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Pulmonary Impact needs a Buff


Exitus.3297

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Not really much else to say. The 66% nerf to PI was way too much.

I get ANet wanted to tone down the damage from CC, but this isn't like Lightning Rod (which now does more raw damage, applies Weakness and can Crit) where any CC application will proc it. Impactful Disruption at least requires good timing. When sharing the same column as Havoc Specialist, what's the point?

I'm not asking for the thing to be buffed back where it was. It just needs some help in my opinion.

EDIT: After thinking about it, a good place I guess it could be is ~40% stronger than Lightning Rod (Elementalist Grandmaster trait). That's roughly how relatively strong it was prior to the February patch. The upside is that it has more raw damage, but the downsides being that it needs to be an actual interrupt, doesn't apply Weakness and can't be a critical hit. Since it is not a Grandmaster trait, this seems fair to me. I posted some numbers below but... Wall of text and math. You've been warned.

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Yeah, we know. Unfortunately its unlikely to get anything. Also, I would absolutely ask for it to be buffed back where it was (because it was already underperforming and the relatively lower damage of other skills wouldve made it more valuable), and I would also fix the bug that lowered its damage more than intended.

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Nah I think Pulmonary Impact needs a rework.It was only ever strong in PvP because Havoc Specialist outclasses it in PvE.

Now that Anet has deemed it "too strong" and nerf batted it so hard, nothing save of a rework will restore that trait slot to viability.Yu can buff the numbers , sure, but then what? It's still another dead PvE slot and niche PvP slot if the damage is still "not good as before"

I say rework the skill to revolve around Weakness, since DD seems to cough that stuff out like a heavy smoker.

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@"Yasai.3549" said:Nah I think Pulmonary Impact needs a rework.It was only ever strong in PvP because Havoc Specialist outclasses it in PvE.

Now that Anet has deemed it "too strong" and nerf batted it so hard, nothing save of a rework will restore that trait slot to viability.Yu can buff the numbers , sure, but then what? It's still another dead PvE slot and niche PvP slot if the damage is still "not good as before"

I say rework the skill to revolve around Weakness, since DD seems to cough that stuff out like a heavy smoker.

I certainly don't disagree with your idea.

My only real issue is that land successful Headshots with S/P or D/P was reallllly satisfying with Impactful Disruption... I would want to keep that fun factor with such a rework.

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@Exitus.3297 said:Not really much else to say. The 66% nerf to PI was way too much.

I get ANet wanted to tone down the damage from CC, but this isn't like Lightning Rod (which now does more raw damage, applies Weakness and can Crit) where any CC application will proc it. Impactful Disruption at least requires good timing. When sharing the same column as Havoc Specialist, what's the point?

I'm not asking for the thing to be buffed back where it was. It just needs some help in my opinion.

Don't compare lightning rod eles to headshot spammers...it's like comparing a Fiat mini to a Porsche .

Spamming 44444444....requires no good timing...you just spamm 111111..... when out of Ini; maybe we should increase the cast time of headshot from zero to 3/4s min.Using 44444....11111...switch to shortbow if losing and 555....there is nothing requiring good timing.

Ofc it's fun to spam 44444.....

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@Arheundel.6451 said:

@Exitus.3297 said:Not really much else to say. The 66% nerf to PI was way too much.

I get ANet wanted to tone down the damage from CC, but this isn't like Lightning Rod (which now does more raw damage, applies Weakness and can Crit) where any CC application will proc it. Impactful Disruption at least requires good timing. When sharing the same column as Havoc Specialist, what's the point?

I'm not asking for the thing to be buffed back where it was. It just needs some help in my opinion.

Don't compare lightning rod eles to
headshot spammers
...it's like comparing a Fiat mini to a Porsche .

Spamming 44444444....requires no good timing...you just
spamm 111111..... when out of Ini
; maybe we should increase the cast time of headshot from zero to 3/4s min.Using 44444....11111...switch to shortbow if losing and 555....there is nothing requiring good timing.

Ofc it's fun to spam 44444.....

wow, totally a thief player that knows what he's talking about. I want to see you play while spamming HS.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Tbh it was always a pretty oppressive trait that heavily punished anyone not running the meta D/P daredevil due to the synergy with sleight of hand, mug and basilisk venom. The way it works now, it's either going to be oppressive or pointless depending on how the numbers work out, so I'd be down for having the trait reworked into something more interesting too.

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  • 1 month later...

A good thing which they can do is make PI deal damage on all CC abilities, but double the damage on a successful interrupt.

So stuff like HS, Choking Gas, Bandit Defense flip skill will deal additional damage by default once this is traited, but a successful interrupt will reward with greater damage.

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@"Exitus.3297" said:Not really much else to say. The 66% nerf to PI was way too much.

I get ANet wanted to tone down the damage from CC, but this isn't like Lightning Rod (which now does more raw damage, applies Weakness and can Crit) where any CC application will proc it. Impactful Disruption at least requires good timing. When sharing the same column as Havoc Specialist, what's the point?

I'm not asking for the thing to be buffed back where it was. It just needs some help in my opinion.

I've made a thread me too time ago..

