Guild Wars 2

XII.9401:

Every other class was affected by this nerf. The warriors were hurt the most since a lot use it.

Thieves have MANY other viable alternatives and if all else fail..restealth restealth resteathl and use the weapon. abilities that have no cooldowns unlike every other class in the game.

If you thought the thief ‘nerfs’ in this patch were significant..I’m afraid you were relying too much on handicaps.

100b still hits for more than auto-attack.

PW does not.

I’m not too aggravated about this simply because it makes Infusion of Shadow (10 pt SA) somewhat less mandatory for D/D pve dps. I would much rather be playing 25/30/0/15/0 and now I won’t feel as bad for doing so.

get the 15% damage nerf to Pistol Whip reverted? Since the whole reason Pistol Whip was nerfed in the first place was because of quickness. Food nerf also hurt PW a lot, I don’t see a reason why the damage can’t be upped now.

Just wondering, how did you come up with 3.25 secs for BS/CnD combo? That seems long to me.

They should make BP a ground-target ability with 900 range.

Alpha.1308:

Blacksarevok.8104:

I think they need to buff dagger auto damage. Right now it actually does less than sword auto, has about the same utility (poison + weak), but only hits one target. D/D doesn’t really have to worry about it but it definitely hurts D/P who relies primarily on #1 for damage.

Either that or buff Shadow Shot damage up a bit.

it’s a dagger,you’re not going to get alot of damage out of a dagger no matter what game you play,unless you’re using a stealthy assassin and their backstab (which,we DO have)
it’s a single target because it’s a stab,not a slash,like a sword (however,the Sword stab hits multiple targets i believe? which is…odd?)
i don’t believe dagger auto damage should be changed,when traited it’s fine
and Shadow Shot is already ridiculously high,it doesn’t need anymore help at all
it does as much damage as a Heartseeker above 50%

WoW dagger Thieves have the highest auto-attack damage in the game… but that’s besides the point.

D/ does have ways to supplement it’s damage, but the problem I have is that in order to do this you have to spend ini. If you are in a situation where you need to save your ini for utility like Blackpowder or Headshot, there really isn’t any reason to play D/ over S/ because S/ auto-damage will always be better. Maybe that’s how the devs want it to be, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with it.

Redscope.6215:

This was nerfed a loooooooooong time ago b/c of Eviscerate.

This should be a totally different stat though. Not all burst skills are damage oriented and a small increase in damage isn’t going to help your situation with most burst skills.

True, it be interesting if they could come with something that would benefit all burst abilities relatively equally.

Make server residents have priority, even if it means kicking guests to the overflow. Server residents can join their guesting friends in the overflow at will.

Either that or make guesting invite-only and/or put a 12-24 hour cd on it.

Should be .5% per, 15% total. Tone down Kill Shot a little if it’s too OP, but the rest of the burst abilities need more than 3%.

Can any of us post anything “meaningful” without simulators or detailed meters/countless hours on a target dummy or direct confirmation on things from the devs?

What we can confirm is the groundwork, and while it may not be useful by itself, it’s still part of the big picture.

I think they need to buff dagger auto damage. Right now it actually does less than sword auto, has about the same utility (poison + weak), but only hits one target. D/D doesn’t really have to worry about it but it definitely hurts D/P who relies primarily on #1 for damage.

Either that or buff Shadow Shot damage up a bit.

It’s most likely assuming you have full health 100% of the time, so it’s probably not accurate. I don’t think you really can accurately measure the contribution of (6) without testing from fight to fight, which isn’t really plausible.

Big problem I have with my thief is the combination of initiative and lack of cooldowns. Basically you are encouraged to spam a really powerful ability (BS, HS, Unload, etc), and ignore others due to lack of cd’s. And if you choose not to spam those powerful abilities, your are giving up far too much damage output when compared to a class that uses CD’s. I know this is part of what gives the thief it’s identity, but it’s also part of why we are weaker than other classes in PVE.

