Guild Wars 2

Kazin.2073:

Blacksarevok.8104:

Kazin.2073:

It does scale with other stats
Direct damage = power prec crit dmg
Condition dmg = Condition dmg prec condition duration (Prec is there because 33% chance on crit to bleed and sigil of earth) two critical parts of a bleed build.

This is only partly true. While one could argue that condition damage does scale to some extent, it does not scale to the same extent power/crit/prec do with each other. While precision does cap out eventually, it has a much higher ceiling for power/crit based builds then it does Sigil of Earth centered builds, all while crit damage and power can be stacked infinitely.

- Condition duration is not a real stat. Traits and sigils/runes are your only source of condition duration, it does appear naturally on gear and therefore limits how much of it that can be stacked.
- Sigil of Earth has a 2 second ICD, which means precision becomes useless relatively quickly for SoE-based builds. Not to mention that even if SoE didn’t have an ICD, precision would still scale substantially better for Pwr/Prec/Crit builds because the value of precision as a stat is highest on berserker pieces due being directly affected by both crit damage and power.

Now if they would just let damaging conditions naturally crit and perhaps up the coefficients on con damage a bit, I don’t think there would be such a huge disparity between scaling.

While condition duration does not appear on gear. It scale sooooo much better then anything else. Condition duration is the same as crit damage, % for % with the following assumptions: 100% crit chance and the bleed finishes duration. Now 100% crit is not realistic so as it is lowered condition duration is MORE beneficial then crit damage.

Let looks at some sources for condition duration for bleeds: Traits (50%) runes (15%x2) Strength tree(0%-30%)

Imagion if there was a trait that added 50% more critical damage, how insane does that sound? Well the bleed trait is better then that unless your 100% crit chance. It is clear that condition damage/precision/condition duration scales better then power precision crit damage. Remember, you don’t lose any power for going rampage items, you actually have a higher crit chance with rampages as precision is its main stat. So you still get same power, higher crit chance and lower crit damage. So your direct damage is likely to be 70% that of a berserker (you will have 50% passive crit dmg + ~30crit dmg instead of 109 crit dmg) in the direct damage department. Let alone how hard bleed scales ontop of that.

Now, I understand your point for crit chance on sigil of earth. Your missing the trait 33% chance on crit to cause a bleed which does not have a cooldown. This scales perfectly with crit chance. There are also additional benefits to crit, such as food procs (onnomberry ghosts) 30point talent in arms are two that I commonly use.

They don’t need to let bleeds crit, they are already many fold stronger. I crit 800 with my rifle with bleed spec, with berserker I achieve around 1200, the difference is I get 130 bleeds instead of 60 and they last twice as long (12sec for rifle 1 bleed). Let alone how well the sigil scales.

Sigil of fire is ~1k damage every5sec
Sigil of earth is ~(5sec bleed duration x 2 condition duration items x 130 bleed ticks) aka 1300 damage every 2sec. This is ignoring the 30% proc chance on fire and 60% proc chance on earth

The trait 33% chance on crit to cause bleed is very strong as well. There is simply no trait available for berserker that matches the dps benefit.

The traits scale better, condition duration scales ALOT better. (Think of food, there is +40% condition duration food available, you don’t see +40% crit damage food, not that it would be as good either)

Bleed rocks

Condition duration is great, I agree, but you forgot to mention 2 things:

1.) Condition Duration still benefits builds that don’t stack condition damage. I’d say that a full berserker-geared build would still gain half the benefit of condition duration (since from my experience, conditions do about half damage when geared berserker when compared to full rampager) ON TOP OF the benefits of crit damage.

2.) You won’t always be getting all of your condition ticks off (condition clearing, target dying, etc…). So you really can’t compare the theoretical max damage of conditions since when applied realistically it will be lower (most of the time, at least).

Ranged weapons intentionally do less damage than melee weapons because ranged weapons have higher up-time on targets than melee weapons do. Thus, comparing ranged weapon damage to melee weapon damage is pointless.

Ranged weapons should only be compared to ranged weapons, melee weapons should only be compared to melee weapons. We aren’t in WoW anymore, gentleman.

Kazin.2073:

It does scale with other stats
Direct damage = power prec crit dmg
Condition dmg = Condition dmg prec condition duration (Prec is there because 33% chance on crit to bleed and sigil of earth) two critical parts of a bleed build.

This is only partly true. While one could argue that condition damage does scale to some extent, it does not scale to the same extent power/crit/prec do with each other. While precision does cap out eventually, it has a much higher ceiling for power/crit based builds then it does Sigil of Earth centered builds, all while crit damage and power can be stacked infinitely.

- Condition duration is not a real stat. Traits and sigils/runes are your only source of condition duration, it does appear naturally on gear and therefore limits how much of it that can be stacked.
- Sigil of Earth has a 2 second ICD, which means precision becomes useless relatively quickly for SoE-based builds. Not to mention that even if SoE didn’t have an ICD, precision would still scale substantially better for Pwr/Prec/Crit builds because the value of precision as a stat is highest on berserker pieces due being directly affected by both crit damage and power.

Now if they would just let damaging conditions naturally crit and perhaps up the coefficients on con damage a bit, I don’t think there would be such a huge disparity between scaling.

Monki.5012:

I used to play Sword/axe too and went the condition road, however Conditions have so many downsides it is painful.

you probably think conditions deal more damage than direct damage because it has to tick over time to do the damage right? At least in most other games it was this way.. no wrong with similar weapons conditions deal about the same damage as direct damage option

Conditions doesnt scale with other stats.. while critdamage benefits from power conditonsdamage dont.

