P/P is too powerful

[omgdracula.6345]

Look at all these people with learn to play issues dying to an easily countered build on a class that is meant to deal high damage. Baffling.

[babazhook.6805]

> @"DeceiverX.8361" said:

> > @"coro.3176" said:

> > > @"DeceiverX.8361" said:

> > > > @"coro.3176" said:

> > > > Is it? I've seen a full 16k+unload finish before the daze from Sleight of Hand wears off.

> > >

> > > On core, odds are they're using SoH after beginning unload, then. Otherwise on DE it's not SoH; A lot of DE P/P players run Unforgiving, which applies a stun on the first attack on a marked target. Likely, it's a mix of both such that SoH pops on the DE mark cast and then this translates to the first hit on unload to a stun.

> > >

> > > P/P isn't good so much as it isn't bad into the current meta which gets shut down heavily by ranged burst damage. It's really, really easy to hard-counter a P/P thief and most build require minimal investment to do so.

> > >

> > > P/P hasn't been strong because of this, and ANet's taken the lazy approach to this kit like many other under-performers and hybrid kits over the years by basically making some of its abilities busted to compensate for innate kit weaknesses. Unload has been this strong since HoT, and people trolled around with Sigil of Rage + Haste + Burst of Agility P/P 3spam Daredevil in WvW for a while.

> > >

> > > The real merit of complaint here is the fact that the entirety of the potency of this kit comes from spamming one button/ease of play, not so much from how much damage it deals or how strong it is, because **it's only strong right now because of the current meta explicitly not building to counter it.** From a game design perspective this is somewhat of a good thing - things coming and going from the meta based on peoples' answers to said meta - it's just likely we're a bit too entrenched right now with the current OP's and that P/P generally is a bit too binary in how well it performs; it either dominates or is rendered absolutely useless.

> > >

> > > Upping consistency on P/P and cutting its excess would go a long way, even if it came to slightly reduced damage on Unload itself (the traits/etc. allowing it to hit so hard are fine given the sheer investment required and how easy it is to counter anything on thief built in such a way).

> > >

> >

> > Right. The main question one needs to ask when evaluating a skill is: What is the opponent supposed to do about this? If the answer is "nothing" or "have a stunbreak ready", it's probably not a very balanced, or at least not a very fun/fair skill to play against.

> >

> > A lot of builds can counter the 3-spam easily with reflect or block or whatever ... but a lot of builds can't, and they just get deleted by a player pressing 1 button. This feels pretty bad.

>

> You're not wrong, but so many things feel bad right now because generally speaking so much can be spammed or it's just very hard to find openings otherwise in dominant kits.

>

> Like many things on thief (and many other professions since HoT), a lack of attention to necessary reworks paired with powercreep puts a lot of elements of the class in a very gimmicky state due to heavy-handed buffs to keep things viable.

>

> There's really no answer without major overhauls across multiple professions and their weapons' kits at this point, which is just the sad part. The design of these gameplay elements were from a time when the way the game played was much more calculated. Numbers bumps to "modernize" old design elements -especially hybrid weapons like P/P - end up either binary into matchups or just generically OP/UP otherwise.

>

> This is one of the biggest reasons I advocate so heavily for massive nerfs and reworks to everything beyond HoT. There's much more work to do to rework the core game to fix it than a few expansions. It may upset some people, but it's really just necessary.

>

 

Part of the problem in trying to achieve balance is that out of the gates some classes were deemed "heavy" some "medium" and some "light". This results in a person having an 8000 HP advantage without investing in any skills, traits or utilities or without even using gear. It simply an 8k hp head start and in order to make up for that the lighter classes were to have different means of avoiding damage other then what is a PASSIVE advantange of more gear , and or means by which they can spike more damage over a shorter period of time in order to make up for that HP differential.

 

Inevitably what happened is there were complaints that the Heavies DPS output was not enough as it all came down to DPS and people with those DPS meters.(DPS meters do not measure how much health YOU might have over another class. They focus solely on damage out) DPS on heavies go up fueling DPS increases in the guys that start with 11k health and it snowballs from there.

 

 

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

Projectile hate ftw. If you don't run one, then adapt or get better at fighting vs P/P. NO different with me having no condi cleanses (i lied...I have 1 that cleanses 1, however the skill is too useful to be used for such) fighting any condi build. I dont state they are OP. I learned to deal with it (as I like my build the way it is).

