Guild Wars 2

It is my opinion that dagger pistol trickery has a tactical advantage over sword pistol trickery so the first question would be: is it true ?

Now if d/p really has that advantage against s/p how exactly does it work ?
I mean, what are the “plays” that give you an advantage ? Like using steal to land a backstab or stuff like that, i know some tricks for sword pistol but i am totally new to dagger pistol and i’d like to get some insight on the more advanced tactics.

Headshot the Pistol Whips

that’s a start, didn’t think about that lol
anything else ?

You have access to more stealths than they do which is a big advantage. Also most s/p thieves use haste skill to burst target down.. so if you avoid that they are pretty easy until their 45 seconds cool down is back up.

Put down that blind field so they miss half their pistol whip and the damage is pretty low also. The only thing you have to worry about like I said above is their burst, get caught off guard with no stun break and you will probably die.

LuRkEr.9462:

Put down that blind field so they miss half their pistol whip and the damage is pretty low also.

Just no… Black Powder will do nothing to them, don’t waste the initiative unless you need stealth to cover your heal or you’re timing a heartseeker at the end of their pistol whip so you can get a backstab in.

Advantage? You have an interrupt on your steal, and as d/p you can interrupt pistol whip. S/P thief can’t interrupt any of your moves.

Dagins.5163:

Advantage? You have an interrupt on your steal, and as d/p you can interrupt pistol whip. S/P thief can’t interrupt any of your moves.

actually s/p can but it is harder to land and it is melee

head shot the head shot.

Dagins.5163:

Advantage? You have an interrupt on your steal, and as d/p you can interrupt pistol whip. S/P thief can’t interrupt any of your moves.

What… do people even play this game?

Narcarsis.5739:

Headshot the Pistol Whips

This.

I would also add that as S/P you’re always out of stealth without the permaevade thing S/D provides, while D/P can backstab basically at anytime, putting you already under the 50% threshold and already forcing you to play defensive.

Narcarsis.5739:

Dagins.5163:

Advantage? You have an interrupt on your steal, and as d/p you can interrupt pistol whip. S/P thief can’t interrupt any of your moves.

What… do people even play this game?

I’m surprised we still do.

Though I’ll also add that blinding the stun on PW is about as good as Headshotting it. The only burst that S/P has is from PW and once you know how to counter it it’s really a kinda pointless weaponset in comparison to other thief weapon sets.

Narcarsis.5739:

Dagins.5163:

Advantage? You have an interrupt on your steal, and as d/p you can interrupt pistol whip. S/P thief can’t interrupt any of your moves.

What… do people even play this game?

All the good ppl left
See how lost we are without guidance from pros?? lmao

Since pistol whip animation buff, s/p > d/p slightly because of evade frames and sword 2. I think once you’ve played d/p enough and understand the flaws, then s/p will definitely be superior to play especially against another d/p thief. The fight will depend on the better thief, but if we’re talking about players of the exact caliber, then I think s/p would win for sure. It really comes down to timing and anticipation/guessing.

Yea you can headshot the pistol whip cast but why would you waste 4ini to daze and tickle someone for 1/4s only for them to do it again? You’re not going to be able to do headshot while simultaneously dealing damage to them so you’re wasting loads of ini…seems like a pointless trade off. If I see you daze me and leap at me with HS out of blind field, i’ll pistol whip then and you’ll eat the whole thing…

Pre-daze nerf I would agree since you can still auto attack 2x before they come out of daze, but post-daze nerf, no.

Oh and spamming BP against a s/p thief is dumb…don’t do it.

I like d/p over s/p. S/P lacks the burst that d/p has and I think staying in short bow is better most the time anyways. Trickery builds really are shortbow builds and the other weapon set should be something that compliments it. D/P’s burst fits perfectly with that. Another benefit of d/p is you won’t feel your mind turning to mush like when playing s/p

Narcarsis.5739:

LuRkEr.9462:

Put down that blind field so they miss half their pistol whip and the damage is pretty low also.

Just no… Black Powder will do nothing to them, don’t waste the initiative unless you need stealth to cover your heal or you’re timing a heartseeker at the end of their pistol whip so you can get a backstab in.

