Guild Wars 2

Pistol thieves right now are a realy rare sight in tpvp, and that has good reasons.
The main reasons is that Pistol thief doesnt do anything better than any other class, the key role of Condition pressure in teamfights is already taken by the HGH engi, who does a lot better at it. Also Pistol/Pistol thieves within the set have no way to mitigate dmg or disengage. I’d say this makes them easier targets to focus, but a Pistol/Pistol thief is like a fly attacking an elephant, insignificant.

Copy-pasta aside. While we’re talking about state of professions what about state of Weapons. P/P and P/D are both sloppy from day one. Since Shadow strike was given the limitation of melee range it might as well have a 30s cooldown considering you’ll only use it in the most niche of situations whether you are power spec’d or condi spec’d you’re better off doing CnD+1 all day every day for simply 2 more initiative.
The P/D weapon set basically uses two skills for it’s life-span unless heinously forced to do otherwise such as being inside a guardian circle ward with nukes coming in. Mind you after doing that he has no reason to Shadow strike again. It’s not just the effectivity people feel in hot-joins spamming 5-1, that the ideal situation for P/D 99% of the time is spamming 5-1 is a terrible shame. Not to mention that Caltrops frequently gets used as a crutch because even for Sneak attacks strength, the weapon set is still quite forgettable save one bandaid utility. When Haste was such a bandaid that it made S/P and S/D capable it got nerfed and threw them farther from favor until S/D got it’s tweak. We still have bandaid utils because the weapon sets are disgraceful srs. I bring up P/D simply because P/P usually gets the hit but P/D is disgusting itself. You telling me however I spec’d, 5-1 will do all I need, cover most of my condi-removal, healing and other defensive means and out-damage basically any other rotation I could possibly do in any circumstance since the combo only starts becoming negligible on targets with 25 bleed stacks?. Lol wot? Not to mention being only 1 condi so that despite it’s vast linearity in offensive skills, the delivery of the damage is shallow and easily countered?
How long till P/D gets it’s tweak?
How long till P/P gets the tweak.
P/P The duck set. No mobility whatsoever, not that P/D’s is wonderful considering melee range and it stopping for a mere bump on the road like a mesmers Phase retreat with only greater limitations.
P/P barely moves, Black Powder isn’t ground-targetted, so it’s defensive against other range assault is essentially non-existing, and so for basically having no defense, it’s utility isn’t valuable enough for a util set. As a damage set, the damage isn’t practical enough or high enough to make up for the overall lack of defense of the set itself. As a hybrid of utility and damage? It still flops because the only extra utility it’s bringing is vulnerability. It has a 300 range benefit over Inf strike which otherwise S/P is bringing basically everything you could want of P/P, for a small price to pay of 300 range.

All this solved by the January update of 10% instead of 5% on Pistol mastery? Of course not. P/P Is basically a single target damage spec with some util thrown in, where slot 2 is mediocre in pvp and niche in pve. With it’s main benefit being comboing with Black Powder to apply 1 blind. Or being a cover condition (covering what exactly? I don’t know. Not anything he himself applied). Slot 5 is a pbaoe field that is negated by proper spacing (which is fine) for a ranged set and can’t give it real tangible defense considering overall lack of defense in contrast to D/P and S/P which have defensive capabilities thrown from skills 2-5 instead of just 4 and 5.

So this patch is all bug fixes.
When will we see Pistol/X thief? June? I don’t doubt that someone can pull off niche strats with full team composition building around that thief.
But why would they want to, and why should any weapon set be simply niche? If that is what we’re stepping away from in comparison to gw1.
The devs certainly have time to give the Pistol thieves some love for Junes patch.

Imo. You can start by checking caltrops bleed. Then establishing P/P and P/D as something proper on their own merits. John Peters said P/P has a lot of util, and just had low damage. P/P has util but does it work? If that’s how he feels than they’re pushing it more towards an all-or-nothing damage set with sorrowful defenses (which is fine) in which case, it still doesn’t hit hard enough in general not just Unload.

Sorry, but a well-played P/D thief is kitten near unkillable. Maybe they don’t fill an obvious roll in a 5v5 setup, but when you have all the tools to roll through waves of opponents, taking on multiple at a time…I kinda feel like there’s always a role for that on any team.

Look at video.
See 5-1 play, Watch 2-4 completely ignored utilizing caltrops to make up for being otherwise ignorable on players who want to play in that sandbox.
See that my points are completely reinforced by the video. What a wonderful set when you dgaf about 3 abilities. P/P uses more sense, and even D/D has more varied skill usage. P/D is flawed as hell.
Come at me bro
Hot-join so good.