CD doesnt do any good against yellow objects.. well critdamage or pricision wont too but when you go the critroad you most likely have more power than you would as conditioner

Bleeds can be capped at 25 stacks wich happens in Events or if you have 2 other conditioners in your party so some damage might be lost… same with burning if you got a elementalist or eng in your party. The weaker burning delays the stronger one.

Tag mobs in events with conditions can be problematic if they die before some ticks oocured you wont get any reward.

Some bosses have buffs that reduce the effect of some Conditions on them and some Bosses can remove conditions due to different abillities. And some Bosses can heal themself when a condition is applied…

Last but not least you wont know how much damage you deal unless you do complicated math. If you crit you see immediately “ok That was a 5k crit” to see what damage your condition do you have to calculate it.

Summed up exactly what I was going to say.

I tried condition damage P/D on my Thief for PVE and it was a huge mistake.

Axe mh is good and can compete with GS on paper at least, problem is (as said above) is that GS traits are better and require less investment.

What we need is another 2-hander (Greataxe, anyone?) to be put on the table. Personally I think 1-handers should be more utility-oriented, and 2-handers should be more damage-oriented.

Spifnar.4712:

Most burst attacks don’t do much direct damage, but rather have an effect/condition damage (GS, LB, Mace, Sword, Hammer)

Axe and Rifle are the only ones with high direct damage.

A cooldown reduction for burst skills would be preferable to any % damage increase.

This, or make burst skills consume less adrenaline when used.

muscarine.5136:

Like i said most of you are just waiting for that extra update that will go too far because of biased feedback, putting p/p way too far above what it needs to be, once it will be there you will maybe consider it and we will start to see another round of nerf thieves, only p/p this time.

It’s like the d/d eles all over again.
That’s how you create an actual fotm.

Right now p/p needs minor tweaks, no more. It’s actually a very balanced set, and if anything the game should be balanced around this kind of design instead of faceroll 123456 or facetank 123456.

Instead of this, we will just end up with another broken spec that goes way too far forcing the meta into more burst vs tank dynamic.

This is pretty much the only reason why I wish we had DPS meters.

Though it would also help if the devs would give us some real feedback on balance.

Yeah I will agree there is an issue with P/ abilities and /P abilities not really going together.

Honestly I think they should just make P/ a short range weapon, like Engineer P/. Basically, make it do more damage when under 200 range. This wouldn’t really affect P/D too much since it already has to get in for CnD anyway, and it would kinda make sense since muzzle-loaded pistols irl had terrible range anyway.

Then, just add a Rifle for Thieves to use as a primary single target ranged weapon, and that way you can build all 5 abilities around the same concept so you have the awesome synergy Warrior Rifle and other 2h ranged kits have.

Ensign.2189:

You should count Brutal Shot in your math when comparing the weapons; it really is quite good in the situations where you will actually use a rifle.

The problem with Pistols isn’t that the damage isn’t up to par (it is pretty much on par with other weapons when you go all-in on Unload spam), but that you sacrifice all your utility to get that damage – why would I want to take a pistol Thief over an Ele or Mesmer or Necro or Engineer or Ranger or even mediocre stuff like rifle Warriors and scepter Guardians?

They just don’t offer anything that a Ranger with a shortbow can’t do while AFK.

P/P really doesn’t offer a lot of utility regardless of damage output. Black Powder is kinda useless since it’s a melee ability and the whole idea is to be at range. Body Shot’s vuln duration is way too low (6 secs I believe? Compared to Brutal Shot’s 10 seconds) , and you already provide decent vuln via Sundering Strikes + Unload. Really the only decent thing the kit has it Head Shot.

I mean, I’d be all for buffing Vital Shot at least up to Shortbow #1 damage just to make using utilities in place of Unload less painful, but that really won’t deter P/P from being just Unload spam + a few Head Shots. Not until they make Body Shot better (or change it altogether) and/or make Black Powder have better synergy with P/P.

Volrath.1473:

Not to mention that s/d is the only weapon set without a bust ability. The best damaging ability it has is auto-attack.

Yeah, the problem I have with sword mainhand is that both /P and /D lack a good, hard-hitting ability. Pistol Whip fulfilled that role pre-nerf, now it’s become a utility ability. Both Flanking Strike and Pistol Whip deal decent damage, the problem is that the damage needs to be delivered in a much quicker fashion.

If Flanking Strike dealt both hits instantly and at the same time, then provided an evasion or a block afterward, it would be pretty much perfect.

Mystogan.4157:

Idk maybe i was also watching a video on youtube and that thief i watched used it also.. In pretty sure it was s/d ill post it wen i get home… Doesnt pistol whip only hit 1 time tho? And isnt quckness jst give ms?

The Pistol Whip animation shows you hitting the target with your pistol hilt, and then swinging your sword at them 4 times quickly.

I think you were seeing Pistol Whip, which is S/P.

Tulisin.6945:

Red Falcon.8257:

Might not be the end of the world, but it’s a much better switch for your melee setup than the nerfed SB (and to think SB used to be the “mandatory” secondary before the nerfs).

I disagree, they don’t really fill the same roles.

As a swap SB offers: Mobility (both evade and travel), utility, burst short-range damage, decent conditions, excellent AE potential, and thief’s longest range set.

As a swap P/P offers: Less damage, malleability, and mobility than your melee set, but at a range.

P/P isn’t “good for damage”, it is “good for damage when melee isn’t an option”. SB brings things to the table that your melee set doesn’t.

