Guild Wars 2

I do fractals and instances and all I see from thieves are P/P thieves which is just as bad as a Guardian using staff. Your damage SUCKS and all you are doing is making the fights take longer. I don’t care if you enjoy the looks or playstyle you should be doing what you can to help down mobs in an efficient manner not doing the crappiest damage of everyone in the group.

STOP using P/P in group instances it SUCKS

1/10

Too obvious

There are actually a couple instances where I swap specifically to P/P, although I wouldn’t recommend running it full-time.

It is excellent for the Dredge fractal boss, providing access to Headshot to easily wear away stun immunity for Scorpion Wire while still allowing some power-based damage to be brought to the table while you’re on the move.

It is also pretty good for the Grawl fractal boss, allowing easy constant mobility, high hit volume for the shield, and Black Powder.

Is P/P’s damage mediocre? Sure, but most people aren’t min/maxing their groups anyways. Someone running P/P isn’t going to cause much more harm than someone running Signet of Shadows instead of a more useful utility, or running MF food instead of combat food. If you’ve got a guild group running level >30 speed-fractals with a min/maxed group, more power to you, if not, there are probably tons of things you could do to be better.

I would submit to you that running P/P so you can be lazy and do less damage at a safe range is exactly the same as people who run +vit/toughness gear instead of full berserker so they can be lazy and miss a dodge. As soon as you jump on people for not going full-offense gear and dodging everything, you can jump on people for using a sub-par weapon set.

Nautika.5376:

I don’t care if you enjoy the looks or playstyle you should be doing what you can to help down mobs in an efficient manner not doing the crappiest damage of everyone in the group.

Not everything in a dungeon consist in damage. P/P is very efficient in many fights.

Besides, P/P thiefs tend to be very survivable. In fact, they lose far more DPS by rezzing players who only focus on damage…

Don’t tell people how to play their class.

Tulisin.6945:

I would submit to you that running P/P so you can be lazy and do less damage at a safe range is exactly the same as people who run +vit/toughness gear instead of full berserker so they can be lazy and miss a dodge. As soon as you jump on people for not going full-offense gear and dodging everything, you can jump on people for using a sub-par weapon set.

I run toughness/crit/power/healing power with 15k life and I spend half my play time reviving my team mates. Not an exaggeration. Running full damage and being the best player, you are still going to die much more often than someone in a toughness + healing set. And I don’t do it so I can take a hit instead of dodging, I do it for the attacks that I can’t dodge. It’s nice, not dying in one hit.

I think some one played to much World of Warcraft here…. and with some one i mean Nautika! There is no agro reset!

P/P condition build with SB is extremely flexible and still pours out decent damage.

If you do not think being able to lock down a boss for 15 to 20 seconds every 45 seconds is not as useful as doing 20% more dps than you need to re-evaluate GROUP dps as opposed to the dps one character is doing.

ta

It’s funny because I end up contributing more using P/P from a distance than most people that run in with damage gear and get wiped by a sneeze.

Tarin Twisted.4183:

If you do not think being able to lock down a boss for 15 to 20 seconds every 45 seconds

Not sure how you’re pulling that off, unless you’ve got several thieves popping headshots to instantly remove stun immunity and then hitting a long-duration daze.

I read OP’s post as. Stop trying to have FUN playing a GAME. Get faster at being DONE with playing so I can get back to Lion’s Arch and wait to find more people to grind this dungeon with me.

I run P/P because I enjoy the playstyle of it. I have fun using P/P. Which is kinda the point of me playing the game…

Sure I’d love a buff to P/P because it is a weaker combination, but it’s not like I’m not contributing at all…

Blacksarevok.8104:

1/10

Too obvious

Looking at the answers i guess it isn’t too obvious.It’s bad thou
1/10 too

While the OP is exaggerating, I have to say that I don’t understand why I see so many thieves running P/P myself when it very clearly has subpar damage and subpar utility.

You can spec into pistols, you can spec into init. regen, you an spec into Signet CD reduction (that gives you +2 init. on pop)…etc. etc.

I can chain Unload [almost] all day long, regularly hitting 7k+ in ~2-3s.

How is that bad damage exactly..? Would you rather me facetank the boss and get 2 shot? I mean thieves have low armor and low (the lowest?) hp pool. There is a reason we range some dungeon fights.