You said it yourself… I just didn’t post the rest of it as its kind of obvious to the d/p rotation. And yes, it does lower their damage as they will miss a few of the hits and sometimes they miss the stun at the beginning if you got it down in time, unless they are still in their haste phase in which you need to dodge away / stun break.

LuRkEr.9462:

Narcarsis.5739:

LuRkEr.9462:

Put down that blind field so they miss half their pistol whip and the damage is pretty low also.

Just no… Black Powder will do nothing to them, don’t waste the initiative unless you need stealth to cover your heal or you’re timing a heartseeker at the end of their pistol whip so you can get a backstab in.

You said it yourself… I just didn’t post the rest of it as its kind of obvious to the d/p rotation. And yes, it does lower their damage as they will miss a few of the hits and sometimes they miss the stun at the beginning if you got it down in time, unless they are still in their haste phase in which you need to dodge away / stun break.

Go learn what pistol whip does

Amaterasu.6280:

Oh and spamming BP against a s/p thief is dumb…don’t do it.

Why is BP no good against pistol whip?

Yasha.5963:

Amaterasu.6280:

Oh and spamming BP against a s/p thief is dumb…don’t do it.

Why is BP no good against pistol whip?

because BP blind pulses slower than PW attack speed, you will eat pretty much entire pw even if thief sits in BP

Also to note is that Pistol Whip is actually 8 strikes across 4 swings, so even the swings that are blinded hit for half damage because Blind only negates one of the strikes. (Side effect of that also means Retaliation does 2 hits per swing on people using PW)

Amaterasu.6280:

Since pistol whip animation buff, s/p > d/p slightly because of evade frames and sword 2. I think once you’ve played d/p enough and understand the flaws, then s/p will definitely be superior to play especially against another d/p thief. The fight will depend on the better thief, but if we’re talking about players of the exact caliber, then I think s/p would win for sure. It really comes down to timing and anticipation/guessing.

Yea you can headshot the pistol whip cast but why would you waste 4ini to daze and tickle someone for 1/4s only for them to do it again? You’re not going to be able to do headshot while simultaneously dealing damage to them so you’re wasting loads of ini…seems like a pointless trade off. If I see you daze me and leap at me with HS out of blind field, i’ll pistol whip then and you’ll eat the whole thing…

Pre-daze nerf I would agree since you can still auto attack 2x before they come out of daze, but post-daze nerf, no.

Oh and spamming BP against a s/p thief is dumb…don’t do it.

Uhm, no, i can’t agree with you.

as a D/P thief you can hide in stealth quite forever while your S/P opponent is always vulnerable ( if he starts with pistol whip, just interrupt it with steal-stab and puf, already under 50% HP).

Unless you waste your steal stab on a random disabling shot ( because kitten happens), a D/P thief will win 100% of the time.

This of course doesn’t mean D/P > than S/P, it’s quite the opposite, but still you can’t say that in a duel D/P won’t win, because it will.

Moreover, S/P is quite inferior to S/D in dueling capacities, and it’s a lot less forgiving ( you can end up swinging your sword at the air quite often) so there’s a reason why thieves may stick to S/D.

Still i saw Sizer playing S/P yesterday.

Maybe the scrub S/D meta reached its end.

In a 1v1 against each other, D/P has the advantage, largely due to stealth. That’s not to say that a good S/P player can’t win though.

Mrbig.8019:

Amaterasu.6280:

Since pistol whip animation buff, s/p > d/p slightly because of evade frames and sword 2. I think once you’ve played d/p enough and understand the flaws, then s/p will definitely be superior to play especially against another d/p thief. The fight will depend on the better thief, but if we’re talking about players of the exact caliber, then I think s/p would win for sure. It really comes down to timing and anticipation/guessing.

Yea you can headshot the pistol whip cast but why would you waste 4ini to daze and tickle someone for 1/4s only for them to do it again? You’re not going to be able to do headshot while simultaneously dealing damage to them so you’re wasting loads of ini…seems like a pointless trade off. If I see you daze me and leap at me with HS out of blind field, i’ll pistol whip then and you’ll eat the whole thing…

Pre-daze nerf I would agree since you can still auto attack 2x before they come out of daze, but post-daze nerf, no.

Oh and spamming BP against a s/p thief is dumb…don’t do it.

