Guild Wars 2

Disagree how, I’m looking at what I said and looking at what there is to disagree about? About boons hitting is very heavily? Wot.. Or that it remains useful? That’s not questionable, S/P still has niche’s and it remains the best melee cleave on the thief you can get. It’s ability to pressure multiple targets has no competition out of the 4 melee specs. In addition to having the most CC. I’m not trying to conjure an idea that is an all around effective set, but that PW is still a useful skill.

If you have a queued up LS or go to que it up it’s faster assuming they have say 6000-9000 health to just CnD them if unblockable then hit with the LS after getting that vulnerability on them or doing it in reverse if you need to strip protection. Cloak and dagger doesn’t do 0 damage. Hence what I’m saying is you let S/D stronger ability to simply invalidate defenses and it really doesn’t require it. Nor is the change of unblock-ability really necessary for thief survival, it’s generally more about counter-play and invalidating the ele Arcane block or Guardian block as….
Ranger counterattack for instance would just be walked away from, if they use it to block CnD again that’s good play that you expect would be desired to have.
Same with Mesmer blocks, War mace/off sword block or Shield stance (which you can blow through with LS). Even disregarding effectivity and counter-play it’s a “why?” change in all seriousness. Why start disregarding block in this fashion? As it is now if you successfully pull off your CnD, stealth attacks are repeatable and unless it is a persisting block will generally hit on the 2nd press of “1”. The real benefit is say giving a reason to use it while Revealed, but it’s cornball.

I like P/D but with Sneak attack as strong as it is, it’s mostly 5-1 play.
I’ve done it in berserkers way back and it was still eh, but was fun. Whether condi or power it’s mostly the same and it’s effectiveness is shoddy regardless.

In regards to S/P wot. PW remains useful even with the AA’s strength and still puts out higher damage as well as having better defensive presence than the AA itself letting it actual do it’s damage without getting wailed upon. One of it’s biggest issues has always been boons in that both use of stealth attack, PW and HS are affected by stability, PW cleaves like nobodies business and retaliation will smash it to pieces without boon removal support it’s like flipping a coin for whether you’ll be effective on the next opponent or not though the damage nerf obviously didnt help. Specifically though /D vs /P they’re fairly comparable. I think giving Dancing daggers poison will have the most synergy with all /D sets out of anything else you could give it outside of pumping raw damage.

It has to be contemplated what the change also means for S/D. S/D already has unblockable damage moved from a weak attack to a strong attack. That set would be pulling teeth on certain builds quite hard if CnD was unblockable as well via options for defensive play period decreasing. As a result of boon defense being mitigated, as well as block. Leaving only blind and evade generally which is limited especially since S/ does bring it’s own Weakness.

D/P without the combo excels at what it’s built to do, pick off low targets, it’s the chaser set, but without that combo it’s much more vulnerable to ranged attacks and requires require use of weapon swap,util or external support to do current BS ganks instead of self reliance.

…..
“Maybe HS+ BP combo isn’t healthy in the first place and should be changed itself”.
If you really look at /P and /D and remove D/P from the equation, there is not a large gap if at all. The main issue is Dancing daggers underperforming. There is a clear choice between the ability to Stealth vs Black Powder. You can see this looking at S/P vs S/D very well, or P/P vs P/D. I don’t know why you’d bring up how great /P is and then say we should basically ignore 2/3 /P sets. Reality is if you look at D/P without the combo usage it’s not that great, actually somewhat poor outside of being the best-chaser. /P sets generally are very susceptible to ranged damage since they can’t stealth within the weapon set to invalidate that excusing D/P. There is a fair cost to going /P over /D just looking at the 5th slot. BP and headshot damage is practically non-existant vs DD and CnD. CnD has good counter-play at the moment it is what it is, making it unblockable somewhat craps on that and for what I don’t know the skill isn’t poor. You can’t compare Cloak and dagger to Black powder and call it a bad skill you simply cannot. The sole thing against it is the D/P set, if you remove that from the equation can you really say CnD is poorer than BP? Nope, how could you possibly? Better immediate trait support, significantly higher damage, vulnerability and stealth has multiple-purposes vs the smoke field which can be useful for teamplay or even play with SB, and some melee pressure for poorly-positioned melee targets.

