Guild Wars 2

Pistol mainhand

Vital Shot

• Now Additionally grants Vulnerability (1 Stack, 4s) in addition to Bleeding. With the changes to Vulnerability, this will help both Condi and Power specs.

Body Shot

• Now Cripples (4s) and Immobilizes (1s) The target rather than granting Vulnerability. This will Synergize with a changed Ankle Shots trait.

Unload

• Now stacks Vulnerability (1 stack, 4s) With every shot. Cost and Damage remains the same.

Traits
Grandmaster Trait: Potent Poison

• Instead of increased Damage, Poison applied by you will Apply additional Poison when it is Cleansed or Expires. (1 stack, 5s).
• ICD: 5s.

Master Trait: Ankle Shots – Renamed into Ricochet

• Pistol and Harpoon Gun Attacks will now Bounce to Additional Targets if the Enemy you attack is Crippled, Chilled or Immobilized.
• Number of Bounces: 2
• All Pistol and Harpoon Gun skills now have a Chance to Bleed (1 Stack, 8s) Enemies struck. This chance is increased against Crippled, Chilled or Immobilized Enemies.
• Chance: 33% (66% if Crippled, Chilled or Immobilized)

Minor Trait: Expeditious Dodger

• in Addition to granting Swiftness on Dodge, now also increases Effectiviness of Swiftness.
• Swiftness: Movement Speed increased by 40%

Minor Trait: Feline Grace

• No longer grants Vigor on Evade, but rather grants a Set amount of Energy on Evading an attack. Grants extra Energy if you evade with a Dodge.
• Energy gained on Dodge: 15. Energy gained on Weapon Skill Evade: 5. ICD: 3s

Maste Trait: Assassin’s Reward

• Moved to Master.
• Heal yourself whenever you use a skill that Costs Initiative. Heal yourself for each point of Initiative used.
• Healing per Initiative: 73

Master Trait: Guarded Initiation

• Landing an Attack from outside of the Range Threshold will Immobilize (1s) your target.
• Threshold: 600. ICD: 10s.

Grandmaster Trait: Upper Hand

• Gain Initiative (1) and Health on Evading attacks. You now Recharge Steal by a static amount when evading attacks with any weapon. (Previously on Swindler’s Equilibrium).
• Steal Recharge: 1s. ICD: 1s.
• Healing: 200. ICD: 1s.

Grandmaster Trait: Swindler’s Equilibrium

• Moved to Grandmaster.
• Increases Initiative regeneration while wielding a Sword or Spear. Additionally, Evading Attacks while wielding a Sword or Spear grants Might (1 stack, 10s). ICD: 1s.
• Initiative Regeneration: 1 Initiative every 10s.

This post touched on the issue very well but IMO

• Guarded initiation would still be useless
• assassins reward should heal on succesful evades(up to 5times for about 200 with 0.75s ICD) and i would merge it with upper hand
• ur swindlers equilibrium would spare too much initiative but might on evade sounds great
• vuln spam on vital shot would be rather annoying im not a fan of 1stack of vulnerability getting cleansed, skills should cause 5stacks at a time at least but less often or the condi cleanses should ignore vulns under 5-8 stacks if other condis are present.

I fancy the rest of the ideas tho

the vital shot idea is actually pretty good. I don’t think that would be overkill if the base duration is low.

Moved Assassin’s reward down to Master and added some Health regen to Upper Hand, allowing said Trait to be a defensive choice for thieves, while Swindler’s Equilibrium will be the offensive choice and Don’t Stop remains as the go-to Mobility Trait.

Did a few changes, primarily to Guarded Initiation. It’s now useful both for Engaging and Disengaging enemies, meant to work as a trait primarily useful for Shortbow and Pistols. The Immobilize will let you engage and disengage without having to rely on Stealth.

Unload can be cast 3 times in a row. That would be 24 stacks of vulnerability without any more effort. So, I just need to spam unload, switch to D/X, stealth with blinding powder and get a backstab in for about 16-20k? I don’t like brainless weaponskills. Not saying that there aren’t any of them around, but I still hope those will be changed eventually.
No real opinion on your other ideas as I don’t use the traits, I only use my P/P against some world bosses.

Jana.6831:

Unload can be cast 3 times in a row. That would be 24 stacks of vulnerability without any more effort. So, I just need to spam unload, switch to D/X, stealth with blinding powder and get a backstab in for about 16-20k? I don’t like brainless weaponskills. Not saying that there aren’t any of them around, but I still hope those will be changed eventually.
No real opinion on your other ideas as I don’t use the traits, I only use my P/P against some world bosses.

