Buff PW damage

There's no reason for it to be so low. Massive initiative cost, roots you, telegraphed; yet hardly punishes anyone it hits.

There's no many blocks and invulns in the meta right now that people can just walk out of it, too.

Seems fine to me. it is still a pretty strong skill which you can chain and similiar to mesmer's blur you evade at the same time too and you don't even have a cd on it.

Pw dps is fine for what it does, more damage would lead to a nerf in other aspects of the skill. A better example of thief skills that need a damage buff are pulmonary impact and dagger autos as they are pathetic lol.

The skill hits hard enough. Besides, you can use steal and shadowsteps while it's in use. Though I hate the fact that it roots you. It would be nice to remove the root and balance it accordingly. Though probably not possible as the root is tied to the animation

@Draygorn.7012 said:The skill hits hard enough. Besides, you can use steal and shadowsteps while it's in use. Though I hate the fact that it roots you. It would be nice to remove the root and balance it accordingly. Though probably not possible as the root is tied to the animation

That would be an awesome animation for circle strafing if it wasn't rooted. Other skills can combine and string together, at least for fluidity and to feel more tactile with other mechanics and other skills, that make PW feel abruptly out of character.

PW is a fun paradox.It's an unusable trash skill now but considering the amount of stuff it does (stun, evade) then the dmg is fine. If you increased dmg it will instantly be op again, if you remove stun or evade and replace it with more dmg it will be back to trash skill.It may be my limited imagination but I think there is nothing you can do to it without making it either OP or trash with no middle ground. Right now in its uselessness it's quite balanced.

sorry for getting pw deleted from the game, it will never return in pvp even with damage increase. The ini cost itself and less stun duration makes it not playable at high levels anymore

@bluri.2653 said:sorry for getting pw deleted from the game, it will never return in pvp even with damage increase. The ini cost itself and less stun duration makes it not playable at high levels anymore

U should be honestly. As penance and due to u being one of the few thief players the team may listen to u must fight harder to get changes to improve thief implemented.With great thief skills comes great responsibility.Thief's future falls on ur shoulders.

@bluri.2653 said:sorry for getting pw deleted from the game, it will never return in pvp even with damage increase. The ini cost itself and less stun duration makes it not playable at high levels anymore

I mean, I'd blame the whining no-goods above all else.

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Pw dps is fine for what it does, more damage would lead to a nerf in other aspects of the skill. A better example of thief skills that need a damage buff are pulmonary impact and dagger autos as they are pathetic lol.Try necro dagger after feb 25th. That's pathetic! It's slower and deals less damage than the teef dagger because necro has less trait multipliers. So it's all relative...

@topic:Pistol Whip itself is fine. Make it stronger you are basically back at spamming sword 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2 ... no one likes to fight against that and no one want's to play that for more than 5 minutes.

@KrHome.1920 said:

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Pw dps is fine for what it does, more damage would lead to a nerf in other aspects of the skill. A better example of thief skills that need a damage buff are pulmonary impact and dagger autos as they are pathetic lol.Try necro dagger after feb 25th. That's pathetic! It's slower and deals less damage than the teef dagger because necro has less trait multipliers. So it's all relative...

It's still more engaging than heartseeker spam

@KrHome.1920 said:

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Pw dps is fine for what it does, more damage would lead to a nerf in other aspects of the skill. A better example of thief skills that need a damage buff are pulmonary impact and dagger autos as they are pathetic lol.Try necro dagger after feb 25th. That's pathetic! It's slower and deals less damage than the teef dagger because necro has less trait multipliers. So it's all relative...

So improve necro dagger when shroud regen is reduced, all good :).pw should just have that one extra ini cost reverted to what it was. Skills so loaded as is I'd have to be redesigned to be able to excel at any one thing further.

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@KrHome.1920 said:

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Pw dps is fine for what it does, more damage would lead to a nerf in other aspects of the skill. A better example of thief skills that need a damage buff are pulmonary impact and dagger autos as they are pathetic lol.Try necro dagger after feb 25th. That's pathetic! It's slower and deals less damage than the teef dagger because necro has less trait multipliers. So it's all relative...

Unfortunately that's a common issue among most of thief's weapon kit's.

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@KrHome.1920 said:

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Pw dps is fine for what it does, more damage would lead to a nerf in other aspects of the skill. A better example of thief skills that need a damage buff are pulmonary impact and dagger autos as they are pathetic lol.Try necro dagger after feb 25th. That's pathetic! It's slower and deals less damage than the teef dagger because necro has less trait multipliers. So it's all relative...

Sadly yeah. If they reverted the ini cost to 5 that would be enough to make it useable, as it is it doesn't out damage or out evade S/D. If PI gets reworked into something useful on interrupt I could see S/P being used as a control set, but at the moment it's not really good enough.

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:

It's still more engaging than heartseeker spam

That's just the nature of having no cooldown limitations. You'll simply dump your resources into the most effective skill you have available.

Unless they start making Feef weapon kits rely more on comboing skills together (Kind of like how Cloak and Dagger sets up for a Backstab meaning chain backstabs is 515151 etc) this will always be the case. But as is, they kind of seem to be going the path of chucking like 3 situational utility skills onto a weapon set and then 1 attack as opposed to trying to create more diverse attack combos...

An example of an easy to implement combo, would be to move PW's stun over to Headshot. So then to do your PW you'll 4 > 3.

