Pistol Whip Daredevil.. maybe the most non-interactive build in the game

[Curennos.9307]

> @"KrHome.1920" said:

> > @"aelska.4609" said:

> > Gotta agree, this skill does too much, I don't know what they had in mind when designing a stun-evade-dps skill.

> Wrong question.

>

> You should ask what they had in mind when they designed daredevil, added instant reflexes to acrobatics and buffed sword 2 to ridiculous levels.

>

> Pistol whip is from a time when thief had 2 dodges, no auto-evasion trait and infiltrator strike had 600 range and immobilized for only 1 second.

>

> And I wouldn't call a 0.75s duration a stun in terms of a lockdown. It's more of an interrupt and you can still move out of a good part of the damage.

 

It still immobs for 1 second.

[KrHome.1920]

> @"Curennos.9307" said:

> > @"KrHome.1920" said:

> > > @"aelska.4609" said:

> > > Gotta agree, this skill does too much, I don't know what they had in mind when designing a stun-evade-dps skill.

> > Wrong question.

> >

> > You should ask what they had in mind when they designed daredevil, added instant reflexes to acrobatics and buffed sword 2 to ridiculous levels.

> >

> > Pistol whip is from a time when thief had 2 dodges, no auto-evasion trait and infiltrator strike had 600 range and immobilized for only 1 second.

> >

> > And I wouldn't call a 0.75s duration a stun in terms of a lockdown. It's more of an interrupt and you can still move out of a good part of the damage.

>

> It still immobs for 1 second.

True, is was split, unsplit and resplit... I missed the latest split.

 

Anyway, infiltrator strike is more of a problem than pistol whip could ever be.

[Kageseigi.2150]

> @"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:

> **My problem with the Pistol Whip build isn't necessarily 1v1s but rather when it is +ing against you in this DPS crept meta**, and in that case the hard CC off the Pistol Whip has become way too powerful of a shut down mechanic.

 

I don't get the logic in the Thief design. According to Anet's description of the Thief, it's supposed to be deadly in a 1v1 scenario.

 

Personally, I see it as more of an assassin... it should be extremely lethal if it gets the jump on a lone, unaware target. And yeah, it should be just as lethal if it "backstabs" an enemy that is already focused on one of the Thief's allies (+1)... as in the target is unaware of its presence. But it should not be so useful in team fights... or at least when it's in direct combat with multiple foes.

 

Unfortunately, all things considered, it's not that effective of an assassin... especially with all of the passive/instant defenses in the game. So instead of being able to focus on a single, sneaky, opening burst to get the upper hand, many Thief players have abandoned Stealth builds so they can have a decent shot at surviving a 1v1 on point in a direct duel. That's not an assassin class.

 

The problem with Pistol Whip (and other evading skills) is that it either avoids ALL damage or NONE... meaning it is even more useful to a Thief in a team fight (avoiding more damage) than it is in a 1v1. Some people want to remove the evades altogether. But that would kill the Thief dead... even in a 1v1. I think a better idea would be to make such evades mitigate 80-90% of damage. That would still be very strong defense in a 1v1, but the Thief would still be in terrible danger if multiple enemies were attacking.

 

Of course, I wouldn't be happy about that without a boost in lethality in return. Either increase auto-attack damage (making Sword/Pistol builds less reliant on Pistol Whip) or give the Thief some sort of "Opening Strike" buff. Something that makes the Thief's initial strike after being out of combat very pivotal to the oncoming fight. The buff would be reset every time the Thief exits combat, and it would only take effect if the Thief strikes first... it would be lost if the enemy strikes the Thief first and causes it to enter combat. If you don't want the Thief to be as effective in a +1 or team event, simply require the target to be out of combat also for the buff to take effect.

 

Either that or give the Thief some "duelist" buff that takes effect whenever only it and a single enemy are isolated from everyone else. As soon as an ally or another enemy gets within a certain distance, the Thief loses its buff, forcing it to fight as normal. I do believe the Deadeye design was on the right track with the concept of Mark (such as Iron Sight's 10% boost to damage to the Mark and 10% damage reduction from the Mark), but it takes effect no matter if it's a 1v1, 1v5, or 5v5. I would much prefer a modified Mark mechanic to be given to the Thief as a whole... one that would not replace Steal, and would apply only to 1v1 situations. Let Deadeye keep its ranged mechanics and even Malice, but the Thief in general could use more 1v1 effectiveness while not increasing its team fight potential... or even lessening its team fight sustain while gaining more 1v1 ability. It may take some creativity to achieve that, but the Thief is already the odd man out in this game.