I would agree with this. No range weapon can really compete with melee weapons, ranged is generally there for when you would otherwise have low melee up-time on the target. When I used P/P I never replace SB, but rather whatever melee weapon I was using.

Daecollo.9578:

Blacksarevok.8104:

Daecollo.9578:

………

2k damage?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru_rXq2LYg0

Its an AOE attack that hits for more then BACKSTAB (due to warriors having more +% damage traits.), warriors far more critical chance, they sit at 80% while we are at 60%. (permament fury.)

I start the fight with full adren, use all my abilities, then use killshot (WHILE I WAIT for my abilities to cooldown and come back.) then after that, I use precision signet, FULL ADRENALINE AGAIN!, my abilities like volley are up again! I use them, then I notice, Kill shots up again! use that! then I can use my heal! full adrenaline again! rince and repeat!

Also… not even going to mention this since I forgot it, on top of doing far more damage then P/P, rifles also Pierce.

Pistol Pistol Thief has no access to stealth, 25% movement speed, and less damage and armor then rifle warrior.

So, less damage (by a good bit.), less range, can’t pierce, less movement speed, less armor, less mobility.

First off, that video cherry picks the best Kill Shots and posts them. Look at his buffs, too. 90% of the time you play Rifle, you are gonna see Kill Shot crits in the 10-11k range. Against light armor wearers and with tons of buffs it will be higher, but so would Backstab (I can get 15-20k Backstabs buffed against light armor, and a far more sustainable rate than KS). Just go on the Warrior forum or better yet play one yourself, KS montages are the same as the Backstab montages we complaning about people making because they aren’t accurate, just cherry-picked scenes with the intention of showing off or whining about OPness. For reference I can hit light armor when buffed similarly for 11-12k, on an attack that I can use back-to-back.

As for Traits:

Damage traits Warriors get (specced 20/30/0/0/20) that affect Rifle:
+10% increased Crit to KS
10% damage when bleeding
+20% rifle recharge
+3/7/12% damage/adrenaline
+2/5/9% crit/adrenaline

Damage traits Thieves get (specced 20/30/0/0/15) that affect Pistols:
+10% damage when weakened
5% Dual Skill damage
+10% Pistol damage
+5% dual skill crit (if you take it)
+10% damage above 6 ini
+20% damage below 50% health

As you can see, traits actually favor P/P over Rifle. I’ll admit that the optimal Rifle build would probably be 10/30/0/0/30, but it’s really not going to make a huge difference.

But back to KS, even if I give you the benefit of the doubt about KS spamming, as I already said, you aren’t going to see those kinds of numbers in that video doing anything solo. Make a Warrior, go full berserker, and run around PVE a bit. I guarantee you will only be seeing hits around 9.5-10k without buffs.

On the subject of pierce, I’m not gonna argue really since it’s a valid point, but not really related to sustained single target damage. Also, we have Shortbow, so does it really matter THAT much?

Again I agree that P/P survivability is low, but that’s not what I’m arguing.

You keep insisting it’s less damage though but you aren’t providing any evidence for this, just a cherry-picked Kill Shot vid (just like the ones with 15k+ backstabs, because we all know we see those numbers every time we use Backstab, right guys? lol). I showed you some numbers, no they aren’t very accurate but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at tooltips and come up with a decent idea of DPS.

Not to mention you can just kill heavy golems, and I promise you P/P and Rifle will be killing them at about the same rate

You forgot the important trait: Rifle Shots Pierce… and you forgot 50% BLEEDING duration…

You forgot “Empowered” 2% Damage per boon, Rifle warriors should have Infinite Might/Fury/Swiftness. so thats at least 6% more.

- Pierce has nothing to do with direct single target damage (which is what im discussing). Bleeds…ok, I’ll give you that.

- If you put points in Tactics to get empowered then you are gimping yourself elsewhere, so it evens out.

- I did forget elite signet, so that’s what, 70%-ish uptime on 5 Might/Fury?

So 5 stacks of might with 70% uptime + 50% more bleed duration. That would probably make the trait allocation about equal between the two kits.

Oh, and for reference:

http://i.imgur.com/VtwEL.jpg

Right about 2k damage unbuffed.

Daecollo.9578:

………

2k damage?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru_rXq2LYg0

Its an AOE attack that hits for more then BACKSTAB (due to warriors having more +% damage traits.), warriors far more critical chance, they sit at 80% while we are at 60%. (permament fury.)

I start the fight with full adren, use all my abilities, then use killshot (WHILE I WAIT for my abilities to cooldown and come back.) then after that, I use precision signet, FULL ADRENALINE AGAIN!, my abilities like volley are up again! I use them, then I notice, Kill shots up again! use that! then I can use my heal! full adrenaline again! rince and repeat!

Also… not even going to mention this since I forgot it, on top of doing far more damage then P/P, rifles also Pierce.

Pistol Pistol Thief has no access to stealth, 25% movement speed, and less damage and armor then rifle warrior.

So, less damage (by a good bit.), less range, can’t pierce, less movement speed, less armor, less mobility.

First off, that video cherry picks the best Kill Shots and posts them. Look at his buffs, too. 90% of the time you play Rifle, you are gonna see Kill Shot crits in the 10-11k range. Against light armor wearers and with tons of buffs it will be higher, but so would Backstab (I can get 15-20k Backstabs buffed against light armor, and a far more sustainable rate than KS). Just go on the Warrior forum or better yet play one yourself, KS montages are the same as the Backstab montages we complaning about people making because they aren’t accurate, just cherry-picked scenes with the intention of showing off or whining about OPness. For reference I can hit light armor when buffed similarly for 11-12k, on an attack that I can use back-to-back.

