Guild Wars 2

Einlanzer.1627:

Not that I should have to explain this, but apparently I do -

It’s not about “waah I don’t want to pay consequences when I don’t use the set right” – this is both a misunderstanding of the issue and a childish mis-characterization of the argument.

You could alternatively answer the question. Which one do you want; a Vital Shot buff that changes how the set is played, or a Vital Shot buff which doesn’t?

Einlanzer.1627:

Instead, it’s about P/P being boring and poorly designed because its Initiative skills don’t compete well with one another strictly because of Vital Shot being weak, making it bland and one-trick pony instead of engaging and tactical.

Boring is subjective. Personally, I enjoy managing and trying to stay at high levels of initiative with unload. If you don’t like that, maybe you should find a different weapon set that better suits your playstyle.

Also the problem isn’t “Unload costs too much initiative, locking out your other skills”. That’s too specific an avenue. The problem is “PP sux”.

Einlanzer.1627:

Builds are not relevant.

Except the amount of initiative you can generate per second is intimately tied to your build, which could mean that the problem you’re experiencing with Unload is that you’re not building properly to maximise Initiative.

The amount of damage that your abilities deal is dependent on your build, and if you’re going to make claims about the amount of damage each ability causes, you’re going to need to provide a build so that you can actually provide a context for, and prove your claims.

CratZ.6270:

Maybe axe should be the go to LF generating weapon in addition to vulnerability. if the autoattack generated 1% LF, would this make it an appealing choice?

This would make it really unappealing. At the moment, LF being on the 2 squeezes it down to a manageable cast time; you channel 2 for 2 seconds, you get 8% life force. Being on the 1 forces you to spam 1 for the same amount of life force for a much longer time.

Dagger 1 is a fast chain which gives large chunks of LF. For Axe 1 to do the same thing, it’d need to provide something like 3% LF for each use of 1.

On Dagger and Staff providing LF while Axe and Scepter don’t; I think making a hard rule here would just suppress build diversity.

Serkit.7836:

Old news. You can still put it in the forge for the possibility of getting something salvageable.

The problem is that certain sets (namely WvW sets) may have valuable upgrade items applied to them, but it is impossible to extract them using a BLTC salvage kit, forcing people to buy the more expensive upgrade extractors.

Maybe:
Give Rending Claws native spread; the first slash will act as normal, but the second strikes 2 more targets within 240 radius of the primary target

Move Unholy Feast to the 2, reduce CD to 10 seconds, reduce Retal duration to 2s per target, reduce Cripple duration to 4 sec

Move Ghastly Claws to the 3, increase cooldown to 15 seconds, reduce cast time to 1.75 sec, boost damage by a nice big number (20-30%)

There’s my wishlist. It’ll never happen, but there it is. That should be enough to give it a firm role as a close-range, power AOE weapon.

IMHO GvG and WvWvW should be kinda sorta the same thing. You currently already have fights between certain guilds happening organically in it. The game just needs new features to orient it more in that direction.

Cecilia.5179:

The problem I have with this skill is that it is a self-destruct button for your pet. When your pet dies, the swap cooldown lasts a very long time. If both of your pets die, traits like empathetic bond stop working, which, in the end, leaves you more vulnerable and lowers your DPS potential. Personally, I’d like to see the removal of animal abuse skills and traits that require the suffering of the pet. Necromancers treat their minions better than a ranger treats his pet… I would much rather see Signet of Stone not require a trait to effect the ranger than “Protect Me!” becoming more likely to kill your pet. I’d rather see the skill reduce incoming damage than kill the pet. If the skill remains the way it is, it should correctly display what it does, though.

Watch your pet’s health and swap it before it dies.

Personally I don’t really know about attaching Stability to it, but I’m pretty sure that the skill isn’t pulling its weight at the moment. I think it wouldn’t be unfair to add a stunbreak to it.

dank.3680:

my post the other day made this topic unreadable?

Forum bug. The forums think that because there are 51 posts in the thread, it needs a second page, but the first post of the thread isn’t counted towards the first page.

Einlanzer.1627:

Try reading again please, even though I couldn’t have possibly made it more clear- Physical. Not overall. Of course Sneak Attack does more overall DPS than Unload at baseline, which is completely irrelevant because it’s also 75% condition damage and can’t be spammed.

I could have also said the word “overall”. Psst: I did. I also question your earlier mathwork other than the “50%/110%” goal because you didn’t even calculate base power.

I also didn’t say that Sneak Attack does more DPS than Unload at baseline. I said that Sneak Attack does more DPS than Unload for the build I’ve posted, which is in full Zerker’s gear. I’ve posted a build; return the favor.

Einlanzer.1627:

Sarrs.4831:

A 20% buff to Vital Shot won’t matter because you should be making very few Vital Shots if you’re playing Unload properly. It will matter to P/D because they use Vital Shot regularly, and the only ability P/D has that needs a buff is Dancing Dagger because that’s the worst Initiative spending skill you have.

No, once again – it will have a much more far reaching impact on P/P because of P/P’s current overdependency on Initiative for damage. It would reduce that dependency, allowing P/P to function like every other set. P/D, in contrast, deals damage from numerous sources, so a Vital Shot buff, while still a buff, would be somewhat diluted and is still warranted.

If you are not a scrub PP player, you will do a lot of Unloads.

For you to make more Vital Shots than you make Unloads in a PvE environment, you have to be utterly, hilariously horrible at your initiative management. If you’re arguing from a PvE perspective, I’m sorry, but this really comes down to skill; you’re getting bad damage not because the playstyle is broken, but because you can’t handle it.

If you’re arguing from an sPvP perspective, your weakness isn’t the result of Vital Shot being weak. You’re weak because other builds (And I mean THIEF builds, not every other build in the game, I swear if I see a word about other classes I don’t know what I’ll do) have core effects which you don’t have, which they use to not die: gapmakers and evade frames. Body Shot is the closest thing to a gapmaker you have, and it’s a 1 second immobilise- hardly a tool that’ll keep you alive. Changing Vital Shot in a way that doesn’t change its fundamental role won’t change your behaviour; you spam Unload until your target drops dead or you do. Changing Vital Shot in a way that does change its fundamental role puts Unload on the same turf as Sneak Attack and Pistol Whip, where it really can’t compete.

And that’s what, as I understand, you want. You want to change Vital Shot from “i screwed up my initiative and now i’m using this” to “core of damage” and you want to change Unload from “core of damage” to “burst”. But you’re missing that Vital Shot in P/D gets changed from “i can’t do anything more interesting so i use this” to “core of damage”, and that Unload is now a redundant tool compared to SA and PW.

