Guild Wars 2

I play a thief and agree the backstab burst combo is too good. I suggest 2 easy fixes:
1. get rid of mug trait (dmg on steal). It first appeared in BWE2 i think. give us some other cool trait that is not burst oriented.
2. get rid of the signet that increases dmg by 50% next hit. Or change it to 25%, or 50% if target below 50% – to make it more finisher than opener, which i think most players would be happy with (on both sides of the fight).
imo these two changes would reduce the CnD-steal opener to a more manageable level, and not impact too much on dagger dagger builds

Moa = win button against a decent mesmer, who will follow up with daze/burst. they should make the target invulnerable or give them protection while it runs, and just get rid of the attacks which are useless. Then it is a very long CC, which i expect it was intended as.

I play a thief and agree the extreme backstab burst is too much. I recommend 2 fixes:
1. stealth – if you miss your stealth should end, not keep giving you more chances
2. steal should not be instant cast, which will prevent CnD-steal opener, giving targets a chance to avoid the signet-BS follower.

Yes this is incredibly annoying with hidden thief, the way it does not stop auto attacking like other stealth skills do. Please fix this Anet!! I like having autoattack on in general, and the other stealth skills are fine. But for some reason hidden thief doesn’t work.

best use of smoke bomb is you get the poison/cripple stealth attack on 1. So it buys you a little more time against a PvP stomp, and allows you to cripple/bleed your foe, then port away giving you more time. Still wont save your *ss most of the time, but occasionally delays things enough for help to arrive. PvE, yeah, mostly useless i guess

imo your weapons and utility skills should all be locked once you start a match. Its a bit silly how you can swap everything willy nilly

Have to say defensive guardian. You wont shift him off the point without help. He probably wont kill you, but at the end of the fight the point is still his…

PW is not the real problem – its haste. If you get caught off guard or in a channel and say 2/3 health, a haste double PW = down.

Pistol whip is actually quite hard to land the full damage. it has a very slow lead up, a target can just walk out of 2/3 of the dmg (even accounting for the 1/2 sec stun). The real problem is haste (which can allow 2 very quick PW in a row, doing heaps of damage, or a very quick HB hit). Phantasm mesmers are very hard to beat right now, i agree they need a nerf on damage or less phantasm HP or something?

Mesmer and guardian are both a little OP in 1v1 at the moment, far as my xp goes (playing thief)

I used a p/p set up for quite a while and have only recently swapped to shortbow. What i found with pp (in PvP mostly) is that while it does good single target damage, you can get similar damage from shortbow, but shortbow gives you a heap more AoE – inc the basic 1 zero ini attack which bounces and has high base dmg, and mobility (inc disabling shot, not just infiltrators arrow). So while pp might help you burst down a sinlge target slightly quicker, SB overall i think is a better weapon. I keep d/p on swap however because headshot interrupt and black power shot are awesome.

I recommend stun break and if possible also an interrupt

When i used dual pistols a lot, i went very stealth heavy in utilities – blinding powder, shadow refuge and hide in shadows, steal granting stealth. Then take the trait that gives 2 ini when you go stealth. With all these stealths, you gets heaps of sneak shots (a great miniunload which bleeds too for zero init) AND every stealth gives you more init. Shadow refuge is huge – it does a stealth pulse every second, giving you 2 init every sec. So if you stay in it for the whole duration, you pretty much always gets all your init back. Must admit i have now moved onto shortbow for more AoE and dodgy goodness, but pistols are good fun too.

Here is my thief main. Used pistols originally, have moved onto dagger pistol and bow