Uhm, no, i can’t agree with you.

as a D/P thief you can hide in stealth quite forever while your S/P opponent is always vulnerable ( if he starts with pistol whip, just interrupt it with steal-stab and puf, already under 50% HP).

Unless you waste your steal stab on a random disabling shot ( because kitten happens), a D/P thief will win 100% of the time.

This of course doesn’t mean D/P > than S/P, it’s quite the opposite, but still you can’t say that in a duel D/P won’t win, because it will.

Moreover, S/P is quite inferior to S/D in dueling capacities, and it’s a lot less forgiving ( you can end up swinging your sword at the air quite often) so there’s a reason why thieves may stick to S/D.

Still i saw Sizer playing S/P yesterday.

Maybe the scrub S/D meta reached its end.

Hide in stealth forever? Trickery d/p can heartseek a total of 3x with full bar of 15ini if they do bp+heartseek stealthing. That’s a total of 6 seconds after burning a full bar of ini…I don’t see how that’s hiding in stealth forever. Not to mention for the typical stealthing of 3 seconds, while the pistol whip evasion frames are roughly 1.5s alone. The other 1.5s you can just dodge and/or position yourself elsewhere via sword 2. If you’re talking about shadow refuge, s/p thieves use the same utilities as d/p..or at least I do.

As I said, it’s all about anticipation and guessing. It also helps if you can dance in and out of range and LoS. One great thing about s/p is that sword 2 still goes through walls, and you can dance in and out of range especially when they are abusing stealth. Shadow shot can’t hit through walls, so unless they have stealth and/or infiltrator’s signet up, it’s very hard for them to catch up to you and position a good backstab in 3 seconds.

You gotta remember s/p trickery has sleight of hand as well…you can easily daze your opponent back.

Saying s/d is inferior to s/p is totally untrue as well. s/d heavily relies on handing larcenous strike which is totally telegraphed after flanking strike…you can always anticipate it since larcenous strike only remains active for a while after flanking strike. They also suffer heavily from BP spamming because unlike pistol whip, they can’t hit through it because of how slow their attacks are. Vice versa, they have no way to negate pistol whip damage aside from spamming dodges.

Again, in thief fights it always comes down to who plays better, but speaking about people of the exact same caliber, I think s/p has a slight upper hand (no pun intended) over d/p and s/d.

Amaterasu.6280:

Mrbig.8019:

Amaterasu.6280:

Since pistol whip animation buff, s/p > d/p slightly because of evade frames and sword 2. I think once you’ve played d/p enough and understand the flaws, then s/p will definitely be superior to play especially against another d/p thief. The fight will depend on the better thief, but if we’re talking about players of the exact caliber, then I think s/p would win for sure. It really comes down to timing and anticipation/guessing.

Yea you can headshot the pistol whip cast but why would you waste 4ini to daze and tickle someone for 1/4s only for them to do it again? You’re not going to be able to do headshot while simultaneously dealing damage to them so you’re wasting loads of ini…seems like a pointless trade off. If I see you daze me and leap at me with HS out of blind field, i’ll pistol whip then and you’ll eat the whole thing…

Pre-daze nerf I would agree since you can still auto attack 2x before they come out of daze, but post-daze nerf, no.

Oh and spamming BP against a s/p thief is dumb…don’t do it.

Uhm, no, i can’t agree with you.

as a D/P thief you can hide in stealth quite forever while your S/P opponent is always vulnerable ( if he starts with pistol whip, just interrupt it with steal-stab and puf, already under 50% HP).

Unless you waste your steal stab on a random disabling shot ( because kitten happens), a D/P thief will win 100% of the time.

This of course doesn’t mean D/P > than S/P, it’s quite the opposite, but still you can’t say that in a duel D/P won’t win, because it will.

Moreover, S/P is quite inferior to S/D in dueling capacities, and it’s a lot less forgiving ( you can end up swinging your sword at the air quite often) so there’s a reason why thieves may stick to S/D.

Still i saw Sizer playing S/P yesterday.

Maybe the scrub S/D meta reached its end.

