Guild Wars 2

testing – what happened to the thread?

Einlanzer.1627:

I don’t see how anybody can argue that P/P is good – it’s very obviously not. It’s not just about people being “unload spam”-minded; the simple fact is, as I’ve pointed out many times – its ‘primary’ source of damage – Vital Shot – is weaker than it should by by a significant margin.

What exactly are you comparing it against that makes you believe that it’s “obviously not” good?

This means two things – one, you will have problems keeping up good sustained damage in any prolonged engagement, and b., you have to heavily lean on Initiative just to supplement your damage enough for P/P to even be usable, which doesn’t actually help because it limits your mobility AND bars you from making much use of the set’s utility.

That’s the common mistake of those who “try” to use P/P. They always have the problem of initiative-starvation.

The set is flat-out garbage at the baseline, and becomes only barely mediocre when traited for Ricochet. It’s unreal to me that they’ve gone 1.5 years without giving Vital Shot a buff it very obviously needs.

The problem with Vital Shot is P/D. As long as P/P and P/D shares the same skill, you’ll never see a Vital Shot change anytime soon.

The reason you guys are arguing, however, is that Shortbow really isn’t much better. However, Shortbow’s weakness is part of a larger design quirk where, since it’s specialized for AoE damage, it’s intended to be bad for single target. This makes P/P more versatile when traited for Ricochet. Don’t mistake that versatility for being good. Ricochet is a half-kitten band-aid for an awful set.

Yes, exactly. It’s not like we have any other choice for a ranged weapon.

Nah they could and should just retool Vital Shot so that it works reasonably well for both sets. Vital Shot is on the weak side even with P/D – the only reason P/D is considered stronger than P/P is due to other factors – like the initiative free supplemental condition damage coming from sources like Caltrops and the Sneak Attack.

They should give a slight nerf to Sneak Attack, a slight reduction to aftercast for Vital Shot, and a slight buff to its direct damage only. This will make it slightly stronger for P/D, which won’t actually impact much, and significantly stronger for P/P, which will, for the better.

Einlanzer.1627:

I

The set is flat-out garbage at the baseline, and becomes only barely mediocre when traited for Ricochet. It’s unreal to me that they’ve gone 1.5 years without giving Vital Shot a buff it very obviously needs.

Truth. It doesn’t help that most of the Thief’s utility skills appear to be garbage, but I don’t want to get terribly off-topic. I’ll just say that, as a player who mostly runs necros and engineers, I will never, ever complain again about my main classes again after playing PP thief. I started a PP/no stealth thief looking for a fun challenge, and instead encountered “GW2 Not Worth It Legendary Difficulty.”

Einlanzer.1627:

Nah they could and should just retool Vital Shot so that it works reasonably well for both sets. Vital Shot is on the weak side even with P/D – the only reason P/D is considered stronger than P/P is due to other factors – like the initiative free supplemental condition damage coming from sources like Caltrops and the Sneak Attack.

What Anet ought to do is give both D/D and P/P their very own full set of 5 skills with new animations that compliments the use of both weapons. This will leave other sets alone to be balanced and tweaked without affecting either D/D and P/P. I know you have noticed that both D/D and P/P are perceived to be the weakest in comparison to other sets, it’s because it share skills with other set that are already perceived to be good sets.

Unless they give both sets their own separate 5 skills set, I’m not optimistic about any changes in the future.

They should give a slight nerf to Sneak Attack, a slight reduction to aftercast for Vital Shot, and a slight buff to its direct damage only. This will make it slightly stronger for P/D, which won’t actually impact much, and significantly stronger for P/P, which will, for the better.

Err, no. Pistol Sneak Attack benefits P/P also. Nerfing that will definitely make P/P nothing but a trash set. Changing a skill for the sake of P/P even though P/D doesn’t need it is not the right path to take here. Anet needs to admit that both D/D and P/P need their own separate 5 skills set.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Einlanzer.1627:

Nah they could and should just retool Vital Shot so that it works reasonably well for both sets. Vital Shot is on the weak side even with P/D – the only reason P/D is considered stronger than P/P is due to other factors – like the initiative free supplemental condition damage coming from sources like Caltrops and the Sneak Attack.