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/97849/save-pulmonary-impact#latest

It would be just fine if it would be able to make 1-1,5k damage.

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@SehferViega.8725 said:

@"Exitus.3297" said:Not really much else to say. The 66% nerf to PI was way too much.

I get ANet wanted to tone down the damage from CC, but this isn't like Lightning Rod (which now does more raw damage, applies Weakness and can Crit) where any CC application will proc it. Impactful Disruption at least requires good timing. When sharing the same column as Havoc Specialist, what's the point?

I'm not asking for the thing to be buffed back where it was. It just needs some help in my opinion.

I've made a thread me too time ago..

It would be just fine if it would be able to make 1-1,5k damage.

I actually did a bunch of calculations on this. I'm technically replying to your post, but bear in mind I responding to many people here on how much it could be buffed. Also beware this response may be long because I've been doing a lot of thinking and number crunching...

So the first thing to be aware of is the formula for Power Damage (I only include this because it is surprising how a lot of people don't understand it).

Weapon Strength x Power x Ability Coefficient/Target Total Armor (this includes Toughness from items and the stat)

This is a very simplified version of the damage formula. Of course, this damage formula expands when you include % damage modifiers and of course critical damage. It important to understand that base damage does not technically exist for Power Damage. It is also important to note that Tooltips for skills display a number as if you were hitting a target with 2600 armor. Keep that in mind for what I am going to say going forward because I am going to reference tooltip values a lot. Moving on...

So I decided to compare Havoc Specialist (5% increased [Power] damage per missing bar of endurance, up to 15% for 3 missing bars) to Impactful Disruption (applies Pulmonary Impact on a successful interrupt). For this comparison, I decided to use the values in PvP if the Thief were wearing a Berserker Amulet and Scholar Runes. This would give 2375 Power, 225% critical damage, 48% critical chance (56.5% with Signet of Agility). This also results in a Impactful Disruption tooltip value of 474, meaning it would do 474 damage against a target with 2600 total armor and assuming you have no other multipliers active.

Important Weapon Tooltip values include:

Backstab: 1519 (half that from front)Basic attack combo total: 1321Shadowshot: 1107Headshot/Black Powder: 211Heartseeker: 844 > 1265 > 1687

All of these abilities of course are subject to critical damage modifiers, in this case for 225% total damage (for instance, Backstab would crit for 3418 damage)

(keep in mind I am not including values from Life Siphon attacks in Shadow Arts as these are not affected by any multipliers. Also keep in mind I am not including any other % modifiers because PI is affected by those as well)

So it begs the question... How much damage does the Thief have to do at each tier of Havoc Specialist to deal an extra 474 damage?

Tier 1 (5%, 1 bar of endurance missing): 9480Tier 2 (10%, 2 bars of endurance missing): 4740Tier 3 (15%, 3 bars of endurance missing): 3160

To give a bit of context, at the first tier, you would need to hit with approximately a Black Powder, Heartseeker (while the target is below 50% health), Backstab AND Full basic attack combo, and every single attack would need to crit in order to reach the damage of a single Pulmonary Impact. Obviously, having full endurance = 0% increased damage.

Conversely, at 15%, a single Backstab crit outshines the damage of a single Pulmonary Impact by a little bit (511 extra damage vs 474), and any damage beyond that is just extra. In fact, a Backstab + Full Auto Attack combo at this tier is literally the equivalent 2 Pulmonary Impacts assuming every single hit crits. Obviously, Tier 2 is somewhere in between.

At Tier 2, you would need somewhere in the realm of 2 Shadow Shots and both would need to also be critical hits.

You may have noticed that in each example, I always assume that every single attack that is capable of critical hits will critically hit. I do this for 2 reasons: The first is because there is no way of knowing which attacks will crit, and it is therefor mathematically easier to assume all attacks will crit (which most will if the Thief has Fury) than to assume none will. The second reason is to give obvious leeway to Havoc Specialist, implying that Pulmonary Impact may actually be better than what appears in my hypotheticals. For example, if in the first example NONE of the attacks were a critical hit, than Pulmonary Impact's damage would be inflated (imagine doing an entire BP > HS + Steal > BS > AA combo and only scoring 215 more damage compared to PI's 474)

So this point you can see where the 2 traits start to compare. Keep in mind, again, that I am giving a lot of leeway to Havoc Mastery. The reality is that you need to keep in mind several things...

For Havoc Specialist:1) Not every attack will be a critical hit, and it is the critical hits that inflate the damage of Havoc Specialist.2) Havoc Specialist is dependent on how much Endurance you are missing, meaning attempting to get the most out of this trait could get you in trouble.3) Conversely, any trait/ability that restores endurance (Endurance Thief, Dagger attack chain, Vigor, etc) actually make it harder to get the most of Havoc Mastery (it is almost unrealistic to expect to get the full 15% damage boost with a Steal > Backstab combo).

Meanwhile, for Pulmonary Impact:1) The damage is much more consistent, not being reliant on Critical Hits for it's damage while also being unaffected by Weakness.2) Instead, how much you get the most out of this trait depends entirely on your ability to land interrupts (this does not mean you have to sue Headshot more than normal to get the most of it)

Here is a hypothetical skirmish to add more context in comparing these 2 traits...