Hide in stealth forever? Trickery d/p can heartseek a total of 3x with full bar of 15ini if they do bp+heartseek stealthing. That’s a total of 6 seconds after burning a full bar of ini…I don’t see how that’s hiding in stealth forever. Not to mention for the typical stealthing of 3 seconds, while the pistol whip evasion frames are roughly 1.5s alone. The other 1.5s you can just dodge and/or position yourself elsewhere via sword 2. If you’re talking about shadow refuge, s/p thieves use the same utilities as d/p..or at least I do.

As I said, it’s all about anticipation and guessing. It also helps if you can dance in and out of range and LoS. One great thing about s/p is that sword 2 still goes through walls, and you can dance in and out of range especially when they are abusing stealth. Shadow shot can’t hit through walls, so unless they have stealth and/or infiltrator’s signet up, it’s very hard for them to catch up to you and position a good backstab in 3 seconds.

You gotta remember s/p trickery has sleight of hand as well…you can easily daze your opponent back.

Saying s/d is inferior to s/p is totally untrue as well. s/d heavily relies on handing larcenous strike which is totally telegraphed after flanking strike…you can always anticipate it since larcenous strike only remains active for a while after flanking strike. They also suffer heavily from BP spamming because unlike pistol whip, they can’t hit through it because of how slow their attacks are. Vice versa, they have no way to negate pistol whip damage aside from spamming dodges.

Again, in thief fights it always comes down to who plays better, but speaking about people of the exact same caliber, I think s/p has a slight upper hand (no pun intended) over d/p and s/d.

1. D/P hides in stealth, S/P doesn’t, reason why D/P can CHOOSE when to attack, while S/P has to foretell.

S/p can win against D/P, bt D/P has the advantage.

2. S/D is better in dueling all other classes, S/P is not. S/D has greater mobility, its damage is more bursty then sustained, it can be done on the move while S/p is static, S/D has better condi removal trough pain response.

S/D is better in overall dueling, while S/P can be better against S/D but it all goes to who plays better, it’s nothing more than kitten-45%.

Yasha.5963:

Amaterasu.6280:

Oh and spamming BP against a s/p thief is dumb…don’t do it.

Why is BP no good against pistol whip?

because BP will only blind the stun, the other pulses are landed while the thief is “evading” so the BP has no effect on it

Amaterasu.6280:

Since pistol whip animation buff, s/p > d/p slightly because of evade frames and sword 2. I think once you’ve played d/p enough and understand the flaws, then s/p will definitely be superior to play especially against another d/p thief. The fight will depend on the better thief, but if we’re talking about players of the exact caliber, then I think s/p would win for sure. It really comes down to timing and anticipation/guessing.

Yea you can headshot the pistol whip cast but why would you waste 4ini to daze and tickle someone for 1/4s only for them to do it again? You’re not going to be able to do headshot while simultaneously dealing damage to them so you’re wasting loads of ini…seems like a pointless trade off. If I see you daze me and leap at me with HS out of blind field, i’ll pistol whip then and you’ll eat the whole thing…

Pre-daze nerf I would agree since you can still auto attack 2x before they come out of daze, but post-daze nerf, no.

Oh and spamming BP against a s/p thief is dumb…don’t do it.

its not 1/4s , if u stun the PW, they wait about 3~s to be able to do it again, 3s in thief world is a lot

Sars.8792:

head shot the head shot.

headshot the headshot that heads the headshot.

Cynz.9437:

Yasha.5963:

Amaterasu.6280:

Oh and spamming BP against a s/p thief is dumb…don’t do it.

Why is BP no good against pistol whip?

because BP blind pulses slower than PW attack speed, you will eat pretty much entire pw even if thief sits in BP

^ which, presumably, he won’t, unless he’s a bad thief anyways. Experienced players know how to melee characters standing in BP, so you have to use it, if at all, as a distancing mechanism (i.e. put the field between you and your opponent as a sort of obstacle to prevent them from doing melee damage to you. It’s like having a miniature Ring of Warding that you’re on the outside of).

Who.4651:

Amaterasu.6280:

Since pistol whip animation buff, s/p > d/p slightly because of evade frames and sword 2. I think once you’ve played d/p enough and understand the flaws, then s/p will definitely be superior to play especially against another d/p thief. The fight will depend on the better thief, but if we’re talking about players of the exact caliber, then I think s/p would win for sure. It really comes down to timing and anticipation/guessing.

