Guild Wars 2

Klazmaunt.2591:

So…like I said. Killing off the three “mentors” for each Order is one of the worst decisions ever. They were the one character throughout our personal stories that we were able to get to know, understand, and bond with.

Tybalt is the most beloved character in the game if I do say so myself…why kill him? You force Traeherne on us (Who we don’t even know if you aren’t Sylvari). By Killing off our Partners/Mentors you take away the one part of our characters lives that had become a constant. We’re sent into Orr completely “naked” so to say, and forced to listen to this random sylvari we know NOTHING about, who hasn’t earned our respect, much less our devotion.

Just my two cents. Because Tybalt just died. And it made me sad and frustrated.

The writers actually take it as a compliment that you were emotionally moved by your mentor’s death you know.

The whole reason you really got to know those characters is so that it meant something to you when they died.

Killing off the mentors was fine, though it does lose its effect after your first character and you are expecting it even though you chose a different order.

The bad part is they’re replaced with someone far less likeable.

Most people don’t like Trahearne. It’s revealed that he’s taking over your story as the hero too early, through a really dumb reason to boot (I hate prophecy and ‘destined one"s I kinda dislike Sylvari for that aspect, that they’re all predestined to do things.

Dagins if you ever read any of my posts, you’d understand that the skill was meant for burst damage, not as a defensive skill.

The evasion was added in as an afterthought late in beta because rooted thieves were being blown up while trying to use the skill.

Cris Croix.2370:

PW is awesome as an interrupt, although slightly slower than Headshot, and it causes you to evade during the swing animation. Don’t forget that on-crit effects will have more chances to apply in a smaller window to time than it takes to execute 9 regular sword swings.

Remember, all of those on crit procs have internal cooldowns, specifically because of skills like pistol whip, unload, and 100b.

Sigil of earth used to not and pistol whip could proc bleeds like nobody’s business (unload as well) then they added the internal 2s cooldown and the sigil became worthless.

Headshot should do about body shot’s damage, but have an extra crit multiplier if the target is under 10% max health.

IE it’d be a finishing blow for someone trying to run away.

That would be a fun and interesting use of the skill.

I always think.. I’m using a melee weapon.. and I have a pistol.. they’re running away… why don’t I just shoot them to finish them off? Well.. headshot doesn’t do damage it just tickles is why.

Well mostly what I see as results here is that I’d like for there to be more damage on some of the other skills, like headshot, black powder, and infiltrator’s strike. I see in most classes and dagger spec thief, that the skills, regardless of any type of utility that they may or may not have, outdo autoattacks, while in Sword/Pistol, autoattack does more damage than anything but pistol whip, and just barely at that. I think thieves would go for more complex rotations instead of just depending heavily on 1 skill when damage is their need if there was damage on the other skills.

That’s the main reason why people who play other classes come in asking for nerfs. They get killed by a thief, see their damage log with 1 skill doing 90% of the damage and think OP, nerf plz, class requires no skill, only use 1 skill over and over.

Because they don’t understand how the class works

Guess what.. they’re getting results.

Maybe if all the damage wasn’t on one skill, it would be a different story. But as they see it, we keep killing them using 1 ability, and so they keep asking for, and getting, nerfs to the thief class every new build.

Paranoid.9542:

Well, allow you to use the same skill quickly in succession. Doesnt have to be a burst damage skill.

Examples: Infiltrators arrow, Infiltrators strike, Backwards SB cripple jump (name escapes me), Dancing dagger, death blossom, both pistol offhand abilities.

In fact, arguably the best burst damage skill we have (backstab) requires no initiative to use and cannot be spammed.

Edit: Let me also say that this is in the context of PvP.

Well, according to dev diaries with Jon Peters that’s what it was for, was originally for burst damage.

Well, the entire class is built around burst damage. That is what initiative is for, so that we can use the same skill multiple times in a row for a burst.

the evade has some gaps in it, I wouldn’t try to use it to reliably dodge attacks that would 1 shot you, it’s most useful to mitigate normal attack damage and counter the hits that do get through with signet of malice procs.

If it’s only a single target mob that can be stunned, you can be damaged during the first .75s, and the last .35s of the animation.

If it’s multiple targets or a target that cannot be stunned, you can be damaged during the first 1.25s and last .35s of the animation.

Not something I’d want to chance if the hit can 1 shot you.

Flanking strike just needs a different animation and camera movement. It should simply shadow step you behind your target and do the damage.

Maybe if it did a lot more damage it would be fitting for it to be the melee version of a skill shot.. but not as it is currently. It’s damage is less than that of pistol whip, roughly the same as unload, it does at least get affected by the 5% damage trait.

It just bugs me that the best dps on a weapon set for a burst damage class is the autoattack.

Not going to bother with sword/dagger, weapon set’s camera issues on flanking strike gives me a headache.

