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There are many archeypes that could be filled:
Heavy – Myrmidon (Warrior/Ele hybrid), Warlock (DeathKnight-ish), Barbarian (pet/tank/berserker)
Medium – Explorer (jack-of-all-trades), Bard
Light – Shaman (ritualist), Monk/Priest
They haven’t even balanced the classes that are already in the game, so the likelihood of a new class anytime isn’t going to be high.
hint: the classes will never be balanced. Balance doesn’t work that way, it’s iterative and never-ending. They can’t hold off on releasing new content for this reason or the game would never grow and then die off very quickly.
The only concept that’s broad enough to fit and isn’t covered by another class already is an arcane knight type class (a gish in D&D terms). I definitely would like to see this.
1.) Living World vs. Personal Story (including new zones and permanent dungeons)
2.) New Skills/Traits/Weapons
3.) Tuning of aftercast and gimpy weapons
RedSpectrum hit the nail on the head
P/P isn’t more capable at DPS than any other set in the game, the only difference is that in order to even reach reasonable damage you have to dump literally all of your Initiative into spamming Unload, which means you get absolutely nothing in the way of mobility OR utility, and vice versa. No other set on any class in the game has this problem, because all other classes use cooldowns (no direct competition between the skills) and Thief’s other weapons use the autoattack as their primary source of sustained DPS (which is how it should be).
This is all due to how horrible Vital Shot is. If they would just buff Vital Shot’s damage or reduce its aftercast by about .2 seconds it would magically fix the whole set.
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To keep you logging in every couple of weeks.
Also there wouldn’t be a sense of urgency or progression to some if you could just simply go back and replay things.
Have a persistent sense of urgency is worse than having no sense of urgency at all, and there would be a better sense of progression. No offense, but people who think lots temporary content is a good idea really don’t know what they’re talking about. If you want to know why there are numerous breakdowns in any number of posts explaining how it’s a waste of development resources that sets the world back, how it just serves to put off most types of players by forcing them on a treadmill or out of the game altogether, etc. etc.
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They need to focus on permanent growth and expansion of the game world to actually keep players engaged and motivate lapsed players to return to the game.
What? You don’t like the Southsun cove?
I love the Southsun Cove, and don’t in the slightest understand why there haven’t been any new zones since.
Some weapons are simply useless. Will they get fixed, or just completely reworked as they should be?
No, they won’t.
Meanwhile we still have stuff like the No.3 skill on Thief Pistol and Dagger with no offhand which just boggle my mind why they are there in the first place.
Yeah, they really need to give every class an ‘empty’ skill set that, for the offhand, is semi-viable. Thieves in particular should actually have options to specialize in fighting with only a single one-handed weapon.
But, that’s a different discussion. I am very concerned about how many ranged weapons feel broken almost entirely because of aftercast issues.
To myopically boost short term profits at the expense of long term sustainability- a very typical corporate blunder.
Seriously, though, it’s pretty much the worst idea ever in a game like GW2. Not only is it a massive and pointless vacuum for development resources, but it just discourages players from coming back when they get tired of trying to keep up and fall behind. They need to focus on permanent growth and expansion of the game world to actually keep players engaged and motivate lapsed players to return to the game.
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I would really like to get some discussion and feedback around this.
I understand and even respect to an extent that you don’t want to display aftercast data to prevent theorycrafting from totally ruling the game, but there is something about them that’s been bugging me a lot from day one that this recent patch is pushing me over the edge on: The aftercasts are all over the place and seem badly tuned on a lot of skills, especially the autoattacks on ranged weapons, and they’re never discussed about and appear to rarely receive balance passes.
As an example, people complained nearly unanimously about how weak the Longbow felt on Rangers for a very long time, which I identified early on was largely due to how slow the rate of fire was on Long Range Shot for its damage specs, leading to poor sustained DPS on top of its rather mediocre utility. The firing rate was finally improved, which resulted in a badly needed buff, but the Warrior’s Dual Shot remains painfully slow for no apparent reason. While it’s still situationally effective for its other skills, this forces it into a highly specialized utilitarian role and makes it feel awkward and weak as a primary weapon.
