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New Thief, why the love for Shortbow over Double pistols?


Kezriak.5076

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Short bow brings a very powerful set of utility skills, aoe poison application, spammable iframe (aka evade), spammable blast finisher which can be used for so many things, good aoe pressure with cluster bombs and not to forget sb5 which is the most op mobility skill in the game.

P/P has some things too, but it doesn't work on a fundamental level because the setup is for damage primarily. If you use Unload you won't have the initiative for using all our you utility skills, if you use your utility skills then you lose all of your counter pressure because you can't Unload. So that's why d/p is taken instead, because you can do on demand burst damage any time you like with just auto attack and you will always have the initiative for utility/defense.

So why not bring d/p annnd p/p?Well because then youre doubling up on your tools and missing a lot of others for no less cost, that doesn't even make a little sense xD

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There are basically 2 things that are pretty much mandatory for thief (unless you pick hipster way at costs of viability) in competitive environment: trickery for extra ini and sb5. They ensure that you can execute more than 2 attacks and give us much needed mobility because few years ago Anet decided that thief should be nothing more but +1/decap pet and we need to exceed at it otherwise we are useless.

p/p is good vs say guards/scourges and co. however issues is that you still need sb for mobility/aoe (we have nearly none of the last besides staff and some cleave from sp).

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I personally run D/P + P/P so its a preference. There has rarely been a time where I was like "Wish I had a SB there as it would have helped". I seem to do well w/o it myself. I have been evolving my build lately however so ya never know. I ran w/o it for a year so im not holding my own breath :p

As mentioned, people run it over P/P mainly for the mobility. P/P has none. Myself...UH and the physical heal do it for me.

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Mobility offered by SB5 -WAS- superior when it used to have a 1200 range. Nothing can compare to it and there -WAS- real love. Also, SB projectile used to home/seek to the target.

Now SB is crap. You can cover the same distance as SB5 using Dagger #2 twice for practically the same cost. However, SB5 has the advantage in terms of elevation and slopes. So it's still a must have even though it's a "dead" weapon in most fights.

Ever since Dagger auto-attack damage was buffed and given cleave, plus making the Init regen to a 1:1 rate, SB lost a lot of its edge.

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At this point I think p/p is a primary damage kit where sb and rifle are mostly secondary slot for tools and kiting, so I don't think I'd chose one over the other. If we're talking about a secondary kit for tools to back up primary kit then I want reach over range and sb can hit things even rifle can't with auto attack due to it's behavior. Sb can lob stuff onto or over obstacles where p/p and rifle need direct line of site. Sb can climb topography to get to something or for better angle and skill for skill sort of mirrors staff functionality and plays as smoothly. I don't use pistols enough to weigh in though.

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@"Ayumi Spender.1082" said:Would Pistol/Pistol + Shortbow be better than Pistol/Pistol + Dagger/Dagger?I really like my Pistol/Pistol. I would be fine with losing the daggers.

I usually play D/P + SB but tried P/P + SB yesterday and had 7 wins 1 Loss. I guess I'll stick with that build for a while now and check if I can continue to climb the ladder ^^

As a side note: The enemy teams had I guess in at least 5 out of those matches reflects and projectile barriers and stuff.. you just have to be aware of those mechanics and act accordingly ^^

PS: Imho shortbow is mandatory for every "general" thief build. There might be sooome situations where you could want to swap it out but tbh I can't think of at least one.Just because of the reasons stated in comments above.

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@Ayumi Spender.1082 said:Would Pistol/Pistol + Shortbow be better than Pistol/Pistol + Dagger/Dagger?I really like my Pistol/Pistol. I would be fine with losing the daggers.

Depends what it's for. For low end PvE anything goes, even dungeons or low tier fractals so wouldn't worry about it at all. If this is for pvp, your weapons are horrible. P/P is a power set and D/D is a condi set, they don't synergize at all.

Shortbow + P/P Deadeye is somewhat viable for PvP but competitiveness is up for debate. I've used it for Unranked and it's fun, but dunno if I would bring the build for ranked or AT's. The thing is it's trying to do something D/P + Shortbow Daredevil already does better. The positive side is you get to do your damage from a distance, so you don't need to sit in AoE's.

