Guild Wars 2

Karolis.4261:

Am I the only one who see keyboard turning here ?

You can turn with the keyboard? o_O

Mindtrick.5190:

wvw builds in pve makes me laugh.

into

Pistol pistol is what I use its really easy

? LOL epic troll

What ballads said is correct, you want to avoid pistol main-hand. Both the normal damage and condition damage is pathetic. Pistol/pistol is trash, pistol/dagger is a really poor kiting spec, only useful for soloing elites. Don’t bother listening to anyone that says a condition damage spec is useful in group PvE. The only usable condition damage spec is d/d because it’s aoe, but it’s still behind shortbow AOE.

Since thieves do such poor damage you’re better off using pistol offhand for AOE blinds or shortbow for aoe weakness; you’ll be a much more useful to your group. Sword/either works as well, but is a spec I personally rarely use(d).

DanH.5879:

it is so unreliable (targeting the lower torso/feet), and you get ~1/3 chance to pull him

other outcomes: target is knocked down for 0.1 sec (lol buggy skill)
miss/block/out of range etc.
no synergy with any trait
i wouldn’t take this skill even it had 15 sec cool down

If it had a 15 second cooldown I wouldn’t run anything else in WvW… a great CC on that kind of cd? Yes please.

And the first part of your post makes no sense whatsoever. People don’t dodge/block it because they don’t see it coming, even more so because most thieves roll with the hurrdurr backstab spec and it’s actually easy to land if you know how it works. Anticipate where the enemy is going and make sure you’ll be in range and he won’t be behind cover/hills when it connects.

It has a few uses but yes the range and casting time are a pain. I use it when Im with other people and don’t worry about dying. Closing in on something with shortbow and yanking it back towards your zerg = free kill. Same with pulling people off obstacles and walls.

What’s wrong with some toughness over power if you have a good amount of vitality?

And what do you mean with con dmg not being the primary stat on ascended gear?

d/p with mixed gear and 0/x/30/20/x

naphack.9346:

It is called stealth, not “memory erasure” or “mind control”. You only get out of their sight, doesn’t mean, they suddenly forget about everything which just happened. We’ve had enough of such poor stealth implementation in Oblivion and Skyrim.

Haha, are you really suggesting that skyrim’s PvE stealth system isn’t a thousand times better than this joke arenanet made of it now?

ZenonSeth.5739:

Haha, this is a joke. You are correct of course, but the design is a joke. Both listed as 1/2 activation time, and Vital Shot gives 1s longer bleed, one would imagine that the vital shot would keep up more stacks. One would imagine they have the same rate of fire.

More “jokes”:

• Both deal 134 dmg per hit, with the same damage coefficient – but as established Crossfire has a higher rate of fire, meaning significantly more damage.
• Not only that but Rangers’ skills are theoretically only 50% or so from their damage output, because they also get a pet.
• Edit: Crossfire also has 1200 range, but Vital Shot has 900.

Are ye laughin’ yet?

If ArenaNet actually changed Vital Shot to what the stats say it’s supposed to be and adjust the bleed to 3s to avoid imbalance condition thieves would actually be useful. Can’t let that happen, eh?

And yes, I know p/d and p/p have extra utility, but SB ranger has decent utility and a pet as well.

Must nerf thieves before buffing (or fixing, really) anything. All the thief ranged specs are kittening trash.

You can use steal to get close. Or simply run up to them or using whatever skill allows you to shadowstep/jump to your target.

Most people use CnD + Steal to jump&stealth at the same time before backstapping.

ZenonSeth.5739:

My two cents: make Vital shot have 0 cast time, just like Ranger’s Shortbow #1. Sure that skill only gives bleed from flanking, but Rangers also get a pet, so I think Vital Shot giving bleed all the time (even if shorter duration) would be completely balanced.

Edit: Whoops – it seems Crossfire (ranger’s shortbow #1) has a 1/2 activation time just as Vital Shot. Why does Vital Shot feel so much more sluggish then?

Because it is.

Vital Shot keeps up 4-5 stacks of bleeding (4s)
Ranger SB keeps up 5-6 stacks of bleeding (3s)

Honestly some of those aren’t bad ideas for seperate traits. The current traits we have for pistol are kittening terrible.

Ricochet – Pistol shots have a 20% chance to bounce to an additional target.
Pistol Mastery – +10% damage with pistols.
Ankle Shots – Critical hits with a pistol have a 60% chance to cripple foes for 3s. (Cooldown of 10 seconds).

Ricochet is a pathetic joke and complete waste of a trait, even at 100% chance it’d be a poor choice because it’s still garbage AOE damage and for anything else it just agro’s mobs you didn’t want to agro. Pistol Mastery doesn’t work for every pistol skill as far as I’ve heard and pistols do terrible damage per shot regardless. Ankle shots is just a joke with that cooldown. 3 seconds every 10 seconds? kitten that.