A similar issue exists with Pistols. Both the Engineer’s Exploding Shot and the Thief’s Vital Shot have very sluggish firing rates for their specs. This is an annoyance for the Engineer, but it entirely breaks P/P for the Thief due to the way Initiative works – it forces you to rely on Unload (an Initiative hog) for not just burst but also sustained DPS, which cripples your utility AND mobility just to get the same DPS you’d get from any other set in the game without sacrificing anything. It also just isn’t fun or engaging.
There are other examples too, but those are the most egregious ones I can think of right off the bat. Are these actively reviewed and tested during balance passes?
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The Pistol auto-attack must be the weakest in game… its is very slow, does very low dmg and the bleed is insignificant…
I think engineer pistol auto attack is weaker.
less damage and less bleeding duration but a small aoe.But engineer pistol is made for condition builds while thief with p/p has a condition auto attack and a physical damage dual skill.
Engineer auto is arguably weaker (it’s probably comparable), but it’s less of a problem because they use cooldowns instead of Initiative.
Also, the fact that Engi pistol auto is so weak is further evidence corroborating that they have tuned the aftercast poorly for many ranged weapons (specifically Pistol an Longbow- they corrected the latter on Rangers but not on Warriors, and have yet to touch Pistols).
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Yes, Vital Shot is and always has been the problem with P/P (and to a lesser extent P/D), which I’ve posted about multiple times. The change to Body Shot wasn’t bad necessarily, just misguided and will do little for its problems. It is the worst autoattack in the game single-handedly creating the worst weapon set in the game for one specific reason- Initiative.
Let me elaborate. Unlike any other class in the game, Thieves use Initiative. This has the effect of pitting all of their skills besides #1 in direct competition with one another. That isn’t a problem when the primary source of sustained DPS is the autoattack and #2-#5 all provide various forms of utility, but that isn’t what happens with P/P.
Entirely because of Vital Shot’s weakness, Unload becomes your main source for not only burst but even for sustained DPS. This has the effect of rendering every other skill in the set into a near-useless state because they siphon resources you need to do basic, sustained DPS. That is why P/P has always been broken and remains so to this day and Vital Shot is 100% of the cause. I’ve been arguing about this since launch and there are still a lot of people that don’t get it.
Vital Shot needs to fire faster or hit harder with a longer bleed duration so that it can provide good sustained DPS on its own, with Unload being more utilitarian for burst support. I firmly believe they have simply mis-tuned its aftercast and it subsequently does less DPS than it is supposed to, destroying the entire set. No change they make to Body Shot short of making it egregiously OP will correct that problem. Buff Vital Shot Anet.
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But in the last patch, wasn’t the time gap between the stun and the flurry reduced? Do you think it’s worse than it was before the last patch?
As an aside, I actually thought it was kind of weird that the stun and the evade overlapped so much after that patch. I think they just need to buff its damage back up 15% to remove that misguided nerf from a long time ago.
Yeah, this patch was very, very underwhelming for the time that we waited.
They don’t even address things across the board, just piecemeal. There’s inconsistency, myopic changes, and odd behavior all over the place:
Why does the Warrior LB auto Dual Shot still have the 1.25 aftercast resulting in an atrociously slow rate of fire when the Ranger’s was re-tuned months ago?
Why was Lightning on the Elementalist’s staff, which is very overtly weaker than it should be, hardly touched at all?
Why was Body Shot updated when the actual problem with Thief’s P/P is Vital Shot’s pitiful DPS, forcing you into perpetual resource starvation?
What’s the deal with aftercasts in general? It’s a hidden stat that renders other stats (such as Activation speed) useless and makes it near impossible to meta?
Why has PW still not been buffed after it was nerfed to correct a balance issue caused by Haste and Haste was later nerfed?
The list goes on and on.
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PW has been jacked up for some time.
First was the damage nerf to correct an issue that was actually caused by Haste and not PW.
Then they fixed Haste to what it always should have been and didn’t rebuff PW.
Then they ‘buffed’ Pistol Whip by speeding up the execution, which only made the stun and the evade overlap and was functionally a nerf in some situations.
Now this.
I don’t P/P on my thief much but messed with it yesterday on my condi P/D setup and its not bad. It is still expensive but if you have initiative management traits to help its not to bad. It does fire slow though. So far I have found it best against other thieves. Initially I thought it would be good against mesmers but I think it is decent against them but with clones in the way wasting 4 ini and hitting a clone sucks. Overall I would say its decent change. 2/5.
