Guild Wars 2

So im running p/d condition build and have this issue. Whatever I do i cant get my bleed timer over 7 seconds. I use 2x sigils of agony on weapons, 2x krait, 2x afflicted and 2x centaur runes on armor), + Im testing it with 30 in deadly arts now just for higher numbers in bleed time. So acording to my calculations my bleed time should be: (I calculate all % from base pistol bleed time wich is 4 seconds)
4 s+0.8s (from sigils 2×0.4s)1.8s (from runes 3×0.6s)1.6s (from 40% condi food)+1.2 (30 % from 30 in deadly arts) =9.4 s (skill description says 7.5, but thats becouse rune bleed time doesnt reflect on skill description, tested it w/o food and deadly arts, I get more bleed time on targets, then it says. So my gues and question … is there a cap on bleed time comming from pistol attacks ?

If there is I was unaware of it, so I’m curious to know. One of the main issues though is that the base 4s bleed duration is very short for Vital Shot’s firing rate (which is very likely a bug with its recovery animation). Because of that, MH Pistol will always struggle to maintain the same number of bleed stacks that other bleed weapons can. This is a large percentage of why it feels under-powered.

It’s something they seriously need to look into.

I don’t think 2 Sigils of Agony stack. I could be wrong, but I thought someone tested it back a few months ago and came to the conclusion that they didn’t (same with 2 cds on weapon crit sigils).

Edit: Never mind, I just tested this out, and they do stack. Nice to know. I also got less then 8 secs on my auto attack bleed.

I’d only get bleed time stack is if Stealth thieves gave my CnDition thief a hard time, but it’s not the case, I’m playing it a little different today I added some crests instead of any runes to get more power/toughness/vitality and it’s working great, I have agony on 1 pistol but thats all I’m heading for, the food makes up for my loss of condition duration, I really wouldn’t go for the highest stacking time, it’s really not worth it.

I guess if your just testing its okay.

I really think they need to make the bleed last longer or make it attack a little faster. Both really.
So the 2/2/2 runes for bleed dur don’t show up on the tool tip?

Yea the runes dont show up on tooltip but thats not the problem, the problem is that bleed time doesnt go past 7 seconds even with all these time stacking options . I have no problems with curent bleed time, p/d thieves offer low dps, but they make it up in stealth and survival. Just i would like to know IF there is a bleed time cap for pistol, which apparently is, how long is it exactly, so i can work around my build with that. Since bleed time actually lets u stack higher numbers of bleeds more easilly, which leads to higher dps.

ok so i did more practical ( allthough obvious) testing, I tested how many ticks can 1 stack of bleed do ( with 9.2 s theoretical bleed time) and it was 8 ticks. So my gues is that max bleed durations is +100 %, thats exactly 8 seconds and there is 0 point in going more then this.

Yes, my tests a few months ago found the same: the cap is at 100% which allows an 8-tick bleed on pistol. For practical purposes, I’ve currently settled on a 7-tick bleed.

Okay, that makes sense. I never realized there was a hard cap on bleed duration, that explains why Vital Shot is even more problematic for condition builds.

I heard some other people talking that there was a hard cap on pistol bleed durations for some odd reason.

Anyways, 6 – 7s is really pretty decent anyways when you factor in sneak attack. It WOULD be really nice though if they buffed it to base 5s, like the necro’s sceptre 1 skill.

Jericho.4521:

I heard some other people talking that there was a hard cap on pistol bleed durations for some odd reason.

Anyways, 6 – 7s is really pretty decent anyways when you factor in sneak attack. It WOULD be really nice though if they buffed it to base 5s, like the necro’s sceptre 1 skill.

It would be, but the reason it’s 4 seconds is because Vital Shot is supposed to fire faster and therefore be able to maintain a higher stack. I think, as I’ve mentioned 100+ times, that boosting Vital Shot’s recast speed to something closer to what was originally intended would do wonders.

Well, that certainly explains why I’ve felt that 30% of my condition duration wasn’t working correctly… because it wasn’t!

Well, I guess it’s time to swap out some runes and/or sigils.

Einlanzer.1627:

Jericho.4521:

I heard some other people talking that there was a hard cap on pistol bleed durations for some odd reason.

Anyways, 6 – 7s is really pretty decent anyways when you factor in sneak attack. It WOULD be really nice though if they buffed it to base 5s, like the necro’s sceptre 1 skill.

It would be, but the reason it’s 4 seconds is because Vital Shot is supposed to fire faster and therefore be able to maintain a higher stack. I think, as I’ve mentioned 100+ times, that boosting Vital Shot’s recast speed to something closer to what was originally intended would do wonders.

Agreed. Although I think I’ll need to invest in scuba gear for the tsunami of tears that will follow on these forums if they actually gave thieves a straight buff like that. We are satan incarnate, afterall.

