Guild Wars 2

Alright so I have just encountered something that is just…disturbing. there is this thief who is going around using nothing but the dual wield pistol skill, the channel one, and absolutely melting tanks. I am full dire, 23k hp and 3374 armor and this thief is just spamming the duel wield skill over and over melting people. Me and another level 80 tried 2v1ing him and he got us both very low then just ran off invisible because he was low. this isn’t a rage thread, I’m just saying anyone who thinks thief is underpowered is just a bad thief.

Block projectiles, relfect projectiles, retaliation, dodge, and any other damage mitigation and gap closing skills you have, to get to the thief, who will have low armour, low health, and only black powder and head shot for defense (no stealth or evade abilities except what they might have for utility).

Head shot drains their initiative, meaning less unloads, meaning they lose their only useful attack ability with that weapon set, rendering them extremely vulnerable. Black powder is a small AoE, easily countered by attacking from outside the AoE, ranged attacks, or AoE of your own. While the thief can move back while in black powder, moving around the outside will keep you within melee range, and certainly with two of you against the one thief, you should be able to hit him, and being squishy, it will hurt him. Reflection will melt the thief instead, and retaliation is also an effective defense against unload.

Insane burst does not make one over powered, especially when there are many counters to it. It makes them squishy, and only useful while they have access to their burst abilities. When focus fired, they have to run or die. Starting a fight at range to gain some time to deal damage before receiving any is more of a necessity for such a build, and is an advantage available to all classes, so it doesn’t make P/P thief any more overpowered than other ranged glass cannons.

Nausiation.1469:

I’m just saying anyone who thinks thief is underpowered is just a bad thief.

This sentence can only come from someone who just sees “power” as weapon strenth which is downright pathetic.

You do realize that p/p has no skill whatsoever that grants survivability right!? It does have that black-powder skill but there is no getting out of tough situations.

I do grant that p/p can be strong combined with high power – which is the thiefs only priority (damage) since if we don’t kill quickly, we die. You got 22k HP and how much armor you say?! Wanna know how much we get? :-D

Nausiation.1469:

Alright so I have just encountered something that is just…disturbing. there is this thief who is going around using nothing but the dual wield pistol skill, the channel one, and absolutely melting tanks. I am full dire, 23k hp and 3374 armor and this thief is just spamming the duel wield skill over and over melting people. Me and another level 80 tried 2v1ing him and he got us both very low then just ran off invisible because he was low. this isn’t a rage thread, I’m just saying anyone who thinks thief is underpowered is just a bad thief.

P/P is overpowered? Oh dear god it happened… I have now. Heard. Everything.

Faeyd.5094:

P/P is overpowered? Oh dear god it happened… I have now. Heard. Everything.

I guess you can’t read properly? nowhere did I say it was op. I said thief is not underpowered like some thieves like to say.

No I read fine. You said a thief repeatedly hit ‘3’ on his keyboard and that this was ‘melting tanks’ and ‘melting people’. Clearly you were implying that this was skillful play that is hard to do a on a class that is in need of attention.

I thought this was an obvious joke thread. I’ve been killed by p/p thieves before when I was low on health and out of cooldowns and it annoyed me so much I focused them the rest of the match. P/P is not a good weapon set and easily counter-able.

what pistols was he using by chance?

Nausiation.1469:

Faeyd.5094:

P/P is overpowered? Oh dear god it happened… I have now. Heard. Everything.

I guess you can’t read properly? nowhere did I say it was op. I said thief is not underpowered like some thieves like to say.

Just because you lost 2v1 to a p/p thief doesn’t make it not underpowered, it makes you really really bad.

Lol p/p is only op against pve single target

if u lost to p/p thief 2v1 that means u are really bad and need to l2p

Ricochet could make a lucky thief get some rather nice numbers, but there’s still no excuse to dying to 333 spam in 2v1.

Also, a dire necro hardly has a right to complain. That set is horribly broken.

Maybe he’s confusing it with a P/D Thief using Sneak Attack ?

The animations of Sneak Attack and Unload do look very similar.

If the guy went stealth at any point it was p/d, in which case a pretty cheesy build.

If he was visible the whole time it was p/p, and honestly you shouldn’t die to that, it’s like fighting a ranger without the pet.