Yea you can headshot the pistol whip cast but why would you waste 4ini to daze and tickle someone for 1/4s only for them to do it again? You’re not going to be able to do headshot while simultaneously dealing damage to them so you’re wasting loads of ini…seems like a pointless trade off. If I see you daze me and leap at me with HS out of blind field, i’ll pistol whip then and you’ll eat the whole thing…

Pre-daze nerf I would agree since you can still auto attack 2x before they come out of daze, but post-daze nerf, no.

Oh and spamming BP against a s/p thief is dumb…don’t do it.

its not 1/4s , if u stun the PW, they wait about 3~s to be able to do it again, 3s in thief world is a lot

You have got to be kidding me…

Please do yourself a favor and don’t post unless you know what you’re talking about…and it’s obvious you don’t even play a thief.

Lesson for you:

Thieves run on intiative, not cooldown time in seconds like all other classes. If you stun/daze my pistolwhip or any other weapon skill, it will put ALL of my skills on the same stun duration as your skill (I.E: Headshot has a 1/4s daze, thus all my skills will go on a 1/4s shutdown)

I will immediately be able to use whatever weapon skill I please after that 1/4s daze. It will NOT put my pistol whip on a 3s CD upon interupt because IT HAS NO CD. Try it for yourself. This is my reasoning behind why I don’t think Caed’s suggestion of dazing the pistol whip helps with the fight at all…you cannot do damage while simultaneously dazing them because the daze duration is too short. Not to mention you have to waste 4ini just for it. Since post-daze nerf, it’s totally not worth it.

You’re thinking about dazing/stunning a skill on a class whose weapon skills runs on CD times. Say, if I interupt a warrior’s Backbreaker(which has a 1s cast-time and a 30s CD) with Headshot, , I will put that particular skill on a 3s CD, while all his other skills will be put on a 1/4s CD.

The only way you’re going to disable a thief for 3s is if your skill actually stuns/dazes for 3s like Signet of Domination on a mesmer. You cannot put any of the thief’s skills on a 3s CD.

Amaterasu.6280:

Who.4651:

Amaterasu.6280:

Since pistol whip animation buff, s/p > d/p slightly because of evade frames and sword 2. I think once you’ve played d/p enough and understand the flaws, then s/p will definitely be superior to play especially against another d/p thief. The fight will depend on the better thief, but if we’re talking about players of the exact caliber, then I think s/p would win for sure. It really comes down to timing and anticipation/guessing.

Yea you can headshot the pistol whip cast but why would you waste 4ini to daze and tickle someone for 1/4s only for them to do it again? You’re not going to be able to do headshot while simultaneously dealing damage to them so you’re wasting loads of ini…seems like a pointless trade off. If I see you daze me and leap at me with HS out of blind field, i’ll pistol whip then and you’ll eat the whole thing…

Pre-daze nerf I would agree since you can still auto attack 2x before they come out of daze, but post-daze nerf, no.

Oh and spamming BP against a s/p thief is dumb…don’t do it.

its not 1/4s , if u stun the PW, they wait about 3~s to be able to do it again, 3s in thief world is a lot

You have got to be kidding me…

Please do yourself a favor and don’t post unless you know what you’re talking about…and it’s obvious you don’t even play a thief.

Lesson for you:

Thieves run on intiative, not cooldown time in seconds like all other classes. If you stun/daze my pistolwhip or any other weapon skill, it will put ALL of my skills on the same stun duration as your skill (I.E: Headshot has a 1/4s daze, thus all my skills will go on a 1/4s shutdown)

I will immediately be able to use whatever weapon skill I please after that 1/4s daze. It will NOT put my pistol whip on a 3s CD upon interupt because IT HAS NO CD. Try it for yourself. This is my reasoning behind why I don’t think Caed’s suggestion of dazing the pistol whip helps with the fight at all…you cannot do damage while simultaneously dazing them because the daze duration is too short. Not to mention you have to waste 4ini just for it. Since post-daze nerf, it’s totally not worth it.

You’re thinking about dazing/stunning a skill on a class whose weapon skills runs on CD times. Say, if I interupt a warrior’s Backbreaker(which has a 1s cast-time and a 30s CD) with Headshot, , I will put that particular skill on a 3s CD, while all his other skills will be put on a 1/4s CD.