While it certainly isn’t perfect, P/D is not broken in the same way P/P is, and this upgrade arguably does more for it than it does for P/P despite how it affects Dancing Dagger. The main reason P/D is more functional is that most of its sustained damage comes from Vital Shot and the Sneak Attack (costing zero Initiative), which means you have more freedom to use the #2-#5 skills as you see fit. With P/P, Body Shot has to compete with Unload for Initiative and Unload will almost always win.
I’m not opposed to this change in and of itself, but I’ll repeat for the 400th time that Body Shot wasn’t really the problem with P/P, even though it’s complained about a lot, and this update will do little to fix it.
The problem that really needs to be fixed on P/P is that Vital Shot is not potent enough to carry DPS for the set, because it:
a.) is not optimizable due to having hybridized damage, and
b.) has too long of an aftercast for its offensive specs
This combination cripples P/P by making you overly reliant on Initiative (Unload) for not just burst but also sustained DPS. This is in turn why everybody complained about Body Shot – because it directly competes against Unload due to the Initiative system, which requires you to lose far too much damage to make applying Vulnerability to be worth it in 95% of situations. No other class has this problem at all and even within the Thief only Pistol and to a lesser degree the Shortbow are affected much.
This is a systemic problem primarily revolving around the tuning of #1 skill in the context of Initiative that needs to be addressed with both of these weapons. I don’t necessarily have a problem with the damage on Vital Shot being hybridized so that it can work well with both P/P and P/D but it needs to at least fire faster or hit harder with longer bleed stacks. Then, Unload would fall into a more utilitarian role, meant for sharp spikes in damage when you don’t need to move or be defensive, rather than having to provide the bulk of your sustained DPS. Not only would the corrected flexibility make the set more functional, but it would also make it more fun and engaging to use.
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I’m not opposed to this change in and of itself, but I’ll repeat for the 400th time that Body Shot wasn’t really the problem with P/P even though it’s complained about a lot.
The problem that really needs to be fixed on P/P is that Vital Shot is not potent enough to carry DPS for the set, because it:
a.) is not optimizable due to having hybridized damage, and
b.) has too long of an aftercast for its offensive specs
This combination cripples the entire set by making you overly reliant on Initiative for basic DPS. This is in turn why everybody complained about Body Shot – because it directly competes against Unload due to the Initiative system, which requires you to lose far too much damage to make applying Vulnerability to be worth it in 95% of situations. No other class has this problem at all and even within the Thief only Pistol and to a lesser degree the Shortbow are affected much.
This is a systemic problem primarily revolving around the #1 skill that needs to be addressed with both of these weapons. I don’t necessarily have a problem with the damage on Vital Shot being hybridized so that it can work well with both P/P and P/D but it needs to at least fire faster or hit harder with longer bleed stacks.
I cant’ believe this change went live. The problem with P/P is and always has been that it’s overly reliant on Initiative to be effective at dealing damage. This is why Body Shot sucked (it was in indirect problem, not a direct one).
What should have happened is a buff to Vital Shot and a redesign to Unload to make it have a different domain than Vital Shot and put it on a more level playing field with the other utilities that you currently get little use out of because you have to drop all your damage to use them.
Seriously, whoever is in charge of balance updates is atrocious at their job.
I don’t agree. Many thieves have wanted body shot changed for a long time. I do agree that vital shot should have got a buff though. I am not sure if I would change unload much. If I did anything I might just speed up the animation and lower initiative cost by 1.
This isn’t really an opinion. Body Shot didn’t suck any more or less than any other vuln stacking skill. Its main problem is that it takes Initiative to use, and so does your main damage skill. No other class OR weapon pits your damage and your utility directly against one another that way. You always have to over-sacrifice on one to get the other, and it makes the whole set feel clumsy and feeble. Since damage is essential in most circumstances, the utilities have to be egregiously overpowered to compete. It’s also a bit of a problem with the Shortbow, but no other class has it and even the other Thief weapons aren’t as bad because the #1 (free) skill usually serve as your primary source of damage (this is how it should be).
