It's not Ricochet. I wanted Ricochet back, not pierce. Rifle is the pierce weapon... but anyways;

Does the 5% dmg decrease go for all targets or just the targets hit after the first one? If it's for all then why is that necessary; just to nitpick?

Agreed.

pleasestopmakingthingsmoreboring

only rifle 2 kneeled pierces unless i'm wrong?

@Doggie.3184 said:It's not Ricochet. I wanted Ricochet back, not pierce. Rifle is the pierce weapon... but anyways;

Does the 5% dmg decrease go for all targets or just the targets hit after the first one? If it's for all then why is that necessary; just to nitpick?

Your main target gets 100% of your damage -- all others get 95% of your damage. It's not bad if they all lined up, but it's useless if you're targeting above or below your current elevation. Ricochet was better since it doesn't matter what your elevation relative to your target and other additional targets.

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

Your main target gets 100% of your damage -- all others get 95% of your damage. It's not bad if they all lined up, but it's useless if you're targeting above or below your current elevation. Ricochet was better since it doesn't matter what your elevation relative to your target and other additional targets.

The tooltip doesnt agree with that. If you spec out of the pierce trait your dmg goes up. The new map bjora marshes has a lot of elevation changes and it shows the weakness of pierce compared to ricochet. I think change the trait to give 2 target ricochet instead or remove the dmg trade-off.

@eldrjth.7384 said:The tooltip doesnt agree with that. If you spec out of the pierce trait your dmg goes up.

Does your damage reflect the tooltip? I can't test it right now, but if that's their intention, then it's a trash trait.

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@eldrjth.7384 said:The tooltip doesnt agree with that. If you spec out of the pierce trait your dmg goes up.

Ok, I got a chance to test it and I deal roughly the same damage with the Piercing trait and without despite of what they tooltip says.

So IMO, my initial impression is correct that it deals less damage to other targets that got hit by the piercing bullets but not to the main target.

One thing I'm curious about is why the trait has an internal cooldown of 8s when 100% of my bullets pierces? It seems that they need to polish the tooltip.

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@eldrjth.7384 said:The tooltip doesnt agree with that. If you spec out of the pierce trait your dmg goes up.

I did more testing including the golems in PvP and took the average and it averages to a -5% damage.

On the up side, you can trigger Signet of Malice multiple times during team fights. >.<'

Yep. Would really like to see it work similarly to short bow auto.

I don't see the point of a 5% reduction. It takes nothing away from the power of being able to multiply your hits. Yet it also makes the trait a liability in very common scenarios of having single targets. It is overtuning and adding a complication for no real gain in balance.

Also the target limit of 5 is a bit of a joke that seems to reward luck and opportunism more than tactical positioning. I think a better balance would be achieved by limiting that rather than penalizing single target damage.

EDIT: I will also add that this coming as a tradeoff makes it feel less like something that you should have to spend a trait on and more like a change that should be baseline.

This trait is now counterproductive in the sense that it makes you deal less damage to single targets, which incentivizes and rewards trait micromanagement depending on whether you face single or multiple targets, which I assume wasn't the intended way for it to play. Please remove the damage decrease for at least the first target hit.

Please change this trait so that it adds the ability to switch between the ability to hit only one target with increased damage, and the ability to pierce several targets, but with less damage.

Maybe a +5% or +10% damage increase for the first target hit and a -5% or -10% damage decrease for all other targets.

It's also a very racist trait!) It gives an advantage to races above average height. Putting Asura at a disadvantage! Since the shot goes from the center of our HitBox to the center of the enemy, the difference in height changes the trajectory of the bullet. As an Asura, I can't hit 2 Golems standing one after the other in the heart of the mist. As a human or a Norn, I hit both. Also if you get too close to target and target taller then you, you will shot to the sky. It can be a big problem if you fighting aganst Norn and Asura. You can pierce Norn but not hit Asura. Or If you fighting some elite mob or boss with trash mobs. Because almost all bosses and elite have large models.

Example of Asura shootingExample of Human shooting

There is also an old bug when on a flat surface all bullets fly into the ground. This bug is present in almost all classes. Because of it, it is impossible to do cleave damage without a target. For example, when I fight against a thief, engineer or mesmer, I know where they are, but I can’t hit this place, because the projectiles fly not parallel to the ground, but to the ground.

@Leablo.2651 said:I don't see the point of a 5% reduction. It takes nothing away from the power of being able to multiply your hits. Yet it also makes the trait a liability in very common scenarios of having single targets. It is overtuning and adding a complication for no real gain in balance.

Also the target limit of 5 is a bit of a joke that seems to reward luck and opportunism more than tactical positioning. I think a better balance would be achieved by limiting that rather than penalizing single target damage.

EDIT: I will also add that this coming as a tradeoff makes it feel less like something that you should have to spend a trait on and more like a change that should be baseline.