The only way you’re going to disable a thief for 3s is if your skill actually stuns/dazes for 3s like Signet of Domination on a mesmer. You cannot put any of the thief’s skills on a 3s CD.

Again, steal-stab and done.

There’s no way for an S/P thief to avoid D/P steal-stab after the 2 standard dodges.

While flanking strike allows for dodge chaning with little to no aftercast, S/P castings are pretty obvious, so you really can do kitten against D/P.

Again, i agree S/P is superior to both D/P and S/D, but D/P will ALWAYS win in a duel, unless outplayed.

Mrbig.8019:

Amaterasu.6280:

Who.4651:

Amaterasu.6280:

Since pistol whip animation buff, s/p > d/p slightly because of evade frames and sword 2. I think once you’ve played d/p enough and understand the flaws, then s/p will definitely be superior to play especially against another d/p thief. The fight will depend on the better thief, but if we’re talking about players of the exact caliber, then I think s/p would win for sure. It really comes down to timing and anticipation/guessing.

Yea you can headshot the pistol whip cast but why would you waste 4ini to daze and tickle someone for 1/4s only for them to do it again? You’re not going to be able to do headshot while simultaneously dealing damage to them so you’re wasting loads of ini…seems like a pointless trade off. If I see you daze me and leap at me with HS out of blind field, i’ll pistol whip then and you’ll eat the whole thing…

Pre-daze nerf I would agree since you can still auto attack 2x before they come out of daze, but post-daze nerf, no.

Oh and spamming BP against a s/p thief is dumb…don’t do it.

its not 1/4s , if u stun the PW, they wait about 3~s to be able to do it again, 3s in thief world is a lot

You have got to be kidding me…

Please do yourself a favor and don’t post unless you know what you’re talking about…and it’s obvious you don’t even play a thief.

Lesson for you:

Thieves run on intiative, not cooldown time in seconds like all other classes. If you stun/daze my pistolwhip or any other weapon skill, it will put ALL of my skills on the same stun duration as your skill (I.E: Headshot has a 1/4s daze, thus all my skills will go on a 1/4s shutdown)

I will immediately be able to use whatever weapon skill I please after that 1/4s daze. It will NOT put my pistol whip on a 3s CD upon interupt because IT HAS NO CD. Try it for yourself. This is my reasoning behind why I don’t think Caed’s suggestion of dazing the pistol whip helps with the fight at all…you cannot do damage while simultaneously dazing them because the daze duration is too short. Not to mention you have to waste 4ini just for it. Since post-daze nerf, it’s totally not worth it.

You’re thinking about dazing/stunning a skill on a class whose weapon skills runs on CD times. Say, if I interupt a warrior’s Backbreaker(which has a 1s cast-time and a 30s CD) with Headshot, , I will put that particular skill on a 3s CD, while all his other skills will be put on a 1/4s CD.

The only way you’re going to disable a thief for 3s is if your skill actually stuns/dazes for 3s like Signet of Domination on a mesmer. You cannot put any of the thief’s skills on a 3s CD.

Again, i agree S/P is superior to both D/P and S/D, but D/P will ALWAYS win in a duel, unless outplayed.

The last 2 words sums up every thief 1v1 fight’s outcome. Being outplayed is what it comes down to in the end because thieves have very little margin for error compared to a lot of other classes/builds. That’s why most good thief 1v1s end up looking like DBZ battles, right?

The steal-stab isn’t really convincing me.

Steal-backstab – Unless I don’t see you at all (which probably means you’re coming from SR) then yea maybe you can sneak behind me and steal-stab. But that’s no different than any other thief burst. s/p = steal+pw, s/d = steal+LS. But what comes right after that? That other thief will shadowstep away and most likely get his/or heal off right? Remember s/p and s/d uses withdraw, not hide in shadows so you can’t rupt it neither.

If you mean steal-backstab while the we’re already engaged in the 1v1, then it’s very unlikely i’ll let him land that backstab. If I can see him laying down the BP and leaping from it, then I can counter-play it and position myself so that he can’t land it (on my side/back atleast).

If you’ve played d/p you know it’s not the easiest thing to land steal+backstab since positioning and timing is EVERYTHING. When dodges/evade frames come into play, there is a huge chance of it not landing the way you’d want it to.