In other words, no matter what Thief players may think, the problem with P/P is the design of Vital Shot and Unload that results in your main damage skill being an Initiative hog, not Body Shot. The fact that whoever does these balance updates doesn’t seem to get that leaves me with little hope for the game in general, to be frank.
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And a useless update to Body Shot to fix P/P when Body Shot was never the problem with P/P and 100% of its problem remains.
I’m particularly floored by the lack of updates to Air, which is very overtly the weakest attunement for Staff by a large margin.
Seriously, I’ve been playing Marvel Heroes a lot lately and the difference in quality with both the updates and response to feedback is staggering.
I cant’ believe this change went live. The problem with P/P is and always has been that it’s overly reliant on Initiative to be effective at dealing damage. This is why Body Shot sucked (it was in indirect problem, not a direct one).
What should have happened is a buff to Vital Shot and a redesign to Unload to make it have a different domain than Vital Shot and put it on a more level playing field with the other utilities that you currently get little use out of because you have to drop all your damage to use them.
Seriously, whoever is in charge of balance updates is atrocious at their job.
It’s hilarious how bad they are at this kitten. The change to Body Shot is laughable. The problem with the set is and always has been that it does weak DPS because its primary source of DPS is the #3 skill instead of the #1 skill, which creates unsustainable resource competition.
The change that has always needed to happen is a.) a buff to Vital Shot and b.) a redesign of Unload so that it has its own functionality rather than being your bread and butter shot.
I would get rid of it altogether and package it as permanent expansions to the Personal Story along with upgrades to the Personal Story to help make it more engaging and immersive, such as:
-use more elaborate in-game lore and piece them together into a more coherent narrative
-the ability to replay instances and/or reset your story through a gem shop item
-create longer, more complex instances/dungeons. Right now, they’re so short and spread out that they’re highly forgettable.
-add a mechanic that lets you gain allies that you can use in personal instances
-add an interface where you can review bios/images of allies and NPCs, manage certain things about them, and add/remove from your personal instance party.
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Yes, this is pretty much #1 of the list of about 8 major flaws with the concept of the LW. It’s no surprise that for many players what started with ambivalence or even excitement has slowly eroded into irritation. The longer that temporary content is the primary focus of development, the more the growth of the game gets set back and the more the game-play experience suffers for the majority of players who just find it stale and trite.
They made a major miscalculation in thinking that change was an adequate substitute for growth. It wouldn’t be even if the LS was of very high quality (which it isn’t). And players are frustrated as the world just gets more and more stale.
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I have mixed feelings about this post. While I appreciate the sentiment and do think some people need to chill out (including myself probably on some occasions), his post also came across as attempting to downplay or deflect their own responsibility for the tone of the forums, which is quite large.
The fact is it came off as a little condescending and accusatory, like they’re attempting to shift blame to the paying customer base for caring about the game and getting irate when something doesn’t meet the expectations that have been set. They as a company have at least as much, if not more, responsibility for this than individual players do- not in the sense that they need to mindlessly center their develompent around players’ concerns and criticisms, but that they should keep communication channels wide open and explain their motivations for why something is being done or not being done that the community has strong feelings about.
The LW genuinely does not seem to be that popular, but they keep pushing it. Why, just for the sake of being innovative? There are a lot of conceptual problems with it that make it very dubious at best, but nothing is ever talked about concerning it. Nobody really wanted Ascended stuff – why was it done? Why was there never an admission of mistake and/or an attempt to correct? There are lots of class/weapon balance issues, but updates are painfully slow and extremely myopic. The list goes on.
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Yeah, I’m fine with it mostly being the same. I’d prefer they concentrate their development efforts on more lasting content.
Just so everyone knows, the term ‘Ranger’ does not refer to fighting at range, it refers to roaming ranges of land, as a warden of sorts. In most fantasy settings, Rangers are primarily scouts and skirmishers, proficient with blade and bow. Their weapon selection, including the lack of a rifle, is appropriate.
That said, I agree with pretty much all the OP’s suggestions, but we need new weapons altogether as well, such as greataxes, whips, claws, etc., PLUS the ability for single-wielding to be viable.
Yeah, it’s time. What really needs to be done is new weapon types to open up more build possibilities.
