Guild Wars 2

TheGuy.3568:

Travlane.5948:

evilapprentice.6379:

TheGuy.3568:

First off lets cut the bullkitten. If the thief is S/D stun locking is not going to happen.

Any other thief build here’s your dilemma. Most good thieves will use Shadowstep Once they play this card there is no way tot catch them. The game is over. The only class that could possibly keep up is another thief or pure melee ranger.

Also there is this misconception that swiftness really help with mobility. Its bullkitten. Fact is mobility like RtL, rush, heartseeker, etc are the really mobility skills. Having swiftness/25% signets up is nice and all but mobility is about the weapon and utility skills.

Also as ranger your pet is free fodder for CnD.

Remember this you are fighting the second or third strongest duelist in the game.

It’s important to note with Infiltrators strike that if you stun or daze the target after the teleport but before the attack portion of the ability, the shadow step portion of the skill doesn’t activate. Not every class has an easy way to do this and it takes good timing, but since S/D needs to go pretty glassy to do effective damage, stunning a thief who just teleported directly to you and no longer has his primary escape mechanism available can end the fight almost instantly.

sorry i couldnt quite grasp or infer what you are trying to say here. mind giving it another go? im curious.

What he is saying is if you mange to stun during the attack but before it competes the shadowstep wont activate. Even if the attack doesn’t hit the step will occur. You would have to stun in the .5 second before the animation to completes. It would be luck at best to land that stun but it does happen. Then he skipped the part where I said any good thief runs with shadowstep making his point moot.

Also I should point out that S/D is a tanky set at base level. the goal can be to burst but the set works equally well just using the third swing of auto attack to do DPS. Lots of fotm S/D is so cool now players do not know this and just use it with D/P.

I’m perfectly aware how ‘tanky’ S/D can be. It’s still a losing proposition to attempt any sort of coordinated PvP with say, a soldiers jewel and/or points in SA over a X/30/0/30/X build – you’re still a thief, your primary defense mechanisms are stealth (not so much in this build, but in general), and being slippery/evading (what this build is designed for). Exchanging high power/crit/crit damage for toughness based survivability is a losing proposition – if you don’t kill your target fast enough, there’s a pretty good chance you might as well not bother.

Essentially, you should be relying entirely on your dodginess to keep you in the fight while you quickly (for S/D anyway) drop and stomp an opponent – extending the fight by lowering your DPS and increasing your damage mitigation just increases the likelihood you’ll make a mistake that gives your opponent the advantage.

Shadow step works once -If you can get a thief to use Shadow step to escape a situation he put himself in, you’ve just gained a huge advantage – IS→SS is great for staying up in a fight, but generally much less effective for escaping (which is what you would typically use the Shadow Step utility for)

TheGuy.3568:

First off lets cut the bullkitten. If the thief is S/D stun locking is not going to happen.

Any other thief build here’s your dilemma. Most good thieves will use Shadowstep Once they play this card there is no way tot catch them. The game is over. The only class that could possibly keep up is another thief or pure melee ranger.

Also there is this misconception that swiftness really help with mobility. Its bullkitten. Fact is mobility like RtL, rush, heartseeker, etc are the really mobility skills. Having swiftness/25% signets up is nice and all but mobility is about the weapon and utility skills.

Also as ranger your pet is free fodder for CnD.

Remember this you are fighting the second or third strongest duelist in the game.

It’s important to note with Infiltrators strike that if you stun or daze the target after the teleport but before the attack portion of the ability, the shadow step portion of the skill doesn’t activate. Not every class has an easy way to do this and it takes good timing, but since S/D needs to go pretty glassy to do effective damage, stunning a thief who just teleported directly to you and no longer has his primary escape mechanism available can end the fight almost instantly.

Travlane.5948:

u trait for 3 intit on weapon swap :P ….so many other good things. i mean if trolling yeah i get it.

Yeah…when you have the initiative and endurance to nearly always be porting in and out, evade most attacks via dodges and FS, and critting 7/10 of your attacks (without counting opportunist, side strikes, and fury), you’ll see why 3 init on weapon switch (you cant type “swap” too close to the word “is” or the insane language filter might think you’re trying to misspell kitten ) is so insanely good with this spec. It plays like a thief was designed – you never stop moving, you hit consistently hard, and you’re hard to pin down.

Mind you, if you get pinned down, you melt, but that’s true for any GC thief spec, and this one is harder to pin down than most.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

I’m finding myself posting this more and more on the boards when people talk about thieves, heh.

I don’t WvW, so forgive me if this is a dumb question but…this isn’t an “averagely skilled” group (by WvW standards) is it? Because that was painful to watch.

I mean either way, it’s pretty pointless. If these players are awful, well any spec would have wrecked them. If this is an “averagely skilled” WvW group, then WvW is leagues below PvP and these players really shouldn’t come to the boards with their ideas on whats OP since they show an alarming lack of this games most basic mechanics.

Sebrent.3625:

Hmmm, the only reasons I would see to run the exact same weapon set as both your sets would be to:

• Take advantage of “initiative on weapon swap” (30 points in acrobatic)
• Take advantage of “on swap” weapon sigils

That’s exactly the point of the dual S/D spec – High init regen (via Traits, cheif among them quick pockets) and high endurance regen (via 30 acro, sigil of agility, and endurance on weapon swap).

It has its weaknesses like any spec (no ranged weapon aside dancing daggers, no Inf arrow for mobility) but its still super fun to play (I feel like I’m playing Anets description of a thief rather than a teleporting backstab machine or a venom/poison dispensary) and can actually contribute to most team fights.

It works, its fun, it has a high skill ceiling, and it’s not OP – expect it to be nerfed soon.