Imagine you are pretty comfortable at landing interrupts. You are entering into a +1. You approach in stealth and you do a Steal > Backstab and successfully interrupt and land a Backstab crit (while also upping your Endurance on the steal). You follow up with a basic attack chain, adding in a dodge or 2 to move around, then notice they are going for a Heal skill (let's pretend it is a Necromancer, easy interrupt). You Headshot, boom, you interrupt it. He's now a bit below half. You BP > HS > Backstab. Boom, they're down. With luck, you crit on all of the important skills, but maybe with a few attacks in your auto-chain not being crits.

If you take this scenario and apply the Impactful Disruption trait to it, pretty simple, 2 PI's go off because 2 interrupts. That is 948 (474 x 2) more damage (this number is actually going to be a lot higher because the Necromancer's armor is going to be 1888 assuming no added toughness and you will also have % modifiers. The real total damage will be ~1500. But let's just pretend the Necromancer has 2600 armor for the sake of the next example...)

If you took Havoc Mastery, obviously it would depend on your endurance value. If you were at 1 bar of missing endurance (+5%) when you landed Swipe (meaning you started with half of your endurance, which isn't unreasonable I think), then that Backstab is going to do 3582 damage (+171 damage from normal). If you followed up with a dodge (now at +10%), and Wild Strike + Vigor doesn't put you back to 1 bar of missing endurance, then basic attack chain will deal 3269 damage (+297 damage from normal). Now let's say you are about to gain an endurance bar by this point, so you dodge before you used the next ability, Headshot then Black Powder. These abilities do the same damage, and assuming they both crit, will deal a total of 1044 damage ( +94 damage). You then Heartseeker while they are below Half and you are missing 2 bars of endurance (+10%), it crits for 3130 (+284 from normal). You then Dodge again to position for a Backstab, and we will assume that this also crits and you will be at 0 full bars of endurance, resulting in a +15% damage boost. This Backstab will deal 3930 (+512 from normal)

In this hypothetical skirmish, Havoc Mastery gave the Thief a total of 1358 extra damage, as opposed to PI giving the Thief an extra 948 (again, this is pretending the target has 2600 armor. Any multipliers besides Havoc Specialist would also have to be applied to PI).

The difference... isn't as big as one would expect. In this hypothetical, one thing to take notice of is that I am being incredibly generous to Havoc Specialist, because I am assuming the Thief is critting 100% of the time, which they certainly won't. In a real example, I can guarantee you that several of those attacks won't crit. If, for example, the only attack that didn't crit was the last Backstab, that 3930 damage (+512 from normal) would actually be 1747 (+227 from normal). That would mean the total would be 1073 instead of 1358, making it much closer to PI in this example. You would get a similar result of several of the other different attacks didn't crit instead.

So what does this all mean? It means Impactful Disruption may not be as weak as one would expect when compared to Havoc Specialist if the player is comfortable at landing interrupts at the right times, but is still at a small disadvantage regardless since 1) the damage is still lower and 2) it requires more skill to successfully land an interrupt. If I had to take a guess at how much of a buff PI would need to be on par with Havoc Specialist, I would say ~30-40%.

Sorry for the wall of text... If something seems wrong or doesn't make sense, please let me know.

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@Exitus.3297
Here is the issue with your entire wall of text: You forgot that using the interrupt requires the thief to use headshot. Which itself is a major damage loss. Compared to using heartseeker or shadowshot you give up over 1000 damage for less than 500. The difference is enormous. The truth is that it is even weaker than one would expect. The trait is so bad its worth reporting for. As for how much of a buff it needs, 200% would be insufficient to make the skill playable. Most likely it needs to be reverted to pre-patch numbers and have the accidental nerf retroactively fixed (which is a little less than 300%). And even then, Im not sure Id pick it instead of havoc mastery.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:@Exitus.3297

Here is the issue with your entire wall of text: You forgot that using the interrupt requires the thief to use headshot. Which itself is a major damage loss. Compared to using heartseeker or shadowshot you give up over 1000 damage for less than 500. The difference is enormous. The truth is that it is even weaker than one would expect. The trait is so bad its worth reporting for. As for how much of a buff it needs, 200% would be insufficient to make the skill playable. Most likely it needs to be reverted to pre-patch numbers and have the accidental nerf retroactively fixed (which is a little less than 300%). And even then, Im not sure Id pick it instead of havoc mastery.

I did not forget that at all... In fact I specifically mentioned it:

@Exitus.3297 said:

Meanwhile, for Pulmonary Impact:1) The damage is much more consistent, not being reliant on Critical Hits for it's damage while also being unaffected by Weakness.2) Instead, how much you get the most out of this trait depends entirely on your ability to land interrupts (this does not mean you have to use Headshot more than normal to get the most of it)

And in my Hypothetical skirmish, I only included 2 successful interrupts... 1 from Steal at the beginning and 1 from Headshot to interrupt a Heal skill; situations in which any Thief would aim to land an interrupt regardless of whether they had Impacting Disruption. If you see any important skill getting casted and you decided to not use Headshot because it cost initiative, then I don't know what to tell you. I can think of plenty of situations in which I would cast a Headshot even if I didn't have Impacting Disruption. Even then, Headshot is not the only potential interrupt in your kit. In fact you can even get a pair of back-to-back interrupts with Basilisk Venom and Swipe by themselves, and not even touch Headshot. Headshot may have been the primary source of PI, but it wasn't the only source.

