Guild Wars 2

Hello,

I disagree.

Before to ask for a change of the game rules I think we should learn/discuss the way to play with what we have. That’s part of the challenge.

As I have wrotten in another topic, I play P/P for some monthes now.
If it can help you my advice is that its Gameplay is different from traditionnal thieves. If you want to have fun with it you need to think a little bit different, far from “meta build”.

Do not hesitate to try untypical things for the majority of thieves (As a sample without the everlasting shortbow).

With some practice you’ll exceed the “unload spam” cliche. The trap of the build is spam temptation. Succumb to that temptation and you’ll die (reflects, lack of initiative at an important point of the fight, etc.), with no chance of progress.

P / P is very well endowed with CC effects and placing an F2 (edit: “body shot”) or an F4 (edit: “head shot”) at the right time can change a fight. A first part of the P/P player path is to learn to use them correctly.

A second step on the way of the P/P player (once he understands that the build will not allow him to “oneshoot” an other player), is to focus its attention in the field use, the management of distance, the target selection and proper use of dodging or stealth skills according to his chosen model of survivability. P/P is interesting to play a skirmisher or a finisher role, not an assassin one.

Depending of your build and equipment, the survivability is good even by harassing the enemy during a zerg fight in McM (edit: WvW).

P/P, to be efficient, needs a gameplay of observation and anticipation more than action.

That’s why I consider the increased of “unload” and of the basic Attack introduced with the last update as very interesting because it allows to take a lot of defensive traits without sacrificing too much of dps or the autonomy of the character (which does not need to be glued to a boon provider and can play its skirmisher role).

Because it allows me to continue to develop these aspects of P/P gameplay I am very satisfied with the last Update.

I’m playing P/P daredevil without a shortbow for now two months in WvW and PvE (I do not play a lot of small PvP match).

My objective was to play something different, without the very popular shortbow. The P/P seemed like a good choice because it balanced out the loss of mobility provided by the short bow with ranged attacks and CC effects.

According to that experience, to be efficient, very far from the “unload spam” cliché, playing P/P without a bow is a matter of anticipation with a very few tolerance to a bad choice.

The gameplay interest is less in the combination of attacks (although P / P is very well endowed with CC and placing an F4 at the right time can change a fight) than in the field use, management of distance, target selection and proper use of dodging or stealth skills according to the chosen model of survivability.

For me the great advantage of the increased of “discharge” and of the basic Attack introduced with the last update is that it allows to take a lot of defensive traits without sacrificing too much of dps or the autonomy of the character (which does not need to be glued to a boon provider and can play its skirmisher role).

Depending of your build and equipment, the survivability is not so bad even by harassing the enemy during a zerg fight without a short bow.

Because it allows me to continue to develop these aspects of P/P gameplay I am very satisfied with the last Update.

According to me it’s one of the best utilitary of the game.

Its real power is more in the tactical options given to the player than in the Dps that it allows.

It’s so true that it’s rare to find a thief who doesn’t use it: the real challenge is to play without it.

To follow up the title of this post:

Playing SOLO, I have done all the HOT maps, all the masteries, participated to all the metaevent using a P/P daredevil…
Actually I travel across those maps, regularly participating to events, collecting resources….

One of my guildmate has completed the maps exploration playing solo with 6 characters…(he enjoys exploration…^^)

HOT maps are certainly not too difficult. Actually It’s just the end game content.
HOT is interresting because it’s not so easy than vanilla game.

I hope its dificulty will never be nerfed.

I whish the following extensions will bring there part of challenge, never going back to vanilla level. An opposite choise will make the game boring for players who know quite well the rest of the game.

There’re different ways to play Thief P/P.

Some examples found on the net:

Old school (no hot):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwo4QhWBqyg

Stealth oriented:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51l_gXEO-PQ

Dodge oriented:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0_u96cKnCY

Condi oriented:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=effNQR75_EM

I’m playing Thief P/P for three or four months both in WvW and PvE.

Acutally I play a dodge oriented P/P daredevil and it’s very dynamic and pleasant.

The only thing I’ve not tried for the moment in PvE is the raid. Normally i soon should try that with my guild.

In WvW, I play it as a Skirmisher around the zerg, Killing weak or wounded enemies, or attacking other thieves.

In a small team it has the same role, and it can be very efficient assisting another player.

I have found something unusual to play, not so easy to play (a positioning game), and very fun for me.

Do not forget that the attacks number 1, 2 ,4, and 5 are part of others build like P/D, D/P, S/P…Only the 3rd one “Unload” is specific to P/P.

According to me it’s a reason of the difficulty to modify too deeply the P/P style.

So the simple things that can be modify without taking a risk to unbalance the other sets are:
- The Attack number 3 “unload”
- The simple fact to equip two pistols.