Shadow strike itself is a pretty well designed skill – P/D should want to slip away and do decent direct damage for the init cost. Unfortunately, the set is currently nothing without sneak attack, which Prioritizes CnD over shadow strike 90% of the time – the only time you’re hitting shadow strike is a situation like what Selver described – you’re pinned down and have absolutely no other way to escape it other than Shadow strike.

If P/D was better designed and not so utterly reliant on stealth→Sneak attack for its DPS, shadow strike would be fine.

I still disagree on S/P (In its current form, of course) – there’s a reason you rarely see it in any form of PvP, Hotjoin and tourneys alike. It may work for you, and players may be able to jury-rig it into working passably, but it still doesn’t mean that the player wouldn’t be more dangerous with a better built weaponset.

S/D has an unblockable ability that’s far superior to one of my proposed CnD changes (IMO of course) – the current S/D build (at least the one I’m running) would almost never CnD over LS on a blocking target – adding the option to stealth through block would be a niche side benefit for it, not really a viable option to be considered in general play. Where it would be fairly strong is in high SA traited builds where the ability to stealth is a valuable defensive measure.

We can suppose what we will about D/P without the combo, but it will never disappear entirely – they may change it so that you only get stealth 1 time by leaping through a smoke field, but it will never go away entirely, so it’s counterproductive to compare CnD changes to a D/P without access to stealth at all.

ensoriki.5789:

…..
“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.

We have to ignore P/P and S/P because they have issues that have nothing to do with /P. Technically, S/P is a pretty solid set – blind field, on demand daze, and Sword’s MH abilities make it versatile – it’s just boring as kitten to play because PW is so poorly designed you have to rely on AA for your DPS AND headshot makes the stun portion of PW in its current incarnation utterly inferior. Prior to the S/D patch, it was a set that relied entirely on AA for damage, but brought more utility to the fight. Post patch its 100% inferior. P/P is all over the place, and requires alot of work to get back into shape, the pistol OH skills are the only good and versatile skills in the set.

As for CnD comparing poorly to BP in terms of stealth, I never made that comparison. CnD scales poorly on its own due to its high cost, .5 cast time (which telegraphs its arrival to a fair degree), and the fact that it can be countered so easily. I don’t think ignoring blocks completely nullifies the counterplay to CnD – it can still be evaded, invulned, and blinded – the point of the Block change isn’t to crap on Block builds, its to stop blocks from utterly denying /D offhand builds stealth. Like I pointed out, it doesn’t add anything else to counter blocking other than allowing the thief to stealth and do moderate damage (and Poor overall ‘dps’ due to the high init cost).

I actually like D/P even without the combo usage – shadow shot is a well designed skill and complements HS extremely well – If you aren’t hitting SS>50% and HS<50% (with some exceptions of course), you’re probably doing it wrong.

Atherakhia.4086:

Make dancing dagger provide aegis. Idea being it threw the enemy off target so their next attack can be countered easily.

Make CnD’s stealth provide endure pain.

That CnD change you’ve proposed is a bit over the top, don’t you think?

As for the DD change, I don’t see it as overpowered as much as not in line with the skills intended purpose. They designed DD as a ranged snare for a reason – it should function as one. It should either be a reliable ranged snare (through faster projectile time and either cheaper cost or no cast time), or a hybrid skill that does decent damage and snares your target, to justify the slow flight time, the wind up, and the cost.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The Dancing Daggers in GW1 is better IMO. If they change GW2’s Dancing Dagger to that, I’d be happy.

I’ve read the DD description for GW1, but didn’t play the game. Elaborate?

Travlane.5948:

i was only talking about auto attack but yeah LS is cool

My point is auto-attack initiates faster after an LS due to reduced after-cast, causing it to “feel more responsive”.

They reduced the after cast for the second strike of FS (which is now LS), and used the same after cast for the New FS, so you begin attacking again noticeably faster than you would have after a pre-patch FS. Not sure if that factors into your observations, just thought I’d throw it out there.

Mind you, my multiple suggestions are either/or scenarios. Perhaps some of suggestion A and some of suggestion B might be mixed, but I’m not proposing that the skill get both changes. Feel free to weigh in politely even if you disagree, but if all you have to offer is scorn and derision, Please do not bother.

The title says it all. X/D is pretty rare these days (aside for S/D, which is taken entirely for skills 1 2 and the dual skill and has little to do with the offhand skills), partly because the dagger offhand skills pale in comparison to pistol offhand skills in general, and especially when paired with Dagger mainhand. (S/P and P/P don’t really factor into this conversation, because they both have issues that aren’t related to your offhand choice.)

There are a few culprits at play here, the largest of which was the overzealous nerf dancing dagger and CnD got a few months back. I’m fine with Anet saying “These skills do too much damage”, but not replacing the lost damage with any additional effects left both skills vastly inferior to other weaponset and speccing choices.

The point of this post is to propose some changes (that would only affect PvP) that I feel are fairly balanced and bring something to /D that would make it work taking again.

- Dancing Dagger
— The problem: the skills costs 4 initiative, does fairly poor damage, has a very obvious wind up (“Hmm, I wonder what skill that D/D thief could possibly be using from halfway across the screen?”), and a very slow travel time. In addition, it seems to have very kittenty hit detection – I’ve recently used it on a number of bunker guardians (to eat Aegis, if anyone is curious) just standing still, while clearly in range (I usually wait til I’m closer than absolute max range), and watched it miss or be obstructed by thin air, on targets which were, again, standing still. I’m assuming it has something to do with the extremely slow flight time of the projectile.
—- Proposed solutions:
——A) Speed up the flight time of the projectile. In addition to this either make the skill instant cast, or reduce the Init cost to 3. If the skill is going to keep its low damage, it needs to function as a utility – cripple is a good utility, but not among the best. If it’s intended to help me escape/catch up with targets, it needs to be good at hitting those targets – that can be achieved by being less obvious, or cheaper to use.
——B) Give the skills back 25% of the damage it lost (making it a 25% reduction, rather than 50% from its pre-nerf value). If the skill is intended to be a hybrid damage/utility skill, it needs to do decent damage – the skills current damage is crap for all the issues it has. Having some of its damage returned makes it an alright option in cases where you want to hurt your target and slow them down.