To me what I’d change.
Dancing daggers would inflict poison for 3 or 4s and perhaps a small damage boost to compliment that addition.
That should be more than enough to cement the skill at the 4 ini cost.
Poison giving P/D and D/D condi specs better depth, scaling with trickery to make any usage of that in general more rewarding say for D/D and S/D power specs. It would give you another reason not to slot the Shortbow though it wouldn’t be able to stack poison as frequently, to as much enemies and create a field. Vs headshot it would be a damaging mitigator of heal vs Headshot which is a very weak damaging deny of heals.
Cloak and dagger would stack more vulnerability than it currently does and possibly at a longer duration.

With that S/D should be fully designed as a harassing set in having weakness, cripple, vuln, poison, boon removal, stealth and evade. P/D would just be using it’s 4 whether power specced or condi specced helping to solve how shallow it is in terms of condi spread and make it less reliant on Caltrops as a credible threat. Plus it would annoy mesmers.

Running more than 2 signets is meh.

Means pvp is getting more popular.

Let us ease your damage woes.
If you have 25% in Acrobatics your damage goes up, 10% essentially. Your 20 in SA is curbing your damage.
If you have 25 in trickery, same thing.
25 in DA same thing.
If your playing pvp (presumably) you have to wonder why take SA. Tactical strike isn’t a clutch in pvp it’s complementary so you generally won’t be spending that much time in stealth, nor having significant need of it offensively. Defensively you’re fine without it tbh and it’s inclusion is why your damage is falling off, even if you go 25 in SA the stacks of might you’ll get will be insignificant.

Your damage output is paltry because you’ve got shoddy investments into defense and no other modifiers outside of Critical strikes as well as no additional power.
You’re running sigil of air on a cleave weapon that by it’s nature can hit a wayward pet or clone first before your target. Should be sigil of fire.

May just be me, but my bow generally is running sigil of bloodlust or minor accuracy. Just switch to it during a stomp, so your melee set is at maximum efficiency when you switch to it.
With Force on the dagger, bloodlust on the bow, and assassin’s signet It’s 430 additional power + 5% increased damage with a flame sigil or 5% crit if I run that instead of force when I’m using my sword. Either way that’s pretty much as strong as 300 DA save exposed weakness. Not that you need Sin’s signet, but if you find your damage isn’t strong in that build it would make sense I believe to change the build for more offense and with 4 10%+ dmg modifiers in 25 pt grandmaster trees, running two of them may be beneficial…
LS isn’t any different from landing the Crippling Slash portion of your auto-attack other than being unblockable and doing more damage…

This is how Shadowsteps have always worked. It’s like the difference between evade and block.
Shadowsteps require physical path, Teleports do not.

1. No thanks to longer games. Feel they’re long enough playing, then watched Blu’s cast, and realize they’re definitely long enough. Was able to watch 3 games in 30 minutes. Length of 1 smite game, much prefer that. It’s just boring to watch because of Slow tick not being thrilling at all

Agree with Gunner on 5.

Guardians sword also has that auto facing. Wish all that crap was gone.

Rerroll.9083:

If we had a decent pool of maps they could add a "ban 1 map " system for each team

Yup. We don’t have enough professions to have counter-picking but we could do it with maps and it would certainly be interesting at least for me to see teams map ban to try and strengthen their comp or weaken the others.

It has all the significant parts of D/D and more.
It’s a chaser set, Thieves take an assassin role most of the time ganking players, D/P excels at staying on a target and disabling them.
In PvE it gives a blind field to disable most enemies.

What you should be wondering. Is what is your Dagger/Dagger giving you that is so valuable. Every pro you mentioned is the same for D/P.

Auesis.7301:

Also coming May 14: Thief reworked in to Assassin! Stealth slowly phased out as there is no need for it, and the glory days of A/x return!

Please don’t get my hopes up.

I thought about the throw traps thing.
Kinda weird when you think about it given their shape.
Wish the effects were just improved, maybe some Cd drops here and there.

Ebonhawke… If I recall a Map called The brand was in the works. Unless this map is relaying to an expansion.

Hope its good enough to replace nifhel what a boring map that is.