Deadly arts trait: Combined Training (major trait 10) only affects the first hit on pistol whip (sword/pistol dual skill) and shadow strike (pistol/dagger dual skill)

I should note that when this bug gets fixed, pistol whip will potentially gain 5% of its damage back, which would help.

Btw:

sword pistol stealth skill:
100 non crit, 213 crit

why does the stealth skill hit less than an autoattack? As it is, sword is very limited in how it can acquire stealth, usually relying on a 30s+ cooldown, or a dagger offhand in one of their weapon sets.

Pistol/Pistol:

autoattack 55 non crit, 117 crit + 49*4 bleed damage (251 total non crit, 313 total crit)

body shot 72 non crit, 154 crit

unload: 41*8 no crits, 88*8 all crits (328 no crits, 704 all crit)

sneak attack: 33*5 no crits, 70*5 all crits, + ((5*46)*4) 1085 no crits, 1270 all crits.

pistol/dagger
shadow strike:
no crits: 41+173=214
both crits: 88+367=455

why does the pistol shot from this skill happen but not on the dagger/pistol skill?
is that a bug?

speaking of bugs, the 5% dual skill damage trait bug also affects pistol/dagger’s dual skill. The trait works as intended for unload, shadow shot, and death blossom (not the bleeds however), but not pistol whip or shadow strike, where it only affects the first hit

Okay, sword/pistol, what used to be my favorite combo.

Autoattack chain:
nocrits: 107+107+174 = 388
all crits: 227+227+370 = 824

Infiltrator’s strike:
100 non crit, 213 crit

Pistol whip:
no crits: 46 + (8×50) = 446
all crits: 99 + (8×106) = 947
interesting thing, results were lower when I did this test a few nights ago, they were under the autoattack chain.
Another interesting thing.. I checked slotting the +5% damage on dual attack skills and it does not affect the sword slashes, only the initial pistol hit. Bug reported it.

So with this set, all the damage is between autoattacks and pistol whip. the autoattacks are barely higher than daggers, and actually lower when no crits are involved because of the poison on the dagger autoattack chain. However the sword does aoe on those 2 skills, but the dagger executes faster for higher dps. So at least the auto attacks are balanced… but what about all the other damage across dagger/dagger’s skills?

Would it be asking too much to make infiltrator’s strike do as much damage as the third hit in the autoattack chain rather than less damage than the third hit?

Would it be asking too much for headshot and black powder to do as much damage as body shot? (which by the way is 72 non crit, 154 crit with the steady weapon setup). Body shot itself needs a reworking, nobody uses it.

Kurow.6973:

Devildoc.6721:

Now, all of this is done in heart of the mists vs the light armor practice golem with berserker’s setup and runes of divinity and steady weapons “of force” (having the same damage modifier for runes but increasing the damage gives more exaggerated results which shows differences clearer. Trait setup is 20/30/0/20/0, which is what I normally use but I did not select any major traits so testing would be fair. Critical chance is at 52% with 62% crit damage, condition damage is 60 from divinity runes. The only minor trait that can effect damage in an unbalanced way is the 25 point in critical strikes, so I always waited for initiative to regen before using skills.

First I used a dagger dagger setup:

autoattack chain (including poison from 3rd hit):
nocrits – 36+36+112+112+(90*2) = 476 total
all crits – 78+78+237+237+(90*2) = 810 total

heartseeker:
>50% – 132 noncrit, 279 crit
50-25% – 180 noncrit, 419 crit
<25% – 264 noncrit, 559 crit

death blossom:
nocrits: 26×3*12) = 1698
allcrits: 55×3((45*3)*12) = 1785

dancing dagger:
132 non crit, 279 crit

cloak and dagger:
185 non crit, 393 crit

backstab:
326 non crit, 629 crit

So basically you can see all of the dagger skills with the exception of death blossom (which has its own specialized role in condition builds) deal more burst damage than any hit of the autoattack chain, and I compare them to single hits rather than the whole chain due to time of execution, since they’re all single hit skills. So that means you have 3 skills + your stealth skill that are all really good damage spread across the bar. I’ve said before that dagger/dagger is the one weapon set thief had that would still work if the initiative system was removed and cooldowns put in.

Now lets just compare 4 heartseekers spammed on a full health target vs a more complex rotation that’d be in place if the class were to hypothetically be changed to cooldown base (it’d still require heartseeker to be on a fairly short cooldown) of dancing dagger, heartseeker (to catch up to them), cloak and dagger, backstab, heartseeker (assuming they’re under 25% health to finish), which can be done with the acrobatics initiative trait in 1 initiative bar. For the sake of arguement, we’ll say 2 heartseekers are above 50%, 1 50-25%, and 1 under 25% (not likely to happen, but best possible outcome for heartseeker spam) and 100% crit rate on all skills.

4 heartseekers 279+279+419+559 = 1536
longer rotation 279 + 279 + 393 + 629 + 559 = 2139
so about 25% more damage on the same initiative bar, not even counting the autoattacks in the mix.

