Unload needs to be reverted to before

Why was Unload even nerfed in WvW/PvP? Pistol/Pistol Thief was already weak. Other than poorly geared opponents, it could only beat Necros consistently. Now with the initiative nerf, you can only fire 2-3 Unloads at most before you run out of Initiative. Before, it was situational. Now it's completely useless.

@xiiliea.9356 said:Why was Unload even nerfed in WvW/PvP? Pistol/Pistol Thief was already weak. Other than poorly geared opponents, it could only beat Necros consistently. Now with the initiative nerf, you can only fire 2-3 Unloads at most before you run out of Initiative. Before, it was situational. Now it's completely useless.

Not to be offensive but when was pressing a single button situational? Also if you pick deadeye as one of your traits and magnificent 7. You won't run out because it refills by the time you run out. It's not a great idea tho. Basically instantly countered by interrupts. And press 1 button non stop is not very skillful The pp set needs to be reworked entirely.

I wouldn't say pp itself was the problem, the problem was the deadeye traits that synergised too well. The other problem now is they've cut too much use out of it now. There isn't much reason to take pp atm in wvw at least. You could probably get away with using it as a secondary set if your main was rifle, but it's really situational now and a bad idea to use as a main as a de, I would probably rather go p/d if I wanted to play around with a pistol for now.

It was semi-usable and now all but un-usable. The reason it was changed was due to a vocal minority claiming that pressing one button was somehow "too easy'. The reality is that "pressing one button" only worked against poor players and that any with a modicum of skill could take advantage of the fact the the P/P thief they faced was putting all their eggs into one basket, that being the Unload and that all one had to do to neutralize the Unload spammer was deal with the unload.

@"babazhook.6805" said:It was semi-usable and now all but un-usable. The reason it was changed was due to a vocal minority claiming that pressing one button was somehow "too easy'. The reality is that "pressing one button" only worked against poor players and that any with a modicum of skill could take advantage of the fact the the P/P thief they faced was putting all their eggs into one basket, that being the Unload and that all one had to do to neutralize the Unload spammer was deal with the unload.

it doesnt matter if it worked against poor players or not... no one should be able to stomp even a poor player just by pressing 1 button when the game claims to have a good/complex combat system

@"babazhook.6805" said:The reason it was changed was due to a vocal minority claiming that pressing one button was somehow "too easy'.Too easy for what tho? Easy wins? Unload spam never got you an easy win against anyone who knew what he was doing. There's just too much counterplay available for 3 to be a "win button".

Then there were also these people who acknowledged that unload was "easy to play around" but thought that the nerf was a good thing because they didn't like how one dimensional P/P is and while it's true that P/P as a hole is quite one dimensional that's hardly the fault of unload but rather the lack of viable alternatives. You can't blame the P/P thief for them only "pressing one button" if there are no other viable weapon skills to use. It's not like those who play P/P wouldn't like to have other viable utility options (e.g. P/P is one of the few (if not the only) weapon sets for thief without either an engage, dodge or disengage ability) and skills which would be otherwise viable options (such as headshot) have to compete with unload for initiative which gets you into a "you can attack but you can't properly use your utility if you do" / "you can use your utility but you can't properly attack if you do" situation. Making unload unusable however doesn't solve the issue they were complaining about and only serves to shut up those who don't care about solving the problem in a meaningful way while also screwing over those who do.

@Zawn.9647 said:it doesnt matter if it worked against poor players or not... no one should be able to stomp even a poor player just by pressing 1 button when the game claims to have a good/complex combat systemOn the contrary, if you get attacked by something as basic as unload and are not even trying to use any of your defensive abilities (such as... you know: dodging) then you pretty much deserve to get floored.

@Zawn.9647 said:

@"babazhook.6805" said:It was semi-usable and now all but un-usable. The reason it was changed was due to a vocal minority claiming that pressing one button was somehow "too easy'. The reality is that "pressing one button" only worked against poor players and that any with a modicum of skill could take advantage of the fact the the P/P thief they faced was putting all their eggs into one basket, that being the Unload and that all one had to do to neutralize the Unload spammer was deal with the unload.

Sez who? Against a BAD player there a wealth of skills that can defeat that player the only difference being other classes have a cooldown on those skills. . Unload was not the issue. Had an RF ranger no cooldowns on RF they could do the exact same thing, The INI system is what it is and that a skill CAN be spammed does not suggest the fix is increasing its INI so it can only be used twice because UNDER the INI system the theif can then use no other skills.

The fact is the main goal of any player is to output damage. P/P put its damage all into the unload. The AA has minimal damage. There not the option other classes have of using skill 2 or 4 or 5 or switching weaponsets to use 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 to deliver more damage and a ranger going from RF to using those other skills wrecks poor players just as easily. Just because a different button pushed does not mean it harder to do.

@Zawn.9647 said:

@"babazhook.6805" said:It was semi-usable and now all but un-usable. The reason it was changed was due to a vocal minority claiming that pressing one button was somehow "too easy'. The reality is that "pressing one button" only worked against poor players and that any with a modicum of skill could take advantage of the fact the the P/P thief they faced was putting all their eggs into one basket, that being the Unload and that all one had to do to neutralize the Unload spammer was deal with the unload.

You really can't make this claim anymore considering mashing the keyboard is just as guilty and works way better than it should in most professions.

P/P was a particularly glaring problem because of DE, but will never be a balanced kit because like D/D power it's one-dimensional thanks to over-dependence on one ability.Unload dealt too much damage (30% more base than Backstab even without the might) at too little cost relative to the other kits thanks to the initiative refunding it had + its range, and is a skill that either gets hard-countered or shuts down someone else instantly and is very easy to utilize with very low risk. The rest of the kit lacks cohesion (Because both OH pistol and MH Pistol are control/support-based and condi on its AA), and is basically disjoint from core thief's traits and utils as well.

To be honest, they either need to rework the MH weapons or rework Unload. It's the same story with DB on D/D. Unload sounds like an easier rework.

Just cut the base damage and initiative cost dramatically and make it have another modifier akin to Lead Attacks for each cast that largely increases the damage of the next unload up to a cap within a short time frame. Thus if you want to spam it for damage, it'll still kill for cheap with ranged play albeit being less of a burst damage dealer.

• This fixes the initiative refund issues with DE and Feast/Famine nature of built-in refunding
• This makes noob-friendly one-button-kill-hasted Unload builds no longer a thing and ups skill expression for the kit by helping keep initiative values higher throughout the fight to allow/reward locking down the opponent as the fight progresses, enabling future safer unloads and making good P/P players more consistent.
• This can allow for better PvE/PvP skill splitting as then for PvE-only, the limit on the stack cap can be elevated to let constantly repeated unloads deal substantially higher damage than before/now.