I used to be lukewarm to the idea of the Living World, but over the last 6 months my opinion has shifted. There’s really not even much opinion involved, just learning – it just straight up isn’t a good concept for quite a few objective, measurable reasons, which I’ve listed on a few occasions. Chief of all, the excessive focus on temporary content is really just a development vacuum that serves no real purpose and has only succeeded in setting the game back dramatically from where it could be by now.
I like the living story. I like the constant change. It’s nice to know that if something I don’t like is added then in 2 weeks, there will be something else. It’s not the same thing over and over and over. It’s not stale, it’s not static. Every two weeks is something new. I like it.
You get this with traditional (permanent) content updates without causing people to feel like they have to play in specific ways at specific times or rush them through time-gated content to experience it. Trust me, the LW concept is not good for the game and never has been.
It seems the majority of players are either ambivalent about it or outright dislike it. There are many good reasons why, too, the biggest ones being:
a.) continuously being thrown on time-gated achievement cycles starts feeling like a chore very quickly and both the achievements and the rewards become very trite.
b.) It’s a gimmick that very obviously revolves around the gem shop and results in very little world-building.
c.) temporary content is a waste of development time and hurts the game more and more the longer it remains the primary focus
d.) the overarching narrative is totally broken by the ‘flavor-of-the-month’ style of the LS and results in a world and gameplay experience that feels very shallow and fragmented.
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Definitely need me some Crystal Desert and/or Maguuma Wastes. I think one of the number one issues in the game right now is that there isn’t quite enough diversity in the landscapes.
I don’t in the slightest get why they felt the need to remove the former path to add a new one. It’s almost like they have an obsession with removing content instead of making it fit in and balanced.
Please just pull the plug on the LS. With all due respect, the LS has a number of problems, not just in its execution, but in its basic concept and, frankly, has done little but worked tirelessly to sabotage this game’s success from day one:
1. It is inconsistent with the launch content and creates cognitive dissonance with the PS and launch dungeons. Why would all of that be ‘static’ but character-driven when everything since is ‘living’ and development-driven? It interferes too much with suspension of disbelief for anyone who’s nerdy enough to pay attention to it (me). The world doesn’t actually feel alive, it just feels like content is rushed in then yanked out for no particular reason.
2. The fast release cycle without even so much as a test realm means rushed, buggy content, which just goes without saying as being bad for the game and its reputation.
3. The constant release-pull-release-pull is a massive development vacuum that continuously diverts resources away from development that would result in actual growth, which any MMO needs to stay fresh. Over a long period of time, the game suffers immensely and has little to show for it compared to traditional content updates, which fuels disinterest for both veteran and lapsed players.
4. The content so far at least has had a very ‘flavor of the month’ vibe which fragments the overarching narrative and makes the world feel shallow. In part because of this shallowness, the releases also become trite very quickly, which helps drive further disinterest. This is a total shame because the world of Tyria is very interesting and has the potential to feel very deep and immersive if they could just do a better job of presenting the right lore in the right way and drawing players into a deeper, interconnected story.
5. Rushed, time-gated content release after release is just incredibly annoying. Completionists get frustrated and abandon the game, casuals don’t really get to experience it, and hardcore players don’t find it interesting enough to bother with. In short, it’s an epic fail for everyone that isn’t just in love with it for some arbitrary reason, which is almost certainly a minority of the players.
6. The business model to an extent encourages periodic, recurrent play rather than persistent play. When a player who lapsed a couple months back logs in to see what’s changed (which is common), they don’t see much except for a bunch of archived achievements they can’t get now, therefore they immediately check back out of the game. The hemorrhaging of players is another self-perpetuating snowball.
I care about this game immensely but, despite a few solid releases, it has been on the wrong track since launch. I do remain cautiously optimistic that year two will be better than year one, but you need to seriously get it together with the way the game is being developed.
Best:
1. Halloween – flavor was fantastic
2. Southsun Cove – permanent new zone, even if it’s small, it’s pretty
3. Fractals – interesting dungeon concept, permanent addition
4. Bazaar – acceptably temporary, great lore, high-fantasy feel
5. Wintersday – good flavor, not quite as great as halloween
Worst:
1. All the temporary stuff that isn’t tied to recurring events/holidays. So, almost everything but the above. Seriously, just stop with temporary content, it blows. The game would benefit a thousand times more by permanent expansions to the lore and game world.