Next post: dagger/pistol

Skimmed over it.

So essentially you want them to completely remove, and revamp the initiative system. The system that was specifically made for the thief class to be played the way it’s played. The system that makes them unique compared to the other classes. Essentially make them a terrible class so all the other classes have far more diversity and better play style and experience.

Gotcha!

Not at all, the point was, other people (after being killed by a thief and seeing that they use the same skill a few times in a row in their death log) ask for the initiative system to be removed, I’m saying that without it, most weapon combos would be broken. But really it’s just analyzing the state of thief weapon skills since my favorite combo was smiter’s booned.

Dagger/Pistol

just the different skills here

Shadow Shot:
non crit 165, crit 349
something of note, only the dagger stab does damage, this should perhaps be looked at. It should be a pistol shot followed by a dagger stab.

Head Shot:
non crit 34, crit 73

Black Powder:
non crit 34, crit 73
(the actual numbers were 31 and 66 but remember black powder uses up 6 initiative so you lose 10% damage)

See this set you lose a lot of damage potential from dancing dagger and cloak and dagger. You can still use the utility of having an interrupt and the blinds and you can leap through black powder with heartseeker to stealth and backstab.

4 heartseekers vs black powder → heartseeker → backstab → heartseeker

That same 1536 heartseeker damage.. vs 66+279+629+559 = 1533

so you give up some damage potential for some blindness and have an interrupt option. Personally, I think the pistol shots could do more, so that heartseeker spam is outdone by smarter play. Unfortunately, in this case it is not.

next post, sword/pistol

Now, all of this is done in heart of the mists vs the light armor practice golem with berserker’s setup and runes of divinity and steady weapons “of force” (having the same damage modifier for runes but increasing the damage gives more exaggerated results which shows differences clearer. Trait setup is 20/30/0/20/0, which is what I normally use but I did not select any major traits so testing would be fair. Critical chance is at 52% with 62% crit damage, condition damage is 60 from divinity runes. The only minor trait that can effect damage in an unbalanced way is the 25 point in critical strikes, so I always waited for initiative to regen before using skills.

First I used a dagger dagger setup:

autoattack chain (including poison from 3rd hit):
nocrits – 36+36+112+112+(90*2) = 476 total
all crits – 78+78+237+237+(90*2) = 810 total

heartseeker:
>50% – 132 noncrit, 279 crit
50-25% – 180 noncrit, 419 crit
<25% – 264 noncrit, 559 crit

death blossom:
nocrits: 26×3*12) = 1698
allcrits: 55×3((45*3)*12) = 1785

dancing dagger:
132 non crit, 279 crit

cloak and dagger:
185 non crit, 393 crit

backstab:
326 non crit, 629 crit

So basically you can see all of the dagger skills with the exception of death blossom (which has its own specialized role in condition builds) deal more burst damage than any hit of the autoattack chain, and I compare them to single hits rather than the whole chain due to time of execution, since they’re all single hit skills. So that means you have 3 skills + your stealth skill that are all really good damage spread across the bar. I’ve said before that dagger/dagger is the one weapon set thief had that would still work if the initiative system was removed and cooldowns put in.

Now lets just compare 4 heartseekers spammed on a full health target vs a more complex rotation that’d be in place if the class were to hypothetically be changed to cooldown base (it’d still require heartseeker to be on a fairly short cooldown) of dancing dagger, heartseeker (to catch up to them), cloak and dagger, backstab, heartseeker (assuming they’re under 25% health to finish), which can be done with the acrobatics initiative trait in 1 initiative bar. For the sake of arguement, we’ll say 2 heartseekers are above 50%, 1 50-25%, and 1 under 25% (not likely to happen, but best possible outcome for heartseeker spam) and 100% crit rate on all skills.

4 heartseekers 279+279+419+559 = 1536
longer rotation 279 + 279 + 393 + 629 + 559 = 2139
so about 25% more damage on the same initiative bar, not even counting the autoattacks in the mix.

Next post: dagger/pistol

@dlechestnut: that’s kind of the point of authenticators, is a second layer of security that can’t be bruteforced or keylogged. WHY this can’t be brute forced or keylogged is because the code changes every 30 seconds, it’s synced to an algorithim that is dependant on your authenticator’s PIN (not the same number you input to log in, but the number used to register your authenticator). In order for a hacker to break through the authenticator system they’d have to know your PIN AND have hacked Arenanet’s algorithim for authenticators, to be able to predict the code for that 30s window, OR, you get infected with a specialized type of malware called a “man in the middle” attack, where you get infected, and the malware will put up a false login screen when you launch the client. Then you input your code in the false login screen, and they use that 30s window to hack your account and abuse it. It’s a lot harder to pull off than keyloggers which don’t need to be specialized for any particular game client.

I’m probably oversimplifying things but that’s how it works as far as I understand.

TL:DR, you have to keep inputting the code every time you log in because the code changes every 30s, that’s what keeps your account secure.

