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What is “meaningful progression”, exactly? Inflating your stats incrementally to match the new mobs in the new dungeon you have to run over and over? This is an illusion, and a bad one.
News flash. Everything in games are illusions. None of it is actually happening.
As for progression, gaining stats to become more strong to take on new content is actually progression.
Not gaining stats so that your character remains stagnant is not progression.
The argument is that you gain skill, so your character is stronger because you are better.
Counter argument is that you gain skill in both models. Another counter argument is that you are role playing a character, and adding stats is a form of representing progression for your role played character.Way to completely miss the mark on the illusion thing. And, the argument isn’t that you gain skill – its that you gain stats. Gaining skills or things that require more skill would be a generally good example of horizontal progression, which is generally accepted as the better option of the two.
Your whole argument is flawed because where you use the word skill, it should be replaced with “stats”. And that has nothing to do with skill.
Curious, how are these new skills different than your old skills? Do they offer easier ways of dealing with content? Would having these skills put you in a better position than people who do not have these skills?
In a sense, yes, because they expand your versatility. They just might not give you an immediate “I win” button, which is desirable as it forces you to rely on actual skill, rather than your characters stats, which makes the game both more engaging and more realistic.
If you can’t see that that’s superior game design, I just don’t know what else to tell you.
You just described the current system in place. Thank you.
And? Did you think I was complaining about the system?
What is “meaningful progression”, exactly? Inflating your stats incrementally to match the new mobs in the new dungeon you have to run over and over? This is an illusion, and a bad one.
News flash. Everything in games are illusions. None of it is actually happening.
As for progression, gaining stats to become more strong to take on new content is actually progression.
Not gaining stats so that your character remains stagnant is not progression.
The argument is that you gain skill, so your character is stronger because you are better.
Counter argument is that you gain skill in both models. Another counter argument is that you are role playing a character, and adding stats is a form of representing progression for your role played character.Way to completely miss the mark on the illusion thing. And, the argument isn’t that you gain skill – its that you gain stats. Gaining skills or things that require more skill would be a generally good example of horizontal progression, which is generally accepted as the better option of the two.
Your whole argument is flawed because where you use the word skill, it should be replaced with “stats”. And that has nothing to do with skill.
Curious, how are these new skills different than your old skills? Do they offer easier ways of dealing with content? Would having these skills put you in a better position than people who do not have these skills?
In a sense, yes, because they expand your versatility. They just might not give you an immediate “I win” button, which is desirable as it forces you to rely on actual skill as well as experimentation and trial/error, rather than your characters stats, which makes the game both more engaging and more realistic.
If you can’t see that that’s superior game design, I just don’t know what else to tell you.
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What is “meaningful progression”, exactly? Inflating your stats incrementally to match the new mobs in the new dungeon you have to run over and over? This is an illusion, and a bad one.
News flash. Everything in games are illusions. None of it is actually happening.
As for progression, gaining stats to become more strong to take on new content is actually progression.
Not gaining stats so that your character remains stagnant is not progression.
The argument is that you gain skill, so your character is stronger because you are better.
Counter argument is that you gain skill in both models. Another counter argument is that you are role playing a character, and adding stats is a form of representing progression for your role played character.Way to completely miss the mark on the illusion thing. And, the argument isn’t that you gain skill – its that you gain stats. Gaining skills or things that require more skill would be a generally good example of horizontal progression, which is generally accepted as the better option of the two.
Your whole argument is flawed because where you use the word skill, it should be replaced with “stats”. And that has nothing to do with skill.
Thanks for beating me to it.
In essence, when you gain stats you aren’t really gaining anything. It’s just a numeric inflation that means nothing for your character. Hence, it’s an illusion. Furthermore, it’s an illusion that serves no purpose other than to gate content and lock you into a forced linear approach to the game, which actually does harm to the cohesion of the game world.
When you gain skills, skins, etc., you actually are gaining material things that affect the way you both see and play your character. In other words, it’s real content. Real content that helps immerse you into the world without obsoleting 90% of the game at any given moment.
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I believe a major problem for a portion of GW2 playerbase is the fact that endgame is really catered to the altholic. 5years of development built around the idea of enjoying alts and taking them to min/max very casually and w/o skill. That is GW2 endgame.
This is great for the playerbase above, imo will not change. So will the other players adapt to this playstyle? Nope, and that is fine. Everyone can’t enjoy the same thing, arguing a change in GW2 direction will not change GW2 or that playerbase (myself) that enjoy meaningful progression, subscription model, & effect of trinity in pve/pvp.
What is “meaningful progression”, exactly? Inflating your stats incrementally to match the new mobs in the new dungeon you have to run over and over? This is an illusion, and a bad one.
