Guild Wars 2

That’s pretty depressing.

It should come out faster. That would help make P/P not suck

reikken.4961:

That’s pretty depressing.

It should come out faster. That would help make P/P not suck

For the life of me, I can’t fathom why there are some few select people continuing to act as if there’s not something very obviously off with Pistols.

I’m a Vital Shot crusader, but while I maintain that’s their biggest problem, it certainly isn’t the only one. Body Shot is way too situational and Unload only does so-so damage. It doesn’t take much analytical skill to see that they always have and continue to underperform, fairly dramatically. I feel like people who think they don’t just don’t have enough experience playing other sets and/or professions or just aren’t very good at analyzing things.

The sword chain is melee. And you have to stay in melee to get the big juicy third attack. So I think it should be better than ranged attacks, even your “initiative dump” attack — because you have to put in more work to make it work.

P/P could use some changes, but I don’t think Unload necessarily needs to hit harder.

ASP.8093:

The sword chain is melee. And you have to stay in melee to get the big juicy third attack. So I think it should be better than ranged attacks, even your “initiative dump” attack — because you have to put in more work to make it work.

P/P could use some changes, but I don’t think Unload necessarily needs to hit harder.

Tell that to the warriors rifle, that thing hits like a truck compared to a lot of melee.

I shoot Guardians down with 3 chains of Unload (with them atteming to heal).

What is wrong with Unload?

Imperator totius Sylvari.9164:

Tell that to the warriors rifle, that thing hits like a truck compared to a lot of melee.

But not compared to a lot of Warriors melee. You see for them(warriors) it’s normal to be able to hit like a truck and to have a full range of weapons.It’s in their mmo history.Likewise Stealth in ours.The difference is that we are not going to their forum to QQ

ASP.8093:

The sword chain is melee. And you have to stay in melee to get the big juicy third attack. So I think it should be better than ranged attacks, even your “initiative dump” attack — because you have to put in more work to make it work.

P/P could use some changes, but I don’t think Unload necessarily needs to hit harder.

Sword chain also is AoE and inflicts status effects. and of course takes no initiative. It’s less about being ranged vs melee and more about unload being bad.

How about this: Trick shot does slightly more dps than unload to a single target when there are exactly two targets (and of course it’s also doing damage that second target).
Alternating between trick shot and cluster bomb does about as much dps to an isolated target as unload does (does slightly more damage, but some is bleed, and it does slightly less without the bleed damage. unless you can hit the target with all three parts of the exploded bomb every time, in which case it does a lot more dps). And as noted, warrior rifle skill 1 outdpses unload, at base stats. But the majority of the damage is bleed, so the scaling is hard to compare.

I don’t think unload needs to hit any harder though, but it definitely needs to have a shorter channel time to do the damage it does do, because that dps is weak.

Hey guys

After extensive use of p/p in pvp and a lot of tweaking to try and get the most balance build out of it, don’t hate me for it but i’m not sure we are lacking in the raw damage department.

As a matter of fact i think the problem doesn’t come from the lack of damage but from how defense in general with the current overall balance is way more efficient than offense.

From my experience, anyone running an offense oriented build will get punished very fast by a wise alternation between unload and headshot and a few defensive selectable skills.

I think i’ll have to disagree on that one about what i read from Jon, although p/p doesn’t lack utilies, it is not packing the right ones to prove efficient.

What i would like to see :

- Increased vital shot activating time, true it will come with a slight increase in the overall weapon set dps, but more importantly it will allow for better pressure which p/p is really lacking atm.

Why ? The constant dodging, repositionning, slow activated skills like unload and recovery time after a headshot means you really don’t get to use it much because it is either interrupted, either not usable because your target is not in front of you.
It is a problem considering how heavily initiative consuming p/p is, you end up not being able to properly keep on pressuring , as well as not being able to rely on proc traits like the essential Opportunist trait because most of the time your auto attack is not usable.

- Unload needs some tweaks but it might prove really hard to balance properly. I would suggest to take body shot’s vulnerability away and put it along with unload, while decreasing the amount of stacks applied, and making it applying only with the last bullet.