You seem to be approaching it as "Does PI do enough damage for me to spend initiative specifically to use it?" Instead of "How much more overall damage does this trait add to my fights even if I play normally?" This was what my hypothetical fights were meant to showcase.

If you spam Headshot specifically to get PI damage in it's current state, then yes, the trait is awful. If instead you only use Headshot when necessary to land interrupts, then all the trait does is keep you from losing more damage than you normally would (after all Headshot's damage is even more abysmal). After all, how is Headshot a waste of initiative if you landed the interrupt you were aiming for anyway?

At that point the question becomes "What damage adds up more? A 0-15% damage boost based on my Endurance level? Or extra damage on Interrupts when I need them?" The reason I take this approach is because this is how I think ANet approached it, especially considering Stability sources are gutted in this meta (they didn't want Thieves spamming it). My goal here is to show ANet it is still too weak even with their own design philosophy. My hope is by showing ANet them reasonable numbers that they may take a look at it (instead of screaming endlessly into the void that are the Thief forums asking for 300% damage buffs that will never happen).

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@Exitus.3297 said:

Here is the issue with your entire wall of text: You forgot that using the interrupt requires the thief to use headshot. Which itself is a
major
damage loss. Compared to using heartseeker or shadowshot you give up over 1000 damage for less than 500. The difference is
enormous
. The truth is that it is
even weaker
than one would expect. The trait is so bad its worth reporting for. As for how much of a buff it needs, 200% would be insufficient to make the skill playable. Most likely it needs to be reverted to pre-patch numbers
and
have the accidental nerf retroactively fixed (which is a little less than 300%). And even then, Im not sure Id pick it instead of havoc mastery.

I did not forget that at all... In fact I specifically mentioned it:

Meanwhile, for Pulmonary Impact:1) The damage is much more consistent, not being reliant on Critical Hits for it's damage while also being unaffected by Weakness.2) Instead, how much you get the most out of this trait depends entirely on your ability to land interrupts (
this does not mean you have to use Headshot more than normal to get the most of it
)

And in my Hypothetical skirmish, I only included 2 successful interrupts... 1 from Steal at the beginning and 1 from Headshot to interrupt a Heal skill; situations in which any Thief would aim to land an interrupt regardless of whether they had Impacting Disruption. If you see any important skill getting casted and you decided to not use Headshot because it cost initiative, then I don't know what to tell you. I can think of plenty of situations in which I would cast a Headshot even if I didn't have Impacting Disruption. Even then, Headshot is not the only potential interrupt in your kit. In fact you can even get a pair of back-to-back interrupts with Basilisk Venom and Swipe by themselves, and not even touch Headshot. Headshot may have been the primary source of PI, but it wasn't the only source.

The problem is that those 2 interruptions are already assuming too much. For one, you cant guarantee that you will even interrupt with a steal (As quite often the goal is just to push as much damage as quickly as possible), but also you assume that the thief would use an interupt on a heal skill, rather than simply finishing the enemy off with any given damage dealing skill if he can do so. In a more practical scenario, a thief attempts to spike an enemy and finish them off as fast as possible, and using headshot in that scenario is highly inefficient.

You seem to be approaching it as "Does PI do enough damage for me to spend initiative specifically to use it?" Instead of "How much more overall damage does this trait add to my fights even if I play normally?" This was what my hypothetical fights were meant to showcase.

And even then your hypothetical fails because instead of the thief using heartseeker, you have him use headshot and black powder. Realistically while a thief doesnt do a lot of damage, the amount of damage he does is still significantly higher with havoc mastery than PI.

If you spam Headshot specifically to get PI damage in it's current state, then yes, the trait is awful. If instead you only use Headshot when necessary to land interrupts, then all the trait does is keep you from losing more damage than you normally would (after all Headshot's damage is even more abysmal). After all, how is Headshot a waste of initiative if you landed the interrupt you were aiming for anyway?

The issue is, how often do you want to interrupt on an enemy that you are also trying to kill? The answer is "not very often". When you then expand the question to "how often do you want to interrupt on an enemy that you are also trying to kill where heartseeker isnt better and/or the damage matters, you will find that you suddenly see that these scenarios happen very, very little.

At that point the question becomes "What damage adds up more? A 0-15% damage boost based on my Endurance level? Or extra damage on Interrupts when I need them?" The reason I take this approach is because this is how I think ANet approached it, especially considering Stability sources are gutted in this meta (they didn't want Thieves spamming it). My goal here is to show ANet it is still too weak even with their own design philosophy. My hope is by showing ANet them reasonable numbers that they may take a look at it (instead of screaming endlessly into the void that are the Thief forums asking for 300% damage buffs that will never happen).

