Guild Wars 2

So I’m still on the grind to figure out a way to fix pistol thieves but to make sure that they don’t become too OP… yes I know we have no way to go into stealth but if you think about it… a glass cannon P/P thief that could disappear, create distance, then sneak attack and unload 2-3 times would be unstoppable… so I don’t think P/P thieves should have easy way to stealth themselves…

now as I was playing a bit ago I realized why my P/P is worse than my warrior… not because of auto-attack, not because of weaker dmg but because on a warrior I can have 62.5% uptime cripple that’s on demand… with the cripple, rifle warriors can kill anything before it gets there… we on the other hand have no way of slowing the enemies down… maybe I don’t know how to use caltrops, but for me, no one gets slowed down by them… enemies just seem to run them over without being crippled… if they are crippled, its barely for like half a second…

now we have a trait (ankle shots) that cripples enemies for 3 seconds on crit… given most thieves have high crit, we SHOULD trigger it on 2 or 3rd shot but again it might take more… while its a nice passive skill, the 10 second CD on it is just ridiculous… that’s 30% uptime, can’t be used when you want to (no strategic advantage) and doesn’t even get triggered right away… with our awful speed of auto-attack, it can take 3-4 shots for some thieves to trigger it… after 4 seconds, risen will already take half your hp…

now I know that a passive skill can’t be as powerful as an active skill that you have to use so naturally it can’t be as powerful but the CD on it has to be decreased to make it halfway usable… I think 6 second CD on it will be nice… and buff he % chance on crit to 80%… you will be more likely to trigger it faster and we’ll have 50% cripple uptime, still not as high as aimed shot on warrior but fair for a passive trait… that would fix a lot of things without messing with the damage too much

and then the pistol thieves damage is still rather weak… I’m glass cannon P/P thief and my hybrid rifle warrior outdamages the thief with 300 more range, more hp and more toughness… not too fair? I think vital shot has to be about 10% buffed… unload… probably another 5% would be good… these wouldn’t be too drastic changes but would give us some control that we need and buff the damage just a bit to a respectable level… thoughts…

P/D can have 100% uptime on cripple if that’s what you want from it. P/P has very few redeeming qualities and really shouldn’t be used.

yea but P/D is a troll build… it has no damage dealing attack… you’re stuck crippling them and kiting while auto-attacking… that does not sound fun at all… also it’s terrible against anyone ranged because at that point they’ll just straight up out-damage you since you know… they actually have ranged skills that do ranged damage… if you want to use #3 skill or CnD, you’re way better off going D/D rather P/D… when 2 main damage skills are melee in a ranged build… something isn’t right, you know?

for P/D to work as kite/auto-attack, vital shot’s dmg would need to be increased SIGNIFICANTLY and even I think that’s too much…

Seeing as Unload is the only skill unique to P/P, why not lower it’s initiative to cost to 4 or do something else to make it into viable weapon for Direct damage ranged thieves?

eXs.6210:

yea but P/D is a troll build… it has no damage dealing attack… you’re stuck crippling them and kiting while auto-attacking… that does not sound fun at all… also it’s terrible against anyone ranged because at that point they’ll just straight up out-damage you since you know… they actually have ranged skills that do ranged damage… if you want to use #3 skill or CnD, you’re way better off going D/D rather P/D… when 2 main damage skills are melee in a ranged build… something isn’t right, you know?

for P/D to work as kite/auto-attack, vital shot’s dmg would need to be increased SIGNIFICANTLY and even I think that’s too much…

P/D is one of best classes with stealth and spam #1 for tons of bleeds check out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH1kzDQ_4nA

Dual.8953:

Seeing as Unload is the only skill unique to P/P, why not lower it’s initiative to cost to 4 or do something else to make it into viable weapon for Direct damage ranged thieves?

