Tails.9372

If you're lucky thief might get a longbow as an e-spec weapon.

I don't care if they call it "class", "e-spec" or whatever, as long as the gameplay is different it's all pretty much the same to me.

They sure do but TBH it's not just the legendaries, the main reason why I don't bother with all these black lion weapon sets (and many weapon skins in general) is the lack of customized projectiles. It obviously doesn't have to be super flashy like one would expect from a legendary but for example a zenith rifle (which is basically an energy crystal) firing reular bullets with gunpowder effects / sounds doesn't fit the weapon at all and is frankly just lazy implementation. Another example would be the frostforged shortbow, they used regular arrows instead of the ice arrows from the shortbow the mages can summon. Why? It's stupid.

While I do think thief as a whole needs some work (unload needs a damage buff (it does less damage then most AAs while also limiting usability of your other weapon skills) and its ini cost lowered for sPvP / WvW, skills / traits like signet of malice / assassin's reward should scale significantly better with healing power and invigorating precision should also be affected by healing power), if there's one thing that needs a rework / improvement it's definitely the shortbow. No one ever uses it aside for "teleporting around". The ini costs are fine but most of the weapon skills are just bad. Take cluster bomb for example: it does barely any damage and requires you to jump into the enemy group to get any use out of it thanks to how detonate cluster works (which should honestly just be a second explosion right after the initial one).

> @"Obtena.7952" said:

> Anet is big on counterplay. You don't get that when you match big damage with long range.

Only if one looks at these two things as if they only exist inside of a vacuum which would be a stupid thing to do.

> @"Obtena.7952" said:

> I'm talking about the effect that lack of counterplay has in competitive gamemodes ...

No you're not, you were making up strawmans about how people supposedly want to disassociate "the range advantage from the damage".

The ability to use deadeye's mark on the octovine would be a nice QoL change. Also, the cast time for both deadeye's mark and the stolen skills should go, it's extremely annoying.

> @"Kageseigi.2150" said:

> The closest the Thief has is Unload and Basilisk Venom...

And LB also has like twice the range of P/P while being overall a lot more consistent, going by the logic of "you can't have damage + range" LB would have to take a big damage or range nerf.

> @"Vayne.8563" said:

> The damage absolutely has everything to do with the range in this case.

No not really, they're other factors besides damage and range which you're completely ignoring.

> @"Vayne.8563" said:

> To say that a generally inferior weapon has a longer range is not a valid complaint. If you want the same range, you have to take the other drawbacks as well.

You're comparing apples to oranges, the drawback of the sniper rifle is the general lack of AoE. If you feel like the LB is underperforming in this regard then that's a completely different issue but that doesn't change the fact that the sniper class should be top tier in regards to sniping (which it clearly isn't) so the basic premise of this thread is still valid.

> @"Vayne.8563" said:

> I'll just leave this here

> https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/27800/so-longbow-is-bad-dps-right#latest

That's a completely different topic, this one is about "the rifle should have more range than the LB" while the one you linked is about "the LB having more range than the numbers suggest".

> @"Vayne.8563" said:

> It is unfair.

It's not unfair, unlike the rifle longbow isn't meant for single target DPS. It's meant for AoE kiting which is why it has knockback, crippling effects and pricing arrows.

> @"Khailyn.6248" said:

> yea right. deadeyes dont even have to kneel to fire deaths judgement anymore

But that's not an argument against anything I just said. Quite the contrary and unlike rifle LB is a weapon with less focus on single target damage so of course it's going to do less damage in that regard.

> @"Khailyn.6248" said:

> they still have the mobility from core thief skills which outshines those of rangers. compared to a daredevil or a mesmer you could say that deadeye doesnt have good mobility, but compared to every other profession they are a cut above.

Many things "outshine" the mobility of rangers, that's not a good benchmark to use. Deadeye is definitely not "a cut above" stuff like a holosmith.

> @"Khailyn.6248" said:

> but they sacrifice range

Which makes no sense since range is one of the most defining features of a sniper class, as of right now rifle is nothing more than P/P 2.0 while P/P keeps getting hammered down by A-Net for no reason.

