Guild Wars 2

So, we all know that P/P has a lot of little problems, but really what set doesn’t? What’s more important is that P/P actually has a single very unique and very large problem that just so happens to be the main reason why the set under-performs.

The main thing to note first off is that the Thief’s Initiative mechanics are unique. They tie all skills but the #1 skill to the same resource. This means that it’s important that there is a balance of efficiency, particularly when it comes to DPS.

Specifically, what I’m talking about here is Vital Shot vs. Unload. You see, the problem with P/P is in this skill-interchange. Vital Shot should be the bread and butter attack while Unload provides situational/tactical boons. The reality, though, is that Unload is the bread and butter skill and Vital Shot does almost nothing.

The effect this has on the set is profound. It means that to ‘maximize’ you have to sacrifice Vital Shot for Unload optimization, which means that the bleeds stacking is all but useless while the direct damage is pitiful, and you’re locked in a never ending battle to prevent reliance on Vital Shot from immediately cratering your DPS in any and every fight.

This, in turn, leads to a much bigger problem: managing even mediocre DPS on the set requires continuous sinking of all Initiative into Unload because you can’t rely on Vital Shot to provide an adequate steady baseline of DPS. Not only is this just plain boring, but it means that all the other skills become virtually useless.

Body Shot is complained about as being weak, but actually there’s not much wrong with the skill itself. Body Shot’s problem is that it shares a resource with your bread-and-butter DPS skill, meaning that to make use of it you have to sacrifice huge chunks of your personal DPS. This indirectly makes it a terrible skill, but it’s a flaw in the design of the set rather than the skill itself.

So what is the change I’m proposing to fix P/P? It’s simple:

a.) Vital Shot needs to receive a moderate buff to its direct damage, making hit roughly as hard as Unload does now. The Sneak attack needs to receive a moderate buff to its bleed duration. This means that Vital Shot benefits equally from power or condition builds based on whether you’re using P/P or P/D.

b.) Unload needs to be converted from the bread-and-butter to more of a specialty skill meant to supplement Vital Shot and work in tandem with the other skills. I propose making a spray-style AoE with slightly less single-target damage than Vital Shot.

That’s it! That’s all it really needs.

even easier, just make body shot a reverse heartseeker with a lower damage coefficient due to it being ranged. deals more damage if the opponent has more health, and less as the opponent’s health decreases. then make it a backwards leap. bp→body shot→sneak attack with unloads as a tactical ini sink if you can afford it.

this way both power builds and condition builds can use the set.

@Einlanzer
And you’d still have a weaponset that offers absolutely nothing in the way of defense for a thief – No evasiveness, no stealth, no way to slow down your opponents. Melee will close and eat you alive.

Quick, name the only ranged weaponset in the game that has
No way to affect speed positively OR negatively (no swiftness for you, No cripple/chill to use on your enemies)
and
No way to root an enemy
and
No way to KB/KD an enemy
and
No weaponset abilities that incorporate movement
Aaaaand you’ve just named P/P. Oh, it’s range 900, on top of all that.
Every other ranged weaponset has At minimum one of those attributes. P/P would be a kitten set in any classes hands, the fact that it also doesn’t offer a thief access to its defined defense mechanics (Stealth and Evasion) is just icing on the top. Even if you crank the damage through the roof, you’d be 100% utility dependent for defense, which is just bad design and wont be much fun.

Body shot is currently completely worthless. No matter what you do to unload, leaving it the way it is will probably only elevate it to “meh”. Body shot also needs something (which is hard to determine since we also need to fix Vital shot, unload, and the weaponsets basic “ranged weapon” abilities)

Egorum.9506:

even easier, just make body shot a reverse heartseeker with a lower damage coefficient due to it being ranged. deals more damage if the opponent has more health, and less as the opponent’s health decreases. then make it a backwards leap. bp->body shot->sneak attack with unloads as a tactical ini sink if you can afford it.

this way both power builds and condition builds can use the set.

I like this.

Jumper.9482:

Egorum.9506:

even easier, just make body shot a reverse heartseeker with a lower damage coefficient due to it being ranged. deals more damage if the opponent has more health, and less as the opponent’s health decreases. then make it a backwards leap. bp->body shot->sneak attack with unloads as a tactical ini sink if you can afford it.

this way both power builds and condition builds can use the set.

I like this.

The immediate issue that comes to mind is P/P – D/X. Use Body shot for great DPI on healthy targets, switch to D/P when they’re low to take advantage of HS’s great DPI on low health targets.

evilapprentice.6379:

Jumper.9482:

Egorum.9506:

even easier, just make body shot a reverse heartseeker with a lower damage coefficient due to it being ranged. deals more damage if the opponent has more health, and less as the opponent’s health decreases. then make it a backwards leap. bp->body shot->sneak attack with unloads as a tactical ini sink if you can afford it.

this way both power builds and condition builds can use the set.

I like this.

The immediate issue that comes to mind is P/P – D/X. Use Body shot for great DPI on healthy targets, switch to D/P when they’re low to take advantage of HS’s great DPI on low health targets.

