Guild Wars 2

Yeah, according to Isaiah Cartwright, who mains warrior btw, warriors are where he wants them to be, at the top of the totem pole.

S/P was the one set we had where we had a good balance between control, mobility, defense, and damage, with some limited aoe. Now the damage is gone.

Guess I need to get a dagger and sacrifice mobility and condition removal instead, and have no aoe.

Krathlos pistol whip now does less damage than the autoattack chain, critical damage magnifies the nerf.

Dayrian.8973:

Bitapetrone.7423:

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.

You must lack playing time in cursed shore with S/P. Before the patch, it’s still quite ok to run along alone, facing 1 veteran or 2. But now? out of the window (as compared to greatsword, which can take up to like 3/4 vets)

And although, I sometimes run S/P. Even, then, I was like, “ahh, kitten, sword ONLY HAVE ONE ATTACK aside from auto-attack”. It’s probably my opening move, and that’s that. With pistol whip costing as high as 5intiviatives, and I don’t run the extra 3 initiative traits, I could hardly use it more than once. In a way, whether you like it or not, it is quite a major nerf for a weapon set, that truly can attack once (utility aside) and not to forget to account for other classes ability that can easily ‘interrupt/ break’ it….

Yeah now I guess I’m going to just spam black powder and autoattack things to death while i stand in the field.

It’s going to kill as fast as pistol whip does now and will be safer when it comes to defenses as well.

Pre nerf I’d use pistol whip to blow up 1-3 mobs in about 2-3 10k pistol whips, now I’m getting like 6k pistol whips (the 15% damage nerf is amplified in difference by crits when you have 250% crit damage it’s extremely noticable), I run out of initiative and am autoattacking anyway.

It was just a heavy handed nerf that just makes me kill things in double the time I used to.

Meanwhile warriors run around killing 1-3 mobs in 1 100 blades.

Izzy needs to find himself unemployed.

Blacksarevok.8104:

Bitapetrone.7423:

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.

Bitapetrone.7423:

Devildoc.6721:

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.

In a situation where I have a target immobilized, using pistol whip twice in a row IS more useful than using any of the other skills, as I’ve likely already used infiltrator strike to set up the pistol whip because if they’re not immobilized they’re not getting hit, and in that situation stunning them and then dishing out damage is a better use of initiative than blinding them or dazing them for 1/4 of a second while they’re in melee range.

How about YOU suggest, what I should do, instead of using pistol whip, when I have someone set up in melee range immobilized and at my mercy, while using the S/P set?

Apparently I’m supposed to switch to a dagger mainhand setup, since that’s still viable.

Bitapetrone.7423:

Clearly you don’t play thief, you show an extreme lack of knowledge on the class.

I may not be the best Thief in the world, but I know enough. The only lack of knowledge I’m seeing is from people completely unwilling to expand and grow with their class as it changes (what do you expect in an mmo?). This little nerf is just breaking people down and it shouldn’t be. Perhaps try playing the class differently and expanding YOUR knowledge of it.

It broke the weapon set to where now autoattack does better damage than the dual skill.

Expand and grow = don’t use sword/pistol apparently.

Testing with steady weapons:

autoattack chain: 135 + 135 + 219 = 489 base, 289 + 289 + 570 = 1148 all crits

pistol whip: 56 + ( 57 * 8 ) = 512 base, 119 + ( 122 * 8 ) = 1095 all crits

This is with speccing 5% more damage from dual attacks

This is just awful.

Elthurien.8356:

Pistol Whip damage breakdown in comparison to Auto Attack
Pistol Whip
882
381
381
923
457
457
1107
457
457
TOTAL = 5502
Slice = 2326
Slash = 935
Crippling Strike = 3953
TOTAL = 7214
Please tell me Pistol Whip was overpowered again. From that one example you can see which numbers are critical hits and which aren’t. Pistol Whip had 3/9 total critical hits, auto attack had 2/3. Pistol whip is useless now, I may as well auto attack and daze spam.
Using Steady weapons:
Pistol Whip
53 + (52 × = 469
Auto Attack
Slice/Slash/Crip Strike: 123 +123 + 200 = 446
Why would anyone spend 5 Initiative on this ability now when they can auto attack?

