Guild Wars 2

I personally have no problem with them – Banners are amazing group buffs for where you can fight around your standard. In PvE they’re easy to use as you control where the fight is. PvP has points that force the fight there. WvW it’s situational – when attacking or defending a keep where your fight is localized on a wall, they work well. When you need to be mobile, they’re too clunky to use… but I see that clunkiness as part of their balance. Just use shouts or other utilities if you are not going to be in fights that would stay around your flag. Your utilities can be swapped whenever you’re out of combat, and I swap mine all the time to adapt to the situation. It’s the utilities that you never use under any situation that need to be looked at… flags are not one of those.

They changed it – in the upper right corner of the tool tip is the cooldown with the little circle arrow next to it. Basically it brings it in line with the skill tooltips.

Mixed opinion of that… makes it look cleaner, but not quite as intuitive. I also had an “Oh!” at some traits that are useless because of their cooldown and thought that was taken away… nope, still useless.

Felix.2613:

The problem as I see it, is that instead of the zergs maphopping between 3 different maps, they would be hopping (guesting) between 100 different maps. So that all blue map, yes green zerg will go there and steamroll it. Will blue zerg be there? No they will be steamrolling an empty red server.

You’d basically make it improbable, that one zerg ever ran into another zerg.

That would be the point of weighted instances. Sure, there can be blob rolls on lower weights, but they wouldn’t count for nearly as much. The main instances would hope to have all maps queued for all groups – so there would never be empty map steamrolling where it counts.

Obviously my solution isn’t the perfect end-all solution, just a direction that may work.

Thanks for the input, and keep poking holes or improvements!

Now Brew Pinch

Brew Pinch.5731:

• Extremely hard for guilds to continue to operate
• Server pride non-existent
• Unskilled players unwilling to accept advice and play to win will flood upper tier matches.

- How would this stop guilds from operating? If anything, it would more easily allow guilds to get together on WvW instead of being split or stopped by map queues.
- This would be subjective, but then determining a feeling would be anyways. Yes, it’s true that the fight isn’t just your server anymore… but it’s for your server still. Your stacking wins would be tracked for the season and reflect in server bonuses. Sure you may not be on your own, but would allies stop you from being proud of your server? Of course is also the fact that people ditch their server if they’re on a losing streak to go where the win is… now you can stick to your server and every week have a chance of winning if you go in and fight.
- How is that even remotely different than it is now? Besides, if all three sides are keeping the upper tiers flooded, it is far less likely to have lone blobs roaming unmolested, making it where the unskilled will be squashed.

Brew Pinch.5731:

• Similar to hotjoin PvP, this couldn’t be further from the truth. With the flood of unskilled zerker players streaming into top-tier ranking maps, commanders with have an extremely difficult time attempting to co-ordinate, especially as 90+% of their guild can’t get in.
• Combat would become the unskilled zergfest “numbers = win” that people ignorantly claim is true of T1. Skill and co-ordination out the window.

- This would be the biggest issue is if all top ranks were full and you’re trying to get your guild in – an issue that’s already faced now on higher WvW participating servers, but exasperated with a bigger pool of players. Really this comes to a few points – one is the traffic of WvW – you want to weight servers to concentrate population, but leave enough room in the weight classes to allow most people to get in the fights that count. If being top tier matters most to your guild and all have a queue, you can pick one and queue with your commander. If just getting together and fighting now is what you care more about than point impact, you can go where there is room. Hard to form an argument against “noobs” clogging upper wvw… 90% of wvw is that anyways. If anything, noobs are less willing to wait on a queue and just blindly follow any blue Dorito. Hopefully over time, the more skilled sides will squash the others sides that the noobs look for other instances for easier fights and the more skilled can get into the real fights.

Brew Pinch.5731:

The current set-up allows players who are interested in playing to win, who don’t flee at the sight of greater numbers, who are willing to run synergy builds, who are on teamspeak, who can follow commanders on a dime and who are interested in hardcore large scale tactical PvP have a place to go.

This change risks taking that relatively small portion of the community, spreading it across all servers to the detriment of those players gameplay experience.

That’s not to say that something similar wouldn’t work, but simply that this isn’t an issue with an quick and easy fix. Players create this dynamic not developers and it’s that community that makes or breaks the experience.

Unfortunately you are right – players create the dynamic. However the “majority” always just wants the win, not the effort. Every MMO I’ve ever played that has had mass race or server based PvP people quit their side and go to the winning side. Eventually once enough quit or the skilled switch sides, it swings to that new side and the cycle repeats. Under the current mechanic as it’s single server it’s small enough that if you have solid guilds or groups that are strong enough to counter a skill-less blob, you can win that server. But then you also place that server on the whim of that group – if the guild or group decides to quit or change servers, that server plummets with hopeless stomped sessions — It’s happened to multiple servers.

These groups can and will still exist under a shared WvW model – will it spread or get drowned, I can’t really say. I hope the player dynamic will go towards learning and gaining skills to fight if all sides are fielding similar amounts of blobs and roaming parties.

Quite a few good rebuttles – time to address them! First Gudradain.

Gudradain.3892:

…snip…
So, you basically replace 24 worlds in NA and 29 worlds in EU by 3 in NA and 3 in EU. Everything seems fantastic in your post but…

What happen when 1 color get stacked and win all the time?
…snip…

It would still change EVERY WEEK. Every server still has its own stats, which help determine the team. But now that they have a pot of 8 or 9 to mix, if any trends that show any consistant stacking, they can adjust matchups instead of what we currently see of 90% map control from poor matches.

Gudradain.3892:

So how would your World still matter? Server bonuses would now be win based instead of point based. Each week your server helps your world (color) win, your bonus accumulates. WvWvW would have seasons, so at the end of the season, the world bonuses reset (along with a personal wvw point refund for strategy changeups). This also means that wins matter more as they would be something that affects your server for the whole season_

By that I guess he wants the RGB matchup to last for a whole season (so 7 weeks), so for 7 weeks you could get bad match up without any change.

Another problem, how do you determinate server strength after the first RGB season since every server are together? You can’t correctly kitten the strength of a server anymore if they are not fighting separately.

What that means? They won’t be able to make a good match up for next RGB season since they have no idea which server to put together. This means that we will get horrible match up again and there won’t even be the chance to get a good one since there is only 3 mega servers that are always match together.

This change has so many flaws I don’t even get why you are all putting +vote on the OP post.

It’s basically the same as saying :

Everyone transfer to the top 3 servers then we will ask Anet to create overflow map so we don’t wait in queue.

As I stated, RvGvB matchups change every week still – the “season” would only really apply for your world bonuses and WXP points. As for determining the stats – they would be recorded the same. Caps, stomps, etc. that your own server garners affects the server ranking. The only real issue for stats would be point ticks wouldn’t be able to count for a specific server – but if they make successful defenses count for points, that would resolve that.

Lastly regarding “mega servers” – essentially it would be mega groups against each other, but as your groups are always changing, it wouldn’t ever be “stuck” or stale.

The suggestions to fix WvW matches continue to roll in. I was lucky the last two weeks and had competitive WvW matchups where coming to WvW made a difference as to who won or not. Old static matchups may allow to keep that, but a single population swing would be all it would take to throw that away. I personally am still hoping for them to bring WvW together and share the population like they do for PvP. It’s obviously difficult to tell what Anet has read or not, but giving it a single bump to increase chances.

There is no wrong class you can play.