Other possibilites can be more conditional damage boosts, sort of like how Ranger's Dagger 4 skill deals bonus damage against movement impaired enemies, meaning you want to combo it after you apply an impairment (Such as Dagger 5, Axe 3, Sword 1/2). Of course, such a thing would need to be balanced in a way that the init (Also time) cost of setting up the combo and the damage boosted strike is more effective than simply spamming the unboosted strike multiple times (I.e. Heartseeker spam against high health targets)

@Taril.8619 said:

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:

It's still more engaging than heartseeker spam

I would enjoy that sort of thing tbh. Would need a rework of virtually every weapon thief has, and I'm not sure if the devs will bother with that at this point in the game's lifespan. Would make for a pretty cool elite spec tho.

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@Taril.8619 said:

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:

It's still more engaging than heartseeker spam

There is a potential issue of complexity.

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@Taril.8619 said:

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:

It's still more engaging than heartseeker spam

For sure. It would make deadeye kneel a lot more interesting if they used combo mechanics on the kneel skills tho, rather than the skills just being slightly better versions of the non kneel ones. And they could replace rifle 3 outright with a skill that combos off movement impeding condis and even if it did no damage but added CC it would be an improvement

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@Taril.8619 said:

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:

It's still more engaging than heartseeker spam

Personally Id rather they remove Kneel. Part of the problem is that Kneel replaces the skills with worse ones than the non-kneel. The correct way of playing Rifle DE is to never kneel.

PW does need an un-nerf. Since the damage got lowered a lot from the last balance patch they did not need to touch the initiative cost at all. They could simply revert that change and be done with it.

If they actually wanted to give it a cool buff I have a suggestion. It might cause some tears.

My suggestion would be to add 2-3 seconds of quickness on activation of PW. It would make it strong, but in perspective of overall balance I don't think it is overpowered

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@Taril.8619 said:

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:

It's still more engaging than heartseeker spam

Eh, sniper's cover has its uses when trying to build malice vs a couple soulbeasts, and skirmisher's shot guarantees fury for no quarter for a damage boost on your DJ, but in general, you're not wrong. Honestly though, a big part of the problem for me is that DJ gets janky when it gets close to max range and misses for no particular reason. I'd rather rework something than lose it in general, that's just me tho.

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@Taril.8619 said:

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:

It's still more engaging than heartseeker spam

Thing is, if youre using no quarter youll get Fury either way. Anyway, the problem is I just dont see how they can rework Kneel to make it less clunky as hell. 1800 range but no dodges at all? Probably too problematic. Move at less movement speed? Ehh.

@"UNOwen.7132" said:

Personally Id rather they remove Kneel. Part of the problem is that Kneel replaces the skills with worse ones than the non-kneel. The correct way of playing Rifle DE is to never kneel.

I dunno, with exception of skill 4, which I think the shadowstep backwards that removes a condition is way better than the wall, I kind of like doing ~50% more damage per shot.

That said, I wouldn't be opposed to a rework of Kneel.

Such as, if they really wanted to go all in on the "Sniper" fantasy that the weapon type and spec is going for, Kneel could be a "Stealth-like" mechanic, where it changes your next shot into a single, more powerful shot.

I.e. Skill 1 becomes Death's Judgment, skill 2 becomes a powerful CC round, Double Tap becomes a powerful single shot that provides boons (Might, Fury, Quickness? Swiftness?) - All of these shots have Piercing too. Also, probably buff Sniper's cover too (Make it a ring? Let it give you stealth on cast? Damage boost while in/near it? idk)

So, you run around like normal ratatataing with your 3 but then when you are safe enough you can duck down onto your knee and fire off a poweful single shot and then you get back up again.

Slap a more substantial Init cost on Kneel, make the obligatory stealth skill adjustments to skill 1 (Basically, make Death's Judgment accessible while Kneeling and while Stealthed. Give it bonus damage while both kneeling and stealthed) and voila, you have a more thematic and overall fluid Rifle package. Where you're not choosing to become annoyingly immobile or forgoing that entire mechanic (And thus being left with a 4 skill weapon set...) while getting a bit more nuance in skill usage beyond 3333333333333

@Taril.8619 said:

@"UNOwen.7132" said:

Personally Id rather they remove Kneel. Part of the problem is that Kneel replaces the skills with

worse

ones than the non-kneel. The correct way of playing Rifle DE is to never kneel.

I think we had a thread or two maybe last year about possible adjustments or alternatives to Kneel. It might have been Sir Vincent and a couple of others who suggested some set of stances. I'd like Kneel to allow you to move in a sort of slower moving crouch-walk like in shooters to adjust a little when you finally get a spot that has a good vantage point but also isn't obstructed. I don't want to loose Kneel though, I like the skills on that line, especially Snipers Cover which I use a lot and in a few different ways.

The idea of combo weaving or sequencing comes up once in awhile but it never gets any traction unfortunately but I think something like that could be a little more involved and rewarding than what we can set up right now and would give thief class a little better and less nerfy shelf life and Pistol Whip could be made into a risk and reward heavy decision that would be a lot more fun than being rooted but also telegraphed while somehow still being annoying for the other player. That's not to say I want to be stuck having to combo, but it would pay off if you pulled it off while still allowing our usual improvisation.

@Taril.8619 said:

An example of an easy to implement combo, would be to move PW's stun over to Headshot. So then to do your PW you'll 4 > 3.

Strange as it is, I don't think we can expect a damage increase even if the stun is removed. It would basically become Mesmer sword 2, but pistol whip actually has the higher damage coefficient. If I had to guess, maybe because it has the vulnerable window during the stun windup, while Blurred Frenzy can be treated as an on-demand evade.

What if they rebalance it around having fewer sword slashes? It would decrease the evade time but also the time spent rooted. It would more reliably land the full damage, so maybe it would take a slight damage decrease, but then the initiative cost could be lowered again.