They really captured the Assassin in P/D when 5-1 plays like Off-hand dual moebius-strike death blossom, with half the sense. P/D clearly needs benefit so that all it’s skills make sense to use within the initiative mechanic in general as it is now, you could give skills 2-4 a 10s cooldown and no would care because 99% of the time they don’t need to use them. Your idol himself does not and his WvW play literally consists of 5-1, skillfully extending it to using 5 on wild Deer so that he doesn’t have to actually gap close. How anyone can see that P/D is in a poor state where 1 skill and utility are being used to make up for the rest of the set utterly flopping and be okay with that is mind-boggling. That’s not to strike at Bill however it is what it is. P/D is a set in need of repair possibly even more than P/P in that at it’s very root most of it’s skills are forgettable when every other set even if they have similar issues, does not have them to the same extent.
Though I suppose one of the devs can say they’re fine if Body shot, Shadow strike and Dancing Dagger are not used by P/D thieves except on full moon’s between 3 am and 3:01 am but only if they roll 6 on the dice.

Nah your wrong, P/D is really good, but requires lots of skill, timing and setting up, on the other hand HGH engy is powerful as well, but requires no skill no timing and setting up, you just drink elixirs and throw nades at enemies. HGH requires no skill to be asset to the team, but you can always get better as well and provide a bigger asset.

When I was watching team sleepy own everyone on that twitch video, I was thinking to myself, if ostrich eggs wasn’t there they probably wouldn’t do so hot because a good HGH engy can make a huge difference, and you saw that by the undefeated streak they went, they didn’t let a single team get past 350 out of like 10 games against other premades and a team consisted of the supposed best of the best.

Pistol mostly just needs a bit of a damage boost, just like sword does.

Black Powder is a combo field, meaning both your initial shot with Black Powder, and any other projectile you shot through the field afterwards, will blind the foe you hit. So in its own right, it is a solid skill. The problem with Black Powder is that it’s too expensive to repetitively use with pistol/pistol, and the initiative cost can’t really be reduced because that would make dagger/pistol even more powerful. But if you removed the combo finisher from Heartseeker, and then changed Black Powder to cost 4 initiative, it would make pistol/pistol a lot more viable.

uberkingkong.8041:

Nah your wrong, P/D is really good, but requires lots of skill, timing and setting up, on the other hand HGH engy is powerful as well, but requires no skill no timing and setting up

LOL. 5, 1 with the occasional caltrops sure is tough.

Im waiting for this highly talented P/D use. I’ve met many P/D thieves of various skills. I’ve played with and against thieves of various skill levels top-bottom in NA I’ve seen quite a few. I’ve seen the videos, I’ve played it. P/D is 2 buttons and a utility skill. Shadow strike used when immobilized/warded. Dancing daggers MIGHT be thrown in when Caltrops is down, and by “might” I mean “will not”. If DD is thrown it’s because P/D has so much initiative sitting down since it only needs to focus on 5-1 it might thrown in dancing daggers because it simply has nothing better to do with the initiative it’s not spending pressing 5-1.

You are right that 5-1 play exemplifies a broken design. It promotes playing the build in a way that was clearly not intended. But you can’t argue that in the right hands it’s not an extremely powerful and competent build.

Honestly, I can’t see why they would focus on a build that can be very strong in the right hands when there are so many builds out there that are so broken they are unplayable.

Kasama.8941:

But if you removed the combo finisher from Heartseeker, and then changed Black Powder to cost 4 initiative, it would make pistol/pistol a lot more viable.

So your suggestion to fix P/P is to destroy D/P’s synergy and nerf HS for no reason just so you can slap a (ultimately ineffective and ill conceived) band aid on P/P.

Can’t Tell if trolling or genuinely clueless.

uberkingkong.8041:

Nah your wrong, P/D is really good, but requires lots of skill, timing and setting up, on the other hand HGH engy is powerful as well, but requires no skill no timing and setting up, you just drink elixirs and throw nades at enemies. HGH requires no skill to be asset to the team, but you can always get better as well and provide a bigger asset.

When I was watching team sleepy own everyone on that twitch video, I was thinking to myself, if ostrich eggs wasn’t there they probably wouldn’t do so hot because a good HGH engy can make a huge difference, and you saw that by the undefeated streak they went, they didn’t let a single team get past 350 out of like 10 games against other premades and a team consisted of the supposed best of the best.

Ahahahaha

Was the first part a joke?

