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.
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Best thread in months
In the beta Sigil of Earth didn’t have an ICD, so Unload + Sigil of Earth made P/P a respectable set for stacking condition damage.
But then they gave SoE a 2 sec ICD, which pretty much sunk con damage-heavy P/P.
Ugh, it drives me crazy that almost no one sees what is very clearly the main issue with pistols – it isn’t Body Shot, it isn’t Unload, it isn’t weak traits, and it isn’t lack of stealth.
The weakness of P/P is 75% due to Vital Shot and its weak sauce damage/bleed stacking due to buggy rate of fire. This is what they need to fix before they do anything else.
…or maybe…just maybe…others don’t like sounding like a broken record repeating the same thing in almost every single thread. There’s a lot of “issues” with pistols and P/P. Not just one.
There is one that is much, much more prominent than any others, and that’s the aforementioned VS issue. Everything else is peripheral. Just because someone refuses to see that does not make it not so, and forces me to bring it up at every opportunity in an (apparently vain) attempt to increase awareness.
Here’s the thing:
Say VS gets tuned up, and becomes a more viable way to do mixed-type damage for free, that doesn’t help power-based P/P at all. Either the “fixed” VS is better than Unload DPS-wise (like all of the other auto attacks) and you’re better off just running condition damage (and consequently most likely just using P/D), or the fixed VS is still worse than Unload and people continue to spam Unload for mediocre damage. Literally the only thing boosting VS would do for P/P is boost a utility-heavy thief where you spam VS with +condition gear for your DPS and conserve your initiative to burn on #2/4/5 skills. Not a popular build, and not really that good at what it does. That is just the unfortunate truth of how the initiative system makes all thief skills in direct competition.
VS is a bad skill, but fixing it won’t fix P/P.
Tulisin, you realize that Pistol is supposed to be a condition weapon, right? And P/P is hybridized, but it’s still supposed to be skewed toward condition in the same way that D/D is a a hybrid set skewed toward Power. While P/P does and should benefit from Power, it does not need to be fully optimal with a Power only build. I don’t believe that was ever the intention behind it.
Yeah but what he is saying is that either VS spam is going to be better than Unload spam, or vice versa. They are both damage dumps, they are competing for the same spot in the rotation. So unless they drastically change things, you are either gonna be sitting there spamming only #1 or sitting there spamming only #3 for damage.
S/P has the same problem, 2 damage dumps competing for a same spot in the rotation. Which is why I think they need to consider putting CD’s on non-auto-attack damage dumps.
Ugh, it drives me crazy that almost no one sees what is very clearly the main issue with pistols – it isn’t Body Shot, it isn’t Unload, it isn’t weak traits, and it isn’t lack of stealth.
The weakness of P/P is 75% due to Vital Shot and its weak sauce damage/bleed stacking due to buggy rate of fire. This is what they need to fix before they do anything else.
…or maybe…just maybe…others don’t like sounding like a broken record repeating the same thing in almost every single thread. There’s a lot of “issues” with pistols and P/P. Not just one.
There is one that is much, much more prominent than any others, and that’s the aforementioned VS issue. Everything else is peripheral. Just because someone refuses to see that does not make it not so, and forces me to bring it up at every opportunity in an (apparently vain) attempt to increase awareness.
Here’s the thing:
Say VS gets tuned up, and becomes a more viable way to do mixed-type damage for free, that doesn’t help power-based P/P at all. Either the “fixed” VS is better than Unload DPS-wise (like all of the other auto attacks) and you’re better off just running condition damage (and consequently most likely just using P/D), or the fixed VS is still worse than Unload and people continue to spam Unload for mediocre damage. Literally the only thing boosting VS would do for P/P is boost a utility-heavy thief where you spam VS with +condition gear for your DPS and conserve your initiative to burn on #2/4/5 skills. Not a popular build, and not really that good at what it does. That is just the unfortunate truth of how the initiative system makes all thief skills in direct competition.
VS is a bad skill, but fixing it won’t fix P/P.
Honestly they should just bite the bullet (no pun intended) and just start putting CD’s on some abilities.
For example, buff VS by 30% or however much it needs to be competitive with other ranged auto-attacks. Buff the crap out of Unload, but put a CD on it. Leave everything else alone. That way, Unload is doing good damage and being used, but not being spammed. It leave periods of time open for VS as well as utility abilities to be used since you won’t be burning through ini.
Same goes for S/P, buff Pistol Whip but put a CD on it so it’s not spammable.
I actually just switched my main from a Thief to a Warrior, at least in PVE.
Not really because of damage, my Thief probably has better sustained, but Warrior survivability is just flat out better. More HP, better damage reduction, even better healing mechanics. Stealth is a powerful mechanic in PVP, but it falls short in PVE when compared to just having a better HP pool and better defense.
With that said, I feel Warrior is the closest class to be being “balanced”. I don’t think it’s OP, I think some other classes just have glaring flaws that need to be addressed.