Look, if theyre going to buff it, then it needs a buff that is actually relevant. If they buff it by 30-40%, then that is as if they didnt buff it. The trait goes from useless troll pick to ... useless troll pick. The goal is to ask for meaningful buffs. That way you have an option that is good. If they dont buff it or rework then so be it, the trait is useless, it will be useless. Asking for an irrelevant buff doesnt change that. The trait needs a 200-300% damage buff, or it remains a useless troll pick. Its up to Anet if they want the trait to be viable but weak (which is what 200-300% buff would accomplish) or utterly useless.

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I don't think they should buff PI, i wish they baked PI into headshot which would indirectly buff core dp builds that now suffers from the massive nerfs from 22nd feb. Then have creative freedom to add another trait that can compete with Endurance trait and fits into PvP.

My 5 cents

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@bluri.2653 said:I don't think they should buff PI, i wish they baked PI into headshot which would indirectly buff core dp builds that now suffers from the massive nerfs from 22nd feb. Then have creative freedom to add another trait that can compete with Endurance trait and fits into PvP.

My 5 cents

Yeah, Headshot was always a “why bother” until PI came along.

Isn’t it 2 cents? Or is that too cheap 2020?

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@saerni.2584 said:

@bluri.2653 said:I don't think they should buff PI, i wish they baked PI into headshot which would indirectly buff core dp builds that now suffers from the massive nerfs from 22nd feb. Then have creative freedom to add another trait that can compete with Endurance trait and fits into PvP.

My 5 cents

Yeah, Headshot was always a “why bother” until PI came along.

Isn’t it 2 cents? Or is that too cheap 2020?

Ye ? its me being drunk ur right

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  • 4 weeks later...

@UNOwen.7132 said:

Here is the issue with your entire wall of text: You forgot that using the interrupt requires the thief to use headshot. Which itself is a
major
damage loss. Compared to using heartseeker or shadowshot you give up over 1000 damage for less than 500. The difference is
enormous
. The truth is that it is
even weaker
than one would expect. The trait is so bad its worth reporting for. As for how much of a buff it needs, 200% would be insufficient to make the skill playable. Most likely it needs to be reverted to pre-patch numbers
and
have the accidental nerf retroactively fixed (which is a little less than 300%). And even then, Im not sure Id pick it instead of havoc mastery.

I did not forget that at all... In fact I specifically mentioned it:

Meanwhile, for Pulmonary Impact:1) The damage is much more consistent, not being reliant on Critical Hits for it's damage while also being unaffected by Weakness.2) Instead, how much you get the most out of this trait depends entirely on your ability to land interrupts (
this does not mean you have to use Headshot more than normal to get the most of it
)

And in my Hypothetical skirmish, I only included 2 successful interrupts... 1 from Steal at the beginning and 1 from Headshot to interrupt a Heal skill; situations in which any Thief would aim to land an interrupt regardless of whether they had Impacting Disruption. If you see any important skill getting casted and you decided to not use Headshot because it cost initiative, then I don't know what to tell you. I can think of plenty of situations in which I would cast a Headshot even if I didn't have Impacting Disruption. Even then, Headshot is not the only potential interrupt in your kit. In fact you can even get a pair of back-to-back interrupts with Basilisk Venom and Swipe by themselves, and not even touch Headshot. Headshot may have been the primary source of PI, but it wasn't the only source.

The problem is that those 2 interruptions are already assuming too much.

Not really. I score interrupts all of the time even when I'm not looking for them. Interrupts I do l get on a routine basis are:

Ranger: Long Bow Rapid-Fire and Heal Skill of any kind. I'll also Swipe Greatsword #4 or Axe #5.

Thief: Heartseeker (after they use Black Powder, effectively wastes 9 of their initiative), Heal Skill (more and more have been using Hide in Shadows). Arguably S/D Thieves I don't get interrupts against too often.

Warrior: Heal Skill (Mending), Shield Stance (I use Swipe to interrupt this), Rush (particularly when they are running away/toward me)

Necromancer: Pretty much any Reaper Skill (after they popped Stab, I break with steal), Literally any Heal Skill because they all have cast times. I also score accidental interrupts with their stolen skill routinely.

Guardian: Any Heal Skill as long as it isn't the one that blocks (I forget its name right now). Dragonhunter F3 skill (the healing leap I also forget the name of), the Signet that Revives downed foes. Their stolen skill is also a CC so I will get accidental interrupts routinely here as well.

Elementalist: This one is a little harder, but I actively watch for their Heal Skill and Glyph of Revival. Overloads are easy to get an interrupt as long as Swipe is up.

Revenant: This one actually depends. Power builds I admittedly don't get/look for too many interrupts. Condi (Mallyx) builds I routinely look for interrupts because they tend to be less evasive, and the Sigil of Absorption prioritizes Resistance (which is the key Boon that keeps them alive).

Mesmer: This one really depends because I don't think anyone has found a common build on this yet, other than maybe Core Power.

Engineer: Depends on the Spec; both Holo's and Scrappers seem common. Regardless, I will almost always aim for the Heal Skill, and save Swipe for Stability.

Keep in mind, I will look for these interrupts even when I'm not running PI

You seem to be approaching it as "Does PI do enough damage for me to spend initiative specifically to use it?" Instead of "How much more overall damage does this trait add to my fights even if I play normally?" This was what my hypothetical fights were meant to showcase.