Here we have a perfect example of why people always hate on thieves. No matter who they are, they will eventually come across a thief that is good enough to wreck them, which then leads them to believe that either thieves are incredibly OP, or that everyone saying thieves need buffs is wrong because that single person destroyed them.

I mean, Taquito’s not a bad thief, but don’t go around screaming OP because of one skilled guy who happens to be one of the only thieves able to manage through P/P and make it work. You and your friend have some serious learning to do if you let a P/P thief nearly take you down. Time his burst. Let him burn through death shroud – that’s what it’s there for.

Viking Jorun.5413:

I mean, Taquito’s not a bad thief, but don’t go around screaming OP because of one skilled guy who happens to be one of the only thieves able to manage through P/P and make it work. You and your friend have some serious learning to do if you let a P/P thief nearly take you down. Time his burst. Let him burn through death shroud – that’s what it’s there for.

Might want to run if he pulls out the fireworks tho.

p/p and insane in the same title. HA!

I read the op, and I’m not at all convinced, this is just a huge issue with multiple people needing to L2P. P/p thief can’t kite, they can’t escape, no weapon skill of theirs dodges, and the damage is weak regardless. If he had any sort of burst he went down both DA and CS (dual skill dmg, pistols, crit dmg, executioner, etc). leaving no room for defensive traits. If he did go for defensive traits his dmg should not even tickle a bunker. They can throw down BPS and use unload, but now they just starved themselves of all initiative (6+5) so I highly doubt they have any kind of initiative regen that can sustain that constant flow.

Sorry op, but thief p/p is most definitely in the bottom 5 of kitten builds.

You do know that having toughness, high health etc means nothing if you don’t play right.

The only way I found to make P/P capable of bursting anyone down at all is with Leeching Venoms. Otherwise the damage is terrible even in full Zerker and takes like 20 unloads to kill an idle bunker. If you were loaded with tons of conditions at the same time he may of been using that.

phaeris.7604:

If the guy went stealth at any point it was p/d, in which case a pretty cheesy build.

If he was visible the whole time it was p/p, and honestly you shouldn’t die to that, it’s like fighting a ranger without the pet.

p/d isnt really cheesy. people use that word wrong lot tho :P

the people has spoken

Travlane.5948:

phaeris.7604:

If the guy went stealth at any point it was p/d, in which case a pretty cheesy build.

If he was visible the whole time it was p/p, and honestly you shouldn’t die to that, it’s like fighting a ranger without the pet.

p/d isnt really cheesy. people use that word wrong lot tho :P

The community pastes cheese onto any thief build that has a remote viability. Tis the life of a thief.

K U T M.4539:

Viking Jorun.5413:

I mean, Taquito’s not a bad thief, but don’t go around screaming OP because of one skilled guy who happens to be one of the only thieves able to manage through P/P and make it work. You and your friend have some serious learning to do if you let a P/P thief nearly take you down. Time his burst. Let him burn through death shroud – that’s what it’s there for.

Might want to run if he pulls out the fireworks tho.

I can’t anymore. Anet nerfed fireworks.

Alright. I knew thieves love to cry UP but you guys need to calm down. I never said it was overpowered. I said thieves are balanced imo. Plus, I’m not a dire necro, no idea where you got that idea from. I was a warrior. And it took him 3 burst fires to bring me down to CRITICAL health. this means in about 5.25 seconds he had won the fight.

Nausiation.1469:

Alright. I knew thieves love to cry UP but you guys need to calm down. I never said it was overpowered. I said thieves are balanced imo. Plus, I’m not a dire necro, no idea where you got that idea from. I was a warrior. And it took him 3 burst fires to bring me down to CRITICAL health. this means in about 5.25 seconds he had won the fight.

Were you still eating that delicious sammich? I don’t see how they can get you critical health if you’re a bunker and they’re a p/p “burst” build. P/p thieves just make me giggle in wvw.

I run P/P mostly because I like to be different than every other person playing said class, and I pretty much only WvW.

Now burst damage? Even when I traited full crit damage/power, Unload was fun but wasn’t very effective in any fight lasting over 10 seconds.

I have since switched to full condi build with perplexity runes, now this is fun. Interrupt people with #4, toss in #2 for debuff and slow, rinse and repeat. The dots stack up quick even when they cure them and the confusion is fun for watching heavy damage classes blow themselves up.

