting durations outside gear and gear is very limited.
3>change 10 percent damage trait based on crippled foe to 5 percent damage trait per equipped pistol. remove crippled effect change to a pierce.
4>Add to the AA (Number 1) some form of on Crit effect . This to favor power loadout and ensure it more favorable to pistol main hand (d/p is already fine p/d is fine . P/d generally has low crit rate)
Suggestions
On crit gain 3 seconds swiftness (I sec cd)
On crit gain 1 stack might for 3 seconds (1 sec cd)
On crit Inflict slow for 2 seconds (I sec CD)
On crit gain 1 ini (2 sec cd)
On crit gain 2 seconds to all applied boons (5 second CD)
(edited by babazhook.6805)
I like these ideas. I think no.1 should be reworked to something like quick shot, quick shot, head shot and the whole sequence do a lot more damage, especially the head shot. Its a bit boring the way it is right now. With 1 made more interesting it opens the option to change 3 to a more tactical option like OP suggested. Spamming 3 is worse thing about P/P imo. It feels good for a while then it gets boring.
4>Add to the AA (Number 1) some form of on Crit effect . This to favor power loadout and ensure it more favorable to pistol main hand (d/p is already fine p/d is fine . P/d generally has low crit rate)
Suggestions
On crit gain 3 seconds swiftness (I sec cd)
On crit gain 1 stack might for 3 seconds (1 sec cd)
On crit Inflict slow for 2 seconds (I sec CD)
On crit gain 1 ini (2 sec cd)
On crit gain 2 seconds to all applied boons (5 second CD)
I think on-crit doesn’t even need to be a thing. You could have it set up in a way that benefits both power or condition (P/P or P/D).
What if Vital Shot granted you an extra point of Initiative against Vulnerable targets, the same way that Warrior’s Fierce Shot grants Adrenaline for the same thing? ICD or no ICD, the balance of that can come later, but I think that would be more interesting.
Gnome Child [Gc]
Resident Thief
Resident Thief
4>Add to the AA (Number 1) some form of on Crit effect . This to favor power loadout and ensure it more favorable to pistol main hand (d/p is already fine p/d is fine . P/d generally has low crit rate)
Suggestions
On crit gain 3 seconds swiftness (I sec cd)
On crit gain 1 stack might for 3 seconds (1 sec cd)
On crit Inflict slow for 2 seconds (I sec CD)
On crit gain 1 ini (2 sec cd)
On crit gain 2 seconds to all applied boons (5 second CD)I think on-crit doesn’t even need to be a thing. You could have it set up in a way that benefits both power or condition (P/P or P/D).
What if Vital Shot granted you an extra point of Initiative against Vulnerable targets, the same way that Warrior’s Fierce Shot grants Adrenaline for the same thing? ICD or no ICD, the balance of that can come later, but I think that would be more interesting.
Well I think p\d already in a good place and feel if we boost p\d more there less a reason to take p\p. P\d condition can still benefit from an on crit if they go the sinister armor route and by making this an on crit on the AA we may see more people considering armor other than Dire.
Now I am currently also using p/p in a condition build using pressure strike and all those interrupts for torment and trappers runes and stealth for the sneak attack and it works very well.
Condition builds already have something from the AA and that is the bleed from vital shot and the bleeds from sneak attack . What is needed is something that will help power builds.
Balance is struck here in that while both still get the bleeds of vital shot condition builds bvenefit more and while both will benefit from an on crit effect in vital shot the power builds benefits more.
The vision here for the on crit effect on the AA is that the traditional p\d build will likely drop to stealth when INI gone for that sneak attack or rejuv of more while the power set of mh pistol can remain active and use the AA to build up a benefit for his next attack.
(edited by babazhook.6805)
My money is that Ricochet isn’t gone; it’s going to be part of the Elite Specialization (Rifle as added weapon) called Gunslinger. Yes, it sucks for pistol in the meantime, but fingers crossed it means great things are coming.
Oh no…
“Revenant is actual proof that devs read the necromancer forum” – Pelopidas.2140
The Dhuumfire thread
The Dhuumfire thread
There was this troll in Map Chat earlier saying he would never allow anyone who played P/P to be a member of his guild or pvp group because it’s “garbage” “caca” and “needed to be removed” “glad it’s useless” etc.. I really wish A-net wouldn’t cater to people like that. I LOVED ricochet it was my favorite build in the entire game. I wish they’d add it back.
My money is that Ricochet isn’t gone; it’s going to be part of the Elite Specialization (Rifle as added weapon) called Gunslinger. Yes, it sucks for pistol in the meantime, but fingers crossed it means great things are coming.
I’m could say that it won’t be rifle. http://i.imgur.com/xA8qvVk.png that picture was datamined and it does not look like rifle. Also that staff looks like [&AgFgEQEAAA==]
My money is that Ricochet isn’t gone; it’s going to be part of the Elite Specialization (Rifle as added weapon) called Gunslinger. Yes, it sucks for pistol in the meantime, but fingers crossed it means great things are coming.
I’m could say that it won’t be rifle. http://i.imgur.com/xA8qvVk.png that picture was datamined and it does not look like rifle. Also that staff looks like [&AgFgEQEAAA==]
Not sure how I feel about that… I mean, if it’s a new ranged option, it could be interesting to play a ‘Shadow Mage’.
Guess we’ll see!
Skif F Galco (War) | Bas Flaith (Thf) | Rawr Doomshot (Rng) | Cheshire Glamourclaw (Mes)
4>Add to the AA (Number 1) some form of on Crit effect . This to favor power loadout and ensure it more favorable to pistol main hand (d/p is already fine p/d is fine . P/d generally has low crit rate)
Suggestions
On crit gain 3 seconds swiftness (I sec cd)
On crit gain 1 stack might for 3 seconds (1 sec cd)
On crit Inflict slow for 2 seconds (I sec CD)
On crit gain 1 ini (2 sec cd)
On crit gain 2 seconds to all applied boons (5 second CD)I think on-crit doesn’t even need to be a thing. You could have it set up in a way that benefits both power or condition (P/P or P/D).