Not to mention with P/P you can drop an amazing AoE blind field (that constantly blinds anything that comes in it). I regularly “tank” parts of dungeons this way with my Thief when we are with less experienced players. When you are specced into init. regen, you can maintain this field for quite a long time, allowing the ranged dps’ers to burn down the mobs.

Have you ever even played a thief, I wonder?

Idolicious.6091:

You can spec into pistols, you can spec into init. regen, you an spec into Signet CD reduction (that gives you +2 init. on pop)…etc. etc.

I can chain Unload [almost] all day long, regularly hitting 7k+ in ~2-3s.

I’m specced into init regen and can attest its a valid a path to dps and utility… I don’t tend to use P/P myself, but that’s only out of preference. If going that way its worth adding “Hastened Replenishment” which adds +4 to healing skill meaning you have a 12s heal with +6 init. With another 2 signets and “Roll for Initiative” along with “Opportunist” there’s some serious init regen.

I prefer S/P and D/P for most situations as it suites the gameplay I want… There’s threads describing how awful that is. If I’m feeling uncertain about a situation I go D/D and P/P and focus on staying up and rezzing others… That’s also awful… There’s threads describing pretty much any loadout as awful except the SB.

It’s a game. People are meant to have fun; Let them.

Not sure if OP is serious…

Idolicious.6091:

You can spec into pistols, you can spec into init. regen, you an spec into Signet CD reduction (that gives you +2 init. on pop)…etc. etc.

I can chain Unload [almost] all day long, regularly hitting 7k+ in ~2-3s.

How is that bad damage exactly..? Would you rather me facetank the boss and get 2 shot? I mean thieves have low armor and low (the lowest?) hp pool. There is a reason we range some dungeon fights.

Not to mention with P/P you can drop an amazing AoE blind field (that constantly blinds anything that comes in it). I regularly “tank” parts of dungeons this way with my Thief when we are with less experienced players. When you are specced into init. regen, you can maintain this field for quite a long time, allowing the ranged dps’ers to burn down the mobs.

It is “bad damage” because it is worse than most other damage sources thieves have, even if you could chain Unload forever. Even un-interrupted Unload spam is less DPS than using either melee auto attack. The best thing you can say for it is that it allows sustainable power-based damage on single targets from 900 range, not exactly a wide area of expertise.

And all the utility of P/P comes from the /P offhand, which can just as easily be used with S/P or D/P.

If you enjoy the play style and safety, more power to you. There are some fights that genuinely support P/P (like, as I said, the Dredge fractal boss). However, there are two facts that people look at when deriding P/P:

1. P/P trades damage potential for safety, it straight up can’t keep up in DPS with most other thief builds. There’s nothing hugely wrong with that, people do it all the time when they wear Valkyrie armor instead of Berserker, for instance, but it is the truth.

2. Pistol traits are, on the whole, underwhelming. You’re right that you can spec into signet use, init regen, etc, and those specializations can be made genuinely useful for a variety of weapons, but the pure pistol traits just aren’t very good.

P/P is a good balance of sustained damage and survivability which can be summed up into one word: support. Thieves are very good in support with venom sharing (offensive) and keeping their team alive (defensive), while still being able to unleash sustained damage (You cannot have it all, as they say). I’ve not run with any team that looked down on the way I play my P/P thief.

Bananasmile.4126:

P/P is a good balance of sustained damage and survivability which can be summed up into one word: support. Thieves are very good in support with venom sharing (offensive) and keeping their team alive (defensive), while still being able to unleash sustained damage (You cannot have it all, as they say). I’ve not run with any team that looked down on the way I play my P/P thief.

Venom share doesnt support anyone but the thief using it.

perhaps you might want to check the range on the shared venoms. when you realize the share distance is maybe 200 (melee range) you realize you are buffing anyone, because they arent standing on top of you.

I’m aware of the range, I just didn’t think I had to elaborate it. You run around and walk up to them, that’s the reason for the P/P, because you will be running around a lot trying to share your venom while still being able to unleash damage.

Bananasmile.4126:

I’m aware of the range, I just didn’t think I had to elaborate it. You run around and walk up to them, that’s the reason for the P/P, because you will be running around a lot trying to share your venom while still being able to unleash damage.

again, unless they are stacked on top of each other, you are sharing with 1 guy. it isnt particularly what most would call acceptable group support and surely nothing to justify pistol/pistol single target damage.

