Guild Wars 2

Before making any more huge nerfs like this (-15% damage for your primary attack skill in S/P weaponset is rather substantial, no matter how you look at it) ArenaNet should really start to consider splitting some of the skills in to PVP and PVE versions similar to what they used in GW1.

The pistol whip change, while obviously aimed to satisfy the crowd complaining about quickness + pistol whip causes S/P to be significantly less desireable in PVE, bit more nerfing like that and you might as well remove S/P thief from PVE all together.

Now before anyone comes up and says, how about using those other skills on your skillbar? Well, besides the auto attack there is a shadowstep, ranged interrupt that does barely any damage at all and an AOE blind… So yes, if you aim to kill anything in a reasonable timeframe the choices are either your auto attack or pistol whip.

I don’t know about everyone else, but if these pistol whip nerfs continue (seeing as the real issue is the quickness buff, those complaints aren’t going to stop even if the damage output was nerfed) I’m a little worried that soon the S/P thief gameplay in PVE will be all about auto attack… But hey, I guess then it will be pretty close to “I swung a sword, hey I swung a sword again!” which doesn’t exactly qualify for fun or interesting gameplay.

Hold Arenanet responsible. Not the individual. How do you even know that it was Izzy that made this decision? I don’t agree with the nerf either, I am a Sword/Pistol thief myself and I’m furious at the change, but I’m not going to make personal attacks on a developer, that is childish and quite frankly, just as stupid as the nerf itself. I will quite happily vote with my wallet if ANet continue to balance the game for sPvP when WvW and PvE are my interest.

The nerf on pistol whip is really going to hurt me….

I play S/P + SB Thief in pve. For dungeons it was great to play a little bit tanky. but now I lost my main dps skill. Hell the auto attack does more damage then this. Don’t see the point play this weapon set. I am actually kitten at this nerf.

+ we got an elite now that is complete crap. the only thing about that skill was that it was unbreakable, but now that is gone.

What is next Blackpowder shot only 1 sec blind duration?

Pistol Whip with CC stacks and haste was a problem. I tend to think that haste is the root of the problem, and that Pistol Whip might be fine without it; but re-working haste is a lot of work, hitting the damage on Pistol Whip is quick and easy, and probably the better course of action until they can spend more time on the bigger issues.

While I agree with nerfing the thieves (and it is my main, I have 250+ pvp matches with mine) I think they are barking up the wrong tree. it is haste that needed a nerf (across all classes) and not PW itself.

Is it wrong for me to want to start a warrior class? They nerf the short bow on Ranger and it seem they will nerf the thief even more.

@Elthurien:

Because Isaiah Cartwright has a history of horrible heavy handed nerfs and he’s the dev generally in charge of balance and metagame. He’s also known to play warrior primarily and surprise surprise, warriors are “in a good place” while every other class has been nerfed in some form.

Case in point:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Smiter%27s_Boon
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Smiter%27s_Boon_

Pistol Whip has been Smiter’s Boon’ed.

RetroSamus.9860:

The nerf on pistol whip is really going to hurt me….

I play S/P + SB Thief in pve. For dungeons it was great to play a little bit tanky. but now I lost my main dps skill. Hell the auto attack does more damage then this. Don’t see the point play this weapon set. I am actually kitten at this nerf.

+ we got an elite now that is complete crap. the only thing about that skill was that it was unbreakable, but now that is gone.

What is next Blackpowder shot only 1 sec blind duration?

It already is only 1s blind duration, it just gets refreshed if the mob stays in the field

at 250% crit dmg, 15% means, 37.5% less dmg if every single hit from PW crits compared to what it was before. S/P is officially off limits to glass cannons. ;P

Devildoc.6721:

RetroSamus.9860:

The nerf on pistol whip is really going to hurt me….

I play S/P + SB Thief in pve. For dungeons it was great to play a little bit tanky. but now I lost my main dps skill. Hell the auto attack does more damage then this. Don’t see the point play this weapon set. I am actually kitten at this nerf.

+ we got an elite now that is complete crap. the only thing about that skill was that it was unbreakable, but now that is gone.

What is next Blackpowder shot only 1 sec blind duration?

It already is only 1s blind duration, it just gets refreshed if the mob stays in the field

I am sorry I meant that the field only would last 1s.

This is one thing what I like about Rift. I played Rift for a year and liked that way they handle balances to classes. They have a Dev for each class and they have a Public test server which people can play on to test there patches they are making.

On the bright side, I don’t have to worry about grinding up the mats to craft Bolt anymore.