What if Vital Shot granted you an extra point of Initiative against Vulnerable targets, the same way that Warrior’s Fierce Shot grants Adrenaline for the same thing? ICD or no ICD, the balance of that can come later, but I think that would be more interesting.
Would make the kit work a little better, especially giving a reason to use body shot other than for giggles. Honestly I rather they remove the immobilize effect and just increase the vulnerability duration to 6 seconds with a shattering effect on-hit. How I see pistol, it has a difficult time distinguishing itself between power and condi which is mostly seen by the auto attack, its sustained damage. A few tweaks could fix that such as:
1. Lower bleed duration on auto attack to 3 seconds. Increase base attack damage, leave power scale alone.
2. Increase the bleed duration on sneak attack to 5 seconds.
3. Remove immobilize from body shot, increase vulnerability duration to 6 seconds. Add a shattering effect to apply the same effects to nearby enemies on hit.
4. Add effect to unload, “hold down for continuous fire. 1 initiative per .5 seconds after initial cost/use” (costs slightly less per second, 1.3 less, to hold down)
As for traits:
-Bring back ricochet now, whether it was going to be reintroduced for our specialization is irrelevant, the trait help conquer one of pistols greatest weaknesses, minion blocking.
-Change ankle shots to apply 5% damage bonus per pistol equipped rather than 10% against crippled foes.
-Either merge or remove flawless strikes or side strike, they are far to similar to be neighboring traits. Add a new trait [Opportunist] "projectile finishers with pistols reduce the cost of your next initiative spender. This effect caps at 3. ICD 5 seconds. This only works if your projectile finisher combo’s with a field. The goal is to help BPs→unload but also slightly helps p/d, and has a minimal effect on d/p.
“I’m waiting for the staff to get off their lunch
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
My money is that Ricochet isn’t gone; it’s going to be part of the Elite Specialization (Rifle as added weapon) called Gunslinger. Yes, it sucks for pistol in the meantime, but fingers crossed it means great things are coming.
Oh no…
I’m sorry, but things aren’t looking to good for the rumored Gunslinger elite spec. Though that’s not to say Gunslinger won’t ever be added (as Anet has said they plan to add more elite trait lines in the future), recent datamining strongly suggests that thieves are getting a staff (which admittedly sounds pretty cool).
I just want Ricochet back… and to have some genuine support and attention given to our dual pistol thieves.
I would say ranged thieves really need some love from devs. I dont say it was intended to almost force thieves melee, but look at the state now when ricochet is removed. Skills:
1. Vital Shot. not great for condi, not great for power. Somewhere between and trait does not offer a way to shift the usage in desired way. Contrary to melee weapons the 1 skill can be hardly viewed as dangerous it is just a fill so that you dont stand there staring at your enemy. As suggested in first post, it needs a buff/trait to be at least comparable with melee dps.
2. Body Shot, “giving a reason to use body shot other than for giggles”- this is my favorite quote now. Like, why do we even have this skill? There are like 2 PvE encounters where it is usuable. Either make it CC or damage.
3. Unload misses the AoE from ricochet, especially with sPvP full of mesmers and pet spam builds. Alternatively, suggested cone/pierce would solve this.
4. Head shot, nice to have interrupt.
5. Black Powder, not ranged skill – used almost exclusively by melee specs for combo field.
To sum it up:
- skill 1 needs traits to shift between condi(+1 stack of bleed?)/power(like +50% dps?), — skill 2 needs to decide what it is intended for – I would personally like to see 3rd option, some kind of ranged stealth(for example leap finisher shot and evade backwards, similar to sb 3)
-skill 3 needs to be AoE
Im just gonna go ahead and say P/P is perfectly fine, to all the people complaining do you guys even WvW? Sure they removed ricochet, and yes i would like to see its return but I have run both dire and zerk for wvw and the damage output on both is amazing. Stop crying. Also to anyone saying they dont use bodyshot i guess you never had a roaming partner or a friend to roam with. You can use that skill a few times mean while have a zerker burst them down. Its great utility.
Order of Grenth ~ P/P Thief~ [OGs] TC
(edited by Bret.6940)
Im just gonna go ahead and say P/P is perfectly fine, to all the people complaining do you guys even WvW? Sure they removed ricochet, and yes i would like to see its return but I have run both dire and zerk for wvw and the damage output on both is amazing. Stop crying. Also to anyone saying they dont use bodyshot i guess you never had a roaming partner or a friend to roam with. You can use that skill a few times mean while have a zerker burst them down. Its great utility.
P/p has no defenses aside from bps which is far to expensive to maintain. The damage output against a single target, yeah its great but it’s entirely dependent on spamming 1 skill which recently was nerfed with the removal of ricochet. All you need is 1 minion whether its utility or rune and you render their efforts useless which also shows how weak p/p is.
As for body shot, when ever you need to spam a skill just to make it useful its a bad skill. Regardless of thief being a resource based class rather than cooldowns, no skill should require repeated use just to be seen as “great”.
“I’m waiting for the staff to get off their lunch
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
@NinjaEd of course no one wants to just spam a skill for no reason its all situational. If someone is chaining unloads its because he wants to kill someone. If hes using body shot its to prevent escape from people running away from fights or trying to get into tower. No one should just be spamming bodyshot in a 1v1 for no reason. As for lack of deffense on p/p we do have blinding powder, and if you take the right utilty skills you will have good deffence. Your also not limited to just 1 weapon set. You could easily take p/p d/p and make up for the lack of stealth, or take shortbow and use it for the evades. The only thing p/p has bit of a tougher time with now is mesmer because of clones, and even then like i said your not limited to just p/p. Use another weapon set in junction with p/p and you can adjust to the situation. A good example is thiefs making videos claiming to be s/d users but in footage of them they are usually using shortbow alot. Now about ricochet. I was a die hard fan. One thing i would like to see if its not coming back is the range of pistol from 900 to 1050 made baseline that would be nice.