 

This is coming from a PvP perspective, of course. Make such buffs PvP only for all I care. Conquest is the gametype where combat is focused on small control zones... that's where the Thief lacks the most. At least in WvW, there's no real constraint or imperative on how or when to fight... not that it can be balanced anyway with its imbalanced numbers. Neither is the Thief punished for weaving in and out of Stealth in WvW as it is in PvP.

[Lighter.5631]

I would play thief again if it has not turned to a one key spam monkey, special thanks to teleport return

[mortrialus.3062]

> @"Chaith.8256" said:

> > @"Arheundel.6451" said:

> > > @"Chaith.8256" said:

> > > Assume the class your playing can't instantly chase a thief back through his Infiltrator's Sword #2 placed on a ledge/behind an object.

> > >

> > > There's no meaningful interaction... Survive a 2 minute onslaught of whiffed Pistol Whips and still never get an adequate window to counterattack a Daredevil playing it safe.

> > >

> > > Suggestions:

> > > - Increase Pistol Whip cost from 5 to 8 initiative, landing Pistol Whip refunds 3 initiative.

> > > - Buff every other thief weapon. It's not fair or reasonable to request a playstyle be deleted, but for everyone's sanity, Pistol Whip should be the least rewarding option when compared with Dagger/Pistol, Sword/Dagger, or Staff specifically.

> > >

> > >

> >

> > How are your suggestions supposed to solve the issue?

> >

> > -You still can't chase the thief through infiltrator's return

> > -The stun is still there making the landing of PW as easy as ever

>

> Can't change infiltrators return without negatively affecting **sword/dagger, a more healthy and interactive spec.**

 

Barely.

 

Sword Dagger is pretty degenerate, and shares the same nearly limitless capacity to engage and disengage and that aspect is noxious on both SD and SP.

 

> @"Dave.6819" said:

> > @"Chaith.8256" said:

> > Assume the class your playing can't instantly chase a thief back through his Infiltrator's Sword #2 placed on a ledge/behind an object.

> >

> > There's no meaningful interaction... Survive a 2 minute onslaught of whiffed Pistol Whips and still never get an adequate window to counterattack a Daredevil playing it safe.

> >

> > Suggestions:

> > - Increase Pistol Whip cost from 5 to 8 initiative, landing Pistol Whip refunds 3 initiative.

> > - Buff every other thief weapon. It's not fair or reasonable to request a playstyle be deleted, but for everyone's sanity, Pistol Whip should be the least rewarding option when compared with Dagger/Pistol, Sword/Dagger, or Staff specifically.

> >

> >

>

> That's what you get when u constantly nerf thief.. they find the most dull builds to somehow cope with nerfs. I say bring back D/P meta and every1 will be happy. Until D/P is back there won't be any fun or skill required build out there. Unless oldschool D/D or S/D but we all know oldschool D/D will never come back. I personally quited gw2 until they bring D/P back. Rifle/Staff/SP/SD just aint fun at all. I won't even mention condi. That's obvious what i think about it.

 

Yeah, no. A big part of what is going on is the Daredevil rework super charged a number of Daredevil traits in ways that were not justified and pure power creep.

 

Take for example:

 

> Escapist's Absolution: This trait has been merged with Driven Fortitude and renamed Escapist's Fortitude. It is now an Adept-tier trait.

 

This change merged the trait that cleansed on evade, which is almost certainly the single strongest cleanse trait in the game, with the one that heals for 450 damage on evade. ICD only one second. Considering SP Daredevil can hit nearly 30 seconds of evade frames during the first 60 seconds of combat that is a massive increase on their capacity to survive both power damage and condition damage. If a thief is evading a skill every 4 seconds that's basically like they have an extra half a healing skill always ticking passively in the back ground. That adds up to a significant amount of healing, about 105 HPS, potentially even higher. Considering most healing skills ultimately come out to 220-300 HPS you can see why thieves and daredevils in particular are suddenly a lot harder to kill even when you land hits on them.