Final conclusion in the case of PvP is that Shortbow is mandatory, you can't really fill your role as a thief without it. The only map where you can make an exception IMO is the Eternal Coliseum, as it's relatively small and doesn't really have much verticality to it. Any times you actually need a port, Shadowstep can fill that purpose.

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@Kezriak.5076 said:Is it the mobility offered by the shadowstep 5 on shortbow or what?

For PvP, short bow tends to be the default secondary weapon for almost every build because of how useful the mobility from skill 5 is.

For PvE, it’s the only ranged DPS option that does cleave/AoE damage. The mobility is also nice.

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@Zlater.6789 said:P/P has some things too, but it doesn't work on a fundamental level^ This so much, P/P generally feels like an unfinished afterthought. I like the high mobility run & gun mid range gameplay it offers but I feel like it could use an overhaul, especially in terms of utility skills. I wouldn't mind seing something like a central tyria elite specialisarion with focus on P/P, mobility and range and I'm sure other professions also have some neglected alternative gameplay styles that could use some improvements / spotlight.

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OP never said he is playing WvW or PvP, so I assume he's asking about P/P in open world PvE because that is what the majority of players do. Some people here got the idea that everybody who asks a question about thief in this forum must play WvW or PvP, while in reality, only a minority of the player base does this.

P/P is the way to go in open world, and basically every thief knows this. You never see a shortbow thief at open world events or in fractals. Every thief has staff + P/P or is a double dagger condi thief (rarely seen). And the reason is that shortbow is pure crap outside competitive play. I might even go so far and kick a shortbow thief in T4 fractals unless it's a guild mate who's experimenting. The utility simply doesn't make up for the crappy damage compared to pistols. For cleave, you have your staff, for ranged it's double pistols. I don't cleave Chak Gerent that downs me instantly, or all the other bosses around that are toxic for squishy builds. Shortbow thief comes close to bearbow ranger, if you see that, you know you have to carry.

I take Headshot plus Unload over any utility shortbow can provide, and it's clear that only #5 is useful in some situations.

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Thief's insane mobility comes from Shortbow 5. When in WvW or PvP, the Shortbow makes you a god damn pathfinder. It also created a meta where people assume that thief must always go back cap or go far.

With Shortbow 5, and now Standing Rifle 4, you can actually teleport to high platforms that would normally take a player 15 seconds to get there. Which allowed the thief to engage and disengage when ever he chooses. And it gave thief an uncontested terrain advantage over other players, which hopefully they keep... because mesmer is already starting to take our job from us and do it better. Thanks anet... thanks for all the f*cking nerfs.

Back in 2012, before a shit load of thief's nerfs. The shortbow was also very strong for Condi-Thieves. As it provided most of the condi in thief's weapon kits, and still gave insane mobility.

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@Tails.9372 said:^ This so much, P/P generally feels like an unfinished afterthought. I like the high mobility run & gun mid range gameplay it offers but I feel like it could use an overhaul, especially in terms of utility skills. I wouldn't mind seing something like a central tyria elite specialisarion with focus on P/P, mobility and range and I'm sure other professions also have some neglected alternative gameplay styles that could use some improvements / spotlight.

It really does. I've been levelling a new Thief lately, and I absolutely love the P/P playstyle out in the open world. The Unload changes make it very fun and actually pretty strong (being able to kill Smokescales in HoT maps before they even get close enough to start their evasive/smoke field BS feels great). And I don't even have PoF yet for Deadeye lol. I've been using P/P with a staff to cleave or melee. Invigorating Precision and Signet of Malice makes you almost unkillable even in my Marauder's/Berserker mix gear.