So yeah. If you can clarify which one you want, that’d be great.
Is it a Vital Shot buff which doesn’t change fundamental behavior, but raises your damage when you’re all out of Initiative?
Is it a Vital Shot buff that changes which skill you use actively to deal baseline damage, and which you use to deal burst?

Also I’ve posted a build; return the favor.

Siva Mira.3546:

No matter how great P/D power is, you can not Sneak Attack out of nowhere you have to go into Stealth first. If you think P/D power use a lot of Vital Shot then you should think that P/P power also use a lot of Vital Shot too. IMO, both P/D and P/P need Vital Shot.

Well, I don’t think that, because I can play P/P power and make a lot of Unloads- A lot more Unloads than I do Vital Shots.

Seriously, try it. 04046 zerk’s on the Indestructible Target Golem. Withdraw, Roll for Initiative, Signet Which Gives You More Initiative Over Time, Blinding Powder, Dagger Storm.

Siva Mira.3546:

As a person who run P/P power build, as far as I can tell is that direct damage of Sneak Attack only did 1/3 of Unload Damage and there is no way those crappy bleeding damage would do another 2/3 of Unload Damage. The only good thing here is, Sneak Attack has a reliable way to land all 5 shots while Unload having a harder time to land all 8 shots. IMO, Sneak Attack and Unload are both perfectly fine and there is no need to fix them.

DPS, not overall damage per cast.

Siva Mira.3546:

As for Vital Shot, whatever math you are using is doesn’t matter. The highest damage I have seen once a month in a single shot of Vita Shot is 1500 damage and if that happened my Unload would do at least 8K damage to that same target. And what does that mean? Even if you have to buff 20% to Vital Shot direct damage it still nowhere remotely close to Unload damage. I honestly still think that Vital Shot should see some buff to it direct damage.

“Empirical facts and mathematical analysis don’t matter! Here’s an anecdote!”

A 20% buff to Vital Shot won’t matter because you should be making very few Vital Shots if you’re playing Unload properly. It will matter to P/D because they use Vital Shot regularly, and the only ability P/D has that needs a buff is Dancing Dagger because that’s the worst Initiative spending skill you have.

Terrahero.9358:

You shouldnt need a healer, you shouldnt need anything. If you need a support, or need a controller, you’ve got a trinity again.

The problem isnt that support isnt viable, its just better to go full damage because you clear faster.
Controller however are pretty much unviable, due to how utterly resistant bosses and champions are against getting CCd.

However with the latest move to make PvE even easier, there is even less reason to want to go for the extra security of a Support over just another damage-pump to clear a dungeon faster.

But if we start to see imposed mechanics that force you to take a support build player, you’re already going back to a trinity. And it wont have the desired effect people want, people think it will make their support character more desired.
But people will just cherry pick the “best” support profession, and if thats Guardian everyone will want a support guardian.

Which then means non-guardian support still gets ignored, and every guardian thats not support will get berated for not being support and told to respec. We’ve got plenty of MMOs with a trinity and we know exactly what that lead to. Less versatility and build diversity, not more.

I’ll take my no-trinity game, thank you very much. And if that means the PUG-lords dont like to play with me, but i can play whatever i like when i go with friends, then so be it.
Because the PUG-gods will always find another “perfect” setup that they aspire to, and that setup will exclude most builds.

The weakness of holy trinity is that you’re dependent on certain classes to fill the healer/tank role, and said healers and tanks are dependent on special healer and tank gear.

Control/support/damage doesn’t have a gear dependency (outside of a few edge cases with condi/boon duration), and with the last patch, you can change your spec wherever you want in the world. All you have to do is carry the weapons you need for your offsets (which you probably do already). If your group needs a support or a control player, you just switch weapons and utils and traits and done.

Siva Mira.3546:

Not too sure what kind of build that make you believe Sneak Attack can do better DPS than Unload which is not true. And to top that off you can’t chain Sneak Attack like you did with Unload.

The build I linked earlier. I did the math and it did almost exactly the same damage as unload, for 1 second of casting. It might switch about a bit depending on which build exactly you’re using. The difference between DPS and DPSC is worth noting.

You’re right; you can’t Sneak Attack more than you can Unload because of Revealed’s limiting. Because of that, though, P/D power benefits more from a Vital Shot buff because they’re forced to spend that time Vital Shotting, and will make something like 4 vital shots in between each Sneak Attack. Unload doesn’t actually benefit that much (if you’re actually doing the rotation properly) because that ratio goes much lower, depending on your build. Using a full initiative build (04046 w/ pistol essentials) and good utility use you can do a full rotation while using very little, if any, Vital Shots.

Siva Mira.3546:

On the other hand, who is in their right mind to say that Vital Shot has the DPS that is remotely close to Unload DPS? Show me how you can deal 4K damage with Vital Shot in a mere 2 seconds.

get 2 crits as 26006 on a light armor class with 0 toughness

134 + ((2314 * .4) * 2.50) = 2448 per shot

i haven’t adjusted for armor
also this is pre ferocity nerf so idk what exactly the highest crit damage you can get now is

oZii.2864:

Is whats missing a healer for the trinity to happen?

• Go make a Ele Aqua Benevolence
• Grab Guard for tanking
• Figure out the definitive answer on the Aggro system.
• Profit?

Probably should figure out the Aggro system then grab a guard and ele later.

how to tank in gw2:
guardian hammer
use your 5 skill
ask ANet really nicely to delete Defiance
done!

Serious, though, the game doesn’t need “heal/tank/dps”. It needs “support/control/damage”; the alternate trinity which was put forward as a model during the early game development. I’m not surprised it didn’t do as well as was expected, because a heal/tank/dps game is easy to make because EQ and WoW have sorted it all out, but it would be nice if dungeons were refined a bit more to actually conform to how small-scale PVE is supposed to operate.

I’m inclined to say dungeon tracks just because assured Exotics. Which dungeon track exactly I’m not sure, but Deimos and Dbest both raise good points.

Maybe if you can push high MF, the regional tracks will be worth more, but I strongly doubt it.

Carighan.6758:

The 500 would be intentional as a result of the slower walking speed. The whole weapon would be about standing somewhere and denying area. To that end, the trait is both a boon and a curse, it means you need to unequip the FT to be mobile, but as long as you got it equipped, direct damage will have some serious issues with overpowering you.

