Guild Wars 2

They confirmed it 4 years ago.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Commando

err… I mean, DragonCommando™

King Amadaeus.8619:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

King Amadaeus.8619:

Once you get past the rah rah server pride, lets build something together nonsense. You realize that it is all pie in the sky talk, and the best way to actually enjoy a game that you play may indeed be simply transferring.

IMO the only thing worse than server-hopping is staying on a ded one where you have no fun.

That’s true, but it also reinforces the cycle and makes it profitable for Anet to simply sit on their thumbs with WvW.

True, but the cycle exists because it is valid. I think a lot of people overestimate how many are using real money to transfer.

I honestly do not know one person that as used RL money to buy gems for a transfer. I almost never PVE and found it fairly easy to farm up enough gold to buy gems to transfer 3-4 times. And I will continue to do it as needed.

Regarding ANET doing anything with WvW, that will come from an external force (IE: some competition doing WvW/RvR better pulling players from Gw2.), the cold hard truth is that WvW is the best thing going in that game mode right now in any game.

I did a bit of sight-seeing on other servers for a while out of boredom (using gold) and walked right into the middle of more than one mass exodus. I agree that gold is the primary means of transfer, but I saw quite a few go out of pocket if their entire guild wasn’t getting paid for by another server. And with the rate that certain large guilds jump servers… well, it’s a sizeable chunk of money for doing literally nothing.

And you’re absolutely correct that things won’t change until they’re forced to. I’m hoping Black Desert will be that catalyst, but I’m not holding my breath.

King Amadaeus.8619:

Once you get past the rah rah server pride, lets build something together nonsense. You realize that it is all pie in the sky talk, and the best way to actually enjoy a game that you play may indeed be simply transferring.

IMO the only thing worse than server-hopping is staying on a ded one where you have no fun.

That’s true, but it also reinforces the cycle and makes it profitable for Anet to simply sit on their thumbs with WvW.

Pick your poison.

Svarty.8019:

• I note with a little disappointment that the other fireworks from this event can’t be used in WvW.

Yeah, I don’t know why they’d do such a thing!

I used stealth one time by accident. ._.

Edit: Ok, it wasn’t by accident…. ._.

A large part of P/P’s problem is that shortbow is simply too good by comparison (which sucks because I hate shortbow). An auto-attack that hits multiple targets and can immob from stealth, a high-damage blast finisher that also provides aoe bleeds, an evade, a poison field, and a freaking SHADOWSTEP ON DEMAND. It’s pretty much the single best utility weapon in the game and only stubborn idiots like myself refuse to use it.

P/P is still capable of doing some serious damage, but physical damage overall has sort of fallen off as the game evolves towards a higher percentage of players running some form of sustain or celestial build. There’s also other inherent weaknesses with the build such as requiring a target for any of its skills to do damage, its heavy reliance on initiative, and just being an incredibly easy set to counter. Plus, Ricochet itself is kind of an oddball trait that sometimes screws things up more than it helps (try using it with Shadowshot from the d/p set) and is, at best, still dependent on RNG. Besides, shortbow gets the same effect without even being required to trait for it.

The set just needs some kind of adjustment to distinguish itself as a viable ranged set from shortbow. Obviously, you can’t really tweak all of the skills too much or else risk unbalancing p/x and x/p builds, but maybe something crazy like a 20% chance to strip a boon on each shot of Unload would make it more attractive. Suddenly, Ricochet builds might become more threatening in teamfights.

There’s been plenty of threads with several great ideas on how to improve the set, but nothing’s ever come of it. I wish Anet would be more willing to test things out.

Working as intended. xD

From the wiki:
“Only the projectile portion is unblockable.”

The guardian has been blinded in your screenshot, so it looks like it’s working “properly”.

Edit: Mauge is fast. o_O

Here’s a proposal I pieced together from several ideas posted by forum users:
(exactly one year ago! o_O)

http://youtu.be/qHcO6Xo8eJ8

This is pretty close to what I’ve been running for a long time. There’s some builds out there that are going to be tough matchups for you, but nothing’s unwinnable.

You should definitely trying to make room for Mug in your build, though. That extra bit of heal/damage comes in handy.

I’m just surprised that so many people are still taking seasons seriously after all this time. The prizes are negligible and the results are pretty much pre-determined by population and coverage.

Just go out there and fight each other. Stop worrying about a stupid scoreboard.

Out of curiousity… do they stack? :x

Penguin.5197:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

4-kit celestial engis? o_O

You mean 5 kit engies. The ultimate skill ceiling.