Wethospu.6437:

Blacksarevok.8104:

Dub.1273:

To clear up things once more: The “activation time” of the skills ingame or in wiki is not the real time it takes to channel the whole autoattack chain. The damage numbers shown in skills description/wiki are not right. Trying to calculate the overall DPS by doing some maths with wrong numbers won’t tell you much except bullkitten.
GS offers more DPS than Axe, if hitting multiple targets and probably having chance to WW to a wall, about 33% more. If hitting only 1 target landing 100b not fully and only using it all 8 seconds, GS still deals very slightly more DPS than Axe with Eviscerate + Autoattack spam.

Just tested numbers in game, no armor accessories, no traits. Basic weapons.

Greatsword (130-144 damage, + 9 power), auto (2.4 sec chain)+HB (3.5 sec) = 62 dps
Axe/Axe (112-137 damage, + 4 powerx2), auto (3.6 sec chain) = 66 dps

So in that regard, the wiki numbers seem accurate to me.

According to wiki Axe-Skill is 0.25 + x + 1.5 chain, so unless second attack is 1.85 seconds wiki doesn’t have correct values.

And without traits? Is this supposed be some kind of joke?

If you want to test raw-damage just go to mists and check “time to kill” with both builds.

1.) Those are the activation times listed, that is entirely different than the actual time it takes for an entire attack to perform . If you look at the notes on the bottom of the page for “Chop”, you will the entire sequence of the chain listed as 3.6 seconds (which if you test yourself, you will see is the value is correct).

2.) Did you even read this thread? I was comparing base damage and DPS of the weapons, I never made any factual conclusions about anything (unlike most of the people in thread) other than the attack speeds of axe chain and 100b. I specifically said that traits, boons, and burst attacks would have an influence on numbers, but those are much harder to measure since everyone plays differently.

Dub.1273:

To clear up things once more: The “activation time” of the skills ingame or in wiki is not the real time it takes to channel the whole autoattack chain. The damage numbers shown in skills description/wiki are not right. Trying to calculate the overall DPS by doing some maths with wrong numbers won’t tell you much except bullkitten.
GS offers more DPS than Axe, if hitting multiple targets and probably having chance to WW to a wall, about 33% more. If hitting only 1 target landing 100b not fully and only using it all 8 seconds, GS still deals very slightly more DPS than Axe with Eviscerate + Autoattack spam.

Just tested numbers in game, no armor accessories, no traits. Basic weapons.

Greatsword (130-144 damage, + 9 power), auto (2.4 sec chain)+HB (3.5 sec) = 62 dps
Axe/Axe (112-137 damage, + 4 powerx2), auto (3.6 sec chain) = 66 dps

So in that regard, the wiki numbers seem accurate to me.

Maybe now they will re-buff PW to do more than auto-attack.

Nah, prolly not.

Using just wiki numbers without taking account traits, buffs, or anything (just flat numbers):

Greatsword using 100b + auto: 433 dps

Axe using auto: 458 dps

Now this will change a lot when you include things like might for GS and Eviscerate for Axe, but just going by base numbers this is what it looks like.

It should be noted that I couldn’t find a source for GS auto-attack chain duration, so I tested myself and came up with around a 2.4 sec duration. If someone has a more accurate number, please feel free to say so.

Someone did math a while ago, 100b does about 30% more DPS than GS auto. Axe auto is substantially better than GS auto, so I would guess 100b is probably only 15%ish more DPS than Axe auto.

Overall I feel like Axe, assuming you are using Eviscerate correctly, probably has more damage vs single target even stationary than GS, but at the cost of mobility and personal survivability.

Dual-wielding two-handers? How about we just ask for halberds + great axes and stop with this crazy talk.

I wonder how many times the devs face palm when they read these forums.

For PVE, I suggest trying S/D. It’s the second highest DPS kit after D/D, but gives you better tools to work with. Flanking Strike does good damage while being able to remove a boon and having a relatively low ini cost. C&D + Tactical Strike also delivers good damage along with a 2 sec daze. If you get Infusion of Shadow (10 pts Shadow Arts) and a Superior Sigil of Paralyzation, you can up the daze to 3 secs and lower the total ini cost of the combo to 4, letting you pretty much lock down mobs indefinitely.

20/30/0/20/0 or 15/30/0/25/0, it’s pretty much a staple in high-level fractals.

25/30/x/x/x is decent too if you don’t feel refunding traits constantly, but once you get to 20+ you pretty much always be using P/P + SB anyway.