I don’t understand people to begin with. It’s so stupidly easy to anticipate some thieves… if they’re using daggers then they’re going for your back. Drop an AOE there or roll backwards and use a frontal cone AOE. Even spamming autoattack will work wonders.

Though it might just be because I main a thief. I just swap to shortbow, drop poison and nuke the area with cluster bombs while dodging/#3/#5ing wherever.

It’s even more hilarious when a thief is close to you, goes into stealth while you have SB equipped, you simply #5 on the spot and they try to backstab while blinded…

Nike.2631:

it is bad in most situations but just realize that going stealth while downed wasn’t intended to reset all agro and act as a “get out of jail free card”, it was meant to proc your downed dagger (maybe 2 of them if the guy is at ranged) so you could rally easier. That invis dagger hits like a truck! Also with the right traits, if you’re having a downed war with someone, pop invis and clear those damaging conditions, throw 2 heavy hitting daggers at the other guy, then blink out of range and laugh as you are able to res significantly faster than the other guy.

Oh and if you’re not downed, then the downed state will never be a problem for you

Yeah the only class that is supposed to get a get-out-of-jail-free cards is warrior obviously.

And the time it takes before you can finally use smoke bomb is far too long to make it even remotely useful. By the time you can finally use it you’re basically dead.

And yes, let’s pretend you never go down while leveling and playing solo. You just cleared a veteran or champion solo along with 10 random mobs and you die to some mob that spawned afterwards cause the respawn rate in this game is kitten #8230; gg. Fun gameplay!

Rafahil.2857:

Swords for pve and daggers for pvp imo.

I hope you mean group pve. Daggers are much easier to use in the open world/events /farming (with SB for aoe)

Aervius.2016:

IMO, P/P might be better than SB for the ‘ranged burst’ role, but it really feels utterly ineffective relative to it’s initiative costs.

Granted, I’m not presently aware of any math to back up that opinion, nor do I feel like running the numbers from work. LOL.

It works fine in WvW. 4 unloads for 5-6k damage each on light armor.

As long as it’s zergvzerg you can flank people and pick them off if you see them low on health or endurance. Especially because you don’t need utilities other than shadowstep to get out of CC. Means you have extra damage from pwr/prc/venom or a root. But again, that’s all this spec excels at and it’s rather sad.

Kenmei.7138:

That trait saved me billion times. It’s completely fine. If you are spammin buttons knowing that you have that trait then it’s your own fault.

And I am X/D thief using CnD.
Another L2P problem for me.

So if you get knocked below 25% just before you hit CnD it’s your own fault?

I believe dealing with the kittenty revealed mechanic is bad enough without having to calculate what the 25% health line is and whether the enemy might trigger it while also keeping an eye on endurance, initiative, position, enemy position/cooldowns and other enemies… Just because I like the other traits in SA.

No thanks, please remove this kittenty trait.

Not spamming buttons is easier said than done when you’re PvPing. A second is all it takes to lose a fight at 25% health.

But then the revealed mechanic is a kittening joke regardless and it’s the most worthless and terrible implementation of anti-stealth mechanic in any MMO… especially considering they advertise with “play the game, not the UI”. Every melee thief is looking at the bottom of his screen nowadays. Even a cooldown on C&D would’ve worked out better.

All the other lfg’s are gone because people join them faster as a lot of people ignore the obnoxious “pols zerk warior link gear” garbage, even if they are good zerk WRs.

The agro system with the pathetic downed state skills is even more hilarious.

WTB warrior downed state skills

Suralin.3947:

Humorless.1573:

Sad because it’s the only real ranged single target damage thieves have (P/D involves a lot of melee range and Shortbow is aoe/utility) and can potentially be a very fun playing style. Even more sad because it’s easy to fix the issue, arenanet just doesn’t give a kitten.

You don’t need that much mobility for P/P. You can Blind your opponent and Daze them constantly. Since you’re likely not running a Stealthy Build, you would have Withdraw, and most likely Smokescreen for more blinds.

In my opinion, people aren’t really seeing how P/P can be complimented with your utilities. The only real issue with P/P is Vital Shot.

You can blind and daze your opponent? And then what? Auto attack them to death? Why aren’t you using P/D?

And yes the mobility is fine… as long as you have at least 15 points into acrobatics. IE you’re forced into one single spec as Critical Strikes is mandatory and Deadly Arts is needed to do decent damage.

As for utility skills, it heavily depends on whether you’re soloing or running with a group and PvE or PvPing. In PvP you have no room for smokescreen. Shadowstep is mandatory if you don’t want to get bursted or condition’d to death. And then there’s roll for initiative, venoms, shadow refugee and signets that are all more useful than smokescreen. In PvE… well, anything works unless you’re running difficult dungeon.