However, the skill 4 is semi-useful, but as Thief has very limited DPS utility skills, I mostly take stun breaks and CC anyway, which are always better than the tiny daze. The skill 5 feels pointless in PvE. It's such a short duration and it's usually better spending the initiative on damage rather than prolonging a fight. And the less said about the skill 2 the better. Tiny duration vulnerability and an immobilize. I wish when they had changed Unload they could have taken a look at the whole of the P/P set. Or give us Ricochet back >:)

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Shortbow is generally, best AoE choice, best mobility choiceSB1 - Bounces means tagging. Against 2 opponents near one another (plenty of examples in all game modes), SB1 does quite a bit of damage.SB2 - Blast finisher / Massive bleed stacks if condiSB3 - Huge in all game modes (more evasion) but best with synergy on evasion traitsSB4 - Now serves as a OKish CC while tagging (mainly for WvW/PvP)SB5 - Crazy strong even with 900 range because initiative cost and not cooldown (thief mechanic supports some repeated use in succession)

Why P/P can be betterGenerally better initiative to damage output (Primarily P3)P1 is meh (thankfully P3 is used almost exclusively instead)Immobilize (Poison synergy) from P2 allows for 'infinite' kitingMight stack and damage output from P3Quick interrupt on P4Blind field on P5

Since SB covers two major areas for the thief, that's why it has the love (or the crutch depending on how you look at it). That all said, if your build is Stealth based and therefore don't routinely have the initiative for SB5 or you are just PvE solo blasting one mob after the other, SB is not going to be the best option. But good thing you can just have both equip'd and do whatever you choose.

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You'll want shortbow for competitive play, especially sPvP, due to its mobility from teleport mechanic "abuse" going up structures, and since the class isn't really that useful for anything but decapping/capping uncontested points due to powercreep, making mobility your best possible thing to play around.

Aside from that it's not really required. I know of a lot of people that use S/x over SB in WvW and have no problems. And in PvE shortbow is pretty much pointless since every other kit except MH pistol can cleave for more damage than what SB offers. Though for high-end PvE, melee kits are pretty much always substantially better, save maybe a few special encounters.

P/P is one of the better kits in open-world and in the current sPvP meta at most levels of play, however. Unload is completely overtuned, and only the better-end of players on the right professions/builds will be able to shut down P/P easily and be troubled by D/P or S/D, assuming P/P is played well (hint, use Daredevil).

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P/P is fine as a weaponset as long as one is willing to change to the alternate set with frequency. Given most thieves (and in particular in PvP) rely on SB off hand P/P does not synergize well with it. It not because P/P "crap" as much as it the design of the thief wherein the same INI pool is used for both weaponsets. If you eat all your INI doing what you need to do out of p/p , there none left for what you need out of SB.

S/x and d/x work better with SB (along with condition p/d) simply because they have much better damage coming out of the #1 slot wherein they can still be dangerous when out of INI or needing to build it back up.

As to DE as compared to Daredevil when comparing the sets , DE works very well with P/P against that single target due to malice. With might stack and malice the #1 skill can do very decent damage and if you have a few stealth sources in there , the Sneak attack DOES hit very hard power wise. The problem is not damage but survival. P/P really likes UC and those dodges out of Daredevil and PI is very hard to give up given the two for one of a defensive measure with excellent damage that it allows.

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  • 1 month later...

@Faaris.8013 said:OP never said he is playing WvW or PvP, so I assume he's asking about P/P in open world PvE because that is what the majority of players do. Some people here got the idea that everybody who asks a question about thief in this forum must play WvW or PvP, while in reality, only a minority of the player base does this.

Excellent point! Many of the posts I have seen about profession or build effectiveness do seem to only talk about the PvP, WvW or Raid metas. These are certainly interesting, but I would not be surprised if many players do just stick to the open world as you suggest. Although they might not post often on the forums which usually seems to be the haunt of those more interested in details and the metas.

I have recently returned to the game and I am trying to find a profession which will let me have fun in the open world and playing through the story chapters. And by 'fun' I mean not dying repeatedly to Forged. I started with my old D/D elementalist but I've tossed that aside and now I'm going to a Thief I left when I stopped playing. Your comments were very helpful in making me think this was the right choice.

I tried S/P + SB but I just wasn't enjoying it that much. I have been considering going the kiting maniac route in open world/Story with P/P + SB, but perhaps P/P + Rifle as a DeadEye would make more sense? (I have PoF but not HoT, don't ask it's a long story).

@MelGT.8326 said:

It really does. I've been levelling a new Thief lately, and I absolutely love the P/P playstyle out in the open world.I'm glad to see comments like this, I was interested in trying P/P for the open world and its good know it won't end up as something tedious that will make me want to switch.

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