KaiserCX.7103:

Knote.2904:

This is how it should be.

Although you can still argue it’s bad that all your dmg is baked into auto attacks (rangers).

Sword Chain doesn’t stun and give you evasion. Pistol Whip does. Initiative shouldn’t be spent based on “what hits the hardest” it should be spent on “what utility do I need”.

The fact that “if you want to do dmg” which is pretty much most of the time, you basically just spam 1 skill because it does the most.

That’d be fine if not every class had some higher damaging skills outside of 1. Not to mention the function of PW makes it not that useful for defensive purposes outside of PVP with haste. The stun is too slow to stop things on reaction (Headshot is used for this anyways) and the evasion comes out too far into the move to also be used on reaction (with the exception of some PVE bosses that you can see do a charge up and time it right).

Lets face it, they made this skill with the intention of it to do high burst damage and they killed that factor of it. If they thought the damage was too high they should have simply increased the initiative cost slightly for a band-aid fix, not nerf the damage itself. Keep in mind, one of Thieves main appeal was to be able to do high burst damage very quickly, they even list it in the class info on their main site.

If they now want this skill to be used more a defensive option (isn’t that what Flanking Strike, Black Powder and Head Shot are supposed to be for?) they have to speed it up. As it stands this skill does have some use for stun lock in PVP with haste against people that don’t bring stun break, other than that I want to write this skill off as wasted space in it’s current state.

Originally Pistol whip had like a 4 initiative cost, had a .25s instant stun, and full damage. The FIRST nerf they did to it was raise the initiative to 5, then add the cast time, then realized the skill only had 1 niche use so they added the evade.

You know what they need to do, to solve a lot of the issues, aside from nerf quickness which is the real root of all the problems people have with Pistol Whip and 100b?

They need to take the damage that was lost from Pistol Whip.. and roll it into infiltrator’s strike.

Cloak and Dagger can hit for really high amounts. Infiltrator’s strike tickles. Both skills are used to set up another skill.

Now I’m not saying infiltrator’s strike should do 9k damage like people claim C&D do (I usually see it hit for about 3500 realistically), but if it got the damage modifier of the THIRD hit of the sword autoattack chain rather than the first 2, I think that’d be more appropriate damage.

In a PVP situation that’d crit for about 3k. Pistol whip would remain somewhat low damage but the combination between infiltrator’s strike and pistol whip would do roughly the damage that pistol whip used to do, at the cost of 8 initiative, infiltrator’s strike doesn’t get spammed, so you wouldn’t have as much damage spamming pistol whip as you used to, but you could do 1 old pistol whip’s damage with the combination of skills, and then jump out, infiltrator’s strike, pistol whip, then jump out, which is probably the intended use of the skill. The overall damage of using pistol whip multiple times goes down from what it used to be, but still gives thieves a burst.

It’d also give sword/dagger thieves a bit of help that they need, flanking strike is pretty weak and is really janky with how it’s used due to the camera.

I’d argue that the offhand pistol skills should get some more damage as well. Just like offhand dagger skills get considerable damage. Daggers have good damage on every skill on their bar. Sword has good damage on 1 skill aside from the autoattack.

So of course they have to use that 1 skill over and over to do damage, apparently when people die in spvp and see what killed them they just see 1 skill and cry about it apparently expecting thieves to use headshot and black powder and infiltrator’s strike for damage, which they don’t do.

At the very least headshot needs to do more damage, it’s pretty sad that the lowest amount of damage I can do is shooting someone in the head with a pistol.

Joshmans.8937:

I still use s/p after nerf. Its fun. And the cleave it gives in events is extremely benificial for picking up like 30 bags on the CoF event.

D/p is cool aswell, blind aura + heartseeker = stealth into backstab.

Anything but d/d which i used from level 1-80

You’re better off autoattacking while moving around if using sword in events, not using pistol whip. This was always the case because of the root.

Pistol whip was more useful in solo pve, but now I run out of initiative before it can kill enemies, sooo.. stand in a black cloud and autoattack is the more efficient way now.

Okay Mike, I don’t have a smartphone at all. How about that?

The stun has a longer windup time than the stun itself gives, the evasion was put in to counteract the fact that you are rooted while doing it as a squishy class.

if it’s intended to be a defensive skill with a stun not a damage skill, then make the stun instant, not a .75s cast, and make the evade cover the entire animation, not just the middle 1s of the animation. There is a gap between the stun and the evade (trust me, risen brutes seem to know exactly when it is, if you’re fighting a pack of risen and there’s multiple risen brutes, the second brute will hit with his hammer knockdown right after your stun goes off, interrupting the skill before the evade + damage starts) and another part at the end of the animation where you are vulnerable after the evade wears off, not to mention being totally vulnerable during the cast time.

Okay, look, during beta 1 and beta 2, Pistol Whip was as much damage as it used to do, but the stun was only .25s and there was no evade. The stun was instant however, so it was great against a single target (with haste especially), but very poor against multiple targets.