After playing a Thief for 3 months, I think that Rifle Warrior is the most overrated kit in the game. It’s not bad by any means, it’s actually really good, but I’m not getting the “unstoppable killing machine vibe” everyone talks about. Yes, Killshot hits hard, but it does basically the same damage as Backstab (NOT including C&D + Mug, which make up for half the damage in the D/D burst rotation). Yes it has 1500 range, but it also isn’t spammable (aside from Healing Surge). Volley isn’t super bursty (it’s no worse than Unload imo) and is probably worse than Unload in terms of sustained damage, though auto-attack favors Rifle over p/p so it evens out I guess. Overall I feel like Rifle is pretty kitten balanced, I think it’s outside factors that make people think it’s overpowered.
Killshot to me feels like pre-nerf Pistol Whip. It’s probably a bit to strong in certain situations (Insta Killshots via Healing Surge, much like Pistol Whip spam via Haste), however the damage doesn’t need to be nerfed imo. I think Healing Surge needs to be looked at.
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I usually kill at least 1 per day to be honest.
1.) For D/D I think 25/30/x/x/x is better than 20/30/x/x/x. Expose Weakness (the 25 pt passive) is pretty much a straight 10% damage increase, there isn’t really anything else you could put those 5 points in that would get you as much bang for your buck (at least from a damage standpoint). Personally, I like 25/30/10/0/5 because it means 4 ini C&D (the 5 points in Trickery you can pretty much put anywhere. 5 more in Shadow Arts or 30 in Deadly Arts for +50 power works just as well).
2.) To be honest, survivability has always been an all-or-nothing thing for me. I never really saw a benefit in having only a few vit pieces, but that’s just my opinion.
3.) S/D is trades some damage for utility. Auto-attacks will be about the same, but Tactical Strike will do about half the damage of Backstab. The 2 sec daze on TS is amazing, so it’s up to you. I usually switch between the two, although lately I find myself using S/D the most.
4.) If you are going glasscannon, I believe the math points to Ruby Orbs being the best.
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Honestly, Vital Shot issues aside, P/P abilties just don’t have a lot of synergy. Body Shot is hardly every used, and any buff to P/P’s direct damage will make it used even less. To me Body Shot is something that P/D might use in situations where the bleed cap is an issue, that way it can still contribute (since the vulnerability cap is generally harder to hit than the bleed cap is). But since P/P has Unload (+ the trait that applies vuln on crits), it will very rarely be in a situation where Body Shot will be practical (I think most of us would rather have an ability that’s more useful, like a cripple or AoE).
The other ability lacking synergy is Black Powder. Now don’t get me wrong, this is an extremely powerful ability on it’s own, but it’s not nearly as powerful for P/P as it is for D/P and S/P. This is because a.) Vital Shot is weak, and when you are using Black Powder you are generally relying on your #1 attack and b.) P/P is supposed to be kiting/staying at range. Black Powder, being a melee ability, naturally goes against the theme of P/P.
My suggestion to fix these is a bit rash, but here it is anyay: Make pistol mainhand a medium/short range kit and add a new weapon set (Rifle) to fill the long range slot.
Basically, give Thief P/P the Engineer treatment. Make the attacks do more damage the closer you are to your enemy (or just straight up require them to be close). Up the damages to make up for the lost range. This would make sense from both a practical standpoint (P/D already needs to be close, at least temporarily, it wouldn’t really be a drastic change) and a historical standpoint (muzzle-loaded pistols like the ones in this game were notorious for having short range compared to rifles of the same era).
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This looks like a bug-fixing patch, not a balancing patch.
Shortbow is pretty much the mandatory second slot weapon in PVE for Thieves. P/P does do better single target damage though, so having a pair as back up for when the situation calls is a good idea.
1/10
Too obvious
They only needed to nerf the bounce damage. They should have made it do 20% less damage per bounce after the first bounce, the nerf was knee-jerk.
Also, this has made wonder if the reason why Vital Shot does less damage than Bleeding Shot is to account for pistols getting two sigils.
Even if this is true, it doesn’t really compensate for the difference that exists.
More than anything, I want answers on what gives with the recovery speed on autoattacks and why it varies so greatly from weapon to weapon, making activation speed a poor predictor of how fast an attack is and making the skills much harder to compare and balance on paper. It really doesn’t make any sense.
Also, it doesn’t make any sense that you killed golems twice as fast with P/D when you said that Rifles held bleed stacks better, because the Rifle’s front-end damage is higher as well. If this claim is true, it leads me to assume your Pistol was higher level/quality than your rifle.
Well it made sense using CaD + Sneak Attack because they both do substantial upfront damage in addition to bleeds. All of the weapons are the 80 pvp exotic weapons.
But I did some more testing today (much more testing, actually). Pistol #1 vs Rifle #1, no gear, no traits, Pistol has 5% extra crit due to extra sigil. And I’ve concluded that Rifle is, on average, killing faster. Pistol can can sometimes stay close (which is what I was seeing yesterday I guess) if it gets lucky with crits, but after testing for a more extended period Rifle is usually killing 8-10% faster.
However, this doesn’t really write-off my sigil theory. But because sigils tend to affect or be affected by most offensive abilities, and because there just so many sigils, it would be hard to actually test what kind of an effect dual-wielding has versus a two-handed weapon without having some kind of simulation program.
As I said yesterday, I was going to test P/P, full berserker, highest dps trait setup, Unload pooling vs Rifle, full berserker, highest dps trait setup, Volley + Kill Shot, but I figure a lot of people are probably going to disagree on traits (I know for P/P I personally prefer 25/30/x/x/x over x/30/x/20/x) and of course sigils, so I don’t know if I will or not. I guess I could try multiple trait setups if I get time.
