Unload Nerf too much

Unload before the nerf while not a top tier skill was strong. However it has effectively been neutered. The 6/1 init change rather than 5/2, has a significant change in flow with the skill. It would have been much better had the skill gotten a straight damage nerf and left the 5/2 init.

Anet took our Ricochet for which I will never forget or forgive but please restore Unload's combat flow in WvW/sPvP. P/P is devoid of defensive capability outside of Bound unlike most other weapon sets so every nerf hits hard. Add in the weak arse auto attack and P/P without a solid Unload is a junk weapon set in competition. Besides, nobody was tearing through decent players with this skill prior to the nerf.

P/P is devoid of any form of joy or excitement in the first place, to be honest.Comes down to personal preference and flavor though.Rather than Unload getting buffed, I'd rather see the rest of the skills be made more useful.Unload spam shouldn't be rewarded, no form of spam should be for that matter, so as not to go the route of "nerf one skill so more skills will be used". I think they should readdress skills #1 and #2 on pistol, or make P/P have an entire new skillset of it's own, without affecting actual P/X or X/P builds.

A simple damage nerf wouldn't have the the proper trick either, I think.My assumption (which, yes, I shouldn't make...) is that they decided to reign in the dull spamfest that P/P was and actually still is. The way they did it though, was by nerfing Unload rather than increase the potential value of the other Pistol Skills to encourage more diverse, situational and sometimes niche use of the set.

So no, I don't agree that P/P was more enjoyable pre-nerf. It was better in it's efficiency, but it wasn't more fun to play. Might just be me, but I never found P/P too enjoyable (Ricochet made it much more fun though!). So yeah... P/P needs some love, but not by encouraging more Unload spam.

@"Vornollo.5182" said:P/P is devoid of any form of joy or excitement in the first place, to be honest.Comes down to personal preference and flavor though.Rather than Unload getting buffed, I'd rather see the rest of the skills be made more useful.Unload spam shouldn't be rewarded, no form of spam should be for that matter, so as not to go the route of "nerf one skill so more skills will be used". I think they should readdress skills #1 and #2 on pistol, or make P/P have an entire new skillset of it's own, without affecting actual P/X or X/P builds.

A simple damage nerf wouldn't have the the proper trick either, I think.My assumption (which, yes, I shouldn't make...) is that they decided to reign in the dull spamfest that P/P was and actually still is. The way they did it though, was by nerfing Unload rather than increase the potential value of the other Pistol Skills to encourage more diverse, situational and sometimes niche use of the set.

So no, I don't agree that P/P was more enjoyable pre-nerf. It was better in it's efficiency, but it wasn't more fun to play. Might just be me, but I never found P/P too enjoyable (Ricochet made it much more fun though!). So yeah... P/P needs some love, but not by encouraging more Unload spam.

Basically.

For a spammable skill, it was way too good when it worked and got countered too hard when it didn't.

There was next to no decision-making when playing it, either.

Tbh, I think they need to just rework all thief weapon skills at this point. P/P is bad/cheese. D/D is bad/cheese. S/P is bad/cheese. S/D is barely viable. D/P is carried by elite specs. P/D is binary and has under-utilized skills. Rifle is a gimmick in it of itself.

That leads us with what, staff? And even that's kind of a gimmick and not seen as super good these days.

Still doesn't really mean anything with the rest of the game powercreeped into oblivion, I guess, though.

Unload needed adjustment for a while. Other skills couldn’t be buffed because Unload was still always the best (power) choice. It’s no coincidence that Sneak Attack gained better power scaling with malice with the Unload nerf.

Unload was compromised to much in the other direction. The weaponset is of little use now.

They should have applied ONE of the patches to WvW/Pvp that being lower the INI payback to 1 one an unload OR raise the INI cost by 1 , not both.

That said as to adding more to the set it hard to imagine what they could do outside the Unload that would make P/P preferable in any circumstance to using p/d with changes, s/p with changes or d/p with changes.

All of the one handed weapons have this problem which I think one of the reasons we received two handed weapon adds last two expansions. Thy just easier to balance.

I can't say that this nerf is "too much" because it implies unload deserved a nerf to begin with. This nerf accomplishes nothing of value and everything you would want to address here should be tackled in other ways. Some people say the nerf is justified because spamming 3 shouldn't be rewarded which doesn't even make sense since mindlessly spamming unload was always more punishing if anything thanks to how easy it is to play around it.

If the problem is that you don't want a build that only uses one skill then you should ask yourself why it is that people only use X. Unload obviously isn't that versatile of a skill so the problem here isn't that unload is outperforming other skills at what their trying to do (except for the "AA" which isn't even needed on "mana" based class). Unload isn't an instant win button either so thats also not the issue here. The reason people "only" use 3 comes down to two main issues: the general lack of utility and the high ini cost of unload. Unload being the main source of damage is fine, most builds have their "go to" skill for XYZ however they usually don't limit your ability to use other stuff but that's exactly what unload does. You don't want to use [insert utility here] if it means that you can't attack anymore. That is of course if this weapon set even had much utility to begin with. You got what? Headshot? That's pretty much about it, TBH they should just make unload weapon skill 1 and redo the rest of the set (and that's not even an uncommon opinion).

If preventing unload spam is your main goal here then giving players more viable options is definitely the best way to go about it since it would address the complaints of both those who don't want to see mindless unload spam and those who want to have more utility for the weapon set.

Unload spam was never an OP situation. Any decent thief that sees Unload or Vault spam typically sees a victim not an OP build. Unload spam while dangerous in some situations was/is easy to counter.

Thieves tend to know what is and isn't OP in small scale better than anyone. Unload gets hammered while most of the Mirage, FB and DH blow up remains. I don't even go near those builds at full strength any longer. Which is odd for a class centered solely around 1v1 and +1 fights.