And even then your hypothetical fails because instead of the thief using heartseeker, you have him use headshot and black powder. Realistically while a thief doesnt do a lot of damage, the amount of damage he does is still significantly higher with havoc mastery than PI.

Under the right conditions, when several bars of Endurance are missing and you can afford to get aggressive, then yes. In situations where you are conserving Endurance, and would otherwise need to land an interrupt regardless of whether you have PI, then no.

If you spam Headshot specifically to get PI damage in it's current state, then yes, the trait is awful. If instead you only use Headshot when necessary to land interrupts, then all the trait does is keep you from losing more damage than you normally would (after all Headshot's damage is even more abysmal). After all, how is Headshot a waste of initiative if you landed the interrupt you were aiming for anyway?

The issue is, how often do you want to interrupt on an enemy that you are also trying to kill? The answer is "not very often". When you then expand the question to "how often do you want to interrupt on an enemy that you are also trying to kill
where heartseeker isnt better and/or the damage matters
, you will find that you suddenly see that these scenarios happen very,
very
little.

I already gave a list of examples as to why this isn't the case. Besides that, I could just as easily flip that question on its head and ask "How often are you willing to get aggressive on a target when you have 0 to 1 bars of Endurance left?" I imagine the answer to this question would also be "Not Very often." This problem is further compounded when you take Exhaustion into account. This is because Havoc Specialist is designed to be a game of chicken.

I also want to address a point you made in a different post: Why spend 4 initiative on a skill to only get a little bit of damage and only if you land the interrupt, when I could spend slightly more/less initiative to just do more damage AND have it receive the benefit of Havoc Specialist? The answer is simple: Havoc Specialist gains value in situations where your endurance is low and you dump initiative on skills and combos that have already high numbers, but loses value if you would otherwise have to spend initiative for utility purposes, namely Headshot (+15% on this skill is next to nothing). On the flip side, PI gains value in situations where you are able to or have to land Interrupts. While Initiative (literally Headshot) does impact its value, it doesn't impact its value entirely because Headshot is not your only source of CC. Both Basilisk Venom and Swipe.

At that point the question becomes "What damage adds up more? A 0-15% damage boost based on my Endurance level? Or extra damage on Interrupts when I need them?" The reason I take this approach is because
this is how I think ANet approached it
, especially considering Stability sources are gutted in this meta (they didn't want Thieves spamming it). My goal here is to show ANet
it is still too weak
even with their own design philosophy. My hope is by showing ANet them reasonable numbers that they may take a look at it (instead of screaming endlessly into the void that are the Thief forums asking for 300% damage buffs that will never happen).

Look, if theyre going to buff it, then it needs a buff that is actually relevant. If they buff it by 30-40%, then that is as if they didnt buff it. The trait goes from useless troll pick to ... useless troll pick. The goal is to ask for meaningful buffs. That way you have an option that is good. If they dont buff it or rework then so be it, the trait is useless, it will be useless. Asking for an irrelevant buff doesnt change that. The trait needs a 200-300% damage buff, or it remains a useless troll pick. Its up to Anet if they want the trait to be viable but weak (which is what 200-300% buff would accomplish) or utterly useless.

Assuming you are Full Berserker in sPvP and running Scholar Runes (225% Ferocity) 40% buff would move it's tooltip from 474 to 664. To give some perspective, that would mean the extra damage from a Backstab plus an entire AA combo at Tier 2 (+10%) would fail to beat even a single proc of PI even if every single attack crit.

A 200%-300% boost would bring the tooltip from 474 to 1422-1896. I really want you to think about this for a minute. Between the 211 tooltip on Headshot (475 if a crit with Scholar Runes + Berserker Ammy), that means a single Headshot interrupt would do 1897-2371. You are literally asking for this ability to do the same amount of damage if not more damage than a Shadowshot crit, with the additional benefits being non-crits not mattering too much to its damage and costing 1 less initiative. This trait would be ridiculously good even without Headshot because even a single Swipe interrupt would so much damage that you would have to Backstab + AA combo 3 times and literally every single attack would need to crit to even get the same extra damage from Havoc Mastery, and by that point Swipe would already be off cooldown and miles ahead. It sounds to me that you just want Headshot to be a primary source of damage on interrupts like it was back in HoTs.

I'm telling you right now this will never happen. Your point about "meaningful vs non-meaningful buffs" flies right out the window when you are just asking for the skill to be so overtuned that neither ANet nor the general playerbase would even consider it. Even in this very thread people are saying it's good where it is (and I'm not one of them). You want that buff to be more meaningful? Let's try an 80% buff then, just to experiment. It would bring the tooltip value from 474 to 853 (again, assuming Berserker Ammy with Scholar Runes). That would of course mean that the Thief would have to do anywhere from 17,060 to 5687 damage (depending on your endurance level) assuming the target has 2600 armor (this is what the tooltips are based off of) to compete with even a single proc of PI. That means there will commonly be cases where the target will be dead before you can even get the full value out of Havoc Specialist to compete with a single proc of PI.