In the future, 5-kit engineers will be played by entire bobsled teams.

Nema Tode.5637:

I can’t understand how the majority of this thread thinks p/p is awful and yet people call me cheese when I kill them with it.

Welcome to the internet!

Sagat.3285:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Some random gunslinger gameplay from C9 I found for comparison. There’s some neat ideas in there.

http://youtu.be/0hxoMlg6Vvs

I have heavenly and demonic memories of that game,every new class was OPer than others and the customer service went from best to horrible.

Loved it tough I use to main ranger,scout and war.

I’d never heard of it until I found it on steam a couple of days ago. It’s a ton of fun so far, but I feel it’s way too late in that game’s life-cycle to really play it seriously. I just wish more mmo’s would adopt that combat style, though.

Anyways, just from the little bit of gameplay I’ve seen, C9 gunslingers have a couple of cool skills that might be worthy of discussion. There’s that aoe bullet spin (like a 0.25 second mini-daggerstorm), there’s another skill that damages all enemies in a short cone (would be useful since every p/p skill requires a target to hit), and there’s also that charged shot that roots the gunslinger but deals extra damage (like a shorter, weaker version of killshot). They even have a what looks like an old-school rocket jump. The playstyle is very fast and evasive and would be a healthy contrast to the rest of the thief builds we currently have.

4-kit celestial engis? o_O

Some random gunslinger gameplay from C9 I found for comparison. There’s some neat ideas in there.

http://youtu.be/0hxoMlg6Vvs

Give that ranger a daggerstorm.
I hear rangers LOVE daggerstorms.

I don’t have any strong feelings on it either way. The old BP was somewhat exploitable in certain situations, but the radius is too small to really be OP. The new BP still provides that nice instant aoe blind, but takes away the passive nature of simply sitting in the field and letting it work for you.

In fact, I think I’d actually prefer the new BP if it wasn’t so expensive to use. I always thought it was kind of strange that BP carried such a high ini cost. The better way to keep stealth in check should’ve been to increase the ini cost of Heartseeker and Clusterbomb so you’d have to choose between using those skills for damage or utility.

Gobble D Goop.4081:

no offense to the server terrain thing, but my server is Gates of Madness… im not sure if i constantly want to see freakish red landscape on a fairly frequent basis

To each their own, but I think it would cool as kitten to have part of the map look like this. Infinitely better than having three borderlands maps that are exactly the same.

We’ve pitched the idea before that since most of the servers are based on actual GW locations, it’d be neat to re-skin portions of the borderlands to match the terrain of those locations.

For a (far-fetched) example, the CD borderlands in a CD/Mag/NSP matchup would be sandy around the citadel and northern towers, with the lower towers and spawns being “jungly” and snowy, respectively. It wouldn’t require a new map layout, and they could even probably just re-use existing assets from the PvE maps. I’d be happy with that.

Caffeine.6724:

Curious if the thief community think’s P/P SB celestial would be viable for small scale WvW? Reason I ask, is I really like pistol’s, and in turn am very close to getting my Quip, and seeing as I’ve worked so hard to get the leggy, I’d like to put it to good use.

P/P was semi successful in Spvp, as people don’t expect the burst most of the time, I understand that it can be a bit lacking in the defensive department, but possible food/runes can make up for that in WvW? essentially, just curious on other’s thoughts. Also considered running heal on crit food, for maybe a bit of sustain.

I messed around with a celestial amulet in spvp on one of my normal builds, except I added Bewildering Ambush and Potent Poison (they should’ve just named this trait Perma-Poison xD) for extra condi pressure. It was pretty fun to play, but not all that effective. You’re basically trading in a good chunk of your burst for multiple damage sources, but that also slows down the fight considerably against skilled opponents… and the longer the fight goes, the more of a disadvantage it creates for P/P builds.

Definitely give it a test run, though, and see if you can make it work.

P/P thief checking in. Still not ruined. \o/

King Amadaeus.8619:

Chaba.5410:

mango.9267:

Anet won’t do anything because they’re afraid of setting a precedent of manual intervention.

It is too late for that. There was a match one week months ago where Anet manually intervened for T8.

They adjusted the glicko ratings manually for FC/ET so SF could climb out of T8. That is if I am remembering properly that was quite a while ago. The problem there was SF could not beat ET AND FC (simultaneously) enough to actually gain the rating to climb.

