@bwillb It is a bug,
Any self root on ANY ability on a class designed for MOBILITY, let me repeat that for you in case you forgot your glasses; MOBILITY based class, is a bug. No dev with an IQ higher then a chimpanzee would add that, so considering they can obviously post on the forums and make statements with real sentences I am going to guess they can dress and feed themselves as well. Ergo self root is a bug
Now you stare at the grass for a moment
You need to learn the definition of the word bug in this context. Self root on this attack was intended and is working as such. Perhaps “Poor design choice” would be better used.
Perhaps this is a way of Anet putting forward that this weapon setup isnt about the instagib but is about control having dazes, stuns, blinds, cripples and immobilizes.
It might cause people to use pistol whip in a more situational way instead of it being practically the only thing used.
The only other worthwhile ability is Black Powder, and P/P + D/P both supply it as well. People go S/P for Pistol Whip, not for anything else. Now that they made it more-or-less do the same damage as the #1 attacks, there’s no reason to play it. That’s not the fault of the players, that’s the fault of the developers making “one trick pony” kits that rely on a single ability to make it viable.
I feel like you are completely disregarding PVE here.
I love Pistol Whip in PVE. I use S/P when I’m running around alone fighting groups of mobs (that I can bunch together of course). I don’t feel that the 15% damage nerf has harmed my PVE effectiveness to any sort of significant degree.
Uhhh….it’s a 15% damage nerf to the skill you use like 90% of the time. Just because you don’t feel it’s impact doesn’t mean the impact is not relevant.
It wouldn’t be a big deal if they took away 15% from PW and moved it into the #1 attack and/or Tactical Strike. But they basically nerfed S/P with no compensation, a kit that was already doing less sustained than both D/D setups and worse AoE and utility than Shortbow.
No, i wouldn’t want it on the autoattack.
Standing there and autoattacking is just not engaging gameplay. Even turning off the autoattack function and continually hitting 1 all the time, not even needing to manage a resource is not engaging.
Well I wouldn’t want it either really. Point I was trying to make was that they nerfed the kit without compensation despite the fact it was already performing just ‘average’ in PVE.
Basically this patch was all about finding scapegoat abilities instead of addressing the real problem: Haste (or Quickness in general)
Test Results Traits: 25/30/0/0/15 (DA/CS/SA/AC/TR) Major Trait: slots empty Armour: Superior Rune of the Scholar (6/6) equipped on sPvP Armor. Amulet: Berserker Amulet equipped with Berserker Jewel Power: 2344 Weapon damage: 1014 Critical Hit Chance: 53% Critical Damage: 58% Health: 14095 Armour: 1980
Results taken on Heavy Golem over a 30 minute period
Average Auto Attacks (All Critical Hits): 6375
Average Auto Attacks (No Critical Hits): 2958
Average Pistol Whip (All Critical Hits): 7137
Average Pistol Whip (No Critical Hits): 3186
I’m betting that S/D + Dagger throw spamming will be better than S/P + PW if these numbers are right.
I feel like you are completely disregarding PVE here.
I love Pistol Whip in PVE. I use S/P when I’m running around alone fighting groups of mobs (that I can bunch together of course). I don’t feel that the 15% damage nerf has harmed my PVE effectiveness to any sort of significant degree.
Uhhh….it’s a 15% damage nerf to the skill you use like 90% of the time. Just because you don’t feel it’s impact doesn’t mean the impact is not relevant.
It wouldn’t be a big deal if they took away 15% from PW and moved it into the #1 attack and/or Tactical Strike. But they basically nerfed S/P with no compensation, a kit that was already doing less sustained than both D/D setups and worse AoE and utility than Shortbow.
The fact that you know nothing about the thief class still stands and your ignorance is insulting.
Thieves share a resource pool across both weapons, it’s not like other classes where their off weapon set gives them a new set of cooldowns to work with. You switch weapons, and have the same amount of resources to work with.
In almost every case, thieves off set weapon is a ranged weapon, most commonly shortbow.
Shortbow is another weapon set that does rather mediocre damage at best but has lots of utility.
So in a sword/pistol and shortbow weapon set, your highest damage skill, is pistol whip, and the way thief is designed, you are supposed to use the same skill multiple times in succession, that is the point of the initiative system. Your only other option for damage in that set, is cluster bomb, which will do about half the damage of a pistol whip at best.