Guardian is your boon fighter. These Regens, stability, protection, etc are extremely useful and powerful in the CC centric meta. Add in the fact they can share it around is even better. They are amazing in zergs, and often use Hammer and Staff. Hammer loads you with some CC and the best access to a blast finisher in the game. Tag every field you see – lightning gives swiftness, fire might, dark weakness to enemies (extremely powerful debuff in fights), water heals everyone, etc. Staff gives aoe swiftness, 12 stacks of might for pre-fight, line of warding (amazing), and auto is pretty much a guaranteed swath of bags as you’ll tag everything. GS works well too and is key for a retaliation build guardian… it also gives you one of the most fun combos in the game – GS5 twice (Binding Blade) to pull your target to you and then quickly swap to Hammer and press 5 again (Ring of Warding). So fun stopping people running to the safety of keeps or away in general as your party pounces on them (and I’ve died due to that combo too T-T).

Warrior pretty much has no weapon combo that sucks. Double Axe on warrior is one of the most damaging weapon sets in the game. Auto hits like a truck, whirling axes is still great aoe DPS even after it’s nerf, and the burst attack is a massive spike. Unfortunately while you may win face tank melee brawls, with no gap closers or CC it’s also easy to kite. It wins in PvE, but you may have difficulty with it in WvW. Hammer is one of your CC tools. With weaken, cripple, and three interrupt moves, it’s quite nice. It isn’t the DPS house of some of the other weapons (though Merciless Hammer trait puts it up there when the target is weakened), but it’s popular for a reason. I would suggest that if you’re running with a large group or zerg to prioritize the hammer’s burst skill (F1) for blast finishers rather than stuns (so use it no matter how many ticks of adren you have). All other weapons have uses too – Mace is more CC along with blocks along with Shield. Sword is a gap closer with OH sword being access to perma bleeds and perma torment. GS is one of the best mobility weapons in the game – and also still amazing DPS. A common tactic is to use Mace/Shield to CC the target to land the GS Hundred Blades. Or to have it handy to run from any fight you can’t handle.

I know that isn’t organized well, but the short answer is you can’t go wrong. Both have slightly different playstyles, but both are effective in WvW. I could go on for a while on tactics and play types for both, but really the best thing to say is to just play. Redoing traits only cost 3s and their are tons of forum posts and videos of gameplay if you want to follow meta.

Good luck and enjoy!

I’ve done a chunk of solo queue tPvP – and I have been thrown into completely unbalanced experience matches quite a few times (along with the all to common 4v5s). No player swapping or drops – it’s just a team of 0-20 vs 30-50s. My only guess is it’s like matching the party, but when matching to the competing party, it is lax on matching or just doesn’t match at all. It is more common for me to see mis-matched ladder fights than to see a wide spread of levels in teams. As I am still low rank myself, I’m often on the team that is just learning PvP against these players that have done it a thousand times with nothing to do but try my hardest to end as top player in my team with a sub-50 score. But then I’ve also been placed on a team of 20-30s against 0-10s and end the match with 30 kills and the opposing team not breaking 100. The matching algorithm definitely needs work.

So what’s best? Be stricter on matchups but possibly cause much longer wait times? Create team spreads after 10 are like-levels are found? Regular intervals as Rieselle suggested?

Whatever the case, I admit I’ve avoided solo tPvP a bit lately due to these frustratingly unbalanced matchups – even fights are a blast. Being blasted or just blasting is not.

Side issue is how to handle drop-outs. 5vLess is often an imbalance that you can’t counter unless you’re team is better (in which case you usually don’t have a drop anyways), so it becomes a loss. Personally I think drop-outs should be pretty heavily punished (maybe a loss of glory?) with the short man team provided a vote if to forfeit or not. Within the first 60s, no win/loss is counted for either team. 60-120, win for the full team, no loss on the short team. After is standard count. Allowing quick joins like in sPvP could be an option, but it sucks joining a losing game so they usually just drop anyways and just becomes a revolving door.

Whatever the case, I hope to see better matchups in the future!

Honestly Necro is in a pretty good place for elites – I personally use all of them.

Flesh Golem: This is great for giving yourself physical damage for inanimate objects while on a condition build. “Charge” can often insta-kill objects if it doesn’t go through the object. Plus it is also great CC. I almost always skill on my Condition build with the exception of sPvP or running to a keep in WvW past a zerg.

Plague: This is your tank form. Quad toughness and triple vit coupled with #2 being an aoe blind every second makes this beautiful. Add on Chill on Blind trait, and you have a win button against melees. This skill is pretty much a must in sPvP, and useful against groups in PvE and WvW. A good form for both condition and zerker builds.

Lich Form: This is a kill button. With triple power and double precision you’ll be hitting like a truck no matter your build type, but has the best synergy with zerker builds. Unfortunately due to the very long cooldowns of your other Lich form skills along with their relatively slow cast times, most of the time you’ll be auto-attacking which is why it works best with classes that have crit damage. Pretty much this is an guaranteed 1v1 win against any class but thief (since they have heavy evades or can just permastealth until it’s down). I tend to use this when on my zerker build in PvE and WvW. sPvP depends if they stick together (plague form for high survival capping) or catch them in 1-2s (where Lich just outright kills them).

TL;DR – You should get all of the elites. Personally I’d suggest starting with Plague Form as it’s your only underwater elite and is useful no matter your build type in no matter what your game type, but you still can’t go wrong with Flesh Golem.

My Trident is Rabid (earth) and my Spear is Berserker (force, but going to change to fire to increase AoE utility). I don’t carry alternate weapons for builds as I see the weapons damage type niched.

As for aqua breathers, best is yellow from Tequatl (unless TA added some), but green karma is the main bet. Key is getting the lvl 80 one so you can equip the proper runes/orbs.

Wells already face the issue of traits being spread across 3 trees, and ground targeting in this game is already a bit clunky. I give up my ability to single button drop my well in combat without really interrupting anything and get it where I have to drop it with additional clicks and mouse input and also face the occassional, welp, I’m going to take 2 seconds to cast now for no reason. But I gain the ability to use it on walls (of course with the risk of being pulled off since you have to stand on the wall ledge right over them due to med range) and casting it outside of melee range. This is also picking it over fall damage, bleed duration, chilling blinds, enfeebling blood, etc.

It’s a trait that has a purpose and I consider balanced. Other classes also have similar traits (such as guardian) that bring extra usefulness to their utility.

I would also consider anything that prevents people from getting out of your well built into the well as OP as that would create them kitten second AOE CC at which point 100% of every necro would trait that.

If anything were to change on Well traits, it would be to buff Vampiric Rituals as taking a Grandmaster trait to do 10-15 damage to up to 5 people and siphon less health than what my warrior gains off perma-regens is a joke. Though if they buff siphoning enough, maybe.

For this idea, Mercenaries would have to count against the outmanned limit to properly balance the number of mercenaries that could be applied. There is a massive difference in populations where people can get outmanned across servers – lower tiers can have it where they have 5 and the other team has 15. If 20 mercenaries can hop on, suddenly you out number them while having the outmanned? Conversely you could have 5 people and they have 60, and those same 20 would still have you outmanned.

Then of course is the subject of “kicking out”. I don’t want a kick out mechanic. Nothing like holding the enemy off from bay when people finally start joining your map and then watch your team disappear and let them take it. Unfortunately that leads to the other possibility that has plagued guesting and bosses – other people not of your server preventing you from joining. Both are bad, which is why I consider this “mercenary” option not the best.