There are other weapons that make a lot more sense than OH Swords. That really isn’t all that Thief-y, everyone just expects it because of WoW’s Rogues.
It’s really not a great change. It’s better than nothing I suppose but the real problem with P/P is that Unload takes the role that Vital Shot should have and mucks up Initiative management for the whole set, leaving every other skill in a near-useless state.
The 4 and 5 skills should be hand to hand skills. Stuff like “Throw Sand” or “Dirty Punch.”
This is what I’ve always said. They should create appropriate hth skills for #4 and #5 when you don’t have a weapon equipped for all classes
I love the two or three dissenters criticizing the OP as if he’s just trolling when the reality is the majority of people who bought this game would probably agree with all of it.
I care less about the Overflow issue, but the other points are pretty much all spot-on.
A dev said that the reason you get that #3 skill is for new thieves who don’t have an off hand. It’s not for actual play. I mean. Unless you want to I guess
That’s kinda the thing though, it should be viable. I’ve never been particularly keen on the way the game ‘forces’ you to dual-wield. It seems especially weird on Thieves, to be honest. I tend to see Thieves as being single-dagger or single-sword with a free for acrobatics/manipulation.
So, in short, I don’t really think that dev response is adequate. They need to rework them to be actual viable skills, and there needs to be some way you can gain some benefit from single-wielding.
I would probably be inclined to agree with you, but it’s important to note that the bar is pretty low. The LS direction has been dreadfully ill-conceived, and it’s really because the whole concept behind it is highly flawed.
I’m hoping that they learned a lot from year 1 about how rapid-paced, gem-shop supported gimmicks and fragmented, temporary, time-gated content are just about the worst way to manage an MMO. The LS in a nutshell has basically equaled dumping massive amounts of resources into a black hole and succeeding only in driving players from the game as it remains unpolished while growing stale and trite.
Their design direction since launch has been dubious at best and arguably downright atrocious in quite a few key areas, most of which ultimately stem from the way they’ve insisted on handling the “LS”, which really is neither living nor much of a story.
There’s a whole lot about the way the game is handled that just feels lazy. The lack of a test realm, the lack of communication, the lack of a cohesive narrative, the slow pace of balance changes, the lack of direction in gameplay, etc. etc. I’m sure it isn’t the result of the developers and content designers actually being lazy, it’s probably more that that they’re kept under the barrel of this foolish, broken “living world” concept which keeps them too rushed to do things right or to focus on polish.
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i think we need to see the patch live 1st then continue on how body shot will works towards p/p gameplay, but i am sure that it will be a beast on p/d condi set.
And Unload itself its not really amazing skill, it just the best DPS we currently have on p/p. adding CC/evasive skill to Unload will be overkill imo, so the decisions to add CC to bodyshot will do some decisions whether to melt the target or root the target in place.
And lets not forget that Body shot could bounce 50% of the time when traited, could be awesome for team disabler.
While I get what you’re saying, you aren’t really understanding my argument.
“Root on MH Pistol #2”? Er, what root? Are they going to add one or something? (only rooting I’ve noticed for Thieves is on Pistol Whip; a really annoying skill. Wish they’d give the option to have multi-strike skills show the per-hit damage rather than an increasing total – seeing it go from like 400 to 800 to 1200, etc. makes it look like you’re doing 2400+ damage total)
Yeah it’s in the patch notes for the big October patch. It’s a totally pointless and ill-conceived change. The problem with P/P isn’t Body Shot; it’s a systemic problem with resource competition that is mostly due to the design of Vital Shot and Unload. That’s where its issues need to be addressed.
No offense, but you clearly don’t understand what I’m saying.
I love when someone disagrees with someone else and they start saying “you don’t understand”.
One can understand and disagree at the same time.
He just doesn’t like your Unload redesign proposal, nor do I.Also, one fundamental concept.
Skills in GW2 are not designed to be an alternative to the main DPS skills, nor to be rotated.
They are meant to be situational; you use unload for DPS, headshot for Control, vital shot for Condition dmg, etc.The only class that defies the concept is Elementalist who needs to rotate all their skills to deal decent DPS.