You have to look at it based on what build actually takes Ankle Shot -- which is P/P builds. So replacing Ankle Shot by adding Pierce to Unload where you stack Might at the same time makes the -5% damage make sense to balance it out. In addition, nobody will take P/P in PvP so this trait is solely for PvE. With that in mind, the damage reduction is negligible since things melts at the same rate anyway.

However, I do agree that the limit of 5 targets makes no sense in PvE -- however, it do makes sense in WvW. So this balance is aimed towards WvW interactions where might stacks as fast as in PvE, but limit it to 5 target as if in PvP.

Thief's pierce trait gets -5% damage, meanwhile Ranger's pierce traits get additional damage lol.

Just compare:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deadly_Aim_\(trait)Gives -5% damage.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lead_the_WindGives quickness and swiftness, and recharge reduction.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Light_on_your_FeetImproves shortbow skills, gives damage and condition duration increase, and recharge reduction.

It's just laughable.

@"Valar Dotalis.6409" said:Thief's pierce trait gets -5% damage, meanwhile Ranger's pierce traits get additional damage lol.

Just compare:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deadly_Aim_\(trait

)Gives -5% damage.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lead_the_Wind

Gives quickness and swiftness, and recharge reduction.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Light_on_your_Feet

Improves shortbow skills, gives damage and condition duration increase, and recharge reduction.

That is because ranged physical damage is within the domain of the Ranger -- it's in their name. What I don't like is that Ranger is also very good in melee which is supposed to be the Thief's domain. The Devs knows nothing about balance.

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:ranged physical damage is within the domain of the Ranger -- it's in their name.

Sorry, I have to interject because my inner linguist is screaming. That's a definition confusion that I think mostly comes from WoW, though it definitely seems to have caught on in RPG circles. The original meaning is:

Nounranger (plural rangers)

1. One who ranges; a rover.

Anyway. Carry on.

@Adul.1520 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:ranged physical damage is within the domain of the Ranger -- it's in their name.

1. One who ranges; a rover.

They are also chefs.

@"Dzheen.5291" said:It's also a very racist trait!) It gives an advantage to races above average height. Putting Asura at a disadvantage! Since the shot goes from the center of our HitBox to the center of the enemy, the difference in height changes the trajectory of the bullet. As an Asura, I can't hit 2 Golems standing one after the other in the heart of the mist. As a human or a Norn, I hit both. Also if you get too close to target and target taller then you, you will shot to the sky. It can be a big problem if you fighting aganst Norn and Asura. You can pierce Norn but not hit Asura. Or If you fighting some elite mob or boss with trash mobs. Because almost all bosses and elite have large models.

Example of Asura shootingExample of Human shooting

There is also an old bug when on a flat surface all bullets fly into the ground. This bug is present in almost all classes. Because of it, it is impossible to do cleave damage without a target. For example, when I fight against a thief, engineer or mesmer, I know where they are, but I can’t hit this place, because the projectiles fly not parallel to the ground, but to the ground.

Yeah, my Sylvari is shortest height and sometimes my bullets will fire upward and miss enemies behind larger target. Bows don't really have that issue since they don't go in straight line like bullets. Another reason I preferred ricochet a lot more.And as someone pointed out it really makes Thief feel hated by the devs when other classes get tons of benefits from their pierce trait while Anet wants us to self-nerf to use ours. We've been facing constant biasm since the beginning because they seem to struggle so much with what they want for this class more than any others.Man, just give me Ricochet back, my hearts been broken for years ever since you removed it. I loved my Pistols so much back then, they were so fun.

So after this time of testing and shenanigans I've deemed it much more beneficial to simply stick with Practiced Tolerance over Pierce since it just isn't helpful VS the damage loss. We're better off continuing to use use the Shortbow and Staff for AoE till they give us Ricochet or more incentive to use the hardly useful Pierce than having less Ferocity and 5% less damage and bullets that may or may not hit your targets and are useless and hurt you the moment there's only 1 target. Quite unfortunate for Pistol lovers and "HOPE's" name remains ironic.

Pierce is too situational. The times you can get people lined up so as to take advantage just are not there especially since thief does not zerg fight a lot.

Should also have this added:Increasing pistol skills range from 900 to 1200

I seriously don't understand why they're so adamant about not giving us the ricochet trait back. That's what most people have been asking for for yeas. Even if you give pistols ricocheting bullets the AoEs of the dedicated "AoE classes" would still be vastly superior. Is there a secret interaction I'm missing which would create an infinite loop of ricocheting bullets they're trying to prevent or what's going on here?

@"Doggie.3184" said:Quite unfortunate for Pistol lovers and "HOPE's" name remains ironic.It's honestly quite sad how much the name of this gun summes up the weapon set as a whole. But yeah, if you want to play P/P thief you need HOPE.

Furthermore, for whatever reason the ingame description states that this trait has an 8 sec. cooldown (which it obviously does not). I can see this being very confusing for new players.

@Tails.9372 said:I seriously don't understand why they're so adamant about not giving us the ricochet trait back.

My best guess is that it would make rifle 2 in pvp too strong as you could have way to much cleave along with single target.