-Cloak and Dagger
— The problem: CnD is a pretty inferior choice for stealth access to D/P’s BP->HS. It can be blocked, miss, evaded, blinded, and so on. It has a .5s cast time, and is fairly obvious when its coming (“Hey, why is this D/D thief right in my face but not hitting me?”). It does poor damage since the 33% nerf, and costs 6 initiative (half of a standard initiative bar).
—-Proposed solutions:
——A) Make CnD unblockable. Before you go up in arms about how thieves already got LS, and more unblockable is unfair to bunker builds, hear me out. CnD is a good candidate for unblockable for a couple of reasons.
-It’s a really kittenty skill to spam. It’s got a high init cost, mediocre damage and grants stealth (which means spamming it would give a theif revealed for no reason).
-Being in stealth does not give the thief access to any more unblockable attacks. It’s not as if allowing CnD through block would suddenly allow the thief to continue to ignore block; Backstab, sneak attack and tactical strike are all blockable. All CnD hitting through block would do is allow a thief to access one of its defensive measures even through block when wielding a dagger OH.
——B)Remove vulnerability from CnD, add 2s Protection, Retaliation and Vigor (Possibly also stability, though I see Stealth/stability stomping being too powerful). Again, before you think to yourself “Did Daecello buy a second account or something?”, hear me out. First of all, I’m not suggesting these abilities be tied to stealth, only that they be tied to hitting with CnD. This means the availability of these buffs is tied into hitting with CnD, which as I noted above, is a very poor candidate for being spammed. With only a 2s base for these 3 buffs, it would be impossible to stack durations to the point where the thief would have these except when in stealth (or for 2-3 seconds when hitting CnD with revealed up). It would give dagger OH spec’s the ability to reposition more confidently than other builds which use BP->HS or rely solely on utilities for stealth, while also punishing mindless team fight AoE spam via retaliation (though admittedly not much), and giving them a small window of increased endurance regen.

This is my modification on the spec jumper posted.
Note: Haven’t done any tPvP with this yet, just practicing in hot join. I’ve had some good fights with some obviously experienced players, and it’s held up extremely well, which is my basis for recommending it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAsY8YlYmKOHcS6E/5Ex2jdKUeqVgmdP4qVrKA-TwAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFN+Y9xmgJBA
(copy/paste if you need)

The spec does 3 things extremely well – regenerates initiative, crits constantly, and regenerates endurance. The play style was a bit of an adjustment for me – you IS in, swing/fs/dodge roll to keep from taking any swings, IS out when needed. Mix in CnD and tactical strike when needed. Repeat. IS->LS is a good way to guarantee the hit. Switch weapons whenever you’ve got 50% endurance and 3 init missing.

If you get swamped with condi’s, hit BV to wipe em and get all the boons. You hit fairly hard for S/D (3100 power and 70% crit/50% crit damage will do that). If you eat some burst and need to bail, Shadow step dodge roll until out of init, weaponswap, dodge roll until out of endurance, pop agility, dodge roll until out of endurance. You’ll escape alot of your deaths like this, and even if you don’t, you’ll drag a target or 2 with you away from the battle, and potentially make them waste some good CD’s on trying to catch you. If you have BV, get some protection, regen, vigor and swiftness on top of it (though you’ll probably already have vigor from Withdraw, and swiftness from dodging)!

If you’re anything like me, you’ll think this spec SUCKS when you first roll it – you almost never go toe to toe with a melee target, you’re still incredibly glassy – burn that init on IS->SS. Dodge roll or FS whenever a stiff breeze rolls your way. You’re spec’d to regenerate init and endurance, take advantage. You don’t do the same damage these stats would with D/P, so you’ve got to rely on your evades and dipping in and out of combat with IS→SS.

It’s a bit weaker against ranged specs (IS->SS doesn’t do much to neuter them like with melee), but you can focus more on FS/LS since you’re not using SS to avoid swings as much.

If you’re interested in the original spec I modified this from, its just Inf Sig over Assassins And 10 trickery (thrill of the crime) over 10 DA with Mug. Its less damage, but noticeably better init regen, a second gap closer for targets over 600 units away (LS->Inf sig is a nice way to get a surprise hit in too), and 90% base crit and swiftness for 13s after a thrill of the crime is nice.

Engels.8537:

A class who can heal damaging conditions and become invisible at the same time,

As opposed to classes who can drop conditions automatically by slotting a signet or trait (no other pre-requisites required)

A class who can restart any fight at will,

“Restarting” a fight would require remaining in stealth for quite a bit. For that time, the thief isn’t doing any damage, contesting any points, or contributing anything significant. Unless they’re deep into SA, they’re not gaining much more than their opponent while he waits for the thief to unstealth. A few lucky AoE’s, and the thief might be in a worse situation then when he decided to try “restarting the fight” with a long duration stealth.

A class with an impressive mobility and burst damage,

Well, Duh. With no access to protection, stability, blocks or immunes, subpar access to regen, medium armor and the lowest base HP bracket in the game, without being mobile and bursty we would count as NPC’s.

A class with the best escape mechanism,

See above

A class with the best damage mitigation in the whole game, (stealth),

Stealth is actually tied for the worst damage mitigation in the game, along with every other ability that mitigates 0% damage. Anything that completely nullified damage (Guardian elite, Distortion, block) would be best, followed by skill that completely nullify direct damage (like endure pain), then protection.