 

This is a literal definition of L2P.

[coro.3176]

> @"Legatus.3608" said:

> > @"coro.3176" said:

> > > @"DeceiverX.8361" said:

> > > > @"coro.3176" said:

> > > > Is it? I've seen a full 16k+unload finish before the daze from Sleight of Hand wears off.

> > >

> > > On core, odds are they're using SoH after beginning unload, then. Otherwise on DE it's not SoH; A lot of DE P/P players run Unforgiving, which applies a stun on the first attack on a marked target. Likely, it's a mix of both such that SoH pops on the DE mark cast and then this translates to the first hit on unload to a stun.

> > >

> > > P/P isn't good so much as it isn't bad into the current meta which gets shut down heavily by ranged burst damage. It's really, really easy to hard-counter a P/P thief and most build require minimal investment to do so.

> > >

> > > P/P hasn't been strong because of this, and ANet's taken the lazy approach to this kit like many other under-performers and hybrid kits over the years by basically making some of its abilities busted to compensate for innate kit weaknesses. Unload has been this strong since HoT, and people trolled around with Sigil of Rage + Haste + Burst of Agility P/P 3spam Daredevil in WvW for a while.

> > >

> > > The real merit of complaint here is the fact that the entirety of the potency of this kit comes from spamming one button/ease of play, not so much from how much damage it deals or how strong it is, because **it's only strong right now because of the current meta explicitly not building to counter it.** From a game design perspective this is somewhat of a good thing - things coming and going from the meta based on peoples' answers to said meta - it's just likely we're a bit too entrenched right now with the current OP's and that P/P generally is a bit too binary in how well it performs; it either dominates or is rendered absolutely useless.

> > >

> > > Upping consistency on P/P and cutting its excess would go a long way, even if it came to slightly reduced damage on Unload itself (the traits/etc. allowing it to hit so hard are fine given the sheer investment required and how easy it is to counter anything on thief built in such a way).

> > >

> >

> > Right. The main question one needs to ask when evaluating a skill is: What is the opponent supposed to do about this? If the answer is "nothing" or "have a stunbreak ready", it's probably not a very balanced, or at least not a very fun/fair skill to play against.

> >

> > A lot of builds can counter the 3-spam easily with reflect or block or whatever ... but a lot of builds can't, and they just get deleted by a player pressing 1 button. This feels pretty bad.

>

> You can stun burst any build in the game with any other build in the game assuming the attacker is building for damage and equips a stun trait or utility, this has nothing to do with the build in question

 

That's true, but it's the ranged stun with no animation to dodge that makes it feel cheap. When a Warrior tries to Shield Bash (or Bull's Charge, etc.) you, you see it coming and if you get hit, you don't really mind because you should have dodged it. When you get stunned at range instantly, or by a projectile that is too fast to react to, it feels kinda lame. That's not limited to P/P. It's more a thief/de problem, but P/P is the most obvious offender because it involves spamming 1 button, whereas other builds usually follow up with other skills.

 

Again, I don't think this should be a balance priority. It's far from the worst thing in the game right now. It's just not fun gameplay.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

> @"Griever.8150" said:

> > @"Yannir.4132" said:

> > What ever happened to "projectile hate" in this game?

>

> There's plenty of projectile hate still. People just don't run that utility in their build anymore because most if not all projectile-based builds are out of the meta. Why run utility to counter something you're unlikely to see.

 

I'd like to mention that a healthy meta functions in specifically this way.

 

People play certain builds, in playing those builds someone finds a counterbuild that shuts those builds down, everyone plays that counterbuild, then someone finds a counter to that counter and the cycle goes on.

 

If the weapon set is strong against you because you didn't take an option to completely counter it, the meta is working properly. You can either take the option to completely counter it, or dont and accept that you will be weak against that particular build.

There's a difference between hard counter and overpowered. If you have the tools to counter or mitigate a playstyle and you choose not to use them, that loss is on you. it's poor form to come complaining about things you cannot beat with your present build, but -can- beat if you picked up a different utility skill or weapon. Reserve the complaints for things so over the top that they can outperform most builds, or so underwhelming that they cannot counterplay against a significant portion of builds.