Miiiight be unbalanced in sPvP ofc, since combat is forced onto the points there. But considering that all this would still not push the FT to the decap power of the current loadout we use for that, it’s a non-issue IMO.

Lazy suggestion; Move the reduced movement speed to FT 1, so you move slower while spraying. You move to a point, pull out the flamethrower and start redecorating.

Carighan.6758:

• Juggernaut changed: Might gain removed, Toughness boosted by 500 total, burning on you lasts 50% shorter, walk 20% slower but immune to blowout, knockdown and knockback.

I like the idea of changing Juggernaut but I’m not sure about this exactly, mostly because traits which cause negative affects on the user don’t really exist anywhere.

Also 500 is a really big number.

Da Sonic.6521:

LUST.7241:

• Why does [Flame Blast]’s explosion not count as an Explosion?

What does this even mean?

Engineers have traits that benefit explosions.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Introducing – “Exhaustion” mechanic

I don’t quite like it. I think it overcomplicates Initiative, which is already a system unique to thieves, by applying another set of rules on top of it.

Personally I don’t think that Initiative is fundamentally bad. In places it’s a bit odd, but it’s not fundamentally bad.

Stun Break on Locust could be cool. Optionally, make it so that it doesn’t have a cast time, so that it can be cast while stunned. If a gang of dudes comes up to you, you can just go “KAPOW LOCUST SIGNET” and steal like 6k health.

Einlanzer.1627:

Guys, guys

I’m talking about Sneak Attack in a power build, which I took to mean a power/crit build and not a power/condi build because clearly P/D is better for that already.

Using a Power/crit build, there’s no way Sneak Attack will ever rival Unload and there’s no chance P/D will ever be better than P/P with such a build unless you made Vital shot do more physical damage than Unload, which nobody is asking for. Zero chance.

Sneak Attack deals better DPS than Unload. Run the numbers.

Post the build you’re talking about. I’ve posted a build; return the favor.

It doesn’t need to deal more damage than Unload. It needs to deal enough damage to push it from “core DPS ability” to “tactical burst”; Pistol Whip and Sneak Attack can do the rest. You also actually did ask for Vital Shot to deal more overall damage than Unload, but let's ignore that.

Roe.3679:

Direct damage is killing the fun for me. They can swing their swords and hammers nonstop. Spam spam spam! Nerf pls kthanx.

They should make all attacks cost energy, and when you are completely out of energy, you have to take a quick Nap to recharge. You can’t Nap and capture a point at the same time!

NinjaEd.3946:

P/d hybrid wouldn’t be affected negatively by this, the bleeds would still be present and the power portion would be getting a slight buff. The point of reworking the aa is to fit what p/p and p/d has access to in terms of stealth. P/p can’t stealth on its own, p/d can, so it would be logical to relocate the the condition portion to the build that has a use for it in order to buff the power portion. A flat buff to the aa does no good as far as distinguishing p/p and p/d, there has to be an adjustment as to where the damage buff comes from.

P/D hybrid benefits a bit I think, both from the direct damage boost and from the bleeds coming in bigger ‘chunks’. I do like that a change like that would move the skill load from the autoattack.

But yeah, I’m not worried about P/D hybrid. I’m worried about P/D power. Boosting Vital Shot closes the cap between P/D power and max Unload P/P power.

Einlanzer.1627:

That can’t be what he meant, because that isn’t what Ninja Ed suggested doing. Even if you did buff its physical damage output, though, you’d have to really overdo it for Sneak Attack to rival Unload as a power move.

I’m fairly sure Sneak Attack is already higher DPS than Unload. I haven’t run the numbers, but if you get stealth as PP, you spend it on Sneak Attack because it’s roughly equal if not better DPS, infinitely better DPI and the bleed stacks are just gravy. The only weakness it has is Revealed locks its fire rate to 1 every 3 or 4 seconds, and Unload’s advantage here is that it’s only locked by your initiative regen.

Didn’t respond to your last post and not going to because it’s the exact same post as the one that came before it; just more “you’re thinking wrong” stuff. My goals are pretty simple; least possible spillover, don’t overshoot the goal, don’t change the playstyle.

If you mean specifically the Crossfire stuff, fine- you get better physical damage out of it. You still get better bleed ticks from a 4 sec bleed Shortbow 1 with .82 cast time, and arguing that a Power Ranger wants good physical damage on SB1 is silly because use a Longbow or a Greatsword you silly ranger.

NinjaEd.3946:

Then the line to separate the 2 sets, increase the bleed duration of sneak attack from 4-8 seconds base, lower the bleed duration of the aa from 4-2 seconds, and increase the direct damage base as well as power coefficient slightly. Lastly, each shot from unload should apply a 1 second 1 stack of vulnerability to help out with its channeled damage. This makes the power portion, p/p, have more direct damage and gives the condition portion, sneak attack, to do what it does.

Not sure about this; Unload applying Vuln could mean that Body Shot’s pushed even further into the Weird Box for PP. At the moment, you might go “yeah throw out body shot for vulnerability stacks and help my buddies” in a groupfight, but now Unload just does that too.

I think a straight 3-5% damage boost for Unload would probably be better just because it’s less messy. It ends up being about the same.

NinjaEd.3946:

This would help p/p have a strong single target impact, it wouldn’t nerf p/d hybrid because the heavy bleeds would still be there just relocated to a more appropriate position, and p/d conditions would get the same treatment. Only build that would suffer would be p/p hybrid if that even exists outside of a gimmick but if you’re gaining one build at the expense of another that behaves very similar, why care?

The only build which suffers is PP hybrid, but there are two builds which benefit here; P/P power (the intended target) and PD power. That’s what I’m mainly worried about when you buff Vital Shot to better supplement Unload, even when you move around the condition application; PD power could just take over completely from PP.

Bhawb.7408:

I think they should take the #2 skill, and add it as a chain to the auto attack, but with only 2-3 hits, make it cleave, and then re-balance it with that in mind. Then make the #2 skill a frontal cone burst skill.

Personally I really like having the channel as it is. It feels visceral and rewarding to press, imo.

What if the frontal cone was 1’s chain skill? So it’s more like slash-slash-boom, a bit like how Warrior Axe 1 is backloaded.

Einlanzer.1627:

I was overstating for emphasis, but Crossfire is still unquestionably the stronger of the two attacks. It’s more than 50% faster than Vital Shot and therefore does more than 50% more direct damage. The bleed damage is about even when you’re able to consistently apply it.