I just think that sigils should certainly be taken into account in the big picture of things when it comes to class balance (although that doesn’t mean I’m against buffing VS).
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mck9wpx9Mfcacsqm – P/P Thief.
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcR9wax9MxVzkVVob – Rifle Warrior. (get all signets, its the best warrior build.)
What sigil for Rifle do you think? Superior Sigil of Air?
Right now I’m thinking of doing Rifle Air vs P/P Air/Accuracy, and I will also probably try P/P Air/Bloodlust because last I checked that was the highest theoretical DPS.
Also, this has made wonder if the reason why Vital Shot does less damage than Bleeding Shot is to account for pistols getting two sigils.
Even if this is true, it doesn’t really compensate for the difference that exists.
More than anything, I want answers on what gives with the recovery speed on autoattacks and why it varies so greatly from weapon to weapon, making activation speed a poor predictor of how fast an attack is and making the skills much harder to compare and balance on paper. It really doesn’t make any sense.
Also, it doesn’t make any sense that you killed golems twice as fast with P/D when you said that Rifles held bleed stacks better, because the Rifle’s front-end damage is higher as well. If this claim is true, it leads me to assume your Pistol was higher level/quality than your rifle.
Well it made sense using CaD + Sneak Attack because they both do substantial upfront damage in addition to bleeds. All of the weapons are the 80 pvp exotic weapons.
But I did some more testing today (much more testing, actually). Pistol #1 vs Rifle #1, no gear, no traits, Pistol has 5% extra crit due to extra sigil. And I’ve concluded that Rifle is, on average, killing faster. Pistol can can sometimes stay close (which is what I was seeing yesterday I guess) if it gets lucky with crits, but after testing for a more extended period Rifle is usually killing 8-10% faster.
However, this doesn’t really write-off my sigil theory. But because sigils tend to affect or be affected by most offensive abilities, and because there just so many sigils, it would be hard to actually test what kind of an effect dual-wielding has versus a two-handed weapon without having some kind of simulation program.
As I said yesterday, I was going to test P/P, full berserker, highest dps trait setup, Unload pooling vs Rifle, full berserker, highest dps trait setup, Volley + Kill Shot, but I figure a lot of people are probably going to disagree on traits (I know for P/P I personally prefer 25/30/x/x/x over x/30/x/20/x) and of course sigils, so I don’t know if I will or not. I guess I could try multiple trait setups if I get time.
I just think that sigils should certainly be taken into account in the big picture of things when it comes to class balance (although that doesn’t mean I’m against buffing VS).
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Incremening the number of shots won’t help too much with the main problems of the set.
I would suggest something like each of the 8 shots applying a 0.5 seconds Weakness (4 seconds total), so you get some defense and opponents can’t evade less, but it doesn’t affect them for too long so spaming it won’t make them weaened for very long durations.
Another good thing I already propposed on a differnt thread would be to make BP stealth you for 1 second, but you can’t leave the BP area (like Shadow Refuge Area). This means S/P and D/D won’t affect their playstyles (they still get the melee permablind, and can’t take high advantage from the 1 sec stealth as they can’t exit the smoke field to get to their opponent back, probably making an exception so Leap Finisher doesn’t end Stealth in the case of D/P), and P/P gets the chance of using Sneak Attack without needing to go P/D.
This means now you can chose between direct damage (+ the mentioned Weakness) from Unload for opponents with more health than armor, and condition damage from BP+Sneak Attack for opponents with more armor and less health (and combinations from both). It stops P/P being 3333333333333, and gives BP some utility when used for ranged combat (right now it’s only worth the 6 initiative on melee).
I really like that BP idea
I think he just got lucky and got all crits. I roll 25/30/0/0/15, and I have seen close to those numbers on individual abilities, but rarely all at once. Also the Backstab and Steal damage seems a little high, I’m thinking he might have had some boons from an outside source.
S/P is probably the best choice. PW to mow down mobs, Black Powder if you get overwhelmed. Sigil of Malice + PW should keep you alive in most situations.
Also, this has made wonder if the reason why Vital Shot does less damage than Bleeding Shot is to account for pistols getting two sigils.
After doing some testing on heavy golems (Warrior Rifle #1 vs Thief P/D #1 + Sneak Attack, no gear, no traits) I’ve concluded that Rifle CAN maintain, on average, more bleeds than P/D can even when using Sneak Attack.
However, what I can also say is that P/D + Sneak Attack kills things twice as fast than Warrior Rifle was (P/D about 20-22 secs to kill heavy golem, Rifle 36 – 40 secs). Another interesting thing I noted is that P/D just using #1 is actually killing things FASTER than Rifle just using #1(I was clocking around 31-34 secs for pistol). Now this could be attributed to P/D getting 2 sigils (5% damage/5% crit) as opposed to Rifle getting just 1 (5% crit), however even with that in mind it would more or less putt the two on equal ground in terms of auto attack, which is interesting.
Something else to note that P/P Unload (not spamming though, pooling ini) does about equal damage to Rifle (Kill Shot + Volley). Actually, P/P tends to pull ahead by a couple secs usually, but I attribute that to having two sigils.