Devildoc.6721:

PISTOL WHIP IS THE ONLY SKILL ON THE BAR THAT DOES CONSIDERABLE DAMAGE

Properly set up and with the correct build an auto attack chain can hit with the following percentage benefits:

10% damage increase if Endurance isn’t full, 10% damage increase when attacking from the side or behind with the correct runes plus an addition 5% with a 7% increase to crit if traited, 10% damage increase when Initiative is over six, and 20% if the enemy is below half health. Now, I don’t know if you just add those all up. I don’t know how those percentages stack up. I’m not a math person. I majored in Theater and English. But I know that they offer a significant boost to attack power.

Yes, Pistol Whip is the weapon set’s only real burst skill but with the right degree of set up, finesse, and situation awareness, and build, the weapon set retains a lot of power. Boring power, I’ll admit. Not dynamic, combat wise.

Hopefully the reduction keeps the burst reasonable and still effective given the skills other benefits, particularly the stun. The real issue comes if they touch PW anymore, although admittedly the change might have been too great. This is an appeasement move, yes. The issue was with Quickness (which only needs minor tweaking) but I think that PW can still retain some effectiveness if set up well.

Elthurien.8356:

Hold Arenanet responsible. Not the individual. How do you even know that it was Izzy that made this decision? I don’t agree with the nerf either, I am a Sword/Pistol thief myself and I’m furious at the change, but I’m not going to make personal attacks on a developer, that is childish and quite frankly, just as stupid as the nerf itself. I will quite happily vote with my wallet if ANet continue to balance the game for sPvP when WvW and PvE are my interest.

I’m just going to assume that it’s all Jon Peters’ idea.

Kraven.4936:

at 250% crit dmg, 15% means, 37.5% less dmg if every single hit from PW crits compared to what it was before. S/P is officially off limits to glass cannons. ;P

15% less is 15% less, not more.

Sharpclaw.7510:

Devildoc.6721:

PISTOL WHIP IS THE ONLY SKILL ON THE BAR THAT DOES CONSIDERABLE DAMAGE

Properly set up and with the correct build an auto attack chain can hit with the following percentage benefits:

10% damage increase if Endurance isn’t full, 10% damage increase when attacking from the side or behind with the correct runes plus an addition 5% with a 7% increase to crit if traited, 10% damage increase when Initiative is over six, and 20% if the enemy is below half health. Now, I don’t know if you just add those all up. I don’t know how those percentages stack up. I’m not a math person. I majored in Theater and English. But I know that they offer a significant boost to attack power.

Yes, Pistol Whip is the weapon set’s only real burst skill but with the right degree of set up, finesse, and situation awareness, and build, the weapon set retains a lot of power. Boring power, I’ll admit. Not dynamic, combat wise.

Hopefully the reduction keeps the burst reasonable and still effective given the skills other benefits, particularly the stun. The real issue comes if they touch PW anymore, although admittedly the change might have been too great. This is an appeasement move, yes. The issue was with Quickness (which only needs minor tweaking) but I think that PW can still retain some effectiveness if set up well.

Yes because autoattack is so engaging.

Also autoattack now does as much damage as pistol whip, if not more.

The set is gutted. It might still be useful in PVP where proper timing with haste can still make it do good burst, but in PVE it’s been smiter’s booned.

Playing in Orr tonight I found myself running out of initiative before mobs were dead and taking a big beating while I finished them off.

So instead I stand in a cloud of smoke and autoattack I push 1 button every 4 seconds.

I kill stuff pretty slowly however.

So I’m pretty much forced to resort to dagger. Stand in a cloud of smoke, heartseeker backstab heartseeker (this kills the crab)

I wasn’t using any build that was affected by this changes. Actually I am only leveling an alt thief.

But what non-thief players should understand is that you can’t balance a skill just around itself. I mean, lots of other things count. And you should feel how a thief receives damage. It’s the fourth class I level, after warrior,engi and ele, and ouch. Just regular mobs take such big chunks of your hp away.

So, don’t whine about powerful skills without taking everything into consideration. Level a thief yourself.

stof.9341:

Kraven.4936:

at 250% crit dmg, 15% means, 37.5% less dmg if every single hit from PW crits compared to what it was before. S/P is officially off limits to glass cannons. ;P

15% less is 15% less, not more.

it’s 15% less base damage, but the difference is amplified by crit damage.

It’s hard to say exactly how much, but I went from 10k pistolwhips to 6.5kish 7.5kish when the mob was under 50%.

Kraven.4936:

at 250% crit dmg, 15% means, 37.5% less dmg if every single hit from PW crits compared to what it was before. S/P is officially off limits to glass cannons. ;P

I can confirm that my crits have been reduced by at least 33%. 37% sounds about right.