 

 

[Legatus.3608]

> @"coro.3176" said:

> > @"Legatus.3608" said:

> > > @"coro.3176" said:

> > > > @"DeceiverX.8361" said:

> > > > > @"coro.3176" said:

> > > > > Is it? I've seen a full 16k+unload finish before the daze from Sleight of Hand wears off.

> > > >

> > > > On core, odds are they're using SoH after beginning unload, then. Otherwise on DE it's not SoH; A lot of DE P/P players run Unforgiving, which applies a stun on the first attack on a marked target. Likely, it's a mix of both such that SoH pops on the DE mark cast and then this translates to the first hit on unload to a stun.

> > > >

> > > > P/P isn't good so much as it isn't bad into the current meta which gets shut down heavily by ranged burst damage. It's really, really easy to hard-counter a P/P thief and most build require minimal investment to do so.

> > > >

> > > > P/P hasn't been strong because of this, and ANet's taken the lazy approach to this kit like many other under-performers and hybrid kits over the years by basically making some of its abilities busted to compensate for innate kit weaknesses. Unload has been this strong since HoT, and people trolled around with Sigil of Rage + Haste + Burst of Agility P/P 3spam Daredevil in WvW for a while.

> > > >

> > > > The real merit of complaint here is the fact that the entirety of the potency of this kit comes from spamming one button/ease of play, not so much from how much damage it deals or how strong it is, because **it's only strong right now because of the current meta explicitly not building to counter it.** From a game design perspective this is somewhat of a good thing - things coming and going from the meta based on peoples' answers to said meta - it's just likely we're a bit too entrenched right now with the current OP's and that P/P generally is a bit too binary in how well it performs; it either dominates or is rendered absolutely useless.

> > > >

> > > > Upping consistency on P/P and cutting its excess would go a long way, even if it came to slightly reduced damage on Unload itself (the traits/etc. allowing it to hit so hard are fine given the sheer investment required and how easy it is to counter anything on thief built in such a way).

> > > >

> > >

> > > Right. The main question one needs to ask when evaluating a skill is: What is the opponent supposed to do about this? If the answer is "nothing" or "have a stunbreak ready", it's probably not a very balanced, or at least not a very fun/fair skill to play against.

> > >

> > > A lot of builds can counter the 3-spam easily with reflect or block or whatever ... but a lot of builds can't, and they just get deleted by a player pressing 1 button. This feels pretty bad.

> >

> > You can stun burst any build in the game with any other build in the game assuming the attacker is building for damage and equips a stun trait or utility, this has nothing to do with the build in question

>

> That's true, but it's the ranged stun with no animation to dodge that makes it feel cheap. When a Warrior tries to Shield Bash (or Bull's Charge, etc.) you, you see it coming and if you get hit, you don't really mind because you should have dodged it. When you get stunned at range instantly, or by a projectile that is too fast to react to, it feels kinda lame. That's not limited to P/P. It's more a thief/de problem, but P/P is the most obvious offender because it involves spamming 1 button, whereas other builds usually follow up with other skills.

>

> Again, I don't think this should be a balance priority. It's far from the worst thing in the game right now. It's just not fun gameplay.

 

Sure that's a fair point, they could give the stun a telegraph, but what does the spamming of a button have to do with anything? Also there are other classes with non telegraphed stuns.

 

Honestly kind of tired of hearing everyone whine about pistol 3. I'd like to see anet just change pistol 3 into a utility and make pistol 1 actually do damage so we don't have to listen to all the "1 button spam" comments, like honestly it has nothing to do with anything other than the class being boring. If the 1, 2, 4, and 5 skills were useful for something people would use them, like for stealth on dp. Instead they are largely useless in this build (headshot is ok but just not as good as 3 in p/p builds). I honestly can't even remember what pistol 2 does and I don't think I've ever pressed pistol 1.

[otto.5684]

I have to admit this thread is hilarious. People complaining about a trash tier build just cuz they cannot dodge/block or just react...

[FyzE.3472]

> @"otto.5684" said:

> I have to admit this thread is hilarious. People complaining about a trash tier build just cuz they cannot dodge/block or just react...

 

You'd be surprised

[KrHome.1920]

Reflects/projectile hate is not the solution to P/P. Thinking they would be just shows low skill. No build has 100% reflect/projectile hate uptime. For a teef it's easy to bait reflects and then finish the job, because baiting (hit and run, dis-/reengage, reset... call it whatever you want) is part of his profession mechanic.