Because pushing 1 and 5 is a lot harder then using all your skills and using skill shot every attack.

what about P/P? imba unload thiefs bros trolololol

Unload is lethal if you get a glass cannon who sits still doesn’t use any skills, and has no teammates helping him.

ensoriki.5789:

Unload is lethal if you get a glass cannon who sits still doesn’t use any skills, and has no teammates helping him.

Headshot is also a particularly dangerous skill when used in this regard.

NERF TEH PIZTOL

evilapprentice.6379:

Kasama.8941:

But if you removed the combo finisher from Heartseeker, and then changed Black Powder to cost 4 initiative, it would make pistol/pistol a lot more viable.

So your suggestion to fix P/P is to destroy D/P’s synergy and nerf HS for no reason just so you can slap a (ultimately ineffective and ill conceived) band aid on P/P.

Can’t Tell if trolling or genuinely clueless.

The only synergy dagger/pistol has is a stealth trigger, which is something that off hand dagger already can do. But the fact that you rely on a stealth trigger to make a weapon set viable, says everything about how broken the Thief is. If gaining stealth from weapon sets is all the Thief’s got going for it, something needs to happen. At least my change would make it interesting to play.

Cazbah.4706:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx-MV-fxYj0

Sorry, but a well-played P/D thief is kitten near unkillable. Maybe they don’t fill an obvious roll in a 5v5 setup, but when you have all the tools to roll through waves of opponents, taking on multiple at a time…I kinda feel like there’s always a role for that on any team.

lol hotjoin, lol.

Kasama.8941:

evilapprentice.6379:

Kasama.8941:

But if you removed the combo finisher from Heartseeker, and then changed Black Powder to cost 4 initiative, it would make pistol/pistol a lot more viable.

So your suggestion to fix P/P is to destroy D/P’s synergy and nerf HS for no reason just so you can slap a (ultimately ineffective and ill conceived) band aid on P/P.

Can’t Tell if trolling or genuinely clueless.

The only synergy dagger/pistol has is a stealth trigger, which is something that off hand dagger already can do. But the fact that you rely on a stealth trigger to make a weapon set viable, says everything about how broken the Thief is. If gaining stealth from weapon sets is all the Thief’s got going for it, something needs to happen. At least my change would make it interesting to play.

Still cant tell if trolling or mentally deficient from too much time on the boards.

“If your class relies on access to its designed defensive measures and primary class mechanic, it just proves how broken it is. Taking away that access would make it interesting to play”.

Hahahahaha.

Kasama.8941:

evilapprentice.6379:

Kasama.8941:

But if you removed the combo finisher from Heartseeker, and then changed Black Powder to cost 4 initiative, it would make pistol/pistol a lot more viable.

So your suggestion to fix P/P is to destroy D/P’s synergy and nerf HS for no reason just so you can slap a (ultimately ineffective and ill conceived) band aid on P/P.

Can’t Tell if trolling or genuinely clueless.

The only synergy dagger/pistol has is a stealth trigger, which is something that off hand dagger already can do. But the fact that you rely on a stealth trigger to make a weapon set viable, says everything about how broken the Thief is. If gaining stealth from weapon sets is all the Thief’s got going for it, something needs to happen. At least my change would make it interesting to play.

As Aphroditë said, perhaps ANet should make us play with two fingers and a thumb, just to make it fair, amirite?

I’d hate to see this matter of intra-profession balance swept under the rug as a result of any slight hot-join success with P/x.
Jon plz.

JonPeters.5630:

We are looking into this. I actually think P/P has a lot of utility. Blind field, daze, vuln stacking. However damage is a bit low. We are making some headway here in the12/14 build so be patient for one more week.

Jon

It’s been months, more headway.

The good pistol skills are on the offhand. Main hand pistol utility is vulnerability stacking, which is all too easily removed

evilapprentice.6379:

Kasama.8941:

evilapprentice.6379:

Kasama.8941:

But if you removed the combo finisher from Heartseeker, and then changed Black Powder to cost 4 initiative, it would make pistol/pistol a lot more viable.

So your suggestion to fix P/P is to destroy D/P’s synergy and nerf HS for no reason just so you can slap a (ultimately ineffective and ill conceived) band aid on P/P.

Can’t Tell if trolling or genuinely clueless.

The only synergy dagger/pistol has is a stealth trigger, which is something that off hand dagger already can do. But the fact that you rely on a stealth trigger to make a weapon set viable, says everything about how broken the Thief is. If gaining stealth from weapon sets is all the Thief’s got going for it, something needs to happen. At least my change would make it interesting to play.

Still cant tell if trolling or mentally deficient from too much time on the boards.

“If your class relies on access to its designed defensive measures and primary class mechanic, it just proves how broken it is. Taking away that access would make it interesting to play”.