What Anet ought to do is give both D/D and P/P their very own full set of 5 skills with new animations that compliments the use of both weapons. This will leave other sets alone to be balanced and tweaked without affecting either D/D and P/P. I know you have noticed that both D/D and P/P are perceived to be the weakest in comparison to other sets, it’s because it share skills with other set that are already perceived to be good sets.

Unless they give both sets their own separate 5 skills set, I’m not optimistic about any changes in the future.

They should give a slight nerf to Sneak Attack, a slight reduction to aftercast for Vital Shot, and a slight buff to its direct damage only. This will make it slightly stronger for P/D, which won’t actually impact much, and significantly stronger for P/P, which will, for the better.

Err, no. Pistol Sneak Attack benefits P/P also. Nerfing that will definitely make P/P nothing but a trash set. Changing a skill for the sake of P/P even though P/D doesn’t need it is not the right path to take here. Anet needs to admit that both D/D and P/P need their own separate 5 skills set.

Not all thieves use stealth. I think my only concern with P/P is the auto attack, maybe 3 could use a slightly better output of damage too though, I think everything else is good with P/P, again I don’t use stealth. Any changes made for stealth or based around stealth does not affect all thieves.

Littlefeather.8623:

Not all thieves use stealth. I think my only concern with P/P is the auto attack, maybe 3 could use a slightly better output of damage too though, I think everything else is good with P/P, again I don’t use stealth. Any changes made for stealth or based around stealth does not affect all thieves.

Yes, but my respond was for those who does and changing the sneak attack will negatively affect those kind of P/P builds.

@Sir Vincent III

Would love to see your spec and attack rotation for a P/P build. Particularly from a WvW standpoint, but any will do.

Thanks.

stinkypants.8419:

@Sir Vincent III

Would love to see your spec and attack rotation for a P/P build. Particularly from a WvW standpoint, but any will do.

Thanks.

Build (non-Ascended Version): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAqaVl0Mp5pdOx3JsPNxLR59aMHlouLQA03WA-T1yAwAWUCed/BAHCACHBAdqUATfgDzfROBAOV+9TdFKPAASBMpyI-w

Note:
Shortbow is for traveling and poison field purposes. Rarely used in combat.

My Favorite Combos:
Boon steal interrupt + Confusion (BT spec’d)
: Pre-cast Headshot -> Steal -> Unload

Blind bomber + Confusion
: Pre-cast Black Powder -> Steal -> Unload

Chain Daze Combo (SoH spec’d)
: Pre-cast Headhot -> Steal -> Headshot -> Unload

Blinder Uncatchable + Scorp-wire + Confusion (advanced)
: Black Powder -> Scrop-wire -> Dodge -> Unload (this will put your target on your blind and bleed/cripple field)

Prisoner Combo + stacks bleed, cripple, vuln, confusion (advanced)
: Pre-cast Caltrops -> Steal -> Bodyshot -> Unload

Blind bomber + Scorp-wire + SoH + Uncatchable spec (advanced)
: Pre-cast Black Powder -> Steal -> Scorp-wire -> Dodge -> Unload

FAQ:
Why 5 into DA? – Exposed Weakness is like having 10 stacks of Vulnerability on your target who’ll have a condition on them the whole fight.

Why Trickster and not BT? – BT is situational and only needed against a target who uses a lot of buffs. The Endurance boost is already covered by Vigorous Recovery, Feline Grace and Rune set #6. Trickster also reduces the CD of RoI which is a must.

Why BA instead of SoH? – BA is simply better in applying pressure but can always be swapped with SoH in certain situations.

whoa. interesting… i have most of that gear lying around too. may give it a “shot”

hurrr…..