To understand I have tried the set using 3 ways to fight (videos are not mine, only things quite closed to what i’ve tried):
A classic vintage thief: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwo4QhWBqyg
A build based on invisibility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51l_gXEO-PQ
A build based on dodge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0_u96cKnCY

Well…I have to admit it’s fun, specially the 2nd and the 3rd one.

The 3rd Attack, “Unload” is very specific to the marksman style. I wouldn’t modify its mechanism. it’s clearly a big part of the fun to play a marksman.

But in pve and in a certain amount of situation, it could be more interesting.
Actually you can’t touch more than one target at a time and you have to aim it.
It’s impossible to touch an invisible thief or mesmer like you can with a dagger or a sword and it’s difficult to manage lots of target even in pve (fight is long in pve with a lot of mobs). In a big fight (pve or WvW) you have less experience or loot than with a classical build because you touch only a target at a time.

If we remember that the old ricochet thief has never been considered as too strongh even firing at 1050 and with a best initaitive recovery speed as it was a long time ago, we can think that its return shouldn’t unbalance the game. Also remember that ricochet in the past could touch an invisible taget.

That’s why I think that an easy solution could simply be to automatically associate “ricochet” with the use of two pistols. it should simply bring us to the previuos situation, just with a distance reduce from 1050 to 900.

The thing that should be used by game designers to balance this automatic association of “ricochet” with the use of two pistols could be the power of the bullets when they touch an additional target with rebound (50% of the power as before?…more?…less?….)

If people enjoy the marksman style…well let’s please them…it’s a game^^

I guess people who enjoyed the p/p in the past or still apreciate it now would desagree about “unload”.

This allow a different gameplay which has never been consider as very strong even with ricochet and a 1050 distance. But in spite of that, some people like the marksman style.

If you have a cone…well it would be like a engineer flame thrower or its “blunderbuss” Attack with a rifle (3rd one)…too close and not a marksman.

Also think that it’s possible to build a double pistol thief that does not use “unload” as his main attack if you don’t like that.

You can build a double pistol thief using a combo between the Attack number 5 (smoke area) and “bounding dodger” from dardevil. the Attack number 1 under invisibility “sneak Attack” should become your main one.
Unload is not often use with this build (initiative points are needed to be invisible).

Here is a video to illustrate this idea:

According to me, considering the relative power of the p/p, and to please people who apreciate it in pve (and why not in wvw or pvp), the best thing to do is here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Why-we-STILL-miss-Ricochet/first#post5975480

In the past it was possible to build a thief with ricochet, firing at 1050 and with a good amount of damage specialy due to the possibility to quickly refund the initiative points in those times.

In spite of that, the double pistol thief has never been a “meta” for pvp and has never been consider as something very strong.

Some people, and it’s their choise, have enjoyed it in pve, and also time to time in wvw or pvp.

Today the double pistol set exists but is not very used because it does not allow to touch more than one target at a time, and so it does not allow the player to have a decent amount of experience/loot .

I do not understand why not to please them. It will bring some variety beside the dagger/pistol and dagger / dagger so often viewed. Here is the lack of variety.

In the first video presentations of HOT I remember ricochet was still there. I guess it has been removed simply due to a lack of place.

So, according to me the best and simplest thing to do to bring back ricochet is to automatically associate it with the use of two pistols. It will simply please its fans, bringing the situation as it was before, just reducing the distance from 1050 to 900. And good if it gives us more variety in the thieves we meet.

I try to propose something (4 posts upper) about population balance and the other main issue: nightcap (the idea of a floor value at the end).

Interesting, even if I’m not sure about “Supply cost for all catapults are being reduced by ten supply”. We should not forget that the biggest guilds just begin to be able to give “at will” the “+10” (yes…+10 not only +5 if you look carefully) supply bonus to the structure they control…but we will see.

An old issue to address is the balance between servers due to their difference of population…especially during night.

Perhaps one simple way to resolve that issue could be to link the amount of points a server wins to its population really present on the 4 wcw maps at the moment of the calculation.

In such a system, we could imagine that only the less populated server should be able to mark 100% of the points for a structure it controls (and…why not…for a player kill).The two other servers could mark an amount of points inversely proportional to the delta between their population and the weakest at the moment of the calculation.

The calculation should be done considering the 4 maps and in real time or, if it’s technically too difficult to implement, for the next 15 minutes just before “the tic”.

As an example if a server has its population present on the maps representing 140% of the less populated server at the same moment, it should be able to mark…60% of the available points.

The ratio I propose are simple ones. Perhaps they should be mitigated by things as a floor value (as an exemple no points for anyone as long the 3 servers have less than 5 players each on the maps)
But regardless of the system chosen to address that issue, it should remain simple.

(Edit: formatting)