Were those numbers taken from the combat log or were you just watching damage. The damage shown over mobs’ heads is not the damage per strike, but the entire chain.

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.

Bitapetrone.7423:

The lack of responsibility in this thread is astounding. While I unfortunately feel it is moot to even mention, it’d be best for most of you to take a moment and really think about what you are saying – and I direct this to people on both sides of the argument.

To ya’ll whining about Pistol Whip being OP:

Pistol Whip can hurt quite badly with haste, but once haste is gone that spec is done. Counter this and you win. And to be honest, if you aren’t running with stun/condition removal you are begging to get eaten by this spec and all specs like it. Complaining about this spec is silly. It’s just plain silly. Don’t waste time whining – go spend it learning how to handle glass cannons. And for the love of god, stop faceplanting into melee range with a Thief you see running at you with S/P. Most of the time I don’t even see people try to get away from S/P thieves until it is too late.

I also notice that a lot of the whining comes from OTHER glass cannons! What do you expect? If you’re sick of dying to glass cannons then spec more defensive. You cannot have it all.

To people whining about Pistol Whip being nerfed:

15% damage? If that hurts you then you are obviously amazingly reliant upon a single skill to kill for you. One hit wonder specs are great if you can sneak up on people silly/inexperienced enough to stay in melee with you. What if they’re clever enough to get away? What exactly do you have once your single skill has been used with Haste? You have over half a minute where you do what? The S/P Thieves I fight spend that half a minute trying to run or dying. If this is to the extent you can utilize your skills then in my opinion you need to practice with your class more. Throwing all of your eggs in a single basket can go well and it can go very very badly. Some food for thought there. There is more to Thief than being a glass cannon if you endeavor to search for it. If this nerf just plain kills it for you then you are doing something wrong.

To the people whining about Basilisk Venom being nerfed (buffed?):

There are two other great ultimate skills. If you just cannot stand Basilisk Venom getting a realistic change then use something else. Or maybe now you people that are whining about Pistol Whip being nerfed can use Basilisk to force your opponent to blow their stun removal. And hey, if they don’t remove it, then no harm done to Basilisk to begin with. In fact, you still have that .5 second buff to the duration!

Have you even looked at the damage on the other skills in the S/P skillset?

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

do I need to spell it out so that you can actually take it in and comprehend what I’m saying?

it is the ONLY

ONLY
ONLY

Skill on the bar that does decent damage.

Every other skill on the bar has great utility, but that utility is situational, and not something you use all the time.

Infiltrator’s strike is good for setting up a pistol whip, or ambushing and then retreating really quickly, or setting up to be able to remove a condition. It does damage equal to the first hit of an autoattack chain.

Head shot does about 1/4 of the damage of the first hit in an autoattack chain, it is useful for when a target is out of melee range and doing something that needs to be interrupted.

Black Powder does 1/4 of the damage of the first hit in an autoattack chain, it is useful for setting up a smoke field that blinds anyone stupid enough to stand in it, and blind 1 ranged target.

The damage from this set is on the autoattack, and pistol whip, and Pistol whip does about double the damage of an autoattack chain (or at least it did).

Guess what Aristo, that’s still more damage than any other class can do in a single skill.

Sanctus.8350:

Epic Sandwich.2637:

But aside from that, I’d have to agree that even outside of the final boss in Arah explorable, Hundred Blades is the highest damage per second ability in the game.

It also leaves you completely vulnerable, immobile, and its extremely easy to wiff.

Pistol whip does too, you gain some invincibility frames but you can get dropped during the first part of the skill and the invincibility frames don’t cover the whole animation.

Pistol whip is even easier to whiff because of the cast time before the stun.

You have to stun/immobilize a target to land the stun that leads into the hits.