Vital Shot has a .82 total cast time.
Crossfire has a .54 total cast time.

.54/.82=0.65853658536.

This rounds nicely to 66%.

Crossfire is 34% faster than Vital Shot, not “more than 50% faster”.

Vital Shot’s bleed duration is 4 seconds. Crossfire’s bleed duration is 3 seconds. 4/3 = 133% = 33% better than Crossfire. This implies that your assessment is correct, and that the two abilities are more or less equal in condition application.

However, Vital Shot’s higher duration allows it to benefit more from Condition Duration. Vital Shot only needs 25% to gain an extra Bleed tick where Crossfire needs 33%. 25% is easily attainable by putting 25 points into Deadly Arts; a ranger would need to put 30 points in Marksmanship and then find another source to get the extra second. Vital Shot can push 6 bleed ticks per shot with Sigil of Agony + 30 Deadly Arts; it is impossible for an sPvP ranger to push a 5th bleed tick on Crossfire, even with full Marksmanship, Sigil of Agony and a condition duration runeset.

I don’t know whether these specs are popular, but 30 Deadly Arts has a nice trait for Condi Thieves in Residual Venom, whereas 30 Marksmanship doesn’t really have much bang for its buck.

Crossfire has a positional requirement, but Vital Shot does not. Another point in Vital Shot’s favor.

Also, Pistol Mastery is there with no equivalent trait for Rangers, and I’d argue that Ricochet is a stronger trait than Piercing Shots. It’s hard to line up shots to pierce in sPvP, whereas Ricochet is completely passive and requires no effort.

If the two skills traded places, Rangers would be stronger for it- 20 Marksmanship(a decent decision, so you can take Piercing Shots)+Agony+runes is 50% bleed duration. They get an extra bleed tick out of the trade, in exchange for a negligible amount of direct damage and slightly less Sharpened Edges procs- But if they build for 2 more ticks from Vital Shot, they’ll gain another tick out of each proc of Sharpened Edges.

Vital Shot has distinct advantages for condi builds over Crossfire. It is only “unquestionably better” if you’re arguing from a Power perspective rather than a Condi perspective, and that’s silly because use a longbow you stupid ranger.

Einlanzer.1627:

Uh no. No it isn’t. I don’t even understand how you’re rationalizing that assertion.

You always need damage.

You don’t always need to immobilise people, you don’t always need to interrupt people, you don’t always need to blind people.

Assertion rationalized.

If you mean the “90%” number, then stop throwing out random numbers- Actually get a track of what abilities you use and when.

Einlanzer.1627:

No other class deals with this because they use cooldowns (meaning skills don’t share a resource and don’t lock each other out), and with all other thief weapons the autoattack is sufficiently strong enough that #2-5 take on utilitarian roles where they are better in some situations than in others, which is how it’s supposed to work. When you’re playing with D/D you don’t just endlessly spam Heartseeker, or Death Blossom, or any of the others, because they all have different strategic uses and which one is better is dynamic based on context.

When you’re playing P/P you don’t endlessly spam Unload. In standard rotation, you put out Unloads when you’re about to cap out on, and therefore waste, Initiative. You only spam it in situations where you need burst- exactly what you want.

Einlanzer.1627:

With P/P, Unload is virtually always better than the other skills, because using any of the other skills takes too much away from your damage, which, ultimately, is more important than any other utility. That’s why Initiative skills that are damage focused should only be slightly stronger than the autoattack and not significantly stronger, so that there’s a balance between Initiative skills and, for example, Body Shot may be more useful than Unload in some situations.

The main reason Body Shot will be more useful than Unload in some situations is because your Unload has no place in a max DPS rotation. You will start using Body Shot for the vulnerability because it’s a better spend when you’re at Initiative cap.

Einlanzer.1627:

I’m sorry, but you just plain are not thinking about this in the correct way – you’re locked into a very specific dogma here that just isn’t very defensible. Maybe I’m not doing a great job of explaining it, but I know with absolute certainty that I’m right.

You accuse me of being locked into a specific dogma, and in the next sentence, you claim to know absolute truth. Seriously- the number work you’ve done is pretty kitten and you’re claiming to know your solution is flawless and will have no secondary repercussions that you haven’t accounted for.

Einlanzer.1627:

Take a step back and really try to evaluate what I’m saying. You’re too literate for this.

I know what you’re saying. Move the damage emphasis from Unload to Vital Shot.

I disagree with you because it fundamentally changes the playstyle (you no longer need to manage your initiative for maximising damage; all thief weapons except S/D need to do this, and S/D is the exception, not the rule) and practical issues (PD is stronger, and PD/SP is now better in every situation except a very specific one).

I understand your position. I just think you’re wrong.

Einlanzer.1627:

First, is spamming #1 better than spamming #3? The answer is yes, for two reasons – a.) you don’t really “spam” #1 – it’s passive. b.) Vital Shot doesn’t cost initiative and doesn’t channel, which means you retain full mobility and access to utility.

You can change your autocast to another ability to use that instead. There are at least a few specs that consciously click off their 1 autocast, particularly Ranger Sword. Even then if your spam’s on autocast, you’re now just sitting there doing nothing- The exact opposite problem.

Vital Shot doesn’t cost initiative and that’s one of its strengths- Yet Unload getting an initiative cost cut would not do anything. That’s a contradiction.

I am arguing exclusively against the assertion “Unload is too initiative-intensive, therefore Vital Shot should be buffed to take its place”. I don’t care about the cast time because that’s not what we’re talking about, unless the cast time is relevant to how expensive it is.

Einlanzer.1627:

Second, you only think reducing the cost of Unload would give you more Initiative for other things, when in reality – it wouldn’t. Unload is a better use of Initiative than any other skill 90% of the time, so all it would do would cause you to spam it even more and leave the set just as dysfunctional from a resource & utility perspective. It would only increase the burst damage without addressing any of the utility, mobility, or sustained DPS concerns, which is not really what P/P needs.

Uh yeah. Being better than other abilities 90% of the time is… Normal. That’s how utility works; you don’t always need it. Trying a perfect 25/25/25/25 split between all four of your initiative spending abilities is silly.

I actually tested how much I can do pure Unloads as it stands with an Initiative focused spec, in the Heart of the Mists. Try it for yourself; 04046 spec, grab all the pistol vitals and initiative regen traits and skills. The only thing that kept me from constantly Unloading and Sneak Attacking was when Steal didn’t give me a Blinding Tuft. If Unload cost 4 Initiative then I’m fairly confident I could spam Unload without ever going underneath 7 initiative.