Why ? Because unload is a skills that immediately calls for a dodge, and is infact not that hard to counter by doing so. So on one hand you would get a slightly better unload but still avoidable like it is right now, meaning you have to use it at the right time instead of just spamming it even more because it got buffed. Once again i think the current unload does fine and i don’t think a raw damage or attack speed increase would do much good. Attack speed especially since the current speed allows Opportunist to proc twice with a bit of luck.
Also, i would like unload to be able to shoot a bit more from the side, like vital shot does, currently it intterupts itself a bit too easily and defeats the purpose of flanking your opponent, negating the usefulness of many thieves traits.

- Black powder shot, while very interesting, costs a lot, while giving no significant returns, while unload can be managed through using the Opportunist trait, black powder shot just empties your initiative leaving you exhausted while you were supposed to play defensively.
Also the blind procs too slowly inside the aoe and you will keep beeing hit by many attacks although your opponent stands inside like an idiot, he won’t even get punished for it.
I am not sure what to do with it but i think it could benefit from the same kind of design as nine-tailed strike, with something like, while standing inside the black powder area you recover your initiative faster, or if you are still in the area once BPS disappears you get a portion of your initiative back.

- Body shot, if you consider what i said about removing vulnerability from it in order to give it to unload, i would really love to see body shot becoming anessential low damage utility skill like headshot is currently, by making it remove a boon on each succesful use. Now you would give pistols a very interesting utility counter skill.

- Headshot, i love this skill but i think it could be improved a bit while rewarding smart playing, by making it deal a % of increased damage Or apply X stacks of confusion if succesfull at interrupting an activating skill.

Feel free to tell me what you think of this ~

1. Unload is ranged, sword is melee. If you want safety of the range you should have lower dps. I do not know why people think you should be doing the same dmg standing safely on the ledge at 800 range as going into the melee and taking all the risks that implies.
2. Even sword skills that are initiative costly like pistol whip do not have much higher dps (if at all) than sword auto.
3. Maybe, just maybe, p/p should be looked at as a good situational 2nd-ary weapon choice, rather than your primary choice, and people should stop trying to make it primary choice because you will have to sacrifice dmg for the safety of range and as a thief you have no need for that in this game. Here is where p/p is better than any other weapon set thief has: The situation where you are snared, rooted or you simply cannot close the distance to your opponent who is low on health and you have your initiative bar pretty full. If p/p is your secondary weapon choice, you can switch to p/p and unload on him to finish him off. p/p has the best ranged spike of the thief weapon sets (bow’s explosions require you to be in melee range pretty much). It has other perks (blind field and interrupt) (but so does d/p).

Mufa.1326:

1. Unload is ranged, sword is melee. If you want safety of the range you should have lower dps. I do not know why people think you should be doing the same dmg standing safely on the ledge at 800 range as going into the melee and taking all the risks that implies.
2. Even sword skills that are initiative costly like pistol whip do not have much higher dps (if at all) than sword auto.
3. Maybe, just maybe, p/p should be looked at as a good situational 2nd-ary weapon choice, rather than your primary choice, and people should stop trying to make it primary choice because you will have to sacrifice dmg for the safety of range and as a thief you have no need for that in this game. Here is where p/p is better than any other weapon set thief has: The situation where you are snared, rooted or you simply cannot close the distance to your opponent who is low on health and you have your initiative bar pretty full. If p/p is your secondary weapon choice, you can switch to p/p and unload on him to finish him off. p/p has the best ranged spike of the thief weapon sets (bow’s explosions require you to be in melee range pretty much). It has other perks (blind field and interrupt) (but so does d/p).

1. That is fair, the main problem with Unload, though, is that there’s no reasonable alternative for ranged DPS, so you’re stuck spamming a “bursty” skill that does less than melee auto attack damage. I’m fine with pistol auto being worse than melee auto, and pistol burst being worse than melee burst, but with the current situation you trade both damage (because Unload has mediocre damage) and utility (because Unload eats all of your initiative) for safety (via range).

2. Sword auto does indeed do more DPS than any other sword skill, as well as any pistol skill. Whether this is an issue with sword auto being too good (not likely) or other thief burst options being nerfed into the ground is up for debate. People quickly came to the realization that if thieves have initiative-for-burst options then they’ll spam those to maximize DPS. The solution: Bring all initiative-burning options down below auto attack to disincentivize this behavior.