Anything that doesn’t include shortbow is a step forward.
(Actually, this set has absolutely 0 mobility so probably wouldn’t be as popular as you think…)

Jumper.9482:

evilapprentice.6379:

Jumper.9482:

Egorum.9506:

even easier, just make body shot a reverse heartseeker with a lower damage coefficient due to it being ranged. deals more damage if the opponent has more health, and less as the opponent’s health decreases. then make it a backwards leap. bp->body shot->sneak attack with unloads as a tactical ini sink if you can afford it.

this way both power builds and condition builds can use the set.

I like this.

The immediate issue that comes to mind is P/P – D/X. Use Body shot for great DPI on healthy targets, switch to D/P when they’re low to take advantage of HS’s great DPI on low health targets.

Anything that doesn’t include shortbow is a step forward.
(Actually, this set has absolutely 0 mobility so probably wouldn’t be too popular…)

All I envision is the thief boards awash in the tears of people who were body shot kited until 50% then mauled by D/P.

And although not exactly “mobility”, D/P – P/P will have powerful tools to dictate the range of fights.

Ugh. That’s all I have to say.

Einlanzer.1627:

Ugh. That’s all I have to say.

You could say more. Do you disagree with my assessment? If so, Why? I wasn’t trying to put you down, I’m just firmly of the opinion that P/P without some sort of defensive measures is still a free kill. On the incredibly unlikely chance Anet at some point realizes P/P is a joke and comes to the boards for some ideas, I’d rather not see them just buff vital shot and call it a day.

evilapprentice.6379:

Einlanzer.1627:

Ugh. That’s all I have to say.

You could say more. Do you disagree with my assessment? If so, Why? I wasn’t trying to put you down, I’m just firmly of the opinion that P/P without some sort of defensive measures is still a free kill. On the incredibly unlikely chance Anet at some point realizes P/P is a joke and comes to the boards for some ideas, I’d rather not see them just buff vital shot and call it a day.

It’s not that, sorry, I didn’t mean to sound chiding. It’s just that it can be debated endlessly what tweaks here and there could be made to P/P to make it better. It’s definitely arguable that its total lack of mobility/kiting aids is a pretty big problem (even though I’d argue Black Powder and Head Shot are both good defensive utilities).

However, I keep trying to make a point that everyone seems to continually miss – that there’s a very basic design flaw seriously crippling the entire set right now, and until that design flaw is addressed making sweeping changes to individual skills would be misguided and would have less of an impact than people think.

The design flaw is that the set is over-reliant on Initiative starvation to maintain even mediocre DPS. Buffing Body Shot won’t change that, and giving Headshot a cripple or confusion or something won’t change that. The only thing that will change that is a significant buff to Vital Shot and that is the thing the set most desperately needs. In essence, whereas other weapon sets have 5 good viable skills, P/P basically has one – Unload. The fact that you have to spam Unload to hurt anything means that the #3 skill is tied up pulling the duty the #1 skill should be doing on its own while the #2, #4, and #5 skills just sit there being virtually unusable. Because of that and that alone, the set can do literally nothing but mediocre single-target DPS with poor mobility from 900 yards. That is the reason that it’s terrible.

Shortbow actually has the same problem; it’s just masked better because of how good it is at trash clearing, but you still can’t use it as a primary weapon.

The number 2 pistol skill is a joke. #3 is good in terms of damage and need no buff. #1 is great as is and is vital for P/D condition thieves.

They should outright remove the vulnerability from it and add boon stealing. Every #2 pistol shot steals a boon. Increase initiative cost to 4

Doomdesire.9365:

The number 2 pistol skill is a joke. #3 is good in terms of damage and need no buff. #1 is great as is and is vital for P/D condition thieves.

They should outright remove the vulnerability from it and add boon stealing. Every #2 pistol shot steals a boon. Increase initiative cost to 4

No, try reading the above post again.

I really want to like P/P for style alone, but I can’t because it’s just about the most boring set in the game. Black Powder is amazing, but you can’t use it if you want to deal any damage, and even if you do, P/P barely combos with the cloud.

Buffing the crap out of Vital Shot makes a lot of sense. If I had free reign, I’d also combine Unload and Body Shot into a weak-but-cheap vuln-spamming cone attack similar to what you mentioned, and then add a touch of mobility for #3 since that’s where pistol sets seem to keep their mobility. I’m thinking something you’d see out of Max Payne.

As a bonus, if that mobility was also a Leap finisher then the set would gain evasion AND stealth in one go.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Hey all! Just wanted to say thanks for keeping this thread so positive and constructive. The balance guys and I are watching this thread, and we’ve really enjoyed some of the ideas you guys are putting out.

So you know (history lesson incoming): There was a time in balance when Necromancers were the apex class for mulitple specs in the game. They were the best tanks (death shroud building + wells giving protection, while also wiping condies), had some of the best mobility (their old Death Shround #2 was a ground targeted teleport!) and they had insane damage/boon ripping with Axe-based bunker killing hybrid builds.

So while we do want to help the Necro to see more play in competitive builds (both in variety of roles and variety of builds), we are being very careful not to give them too much. We will be adjusting them just like all the other classes, and I just wanted to let you guys know we ARE watching threads like this.