Order of Grenth ~ P/P Thief~ [OGs] TC
(edited by Bret.6940)
Your also not limited to just 1 weapon set. You could easily take p/p d/p and make up for the lack of stealth, or take shortbow and use it for the evades.
I can see you waiting good 3 seconds for stealth – swaping weapons, detargeting and casting two skills…. and then not able to do anything(ranged) regardless because you are stuck next 6 seconds on melee weapon.
As for SB, it is more or less the only option as we lack reliable movement and travel mechanics (=8s of stability and/or unlimited swiftness). And again – you just dont swap weapons in combat(only when dis/engaging), because you have utility on second set and thus it kills your next 9 seconds. I just dont see skills on secondary -utility- set as an in-combat option.
Im just gonna go ahead and say P/P is perfectly fine, to all the people complaining do you guys even WvW? Sure they removed ricochet, and yes i would like to see its return but I have run both dire and zerk for wvw and the damage output on both is amazing. Stop crying. Also to anyone saying they dont use bodyshot i guess you never had a roaming partner or a friend to roam with. You can use that skill a few times mean while have a zerker burst them down. Its great utility.
P/p has no defenses aside from bps which is far to expensive to maintain. The damage output against a single target, yeah its great but it’s entirely dependent on spamming 1 skill which recently was nerfed with the removal of ricochet. All you need is 1 minion whether its utility or rune and you render their efforts useless which also shows how weak p/p is.
As for body shot, when ever you need to spam a skill just to make it useful its a bad skill. Regardless of thief being a resource based class rather than cooldowns, no skill should require repeated use just to be seen as “great”.
Head shot with dazes is a defense. harder to pull off to be sure than a port or stealth but a little cheaper then the blind and can be remarkably effective if the timing right.
Put a chance to proc a cut down version of Flanking strikes on vital shot, like a 10% chance for 1 or 2 seconds, with a 5 second CD.
P/D generally doesn’t benefit from crits so it won’t really imbalance anything on that side. The haste will add a couple bleeds at most for P/D.
Perhaps have it affected by Trickster, so it removes a condition. This would help address the weakness to condis with pistols.
(edited by uglydan.1638)
@NinjaEd of course no one wants to just spam a skill for no reason its all situational. If someone is chaining unloads its because he wants to kill someone. If hes using body shot its to prevent escape from people running away from fights or trying to get into tower. No one should just be spamming bodyshot in a 1v1 for no reason. As for lack of deffense on p/p we do have blinding powder, and if you take the right utilty skills you will have good deffence. Your also not limited to just 1 weapon set. You could easily take p/p d/p and make up for the lack of stealth, or take shortbow and use it for the evades. The only thing p/p has bit of a tougher time with now is mesmer because of clones, and even then like i said your not limited to just p/p. Use another weapon set in junction with p/p and you can adjust to the situation. A good example is thiefs making videos claiming to be s/d users but in footage of them they are usually using shortbow alot. Now about ricochet. I was a die hard fan. One thing i would like to see if its not coming back is the range of pistol from 900 to 1050 made baseline that would be nice.
What I’m saying is other weapon sets have natural defenses, whether its mobility evasion or stealth its there. Relying on utilities and your secondary weapon doesn’t make it any better, its not like you can’t do the same on a set like d/x or s/x which have built in defenses that thief relies on. Like wondra said, you swap and then wait 9 seconds before you can hit them hard again.
I’m not saying p/p is impossible to use, but its a very weak option for thief and there isn’t a whole lot of room to improve it via traits that make it stand along side the other weapon sets. It needs attention both in the skills and its potential trait enhancements.
“I’m waiting for the staff to get off their lunch
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
@NinjaEd of course no one wants to just spam a skill for no reason its all situational. If someone is chaining unloads its because he wants to kill someone. If hes using body shot its to prevent escape from people running away from fights or trying to get into tower. No one should just be spamming bodyshot in a 1v1 for no reason. As for lack of deffense on p/p we do have blinding powder, and if you take the right utilty skills you will have good deffence. Your also not limited to just 1 weapon set. You could easily take p/p d/p and make up for the lack of stealth, or take shortbow and use it for the evades. The only thing p/p has bit of a tougher time with now is mesmer because of clones, and even then like i said your not limited to just p/p. Use another weapon set in junction with p/p and you can adjust to the situation. A good example is thiefs making videos claiming to be s/d users but in footage of them they are usually using shortbow alot. Now about ricochet. I was a die hard fan. One thing i would like to see if its not coming back is the range of pistol from 900 to 1050 made baseline that would be nice.
Ankle Shots gives 1050 range, it’s just not on the tool tip of the trait but if you take the trait the range shows on the tool tip for your pistol abilities.
Forget it! Why suggest all these changes when the obvi fix is to just put Ricochet back? P/P IS GARBAGE without it, it was barely viable with it! I’m pretty much taking a break from GW2 at this point. I just pop in to see if they’ve announced new specializations from time to time to see if something is going to be able to get me excited about HoT again. So far…….
Forget it! Why suggest all these changes when the obvi fix is to just put Ricochet back? P/P IS GARBAGE without it, it was barely viable with it! I’m pretty much taking a break from GW2 at this point. I just pop in to see if they’ve announced new specializations from time to time to see if something is going to be able to get me excited about HoT again. So far…….
Can I have your stuff?
Of the 5 p/p skills.
5)Is fine. It does not require tweaks and any tweak here would just enhance the already strong d/p too much.
4>Is ok. Head shot daze is very good .
3>Great damage. Overall is fine. Here I think it can use a one ini tweak lower or add something like gain 2 seconds swiftness. Or change it to a Blast finisher.