I made this a long time ago when I thought people cared:

I play both a level 80 Thief/Level 80 Warrior, both are glass Cannony.

Volley/Unload.
Volley has an 8 second cooldown if traited.
Unload has no cooldown, but uses 5 initative, which means you have to wait 8 seconds to use it again, which pretty much means it has an 8 second cooldown, since 5 × 1.6 is 8.
Volley has more Range, costs nothing but a cooldown, you can use other abilities after you use unload, like the knock back, blind and vulnerability.
Unload can be used 3 times, but after this you must wait, and you cannot use any other abilities. (you must wait 24 seconds to get your initiative back.)

Volley does 755 more damage. (we have near identical stats, same gear as my thief on my warrior.) has more range, and a bigger advantage because you are not stuck using 1 skill for damage.

Bleeding Shot vs Vital Shot.
Same Cast/Channal time, regardless of what it says.
Vital Shot does 50 less damage in power, and 298 less damage in bleeds, this means Vital Shot does 348 less hypothetical damage.

Bleeding Shot and Volley have 100% chance to pierce, meaning they are AOE Attacks.
Again, this is using traits/gear I use for both, meaning its similar but not, but from the way I see it the math is skrewed because they have different traits/different builds, but the numbers don’t lie.

Rifle Shot/Volley are much better, Unload should be brought in line with Volleys damage, infact it should do more damage since its less range.
Vital Shot either needs a speed boost, or damage should be increased by 25-33%.
Global Cooldown for Vital Shot should be decreased by 33%, it should be firing 33% faster then it currently does.
Theoretically, Both Unload/Volley share the same cooldown (8 seconds.)

Volley does almost 30-40% more damage, AND has longer range…
Bleeding Shot/Vital Shot share the same cooldown/gcd, regardless of what it says, and Bleeding Shot does 30-40% more damage, AND has longer range…
And… its all AOE!

Melee Vs Range Argument is silly for thieves, because it doesn’t really matter if thief is in melee or range, because we have the most gap closers of any class.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Steal – Always have it.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infiltrator%27s_Strike – Sword.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Heartseeker – Dagger.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadowstep
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infiltrator%27s_Signet

Trust me, range does not really matter to us at all, we have so much of it we can stuff our melee weapons down our enemies throats.

Pistols deserve decent damage, they lack ONE thing that makes thief not squishy… STEALTH.

Sarrow/Anyone,

How does one achieve a minimum of a 7-second Bleed tick with Pistol/Dagger? Can you list the bare minimum runes/gear/food required?

Thank you.

^
XXX: Sorry, we don’t make this game for Thief to stay at the top. We think Warrior Rifle need more Buff while P/P is fine as it is right now.

Siva Mira.3546:

^
XXX: Sorry, we don’t make this game for Thief to stay at the top. We think Warrior Rifle need more Buff while P/P is fine as it is right now.

You made me laugh, I love reading your posts. Rifle warriors need more dps! Pistols should be nerfed so it does less damage then a nerf gun.

Jayblah.4682:

Sarrow/Anyone,

How does one achieve a minimum of a 7-second Bleed tick with Pistol/Dagger? Can you list the bare minimum runes/gear/food required?

Thank you.

For pistol bleeds, every +25% will add one extra tick. At +100% condition/bleed duration you get four extra ticks, which takes pistol bleeds from four ticks to eight ticks.

To do this, in spvp you can do the following:
- Put points in Deadly Arts for up to 30% duration
- Use Sigils of Agony on your weapons (they are stackable) for up up to 20% duration
- Use a mix of Krait, Centaur and Afflicted armor runes for 45% duration

In WvW you can also use food (pizza) to buff you condition duration a further 40%

In my build I run with one Sigil of Agony (10%), the above armor runes (45%) and in WvW, a cheap 24% food buff. This brings me to slightly above 79% allowing 7-second bleeds on pistol with 4% wasted.

This is off the top of my head so sleight errors may be contained within.

I see, thank you. My build is P/D, so I don’t invest in Deadly Arts. Wasn’t aware that Sigl of Agony stacked. That is good to know, although I believe I’m also at the 7-second mark since I run the same setup you do, with slightly better quality pizza.

NP. It’s not hard to test. Find a dummy in the mists, turn auto attack off and count the bleeds after shooting it once.

Daecollo.9578:

I made this a long time ago when I thought people cared:

I play both a level 80 Thief/Level 80 Warrior, both are glass Cannony.

Volley/Unload.
Volley has an 8 second cooldown if traited.
Unload has no cooldown, but uses 5 initative, which means you have to wait 8 seconds to use it again, which pretty much means it has an 8 second cooldown, since 5 × 1.6 is 8.
Volley has more Range, costs nothing but a cooldown, you can use other abilities after you use unload, like the knock back, blind and vulnerability.
Unload can be used 3 times, but after this you must wait, and you cannot use any other abilities. (you must wait 24 seconds to get your initiative back.)