GW2 has a great system, it is lacking one thing and one thing only – content. The problem with the end game in Guild Wars 2 is that there just simply isn’t enough content yet to satisfy long term goals. We don’t need new levels/gear levels that lock you into a linear ‘progression’ through content gating and a false sense of achievement, we need things like:
Lots of new skins
New crafting goals
New weapon types
New metaevents
Lots of new skills that can be acquired through specialized means
Broader variety of zones to farm spread across the existing level range (the zones are beautiful, but they’re kind of samey and get repetitive)
Lots of new dungeons with improved encounters.
New WvW and stpvp maps
More cultures and cool NPCs to interact with
Eventually, new playable races and classes
Perhaps an expansion of the current skill # from 10 to 12-16
The scaling system that already exists in the game means that old content is never made totally obsolete, so unlike a game like WoW, where the only meaningful stuff to do in the game is stuff that’s brand new, all content here continues accumulating and remains usable. The more they add to the game, the more you can vary your gameplay with any particular character and the less stale the game will be.
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Yes, it should be un-nerfed. Dancing Dagger should also, for that matter, though not by the full amount. It was nerfed by 50%, it should have only been by 25%.
Einlanzer has been bring this up regarding Pistol #1 practically since the launch of the game (read: a long while)
[snip]On the one hand, that’s great – Einlanzer has noticed this and I’m glad he’s brought it up, and we shouldn’t let it go unfixed.
On the other hand, if he’s been bringing it up since near-launch, for such a long time, and it’s not fixed yet, it gives me very little hope that it will be fixed… /sigh
It will get fixed…eventually. Just that, according to Anet, more pressing matters are bumping these issues to the bottom of their list.
To me, this is one of the most pressing issues in the game, it’s making an enormous number of builds across professions barely playable and is the single greatest contributor to various balance problems.
I guess if you mess somthing up and revert it back — it becomes good news. :/
They shouldn’t have done it in the first place.
Well, it’s positive that they are willing to more or less admit it was a screw up by reverting it the very next patch. They could have remained defensive and stubbornly insisted it was a good move.
On the other hand, why is Revealed even necessary in PvE, and is it necessary at all now that culling is fixed?
What makes more sense to me is putting all Thief weapon skills on a very short global cooldown, like .5 seconds, to allow you maximum flexibility without the ability to truly spam. It would also fix that annoying tendency to accidentally over-queue if you’re used to profession hopping.
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Only way to fix unload is to make it do something like burn people and make it an aoe. When it bounces from the trait, it should burn people again or something.
They don’t need to do anything to Unload, they need to fix Vital Shot and Ricochet. That would do wonders for the set.
So, as numerous people have posted about numerous times, P/P (and to a lesser extent P/D) just plain does not work right and is a totally borked set. Lots of explanations, suggestions, and workarounds (as well as some defenses) have been given, some are good, some aren’t, but most dance around the most critical issue affecting the set by far: Vital Shot. Vital Shot has a sluggish rate of fire for its stats, making it offensively weaker than it should be in general, but there’s more to it than even that:
You see, the way Initiative works makes it imperative that your autoattack, which is your only free source of DPS, deals appreciable enough damage that you have the freedom to be flexible with the way you use your Initiative. This is actually a problem with both SB and MH Pistol, but is masked a bit more with SB due to how well it performs in specialized roles, largely due to Cluster Bomb.
P/P’s major problem is that Unload is both significantly stronger than Vital Shot (while still not being amazing) and benefits from different stats. This pigeonholes the player into building power/crit for maximum efficiency, which widens the gap between the two even more. This in turn forces you to play P/P in such a way that you’re constantly dumping all your Initiative into Unload in a frantic attempt to prevent reliance on Vital Shot from instantly cratering your DPS. This also means you are left with no resources to use elsewhere, meaning you are perpetually crippled with regard to mobility and utility at a max range of 900 yards. In short, the inequality of the two completely destroys the usability of the set.
What needs to be done? Regardless if it’s a bug or not, Vital Shot needs to have a faster rate of fire (maybe something much closer to its stated Activation speed like the Rifle) or do significantly better direct damage so it can provide decent DPS support for both P/P and P/D.
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Pistol/pistol seems to only have a role as a high single target dps but it just doesn’t deliver that so unload seems to be the failing skill.
It’s easy to assume that at first, but see above: The biggest failure is on the part of Vital Shot. Because of the thief’s resource mechanics, it is imperative that the #1 skill provide an appreciable amount of DPS, which allows you to use your Initiative in a freelance way based on circumstances. If you need a momentary boost in DPS, use Unload, if you need to protect yourself for a moment, use Black Powder, etc.
P/P’s major problem is that Unload is both significantly stronger than Vital Shot AND benefits from different stats. This pigeonholes the player into building power/crit for maximum efficiency, which widens the gap between the two even more. This in turn forces you to play P/P in such a way that you’re constantly dumping all your Initiative into Unload in a frantic attempt to prevent reliance on Vital Shot from instantly cratering your DPS. This also means you are left with no resources to use elsewhere, leaving you with perpetually crippled mobility and utility at a max range of 900 yards.