3. In the situation noted, sword/anything would serve you better than P/P, thanks to Infiltrator’s Strike. P/P does have situational uses, but they’re rather limited, and thanks to recent changes to make P/P at all competitive you have to take pistol-specific traits. Dumping two or more traits specifically into pistols makes P/P a very poor choice for “situational swap weapon”.

One of the main problems with Unload in specific is that Pistol Whip does what Unload does (huge hit volume) so much better. There are certain buffs that could be made to thief traits to make Unload much more attractive, like removing the 1 second CD from the vuln-on-crit trait. The problem is that these same buffs would affect Pistol Whip even more than Unload. I’d like to see Unload be revamped as a whole into something less focused on hit volume.

Mufa.1326:

2. Even sword skills that are initiative costly like pistol whip do not have much higher dps (if at all) than sword auto.

that’s because pistol whip stuns and evades (and got nerfed. see next line). Unload does nothing

Anyway, I’m pretty sure the problem is haste. Haste + dps skills is too good if the dps skills actually do good dps. Therefore they’re balanced to suck at dps without haste.

Mufa.1326:

1. Unload is ranged, sword is melee. If you want safety of the range you should have lower dps. I do not know why people think you should be doing the same dmg standing safely on the ledge at 800 range as going into the melee and taking all the risks that implies.

This

Who, exactly, are thieves competing with for ranged burst? Rifle warriors? Cause thieves are already beating them out.

P/P is terrible. Why beat this dead horse?!

ens.9854:

Mufa.1326:

1. Unload is ranged, sword is melee. If you want safety of the range you should have lower dps. I do not know why people think you should be doing the same dmg standing safely on the ledge at 800 range as going into the melee and taking all the risks that implies.

This

Who, exactly, are thieves competing with for ranged burst? Rifle warriors? Cause thieves are already beating them out.

Except they aren’t, not even close. They also have better range and better defense.

Deathspike.1870:

I shoot Guardians down with 3 chains of Unload (with them atteming to heal).

What is wrong with Unload?

You must be fighting some REALLY terrible guardians.

Kurow.6973:

Deathspike.1870:

I shoot Guardians down with 3 chains of Unload (with them atteming to heal).

What is wrong with Unload?

You must be fighting some REALLY terrible guardians.

agreed, unload just kinda seems to bounce off my guardian (and I’d never run PP on my thief)

Unload does less DPS than sword autoattack? Seriously?
Have you at least tried to do some math before coming to this conclusion?

Unload: 808 base damage on 1.75s channeling time. 808/1.75 = ~461
Sword autoattack chain: 975 damage on 2.52s channeling. 975/2.52 = ~386

There is nothing to argue about a clearly false statement.

unload actually takes around 2.35 sec from one attack to the next. The channel time isn’t the only time.

reikken.4961:

unload actually takes around 2.35 sec from one attack to the next. The channel time isn’t the only time.

There is an aftercast delay to every skill in the game.
The aftercast is something like 1/4s, but anyway every skill is affected from this aftercast, the autoattack chain also. This doesn’t change anything.

sorrow.2364:

Unload does less DPS than sword autoattack? Seriously?
Have you at least tried to do some math before coming to this conclusion?

Unload: 808 base damage on 1.75s channeling time. 808/1.75 = ~461
Sword autoattack chain: 975 damage on 2.52s channeling. 975/2.52 = ~386

There is nothing to argue about a clearly false statement.

Actually go and test it in-game, you’ll quickly see that sword auto is superior to Unload in DPS while being more granular, initiative free, hitting 3 targets, and applying conditions. What Unload has on sword auto attack is range, no reliance on landing the chain, and single-target hit volume.

Tulisin.6945:

Actually go and test it in-game, you’ll quickly see that sword auto is superior to Unload in DPS while being more granular, initiative free, hitting 3 targets, and applying conditions. What Unload has on sword auto attack is range, no reliance on landing the chain, and single-target hit volume.

Actually, it isn’t.
Plus, Sword has no specific damage booster compared to pistol, that means that at best, you are doing 10% more damage compared to sword.
The sword autoattack is much slower compared to unload, while the damage is only just a bit less. Also, Unload is much more reliable compared to sword autoattack due to long range. While you can easily get a miss with sword autoattack due to its melee range, you are going to get a miss to Unload only due to LoS or out of range, which are way less frequent compared to autoattack misses (kiting is enough to avoid damage).