Volley does 755 more damage. (we have near identical stats, same gear as my thief on my warrior.) has more range, and a bigger advantage because you are not stuck using 1 skill for damage.

Bleeding Shot vs Vital Shot.
Same Cast/Channal time, regardless of what it says.
Vital Shot does 50 less damage in power, and 298 less damage in bleeds, this means Vital Shot does 348 less hypothetical damage.

Bleeding Shot and Volley have 100% chance to pierce, meaning they are AOE Attacks.
Again, this is using traits/gear I use for both, meaning its similar but not, but from the way I see it the math is skrewed because they have different traits/different builds, but the numbers don’t lie.

Rifle Shot/Volley are much better, Unload should be brought in line with Volleys damage, infact it should do more damage since its less range.
Vital Shot either needs a speed boost, or damage should be increased by 25-33%.
Global Cooldown for Vital Shot should be decreased by 33%, it should be firing 33% faster then it currently does.
Theoretically, Both Unload/Volley share the same cooldown (8 seconds.)

Volley does almost 30-40% more damage, AND has longer range…
Bleeding Shot/Vital Shot share the same cooldown/gcd, regardless of what it says, and Bleeding Shot does 30-40% more damage, AND has longer range…
And… its all AOE!

Melee Vs Range Argument is silly for thieves, because it doesn’t really matter if thief is in melee or range, because we have the most gap closers of any class.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Steal – Always have it.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infiltrator%27s_Strike – Sword.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Heartseeker – Dagger.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadowstep
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infiltrator%27s_Signet

Trust me, range does not really matter to us at all, we have so much of it we can stuff our melee weapons down our enemies throats.

Pistols deserve decent damage, they lack ONE thing that makes thief not squishy… STEALTH.

Thanks for this. It’s painfully obvious to anyone with half a brain that something(s) is massively off with the Thief’s MH Pistol.

Very quickly after shifting from warrior/rifle, I discovered that the offensive specs for thief/pistol were dramatically weaker than I was expecting to the point that I gave up on it altogether and decided to stick with melee.

It was also immediately obvious to me that something was wrong with Vital Shot in particular and that it should be firing a full 30-40% faster than it does. Vital Shot doing 60-70% of the condition damage it was almost certainly intended to do alone makes the set terrible, everything else is just vomit frosting on the doo doo cake.

2x agony sigils (20%), 3x pairs of bleed runes (centaur, afflicted, krait – 45%), 40% condi time food. Thats 105 % off bleed time, that 5 % is wasted, it gives u 8 ticks of bleed when 1 stack is applied, but im not sure if its the case when u have multiple stacks of bleeds on, since its > then 1 tick a second then, becouse bleed stacking increases its intensity, means u get more then 1 tick a second.

@OP: you can get 8 ticks with food,runes, sigils easy.
also giver weapons give 10% condi dur.

@everybody ranting over p/x build: its laughablely easy to play them as it is p/d especially…spamming 5-1-1-1-5-1-1-1.
Can you kill a single target faster the other burst builds? No. Can you kite everything to death without ever putting yourself within 2km of any harms way? Yes.

Melee/range balance at its finest. It would be pretty idiotic to burst something/sombody from 900 range to 10-20% HP 100% of the time.

I used pistol builds a while ago, it got boring within 1 hour.

@Sarrow: tests in the mists are lame. The results you get from pve gear are vastly superior. A tip: test on dummies in the fort in LA

@Daecollo: everything you said is lol. comparing classes has never been the way to go. the way you test it its bordeline…well stupid. 2 different classes, skills, weapon sets etc.etc., and dont care what a-net says about the holy trinity. ALL CLASSES ARE NOT THE SAME, ALL CLASSES CANT DO EVERYTHING EQUALLY WELL, ALL BUILDS ARE NOT VIABLE FOR/VS EVERYTHING. Period.

Also you’re argument about melee/range really takes the cake. Do you have any idea how easy it is to keep range on a thief? You do know gap closers work both ways right?
Steal: oh no that thing is getting to close to me. Target another mob/player/bunny bam you’re at 900 again
Infiltators strike: it has a gtfo skill already in it. Jesus.
Infitrators arrow: 1800 in under a second? Not a problem
Shadowstep: insta 1200 range, oh noes its coming at me again. click(return to original position) 1200 range again.

Yes most require a weapon swap, but why do you think you have that button? Decoration?

As far as pistol recast goes: yes its borked, yes its known. However thief p/x is still one of the easiest builds to play as it is, and now you want it to have on of the best damages in the game? No. Just no.
Honestly if they fix recast I expect them to lower (yes lower) base damage of #1 or (unlikely, since its mostly condi build) remove bleed-or maybe switch it to traits.