As for Traits:

Damage traits Warriors get (specced 20/30/0/0/20) that affect Rifle:
+10% increased Crit to KS
10% damage when bleeding
+20% rifle recharge
+3/7/12% damage/adrenaline
+2/5/9% crit/adrenaline

Damage traits Thieves get (specced 20/30/0/0/15) that affect Pistols:
+10% damage when weakened
5% Dual Skill damage
+10% Pistol damage
+5% dual skill crit (if you take it)
+10% damage above 6 ini
+20% damage below 50% health

As you can see, traits actually favor P/P over Rifle. I’ll admit that the optimal Rifle build would probably be 10/30/0/0/30, but it’s really not going to make a huge difference.

But back to KS, even if I give you the benefit of the doubt about KS spamming, as I already said, you aren’t going to see those kinds of numbers in that video doing anything solo. Make a Warrior, go full berserker, and run around PVE a bit. I guarantee you will only be seeing hits around 9.5-10k without buffs.

On the subject of pierce, I’m not gonna argue really since it’s a valid point, but not really related to sustained single target damage. Also, we have Shortbow, so does it really matter THAT much?

Again I agree that P/P survivability is low, but that’s not what I’m arguing.

You keep insisting it’s less damage though but you aren’t providing any evidence for this, just a cherry-picked Kill Shot vid (just like the ones with 15k+ backstabs, because we all know we see those numbers every time we use Backstab, right guys? lol). I showed you some numbers, no they aren’t very accurate but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at tooltips and come up with a decent idea of DPS.

Not to mention you can just kill heavy golems, and I promise you P/P and Rifle will be killing them at about the same rate

Daecollo.9578:

Blacksarevok.8104:

Daecollo.9578:

Oh yeah, Rifle Warrior also has more range too.

The Channel doesn’t matter, Pistol has a longer recast then Rifles, so there wait time between attacks is almost THE SAME, do a video comparing Unload/Volley and then fire a shot after.

Do a Comparing Video between Bleeding shot/Vital shot, vital shot is suppost to be 25% faster, but its not, volley is suppost to be slower, but its not.

I’m not even going to bring up “Kill Shot.”.

The channel time between rifle/pistols do not matter, because Pistols have to wait 0.75 seconds to attack again, while rifles only have to wait 0.50 seconds.

Vital Shot/Bleeding Shot have different channels, but because Pistol Recast is 0.75.
Volley/Unload have about the same reuse time, even though volley channels slower, I can use another attack faster then I can as a Pistol Thief.

1.) All damage testing and theorizing I do has Rifles and Pistols at the same cast time (because they do have the same cast time.

2.) Rifle adrenaline building is extremely slow. Like, 1 KS every 20 secs. It would affect Rifles damage output, but not to a deal-breaking extent.

3.) Even if this is true and the recast times are different (I haven’t tested this) it would essentially tag an extra .25 sec to Unload, but it would still be .5 sec faster channel than Volley.

I do agree range is an issue, among many other issues P/P has. This argument is solely aimed at comparing damage.

Its not slow… You have a healing ability that puts you at full adrenaline + precision signet that does the same thing, both have LOW cooldowns.

You can use these BOTH before the fight even starts as well.

Fair enough, but 2 things to consider:

1.) You lose 12% damage and 9% crit every time you Kill Shot, and it takes a long time to build that back up manually.

2.) Kill Shot (for me) has a 1.75 cast time for 2k damage (though it crits a lot). It’s an intimidating burst tool, but when looking at it from a sustained point of view, it’s not that mind-blowing (especially when you take what I listed in #1 into consideration).

Daecollo.9578:

Oh yeah, Rifle Warrior also has more range too.

The Channel doesn’t matter, Pistol has a longer recast then Rifles, so there wait time between attacks is almost THE SAME, do a video comparing Unload/Volley and then fire a shot after.

Do a Comparing Video between Bleeding shot/Vital shot, vital shot is suppost to be 25% faster, but its not, volley is suppost to be slower, but its not.

I’m not even going to bring up “Kill Shot.”.

The channel time between rifle/pistols do not matter, because Pistols have to wait 0.75 seconds to attack again, while rifles only have to wait 0.50 seconds.

Vital Shot/Bleeding Shot have different channels, but because Pistol Recast is 0.75.
Volley/Unload have about the same reuse time, even though volley channels slower, I can use another attack faster then I can as a Pistol Thief.

1.) All damage testing and theorizing I do has Rifles and Pistols at the same cast time (because they do have the same cast time.

2.) Rifle adrenaline building is extremely slow. Like, 1 KS every 20 secs. It would affect Rifles damage output, but not to a deal-breaking extent.

3.) Even if this is true and the recast times are different (I haven’t tested this) it would essentially tag an extra .25 sec to Unload, but it would still be .5 sec faster channel than Volley.

I do agree range is an issue, among many other issues P/P has. This argument is solely aimed at comparing damage.

Daecollo.9578:

Blacksarevok.8104:

Daecollo.9578:

Whats so good about Pistol/Pistol?
Survivability – Poor (no stealth.)
Mobility – Poor (no way to escape or cure conditions.)
Damage – Poor (Laughable Damage.)
Control Effects – Ok (but not to good, the enemy must be standing on top of you to get CCed, so it might as well be a melee weapon.)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spatial_Surge – Good Range, Good Damage.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bleeding_Shot – Good Range, Good Damage.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vital_Shot – Less Range, Less Damage.