Know I shouldn’t plug, but I still lean towards my idea: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/RvGvB-instead-of-WvWvW/first#post2943674

I had a bit about the disadvantages of P/P, but I passed the character limit, so you’ll just get what I played when I attempted to run P/P:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-c;4Vw-_06-V-Fd0;9;49T-T-2;042A;1287;15NW4;2ytbUytbUG-Gg-A-6-N2sca-f0k1pYvZ0a63-SF6H-7PcW5V;9;9;9;9;9;53-6G

Trait Changes:
A trait spread that pretty much is a must for all thieves. The 10 in DA is the most flexible, but 100 power and poison on steal is pretty important. Mug also gives a bit of a heal, so if you don’t open with steal, you can use it to give a tick of health.

30 in CS is unfortunately an absolute must on any thief that isn’t attempting a condition build. Thief is balanced around you having Executioner and the stats from that line, so not having it you’re hurting yourself.

30 Acrobatics is all about init and survival… things that are extra important with your giving up mobility for P/P. Only trait I consider flexible here is “Pain Response”. If you’re not having much issue with conditions, you can swap it out for fall damage if you’re in WvW, or inertia/reward in PvE. “Hard to Catch” simply has too long a cooldown and is too random to be useful. If you are having issues with CC, load more breakers on your utility bar as they can be controlled and used just as often if not more so.

Weapon Changes:
You like P/D for the jump back. SB gives you that jump back + a mobility move + much better AoE than P/P with ricochet will ever be. In PvE you just gather everything up with auto, then shotgun spam with #2 as you kite. EZ modes any amount of trash as you can hit up to 15 targets with it (5×3 bombs). D/P is also an option as you get access to stealth from your BP field, mobility and good cheaper damage.

Utility Changes:
Heal: You will be wanting to use your heals for vigor. Vigor is a must on P/P as dodging is your key to survival. Coupled with the food you should be able to dodge whenever you need to. Add in the immobilize breaker and the signet doesn’t compare. Though signet is still fine in PvE.

Util 7: This is your swap out utility. Refuge is for your party. It is important for standing them up. Scorpion Wire for pulling off walls or Skyhammer trolling. Assassin’s when solo (SB + shadow + steal + infi is all you need for chasing). RoI when you’re boss/champion fighting for the init. Sig of Shadow for zerg running.

Util 8: Shadow Step – Most may argu sigs over this, but this move is mobility + TWO stun breakers (a MUST in wvw/pvp) + condition removal. Enough utility to be worth it. PvE where conditions/stuns are not common or zerg runs where you’re less likely to be a target you can swap out for suggestions of Util 7.

Util 9: Infiltrator’s Signet – As P/P, init gain is extremely important. Add in the fact that this is a chasing/mobility move, and this will be a perma spot on your bar.

Elite: Basilisk Venom is important for two reasons. First it’s one of the shortest cooldown elites in the game, tying nicely with Lyssa runes. Second is that it is CC that can let you land your unload. Thieve’s Guild tapped with your vuln #2 (only time I’d use #2) can also be useful and is better for PvE.

Note on Signets:
Signet of rage is a poor signet due to it’s high cooldown of kitten . It’s also not compatible with any signet that has a cooldown as ALL cooldowns are shared – so that HP on crit won’t trigger because of that rage cooldown. Until that signet is on a 10s cooldown, never touch it for any build.

Signet of Fire will give you the AoE that you want on your pistols. Ricochet is nice, but with a RNG trigger and at the cost of power, not worth it.

Note on Runes
Scholar and Orbs are both great damage and are great for PvE. However in WvW/PvP, condition removal is a must. Lyssa runes give you condition removal that you need along with more synergy of the heals that you will be quick to use.

Hope that helps you. If you want me to rant what’s broken about P/P, let me know. Short story is I’ve never lost against a P/P user, and probably never will (unless the player is vastly more skilled than I) until they fix it.

Probably nothing… not sure of what mechanics are behind how PvE and WvW are hosted. Though separating them like this would assure that they’d be apart and thus could be individually manipulated.

Prime.8792:

I was about to suggest the same thing. Also, you should be able to guest on the servers within your league color. Blue able to help any blue server, green guest to green, etc.

As they would be their own instance, guesting to servers would not make a difference as you would be joining the instance under your own server. You would still be able to party with friends/guilds no matter their server anyways just like you can for dungeons/overflows/pvp.

World v World v World is an awesome concept that is one of my favorite things about Guild Wars 2. Unfortunately it’s also a fact that Numbers > Skill. Doesn’t matter that I can out play four people at once when there’s 60 people knocking on the door and I’m by myself. That magic find from the Outmanned buff is not going to help me kill them. Server WvW population and server coverage dictates who wins, not strategy. Higher tier servers are not as bad as everyone can field full maps, but then when you have a 6 hour queue for your main play time, that’s not really playing anyways.

What I propose is a pretty massive change, but one that can introduce variety to World vs World and make it competitive for ALL worlds rather than the most populated ones:

Red vs Green vs Blue

Each color is represented by 8 servers for NA and 9 servers for EU (which works out evenly for each color). World rankings by server will still exist as how many points a server contributes is still tracked. This plus their new seed used for current wvwvw will dictate the new groupings.

WvWvW would now be held on separate servers like PvP and overflows. It would also have separate instances or “rankings” so everyone can play, however these will be weighted to keep fights heavy. These instances would be selectable so you can queue for the top rank instances that affect your war the most, or lower ranks so your whole guild can make it into a single map and be able to work together (which coincidentally opens the lower ranks to PvE map explorers or GvGs or role play wars that could even be hosted by anet).

So how would your World still matter? Server bonuses would now be win based instead of point based. Each week your server helps your world (color) win, your bonus accumulates. WvWvW would have seasons, so at the end of the season, the world bonuses reset (along with a personal wvw point refund for strategy changeups). This also means that wins matter more as they would be something that affects your server for the whole season

So what would this change do:
- WvWvW matches would always be new and dynamic. Your allies and your enemies will be different each week.
- Strategy, team work and guild play will become more important. This would be from a combination of the more even fights at top instance ranks as each world/color can always field full teams, but you can pull your personal groups together to swipe a few points on lower instance ranks.
- It doesn’t matter what your server population is, your contribution now matters. This also means that every server can participate in massive world combat instead of stare at empty maps (unless you purposely search for empty map at lower instances).
- Matchups can actually be more fine-tunely balanced as you have multiple pieces to work an algorithm against instead of single servers.
- Classes in WvWvW can now be balanced separately from PvE – which is a pretty big deal.

Is this a solution that can be implemented overnight? No – probably not even the best solution, but a direction I hope Anet looks at. It’s impossible to have a dynamic and competitive WvWvW under the current system as it’s too population dependent. Sharing that population seems like the best solution to me.

Bhawb.7408:

No thanks. No more boons unless they are very well done (read: not this way).

If they decide to give us endurance, I want either endurance stealing, or “siphoning” (in the sense that their expended endurance is given to us in some portion). Not vigor.

I simply find this to be pretty genius. They spoke of reworking the Blood line and siphoning, and if they worked it to also siphon endurance, that would seriously wake the line up and give Necros access to the dodge they lack.

Remember though – Well of Power + Blood is Power = Vigor. Not a 50%+ uptime like other classes can reach, but something that will usually last through most 1v1 fights.

