Black Frog.9274

I've enjoyed and been educated by your posts over the years. I'll keep an eye out for your wisdom and playtesting for a month or two. Maybe you'll find some secret to P/P working out. Until then, may your backstabs be maxed. Salud!

I'm done. After so many years trying to make P/P thief work, this last patch has worn me out. Good luck for all who stay. I hope you find your gaming fun.

Is there a particular reason P/P thief is being nerfed? I mean it's near useless as is.

We lost 15% single target damage with trait changes. Now +5% vs crippled target and +5% with pistol, will be -5% on all p/p skills and no cripple. We lost damage from PI, from Bound.Less survivability: longer cd on withdraw and roll for initiative.And -30% damage across all class and skills.If we can switch in combat between new trait and old it will be buff. But now this is nerf for p/p. I just don't understand nerfing a weapon set that is already next to useless. Guess I'll be back in a year to see what's happened.

so, can some kind soul break down how this might affect a P/P thief? Are we still the red headed step children of GW2?

I had a weird moment last night where I got fed up with getting few tokens. I could have sworn I got more, but only 2 showed in my stack. So, I went to the vendor to use the ones I had. My stack showed 2, and I had 5 left that I could buy. When I looked at the icons on the vendor, it showed I had 5 available. I bought 5 despite my stack in the inventory showing only 2. I thought maybe they were in my bank/wallet, but there is no wallet entry and I hadn't visited my bank. Super weird.

P/P, high crit (I have 100% uptime), and invigorating precision make PvE easy. Just keep pulling the trigger. Crit Strikes, Trickery, and the third is up for grabs but stay away from condi and go full damage and crits/ferocity. Your goal is to burn things down one a time and use your shortbow for low HP mobs that can be pulled close together. This means you need to have good "footwork" when you're working your targets. Aggro things, pull them together, shortbow AoE, death blossom, then clean up with the pistols. Anytime you want to get together and do a little PvE, message me, I'll show you how it's done.

I created a guide recently. I'm always surprised that, in a game filled with min/maxers and those concerned with farming, that more people don't get that you can finish the whole Toypocalypse pretty quickly if you actually use some placement strategy and upgrade everything. If you want to farm presents for gold (a la the Mad King's Labyrinth), you'd think people would want to burn through faster.

I'd love to see 2 people do it, keep all yaks alive, while placing things randomly. No snark here. I would genuinely like to see it. I'm trying to imagine a scenario where Duchess lives through the first round without getting to her immediately and either setting up siege or dogpiling with 3 or more people. It also sounds like you are proposing not bringing stuff to the circle to set up a perimeter. Is that correct?