2>Body shot. Expensive for the effect. I really think the durations of Vulnerability and Immob need to be higher. They were premised on having some sort of condition duration out of traits. If those durations not increased then it needs to be cheaper INI wise. 5s and 1.5s or 3 ini.
1>some enhancement needed to the AA. Some sort of proc on crit effect or some such.
To traits.
Ankle shots is supposed to be your defense with those cripples but the cripples do not last that long when compared to the cooldown. It gives 3 seconds cripple stacks duration but is on a 8 second cooldown so what is the point of stacking duration? Even if one had 100 percent condition duration (all but impossible) you can never get more than one cripple on. Increase duration to 4 seconds.
Ricochet. Returned in some form adding it back to Ankle shots would not make it OP. The AOE would be very desirable in the set.
(edited by babazhook.6805)
Of the 5 p/p skills.
5)Is fine. It does not require tweaks and any tweak here would just enhance the already strong d/p too much.
4>Is ok. Head shot daze is very good .
3>Great damage. Overall is fine. Here I think it can use a one ini tweak lower or add something like gain 2 seconds swiftness. Or change it to a Blast finisher.
2>Body shot. Expensive for the effect. I really think the durations of Vulnerability and Immob need to be higher. They were premised on having some sort of condition duration out of traits. If those durations not increased then it needs to be cheaper INI wise. 5s and 1.5s or 3 ini.
1>some enhancement needed to the AA. Some sort of proc on crit effect or some such.
To traits.
Ankle shots is supposed to be your defense with those cripples but the cripples do not last that long when compared to the cooldown. It gives 3 seconds cripple stacks duration but is on a 8 second cooldown so what is the point of stacking duration? Even if one had 100 percent condition duration (all but impossible) you can never get more than one cripple on. Increase duration to 4 seconds.
Ricochet. Returned in some form adding it back to Ankle shots would not make it OP. The AOE would be very desirable in the set.
There’s nothing really wrong with the skills on P/P. There never has been, even way back before they changed Body Shot. The problem is and always has been that Vital Shot is weak, and that Unload is the only strong damage the set has. This in effect means you are forced to sink all of your Initiative into Unload because it’s always most important to keep damaging your target, which breaks the set because it keeps you locked out of utility and defense options. It also means that P/P has terrible sustained DPS because its main source of DPS uses a finite resource.
It’s a unique problem brought on by the Thief’s use of Initiative. Thief weapons need to be designed in a certain way – the autoattack should always serve as the primary source of sustained damage, and the other 4 skills should all be tactical – offering various utility or more specialized/situational/burst damage. That is not how P/P works, and it’s the only set that doesn’t. No other set in the game forces you to sacrifice so much damage for utility or vice versa. It’s a problem, and it’s largely why P/P has just never been good.
So, in other words – P/P more or less sacrifices utility, mobility, and sustained DPS all to have mediocre ranged burst DPS. And now it doesn’t even have AoE. It’s that simple. And it really has always made me question the competence of Anet’s balance team that they’ve never addressed this in 2.5 years. I.e. when they changed Body Shot into something equally unusable instead of altering resource management.
(edited by Einlanzer.1627)
Quick Pockets: “gain 3 initiative on weapon swap”
Since Thieves don’t have weapon cooldown, why not run double – double pistol ^^
This trait has no ICD so it works fine with rune of the warrior giving an extra unload every 7 seconds basically.
(edited by RevanCorana.8942)
Quick Pockets: “gain 3 initiative on weapon swap”
Since Thieves don’t have weapon cooldown, why not run double – double pistol ^^
This trait has no ICD so it works fine with rune of the warrior giving an extra unload every 7 seconds basically.
So you’d slaughter your defenses for an extra unload? Hardly seems worthwhile, right now having a second weapon set is extremely vital to make up for p/p having no defenses like mobility or stealth.
“I’m waiting for the staff to get off their lunch
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
Of the 5 p/p skills.
5)Is fine. It does not require tweaks and any tweak here would just enhance the already strong d/p too much.
4>Is ok. Head shot daze is very good .
3>Great damage. Overall is fine. Here I think it can use a one ini tweak lower or add something like gain 2 seconds swiftness. Or change it to a Blast finisher.
2>Body shot. Expensive for the effect. I really think the durations of Vulnerability and Immob need to be higher. They were premised on having some sort of condition duration out of traits. If those durations not increased then it needs to be cheaper INI wise. 5s and 1.5s or 3 ini.
1>some enhancement needed to the AA. Some sort of proc on crit effect or some such.
To traits.
Ankle shots is supposed to be your defense with those cripples but the cripples do not last that long when compared to the cooldown. It gives 3 seconds cripple stacks duration but is on a 8 second cooldown so what is the point of stacking duration? Even if one had 100 percent condition duration (all but impossible) you can never get more than one cripple on. Increase duration to 4 seconds.
Ricochet. Returned in some form adding it back to Ankle shots would not make it OP. The AOE would be very desirable in the set.
There’s nothing really wrong with the skills on P/P. There never has been, even way back before they changed Body Shot. The problem is and always has been that Vital Shot is weak, and that Unload is the only strong damage the set has. This in effect means you are forced to sink all of your Initiative into Unload because it’s always most important to keep damaging your target, which breaks the set because it keeps you locked out of utility and defense options. It also means that P/P has terrible sustained DPS because its main source of DPS uses a finite resource.
It’s a unique problem brought on by the Thief’s use of Initiative. Thief weapons need to be designed in a certain way – the autoattack should always serve as the primary source of sustained damage, and the other 4 skills should all be tactical – offering various utility or more specialized/situational/burst damage. That is not how P/P works, and it’s the only set that doesn’t. No other set in the game forces you to sacrifice so much damage for utility or vice versa. It’s a problem, and it’s largely why P/P has just never been good.
So, in other words – P/P more or less sacrifices utility, mobility, and sustained DPS all to have mediocre ranged burst DPS. And now it doesn’t even have AoE. It’s that simple. And it really has always made me question the competence of Anet’s balance team that they’ve never addressed this in 2.5 years. I.e. when they changed Body Shot into something equally unusable instead of altering resource management.