Or we could just say Berserker Stance is a broken skill that auto-counters necro until they fix it.

As for the stuns, kiting and dodging has always been the big counter against warriors due to their move predictability. Unfortunately as a class with the least access to vigor and no traits that help how often you can dodge, that makes it tougher for necros to do. However you do have a skill combo that works pretty well – Well of Power (pun intended). It’s a 5 second counter to stun warrior builds as you can’t be knocked down or stunned in it on top of also being a stun break. Use Blood is Power to give yourself that troublesome buff of vigor so you can now dodge more often once that Well wears out. If you can’t bring the fight in your favor with the well and vigor against a warrior, then he’s the better player.

And if you’re a power necro: Lich Form. Heck, it’s not bad on a condition necro either as it’ll still put him on the defensive with damage that’s still respectable and 5 jagged horrors that can lay on bleeds… I just wouldn’t normally slot this on a condition necro unless you’re having serious issues with a CC enemy.

Plague Form is ok – but it’s only an OS defensive button as you’re not going to be killing anything in it. Beautiful for getting past a zerg into a keep. Could also be used as a respite for cooldowns (toughness + vit + blinds makes it a tanky form), but your DS is better for that.

So are you SOL against stun warriors? Hardly. It’s just that you have to build against them, or they WILL roflstomp you. Berserker Stance is the real breaker, and once they fix that, I’d consider stun warriors fair fight.

Personally I see this as MORE reason for fights as you can get points off them. In close fights it lends more credence to battles and strategy. In fights where you’re already getting trounced, who cares if they get even more points?

Though I would like to see an internal timer set against stomp points to hinder alt account farming… something like once a person is stomped, they don’t count again for 10-15 mins.

For now I’ll resist placing my opinions of what changed and what should be changed. All I can say is I look forward to the thief mainhand pistol change – I’ve been wanting to play P/P Thief since this game started, but it has faced the fact of it being the only weapon combo with NO access to weapon based mobility, and on top of that, NO access to stealth. And in return for giving those up, you gain a below average confused weapon set. There have been a million posts of people saying what they think it should be… but maybe we’ll get to see what Anet thinks it should be. Don’t think they can make it any worse. :p

Sarcasm Travlane. Mesmers are the hardest to reach 100% swiftness uptime on, have no speed signets, and only one non-combat port that they can use to actually gain ground actively, which is on a rather long cooldown. Mesmers have the least non-combat mobility in the game. :p

As for thief, there are a dozen options to keep run speed and ports up, but screw all that. Just Sword #2 at the finish line, and as long as the race starts before the timer runs out, win!

Pfft, you’re all wrong. Mesmers totally have this hands down.

Bah, made comments to Nettle’s build and what I would do different and why – but screw that. Here is what I’d do:

http://tinyurl.com/c2nreop

Weapon swaps with energy sigils + vigor + Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew (only PvE/WvW) has given me enough dodge I never needed to use Signet of Agility. That frees up space for the much needed condition remover of Shadow Step.

Also consider “Uncatchable” as important as you need some control and that trait gives you that on this high dodge build. I could solo Champions in my sleep with this build (which I would be, due to how long Champions take with the mediocre DPS of Unload).

But as Nettle said, play it for fun, but you can’t use P/P competitively. The second your target has a block/evade/interrupt/invuln/reflect/teleport to add against their dodges against your predictable unload and they don’t suck, you stand no chance. You’ll understand once you face your first Guardian.

10/30/30/0/0 is a classic D/D or S/D configuration. However CS has better traits and better DPS gain than DA, so there is no reason to split 10 points off, so 20/20/30/0/0 is a no.

I do question if you were able to do as much damage as a 25/30/x/x/x build with any other combination. As thief has crap weapon traits, any point taken off of DA/CS trees is a numbers loss. However what’s the point of going for max damage if you can’t survive? Death = zero damage. The SA tree is a nice tree that greatly adds utility to stealth or when you’re WvW zerging to flip to venom heals/sharing.

Thief faces trait tree spreads that are both great and horrible. Great in the fact that every tree offers something you want, but horrible for the fact that with some of the lowest base damage in the game, you have no choice but to heavily invest in DA/CS if you want to have hope of killing anyone but a noob that doesn’t know how to remove bleeds… so there is no real build options anyways. Until they boost the Thief base damage to where you can pick utility and still kill effectively, enjoy your x/30/x/x/x builds.

Elusive.9481:

Drawing Guy.3701:

… and even if it all is already easy, you’re taking the entire parties time by making the dungeon longer because you are lowering your DPS majorly (not arguing lowering your defense, since the argument of MF is ok because you’re skilled and you don’t need that defense, it should be turned into DPS).

Turned into DPS by which stat exactly? At level 80, it takes 21 points of precision to increase your crit chance by 1%. Crit damage? That’s based on crit chance, so better more precision first. So then Power? What if all my gear already has a power stat? Or were you thinking I was wasting one of my stats on that measly 3% MF in the combo? Hmm 3% times 6, 7, even 8 pieces would give me 24% MF. Not that useful, but that DOES make pretty crappy armor.

Little Secret: That’s not where the MF is in my gear. My DPS is JUST FINE. I think all the MF haters need to look at an effective player that runs MF and then see how you would suggest they alter their stats. And I don’t want to hear a word out of someone who hasn’t touched a crafting profession, cuz you don’t know how much you DON’T KNOW about stat combos. That’s practically a guarantee that your jewelry is crap, unless you’re all ascended out. And please don’t tell me you’re running with the runes that came with that dungeon armor. If you need a proper demonstration, I can hop on my mesmer and his phantasms will EAT YOU. Any damage I do is practically a bonus compared to them.

Oh yeah, and does everyone remember that trait lines give you stats? There’s 700 points of stats that won’t show up when you ask them to ping their armor. Did you want to audit that too? Why don’t you just put on a rubber glove and do a thorough exam and make sure everything’s in order.

By the time you analyze and approve your party’s armor, you could have already been halfway through that dungeon.

Fascinating. Of course I poll people and spend hours verifying gear instead of just not bothering and doing the dungeon. I also assume people have their traits to zero, so don’t count those either. Having 12 crafting schools mastered (yes, that means I’ve done some twice as I’m an altaholic) though means nothing – you can max out crafting without ever buying all the recipes, and even then not all stat combinations are available in the crafting schools (though this update looks like it has added PVT). Don’t quite see how that then ties to ascended jewelry – anyone can hop to a Laurel vendor and see every ascended jewelry combination.

So you’re saying that your stats don’t suck as you’re not using MF armors. Cool, thanks for agreeing with us – less MF gear = better stats. MF accessories also come with a pretty big loss – the only exception being “all stat”. All Stat accessories come with a little bit of everything and actually come out ahead in raw stats, so they’re one of the few that I don’t consider a real compromise even if they’re not necessarily the most efficient. Runes by far have the best MF gain to stat/utility loss you can get with Food being the second. You still can’t argue against the fact that you are still making a compromise at the cost of the party. We can crunch numbers and make assumptions all day, but that doesn’t change the fact that every stat you lower to increase the self-serving Magic Find affects your effectiveness. There is no need for personal attacks or kittening that your mesmer can kick my kitten – even if you did win, that only proves you’re more skilled, not that Magic Find increased your ability to kill me because you know it doesn’t.