Ironically Maguuma is obviously in a similar position in that ticking +5-20 ppt for long periods of the day is not enough to drop….The main difference being that eventually what is left of Mag will drop, whereas SF would have never climbed without the intervention.

The stupidest part of all of this, is ANET could have intervened, and made their “leagues” slightly more legit simply by ensuring Mag rolled a T3 match this week. Instead they allowed the RNG (or whatever you believe they do) to roll probably the worst situation (for Mag and T2), by boosting DR up.

Now with this being the last week it is a lot to ask of CD to steamroll for PPT on DR, considering DR will likely leach rating in most of the possible outcomes.

With that said, respect to CD because they do seem to be giving it a go…If that remains true, they can join the ranks of Mag/FA (and NSP in S1) of being some of the few servers that actually tried to move up and get better fights/competition.

I remember that. All of us on GoM at the time were so salty about being manually moved down to T8 that hardly anyone even bothered logging into wvw for the first week or two after. SF deserved to move up, but the entire handling of that situation was terrible. ET/FC deserved better than some patchwork pity solution.

As for CD moving up to gold, we’re trying. That RNG roll hurt, but it looks like things are still going to be up in the air as the week progresses.

I’m down to check out what all this gold league fuss is about.
http://youtu.be/fhOrxkGlLDM

Static.9841:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Pinkcomet.2975:

Can I ask why you guys use Scorpion wire with P/P?

I like it because it’s versatile and on a low-cooldown. I mainly use it to interrupt heals/big skills or to set up my unloads and steals. Typically when people get pulled, their first impulse is to immediately dodge roll on wakeup. So I pull, pause, then land anything I want. If they burned a dodge to avoid the pull, that’s also fine by me.

It’s also incredibly useful when chasing opponents that like to run away or for separating squishies from their group. It even lands on opponents that are trying to stealth (<3 SR thieves).

Why on earth would you need scorpion wire to set up a steal?

I don’t NEED it to set up a steal. It’s simply a tool that can be applied to a multitude of situations. Since I don’t use stealth at all, SW is an option I can use to guarantee a steal connects, especially on opponents that are moving erratically.

style.6173:

Straegen.2938:

Looking back on it Free Transfers to all servers was better than this system. It had its problems but I will take a Kaineng situation over a general declining population any day.

You need to understand the reason for tournaments from ANET’s perspective. WvW typically doesn’t make ANET much money. Think about it, how many people really buy wxp boosters? The whole point of tournaments is to get as many people as possible to transfer in order to get better rewards. More transfers = more gems = more revenue for ANET.

Tons of people use special finishers, premium weapon/armor skins, and other cosmetic crap in WvW. In a game mode where you’re not allowed to see your opponents’ names, you have to stand out in other ways to be able to recognize each other.

Sure, the whales with 10+ legendaries are rarer here, but there’s still a sizable cash flow even without counting server transfers.

Pinkcomet.2975:

Can I ask why you guys use Scorpion wire with P/P?

I like it because it’s versatile and on a low-cooldown. I mainly use it to interrupt heals/big skills or to set up my unloads and steals. Typically when people get pulled, their first impulse is to immediately dodge roll on wakeup. So I pull, pause, then land anything I want. If they burned a dodge to avoid the pull, that’s also fine by me.

It’s also incredibly useful when chasing opponents that like to run away or for separating squishies from their group. It even lands on opponents that are trying to stealth (<3 SR thieves).

I change my trait layout pretty often, but this is what I’m running currently for roaming:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAqa4al0Mp0pVOx2J0PNBNB5ZY+iuBIB9Gl+C-TFiFABr9AA6Y/hqUCakyPAOJAEq+DDHBgz0PEAABgbO0bO0bedSBonwI-w

I occasionally switch Scorpion Wire out for Smoke Screen in tougher 1vX situations.

Also, if you’re mashing 3, you’re doing it wrong regardless of your build. Especially with the quicker channel time that’s coming, it’ll be much easier to avoid the entire damage from an ill-timed Unload.

SkylightMoon.2098:

For all those guilds going to archeage. You will be back. Ive tried it. Coming from guild wars 2 you will never get used to the unoriginal combat system that game has to add. It has a ton of cool systems in it but I don’t feel taht even as a whole, with the roleplaying, pirates, getting married, that the game can replace the epic feels we had in WvW.

The lack of a simple “invert y-axis” mouse option killed any chance of me playing that game.

Instructions unclear. Accidentally built arrow cart instead and it solved my problem.