Then it begs the question how much value players get out of Havoc Specialist to begin with. Sometimes smack a target while their endurance is completely full, other times they will want to play that game of chicken and hit them with 0 endurance. Let's say that a player can usually capitalize on a 10% damage boost on average from this trait most of the time (and I am being VERY generous here). That player would have to deal 8530 damage for it to compete with a single proc of PI. To put it in perspective, you would have to hit someone with a Backstab, AA combo and Shadowshot and every single attack would need to crit. THEN you would have to consider that not every attack will crit, and all you can't hope for is that the bigger hits are the ones that do. Does this sound like a more "meaningful buff" to you?

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Boy, talk about necroing. Ill just go through this one really quickly.

@Exitus.3297 said:


You seem to be approaching it as "Does PI do enough damage for me to spend initiative specifically to use it?" Instead of "How much more overall damage does this trait add to my fights even if I play normally?" This was what my hypothetical fights were meant to showcase.

And even then your hypothetical fails because instead of the thief using heartseeker, you have him use headshot and black powder. Realistically while a thief doesnt do a lot of damage, the amount of damage he does is still significantly higher with havoc mastery than PI.

Under the right conditions, when several bars of Endurance are missing and you can afford to get aggressive, then yes. In situations where you are conserving Endurance, and would otherwise need to land an interrupt regardless of whether you have PI, then no.

And the former situation is 99.99% of the time. The latter situation is 0.00001% of the time. Slight exaggeration, but its vastly in favour of the previous.

If you spam Headshot specifically to get PI damage in it's current state, then yes, the trait is awful. If instead you only use Headshot when necessary to land interrupts, then all the trait does is keep you from losing more damage than you normally would (after all Headshot's damage is even more abysmal). After all, how is Headshot a waste of initiative if you landed the interrupt you were aiming for anyway?

The issue is, how often do you want to interrupt on an enemy that you are also trying to kill? The answer is "not very often". When you then expand the question to "how often do you want to interrupt on an enemy that you are also trying to kill
where heartseeker isnt better and/or the damage matters
, you will find that you suddenly see that these scenarios happen very,
very
little.

I already gave a list of examples as to why this isn't the case. Besides that, I could just as easily flip that question on its head and ask "How often are you willing to get aggressive on a target when you have 0 to 1 bars of Endurance left?" I imagine the answer to this question would also be "Not Very often." This problem is further compounded when you take Exhaustion into account. This is because Havoc Specialist is designed to be a game of chicken.

No, actually, the answer to that would be "Always". Youre a +1 class. Youre using dash to move around the map anyway, so youre naturally low on endurance. and your focus is to kill the enemy ASAP, while you are not really in danger while doing so since youre +1ing. And no, you gave a list of examples except you ignored that for all of them, you would rather just use heartseeker. So they arent example.

I also want to address a point you made in a different post: Why spend 4 initiative on a skill to only get a little bit of damage and only if you land the interrupt, when I could spend slightly more/less initiative to just do more damage AND have it receive the benefit of Havoc Specialist? The answer is simple: Havoc Specialist gains value in situations where your endurance is low and you dump initiative on skills and combos that have already high numbers, but loses value if you would otherwise have to spend initiative for utility purposes, namely Headshot (+15% on this skill is next to nothing). On the flip side, PI gains value in situations where you are able to or have to land Interrupts. While Initiative (literally Headshot) does impact its value, it doesn't impact its value entirely because Headshot is not your only source of CC. Both Basilisk Venom and Swipe.

And 400 damage in a situation where you interrupt is also next to nothing. Thats the thing. Havoc specialist gives massive benefits in its situation, and is meh in the others. Yours is meh in all situations. Its unplayable. Even if you are going for interrupts, the damage PI does is so little, its outright irrelevant. Hence why no one uses it, and everyone uses havoc specialist, because that is just objectively correct.

At that point the question becomes "What damage adds up more? A 0-15% damage boost based on my Endurance level? Or extra damage on Interrupts when I need them?" The reason I take this approach is because
this is how I think ANet approached it
, especially considering Stability sources are gutted in this meta (they didn't want Thieves spamming it). My goal here is to show ANet
it is still too weak
even with their own design philosophy. My hope is by showing ANet them reasonable numbers that they may take a look at it (instead of screaming endlessly into the void that are the Thief forums asking for 300% damage buffs that will never happen).

Look, if theyre going to buff it, then it needs a buff that is actually relevant. If they buff it by 30-40%, then that is as if they didnt buff it. The trait goes from useless troll pick to ... useless troll pick. The goal is to ask for meaningful buffs. That way you have an option that is good. If they dont buff it or rework then so be it, the trait is useless, it will be useless. Asking for an irrelevant buff doesnt change that. The trait needs a 200-300% damage buff, or it remains a useless troll pick. Its up to Anet if they want the trait to be viable but weak (which is what 200-300% buff would accomplish) or utterly useless.

Assuming you are Full Berserker in sPvP and running Scholar Runes (225% Ferocity) 40% buff would move it's tooltip from 474 to 664. To give some perspective, that would mean the extra damage from a Backstab plus an entire AA combo at Tier 2 (+10%) would fail to beat even a single proc of PI
even if every single attack crit
.