It actually is better that they attack. Unless the opponents had no clue they took the person they were attacking down, it saves nothing from that spot being AoEd to all heck. Might as well take down what you can, since if they down the target, it suddenly becomes much safer for you to res. I’ve also seen times where they don’t notice the refuge circle because they tunnel vision on finishing the downed person.

Of course the situation where it’s mass PVP or enough confusion where the opponents might not know where they went down, berate them for giving you away. :p

Sorry, Siva, but you WOULD be eating those Cluster Bombs. No one just stands there – as a P/P thief, if you don’t have at least 15 acrobatics for dodges, it’s a fail build as you have to make up for the lack of base mobility. You run out of my choking gas, that’s at least 3-5 stacks of poison/weakness. You dodge out, I baited that dodge for only 4 init and I can just cast it again. You’re not stopping the poison/weaken. Besides, I usually start the battle from stealth, thus immobilizing you. You’re eating that unless you eat your Withdraw or RoI right off the bat, which to me is an even bigger win than if you ate it. With my always having a minimum of 2 immobilizes + spammable cripple + infi arrow, mobility between your P/P and my SB is not a contest. Keeping CB on you is easy, and I have just as many dodges as you. The only difference is it’s 3 or 4 init wasted when you dodge, and for you it’s 5. P/P #1 is ignorable. #2 is ignorable. #3 is rediculously predictable, and have more than enough dodges + utilities to keep up on avoiding it. #4 is ignorable as Withdraw heal triggers instantly, and I don’t really care if you interrupt anything else. #5 means you just spent 6 init for that blind – SB is a lot weaker than it used to be with it’s auto-attack nerf, but it still can take on P/P easily. I have never lost to P/P, and the only time I ever struggled against one using that set was back when I used P/P.

Until they fix P/P, there is only two reasons to use them:
1) You want to, and don’t care if they suck compared to anything else.
2) You need to DPS a single target at longer than melee range. Cluster Bomb is better DPS than Unload at melee range, but at long range sucks due to it’s stupidly slow arc. All other thief weapons are melee, so that leaves no option but P/P. Though, of course, this situation only applies to anti-melee bosses in PvE.

As for your example, that fits the situation where P/P can shine: If the target has no blocks, no interrupts, no reflections and only two dodges. Warriors are one of the easiest targets in PvP as they have crap mobility – the mobility moves they do have are clunky and predictable – you can walk out of a Bull Charge, though I’m sure you just dodged or interrupted. And as a Bull Charge user, I’m sure he is a Melee using CC over Endure Pain, thus he had nothing but two dodges to avoid unloads. Saying P/P is a 3,3,3,3,3 is not saying you’re an inept player that uses one finger never touching WASD or utility skills, it’s saying that 90% of the time you use a weapon skill, it’s #3. My point is that everything else on the weapon set is so dredge worthy that you’re stuck using a sub par skill as it’s your only access to DPS. Heals/Utilities/Elites are fine.

As for the comment of P/P being an “amazing stealth build”, um why would you use P/P over P/D? P/D translates your #3 into a mobility move (giving you far far better escape than P/P). /D #4 may have been nerfed to uselessness, but CnD gives you access to all the stealth you need rather than relying on long cooldown utilities. Add in the fact that stealth blinds > BP, and the only thing you can argue the loss on is the interrupt and unload. But if you want DPS with stealth, you should be using Sword or Dagger mainhand. If you want condition, you use Pistol. And the expensive interrupt is a small loss for more mobility and more stealth.

I’m not telling you to give up P/P, I’m desperately pleading for Devs to give P/P some much needed love.

@jpnova – I’d rather see weakness added to Body Shot over cripple. The easiest counter to an unload is a dodge, and weakness helps stop that… but with little access to poison, it’s difficult to get with Pistols. Cripple is needed, however. There is a trait called “Ankle Shots”, but at this current time, it’s horribly weak having a 10s cooldown on the 3s cripple. RNG + long cooldown = fail. Personally I’d like to see this cooldown lowered to 5s, and I think this would help land it in more proper mobility control.

As for your other suggestions, my thoughts:
1) Yes, fits my suggestions too. I’m going double as I want pistols to be high risk high damage, but any increase is needed.

2) No. A reverse lunge works on SB as you’re constantly going in and out of melee range for Cluster Bombs. On Unload, you already are staying at arms length, so you’ll likely knock yourself out of range if not off a cliff. This would be a detriment to the move. Now if it knocked the target back, that would be nice. Though it can’t be a knockdown as that would be too OP.

3) This would be the movie dream of unloading during flips (as I’d want it controllable. Leaving it as just a backwards move would be just too much like Withdraw/RoI). To have it natively would affect its usability on the many dungeons that have narrow ledges, and to have it as a second activation would interrupt unload’s chainability… especially when you’re faced with those times where you don’t want to leap somewhere. However the cool factor and utility > usability issues this would cause, so I would gladly accept it. However balance may be of concern – it’s currently a slow channel. To have it cover that whole duration would be a bit overpowered. To have it cover only a small section would make the evade barely useable as it can’t be used as a reactionary move unless the evade is front-loaded. Making the move much quicker to keep the evade duration in check would work, but then the utility added would mean that the damage would need to be brought down (possibly 5 shots instead of 8 ).

TL;DR – the evade option would take a lot to balance, and would take a lot to code, so I don’t see it happening. Faster channel or harder hitting is pretty much all Unload needs IMO.

Cluster Bomb at 1200 range is a joke anyways as it then becomes so slow that it becomes impossible to kill anything. Can’t reach anyone with auto attacks to or from walls in WvW, so I’m faced with slow CBs that if I ever take anyone down, they can be healed up and walk away before my next CB lands. Add in any other situation with ranged fighting, and you’re the lone target standing at 900 range while everyone else is 1200+. It’s not a flavor factor for thief, but a major issue. I’m fine with it being a trait, but I feel it’s needed. Unfortunately this is far from the only time this has been suggested.

Siva Mira.3546:

- snip as it makes my post too long

My responses, and why I stopped maining P/P:
1. True, but this also faces the greatest weakness of thief: Initiative is shared. P/P is one of the most initiative hungry combos in the game – Unload is your only access to DPS, and costs 5. Headshot is your interrupt that can stop the heal that would have undone all of your unload damage, but costs 4. Black powder can add survivability, but costs 6. Mobility/stealth moves costs 4+ init to use. You’ll never kill anything with conservative use of initiative with P/P as the DPS is simply too low, so you can often find yourself seconds dry from that escape, and that would = death. Utilities can help close that gap, to be used for escape or to be able to stay on target, but your lack of native moblity/control means that an active fight eats those too. Short story – you either cripple your fighting ability to keep an escape, or you go do or die to be able to fight.

2. Very true. As I said in 1, 4 and 5 are both useful… but they are also expensive. I personally don’t think P/P can afford BP, as eating half your initiative for a few blinds on a init starved set is highly iffy. It might work on a 1v1 where the target is too dumb to just auto-attack off the blind and dodge/block/reflect your subsequent single unload… but the most it does is delay the battle for less time than the init you consumed – thus it is a loss. Headshot is useful, but once again expensive for what it is. I save it for that casted heal or all mobility breaks are down and 100b is about to skewer me. Won’t bother talking about auto attack and body shot. 90% of the time you should just be dodging and 3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3

3. Bull kitten. An SB will be P/P any day if both are good. If the SB user sucks, sure, the SB would lose, but that applies to anything – Skill > Class/equipment. But seriously, Chocking Gas will keep you perma poisoned and weakened, Weakened being the hard counter to dodge builds like P/P. SB can keep you crippled and stick on you for Cluster Bomb shotgunning, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Add in the fact that SB auto from stealth is an immobilize (I’ve won many fights from this), and it’s no contest. Oh, and my Cluster Bomb I have less than a second where dodging would interrupt my attack, as I can trigger it during dodges. The only thing is that SB lost auto attack due to the kitten nerf, so it’s now a melee range only weapon.

