Hero {} Roleplayer {} Friend {} Professional Princess Saver
https://twitter.com/TalathionEQ2
https://twitter.com/TalathionEQ2
Pistols need to hurt.
Wish granted. They now cause the thief to burst into flames for 10 seconds whenever they are equipped.
Indeed, we all particularly loved your suggestions.
- Increases Pistol Range to 1200.
- Makes Vital Shot a 100% Projectile Finisher.
- Increases Pistol Damage by 10%.
- Makes Vital Shot Fire Faster.
- Lowers all Pistol Skills by 1 initiative.
- Adds 5 seconds of burning to Body Shot.
- Makes Headshot give 10 seconds of 1 stack of confusion.
- Black Powder additionally creates a “Combo Field: Fire.”
What P/P needs:
Vital Shot – needs to shoot roughly 20% faster
Unload – convert to small-spray AoE
Pistol Mastery – back down to 5% bonus
Ricochet – buffed to 50/25%
The biggest problem is that Unload overlaps Vital Shot too much and is strictly better, especially with power/crit builds, which P/P tends to benefit more from.
This overdependence on Unload for basic single-target DPS a.) makes the set boring and b.) cascades out and negatively impacts the other skills by forcing them into excessive and needless resource competition. In other words, because of the Vital Shot-Unload dynamic, the set forces you to sacrifice too much utility for DPS and vice versa.
What people tend to not get is this is more Vital Shot’s fault than anything else’s because it’s not able to carry the set’s DPS the way it needs to to allow you to use your Initiative more flexibly.
That said, I think people are too quick to judge P/P as being a power/crit set. I’m of the mind that, as its skills would imply, it actually works best as a hybrid set. Gaining some condition bonuses allows Vital Shot to be more of a functional skill in your repertoire, which opens up a lot of freedom in how you play it. You essentially trade off a modest amount of spike potential for significantly greater flexibility in both movement and utility while generally maintaining similar sustained DPS.
(edited by Einlanzer.1627)
What people tend to not get is this is more Vital Shot’s fault than anything else’s because it’s not able to carry the set’s DPS the way it needs to to allow you to use your Initiative more flexibly.
Someone get this guy a cookie.
Think about sword auto attacks – its the thief’s staple damage and all skills are utility. Dagger is auto + backstab. Shortbow aint brilliant with the auto, but at least it hits 3 targets and dps is supplemented by clusters (only 3 ini!)
Now imagine trying to rely on pistol mainhand autoattacks like the above. Ridiculous, no? The autos just dont provide the staple damage of other weaponsets, hence the reliance on ini-hungry unload.
Admiral Mournn, Tarnished Coast
What people tend to not get is this is more Vital Shot’s fault than anything else’s because it’s not able to carry the set’s DPS the way it needs to to allow you to use your Initiative more flexibly.
Someone get this guy a cookie.
Think about sword auto attacks – its the thief’s staple damage and all skills are utility. Dagger is auto + backstab. Shortbow aint brilliant with the auto, but at least it hits 3 targets and dps is supplemented by clusters (only 3 ini!)
Now imagine trying to rely on pistol mainhand autoattacks like the above. Ridiculous, no? The autos just dont provide the staple damage of other weaponsets, hence the reliance on ini-hungry unload.
It drives me nuts how more people can’t see this.
As an example, people rabidly attack Body Shot, when Body Shot is not the actual problem with Body Shot. Sure, it may not be an amazing skill, but the problem with it is an indirect consequence of the problem with Vital Shot/Unload rather than there being anything so profoundly wrong with the skill itself that it breaks the whole set.
It’s forced into direct competition with Unload when the competition should only be indirect. You should only be choosing between different kinds of utility, not utility or basic DPS. In a nutshell, Body Shot feels like a terrible skill because using it tanks your DPS more than any utility on any other set by siphoning Initiative that needs to go to Unload.
That clearly should not be how it works, and that’s design issue is what they need to focus on fixing.
Indeed, we all particularly loved your suggestions.
- Increases Pistol Range to 1200.
- Makes Vital Shot a 100% Projectile Finisher.
- Increases Pistol Damage by 10%.
- Makes Vital Shot Fire Faster.
- Lowers all Pistol Skills by 1 initiative.
- Adds 5 seconds of burning to Body Shot.
- Makes Headshot give 10 seconds of 1 stack of confusion.
- Black Powder additionally creates a “Combo Field: Fire.”
Give the guy a break man, he’s not making ridiculous suggestions this time. I agree, pistols do need to hurt. If I see a P/P thief I treat him like I do a glass cannon longbow ranger and warriors in spvp: fodder. They need to at the very least not be a joke of a spec.
What people tend to not get is this is more Vital Shot’s fault than anything else’s because it’s not able to carry the set’s DPS the way it needs to to allow you to use your Initiative more flexibly.
In fact it’s not Vital Shot fault, it’s Sneak Attack (and the day they made stealth attacks hurting this profession so much). I’ve said it other times, if it wasn’t for Sneak Attack, the auto-attack would be the 1 Vuln body shot like it was before the inclussion of stealth attacks. Because of them they’re in a situation where if they change the auto-attack in favor of P/P, they’re hurting P/D.
Thief’s world would’ve been wonderful if they wouldn’t have made those stealth attacks (and they’re silly IMO, stealth isn’t a thief only thing, it would be like Warrior changing his auto-attack when he gets Might) and instead focus more on how to make each set synergize perfectly with stealth being the defensive utility that was intended to not be a focal point instead of the “use it or you won’t optimize the thief” thing that it’s now because of stealth attacks.
If they wanted to make backstab usable only while stealthed they could’ve either made it the second sequence of cloak and dagger or make a trait to deal +X% more damage while flanking and stealthed. That decission was a hammer to the face for future balancing issues for the Thief in multiple aspects as we’ve seen patch after patch.
IMO it’s still not too late to revamp the Thief by making every set synergize better and getting rid of the stupid stealth attacks.
(edited by Lokheit.7943)