Now this isn’t conclusive evidence by any means, but I suggest you guys try messing with this stuff yourselves. It’s pretty interesting. Later on I think I will try comparing P/P berserker Unload pooling with appropriate build vs Rifle berserker Volley + Kill Shot with appropriate build. I think it’s going to be closer than everyone thinks.
EDIT: Corrected countless grammar errors…
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The Skales/Barracuda’s in the water off the northern coast are actually a decent farm. They are extremely easy to kill, and drop t6 blood/scales at a good rate. But those are pretty much the only mobs worth the effort in the zone atm.
Young Karka are easy to kill. Use your dodge-roll twice, and you’ll evade 90% of the shots.
Alternatively, strafe left and right rapidly at a medium range distance (about 600 in-game metres) and the enemies aiming AI will cause every single one of the shots to miss you completely (it’s something you have to practice, but works on every enemy skill that is not tracking, such as the giant boulders that wurms throw at you).They only do about 1000 damage per hit; as long as you engage them one on one, I fail to see how even the squishiest of squishies could die to one unless you literally just stand there and facetank the enemy, in which case you might want to reconsider your choice of build. Or your choice of tactic. Or you choice of game.
The Reef Riders I haven’t fought as much. They seem tankier than the Karka’s, but their damage output is lower. I can literally just facetank them on my Carrion geared Engineer. But I can see how someone with no vitality or toughness could have trouble with them.
TBH though, you shouldn’t be playing PvE without one or both of those stats. Vitality is the most important stat in this game. Your DPS does not matter if you cannot stay on your feet long enough to kill your enemy.The only thing I don’t like about the Veteran Karka’s is their knockdown ability. It has little to no telegraphy, and occurs extremely fast. I feel that these chain-knockdown strategies are a cheap attempt to to add “difficulty” to the game, when really all they add is frustration.
I can take 2 Young Karka’s at once on my Warrior in full berserker gear (well, I guess not really full, I have Valk gems in my accessories). My Thief can only take on one, and even then I have to have full endurance or an interrupt. My issue with them more in terms of disparity of difficulty between professions, I guess. I just see no reason to even step foot in Southsun on my Thief when I can be killing things far more efficiently on my Warrior. Just because their attack is avoidable doesn’t really make it any less of a gimmick. I’d much rather see the initial attack nerfed but their other attacks increased, straighten out the damage so that it still requires skill but doesn’t feel so cheesy.
Well if stealth was removed obviously it would be compensated… I don’t just mean removed and thief is just left at that.
It would really depend on what we got in return, specifically.
I really like stealth in this game, especially in PVE. There aren’t many MMO’s where you actively get to utilize stealth in a non-PVP environment as you do in this game.
I’d be okay with this, since it would also make SoM even more valuable. Not to mention, as you said, it would make sense.
What would be also cool is if it fired 8 shots, then fired both guns at the same time for the final shot for extra damage, similar to 100 Blades. I’m kinda disappointed ANET hasn’t used any simultaneous shooting animations for dual pistols.
I partially agree. I assume the monsters are tougher because they drop loot more abundantly (I get way more T6 mats in Southsun than I do in Orr or Frostgorge). With that said, the Young Karka machine gun thing needs to be toned down (right now I pretty much HAVE to run a weapon set with an interrupt. I get killed by that ability alone if I don’t have an interrupt or endurance, it’s a bit too much). The vet/champ Karka’s also need to have their damage reflect toned down.
The auto attack and the stealth attack are the only two abilities that aren’t crap on main hand pistol. Why would you want to change the auto attack?
Edit: To the poster above me, all arrows shot have slightly more range than stated (as they start to lose distance, they are still able to make contact). It’s not that the Pistol has less range – it’s that the Shortbow has slightly more range than stated.
You are objectively wrong. The #1 attack is far crappier than it should be. Try playing a rifle warrior and come back and make this argument.
Rifle warrior isn’t viable as a condition damage weapon. Pistol main hand is, very much so.
I really don’t see the comparison between the two, either.
The auto attack isn’t as good as the stealth attack, but it’s great nonetheless. It’s a consistent bleed with decent duration. It’s terrible on DPS builds, obviously, but you shouldn’t be using Pistol if you’re using a DPS build.
I’m sorry, but once again flat-out, unequivocally wrong. The warrior’s rifle (and every other condition weapon in the game) is far better at stacking and maintaining bleeds than the Thief’s Pistol is, and determining this isn’t a matter of complicated, detailed analytics. It’s a matter of spending 5 minutes casually playing each one.
Here, I’ll lay it out for you:
The Pistol (baseline) has about a .8 recast, and the bleed lasts 4 seconds
The Rifle (baseline) has about a .85 recast, and the bleed lasts 6 seconds.Therefore, Vital Shot can only maintain 5 stacks of bleed at best, you occasionally briefly get more from a sneak attack, and often dip below from doing anything else at all.
The Rifle pretty consistently maintains about 8. The front-end damage is also slightly higher, the range is greater, and they still get huge boosts to power from Volley and especially the Adrenaline shot that does mega damage (far more damage than Unload).