A class with almost no cooldowns and a laughable punishment for spamming a single key during the whole fight,

There are costs associated with initiative that most thief hating players tend not to notice.
A) Initiative is a resource pool shared across both weapons. We cant “Go nuts” with weaponset 1, then switch to 2 for a whole new set of cooldowns. We hit 0 init, both our weapon sets are out of mojo.
B) Spammable attacks means very restricted effects on those attacks – No knockdown/blowback/knockback of any kind. Extremely short duration on any stun, daze or immobilize. Short duration on any buff granted by an ability. All because they can be spammed. It’s perfectly fair, but just something most don’t notice when complaining about the spammability of thief attacks.

Yep… super hard to master, and it dies super easily…

Yes, actually. The difference between a new/noob thief and an experienced/good thief is extremely noticeable.

Teamkiller.4315:

ensoriki.5789:

That’s terrible.

What why? It’s way too easy to access larcenous strike’s boon stripping capabilities at the moment. You don’t have to plan for ANYTHING tactical, just press 3 and LS is available for you to use next time you’re in range. Instead, now you have to plan your 3 strike instead of just spamming it.

Right now Sword 3 is less reactive than even HS. HS is worse than autoattack for targets with HP over 50%, so you wouldn’t spam it then. You can spam FS+LS without worry because not only does it do a very very acceptable level of damage but it strips boons from targets…which almost all targets have. Even if it doesn’t, it’s still worth spamming as long as the target’s in melee range because of its higher dps than auto and it being higher dps than all the other abilities in S/D. Not to mention the evade.

Emphasis Mine.

Why is it, do you think, nearly every spec uses boons heavily? My take is that boons, prior to this patch, were extremely powerful with little to no effective counter. Anet realized this and made some adjustments – there should never be an ability without some sort of opportunity cost or counterplay – boons did not have effective counterplay, and the opportunity cost was rather low for the rewards reaped. Now, boon spamming specs have something to fear in S/D thief. They should also have something to fear in warrior, but from what I’ve heard (I’m no warrior expert), their boon hate buff wasn’t substantial.

The meta will shift when people realize the days of maxing out boon application and length are over – there is now a cost associated with it, so It’s not Automatically the smart thing to do in 90% of encounters. They’ll have to be smarter about it, and smarter play will lower the effectiveness of S/D.

Concerning your other point – if someone is spamming FS for straight up damage, its just about as bad as 2222222222 with Dagger MH. Considering how the skills are now split, you do not have access to an evade automatically on your weaponset anymore (Like thieves did prepatch). If you get stuck with LS when a warrior whirls through you, you just ate a big chunk of DPS you could have easily avoided had you been playing tactically, and saving your FS for when you target was actually swinging at you. In short, mindlessly spamming 3 with S/D is exactly comparable to mindlessly spamming 2 with D/X – something that catches the inexperienced player off guard, but any player who’s seen it before will take advantage of.

Jumper, what do you think of switching 10 trickery with 10 DA and Inf sig with Assassins?

Slightly less init regen, 1 less port and fury/might/swiftness on steal for 280 power, mug, and 12s poison on steal.

Asomal.6453:

Nice video, Jumper! S/D is pretty neat for 1×1s and some 2×1, but it’s initiative hungry and therefore, very punitive for mistakes.

The build is dedicated to 3 things – crit, endurance regen, and init regen. I’ve been running it for a few days, and while it takes some time to get used to, you’re not running out of initiative any time soon (unless you miss 2 CnD’s in a row, your steal is down, AND your weapon swap is on CD). Its easy to recover from spending too much init (As long as you don’t do it the entire fight), a bit harder to recover from eating a big burst you should/could have avoided.

Travlane.5948:

Grimwolf.7163:

Softspoken.2410:

Polite reminder that initiative is also a profession mechanic for the thief.

It may be unique to the Thief, but it really doesn’t apply here at all since it adds nothing new; it simply replaces an existing mechanic. And it’s actually much, much weaker mechanically than recharges in return for some extra versatility.
Other classes can use every skill on their bar, switch weapons, use every skill on that bar, switch again 10 seconds later and likely use many of the cooldowns on that bar again etc.
Thieves can use half the skills on one bar in succession, and get very little use out of ever weapon swapping.
On top of that, each Thief attack, despite being used less frequently, actually does LESS damage than most attack skills from other classes. Not more. Because oh God, they can use the same attack 2-3 times in a row! …..Followed by nothing at all for a bit.

exactly. every class has 2 weaponset…..thief (in theory) only has 1. u attack skills 2 3 4 5 on any class then u can switch then go 2 3 4 5 again then switch in 2 secs and repeat most of them. a thief can do 2 attacks maybe 3 then switch and have none for a while. trade me if u like

There’s also the downside that spammable attacks can’t have anything too good on them – you’ll never have Immob over 1s, a KD, a Blowout, a Knockback, a block or a skill that gives any substantial length boon and so on with any thief weaponskill because they’re spammable. I’m not saying thieves should have those things (they’d be clearly broken if spammable), but it’s a price thieves pay for having the ability to repeatedly use the same skill.

I like the goal of boon hate/boon stealing. The idea is to reduce certain classes high DPS/Spike damage (warrior and thief, mostly) by just a small amount (so GC’s cant drop other players in 3 seconds) while maintaining the ability to seriously threaten bunkers through other means.

You’ll notice even most non bunkers rely heavily on boons – they’re literally everywhere. That’s because prior to this patch they were immensely powerful with almost no downside – Engi’s, guardians, ele’s, mesmers – they all run with a crazy amount of boons on them any time they’re in combat. Warriors and rangers throw up a smaller assortment, but tend to keep the important ones up for a good long time. A thief with 20 points in trickery will get Fury, Might, Swiftness, Vigor, and 2 of your boons for 10-15 seconds on steal.