Hahahahaha.

Once again, stealth is not the primary mechanic of the Thief. Movement is, and it always has been. Stealth is the primary mechanic of the Assassin, which is not a class in Guild Wars 2. Just because 5-1 builds are the meta, it doesn’t mean that’s how the Thief is designed to be played. In fact, in beta and at release, stealth was barely used at all in builds. It was only once people found out how good burst damage Backstab deals, and how much easier it is to play with stealth then movement, that everything changed.

Taking away weapon stealth would make the Thief more interesting to play, as a movement based profession is arguably a lot more fun to play, then a stealth based one. And it’s defiantly a lot more fun to play against a movement based build.

Kasama.8941:

The only synergy dagger/pistol has is a stealth trigger, which is something that off hand dagger already can do. But the fact that you rely on a stealth trigger to make a weapon set viable, says everything about how broken the Thief is. If gaining stealth from weapon sets is all the Thief’s got going for it, something needs to happen. At least my change would make it interesting to play.

D/P is one of the most versatile weaponsets in the game, actually.

Dagger has a brilliant auto-attack, both range and aoe cone are superior to most swords and greatswords. Ofcourse, Backstab is essential!
Heartseeker scales amazingly with the increased damage on low HP traits, it evades and gapcloses.
Shadow Shot is an unblockable gapcloser with decent range and it blinds to boot.

The Daze on Pistol is nearly spammable and instant, it’s borderline overpowered.
Blind field is used for stealth, but it is incredible to set up stomps without requiring stability too.

It is near perfect in design and outshines D/D by it’s initiative costs, unrelience on melee range and basic utility. All skills are required for the combo, which creates a high skill cap and they synergize with utilities, traits and stats.

On topic: P/P damage = Unload and any channeling skill is terrible in GW2. They fail on dodge/block and are impossible to cancel (confusion). P/P is flawed and I have little hope for it becoming near to viable again after the Quickness nerf.
Since the off-hand skills are exactly the same on D/P but Pistol main hand lacks the synergy with the off-hand there is no logical reason to run it besides gimmick builds.

Stof.9584:

Kasama.8941:

The only synergy dagger/pistol has is a stealth trigger, which is something that off hand dagger already can do. But the fact that you rely on a stealth trigger to make a weapon set viable, says everything about how broken the Thief is. If gaining stealth from weapon sets is all the Thief’s got going for it, something needs to happen. At least my change would make it interesting to play.

D/P is one of the most versatile weaponsets in the game, actually.

Dagger has a brilliant auto-attack, both range and aoe cone are superior to most swords and greatswords. Ofcourse, Backstab is essential!
Heartseeker scales amazingly with the increased damage on low HP traits, it evades and gapcloses.
Shadow Shot is an unblockable gapcloser with decent range and it blinds to boot.

The Daze on Pistol is nearly spammable and instant, it’s borderline overpowered.
Blind field is used for stealth, but it is incredible to set up stomps without requiring stability too.

It is near perfect in design and outshines D/D by it’s initiative costs, unrelience on melee range and basic utility. All skills are required for the combo, which creates a high skill cap and they synergize with utilities, traits and stats.

On topic: P/P damage = Unload and any channeling skill is terrible in GW2. They fail on dodge/block and are impossible to cancel (confusion). P/P is flawed and I have little hope for it becoming near to viable again after the Quickness nerf.
Since the off-hand skills are exactly the same on D/P but Pistol main hand lacks the synergy with the off-hand there is logical reason to run it besides gimmick builds.

Everything ells but Backstab is a bonus. You already have a gap closer in steal, and since you are in stealth for the majority of the time, your opponents are clueless about your location, and therefor don’t know how to effectively gain distance to you. Further more, running with Signet of Shadows makes sure you are never slow. All of this makes the gab closer from Heartseeker and Shadow Shot nothing more then a nice bonus, at best. Seriously, dagger/pistol is just dagger/dagger, without the downside of having to gain stealth in melee range. Using Black Powder when stomping, isn’t any different then using Cloak and Dagger when stomping.

I don’t see how you can have more initiative with dagger/pistol, when you spend more initiative on Black Powder+Heartseeker, then dagger/dagger does on Cloak and Dagger alone.