I trait for stealth condi removal/speed, steal range and stealth. On my pistols I use a +condi on kill and a AoE torment sigil (may try a condi duration on one and swith the +condi on kill to another weapon just for stacks).

It’s a great setup for killing people trying to run away, or to be able to wreak some havoc in a group of people and still get out alive and leave a few downed or close to it for your buddies to finish off.

I use Shadow Refuge, Blinding Powder, Dagger Storm and the backwards dodge roll heal, the other skill is usually run speed or harpoon to gank people off keeps.

It’s not pretty but it works and must be annoying as hell to people I fight as I don’t die very often vs how many people I kill, definatly NOT a burst build, for that I like Sword/Pistol or spam shortbow #2 in a crowd of people and watch the bleeds stack like crazy.

P/P op. Pls nerf, anet.

apparently none of you know your class well. Just because it isn’t faceroll meta, doesn’t mean it’s not viable.

(in reference to WvW)

I’m not playing my thief anymore, but my full-ascended P/P (Valk + Beserker) only had issues with certain Mesmers builds, and the very occasional backstab Thief, and it usually had no problems melting bunkers.

Block projectiles, relfect projectiles, retaliation, dodge, and any other damage mitigation

Blocks or other immunities usually just prolong the fight, and offer no specific advantage to either. Reflections are limited (in availability, CD, and duration), and does very little to help. Unload can be almost infinitely spammable — depending on the build — and cancelling it and waiting for a reflection to drop will also just prolong the fight. I never worried about eating the damage from retaliation, either — the fights didn’t last long for it to amount to anything (and I could’ve always switched to boon-steal if needed for future encounters).

no stealth or evade abilities except what they might have for utility

Nothing more was necessary.

Insane burst does not make one over powered, especially when there are many counters to it. It makes them squishy, and only useful while they have access to their burst abilities. When focus fired, they have to run or die.

How do you counter spammable ranged damage when you can’t close the gap, and can’t do enough damage at ranged yourself to survive? The only hard counter I ever experienced was from confusion-stacking (i.e., perplexity runes), but that poses an issue for many professions.

Even against most bunker-condition necros/engineers, Basilisk would clear their initial conditions (Lyssa), and the fights would be over before needing it again.

You do realize that p/p has no skill whatsoever that grants survivability right!?

In regards to weapon-skills, no, not really — although BP can be useful. However, trait-lines and utilities provide more than enough survivability, and most of them provide offensive purposes as well.

P/p thief can’t kite, they can’t escape, no weapon skill of theirs dodges, and the damage is weak regardless.

If you compare melee vs. ranged, then of course the damage will be inferior, but you also must consider damage potential, and the applicability of that within different situations. I loved P/P thief in massive fights (50v50 or 50v50v50), because it was incredibly effective at single-target burning, and surviving horrible situations. A melee thief, however, would’ve had a much higher chance of being an easy rally for the enemy. Actually, any I saw that were silly enough to switch to shortbow… 1 Unload was enough to trigger their low-hp stealth trait.

P/p thieves just make me giggle in wvw.

Stealth-heavy thieves did the same for me. If they were glass, a single Unload (8-9k+, channeled through stealth) and Steal (2k+ if I recall correctly) gave them a nice surprise.

Warriors were also fun to play with; they’re very helpless against a good P/P build.

These are all comments in regards to 1v1 situations in WvW, but can apply to larger scales (5v5 or 50v50). Against unequal odds, however, such as the 2v1 in this topic, P/P (or at least my no-stealth setup) is very vulnerable. It can be done, but 2 equally skilled players vs. another should usually always have the same outcome.

Nausiation.1469:

apparently none of you know your class well. Just because it isn’t faceroll meta, doesn’t mean it’s not viable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ODp-OMKwg

Well, he’s talking about P/P burst and that isn’t P/P Burst. It’s long drawn out gunslinging where people live for entirely too long for it to be considered burst. More of a kill via many annoying mosquitoes. That build is not going to “melt” tanks or even normal condi builds. Venoms could though as I mentioned. Which would explain why he used stealth with P/P. It’s not a very well designed build though overall but it’s capable of killing fast.