Bitapetrone.7423:

… Most of the time I don’t even see people try to get away from S/P thieves until it is too late.

…
15% damage? If that hurts you then you are obviously amazingly reliant upon a single skill to kill for you. …

P.S. Forgot to add this. Stop trying to cast Basilisk Venom in combat with 5 people hitting you. It’s not smart. Go into stealth or something.

Agreed. Though I rly liked the petrify … I never rly used the venom for longer then a second. I just use it to follow up with backstab … Which means D venom works good enough for me but I like my current utilities setup

I am not complaining about the changes, though personally I think haste with PW is more of an issue than PW is, but I gotta say I wish people that come from other classes to our forums to post, would do so with some understanding of what they are talking about.

I go to other class forums to learn about their class, I do not post in them with half backed, inaccurate information.

Anyone claiming thieves aren’t overpowered still is a delusional forum warrior.

You know the nerfs will continue for a while yet.

I for one think that insane burst skills should really have a top limit which allows them to surge larger but only to a cap. The point of pistol whip is multiple- evade attacks, interrupt target, deal damage. I really love the ability. It should allow us to deal substantial damage by nature of landing the damage and improving our ability to outlive the enemy and kill them, since we are both evading and landing our attack.

The biggest problem I have with cloak and dagger reliant sets is the difficulty of landing these attacks just to be effective. It’s a bit cool actually that you can pull off sword/dagger with executioner builds and your main damage is the free/1 slot.

With all of that said what would make sense to me is haste making cast bars instant and making the execution of any channeling about 35 or 40% faster. Pistol whip is devastating for the above mentioned benefits and should also deal more damage the more strikes of it that land. It seems that is the core design where you deliver several strikes rather than just one that takes some amount of time to go off. I’m not sure how they came to the point of a 15% base damage change here, but I trust it is from all the quantitative data from combat situations showing damage to hp and time/efficiency averages, and went this route to address the total upward scaling of the damage. At base levels or moderate the adjustment is what it is. While surging upward, the impact is more limiting, it would seem.

Luckily these changes don’t affect me. You see, I use conditions

Still, they pretty much made the elite skill worthless. They should just make it a utility skill now, it doesn’t really deserve the title “elite” any more.

He’re is what I don’t understand. How do people actually ‘abuse’ abilities/set ups which are in the game. What, you expect them to go: ‘oh I won’t use it because people will not like it’.

It’s the dumbest thing I ever heard: ‘people abuse X’. You should say, Arenanet wasn’t smart enough to foresee it’s use.

Btw, another example of PvP ruining PvE. Get seperate skills already Arenanet. I love PvP, but I hate the fact skills get nerfed for PvE too where most of the time they’re perfectly balanced.

RetroSamus.9860:

Hell the auto attack does more damage then this.

The autoattack doesn’t daze the enemy and prevent you from taking damage, does it?

I play P/D thief mostly, but switched to S/P to try out this Pistol Whip, and I found it was not only too strong, but it was boring as well. It’s not useless now by far, you get a daze, a dodge, and an aoe attack. If you think Pistol Whip is useless now, try going Pistol/Dagger, you’re almost entirely single target, deal less damage, and if you don’t kite properly then you die much quicker. Not only that but P/D doesn’t have an ‘i win’ skill.

Tough nerf to take. Didn’t really see it coming, since the damage wasn’t very good in the first place (without Quickness). I guess they musta figured it was too much for a skill with a stun+evade. I like S/P too much to just switch to something else…hoping it’ll still be fun in a tanky/interrupty kinda way.

You know what…
I run a survival, hit like a girl pistol dagger build.
I have been playing pvp since release and before that.
I have a great time wining every fight almost every encounter.
1v1, 1v2, 1v3.

I’m not in your shoes to understand your over exaggerated pain about this nerf, for I don’t use any one of the abilities that were nerfed.

All of us are still learning to become better, why does every one here jump to a conclusion and assume that this build/skill was the end of the road and it was as good as it gets?

To all of you throwing out blames and posting how you cant do anything. Have you tried fixing your problem your self before being completely rude towards Anet?

Isn’t that the point of evolving? When you’re face to face with your problems, don’t cry, dry your eyes, and fix them.

Games in general are supposed to make us better at thinking.
What you’re asking for and crying for is just hitting a brick wall.

What if they made it a 5% nerf, what if they made it a 20% nerf…holly crap!!
Work with it.
They DO know what they are doing.
They are working professionals and have been so for many, years.
They have successful games under their belts; tons of experience!