In a nutshell, the inequality between Unload and Vital Shot screws up the entire set, and the blame is really more on the latter. I don’t think it needs to be direct damage only, it just needs to be better. It needs to fire faster so it can both do more direct damage and maintain more bleed stacks.
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The problem is really with a specific weapon set not with the class. P/P thieves are just bad for PvE, the reason is that the weapon set is a contradiction. your auto attack skill is mostly for condition damage, it keeps a nice 5 stack of bleeds on the target. your 2 skill is completely worthless. It will always result in less dps then anything else you can do until there are 60+ players attacking the target, then the 1% dmg increase it offers will outweigh the cost. 3 skill is pure dps and pretty good dps, but it has no condition dmg so using it negates your autoattack as it lets your bleed stacks fall off. 4 and 5 are both very useful defensive skills, but they are neither good for dps or condition damage.
Basically pistol has needed a complete redesign since BWE 1. it just has never happened. it either needs to be a direct dps weapon, a condition dps weapon or something else, but right now it is just a waste of time and space compared to every other weapon available to the thief.
I would disagree
may attack does not do much damage, but your second attack stacks vulnerability. Very useful in dungeons. Going invisible and using your 3rd skill is plenty good as well.No, it’s exactly what he said. It is badly designed, but the most egregious problem is how weak Vital Shot is, which forces you into Unload dumping, which means you might as well not have an autoattack, and also means you stay Initiative depleted and can’t use the other skills.
It’s really a terrible set and needs to be redesigned.
the set is not terrible, it’s only the auto-attack that actually needs redesigning. Unload does a hell of a lot of damage and thieves in p/p are the only ones able to stack vulnerability that efficiently.
Well, Vital Shot is definitely a disproportionate contributor to the problems with the set and fixing it would definitely make it a lot less bad than it is now, but there’s still plenty about it that just isn’t quite up to par.
Ricochet is needlessly inferior to the Piercing available elsewhere. It should be something like a 50% chance to bounce to one target and a 25% chance to bounce to a second one.
Body Shot is far too situational to be considered good. Even as a Vuln. stacker it is inferior to many other skills from other professions. It needs to do more direct damage or have some secondary effect.
Head shot should probably cause momentary confusion or something. With P/P you have very limited mobility and kiting ability outside of relying on certain utilities like Caltrops.
Black Powder would be fine if you could actually use it, but you can’t because in order to make any headway in fights you have to sink 100% of your Initiative into Unload.
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Why not just make unload drop a fire field at your feet? With all those shot something’s bound to catch fire. This way it does condition damage in addition to physical.
And is P/P good in PvP/WvW? I see a lot of these p/p threads but they all focus on PvE. I’m just curious as I’ve never tried P/P for anything and the image of a cowboy with 2 pistols is stuck in my head now.
This doesn’t fix the core issue with the set – that the autoattack’s (free) damage is too poor to rely on even for short periods, meaning you have to constantly dump all your initiative on Unload to do significant damage, meaning you get zero utility while your sustained DPS is barely mediocre, all at less maximum range than most ranged weapons and with atrocious defenses.
It’s really very laughable how bad it is and that it’s been 8 months since launch.
The problem is really with a specific weapon set not with the class. P/P thieves are just bad for PvE, the reason is that the weapon set is a contradiction. your auto attack skill is mostly for condition damage, it keeps a nice 5 stack of bleeds on the target. your 2 skill is completely worthless. It will always result in less dps then anything else you can do until there are 60+ players attacking the target, then the 1% dmg increase it offers will outweigh the cost. 3 skill is pure dps and pretty good dps, but it has no condition dmg so using it negates your autoattack as it lets your bleed stacks fall off. 4 and 5 are both very useful defensive skills, but they are neither good for dps or condition damage.
Basically pistol has needed a complete redesign since BWE 1. it just has never happened. it either needs to be a direct dps weapon, a condition dps weapon or something else, but right now it is just a waste of time and space compared to every other weapon available to the thief.
I would disagree
may attack does not do much damage, but your second attack stacks vulnerability. Very useful in dungeons. Going invisible and using your 3rd skill is plenty good as well.
No, it’s exactly what he said. It is badly designed, but the most egregious problem is how weak Vital Shot is, which forces you into Unload dumping, which means you might as well not have an autoattack, and also means you stay Initiative depleted and can’t use the other skills.
It’s really a terrible set and needs to be redesigned.
I’m just throwing this out there – I’ve leveled multiple toons, including both Thief and Elementalist, and Thief is unquestionably too squishy for its offensive output and utility, at least at lower levels. On top of that, they have a Downed State that is utterly horrid in solo PvE. Lastly, Stealth not dropping Aggro was one of the most ham-brained ideas I have ever heard of in my life, and cannot even begin to fathom where it came from.