Right now, pistol/pistol is a great secondary utility weapon set, as it can offer damage stacking with Body Shot, ranged burst damage with Unload, interrupt with Headshot, or stomping with Black Powder. But as a main weapon set, it is pretty bad. The problem is the skills are just too expensive for it to be really effective. Body Shot doesn’t really work with Unload, as the 5 stacks of vulnerability isn’t effective enough to justify spending 3 initiative. Using Unload one time isn’t enough damage on it’s own, because pistol damage is too low. This means you really need that Headshot available to interrupt a possible heal, except it costs 4 initiative, on top of the 10 initiative you just used on double Unload. And because Black Powder is the only option for avoiding damage with pistol/pistol, you need that as well, in between the other skills.

As mentioned earlier, an idea could be to reduce the initiative cost of Black Powder so that pistol/pistol Thieves could avoid more damage. And increasing the overall damage of pistol would mean that it wouldn’t be necessary to spam Unload two or three times. Body Shot has its uses against “bosses”, but I would love to see how adding 2-3 seconds of swiftness, instead of the vulnerability, would change the weapon set.

“Great secondary utility weapon set”
Relative to what exactly, Mesmer Torch?

What are you talking about in terms of D/P serious? The combo is marginalizing in terms of intra-professional balance but that’s about where the puck stops.
HS+BP aside it’s a well pieced together set, though it lacks damage once that combo isn’t a factor. Shadowshot lets you zone in, not having to worry about traps and can even get past factors in elevation. Get to squishy/weakened targets and you can finish them off with Heartseeker, stop em with HS, and finish with BP or defend yourself with it. The only synergy is the combo? That’s false. With steal on a kitten cooldown at maximum it’s not a consistant gap closer which is part of why shadowshot is a good skill because it is a reliable gap closer that you can use multiple times.

Shadowshot isn’t all that amazing in my opinion. It could be better – the problem I find with it is that the enemy can’t be in dodge animation AT ALL (even if the animation is near it’s end), or you won’t shadowstep to them…if the shadowstep worked as a gap closer even if they dodge, as long as they are in range, then it’d be amazing. But I guess that could be perceived as OP.

That’s really the only reason to use heartseekers to chase people when utils are on CD, because you will travel regardless. Shadowshot isn’t as reliable. Not to mention shadowshot has very little forgiveness when it comes to elevation + LoS.

Now that mug can’t crit anymore, I just want to see what they have in mind for thieves…revamping p/p would be awesome. If p/p had a ability like SB #5, then it’d be money.

Amaterasu.6280:

Shadowshot isn’t all that amazing in my opinion. It could be better – the problem I find with it is that the enemy can’t be in dodge animation AT ALL (even if the animation is near it’s end), or you won’t shadowstep to them…if the shadowstep worked as a gap closer even if they dodge, as long as they are in range, then it’d be amazing. But I guess that could be perceived as OP.

That’s really the only reason to use heartseekers to chase people when utils are on CD, because you will travel regardless. Shadowshot isn’t as reliable. Not to mention shadowshot has very little forgiveness when it comes to elevation + LoS.

Now that mug can’t crit anymore, I just want to see what they have in mind for thieves…revamping p/p would be awesome. If p/p had a ability like SB #5, then it’d be money.

you would still lose the AoE.

that is the main issue i find with the thief: shortbow is the only AoE weapon we have, and has one of the most powerful ( seriously) skills in game;

choking gas

They’ve almost fixed S/D ( OH dagger screams for buffs) but now that Mug has been nerfed, burst thieves need something else to compensate.

They said they’re going to buff weapons’ base damage, but i believe that in order to fix what is broken about the thief, we need:

1. better trait selection

2. poison spread around other weapon sets

3. buff to utilities ( this goes along with 1)

4. something needs to be done to Steal as a mechanic, now that mug has been nerfed, 45 secs CD for Steal is too much ( it was even before, but Mug was holding it)

5. some skills / weapon sets /traits need a total rehaul ( MH pistol, Pistol whip, dancing dagger, traps, venomous strenght, potent poison, dual skills traits, sundering strikes, improvisation and all the other crap)

The thief is the class with the least amount of viable traits in the whole game : in each line, there are only 3-4 worthy of picking, not even the elementalist is in such a horrible state.

This, along with horribly designed U-skills ( aside few ones that everybody picks) and terribad trait sinergy, kills build diversity and efficiency.

ensoriki.5789:

“Great secondary utility weapon set”
Relative to what exactly, Mesmer Torch?

What are you talking about in terms of D/P serious? The combo is marginalizing in terms of intra-professional balance but that’s about where the puck stops.
HS+BP aside it’s a well pieced together set, though it lacks damage once that combo isn’t a factor. Shadowshot lets you zone in, not having to worry about traps and can even get past factors in elevation. Get to squishy/weakened targets and you can finish them off with Heartseeker, stop em with HS, and finish with BP or defend yourself with it. The only synergy is the combo? That’s false. With steal on a kitten cooldown at maximum it’s not a consistant gap closer which is part of why shadowshot is a good skill because it is a reliable gap closer that you can use multiple times.