You’d pistol whip, instantly stun, and then get blown up by the mobs surrounding you, you ended up having to black powder, then pistol whip in order to use it at all, and you were out of initiative.

There were cries however about it being paired with haste and blowing up single targets in sPVP in glass cannon builds, just like there have been since.

toward the end of beta, they added a .75s cast time before the stun, so that people who’s brains weren’t completely starved of oxygen could dodge out of it and make the thief whiff air unless the thief immobilized them first (the immobilize to infiltrator’s strike was added at this time too). Then they added the evade, because the skill rooted the thief making using it in any situation other than a premeditated haste gank a death wish, I tried using it between them adding the .75s cast time and when they added the longer stun and evade.. trust me, it wasn’t pretty. You rooted yourself and got blown up as soon as they broke devourer venom.

It was intended initially as a damage skill, the only damage skill on the bar aside from autoattack.

Gaile is there a possibility of a physical authenticator for those without supported smartphones?

BTW, I have found with actual critical hits with steady weapons and normal weapons, with high critical multipliers, pistol whip not only does less DPS, it does less overall damage. The third hit on the autoattack chain crits for 4k or more.

In normal fighting conditions the autoattack chain can crit for 7.5k or so, while pistol whip will sit at roughly 7.1k. Obviously haste/quickness will increase it a bit but that’s a couple times a minute.

Sharpclaw.7510:

I’d say up the damage 5-10% from this and then alter Quickness. 1.5 speed increase, 4 seconds (or potentially 4.5 seconds) across the board: Haste, Frenzy, Zephyr, Elixer U.

Keep the usage penalties the same. That right there might be enough to solve the issue. And in this classes case, ensure that S/P is viable for PvE and that AUTO ATTACK of all things isn’t the more viable thing unless you’re really traiting give a lot of buff across the board (which you can, particularly with Acrobatics and Critical Strikes in particular).

I’d rather bring the damage back to the full original damage, and just nerf quickness which is the real problem behind all of these “op” multi-attack skills. The only reason blurred frenzy is not considered OP is because Mesmers can only do quickness once every 3 minutes.

GW1’s best IAS was +33%, maybe that’s what quickness should be. They might even be able to remove some of the penalty from the quickness skills if that were the case.

Teabaker.9524:

I totally agreed to the heartseeker-nerf but this nerf is just too much, especially because they didn’t gave us anything in return. Doesn’t arenanet see that the problem is quickness? Steal + quickness + 2x PW drops anything in a couple of seconds.

EDIT: I don’t think you can compare PW to HB. HB has no initial stun and doesn’t deal tons of damage in the first couple of seconds. Also the burst has a pretty clear animation (Bull’s charge, bollas). Also if you avoid the first stun and the first HB with quickness, he is an easy kill. GS-Warriors need buffs and not nerfs >.>

Pistol Whip has an obvious animation too. You cast for 0.75s where you reach your pistol way back to do the pistol stun.

The animation was added in beta (I think between beta 2 and beta 3) due to complaints of people being instagibbed by pistol whip (stun used to be instant).

Apparently people are too dumb to dodge the cue, so the skill has to be nerfed into only being usable twice a minute and only in PVP.

Kintari.4172:

Dual.8953:

Galandil.9641:

Well, I think that no one with a sound mind will tell you that the problem was in PW, but that it was, er… it IS in Haste in conjuction with PW. And so they nerfed PW. Way logical. :>

It’s more logical for a temporary fix to a stand out skill. Quickness effects 6/8 class in this game so it has more tied to it, making it harder to change.

Also, just because they nerfed PW doesn’t mean they will never re-buff it. In any case, if you’re really disabled by PW’s nerf, imo you need to reassess the flexibility and adaptability of your build and/or playstyle.

Sure, but they are going to have to change Quickness, so it would make sense for them to just do it first. Besides, in my experience, skills rarely get re-buffed after something like this, at least not within around 6 months or so.

Players can and always should adapt to changes like this, but that says nothing about the quality of the changes themselves.

But in this case, “adapt” means “don’t use sword/pistol”

Backstabs have 0% absolutely nothing to do with pistol whip. Please stop using examples of backstab thieves as justification for pistol whip being nerfed.

No, autoattack hits harder than pistol whip on crits, this was tested with steady weapons and normal weapons. Pistol whip BARELY does more damage when no hits crit in either skill.

BTW, Pistol whip won’t hit for 11k now.

You’re looking at 7k now.

Yup, quickness is the culprit behind all of these multi hit skills being called OP

Eliteseraph.4970:

And still doing kitten amount of damage. What a surprise!

For the record, I play a lvl 80 P/D thief. I still see plenty of other thieves tearing it up with Pistol Whip + Haste. Can we stop with the crying now?