Now that there’s a punishment for just throwing up as many boons as you can for as long/as frequently as you can, we’ll see less mindless boon spamming, which is a good thing. Prior to this there was no reason not to just throw up every boon your class could take advantage of for as long/as frequently as possible.

You start Axe Whirl on an unsuspecting melee target after a BP, so the whirl throws out handy blinding bolts. Though it is admittedly hard to use without BP – your best bet is to hit it in a big melee and dodgeroll out the second you start getting hit.

magom.3275:

evilapprentice.6379:

Dear lord these suggestions are getting better and better. We should hold a contest and organize the best into a GW2-Geek-Centric stand-up routine.

Jeez, is a mocking post, at least the other two get that (or i assume that at least).

Well then I do apologize. In my defense, it’s becoming impossible to tell the difference between what people seriously suggest on these boards, and a post mocking them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Dear lord these suggestions are getting better and better. We should hold a contest and organize the best into a GW2-Geek-Centric stand-up routine.

How does one guard against a dagger being plunged into his back with a shield he’s holding in front of him? When block is 180 degree front arc only, we’ll talk – until then, its the way it is for a reason.

People who keep telling you to go D/P (Like myself, in the last thread you posted concerning D/D builds) aren’t doing so to screw with you. Check any of the stickied thief guides if you desperately want D/D for stylistic reasonss.

But if you want “Lots of Damage, burst, a viable survival, etc”, you want D/P. D/D is a clearly inferior set for what you want.

I thought it was strange, but didn’t expect them to split the mists and actual games – that’s just dumb. The Mists is where players go to practice new specs… why wouldn’t revealed work like it does in actual games?

Who thought that was a good idea? I can’t imagine how confusing it is for thieves who don’t exclusively PvP to figure this kitten out. Its 3s in PvE and WvW…you go to the mists, and its still 3s. Then you join a game and your entire rotation is off because you’re getting these mysterious immunes when you try to stealth sometimes. This must be incredibly discouraging to new players, who are probably too busy keeping track of the field to pay super close attention to their boons and conditions bar.

It appears as though revealed is back down to 3s in PvP. Unintended side effect? Stealth change? Did I miss an announcement?

Tested on dummies in the mist.

If you’re absolutely set on a dagger in both hands, that’s on you.

Dagger/Pistol a vastly superior choice for a litany of reasons, mainly because of how viciously and over zealously dagger OH was unjustly nerfed a while back. Honestly, just go find a good D/P build on the boards and use that if you’re interested in big hits and survivability.

Einlanzer.1627:

You have dodge rolls, you have interrupts, you have blinds, you have effective bleed stacking. These things can be used very consistently while also being supplemented by Utility skills, all while not sacrificing too much of your DPS.

It would make a much bigger difference than you keep trying to argue, I promise you.

Any spec has dodge rolls, those aren’t restricted to P/P. Any Pistol OH spec has interrupts and blinds, those aren’t restricted to P/P. Rolling with a Pistol mainhand does absolutely nothing to make either better. If you’re arguing VS being a viable DPS alternative to Unload while keeping Unload as a possible DPS ability, then you’re not arguing for the bleed, because they’re mutually exclusive (either your bleed is good or Unload does good damage, not both). Just because you can jury rig a spec into working doesn’t make it good – similar choices with a superior weaponset would result in a MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE spec, and thats a pretty good indicator of how bad P/P is.
So what exactly is it that a boosted VS, and just a boosted VS does (since that’s your entire argument), that elevates it to “the biggest, easiest fix in P/P”.

Einlanzer.1627:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

evilapprentice.6379:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

I’ve been maining a P/P in wvw since long before the buff to pistol mastery. I chose to go with full evasion and zero stealth in the build, and even though I know I’m handicapping myself with my weapon/skill choices, it’s been way more fun to play my evasive gunslinger than any of my other four level 80 characters. I still do quite well with it despite its shortcomings and can hold my own just fine in 1vX situations.

All I really want is a faster rate of fire on Vital Shot and for Body Shot to be re-worked into either a lunging cone attack (Spray’n’Pray) or a stationary evasive aoe (Gun-kata, for those familiar with the movie Equilibrium). I’m more than happy with everything else in the set because it synergizes well with a kiting, evasive play-style.

Please don’t take this as insulting, because I’m just going to be blunt here. WvW <> sPvP. Especially tournaments.

Furthermore, P/P has literally nothing that synergizes, in the slightest, with a “Kiting, evasive play-style”. Sword Mainhand (S/D In particular) does that with its teleports (and in S/D’s case FS). D/D condi does that with DB and to some extent DD. SHbow certainly supports a “kiting, evasive play-style” with Inf arrow and disabling shot, and to a lesser extent, choking gas and cluster bomb (our only range 1200 weapon set attack)

Unload is a 1.75s cast you can’t dodge or evade during. There are no snares or roots in P/P, and no personal speed boosts. No teleports, no retreats, no immobilize, no stuns. It’s only got 900 range.

I’m glad you have fun with it, and that it works for you – but that doesnt change the fact that its an underpowered, broken set in much need of some significant attention.

The fact that YOU aren’t finding success with P/P doesn’t mean that the set needs big, sweeping changes. But hey, if you want to argue to get my weapon set buffed, then by all means do so.

Opinions vary on whether it needs big, sweeping changes (I’m inclined to agree that it doesn’t) but it absolutely, objectively needs some fixes in a few key areas where it’s really not working. Vital Shot is the most significant of those.

You keep pushing the VS aspect. Ensoriki put up a great counter-point. I wont repeat it, but instead, I’ll just pose some scenarios.