You guys on the other hand… what have you done?
If you think you know better? Go make your own game.
Go find a publisher and work on a pitch to wow them to fund your game. Go hire a team of concept artists, go hire a team of 3D artists, go hire a team of coders.
Go compete against other giants of companies that do mmos.
Do it your self if you think everything revolves around your problems.

You know what, you wouldn’t make it out of the door, you guys have no character.
You guys are behaving like a bunch of kids. Maybe you are.

You know what…
I run a survival, hit like a girl pistol dagger build.
I have been playing pvp since release and before that.
I have a great time wining every fight almost every encounter.
1v1, 1v2, 1v3.
I’m not in your shoes to understand your over exaggerated pain about this nerf, for I don’t use any one of the abilities that were nerfed.

I usually run D/P. It doesn’t directly affect me, either. But I can still see the problem here. I originally was going to play S/P. Even long before I knew what skills were available, I liked the S/P flavor. But you know what? I found out through experimentation that that weapon set was very weak without haste, so I went with the more sustained D/P set. S/P was, however, extremely effective while haste was up. So don’t you think it would have been more prudent to modify haste or how it affects pistol whip rather than a flat damage nerf to the pistol whip ability, which was useless without haste?

You say they know what they are doing. I’m not so sure. To begin with, if they really knew what they were doing, How did the issue come up in the first place? And even with the issue there, they continue to show that they don’t know what they are doing by taking the action they did against it. And that’s not even mentioning things such as their lovely reply about FoV, which showed that at least one of them has no idea what they are talking about.

No, my friend, they most definitely need help. They’re great with the business aspects, I suppose, but really lacking on the gaming knowledge and balancing forethought.

obtuse.8291:

I for one think that insane burst skills should really have a top limit which allows them to surge larger but only to a cap. The point of pistol whip is multiple- evade attacks, interrupt target, deal damage. I really love the ability. It should allow us to deal substantial damage by nature of landing the damage and improving our ability to outlive the enemy and kill them, since we are both evading and landing our attack.

The biggest problem I have with cloak and dagger reliant sets is the difficulty of landing these attacks just to be effective. It’s a bit cool actually that you can pull off sword/dagger with executioner builds and your main damage is the free/1 slot.

With all of that said what would make sense to me is haste making cast bars instant and making the execution of any channeling about 35 or 40% faster. Pistol whip is devastating for the above mentioned benefits and should also deal more damage the more strikes of it that land. It seems that is the core design where you deliver several strikes rather than just one that takes some amount of time to go off. I’m not sure how they came to the point of a 15% base damage change here, but I trust it is from all the quantitative data from combat situations showing damage to hp and time/efficiency averages, and went this route to address the total upward scaling of the damage. At base levels or moderate the adjustment is what it is. While surging upward, the impact is more limiting, it would seem.

Name me another class/setup where autoattack is their highest damaging skill please.

“Substantial damage” yeah, really.

If that’s substantial damage then maybe 100b should do less damage than autoattacks too.

Martym.6971:

I’ll keep owning on my D/P backstab build with Dagger Storm :-)

My favorite main build is D/P backstab with Dagger Storm. DS is such an awesome Elite Skill that I really don’t use the others.

Mandra Madador.1709:

You know what…
I run a survival, hit like a girl pistol dagger build.
I have been playing pvp since release and before that.
I have a great time wining every fight almost every encounter.
1v1, 1v2, 1v3.

I’m not in your shoes to understand your over exaggerated pain about this nerf, for I don’t use any one of the abilities that were nerfed.

All of us are still learning to become better, why does every one here jump to a conclusion and assume that this build/skill was the end of the road and it was as good as it gets?

To all of you throwing out blames and posting how you cant do anything. Have you tried fixing your problem your self before being completely rude towards Anet?

Isn’t that the point of evolving? When you’re face to face with your problems, don’t cry, dry your eyes, and fix them.

Games in general are supposed to make us better at thinking.
What you’re asking for and crying for is just hitting a brick wall.

What if they made it a 5% nerf, what if they made it a 20% nerf…holly crap!!
Work with it.
They DO know what they are doing.
They are working professionals and have been so for many, years.
They have successful games under their belts; tons of experience!

You guys on the other hand… what have you done?
If you think you know better? Go make your own game.
Go find a publisher and work on a pitch to wow them to fund your game. Go hire a team of concept artists, go hire a team of 3D artists, go hire a team of coders.
Go compete against other giants of companies that do mmos.
Do it your self if you think everything revolves around your problems.

You know what, you wouldn’t make it out of the door, you guys have no character.
You guys are behaving like a bunch of kids. Maybe you are.