Again: there is nothing to argue about. The DPS is in fact higher on Unload, you can’t argue about math.

Tulisin.6945:

3. In the situation noted, sword/anything would serve you better than P/P, thanks to Infiltrator’s Strike. P/P does have situational uses, but they’re rather limited, and thanks to recent changes to make P/P at all competitive you have to take pistol-specific traits. Dumping two or more traits specifically into pistols makes P/P a very poor choice for “situational swap weapon”.

One of the main problems with Unload in specific is that Pistol Whip does what Unload does (huge hit volume) so much better. There are certain buffs that could be made to thief traits to make Unload much more attractive, like removing the 1 second CD from the vuln-on-crit trait. The problem is that these same buffs would affect Pistol Whip even more than Unload. I’d like to see Unload be revamped as a whole into something less focused on hit volume.

Answer: That is not true. S/anything is not better than p/p in situation I noted.
Remember: You want to dump ur initiative in order to finish off enemy at low health while your movement is impaired in one or more ways (let us say you are rooted/slowed).

If you go with s/anything:
you do infiltrator strike which costs 3 ini i think. Then let us say you do pw, your pw will hit unless oponent clears root and dodges fast. But even if it hits, you will manage only small dmg before he is free from both root and stun to dodge away with you doing almost no dmg.
Now, you are still slowed (only one second passed), did not do any dmg, 1 sec passed and you burned 8 ini.
If you want to close on him again, you will have to do shadow return (4 ini?) and again infi strike (3 ini?)…..so essentially no spike there, you will just be burning your initiative (i counted 18 ini there) for no dmg and even now you just have him rooted for one sec.

With p/p: you simply unload multiple times (probably about 3 times). With one dodge he may mitigate part of the dmg of one unload but he will eat two more. So in this situation (slowed and unable to close gap need to deliver finishing spike), p/p does much better than s/anything.

reikken.4961:

Mufa.1326:

2. Even sword skills that are initiative costly like pistol whip do not have much higher dps (if at all) than sword auto.

that’s because pistol whip stuns and evades (and got nerfed. see next line). Unload does nothing

Anyway, I’m pretty sure the problem is haste. Haste + dps skills is too good if the dps skills actually do good dps. Therefore they’re balanced to suck at dps without haste.

1a. Unload keeps you far away from your enemy while you are delivering significant spike.
1b. It is more difficult to mitigate with dodge (most common dmg mitigation) then PW: If you dodge asap against PW you will avoid 90% of dmg. If you dodge too early against pw you will eat few last shots that carry the most of the dmg. Your statement is simply false.
1.c PW roots you in place and direction of attack, unload lets you move around (i.e. your mobility is not impaired for 2 sec or so, which is VERY significant).

2. Haste is not an issue, it is mitigated by invuls for X seconds, blocks for X seconds, CC, dodges, etc. Haste is simply L2P issue. People complaining about bullrush/frenzy/100b just do not know wtf they are talking about.

sorrow.2364:

reikken.4961:

unload actually takes around 2.35 sec from one attack to the next. The channel time isn’t the only time.

There is an aftercast delay to every skill in the game.
The aftercast is something like 1/4s, but anyway every skill is affected from this aftercast, the autoattack chain also. This doesn’t change anything.

The channel time for sword’s chain is two half seconds. Total of 1.0 seconds. The 2.52 seconds for sword’s full chain already includes the after delays. Unload’s dps at base stats is around 808/2.35 = 344. Sword’s is 975/2.52 = 387.

Mufa.1326:

2. Haste is not an issue, it is mitigated by invuls for X seconds, blocks for X seconds, CC, dodges, etc. Haste is simply L2P issue. People complaining about bullrush/frenzy/100b just do not know wtf they are talking about.

note that I’m talking about the developers balancing around haste, not about how players deal with their opponents using it

swinsk.6410:

P/P is terrible. Why beat this dead horse?!

As primary I agree. As a secondary weapon to provide ranged burst quickly in certain situation it is the best choice thief has. So it could be used as secondary weapon choice.

I wish thief did have ranged burst. It doesn’t have anything of the sort. All of thief’s burst is melee. I actually don’t know of any actual burst other than mug C&D backstab. Everything else is just dps about on par with autoattacking. except heartseeker at low health. And haste. Haste makes everything burst.