It takes their utility skills into account.
The main bonus of chill against thieves in the short-term is the snare to reduce the mobility they are proud of. Ini isn’t affected by the chill cd effect.

Im talking from literally a month ago. pre-change
It’s backwards progression.

As it is now
1) it is not a big deal
2) it is the way it is because of the amount of features LS has on it’s own vs FS.

Call logical fallacy if you want but I see your call as pig-headed.

FS was a hard to hit attack that removed a boon and was unblockable on the 1st hit which was relatively weak. However it had a second hit with the actual damage on it, you didn’t need to hit 1 to ensure the other. That’s how it’s always been. So you then say forget the ability for disjointed play that’s always been there. Linearize it.
Which really doesn’t do anything more than make it more shallow.

Naturally it’s going to be used twice or more with frequency because that’s the idea of the ini system. Back-to-back skill use. Wtf are you whining about?
Balance issues?
Again LS is front-loaded with the majority of the utility when it probably shouldn’t given how hard it’s always hit.

Or to use my actual train of thought. It’s like you saying “I don’t like how Dogged March works now, so let me make it functionally challenged.”

So go play Dota2 and gtfo.
I understand people want different game modes but Moba?
If you like Moba go download one. In gw2? Screw that.

If you’re going to copy-paste, there’s enough modes in gw1 to do so.

That being said, if theres a paradigm shift, I hope it is in how they design maps.

Its backwards progression from the original skill.

That’s terrible.

That’s because it’s been frontloaded with all of the major effects except for the evade. So it is prioritized more. There isn’t that trade off anymore where the 1st hit has a lot of util in it, but the 2nd hit has all the damage. Your 2nd hit has everything but the evade so you can care less about the 1st hit.

^ lol this. Inf strike is life.

They did say they’re going to revamp sigils.
Though I think they should check some runes too.
Runes of Krait are way too strong right now.

Good work brah.

Are those side capture points blocked by a gate?
Maybe I’m seeing things but that be interesting.

Hope it doesnt have tiny nodes.

Mesmers get you when you make mistakes or get lazy.
Only thief set that can’t kill a standard mesmer is probably P/P and you don’t have to burst. Be aware and mes is just another threat.

sorrow.2364:

Man, S/D never was bad.
Looks like you are running it while thinking it isn’t viable. Looks like a contraddiction to me.

This. One million times.

S/D wasn’t bad but D/ overshadowed for a couple of reasons. While Tactical got balanced it now meant putting greater emphasis on main skills. Dancing daggers is a sore spot on the set putting more emphasis on inf strike and Flanking. Flanking strike was quite strong but D/ basically did the same thing, the great divider was you could strip protection and end up more or less with more damage than a BStab/HS in ideal conditions but due to the way prot can often get covered this doesn’t happen well in practice, mixed with animation times. FS fell off if trying for the same purpose of burst.
So it only had a couple niches it could fullfill. While not bad itself, for the needs most players wanted out of a thief, they could get that specific role fulfilled better without it.

On the other hand I don’t know wtf you’re talking about with P/P because it is seriously a poor set. Not relative to simply other thief sets. You could replace a D/P with a S/D or even a S/P if you wanted before and they could contribute do the same roles, you may question if they were as effective but relative to the other professions in the game it didn’t really matter because often enough they are good enough.

With P/P no, not really. It’s scope is very narrow, it’s naturally defenses are the poorest in the profession and relative to other professions it can have significant difficulty getting anything done because even if it can or cannot blow you up, it gets forced out incredibly easy without the ease of returning back that SB, S/ or D/ have.

I got multitude of compliments and questions about S/ pre-patch with players deciding they wanted to test it out and see if they could get something done with it. It wasn’t bad certainly but Sword definitely has some flaws and in a way I question LS because it’s a super-loaded skill relative to FS, which has already begone to marginalize the evade when people just hit FS anywhere to turn it into LS because it’s so heavily loaded.
Whatever though.
S/D is fun.

S/D could always hold its own against other thieves but now since LS is desperate its more forgiving at the cost of not having a semi reliable evade. What you had to push yourself against was Rangers.

The match was good.

Congratulations.

Dervish.

Is this actually happening?

Grimwolf.7163:

Auesis.7301:

Assassin, no contest. As soon as Flashing Blades pops, the fight is over.