And P/P is among the worst sets in the game, it’s very poorly designed within the context of the Initiative system, but more importantly Vital Shot is broken and fires way too slowly for its offensive specs. This is also probably the same problem with Longbows, Staffs, and Scepters (and notably NOT Rifles).
No offense, it’s a nice critique, but all of these suggestions just dance around the fact that P/P has one particular problem that is disproportionately significant – Vital Shot.
Vital Shot represents your “free” DPS, and it’s much lousier than an autoattack should be. So is Trick Shot for that matter.
Due largely to very sluggish rate of fire for its offensive specs, Vital Shot struggles way more than it should (especially with Unloading frequently) to maintain an appreciable number of bleed stacks and does terrible direct damage on top of that. If they fixed that, you’d see a vast improvement to the usability of P/P because it would enable you to get by without needing to frantically dump all your initiative constantly into Unload and you’d be able to make use of the other utilities while also maintaining more consistent DPS.
Now, there are definitely other things that need some work too, such as Ricochet, but Vital Shot is without question the most significant single problem with P/P (and it’s honestly not great for P/D either).
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I swear to God if they don’t fix the kitten activation speed/total cast time issue affecting Longbows, Pistols, Scepters and Staffs (and notably NOT Rifles), I’m going to lose it.
This is likely almost the entire reason these 4 weapons get complained about all over the forums, and it’s a rather ridiculous thing to remain oblivious for months on end.
It’s particularly dumb because it’s actually a sensible enough thing that it could really come to fruition one day, kind of like Blood Elf Warriors – I bet he laughed at people requesting that too.
I hope you didn’t lose all your money then. Besides, the day that kind of stuff happens, engineers will also be wielding martial staves and necromancers will use rifles and turrets. After all, it would be lame that only one class gets slaughtered, people could be jealous!
I can’t even follow the train of logic in this post. No surprise there.
To add to this, it’s something affecting more than just Vital Shot and Trick Shot, the #1 skills for may of the ranged weapons behave the same way, and are also much weaker than you’d expect them to be.
The sole exception seems to be the Rifle, which shoots at a rate very close to its stated activation speed, and unsurprisingly feels a lot stronger than the others. There are two other examples where they had Activation speeds removed in order to increase the speed, and now fire at an appropriate (or close to it) rate: Mesmer’s Greatsword and Ranger’s Shortbow.
This is almost certainly a bug or an oversight, and equally almost certainly why Longbows, Pistols, and Staffs (and probably Scepters too) are complained about all over the forums.
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By the way, regarding the pistol’s #1 – we all know that it has about 0.75 seconds activation time, whereas it’s listed as 0.5 seconds. That’s ridiculous – since its a 50% error, and an outright lie to user.
But you want the real travesty? Look at the Thief’s shortbow #1 – Trick Shot. Listed as 1/4 second activation time (that’s 0.25 seconds per shot, or 4 shots per second). The real activation time? 0.95 seconds (according to wiki). That’s a 200% error in the tooltip, and its obvious by how ridiculously underpowered Trick Shot really is.
I made a bug thread, because as far as I’m concerned, a difference between listed behavior and actual behavior is a bug.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Thief-Vital-Shot-and-Trick-Shot-Cast-Time/first#post1849457
Yes, they’re both problems. And it isn’t isolated to the Thief either – Engineer Pistol, Warrior Longbow, and Ranger Longbow, and Elementalist Staff at the very least have the same issue, which is probably why people complain about those a lot too.
I really don’t think it’s intentional, either, despite what a lot of people say. It seems to be they just aren’t paying enough attention to how the skills are performing, JP himself said they are trying to balance through traits, you can’t be myopic like that.
SO you are saying that all weapons should be available to all classes in this game? The type of staff you are talking about and the type of staff skills used in GW2 are on polar opposite ends of the spectrum lore wise and from a gaming practicality stand point…There are reasons that they limited the weapons available to certain classes and from a game mode perspective you are essentially asking for an entirely new weapon because staves are “Magical weapons” in this game and you are asking for more of a melee time option here… You aren’t comparing oranges to apples you are asking oranges to turn into apples.
Bah, just leave them in their wet dreams, the whole thing is just laughable at best.
About as plausible as using a greatsword like a laser cannon, how absurd! Haha.
Oh wait…
It’s particularly dumb because it’s actually a sensible enough thing that it could really come to fruition one day, kind of like Blood Elf Warriors – I bet he laughed at people requesting that too.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
P/P has a serious, rather overt, problem. That problem is Vital Shot. Vital Shot was very clearly designed to shoot significantly faster than it actually does, meaning that it is much weaker than it should be.