 

Dodge/block/reflect/interrupt P/P3 while counterbursting is the solution. And your build needs to be capable of doing that multiple times in a row because if he is decent he will avoid one or two of your attempts before he runs out of ressources and needs to shadowstep and run away for 50 seconds. If your build is not, the teef will destroy you... one dimensional!

 

On reaper I go full zerk these days and pull the P/P teef with spectral grasp while he is unloading into a hydromancy sigil (only WvW)/spiteful spirit/chilling nova/chill of death/RS4 combo. that's a 0,5s instakill. Pretty funny. If he manages to dodge the pull I continue with axe2 to maintain the pressure and prevent him from doing a second unload. The third unload I will tank in shroud while gap closing. And so on...

 

**TL;DR**

Someone above wrote sth. about "one dimensional". That naild it.

 

/vote for thread close

[Turk.5460]

P/P and Burst/NonStealth Rifle are a very similar risk/reward. Dealing damage isn't the hard part. Avoiding damage is.

[Vagrant.7206]

P/P on engineers too powerful...

 

Wait. Just kidding. Everybody already assumed we were talking about thief because we never see P/P engineer. :angry:

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

> @"Vagrant.7206" said:

> P/P on engineers too powerful...

>

> Wait. Just kidding. Everybody already assumed we were talking about thief because we never see P/P engineer. :angry:

 

I actually play mine a bit. Played it last night in PvP actually. Destroyed a scourge (which was comical)

[apharma.3741]

> @"Felipe.1807" said:

> I feel like 100% of complaints against thieves exist only because of this iniciative thing that Anet made...just remove it and give Thief cooldowns like everyone else, is obvious that the ability to spam the same skill more then once is OP.

 

I postulated this a while back, maybe on the old forums and it was as popular as a fart at a state banquet.

 

Having said that now we have an ammo mechanic, I also said before I could see an iteration of thief where it had slightly lower cool downs than other classes on its weapon skills but all of them had an ammo count. This offers the advantage of using a skill back to back if needed but counters the ability to essentially spam the most effective skill possible.

 

This would be a hefty redesign though as you’d be getting rid of initiative and you’d have to tune up a lot of skills to be worth using on their own, a good example being the BP+heartseeker combo which would need stealth added onto BP as a refund because you can’t heartseeker through the smoke field much. However it could lead to a much better thief where weapon skills are allowed to be stronger as they can no longer be spammed while still keeping the front loaded +1 style a thief has always had because ammo will regenerate between combat.

 

90% of thief players will probably hate it though either because they don’t like change or because they really enjoy the ability to use a skill as much as they want given enough initiative.

[Plautze.6290]

In WvW, I met a thief player who also thought P/P to be powerful. After eating his first volley, I used my shield block skill which was traited to reflect projectiles. So it took me the push of one button to defeat that player... So we have play and counter-play. I fail to see the "too powerful" sentiment.

[NuhDah.9812]

> @"anduriell.6280" said:

> i still think if thief would do less damage depending on how many initiative has left in pvp\wvw this would solve all the complains. The thief still would have the opening burst at full power but it wouldn't be able to sustain the damage spamming buttons.

>

 

Actually I think that's no longer an issue since they nerfed melee AA to the ground anyways. I think most people switched to cheese PP for that reason in the first place. It's a yolo build, but at least you can consider it a burst one, something less true for any melee build at this point. I guess it's in a way the result of the people constant cries about thief something they did a lot instead of learning to counter the profession which isn't and wasn't a duel profession ain the first place.

[ilmi.5369]

If you are aware of the p/p thief and you pressure him, he is easy to beat - so I would not complain about p/p being overpowered. But if he gets you unaware while already fighting for a capture point, it is more than just annoying. I also play thief and if I'm attacked by p/p from behind there is nothing I can do against. Even if my shadowstep has not been wasted before while fighting for the node and I stun break after his initial attack, I have no time on my d/p thief to prepare a counter except of perma dodging out of LOS assuming that I have not wasted my endurance before. Laying a smoke field and escape in stealth? Even if initiative was not wasted before the cast time of both can make the difference while he happily roots me in my smoke field and pew pews the crap out of me. The only fast counter is either insta invis or to steal on him and hope you make more damage before you eat his second volley. Sure, there are classes with higher health pool, invulns or reflects and if you have those tools available you can do something against. But still, I believe that the damage of this one skill is a bit overtuned and should be toned down slightly. A rapid fire from a glas cannon ranger usually ist not that fatal.