Every thief who used pistol whip in PVP chained into it with either basilisk venom, devourerer venom, or infiltrator’s strike, otherwise it would never hit, and without quickness it still was dodged out of before all of the damage hit.

This nerf just makes sword/pistol less effective in PVE more than PVP.

Schurge.5194:

faytte.1057:

Killua.8041:

Seeing this topic I’m looking at the broken Hundred Blades, lol.

Yeah, I’m not even sure how pistol whip gets nerfed when Hundread Blades is allowed to exist as is.

Hundred Blades was never any stronger then Pistol Whip. That said neither deserve/ed a nerf.

It always did double the damage of pistol whip if not more, and benefitted more from boons and quickness than pistol whip as well.

Slower base swing speed weapons always benefit more with % based speed increase buffs.

Now it does 3x the damage of pistol whip, and let’s not forget that the other skills on GS line also do thousands of damage, while pistol whip is the ONLY damage dealing skill for a S/P thief. Infiltrator’s strike = auto attack damage, head shot = 1/4 of an auto attack, black powder = 1/4 of an auto attack. Now these are great skills for utility but that really means once a S/P thief gets set up to where he is in melee range, and doesn’t need to blind or interrupt… they’re going to be spending most of their time pistol whipping, since it’s the only damage skill they have.

Ship.3612:

You guys have no idea what you’re talking about, warrior is one of the least sought after professions on a good team in tpvp. Luckily this game isn’t balanced around carebear pve where anything works, or else warriors would be in really bad shape. Warriors need a buff if anything, if you don’t have at least 100 tournament games played please don’t bother trying to argue balance.

in PVE, groups are already saying warriors and guardians, other classes need not apply.

Both high end PVP and high end PVE require skill, generally different types of skill, so don’t claim that unless you’re doing high end PVP you don’t have the right to have an opinion.

Besides, they have the tech to split skills into PVE and PVP versions, just like they did in GW1.

They can balance for PVE AND PVP.

They’re just choosing not to right now, because the dev leading the team for skill balance LOVES his warriors and guardians.

Knyx.5926:

I think these devs at a-net should return to get their high school diploma or GED at least.
They reduced the damage but didnt fix the bug that made it self root on a mobility class?
A 5 year old would know better.

It’s not a bug, the root is intentional, just like the roots on blurred frenzy and 100b.

Isaiah Cartwright needs to be fired though.. His blatant favoritism of the warrior class and heavy handed nerfs in both GW1 and this game are just absurd for someone toting themselves as the ‘balance’ dev.

S/P has ONE damage skill, unless you count auto attack.

Nerfing that outright without replacing the damage elsewhere is just stupid and heavy handed.

Krathalos.3461:

Pistol Whip nerf was needed. If you think otherwise, you’re delusional. It’s insanely powerful for what it does. Even now, it’s still strong.

So roll the missing damage into headshot or something, just taking 15% damage off the entire spec because that is literally the only damaging skill the spec has is too heavy handed.

Just thought I’d cross link this image from the warrior thread.

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/11247/lol_warriors.jpg

150k.

No other class can do that in a single ability with a less than 10s cooldown.

Kraven.4936:

In summary, this what happens when you don’t play your own game. Welcome to aNet’s balancing: Heads, you lose, tails, I win.

No, Isaiah Cartwright plays the game

.. he plays Warriors and Guardians.

Shocking that those are the 2 most desirable classes for dungeons.

DiogoSilva.7089:

As someone who has never played a thief, it’s pretty awesome to go to the thief boards every time an update hits them. And the same can be said for every other profession. It’s a whining, cry-fest.

They’ve got a stronger elite that can be countered, which leads to far more interesting gameplay than a weaker, uncounterable skill. And they got the much-needed nerf to a skill that was being abused. That’s it. Simple. The former is stronger with skillful play, and the later forces you to play more skillful.