I was gonna say the same thing. Flashing Blades would end any Thief.
Thieves win in style though. Party Rock dance plus actual clothes instead of the bladed latex S/M suits.

Flashing blades is meager vs ranged kiting.

sorrow.2364:

Travlane.5948:

s/d is the most confusing build in the game for an enemy to play against if specced/utilities are right… 100% nothing more confusing than dozens of teleports with dozens of invis and several dazes and a couple doesnt evades and a heal every 15 secs with dozens of blinds…..although dmg is average its very hard to defend against a professional s/d player which takes many months of mastering…… can be proven. or do u have a counterpoint which example of build/class? plz do go on. dont just say well if u believe it thats nice….then i respond “well if u dont im sorry for your lack of experience” then we get nowhere like 6th graders arguing if somebody is out in dodgeball. come correct. nothign wrong with debating or “opinionizing” .

Yes. You are right. The S/D skillcap is higher compared to other thief’s builds. BUT, BUT, this doesn’t mean that evades aren’t too much. They should be toned down a bit to the point that you can’t afford to spam them, but you can be extremely effective if you time them correctly. Right now, you can just spam you evades getting nice results.

Also, Infiltrator’s Strike should be looked into. No-cooldown stunbreaker is insane, seriously.

People trying to nerf the God skill now?
Be gone.
Odd how people are complaing about things S/D has always had.
It had More evades before the patch has hit just as hard.
The only difference is most people couldn’t land FS, Mug was nerfed and it didn’t steal the boons. Outside of small changes its the same it’s always been (excusing unblockable 2nd hit)

Even if you didn’t adjust the hp scaling for the 480 hp Sin vs 10k hp Thief, the Sin would probably win.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Would you really bring any of the traps, even if improved, to replace Caltrops?
Or would you bring the traps in addition to Caltrops further hurting your build?

Hell yeah. I’d bring Tripwire or Ambush trap. There are niches for that skill specifically, one of which was the Spirit watch map at which I rather Tripwire a dam lot of the time, since it wont trigger until they come at it, wont disappear 10s after I dropped it unless triggered and it disables skill usage and can force a stunbreak where Caltrops won’t. On top of it being invisible. Best skill in game? No but it has niches, it should be broadened mind you and many times there are better choices but in terms of Traps vs Caltrops? That’s an easy justification.
2 traps block out dodging where Caltrops does not. Tripwire blocks out all skills where Caltrops does not. Ambush trap melee, brings out a scorpion wire which has clear benefits over caltrops and as a npc if not killed will pursue them, where Caltrops can be walked around and ignored.

Traps perfect or ideal? Eh not really Vs caltrops? Are you even serious. You can compare any trap vs Caltrops and have a reason to use it their different to the point of having seperate niches they excel in allowing you to clearly justify one over the other. In addition neither Trops or traps are strong to the point of bringing one over the other being so peculiar where as choosing Needle trap over Shadowstep is very strange.

Home boy go to lions arch then the norn place.
Go play Keg brawl.

you’re underplaying Sword damage.
Dagger is very single target heavy vs Sword cleave, and reality is people have to clear away from a sword because they’re all getting smashed and if not Swords damage output shoots past Daggers, very quickly. On a node based mode like this outside of Graveyard, Sword certainly helps to (S/P more than S/D) discourage being on the node and otherwise deals out heavy damage and at the same time does have strong single-target damage itself though like HB it wants to be set-up.

If you look at D/D vs S/P and S/D there’s really not much of note. D/D has single-target damage but again is atm the most shallow set of the three. LDB as a cleave doesn’t even really compare to Sword auto, inf strike gives you more for you buck and cleaves, and PW outclasses it completely and can outclasses Backstab in a couple of situations. Auto wise Sword is comparable and outclasses given cleave opportunities. Single-target wise, FS is only 7% weaker and has always given more util than backstab at the same time doesn’t require stealth.

D/P is overbearing in that it grants stealth without contact requirements conflicting with the point of taking /D anyways. While retaining all benefits of /P, all the main damage skills of D/D. So it gets all the pie and none of the cheese though it could still use benefits in certain areas, the HS+BP combo is toxic.

