Guild Wars 2

I’ll be honest, while I’d like to see Ricochet returned exactly as it was… I’d be happy if it was at least added as a baseline to unload. I can get past the range decrease, I can get past the loss of aoe when I play -/p or p/-…

but I really don’t see when I’d play p/p without it in the current environment (even, and especially, as a second weapon set).

It was likely too hard to balance for S/P and P/D… that it crushed P/P was probably a side effect. I say crushed, because the change took a weapon combo that was already seldom played due to weaknesses and and further increased that weakness without any making up for it in another aspect in any way.

The only think P/P has going for it in the current game is aesthetics. I already had to swap to my Guardian for group WvW, Warrior for PvE farming , and any build BUT P/P for dungeons…

Maybe they can give our #3 ability as an option to engineers :P

There are those of us who are rather casual players and played thief solely for the joy that was firing off the number 3 skill. We were fine with being less desirable in Dungeon groups…
fine with killing mobs one at a time while playing outdoor zones…
fine in WvW with being the least effective roaming thief spec…
fine in WvW with being handicapped with single target dps in a zerg…

If the desire is to not have thieves play it at all… then just give the dual pistol and # 3 skill to any other class. Ranger, Elementalist, Warrior. Don’t care, just don’t understand beating into the ground one of the most underutilized skills by a class in this game.

Would love to see any metric they can provide showing a thief playing dual pistol having an advantage in any facet of the game. Seriously, would love to see it so I could at least believe their was some thinking behind this beyond what feels like “there just wasn’t room for more skills and we think dual pistols were a mistake to give thief in the first place”.

Bovan.9481:

Is P/P really a thing?

Dual Pistol is attractive in and of itself. There’s a segment in any MMO atttracted to it if for no other reason than the non Guild Wars 2 Media it reminds players of. Hell, I love seeing a bunch of enemies somewhere and feeling like I’m about to go all John Woo on them… even if the reality might in fact be something else entirely.

Personally I wish they’d given Dual Pistols to any other class because I feel like the majority of the balancing issues come down to the fact that theives get stealth… and these guys have hit a wall balancing single target ranged damage against a class that can vanish.

They seem to have been happy with P/P for quite some time now, so I wouldn’t anticipate the class being improved in HoT as sad as that may be. In my opinion P/P is just a niche build they’ll allow people to play while they focus balancing around burst/stealth melee builds. If they wanted it to be more it would have come up at least once in a developer comment by now as an issue they’d like to address.

You keep talking about strengths off the set quite vaguely. People are pointing out that it does not have a strength via 1,2,4, or 5. If you want to debate that great but you need to provide something besides “I have a secret”. Strentgth by any definition of the term implies that you believe that combination of abilities is “better” than the alternate available combinations.

Please pick any combination of your choosing to compare to and explain how you think it is more effective otherwise you really still have not added anything of value and sound like you are just trolling.

“Are you suggesting that main hand pistol is suddenly have less condition damage just because the off-hand is also a pistol?”

Are you suggesting the 1 skill is the only condition dealing ability?

“Also are you saying that S/P has less escape option?”

Are you suggesting I wasn’t also talking about D/P?

Are you suggesting that strengths of the P/P combo are not present on any other combination in the absence of utilizing the 3 skills?

If you want to discuss great, if you just want to throw vague questions out I don’t have time for that game thanks.

Help me out here, I think I am missing where you are coming from.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

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

P/D stack conditions, and generally make themselves hard to target by utilizing the 3 skill and cloak and dagger. The 3 skill in this case is also used in stacking conditions. Relying on this sort of play for the 1 and 2 abilities when playing P/P results in lower damage (lower condition damage) with weaker mitigation (blindness vs stealth), and a dual skill no longer worth using because you have geared for conditions and should keep spamming 1.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

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

When I watch other play D/P I see the 4 as an interrupt with heavy utilization of the 5 skill for perma stealth. Their main source of damage is sword or dagger. P/P loses the prime attraction of the 5 skill to someone playing D/P. S/P primary damage comes from the sword and the 3 of that combo is also a prime attraction of that set.

What you describe seems like a lower dps Condition build with less escape options. Am I missing something about how you think it should play?

Soon as I wrote that I had a great idea (at least one I would be happy about).