I’m absolutely sure bigger thief changes will come, because a conditional buff to an underused skill and a much needed nerf to one of the most abused skills is not going to prevent from over half the pvp community rolling thieves. :P

Also, no warrior can hit for 25k with a single skill, ever, and warriors attacks are slow, predictable and easy to recognize. Unlike a thief, which can spam quick attacks, kill in 3 seconds, and hide in stealth every few seconds, to spike you again if it hasn’t killed you already.

“the latter forces you to play more skillful”

Do you realize how ignorant you are?

Have you looked at a S/P thief’s skill bar?

Pistol Whip is the ONLY SKILL on the entire bar that does considerable damage.

Everything else is situational and built around control. Interrupt, Blind, and Immobilize/mobility. Your bread and butter skill for damage was what was nerfed.

It does 1/2 of the damage of 100b, now more like 1/3.

If they’d taken that damage and added it to head shot, maybe I wouldn’t be complaining.

But as it is, I just lost 15% of my total damage.

There’s no way to “play smarter” than to not use that weapon set, at all.

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.

Does Izzy need to make it that blunt that he plays a warrior as his main? Really? This is the guy in charge of balancing the game? Warriors capable of doing over 100k damage to each target in dungeons, while having the highest HP and base defense in the game, yet every other class in the game is receiving nerfs in each patch. Warriors have not been touched.

Really?

Lithen.3642:

Devildoc.6721:

I just love the treatment of dodge as a panacea as well.

Everyone uses that, but you only get finite dodges.

Yes they are finite, but being intelligent with dodging is not. You do not have to dodge every single attack of every mob. Should be possible to dodge only when you know it will be devastating to be hit (CC, huge damage attacks, almost dead, etc.)

With a lot of dungeon bosses that’s about every hit :P

PsionicDingo.2065:

Jumping off of ledges with Shadow Step and Infiltrator’s Strike can be a fun way to toy with people, because you can zip right back up.

I did this last night, I had about 4 people chasing me, I untargeted, infiltrator’s striked at the edge of a cliff, jumped down, they followed, I returned, switched to shortbow, and clusterbombed them.

Downed 1 and then had to run before they caught back up

Wasn’t going to get any kills but it sure did buy me an escape.

I just love the treatment of dodge as a panacea as well.

Everyone uses that, but you only get finite dodges.

We need that sword to freeze and shatter enemies on death

Mekboss.5069:

I’m at 2 ectos / 6 salvages, using a BL kit. I’m really not sure whether I should continue salvaging or cut my losses and sell them, right now I’d even be glad if I could break even [price of kit + what I would have gotten for rares].

I’ve been getting multiple ectos salvaging with basic kits, for what it’s worth. Linsey hasn’t confirmed that they have the same drop rate due to them being trophies not rare crafting materials but empirical evidence would suggest that this is the case.

I don’t even know if it’s a bug or anything.. I’d like some official word on it.

I think everyone prefers their order partners to Trahearne. I’ve heard a lot of positive things about Magister Sieran and Warmaster Forgal. Now Forgal wasn’t the best character I ever encountered but even he was heads and shoulders (and I don’t mean just in rendered character size) above Trahearne. But Tybalt was just a very memorable and well written character. He’s like the opposite of what you expect for a covert field agent in a secret society. He’s got a gentle puppy dog like face, and he’s kind of a klutz and bumbles his way around missions and makes things up as he goes. His cover identity is so bad it’s good. He’s a screwup, a flawed, believable character that “redeems” himself through sacrificing to ensure other people’s safety, and it’s only afterward that you realize what a friend you lost and it really means something in the story.

I’m playing through the vigil story now and I’m just not sure that I’ll miss Forgal as much as I miss Tybalt.

Hey Linsey could you clarify for me please if it’s true or not that ectos have the same chance of being salvaged regardless of what kit is being used as they’re a trophy not a “rare crafting material”?

It’s getting to be kind of hard to keep track of which zones I have 100% in or not, and I’d just like some symbol to be visible on the world map by the zone name, like in Guild Wars 1 you could see if you’d vanquished a zone or not by the gold helmet symbol.