I don’t see how a set that gives up Mobility/Survivability/Damage can be good, infact it sounds kind of terrible actually.

To the poster above, why does that ranged weapon “do so much” damage?

I can’t speak for Mesmer, but P/P has equal, if not better, sustained than Warrior Rifle. Yes Vital Shot is worse than Bleeding Shot, but Unload has a much higher up time than Volley and ends up covering for it. Volley does about 30% more damage than Unload, but you can easily fit 2-3 Unloads during Volleys down time, meaning Unload is dealing more damage than Volley over x amount of time.

I agree that P/P mobility is terrible and and the survivability is meh, but the damage is actually really good when you compare it to other ranged sets.

EDIT: Also, Volley has a longer channel time than Unload, further reducing the DPS margin when comparing it to Unload.

Lol… No… Sustained Damage is damage over say a 2 minute timeframe, which Rifle Warrior’s Damage out put is almost 3 times that of a thieves in that period.

Pistol can spam unload 3 times, and then are completely useless for awile, since they can’t do anything else.

Maybe if you have garbage precision, but assuming you are in full berserker sitting close to or at 60% natural crit, Opportunist procs will allow to fill in at least 2 Unloads every 8 secs. And this is not including the 3 Ini per 10 secs from Quick Recovery + Infiltrator’s Signet if you choose to run that build.

And I got to lol at Rifle doing 3 times more damage than P/P. Do you even try to do the math? Let’s assume, just for the sake of the argument, P/P can only do 1 Unload per 8 secs. Normalize Bleeding Shot and Vital Shot to 1 sec for quality of life reasons, and round Unload up to 2 sec channel from 1.75 (tipping the balance further towards Rifle). Here is quick scenario just to demonstrate a point:

10 second timeline, numbers taken from my Thief and Warrior both geared in full 80 berserker exos (25/30/0/0/15 for Thief, 20/30/0/0/20 for Warrior)

P/P: Unload – 2100 (2 sec) Vital Shot x8 (@350 per shot) – 2800 (8 secs) Unload – 2100 (2 sec)
Total: 7000

Rifle: Volley – 2950 (2.5 sec) Bleeding Shot x 8 (@400 per shot) – 3200 (8 secs) Volley – 2950 (2.5) sec
Total: 9100

So as you can see, even in a completely unrealistic scenario that vastly favors Rifle, Rifle is only doing about 30% more damage that P/P. Factor in the extra Unloads + correct channel times + everything else and you will have both weapons more-or-less performing at the same level.

EDIT: Fixed some math I did wrong.

Daecollo.9578:

Whats so good about Pistol/Pistol?
Survivability – Poor (no stealth.)
Mobility – Poor (no way to escape or cure conditions.)
Damage – Poor (Laughable Damage.)
Control Effects – Ok (but not to good, the enemy must be standing on top of you to get CCed, so it might as well be a melee weapon.)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spatial_Surge – Good Range, Good Damage.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bleeding_Shot – Good Range, Good Damage.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vital_Shot – Less Range, Less Damage.

I don’t see how a set that gives up Mobility/Survivability/Damage can be good, infact it sounds kind of terrible actually.

To the poster above, why does that ranged weapon “do so much” damage?

I can’t speak for Mesmer, but P/P has equal, if not better, sustained than Warrior Rifle. Yes Vital Shot is worse than Bleeding Shot, but Unload has a much higher up time than Volley and ends up covering for it. Volley does about 30% more damage than Unload, but you can easily fit 2-3 Unloads during Volleys down time, meaning Unload is dealing more damage than Volley over x amount of time.

I agree that P/P mobility is terrible and and the survivability is meh, but the damage is actually really good when you compare it to other ranged sets.

EDIT: Also, Volley has a longer channel time than Unload, further reducing the DPS margin when comparing it to Unload.

Condition damage thieves will generally have better survivability due to not being required to put points in Deadly Arts/Critical Stikes, direct damage thieves will generally have better damage due to power/precision/crit damage scaling far better than condition damage.

Overall though it boils down to your playstyle. Damage is useless if you can’t stay alive, but if you can’t deal any damage you are in for a long, tedious trip to 80. D/D con damage and S/P direct damage are both great leveling choices.

The damage has always been good, people just compare it to melee kits instead of other ranged kits (even though ranged weapons are SUPPOSED to do less damage than melee weapons in return for having higher uptime on targets) and think it’s gimped because of that.

Even before the damage buff it did equal damage to Warrior Rifle and both Ranger bows. They just need to figure out a way to make P/P utility better/more synergistic and it will be fine.

It’s useless.

They might as well change it to “Seppuku” and just let us skip the BS and kill ourselves.

Personally I would rather it remove 2 boons rather than steal 1, but regardless I think it’s a good idea and better than what we have now.

Honestly, I really don’t care what they do with the secondary effect, as long as they just make it an instant strike so we don’t have deal with the terrible pathing.

I hate how AoE/one-shot mechanics are the go-to strategy developers use to make encounters more “challenging”.

Zaylin.3297:

That doesnt make any sense either.

You get a 2nd weapon right after your finish the prelude. Plus all main hand weapons have it, not just the one you start with.

Well when you think it about, it doesn’t make any sense matter what. Only using a single one-handed weapon means you lose a ton of stats, so even if the abilities were decent individually the kit itself would be worthless (unless they added some kind of offhand “filler” item to serve as a stats platform, which would be interesting).