What I would do is remove (or severely weaken) haste and give thief more actual burst options. We don’t really have but one despite the class supposedly being about burst damage.

Just one more thing to say to ppl using p/p as primary set and whining all the time:
The main problem with p/p is not that it has bad dmg (it has lower dmg than melee, but that is how it should be), but that it lacks access to the most powerful thief mechanic: stealth.
Stealth (and mobility) is what gives survivability to thief.
So if you want to make decent p/p build, you better carry a lot of ‘enter stealth’ utilities.
You should take deception line traits (shadow ref, blinding powder), you should spend trait to decrease their cooldown, take hide in shadows and then go play. Going out with p/p without such utilities will just mean you die fast.

With those utilities I mentioned you will have access to stealth approximately every 11-12 seconds. So whenever opponent closes on you, stealth up, get some range, open with sneak attack and proceed to unload. While others have to spend initiative to enter stealth you can spend it on unloads. Also try to keep ini up for some blinding powder to mitigate dmg if all ur stealth entrees are down and the enemy closes in.

“This Apple is absolutely NOTHING like that Orange over there!”

reikken.4961:

The channel time for sword’s chain is two half seconds. Total of 1.0 seconds. The 2.52 seconds for sword’s full chain already includes the after delays. Unload’s dps at base stats is around 808/2.35 = 344. Sword’s is 975/2.52 = 387.

The channel time of the sword autoattack takes into account only the timeframe needed to land the full damage. This, obviously, doesn’t take into account the aftercast delay of the last sword hit.

Anyway the aftercast delay is nowhere near more than half a second and, also if it was, you have to apply the same aftercast delay to the last sword attack.

Mufa, have you even tried p/p before you make those statements ?

1a. Unload keeps you far away from your enemy while you are delivering significant spike.

Far away is a sweet word in a world where 900 range means nothing and is closed in a second, inside so little maps, also “significant” spike is nowhere near what unload does unless you’re dressed with paper. Regular unload will deal about 3k, while eating half your initiative in the process.

1b. It is more difficult to mitigate with dodge (most common dmg mitigation) then PW: If you dodge asap against PW you will avoid 90% of dmg. If you dodge too early against pw you will eat few last shots that carry the most of the dmg. Your statement is simply false.

False, a dodge will actually save you from all but the las two unload shots, meaning you virtually take no damage, and i don’t see where you understood that the last shots “carry more damage”, plus you aren’t rooted to begin with.

1.c PW roots you in place and direction of attack, unload lets you move around (i.e. your mobility is not impaired for 2 sec or so, which is VERY significant)

As i mentionned in my earlier post, unload interrupts itself if you try to shoot from the side, true you don’t get rooted but it doesn’t offer the mobility you try to describe, you have to face your opponent and the only real movement you get is… backpedaling, and strafing a bit while fighting the random “obstructed” fails.

As primary I agree. As a secondary weapon to provide ranged burst quickly in certain situation it is the best choice thief has. So it could be used as secondary weapon choice.

We all know this slot is absolutely reserved for shortbow

So if you want to make decent p/p build, you better carry a lot of ‘enter stealth’ utilities.
You should take deception line traits (shadow ref, blinding powder), you should spend trait to decrease their cooldown, take hide in shadows and then go play. Going out with p/p without such utilities will just mean you die fast.

Trading damage for survivability means you actually give up on survivability unless you expect to flee from 90% of your encounters, especially since the shadow arts line carries no damage buff whatsoever. The only alternative for survivability with a decent damage buff is acrobatics.
Although i agree with the utilities part.

Also try to keep ini up for some blinding powder to mitigate dmg if all ur stealth entrees are down and the enemy closes in.

6 initiative is not something you “try to keep” especially since it means giving up with damage (one unload every 10 sec, awesome), and since blinding powder doesn’t last long enough and doesn’t proc fast enough to be a reallly useful defensive skill, if you need to defend yourself you’d better learn to land headshots instead.

Mufa.1326:

With those utilities I mentioned you will have access to stealth approximately every 11-12 seconds. So whenever opponent closes on you, stealth up, get some range, open with sneak attack and proceed to unload. While others have to spend initiative to enter stealth you can spend it on unloads. Also try to keep ini up for some blinding powder to mitigate dmg if all ur stealth entrees are down and the enemy closes in.

