Thief pistols nerf

[Zyllias.9538]

People usually cry but this is serious, i'd like to see more pistols thieves full power/condi to see how they are insane in dps. Maybe we would hear more about them.

[Cougre.6543]

It is debatably too potent for what it requires as player input, especially the Deadeye variant. Obviously it's not as good as d/p or s/d, but I do think it does too much for what it is.

[saerni.2584]

I’m not sure what you are saying. I’m going to assume you’ve seen a few of these lately and think the damage is too high.

First, I want to differentiate between a P/P player and a P/D player. P/P is the one with Unload which is where 80% of the damage is coming from. Also, most of said damage is power and not condi. I’ve seen a couple trying out a hybrid but most of the time that is less burst damage comparatively.

Second, most P/P builds are complete glass. They fall apart when focused and are one trick builds. It is a build that really can be powerful but trades off a lot of risk for the burst. If holois balanced so is P/P.

Take a match I fought yesterday. Enemy thief was P/P and decently good at it. Unlike many P/P thieves she didn’t fall over at the first sign of pressure and she could withdraw when the fight wasn’t going well. Sadly for her, her team wasn’t good enough and the result was a loss for her.

The key for fighting P/P is awareness. Once you know the thief is P/P you need to watch carefully and immediately get DPS on the thief to put them on defense—where they don’t shine. You should also be prepared to dodge an unload or two. Unload is designed to be especially spammable if all the shots hit so you really don’t want to take all the hits even if you are a sustain focused build.

[Despond.2174]

P/P is a meme build still, it's a one trick pony. It suffers from many downsides and once they have finished pressing their 2 buttons it's like shooting a fish in a barrel. As soon as you put a PP thief on the defensive, they cannot regain, and are severally limited compared to other thief builds especially disengaging.

P/P is only annoying if you have a side that is steamrolling, then a PP thief can afford to just sit back with no pressure and spam #3 because their team are dominating. But given 2 similar teams comp/skill, P/P is a novelty build that gets severely punished at even medium ratings.

Other thief builds, namely d/p hard counter PP that it's basically a free kill. I see a PP thief while I am playing d/p, it's basically a 95% free kill even if they try hide at the backlines.

[EremiteAngel.9765]

P/P shines if the opposing team has no thieves to counter-pressure him.If a thief counter pressures him all game, he is dead.

[Vasdamas Anklast.1607]

Most played classes have too much reflect or projectile destroying abilities so pistol thieves are not going to work for this meta.

[Sojourner.4621]

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:P/P shines if the opposing team has no thieves to counter-pressure him.If a thief counter pressures him all game, he is dead.

If anyone carries a single reflect he's also dead.

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

I run a DrD build (d/p + p/p) in both PvP and mainly WvW. Those saying that p/p is one trick pony or they are no good elsewhere have not seen/experienced a semi decent thief. Any non-braindead thief knows when to swap to and away from p/p and knows when to spam unload and when not to. those that camp p/p and unload deserve to get rekt like the vault spamming ones.

just my $0.02

[Dreams.3128]

@Bigpapasmurf.5623 said:I run a DrD build (d/p + p/p) in both PvP and mainly WvW. Those saying that p/p is one trick pony or they are no good elsewhere have not seen/experienced a semi decent thief. Any non-braindead thief knows when to swap to and away from p/p and knows when to spam unload and when not to. those that camp p/p and unload deserve to get rekt like the vault spamming ones.

just my $0.02

Agreed.

Others are assuming you just one set of pistols all game and that's it.

If they are running d/p, they are getting away. They have more on-demand stealth with this set.

If they are running shortbow they will know how to disengage with a few shadowsteps.

Yes p/p is novelty, but don't assume people would not know how to weapon swap either.

[Liewec.2896]

as someone who plays GW2 pvp when "less than sober" i can say that p/p is one of my favourite specs,yes it is ridiculously powerful for what it takes to play it.i attack from stealth and my first shot is a stun, i will then 100-0 them in under 2 seconds unless they pop a stunbreak/reflect.if they do pop a reflect i'll dodge to cancel my firing and i can either then simple wait a second or 2 for the reflect to end before melting them or i can switch to shortbow and get the hell outta there if i don't think it'll go my way.

in short its ridiculously easy to play and EXTREMELY deadly.no other class has such reliable and fast damage from simply pressing one button (which also has NO COOLDOWN)other classes have long complex skill chains to run through in order to pull off what p/p thief pulls of by clicking Steal and then Unload x2

that being said, i hope they don't nerf my fun and skill-less build! i've been p/p since way back in the early days of pvp!

[powerbits.6235]

Thief in general needs a team to carry it. There are some that are good, but the faceroll that they get from some builds of other classes makes them sub par at best. I think that if they nerf thief any more, it will be rendered useless altogether.

[Kaga.7629]

Honestly unload could use a slight adjustment on the initiative used ( say oneor two more pip per use perhaps?) and the spamming issue would probably be a lot less ridiculous.

[Kako.1930]

P/p is good enough to be viable but not so strong that it needs nerfed in my opinion.

[Ithilwen.1529]

P/P Thief is annoying but not OP. They're an easy kill if they don't get you first.