> @"Khailyn.6248" said:

> If deadeyes had high burst, **high mobility** AND the longest range

Well good thing that deadeye doesn't have high mobility then.

> @"Feanor.2358" said:

> they're useless. You don't need either.

That depends on the skill level of the player. I'd rather have a low skilled player running around with defensive gear which actually does something and survive than one of them trying to play glass cannon and decorate the floor ~99% of the time.

> @"TheQuickFox.3826" said:

> why are Celestial stats generally not the most favourite stats amongst the playerbase

For them to be worth using both concentration and expertise would have to be added to the celestial stats as well as them getting a ~50% buff across the board and even then they'd still be outclassed most of the time cause ultimately specialization > everything else.

> @"Chyanne Waters.8719" said:

> Rangers long bow and Thief's Rifle have the same distance

Not quite the LB has actually more, it says "1500" but the effective range is more like 1700-1800. But yes, a sniper rifle should definitely have more range then a bow and no, I'm not saying that the range on the LB sould be nerfed.

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > @"Tails.9372" said:

> > > @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > > Anet's not the one forcing anything on players.

> > As I've shown in the example given before: they do. They're just not as vocal about it.

>

> You're attributing a will to what i see mostly as a result of inherent (but still unintentional) design flaws and just being not so good at balancing.

So you're implying that they don't put much thought in their class design? Interesting and it would make sense on some level but I have to disagree here, there's no way they turn an e-spec which should have been based on long range sniping into a "hide and seek" spec by accident. I don't think they're that incompetent.

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> Anet's not the one forcing anything on players.

As I've shown in the example given before: they do. They're just not as vocal about it.

> @"babazhook.6805" said:

> I ran with such a build for a while but found it duplicated too many skills across both sets offering not enough in the way of advantages.

.

> @"Scud.5067" said:

> Aye, there's too much overlap to make the setup worth while.

Which I think is a severe design flaw, new weapons should always aim to add onto the existing ones instead of "replacing" them. Luckily in this case the problem is quite easy to fix by stuff which has been asked for by the community countless times. If they would reintroduce the ricochet trait (or make it an inherent trait of the weapon) and increase the range of the rifle then there would be enough of a difference to justify running both, P/P for direct engagements vs. small groups of enemies and the rifle for sniping.

Every collection which forces you to play old bug ridden events. For example the first collection of the legendary weapon Chuka and Champawat requires you to kill a largos assassin, to bad the event line is usually stuck somewhere so the assassin doesn't spawn. You can beat strong opponents but you can't beat the game tilting out on you.

Honorable mentions goes to collections which require you to do time gated crafting just to throw a bunch of money against a wall in the middle of nowhere and those which require you to deal with the more toxic parts of the community.

> @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> Different skills scale differently off of HP, so some are fine, but many underscale.

Not only that but some traits don't scale with HP at all. You're usually better off using toughness over healing power, having more toughness doesn't just lower the damage you receive but also indirectly makes your self-heal more effective and HP often times isn't strong enough to even remotely offset these disadvantages.

Yes, healing power is indeed underpowered.

> @"Nemo.8759" said:

> I hope they put more attention into the open world rather than raids. :/

I agree It should be a living world map, OW has yet to see a map which is mostly focused on indoor areas and a gigantic castle would be the perfect place for it.

If it's a trade-off as in the more damage the minions are doing the less damage the PC is going to do than yes, they should definitely do more damage. Also, minions from other classes should work similar to the necro minions and stay up until they are defeated.

To put more salt into the wound if you turn into a small spider you actually get a decent effect out of it:


But yes, I agree with the OP. They should increase the visual effects on asura, what we have rn is way to underwhelming.

Also lol @ all the OT spam.

I'd be fine if we tone down the stealth if we get more range in return. 1200/1500 range is definitely to low for a sniper rifle considering that even LB has more range to offer. They even called the e-spec "sniper" in some languages but it definitely doesn't really feel like one.