Whirling Axe generates adrenaline ridiculous fast, and is useful in large-scale AoE situations. Dual Strike is pretty underwhelming, but not useless.

I think people make a way bigger deal out of the A/A vs A/M thing then they should be. A/M has the better group benefits, but I mean really, nothing on /M is going to make or break your group.

Also, it look like even on single target Sword #1 chain has higher DPS than Dagger #1 chain

From wiki:

Dagger:
- #1 chain attack sequence duration: 2.07 seconds.
- 188 + 286 +286 = 760 / 2.07 = 367 DPS

Sword:
- #1 chain attack sequence duration: 2.52 seconds.
- 269 + 269 + 437 = 975 / 2.52 = 387 DPS

Dagger: 367 DPS
Sword: 387 DPS
(dagger DPS does not include poison, but assuming you are stacking power sword damage would still come out on top after scaling)

I find this odd, considering dagger only hits one target, that it would deal less damage, or even equal damage, with an auto-attack chain than sword does. I guess dagger MH has to rely solely on HS and BS to be competitive.

Which I guess makes sense, since I’m pretty certain that C&D + BS combo has the highest DPS in the game, assuming you have no down time between the two.

EasymodeX.4062:

Rough sketch of 10s:

D/D Thief

2x CND (504) (0.5)
2x BS (806) (0.25)

10x Filler 111 (760 + 168 poison) (0.75)

Total: 10220 in 9s; does not include poison damage

Axe Warr

1x Evisc (731) (?? approx 0.25 – 0.5, I would say 0.5)
4x Filler 111 (1648) (2)

7323 in 8.5

Think the main thing is that the dagger attacks rather quickly. I’m also dubious about the cast time listed for the third step of the Dagger1 chain. I feel like it has a 0.25s wind-down after the hit, for a total of a 0.5s attack, rather than 0.25 listed on the wiki. This would reduce the D/D estimate by 2500.

EasymodeX.4062:

Rough sketch of 10s:

D/D Thief

2x CND (504) (0.5)
2x BS (806) (0.25)

10x Filler 111 (760 + 168 poison) (0.75)

Total: 10220 in 9s; does not include poison damage

Axe Warr

1x Evisc (731) (?? approx 0.25 – 0.5, I would say 0.5)
4x Filler 111 (1648) (2)

7323 in 8.5

Think the main thing is that the dagger attacks rather quickly. I’m also dubious about the cast time listed for the third step of the Dagger1 chain. I feel like it has a 0.25s wind-down after the hit, for a total of a 0.5s attack, rather than 0.25 listed on the wiki. This would reduce the D/D estimate by 2500.

Those times listed are just the activation times, they do not include channels and wind-downs. So you can’t really calculate any dps without getting out a timer and doing it yourself in game.

I don’t think increasing Heartseeker to 4 ini is the right solution imo, that’s a fairly large pve nerf to both D/D and D/P. In fact, I don’t even think D/D would use Heartseeker at all at that point aside from being a gap closer (at which point, why not just make it a real gap closer?).

I they should probably just nerf the values again, in PVP only. Or maybe break Heartseeker down to just 2 ranges:

100-34% = current 100-50% damage
33% and under = current 25% and under damage.

Realistically A/ prolly does more damage, GS prolly stays alive better. As said already, it boils down to which playstyle you prefer. I’d say both are pretty much equal in strengths and weaknesses.

Daecollo.9578:

Blacksarevok.8104:

What I expect:
- 15% Backstab nerf, buff to #1 chain to compensate
- Clusterbomb nerf
- Mug nerf, or it being swapped to a higher tier

What I want:
- 15% buff to Pistol Whip in PVE only
- 15% buff to Vital Shot
- Black Powder becomes a ground-target AoE with 900 range, making it more useful for P/P without nerfing it for D/P or S/P.
- Body Shot vulnerability increased to 8 seconds baseline and damage increased so it’s not as big of a personal DPS loss to use it.
- Shadow Shot root removed (please do this ANET)
- Flanking Strike animation sped up or instantly teleports you behind the target, provides a block charge to make up for the loss of evasion.

What I expect:
Huge Damage Nerfs.

What I want:
Not to be Nerfed and to actually have useful boons.

Pretty much.