I’d rather not spend my time map traveling to each zone and using the local map to find how complete I am.

That pirate pegleg trick sounds brilliant. People don’t expect thieves to have a launch.

yandere.9176:

They change up your home instance a bit but that’s it.

what do they change in your home district?

Thanks for looking into it Linsey, remember it wouldn’t give any statistical advantage, it’s just some extra animation/visual flair

That’s a shame Dysect, they really should have those extra animations.

I give my charr rather bright eye colors for this reason, so that they show up more intensely in low light situations.

What I want for horns is more “modified” horns. The males only have a couple. 1 set that has some metal bands decorating them. The second set the horns are actually cropped and have cinching bands of metal at their ends I guess to keep them from growing back.

Females have this 1 cool set of horns where the horn is in 2 pieces and joined by a gear looking piece of metal. I want some more stuff like that for the males.

ThiBash.5634:

Does anyone know if the proc from Signet of Restoration (Elementalist) counts as using a skill?

There was a fix to one of the crafted foods, one that removed conditions on heal skill, and the reason why was because signet of restoration was proccing a condition removal on every spell cast.. so I’m wondering about this myself… as a thief, does my signet of malice make me proc these effects without using the active signet?

Jeffrey, Bobby? anyone, could we get some clarification here?

LinseyMurdock.4165:

“No shiny or glowy thing to it”?? Clearly, you haven’t seen it. Maybe you are familiar with the Fiery Dragon Sword from the Hall of Monuments? Jormag’s Breath is an icy version

Linsey I got a question in regards to that, and well, possibly other special weapons in general.

The Hall of Monuments Fiery Dragon Sword is awesome, not just because it’s a really nice skin, but because it changes your damage to fire damage, so you know, things that die by fire damage ignite and roll on the ground screaming,

Does Jormag’s Breath of Ice change your damage to ice/cold damage and have an effect on enemies?

Do any other weapons change your damage type and have these neat death animations on enemies?

I’m in particular interested in Jormag’s Breath of Ice, Firebringer, and the legendary sword Bolt.

If these weapons DON’T cause such death animations… could they?

I know lightning damage gives a neat convulsing animation so I’m really hoping Bolt does this.

In character creation for Charr characters you choose a sparring partner and there is an effect in the story, they are a sidekick character for you, they’re in all of your story quests (or at least most of them) for 30 levels.

The equivalent character creation options for the other races however.. I have not seen them come into play. My mesmer never encounters lyssa, not an avatar, not a peep about such a blessing from any NPC… nothing.

Were these things just not fully developed due to time constraints, were they forgotten, are they something that’s going to effect future content, what’s the deal?

I mean my Sylvari is cycle of night… and she woke up during the day… so not even that miniscule detail.

SiNoS.2147:

Conncept.7638:

SiNoS.2147:

They have also said all along that dungeons are not ment for everyone. They said that they were ment for well rounded groups of players. They said that everyone had to carry there own weight. They never once said anyone could just go into a dungeon and complete it. People who have/had this expectation the fault rests entirely with them.

Would you like to try again?

I’ve read every single piece of GW2 news pre and post release, and Arenanet has not stated, anywhere, that any dungeon would not be playable by the entire playerbase.

If they have stated that anywhere, prove it, link it, show evidence. You may find that difficult though, as no such statement has ever been made.

Heres the post by Colin him self. While he doesent come right out and say it as bluntly as i do its there.

http://amd-icbm.com/icbm/guild-wars-2-colin-johanson-talks-about-dungeon-difficulty/

The thing that’s faulty about what Colin said there is that in GW1 you were able to stack buffs in a way that you took 0 or 1 damage from every attack, while you gathered up mobs and blew them up with aoe. There were consumables that reduced cooldowns, increased movement speed, increased all attributes (damage), decreased cast time, reduced incoming damage/gave immunity to critical hits, and increased health, for half an hour straight. These consumables could be used all at once too.