Einlanzer.1627:

In essence, the reason the set is broken is because its usefulness is relegated to only 1 skill – Unload.

Thank you based God.
Which is basically what has been said.
P/P is 3-1 spam
P/D 5-1 spam
D/D 5-1 with some 2 thrown in there or, 3 spam in a bleed spec.
All you are changing is the significance of the 3-1 spam.

Like I said before a stornger VS increases the value of BP indirectly by increasing your pressure HOWEVER. As a ranged kit, BP loses significance on P/P especially because by it’s nature you’re not in range to do anything other then get a 1 off blind. For that you’re better off the majority of the time just using headshot for a cheaper cost, unless there is stability.
When put against someone in melee range, you’re going to get obliterated regardless because you are a duck. You can’t move from BP since it’s your only real defense. BP just wants you to remain a duck because you can’t leave it’s range and simultaneously to get use out of it, you need to be in it’s range because of it being a pbaoe.
Vital shot can’t save you. Essentially your solution is make Vital shot so strong that it can start carrying an otherwise terrible set.
But it’s still just going to get pushed into using Unload more, because the utility otherwise isn’t worth using. Headshot is typically a heal interrupt though it has multi purpose, and to bring that about you need to do significant damage. If VS and Unload conflict in damage there is little point in Unload as it has no utility purpose.

In other words you’d be phasing Unload out of the ONE purpose it has, which is damage.
VS and Unload can’t be on the same level. There is a reason you see on the rangers longbow that Long shot and Rapidfire are not comparable.
Volley and Bleeding shot on warrior? Not comparable.
The Raw damage skill has nothing else going for it other than raw damage so it has to excel specifically at that.
VS always has to noticeably weaker than Unload to make Unload meaningful and otherwise It just means shift turns over to Body shot, to drop a little extra 5% as a steroid and phase out Unload. The only other way it works is if Unload is supportive too like the Rangers shortbow where it’s auto is predominant and everything else is more or less simply supportive of that.

The shortbow worked for many thieves because it did adequete though somewhat lackluster 1v1 damage, but it was strong enough especially without desiring traiting or having to wait seconds for results, and all of its 4 ini skills are useful.
2 are really useful on P/P and the utility daze gets let down by P/P not being able to cause situations where it’s desired generally except against glass cannons who will generally live long enough to turn around and throw P/P Immediately into another weapon set because it’s defenses within the kit are possibly the worst in the game.

I tried playing P/P. 1) Vital shot was underperforming, certainly but if anyone even looked at me, I said to hell with that and switched my weapon immediately if I tried to battle it out I spent way too much time trying to defend myself than being able to apply any pressure because the other issue with this whole utility thing?

The 2 “defense” skills you have?
They do fart for damage.

Einlanzer.1627:

ensoriki.5789:

VS should be stronger, but it’s not “the” fix for P/ in general.

Yes it is. I honestly don’t know how it could be made more clear. I’m not saying P/P would be perfect, but it would not be altogether broken like it is now. It is the single most impacting change they could possibly make to the set.

How is it not obvious that Thief weapons HAVE to be set up so that #1 skill does almost comparable DPS to any of the other skills due to the way our resource mechanic works?

Generally auto attacks have to be significant damage for all professions. With few exceptions.
HOWEVER and I’ve detailed it before in the previous post to an extent.
You feel that the auto being strong enough gives reason to use the ini skills tactically this more or less true for S/x, D/x and SB.
However P/P doesn’t have skills that are powerful enough to use tactically, 100% srs.
D/D is generally ini based, not auto attack based despite the power of it’s auto. It’s power really comes from ini skills and very little from it’s auto. The opposite is true for Sword which uses the auto strongly in co-ordination with it’s other skills (other than dancing dagger :P). However the skills are far more worth using than P/P even when they have the same bloody offhand they’re worth more on a D/ or S/.

Unload is straight pure damage, nothing else, their is no evade, no stun, no bleed it’s straight damage. With that in mind it’s going to be stronger than VS or it’s going to be mostly insignificant since it offers zero utility other than being a combo finisher.

Until the ini skills themselves are worth tactifully using, P/P will be a joke.