Again, you run up to your allies, and you share your venom one at a time if they’re spread out, that’s why you’re using P/P to unleash damage while in the process (I’d like to see you try sharing your venoms using D/D while everyone’s all over the place). You don’t need everyone to have all the same venoms at once, you just need one of them to have your venom so your skills are still being used while you hit unload and apply the same poison. You can do this every every 36 seconds, so with practice, you can have a perma-poison team, while you still being able to do damage via your P/P constantly…you cannot DPS while trying to share your venoms in a D/D because you’ll be out of range for the most part…

Way too obvious for some, and not so obvious for others.

Mods are too busy infracting people for posting “unrelated posts”, instead of these posts.

Whether you can venom share with melee depends on your group composition, but I’d still argue that P/D is superior for venom share.

The problem with the idea of P/P being a utility set is that to even maintain mediocre damage output you’re pouring initiative into Unload, necessarily leaving less available for the (quite good) #4/5 utilities. Compare to S/P or D/P which can outdamage P/P without using any initiative, leaving 100 % of it for timely Headshots and Black Powder.

Unfortunately, and entirely due to the dancing dagger nerf, P/P Unload spam is as good as it gets for single target ranged damage. Sbow is about 20% better for mulitple targets and about 20% worse for single targets.

So, if for whatever reason, you can’t get in melee and STAY in melee, P/P is as good as it gets. I really do mean stay there DPS’ing 100%, not in and out dodging.

It may not feel like you’re spending a lot of time avoiding damage because you’re doing something a lot more active than moving from point to point while spamming 33333, but if you’re not in there hitting it, you’re not DPS’ing. Every fraction of a second you’re not hitting the target waters down the roughly 30~50% lead that melee has over ranged.

Your comment on staff guardians is equally misinformed. Yes, staff itself has poor DPS. However, the guardian will be putting 12 stacks of might on the group every 16s, plus two group heals and a swiftness. Trading at most 50% of their own DPS for buffing 4 other players that much can be a big win.

Also, staffs shockwave (it’s auto/1 skill) can be used to take out herds of little things pretty fast. Not faster than GS on a tight clump with it’s CDs up, but faster than GS with it’s CD down and much faster on a wider spread that isn’t clumped within GS’s range.

Staff is by far my least favorite Guardian weapon. I’d never camp out on it. But it definitely has application that a clever guardian can exploit to the teams great advantage.

Okuza.5210:

So, if for whatever reason, you can’t get in melee and STAY in melee, P/P is as good as it gets.

P/D only requires you to get into melee, not stay in melee, while having situationally better damage and equal range capability.

The only reason why my P/P damage is subpar is because I have to stop and rez a melee player every 5 seconds.

Bubbles.1047:

The only reason why my P/P damage is subpar is because I have to stop and rez a melee player every 5 seconds.

If you refer to single-target, then yeah, this is usually true. My favourite thing to do is start off a fight from range with Smokescreen and Unloading like crazy, then when the Smokescreen runs out, Blinding Powder → Tactical Strike → Stun-lock.

I guess I just really enjoy the P/P style and HAVE to include it somewhere. I think it’s the trench coat + hat.

I think the sustained dps has to be emphasised… Again, I avoid P/P but if you’re not going to be able to sustain dps otherwise P/P is the best option. People rarely pay adequate attention to the amount of time they’re not actually spending dealing damage and the hit that causes their sustained dps.

Having said that, it is perhaps best to regard P/P as what is used while learning a situation and should be transitioned to a loadout with better sustained dps when possible.

Really though, if somebody is really enjoying P/P and is providing unbroken dps and rezzing it is a solid and reliable contribution even if not optimal… Should we try and curb their fun? Do we want to turn this into a game where people are told what their optimal build should be the moment they enter a group? Some games have become that.

People. Full zerk p/p <> sb thief with dual damage, dual crit, vuln on crit, flank crit and flank damage does insane amount of damage, crazy amount of critical food procs (i can stay alive just with one omnom pie while also adding awesome damage) with 25 stacks of perception.
On a 50% hp boss with around 90% crit rate from the back unload with all crits deals 12+k damage, up to 2k leeching from food, restores 3-4 initiative, applies 2-3 vuln and it is also a ranged attack.
On top of that, you get aoe blind (and one more mass stealth), on-demand spammable interrupt and access to shortbow gives you all the aoe and dodges you need.
And don’t forget combos

go complain to A-nerf team for keeping damage of P/P low
tell me about single target damage using ranged weapons for thief…

Ichishi.9613:

On a 50% hp boss with around 90% crit rate from the back unload with all crits deals 12+k damage, up to 2k leeching from food, restores 3-4 initiative, applies 2-3 vuln and it is also a ranged attack.