I agree, it should still have more damage but I don’t think unload buff by itself solves the problem of risen being in your face in a fraction of a second… we can spam Unload all day but it doesn’t help very much if you die cause as a ranged class you can’t stop enemies from getting to you

as a rifle warrior, most things die before they even reach me (and I’m not even full glass)… if they still have some hp left by the time they get to me, I can rifle butt them away and that will pretty much take care of that…

as a P/P thief I’m lucky if I can unload once on risen and then they’re all over me, I took 1/4 of their life and now they’re beating me into the grave… what do I do? blinding powder, drain my initiative and stay in that circle auto-attacking? I might as well have a main hand dagger in that case

that’s sort of the problem I’m seeing… it doesn’t seem like there is a viable way of playing thief ranged… one way or the other, even the ranged skills are somehow designed to be best used in melee… how does that work?

Predator.7321:

eXs.6210:

yea but P/D is a troll build… it has no damage dealing attack… you’re stuck crippling them and kiting while auto-attacking… that does not sound fun at all… also it’s terrible against anyone ranged because at that point they’ll just straight up out-damage you since you know… they actually have ranged skills that do ranged damage… if you want to use #3 skill or CnD, you’re way better off going D/D rather P/D… when 2 main damage skills are melee in a ranged build… something isn’t right, you know?

for P/D to work as kite/auto-attack, vital shot’s dmg would need to be increased SIGNIFICANTLY and even I think that’s too much…

P/D is one of best classes with stealth and spam #1 for tons of bleeds check out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH1kzDQ_4nA

oh I’m not arguing that it’s not a good build… but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s a troll build… CnD… sneak attack… run around till they die auto-attacking here and there…

Adding more damage to pistol attacks, all of them buffed to 50-60%.

Predator your video is nice, and one can see that you are skilled. but most of the enemy players in that video have no clue about pvp…

The point is that even if you were using P/P, and P/P had a cripple skill, you’d have to pump initiative into it, which would preclude Unload, which makes it just as bad as P/D as a ranged build.

Putting a very strong, high uptime cripple on the auto-attack would, of course, be stupidly powerful and doesn’t belong in the game – even the 3s cripple every 10s is already a strong proc effect for such a low cost.

Not all weapons are good at everything. Pistol already has atleast 2 pretty viable builds. P/D thats is by far the easiest builds to play in this game, and S/P with pistol whip is stil viable.
P/P is crap yes, how do you boost that with out making the other 2 retaredly OP? I have no idea. Traits maybe.

On the other hand look at other classes. They have much more kitten borked then thiefs do.

It’s clear what Arenanet wants P/P to be at the moment.

No forms of crowd control, no forms of survivability, no access to stealth, despite having one of the best if not the best stealth breakers.

Clearly the Pistol is meant for raw damage/utility. The problem is, it can’t really do its own job well.

Body shot is completely worthless as-is. Just use 1 more unload and you’ll get more damage. Headshot is a difficult-to-use, but very powerful skill. Black Powder could use a larger AoE and 1 second longer duration.

I hope this is the last time I have to say this, Ankle Shot doesn’t last 3sec as to what it said in the description. It only last ONE second with 10sec CD there in fact and nobody give a kitten about it because they don’t want to fix it.

VitalShot: tweaks it, so that the Power build can use it as effective as Condition build.
Sneak Attack: Improves raw damage by a little more so that P/P can do some decent damage when Stealth. It is not like we have so many way to get into stealth as P/D to begin with.
Bodyshot: Reworks it, period.
Headshot: as someone suggested last time, makes it 100% critical.
Black Powder: makes the field do damage like guardian symbol or grant us 2 second stealth on the last pulse.

Critical Strikes Trait line needs some serious look here.
Keen Observer: You really need to get one hit to make this trait useless. Scraps it and swaps it with Side Strike.
First Strikes: Lower the initiative required on this trait or rework it for better.
Executioner: As much as I am forced to use it to make up with First Strike, I don’t think this combination work most of the time.
Combo Critical Chance: Makes it Grandmaster and increase the crit chance to 20%.