RaiKan.8760:

I just believe that ANET could change the unload skill. Since when one is wielding P/P, there is no escape mechanism apart from using deception skills etc, they could at least change unload to be a something like withdraw/roll of initiative. Instead of just evading, while evading, thieves unload their bullet. Not only it will look cool, but it will solve some problem faced by P/P thieves and also some love for P/P. Just my thoughts though.

Can you please not post suggestions to kitten up the only useful skill P/P has?

1. = auto, only useful as a filler and condition applying for Exposed Weakness
2. = joke skill unless you’re with a lot of people… in which case you might as well do something else
3. = somewhat useful depending on what you’re fighting/doing
4. = VERY situational and a ridiculous waste of initiative

Unload doesn’t even do enough damage with full zerker gear to be worth 5 initiative. And full zerker is the only way to go with P/P, because otherwise there’s very little reason not to go with condition spec P/D for almost the same damage while having more utility.

P/P is nice for solo WvW and overall being lazy in groups, but it has very little to offer. No utility/mobility and hardly impressive damage for something that sucks all your initiative.

Sad because it’s the only real ranged single target damage thieves have (P/D involves a lot of melee range and Shortbow is aoe/utility) and can potentially be a very fun playing style. Even more sad because it’s easy to fix the issue, arenanet just doesn’t give a kitten.

As someone with near full berserker exotics I can safely say that the OP is full of BS. 7.5k? Are you hitting naked targets? Even Unload needs to crit on 5/8 hits to get there.

I think it’s odd in general that we hardly have any options for weapons/attacks. We have 7 weapon combinations (on land) and F1. Elementalists and engineers have less weapons to use but gain the kits/elements. Every other class has 10-19 weapon combinations.

And somehow the class with 3 weapon combinations is bugged like no other.

Yes, a thief with shortbow can hit multiple targets for 5k… if very lucky. But it’s a ground target AOE with a long travel time and it cannot be spammed unless point blank range.

Unless you’re refering to trick shot, in which case you’re just being silly. There’s no way that’s gonna crit that high. The average trick shot hits for 500 noncrit, +/- 100 depending on gear/spec/target.

Depends on your build and playing style? In PvE the only thing that matters is doing damage or being useful. As long as you’re alive, you can do damage and useful things… so get whatever you need to stay alive. I run glass cannon and I do perfectly fine with nothing but 20 acrobatics.

Why the kitten would you want to stack a stealth timer while taking falling damage.

I run this trait 100% of the time in WvW and it’s completely fine as it is. Lol @ thread creator calling OTHER PEOPLE whiners.

Haste + 100 blades is overpowered.

Haste in general is kitten broken on any class, and probably any weapon. It allows for too much burst in the duration someone is rooted or stunned.

You’re standing underneath a wall anyway if you want to hit people on them, it’s actually safer and you lower cluster travel time meaning you can spam it…

And from 900 range the travel time is so long you can walk into range with 30 people firing your way, shoot and dodge backwards… you’ll take a little damage at most and by the time it lands you can repeat.

Link doesnt work, FYI.

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee231/Legault_/gw020_zpsf8f7fdf2.jpg

30 crit strikes, 20 acrobatics, 15 trickery, no traits other than 2 init/10. No gear other than 2 pistols, pvp sigil of superior air on offhand. Left it on autofire headshot for a few minutes and came back to seeing 0 procs. That’s… strange.

Pistol #5 is good when you get jumped by a thief or warrior at melee range. And it helps when finishing someone off.

500 isn’t a lot, no. 30 points into trickery = 300. Lv80 exotic top = 101 or something similar. Add the rest of the set and runes… I have no idea how high you can go, but it’s somewhere around 1k probably.

How is there zero counter options? Dodge out of the way. Use swiftness and run. They’re in stealth and they’re going to walk to your backside, you know -exactly- where they are and you can get away from it easily.

Because descriptions on wiki are always accurate…

Anyone that has tested it and gotten different results?

I haven’t tested Powder+HS and the 2 init/stealth trait, do they work together? I’m wondering if the game will simply recognize heartseeker as a skill that stealths you if it’s from a combo field.

I don’t consider warriors OP, no. Haste/quickness is a broken mechanic which makes everything OP (Pistol whip, heartseeker, 100 blades) but overall the class is fine. It’s just that necro’s/elementalists/engineers are sort of weak, everything else is okay when it comes to balance. And when I say okay I mean it’s not perfect, but it works.

The moderators do odd things sometimes…

And for some reason my test results came out completely different. If I equip two pistols and put a superior sigil of air on the offhand gun it will not proc regardless of what I do. 1, 3 or 4 = no lightning procs. If I switch them around 1, 3 and 4 ALL proc lightning… how did you test it?