The devs never stated what the point of these were, so we can only assume they are bridge abilities to carry you until you get another weapon, or they just leftover abilities from an earlier version of the game that never got removed. Regardless, from the looks of it there isn’t a point them atm, so I guess it doesn’t matter anyway.

I don’t think ANet intends for us to run with one weapon, I think the one-weapon skills are just there to help you get around until you receive a second weapon.

Which kinda sucks, viable one-weapon abilities could help alleviate the issue of thieves having such a small arsenal of weapons.

Well when traited SoM only has a 12 sec CD, which I’m pretty sure would give it the highest HPM. Combined with the passive, the activation time might be justified.

But I’m certainly not against making it faster.

EDIT: And I agree with Tul’s last paragraph completely.

ensoriki.5789:

Pistol whip is fine. Removing the stun and evade doesn’t open up anything.
It’s purpose is already clear. Smash people in the face. Removing those two features, just makes it so the skill is easier to ignore without quickness, and easier to escape with quickness. In addition leaving you significantly more vulnerable to all pet/minion types in this game from Rockdog’s to turrets, illusions, pets, minions, thieves and spirit weapons, as well as enemy team mates. All for a damage increase on something that already hits quite well? No thanks.

Hits well? It’s been tested, in absolutely best-case scenarios (IE: Traiting for +5% dual skill damage, +5% dual skill crit, and having a proc sigil) to have the same DPS as sword auto-attack. You are basically paying 5 ini for and interrupt and a evade, both of which can more-or-less be provided by other abilities (and not at the cost of your mobility). There is literally no reason to use PW over Black Powder + auto-attack unless you are trying to get health back via SoM. I would much rather it be a nuke skill then something that niche.

Maybe removing the daze + evade isn’t the best solution, but saying the damage is fine is pretty much laughable. They might as well just remove the damage all together and just make it an evade that lasts a second or two that allows us to continue to auto-attack and move.

EDIT: I guess alternatively instead of damage they could add a condition to it. For example, each sword hit applies vulnerability. That would make it worth using on it’s own without increasing the damamge.

evilapprentice.6379:

Blacksarevok.8104:

Pistol Whip – Remove the daze + evade, increase the damage by 20%.

We already have an interrupt ability (Head Shot), and we already have a survivability tool (Black Powder). Seems redundant for PW to have a daze and evade. S/P needs a damage dump, and that is what Pistol Whip needs to be.

We’d get eaten alive due to the root and channel- PW would be a clarion call to any burst setup to maul us, because we’d be sitting ducks without the evasion. There’s literally nothing worse a thief can do then broadcast to the enemy team “Ima just stand here for a second, totally visible”. Without the stun we also wouldn’t have any way to prevent an opponent from just walking out of the swings (like they already do when the stun wears off, but the stun at least forces them to take a few of the swings)

100b has the same issues, the difference being that 100b can actually deliver relevant damage when used tactically, PW cannot. Removing the stun is not an issue because you should not be using PW without Haste anyway, it does less/the same damage than auto-attack while rooting you in place. PW + Haste + SoM is the only possible use I can think of for PW in PVP, of which the stun + evade are irrelevant due to how fast the attack is performed (or at most, near-irrelevant). By buffing the damage and removing the stun/evade, you are actually opening it up to be used in more situations other than being coupled with haste + SoM.

Pistol Whip – Remove the daze + evade, increase the damage by 20%.

We already have an interrupt ability (Head Shot), and we already have a survivability tool (Black Powder). Seems redundant for PW to have a daze and evade. S/P needs a damage dump, and that is what Pistol Whip needs to be.

WHY ARE THERE NO PIERCINGS ANET? WHY?

I’ve found the best gold per hour to be doing full node clears of Malchor’s/Cursed, and grabbing the Ori/Saplings from Southsun/Frostgorge while killing everything along the way. Obviously this is far less efficient if you aren’t running a murder build, but if you can kill reasonably fast then you can probably make 6-8 gold in 2 hours. Following that, just farming Pen/Shelt is also great gph (even without magic find, though grabbing a banner + cookie/bar helps alot).

I definitely agree FotM’s are a great way to make money (and relieve the tedium of grinding), but they also require you to pay attention. It’s also worth mentioning that if your group sucks and you are dying a lot, that is cutting into your profits. Basically, FotM is the way to go if you have a set group you can spam fractals with or if you can’t stand farming/mindless mob grinding.

Aether the Nob.9172:

Blacksarevok.8104:

There is not a huge gap between Rifle and P/P damage like this community likes to make it out to be. P/P has a lot of issues, but damage isn’t one of them.

I seem to misunderstand. If damage isn’t a problem, and the build has pretty good mobility, then what are the issues with the build???

Outside of Unload, the other abilities aren’t very useful or lack synergy.

- Body Shot is nearly worthless. It does nothing for solo and 2-3 person encounters, and it’s useless in large scale encounters because other classes will provide vulnerability without having to give up as much, or any, damage.
- Head Shot isn’t so bad, but like above other classes/kits can provide interrupts without giving up as much damage as P/P does. It’s nice if you need a spammable, ranged interrupt, but there really aren’t that many situations where you do.
- Black Powder is a great ability, but it doesn’t really doing anything for P/P since it’s a melee-oriented ability and the whole idea as a ranged kit is to stay away from melee. Totally lacks synergy.

And the mobility really isn’t that great. The kit doesn’t provide anything to restore mobility, nor does it have a cripple/root/knockback. Not having a single 1200 range ability also hurts P/P. The lack of range is actually what bothers me the most out of everything.