It’s also very intuitively obvious that this is all because Vital Shot is ‘bugged’ and doesn’t autoattack as quicly as it was intended to. The same problem affects the #1 skills on various ranged weapons across professions. Not trying to be rude, but you very clearly don’t understand much about what you’re talking about.
The fact that you consider Rifle warrior a viable condition build is proof enough that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Rifle is terrible for conditions. It has one ability that can apply it, not counting the bleed on crit sigil/traits (which really shouldn’t be factored in at all).
Thief’s pistol is perfectly fine. P/D is already a great weapon set for conditions. You’re trying to buff the auto attack without realizing that it would cause balance issues in combination with the stealth attack. THAT is why our auto attack isn’t on par with other ones that cause bleed. We also have stealth attack which can apply 5 stacks of bleed no problem.
Pistol is perfectly okay, if not stronger than okay, for conditions.
Rifle condition build warrior vs. Pistol condition build thief: the rifle warrior would lose every encounter, no questions asked.
Seriously the only thing that would put thief behind on condition builds is the lack of a trait that allows us to put on a condition on crit (like, for example, how Mesmers’ illusions, Rangers, Necro, and Warriors can apply bleed on crit).
Edit: Forgot to add that the entire reason rifle warrior even has a bleed on AA is so they could split the damage between pure raw damage and condition damage. Having more raw damage on rifle’s auto attack would make it far more powerful, whereas adding bleed and reducing the base damage will balance it out on burst builds. Also so that it synergizes with the 25 point minor trait in Arms path.
The weapon speed is a tooltip error. The devs have the weapon speeds set as they want them to be. The evidence is the fact that the devs, in the last patch, buffed longbow #1 by 10%. They are obviously aware some auto-attacks aren’t performing as good as they should be. If the speeds were actually wrong, they would have just fixed that instead of buffing damage. Not to mention, as you said, increasing VS speed by 37% would mean P/D would be able to maintain 10 stacks of bleeds with just that ability alone. It would be OP, the devs knew it would be OP, they nerfed the speeds and didn’t update the tooltips. These guys aren’t idiots, after 3+months they would have figured out that half the auto-attacks in the game were attacking at the wrong speed.
We are super squishy. It takes a lot more effort to stay alive, and we have to give up substantial offense to increase our passive survivability. With that said, we aren’t worthless, it just takes more skill to properly play a Thief in PVE over other professions. We can certainly put out good numbers, and we have some strong support abilities, it just takes more effort for us to stay alive.
Most of the dungeon bosses and trash mobs can be meleed so I strongly disagree with Blacksarevok. The damage from pistols doesn’t compare to d/d. When your target hits 50% and even 25% the difference becomes enormous. I agree that you should carry two pistols for certain situations but don’t always pick the easier ranged option because your dps will be a lot lower for no real reason.
Although you are right about trash, he wasn’t really referring that, and I would say that almost half of the explorable bosses shaft melee Thieves due to either survivability issues or movement. But yeah, I’m not suggesting he should always be using pistols, but he should certainly have them in his bags because there will be situations where they will be his best option.
Do u guys use shortbow ONLY for tagging events? Or…when should i be using it?
Tagging, AoE, kiting….shortbow is arguably our best weapon set. It’s not very useful for single target dps, but it’s amazing in basically every other situation. Shortbow has always been my secondary weapon, and I switch between D/D and P/P as my primary.
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From a general standpoint, ranged is usually favored for boss fights. Even with how kittened P/P is, it will usually outperform melee builds damage wise on bosses simply because it doesn’t have to dance in and out of melee range. If you are going to do a lot of bosses (both world and dungeon) I suggest having a pair of pistols handy.
Well all I can say is I’ll be chuckling when in the future we see in the patch notes “Vital Shot: This attacks tooltip has been properly updated to reflect it’s attack speed.”
And I don’t know where you’ve been, but all ranged sets perform mediocre in the damage department. Even Unload spam in it’s current incarnation can put out competitive numbers to Ranger Shortbow or Warrior Rifle. Just go and test it yourself. Why do you think P/P didn’t receive any damage buffs this past patch? The issue with P/P is, and has always been, it’s lack of diversity. It’s a one-trick pony. Kits like Warrior Rifle are better because they have better utility and better on-demand burst, but the actually sustained damage is similar.
While this is generally true it isn’t even P/P’s skills that make it worse than, say, ranger shortbow or warrior rifle, it is that the initiative system creates a shared resource pool between damage and utility, whereas the cooldown system means a weapon can bring both to the table. So while a thief can put out “competitive numbers”, doing so means pouring all of their initiative into damage and leaving very little for utility. It isn’t that the skills aren’t diverse, P/P actually has a pretty diverse set of skills (perhaps missing a token AE option), it is that thieves can’t properly utilize utility unless the utility is bundled onto their damage skills or they can do initiative-efficient damage, neither of which is true of P/P.
I suppose that’s true, but that seems to me to be more of a flaw with the resource system itself. I mean, what could they do to counter that? The only thing I can think of would be to put CD’s on our abilities while increasing the damage, but that would kinda take the point out of having initiative.
What seems to work well are specs that utilize stealth attacks as their main abilities. D/D backstab, P/D Sneak attack, and the former S/D TS all usually had ini to work with because of the stealth ICD. Maybe they could implement a similar system for all the kits? Alternatively, I guess they could always put more emphasis on traits like First Strikes, rewarding us for pooling initiative so that we have enough to spend on situational abilities. This was something that was used in ToR extensively, and I actually enjoyed from a damage-dealing standpoint.