Yes, you can stack a bunch of bonuses up and Unload will do a lot, but so will all the other skills that synergize with those bonuses. Pistol Whip, for instance, will do more DPS, stun, evade, and have more hit volume (Unload’s primary strength). Lets break down your claim though:

1. Damage. Yes, it can do 12K damage, no that isn’t a lot of damage for how long it takes to channel. It isn’t bad DPS, but it can’t compete with other options the thief has.
2. 2K leeching from food. Absolutely, but again not particularly that impressive due to how long it takes to use Unload. PW is leagues better in this respect, and since Unload doesn’t have any AE capability, sword mainhand will pull in more on-crit healing against multiple targets.
3. 3-4 initiative is not going to happen very often, at least not from procs. Even if you were able to pull 100 % crit rate, a 20 % chance to trigger your +1 init trait means you’ll pull in on-average 1.6 initiative from your 8 Unload hits. Since even perfect-world you aren’t holding a 100 % crit rate, you’re looking at substantially lower returns. What you’re actually seeing is proc intiative + natural initiative regen over the eternity it takes to use Unload.
4. With a 1 second cooldown on Vulnerability proc you’re not going to see 3 Vuln stacks on an ability that doesn’t last 3 seconds. This is a place where Unload could potentially shine, but it is utterly shut down by cooldowns on crit procs. The fact here is that running huge crit rate values you’re going to be able to keep that cooldown down with most skills and Unload doesn’t help much. Edit: A quick test against some targets in the mists demonstrates that with 85%~ crit rate, you can expect 0-1 stacks of vulnerability, with 2 being very uncommon (less than 10 % of the time).

So, to reiterate, P/P is a good choice for trading damage potential for safety. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as people who use P/P accept that it is the choice they’re making. Conversely, groups have no business telling people to stop using P/P unless they’re also telling people to stop using defensive gear and get into Berserker equipment. Damage potential for survivability, it is the same choice.

imo pp should be sidekicks not primary weapons.

just to clear something out, dps means damage over time, so chaining unload all day long from safety does more dps than a hit n’ run burst build (against bosses)

been using p/p since beta and im usually the group’s biggest dps

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.7.6.10.20.0.5.5.16.0.155.168.169.176.179.2.2.0.453.460.0.470.474.476.0.0.0.0.0.0.515.0.0.25.30.0.0.15

Nautika.5376:

I do fractals and instances and all I see from thieves are P/P thieves which is just as bad as a Guardian using staff. Your damage SUCKS and all you are doing is making the fights take longer. I don’t care if you enjoy the looks or playstyle you should be doing what you can to help down mobs in an efficient manner not doing the crappiest damage of everyone in the group.

STOP using P/P in group instances it SUCKS

If the instance is easy I agree staff guardian sucks. However for surviving and support, staff is great. Especially if it’s hard to reach the mobs from your current location, the cone will hit all of them. against the legendary ice elemental (dredge), staff + empower + altruistic healing + line of warding (at the burnt lava locations) = win.

So please think before you post. Sure i can see some noobs just spamming staff aoe 1. But that doesn’t make all staff users bad. And in combat i mainly use GS/hammer as main weapon, switch to staff when things go bad (empower can heal quite a lot to me and to party members).

Thieves really have no business being in melee range of many bosses without ridiculously tanky gear or tankiness provided by party members like a Guardian.
Does P/P theoretically deal less damage? Probably, but sometimes trying to use melee would mean you spend more time dodging, downed, or waiting to reengage than actually hitting your target.

Sticking with the same weapon setup or same set of utilities/traits for everything is just lazy play, though, and applies to more than just P/P.

OP is troll or hasn’t played altruistic healing crit build… Staff is a very viable weapon in dungeons.

In my experience all ranged combat is subpar on the thief – if compared to other classes. So what is the OP’s suggestions for us? Go melee in situations where even Warriors and Guardians go long ranged (i.e. Ascalon fractal)?