Daecollo.9578:

Blacksarevok.8104:

Aether the Nob.9172:

I just ran a rifle/longbow warrior in sPVP. I’m pretty sure my thief did more damage. It was also more mobile.

P/P has better sustained that Rifle. I can get 2-3 Unloads (depending on build/procs) in the time of 1 Volley. Rifle has better range and better burst though, so it evens out. P/P damage is fine in comparison to other ranged weapons. The problem I see is that when I play P/P, I only use #3. When I play Rifle, I use all of the abilities. P/P abilities just don’t have a lot of synergy and lack overall usefulness.

P/P has poor sustained damage, Volley does 2x more damage then Unload does, i’d rather have volley up every 8 seconds then use 3 unloads, because after 3 unloads, I have to wait 24 seconds to get my initiative back, meanwhile I can use volley again in 8 more seconds…

Rifle Autoattack also does about 40% more damage then Vital shot.

My Warrior and Thief are both in the same gear (100% 80 exotic berserker) 20/30/0/0/30 for Rifle and 25/30/0/0/15 for P/P.

Volley does 2,965,
Unload does 2096

Bleeding Shot does 393
Vital Shot does 349

Volley does about 40% more damage than Unload, but you can easily get in 2 Unloads in the time between Volley CD’s (sometimes even 3, while maintaining at least 6 initiative, mind you).

Bleeding Shot does about 15% more damage than Vital Shot, but P/P utilizes VS less than Rifle uses BS, so I would say it evens out in the big picture.

There is not a huge gap between Rifle and P/P damage like this community likes to make it out to be. P/P has a lot of issues, but damage isn’t one of them.

Aether the Nob.9172:

I just ran a rifle/longbow warrior in sPVP. I’m pretty sure my thief did more damage. It was also more mobile.

P/P has better sustained that Rifle. I can get 2-3 Unloads (depending on build/procs) in the time of 1 Volley. Rifle has better range and better burst though, so it evens out. P/P damage is fine in comparison to other ranged weapons. The problem I see is that when I play P/P, I only use #3. When I play Rifle, I use all of the abilities. P/P abilities just don’t have a lot of synergy and lack overall usefulness.

Not sure since Pistol Whip is a dual skill and utilizes a pistol.

Is the burst ability for Harpoon Gun supposed to be affected by Crack Shot?

Honestly, I’d rather have +damage% traits than a bunch of near-meaningless, situational traits (like in WoW). Even if it’s boring, I’d rather be picking traits that matter instead of just closing my eyes and randomly picking because they all don’t matter.

That’s not to say GW2 traits are anywhere close to being as boring as talents in WoW, but there are still quite a few that are just pointless. If they actually reworked all of the traits to be interesting and useful then I would be okay with ditching bonus damage traits. But it just seems like a lot of time and effort that could be put towards more important issues (how about we actually get all of the traits WORKING before we start changing them?)

Author was exaggerating heavily on most things. Crafting is fine, leveling is fine, and the story, while not amazing, is still better than like 75% of the MMO’s out there.

I do agree though that traits are a mess and need a lot of work. Not so much because they lack direction, but a ton of them are underpowered, misplaced, or bugged.

I’d like to see Arcing Slice actually do relevant damage, the other effects are secondary (Weakness + Vuln would be cool though)

Still doesn’t apply the cooldown reduction to the #5 Harpoon Gun ability “Repeating Shot” (supposed to be 20 secs with Crack Shot, but still goes on a 25 sec CD upon using the ability).

Not really a big deal since no one uses Harpoon Gun, but figured I’d mention it anyway.

Since a majority of axe MH damage comes from #1, would I really be giving up much, from a DPS perspective, using a shield? I know OH mace brings another 4% vuln and OH axe brings Fury/AoE….but it terms of individual DPS, am I missing out on anything using a shield?

I’ve never used one before so I have no idea if there any hidden mechanics or what

Ok, Volley DOES now benefit from Crack Shot, it’s just not in the notes. Woot

I’m assuming Crack Shot got fixed as well and it just didn’t make the patch notes. I’ll test it as soon as I can get in.

No, no, no, please god, no. I would honestly debate quitting if they ever added dual-wielding two handed weapons. It’s doofy, stupid, and cartoony. Lets leave that to WoW.

I am all for adding halberds/“land” spears/great axes though. Maybe some more 1-handers too (flails, etc).

The warrior trait “Crack Shot” is not properly applying a cooldown reduction to the Rifle ability “Volley”. The tooltip shows the 20% reduced cooldown (8 seconds, from 10 secs) but when you actually use Volley it remains on the default 10 second cooldown. All of the other Rifle abilities appear to be correctly benefiting from Crack Shot.

Harpoon Gun abilities seem to be affected by the same bug, they are also not benefiting from the reduced cooldown.

Already rerolled to Warrior.

Not for damage reasons, but because Thief survivability in PVE is terrible and the only way to get around that is to sacrifice a substantial amount of offensive capability (which Warriors don’t have to do, or at least not to the extent Thieves do).

Pistol changes might make me come back though, depending on what they are specifically.

Einlanzer.1627:

A few points here:

1. This is more an issue with conditions than it is an issue with condition-oriented weapons. It’d be silly in general to dump all power and crit for nothing but condition damage, good thing the game doesn’t even let you do that, much less force you to.

2. Whoever said anything about not ever using Unload? That would be silly. Also, I never said it would magically become an amazing set, I merely stated that it is the most significant single broken element of the set. And to that I stand. These would be examples of strawmen.