Seriously, don’t understate how big a cost drop is. A 20% boost in resources over in WoWland changes a Rogue from energy starved to unable to spend all their energy.

Einlanzer.1627:

Third, I just simply don’t buy the ‘buffing vital shot = slippery slope’ argument. There’s a chance it will make P/D slightly too good, which isn’t even certain as P/D is only currently better than P/P because of its resource management, which this wouldn’t impact much. If after evaluation it proves to be too good, it will only be because of the combination of Sneak Attack and Vital Shot, so they would just need to rebalance Sneak Attack to do an even amount of direct and bleed damage instead of mostly bleed damage. Run the numbers yourself!

It’s better than P/P for several reasons. It has native access to stealth (DO NOT UNDERSTATE HOW BIG AN ADVANTAGE THIS IS), its damage isn’t tied up in a long channel, it’s less resource dependent, more condi protection…

If Vital Shot dealt more damage than Unload in all circumstances, I’d never use PP. Like I said, no reason not to use PD/SP. Pistol Whip’s better than Unload.

Einlanzer.1627:

Look, we’re just on fundamentally different pages here. You are focused on Unload being the issue.. I’m not arguing that there’s no chance Unload needs a buff – maybe it does. But it’s not the problem with the set. At most, it deserves a 10% damage increase OR some additional utility. It does less total damage than Pistol Whip and lacks cleave, but it also has 900 range and channels a bit faster; I don’t actually know that PW is superior burst. They’re definitely close to one another, and Unload does its full damage a bit faster.

I’m focusing on Unload because Unload is the only skill that can be changed for PP without there being knock-on effects from buffing a skill. Pretty much every other weapon spread in a Thief’s kitten nal is just fine, except for PP. (I’d actually probably argue that DD could use a bit of love as well, but that’s not what we’re here for).

Einlanzer.1627:

That is simply not the case with Vital Shot, which is a good 20% shy of where it should be at best, leading to issues with resource management and general playability for the entire set.

I’m going to respond to the first section of this twice because there’s two ways of going about it.

Vital Shot is a good 20% shy of where it needs to be in a PP set. That’s the problem with buffing it; you make other builds’ 1 skill 20% better, you start chasing other skills (like Sneak Attack) to try to fix the issue- And before long, you’ve got dozens of skills which all need adjustment. Thieves are in a decent place right now, and tromping about making changes causes upsets all across the board.

Vital Shot is a good 20% shy of where it needs to be in your interpretation of PP. You’ve set up the statement that all weapon sets in the game use 1 as their damage baseline, and that’s true- for classes which have cooldowns dictating their weapons (not a thief, in other words). You’ve also set up the statement that all Thief weapon sets need to use their 1 as their baseline, which I disagree with because, to the best of my knowledge, every other weapon for a Thief relies on skills other than their 1 to deliver their damage. Sword 1 is the exception, not the rule.

Einlanzer.1627:

The issue is that, whether it’s too weak, too strong, or just right, Unload is still more critical than #2, #4, or #5 a disproportionately large percentage of the time just because it’s pigeonholed into functioning as your main source of DPS.

You make note of Unload holding the set back because sustained use causes initiative issues, locking you out of your utility. I agree with this assessment.

Your recommendation is to increase Vital Shot’s damage so that when you do fail to manage your initiative, it’s less punishing. You’ll still run out of initiative when you spam Unload, but that’s okay, because you can fall back on Vital Shot if you screw up. This leans over and sticks its straw into P/D’s milkshake and drinks it up, which is very, very dangerous.

My recommendation is to reduce Unload’s initiative cost so that it’s significantly less taxing to maintain high Unload uptime. I think just saying this doesn’t quite have the impact it does, but reducing the resource cost of your primary attack by 20% is huge.

Einlanzer.1627:

Buffing Unload won’t change that and will just make it even more critical that you spam it endlessly anytime you’re using P/P, keeping your versatility, mobility, sustained DPS, and utility all perpetually poor.

Okay, going to address each of these in turn.
Is spamming 1 better than spamming 3?
Reducing the initiative cost of Unload gives you more Initiative to spare for other utilities, increasing your versatility.
Reducing the initiative cost of Unload makes it less punishing to interrupt it- allowing you to dodge and move more.
Reducing the initiative cost has both direct increases on sustained DPS (more unloads = MORE BULLETS) and secondary effects (Lead Attacks/First Strikes have better uptime).
Reducing the initiative cost of Unload gives you more Initiative to spare for other utilities, increasing your… Uh, utility.

This all assumes that you’re actually talking about initiative and not time. If you’re literally talking about “time” as in the stuff that comes in balls of timey wimey stuff then just cut the init cost/cast time/bullets fired by unload and done, now Unload’s nowhere near as much of a time investment while retaining the damage.

Einlanzer.1627:

It’s just bad design. Despite my snark, you come across as a smart guy – I don’t see how you can’t see this.

Thankyou for dropping the snark. It really makes a difference in how I interpret your posts.

I think there are a few key skills and weapons that are a bit too strong on the CC mark.

Warrior hammer is obvious. You just hit the enemy with your hammer and CC falls out of it.

Magic Bullet bothers me because mesmers manage to make it last forever

These aren’t really comments on how well balanced they are, though, more on how they feel.

Einlanzer.1627:

Man that was a lot of work considering that you complicated the comparison needlessly without even factoring in Vital Shot’s aftercast, which is one of the most significant components and is even on the wiki. Additionally, Pistol Mastery for sure and I believe the other traits only affect direct damage, not bleed damage, so they benefit Unload significantly more than Vital Shot.

It’s fairly simple; most of the work is in how it’s structured.

The aftercast isn’t there, but the total cast time is, and I made a mistake with Unload’s cast time. I’m making the adjustments now; my apologies, as they quite significantly change the results.

Vital Shot-centric rotation deals 5902 DPS. Unload-centric rotation deals between 7052 and 7295 damage.

Vital Shot
5902/2=2951
2951*1.2=3541.2

Low Unload
(7052*9)/4=15867
15867*(4/7)=9066.85714286

High Unload
(7295*9)/4=16413.75
16413.75*(4/7)=9379.28571429

Therefore, Vital Shot spam deals 3541 DPS. Unload spam deals between 9067 and 9379 damage. This assumes that 1.2 Vital Shots are made per second, and 1 Unload takes 1.75 sec to complete, with no cast delays.