Thief’s survive due to evading attacks (the way aegis works for Guardians). If I face an enemy that either does very high pbaoe damage (Ascalon Boss) or does cc (Harpys in Asura Fractal) I go into ranged combat since melee range wouldn’t give me the appropriate time to dodge attacks.

And while the average damage of Unload might not be that much, let’s not forget Body Shot. Whenever I switch to p/p, my experience is that there are usually only 1-3 stacks of vulnerability on the enemy – even when there are ranged Warriors in the group. As p/ thiefs we can go for at least 15 stacks permanently. For short amounts of time even 20-25.
Can my 4 teammates do more damage with 15-20 stacks of vulnerability than I can do with Unload? Most likely.
Can I be more usefull with that combination than to try a very stupid melee attack? Absolutely!
Add in a perfectly timed Headshot and the occasional teammate ressurection and I don’t think that p/p sucks.

And to those that complain about Signet of Shadows: I am usually equally sad about fellow thiefs that have that skill slotted without ever using it. Imho when used correctly it is a very essential skill, in that you use it to blind a mob immediately before you run into it to to prevent them from simply downing you with their initial attack. Then you do a lot of damage (not with P/P :P) and dodge out before their counter.
Well, except in the Dredge fractal, for obvious reasons.

surely you do more damage in a given amount of time in melee but you spend more time dodging and closing in.
With p/p you dont have that 120 range radius area you need to be in to attack. You dont need to dodge as much. You dont need defensive utilities. You can move freely.
And I find it much harder to benefit from scholar runes 6 set when every misdodge takes significantly more than 10% of hp.

As a thief user, I carry all my armors and my weaponry from daggers, bows, swords etc all the time consuming the starter bag and one 15-slot bag. In Fractals, I’ve used P/P a lot. Main reason is that it dishes out faster damage if I am to take out a single target without diving-in and having a chance to die. My thief is wearing berserker gear and yes I get things done as a glass cannon though as the fractal levels go higher, fighting in the fractals in close combat isn’t the right thing to do especially if you are to face a horde of grawls or dredge.

If you shadowstep to a huge pack of grawls/dredge and do your dagger storm. I’m pretty sure you’d be dead in no time.

Keep this in mind as you do fractals:

" You deal huge amounts of damage but you die almost instantly when someone spits at you. What good are you to us when you are dead? "

Lockon.5312:

" You deal huge amounts of damage but you die almost instantly when someone spits at you. What good are you to us when you are dead? "

That applies to PvP too.

ok PP in fractals. lets see

1. it a game, if you dont have fun you not playing the game right.
2. PP does actually do more dmg than shortbow against bosses where you have to keep moving, shortbow needs you to either have more than 1 opponent so the shots bounce, or be able to stop moving and aim the AoE skill.
3. in PvP if you use the pistol stealth move followed by spammign the dual shot skill you can actually do pretty good dmg at a distance.

4. the person who made this thread is either trolling, or is QQ cause he can’t use dual pistols. its up to the player what they use, not you.

Bassman.9245:

just to clear something out, dps means damage over time, so chaining unload all day long from safety does more dps than a hit n’ run burst build (against bosses)

Yeah, but almost nobody uses hit n’ run burst builds in PvE. Even if you could chain Unload permanently (most builds cannot do more than five/six in a row), it is less DPS than melee auto attacks, or even shortbow auto attacks vs. multiple targets.

So for example, Unload is better DPS than someone landing a backstab, walking around for five seconds, and landing another backstab, but since dagger auto attack is better DPS than Unload by itself, chaining those two together (auto + backstab) is going to result in DPS not just slightly better, but leagues better.

lunaticat.4216

Can my 4 teammates do more damage with 15-20 stacks of vulnerability than I can do with Unload? Most likely.

The answer to that question is only situationally “yes” because Unload’s DPS is mediocre, and even then it is questionable. 15 stacks of vulnerability is essentially a 15 % boost in power-based damage, which in a perfect world would be easy to determine. However, consider that it doesn’t affect condition based damage, so the effect is heavily lessened if anyone around is running condition-based builds. Also consider that the relative use of Body Shot is lessened the higher the DPS of the thief is than the group average DPS. This means that if you’re running a high-utility thief without many offensive stats that using Body Shot is a great idea, since you’ll lose a small amount of personal DPS (since you aren’t specced for it) and give the big hitters in your group a big boost. However, the reality is that the thief often is the big hitter, compared to the rest of the group. By reducing your own damage potential drastically to increase other lower-damage groupmates by 15 % you might not even be breaking even.