I’m wondering what if you ran P/P / P/D? You could have a hybrid condi / power spec, no? Or maybe even P/P / D/P. I tried something like that where I would lower their hp w/ P/P then steal in for some backstabs from D/P and it was working ok, but I’m not good at making builds.

Lamuness.3570:

I’m wondering what if you ran P/P / P/D? You could have a hybrid condi / power spec, no? Or maybe even P/P / D/P. I tried something like that where I would lower their hp w/ P/P then steal in for some backstabs from D/P and it was working ok, but I’m not good at making builds.

Definitely D/P is the best off-set when the situation demands it, but it will do mediocre damage with this build since this one has minimum access to crit.

I will use D/P not for backstab though, but you have the right idea when your target’s HP is low. I would use Heartseeker instead.

stinkypants.8419:

whoa. interesting… i have most of that gear lying around too. may give it a “shot”

hurrr…..

ahahaha

I’m so slow today. I saw “shot” and I was wondering what that meant and it just hit me. :P

You went pretty much the opposite of my setup.
I went for power DPS, mix of zerk/valk/cav/knights; 0/30/0/20/20
Generally use S/P for an offset, although I occasionally slot SB.
Similar utils, although I slot S-Step and D-Storm as Elite.
How’s it work for you?

Advent.6193:

You went pretty much the opposite of my setup.
I went for power DPS, mix of zerk/valk/cav/knights; 0/30/0/20/20
Generally use S/P for an offset, although I occasionally slot SB.
Similar utils, although I slot S-Step and D-Storm as Elite.
How’s it work for you?

I used to run a Power build P/P but that never really workout since it relies too much on Unload. My main issue with the Power build is that, I want to use Unload as much as I can, but I leave zero initiatives for my other skills — which in a fight is a big disadvantage.

So I look at the weapon set and asked myself how to maintain a sustainable DPS without wasting initiatives.

Looking at the P/D set convinced me that it has to be condition damage based instead of power based and Unload is just something to maintain the pressure but not the main source of damage.

Before the April 15 update, specifically before Bewildering Ambush, my P/P is doing ok damage, much better than my Power build because my damage source is not easily mitigated since it’s coming from two sources – physical and condition. When BA becomes active after April 15, my build improved big time in terms of damage output.

EDIT:
Oh yeah, my utility choice revolves around the trait Trickster and since this is a P/P build, SS is a situational pick for me, mainly against heavy condition builds. As for my Elite, Thieve’s Guild is just hilarious.

Picture this: Pre-cast Thieve’s Guild → Steal → Bodyshot. The melee Thief will Scorp-wire then I will Scorp-wire, while the P/P Thief is blinding and Unloading with me -- beats Dagger Storm everytime.

And one thing I don’t like about Dagger Storm is the fact that the channel lasts 7s — that’s brutally long. I once suggested that Dagger Storm should only spins the Thief once, sending daggers all around, doing the same damage and granting the same buff. That way, we’re not disabled for a very long time.

Interesting. Luckily, I’ve got some spare Ascended Rabid trinkets floating around. I could slot a few in, see where I end up. And Rabid or Carrion are kinda cheap on the TP, lately.
(I also noticed my damage dropping off, especially post 4/15.)

I actually use P/P to farm in Orr before the patch. It’s a nice change from the standard D/P and S/D builds.

If people telling you P/P is #3 spamming set then those people is either never actually used this set or haven’t used it for long enough to understand the set. In power build, you may have to use a lot of Unload to do enough damage but spamming Unload alone isn’t going to win you a victory, well unless you are talking about some trash mobs in PvE.

Even in the current form, P/P isn’t going to outshine any other sets of Thief but on its own it is good enough to be used.

Also, I am against a completed rework of this set. If anything they should Buff Vital Shot raw damage to do the same damage of Trick Shot. Trick Shot can hit up to 3 targets and Vital Shot has Bleeding which should be a fair to buff Vital Shot. And making Body Shot to be a reliable projectile by making it fly faster or shot faster. I lost count on how many time I failed to land this skill at near max range.

Combined Training and Combo Critical Chance should really see some rework. These traits simply SUCK.