4. True. The stealth move off P/P is a condition move, and if you’re running P/P, you’re likely not a condition build unless you don’t know what you’re doing. Thus stealth doesn’t really help you except as an escape. However it’s a powerful escape, so it’s hard to go amiss with SR on your bar.

5. I used to think that, but then as I sPVP and tPVPed more, I woke up to the fact that by simply swapping the utterly worthless mainhand pistol with anything else, I get more utility, mobility, and more DPS. P/P doesn’t crumple against multiple targets, P/P crumples against anyone that is slightly mobile. You have nothing to stop them as even the trait sucks as it has a lame 10s cooldown for a chance at a 3s cripple, while anyone else will keep you crippled a minimum 50% of the time. Your only DPS move is easily dodged/interrupted/blocked/reflected. If the target has no blocks, no interrupts, no reflections and only two dodges is the only time P/P shines. But then any other DPS would shine against that, so once again, why take P/P over D/P or S/P (or any other weapon combo period)?

I think all thief Pistol moves need major help, but mainhand Pistol is completely broken. The only thing that is ok on it is the stealth attack for condition stacking, but if you want to use that, once again you’re not using P/P, it will be P/D… which once again gains you mobility, stealth and actual bleed stacking that P/P can’t give.

I want to use P/P. My first month as a thief was P/P. But I can’t justify its use competitively.

Puru.4217:

It’s because you can’t really stealth underwater which means you can’t abuse shadow’s embrace. On top of that you lose shadow return condition removal be it on sword and shadow step which doesn’t help either.

Basically yes, thief condition removal underwater sucks, your only choice are a 20 acro trait, signet of agility (you need it underwater) and HiS.

That being said there’s no way to avoid underwater combat as a thief since withdraw + roll for ini + spear 3/5 and speargun 5 (use this when fleeing, can switch to spear and use 3 to block some ranged hits aswell if they miraculously catched up with you) = impossible to die.

This all translates to “I run away and it’s impossible for them to stop me from running”.

As for the location, it doesn’t really matter – though PvE doesn’t count for any strategy as it takes no strategy to mow through PvE. You can just #3 stomp PvE… so this would be WvW or PvP.

Johnny’s suggestion of venoms to root and #5 spam seems to be the most realistic way to have a hope of underwater battle. I really really do not want to have to rely on Lyssa runes for condition removal, especially considering that in sPvP it only matters on one map. But the suggestion moves of RoI and Withdraw would defeat the whole point of doing underwater in sPvP, as the only reason I’d touch underwater is to capture. Also not sure I want to roll so heavy into initiative gain as I don’t need it above water. Lacking those points, I may not be able to hold like that.

Short answer seems to be there seems to be no secret way I was missing, though I’ll be using venoms more. =d

So I don’t have a problem with thief condition removal on the ground – shadow steps, traits, heals, etc make it where conditions are not a big deal. Underwater, though, I get roflstomped by any tanky condition build as their vitality/toughness beats out my already sub-par underwater attack long enough for their condition stacks to kill me. Underwater, my ONLY condition removal option is HiS – and on a 30s cooldown that is absolutely not a reliable condition removal tool. No access to shadow steps, no access to stealths (beyond that HiS), etc… it sucks.

So what do you guys do? Use Purity/Generosity sigils? Runes of Lyssa? Flee underwater combat the second you see conditions stacking? Or is there some effective method I’m missing?

Honestly an indicator helps learning curve pretty well, though text color can work. Confuse also has an indicator, and is just as massive, but being pink and mostly transparent, it’s not as painful.

Personally I’d like to see the image shrunk (and changed from brown! Yellow so it’s golden fists of pain). Another option is an icon in front of the numbers – indicate without filling half the screen.

Sadly I do realize that they said they’re concentrating on bug fixes – but they didn’t say there would be no balance changes.

There is one suggestion I read to Pistol #5 BP that would increase it’s utility without buffing D/P (and possibly even making it more difficult for them): Make BP targeted. Updating my OP to reflect.

Unload with a dodge so you can do dives and cartwheels like movies would be epic. At that point I’d use it to troll and look boss rather than kill crap. However such mechanics can also render a move difficult or impossible to use in sections of the game. Like GG on harpies in Fractals.

Two SotGs ago, they mentioned adding mobility to Pistols. How they plan on it, I really have no idea, but they obviously haven’t made up their minds yet as no changes have been made. I personally still desire them to be high risk – high DPS, but the decision is not mine. We’ll see how it goes, I just hope that they do not continue to be ignored.

It’s obvious this guy is a troll, as he hasn’t posted again. Not even with over 3500 attack and 122% crit damage with every hit landing as a crit would you see those high end damage numbers unless they were on a vulnerable stacked underleveled noob. Noob being the key term, as anyone that doesn’t stun break and get out of your rooted pistol whip sucks. Anyone that doesn’t block/dodge/reflect the second your slow unload starts is a noob. The only numbers that may have merit on a real 80 is backstab on a build like mine where you pre-up with Assassin’s Signet and your steal/CnD brought them to below 50% on a glass cannon target. THERE I have seen a 14k hit. Of course the stars aligned to make that number happen make it complete overkill and pointless.

The Unload is what I find most priceless – I used to try so hard to use P/P in WvW. Had to love the difference of my being able to kill someone or not is if they knew how to dodge. Add in a Guardian with bubbles and reflects, and you might as well just hand them your pistols. My own thief has never died to a P/P thief on any build I’ve had – stealth builds they can’t even attack me half the time, and with no mobility, they’re easy as pie to get behind and blast. If they dare go GS with their pistols, one combo knocks them. And if I’m not a stealth build, I’m a mobility build, so I’m either dodging or breaking the LoS of the unloads. Not that if I stood and let it hit me in the face would it kill me. Sadly the Haste Nerf hurt pistols from even when I tried it actively – that attack rate actually made Unload fast enough that you could bait the dodges and actually get two or three off before they could dodge again and I was able to actually get kills.

As it stands, the only way you’ll effectively get kills with P/P is in a group so you’re not a single easily avoided target. Of course assuming that the party is also hitting that target, as most likely anything other than a glass cannon will just ignore it and heal for more than you hit them.

Dasorine – it’s not a thing of “perfect” stats – it’s about going for what is most effective for your playstyle and teamwork. Full Zerkers on someone that knows the game and doesn’t die would be most effective on them while someone that constantly dies should be using more defensive to be effective. People can go for condition damage, tanking, healing, DPS, whatever… THOSE are playstyles. Greed should not be a playstyle.

As for how much it slows it down, it’s not “slightly” – it’s pretty major. Same party, same classes, you drop the entire party’s effectiveness by 10% just by swapping to MF gear. This is assuming a perfect run with no variance. If that slowdown then causes time for someone to die, that number can only climb. If you’re the more skilled better player on the party, that means you control a bigger chunk of team effectiveness, and thus that slowdown climbs once again. Only if you’re basically a tag-along not really contributing anyways could you calculate that percentage smaller. But by the mere fact you’re almost halving yourself for your greedy “how you want to play”, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be the least contributing player anyways.