What does your VS buff do against any other competent ranged class in the game? How does VS doing more damage (and in turn freeing up more init for things other than Unload) increase effectiveness against a Shbow ranger who has 300 better range AND access to a cripple AND swiftness to ensure he can keep you inside his range, and outside yours…AND a pet to DPS/CC you in the meantime? P/P cant snare or root him…or boost your own speed… or clear conditions, in and of itself.

How does VS doing more damage increase effectiveness against any flavor of Mesmer?
How does VS doing more damage increase effectiveness against a Boon spamming/ Heal monster bunker ele?
How does VS doing more damage increase effectiveness against a bunker guardian?
How does VS doing more damage increase effectiveness against a D/P thief?
How does VS doing more damage increase effectiveness against a condi Engi?
How does VS doing more damage increase effectiveness against a GS/Rifle or Longbow Warrior?

I could keep going, but I won’t. Long story short, VS doing more damage doesn’t solve the problem. Ranged classes will still kittening obliterate you (because BP does kitten against them, and HS doesn’t slow them down enough). Any competent melee class will make BP a cost prohibitive measure through extremely simple counter play. Heck, any class with decent AoE will render BP as a useless defensive measure by laying down ground AoE all around your BP. Without additional defensive measures, any buff to VS (short of something that makes it clearly overpowered) will be a band-aid on an axe-wound: Useless.

If it was just me, you’d have a point. That is not the case however.

Ask any thief on the leaderboards if they run P/P. Hell, ask anyone with a %. Ask any other non-thief player on the leaderboards if they’ve ever faced a dangerous P/P thief in a match. Then ask them if they’ve seen p/p in an organized team. Since the answer will be definitively no (you can check if you’d like, I’m just trying to save you some time), ask the follow up question of why. They’ll echo everything myself and Ensoriki have said.

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

I’ve been maining a P/P in wvw since long before the buff to pistol mastery. I chose to go with full evasion and zero stealth in the build, and even though I know I’m handicapping myself with my weapon/skill choices, it’s been way more fun to play my evasive gunslinger than any of my other four level 80 characters. I still do quite well with it despite its shortcomings and can hold my own just fine in 1vX situations.

All I really want is a faster rate of fire on Vital Shot and for Body Shot to be re-worked into either a lunging cone attack (Spray’n’Pray) or a stationary evasive aoe (Gun-kata, for those familiar with the movie Equilibrium). I’m more than happy with everything else in the set because it synergizes well with a kiting, evasive play-style.

Please don’t take this as insulting, because I’m just going to be blunt here. WvW <> sPvP. Especially tournaments.

Furthermore, P/P has literally nothing that synergizes, in the slightest, with a “Kiting, evasive play-style”. Sword Mainhand (S/D In particular) does that with its teleports (and in S/D’s case FS). D/D condi does that with DB and to some extent DD. SHbow certainly supports a “kiting, evasive play-style” with Inf arrow and disabling shot, and to a lesser extent, choking gas and cluster bomb (our only range 1200 weapon set attack)

Unload is a 1.75s cast you can’t dodge or evade during. There are no snares or roots in P/P, and no personal speed boosts. No teleports, no retreats, no immobilize, no stuns. It’s only got 900 range.

I’m glad you have fun with it, and that it works for you – but that doesnt change the fact that its an underpowered, broken set in much need of some significant attention.

Einlanzer.1627:

evilapprentice.6379:

Einlanzer.1627:

evilapprentice.6379:

This, btw, is exactly what my initial response was talking about – instead of bringing to light and discussing the myriad of issues with P/P in a general sense, we’ve gone into a long winded discussion of why we disagree with your opinion that this one specific change will fix all of P/P’s problems.

I never said it will fix all of P/P’s problems. I said that it is the single most major reason why P/P is broken.

In other words, if they only make one simple tweak to P/P, this is by far the best one they could make.

Turning 10 tons of dog crap into 1 ton of dog crap doesn’t help you when your house smells like dog crap.

Making this 1 change would of course make P/P better because it’s in such a sad state nearly anything would make it better. It still wouldn’t be worth using though. Why bother making changes when it’s still going to be worthless in the end?

Well, it’s a change that needs to happen regardless of what other changes may or may not happen, that’s the key idea to capture here.

Updating a Weaponset that needs a massive amount of adjustment piece by piece is a bad idea.
A) It’s going to draw ire from the community. “Why spend time and resources fixing 1 piece of a set that STILL SUCKS when you’re done with it? Just fix it all or don’t bother” etc etc…
B) What if the fixes don’t mesh with later fixes? They buff VS damage, then they buff something else, then they realize they’ve painted themselves into a corner because they’re out of logical changes they can make to other skills because they didn’t design All the changes at the same time.

They need to re-envision how they want P/P to work, Completely, before doing any sort of work. It’s acceptable to deliver the changes one by one, but they need to figure out how every ability in P/P is going to interact with every other ability, commit to that design, then start implementing. Making 1 change without taking into consideration Any of the other changes that P/P needs is a very bad idea from a design standpoint.

Einlanzer.1627:

evilapprentice.6379:

This, btw, is exactly what my initial response was talking about – instead of bringing to light and discussing the myriad of issues with P/P in a general sense, we’ve gone into a long winded discussion of why we disagree with your opinion that this one specific change will fix all of P/P’s problems.

I never said it will fix all of P/P’s problems. I said that it is the single most major reason why P/P is broken.

In other words, if they only make one simple tweak to P/P, this is by far the best one they could make.

Turning 10 tons of dog crap into 1 ton of dog crap doesn’t help you when your house smells like dog crap.

Making this 1 change would of course make P/P better because it’s in such a sad state nearly anything would make it better. It still wouldn’t be worth using though. Why bother making changes when it’s still going to be worthless in the end?