You are correct in that all damage % multipliers are applied only to the direct damage portion of the attack. This is why I ordered the analysis in the way that I did; multipliers come before the Bleed damage is added.

Einlanzer.1627:

Let’s just look at baseline statistics taken from the build editor, which for the most part corroborate your math.

Vital Shot – 134 direct damage, 170 bleed damage with a .82 refire rate
Unload – 808 direct damage over 1.75 seconds with a .1 recast delay

Let’s take an arbitrary value for time- we’ll go with 6 seconds:
7.3 Vital Shots
3.3 Unloads

Vital Shot damage total = 978/1241 total direct/bleed damage
Unload damage total = 2666 total damage

You are completely ignoring Power and Condition Damage; the effect they have on numbers is not a direct translation.

Einlanzer.1627:

However, the problem remains the same. Because condition damage is delayed and can be more easily mitigated, it is ‘worth’ significantly less than direct damage.

Armor? Toughness? Protection? Direct damage is subject to just as much mitigation as condi damage, if not more. If you’re just spamming Vital Shot I’m personally kinda doubtful that anyone will bother spending their condi removal to take it off.

Einlanzer.1627:

Also, because Unload is spammable and benefits more from crit and Pistol mastery (which if you don’t have you shouldn’t be using P/P), it is capable of putting out far more damage than Vital Shot can in a given window of time and therefore carries excessive responsibility for the set’s overall damage pressure.

I have included Pistol Mastery and critical damage in my calculations. They’re in the sections labelled “traits” and “critical strikes”.

Einlanzer.1627:

It is critically important to note that this is skewed much further by the way you should be building with P/P. Between traits and gear you’re likely to end up with something more like Vital Shot doing 70% of the damage Unload does.

If you have a spec with which to perform an analysis, please feel free to post it. This spec has some provisions in its utilities to ensure that it doesn’t die. I’d be very interested in seeing a higher-damage version of an Unload build.

I’ve calculated the effects of traits and crits.

Einlanzer.1627:

When the proportion should be more like this:
Vital Shot – 50% direct damage, 110% total damage of Unload.

The above would in no way make Unload useless or obsolete, because there’s tremendous value in 100% of the damage it does being direct damage as opposed to condition damage – it’s burstier, way less likely to be mitigated, and will be impacted significantly more by crit stacking builds. Many people would still spam it, but it would give the set enough flexibility that it wouldn’t be required.

Only if you analyze P/P in a vacuum. If you’re P/P with either Shortbow or no alt set, then Unload is superior to Vital Shot for burst.

However, that’s a vacuum. Pistol Whip is a better burst ability than Unload, and I’m fairly sure most people will agree. SP/PD would be able to retain all the utility of PP, retain the max range pressure of a buffed Vital Shot(which now deals more damage over time than Unload), and substitute Unload with the superior Pistol Whip. The only strengths that Unload has over Pistol Whip are Ricochet and range; Ricochet requires a specific set of circumstances to come out on top over cleaving attacks like Pistol Whip, and while the range can be useful, Pistol Whip’s evade frames beat it out.

I still don’t think a Vital Shot buff is the right way to address Unload.

Siva Mira.3546:

Hello, Sarrs.4831.

Your post was amazing that I have to shed some tears. But there is one flaw in your math. If you don’t believe me then you try a Thief with P/P with your best Power build and join a PvP game and see for yourself if you can hurt anyone if you simply spam Vital Shot alone.

Few points;

I do use that build, with a few minor changes, in hotjoin (different sigils and runes, combo critical chance instead of side strike). I don’t use it in solo queue or team queue because… Well, it’s bad, and it’s bad whether I use unload or vital shot. It isn’t bad because of Vital Shot’s damage, though.

This is a pure numbers analysis, and Vital Shot still loses by 20%. It’s still an objectively worse thing to do, to spam Vital Shot instead of properly use Unload, but the point wasn’t to demonstrate that Vital Shot is better or equal to Unload- The point was that a 20-25% increase is a ridiculous amount to boost Vital Shot, especially considering that such a change has overflow to P/D. If you want to make P/D objectively better than P/P, this is a great way to do it.

Einlanzer.1627:

The numbers in the original post were just wild, impromptu guesswork. I would imagine a 20-25% increase for Vital Shot would be about right.

If that was wild impromptu guesswork, where are you deriving your “20-25%” increase from?

Screw it. Gonna figure out just how much the difference between Unload and Vital shot is, because I’m pretty sure it’s not so big that 20-25% is required to put it in order.

I’m going to run the numbers for two thieves; one which is spamming just Vital Shot, and one which has hacked the game and is able to regenerate their initiative quickly enough to be able to return to 15 initiative while casting Unload. This is the build which I’ll be using.

I’ll be doing this in four stages; I’ll calculate untraited DPS, then calculate the impact of traits, then critical strikes, then the condition damage which Vital Shot deals. I will not be including Vulnerability, Might, Fury, or the complicated effects of Runes or Sigils, because I am lazy. Both Thieves are always able to benefit from Flanking Strikes and Side Strikes.

Untraited

Vital Shot direct damage at the moment:
134+950.4=1084.4
Unload direct damage at the moment:
101+712.8= 813.8 per shot
813.8*8=6546.4
Vital Shot direct DPS at the moment:
1084.4*2=2168.8
Unload direct DPS at the moment:
6546.4*4/9=2909.51111111

2168.8/2909.51111111=0.7454173286

Vital Shot is currently 74.5% of the DPS of Unload, not including the conditions applied.

Traits

These traits have a direct effect on the numbers of both Vital Shot and Unload, and are not affected by Initiative:

Pistol Mastery: +10% damage
Executioner: +10% damage (averaged out)
Flanking Strikes: +5% damage

These traits are dependent on Initiative. They have a variable effect on an Unload-centric rotation’s DPS, and not a Vital Shot-centric rotation:

First Strikes: +10% damage (if over 6 initiative)
Lead Attacks: +1-15% damage (depending on initiative)

We end up with 50% increased direct damage to Vital Shot, and 45-50% increased direct damage to an Unload rotation which can magically restore all of its initiative while using an Unload.

Vital Shot DPS: 2168.8*1.5=3253.2
Unload low DPS: 2909.51111111*1.45=4218.79111111
Unload high DPS: 2909.51111111*1.50=4364.26666667

Critical Strikes

Critical strikes affect Unload and Vital Shot equally. The build has a 66.86% chance to critically strike. This is an old version of the build calculator, and has not been adjusted to account for the Ferocity change, so the numbers generated here will be slightly inflated as a result.