GW2 you can’t take hits for 0-1 damage. Your only damage reduction boon cannot stack in intensity, you can only get -33% incoming damage, or walls that reflect/absorb projectiles, or dodging to avoid damage altogether. But unless you’re stacking your group with a specific arrangement of multiple guardians, a staff or focus elementalist with powerful auras (for the staff anyway), and a mesmer using feedback.. you probably can’t keep up those walls with 100% uptime. You probably can’t keep vigor up across the entire group with 100% uptime either, dodge is limited, you can’t dodge everything.

You also don’t have as powerful of consumables and can’t stack consumables either.

Comparing DoA in GW1 to dungeons in GW2 is a rather poor comparison.

The DR should only happen from doing the same event multiple times in a row. Doing event chains or completely different events should never hit DR.

WHY IS QUOTING ALWAYS BROKEN ANET?

@Relentliss: It is a 0.5s stun, the animation (if haste is not up) is longer than that, you can avoid a significant part of the damage + the next pistol whip if you dodge as soon as you come out of the stun. That is also, if you get stunned in the first place. Good players will break out of infiltrator strike’s immobilize and avoid the stun altogether. You might want to look into that. It’s an extremely obvious animation where the thief reaches way back with their pistol offhand. Dodge, walk out of range or hell, walk right through them and be squarely behind them. They will have to break their skill or risk being self rooted while you kick them from behind.

@Redscope: Thief skills are not designed to be used in sequential rotation aside from a few exceptions.

Like I said Dagger could work with cooldowns, sword/pistol could not.

The only sequence sword/pistol has is infiltrator’s strike → pistol whip.

The class is specifically designed to use the same skill repeatedly, with many thief weapon skills behaving more like utility skills than weapon skills.

Head shot and black powder both do less damage than an auto attack, I believe infiltrator’s strike also does less damage than an auto attack.

You can’t use that in a rotation.

You put their skills on cooldown and you would literally break the class.

It’d have to be redesigned from the ground up.

Relentliss.2170:

It can and is spammed. I had a dude hit me with 5 pistol whips in about 5 seconds. I have had a dude use 7 heartseekers in a row on me. WTF

Thief is a broken class as it has no cooldowns. Its the only class that can spam high damage abilities. Its not really fair that with high crit you can just spam them. How about every time a skill like Pistol Whip or HS are used within 5 seconds they cost 50% more initiative?

TBH I am a little tired of people just spamming these skills and thinking they are good.

Secondly, Pistol Whip also has too much damage on it to also include a stun. Its got to be either a medium damage ability with a stun or a high damage ability without. Having both is not balanced.

There are times in SPVP that I can not even get a skill off due to the PW spam. I am just in 10 seconds of stun. Thiefs are broken.

If you’re getting hit by more than 1 pistol whip, just stop son, you’re bad. Heck if you’re CONSISTENTLY getting hit by pistol whip, you’re bad. A thief can surprise attack you with a pistol whip only about once every 45 seconds.. because there’s only a few methods to negate the extremely obvious animation and cast time at the beginning, and no way to negate the self root.

It has high damage and a stun because it has that obvious, easy to avoid tell, and has a self root.

Your suggestion on initiative would also break the entire class.

The class is designed around using the same skill in quick succession, limited by a shared resource, you decide on which skill to use based on what would be best in the given situation.

If we were to have cooldowns on our current skills.. the class would be 100% broken.

Headshot, black powder, and infiltrator’s strike are all very situational skills, they all do extremely low damage.

Dagger/Dagger is honestly the only thief setup that would still function if each skill was given a cooldown, because all the attacks do substantial damage and could be used rotationally. like other classes.

A pistol pistol thief would be even more broken than they already are, shortbow, broken, pistol/dagger broken, dagger/pistol, broken, sword/dagger … well it’s already broken but hey, even more broken.

Thief using any weapon but dagger dagger where you could do a rotation of dancing dagger, leaping death blossom, cloak and dagger, backstab, heartseeker… would be come auto attack: the class.

SHM.7628:

What would be the reason for rolling a guardian or a w if casters could do teh same exact thing while doing more AOE?