This, btw, is exactly what my initial response was talking about – instead of bringing to light and discussing the myriad of issues with P/P in a general sense, we’ve gone into a long winded discussion of why we disagree with your opinion that this one specific change will fix all of P/P’s problems.

Einlanzer.1627:

Once again, it has nothing to do with damage. It’s not that your new damage is scary, it’s that you now are able to both do damage AND use your defensive utilities at the same time gasp.

Black Powder and Head Shot have suddenly become virtually spammable because you are no longer overly-reliant on the damage from Unload when backed into a corner. You seem to be underestimating or overlooking what that adds to the set, especially when combined with utility skills.

You’re vastly overestimating how good BP and HS are in P/P (even with your fixed VS). Any player running range weapon laughs at you spending 6 init for BP. HS is good for interrupting big skills, but only buys you time for 1 vital shot if you’re using it as a defensive tool to prevent a player from using any skills. Those skills cost 6 and 4 init respectively, so “virtually spammable” isn’t an accurate description. If you hit BP Once and Hs once in a 3 second period you probably (spec dependant, of course) Don’t have the init for an unload, or another BP.

Any ranged focus class build would still eat you alive. A D/P thief would wreck you. Mesmers would wreck you. Heck, I fail to see how this proposal would stop a GS/Rifle warrior from wrecking you. You have 900 range and no gap openers outside of utilities – every class in the game has a way to either close a 900 gap in an instant, or the range and tools to still hit you from outside your range.

Einlanzer.1627:

evilapprentice.6379:

Einlanzer.1627:

That’s the thing though – reread my initial post. Even if there are other things that could stand some retuning (such as Body Shot and Ricochet) – P/P is garbage for exactly one reason, and that reason is that Vital Shot does inadequate DPS, which screws up the playability of every other skill in the set.

You’re making the assumption that Anet wants to make P/P a direct damage set – we currently have no idea what Anets initial vision for P/P was, because its so kittening awful and disjointed.

In addition, fixing the damage does almost nothing for P/P – it’ll certainly be less kittenty, but now you’re just a slightly dangerous sitting duck. It promotes people to focus on that 1 aspect, and neglects all the other problems with P/P – if we don’t address all the issues simultaneously, it will remain a kittenty weaponset for longer as Anet addresses issues piecemeal instead of altogether.

No, the point is that you are no longer a sitting duck because you have the Initiative to spend on Black Powder and Head Shot without obliterating your DPS. Not perfect, perhaps, but a vast, vast improvement on what you have currently.

I will repeat it ad nasuem: Vital Shot’s weakness is by far the single biggest contributor to P/P being broken.

And I will continue to disagree – Without addressing the sets utter lack of mobility, you’ll be a sitting duck. Even if you’ve got great damage and leftover init for BP and HS, the second someone decides you’re worth targeting, you might as well kiss your kitten goodbye – BP and HS aren’t going to save you if your weapon set offers nothing in the way of thief-style escapes.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying your point isn’t valid, I’m just saying All the issues need to be addressed ASAP, not just some. If they buffed vital shot the way you want it today, the spec would be kitten by the end of the week when people learned that although your new damage is scary, you’re still totally reliant on utilities to avoid getting eaten alive.

Einlanzer.1627:

That’s the thing though – reread my initial post. Even if there are other things that could stand some retuning (such as Body Shot and Ricochet) – P/P is garbage for exactly one reason, and that reason is that Vital Shot does inadequate DPS, which screws up the playability of every other skill in the set.

You’re making the assumption that Anet wants to make P/P a direct damage set – we currently have no idea what Anets initial vision for P/P was, because its so kittening awful and disjointed.

In addition, fixing the damage does almost nothing for P/P – it’ll certainly be less kittenty, but now you’re just a slightly dangerous sitting duck. It promotes people to focus on that 1 aspect, and neglects all the other problems with P/P – if we don’t address all the issues simultaneously, it will remain a kittenty weaponset for longer as Anet addresses issues piecemeal instead of altogether.

P/P has a ton of problems.
1) Confused purpose – Is it a Conditions damage set, as Vital shot would imply? Is it a direct damage set, as Unload would imply? It is a joke of a set, as body shot might imply?
2)Complete lack of mobility/mobility hindrance – The set brings nothing in terms of mobility or mobility hindrance. No teleporting or evading or vigor or endurance regen or swiftness for you, no chill or cripple or immobilize or KD to use on your opponents.
3)No access to a thiefs normal defensive arsenal – With no access to stealth AND no mobility, the weaponset has absolutely nothing defensive in its toolset. Thieves cannot soak damage like other classes – without a weaponset based way to avoid damage, you’re a sitting duck.

Fixes
For 1) Decide what P/P is going to be – a conditions weaponset or a Direct damage weaponset. Change the appropriate skill, and fix body shot to a useful skill in that new purpose.
For 2) Short duration Swiftness on #1 #2 or #3 is probably the best bet – cripple or chill would clash with P/D #4, and immob would be too hard to balance (either UP or OP depending on duration and spammability). Basically, if you’re duking it out with pistols, you should have perma-swiftness. once you stop actively firing at a target, swiftness fades quickly.
For 3)Some way to evade damage that’s already compatible with how thieves are designed – some evasiveness added to moves, high uptime vigor easily accessible via the weaponset, stealth…something.

I’ve avoided making super-specific recommendations because it always leads to abandonment of purpose – people start fine tuning your idea, calling it OP, UP, proposing their own ideas and so on and so on… we don’t need that now. We need Anet to finally acknowledge that P/P is complete garbage, and very general idea’s they can use as a jumping off point, leave the specifics to them.