This is a very important piece of information to make P/P work for you. You should also remember that you have the most amazing, spammable interrupt in the entire game: Headshot. Learn to use it, learn to love it. Guardians are a pest when they heal, but you don’t have to let them (!)

People are saying that unload should do less damage than sword #1 chain, I disagree as the only defense of this argument is that unload is a ranged skill while sword #1 isn’t.

The problem is unload has an effective cast time of 2s (display time of 1.75s) and fires 8 shots at 900 range, sounds good right? Until you realize that Trick Shot (SB #1) can get off 7-8 shots in the same time as unload at 900 range… and does close to 2x the damage of each unload shot with the added benefit of bouncing up to three hits.

Based on that, unload is worse than the SB “auto-attack” skill even though they are in the same category… not to mention that most thieves have a SB equipped already because… that utility is just that good.

Coffeebot.3921:

Until you realize that Trick Shot (SB #1) can get off 7-8 shots in the same time as unload at 900 range…

Except it doesn’t. Go try it.

There is no sword mastery
There is pistol mastery worth 10%

Using base damage using steady weapons I recorded here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-Steady-Damage/first#post938509

Sword auto attack came to: 123 damage.
Unload came to: 104
With the 10.4 applied to unload (114.4), unload still falls short by 11 base damage.

ASP.8093:

Coffeebot.3921:

Until you realize that Trick Shot (SB #1) can get off 7-8 shots in the same time as unload at 900 range…

Except it doesn’t. Go try it.

Yeah, just did and the after-cast delay makes it not possible… unless you have +1 or 2 extra targets.
But it does bring up two valid points;
1) if there is an after-cast attached to every skill, why isn’t this reflected in the cast time of the skills?
2) If there was no after-cast, why would our initiative using burst skills be less effective than the #1 skill?

Mufa.1326:

Tulisin.6945:

3. In the situation noted, sword/anything would serve you better than P/P, thanks to Infiltrator’s Strike. P/P does have situational uses, but they’re rather limited, and thanks to recent changes to make P/P at all competitive you have to take pistol-specific traits. Dumping two or more traits specifically into pistols makes P/P a very poor choice for “situational swap weapon”.

One of the main problems with Unload in specific is that Pistol Whip does what Unload does (huge hit volume) so much better. There are certain buffs that could be made to thief traits to make Unload much more attractive, like removing the 1 second CD from the vuln-on-crit trait. The problem is that these same buffs would affect Pistol Whip even more than Unload. I’d like to see Unload be revamped as a whole into something less focused on hit volume.

Answer: That is not true. S/anything is not better than p/p in situation I noted.
Remember: You want to dump ur initiative in order to finish off enemy at low health while your movement is impaired in one or more ways (let us say you are rooted/slowed).

If you go with s/anything:
you do infiltrator strike which costs 3 ini i think. Then let us say you do pw, your pw will hit unless oponent clears root and dodges fast. But even if it hits, you will manage only small dmg before he is free from both root and stun to dodge away with you doing almost no dmg.
Now, you are still slowed (only one second passed), did not do any dmg, 1 sec passed and you burned 8 ini.
If you want to close on him again, you will have to do shadow return (4 ini?) and again infi strike (3 ini?)…..so essentially no spike there, you will just be burning your initiative (i counted 18 ini there) for no dmg and even now you just have him rooted for one sec.

With p/p: you simply unload multiple times (probably about 3 times). With one dodge he may mitigate part of the dmg of one unload but he will eat two more. So in this situation (slowed and unable to close gap need to deliver finishing spike), p/p does much better than s/anything.

The problem here is that you’re saying you’re movement impaired and P/P is at a huge disadvantage because P/P is innately the lowest-mobility set thieves get. S/x would allow you to IF in and use auto attack for superior damage to Unload (while crippling to even the movement field), while P/P would quickly leave you unable to dictate range, even if you did want to dump a bunch of initiative into doing less DPS than sword would do.

You’re assuming P/P is a good choice when mobility is low, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth, especially when other professions can still do damage at >900 range while keeping you completely impotent due to P/P’s weak mobility.

sorrow.2364:

Tulisin.6945:

Actually go and test it in-game, you’ll quickly see that sword auto is superior to Unload in DPS while being more granular, initiative free, hitting 3 targets, and applying conditions. What Unload has on sword auto attack is range, no reliance on landing the chain, and single-target hit volume.