So if a thief with that setup wants to actually damage an opponent that they’ve immobilized/blinded or otherwise hindered with their other skills… they have to use pistol whip, in succession (if they can land it). Using anything else consumes all their initiative and produces minimal damage.
Do some homework, play a thief, then you can come back and run your mouth.
Getting a bit hostile are we? I actually do play a Thief. I just don’t rely on a single skill to do all my work for me.
Regarding initiative. What exactly are you spamming to use up all your initiative making a second weapon set useless? Pistol Whip? Just because Pistol Whip is your highest damage skill does not mean you should be spamming it and forsaking other abilities more useful for the situation. This AGAIN pushes the fact you completely rely on it! Read what you are typing. And no, you do not have to be spammy with a single ability to be effective unless you are completely built around doing as much damage as fast as is humanly possible before you die from lack of survivability. If that is your case, then you need to deal with the downside of this choice. From your post I gather that you literally are running into people and hammering Pistol Whip over and over hoping they die. Practice. You can do better than that.
I feel like you are completely disregarding PVE here.
All those complaining that DR hurts their farming and etc simply do not deserve to get more gold than normal players who just play the game. ArenaNet should punish farmers and other grinders, who create a massive gold disparity when compared to players who are not going to waste their time grinding, but instead would rather have fun.
I wish they would nerf farming more, and reward playing the game normally more. If you want a grind-based MMO, there are many options for you out there.
So basically people who put more time in the game should get the same amount of gold as people who put in less time? Basically, communism?
Fixing P/P would at least give us another option for ranged. I think SB will always be popular simply because it’s a ranged aoe kit, and that role is just too good to give up. Maybe if they made Death Blossom stronger it would at least become an option.
Basically, if they make P/P not garbage and buff Deathblossom I can see P/P + D/D being a alternative setup to D/D + SB or S/P +SB
Quickness better not be changed at all unless they are going to remove the downed state completely from PvP. It’s already bad enough trying to finish people when you are outnumbered. Without quickness it’s impossible (assuming you are fighting people competent enough to revive each other).
Honestly I’d be all for removing downed state completely.
It’s just a gimmick so arenanet can say they have an interesting (cough) mechanic
They need to get rid of the condition cap and make Condition Damage not terrible before they even consider adding more conditions to D/D….or any other kit.
What I don’t get is….people are always attacking PW and HS because of PW/HS + Haste spam….why is no one attacking Haste? I mean, if that is the source of the issues everyone is having, why are we not discussing fixes for that instead of discussing fixes for core abilities that are only causing trouble *during * Haste?
I don’t think the issue here is whether or not a D/D condition thief is viable. The issue is that it would be better if DB utilized Power/Precision/Crit (like every other D/D ability) instead of Condition Damage.
Although I think the bigger issue right now is the condition cap + terrible scaling issues more than anything else.
You got the main issue right.
D/D is direct damage and should not have a condition-based dual skill, similarly P/P should stack conditions.
DB and Unload basically need their effects swapped to be viable with their weapon’s playstyle.
I think P/P might actually be designed specifically for PvE. Unload becomes your primary attack to down foes, and all your other pistol skills support it as you kite around.
Unload really isn’t strong enough by itself to make the kit worth using, though, even in PVE. Especially if you have +condition damage. Adding bleeds to Unload would go a long way to making the kit more tolerable, or alternatively they could reduce cost to 4 initiative and let us essentially spam Unload, letting us stack power/precision/crit damage since Vital Shot would hardly ever get used.
Also, Body Shot is just straight useless. For both P/P and P/D. In both PVE and PVP.
We’d be missing out on stats though. I too thought it would be cool to be able to run around just wielding a single sword or single pistol (or dagger), but I just don’t see how they would compensate for the missing stats (unless they allowed us to use Focus’ or something)
- Body Shot is garbage, need to revamped completely. My suggestion would be to either change it to a cripple or a knockback, or make it an AoE (obviously not as good as Shortbow, but good enough to justify actually taking P/P over Shortbow in some situations)
- There is no synergy between Vital Shot and Unload. Either the Vital Shot bleed needs to be removed to allow P/P to go straight Power/Precision/Crit damage, or Unload needs to be given a bleed to allow P/P to be a real Condition Damage build. The latter would be the easier solution, though I personally would prefer the former.