There are other differences that balance the classes too. Ex- range on a guardian is rather small even with a wand or a scepter.Also, Necros have minions, engineers have turrets, rangers have pets.

Its not as simple as you made it sound. In the end it all has to be balanced or you would get people rolling one class to the exclusion of others.

Okay look dude.

A warrior can do 30,000 damage to EACH target across 3 targets, while having higher health and damage reduction than a dagger elementalist. The elementalist is taking far greater risk, but getting less reward for it.

I think Lyssa is one of the more balanced and fun events. I particularly liked that she reflects projectiles … in a genre filled with bosses that exclusively do melee hate and encourage range, it’s nice to have a boss that does the opposite.

Does it cause enemies to ignite and scream rolling on the ground when they die like the fiery dragon sword? It should.

Personally I think something of his has got to give, I’d say namely the time limit, or the teleport, or both.

Eventually it’s going to be impossible (probably is on several servers) to mobilize the 100 or so people needed to successfully graveyard zerg this event (which is what it is, it’s a freaking graveyard zerg).

In some cases it’s impossible to avoid being 1 shot. If he throws a fireball at you right after he teleports to you, you’re toast, no time to react.

Can this event even be completed on servers like Kaineng and Devona’s Rest?

if anything, Balthazar is too much, and Dwayna is too easy.

Grenth and Lyssa are about right.

maybe lighter armor should regen endurance more, to the point of light armor being able to dodge twice as often as heavy armor, with medium armor being able to dodge three times for every 2 dodges a heavy can do.

But seriously it does kind of seem like a joke that warriors can put out that much damage while having that high of base toughness and high HP.

Usually survivability was balanced by lower damage… but not when warriors are doing 100 blades for 30K+ damage.

Harrier.9380:

Devildoc.6721:

Half of a GOOD use of pistol whip is interrupting a skill and then following through with damage.

I think Head Shot is superior interrupt, simply because it’s instant and ranged.

Devildoc.6721:

Besides it would be incredibly imbalanced if we could move around while doing pistol whip, they’d have to junk the damage and totally ruin the skill.

Not really, there are other ways to balance it out – making you suspectible to root/slow/interrupt while channeling could balance it out nicely.

Garlic Sensei.4103:

thief class has been nerfed to the point its barely even played.

Have you played any 8v8 match recently? It’s rather easy to notice there are twice as many thieves as all the other classes combined.

Head shot doesn’t follow through with damage.

When you are sword/pistol, head shot is a SECONDARY interrupt, it’s an interrupt on a person you can’t reach before their skill goes off.

Pistol whip is a primary interrupt, as you can shadow step in, interrupt, and punish in quick succession.

Headshot means, okay I interrupted them… now what.. they’re still too far away.

I use it when steal is down, I’m already leashed to where infiltrator’s strike won’t take me to them, and they’re going to do something IE execute or res someone.

Hell I’ll actually usually use scorpion wire on them instead if that’s up.

OR I’ll use it in PVE if it’s a mob that would kill me too quickitteno melee, and they’re not currently immune to CC.

But generally I’d rather interrupt and follow through with damage than just interrupt and still not be there hitting them.

This is a good question… shouldn’t a light armor class who is using melee skills do more damage than a warrior? It certainly doesn’t seem to be the case.

I have 3 level 400 crafters and am going to finish 2 more crafts shortly.

I think personal story content is harder than getting the crafting done, so don’t tell me it’s “handing it to me on a silver platter”

I can make an exotic a day without even hitting the TP.

This would be 1 exotic per character, with a unique skin, after all the deaths they’ve taken in their personal story. All the time their solo character was zerged by 20+ mobs with lackluster NPC support.

Give a limitation on stat choices if you want, crafting will still have more variety in stat combinations, and it would be appropriate to the greens in GW1. There was only 1 stat set per weapon usually (well aside from 1 staff per attribute, but each of those staffs had the same stats)

But don’t make the claim that crafting is more effort… it’s really not.