Ok, so Perplexity runes opened my eyes to how incredible ANET could make this set.
With the current implementation of Perplexity in PvE it feels pretty balanced, yet incomplete, much like S/D. I’ll be examining what needs to be done to implement and balance this kit for PvP.
Sneak Attack: The most balanced stealth attack, it deals good damage and the opponent is actually able to dodge most of the damage reactively.
Auto Attack: Deals very low damage, as expected.. it’s an autoattack.
Body Shot: Incredibly niche design and useless in almost every scenario.
Unload: Waste of Initiative in a condition build, hits too low for a power build and was nerfed in BWE due to 3-spam.
Headshot: Alone, an incredible skill used to interrupt important skills such as heals or resses. With Perplexity, a skill-based rather than spam-based dps source.
Black Powder: Smoke field, nuff said. Incredibly useful especially for P/P.
Suggestions:
Headshot: Ok, so first off, we all know Perplexity is over the top and classes like Engineers would become out of control with such power. My suggestion to avoid completely killing it for thieves, is nerf the confusion stacks interrupt to 2-3 and passive to 1-2, whatever would be considered balanced. Second would be to give thief the same effect implemented as one of their traits for 1-2 stacks of confusion. Alternatively, it could be implemented as part of the base Headshot skill.
Unload: To keep synergy, as well as open up room for hybrid/power play, I’d suggest Unload to give additional damage per condition on the target. This would eliminate the “3 spam” style of play which was present and un-welcomed in the beta weekend events. Players would be forced to looking to use other skills in their kit to apply conditions to amp up the damage on Unload or coordinating it with another player, rather than simply hitting frenzy and mashing it.
Sneak Attack/Body Shot: There are very limited options to get into stealth with P/P. To give body shot some utility, at the same time giving P/D the buffs it needs, I suggest a remake to Body Shot. This was suggested previously by another user, but I feel a good way to take it would be to make it a small radius (160-250ish) blast which burns nearby foes for a short duration. This would enable P/P and P/D another condition to punish players in melee range as well as blast a Black Powder for stealth, enabling Sneak Attack. Balance the initiative cost so that it is only effective situationally, using a black powder that was used to blind an important attack, for example. We wouldn’t want to see a boring 521 521 521 repeat rotation.
Further detail:
I was thinking something like 1-2 second of burn for 4-6 init and see where that stands. Something like how the D/P trickery build is, you almost always initiate with a bp>seeker>stab, but then very rarely use it mid-fight.
Note: If it were given flat damage, it would not be able to give yourself stealth while hitting a burn, so that is another balance decision that can be made. Personally, I think this would be ideal, forcing the player to decide and/or be aware of nearby enemies when trying to enter stealth. Also it introduces counterplay to the enemy by seeing a P/P thief drop a BP and knowing to walk into it to counter the thief going into stealth, wasting a huge chunk of the thief’s initiative leaving him vulnerable.
The base damage and initiative could also be set at a relatively high amount, opening more options for Power P/x specs. Although balancing these numbers along with the burn would require much effort.
I would go even further to balance this skill by implementing a .25ish sec cast time in which you are locked in place (or the cast is cancelled) rather than having it instant+aftercast like most of the thief’s abilities. This opens up even further skilled and counter-play—what this game so desperately needs.
For P/D:
I would intend on P#2 becoming either mostly a utility/situational and/or power-based weapon skill with a (very) small amount of burn to compensate condi specs. It would be made slightly less effective initiative-wise than using Sneak Attack or Shadow Strike on a P/D condition build, but ideally offer a small condition “burst”. This is, if the numbers are tweaked well-enough. Whether or not P/D needs buffs or not is irrelevant, as it is still an incomplete kit with not much synergy across each skill, similar to P/P and S/D.