The nerf hit S/P Thieves in PVE FAR worse than it did PVP thieves using haste. PVE S/P thieves used the skill as their bread and butter skill for killing mobs, they didn’t use haste. Without haste, PW is worthless now.

Remember there are 2 sides to this game.

Bombul.2506:

Pistol Whip had a high damage output and was also a stun. When combined with an initiative regen build, it allowed far more stuns then classes have counters. Add to that the great ability of theives to close gaps and it made for a very frustrating opponent who may have only been spamming 2 or 3 abilities.

15% may have been harsh or may have been too little. Time will tell, and I am sure ANET has its ever present eye still focused on theives.

It’s a 0.5s stun with a 0.75s casting time before the stun.

Get real.

You want to nerf the damage so that the skill is based on the stun? Then you’d better make it instant and 1s long.

AUTOATTACK NOW DOES MORE DAMAGE THAN PISTOL WHIP

Sword Pistol’s MOST damaging skill is AUTOATTACK

That is PATHETIC

Blacksarevok.8104:

They should have reduced PW’s animation time go with the damage nerf. Basically, keep the initial pistol swing + daze, but cut down the sword slashes to just a single, hard-hitting swing. Make the evasion last the entire duration (instead of just partially).

Also, get rid of the root.

A single slash breaks the synergy it has with signet of malice, which is important to the build. The invincibility frames don’t cover the entire time you’re rooted, you do get hit, so healing up through signet of malice offsets the damage you take while rooted swinging your sword.

I wouldn’t even suggest cutting down the number of hits as a solution, just in case that’s what anet does, bump the damage back up but take away the multiple swings so it doesn’t benefit from haste so much.. leaving you rooted but not getting near the hps from signet of malice.

@Eliteseraph: I’m really getting sick of explaining this very, basic, GED stupid concept.

Pistol whip was the only skill on the bar that did damage, otherwise you just autoattack. The other skills are 100% utility with near nothing for damage.

It is actually MORE than a 15% damage nerf, due to the effect of crit damage, which, a lot of pistol whip thieves ran around in berserkers with high crit damage.

You go from 10k pistol whips pre patch to 6k pistol whips post patch

Then you turn around and crit all 3 hits on your autoattack chain for 7.5k and just want to delete your character and stop playing the game.

That’s not a 15% damage nerf, it’s worse.

Basic concept.

Look at the Sword/Pistol bar and tell me where all these other skills I’m supposed to use to make up the damage lost from pistol whip…

Hint: It’s not there.

Do I need to repeat yet again?

Eliteseraph.4970:

The only things the nerfs the OP lised will do is cause thieves to re-adjust their builds away from all out 100% offense builds. They’ll actually need to think beyond a simple strategy of “pop all CDs, explode enemy, stealth, lol!”.

I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing. Many of the good thief videos you see already involve the players thinking outside of the burst builds. They’re taking people down with superior tactics and awareness, and outplaying their opponents instead of insta-gibbing them.

The burst builds are FUN, don’t get me wrong. But they aren’t very balanced when you get right down to it. Also, nerfs in one area might allow for adjustments upwards in other areas. Anet might see fit to give thieves a more reliable long range option other than the shortbow with cluster bomb spam.

We’ll see. In the mean time, all you burst backstab thieves should maybe take this opportunity to try out a more survivable condition build, such as the P/D, or the D/D bleed builds. Broaden your skillset. That way nerfs to one ability don’t wreck your entire effectiveness.

Doesn’t help one lick in PVE, condition damage is awful in PVE because only the person with the highest condition damage will get credit.

The whole class, starting wtih the initiative mechanic and stealth skills, is designed around burst dps. We already pay for it with lower actions per minute and lower sustained DPS than other classes. Now we’re losing our burst.

So we’ll have less sustained dps and less burst dps, in PVP sure you can go kite/bleed specs.

But in PVE? People won’t invite you to dungeons, they’d just assume get someone who has better support options and better damage. Remember, blindness spam does JACK against champions, and we can’t stun a champion once on an entire initiative bar because of defiant. Agaisnt dungeon bosses.. you’re plinking away with a shortbow or pistol, doing moderate damage and putting up poison/weakness and have a few limited support utilities.

The issue is quickness. Quickness is too powerful across the board. They have known this since BWE1, that’s why they first reduced the duration of quickness, and then added penalties to quickness on demand skills.

What has to be nerfed is the magnitude of the attack speed increase. +100% is too high. In GW1 +33% was the highest, maybe they should look into that, give PW back its base damage so that it’s actually useful, and make quickness not such a god mode proc/utility.

Any multi hit combo benefits too much from Quickness but the multi hit combos are fine without quickness (though 100B is a bit too much IMO, how pistol whip doing half of its damage gets nerfed but 100b being left alone is okay is beyond me, I can only blame an incompetent warrior biased Developer for that)

The only way to make pistol whip viable in PVE now is to make it not root us. I’m not paying 5 initiative to have only partial evade frames, do less damage than an autoattack chain, and root myself in place.