If you want to use all your skills a la WoW you can roll an Ele, so you can play piano with your numerical buttons and believe that makes you a pro, instead of having to use your skills intelligently.Yes you can understand and disagree, but that isn’t what’s happening here. Your analysis is mostly right, and that’s exactly what the problem is. The Thief has a unique resource mechanic – it isn’t cooldowns, it’s initiative. No other classes deal with this as a potential problem because they use cooldowns so their skills don’t directly compete with each other.
The Initiative mechanic means that the bread-and-butter damage skill should always be the autoattack like it is for every other Thief set because it uses no Initiative and therefore isn’t directly tied to your ability to use other skills. #2 – #5 should operate in a supplementary/specialized role. They offer some utility and may be better than the autoattack DPS wise in some situations, but not all. Unload is uniquely among all sets totally superior to Vital Shot, and that single-handedly breaks P/P by forcing you to choose at all times between maintaining DPS or having any utility whatsoever.
You can argue all you want, but I’m objectively right. The main thing that needs to happen is that Vital Shot needs to be buffed in some way to work better with P/P and Unload should be redesigned to work in some unique way that makes it only situationally better than the other skills, including Vital Shot.
It is what is happening here. I disagree, give you my reason, and you state I don’t understand. Here is what I understand:
You want to diminish Unload’s effectiveness in order to buff a skill you like better. No. No thanks. You go on your merry way. You give NO reason to change the skills other than you don’t like the way YOUR preferred skill works and would rather a non-preferred skill be diminished in order to get your preferred one buffed.
No thanks. I do understand, and I disagree. Better yet, it won’t happen. Close discussion, carry on.
No, this post demonstrates your lack of understanding of both the situation and my argument with even greater transparency.
This isn’t actually a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of fact. Thieves uniquely have Initiative, which means they uniquely have direct resource competition with their 2-5 weapon skills. The only way that can function well is if the primary damage skill is the auto-attack and the 2-5 skills are more tactical/situational/utilitarian.
Doing it any other way means that whatever the primary damage skill is (in this case Unload) is going to consistently out-compete the other skills and leave them in a much less usable state than they should be because in order to use them you have to siphon resources you need to keep damaging your target.
That’s why people complain about P/P having such poor utility and mobility – it isn’t because it has poor utility and mobility, it’s because you can’t make proper use of what it does have without sacrificing your DPS more than is necessary on any other weapon set in the game.
(edited by Einlanzer.1627)
No offense, but you clearly don’t understand what I’m saying.
I love when someone disagrees with someone else and they start saying “you don’t understand”.
One can understand and disagree at the same time.
He just doesn’t like your Unload redesign proposal, nor do I.Also, one fundamental concept.
Skills in GW2 are not designed to be an alternative to the main DPS skills, nor to be rotated.
They are meant to be situational; you use unload for DPS, headshot for Control, vital shot for Condition dmg, etc.The only class that defies the concept is Elementalist who needs to rotate all their skills to deal decent DPS.
If you want to use all your skills a la WoW you can roll an Ele, so you can play piano with your numerical buttons and believe that makes you a pro, instead of having to use your skills intelligently.
Yes you can understand and disagree, but that isn’t what’s happening here. Your analysis is mostly right, and that’s exactly what the problem is. The Thief has a unique resource mechanic – it isn’t cooldowns, it’s initiative. No other classes deal with this as a potential problem because they use cooldowns so their skills don’t directly compete with each other.
The Initiative mechanic means that the bread-and-butter damage skill should always be the autoattack like it is for every other Thief set because it uses no Initiative and therefore isn’t directly tied to your ability to use other skills. #2 – #5 should operate in a supplementary/specialized role. They offer some utility and may be better than the autoattack DPS wise in some situations, but not all. Unload is uniquely among all sets totally superior to Vital Shot, and that single-handedly breaks P/P by forcing you to choose at all times between maintaining DPS or having any utility whatsoever.
You can argue all you want, but I’m objectively right. The main thing that needs to happen is that Vital Shot needs to be buffed in some way to work better with P/P and Unload should be redesigned to work in some unique way that makes it only situationally better than the other skills, including Vital Shot.
(edited by Einlanzer.1627)
I, like many others, not only have no problem choosing where to use our Initiative, but I prefer Unload as it is. While not the same burst as d/d, Unload delivers a nice burst of ranged dps.
No offense, but you clearly don’t understand what I’m saying.