Like I said before.
If it’s an all or nothing set than it flops because it’s skills aren’t strong enough for the cost.
If it’s something that is supposed to fit in with the thief style than it flops.
Ini about opportunity cost. BS is rarely worth it. BP isn’t worth it. Headshot simply can’t carry it because even Unload loses the threat once they turn to you, because you are a duck and simply knowing that is enough to force YOU into defensive at which quite arguably there is few if any sets in the game which are worse.

Like I said before, I believe VS is too weak.
It’s not the fundamental issue here.
When taking Shortbow I knew trickshot was giving me in my glass builds decent damage, and aoe pressure. The single target dmg wasn’t phenomenal but it was adequete and once more foes came up it scaled well for applying pressure. Which meant I was free to use CB’s, Distracting shots, IA or Chocking gas for my own needs.
However even if VS does 10k dmg a shot, it just means I’d use VS and not the other skills except maybe Head shot because head shot is the only utility skill on that entire bar that really works with the kit and it’s purpose.
If VS did hell even 1.5k, or 2k still wouldnt use BS. If I was using BS it meant the damage increase on VS was just that significant and I’d stop using Unload instead.
2 sucks.
5 just doesn’t mesh properly with the kit.
3 is pure raw damage at a slow rateand as such to be significant has to be significantly stronger than VS or it’ll be straight up useless.

Broken record and unfortunately I think you’re ending up on the same note as Jon Peters and it isn’t working.

We are looking into this. I actually think P/P has a lot of utility. Blind field, daze, vuln stacking. However damage is a bit low. We are making some headway here in the12/14 build so be patient for one more week.

Jon

Yes auto attacks are important to give you dmg without spending your ini and I do feel that VS underperforms in this situation in comparison to any other thief auto attack/

However the set itself is messed up which is why it doesn’t flow.
Daggers and Sword have powerful auto attacks, but Dagger does not have a great reliance on it’s because it for better or worse puts a lot of emphasis on Backstab and HS. Most of daggers damage is heavily dependant on ini despite the strength of it’s auto.
Shortbow’s auto was actually carrying quite a lot of weight on it’s shoulders tho you’ve said otherwise but every one of it’s abilities has significant use, fits with the profession vision, and the kit offers meaningful advantages to survivalbility at ranged.

If P/P is an all or nothing set abstract from the rest of the thief style with no mobility and no stealth, then it falls flat not just because of Vital shot but because in general it’s mediocre at “all or nothing” given it’s lack of defense and the opportunity cost of its skills for what they do.

If P/P should fall in with the thief style then it straight up flops because again pretty much nothing that is the thief.

As it is your emphasis is on VS, which only gives it primarily something to do while not Unloading, as that’s basically all it wants to do as far as Ini goes because BS is weak and BP does not offer it much relative to where it wants to be and it’s defensive needs despite it being a relatively decent skill.
Sneak attack is strong, in some ways absurdly so but it has limited access to it (for good reason).

Even if you buff VS because of the way the skills themselves are your options remain basically to Spam 3 and hit 4 for an interrupt every once in awhile.
It’s got 3 usable skills, it’s messed up just like P/D and D/D and people don’t acknowledge how those weapon sets just aren’t living up to where they should be when P/D ignores 2, 4 and often 3 except the rarest of situations and D/D typically ignores 3,4 and even it’s 1, or opts for focusing primarily on 3 and giving little for everything else Lol wot :o.

VS should be stronger, but it’s not “the” fix for P/ in general.
That P/X is lacking and suffering from not having meaningful options other than funneling itself into either 3-1 in P/P or 5-1 in P/D. Buffing VS won’t fix their linearity at the end of the day which I think needs to be emphasized because they simply don’t have much else to do other than 3 or 5.

Pretty much agree with Evilapprentice but eh will say shouldn’t even worry about conflicting with P/D at this point.
It isn’t using 2, it isn’t using 4.
If 2 and 4 conflict who cares.
If 2 and 3 conflict it’s not using it they’re heavily condi CC’d and can’t justify the CnD that they’d normally just do irregardless of the threat and after the Mug change in a berserker set Shadow strike can’t even pretend that it can spike either.

P/x is broke. Caltrops is a bandaid for P/D to hide it, but you’ve said as much before Einlanzer.