Honestly, it’s better to expect to be nerfed and get buffs/fixes than to expect to be buffed/fixed and get nerfed.

Remember last patch when everyone swore Backstab + Mug were getting nerfed, and it never happened? Feels good mannnn

I can’t speak for low levels, but in explorables/fractals I find myself switching between weapon sets often. D/P is pretty much my main set, but I will use S/P and/or S/D if I need a cleave or daze-lockdown. P/P for whenever I can’t get close to something, or D/D if I need to burn something down fast (although I find I am able to used D/P in most D/D situations without any issue).

If you find yourself dying a lot, I would suggest dumping D/D in favor of another set, since D/D is pretty much the squishiest set we have. Try D/P or S/P, and if you are still having issues P/P is a even more safer route (at the cost of damage).

What I expect:
- 15% Backstab nerf, buff to #1 chain to compensate
- Clusterbomb nerf
- Mug nerf, or it being swapped to a higher tier

What I want:
- 15% buff to Pistol Whip in PVE only
- 15% buff to Vital Shot
- Black Powder becomes a ground-target AoE with 900 range, making it more useful for P/P without nerfing it for D/P or S/P.
- Body Shot vulnerability increased to 8 seconds baseline and damage increased so it’s not as big of a personal DPS loss to use it.
- Shadow Shot root removed (please do this ANET)
- Flanking Strike animation sped up or instantly teleports you behind the target, provides a block charge to make up for the loss of evasion.

I’m having the same issue. However I noticed that if I alt+f4 out of the game, the process closes just fine. The process only remains if I exit via the menu option when in-game.

In a perfect scenario when you can always get off all of your 100b swings, probably GS. Realistically, though? Probably Axe.

But don’t hold me to that, I really don’t have any numbers to back it up. Just what I’m guessing from “feels”.

EDIT: This is assuming 2hs = 2-hand sword = greatsword

As the self-proclaimed laziest man on earth, I find the dailies to be extremely easy so far. Takes me like 20 mins, tops, to get it done. In fact, the only thing I can’t get done just doing the things I normally do in game is the crafting, and for that I just craft 10 Bronze ingots which takes 10 seconds.

The monthly can be annoying, especially when it is WvW kills and your server is getting smashed atm, but even then people are being way too dramatic about it.

SoM is still pretty gimmicky though. Every other heal can be used with basically any setup, SoM is the only one that requires the use of certain abilities to be useful. With that said, PW more-or-less has the same issue; it’s really only good in conjunction with SoM and/or Haste. It’s just as gimmicky. And yes, I understand that it provides an interrupt and an evasion, but those are just there to offset the frailty of the Thief.

Deathblossom, Flanking Strike, CnD + BS/TS….these all provide a defensive mechanic without a loss in damage….so why doesn’t PW?

EDIT: I just really don’t understand why they haven’t re-buffed PW in PVE. I guess I can understand the nerf in PVP, but in PVE…really? It was only doing like 8% more damage than auto-attack to start with, that isn’t ‘making or breaking’ anything.

Same problem here. Was hoping the patch last night would fix it but it’s still happening.

Actually, it makes sense, since historically these types of pistols were woefully inaccurate and were generally only used as back up weapons.

However, with that said, balance > realism. Pistols should have 1200 range default or at least be traitable for 1200 range. Or I guess they could give us a Rifle, I’m cool with that too.

SB is kinda cemented as a secondary weapon in PVE, unless it gets smacked with the AoE nerf tomorrow. It’s just way too good to leave out.

Being a berserker build, I usually do D/D + SB or P/P + SB if the situation calls.

If you are 25/30/15/0/0 with Infusion of Shadow, just looking at the numbers leads me to believe that you wouldn’t use Heartseeker at all unless you were closing gaps. 25/30/0/0/15 you would most likely HS at 25%, but not any higher unless you were closing gaps.

Crit rate wouldn’t really be a big deal even with Hidden Killer, because CnD would still scale with crit and would likely keep CnD + BS on top until 25%.

It’s good for solo PVE, outside of that it falls short.

1. looks like it would make P/D too powerful, but every thing else looks good.

The Unload change is interesting, encourages use of other skills while not being so mandatory as to not allow Unload spamming in situations where you need burst.