Magic Find needs to change. Until it is a state where it does not harm a team in any way or at least provides a shared benefit for that shared harm, it is a bad thing in this game.

Skill > Stats is the only argument for MF gear.

But does not Skill + Stats make you more effective? Sure, having a skilled player in MF gear is better than a noob in Zerker gear that is constantly dying – but that’s not the point. This is not a discussion of player skills, but the fact you’re gimping the party to feed your greed. The whole party dies but you’re the last one standing, yay? But what if you actually had the stats that gave you the ability to kill everything before your party died? Taking a minute or two longer to kill something can make a major difference on a party success… and even if it all is already easy, you’re taking the entire parties time by making the dungeon longer because you are lowering your DPS majorly (not arguing lowering your defense, since the argument of MF is ok because you’re skilled and you don’t need that defense, it should be turned into DPS).

TL;DR –
Magic Find is a greedy stat that you are lowering your effectiveness to use and hurting the party to do so. If you argue that skill makes up for it, NO. The math should be taking Skill + Stats then. The argument that you’re better in MF gear than a noob in Berserker gear that constantly dies is just stupid and unrelated. I’m better than someone without arms or legs at basketball – does that mean I should tie an arm behind my back making the game harder for my team because sponsors might give me more money?

- Actually Vital Shot should do 100% more DPS than it does. It’s currently half damage and 2/3rds bleed damage compared to bleeding shot. But I want it’s attack rate to be doubled (so it actually is .5s or less per attack) rather than its damage brought up.

- Body Shot does need to be buffed or made cheaper (another debuff like weakness, duration brought to 8 or 10s, cost 2 instead of 3, something like that)… though brought to the level of Brutal Shot would be a bit too strong as it is indeed faster and has no CD. Though Brutal Shot is now at a level I find it more worth it.
- I’m not even sure I’d take it at 40%. Pistol traits really need to be brought together and new weapon added and others buffed. A MASTER 5% dagger trait, a MASTER 5% SB/Harpoon trait, NO traits for sword or spear, and three little traits for pistols scattered in trees. The 10% on Pistols as an Adept trait wouldn’t be bad if not for the Pistols already sucking. A 60% chance to cripple for 3s on a crit on a 10s cooldown is weak. A 20% chance to ricochet is also pretty bad, especially as a master trait. Personally the Ricochet merged with the Pistol Mastery and the cooldown on Ankle Shots lowered to 5 or 6s. As that would make Pistol Mastery stronger while still finding Ankle Shots not that powerful, they should be changed on ranking to (Ankle Shots > Adept. Pistol Mastery > Master). That would free a trait to give to other weapons. I’d go onto those, but that’s not the subject of this… but part of the reason that 25/30/x/x/x equates to the highest DPS option for any weaponset is because those trait options suck so utterly.

@Zacchary – The painfully low base damage is exactly why a Thief HAS to build full power/crit to have a hope of killing something with these weapons. Even with mixed traits and non-DPS runes, my Warrior crits for 3k per shot on his rifle while my thief with glass cannon everything only hits 1k on his pistols per shot. They need to hit faster or harder. Maybe people in early level hot join sPVP think they’re ok against people that just eat repeated Unloads, but those same people would have died more quickly if I just went up and slapped them with a sword as I would have had real utility to go with better DPS just from auto-attack.

Pistols have been ignored in every update for Thief – and while I had hoped from the last SotG that they were looking at it from the comment regarding thief’s low base damage it has been missed yet again. I’m sure they realize pistols need work, but I’m hoping that some ways to look at them and pointing out that it is of concern will help make it hit this next update.

replicacloned.2809:

I think Anet just needs to decide what they want pistols to bring to a fight.

Daggers and Sword are pretty straight forward. With P/P you would assume it’s a DD set, as the heavy hitter is Unload. But, the stealth move is a quick stacking bleed ability. No one in their right mind is going to stack power and precision for a hard hitting Unload, and then use Sneak Attack as anything more than a filler. Even tho Thieves stealth abilities are supposed to be a big part of the profession.
It doesn’t make sense to me. To have a weapon set that screams DD, and then have a condition applying special ability.

Like I said. Anet needs to make up their mind. Make pistols condition based weapons with higher condition damage and duration on Vital Shot, or remove the bleeds from Vital Shot and Sneak Shot and up their direct damage.

For me, I hope it’s a made into a conditions play-style. Daggers and Sword are the DD weapons already. SB is the utility/AOE weapon. Pistols should be conditions.

(And if they decide to make pistols the condition weapon of choice, Unload should stack bleeds, like Sneak Attack, but the DD should be toned down.)

Shortbow already provides bleeds and poison – P has only bleed. With it’s low damage, I’ve always considered it the condition ranged weapon, and a DPS range weapon is needed. As for Pistols having bleed, a weapon containing a debuff is extremely common – that D/D has poison. Those bleeds actually tie nicely to the t3 DA minor of 10% against a target with conditions, though I’d be alright with that translating to damage instead as damage stacks infinitely and conditions do not in a party. The other reason I wouldn’t want it to be a condition set (despite the suggestion of adding a condition to P4) is that P/P is already a condition set on Engineers. The less copying, the better.

There’s no question that Mesmers have the highest invuln time with their short CD Blurred Frenzy and F4. Blurred Frenzy already locks you in place and from skills – F4, though, should have the same limitations placed on it that Elixir S and Mistform has to be fair.

Now as for healing being blocked, this is a bit of a case of one ruining it for everyone. The Elementalist, of course, as they have they could just Mistform and Ether Renewal to strip all debuffs and get a nice heal, and there was nothing you could do about it. I would also argue that Elixir S + Heals made the bunker Engineers a bit too tanky. But really the question here is what is the purpose of invulns? To make channeled/important moves unstoppable, or as a respite from attacks that could give the seconds needed to finish a cooldown and live to it?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Drawing Guy.3701:

The signet use should still have a sacrifice, but I agree that the active of the Assassin’s signet needs work. I personally find the 3 attack boonsteal to be a pretty genius idea.

Um no. That would mean an S/D build will be able to 100% boon denial.

Are you guys even thinking this through?

Umm, it’s not able to already? S/D #3 is spammable – having this signet ability on a 45 second cooldown does not massively increase the already high rate S/D is capable of while opening the utility to more weapon sets.

Mixed opinion – this is obviously meant to make boon bunkers vulnerable, so prioritizing defense over attack makes sense. And as 90% of boons are defense, that would put Might at the bottom (though hopefully above Fury at least). Unfortunately this means that the more dangerous heavy Might stacks can be protected by keeping Swiftness, regens etc on. Is RNG worth the risk of losing the reliability of taking Protection and Retaliation off that Guardian and finding yourself with regen and vigor instead? Should Might be placed higher on the list? Whatever the case, boon steal is a direction I love seeing this going, and I hope it goes beyond S/D

The signet use should still have a sacrifice, but I agree that the active of the Assassin’s signet needs work. I personally find the 3 attack boonsteal to be a pretty genius idea. Though to be perfectly honest, if we want purpose to match the signet name, I’d do this:

Assassin’s Signet: (30s cooldown)
Passive – Grants 180 Power
Active – Shadowstep to your Foe

Infiltrator’s Signet: (45s cooldown)
Passive – Regenerates one extra initiative every ten seconds
Active – Steal a boon on your next three attacks

Took the time to put my thoughts in the suggestion forum. Unfortunately this forum is spammed with pages of random junk posted daily, so anything not hot enough to keep it first page will be likely not be seen – so maybe we can keep it going?:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Thief-Pistols/first#post1933734

Would also love to hear thoughts.