[babazhook.6805]

> @"ilmi.5369" said:

> If you are aware of the p/p thief and you pressure him, he is easy to beat - so I would not complain about p/p being overpowered. But if he gets you unaware while already fighting for a capture point, it is more than just annoying. I also play thief and if I'm attacked by p/p from behind there is nothing I can do against. Even if my shadowstep has not been wasted before while fighting for the node and I stun break after his initial attack, I have no time on my d/p thief to prepare a counter except of perma dodging out of LOS assuming that I have not wasted my endurance before. Laying a smoke field and escape in stealth? Even if initiative was not wasted before the cast time of both can make the difference while he happily roots me in my smoke field and pew pews the crap out of me. The only fast counter is either insta invis or to steal on him and hope you make more damage before you eat his second volley. Sure, there are classes with higher health pool, invulns or reflects and if you have those tools available you can do something against. But still, I believe that the damage of this one skill is a bit overtuned and should be toned down slightly. A rapid fire from a glas cannon ranger usually ist not that fatal.

 

There a big difference between a glass cannon ranger and a glass cannon p/p thief. That is the Ranger already starts with a higher health pool out of the gate without having invested anything, and the rangers weapon skills outside the RF are much more useful to the ranger build as far as survival goes , so no I do not think p/p damage "overtuned".

 

The ranger has a 4400+ health advantage even in zerker. The person picking thief is much more vulnerable to damage in turn for having p/p unload hit harder. The REASON your thief is vulnerable to a p/p unload when caught unawares is not because p/p overtuned. It because your thief has less health to start with.

 

Now Imagine your p/p thief sees damage lowered on his major big hitter and faces that same RF ranger. There no way he would win such a match. Nothing raised his health pool so the RELATIVE strength of the ranger versus the thief went up even more. This becomes more pronounced when facing a class like a warrior which also has hard hitting attacks and comes out of the gate with 8000 more health. In other words were there indeed to be a "one shot one kill" system , that zerker thief would have to hit for 8000 more damage on a single attack versus a warrior, then that warrior has to hit for against that thief.

 

When looking at issues of balance one can not just leav out the fact that the concept of "light , heavy and medium" exist and that classes were designed from the get go to have varying health pools. When you have a class with one of the lower health pools and you LOWER its damage because of what it can do against another player with the same health pool, then that classes ability to deal with a class that has a higher pool plummets. It then becomes useful only in fights against its own class. One can try to address this discrepnacy by giving that lower health class much more in the way of mitigation measures (dodges/stealth blocks) but we see the results of that with people complaining about "dodge spam" and "stealth spam".

 

In this system you can not normalize damage towards a narrower point between the various classes unless health pools are normalized as well.

[yiksing.9432]

This is not an isolated problem with p/p thief. Welcome to Burst War 2, many of the profession can be built to do an insane amount of front load damage and turned fighting into "who gets the drop on who first", this is not fun for me and many others and i wish combat would last longer where people actually has a chance to come back after getting hit with a combo out of nowhere. Why is p/p thief being complained in this thread? Its because professions especially thief, mesmer, holo can actually gtfo if their burst didn't land, it is extremely not fun on the receiving end of things. I play my thief and mesmer 90% of the time but haven't touched them in a month because it doesn't feel like i earn the kill sometimes. Just my 2 cents.

[Vagrant.7206]

> @"Plautze.6290" said:

> In WvW, I met a thief player who also thought P/P to be powerful. After eating his first volley, I used my shield block skill which was traited to reflect projectiles. So it took me the push of one button to defeat that player... So we have play and counter-play. I fail to see the "too powerful" sentiment.

 

Mainly because Thief is supposed to be a +1'er, not a duelist. In those scenarios you have to drop everything you're doing to immediately put up a reflect or projectile destruction, and pray you don't get interrupted in the meantime. In dueling scenarios, it's absolutely not OP. But in +1 scenarios, there's often very little you can do about it unless you have a build with a fair or large number of reflects in it.