This creates a DPS vaccuum that forces you into an excessive reliance on Unload dumping in an only moderately successful attempt to stave off the loss of DPS from Vital Shot. This also has the side-effect of more or less zeroing out any tactical usability of the set as attempting to maintain even mediocre DPS keeps you in a state of perpetual Initiative starvation.
I seriously can’t believe it hasn’t been fixed yet and that there isn’t more uproar about it.
What tactical usability? HS, BP and BS?
None of those graduate P/P past Duck status.
What are you gonna do with your range hit, shoot of Vital shots in Black Powder like a thief training dummy but without the initiative pool? No to expensive.
Use the inkling HS? Not enough damage, even with a faster RoF.
Man P/P’s set in general is just lacking and VS firing even a half second faster ain’t solving that.I made it a few words in then gave up.
Yes, fixing Vital Shot will make a pretty dramatic difference, even if the set is still hardly perfect.
You know, P/P doesn’t reach as high of DPS as melee, but thats to be expect, 3200 DPS, but we have nothing to compare that too. What if most other ranged weapons did 2000 DPS? P/P would be one of the best weapon sets. And if thats true, and P/P is the highest ranged damage set for a class, why would AN fix vital shot?
Because that isn’t the case. I can promise you Rifle Warriors do substantially more DPS at longer range while having vastly better survivability.
O RLY
Resurrecting this thread just to say this: Yes, really. Rifle warrior unquestionably has superior (potential at least) range, firepower, and utility than P/x Thief. If this spreadsheet says otherwise, then somewhere your data is wrong or you aren’t taking something into account.
For one, the flow is smoother. Bleeding Shot can stack up to 10 or 11 bleeds with just one trait and half kitten condition gear. Volley does terrific damage, better than Unload, even though it’s on a cooldown it works out because you are able to keep bleed stacks high while also utilizing the Rifle’s other rather decent utilities. Also, Kill Shot.
At absolute peak P/P may come somewhere close to Rifle, but it still falls shy and it does so at shorter range with zero utility.
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Yes. Even though I make kitteny posts from time to time, that really only shows that I care about the game and have enough invested in it to want to see it succeed.
I would imagine that’s actually true of most negative posters.
I like it but add a new type of Staff to the game or it will look kinda stupid.
I was thinking this at first, but the more I think about it the more I don’t think it’s necessary. They could just introduce some new more martial looking skins and it wouldn’t really be a big deal. I could see someone fighting martially with the skins already in the game.
I could do with more than 10 skills, to be honest, but yes having access to all available skills at all times WoW-styled is not only unnecessary, it’s actually kind of the opposite of engaging.
Apart from the general UI issues it causes, a lot of the reason why simply revolves around build customization and experimentation. It’s much funner that you are forced to work with a subset of your available skills as a way to play around and customize your character.
The quarter staff would be genrely applicable and it would be nice to have a melee two handed weapon.
My recommendation for skills: Guard, Turn, Parry, Spin, and Thrust.
(Left out dodge since that is already in the game)
What about A-ho and A-ha?
Actually, buffing the dual skills is not the direction that needs to be taken.
Buffing dual skills leads to a situation like what exists with MH Pistol currently. The #1 skill, which is your only free DPS, is too weak to rely on so you end up having to spend all of your Initiative constantly on the other DPS skill, Unload, meaning you get zero utility from the set and no ability to use it tactically.
They actually need to do the opposite of what you suggested and buff the autoattacks, at least for Pistols and Shortbow. They probably should un-nerf Pistol Whip, however.
Unload needs its damaged buffed up to the levels of Rapid Fire and Rifle Volley and be able to pierce, it has low range compared to both of them and does not pierce at all.
It also costs a lot of initiative for easy to dodge damage, the damage should be buffed by atleast 50%.
There is no reason other weapon sets get higher damage attacks with a lower cost and are able to pierce. Thieves don’t even get a pet or anything like that either.
Try using Unload in Spvp, its an absolute joke skill.
Well, I have to admit that P/P does feel dramatically inferior to Rifle on the Warrior all the way around, so maybe they should buff everything. I still say that Vital Shot is both the most important and the most flawed piece of the puzzle though.
While I wouldn’t turn down some buffs (like un-nerfing Pistol Whip), buffing the dual skills in general is not the direction that needs to be taken.
Buffing dual skills leads to a situation like what exists with MH Pistol currently. The #1 skill, which is your only free DPS, is too weak to rely on so you end up having to spend all of your Initiative constantly on the other DPS skill, Unload, meaning you are trapped into mindlessly spamming 3 and geting zero utility from the set.
They actually need to do the opposite of what you suggested and buff the autoattacks, at least for Pistols and Shortbow- that way you are able to deal appreciable DPS without dumping all your initiative on one skill and can approach fights more tactically.
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Yes, people like communication. The other folks don’t do enough of it.
You can’t look at Ele skills in the vacuum of pure DPS. ESPECIALLY with Staff.