3. It isn’t certain they are buffing VS attack speed, but Jon showed up on the Ranger board on a thread about the Longbow earlier talking about the DPS is too low because the #1 skill fires too slowly. So even after buffing the damage on the longbow they determined it wasn’t enough and that the speed needs to be increased. It’s very likely they are looking into this very specific issues across various weapon sets and professions.h

1.) Taken from Warrior Forum:

“critical damage. I did the math and condition damage needs a buff. Raw data:
Gear is all-exo. 3/6 berserker’s 3/6 rampager’s for the purpose of testing, weapon is a rampager’s rifle with sigil of earth. Traiting distribution is 20/30/0/0/20 glass cannon. What I modified was jewelry between 5/5 berserker’s or 5/5 rampager’s.
With the berserker’s jewelry set I have 3159 attack, 58% crit, +68% critical damage, and 634 condition damage.
With rampager’s I have 3103 attack, 65% crit, +36% critical damage, and 949 condition damage.
Going out into the wild and testing:
Rampager’s autoattack shots do 350 damage base, critting for 650, and bleeding for 90 damage a tick. My bleeds are extended roughly 80% so I get ten ticks of bleed, and I have two additional possible procs of bleed (33% and 60% on critical), so each shot is on average worth 350 + 195 (crit) + 900 (guaranteed base bleed) + 200 (33% bleed) + 360 (60% bleed) = 2005 damage.
With the berserker’s jewelry set, I auto for 380 critting for 800, with bleeds ticking at 74. 380 + 244 + 740 (guaranteed bleed) + 142 + 258 (other bleeds) = 1764 damage.
So by rotating to rampager’s, the rifle autoattack loses about 250 dps.
The problem here is when you factor in skills that don’t have guaranteed bleeds, and thus frontload all their damage. Volley, for instance, does another 2-3k damage with berserker’s. Killshot crits for 6k under rampager’s but does 10k with berserker’s. Might improves condition damage and power, and the improvement to power will vastly scale against both your critical rate and the crit damage buff. In exchange for the 250 dps on autoattack each of the other attacks becomes kittenedly buff, and this is under full traits and runes for maximizing bleed damage. Swords are actually worse because of the relatively large damage on the sword autoattack swings which comprise most of a sword warrior’s damage.
so yeah condition damage is never worth it on warriors, at least”

So, for Rifle, Rampagers vs Berserkers, purely from a damage standpoint, Berserker’s is better. As the quoted man stated, you need to take into account all of a kits abilities to determine what gear you use, not just the auto-attack.

2.) We talked about Unload earlier. The situation is this: Either using Unload is going to net more DPS than than just using VS, or just using VS by itself (completely dropping Unload) is going to net more DPS. By buffing VS, it is either still going to be weak enough to encourage using Unload, or it’s going to get buffed enough to allow us to drop Unload out of the rotation entirely. You see what I’m saying? VS and Unload both directly compete as our damage dump, and as long as one does more damage than the other, that is the one we will be spamming. So unless VS gets buffed to the point it out damages Unload, Unload spamming will still be prominent.

Now I will admit that buffing VS will make spending initiative on Black Powder/Head Shot instead of Unload less painful, which is exactly why I am all for buffing VS. But as I said, in situations where only damage matter, Unload spam will still be king (and therefore, crit damage > con).

3.)If they do buff weapon speeds across the board, then that’s awesome. But until the 14th comes around I’m not banking on any kind of specific buff.

Einlanzer.1627:

Blacksarevok.8104:

I tried con damage Rifle Warrior for shiggles. Even with the trait that applies bleeds on crit, it was still terrible compared to pwr/crit Rifle.

You are banking way too much on a VS buff making condition damage-heavy P/P being supreme. It’s not gonna happen, not unless we are talking like 200% speed increase to VS or P/P is given some kind of reliable stealth mechanic. You keep clinging to this idea that auto-attacks dictate how a kit is to be played, and when you actually play the game you realize it’s just not true.

Even if this is true (which I doubt), it isn’t that relevant, and you (and many others) continue to argue with strawmen.

To make the point simpler, here it is: Pistols do subpar damage, and that is the main problem with them. Utility issues are secondary. The source of the problem must be one of two skills – Vital Shot or Unload. Unload may not do stellar damage, but Vital Shot is very, very obviously weaker than it’s supposed to be.

Continually arguing about condition vs. power is really pointless and either way the facts don’t change. The simple fact is this: the designers have already stated damage is the problem, and it’s the easiest deduction in the world to conclude that when it comes to damage Vital Shot is the problem.

How is it a strawman? You on COUNTLESS OCCASIONS have stated auto-attacks dictate how a kit should stack stats. Warrior Rifle is generally considered to be the best ranged kit in the game, and yet it completely contradicts what you are stating as fact. Warrior Rifle does not stack con damage as it’s primary stat, despite it’s #1 attack applying a bleed. Condition damage doesn’t hurt, but you don’t actively seek over power/crit/pre. And if you don’t believe me, go ask any competent Warrior on the Warrior forum and you will get the same answer.

As for your last statement, nobody is arguing against a VS buff. Most of us agree it sucks, what we are arguing is that a VS buff will not magically make P/P an amazing kit, no will it make P/P a viable con set without sacrificing Unload entirely.

Not to mention them saying they are buffing P/P does not guarantee they will buff VS, let alone increase its speed (if they do buff VS, more than likely they will just increase it’s damage by 10%, as they did with longbow)