I can absolutely respect P/P as a platform for utility wherein the thief decides from the get-go that they’ll be uninterested in personal damage and devote their initiative to utility via Body Shot, Headshot, and Black Powder. But simply taking a damage-focused build and throwing in Body Shots may not be a good investment.

Ichishi

surely you do more damage in a given amount of time in melee but you spend more time dodging and closing in.
With p/p you dont have that 120 range radius area you need to be in to attack. You dont need to dodge as much. You dont need defensive utilities. You can move freely.
And I find it much harder to benefit from scholar runes 6 set when every misdodge takes significantly more than 10% of hp.

Depending on your build you may be dodging anyways, and thieves have enough closers and mobility to ensure very high melee uptime in all but the most mobility-based fights. I’m not sure what you mean by “defensive utilities” though. The only real defense-heavy utility thieves have, Roll for Initiative, doesn’t support melee combat in any case.

You’re right on the money with it being more difficult to benefit from scholar runes in melee range, but I question whether that is enough to offset the disadvantages. That is, however, mostly an extension of P/P being safer, which I don’t think anyone doubts. One could argue that taking a bunch of toughness/vit also makes it easier to benefit from Scholar runes, but it may not be the best choice for damage.

arenta.2953:

3. in PvP if you use the pistol stealth move followed by spammign the dual shot skill you can actually do pretty good dmg at a distance.

In PvP, if I see a P/P thief, I drool from my mouth because I know it’s a free kill. P/P in PvP is TERRIBLE. All I do is dodge and continue strafing soon as I see Unload, and I barely take any damage AT ALL. Wasting 2/3 utilities and your heal skill to stealth for P 1 is silly. I’d rather play P/D if I wanted to benefit from P 1.

In PvE, P/P is ONLY, and ONLY worth using when you’re FORCED to stay at range during a single target DPS…and, that’s ONLY for Unload spamming…until you run out of initiative ofc, which doesn’t take that long…especially when untraited for initiative regen.

Tulisin.6945:

Bassman.9245:

just to clear something out, dps means damage over time, so chaining unload all day long from safety does more dps than a hit n’ run burst build (against bosses)

Yeah, but almost nobody uses hit n’ run burst builds in PvE. Even if you could chain Unload permanently (most builds cannot do more than five/six in a row), it is less DPS than melee auto attacks, or even shortbow auto attacks vs. multiple targets.

So for example, Unload is better DPS than someone landing a backstab, walking around for five seconds, and landing another backstab, but since dagger auto attack is better DPS than Unload by itself, chaining those two together (auto + backstab) is going to result in DPS not just slightly better, but leagues better.

I really would love to see a video of someone maintaining a 80%+ melee presence (meaning staying in there to actively dish out damage without eating dirt in downed state every 10-20 seconds) as a glass cannon thief throughout a scale 10+ fractal.

P/P is not viable in spvp only because it cannot hold points well due to being forced to kite.
One-on-one proper p/p can destroy anything without extensive amounts of reflects.

edit: that WILL sounded too cheesy

Bassman.9245:

just to clear something out, dps means damage over time, so chaining unload all day long from safety does more dps than a hit n’ run burst build (against bosses)

been using p/p since beta and im usually the group’s biggest dps

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.7.6.10.20.0.5.5.16.0.155.168.169.176.179.2.2.0.453.460.0.470.474.476.0.0.0.0.0.0.515.0.0.25.30.0.0.15

dps means damage per second, its different than damage over time.

Lorath.2504:

Tulisin.6945:

Bassman.9245:

just to clear something out, dps means damage over time, so chaining unload all day long from safety does more dps than a hit n’ run burst build (against bosses)

Yeah, but almost nobody uses hit n’ run burst builds in PvE. Even if you could chain Unload permanently (most builds cannot do more than five/six in a row), it is less DPS than melee auto attacks, or even shortbow auto attacks vs. multiple targets.

So for example, Unload is better DPS than someone landing a backstab, walking around for five seconds, and landing another backstab, but since dagger auto attack is better DPS than Unload by itself, chaining those two together (auto + backstab) is going to result in DPS not just slightly better, but leagues better.