Well, considering how important positioning and timing is in this game, I think it should be a priority to be fixed.

I’ll re-iterate, I know there will always be some “lag”, but it currently happens way too often. It certainly seems like the servers are at fault (considering I’ve monitored my Ping to verify that it isn’t the cause), there must be something Anet can do to lessen the severity of the issue.

Anything more than your standard MMO monthly subscription cost (12-15 bucks) to rent a server for a month will be full on lunacy. It should probably be a little less, but anything more and they’ll be showing an extreme lack of business acumen.

shockwave.1764:

Delryn.7235:

Worst part is each time token only adds one day, so unless you’re playing every single day, it’s really not worth it. I really like PvP but I only play it a couple times a week when I’m able to play GW2

Wait, what?! Wouldn’t you rather have a token you can slot in when you want to play for 1 day, rather than one for a month and it’s just being wasted if you only play a couple times a month?

My thoughts exactly – tho more tedious to manage, paying on a day to day basis circumvents you getting screwed; if for some reason you don’t have time to play for 5 days straight, you didn’t lose 5 days out of a month.

Though its always more pronounced right after a patch, the following is a consistent problem that comes and goes, and I’m starting to get sick of it.

Randomly, skills dont fire – its especially noticeable with instant cast skills (withdraw, Infiltrator’s Strike, Shadow step, Shadow return, and even though its not a ‘skill’, weapon switch).

Roughly 70% of the time skills function normally – 30%, they simply don’t fire (I dont have any empirical data for these numbers, just a ‘feeling’). I watch the skill button light up, I’m not stunned, feared, or in any other way denied use of my skillbar…they just don’t fire. This has led to me “Spamming” skills when I really need to make sure they go off…and with skills like Infiltrators strike, shadow step, shadow return, and (to a lesser extent) the new Flanking strike/Larcenous strike, its a huge hindrance.

When withdraw doesn’t fire the first time I hit it, I might as well not bother; I run with a snare/root breaking, evade rolling instant cast heal for a reason – if it doesn’t immediately get me the kitten out of dodge, there’s a good chance I’m getting mauled.

I bring this up now because it seems like Anet might finally start delivering on some of their promises; maybe in a few months this game will be excellent again (IMO). But before that can happen, they need to address skills not firing when pressed 95% of the time (there’s always a margin of error, I’m not some crazy perfectionist)

I’ve checked my ping mid game – while it bounces around, its never over 100, and usually flickers between 50 and 80. I have to assume I’m not the only one dealing with this – anyone else want to weigh in?

Not an awful idea – could be used to add some skill and unpredictability to thief, and in addition fix some under performing skills. The below suggestions are just off the top of my head, so forgive me if they’re poor/op/whatevs.

PW – 2 init – Perform the stun swing from the current PW Skill. If it connects, for 3-5s you can use a secondary skill “Thrash” – 1 Init, isn’t consumed on use (IE, you can keep hitting thrash for the duration), does something interesting (More damage, some condition per hit, I don’t know)

Shadow shot – just split up the teleport and the damaging swing

Shadow stab – P/D needs some help before we discuss this.

Unload – 3 init on activation – takes 3 quick shots at your opponent, each shot that hits puts a “Hit” debuff on them for 5s. Chains to overloaded shot – 3 init, .5s cast time (or something like that) does X damage plus a bonus for each stack of the “Hit” Debuff.

Death Blossom – Honestly no good ideas here – evade leap to target for 3 init -> chains to dagger spin, spins around hitting all targets in X radius for 3 bleeds, 3 init?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Drawing Guy.3701:

The signet use should still have a sacrifice, but I agree that the active of the Assassin’s signet needs work. I personally find the 3 attack boonsteal to be a pretty genius idea.

Um no. That would mean an S/D build will be able to 100% boon denial.

Are you guys even thinking this through?

You can already go 20 points in trickery for Bountiful theft and get almost the same functionality – it’s about choices. If you wanna roll 20 trickery, assassins sig (my boon stealing version), and S/D, you’ll be a boon stealing monster, but you’re dedicating a utility slot, 20 points in trickery, and your weapon set to just being a boon thief.

The idea was to give players who don’t want to roll S/D or 20 points in trickery a way to steal boons – Anet has mentioned (and with this patch proven) that they want warrior and thieves to go in a different direction – losing a bit of their “general damage” in favor of abilities that specifically target bunkers – boon stealing and boon hate.

Still just an off-the-top-of-my-head suggestion though, would perhaps need tweaking.

Grimwolf.7163:

The Passive and Active effects are a bad match, since they both do exactly the same thing in different amounts.
I’d like to see them change the Active effect to something like “The next X attacks have 100% Critical Chance,” or like the Warrior’s “The next X attacks are Unblockable.”

Or “The next 3 attacks steal 1 boon”, for those thieves who don’t want to go S/D but still want to be part of the bunker busting party.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Travlane.5948:

who in the hell uses CND while they are invis? thats just dumb bc you get revealed.

My thought exactly so I am led to believe that CnD crits outside stealth, but I’ll be testing it when I get home.

Good points. I hope I’m wrong because that would be OP.

They Might have just adjusted CnD critting while in stealth for consistency – No one intends to use CnD from stealth, but if you’re slotting Hidden Killer, go for a CnD at low health, trigger last refuge, then tag a target with your CnD, you’re going to be doubly kitten if it doesn’t auto-crit like it should.

ryokoalways.3450:

The .5 seconds recovery off sword stab is pretty major. It helps chain attack 3 for sure, and I’m assuming it helps infiltrator (which is also a stab) as well. It would help the flexibility of most attacks and also increase dps.

Isn’t this change referencing the Sword/No Offhand 3 skill, “Stab”? Or does it actually effect AA third swing and IS swing as you’ve mentioned?