The nerf to the initiative cost of Unload was unnecessary and unreasonable. They were really push us to build towards condition damage — that’s opposite of build diversity.

I don’t know about your build but the buff to base initiative regen was a big deal to my Build. Before I had to run X/6/X/4/X with Quick Recovery to keep up with initiative usage but that is no more with the buff to base initiative regen. This open an option for me to go deep in DA and pick Exposed Weakness which also give 25% condi duration that made Vital Shot’s bleeding last 5sec instead of 4sec. All of this made Vital Shot became somehow a reasonable DPS if not good as Trick Shot.

Some people think the change to Opportunist was a nerf but I think it was a nice change. It is true that the CD is higher but the chance was also higher too. Before the only good way to get this trait trigger was to hit as much as you can which lead to spam Unload because the more you spam the more you get back. But now any of skills can have a really good chance to trigger this trait which I am happy about it.

My current build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZQQRAqa4YlsMpztNNxwJ0PRxLhs5oK+tWzDB6LKA-ThCBAB8pfAT1fOa/RJmWKDWwkHAPBgkUSMhSQuUKEwJBIAACAX3kBA-e

it seems to work okay for me. I don’t do WvW very often, but when I do switch out D/D for SB and switch to PTV armor. I make occasional tweaks for specific situations in PvE. With a single champ or something, I lose dagger storm for thieves guild. If some expert could tell me if it sucked or not and why, that would be helpful for tweaking. P/P forever though. I’ve used it since day one as my primary set.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

NinjaEd.3946:

Here’s what I’ve concluded on p/p.

1. Very obvious. They rely on 1 skill for dps, and that skill is rather easy to negate if the enemy has even a little awareness of their surroundings. I tested this by making a spec for p/p that solely focused on spamming 3, evading, maybe interrupt a heal here and there and evasion. Since the aa is a hybrid and the remaining 3 skills are utility you’re left with #3 for a majority of your damage which is either expensive, weak, or little of both. The lack of a suitable #2 and low dps on #3 I was only slapping people and killing people who still use A and D to turn in pvp.

You need to use it more often before you conclude because your conclusion is not representative of how P/P is actually used.

The common misconception is that P/P is mainly to spam skill #3. You can’t be anymore wrong.

Think about it, what does P/D uses as their main source of damage? Got that?

Now look at D/P and S/P on how they are using skill #4 and #5. Got that?

Knowing that, look at on how you’re building around P/P — sad right? You got the wrong idea about P/P.

If you put any points into CS or SA, then you’ve already failed at P/P. Might as well use other build.

2. The utility from #2/4/5 doesn’t do much good to the thief defense. #2 has a long aftercast, #4 doesnt’ last you in the long run, #5 only affects those who aren’t aware you can melee outside the circle or range. Other weapon sets have strong evasion or can reposition themselves either from teleports or stealth.

Then you’re using it wrong. Whoever said that you have to remain at a far distance using P/P? This set is effective either at far range or close range.

Also, I never seen a Thief who insist on standing on the smoke zone while enemy melee them from the outside the zone. That’s has L2P issue written all over it.

As fun as it can be, it’s not practical for a thief in any pvp enviroment. If they just changed the #2 to something useful then maybe it can partake in competitive play but right now its just not comparable to the rest.

I don’t know about that. Where ever P/D is viable, so is P/P. You really just have to learn how to use the weapon set starting with a (6/x/x/x/6) build.

On p/d that bleed is likely 5-7 or more seconds, so they just need to hit them and a bunch more DoT is tied to it. There is no reason for a condi build to choose p/p over p/d with no access to stealth and without an effective kite ability.

The 4 is for interrupts, which does no good to the p/p other than interrupt and won’t last you long to call it sustain. Same with the #5, it can be easily avoided by standing outside the circle, and it is expensive to throw down to begin with so it helps you in neither melee or ranged. Even if you throw bps down and kite them into it over and over, you really going to aa them to death? Doubt it, or that screams L2P.