Wall of text warning. It's late in the season, but I thought I would put a guide out for the curious. Feel free to rip it to shreds or improve it. This assumes you have your max number of players: 3 or 4 of you should rush northward immediately. Smash stuff on the way to pick up scraps.All 3 or 4 who rush north should place ballistas to cover Duchess first. Usually 4 spaced on the edge of the circle near the north most path into the center circle. Protip, don’t place them in front of the path itself, but to each side.While this is going on, cover each other and Duchess to keep the first waves of toys off the yaks. Don’t get too caught up, just don’t let Duchess go down. It’s more important to build than keep Duchess totally unscathed.The one or two people who don’t run north should go to the top of main hill just south of the circle. Smash everything around it and build, as quickly as possible, 2 or 3 catapults, 1 ballista, 2 or 3 snowmen. Exact numbers will depend on what drops. Do catas first, snowmen next, and ballista last. Immediately upgrade them as much as you can to max them out. Split up by compass points.At this point there are a lot of variations that will work for what to do next. But, there are some important things to keep in mind. There is a limit on the number of weapons/snowmen you can build. This means that when you hit the total number of allowed siege weapons, each new one you place will despawn the oldest. If you followed the steps above, keep an eye on those first ballistas and/or siege on the main hill. If they start to disappear, you’ve hit the limit. Stop building new things and focus on upgrades. It IS possible to hit a point where you don’t need to/can’t do any more building/upgrading. Just relax and enjoy the carnage or pick up a rifle. UPGRADE, upgrade, upgrade. More powerful weapons are better than just more weapons total. If you’ve set things up according to this guide, you’ll wipe out most of the initial spawns before they even move. The ones that get moving will be mowed down before they get beyond the edge of the circle. Building randomly, wherever stuff drops, is not optimal. That’s because the toys split up to attack different things and are often out of range of most weapons. (“So what?” You say. Well, the quicker the toys go down, the quicker the round finishes, the quicker the event can finish, the more gifts you collect.)The north is harder to defend than the south. The distance between the yaks and spawn points is the shortest. If you followed #4, your south will be in good shape through the first few rounds, and it will be worth it to focus on your north and east sides of the circle first. Build along the circle (not “in it” or you’ll be too low), on the main city hill, the “little town” hill on the west, the cliff on the east, the maze, and if you haven’t hit siege limit yet on the north side of the ice pond on the east side of the circle. Don’t overbuild in those spots. For everything but the circle, get 3 or 4 catas and 2 or 3 snowmen down and upgraded. Place a few mega snowmen or bait walls in wide open areas to slow the toy rushes. Then assess whether you’ve hit siege limit before building more in those locations. Don’t overbuild in the south. It’s a pain to run stuff north, but anything not built on the main hill, the “little town” hill on the west side, or the main cliff on the east side, won’t be able to hit toys in the north or the opposite side of the circle. It will hit the few spawns at the far south and in the main hill area, but those will already be covered by the other three areas mentioned above. Walls are of limited use. They block line of site/shots and if they’re built too close to the siege, will render them basically useless. They can also block your path of movement when you least expect it. For the most part, use them to seal off the maze, block the southeast path into the circle and the northmost path into the circle (this is why you place the ballistas to the side in #2, so they can reach toys on the back side of the wall). They also serve as good bait points for toys to attack and get hit by the catas. If you place them for this purpose, make sure that the thin edge of the wall is aimed at the circle, or you will create a hiding place on the other side of the wall. Everyone says catas, catas, catas. They’re good, but ballistas are critical on your north side, especially later in the rounds. Snowmen are great for slowing down advances and for holding agro while the siege weapons take down the toys. Don’t commit entirely to catas. Don’t forget to heal in the middle circle. This is easiest between rounds. As soon as one of the siege you setup hits a target, you won’t be able to heal until you lose all agro/combat status. Don’t forget the mercenary skritt. If you’ve got good siege coverage, take the time to get the mercenaries. Toxx FightsTarget him so that everyone knows when he spawnsWhen his bar is broken, you do more damage. At least one and preferably two people should hit him with toysmashers. The longer he stays dazed, the more damage you can do. STAY OUT OF THE CIRCLE WHILE YOU FIGHT HIM. Ideally, someone should rush him at his spawn point and keep aggro as best you can. Do your best to kite him away from the circle. Never retreat or dodge towards the circle. Most of the time you can re-pull agro before he gets there. Once he gets onto the yaks, its hard if not impossible to pull aggro. It’s just a race to take him down before he kills them. The best time to heal is immediately after Toxx goes down. The delay before the next round is longest and it takes a while before your siege hits a target and locks you into combat.

You know you could actually prove how active a server is in WvW if you wanted to. It would be a PITA, but doable. Place scouts at key travel chokepoints and/or layout marker traps at those points. Record it with focus on map. Do it for 24 to 48 hours starting at reset. You should get a near perfect idea of the numbers of players on all maps fighting in WvW. And you could post the video to prove it. Then this thread would be half as long. Win/Win

much confusion all around. that trait doesn’t exist anymore?

Ankle Shots doesn't immobilize. Never said it does.Then how does Opportunist figure into the equation you gave?

Ankle Shots doesn't immobilize.

I miss ricochet so so very much. Even though it's to my detriment, I've stuck with P/P from day 1. In 6 years, there have been few bright spots, but Ricochet was one of them. Overall, P/P is better than it used to be (or rather, it sucks less than it used to), but there is still so far to go. Ricochet was interesting in that it seemed like you actually needed skill to use it well. I remember circling my main target in a way that allowed me to keep up pressure on the other person that kept moving around until I could focus on him once the main target was downed. Fun times.

Which guilds are the bandwagon guilds?

This is very close to my build. I use SB instead of staff and my trinkets/armor are all marauder. For skills I use SoM, SoA, Blinding Power, and RFI. I do a tweak for WvW roaming with no specialties and SA line. I use life steal food. In PvE, I only die under the most extraordinary circumstances. I fight and kill almost everything I engage except world bosses, with or without assistance. WvW is a whole different thing though. But I'll never give up my P/P.

Pour a 40 on the grave of Blackgate. Today I finally realized it's over. Still got my Dolyak finishers from Season 1. Sniffle.

No it wouldn't. What element of "my character is also standing here with pets" qualifies as griefing?

Just have the gold float down like snow instead of forcing me to farm it in another labyrinth.

if it's a permitted action, maybe you should consider setting up your own character, putting it really close to theirs, and making it not worth their while. Maybe make 2 or 3?

"Lotteries" are so easily manipulated and abused. Surely you can come up with some other method for spreading the wealth.

i think if you want orcs, you should be playing that other MMO

So. What is the exact permastealth build? I'm not familiar with it.

I play it often. In many ways I prefer it to Alpine. It's bigger, more variety, and, for a roamer, easier to stay unobserved while moving around the map. This makes hitting behind enemy lines more fun and opens some possibilities for staying out there longer before returning to friendly areas. The alpine maps are so incredibly boring.