Actually, it isn’t.
Plus, Sword has no specific damage booster compared to pistol, that means that at best, you are doing 10% more damage compared to sword.
The sword autoattack is much slower compared to unload, while the damage is only just a bit less. Also, Unload is much more reliable compared to sword autoattack due to long range. While you can easily get a miss with sword autoattack due to its melee range, you are going to get a miss to Unload only due to LoS or out of range, which are way less frequent compared to autoattack misses (kiting is enough to avoid damage).

Again: there is nothing to argue about. The DPS is in fact higher on Unload, you can’t argue about math.

You can’t just apply math when, in practice, auto attack puts out more DPS and consequently puts down targets faster.

And, as someone else noted, “pistols have a 10 % damage trait” doesn’t mean anything if pistol skills have significantly less base DPS.

Melee damage per class > ranged damage per that same class. Design choice by AN. Thats all there is to it. Besides… sword’s initiative dump skill also does less damage than autoattack.

If anything id like AN to look at pistol’s autoattack damage/speed and the usefulness of the no. 2 skill. Piercing on attacks would also be much appreciated.

sorrow.2364:

reikken.4961:

The channel time for sword’s chain is two half seconds. Total of 1.0 seconds. The 2.52 seconds for sword’s full chain already includes the after delays. Unload’s dps at base stats is around 808/2.35 = 344. Sword’s is 975/2.52 = 387.

The channel time of the sword autoattack takes into account only the timeframe needed to land the full damage. This, obviously, doesn’t take into account the aftercast delay of the last sword hit.

No, 2.52 seconds is the number I added to the wiki from doing dozens of trials timing from the time the third hit makes contact until the next time the third hit makes contact.
I sat there autoattacking a target dummy and pressing the lap button on my stopwatch every time the last hit of the chain connected, and then I took the average of all the “laps”, got 2.52, and added it to the wiki.

i am a pve zerker P/P thief and i love the dmg output of unload at 900 range. once a boss hits 50% and i have a goot group set up / synergy im seeing 10k -12k + unload crits on most bosses in fractals.

around 10.7k hp but meh with signet of malice and omnon pie unload outheals alot of dmg i take from random aoe if i ever get hit.

now yes vital shot need to be greatly increased either make it scale fully with power for its direct dmg part when P/P. and have it get 100% of cond and power for its bleed when P/D (seeing as u go msotly cond for that build)

or just replace vital shot and give us sneek attack as a main #1 skill. would be nice to have rapid fire #1 skill and ten bleed stackign not an isssue. and because sneek attack is about same dmg as vital shot direct dmg it wont be op but will have good bleed stacking and look even more awesome then unload.

mayebe make unload have 10 shots in same duration or make it 0.5 sec faster.

now i know alot of people who complain about P/P are pvp ppl. but then again isnt pvp about being able to survive and take lower dmg. and most decent pvpers will use alot of toughness and grind people down. so maybe use evasion based builds and grind ppl down. alot of mmos pure direct dmg burst specs are hinders by toughness / resilience / what ever swotor uses.

krixis.9538:

isnt pvp about being able to survive and take lower dmg. and most decent pvpers will use alot of toughness and grind people down.

Don’t think you’ve been keeping up with how a lot of thieves operate in PvP. While bunkering is certainly viable, it isn’t really the route most thieves take.

reikken.4961:

No, 2.52 seconds is the number I added to the wiki from doing dozens of trials timing from the time the third hit makes contact until the next time the third hit makes contact.
I sat there autoattacking a target dummy and pressing the lap button on my stopwatch every time the last hit of the chain connected, and then I took the average of all the “laps”, got 2.52, and added it to the wiki.

I just took those numbers from the wiki and thought they were reliable data, matching my impressions on the skills.
That means I’m going to test the actual autoattack time and compare it to the pistol casting time from myself.

Tulisin.6945:

You can’t just apply math when, in practice, auto attack puts out more DPS and consequently puts down targets faster.

And, as someone else noted, “pistols have a 10 % damage trait” doesn’t mean anything if pistol skills have significantly less base DPS.

In fact? Which fact exactly? Those datas you are claiming to be true are just based on unreliable impressions, so they are completely insignificant, not facts. The only think that matters is math.