@CptCosmic: All this nerf did is make more people take up daggers. Swords are now useless on both builds OUTSIDE of using quickness with pistol whip in PVP.

It was already niche in PVP, and it remains niche in PVP just less effective.

it was good in PVE, now it’s awful in PVE.

We went from Shortbow, Sword/Pistol, Dagger/Pistol, Dagger/Dagger, and Pistol/Dagger as having niches to work in (P/D only being useful in niche condition builds for PVP), and now we only have Shortbow, Dagger builds, and Pistol/Dagger if you’re condition spec.

An elite is worse than a non elite, that’s not a problem?

BTW guys, anyone suggesting “adapt” you should just change your language to fit what the real suggestion is “don’t use sword/pistol in PVE” because that’s what it really is now.

Syynx.5762:

RetroSamus.9860:

Hell the auto attack does more damage then this.

The autoattack doesn’t daze the enemy and prevent you from taking damage, does it?

I play P/D thief mostly, but switched to S/P to try out this Pistol Whip, and I found it was not only too strong, but it was boring as well. It’s not useless now by far, you get a daze, a dodge, and an aoe attack. If you think Pistol Whip is useless now, try going Pistol/Dagger, you’re almost entirely single target, deal less damage, and if you don’t kite properly then you die much quicker. Not only that but P/D doesn’t have an ‘i win’ skill.

No, but black powder prevents you from taking damage more effectively than Pistol Whip could ever hope to. You took damage while pistol whipping mobs, the evade wasn’t for the entire attack, the first part of the animation you usually ate full damage while you casted the stun, the stun only hit 1 mob and you’d have others beating on you. You had to pair it with signet of malice to give good HPS to counteract the hits you were taking.

Now you just stand in a smoke cloud and autoattack, kill things slow as molasses but safer and just as fast as pistol whipping now.

obtuse.8291:

I for one think that insane burst skills should really have a top limit which allows them to surge larger but only to a cap. The point of pistol whip is multiple- evade attacks, interrupt target, deal damage. I really love the ability. It should allow us to deal substantial damage by nature of landing the damage and improving our ability to outlive the enemy and kill them, since we are both evading and landing our attack.

The biggest problem I have with cloak and dagger reliant sets is the difficulty of landing these attacks just to be effective. It’s a bit cool actually that you can pull off sword/dagger with executioner builds and your main damage is the free/1 slot.

With all of that said what would make sense to me is haste making cast bars instant and making the execution of any channeling about 35 or 40% faster. Pistol whip is devastating for the above mentioned benefits and should also deal more damage the more strikes of it that land. It seems that is the core design where you deliver several strikes rather than just one that takes some amount of time to go off. I’m not sure how they came to the point of a 15% base damage change here, but I trust it is from all the quantitative data from combat situations showing damage to hp and time/efficiency averages, and went this route to address the total upward scaling of the damage. At base levels or moderate the adjustment is what it is. While surging upward, the impact is more limiting, it would seem.

Name me another class/setup where autoattack is their highest damaging skill please.

“Substantial damage” yeah, really.

If that’s substantial damage then maybe 100b should do less damage than autoattacks too.

@Jeshtuni: No, the damage shown in the screenshot is the total damage for all the hits in the combo.

I think in the end they need to split skills for PVE and PVP. Warriors are OP in PVE, but claim to be underpowered in PVP. Mesmers are underpowered for PVE, and OP for PVP, thieves in that same boat.

stof.9341:

Kraven.4936:

at 250% crit dmg, 15% means, 37.5% less dmg if every single hit from PW crits compared to what it was before. S/P is officially off limits to glass cannons. ;P

15% less is 15% less, not more.

it’s 15% less base damage, but the difference is amplified by crit damage.

It’s hard to say exactly how much, but I went from 10k pistolwhips to 6.5kish 7.5kish when the mob was under 50%.

Sharpclaw.7510:

Devildoc.6721:

PISTOL WHIP IS THE ONLY SKILL ON THE BAR THAT DOES CONSIDERABLE DAMAGE

Properly set up and with the correct build an auto attack chain can hit with the following percentage benefits:

10% damage increase if Endurance isn’t full, 10% damage increase when attacking from the side or behind with the correct runes plus an addition 5% with a 7% increase to crit if traited, 10% damage increase when Initiative is over six, and 20% if the enemy is below half health. Now, I don’t know if you just add those all up. I don’t know how those percentages stack up. I’m not a math person. I majored in Theater and English. But I know that they offer a significant boost to attack power.

Yes, Pistol Whip is the weapon set’s only real burst skill but with the right degree of set up, finesse, and situation awareness, and build, the weapon set retains a lot of power. Boring power, I’ll admit. Not dynamic, combat wise.

Hopefully the reduction keeps the burst reasonable and still effective given the skills other benefits, particularly the stun. The real issue comes if they touch PW anymore, although admittedly the change might have been too great. This is an appeasement move, yes. The issue was with Quickness (which only needs minor tweaking) but I think that PW can still retain some effectiveness if set up well.

