Lumi.8713

Single weapon skills on thief are bad and basically unusable due to losing the stats from a second weapon so i came up with a trait idea to partially fix them Lone WolfGain increased stats and single weapon skills deal increased damage and condition damage while single wielding a weapon.Power: +100Precision: +100Ferocity: +100Condition Damage: +100Expertise: +100Damage increase: 5%Single weapon skills: Stab, Twisting Fangs, Repeater (None of these count for duel skills count for duel wield traits either obviously)Perhaps stat gains could be a bit lower, but I thought this was a decent stat gain as you'd lose some stats and you'd lose sigil compared to using 2 weapons, but gain some additional stats to compensate.

Cripple apllies not only from this trait. In teamfights and in PVE uptime much higher. In condi builds you have Caltrops, Uncatchable, Impaling Lotus, Dancing Dagger. Dagger Storm apllies Cripple too.Of course you can select other traits, but here i compare Ankle Shot vs New trait. And i think it will be very strange if the trait designed special for pistol will be worse than common one. Whats the point then to take new trait?I'm aware, but critical strikes traitline isn't used in condi builds if you care about damage output, you're also not really going to be using dancing dagger if you're using pistols either. That's why I didn't mention any of the condi related options. The new trait does feel a bit underwhelming but, compared to the old trait that is easily overshadowed by Practiced Tolerance, it's unique enough that it will have some use. The best case scenario to make the trait good for single and multitarget, and make it more useful to take would be something along the lines of"Deadly AimPistol and harpoon gun skills pierce/bounce up to 5 targets dealing 3% increase damage to the first target and 1% less damage (from base damage, so 3% is nulled after first hit) to each additional target.First Target: 3% IncreaseAdditional Targets: 1% decrease per target (cap 3%)Pistol range increase: 150"Pierce and bounce both have slight issues in some cases. Pierce would let you actually hit the target if enemies are body-blocking it, but fairs poorly with slopes in some cases. Bounce makes it easier to hit multiple enemies, but can be frustrating if enemies are in the path and your target is either far away or there are 2 enemies close together between you and your target. As a player I'm more so of the opinion that powerscaling needs to be reduced and damage increase (5% -> 3%, 10% -> 5%), stat increase (cut in half at least), and stat conversion traits (10% -> 7%, 7% -> 4%) toned down or replaced with more gameplay oriented traits. I personally feel that this would allow more focus on making traits feel unique. It would have the side effect of decreasing the dps difference between traitlines while also reducing some of the powercreep that has occured...ah, right, sorry. I got a bit distracted at the end.

I don't believe increasing the initiative on thief weapon skills to be the proper solution. It's not very fun to only be able to use 2-3 skills before you're out of initiative. I think in PvP and WvW initiative should be kept at the same value as PvE, however I believe the solution to preventing spammy combos is to give all thief weapon skills (aside from autoattack) a 1 or 2 second cooldown. This could be solely in combat to allow for some form of strategy and setup. This would allow for counterplay like placing aoes to make thieves take longer to traverse the map with shortbow 5 or placing them in combat before you get attacked to keep them from using 2 powerful skills in a row.

I felt like giving some feedback today. For pistol 5% seems like a lot. If you're only attacking one enemy it's not good. I think a better choice (keeping with the function of the trait) would be to have the first enemy hit take full damage and additional enemies take 5% less damage. This would make it useful for both single target and multiple targets. Ok so, stolen skills. Stolen skills aren't very good most of the time. They are random (within a set table per enemy) and some of them have long aftercast. I've had the idea for a long time to make base game stolen skills selectable through a dropdown box in F2 (this wouldn't apply to raids or strikes) that gets 1 charge when you use steal. This would eliminate the random aspect and allow people to create builds around certain stolen skills. That would create more impact already, but on top of that it would allow for more in-depth playing with selecting the best stolen skill for a fight. On a side note it would be nice for you to gain stolen skills even if the target absorbs the steal (invulnerable enemies)