 

Next Weakening Strikes was made into a baseline Minor, as well as being reworked into having significantly higher weakness uptime because rather than procing on Crit which you can't really guarantee it now procs on next hit after you evade. The uptime on weakness is straight up massive on daredevil now, and it also gives a blanket -10% incoming damage on top of the fumble debut and Anet added an additional 7% damage modifier on top of it.

 

Finally as much as thief players were all sour grapes when it came to Swipe losing 600 range, the unblockable is a huge buff in the grand scheme of things. First most good thieves will specifically engage in combat with you and try to bait out dodges and then steal. So the amount of steals coming at you from 600 range is already probably a minority of them.

 

Second, one of the deadliest aspects of this is Unblockable Swipe combined with trickery's Slight of Hand Daze. This gives thieves unblockable, instant cast, wind up free, interrupt. This interrupt can cancel your block stances. Things such as Warrior Shield Block, Mesmer Illusionary Counter and Echo of Memory, Revenant's Warding Rift, Ranger's Counterattack. The second a daredevil sees these they can instantly cancel them, often completely throttling the player's defensive rotation entirely.

 

Previously this sort of play required Basilisk Venom, which itself has a tell both the animation where it is applied and the buff that appears on the thief's status bar indicating "You cannot block the upcoming attacks."

 

And while Impacting Distraction hasn't changed, it combos very very well with unblockable daze on swipe. And they can afford to get both this trait and Condition Cleanse on evade, which was normally a difficult choice.

 

There's a reason why since the Daredevil rework we've seen Condition SD run rampant in ranked, followed by Staff/Staff running rampant in ranked and especially ATs, and now Pistol Whip. And no, it's not because all the "nonstop nerfs".

[chiri.9087]

ΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞ

[Highlie.7641]

Our "Glorious" community losing to a meme spec,

We warned you Arena net, don't give out innate defensives or the player base will turn to shit.

 

Now there dieing to an Acro pw thief, pretty hilarious considering I can stand directly in pw with 11k life and have yet to die to this joke spec. (and it is a joke spec)

Prediction and reacting are things of the past now. this game has been effectively turned into: let's all bang our heads on the keyboard until we achieve victory....

 

 

 

 

 

[Psycoprophet.8107]

> @"Highlie.7641" said:

> Our "Glorious" community losing to a meme spec,

> We warned you Arena net, don't give out innate defensives or the player base will turn to kitten.

>

> Now there dieing to an Acro pw thief, pretty hilarious considering I can stand directly in pw with 11k life and have yet to die to this joke spec. (and it is a joke spec)

> Prediction and reacting are things of the past now. this game has been effectively turned into: let's all bang our heads on the keyboard until we achieve victory....

>

>

>

>

>

 

I find it funny that a fb as one example can I vs 3 on a node and stall them for a good long while all while farting out boons and good hitting aoe's and the community rally's against sshit like pw thief instead lmao literal no hope for this game or its community

[Chaith.8256]

> @"Highlie.7641" said:

> Our "Glorious" community losing to a meme spec,

> We warned you Arena net, don't give out innate defensives or the player base will turn to kitten.

>

> Now there dieing to an Acro pw thief, pretty hilarious considering I can stand directly in pw with 11k life and have yet to die to this joke spec. (and it is a joke spec)

> Prediction and reacting are things of the past now. this game has been effectively turned into: let's all bang our heads on the keyboard until we achieve victory....

 

Making a lot of assumptions.

 

- Are Pistol Whip-dash Daredevils winning and others losing?

- Are Pistol Whip-dash Daredevils killing people?

 

I dunno about that, Chief. The point of this thread is that regardless of whether a Pistol Whip Daredevil is killing or winning, it isn't affected by 90% of your player input due to the classes' current ratio of iFrames to sustain, being almost fully sided on iFrames. Such a spec should not be a comparable option to D/P Daredevil or any spec that requires brainpower and timing.

 

Edit: Purely about the intra-thief class balance. Not between other professions, just Thief needs to sort itself out to have a semblance of proper risk/reward for its builds.