10% damage trait means alot. Basically means that pistol are capable to do 10% more damage compared to any sword skill. 808 can be actually considered 888 in fact, because of the higher damage capability cap, or even more, depending on where the 10% damage boost is applied and how damage scales with power.

taking the 10% damage trait means you miss out on another trait that could also boost damage, so you can’t just pretend pistols have 10% more damage than swords

sorrow.2364:

I just took those numbers from the wiki and thought they were reliable data, matching my impressions on the skills.
That means I’m going to test the actual autoattack time and compare it to the pistol casting time from myself.

Please do, and post your findings. I’ve re-checked it multiple times, so I’m sure it’s accurate, but verification is always nice.

Considering the amount of time passed from the first time I press the button till the time the next autoattack/unload starts to channel, I’ve found those numbers:

Sword: ~3s (2.99, 3.02, 3.05)
Unload: ~2.80 (2.79, 2.81, 2.78)

So, yeah, the data I were using were wrong.
Anyway it still looks fair to me tbh.

sorrow.2364:

Considering the amount of time passed from the first time I press the button till the time the next autoattack/unload starts to channel, I’ve found those numbers:

Sword: ~3s (2.99, 3.02, 3.05)
Unload: ~2.80 (2.79, 2.81, 2.78)

So, yeah, the data I were using were wrong.
Anyway it still looks fair to me tbh.

Horrible observations, dear lord, horrible… forgive them, Lord, coz they dont know better; guys, if you wanna do a proper timing of the sword auto chain, chain it TEN times at least, (thats 30 hits with the sword) control it with a stop watch, and then divide by TEN… its this simple, observing and stopwatching 1 by 1 leads to mistakes; ive done this a long time ago for guru, and i used my inbuilt stopwatch in my G13, and the sword auto chain takes 2.4 secs to complete, and the Unload takes 2 secs to complete, plus, the SM (skill modifier) for Unload is 0.248 per shot, so its SM is 0.248×8, divided by 2 secs, or 0.992; now the sword SM is 0.801+.0801+1.3, which is 2.902, divided by 2.4secs, we get 1.209. Its all in this ancient thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Skill-Coefficients-for-all-the-Thief-weapons/first#post467096

@mufa … agree with you 100%

P/P is my secondary set and i absolutely love it for all the points you have made.. being able to swap to p/p towards the end of a fight and hit a 3k sneak attack followed by a 5-6k unload at range is pretty dam awesome

Kind of weird to compare it to a melee weapon.
The real issue is that P/P is worse than shortbow, in almost every aspect, except single target dps. And even on single targets, I doubt there’s much difference in dps between SB auto attack+clusterbomb spam vs unload spam.

Jefzor.7145:

Kind of weird to compare it to a melee weapon.

Agreed, but the relatively short range and weak mobility of P/P coupled with the incredible mobility of thief melee sets means they aren’t as far apart as some professions’. The range at which you can engage is far less important than the range which you can actually dictate. Being able to fight at 900 range but unable to actually keep your target at that range is far less powerful than having to fight at melee range but having all the tools required to stay there.

There has been an absurd amount of time devoted to trying to prove the statement that unload does less DPS than sword chain. The point that pistols are ranged and sword is melee is valid, but most (some have mentioned it) people posting here have ignored shortbows, which do far more damage than pistols ever could.
The only thing pistols really have going for them are their non-unload skills, which have great utility without any damage, leaving you with #1 shots for damage, which are condition damage based and fairly mediocre.

Whew.

So, assuming that shortbow has an intentionally higher DPS than pistol/pistol, a more constructive comparison to make would be pistol/pistol’s damage respective to other ranged utility builds (which seem not to really exist at the level pistol/pistol delivers).

So this all comes down to one point: if pistol/pistol is useful for its bad-to-mediocre damage at range while providing useful utility: a role with little to no competition from other classes – why does unload even exist? Should unload even be paid attention to or is it a useless ability? I would argue that it is, in fact, useless.

The problem with the assertion that pistols aren’t about damage but actually about utility is that the good pistol utility skills (#4/#5) work better with every other mainhand aside from pistol. None of this supposedly good pistol utility is contained on the main hand.

When you say “The only thing pistols really have going for them are their non-Unload skills” what that means for main-hand pistol is Vital Shot and Body Shot, neither of which are good.