It probably does come down to playing style. During large sieges there’s always people in range, and during smaller ones I jump down and move to the side of their group. Either I pick people off or they chase me. If one person chases me I kill them, if it’s more than one then they’re wasting their time because thieves don’t die.

With 15 acrobatics you can dodge so much that getting into range has never felt like an issue to me. You can get away with almost anything and rarely die.

Pretty much, yeah. Though thieves hardly have any options anyway… shortbow is our secondary option almost all the time and sword/dagger is always bad.

Edit not working, woo.

One more thing, Axe/Shield warriors can hit a 1.5k toughnes target for 8-9k and it hardly involves setting anything up. They have less mobility, but more survivability and it’s harder to anticipate. And even then, greatsword+axe/shield is like… lol.

A few hundred HP at most won’t make much of a difference.

1.5k toughness is nothing. Steal has a range of 900, which means you should easily be able to see the thief coming and then dodge out of the way before you get combo’d to death. I’ve yet to die to a backstab thief and it’s not because they haven’t tried.

And some classes have extra ways to avoid damage taken, such as shield warrior. Either way if you somehow manage to get stabbed IN THE BACK you deserve taking double damage.

If you want 0 lightning procs, yes.

Yes, weak is the right word. Dagger/dagger damage output completely destroys Pistol/Pistol. Because of that someone using pistols will take as much damage as someone using daggers… especially if you go 15 points into Deadly Arts. Daggers are also capable of good AOE damage.

Dronin.3957:

Humorless.1573:

Dronin.3957:

How can you get into that range if the enemy is 1200 from the wall… do you jump off into aoe of doom just to plink a few shortbow or pistol shots off before trying to dodge/steath back? because that way your are massively less effective than everyone else on your server.

Relocate on the wall… if none of them are in range, jump off, because they’re probably backing off and your side should just wipe them. As a thief you can get away with this extremely easily. I’m always attacking or moving to a spot where I can during WvW sieges, 900 range doesn’t matter. Ofcourse it comes with some limitations, but they’re easily made up for by the fact that you can empty someone’s HP bar in 6 seconds of them being in 900 range.

Thieves in this game are by no means weak or underpowered.

I think its interesting you bring up the whole underpowererd overpowered argument. I don’t think this thread is here to discuss that, in fact there are loads of threads arguing one way or the other. In reality the main reason people argue thief is so good is due to pistol whip right now.

Myself and others are happy to take a small ranged damage reduction (even though our only good ranged damage is unload) to compensate for a slight increase in range

Interesting how you focus on one line in my entire post, that wasn’t specifically in response to yours…

And I’d rather keep my damage. I have no problem damaging anything in WvW and PvE. I’d rather win a fight at 900 range than lose it at 1200, lol. And if you think Unload is our only good source of damage then you have no clue how to do damage.

S/P and SB don’t have enough condition damage built-in to make use of in WvW situations, so I’d say that falls off.

Other than that, Shortbow = very mobile, S/P = burst. So you want damage and you have enough mobility to get away with being squishy = Critdmg > Toughness.

As for runes, anything that adds precision/power/critdmg. Or if you really don’t know, Divinity runes are always good.

Dronin.3957:

How can you get into that range if the enemy is 1200 from the wall… do you jump off into aoe of doom just to plink a few shortbow or pistol shots off before trying to dodge/steath back? because that way your are massively less effective than everyone else on your server.

Relocate on the wall… if none of them are in range, jump off, because they’re probably backing off and your side should just wipe them. As a thief you can get away with this extremely easily. I’m always attacking or moving to a spot where I can during WvW sieges, 900 range doesn’t matter. Ofcourse it comes with some limitations, but they’re easily made up for by the fact that you can empty someone’s HP bar in 6 seconds of them being in 900 range.

Thieves in this game are by no means weak or underpowered.

A sigil of air on offhand will not proc at all, even on offhand attacks. It has to be on your mainhand.

SoForce works regardless of what hand it’s on. So I’d say use both.

1.5k toughness? My hamster has more than that.

Though you and my hamster share the inability to dodge, clearly. How you don’t see someone coming in such a confined area is beyond me.

That’s those peeps being bad, then. Dagger storm kills people yes, but it’s not because of the bleeds alone. Anyone that simply dodges out and heals will never die to a condition damage build in a group zerg. And if they do, they should have dodged back into their team and will be ressed. The only way to kill people in defenses/zergs is bursting down the front line and then killing them completely or running in and trolling with Dagger storm, in which case it’s got very little to do with condition damage.

A condition damage spec works great in smaller fights, but so do other specs that are a lot more useful in zergs/defense, so why bother?