The cash grab is strong.

evilapprentice.6379:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

evilapprentice.6379:

Dahkeus.8243:

I’m not arguing that it’s well designed either!

I’m just saying that making it a condi weapon makes it worse, not better.

You’re arguing its worse from the subjective viewpoint of thieves who want a ranged direct damage option.

I am arguing its better from the objective viewpoint that when a weaponset only has 2 damaging abilities, those abilities should have the same type of damage.

We’re unfortunately locked into “turn unload into condition based damage” rather than “Make vital shot do direct damage” because of P/D and the way thieves were designed from launch.

Your argument of P/D being designed as a condition set since launch is what’s throwing off the rest of your logic. Torment didn’t exist at launch, so the only condition the original P/D set had access to was bleed. Even with Sneak Attack, it’s still extremely slow compared to other condition builds and really only got popular in the pre-torment era because of Wild Bill’s videos and how easy it is to use Cloak and Dagger to simply outlast your opponent no matter how long the fight went.

Meanwhile, P/P has Body Shot (vulnerability only at launch, immobilize added later), pure power damage in Unload, a daze, and a blind+smoke field for additional blinds. The dazes/blinds and the lack of… well, stealth skills…. suggest a less stealth-oriented playstyle (indirectly minimizing Sneak Attack use and bleed-stacking). Couple that with the fact that vulnerability only affects physical damage and that shortbow has access to more skills with damaging conditions (poison + bleed), it seems P/P was likely intended as a power set.

Of course, we’re probably putting way more thought into this than Anet ever did. It’s still a poorly designed weapon set no matter how you interpret its function.

“The way thieves were designed at launch” was a vague statement, my bad.

Not that I disagree with anything you’ve said, but Pistol has been an awful mess since its inception. If P/P was intended as a direct damage set, who in their right mind would make the AA and stealth attack condi based with awful direct damage scaling?

Regardless of how the set was originally designed, P/D is now a condition set, which unfortunately locks down P/P as well (unless they do something unprecedented and change AA/stealth attack based on Offhand weapon)

I’d bet they just slapped the bleeds on there for bonus damage without really thinking about it. I don’t remember what the original stat prefixes were at launch, but these weapon sets were definitely not created with things like dire gear and the current clusterkittenery of sigils and runes in mind. Those alone make just about any build a good condi build, regardless of weapons (or no weapons lol).

evilapprentice.6379:

Dahkeus.8243:

I’m not arguing that it’s well designed either!

I’m just saying that making it a condi weapon makes it worse, not better.

You’re arguing its worse from the subjective viewpoint of thieves who want a ranged direct damage option.

I am arguing its better from the objective viewpoint that when a weaponset only has 2 damaging abilities, those abilities should have the same type of damage.

We’re unfortunately locked into “turn unload into condition based damage” rather than “Make vital shot do direct damage” because of P/D and the way thieves were designed from launch.

Your argument of P/D being designed as a condition set since launch is what’s throwing off the rest of your logic. Torment didn’t exist at launch, so the only condition the original P/D set had access to was bleed. Even with Sneak Attack, it’s still extremely slow compared to other condition builds and really only got popular in the pre-torment era because of Wild Bill’s videos and how easy it is to use Cloak and Dagger to simply outlast your opponent no matter how long the fight went.

Meanwhile, P/P has Body Shot (vulnerability only at launch, immobilize added later), pure power damage in Unload, a daze, and a blind+smoke field for additional blinds. The dazes/blinds and the lack of… well, stealth skills…. suggest a less stealth-oriented playstyle (indirectly minimizing Sneak Attack use and bleed-stacking). Couple that with the fact that vulnerability only affects physical damage and that shortbow has access to more skills with damaging conditions (poison + bleed), it seems P/P was likely intended as a power set.

Of course, we’re probably putting way more thought into this than Anet ever did. It’s still a poorly designed weapon set no matter how you interpret its function.

I like seeing people get excited about pistol builds, but don’t get yourself too hyped up over the buffs. They’re not really that big of a deal and you probably won’t even notice them in actual gameplay.

Ricochet is only getting a +150 range increase. By comparison, most melee attacks are 130 range. In practical terms, what this means is that if you manage to shoot someone at exactly max range, your ricochet can now hit a person standing directly behind him, and that’s it.

The shorter cast time on Unload looks nice. Same damage in less time, right? The bad part is that the shorter cast time means that dodging will evade more of the hits. Either way, nothing really to write home about.

Dagger 1 is getting a minor cleave?