Why? Because from the outset, the Staff is built as a support weapon. Yes, some of our largest AoEs, but also most of our best combo fields.
As an example, playing with a Thief the other day, we were just bumming around in Gendarran Fields, doing a few random DEs. We decided to do the Tamini Mogul group event. He was a D/D and Shortbow, I was using Staff.
To put it bluntly, had I stayed in Fire, we both would have died, and quickly. By cycling attunements, using all my CC, rotating earth elementals, providing water combo fields for healing, kept burning up, etc., etc. we prevailed.
Was my damage as high as just spamming 1,2,3 in Fire? Probably not. But people asking that question make the incorrect assumption that a Staff Ele can sit back safely and nuke, never needing to dodge, or kite, or support teammates. Since the game does not work like WoW, you don’t have the luxury of sitting at max range casting arcane missiles or whatever.
Which is why I always laugh a bit when I read people asking about DPS charts, meters or builds, as if that’s the be-all, end-all of consideration. Every profession in the game needs to bring DPS, support, CC and rez ALL the time in every battle. To think otherwise is to miss the point of the combat system.
This is accurate. Pure DPS, go Fire. However, attempting to be “pure DPS” all day, e’rr day doesn’t work as well in this game as it does in WoW.
I’m bothered by this, not because I insist on getting new skills for existing weapons, but because some of the balance problems are coming directly from skills and not from traits.
In particular, the refire speed issue on some of the #1 skills is causing a lot of problems this implies they aren’t even looking at that.
Disappointing, to be sure.
….You’d rather see darts and boomerangs than dual swords?
They were just random examples, but yes, I would rather see new weapons as well as OH viability over Dual Swords.
Which is fine, but I’m absolutely not a fan of the whole ‘x class is harder than y class by design’ paradigm. All classes should require a similar amount of skill and input to do well as.
My guardian can kill 3+ mobs upwards of 2 levels from her without much attention. My thief can barely handle 3 at the same level and then it takes a bunch of kiting, and fairly decent luck.
What you’re saying is that you want every class to be the same and there to be no variation in class. If one wasn’t harder to play and they were all able to achieve the same goals while doing the same thing then what would be the point of even having classes? Thief is an engaging class that requires at least some attention when you have aggro. I’m sorry that you played a guardian before, I really am. Twice I tried to level one. First time I got it to lvl 40 something before deleting it due to how insanely boring it was. The 2nd time I got it to 50 through sheer force of will, trying to get a reflecting wall bot for grawl fractal. Deleted that one too and made an engi. So much more fun but still not as fun as a thief.
And about the whole thief having troubles doing the content that is faceroll on guard or war… well that happens in low lvl pve. The guard and war still do it at high lvls open world pve but then again so does every other class. Despite what people think, thief is amazing in dungeon and it has already been established that thieves are great in wvw too. So the problem is that you’re trying to compare thief to guardian when those 2 classes are apples and oranges. If you really need comparisons, then thief is the condition guardian. Instead of boons on you, it’s conditions on them.
If you don’t like the class though then just don’t play it. If you want the game to pretty much be handed to you and have very little challenge, then continue with the heavy classes. Problem with that though is you’re probably going to get bored of this game very soon when you’re not allowing yourself to get engaged into the combat.
Honestly, I’ve never bought into the whole WoW style “if you don’t like x aspect of the class then get out” method of thinking.
I’d rather suggest a change.
Balance 101: If one class/race/thing requires significantly more input and skill to succeed with than another, then it needs a look. Reason being that in a situation where skill and input is equal, then the other class is going to be better.
I agree with this.
I find myself wondering how necessary the debuff even is now that culling is fixed. Maybe it still is, I dunno, it just seems weird.
I use Ambush Trap semi-often, it’s a good way to get a little help in solo play. Otherwise, not really. They aren’t terrible for the most part, it’s just that there are 2 skills that stay on my bar pretty much all the time – Caltrops and SoS, leaving me with only 1 true choice, leaving little room for build experimentation.
While I wouldn’t complain much if we got it, I don’t really think dual swords fits the theme of the Thief, people are just accustomed to seeing Rogues with them in WoW.
I actually think what would be better is a good, usable Off-hand light option. Single-wielding a dagger, sword, or pistol should be a viable way to play the game and there are a number of different ways they could accommodate that. The easiest would be to add a glove-type ‘weapon’ usable by every profession in the offhand and maybe some professions in the main hand.
Also, we need more thiefy weapons altogether – whips, claws, boomerangs, darts/shurikens, etc., and probably MH axes also.
One thing to note – you can’t go by the activation speeds to calculate DPS, they don’t really work with autoattacks.
As an example, even though Air, Water, and Earth #1s are 3/4 second and Fire is 1 second, they actually all have about the same recast rate, about 1.25 seconds.