And once again youre ignoring that using headshot also loses out the entire damage from backstab plus the AA combo. The tooltip is also off, its lower.

A 200%-300% boost would bring the tooltip from 474 to 1422-1896. I really want you to think about this for a minute. Between the 211 tooltip on Headshot (475 if a crit with Scholar Runes + Berserker Ammy), that means a single Headshot interrupt would do 1897-2371. You are literally asking for this ability to do the same amount of damage if not more damage than a Shadowshot crit, with the additional benefits being non-crits not mattering too much to its damage and costing 1 less initiative. This trait would be ridiculously good even without Headshot because even a single Swipe interrupt would so much damage that you would have to Backstab + AA combo 3 times and literally every single attack would need to crit to even get the same extra damage from Havoc Mastery, and by that point Swipe would already be off cooldown and miles ahead. It sounds to me that you just want Headshot to be a primary source of damage on interrupts like it was back in HoTs.

Ok there is a lot wrong here. First of all, 200% boost would be less than 1422. Were talking about pre-patch values here, where PI hit for usually around 1k. Second, you also ignore that headshot does less damage (tip: Dont use the tooltips. Theyre not accurate as anything other than a comparision between skills). And then, you also are completely are wrong about shadowshots damage. But let me make it easy for you. PIs actual coefficient after a 200% damage boost would be the pre-patch 1.5. Shadowshots is 1.3125. With 225% crit damage, thats 2.95 scaling. Meaning PI wouldnt do the same amount at all. It would do half the damage of a critting shadowshot. While being conditional. And even after Shadowshot got an equally stupid nerf. It gets worse though. It would do less than a third of the damage of a heartseeker, for more initiative. Do you understand what this means? The trait would still be bad.

I'm telling you right now this will never happen. Your point about "meaningful vs non-meaningful buffs" flies right out the window when you are just asking for the skill to be so overtuned that neither ANet nor the general playerbase would even consider it. Even in this very thread people are saying it's good where it is (and I'm not one of them). You want that buff to be more meaningful? Let's try an 80% buff then, just to experiment. It would bring the tooltip value from 474 to 853 (again, assuming Berserker Ammy with Scholar Runes). That would of course mean that the Thief would have to do anywhere from 17,060 to 5687 damage (depending on your endurance level) assuming the target has 2600 armor (this is what the tooltips are based off of) to compete with even a single proc of PI. That means there will commonly be cases where the target will be dead before you can even get the full value out of Havoc Specialist to compete with a single proc of PI.

Ah yes, because D/P thief using PI was famously overtuned pre-patch. Why it was so overtuned that D/P thief ... straight up ditched Daredevil alltogether because of how bad PI was. If people are saying its good as is, theyre delusional. Its unplayable. A 200% buff would just be reverting the patch nerf. Here is the thing: The pre-patch version was awful. A 200% buff is a safe option. 300% is a tiny bit more risky, but almost certainly still safe. And once again you rely on tooltips that are worthless. Try playing with it, actually playing with it, and see how bad it is. And you keep ignoring the fact that you have to use headshot and drop an actually damaging skill to get an interrupt.

Then it begs the question how much value players get out of Havoc Specialist to begin with. Sometimes smack a target while their endurance is completely full, other times they will want to play that game of chicken and hit them with 0 endurance. Let's say that a player can usually capitalize on a 10% damage boost on average from this trait most of the time (and I am being VERY generous here). That player would have to deal 8530 damage for it to compete with a single proc of PI. To put it in perspective, you would have to hit someone with a Backstab, AA combo and Shadowshot and every single attack would need to crit. THEN you would have to consider that not every attack will crit, and all you can't hope for is that the bigger hits are the ones that do. Does this sound like a more "meaningful buff" to you?

A lot. You are never at full endurance. You are not being very generous, you are being extremely ungenerous. Theyre at 10% all of the time, and at 15% quite a lot of the time. You rely on tooltips again too much, its closer to 700. 7k damage is very quickly achieved, thats 2 heartseekers. And then you add the fact that Havoc used 2 heartseekers, while the other used PI, and you see how bad it is. And no, its equally meaningless.

But just to summarise. Currently, PI is completely unusable. Its easily one of the by far worst traits in the entire game. I would go as far as to say its at least top 10 and probably top 5. A 40% buff keeps it just as unusable, and still in the top 5. An 80% buff also keeps it in the top 5. A 200% buff would make it go from "unusable" to "bad". It would still be a bad trait. Almots everyone still wouldnt use it. But it would at least make it not be a troll pick.

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Frankly I'd rather they deleted the trait and started again honestly. Traits that add damage on something as wide as a crit, a dodge or a CC are too powerful given the way the initiative system works, it's one of the reasons condi thief is generally considered cancer (since traits make it so you have to avoid pretty much EVERY hit, not just telegraphed condi skills).

@bluri.2653 said:I don't think they should buff PI, i wish they baked PI into headshot which would indirectly buff core dp builds that now suffers from the massive nerfs from 22nd feb. Then have creative freedom to add another trait that can compete with Endurance trait and fits into PvP.

My 5 cents

I would be totally fine with this tho, it links the effect to a skill that can be predicted and avoided rather than just any CC. Good call ^^

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