Firstly the ranged damage of unload is not mediocore , albeit the lack of Richochet does diminish the set. Against a single target its range burst is quite good.
Secondly the reason p/p does not use body shot is there no bang for the buck on such low duration effects. Under the old system wvw I traited my thief to get a 100 percent condition duration. The utility of that skill went way up as I could get a longer Immob and one issue p/p had was when chasing. I could use 2 and then use unload and target would not be able to dodge . The problem was the loss of all the damage due to the gear used to get that duration. The 1 second duration with the long unload time of unload does not syngergize well. The one second duration along with havng to close gap at distance to catch that person now immobolized allows little in the way of gap closure,
Much the same applies to Vulnerability. When used in conjunction with the long channel time of unload it was pretty hard to gen enough of that condition to make it worthwhile when compared to just using that Ini on unload.
Needless to say under the old system 30 percent of that added duration in my thief came from the DA traitline. Another 40 percent came from food. In WvW and Pve we can no longer get that from DA and if you are in PvP you do not even get food.
Up the durations and there will be more use.
(edited by babazhook.6805)
If balancing ricohet is so hard then make the pistols pierce, is 5 targets too much? then make it 4 or 3.
Quick Pockets: “gain 3 initiative on weapon swap”
Since Thieves don’t have weapon cooldown, why not run double – double pistol ^^
This trait has no ICD so it works fine with rune of the warrior giving an extra unload every 7 seconds basically.So you’d slaughter your defenses for an extra unload? Hardly seems worthwhile, right now having a second weapon set is extremely vital to make up for p/p having no defenses like mobility or stealth.
This could work to an extent pre-patch. I would use p/p with energy on each and a cleanse on swap to address the issues of conditions and the need for lots of dodges to kite. I alos traited both quickpockets and hastened replenishment.
I am not so sure it would work now as with less overall health and more damage there more a need just to get away rather then rely on dodges to evade attacks. We used to be able to soak up a few hits and that much harder now.
lul just posted a vid of p/p
spent the night facerolling nerds with p/p and haste trait, gg
Actually P/P was garbage in spvp even before they removed recochet. But now it’s also garbage for pve. And it’s not only about recochet but also about trait that restored ini on crit they removed.
If rifle is the specialization, I’m out. Played Thief forever, and I’d drop it like a bad habit. Please no rifle.
I dont think you have to worry. From what was datamined by that_shaman a specialization picture of thief wielding a staff in shadows/smoke.
Source: http://imgur.com/a/cIOW3
Another hint i would like to note is a shortbow called Shadow Assassin Shortbow
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3aswh4/datamining_upcoming_features_from_the_june_22/
With all the other pictures showing their elite spec pictures like guardian, necro, ele and mesmer ones… i am in no doubt that this is the thief elite spec picture wielding a staff.
Of the 5 p/p skills.
5)Is fine. It does not require tweaks and any tweak here would just enhance the already strong d/p too much.
4>Is ok. Head shot daze is very good .
3>Great damage. Overall is fine. Here I think it can use a one ini tweak lower or add something like gain 2 seconds swiftness. Or change it to a Blast finisher.
2>Body shot. Expensive for the effect. I really think the durations of Vulnerability and Immob need to be higher. They were premised on having some sort of condition duration out of traits. If those durations not increased then it needs to be cheaper INI wise. 5s and 1.5s or 3 ini.
1>some enhancement needed to the AA. Some sort of proc on crit effect or some such.
To traits.
Ankle shots is supposed to be your defense with those cripples but the cripples do not last that long when compared to the cooldown. It gives 3 seconds cripple stacks duration but is on a 8 second cooldown so what is the point of stacking duration? Even if one had 100 percent condition duration (all but impossible) you can never get more than one cripple on. Increase duration to 4 seconds.
Ricochet. Returned in some form adding it back to Ankle shots would not make it OP. The AOE would be very desirable in the set.
There’s nothing really wrong with the skills on P/P. There never has been, even way back before they changed Body Shot. The problem is and always has been that Vital Shot is weak, and that Unload is the only strong damage the set has. This in effect means you are forced to sink all of your Initiative into Unload because it’s always most important to keep damaging your target, which breaks the set because it keeps you locked out of utility and defense options. It also means that P/P has terrible sustained DPS because its main source of DPS uses a finite resource.
It’s a unique problem brought on by the Thief’s use of Initiative. Thief weapons need to be designed in a certain way – the autoattack should always serve as the primary source of sustained damage, and the other 4 skills should all be tactical – offering various utility or more specialized/situational/burst damage. That is not how P/P works, and it’s the only set that doesn’t. No other set in the game forces you to sacrifice so much damage for utility or vice versa. It’s a problem, and it’s largely why P/P has just never been good.
So, in other words – P/P more or less sacrifices utility, mobility, and sustained DPS all to have mediocre ranged burst DPS. And now it doesn’t even have AoE. It’s that simple. And it really has always made me question the competence of Anet’s balance team that they’ve never addressed this in 2.5 years. I.e. when they changed Body Shot into something equally unusable instead of altering resource management.
Firstly the ranged damage of unload is not mediocore , albeit the lack of Richochet does diminish the set. Against a single target its range burst is quite good.
Secondly the reason p/p does not use body shot is there no bang for the buck on such low duration effects. Under the old system wvw I traited my thief to get a 100 percent condition duration. The utility of that skill went way up as I could get a longer Immob and one issue p/p had was when chasing. I could use 2 and then use unload and target would not be able to dodge . The problem was the loss of all the damage due to the gear used to get that duration. The 1 second duration with the long unload time of unload does not syngergize well. The one second duration along with havng to close gap at distance to catch that person now immobolized allows little in the way of gap closure,
Much the same applies to Vulnerability. When used in conjunction with the long channel time of unload it was pretty hard to gen enough of that condition to make it worthwhile when compared to just using that Ini on unload.