 

Dueling P/P thieves is easy. I win those handily on my holo. Getting +1'ed by one? Complete ass.

[ilmi.5369]

> @"babazhook.6805" said:

> > @"ilmi.5369" said:

> > If you are aware of the p/p thief and you pressure him, he is easy to beat - so I would not complain about p/p being overpowered. But if he gets you unaware while already fighting for a capture point, it is more than just annoying. I also play thief and if I'm attacked by p/p from behind there is nothing I can do against. Even if my shadowstep has not been wasted before while fighting for the node and I stun break after his initial attack, I have no time on my d/p thief to prepare a counter except of perma dodging out of LOS assuming that I have not wasted my endurance before. Laying a smoke field and escape in stealth? Even if initiative was not wasted before the cast time of both can make the difference while he happily roots me in my smoke field and pew pews the crap out of me. The only fast counter is either insta invis or to steal on him and hope you make more damage before you eat his second volley. Sure, there are classes with higher health pool, invulns or reflects and if you have those tools available you can do something against. But still, I believe that the damage of this one skill is a bit overtuned and should be toned down slightly. A rapid fire from a glas cannon ranger usually ist not that fatal.

>

> There a big difference between a glass cannon ranger and a glass cannon p/p thief. That is the Ranger already starts with a higher health pool out of the gate without having invested anything, and the rangers weapon skills outside the RF are much more useful to the ranger build as far as survival goes , so no I do not think p/p damage "overtuned".

>

> The ranger has a 4400+ health advantage even in zerker. The person picking thief is much more vulnerable to damage in turn for having p/p unload hit harder. The REASON your thief is vulnerable to a p/p unload when caught unawares is not because p/p overtuned. It because your thief has less health to start with.

>

> Now Imagine your p/p thief sees damage lowered on his major big hitter and faces that same RF ranger. There no way he would win such a match. Nothing raised his health pool so the RELATIVE strength of the ranger versus the thief went up even more. This becomes more pronounced when facing a class like a warrior which also has hard hitting attacks and comes out of the gate with 8000 more health. In other words were there indeed to be a "one shot one kill" system , that zerker thief would have to hit for 8000 more damage on a single attack versus a warrior, then that warrior has to hit for against that thief.

>

> When looking at issues of balance one can not just leav out the fact that the concept of "light , heavy and medium" exist and that classes were designed from the get go to have varying health pools. When you have a class with one of the lower health pools and you LOWER its damage because of what it can do against another player with the same health pool, then that classes ability to deal with a class that has a higher pool plummets. It then becomes useful only in fights against its own class. One can try to address this discrepnacy by giving that lower health class much more in the way of mitigation measures (dodges/stealth blocks) but we see the results of that with people complaining about "dodge spam" and "stealth spam".

>

> In this system you can not normalize damage towards a narrower point between the various classes unless health pools are normalized as well.

 

I'm well aware of the disadvantages of a thief, as I play thief myself. And I know that it can be hard to fight a warrior but 1v1 you can beat them, blind them, kite them and so on (he would still maintain to hold the node in his favor but that's a different story). And you are right that thief needs hard hitting attacks. But not only because of the lower health pool but also because it's a melee class. The community have been complaining since ever about thieves and since then heartseeker and shadowshot have bee been nerfed to a level where it makes no more sense to spam, since ini cost are too high and damage is too low. I rember how easy and annoying 2 2 2 2 2 d/d thiefs at vanilla times were. It's the same with p/p thief now. No spammable attack should be that strong. In exchange Anet could make pistol auto attack stronger if attacking from stealth or make 2 cost less initiative and remove the vulnerability part so that a p/p thief can hold distance easier. Or raise the initiative costs of 3.

[Abazigal.3679]

P/P is a false problem to me. It's actually pretty similar to deadeye in terms of annoyance from my solo queue experience : when you have to already deal with 2 scourges and a mesmer on sides, it's fairly easy to get rolled by a P/P since you have too many things to consider at the same time.

I mean, in any game that is about rangers, revs, warriors or engineers, you can easily anticipate and dodge thieves shoots.

 

We're still going back to the scourge + mesmers issue, thieves are a minor issue.