There’s actually a decent chance this is unintentional, and that’s why Fire feels stronger than the other 3.
Thieves were not nerfed . In no game ever, especially RTS games would a fast mobile class or faction be given high damage . Usually the slowest option would do the most damage … because it is slow and avoidable .
Thieves have unparalleled mobility and damage , and an good escape mechanisms . Hence they are OP .
No, they don’t. Their mobility is slightly above average, their damage is on part with other classes, and their defense is atrocious. The reason why they seem to be OP is because Stealth (despite being horrible in PvE) synergizes well with a glass cannon build. This makes them harder to counter than other classes with glass cannon builds, but they still die immediately if you manage it. Moreover, there is little else they can do well. If anything, Thieves need some buffs to their other builds/sets at this point.
Have you tried leveling P/P since they changed stealth not to reset aggro?
THIS is probably a valid point. ::looks meaningfully at Anet:: One thing that always balanced a Thief’s squishiness while leveling was, if things got really hairy, she had an escape clause; even if she had to drop aggro completely and run away. Without that a hard pressed Thief isn’t going to be able to take those seconds to rest and regain initiative or stamina while fightin’ groups of monsters.
This was a horrible, horrible change, one that no matter who throws out what defense, I can’t see the logic in whatsoever.
I started GW2 with the hopes of leveling and enjoying all aspects of the game as a dual pistols gunslinger. After being told to ‘l2p’ by a lot of people, being threatened with being kicked from groups if I didn’t use a different weapon set and being killed endlessly by mobs that my Guardian could just roll over 3 levels below me, I shelved her.
When P/P is made better, I may come back.
It needs a more reliable AOE and either better mobility tools or more tankiness.
No, it really just needs for Vital Shot to do the DPS it’s supposed to and allow you the freedom to use the other skills more tactically rather than having to constantly Initiative dump just to get halfway decent (not terrific) damage values.
I agree with the OP – it’d downright goofy how much better some classes are in introductory levels than others.
Thieves in particular are awful. They have a melee focus with bad defense (MH Pistol is terrible), stealth doesn’t work right as a defensive tool, and their downed state is the worst in the game for solo PvE.
No one NEEDS gear progression. It is a tired, old answer to the question of providing a sense of progression and brings a host of problems to a game. Get current with the best thinking in game design. There are other ways to do it—much better ways to do it.
BTW, your proposed way hasn’t worked, has it? You consumed WoW and SWTOR and both offer gear progression. And, if you haven’t noticed, Anet agrees with you. They haven’t realized, however, that the pace of their gear progression won’t satisfy the hardcore grinder. Perhaps they are beginning to notice; I haven’t really noticed.
The time is actually ripe for a new kind of MMO, one that is current with the best thinking in game design.
This.
I agree with all of your points to an extent, but in particular #1. It could be argued that GW1 had too many skills in the end, but GW2 definitely needs more than it currently has.
One of the big draws to any game like this is having lots of ways to slice and dice your character and what they can do, which allows you to experiment with new things enough to keep the gameplay from getting too repetitive and stale. Watering down the selection for the sake of ‘balance’ is not the way to go (see: Diablo 3).
I also agree that the number scaling is needlessly high. The level cap should have been 40 and the leveling speed should have been slower. And frankly, gear shouldn’t have had both levels and rarity, it should have only had the latter. It’s totally pointless to have multiple iterations of the same piece of gear whose only purpose is to inflate the same stats a little more.
I really like GW2, but I’m very fearful they’re going in the wrong direction with it and it’s going to drown the game.
(edited by Einlanzer.1627)
I sincerely hope they don’t raise the level cap. It would be far better to add new content across the current level range instead of increasing the level cap and shoehorning all new content into that level range.
The problems with P/P (and to a lesser extent P/D) are so obvious that it’s astonishing to me not only that it hasn’t been addressed by devs/patches, but that it isn’t cried about all over the forums.
Everyone knows that Ricochet is too weak in relation to the Piercing available elsewhere (it should be a 50% chance to bounce to one extra target, and a 25% chance to bounce to a second).
Everyone also knows that Body Shot is way too situational to be considered good (it should have a short Burn effect and/or just do greater direct damage).
Everyone knows that the lack of Stealth is an annoyance, although personally I’m ok with this since they can’t revolve everything around stealth.
But, what people really should be screaming about is Vital Shot. The primary problem afflicting P/P especially (the above problems are more peripheral) is that Vital Shot does lousy DPS (it fires too slowly for both its direct damage and its bleed duration), especially with power/crit builds, which you’re likely to be using with P/P. Why is this such a big deal? Allow me to elaborate.
The Thief’s unique resource mechanic means that you get a certain amount of “free” DPS, which comes solely from the #1 skill, while every other skill shares the same resource. For other sets, the #1 skill represents a significant enough portion of your DPS capabilities that you can approach the other skills tactically, bandying around them as the situation demands, gaining momentary supplements to your DPS or providing you with some useful or fun boon or utility.