This is a ridiculous post. Of course people are going to do their best to hold game developers accountable for changes made to the game. This is only right.

By your logic, we should also give ANet a pass on the completely busted player culling issue (which was made worse in last night’s patch, probably by accident) because hey, they know what they are doing, right? In the meantime, just adapt!

It may also surprise you to learn that adapting to changes and giving feedback about them are not mutually exclusive activities. You can do both.

Poorly thought out feedback riddled with inaccuracies is one thing, but you can’t just say “don’t give any feedback at all, go make your own game” lol. Choices matter, games can and do become worse when bad choices are made, and people who like those games generally don’t want to see that sort of thing happen.

Syynx.5762:

RetroSamus.9860:

Hell the auto attack does more damage then this.

The autoattack doesn’t daze the enemy and prevent you from taking damage, does it?

I play P/D thief mostly, but switched to S/P to try out this Pistol Whip, and I found it was not only too strong, but it was boring as well. It’s not useless now by far, you get a daze, a dodge, and an aoe attack. If you think Pistol Whip is useless now, try going Pistol/Dagger, you’re almost entirely single target, deal less damage, and if you don’t kite properly then you die much quicker. Not only that but P/D doesn’t have an ‘i win’ skill.

No, but black powder prevents you from taking damage more effectively than Pistol Whip could ever hope to. You took damage while pistol whipping mobs, the evade wasn’t for the entire attack, the first part of the animation you usually ate full damage while you casted the stun, the stun only hit 1 mob and you’d have others beating on you. You had to pair it with signet of malice to give good HPS to counteract the hits you were taking.

Now you just stand in a smoke cloud and autoattack, kill things slow as molasses but safer and just as fast as pistol whipping now.

BTW guys, anyone suggesting “adapt” you should just change your language to fit what the real suggestion is “don’t use sword/pistol in PVE” because that’s what it really is now.

Name me another class/setup where autoattack is their highest damaging skill please.

That’s pretty much the ranger… auto attack and pet. extremely easy in PvE, and why it’s a favorite among botters.

Devildoc.6721:

On the bright side, I don’t have to worry about grinding up the mats to craft Bolt anymore.

I was thinking the same thing

Mandra Madador.1709:

They DO know what they are doing.
They are working professionals and have been so for many,
You guys on the other hand… what have you done?
If you think you know better? Go make your own game.
Go find a publisher and work on a pitch to wow them to fund your game. Go hire a team of concept artists, go hire a team of 3D artists, go hire a team of coders.
Go compete against other giants of companies that do mmos.
Do it your self if you think everything revolves around your problems.

You know what, you wouldn’t make it out of the door, you guys have no character.
You guys are behaving like a bunch of kids. Maybe you are.

I have worked gaming QA for YEARS at the very same studio ArenaNet subcontracted their QA for GW2 to. I have to say, DEVs in general are completely out of touch with reality most of the time. They live in lala land. Programmers and QA, on the other hand..

Devs will say they are gamers yet most probably dont even play their own game(they will pretend to).

What do YOU know about the industry?

that’s what like 3 paragraphs of pure nonsense. nothing proved.

If you don’t get what’s being talked about, Mandra, stay out of it. The problem with PW wasn’t the ability itself, because that ability isn’t really strong agains a player unless he’s as dumb as a pve mob. What made PW really strong was HASTE. I’m not sure why they didn’t adress that instead.

And yeah, it feels kind of crappy to be nerfed when there are classes who outdo your damage and survivability out there and they were barely touched. So yeah, either stay out of it or at least get an idea of what’s being debated before posting.

Syynx.5762:

RetroSamus.9860:

Hell the auto attack does more damage then this.

The autoattack doesn’t daze the enemy and prevent you from taking damage, does it?

I play P/D thief mostly, but switched to S/P to try out this Pistol Whip, and I found it was not only too strong, but it was boring as well. It’s not useless now by far, you get a daze, a dodge, and an aoe attack. If you think Pistol Whip is useless now, try going Pistol/Dagger, you’re almost entirely single target, deal less damage, and if you don’t kite properly then you die much quicker. Not only that but P/D doesn’t have an ‘i win’ skill.

What you find boring other people find fun. I hate pistol/dagger combo because it is such a slow process of kiting, conditions and more kiting. If I wanted to play a kiting character I’d play a ranger or mage-like. I tried condition builds as well as sword/dagger control builds, they are all just as harmful as pistol whip and backstab, they just don’t show the big scary burst in the combat log. I actually find Sword/Pistol more interesting out of the six choices we have, I enjoy having an option with zero stealth and zero venom. I’m a Thief not an Assassin.