Guild Wars 2

So I have been playing a lot of P/P thief lately and there’s one thing that has been bugging the crap out of me. The fact is, my AA will a lot of the times go off just before I use my Blinding Powder and as a result the projectile hits the target and I lose my stealth, getting the revealed debuff. The only way I’ve managed to counter this is by learning how to quickly turn my camera away from my target just before I use Blinding Powder to prevent the AA from going off.

Has anyone else noticed this and is as annoyed by it as I am? Do you think this should be fixed so that stealth doesn’t break from your travelling projectile, or should it remain this way?

I propose that the travelling projectile shouldn’t break my stealth the way it currently does. I don’t know how they would go about fixing it so that it works that way, but my god is it annoying when I get the revealed debuff instead of stealth.

Yeah, it’s really frustrating. It was happening to me so much for a while that I thought it was a bug until I came to the same realization as you. Vital Shot (Pistol #1) is the culprit, because it’s about half as fast as it should be (both in the firing animation and how fast the projectile travels). If they adjusted the speed, this problem would be almost entirely solved, as I don’t think I’ve ever had this issue with another Thief weapon or attack.

Solution: Don’t use auto attack. Flight time of projectiles aren’t the problem.

Use it manually. That should solve your problem

It says a lot about how bad Vital Shot is that you have to use it manually to stop its slowness from breaking your stealth. I can’t think of a single other Thief weapon attack that has that problem.

Shortbow 1 has the same problem and can arguably said to be worse. All projectile attacks will reveal you if its still in the air when you go into stealthed or are stealthed.

Trick Shot does suffer a bit from the same issue, but in a far less severe way. For starters, it’s much rarer for you to be in a situation where you’re stealthing right after a Trick Shot. If autocast is left on, Vital Shot often sabotages deliberate attempts to enter stealth to use Sneak Attack. That you have to turn off Vital Shot’s autocasting just to get it to not sabotage the flip side of itself says a lot about how badly its designed.

Edit:
vvv
That’s an interesting workaround that I’ll have to try, thanks.

I have stow weapons bound to one of the thumb buttons on my mouse, this helps quite a lot since I like the auto normally and I find pressing 1 repeatedly quite clunky in combat.

I shouldn’t have to disable autoattack for this to not be a problem. I’ve never had any problems with the AA being “disruptive” in such a way on any of my other alt professions, so in what way is it fair that the thief should have this problem?

I would really appreciate if the devs would have a look at this problem, because it gets quite tiresome to lose fights as a result of pistol AA working improperly with blinding powder.

You do realize you can just turn off AA?

That’s a practical workaround (and not even a very good one), not an explanation for why it’s Thief’s only Weapon #1 with that problem. Some of us would rather not get RSI from mashing an ability that should be fine when used as an autoattack.

Vital Shot Defense Squad on the prowl tonight, apparently… why wouldn’t you want it improved? It’s slow and it does almost no damage (as Power OR Condi). Just awful.

This is not a thief specific issue or specific to p/p.

If you’d play thief for a considerable time, you’d know even melee weps would reveal you if you keep autoattak on. Even other classes toggle this off so they wouldn’t get into combat. There is a simple solution to your problem, don’t be lazy and use it.

I have played Thief for years and never had a consistent problem with autoattacks interrupting stealth on any weapon but Pistol mainhand. That you can turn off autocasting to “solve” this issue is about as meaningful a solution as cutting off your feet so you don’t have to walk so much anymore.

But sure, let’s resort to name-calling and questioning people’s experience with a profession because they have a different opinion than you. I’m sure Vital Shot (and Pistol) are just fine.

It’s true this can be really annoying, but the easiest way to fix this, is to not have any targets then pop your Blinding Powder.

press escape and stealth out.

Amante.8109:

I have played Thief for years and never had a consistent problem with autoattacks interrupting stealth on any weapon but Pistol mainhand. That you can turn off autocasting to “solve” this issue is about as meaningful a solution as cutting off your feet so you don’t have to walk so much anymore.

But sure, let’s resort to name-calling and questioning people’s experience with a profession because they have a different opinion than you. I’m sure Vital Shot (and Pistol) are just fine.

Name calling? You sure jump to defensive really quickly. Ofc ranged weapons will cause more problems, they are ranged and thus have larger radius for autoattack to activate. Considering that even when not in stealth, sometimes not attacking is the better choice, I think having the option to chose when and when not to attack is more favourable.

Like I get that stealth breaks from using attacks while in stealth because that makes sense obviously. But the fact that an attack I used before I entered stealth can break my stealth is about as stupid as if one of my pulsing aoe fields would pull me out of stealth from pulsing on an enemy. It’s just plain dumb.

I don’t see why you would even argue against a “fix” for this. It wouldn’t exactly be a massive buff that would make the thief super OP. It’s basically just a simple change to make mh pistol less annoying.