[babazhook.6805]

> @"ilmi.5369" said:

> > @"babazhook.6805" said:

> > > @"ilmi.5369" said:

> > > If you are aware of the p/p thief and you pressure him, he is easy to beat - so I would not complain about p/p being overpowered. But if he gets you unaware while already fighting for a capture point, it is more than just annoying. I also play thief and if I'm attacked by p/p from behind there is nothing I can do against. Even if my shadowstep has not been wasted before while fighting for the node and I stun break after his initial attack, I have no time on my d/p thief to prepare a counter except of perma dodging out of LOS assuming that I have not wasted my endurance before. Laying a smoke field and escape in stealth? Even if initiative was not wasted before the cast time of both can make the difference while he happily roots me in my smoke field and pew pews the crap out of me. The only fast counter is either insta invis or to steal on him and hope you make more damage before you eat his second volley. Sure, there are classes with higher health pool, invulns or reflects and if you have those tools available you can do something against. But still, I believe that the damage of this one skill is a bit overtuned and should be toned down slightly. A rapid fire from a glas cannon ranger usually ist not that fatal.

> >

> > There a big difference between a glass cannon ranger and a glass cannon p/p thief. That is the Ranger already starts with a higher health pool out of the gate without having invested anything, and the rangers weapon skills outside the RF are much more useful to the ranger build as far as survival goes , so no I do not think p/p damage "overtuned".

> >

> > The ranger has a 4400+ health advantage even in zerker. The person picking thief is much more vulnerable to damage in turn for having p/p unload hit harder. The REASON your thief is vulnerable to a p/p unload when caught unawares is not because p/p overtuned. It because your thief has less health to start with.

> >

> > Now Imagine your p/p thief sees damage lowered on his major big hitter and faces that same RF ranger. There no way he would win such a match. Nothing raised his health pool so the RELATIVE strength of the ranger versus the thief went up even more. This becomes more pronounced when facing a class like a warrior which also has hard hitting attacks and comes out of the gate with 8000 more health. In other words were there indeed to be a "one shot one kill" system , that zerker thief would have to hit for 8000 more damage on a single attack versus a warrior, then that warrior has to hit for against that thief.

> >

> > When looking at issues of balance one can not just leav out the fact that the concept of "light , heavy and medium" exist and that classes were designed from the get go to have varying health pools. When you have a class with one of the lower health pools and you LOWER its damage because of what it can do against another player with the same health pool, then that classes ability to deal with a class that has a higher pool plummets. It then becomes useful only in fights against its own class. One can try to address this discrepnacy by giving that lower health class much more in the way of mitigation measures (dodges/stealth blocks) but we see the results of that with people complaining about "dodge spam" and "stealth spam".

> >

> > In this system you can not normalize damage towards a narrower point between the various classes unless health pools are normalized as well.

>

> I'm well aware of the disadvantages of a thief, as I play thief myself. And I know that it can be hard to fight a warrior but 1v1 you can beat them, blind them, kite them and so on (he would still maintain to hold the node in his favor but that's a different story). And you are right that thief needs hard hitting attacks. But not only because of the lower health pool but also because it's a melee class. The community have been complaining since ever about thieves and since then heartseeker and shadowshot have bee been nerfed to a level where it makes no more sense to spam, since ini cost are too high and damage is too low. I rember how easy and annoying 2 2 2 2 2 d/d thiefs at vanilla times were. It's the same with p/p thief now. No spammable attack should be that strong. In exchange Anet could make pistol auto attack stronger if attacking from stealth or make 2 cost less initiative and remove the vulnerability part so that a p/p thief can hold distance easier. Or raise the initiative costs of 3.

 

They already went the course of putting more damage into the AA attacks and now reverse course there. It became a "why should I use an INI based attack when I can use the AA to do just as much damage".

 

Keeping the hard hitting attacks under the inititave system is how you balance them. P/P unload is one dimensional as far as the weaponset goes but it hardly OP or overtuned. The nature of INI and the thief is that it makes little to NO sense to distribute damage across all 4 of the weapon skills outside the AA because INI is lost no matter which skill used. When damage is wanted there generally an "always best to use skill" when trying to focus on damage. This leads to what is called "spam".

[DeceiverX.8361]

It's also a problem with the general scope of PvP design right now.