Crit damage calculation:
.6686*2.5=1.6715

Vital Shot DPS=3253.2*1.6715=5437.7238
Unload low DPS=4218.79111111*1.6715=7051.70934222
Unload high DPS=4364.26666667*1.6715=7294.87173334

Vital Shot’s bleed damage
58/s per bleed stack with this build
Each bleed lasts 4.4 seconds, and a bleed is applied twice every second. Truncate bleed duration to 4 seconds.
58*4*2=464 extra damage applied every second.

5437.7238+464=5901.7238

Conclusion

I am truncating numbers for the sake of readability here.

Vital Shot-centric rotation deals 5902 DPS. Unload-centric rotation deals between 7052 and 7295 damage.

5902/7052=.83
5902/7295=.81

A Vital Shot centric rotation currently deals between 81% and 83% of the damage a pure Unload rotation does. By buffing Vital Shot’s damage by “20-25%”, you are overshooting your initially stated goal by at least 11% and making Vital Shot deal more DPS than Unload, even in optimal circumstances.

My wild guesses about the assumptions that I made:
Might benefits Vital Shot rotation significantly more than it does Unload, by improving the amount of damage Bleeding does.
Fury and Vulnerability slightly benefit Unload rotation more, because Fury and Vulnerability do not affect Vital Shot’s bleeds.
Sigils and Runes slightly benefit Unload rotation more, because they are not a component of Vital Shot’s bleeds, unless a bleeding duration/condition damage/condition duration rune/sigil set is used, which does more harm than good to the Vital Shot rotation.
Vital Shot’s aftercast is not calculated because I don’t know it. I’m just using the wiki’s numbers.

If there are any mistakes in my math, please let me know.

Super Conclusion: Vital Shot is not the problem. Unload is the problem- if there even is one.

Einlanzer.1627:

First, no – 15-25% damage buff, not 33-50%.

Earlier, you claimed that vital shot was 60% of Unload, when it should be 80-90%.

Einlanzer.1627:

Vital Shot probably does an average of 60% of the damage Unload does when it should be more like 80-90%

Boosting Vital Shot from 60% of Unload’s damage to 80% would be a 33% buff. Boosting Vital Shot from 60% of Unload’s damage to 90% would be a 50% buff.

I’m not sure whether you forgot you said that, or whether you remember it and just don’t know how to math?

Einlanzer.1627:

Second, no – Vital Shot is just as stupidly weak with P/D as it is with P/P, but the effect is diluted with P/D because the damage comes from multiple sources while allowing you to remain mobile. Buffing Vital Shot would have a smaller practical impact on P/D than it would on P/P.

I’m actually inclined to say the opposite. Unload’s a 2 1/4 second channel, IIRC. A lot of your time as PP is spent unloading. A buff to Vital Shot would only affect your downtime when you have no Initiative.

On the other hand, P/D’s abilities have no channels- they’re all quite quick. They spend quite a bit of time using Vital Shot. This leads me to believe that P/D would be benefiting at least a similar amount from a Vital Shot buff.

Einlanzer.1627:

Third, no – that’s why you balance Sneak Attack.

How?
Make it deal more damage? You’ve made Sneak Attack completely invalidate Backstab.
Make it deal less damage? You’ve made Sneak Attack a waste of time.

Einlanzer.1627:

Virtually every argument you throw out shows your inability or unwillingness to consider more than one or two peripheral factors at a time. It isn’t worth arguing with you.

I’m inclined to agree that this discussion can’t bear any fruit either. You keep jumping between things; you say “mediocre” when you mean “average”, you forget the numbers you’ve already posted, you take time out of your busy day to include comments like “this is a dumb argument” and “it isn’t rocket science”. How is this supposed to be fair to me?

T raw.4658:

P/P isn’t a primary weapon set. Stop thinking of it that way.

Instead imagine using unload ranged burst potential to combat classes that are trying to kite you.

I’ve seen thieves open up with melee burst and finish em with the pistol stealth shot into unload.

Buffing vital shot is NOT an option due to P/D

Also unload hits for a truck load for being a ranged attack

This is actually fun.

Just play S/D or S/P. When they try to kite you and they’re all smug, switch to PP and pewpewpewpewpewpewpewpew. You’ll scare the crap out of them. Not MLGpro level, I don’t think, but it’s enough of a curveball to confuse them.

Einlanzer.1627:

The point is that P/D has easier access to Sneak Attack than P/P AND benefits more from using it. Additionally, condition damage is more passive which means you don’t have to stand still and channel something to generate it AND it synergizes really well with Caltrops, especially in PvE. These are all reasons why P/D works better.

so basically p/d’s good. we know. in fact, it’s a very good reason not to adjust Vital Shot because buffing p/d’s 1 skill to do 33-50% more direct damage would be a pretty huge buff.

The “core” traits in spvp do not require you to unlock them. Only the 5 new XIII’s do. This is for every character, even one made after the patch.

Einlanzer.1627:

I never said that, and I’m not now.

You asserted that P/P has ‘crippled utility and mediocre damage’ or ‘mediocre utility and terrible damage’.

If you push up Vital Shot’s damage to ‘mediocre’ then you still end up with ‘mediocre utility and mediocre damage’, and while that is stronger, I’d barely call it much of an improvement. If you’re still dumping all your initiative into Unload, then you end up in the same boat- Mediocre damage and crappy utility, because you haven’t adjusted Unload.

Einlanzer.1627:

P/P’s utility is fair if you look at the skills independently, but it’s functionally crappy- not because the skills themselves suck, but because they all share a resource with the primary damage skill. As you don’t seem to get, this is unique to the Thief profession due to how Initiative works. It’s also (mostly) unique among thief weapons because the others properly use the autoattack for standard damage output with other skills being supplementary based on tactical openings or special needs, which is very obviously how it should work.

I don’t understand why you keep saying I don’t ‘get it’. I get what you’re saying, you have to choose between spending your initiative on utility and damage. I just disagree with your position that this is not how PP is intended to operate. Again; initiative management is the thing you have to do in exchange for PP’s native benefits as a ranged power set.

Einlanzer.1627:

If Initiative is going to work well as a resource, the design has to be that the #1 skill is always the standard, bread and butter damage source, with the #2 – #5 skills offering supplementary utility or damage based on different tactical contexts.

With this in mind, what is Unload supposed to be? Pistol Whip DPS levels of burst?