Indeed, didn’t quite think of that. The Duration of the Vulnerability should be cut down so that stacking it using Unload alone becomes difficult, instead the Vulnerability will be there to increase the effectiviness of using Unload more than once on a target.

Proposed potent posion would not do a lot. Poison used as a damage condition now and not just a heal inhibit meaning most will have ready access to the condition that go the poison route. 1 stack of poison is all it really amounds to.

I would suggest keep duration. Keep potentcy. Add to the trait "when posioning an enemy transfer one condition (10 second ICD on transfer)

Upper hand. I would rather see it build Vitality stacks much like applied fortitude. We have a regen in the line from Pain response. If we have upper hand building stacks to a limit of 15 (20 vital per) we get 3000 health . These stacks drop off when downed and or slowly bleed off when out of combat.

This an alternative to using valkyrie and one would gain a stack on a successful evade. Keep the +1 ini as well.

Proposed Guarded Initiation needs a rethink. I would rather have the existing one than the 1 second Immob.

Expeditios dodger. This 40 percent would apply to all swiftness correct?

I like the proposals on pistol changes.

babazhook.6805:

Proposed potent posion would not do a lot. Poison used as a damage condition now and not just a heal inhibit meaning most will have ready access to the condition that go the poison route. 1 stack of poison is all it really amounds to.

I would suggest keep duration. Keep potentcy. Add to the trait "when posioning an enemy transfer one condition (10 second ICD on transfer)

Transferring Conditions isn’t something that’s very “Thief”-y, I’d say. It’s not something I believe that Thieves should have ready access to.

Poison is certainly a Damaging Condition, but its real strength lies just in the heal Debuff. This will make Poison coming from Thieves requiring more than 1 Cleanse to get rid of, which can be extremely Potent vs Classes who rely strongly on Healing to survive (D/D Eles, Bunker Guards).

babazhook.6805:

Expeditios dodger. This 40 percent would apply to all swiftness correct?

I would suggest All Swiftness Applied to the Thief, similar to how the Tempest are getting increased Effectiviness from Protection with one of their Traits.

TheSwede.9512:

babazhook.6805:

Proposed potent posion would not do a lot. Poison used as a damage condition now and not just a heal inhibit meaning most will have ready access to the condition that go the poison route. 1 stack of poison is all it really amounds to.

I would suggest keep duration. Keep potentcy. Add to the trait "when posioning an enemy transfer one condition (10 second ICD on transfer)

Transferring Conditions isn’t something that’s very “Thief”-y, I’d say. It’s not something I believe that Thieves should have ready access to.

Poison is certainly a Damaging Condition, but its real strength lies just in the heal Debuff. This will make Poison coming from Thieves requiring more than 1 Cleanse to get rid of, which can be extremely Potent vs Classes who rely strongly on Healing to survive (D/D Eles, Bunker Guards).

The problem is in the current system poison is so very easy to apply. I keep it on my opponents all the time. If they cleanse it just put it back on. Virtually all my builds can do this.

Just as example my poison stacks do as much damage as bleeds.

For those that do not go and get poison access they are better served taking Improv or executioner. if they really want it they can then use doom sigil or blight rather then use a GM trait for that single reapplied stack.

Now another fix is increasing the potency to 20 percent but there a concern there of what that does to Venomous Aura. As example when venom share my poison with 5 others I can get 8k poison stacks. This without potentcy. I am thinking the reason they did not want to put that higher is that another 20 percent on top of that after a share would be huge.

Potent Poison should be helping people that make poison builds and not people who have little or no access to poison. With low CD on steal, dagger training, that extra strike on spider venom , we can use runes and gear to make true poison based builds and a potent poison as you outline does nothing for such a build.

It is directed towards people who do not train poison which makes little sense.

As to transferring a condition being “unthiefly” i tend to disagree. This basically a sigil of generosity as a trait. We can steal a lot of skills that would seem “unthiefly” and i do not think it a great stretch to imagine giving stuff we do not want back.

babazhook.6805:

TheSwede.9512:

babazhook.6805:

Proposed potent posion would not do a lot. Poison used as a damage condition now and not just a heal inhibit meaning most will have ready access to the condition that go the poison route. 1 stack of poison is all it really amounds to.

I would suggest keep duration. Keep potentcy. Add to the trait "when posioning an enemy transfer one condition (10 second ICD on transfer)

Transferring Conditions isn’t something that’s very “Thief”-y, I’d say. It’s not something I believe that Thieves should have ready access to.