Peters said P/P has a lot of utility but a fair bit of it is useless and that’s the problem. It’s power may be wanting but the utility isn’t very practical.
BP is a single shot blind at the range P/P wants to be, at best it’s a defense against melee that is very easily remedied by the fact that all melee can get around it, and that P/P unlike S/P and D/P is not putting out that kind of pressure to go along with BP and make it a strong use of ini most of the time for defense. You’re better off weapon swapping 99% of the time. Utility flop here. Vital shot being stronger would allow P/P to put out better pressure in BP so it would help, however unlike S/P and D/P P/P does not really have other defenses in the form of the amazing Inf strike, their dual skills or even heartseeker.

People did the calc on Body shot, you can figure out when it’s better to do than Unload. Generally in situations everyone cares about. It’s not, crap utility.
So the two utility skills pretty much don’t matter so all you’re left with is headshot, Unload and Vital shot. These 3 abilities have to carry the entire weapon set.
Absolutely ridiculous and if P/P does function off just these alone it’s just a testament to how they had to make individual skills overpowered to make up for the fact that the weapon is heinously linear and have it balanced knowing that.

P/P pistol main hand period is dumb. As well as D/D. These 3 sets basically revolve around 3 buttons at most out of there 5.
They’re shallow weapon sets and can’t stay in favor unless the 3 buttons they use are simply outrageous.
You can boost the greatness of IA if you want but its something that can be played without but if you don’t take SB you don’t exactly have great options for ranged damage or defense. Since nothing on em compares to distracting shot in defense unless you shadow art trait P/D. P/D’s offensive power is in shadow strike and sneak attack both which are basically melee attacks in application and all the melee seta have good defenses so given you are in that range might as well gtfo. Oddly enough they needed shadow strike warping heavily but IA and His remain spam able for escapes leaving P/D a shadow of its mobility and pushing it further out of the limelight.

You end up ignoring both P/ because they’re disfunctional so you then take either an extra melee or SB
The only exception is if your trying to be senseless with a condi build.

There are significant cons to inf strike being ground target ted to the set itself which would be why not to do it. In terms of escaping it is quite negligible and already situationally available. From Shadow return to inf strike in the distance like you would inf signet or Steal except unlike steal the two infs don’t fail as they out of rangr already. You can do ezpz pokes with inf strike simply because its nature doesn’t need ground tar getting but simply tar getting and at the coat of flexibility it allows phenomenal defense through abuse of terrain that would otherwise hinder you if ground targetted.

p/D, P,/P, D/D all need some considerable work. S/P is a really complete set that needs small tweaks. Everything is useful on S/P and fits with the system.

Deer….

Aquin.3192:

It’s a sleezy combo and it rewards sucker thieves all day long. Donno what happened to having to earn your stealth or doing something of value leading up to such dmg.

You know… if you land the cloak and dagger you deserve a chance at a follow up combo of big dmg.

Nah now they just chain a couple skills and guarantee the backstab. Silly design choice if you ask me but maybe im just jealous.

This.

What a funny thread.

Agree with vinc on ricochet just delete it. Trickery needs a damage condition trait.
P/D and D/D are issues as well.

Its the format. When you fight as a team in one area points are ticking every second elsewhere.

1. Give it mobility on 2.
2. Rework sneak attack
3. Buff shadow strike and dancing daggers.
4. Higher damage on headshot.
5. 5stacks of vuln on CND.
6. Delete ricochet replace with a condition applying trait.
7. Increase DMG 5%
8. Nerf pistol mastery 5%. Pistols pierce.

Broaden past 5-1 and 3-1 play.

Dancing dagger is the main failure of all /D and arguably worse than body shot.
Sword 2 is beast, 3 is great outside of no evade cancel. 5 is definitely helpful though the 3% vul isn’t much of a steroid. 1 is a great way to re-engage after stealth and can help stop stomps/predicted heals. 4 is 80% useless and I’m being generous.
The only other significant flaw is a lack of dots to synergize with trickery.
Everything else is minor.

I suggested before making all infiltration skills ground targetted will pick away at the short bow naturally at the cost of making sword play harder.

With hellishly low DMG output and invul with zero push back or launch. Its not much of a bunker without comet its damage will drop even further gg focus.