P/D is really good. Even if they wipe your bleeds, you can still get them back fairly quickly. Sneak Attack is an extremely powerful skill because the ability itself does not rely on initiative. Depending on how many stealth abilities you utilize, you can pretty much always have a substantial stack bleeds going. Really the only thing P/D lacks is AoE, but for putting pressure on a single target pressure I would say P/D is probably on par with D/D backstab.
If you logic was correct, then every single weapon kit would only have abilities that benefit from one stat type. If D/D was intended to only stack pwr/crit, then DB would deal pure direct damage and no bleeds. If Warrior Rifle was intended to only stack condition damage, then Killshot and Volley would both do less direct damage and apply bleeds or some kind of condition. It is fairly obvious that developers intended most weapon kits to be able to be played in different fashions. Whether or not said playstyles are viable is another story, but to say that a weapon set is supposed to stack a certain stat based SOLELY on what the number #1 skill does is contradictory to what is actually happening in the game even outside of P/P.
Man, I’m trying hard not to be rude, but you struggle with reading comprehension don’t you? None of this even remotely resembles any statement I have ever attempted to make, and you pretty much just wrote a full paragraph arguing against a strawman.
I’ll break it down as simply as I can: P/P is a terrible set. The reason why it’s a terrible set is because it’s intended to do good DPS through a combination of bleed stacking via Vital Shot and tactical Unloads, benefiting from both Power and Condition building. Instead, Vital Shot is so weak that you get little return from condition building and therefore in order to make P/P even kind of work you have to build for power and focus exclusively on spamming unload. Even doing that, you only reach mediocrity, not anything great. Not working as intended. And it’s entirely because of Vital Shot, everything else that may or not be wrong with the set is tertiary.
You said that a kits #1 attack directly reflects how the kit should played. You are saying that because D/D’s #1 attack utilizes direct damage that D/D is clearly intended to be a power-based kit. You said that because P/P’s #1 attack utilizes bleeds, it’s clearly intended to be a condition damage-based kit. I simply pointed out that assuming that is contradictory to how these kits, among loads of others, are actually being played in game.
And I don’t know where you’ve been, but all ranged sets perform mediocre in the damage department. Even Unload spam in it’s current incarnation can put out competitive numbers to Ranger Shortbow or Warrior Rifle. Just go and test it yourself. Why do you think P/P didn’t receive any damage buffs this past patch? The issue with P/P is, and has always been, it’s lack of diversity. It’s a one-trick pony. Kits like Warrior Rifle are better because they have better utility and better on-demand burst, but the actually sustained damage is similar.
Who is to say that the devs didn’t intend for VS to mainly utilized by P/D and that Unload spam was actually intended for P/P? You do also realize that P/D is already a very strong single target kit, and that increasing VS speed by 30-40% may make it overpowered? Hell, that could be the whole reason why VS speed is as it is currently.
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I really enjoy S/D, I just really wish they would address Flanking Strike by either making it follow the target or speed up the animation. It’s very powerful attack potentially, but the pathing makes it fairly unreliable.
If you logic was correct, then every single weapon kit would only have abilities that benefit from one stat set. If D/D was intended to only stack pwr/crit, then DB would deal pure direct damage and no bleeds. If Warrior Rifle was intended to stack condition damage, then Killshot and Volley would both do less direct damage and apply bleeds or some kind of condition. It is fairly obvious that developers intended most weapon kits to be able to be played in different fashions. Whether or not said playstyles are viable is another story, but to say that a weapon set is supposed to stack a certain stat based SOLELY on what the number #1 skill does is contradictory to what is actually happening in the game even outside of P/P.
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I’m not assuming anything, I’m using deductive logic. There’s a very big difference. MH Pistol is clearly intended as a condition weapon, just like the MH dagger is very clearly a power weapon. P/P and D/D are both hybrid sets due to the dual skills. They are both intended to benefit from condition damage and power builds.
Every other “bleed weapon” in the game has a #1 that is able to maintain stacks of 8 or 9 on autoattack. Vital Shot struggles to maintain 5, doing terrible upfront damage in the process. The weapon that the Thief’s P/P set most closely resembles is the Warrior’s Rifle. The #1 on the rifle does more upfront damage, has greater range, and a has a 2 second longer bleed duration, while the #1 on the Pistol has a faster rate of fire, except it actually doesn’t. The Rifle also has great upfront damage capability with Volley and the Adrenaline attack, while also having superior utility and range.
When you actually look at the data, the conclusion is intuitively obvious. Either you haven’t spent enough time looking at the data, or you have poor analytical skills. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the former.
If MH dagger is clearly designed as a power weapon, then why is D/D bleeds still just as viable as D/D backstab? The issue here is that you think weapon sets are intended to solely fulfill one role based on their #1 attack, exactly how is that logical? As I said, if D/D was intended to be a pwr/crit kit, then why are just as many people playing D/D bleeds? If Warrior Rifle was intended to be a bleed build, then why is just as viable (no, MORE viable) as a pwr/crit build?
