Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I don’t play a thief, it’s just not my style so I had to come by here and ask this.

I feel like, as time goes on, I’ve gotten a handle a bit on how to fight a thief 1v1 in WvW. But something happened the other day that I haven’t seen before so I wanted to ask here is this even normally possible? If so I need to learn a counter.

My question is, is it usually possible to pistol whip someone 10 times in a row within a second or two? I mean super rapid fire.

Sometimes a thief catches me off guard and I die quickly, as it should be. But I was ready for this fight, all my cooldowns were ready, I set myself up…etc…

He ran up to me and ::ping ping ping ping" hit me with 10 pistol whips in about a second and I was dead.

Doable? It’s new to me. IF this is legit more of you might want to start doing it lol.

Thanks guys, for the help! I know you might not want to offer help to a counter to your class, but this really caught me by surprise.

Norse

He may have used Haste so he could have gotten off 3 full Pistol Whips on you in the time it would only take to do 1.5. Pistol Whip appears in the combat log as several attacks per each Pistol Whip.

Thieves usually have a lot of damage + traits and such and with haste chain skills seem to hit harder (not sure about this one)
Same happened to me this morning but with unload. Basically you just pop dead within a few because they stack scholar’s, bloodlust and such.
It’s annoying, very annoying that glass can scale up so much. It’s not the thing that “you can’t see so it’s annoying” it’s that you are built balanced and get flipped in a blink, or combo rather.
I like playing a balanced thief, moderate damage and good survivability. But when I see these cheesy combos I just get annoyed, as anyone else.

They sacrfice everything it, sure, but thing is, they stick to their zerg mates and/or flee like chicken when the combo fails, same with those cheesy gc warriors.

I just believe there should be a cap on dmg since it can go like this > 10% + dmg on DA , 10% + dmg from crit strikes, 20%+ dmg on targets below 50%, 10% scholar, 250 bloodlust, 10%+ crit from food and 250 power, extra power from sharpening stones, signet of power 15% (and some might probably if traited.)
Now you have a super GC that will dorp in a sneeze, but it can drop you in a sneeze. And if you build tanky then they’ll escape every time.

I am not saying it doesn’t have cons, it’s just “anti-fun” if it was a lock stun I’d be okay, since stunbreakers. But really, someone who goes through all that hassle just for that.
As it is now, especialized specs seem dumb. Be it bunkers, be it GCs. Truth is, they’re both boring and most mechanics actually hurt balanced specs (weakness, boonstripping, instagibs, ect) I would be much happier if stats were like PVP’s that seem a little more balanced (amulets)

Norseman.4280:

My question is, is it usually possible to pistol whip someone 10 times in a row within a second or two? I mean super rapid fire.

If we are talking about activating the skill 10 times in that time, it’s absolutely impossible.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pistol_Whip

It costs 5 initiative, the maximum a thief can get is 15 (it has to be traited), and there is no way he completely restored his initiative twice and then 1/3 of a time during a time frame of a second.

However, like the poster above me said, pistol whip hits multiple times (9x to be exact), and with haste it could very well hit 9x-18x in a second (depending on the amount of pistol whips used).

Wow, you found a s/p in wvw? I haven’t seen that in a long time.

Thanks guys. Yep the combat log showed exactly 10 pistol whip hits for around 1800 damage per hit. I appreciate the input.

I think there are those situational things with thieves that are just near impossible to counter.

good thing is you will never face this attack again because

a) it’s a horrible broken build currently (for the thief)
b) it was nerfed into oblivion

you found the one thief in gw2 still using it.

and while tehre may be things that are near impossible to counter this is not one of them

If you see this again (you wont) hit your stun break and dodge.

or just wait for the 1/2 second stun to end and then dodge

he cant move to chase you.

Norseman.4280:

Thanks guys. Yep the combat log showed exactly 10 pistol whip hits for around 1800 damage per hit. I appreciate the input.

I think there are those situational things with thieves that are just near impossible to counter.

Well in that case you’d just need to have a Block of some sort :/

Norseman.4280:

Thanks guys. Yep the combat log showed exactly 10 pistol whip hits for around 1800 damage per hit. I appreciate the input.

I think there are those situational things with thieves that are just near impossible to counter.

What in the world?

1800 damage per hit requires a very very special set of circumstances. Specifically, this includes but is not limited to both you and thief must have been glassy as my friend’s window I accidentally broke with my wrist one night sophomore year in high school. Oh yes, I like meeting those kinds of thieves, because i can two shot them with even tanky builds.

Against regular builds each pistol whip hit should only be doing around several hundred damage…not even high hundreds (even if you yourself are fully glass). Not to pry but were you running an uplevel?

Also the counter is to bring a stunbreaker then dodge. PW roots the thief and is mediocre damage that is done in a short range small area frontal cone, not to mention to pull it off against any nongodawful opponent the thief has to use haste, and even then they have a very high chance to fail. There’s a good reason why the build is considered unviable. Pistol whip is arguably worse than many autoattacks.

idk it really depends on PW…if ur running a 15k hp 60% crit 100% crit dmg 3200 attack build…..and you attack a warrior u can do a total of 4500-6500 dmg depending on a few variables…..can go up MUUUUCH higher against a thief with 0 in SA and no toughness armor obviously. but would have to hear what the circumstances are adn what you were personally running.

Lets just assume he had no defense.

Full time s/p WvW Thief here. Sounds like it could’ve been me lol. (what server?) With a popped assassins signet and a few lucky crits, I’ve seen numbers reaching 10k with a hasted PW on lv 80’s (zerker I assume), and that’s without buffs such as might. Couple that with the fact that I can get a couple of them off in just a few seconds and it absolutely destroys people who don’t have a lot of stun breakers or don’t know how to dodge properly.

Honestly, I don’t know why everyone hates on the build. Sure, you can’t take on 5 people like you can with lolstealth builds, but overall I find it really fun. Also, I am the definition of glass, zerkers+scholars and 10.9k health but yet I still find it easy to survive with my group of friends, or even on my own.

For advice? Learn to dodge/use your stun breakers. Nothing makes me more mad then when someone dodges my Infil Strike>PW because usually I’ve already popped my assassins signet and haste and now I’m stuck in place batting at nothing.

Stunbreakers, Shroud, invun, mistform, blinks, blind, retaliation. all of these are good counters especially retaliation. Hope you are successful next time

When I ran my Pistol whip build. I had the trait that immobilized you at 50% health, also I used basilisk venom to start then AS SOON as you break out of the petrify I’d pop the venom that immobilizes you my next two hits. All this in conjunction with haste.

Most of these builds have 30/30/10/0/0 or something close to that so if you break out somehow IMMEDIATELY cc the thief and burst him down. He can now either die or if he blinked in he could shadow return out. GL

Grandtomatoe.2045:

He may have used Haste so he could have gotten off 3 full Pistol Whips on you in the time it would only take to do 1.5. Pistol Whip appears in the combat log as several attacks per each Pistol Whip.

This.

FYI: I am glad there are some people who actually come here and ask for advice instead of complain and try to convince us that something is OP. +1 for that.

yup, the thing that balances it is the long cooldown on haste + the loss of endurance/endurance regen. by the end of that combo, the thief would have no initiative, no dodges and one unused utility skill. he could still juke around with sword 2, or swap to shortbow to run away, but he’d definitely be more of a sitting duck than your average burst thief.