Einlanzer.1627:

Vital Shot’s weakness means P/P doesn’t function that way, which ruins the set’s general playability. The reason P/D works well in comparison is because Vital Shot is supplemented by various sources that do not cost Initiative like the Sneak Attack and Caltrops, which are arguably OP as a utility skill.

P/D works well in comparison because it gears to exploit the conditions that its core abilities (Vital Shot, Sneak Attack and Shadow Strike) cause, making the best of everything that the pistol mainhand has to offer. It also uses the thief’s core defensive mechanic (stealth) better.

Also, “Sneak Attack doesn’t cost Initiative”? Stealth costs anywhere from 0 to 9 initiative to enter, and if it costs 0 initiative, that’s because you’re blowing a potentially very important cooldown. Saying it’s free is hardly a fair analysis.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Sarrs.4831:

Zacchary.6183:

Then give everyone initiative (or something like it).

It is WAY more fun to use a global cooldown than the current cooldown system. The cooldown system every other profession has encourages rotations which has to be the most brainless method of attack in existence.

It forces players to manage what they have available in real time where every attack makes every other attack less available. It forces players to fully commit rather than “LETS SEA WUT AHTACK IZ OF CULDOWN”.

necro skills should all consume life when you use them, unless they’re deathshroud skills, in which case they consume lifeforce. GONNA SPAM ME SOME REAPER’S MARK

The kicker here is you can only spam so much. Once you run out of resources you are reduced to auto attacks.

Once you run out of resources you DIE.

Latinkuro.9420:

Sarrs.4831:

Sizer.5632:

Every time i go to bed at night I shed a few more tears for all those poor warriors and their attempts to beat those OP eles with all of their useless utilities. Perhaps someday this injustice will be fixed, but we can only hope.

like dis if you cry errytime

@OP if you genuinely think that Balanced Stance is a ‘joke’ just because Stability can be stripped you’re being dangerously silly.

LOL, I’m a warrior, run pain train warrior in WvW and yes balance stance is always on my bar as well.

but….

you guys are missing the point altogether or conveniently ignoring it, whichever.

the point is this: a stance should not be something you can boon strip or corrupt it is NOT a shout it is a stance an innate warrior thing

think about the unshakable icon on elementals that is how it should be when you pop balance stance not this crappy boon we get, which is the only reason I call it crappy.

Conveniently ignoring it yeah. I get what you mean but I don’t really think it’s enough of a distinction to be worthwhile, and personally I think an “uncorruptible stability” would be pretty OP with Balanced Stance’s duration in mind. It’d have to eat a pretty major (50%+) nuke to remain at a suitable power level.

Carighan.6758:

Am I alone in thinking Initiative is an interesting mechanic? And I don’t even have a Thief but hey, good for them that they have a global pool of shared cooldowns.

I like initiative. It’s not perfectly done, but it’s still pretty fun and different.

by ‘in the middle of peak maps’

do you mean

literally in the middle

like, in where you get the Bloodlust buff?

srs tho sometimes Obsidian Sanctum is already in use

I think it should be like.

You can dodge while stunned, and it’ll break the stun effect, but it’ll cost 100% endurance.

Mostly because I’m a scrub baddy who can’t handle the f1-5-4 hammer combo.

Zacchary.6183:

Then give everyone initiative (or something like it).

It is WAY more fun to use a global cooldown than the current cooldown system. The cooldown system every other profession has encourages rotations which has to be the most brainless method of attack in existence.

It forces players to manage what they have available in real time where every attack makes every other attack less available. It forces players to fully commit rather than “LETS SEA WUT AHTACK IZ OF CULDOWN”.

necro skills should all consume life when you use them, unless they’re deathshroud skills, in which case they consume lifeforce. GONNA SPAM ME SOME REAPER’S MARK

This makes sense. I also wonder whether there are traits that convert condi damage into something else, because they’re the same.

I don’t have a problem with these traits in general. They might not be great traits if they just provide 90 of a stat baseline; not all traits need to be fantastic. But, they should at least provide something; healing power->X can only get 90 to another stat if you’re full Cleric’s (or equivalent).

Personally, I think that healing power is too niche of a stat to really be worth the input spot to, even if the base stat were boosted to 916. Flipping the input and the output would work.

Would like hotkeys for more than just sets of weapons, but entire sets of gear. I’d use this specifically for switching to a Gotta Go Fast spread, and Centaur runes make Gotta Go Fast so much better.

Einlanzer.1627:

You can try rationalizing it all you want – always having to choose between having crippled utility and mediocre damage or mediocre utility and terrible damage is broken. No, you don’t have to rebalance everything, just Sneak Attack. And Unload isn’t the problem with P/P. Vital Shot is. There’s nothing else to be said about it. Bye.

You’re now saying that 5 abilities are the problem with P/P, not just one.

Guild challenges need to be opened up so that everyone participating can get credit, not just the guild in question

Spiteful Marks a bad trait, IMO. Stickytape it together with Soul Marks.

Einlanzer.1627:

Wow, you still aren’t getting it. At all. I don’t know how else to break it down. Okay, I’ll try one more simple explanation:

Compared to every other set in the game, P/P forces you to sacrifice too much utility and mobility for damage, and sacrifice too much damage to get any mobility or utility. This is a problem caused almost entirely by Vital Shot being too weak, and it’s a problem that reducing the Initiative cost of Unload will do very little to address. It’s that simple.

Please try to keep your posts as clear and concise as possible. Also try not to be a condescending kitten. I know it’s fun, but please try.

Onto the actual content of your post;
Comparing Thief spreads with other classes’ spreads is unreasonable. Initiative is fundamentally different to how every other class operates. Compare apples to apples; compare thief weapon spreads to thief weapon spreads.

You’re looking at Vital Shot as though it exists in a vacuum. It doesn’t. This makes it incredibly difficult to make a change without said change having a lot of spillover. If you buff Vital Shot to make PP “balanced”, you now have to rebalance every PD skill to compensate for its new effectiveness. If you want to buff or change PP’s effectiveness, look at the unique skill that PP has- Unload.

I don’t know whether it’s a good idea over the entire game, but I think it could make an interesting option for custom arenas. A private tournament with rallying disabled could be very interesting.

Generally speaking I think options that completely remove some of the rules of combat, like Rallying, would be really cool in custom arenas. If they do really well, then add them as special weekend modifiers in solo queue, or a weekly modifier for WvW.

ronpierce.2760:

- A “give up” button like borderlands 2 had so you don’t waste time on the ground.

This would also be nice. I think the ‘strategy’ of letting your opponents bleed out rather than killing them off is silly.