Why does it have to related to anything? Pistol/pistol just give you different tools that are great to use as one-offs. Vulnerability stack, ranged burst, an interrupt, or blind to protect yourself. The problem is that, because of the initiative cost and low pistol base damage, none of them can really work together as a whole.

The Thief is always moving, so you always have to worry about traps. Even though Shadow Shot lets you get close past a trap, you might fall into that trap when you have to get distance again. And if your opponent is standing on a trap, this doesn’t have a lot of value anyway. Steal also has the ability to elevate you to place that are otherwise not accessible. Infiltrator’s Shot or Shadowstep can even do that. Hell, if you go into stealth, you can run around the elevated area and Backstab your foe. So Shadow Shot doesn’t give you any noteworthy advantage. Dagger/dagger can already finish foes off with Heartseeker or Dancing Dagger, and then stomp them using Cloak and Dagger. Even when Steal is recharging, you still have Shadowstep as a utility, which every Thief I’ve ever seen has equipped. Dagger/pistol doesn’t give you anything that you really need. Since most of your initiative is spend on Black Powder+Heartseeker, you have no real initiative left that can allow you to use Shadowshot, or any other skill, multiple times. If you removed the leap combo finisher from Heartseeker, reduced the initiative cost of Black Powder, improved the base damage of dagger, and put Shadow Strike on the weapon set, it would be awesome. But as long as the stealth trigger is there, everything is secondary. As mentioned, why use Shadow Shot, when you can just go into stealth, casually stroll over to your opponent, and then Backstab him? No one even cared about dagger/pistol, until players found out how easy it is to trigger stealth with Black Powder+Heartseeker. That says it all right there.

The problem with thief isn’t specific to any of the weapon sets, but more of a design choice that was not a very good one. Thief is the only class in this game that has to manage a resource pool (initiative) for skills rather than CD’s. This is coupled with not having CD’s on skills, so the most efficient way to play thief in ANY weapon set is to be VERY repetetive in skill use that only changes situationally.

Think about it for a second… Depending on weapon set you might use your stealth combo then its 2,2,2,2,2,2,2 or whatever your stealth application is or you build to 5,1,5,1,5,1,5,1. It doesn’t matter which weapon set thief is in. There is an inherent design flaw that makes playing thief well nothing more that having situational awareness and reliably repeating the same combination of button presses for the given situation.

If they got rid of the initiative system and gave thief CD’s like everyone else it would improve the class (IMO), but that kind of redesign isn’t likely to happen, so I suppose get used to pretending that you aren’t basically emulating what a macro would do more efficiently.

Kasama.8941:

Everything else but Backstab is a bonus.

Further more, running with Signet of Shadows makes sure you are never slow. All of this makes the gap closer from Heartseeker and Shadow Shot nothing more then a nice bonus, at best. Seriously, dagger/pistol is just dagger/dagger, without the downside of having to gain stealth in melee range. Using Black Powder when stomping, isn’t any different then using Cloak and Dagger when stomping.

I don’t see how you can have more initiative with dagger/pistol, when you spend more initiative on Black Powder+Heartseeker, then dagger/dagger does on Cloak and Dagger alone.

I don’t think you realise how strong Black Powder is. A thief should never stomp if a teammate is close enough to do it, BP allows you to stomp Guardians and Rangers who interrupt you even in stealth.

Signet of Shadows is never worth it either, it locks you out of running one important utility you can’t afford to skip: Shadow Refuge or Shadowstep.
Also, you’ll never use Death Blossom, while you can use Shadow Shot on ocassion.

Basically, D/D is selfish, while D/P is team orientated. P/P is team oriented, but lacks damage, stealth, mobility and requires utilities/stats that don’t fit the meta.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

The problem with thief isn’t specific to any of the weapon sets, but more of a design choice that was not a very good one. Thief is the only class in this game that has to manage a resource pool (initiative) for skills rather than CD’s. This is coupled with not having CD’s on skills, so the most efficient way to play thief in ANY weapon set is to be VERY repetetive in skill use that only changes situationally.

Think about it for a second… Depending on weapon set you might use your stealth combo then its 2,2,2,2,2,2,2 or whatever your stealth application is or you build to 5,1,5,1,5,1,5,1. It doesn’t matter which weapon set thief is in. There is an inherent design flaw that makes playing thief well nothing more that having situational awareness and reliably repeating the same combination of button presses for the given situation.

