Guild Wars 2

Am I the only one who finds this weapon set underpowered compared to others?
I believe it needs quite some balancing, desperatedly.
But let us get to each attack analysis:

Vital Shot: The auto-attack, so no initiative cost. I guess this is okay but not that great. The added bleeding effect is nice for stacking up on others’ bleeds. Yet, the attack speed is much slower than dagger and deals less DPS. And that would be a shot to the vitals?

Body Shot: Needless to say the damage for this skill is almost as low as the auto-attack, but the Vulnerability makes a bit up for it. Yet it’s still considered a waste of initiative. Two unloads after a vital shot deal less damage than three unloads in a row.

Unload: The B&B pistol skill to deal damage with P/P. While it does quite some damage in PvE, it’s still underpowered when compared to Dagger DPS builds and it’s also heavy on Initiative consumption with 5 points. In PvP, it does decent damage but it’s even less viable because anyone can easily dodge out most of the shots out of a volley, and once your initiative is depleted you’re a much less of a threat.
In my opinion, something in this skill should be changed. Either increase damage per hit, or reduce initiative cost.

Head Shot: This skill now is just terrible. All it does for 4 Initiative points is Daze and Daze alone for 1/4 second.
Yes, in PvE you can stop mobs while they’re using a slow but powerful attack, but in PvP the utility of this skill would be almost down to zero and a true waste of initiative. Why? While you can stop slow casting skills such as healing (that if you have a decent reaction speed), if you’re focused on dealing damage you will most likely never have enough initiative points required to use Head Shot and daze a target out of their healing skill, let alone if you’re in the middle of an unload volley.
Oh, and last time I checked head shots were lethal in real life and many other games. I’m not saying they should be lethal in GW2 as well, but at least they should be more damaging. That or just change the skill’s name to Concussive Shot, which would be a much more appropriate name for a skill that dazes, and at least increase daze duration to 1/2 second.

Black Powder: Now this is a much more reasonable skill. The damage is as low as Head Shot and it’s the heaviest on Initiative consumption, but this is compensated by a way better effect: It blinds the enemy and grants a small area smoke around the caster that can be used for combos as it blinds the enemies attacking you in melee range. This is probably the only okay skill in this set.

Down to it, this weapon set offers no incentive over the other sets and cannot even be placed on the same level. So I hope the guys at ArenaNet could begin soon doing some balancing and bring it up to decency.

I agree it is indeed a little weak compared to other weapon combinations…so I use it as a backup to d/d when I want to stay in range…not as powerful as the shortbow but a lot more fun :-) You can use it to keep bleeds up with a bleed build…

No mention of sneak attack? Zero initiative and does as much damage as unload just need to stealth first.

Merkenary.9860:

No mention of sneak attack? Zero initiative and does as much damage as unload just need to stealth first.

Yeah, I forgot about Sneak Attack. It is almost as powerful as unload but it cannot be compared to the power of Backstab, which doesn’t use initiative as well.

Hermes.7014:

Merkenary.9860:

No mention of sneak attack? Zero initiative and does as much damage as unload just need to stealth first.

Yeah, I forgot about Sneak Attack. It is almost as powerful as unload but it cannot be compared to the power of Backstab, which doesn’t use initiative as well.

The sneak attack works best if you can stealth constantly, which is why it is used often by P/D thieves. In a P/P setup, you’re only stealth is from utility skills and traits, which all have longer cooldowns.

With the right build, P/P is fantastic single target DPS. Although, I agree, it could use some love. Here is a guide I wrote up for it:

http://veil.enjin.com/forum/m/6641013/viewthread/4909366-king-thieves-thief-dual-pistol-build/post/last#last

EDIT: Also, I’d like to add that Headshot is incredibly useful. Do you know how many allies I’ve saved from being finished in sPvP? Or how many people I’ve stopped from healing? It’s one of the very few stuns in the game that doesn’t have a cooldown and is RANGED and INSTANT. I find it amazingly OP in my opinion.

Amiron.1067:

EDIT: Also, I’d like to add that Headshot is incredibly useful. Do you know how many allies I’ve saved from being finished in sPvP? Or how many people I’ve stopped from healing? It’s one of the very few stuns in the game that doesn’t have a cooldown and is RANGED and INSTANT. I find it amazingly OP in my opinion.

Quoting this for truth. Headshot is a ranged, near instant interrupt skill. If you can show enough restraint to keep at least 3 initiative at all times instead of using every point as fast as you regain it, it will generally come up when you need it.

In PvE it also counts as a crowd control skill that removes a stack Defiant. A thief can single-handedly remove 3 stacks of defiant in about 1.5 seconds (assuming that they start with a full initiative bar) setting up for an ally’s heavy CC skill like a launch or pull.