Yes because autoattack is so engaging.

Also autoattack now does as much damage as pistol whip, if not more.

The set is gutted. It might still be useful in PVP where proper timing with haste can still make it do good burst, but in PVE it’s been smiter’s booned.

Playing in Orr tonight I found myself running out of initiative before mobs were dead and taking a big beating while I finished them off.

So instead I stand in a cloud of smoke and autoattack I push 1 button every 4 seconds.

I kill stuff pretty slowly however.

So I’m pretty much forced to resort to dagger. Stand in a cloud of smoke, heartseeker backstab heartseeker (this kills the crab)

Devourer Venom is clearly the better choice now, as you can use thieve’s guild with a venom sharing build instead.

On the bright side, I don’t have to worry about grinding up the mats to craft Bolt anymore.

Burai.4370:

Devildoc.6721:

Terrant.2903:

1) 100k damage? I’m gonna take that to mean “over the span of a few minutes” which a lot of classes can say.

2) About every class:

Elementalist was not nerfed. It got some skills that weren’t working right (signets hitting things beyond range, etc) fixed.

Engineer was not nerfed at all. If anything, a slight buff.

Guardian was not nerfed. The only thing close to a nerf was teh activation time on Sig of Judgement.

EDIT: Upon closer read, the Guardian changes were more significant. Some nerfs, some buffs.

OK, Mesmer got nerfed to hell and back. I’ll accept that.

Necro not nerfed at all.

Ranger: Look, if a 40ms cast time increase is a nerf, you play on an entirely different level.

Thief: One nerf, one buff.

With a lot of stacks of might (which warriors can give themselves with GS traits), and frenzy, I’ve seen warriors 100b for 100K+ in Arah on Champions. That is 100k in 1 skill.

I wouldn’t call the change to basilisk Venom a buff. part of why the skill was even remotely useful outside of venom sharing builds is that it couldn’t be purged.

Now that it can be purged, it’s only viable in 1 gimmicky build.

Pistol Whip is a sword/pistol thief’s ONLY damage skill.

By nerfing the damage from it by 15% , you nerf the entire thief’s damage by 15%.

The signet changes hurt a lot of casters, who have to kite to kill things, because they can’t just stand and face tank everything like warriors. A strategy they had was to run forward (the only way they get their movement speed buffs), face their camera backwards, and use signets and ground targeted spells to hit the mobs chasing them.

Besides, this is the guy who nerfed smiter’s boon so bad it was taken completely out of PVP play.

You’ve never played warrior before have you? There is no way a warrior can hit over 100k even with full Berserkers glass cannon with 25 stack might buff, especially if the mob is Champion level. Check your eyes.

Check the screenshot linked, and I’ve seen other screenshots on other mobs in that dungeon with similar damage.

Aristio.2784:

@Devildoc

And? Warrior’s are meant to do a healthy amount of burst damage. They even have it straight built into their profession mechanic. He’s clearly built as a Glass cannon as well, as he barely has 1.8k~ more HP than his profession’s base HP.

In no other game is the class that has the highest health, and highest armor (tied with Guardians anyway) able to do the highest damage as well. They are outdamaged by lighter armor, lower health classes like archers/hunters/rangers, thieves/rogues/assassins, and mages/elementalists/sorcerers/wizards, because those classes have higher risk to do their damage, in particular, rogues/thieves/assassins are generally the top damage dealers due to their requirement to be in melee, and being in lighter armor. Even warriors that spec for dps to get close to the assassin/rogue/thief damage sacrifice so much survivability that they are no more crunchy than that thief next to them.

Yet in GW2, a warrior even specced glass cannon, is more survivable than all but the most tanky built thieves (and a thief would have absolutely terrible damage in that build), and they do tons more damage than say a dual dagger elementalist, who takes extreme risks having paper for armor, the lowest base health in the game, and next to no defensive skills on their weapon set.

It’s stupid.

RetroSamus.9860:

The nerf on pistol whip is really going to hurt me….

I play S/P + SB Thief in pve. For dungeons it was great to play a little bit tanky. but now I lost my main dps skill. Hell the auto attack does more damage then this. Don’t see the point play this weapon set. I am actually kitten at this nerf.

+ we got an elite now that is complete crap. the only thing about that skill was that it was unbreakable, but now that is gone.

What is next Blackpowder shot only 1 sec blind duration?

It already is only 1s blind duration, it just gets refreshed if the mob stays in the field

@Elthurien:

Because Isaiah Cartwright has a history of horrible heavy handed nerfs and he’s the dev generally in charge of balance and metagame. He’s also known to play warrior primarily and surprise surprise, warriors are “in a good place” while every other class has been nerfed in some form.

Case in point:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Smiter%27s_Boon
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Smiter%27s_Boon_

Pistol Whip has been Smiter’s Boon’ed.