Amaterasu.6280:

Mrbig.8019:

Amaterasu.6280:

Who.4651:

Amaterasu.6280:

Since pistol whip animation buff, s/p > d/p slightly because of evade frames and sword 2. I think once you’ve played d/p enough and understand the flaws, then s/p will definitely be superior to play especially against another d/p thief. The fight will depend on the better thief, but if we’re talking about players of the exact caliber, then I think s/p would win for sure. It really comes down to timing and anticipation/guessing.

Yea you can headshot the pistol whip cast but why would you waste 4ini to daze and tickle someone for 1/4s only for them to do it again? You’re not going to be able to do headshot while simultaneously dealing damage to them so you’re wasting loads of ini…seems like a pointless trade off. If I see you daze me and leap at me with HS out of blind field, i’ll pistol whip then and you’ll eat the whole thing…

Pre-daze nerf I would agree since you can still auto attack 2x before they come out of daze, but post-daze nerf, no.

Oh and spamming BP against a s/p thief is dumb…don’t do it.

its not 1/4s , if u stun the PW, they wait about 3~s to be able to do it again, 3s in thief world is a lot

You have got to be kidding me…

Please do yourself a favor and don’t post unless you know what you’re talking about…and it’s obvious you don’t even play a thief.

Lesson for you:

Thieves run on intiative, not cooldown time in seconds like all other classes. If you stun/daze my pistolwhip or any other weapon skill, it will put ALL of my skills on the same stun duration as your skill (I.E: Headshot has a 1/4s daze, thus all my skills will go on a 1/4s shutdown)

I will immediately be able to use whatever weapon skill I please after that 1/4s daze. It will NOT put my pistol whip on a 3s CD upon interupt because IT HAS NO CD. Try it for yourself. This is my reasoning behind why I don’t think Caed’s suggestion of dazing the pistol whip helps with the fight at all…you cannot do damage while simultaneously dazing them because the daze duration is too short. Not to mention you have to waste 4ini just for it. Since post-daze nerf, it’s totally not worth it.

You’re thinking about dazing/stunning a skill on a class whose weapon skills runs on CD times. Say, if I interupt a warrior’s Backbreaker(which has a 1s cast-time and a 30s CD) with Headshot, , I will put that particular skill on a 3s CD, while all his other skills will be put on a 1/4s CD.

The only way you’re going to disable a thief for 3s is if your skill actually stuns/dazes for 3s like Signet of Domination on a mesmer. You cannot put any of the thief’s skills on a 3s CD.

Again, i agree S/P is superior to both D/P and S/D, but D/P will ALWAYS win in a duel, unless outplayed.

The last 2 words sums up every thief 1v1 fight’s outcome. Being outplayed is what it comes down to in the end because thieves have very little margin for error compared to a lot of other classes/builds. That’s why most good thief 1v1s end up looking like DBZ battles, right?

lol yeah

What i’m saying is that if you compare 2 guys of the same caliber, D/P has the upper hand mostly thanks to higher stealth uptime and S/P lacks of “istant” dodges like S/D.

It’s the same reason why S/D is an overall better dueling build ( FS-AA-LS with dodge here and there, port away, without losing damage while S/P needs to stay on the target in order to keep the pressure, another reason why S/P has a lot higher skill floor than S/D).

But if we account that S/P is not THAT worse than S/D in dueling capabilities + CCs+stab-stomp interrupts-cleave damage it’s obvious that S/P trickery is current best choice, especially if your team does his job properly.

And, unlike S/D, it CAN be countered without relying on pure luck.

Edit to your edit:

Steal-stab will mostly come out at the beginning.

BP+HSx3= 6 secs of stealth. Position yourself and steal-stab as soon as your opponent is out of dodges-casts PW.

Even if he has withdraw, he will still be poisoned.

Steal-stab+fire sigil = 8-9k damage, or rather 60% of S/P overall health. if you count WD poisoned heal ( 3k +-) he will end up with 9 k health, already on the defensive.

This is how standard duels go, among skilled thieves, in duel servers.

In NA i heard you don’t have it, you really should create one.

In tPvP it’s a whole different story, in that case i agree with you, since it’s very unlikely that a D/P thief will spam stealth while roaming.