And I feel like you are implying that I think P/P doesn’t need buffs, which is not true. I agree that Warrior Rifle is better than P/P in most aspects, however VS under performing due to a proposed speed bug isn’t not the only reason for that under performance.
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Sorry, but every single point you attempted to make here is wrong.
First, it takes a lot of denseness to think that pistols firing as slowly as rifles, especially when its contrary to the activation speed is “working as intended”, especially given the obviously and laughably weak damage that Vital Shot puts out combined with its reduced range relative to other #1 skills (such as, say Bleeding Shot).
Second, yes, speeding up Vital shot would in fact make the set much better because it would allow it to be properly used as the bleed stacking weapon with power utility (the opposite of D/D) it’s supposed to be. Unload is meant to supplement the sustained condition damage of Vital Shot, not vice versa. Speeding up Vital Shot by 40% would be a dramatic increase in DPS regardless of OH because you’d be able to maintain 9 or so bleed stacks like every other bleed stacking weapon can instead of struggling to maintain 5. This isn’t rocket science, I have no idea how it isn’t 100% clear to anyone.
Third, Body shot is only useless when you’re alone. It’s not at all useless in a group, and especially wouldn’t be useless if you could manage decent sustained damage through Vital Shot instead of having to destroy Initiative by endlessly spamming Unload to make the set halfway effective.
Fourth, Pistol Whip swings 4 times, but hits 9 times during those swings, so the tooltip is accurate.
Fifth, Black Powder is amazing, it can almost single handedly make you invincible against multiple targets in melee range, although a stealth field would certainly be nice.
/end rant.
1.) Again, you are assuming here. It does weak damage. I totally agree that it needs to be buffed. However as I said, it’s just as likely that the tooltip could be wrong as it could be the tooltip is right and the function is wrong. You keep comparing it to Rifle #1, but how do you know the intended for Pistol #1 and Rifle #1 to do the same damage?
2.)Once again, assuming. You are assuming that P/P is intended to be played in one fashion (condition damage build) without any real evidence to back up the claim. Did the devs ever come out and say “P/P can’t be played as pwr/crit. We want you to play it as bleed stacking solely, sorry”. If that was the case, then explain D/D? Why are all of D/D’s abilities in favor of pwr/crit, but not DB? Or Warrior Rifle, Rifle #1 is obviously way too slow to effectively be used as a condition damage build, so does that need to be speed up to? Not to mention, if they did speed up VS, Unload spam would STILL BE VIABLE, it not BETTER than P/P bleeds, you’d likely just run 25/30/0/0/15 instead of 0/30/0/20/20 because the VS buff would be more beneficial to that build.
3.) Okay, I suppose you are right, Body Shot isn’t totally useless. It’s a decent opener But lets be real here, NOBODY is taking a Thief to a dungeon for Body Shot spamming. Especially when you can bring vulnerability via Sundering Strikes + Unload. It won’t be as much vulnerability, but you won’t be giving up all of your damage to apply it either. The only time Body Shot would truly be useful is in large scale encounters, but with the vulnerability cap it’s pointless.
4.) It physically only swings 5 times. Regardless though, a better example is Warrior axe. As I said, it’s says it performs 15 attacks but it only performs half of those. The point I’m trying to make here is that there are plenty of instances where tooltips are wrong.
5.)Black Powder is amazing. It’s just not amazing for P/P. If you are going to be using BP, why are you not using S/P or D/P?
- Shadow Refuge
- P/P + S/P, when traited correctly, pretty much bring an endless interrupt.
- Good burst damage
- Steal, when traited correctly, is a fantastic source for group buffs.
- Vital Shot sucks
- Body Shot (still) sucks
- Flanking Strike doesn’t quite suck, needs to follow the target or have a much quicker animation
- Pistol Whip sucksAs a general statement, Thieves lack survivability in PVE. Stealth is a very powerful mechanic in PVP, but it falls short in PVE. It seems like we have to give up a lot of our offensive capability just to be able to stay alive, whereas proffesions like Warrior barely have to give up anything offensively to avoid being flattened.
I can’t tell you how lame it is that I can only fight one veteran or karka at a time on my Thief, but my Warrior (who is slightly less geared) can run in and take 2-3 at a time. I know Warriors are obviously intended to take hits better than a Thief, but my issue is that if a Warrior and a Thief have similar damage outputs, but a Warrior can survive substantially better, why play a Thief?
Actually, in response to my last paragraph, I would like to see Thieves get an elite skill defensive signet. Something that gives a passive damage reduction and/or HP increase, and has a Use that restores endurance and grants a block or something.
An elite signet with a passive that makes all attacks have a chance to restore a small amount of endurance like the dagger auto attack would be all kinds of awesome. Perhaps with an active that gives you and your group vigor and protection.
Yeah that would be cool too. Just something that can give us access to either more endurance or damage reduction, without having to completely change our traits.
D/D is a good choice, P/P is a viable choice, however they are both mutually exclusive. Sb is pretty much mandatory, so that only leaves you with one open slot. D/D (both condition and pwr/crit) brings theoretically the highest single target dps, but is limited due to the Thief’s lack of natural survivability in PVE. P/P does substantially less damage (and is currently only viable using pwr/crit), but being a ranged kit, it allows you to stay alive easier.