Needless to say under the old system 30 percent of that added duration in my thief came from the DA traitline. Another 40 percent came from food. In WvW and Pve we can no longer get that from DA and if you are in PvP you do not even get food.
Up the durations and there will be more use.
I mistakenly said burst when I meant sustained. But I’m not disagreeing with you – the problem is that the other skills for the most part don’t compete well with Unload. But it’s not really because the skills suck, it’s because P/P’s overall design over-emphasizes Unload for DPS.
A short answer of why P/P is garbage? And how would you overall rank Theives weapon combos
p/p is not garbage at all. It has blind, combo field for blindness and stealth, interrupt, immob, and Unload which is a lot of fun.
The problem is the loss of Ricochet. Without Ricochet, p/p went from being a very strong all-around non-meta weapon set, to being only useful in certain situations. And the changes suggested above do not bring it back to the same usefulness as before, I hope no one at aNet is actually considering any of that. Just bring Ricochet back and p/p will be excellent again, thus leading to more build diversity for thieves.
p/p is not garbage at all. It has blind, combo field for blindness and stealth, interrupt, immob, and Unload which is a lot of fun.
The problem is the loss of Ricochet. Without Ricochet, p/p went from being a very strong all-around non-meta weapon set, to being only useful in certain situations. And the changes suggested above do not bring it back to the same usefulness as before, I hope no one at aNet is actually considering any of that. Just bring Ricochet back and p/p will be excellent again, thus leading to more build diversity for thieves.
It has all those things, which it can’t access because Vital Shot is so bad that it creates an over-dependency on Unload. Just because you had fun using P/P doesn’t mean it was good.
A short answer of why P/P is garbage? And how would you overall rank Theives weapon combos
The main reason is the weak autoattack. Like I’ve said in previous posts, maintaining respectable damage while using P/P is highly dependent on spamming Unload, which siphons all of your Initiative and prevents you from making full use of the set’s utility. It also causes a double-whammy by significantly impacting your mobility, being that Unload is a channeled skill.
All of the others have decent uses based on your build, but P/P is outperformed by pretty much everything else. The only thing it uniquely offers thieves is some ranged burst potential. Which isn’t totally useless, but is not enough to make the set viable in most situations, especially in PvE. Especially now that it’s single-target only.
And that, therein lies the problem – Anet never pays attention to PvE balance. So they somehow never notice this extremely glaring balance problem with P/P that doesn’t hit it quite as hard in PvP.
(edited by Einlanzer.1627)
A short answer of why P/P is garbage? And how would you overall rank Theives weapon combos
P/P is garbage for a couple of reasons.
A) The set is utterly disjointed.
3 of the 5 available skills (Body shot, Head shot, black powder) are utility skills not designed to do practical damage. This leaves the last 2 skills (Vital/Surprise shot and Unload) with all the responsibility of doing damage for the set, and these skills use vastly different stats to do damage.
Vital/Surprise shot has a very low direct damage multiplier, and is intended for stacking bleeds.
Unload has absolutely no practical way to apply conditions, and a great direct damage multiplier.
So now, you’ve got a situation where taking the stats that Vitality/Surprise shot need (condi damage, duration) to do decent damage leaves unload out to dry, and vice versa. You can’t even go hybrid with a Cele amulet and see good results because the power/precision/ferocity counts so little for Vital/surprise shot, and the condition damage is utterly wasted on Unload.
B) Lack of defenses.
Thieves rely on stealth, evasion, high mobility and blinds to stay alive. P/P lacks access to stealth, evasion and mobility, and their blind access was nerfed a few patches ago.
I’m sure someone (probably babazhook) will respond to this with some story about how it works for them, or how you can jury-rig the weaponset into working in some situations, but that doesn’t matter. Someone elses subjective experience does nothing to counter the objective, empirical facts I’ve laid out concerning how poorly P/P is designed – this is why it’s a garbage weaponset.
If you’re a thief and haven’t
pre-ordered HOT at this point,
save yourself the money and don’t bother.
pre-ordered HOT at this point,
save yourself the money and don’t bother.
A short answer of why P/P is garbage? And how would you overall rank Theives weapon combos
P/P is garbage for a couple of reasons.
A) The set is utterly disjointed.
3 of the 5 available skills (Body shot, Head shot, black powder) are utility skills not designed to do practical damage. This leaves the last 2 skills (Vital/Surprise shot and Unload) with all the responsibility of doing damage for the set, and these skills use vastly different stats to do damage.Vital/Surprise shot has a very low direct damage multiplier, and is intended for stacking bleeds.
Unload has absolutely no practical way to apply conditions, and a great direct damage multiplier.
So now, you’ve got a situation where taking the stats that Vitality/Surprise shot need (condi damage, duration) to do decent damage leaves unload out to dry, and vice versa. You can’t even go hybrid with a Cele amulet and see good results because the power/precision/ferocity counts so little for Vital/surprise shot, and the condition damage is utterly wasted on Unload.
B) Lack of defenses.
Thieves rely on stealth, evasion, high mobility and blinds to stay alive. P/P lacks access to stealth, evasion and mobility, and their blind access was nerfed a few patches ago.I’m sure someone (probably babazhook) will respond to this with some story about how it works for them, or how you can jury-rig the weaponset into working in some situations, but that doesn’t matter. Someone elses subjective experience does nothing to counter the objective, empirical facts I’ve laid out concerning how poorly P/P is designed – this is why it’s a garbage weaponset.
This is all correct, but it’s worth noting that Vital Shot is under-tuned even if you factor in the damage from both sources. So the choice you have for P/P is:
a.) forget about maximizing Unload and go with a hybrid or condi setup. This choice gives you better “balance”, with decent utility and mobility, but ends up with poor damage all the way around – below average burst and sustain. It works as a mostly inferior version of P/D, arguably sacrificing a lot of condi pressure for very slightly better burst potential.
b.) go berserker and try to maximize DPS from Unload. This has the benefit of providing unique functionality (ranged burst DPS) but the drawbacks of being a boring spam-fest and having exceptionally poor utility, mobility, and even worse sustained DPS than option a, and most other sets in the game.