If they got rid of the initiative system and gave thief CD’s like everyone else it would improve the class (IMO), but that kind of redesign isn’t likely to happen, so I suppose get used to pretending that you aren’t basically emulating what a macro would do more efficiently.

This is an over-simplification and a misunderstanding.

D/P is the perfect counter-example. It’s a well built set where every ability has a purpose at nearly any point in the fight. It’s almost always better to pick your best suited skill rather than just spam HS with D/P – there are often times shadowshot and head shot are the superior choice to HS, even when HS does more DPI. There are times you’ll hit BP primarily for the blind so you can AA safely, and only use it for stealth if your target tries to bail. 2 is not always the best choice in D/P (and IMO, it’s not even often the best choice).

If all of our weaponsets were half as well built, thieves would have no problem with weaponskill diversity. Unfortunately, with D/D, if you aren’t aiming for stealth, 2 is your only intelligent option. If you’re running P/P, spam that 3. Heck, even in S/D you’ll be hitting 2 and 3 85% of the time because the designers gave us almost no reason to use 4 and 5.

Tl:Dr – Initiative is not the source of skill spam, bad design is. Once the dev’s give thieves skills that can be effectively applied to various situations, you’ll see less skill spam. Until then, we have to use what we’re given if we want to win.

I agree that D/P is the best designed set by a mile. Yes, I over simplified for the sake of discussion here.

That said, there is one reason to take mainhand dagger that trumps all, and it is the Backstab combo. You are going to go to extreme lengths to get off as many backstabs as possible, because from the perspective of resource consumption vs. output it is by far the best skill on the set. EVERY other skill there (regardless of OH choice) only serves as part of the combo (in the case of using Head Shot to interrupt the heal) or set up (in the case of Black Powder) so that you can pull off more backstabs. Other uses for the other skills on that weapon set are extremely infrequent and/or mistakes.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

The problem with thief isn’t specific to any of the weapon sets, but more of a design choice that was not a very good one. Thief is the only class in this game that has to manage a resource pool (initiative) for skills rather than CD’s. This is coupled with not having CD’s on skills, so the most efficient way to play thief in ANY weapon set is to be VERY repetetive in skill use that only changes situationally.

Not really. Think of Sword/Pistol and Sword/Dagger in the time period between the Tactical strike nerf to the quickness nerf. Think of the two sets between that the time period of the tactical strike nerf to right before this May FS change. I’m sure while D/P had most people ensnared you all got bored enough out of repetition at some point to fool around with some other toys. These sets used all their skills (save DD, which is very situational), and could reinforce there damage with haste.
There was no 5-1 play on S/D in spvp after Tactical was nerfed, it simply made zero sense to do so because the trade off pressing 5-1 on S/D is very poor. Instead Tactical factors more as an emergency “I need a interrupt!” and as a tool to re-engage after using stealth as a defensive option, which is fine. Same on S/P though it has that emergency daze button already in headshot. Before quickness nerf you could go for a double PW with haste certainly but thats 10/12 base. 10/15 augmented. This is a pretty clear opportunity cost because relative to D/P or D/D it’s the most expensive out of the three options. The opportunity cost of S/P was reinforced by stability and retaliation which made just spamming PW without conscious ineffective if not lethal.
Coupled with that old damage nerf from way back, S/P would still frequently need more than 2 pistol whips to accomplish what it wanted on a full health target, so blowing up your resource could screw you over hard.
Same with S/D. Though it was much less ini heavy.

If you wanted to pop in on a ranger like a D/P thief may of tried with Haste and Pistol whip while he’s sitting their chilling, good luck with that when he healing springs back up (unless you get a lucky head shot), if he even had to. You end up juggling your inf strikes a fair bit as zoning tools (or at least thats how I adjusted my play) zoning right before the trap by spacing more than 600 units and dodging over it, then going in and pressuring, continually before you could actually haste +PW him down safely. Sure in a team fight I could care less about that crap and just pick a weakened target and press 3, but in any situation where sense was required against someone with a head on their shoulder spamming 3 with S/P would be very dumb. You’d blow all your ini to do something mostly negated and then have no ini to protect yourself. No thanks jeff.

Think about it for a second… Depending on weapon set you might use your stealth combo then its 2,2,2,2,2,2,2 or whatever your stealth application is or you build to 5,1,5,1,5,1,5,1. It doesn’t matter which weapon set thief is in. There is an inherent design flaw that makes playing thief well nothing more that having situational awareness and reliably repeating the same combination of button presses for the given situation.