So basically you choose between raw killing power and survivability.
Yes, if all you do is Unload spam then you are getting no utility usage out of P/P and that is in fact the only viable way to use P/P.
Once again, read: Vital Shot’s attack speed is broken, and it ruins the set. You may manage to do decent DPS spamming Unload but that means you get zero utility out of the set. And if you aren’t spamming Unload so that you can use any utility whatsoever, you’re doing wretched DPS.
The set is borked, face it, and it will be until they fix Vital Shot’s attack speed.
Speeding up Vital Shot isn’t magically going to make the set good. You’ve literally brought this up in every thread (with no real evidence to support it, for all we know it’s working as intended and Arenanet just forgot to update the tooltip). Most of the tooltips are either straight up wrong or don’t update properly, so it wouldn’t be surprising. For example, PW says it hits 1 + 8 times, but the animation only swings 1 + 4 times. Warrior Axe #5 is also only hitting 7 (or is it 8? I forget) times, but the tooltip says 15. So unless the devs come out and say these abilities are broken, it’s just as likely they could be working as intended and just haven’t had their tooltips updated.
Speeding up VS would be a buff to P/D more than a buff to P/P. Vital Shots base damage is absolutely pitiful and makes up such a small percentage of P/P’s damage (when traited correctly) that speeding up ability by 30-40% really wouldn’t do much without a damage buff to go with it. Not to mention it still leaves the kit in a very niche situation (single target ranged dps). #2 will still be useless, and #5 will still remain mostly unused (although I will admit that any Vital Shot buff will simultaneously make Black Powder more useful).
But yeah, on topic, P/P is certainly viable for PVE. It’s almost mandatory in some dungeons unless you want to completely trash your damage for melee survivability, and Headshot is extremely useful from stopping Karka from destroying you in one channel. Theoretically D/D will put out more numbers, but I feel like the forums underestimate the usefulness of range single target DPS. P/P certainly needs work, but issues it has are more with the fact that don’t use half your abilities, not so much with the damage.
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As someone with a Warrior alt, I disagree. Charge has a long CD, blade spin is unreliable.
Thief is substantially more mobile, Signet of Shadows alone trumps basically everything GS has.
However, the Thief’s mobility to damage ratio does not trump Warriors survivability to damage ratio. We have to give up a lot to stay alive, usually damage mainly. We need the right gear, the right traits, and the right weapon set. Warrior just needs gear and it’s good to go.
Not worth it. The base damage is so minimal that it won’t make a difference. In full berserkers you might reach low 2000’s, that plus 1.5k bleeds is just terrible for 5 ini (that’s like 1 Lotus Strike crit lol).
I mean, against a large group maybe it’s worthwhile, but that’s what Shortbow is for.
- Vital Shot sucks
- Body Shot (still) sucks
- Flanking Strike doesn’t quite suck, needs to follow the target or have a much quicker animation
- Pistol Whip sucksAs a general statement, Thieves lack survivability in PVE. Stealth is a very powerful mechanic in PVP, but it falls short in PVE. It seems like we have to give up a lot of our offensive capability just to be able to stay alive, whereas proffesions like Warrior barely have to give up anything offensively to avoid being flattened.
I can’t tell you how lame it is that I can only fight one veteran or karka at a time on my Thief, but my Warrior (who is slightly less geared) can run in and take 2-3 at a time. I know Warriors are obviously intended to take hits better than a Thief, but my issue is that if a Warrior and a Thief have similar damage outputs, but a Warrior can survive substantially better, why play a Thief?
Actually, in response to my last paragraph, I would like to see Thieves get an elite skill defensive signet. Something that gives a passive damage reduction and/or HP increase, and has a Use that restores endurance and grants a block or something.
- Vital Shot sucks
- Body Shot (still) sucks
- Flanking Strike doesn’t quite suck, needs to follow the target or have a much quicker animation
- Pistol Whip sucks
As a general statement, Thieves lack survivability in PVE. Stealth is a very powerful mechanic in PVP, but it falls short in PVE. It seems like we have to give up a lot of our offensive capability just to be able to stay alive, whereas proffesions like Warrior barely have to give up anything offensively to avoid being flattened.
I can’t tell you how lame it is that I can only fight one veteran or karka at a time on my Thief, but my Warrior (who is slightly less geared) can run in and take 2-3 at a time. I know Warriors are obviously intended to take hits better than a Thief, but my issue is that if a Warrior and a Thief have similar damage outputs, but a Warrior can survive substantially better, why play a Thief?
Human female. Just for T3 cultural.
This, although if they ever open up race changes (which I’m assuming they will at some point), I think I’m gonna change her to Sylvari.
I recommend Berserker personally for P/P. Unload will be most of your damage and that benefits more from Berserker more than Rampager.
If you go Rampager you might as well just go P/D, which will perform better than P/P in most situations anyway.
The rewards I got (no precursor, 2 exotics that sell for about a gold each) probably covered the repair cost from dying. Maybe I netted a small profit.
For the people that got precursors, the rewards justified the difficulty of the encounter. For everyone else? Not so much…
The lag was really what made the event terrible, though
EDIT: I forgot about the bag, I suppose that made the reward worth it for everyone. Well, everyone that didn’t get DC’d and was able to loot the chest.
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