Both options are now also single-target only, which dropped their viability from “almost” to “not at all” in PvE with the recent patch.
Basically, Anet has no idea what they’re doing and somehow can’t manage the competence to fix the set in almost 3 years.
(edited by Einlanzer.1627)
Wow you guys cannot be more wrong about p/p.
First of all, thieves have access to TWO weapon sets. Whatever you feel it is lacking, just make sure your other weapon set has it. That’s what ALL the other professions do (cept ele obviously, they just switch attunements). That argument in and of itself is enough to rest my case. But because this is a war of words, enter my bullet storm:
3 of the 5 available skills (Body shot, Head shot, black powder) are utility skills not designed to do practical damage.
Complaining about the damage the 3 utility skills do means you do not understand the purpose of p/p. It includes 3 utility skills because the set is meant to add utility – plus a fair amount of condi and/or direct DPS to your other weapon set. Look at engi Rifle skills. Rifle also adds more utility than direct DPS, but it is awesome because of all the utility it adds. And (at least before aNet screwed us on this update) p/p could actually be used almost exclusively without need to swap (unlike engi rifle). Blind all day and stack bleeds and poison, stealth, repeat. After the initial Basilik Venom burst, burst thieves could not touch me, and if they did, my condi would down them before they could run and hide. (unfortunately can’t do that anymore because of the current imbalance, but the fact that we used to be able to should tell you it is a perfectly capable set). Next you’re going to complain that Shields, Warhorns and Focus are garbage cuz they generally don’t do much damage.
Unload has absolutely no practical way to apply conditions
then you must’ve missed the fact that we are thieves and have venom utility skills available. Preeeeeetty sure there’s no exception to adding venom to Unload.
it’s worth noting that Vital Shot is under-tuned even if you factor in the damage from both sources. So the choice you have for P/P is:
a.) forget about maximizing Unload and go with a hybrid or condi setup. This choice gives you better “balance”, with decent utility and mobility, but ends up with poor damage all the way around – below average burst and sustain.
Even with no crit at all, Unload does 2k damage, that’s not too bad. The poor damage all around is only due to the nerf to the dps that bleed does on Skill #1. Like I said, before the recent nerfs, p/p was very strong, esp with condi. You could blind, Unload (with poison if you want) a couple times, stealth, Sneak Attack, Vital shot a few times, repeat. No need to even worry about running out of ini. By the second time you go thru this cycle you can walk away and let your bleeds do the rest. Of course I liked to throw in some Death Blossom too, but p/p by itself was still stupid easy and lots of fun.
b.) go berserker and try to maximize DPS from Unload. This has …the drawbacks of being a boring spam-fest and having exceptionally poor utility, mobility, and even worse sustained DPS than …most other sets in the game.
poor utility? then you’re doing it wrong. spamming Unload isn’t fun? To you. Talk to all the other p/p thieves who loved playing p/p thief all because Unload is fun to them. It’s like being a in a John Woo film. You complaining about Unload is like a Ranger complaining about Rapid Shot. Everyone be like ???
Lack of defenses. Thieves rely on stealth, evasion, high mobility and blinds to stay alive. P/P lacks access to stealth, evasion and mobility, and their blind access was nerfed a few patches ago.
Hmmmm so I guess immob and an interrupt and a smoke field are completely useless for things like disengage, delaying a stomp, interrupting a big burst. I mean seriously bruh, do you even thief p/p?
The only thing aNet screwed up is the removal of Ricochet, and a reduction to bleed dps. ‘oh well if you need a trait for a weapon set to work then it is broken.’ Wrong again. There are other weapons in this game that need certain traits to be viable. Take flamethrower for engi. Without Juggernaut it is a really bad choice to equip for more than a few seconds. There are much better options. But use Juggernaut, and all of a sudden Flamethrower is freakin awesome. That’s just one example. Needing certain traits to make a weapon truly viable is not unique to Thief p/p.
Now I rest my case.
Wow you guys cannot be more wrong about p/p.
Well, I knew you were going to show up. Lets see what arguments you’ve got to get refuted.
First of all, thieves have access to TWO weapon sets. Whatever you feel it is lacking, just make sure your other weapon set has it. That’s what ALL the other professions do (cept ele obviously, they just switch attunements). That argument in and of itself is enough to rest my case. But because this is a war of words, enter my bullet storm:
False. That weaponset is always Shortbow, since the only place weapon set functionality really matters is in PvP, and in PvP you’ll never see a thief without a shortbow (since it’s the definiton of the roamer playstyle, the only one available to thief). You’ll also be delighted to hear that shortbow makes a much better hybrid weapon than P/P. Even if that weaponset wasn’t shortbow, you could just replace P/P with an actual functioning weaponset and do multitudes better.
3 of the 5 available skills (Body shot, Head shot, black powder) are utility skills not designed to do practical damage.
Complaining about the damage the 3 utility skills do means you do not understand the purpose of p/p. It includes 3 utility skills because the set is meant to add utility – plus a fair amount of condi and/or direct DPS to your other weapon set. Look at engi Rifle skills. Rifle also adds more utility than direct DPS, but it is awesome because of all the utility it adds. And (at least before aNet screwed us on this update) p/p could actually be used almost exclusively without need to swap (unlike engi rifle). Blind all day and stack bleeds and poison, stealth, repeat. After the initial Basilik Venom burst, burst thieves could not touch me, and if they did, my condi would down them before they could run and hide. (unfortunately can’t do that anymore because of the current imbalance, but the fact that we used to be able to should tell you it is a perfectly capable set). Next you’re going to complain that Shields, Warhorns and Focus are garbage cuz they generally don’t do much damage.