If they got rid of the initiative system and gave thief CD’s like everyone else it would improve the class (IMO), but that kind of redesign isn’t likely to happen, so I suppose get used to pretending that you aren’t basically emulating what a macro would do more efficiently.

The “design flaw” isn’t in initiative it’s in the skills themself. Initiative works fine if all your skills have clear useful purpose. Initiative wants equilibrium within the set if it doesn’t have that and something is polarizing then it degenerates to 5-1 play. When it has it, then the opportunity cost of all your actions must be considered arguably more than any other profession in the game. As when skills are actually in check on a thief, no one is punished more than he is for misuse. When they aren’t, no-one gets let off easier for misuse than he does.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

I agree that D/P is the best designed set by a mile. Yes, I over simplified for the sake of discussion here.

That said, there is one reason to take mainhand dagger that trumps all, and it is the Backstab combo. You are going to go to extreme lengths to get off as many backstabs as possible, because from the perspective of resource consumption vs. output it is by far the best skill on the set. EVERY other skill there (regardless of OH choice) only serves as part of the combo (in the case of using Head Shot to interrupt the heal) or set up (in the case of Black Powder) so that you can pull off more backstabs. Other uses for the other skills on that weapon set are extremely infrequent and/or mistakes.

All you’re looking at is damage – there are other reasons to use abilities. With 0 points in SA, living in stealth for constant backstabs isn’t even that great with D/P – it’s only made good by all the things you can get in 30SA that makes constantly stealthing worth it. There are again times when an HS or shadowshot is far superior to Backstab.

Example – Even with 30 points in SA, from a pure Damage standpoint, Trying to set up a backstab when your target is under 25% (and maybe even 50%) can be pointless – you Can shadowshot->HS for for greater damage and more mitigation (Thanks to the blind from SS). Also, not entering stealth means you are still on point for conquest maps.

ensoriki.5789:

The “design flaw” isn’t in initiative it’s in the skills themself. Initiative works fine if all your skills have clear useful purpose. Initiative wants equilibrium within the set if it doesn’t have that and something is polarizing then it degenerates to 5-1 play. When it has it, then the opportunity cost of all your actions must be considered arguably more than any other profession in the game.

We are saying precisely the same thing with different words. The initiative cost makes Thief action more costly than any other profession in the game. Not arguably, absolutely. Considering it in the terms you used, the reason why D/P is better designed than the other sets is precisely beacuse the Backstab combo does not drain the initiative resource like other sets (i.e. your example of Pistol Whip), thereby allowing more access to the situational uses of the other skills on the bar. Absolute parity in the skill cost/benefit across the whole bar is not a real possibility. Depending on your opponent there will ALWAYS be an ideal rotation to execute regardless of the relative balance across your bar as long as the initiative system is in place, thus perpetuating the repetative nature of the profession.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

ensoriki.5789:

The “design flaw” isn’t in initiative it’s in the skills themself. Initiative works fine if all your skills have clear useful purpose. Initiative wants equilibrium within the set if it doesn’t have that and something is polarizing then it degenerates to 5-1 play. When it has it, then the opportunity cost of all your actions must be considered arguably more than any other profession in the game.

We are saying precisely the same thing with different words. The initiative cost makes Thief action more costly than any other profession in the game. Not arguably, absolutely. Considering it in the terms you used, the reason why D/P is better designed than the other sets is precisely beacuse the Backstab combo does not drain the initiative resource like other sets (i.e. your example of Pistol Whip), thereby allowing more access to the situational uses of the other skills on the bar. Absolute parity in the skill cost/benefit across the whole bar is not a real possibility. Depending on your opponent there will ALWAYS be an ideal rotation to execute regardless of the relative balance across your bar as long as the initiative system is in place, thus perpetuating the repetative nature of the profession.

Think you’re looking too far into this. This is fairly similar to every other profession. Who can use a rotation of cooldown skills and generally will since their is no going back with the CD system.
Ergo, Flurry/Bulls-charge/Bolas/blade-throw -> HB -> Whirling strike for instance.

Or.
11111111111111111111111111111111 – Ranger shortbow.
There generally always is ideal rotations/button presses that you will perform unless the opponent or other circumstances force you switch this up. It’s really not an initiative issue if say you look at P/D without sneak attack. Shadow strike does damage but not that much and puts you in melee range to start it off which has obvious consequences. Plus with the warp spamming that is not ideal. Body shot is body shot, not ideal. DD does trash damage, not ideal. Spamming CnD? Redundant. Depending on your opponent as any profession there is an Ideal rotation, it does not mean you will get to execute it. All that matters is that there opportunity cost for when you’re unable to execute it, that it actually matters.