[Crab Fear.1624]

> @"mortrialus.3062" said:

> > @"Chaith.8256" said:

> > > @"Arheundel.6451" said:

> > > > @"Chaith.8256" said:

> > > > Assume the class your playing can't instantly chase a thief back through his Infiltrator's Sword #2 placed on a ledge/behind an object.

> > > >

> > > > There's no meaningful interaction... Survive a 2 minute onslaught of whiffed Pistol Whips and still never get an adequate window to counterattack a Daredevil playing it safe.

> > > >

> > > > Suggestions:

> > > > - Increase Pistol Whip cost from 5 to 8 initiative, landing Pistol Whip refunds 3 initiative.

> > > > - Buff every other thief weapon. It's not fair or reasonable to request a playstyle be deleted, but for everyone's sanity, Pistol Whip should be the least rewarding option when compared with Dagger/Pistol, Sword/Dagger, or Staff specifically.

> > > >

> > > >

> > >

> > > How are your suggestions supposed to solve the issue?

> > >

> > > -You still can't chase the thief through infiltrator's return

> > > -The stun is still there making the landing of PW as easy as ever

> >

> > Can't change infiltrators return without negatively affecting **sword/dagger, a more healthy and interactive spec.**

>

> Barely.

>

> Sword Dagger is pretty degenerate, and shares the same nearly limitless capacity to engage and disengage and that aspect is noxious on both SD and SP.

>

> > @"Dave.6819" said:

> > > @"Chaith.8256" said:

> > > Assume the class your playing can't instantly chase a thief back through his Infiltrator's Sword #2 placed on a ledge/behind an object.

> > >

> > > There's no meaningful interaction... Survive a 2 minute onslaught of whiffed Pistol Whips and still never get an adequate window to counterattack a Daredevil playing it safe.

> > >

> > > Suggestions:

> > > - Increase Pistol Whip cost from 5 to 8 initiative, landing Pistol Whip refunds 3 initiative.

> > > - Buff every other thief weapon. It's not fair or reasonable to request a playstyle be deleted, but for everyone's sanity, Pistol Whip should be the least rewarding option when compared with Dagger/Pistol, Sword/Dagger, or Staff specifically.

> > >

> > >

> >

> > That's what you get when u constantly nerf thief.. they find the most dull builds to somehow cope with nerfs. I say bring back D/P meta and every1 will be happy. Until D/P is back there won't be any fun or skill required build out there. Unless oldschool D/D or S/D but we all know oldschool D/D will never come back. I personally quited gw2 until they bring D/P back. Rifle/Staff/SP/SD just aint fun at all. I won't even mention condi. That's obvious what i think about it.

>

> Yeah, no. A big part of what is going on is the Daredevil rework super charged a number of Daredevil traits in ways that were not justified and pure power creep.

>

> Take for example:

>

> > Escapist's Absolution: This trait has been merged with Driven Fortitude and renamed Escapist's Fortitude. It is now an Adept-tier trait.

>

> This change merged the trait that cleansed on evade, which is almost certainly the single strongest cleanse trait in the game, with the one that heals for 450 damage on evade. ICD only one second. Considering SP Daredevil can hit nearly 30 seconds of evade frames during the first 60 seconds of combat that is a massive increase on their capacity to survive both power damage and condition damage. If a thief is evading a skill every 4 seconds that's basically like they have an extra half a healing skill always ticking passively in the back ground. That adds up to a significant amount of healing, about 105 HPS, potentially even higher. Considering most healing skills ultimately come out to 220-300 HPS you can see why thieves and daredevils in particular are suddenly a lot harder to kill even when you land hits on them.

>

> Next Weakening Strikes was made into a baseline Minor, as well as being reworked into having significantly higher weakness uptime because rather than procing on Crit which you can't really guarantee it now procs on next hit after you evade. The uptime on weakness is straight up massive on daredevil now, and it also gives a blanket -10% incoming damage on top of the fumble debut and Anet added an additional 7% damage modifier on top of it.

>

> Finally as much as thief players were all sour grapes when it came to Swipe losing 600 range, the unblockable is a huge buff in the grand scheme of things. First most good thieves will specifically engage in combat with you and try to bait out dodges and then steal. So the amount of steals coming at you from 600 range is already probably a minority of them.