I entirely disagree with p/p being a close ranged set, the skills are far to unreliable to use at close range without missing or being canceled, I just dance around thieves that use p/p and keep the harassment up so they can’t hit me reliably.

P/p lacks sufficient ranged damage and sustain. If you’re going to sit on the sideline and “snipe” people, you’d be better off with sb which is AoE and has far more utility in a group. Even single target p/p may hit a little harder but nothing significantly higher than sb. Dagger→ sword has the system down with dagger having high single target and sword having good AoE, sadly pistol→ shortbow doesn’t share that relationship.

NinjaEd.3946:

On p/d that bleed is likely 5-7 or more seconds, so they just need to hit them and a bunch more DoT is tied to it. There is no reason for a condi build to choose p/p over p/d with no access to stealth and without an effective kite ability.

The 4 is for interrupts, which does no good to the p/p other than interrupt and won’t last you long to call it sustain. Same with the #5, it can be easily avoided by standing outside the circle, and it is expensive to throw down to begin with so it helps you in neither melee or ranged. Even if you throw bps down and kite them into it over and over, you really going to aa them to death? Doubt it, or that screams L2P.

I entirely disagree with p/p being a close ranged set, the skills are far to unreliable to use at close range without missing or being canceled, I just dance around thieves that use p/p and keep the harassment up so they can’t hit me reliably.

P/p lacks sufficient ranged damage and sustain. If you’re going to sit on the sideline and “snipe” people, you’d be better off with sb which is AoE and has far more utility in a group. Even single target p/p may hit a little harder but nothing significantly higher than sb. Dagger-> sword has the system down with dagger having high single target and sword having good AoE, sadly pistol-> shortbow doesn’t share that relationship.

Folks, this is a great example someone who had not used P/P efficiently and have no knowledge about its strength. P/P has the flexibility of actually doing something near or far as ranged weapon. Before you replied, you should have read what I have posted above.

P/P does indeed tend to work better as a hybrid set rather than a full power set like most people try to use it as, but you’re still trading off damage for versatility more than you should have to.

Building around Power at least gives the set reasonable burst potential, which gives it a specific niche, while building in a hybridized way makes it overall more functional but at the expense of just being kinda all-around lackluster in damage pressure. No matter how you dice it, the set is weaker than it should be.

Einlanzer.1627:

P/P does indeed tend to work better as a hybrid set rather than a full power set like most people try to use it as, but you’re still trading off damage for versatility more than you should have to.

Building around Power at least gives the set reasonable burst potential, which gives it a specific niche, while building in a hybridized way makes it overall more functional but at the expense of just being kinda all-around lackluster in damage pressure. No matter how you dice it, the set is weaker than it should be.

It has potential as a power set, but not so much hybrid. If you mix in the aa with some unload the bleeds are not worth cleansing as they will never stack to dangerous numbers. It basically comes down to scaring the enemy mentally by showing "I’ve got bleeds on me, and vulnerability, “click” panic button" and throwing a 3-5k unload here and there assuming even decent conditions (enemy soaks up each hit, each hit critting, etc).

It’s still not practical and goes on a full offensive approach which on a thief weapon set is not good. Compare the defensive and offensive power of the other weapon sets and try to put p/p with them, it falls short on both ends. I’m not saying its unplayable, I’m saying it is below average and this is displayed by the lack of its use, the fact that we have a 10% damage bonus trait towards pistols in an adept trait line, and the lack of nerf requests towards it. If it was anything above average it would be complained about, because every single other weapon set has been thus far.

Einlanzer.1627:

P/P does indeed tend to work better as a hybrid set rather than a full power set like most people try to use it as, but you’re still trading off damage for versatility more than you should have to.

Building around Power at least gives the set reasonable burst potential, which gives it a specific niche, while building in a hybridized way makes it overall more functional but at the expense of just being kinda all-around lackluster in damage pressure. No matter how you dice it, the set is weaker than it should be.