I think the range-increasing traits are crap. Longbow should just be 1200 baseline.

To be honest, I don’t see them flat buffing PW. They may increase the damage in PVE only, or maybe buff the Dual Skill related traits, but they obviously nerfed it for a reason (though I would like to hear the reasoning behind it), so I don’t see them reverting without some kind of catch.

Though even if it does have a daze and a evade, I really don’t feel like that justifies it having a relatively high ini cost, a self-root, and sub-par damage. Considering how unreliable the daze and evade both are, I feel like the ability has far more cons then it does pros, so I would love to hear a devs insight on why it has to do pitiful damage on top of everything.

They should just make it instantly teleport you behind the target, then provide x amount of time of evasion. Alternatively, they could do something like….make both attacks instant and simultaneous, and give a block.

I think the ability does good damage, it just needs to deliver it faster.

I usually do 20/30/0/20/0, might try the build you posted though. I definitely see the potential in Fluid Strikes, but it’s more niche as well.

Actually I might just try 15/30/0/25/0, since I know I will be rolling with SB as my secondary and I love AoE weakness too much to give up.

I like the concept of MF, I just think it needs to be implemented differently. Remove it from gear, make it something you get from potions/buffs/food. Also, maybe try something like….you gain 1% MF every time you level after 80 (Capping out at x%).

Crawford.4135:

ArenaNet’s decision to nerf Pistol Whip by 15% yet do nothing about the D/D spec nearly one-shotting players is what surprises me. And they say they have meetings on class spec? How can they have meetings on these sort of things when Pistol Whip locks you to the ground after its animation kicks in yet look past HS spamDeath?

I’m still shocked PW got nerfed, but what do I know; I’m just a gamer.

Meetings? What meetings?

Honestly, I never really understood the reasoning either. Pre-nerf PW only did like 5-8% more damage than auto-attack. I don’t really see how it warranted any nerf, let alone a 15% one.

Rebuff Pistol Whip damage by 15% in PVE, leave it as is in PVP.

I think that is a fair compromise.

I’ve been doing 25/30/15/0/0 backstab spam. I literally only use 1 and 5 (occasionally HS for closing gaps), but I’m also running Signets of Power + Signet Use, so tossing in signet CD’s make the rotation a bit more interesting otherwise.

Sometimes I might throw in Refuge + Blinding Powder for group utility, but I’ve been running mostly solo lately so usually it’s just signets.

Oh yeah, I wasn’t arguing that condition duration had the same value for both builds (it’s certainly better for con damage builds). I was simply arguing that there is still decent value in it for direct damage builds, and you can still achieve decent con duration without giving up any direct damage.

Kazin.2073:

Any direct damage build would only get 10-20% condition duration from the strength tree. Condition duration scales down, so this will result in +0s-1s duration on most of your bleeds. (Eg 6sec from rifle x 10% = 6.6 = 6sec still) It only becomes strong when your stack it alot. It certainly doesnt do anywhere near as much for a direct damage build as crit damage does for a condition damage build (it has the same power, higher crit chance)

This is correct. Bleeds don’t always get to finish, so in some situations where a fight lasts less then say 10sec (its a guess not entirely sure) berserker builds will do more dps then condition damage builds. Does it really matter? How important is a fight that lasts only a matter on seconds. I’m more worried about the long boss fights.

Condition clearing is very very uncommon in pve. I do only fractals and there is no condition clearing from bosses in there at all. What there is plenty of is protection boons and high armor targets. In both these situations condition damage builds surge ahead even further due to the large hit zerker builds take.

1 point to make. While a target can die and bleed dps is lost, is does have a benefit. What if you go down? After you go down your dps on the target is still solid for a few seconds, this allows rallies to occur far more easily.

- Well, on my Warrior I am 20/30/0/0/20, so I get +20% duration, and I also have +50% bleed duration. So I am only losing 10% from the tree, and 30% from runes. So yeah, the disparity is much smaller in comparison.

- I agree that condition builds generally have better survivability, however this boils down to skill more than the builds themselves. I hardly ever find myself getting downed, at least compared to my Thief.

- As for your last point, this is entirely true…but you will be doing more damage in berserker stats during your downed state, so i think it evens out in the end.