No one complained about the damage the utlities did. I merely pointed out that with 3 of the skills being utility oriented, the damage from the set was entirely reliant on the other 2 skills (who have completely different stat requirements for optimum damage, which was the point). It’s almost as if you have some sort of canned response for anyone who (rightly) criticizes P/P and decides to respond to my post with it anyway, even though it didn’t fit.
Unload has absolutely no practical way to apply conditions
then you must’ve missed the fact that we are thieves and have venom utility skills available. Preeeeeetty sure there’s no exception to adding venom to Unload.
And you must have missed the fact that venoms can be applied by literally any weapon set. In fact, they can apply venoms while also being good weapon skills, unlike P/P! P/D can even do it from stealth (unavailable to P/P) while also applying 5 bleeds!
Lack of defenses. Thieves rely on stealth, evasion, high mobility and blinds to stay alive. P/P lacks access to stealth, evasion and mobility, and their blind access was nerfed a few patches ago.
Hmmmm so I guess immob and an interrupt and a smoke field are completely useless for things like disengage, delaying a stomp, interrupting a big burst. I mean seriously bruh, do you even thief p/p?
Oh, do you mean that same interrupt and smoke field that are available on the vastly superior and better designed D/P, or the 1 second Immob at 900 range that literally every other class can match or exceed with their ranged weapon? Have you ever PvP’d with P/P? Don’t see many thieves taking P/P in PvP at all really…probably due to the lack of Stealth, Evasion, and Mobility that I pointed out earlier (which are things that actually help a thief survive in the majority of fights, btw). And in case you were curious, interrupting a stomp isn’t an improval to thief survivability and Infiltrators arrow/Heart seeker/Inf return/shadow shot are all infinitely superior to a 1s immob as a disengage, still making P/P the absolute worst in mobility, and still no stealth access.
Now I rest my case.
In an obviously inadequate state. You didn’t even offer an inadequate explanation as to why P/P’s only 2 damaging skills require completely different stats to be effective – Now, every competent thief reading this already knows that’s because there isn’t an adequate explanation, but it begs the question, why did you bother responding? P/P is still empirically the worst set Thief has, and possibly the worst set in the game.
If you’re a thief and haven’t
pre-ordered HOT at this point,
save yourself the money and don’t bother.
pre-ordered HOT at this point,
save yourself the money and don’t bother.
(edited by evilapprentice.6379)
False. That [alternate] weaponset is always Shortbow
Read that and knew everything else that would follow would be your (illogical) opinions and not facts.
Smh at “always Shortbow”. Your other weapon set can be Shortbow, s/d, s/p, d/p, p/d, or d/d. Again, do you even thief?
Respond with correct statements and maybe you’ll have a chance at making valid points. Cuz I read thru the rest of your arguments and they are as unfounded and errant as the first statement. Feel free to try again but I don’t debate with someone who won’t stick to facts and states their opinions as if they are facts.
False. That [alternate] weaponset is always Shortbow
Read that and knew everything else that would follow would be your (illogical) opinions and not facts.
Smh at “always Shortbow”. Your other weapon set can be Shortbow, s/d, s/p, d/p, p/d, or d/d. Again, do you even thief?
Respond with correct statements and maybe you’ll have a chance at making valid points. Cuz I read thru the rest of your arguments and they are as unfounded and errant as the first statement. Feel free to try again but I don’t debate with someone who won’t stick to facts and states their opinions as if they are facts.
So, you can’t refute any of my points – but I already knew that.
P/P remains, empirically and provably, the worst thief set. No amount of misdirection and rambling excuses the fact you still haven’t even tried to explain why the sets only 2 damaging abilities require completely different stats to be effective.
Until you can do that (Which would just be the start, btw), please stop wasting everyone’s time, because P/P is clearly garbage.
If you’re a thief and haven’t
pre-ordered HOT at this point,
save yourself the money and don’t bother.
pre-ordered HOT at this point,
save yourself the money and don’t bother.
(edited by evilapprentice.6379)
Not garbage but very fragile. A few tweaks still needed. Unload as a blast finisher as this will allow area stealth through the black powder , increase durations number 2 body shot and something that procs on crit for vital shot. This will help to an extent open up the SA line to the PP user and more in the way of defenses and tactical options.
Blast finisher on Unload? Its like you hate stealth.
Body shot is in an interesting situation for sure.
There are scant few, if any, on crit effects that are baseline to an auto attack.
Vital Shot could maybe be served with an increased power scaling.
Body Shot might do well with a slight increase to duration, I’m not sure what would necessarily be appropriate
Unload is fine really. I could maybe see it giving 2-4 endurance per hit.
Fishsticks
I’ve actually met some thieves who prefer P/P as their ranged choice over SB because of the damage. It’s also funny how everyone talks about how weak and nub P/P is, even after getting facerolled by Unload.
Blast finisher on Unload? Its like you hate stealth.
Body shot is in an interesting situation for sure.
There are scant few, if any, on crit effects that are baseline to an auto attack.Vital Shot could maybe be served with an increased power scaling.
Body Shot might do well with a slight increase to duration, I’m not sure what would necessarily be appropriate
Unload is fine really. I could maybe see it giving 2-4 endurance per hit.
I would not suggest changing Unload to a blast finisher if I hated stealth.
Stealth would still not be used as much in the set were it so simply because of overall ini costs but it would give some badly needed defenses.
Durations increases to body shot warranted as they were premised off getting duration increases off a trait line. They are pointless as is. It just better to use the INI on unload further making it a one trick pony. Unload giving more endurance per hit would make it even more unlikely any other skill used in the set.
(edited by babazhook.6805)
It is almost funny how I made a post concerned about condition/boon duration prior to this patch and sure enough, it wasn’t addressed and is a problem for many professions. Not to say I was the first to bring it up, but it bets the question of whether or not the dev’s saw this coming or did they just expect to launch something with no failures during the process.
“I’m waiting for the staff to get off their lunch
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
1 2