Add a utility ability that stacks a power (or crit) buff which resets on stealth. Just like the weapon stacking buff it can give you a +5 for each kill and reset to zero when you stealth, die, or weapon swap. While encouraging thieves to not stealth, the reality is that only dual pistol thieves would use it and it would be a simple way to buff all 5 abilities to something closer to where they need to be when playing dual pistol.

It is almost impossible to balance dual pistol thieves outside of focusing on our 3 skill. The primary problem is how well the 1,2,4, and 5 skills are set up to synergize for the other builds. What we would need changed or buffed to make them useful for dual pistol weaknesses would make them too strong for the stealth builds that use them also.

Dual Pistol generally lacks in aoe by nature of it’s attacks, and a lower survivability in comparison to other thief builds without gutting dps and/or mobility. Unlike more popular builds you can have one, but not both. If you buff the 1,2,4, or 5 skills to make up for this it would allow other builds to utilize them as well and free up more utility slots and/or alternate weapon options for them to further increase their ability.

The only way, in my opinion, to buff dual pistol is to do one of two things:
1) buff the 3 ability to either do higher single target dps than typical abilities or add an aoe component. I don’t see them doing this because, despite what they may say, some balancing is done around 1v1 and the crying would be loud if the single target was much higher.
2) Add utilities that are specific to dual pistol weilding. An ability like Dagger Storm that only functioned when dual wielding pistols. Not holding my breath on that one either as at this point in development I don’t see them introducing new utilities that require specific weapon combos and having to appease other classes demanding the same for rarely used weapon combos.

Short version though to answer your question:
They have implied multiple times that their design time goes towards the more popular game segments. When they admit more time/resources are spent on humans as they are more popular… then it is fair to believe they won’t spend much time developing the dual pistol build for much the same reason.

Culling….

a Quaggan’s worst enemy.

our apologies.

“For this build you don’t need anything in the deadly arts or critical strikes tree.
0/0/30/10/30 is what is going to be one of the most viable with P/P”

Why P/P? Condition damage only lends itself to the 1 skill, so dagger would be a viable option providing more mobility and an additional stealth mechanism. Is there something about the 4 and 5 skills that you prefer as it wasn’t clear in the video you used anything but the 1 skill.

Thanks!

It isn’t like the GW2 is a unique and special snowflake where it is harder than normal to detect/ban abusive bots. Somehow though, this game is on par with only Aion among all the MMOs I have played in the sheer number and audacity of bots. Oddly… another NCSoft title.

6 months ago “be patient” worked. Things are no better now then then. You don’t need an update from Arenanet to see how things are going… you can see it pretty clearaly in game now that very little is being done to discourage cheating/botting. The funny thing is that new botting client was released months ago for which the users likely far out number all the node mining and Ranger trains that you come across.

For the most part, in PvE, I just assume anyone I run across is a bot.

It is what it is. Either accept it or play an MMO where hacking/botting is at least something people are trying to hide.

As mentioned earlier…

there is no sense finding and reporting the out of the way hard to spot bots… when the obvious level 80 bots in places like Cursed Shore are still running their routes 24/7 months after being reported.

Hippocampus.8470:

How sure are you that they are all exactly the same bots? Do you write down all of their names or something?

Add Friend. Bam done, and takes less than a second. All you have to suffer is a 100+ friends list every day… every time of day…

Do you mean the meassage on the login prompt “Please consider changing your password”?

I was under the impression everyone was seeing that.

Ranger probably.

“Did we really need another thread about this?
They said that they observe the behavior to try to come up with ways to combat it, then do mass bannings.
So just report those you think are botting and move on with your game.”

This is the OFFICIAL thread on the subject… so fairly appropriate place to post it.