DeWolfe.2174:

Umm…. I’ve been hit by a 9k+ Unload before. That’s with about 1600 toughness. Soo….. I think something is working for pistol.

Umm, that’s 9k over a period of a few seconds. My warrior’s axe auto attack would do that in that amount of time. Or looking at Thief skills, the specs required to get a 9k unload would get a 9k backstab on that armor. Actually, you can name a class, and it could do more damage than that in the same or less time built the same way. And the only way to do that is a 25/30/x/x/x stats with every piece of equipment glass, and you still usually hit for less than 9k total after the full channel. It’s not utter worthless ignorable damage, it’s mediocre damage. It’s mediocre damage that takes over 2 seconds to cast, is horribly predictable so anyone with a brain cell will dodge/block/reflect it, so often they can outlast your initiative… which leaves you hitting for 1k per second with auto attack. Woo!

Eviscerate damage = burst. Killshot = burst. Backstab = burst. Mesmer shatters = burst. Etc, etc. Thief Pistol/Pistol has to pay out the nose to reach just the auto attack level of most weapons, as anything else on their weapon does nothing. How is that balance?

Continued:

4 – Headshot: A spammable interrupt is always nice, but this is expensive for nothing else. What I would like to see is a confuse added to this… because seriously, would you recover in a quarter second after being shot in the head? “Dazed and Confused” makes perfect sense, and would make it worth the cost, and would open the debuff a bit.

5 – Black Powder: Make this a targeted ability. This greatly opens the utility as it allows the field to be placed where the blind pulse triggers are actually on the enemy, or where party attacks can make the most use of it without placing yourself in danger. This helps S/P and P/P utility without giving any real boost to D/P (as self targeted stealth is what they’d use it for anyways). While still a bit painfully expensive for those that can only use it as a blind, it eeks that small edge that I think it needs.

Now I realize that my suggestions is a major boost to pistols, but for those that have played thief, realize that this (or something like this) is needed to fix pistols. Something like this would make P/P viable, bring completely ignored skills in use, and finally fix the auto-attack. Any love would be a help, and hopefully this will make it to a Dev to help point out that they need to be looked at.

[EDIT] – Updated suggestion for Black Powder

Right now Thief Pistols are the weakest weapons in the game. They have to be combined with a different weapon to derive a use from them as they are useless for DPS and their utility skills far too costly on their own.

Let’s break this out:
1 – Vital Shot: This skill takes about .8s to cast, has a .4 attack modifier and a 4s bleed at 900 range. Compare that to a nearly identical skill, Warriors Bleed Shot with takes .96 to cast, has a full attack modifier, 6s bleed and 1200 range. So for barely over a tenth of a second faster, Vital Shot is less than half the damage, has 2/3rds the bleed time all at 2/3rds the range. At this point Vital Shot is so weak it’s a joke – if it were to be buffed to match the warrior skill, the tenth of a second faster shot would make up for the shorter attack range, but homogenizing the game is not what I want to see. Having the animation cut in half would be the preferred method. It would still do less physical DPS than Warrior, but the ability to stack the bleeds higher would make up for it and make this the small quick hits it was meant to be.

1 – Stealth Attack: Fine as is

2 – Body Shot: This move currently is not worth its initiative cost to DPS gain vs just using the initiative to cast another DPS move on any weapon combination. In party situations where you have high DPS without people that already have innate vulns, it can come to a very situational use, but generally then it’s still iffy. Several things can be done – it can be made to hit harder so it becomes a DPS move along with the vuln. It can be made to cost 2 init instead as that will start making it mathematically viable. It can have a cripple or weakness added. Just some kind of minor tweak is needed.

3 – Dual Skill: As this depends on the weapon set:
- D/P – Shadow Shot: This received a recent buff to become unblockable on the blind. Along with being a mobility move, this is a nice move, no further adjustment needed.
- P/D – Shadow Strike: This is a reverse weaker version of Shadow Shot that costs the same as it’s the same ultimate damage without the blind. Wouldn’t mind seeing a minor bump on the attack, but as is still worth it.
- S/P – Pistol Whip: Under the old haste, this move could be comboed so it can be completely unloaded during the stun hit and was pretty OP. The damage was nerfed accordingly, but then haste was nerfed. So now that it can’t be fully delivered and is less DPS than Sword auto, it’s use is questionable due to the root. As it can be avoided relatively easy, having the backend damage back to make the gamble worth it would be nice.
- P/P – Unload: The crux of this and the main reason for this post. If you dare to pick P/P, you give up all of your mobility moves and stealth moves, for what? A .3 coefficient channel move that takes 2 seconds to cast. The damage is weak, but as you have ZERO damage options with P/P, you have no choice but to eat the 5 init cost for a mediocre move to be able to use the weapon combo. The DPS of auto attacks of most weapons (other than thief pistols of course) outdo the DPS of unload. Personally there are two directions that I would like to see this move take: Either double the damage or halve the cast time and lower the cost to 4 initiative.

The first option of doubling damage would make it where a thief can afford to pull away from a 25/30 build to work on initiative gain for high sustained ranged DPS making them a solid choice in dungeons and help break the current trio. It also would mean that a tank could no longer stand there and just heal through my unloads – nothing is more frustrating than being a FULL GLASS CANNON thief with full glass cannon traits, and not being able to do more damage than a single heal – so they would actually need to actively avoid the predictable move (projectile reflect, blocks, dodges, etc).

The second of halving the cast time turns the move into an unsustainable burst. It’s faster attack speed makes it a burst, but eats initiative at a rate that you can’t gain initiative fast enough to sustain the move. You can actually “unload”! This opens more tactics as it actually becomes useable in a venom cast and is more unpredictable (which coincidentally means you’re more like to eat your unload when someone reflects). I do think the damage is low enough it should cost 4 instead of 5, but balance would need to be looked at.

Between the two options, the first is better in PvE as sustained Boss DPS would be desired, and the move is simply too predictable in PvP. The Second option would be better in PvP and arguably more balanced due to the higher initiative cost to reach that DPS. No matter case, this move needs desperate love as there needs to be a reason to give up mobility and stealth on a minimum HP, meh defense, no buff character that relies on those very options… and becoming an actual glass cannon that can easily kill or be killed is where I would like it to see it go.

Every patch since I’ve made my thief I’ve been hoping for a buff to P/P. I want to play my thief with P/P, but no matter how hard I tried, giving up mobility and stealth for LESS DPS just was not playable competitively. Heck, I gave up trying to use it in PvE as why take 15 init and 7s to kill one mob with 3 unloads when I can kill it quicker for less initiative with any other weapon? I guess I’ll hold my breath for the next patch.

As for the rest of the patch notes, most are relatively nice but the Short Bow nerf. I’ll have to see how bad it is, but part of the factor that made up for SB crap damage was the reliability of Trick Shot along with it’s multi-target. I’m hoping it’s fast enough to not fail on general mob walking, but as a spinning, obvious projectile I fear this may render it useless in PvP except against unaware groups.

So the real question, with the SB nerf, P/P being ignored still, D/P > D/D, etc that everyone just runs with D/P and S/D?