The same can be said for Warriors in TPvP, non shortbow-based Thieves, different specs for Engi that are weak, etc. etc. We want all classes to have multiple options, so that’s what we’ll be looking for in upcoming balance changes. This will happen through number adjustments (the multipliers on specific skills), through skill “toolbox” adjustments (like we did with S/D Thief removing boons) and through trait adjustments (Warrior changes to counter condies + boons).

And as always, we don’t want to do crazy increases followed by large decreases. We are employing metered changes as opposed to a ‘whack-a-mole’ approach.

Sorry for no response until now, been out of the office a few weeks to see family.

-Chap

Hopefully, P/P is not too far off that list.

lets be honest here, hs needs a 10-15% damage nerf as it stands. if i can immobilize, then spam hs 6 times and kill anyone without invuln there’s probably an issue with the skill’s damage.

either way, body shot’s the only thing in the set that can be changed without screwing over every other set that uses pistol oh. vital shot does reasonable damage, unload does reasonable to good damage, and sneak attack does great damage. body shot does jack for us.

only other thing i can see happening is body shot can be made into leg shot and given a 1.5s immobilize, but that’d make it too strong on that weapon set

Egorum.9506:

lets be honest here, hs needs a 10-15% damage nerf as it stands. if i can immobilize, then spam hs 6 times and kill anyone without invuln there’s probably an issue with the skill’s damage.

either way, body shot’s the only thing in the set that can be changed without screwing over every other set that uses pistol oh. vital shot does reasonable damage, unload does reasonable to good damage, and sneak attack does great damage. body shot does jack for us.

only other thing i can see happening is body shot can be made into leg shot and given a 1.5s immobilize, but that’d make it too strong on that weapon set

Vital Shot does not do reasonable damage, particularly with P/P. It arguably is adequately powerful for P/D, but it doesn’t matter. Having to constantly Unload spam to keep up decent damage is what breaks the set.

Einlanzer.1627:

Egorum.9506:

lets be honest here, hs needs a 10-15% damage nerf as it stands. if i can immobilize, then spam hs 6 times and kill anyone without invuln there’s probably an issue with the skill’s damage.

either way, body shot’s the only thing in the set that can be changed without screwing over every other set that uses pistol oh. vital shot does reasonable damage, unload does reasonable to good damage, and sneak attack does great damage. body shot does jack for us.

only other thing i can see happening is body shot can be made into leg shot and given a 1.5s immobilize, but that’d make it too strong on that weapon set

Vital Shot does not do reasonable damage, particularly with P/P. It arguably is adequately powerful for P/D, but it doesn’t matter. Having to constantly Unload spam to keep up decent damage is what breaks the set.

Vital Shot should deal the same damage/have same speed as http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crossfire. However do more damage because it has lower range.

Einlanzer.1627:

Doomdesire.9365:

The number 2 pistol skill is a joke. #3 is good in terms of damage and need no buff. #1 is great as is and is vital for P/D condition thieves.

They should outright remove the vulnerability from it and add boon stealing. Every #2 pistol shot steals a boon. Increase initiative cost to 4

No, try reading the above post again.

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize this was a dictatorship and we weren’t allowed to present our own opinion, your majesty.

Doomdesire.9365:

Einlanzer.1627:

Doomdesire.9365:

The number 2 pistol skill is a joke. #3 is good in terms of damage and need no buff. #1 is great as is and is vital for P/D condition thieves.

They should outright remove the vulnerability from it and add boon stealing. Every #2 pistol shot steals a boon. Increase initiative cost to 4

No, try reading the above post again.

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize this was a dictatorship and we weren’t allowed to present our own opinion, your majesty.

His point was that he wanted to address the main problem with P/P – these posts always eventually turn into 15 people throwing out their suggestions, 30 people chiming in on said suggestions with tweaks/their own suggestions and so on… and the original intention is lost. I’ve made a very similar post on the subject (and then I go do the exact same thing in this very post like a dunce).

His point is, let’s focus on making Arenanet aware that there is a problem with P/P, instead of throwing out dozens of suggestions until this entire thread turns into an uncoordinated mix of suggestions of all flavors (good, bad, broken, useless, etc), and people talking about said suggestions, rather than the real problems.

Doomdesire.9365:

Einlanzer.1627:

Doomdesire.9365:

The number 2 pistol skill is a joke. #3 is good in terms of damage and need no buff. #1 is great as is and is vital for P/D condition thieves.

They should outright remove the vulnerability from it and add boon stealing. Every #2 pistol shot steals a boon. Increase initiative cost to 4

No, try reading the above post again.

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize this was a dictatorship and we weren’t allowed to present our own opinion, your majesty.

No need to be snarky, I just wanted to let you know that your opinion is misinformed. First off, it’s somewhat important that different sets do different things. Making Body Shot a clone of Flanking Strike is not something they’re likely to do. Second off, Body Shot, despite popular opinion, is not the real problem with the set.

More importantly than all of that is that suggestions for individual skills are pointless, the set is broken by a design flaw that affects every skill in the set and changing those skills is pointless until that design flaw is addressed.