Few myths being thrown out making some think the issue is solved…
1) “Anti botting code is in place so they are not effective anyhow.”
FALSE. Diminishing returns is reset by relogging. Watch the botters, they will relog every 3 hours or so. There is currently no effective antibotting code.
2) They are not impacting you so ignore it.
FALSE. Even if you can go play somewhere else, each of those bots are injecting 10+ gold per day (and or crafting mats) at a minimum to the economy that would not otherwise be there. Items you may need to purchase from the BLTC will cost more due to this injection of gold. Server performance also takes a negative hit due to these bots. As spoken about by the makers of EVE Online… there is a very detrimental effect by these bots on server performance.
3) Arenanet said they are doing something so they are. FALSE. They may very well be doing something, but every time they make that statement they are not answering the actual question. The question is "why aren’t you banning these bots using an easily available peice of software who are hunting in a manner that indicates they have ZERO fear of being banned. A crappy bot is henerating 10 dollars a day. In 5 days it has paid for itself. Banning every 2 or 3 months is ineffectual. "Saying there’s a plan, and then letting the bots continue for 2 weeks… indicates that NOTHING is being done for the actual problem complained about. It’s pretty much me telling my kid he needs to get a job, hearing he has a plan for the money situation, and finding out the plan was to sponge off of Dad. Technically correct but not at all what I was talking about.
4) They need time to investigate and seperate the legit players from the bots. FALSE. There are plenty of easy metrics that make it easy to spot a bot. There are plenty of bots no one is even noticing. The bots most are complaining about are scripted with aggressive behavior that makes them detrimental to the game. If you ban a legit player then you have banned someone playing 24/7 for weeks on end grinding the same location over and over again. Let them call you and explain it :P

People are botting because it is financially feasible to do so. If it continues to be financially feasible botting will continue to increase regardless of mass bannings. That we have seen virtually no bannings since this announcement was made (my friends list continues to grow with bots online 24/7) one can safely presume that botting will remain VERY lucrative (meaning nothing is really being done). All the tools in the world do not matter if you don’t actually ban anyone. Maybe it’s an NC Soft thing since Aion was the only other AAA title game I seen with this much flagrant in your face botting.

grifflyman.8102:

Remember that they might be letting bots like this get away with it so they can find patterns within the botting code. Just be patient.

Say what? The bots used are known and the code is readily available. They may be waiting, but it is not to try and find patterns within the code. I keep telling myself it’s liability… but the reality is they are likely waiting to come up with a solution that does not require paying human staff the 10 dollars an hour per server it would cause to effectively eliminate the problem

“As Mike explained, we’re committed to fighting botters.”

Then explain to them, please, that this word does not mean what you think it means. The current actions seen being taken encourage players to run bots on a second account through a proxy if they want to have enough in game gold to compete in a botting driven marketplace. Botting and being banned every few weeks is still incredibly lucrative and places non botting players at a severe disadvantage in the Black Lion Trading Company.

You can’t claim to be committed when the current actions are allowing the many bots out there to be extremely profitable. That is not fighting them… that is encouraging others to do the same.

seventhson.6932:

Ruien.9506:

This was released more than 2 weeks ago. Bots are actively teleporting to resource nodes and mobs and flying orbs out of castle in WvW. The game is almost completely hacked at this point. Only thing so far that isnt is user account database. Only a matter of time tho so take those CC cards off your gem account.

And how exactly do you know this? Obviously you go to/run these questionable web sites that offer these hack progams, otherwise how the hell would you know? You should be banned on the spot.

Your logic is goofy. I go to these websites as well. You know why? Because some putz always comes along saying “How exactly do you know this?”

Nothing tells you just how much a developer is REALLY combatting hacks like what they are discussing on the hacking forum (folks aren’t often being banned for botting atm). Knowing just what people are abusing also allows you to skip the content that isn’t going to be fun due to whatever knew hack popped up (like WvW when people are teleporting around).

Of course, you could just never keep up with what is REALLY happening and just talk out of your buttocks.

Here is a quote from a popular botting site:

“If you have an 80, you can easily make 10g/day using any of the commercial bots available. (even if you have no manner in which to mitigate the anti-camp code) They all pay for themselves in less than a week if you turn around sell that gold to any reputable buyer, so just buy one as an interim solution until Minion is available.”

You NEED to start banning. People botting aren’t concerned about your current process.

The major problem with these delays against banning easy to spot botting is the ban no longer acts as a deterrent. Waiting weeks for a ban means the person (or company) botting is making a profit.

If you aren’t going to deter it (swift banning of bots) then legalize it so players are at least on equal footing.

They are making money with the current report/ban methods and the only people being deterred are the actual players. Word of mouth will kill future sales if this isn’t stopped soon as the botting problem is only going to grow from here as the easy to use bot programs are getting ready to hit wide distribution (they are being tested in the popular exploit groups now).

This game lives or dies off of future box sales and in game purchases… and the botting problem is going to crush that within 2 months when this currently obvious botting problem becomes game breaking for various zones.