Really the fact that it does damage at all is a pleasant bonus. It’s an amazingly good interrupt because of how easily available it is.

EDIT: Regarding the original post: stop expecting that skills with 900 range will have equivalent damage to melee attack skills. The risk of attacking from 900 is nothing compared to getting into melee, even if you are playing an acrobatics heavy thief. Plus, every single P/P skill has a combo finisher component.

One thing you missed about Head Shot in PvP; even if you actually do interrupt a skill, it only recharges for a few seconds, at which point they can just use it again and you’re out 4 Initiative that could’ve been spent on another Unload.

Softspoken.2410:

In PvE it also counts as a crowd control skill that removes a stack Defiant. A thief can single-handedly remove 3 stacks of defiant in about 1.5 seconds (assuming that they start with a full initiative bar) setting up for an ally’s heavy CC skill like a launch or pull.

I must emphasize this. Headshot is amazing at removing defiant stacks

I think that the problem with P/P is not so much the underpowered skills/damage but the concept of it in general.

Depending on what build you’re using you’re essentially using 2 of the skills constantly with a little bit of the others sprinkled in.

Condition – (bad for P/P, but lets ignore that) you are trying to stealth as much as possible off of your traits/utility to get auto shot, and other than that you are using auto attack 1 and maybe a little bit of BS.

Unload build (power/crit) – You spam unload. Probably the most “viable” build for P/P but holy hell this is the most boring playstyle possible. You basically kite and spam unload…

(I’m not very well versed with P/P but i think these are the only few playstyles that will net you anything in PvP/PvE)

I think that instead of tweaking damage numbers ANet needs to take a fresh perspective on the core abilities that are there. Mainly unload and Vital shot, IMO. Here are a few suggestions that would alter the playstyle of P/P and make it fun to play.

Auto attack should be faster: Why is it that 1 is the same speed when you have one pistol as well as having two? I think some of the benefit to using two pistols is to shoot a bit faster. Maybe tone damage down or bleed damage or whatnot, but would it not be alot more fun if your auto attack actually felt like you were dual wielding pistols? Keep sneak attack the same IMO.

Maybe make auto attack capable of attacking 2 enemies (traited?). Lower damage or fire rate, but i think it would feel alot cooler to have a cone aoe and have it capable of attacking 2 targets. This would make the ricochet trait alot of fun.

Unload should be shorter: Unload takes way too kitten long to use. It’s SO boring. Tone the damage down or init or amount of shots fired or whatever, but make it a much faster ability to use so this can be a mobile build if we choose. This way people wont have to choose between using the peripheral skills and another unload. Maybe a trait for bleed so this can be part of a condition build as well?

I am not pretending to know about the balance of any of these suggestions, but i think the root of the problem comes from the way they want us to play with P/P rather than which abilities do x too little/too much damage.

What does everyone think? Obviously there would be alot of number tweaking so dont scream “OMG OP” instantly.

Grimwolf.7163:

One thing you missed about Head Shot in PvP; even if you actually do interrupt a skill, it only recharges for a few seconds, at which point they can just use it again and you’re out 4 Initiative that could’ve been spent on another Unload.

I may be wrong, but I believe that if you use it while your foe is using a channeled skill (Things like Meteor Storm, Life Transfer, Rapid Fire, Hundred Blades) the skill actually goes on full cooldown.

It only goes on the reduced, 5ish second cooldown if you interrupt the action before the skill starts activating, which can still be worth a lot in certain cases.

I personally don’t take issue with the idea of using mostly 2 skills out of 5 on a skill bar, with the other 3 being for specific situations. When my goal is ‘deal damage’ I don’t need four nigh-identical ways to do it. I need one good way to deal my chosen damage type. (Condition or direct)

Sneak attack does about half the damage of unload.. look at the stats

also, if traited for power/crit/precision unload can hit for 6-7k, combine that with haste and your doing 14k in 2-3 secs.. hardly underpowerred . you make a few different builds to make it work.. leaching venoms, might stacking, life stealing etc

personally, i use a melee weapon set as my main, then switch to p/p when the target is about 40% life, hit sneak attack, then unload…people die

Vital Shot - This one is okay for me

Body Shot - Change it to a close range AoE that applies Vunerability, including in it a blast finisher. That way, it has a sinergy with Black Power, brings an aoe stealth to your team. Plus, Sneak Attack followed by Unload would be the combo from this build.

Unload - Increase the damage slightly.

Headshot - This skill is fine. If anything, increase the daze duration to 0.5 seconds.

Black Powder - Same as Headshot. If anything, increase the duration by 1 second or decrease 1 intiative.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Things-that-could-use-a-buff/page/3

There’s this thread that was going for a while. However, I didn’t get around to posting anymore because I’ve been busy with exams and papers…but, it has some good ideas for changes.