 

Most classes today have very small windows of opportunity of actually being killed. While burst is generally how PvP is won (punishing gaps in defenses and attempting to nullify and opponent's punishment), the sheer uptime of strong defenses in rotations is negating a lot of that punishment potential, especially in cases like mirage, scourge, spellbreaker, and firebrand (though not as bad now) demands for even bigger, more potent burst damage. Very few professions are capable of being killed by AA's alone (with thief now toned down).

 

And even if unload is gutted, what then? Spam 5 to negate damage with pulsing fields in melee? Spam 4 on Daredevil with PI interrupts between AA's?

 

The problem with Unload is that like HS and Shadow Shot of the past, they made its damage very cheap for its efficacy. Get rid of the might stacking and get rid of the initiative refunding as to not be broken on DE and it's fine. Maybe buff the AA by like 20% again to account for a bit of lost sustained damage, but it's really just not a PvE set so what does it matter?

 

Such is also problem with only having dual skills on skill 3 and not 2 through 4; changes to other abilities outside of the AA will affect other kits as well which is a balance nightmare. That's why P/P is garbage outside of unload and has all its strength there; D/P is strong because of OH pistol, and P/D is a kit that is in a good spot and if not only weak due to the failures and weaknesses of OH dagger, so buffing MH pistol will make offhand dagger impossible to buff or else overload P/D.

[MithranArkanere.8957]

While anyone with some reflect, or retaliation can easily deal with a bad Unload spammer, the actual problem is that there's Unload spammers at all. Spamming Unload creates boring gameplay. It works too well, too often for little effort against less experienced players, and also makes less experinced palyers think it's a good an effective build, when it's just a boring gimmick.

 

Balance should not be just about keeping skills from being to strong or too weak. It should also be about keeping gameplay fun and engaging.

 

Because of that, changes like reducing the damage of Unload, or increasing its initiative cost would no do. Decrease damage, people just complains it's useless now. Increase the cost, people stop using the other skills and sticks even more with Unload, making the build even more boring for both the user and the enemies.

 

The solution to this problem is skill ammo. What Unload needs is charges.

 

With charges, it's possible to control how much a skill like Unload can be used consecutively. This keeps Unload as a viable burst skill, without letting it be spammable over and over. The initiative cost could even be reduced depending on how many charges the skill can accumulate, allowing more varied skill combinations of the weapon, without letting anyone sit on a single skill.

 

I'd Start with 5 charges, 20s cooldown each charge. After that, if people keep falling into bad gameplay and sticking with Unload spam, it can be adjusted reducing the charges or increasing the charge cooldown.

 

And this does not apply only to Unload, but to other thief weapon skills that people tend to use over and over, creating boring gameplay.

[NuhDah.9812]

> @"MithranArkanere.8957" said:

> While anyone with some reflect, or retaliation can easily deal with a bad Unload spammer, the actual problem is that there's Unload spammers at all. Spamming Unload creates boring gameplay. It works too well, too often for little effort against less experienced players, and also makes less experinced palyers think it's a good an effective build, when it's just a boring gimmick.

>

> Balance should not be just about keeping skills from being to strong or too weak. It should also be about keeping gameplay fun and engaging.

>

> Because of that, changes like reducing the damage of Unload, or increasing its initiative cost would no do. Decrease damage, people just complains it's useless now. Increase the cost, people stop using the other skills and sticks even more with Unload, making the build even more boring for both the user and the enemies.

>

> The solution to this problem is skill ammo. What Unload needs is charges.

>

> With charges, it's possible to control how much a skill like Unload can be used consecutively. This keeps Unload as a viable burst skill, without letting it be spammable over and over. The initiative cost could even be reduced depending on how many charges the skill can accumulate, allowing more varied skill combinations of the weapon, without letting anyone sit on a single skill.

>

> I'd Start with 5 charges, 20s cooldown each charge. After that, if people keep falling into bad gameplay and sticking with Unload spam, it can be adjusted reducing the charges or increasing the charge cooldown.

>

> And this does not apply only to Unload, but to other thief weapon skills that people tend to use over and over, creating boring gameplay.

 

You do not take into consideration there is more than one way to mitigate unload dmg besides reflects. There are all sort of projectile hate walls, blocks, invulnerability, kiting out of range, stealth and, most importantly, interrupts in the game (yeap thief has virtually no way to access stability so interrupts are a thing). I'm confused why is unload such a big deal when there are other skills that do probably even more burst than this from further away and with less vulnerabilities and counter play.