Poison is certainly a Damaging Condition, but its real strength lies just in the heal Debuff. This will make Poison coming from Thieves requiring more than 1 Cleanse to get rid of, which can be extremely Potent vs Classes who rely strongly on Healing to survive (D/D Eles, Bunker Guards).

The problem is in the current system poison is so very easy to apply. I keep it on my opponents all the time. If they cleanse it just put it back on. Virtually all my builds can do this.

Just as example my poison stacks do as much damage as bleeds.

Now another fix is increasing the potency to 20 percent but there a concern there of what that does to Venomous Aura. As example when venom share my poison with 5 others I can get 8k poison stacks. This without potentcy. I am thinking the reason they did not want to put that higher is that another 20 percent on top of that after a share would be huge.

Potent Poison should be helping people that make poison builds and not people who have little or no access to poison. With low CD on steal, dagger training, that extra strike on spider venom , we can use runes and gear to make true poison based builds and a potent poison as you outline does nothing for such a build.

It is directed towards people who do not train poison which makes little sense.

As to transferring a condition being “unthiefly” i tend to disagree. This basically a sigil of generosity as a trait. We can steal a lot of skills that would seem “unthiefly” and i do not think it a great stretch to imagine giving stuff we do not want back.

It isn’t all that different from other builds having a vast selection of conditions to apply and reapply making removing them next to impossible, or certain professions have dangerous stacking potential with burn which is far stronger than poison.

Venomshare should have no say in how to balance thief, that trait was put there long ago and trying to balance thief skills/traits based on it is ridiculous. If they are that concerned, give lesser venoms to allies rather than the full potency but to justify the grandmaster trait from an entirely different trait line based on this is silly but believable to an extent.

I’d love for condition transferring, skillful based but still. Suggested a million times to give us a venom for that (cough Karka Venom) so we have support options, not just dps support.

NinjaEd.3946:

babazhook.6805:

TheSwede.9512:

babazhook.6805:

Proposed potent posion would not do a lot. Poison used as a damage condition now and not just a heal inhibit meaning most will have ready access to the condition that go the poison route. 1 stack of poison is all it really amounds to.

I would suggest keep duration. Keep potentcy. Add to the trait "when posioning an enemy transfer one condition (10 second ICD on transfer)

Transferring Conditions isn’t something that’s very “Thief”-y, I’d say. It’s not something I believe that Thieves should have ready access to.

Poison is certainly a Damaging Condition, but its real strength lies just in the heal Debuff. This will make Poison coming from Thieves requiring more than 1 Cleanse to get rid of, which can be extremely Potent vs Classes who rely strongly on Healing to survive (D/D Eles, Bunker Guards).

The problem is in the current system poison is so very easy to apply. I keep it on my opponents all the time. If they cleanse it just put it back on. Virtually all my builds can do this.

Just as example my poison stacks do as much damage as bleeds.

Now another fix is increasing the potency to 20 percent but there a concern there of what that does to Venomous Aura. As example when venom share my poison with 5 others I can get 8k poison stacks. This without potentcy. I am thinking the reason they did not want to put that higher is that another 20 percent on top of that after a share would be huge.

Potent Poison should be helping people that make poison builds and not people who have little or no access to poison. With low CD on steal, dagger training, that extra strike on spider venom , we can use runes and gear to make true poison based builds and a potent poison as you outline does nothing for such a build.

It is directed towards people who do not train poison which makes little sense.

As to transferring a condition being “unthiefly” i tend to disagree. This basically a sigil of generosity as a trait. We can steal a lot of skills that would seem “unthiefly” and i do not think it a great stretch to imagine giving stuff we do not want back.

It isn’t all that different from other builds having a vast selection of conditions to apply and reapply making removing them next to impossible, or certain professions have dangerous stacking potential with burn which is far stronger than poison.

Venomshare should have no say in how to balance thief, that trait was put there long ago and trying to balance thief skills/traits based on it is ridiculous. If they are that concerned, give lesser venoms to allies rather than the full potency but to justify the grandmaster trait from an entirely different trait line based on this is silly but believable to an extent.

I’d love for condition transferring, skillful based but still. Suggested a million times to give us a venom for that (cough Karka Venom) so we have support options, not just dps support.

Oh I do not think they should balance thief traits around venomshare either. I just think that their mentality. I think a “transfer one condition on inflicting poison” would make this GM trait much more desirable and not be OP.