[Elxdark.9702]

Nothing is more fair than a pistol pistol thief. And I know. I know some people. Some people like to say that it is NOT fair. But let me tell you this, there is nothing more fair than a pistol pistol thief. There are people out there, bad people, that will tell you I am wrong. But pistol pistol thief is very fair and is the only class you can play that delivers clean kills. Clean cleeeean kills.

[Dahkeus.8243]

@Ithilwen.1529 said:P/P Thief is annoying but not OP. They're an easy kill if they don't get you first.Yea, and they’re generally very hard-countered by a d/p or s/d thief on the other team.

That being said, it’s still a pretty cheesy build. I like the fact that a pistol thief build is viable and I don’t want it needed out, but it needs to do more than just spam 3 for damage.

If I were dev for a day, I’d put a big increase on the initiative and add a trait that decreases initiative of the next skill used by X whenever you use a different skill afterwards.

[Damocles.4908]

@Zyllias.9538 said:People usually cry but this is serious, i'd like to see more pistols thieves full power/condi to see how they are insane in dps. Maybe we would hear more about them.

I think most theifs might have to take to range attacks since every HoF has an aoe nuke

[EnderzShadow.2506]

@Elxdark.9702 said:Nothing is more fair than a pistol pistol thief. And I know. I know some people. Some people like to say that it is NOT fair. But let me tell you this, there is nothing more fair than a pistol pistol thief. There are people out there, bad people, that will tell you I am wrong. But pistol pistol thief is very fair and is the only class you can play that delivers clean kills. Clean cleeeean kills.

clean kills as in, 100-0 from stealth.Yeah, clean. Really Clean.

[Felipe.1807]

Its not that the build is OP or anything, but the effort required to play it and the reward that it offers is way to much...Anet must add some kind of debuff to Thief if he keep spamming the same skills over and over, something like add 1 iniciative cost per cast for a period of time, this alone would solve all the problems that we had with Thief since the release of the game, lol if my Guardian could spam Sword 2 like thief can or Hammer 2 or a Warrior being able to do like 3~4 Greatsword 3 in a row lol...Mesmer got a rework(for good or bad is up to debate) Thief should be the next in line.

[Vague Memory.2817]

OP makes it sound like PP takes skill to use. It is a noob build. Usually for people trying to get ascension tiers for playing a different class they have no familiarity with at all. Any class that can use one skill that has a short cd and does a decent amount of damage and has low risk to the player. Like Holosmith shockwave, Thief vault, DH trapper, Scourge (the whole elite ), Mirage randomly spamming evade skills which also does a ton of condi damage, and of course the king of noob builds: rangers that only use 3 skills on bow repeatedly (auto attack, point balnk and rapid fire). These ridiculous low risk skills should be penalised so people learn how to play the class on more than 1 weapon or with 1 skill. But thats Gw2 PvP for you.

[Eddbopkins.2630]

I feel if a thf uses the same skill more then 3 time in a row or within a certain time frame that skill goes on cool down like every other class's skills do when they use them.....like why do they get the option to spam heartseeker 3-4 times continuously doing more and more damage each time, specially when the enemy is below 50% hp the skill does more damage so why do they get the benefit to do that endlessly some times? I never understood the equality in that idea.

[Sarrs.4831]

Just stand in the necromancer's fart cloud. PP can't do anything to you.

[saerni.2584]

P/P suffers from projectile hate. Like holosmith it puts out a lot of damage but is extremely fragile and not too mobile.

Just use range pressure on the thief and they will melt. Just use a mobility skill to gap close and you will likely have the advantage. Pull the thief into AoE and watch them melt too.

High damage but high risk. You can try it for yourself and see that even though it seems OP to the untrained eye there are real disadvantages to playing it (without an offhand set to compensate which makes the mobility of the thief go down a lot).

[thatdarnkatz.7168]

At first they were frustrating, but honestly, when I find one on my team, I'm basically ready to just throw the match. They really are a one trick pony that puts a drag down on your team. Come back after you complain that fresh air does too much damage. Oh wait, no one ever said that because they die easily if you catch them off guard. Sound familiar? Fresh air isn't meta any more because any decent player can counter them, or at least put enough pressure out to make them run. Same with the P/P thief. Single target damage is good, but they can't cleave, can't win duals, and can't far harass easily. Not much use to the team, just annoying.

EDIT: Fresh air ele can at least cleave a downed body. And don't say a thief can with a bow, because no thief that plays P/P has had enough brains in any match I've been in to know what a bow is, let alone think that cleaving a downed body is smart. I mean, you kill the one guy, then run away, so you can hide and kill another right? True thieves bring p/p and a rifle. I'm not kidding, that's mostly what I've seen on my way out of silver and into mid gold. They suddenly disappeared when I got to real matches. Who woulda thought.

[Legatus.3608]

@Liewec.2896 said:

other classes have long complex skill chains to run through in order to pull off what p/p thief pulls of by clicking Steal and then Unload x2

I mean I agree with the premise but this is just not true. Scourge pressed f1f2f3f4f5. Mes pressed dodge 1 f1, which is probably the most complex chain. Idk what the new mes build does since I haven't tried power yet but I imagine it's clonesbutton - f1 or similar. These aren't the least bit complex.

The bottom line though is pp thief isn't really a great build. It does well when you're already winning and poorly when you're losing, which means literally any other glass build could basically do the same.