Power build simply doesn’t work. This “burst potential” is neither reasonable nor in existence and you’ll hurt yourself more against Retal spammers on top of you being so much easy to counter since you only do one thing — spam Unload. If Unload doesn’t work, what’s your plan B? That’s why it fails and it fails hard.

You need to get yourself outside of this mindset of spamming Unload to actually see what else you can do with this weapon set.

But if your premise, if your mindset, is to mindlessly spam Unload, then it’s obvious that the P/P weapon set is not for you.

On that topic, I’d really like to know if anyone has ever done any calculations on the DPS of Vital Shot and Unload. I’d be willing to bet there’s a massive difference favoring Unload which, if so, is why the set is broken.

edit – I did it myself. With baseline stats, Vital Shot does roughly 36% of the direct damage and 83% of the total damage Unload does, which is bad for a number of reasons such as condition damage being ‘worth’ less and traits and crit gear you’re likely to be using skew the baseline gap further rather than bridging it closer.

This ratio actually should be more like 50%/110%. Yes, you read that right. Vital Shot should actually do slightly more total damage than Unload since such a large percentage of it is condition damage. The fact that all of Unload’s damage is direct is a huge boon, and you’d still be likely to benefit from using it a lot, it just wouldn’t be mandatory to spam it to make the set have reasonable DPS, which is still poor since it can’t be sustained forever.

I started playing about 3 months after launch, and I’ve been using P/P since day 1. I primarily do open world pve and I’ve done some wvw.

Here’s my current build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZQQRAqa4YlsMpzpNOxwJ0PRxLhs5oK+tWzJB6LKA-TxCBABHpEzQ9DapMYBTcYpUAgnAAN7PQk6PToEkLlEBcSACAgAw1N5vBRAYLA-e

With the upcoming changes, I think I’m going to change it from 4/4/0/3/3 to 4/4/0/2/4, to get Ricochet. I care less about the bounce (which can be problematic in PvE as it can aggro mobs you want to leave alone) and more about the range increase. I might even drop Acrobatics and put those 2 points elsewhere.

With the bonuses to dual weapons and nice stack of available initiative, I can keep that unload going for a pretty long time. I swap out the Signet of Shadows with a poison or the radiation field to enter combat. I swap the Dagger Storm with Thieves Guild for single targets. I sometimes swap things out for very particular instances, like Scorpion Wire for those Inquest agents during the crystal event in Dry Top. I also often forget to swap out SoS, but have found the blindness useful when timed right. It also combines well with black powder.

I rarely swap to daggers. I almost always use the pistols. I like the concept of perfecting pistols for all situations.

With all the dodging, I avoid a lot of damage. It also helps stack the might and keep swiftness up. On low level maps, I can run full speed with SoS, blast down targets with a single burst, and loot without stopping. Which is nice for dailies.

Best of all is the two pistols blazing animation. I really, really wish they’d add a .45 style pistol skin.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAqaVl8MprpNOxwJ8PNxLRt9IECfo2TQAMAdFFA-TpBGABLcCA49QAsy+DEcEAA4BAEVZAA
Still trying to find a good combination, but mainly stealthless thieves need more survivability next to damage
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAqa4al8MprpNOxwJ8PNxLRt9IECfo2TQAMAdFFA-TpBGABLcCAQ4gAw7RAYl9HA4BAEVZAA
allmost the same with DP secondary

Problem is… so many traits a P/P Thief would need is scattered all over the place, it’s hard to get out something of it. But in teamfightsyou just take good care of your positioning and you really can hurt enemies, if they are not closing in fast on you.
It’s more like a gatling gun build, trading in overall mobillity for sustained damage

lmao triggerless took a dump on magic toker in the 1v1 tourny with d/d p/p

the problem with P/P is that everything that uses condition or can burst in one lockdown will wipe the floor with you

Mayama.1854:

the problem with P/P is that everything that uses condition or can burst in one lockdown will wipe the floor with you

Meh, that’s true with every non-tanky builds. That’s not exclusive to P/P.

This last update feels like the p/p is even worse than it was before.