- Headshot needs either a initiative reduction, or have the cost removed altogether and given a cooldown. Because right now it’s just really lackluster for all setups, rarely worth the cost to use.
I’d love to see Thieves be able to use rifles simply because….P/P kinda sucks, and it probably always will kinda suck. Thus, we lacking in the the single target ranged category.
I feel like they could come up with a very nice-feeling, synergistic kit similar to rifle Warrior, mostly because they wouldn’t have to worry about shared abilities (which is what kills P/P).
- S/P is going to have better damage against 3 targets or less (including single target)
- S/P has better survivability (Pistol Whip evade + Infiltrators Strike + Black Powder + Head Shot + Tactical Strike vs Death Blossom evade + Cloak and Dagger)
- D/D has better large scale AoE
Overall S/P is the better kit imo. You won’t be able to AoE like D/D can, but you will be better off in every other category. If you take S/P + Shortbow you will be covered in almost every situation.
Also, S/P is substantially easier to gear for. You pretty much just go straight Berserker, with perhaps a couple of Vit pieces tossed in if you want a little more survivability. D/D is way more complicate, you gotta decide if you wanna go Condition Damage + Death Blossom, precision/crit damage + backstab/heartseeker, or a mix of crit/prec/cd. That’s actually what turns me off from D/D, I feel like Death Blossom and Heartseeker/Backstab are mutually exclusive due to the stats each ability wants.
No, because then Condition Damage would be even more worthless then it is now, as long as the "Condition Damage’ stat makes it critical and not “Precision” it would be fine though.
Not really. The value of condition damage would actually go up by allowing conditions to crit. Literally all Arenanet would have to do is make sure CD gives enough of a bonus to justify taking it over straight power and it’s pretty much good.
Not to mention it would just straight up make D/D flow better. It’s really stupid that you have to be wearing certain gear to viably use your #3 ability, and you have to be wearing certain gear to viably use your #2 ability. I can understand different weapon setups requiring different gear setups, but you shouldn’t need 2 sets of gear for the same friggin’ weapon setup.
They need to do something about Vital Shot because right now it’s part of the reason why P/P sucks so bad. P/D wants the bleed and P/P wants to get rid of it. Either they need to ditch the bleed on Vital Shot and buff its base damage, or add a bleed to Unload and make P/P another condition build.
Tbh I think the easiest solution for P/P would be to just make do more damage. It’s single target, if you start giving it AoE then it starts directly competing with Shortbow and one will still always be chose over the other. P/P needs to do equal or close to equal damage to S/P, or at least D/D, on single target. I understand that because it’s ranged there is a inherent need for it to do less damage than melee setups, but I think the utility that S/P and D/D bring make up for the fact they are not ranged.
I do agree that Body Shoot needs to be looked at though. Also, I think Head Shot in general needs at least a 1 point Initiative reduction.
I think pistols get crapped on a bit too much. While I definitely agree shortbow has far more utility, pistols still are your best choice for ranged single target.
With that said, I don’t think pistols will ever truly be good. As already said, Vital Shot conflicts with Unload because VS want’s condition damage whereas Unload wants power/crit. If they removed VS bleed and buffed the base damage it would work, however I don’t think that will ever happen because VS bleed is very important to P/D. Another option would be to buff Unload enough to counter VS being pathetically weak for P/P, however that would make P/P basically the ultimate glass cannon setup, and being that they just nerfed Heartseeker for those reasons, I highly doubt this will ever happen.
The only other thing I can think of that could possibly work is if they ditched Body Shot completely, since it’s basically worthless for all mainhand pistol setups, and threw in some kind of AoE instead. This would make P/P a viable choice over shortbow, however they would have to balance it EXTREMELY well because P/P would need to enough AoE to be viable, but would still have to do less AoE than shortbow overall, otherwise there would be no reason to take shortbow.
I was thinking Superior Sigil of Rage (10% on crit for Quickness) MH + Superior Sigil of Bloodlust (10 power stacking) OH. But then I was thinking Superior Sigil of Perception (stacking precision) OH might be better because of more Rage procs.