I really would love to see a video of someone maintaining a 80%+ melee presence (meaning staying in there to actively dish out damage without eating dirt in downed state every 10-20 seconds) as a glass cannon thief throughout a scale 10+ fractal.

As someone who has done it in 10+ fractals:

Ice Fractal – Easy, no real issues, time PW well on the shaman boss and you don’t need to worry about the breath weapon.
Dredge Fractal – Depends on your role. I tend to focus on stunning and scorpion-wire’ing the boss around. You can make melee work here, but the fight isn’t really conducive to it, especially since you generally don’t want to cripple him while he’s moving. If you just want to burst him down in a couple phases melee is the way to go.
Grawl Fractal – Melee works great on the miniboss, for the final boss I usually go ranged so I can focus on running around helping people getting hurt by fire. To melee you just have to continue walking circles. Only other boss I generally range.
Water fractal – Inapplicable
Asura fractal – Melee works great on everything, especially if you can get the final robots grouped into a ball for AE sword strikes.
Giant fractal – Generally range the first fight since the group does, for the final fight melee works great, especially since sword strikes will swiftly down the adds as he spawns them.
Charr fractal – Melee works great unless the rest of your group decides to range it, in which case just go with the flow.
Swamp fractal – Melee is amazing on the plant boss, requires a little dodging on Mossman when he pops up.
Bonus fractal – Doesn’t really matter, you can kill the boss without wearing armor because everything is mechanics-based. Melee is needed for the golems.

So in summary the only big fights I really range are Dredge/Grawl bosses, but that is mostly due to fight mechanics and not the fact that it is dangerous to melee them. And ranging the dredge boss is only really when groups want to draw out the fight instead of stacking up and trying to end it quickly.

Bassman.9245:

just to clear something out, dps means damage over time, so chaining unload all day long from safety does more dps than a hit n’ run burst build (against bosses)

been using p/p since beta and im usually the group’s biggest dps

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.7.6.10.20.0.5.5.16.0.155.168.169.176.179.2.2.0.453.460.0.470.474.476.0.0.0.0.0.0.515.0.0.25.30.0.0.15

I love it when people use abbreviations without knowing what they mean:

DPS = Damage per Second (used when describing your damage during an event or during a part of an event)
DoT = Damage over Time (used to describe bleed like affects typically)

and not that’s it’s relevant but “LFG looking for group for xyz” and “LFG need 1 more for xyz” is redundant (sorry, but that irks me to no end).

Wilow.3061:

Bassman.9245:

just to clear something out, dps means damage over time, so chaining unload all day long from safety does more dps than a hit n’ run burst build (against bosses)

been using p/p since beta and im usually the group’s biggest dps

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.7.6.10.20.0.5.5.16.0.155.168.169.176.179.2.2.0.453.460.0.470.474.476.0.0.0.0.0.0.515.0.0.25.30.0.0.15

I love it when people use abbreviations without knowing what they mean:

DPS = Damage per Second (used when describing your damage during an event or during a part of an event)
DoT = Damage over Time (used to describe bleed like affects typically)

He’s right, you’re just referring to different things.

DPS = Damage Per Second (Damage/Seconds) = Damage Over a Timeframe. It is a metric that specifically details damage over a timeframe (1 second), or more likely an average over a large number of seconds, as opposed to total per-fight damage or something like Damage Per Minute. It is a comparative damage metric that has nothing to do with attack type, Conditions do DPS, power-based damage does DPS, etc.

DoT = Damage Over Time = Refers to abilities that deal a set amount of damage over a timeframe, usually without additional action after being applied. This is an attack type, not a metric. In GW2, this most specifically refers to conditions. You don’t say “I did 1,000 DOT” you say “My DOT does 100 DPS over 10 seconds”

The definition of the former is extremely important because people often just use DPS as a catch-all term for damage output, which it is not. To make a reasonable damage comparison, you have to first establish a timeframe within which DPS is being measured. For a one-second timeframe, for instance, you may be able to do 20,000 DPS, but that isn’t very useful for comparison.

So Bassman was attempting to make the assertion that P/P has better DPS over an actual real-life timeframe (a couple-minute boss fight) due to higher uptime. He was (correctly) challenging the idea of DPS as a catch-all term for offensive power, implying that backstab builds, for instance, were not good DPS compared to the high-uptime DPS of P/P. He is wrong about this specific instance, P/P has bad DPS as well as poor relative burst capability, but he’s right about how DPS works.