With P/P however, what happens is that your #1 skill does such poor DPS on its own that in order to even be marginally effective you are forced to try to compensate by dumping all Initiative into the only other damage-primary skill, Unload, which, apart from being extremely dull and tedious, keeps you in constant state of resource starvation. This means that, not only does the sustained DPS of P/P suffer as you cannot maintain Unload spamming forever, but because your skills all share the same resource you are prevented from being able to properly make use of the various utilities the set offers all while doing only mediocre damage from a maximum of 900 yards.
Why does this not get talked about more often?
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I see no reason why every weapon couldn’t be made available to every class with a flavor twist to make them unique to each.
While I’m not at all opposed to this possibility, I’m definitely more interested in seeing all new weapons types trickle in first. The following all need to be in the game at some point:
Martial Staves
Claws/Knuckles
Whips
Tomes
Polearms
Greataxes
Scythes
Sigils
Combat gets a little stale in this game mostly due to how few options there really are for a lot of professions. Each profession should have several more options than it currently does, and at some point the should discuss having 3 sets you can switch between.
I like Orr a lot in the context of it being a trinity of zones you don’t try to tackle alone. I think the biggest problem with Orr has nothing to do with Orr itself but stems from the main ‘negative’ of the game in general at this point – lack of alternative content.
Martial Staff fits the Thief theme quite well, so I’d love to see it added (I’m sure it would go to some other professions as well).
P/P is not largely a condition spec. thats P/D with vital shot stealth ability.
P/P with unload is direct damage. once you learn a ranged mobs patterns and know when to dodge u can just slaughter everything.
full zerker gear + signet of malice + omnom berry pie (or same food for lower lvls) even with the internal CD now it heals alot due to high hit volume from unload.
no P/P does not hit as hard as melee based weapons (duh) but it lets u do fights that normally cause melee to run around like a headless chicken avoiding AoE and boss attacks. while P/P u strafe circles around the boss keeping a constant and reliable source of damage.
and if you spec into +3 int and int on crit regain, you quickly see how long your int actually lasts. i can just spam unload all day and only have to stop every now and then (also when using dodge or LoS attacks that lets u regain int).
yes P/P lacks some damage and yes it can use a buff. but its still very nice to use ikittennow how to use it.
alot of people who say its bad just stand still and dont move (u can shoot while moving like zomg wtf no wai) and if u shoot then jump u keep shooting while jumping (unload) so u can hop all over the place (i play asura so i need to jump !).
P/P is bad because most of the attacks don’t work together. It’s direct damage but both the auto attack and stealth attack are pure condition damage, leaving you with only Unload to actually deal damage.
Because you don’t have a decent auto-attack, you blow through initiative spamming Unload to kill stuff.
Because you can’t kill stuff without blowing Initiative on Unload, you don’t have any Initiative for Blackpowder or Headshot.
Body Shot is also just full-blown garbage and a waste of a skill slot.
This. Vital Shot is too slow/weak to provide adequate DPS support, forcing you to stay Initiative starved by spamming Unload and consequently canceling out any utility you might otherwise get from the set. Body Shot is also mostly useless.
It’s really just bad and needs a redo. It could be improved substantially if they either increased the rate of fire or the direct damage done by Vital Shot.
Thieves in general are optimized for PvP and are pretty bad in PvE, particularly at lower levels, for various reasons:
- Melee focus despite shoddy defense and worst-in-game health
- Lack of damage mitigation/avoidance and surival utility
- Stealth balanced for PvP offense and consequently inadequate for PvE defense
- A downed state that is hilariously awful for solo PvE (in part because of Stealth’s mechanics).
On top of that, P/P has a number of additional problems:
- Single target only, the only AoE option, Ricochet, wont’ come until later and is pretty bad anyway.
- Identity crisis- Vital Shot and Unload have terrible synergy and neither is amazing enough on its own for that to work out well
- Body Shot is entirely useless unless you’re in a full group and no one else has Vulnerability.
- Maintaining even mediocre DPS (mostly due to the problems with Vital Shot/Unload) requires dumping Initiative continuously into Unload, meaning that you stay perpetually Initiative starved and can’t make proper use of Black Powder or Headshot, leaving you with no utility.
In other words, there are a number of things that really need to be looked at with the Thief profession, but they’re mostly focus on trying to make sure they aren’t OP in PvP, which is getting a little annoying.
For leveling, the best sets are definitely S/P, D/D, and Shortbow.
Truthfully, Vital Shot, Body Shot, and Unload are all 3 in need of a buff, as is the Ricochet trait that provides limited AoE ability. Until they do that, both P/P and P/D are going to be very mediocre and extremely situational. It might be worth using in tough boss fights.
(edited by Einlanzer.1627)