Former content creator checking in. On the off-chance that anyone emails/posts any of my old videos as a suggestion for Anet’s compilation, please don’t waste your time.

Permission denied.

The WvW section is basically the /r/Pyongyang of these forums.

Lorelei.3918:

My solution is to run P/P and D/P. I use unload+ricochet against zergs so I can stay out of the zillion red circles. I use D/P in solo combat where I don’t have to worry about red circles. Yes I give up two trait slots to make P/P decent. Pistol mastery and Ricochet. Giving up Vital Persistence and Bountiful Theft isn’t that bad.

P/P is also strong against certain builds. Particularly shatter mesmers and perma stealth thieves. Ricochet kills clones and Unload tracks through stealth just like Rangers rapid fire.

One weird thing, sometimes ricochet affects shadow shot. I actually teleport and stab 2-3 more targets if there are other enemies nearby. Thankfully this is as disorienting for my enemy as it is for me.

I miss the days when you used to be able to use shadow shot on people with reflect to make them teleport to you.

If you don’t mind ditching Executioner, you can go 6 deep in Trickery so you can snag Bountiful Theft AND Ricochet. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with a 22046 build to accomplish that. So far, I’m not missing the extra damage as much as I thought I would, but the boon stripping/sharing is invaluable and I can still drop a ton of dps.

Hamster.4861:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

It’s a ddos.

Where is your evidence.

Some idiot is bragging up and down on twitter about taking down Wildstar’s NA servers.

It’s a ddos.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Dagins.5163:

People fail to understand, that P/P is best utilized in teamplay, where your allies take on themselves focus of your enemies, allowing the glassy thief to be safe at range.

It is fully possible to play P/P in sPvP with 6-6-x-x-x traits plus zerker amulet and not dying more often than a bunker. A thief which is geared like that, raining down unloads on the enemies in the middle of a node is very valuable. You can always steal+black powder to secure a stomp (can do that without steal from range if timed well), or save your allies by interrupting enemies with headshot.
For a squishy zerker it’s a nightmare to be focused by a such thief in a teamfight, because damage from chained unloads is exhausting, and offensive combos can be easly interrupted.

Any unreasonable buffs like stealth on #5 or extra damage on unload will overbuff this set. Right now, I could only change body shot, because it’s way too situational and useless in 99% cases.

You’ve just stated the main problems of P/P;

1) “P/P is best utilized in teamplay”

2) “A thief which is geared like that, raining down unloads on the enemies in the middle of a node is very valuable.”

3) “For a squishy zerker it’s a nightmare to be focused by a such thief in a teamfight, because damage from chained unloads is exhausting, and offensive combos can be easly interrupted.”

4) “Right now, I could only change body shot, because it’s way too situational and useless in 99% cases.”

Do you honestly believe that this limited viability is not a problem? And the only reason ArenaNet is hesitant on fixing P/P is because 4/5 skills are shared with other weapon set.

No, the only reason ArenaNet is hesitant on fixing anything is because they’re lazy AF. That’s why we’re still getting “balance” updates consisting solely of adding skill facts to skills/traits that have been around since launch.

Buffs? Ok.

King Amadaeus.8619:

WTB an EoTM forum….

Is… is this an EOTM matchup discussion?

NinjaEd.3946:

Zackie.8923:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Why no SB?

don’t really like shortbows

I hear ya, but if your goal is to zerg in wvw sb is your best option. The aa is better than richocet, cluster bomb is a great aoe and blast for fire/water fields, evade is kitten so best to ignore it, aoe poison to hinder their healing is always good and infiltrator’s arrow to escape a static field or avoid some hits while immobilized.

SB has more utility and survivability in zerg fights, but pistols/ricochet can pull off heaps more damage as long as you’ve got good enough positioning and awareness to not get melted. The only downside is being required to physically target someone.

Anything can be viable if you put the work in to maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses through your gameplay. Some builds are just easier to play than others.

jportell.2197:

What was changed about P/P thief?

Ricochet supposedly works with Black Powder now. Not a big deal. Before the patch, the skill was bugged and the shot would never bounce.

That’s the only change I saw when I skimmed the list.

Check the southern sections of borderlands and the areas around sentries in EB. If you’re going to get any good small fights at all, you’ll likely find them there.

Unload does great damage without sacrificing movement, so giving it an evade would make it over-powered when compared to something like Pistol Whip.

Personally, I’d love to see Unload have a 20% chance per hit to remove a boon from the target. Combined with Ricochet, that would be a pretty wicked and viable alternative to short bow in group fights.