>

> Second, one of the deadliest aspects of this is Unblockable Swipe combined with trickery's Slight of Hand Daze. This gives thieves unblockable, instant cast, wind up free, interrupt. This interrupt can cancel your block stances. Things such as Warrior Shield Block, Mesmer Illusionary Counter and Echo of Memory, Revenant's Warding Rift, Ranger's Counterattack. The second a daredevil sees these they can instantly cancel them, often completely throttling the player's defensive rotation entirely.

>

> Previously this sort of play required Basilisk Venom, which itself has a tell both the animation where it is applied and the buff that appears on the thief's status bar indicating "You cannot block the upcoming attacks."

>

> And while Impacting Distraction hasn't changed, it combos very very well with unblockable daze on swipe. And they can afford to get both this trait and Condition Cleanse on evade, which was normally a difficult choice.

>

> There's a reason why since the Daredevil rework we've seen Condition SD run rampant in ranked, followed by Staff/Staff running rampant in ranked and especially ATs, and now Pistol Whip. And no, it's not because all the "nonstop nerfs".

 

NO U.

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

Herald, weaver and FB are too strong.

 

Forums: "Nerf Teef!!"

[Odik.4587]

> @"Psycoprophet.8107" said:

> > @"Highlie.7641" said:

> > Our "Glorious" community losing to a meme spec,

> > We warned you Arena net, don't give out innate defensives or the player base will turn to kitten.

> >

> > Now there dieing to an Acro pw thief, pretty hilarious considering I can stand directly in pw with 11k life and have yet to die to this joke spec. (and it is a joke spec)

> > Prediction and reacting are things of the past now. this game has been effectively turned into: let's all bang our heads on the keyboard until we achieve victory....

> >

> >

> >

> >

> >

>

> I find it funny that a fb as one example can I vs 3 on a node and stall them for a good long while all while farting out boons and good hitting aoe's and the community rally's against sshit like pw thief instead lmao literal no hope for this game or its community

 

Thats only speak how bad you are and your team, the only reason you cant kill a firebrand 1x3 :joy:

And thats pretty much explain why you crying about thief being weak 24/7. We need more your posts "no hope in this game and hoomans! everyone are stoopid but im smorc!"

[la penombre.2415]

> @"Dave.6819" said:

> I say bring back D/P meta and every1 will be happy. Until D/P is back there won't be any fun or skill required build out there. Unless oldschool D/D or S/D but we all know oldschool D/D will never come back. I personally quited gw2 until they bring D/P back.

 

Without especially focusing this quote, I don't know why people think that D/P build is one of the thief build that need the most skill, considering that :

- 3rd D/P skill is one of the easiest 900 range gap closer ability of the thief, which, in additive, deal pretty good damages and blind the target (for only 4 initiative). To defend against an opponent, it is easier to blind him, forcing him to intentionnaly miss an attack to actually hit the thief with an important ability, than the thief intentionally dodge and cancel his DPS cycle to do so.

- Even if the combo to go in stealth need at least 9 initiative (that can be slightly recovered during the combo, and when invisible, but still, the D/P thief needn't to waste that much initiative outside this combo), the thief don't need to interract with anybody to go in stealth, and, in that way, wherever the thief is, it is a very good reliable way to go in stealth, for an undetermined duration from their ennemies (it is actually the only weapons set that allow him to go in stealth whenever he wants, when Cloak and dagger need to successfully hit a target at very close range, considering all the defensive, block, evade, blindness abilities present in the game).

 

Overall, the D/P build needn't any relatable good positionning to actually works, compared to other thiefs builds (it is similar with sword, but it is the intented strenght of the weapon : being mobile and strike at multiple places)

 

About Pistol whip it-self, as some of people said there, it have obvious windows of vulnerability and the CC isn't that long. Plus, the casting time is slighty longer compared to what we are used to see.

If I should complain about something in this game, Pistol whip is clearly one of the last things I am going to think about.

[Shao.7236]

@"Chaith.8256" As long as they reward people with one of the biggest evade in the game for missing an attack, it's not gonna change.

 

I don't think anyone will ever understand the influence of being untouchable for 1.25 seconds so often with no risk or meaningful cost, benefiting if anything dares whizzing past that moment of no telling and least effort ever used while already being above every other professions in the basic function of avoiding damage altogether wasn't enough.