Guild Wars 2

Right now Thief Pistols are the weakest weapons in the game. They have to be combined with a different weapon to derive a use from them as they are useless for DPS and their utility skills far too costly on their own.

Let’s break this out:
1 – Vital Shot: This skill takes about .8s to cast, has a .4 attack modifier and a 4s bleed at 900 range. Compare that to a nearly identical skill, Warriors Bleed Shot with takes .96 to cast, has a full attack modifier, 6s bleed and 1200 range. So for barely over a tenth of a second faster, Vital Shot is less than half the damage, has 2/3rds the bleed time all at 2/3rds the range. At this point Vital Shot is so weak it’s a joke – if it were to be buffed to match the warrior skill, the tenth of a second faster shot would make up for the shorter attack range, but homogenizing the game is not what I want to see. Having the animation cut in half would be the preferred method. It would still do less physical DPS than Warrior, but the ability to stack the bleeds higher would make up for it and make this the small quick hits it was meant to be.

1 – Stealth Attack: Fine as is

2 – Body Shot: This move currently is not worth its initiative cost to DPS gain vs just using the initiative to cast another DPS move on any weapon combination. In party situations where you have high DPS without people that already have innate vulns, it can come to a very situational use, but generally then it’s still iffy. Several things can be done – it can be made to hit harder so it becomes a DPS move along with the vuln. It can be made to cost 2 init instead as that will start making it mathematically viable. It can have a cripple or weakness added. Just some kind of minor tweak is needed.

3 – Dual Skill: As this depends on the weapon set:
- D/P – Shadow Shot: This received a recent buff to become unblockable on the blind. Along with being a mobility move, this is a nice move, no further adjustment needed.
- P/D – Shadow Strike: This is a reverse weaker version of Shadow Shot that costs the same as it’s the same ultimate damage without the blind. Wouldn’t mind seeing a minor bump on the attack, but as is still worth it.
- S/P – Pistol Whip: Under the old haste, this move could be comboed so it can be completely unloaded during the stun hit and was pretty OP. The damage was nerfed accordingly, but then haste was nerfed. So now that it can’t be fully delivered and is less DPS than Sword auto, it’s use is questionable due to the root. As it can be avoided relatively easy, having the backend damage back to make the gamble worth it would be nice.
- P/P – Unload: The crux of this and the main reason for this post. If you dare to pick P/P, you give up all of your mobility moves and stealth moves, for what? A .3 coefficient channel move that takes 2 seconds to cast. The damage is weak, but as you have ZERO damage options with P/P, you have no choice but to eat the 5 init cost for a mediocre move to be able to use the weapon combo. The DPS of auto attacks of most weapons (other than thief pistols of course) outdo the DPS of unload. Personally there are two directions that I would like to see this move take: Either double the damage or halve the cast time and lower the cost to 4 initiative.

The first option of doubling damage would make it where a thief can afford to pull away from a 25/30 build to work on initiative gain for high sustained ranged DPS making them a solid choice in dungeons and help break the current trio. It also would mean that a tank could no longer stand there and just heal through my unloads – nothing is more frustrating than being a FULL GLASS CANNON thief with full glass cannon traits, and not being able to do more damage than a single heal – so they would actually need to actively avoid the predictable move (projectile reflect, blocks, dodges, etc).

The second of halving the cast time turns the move into an unsustainable burst. It’s faster attack speed makes it a burst, but eats initiative at a rate that you can’t gain initiative fast enough to sustain the move. You can actually “unload”! This opens more tactics as it actually becomes useable in a venom cast and is more unpredictable (which coincidentally means you’re more like to eat your unload when someone reflects). I do think the damage is low enough it should cost 4 instead of 5, but balance would need to be looked at.

Between the two options, the first is better in PvE as sustained Boss DPS would be desired, and the move is simply too predictable in PvP. The Second option would be better in PvP and arguably more balanced due to the higher initiative cost to reach that DPS. No matter case, this move needs desperate love as there needs to be a reason to give up mobility and stealth on a minimum HP, meh defense, no buff character that relies on those very options… and becoming an actual glass cannon that can easily kill or be killed is where I would like it to see it go.

Continued:

4 – Headshot: A spammable interrupt is always nice, but this is expensive for nothing else. What I would like to see is a confuse added to this… because seriously, would you recover in a quarter second after being shot in the head? “Dazed and Confused” makes perfect sense, and would make it worth the cost, and would open the debuff a bit.

5 – Black Powder: Make this a targeted ability. This greatly opens the utility as it allows the field to be placed where the blind pulse triggers are actually on the enemy, or where party attacks can make the most use of it without placing yourself in danger. This helps S/P and P/P utility without giving any real boost to D/P (as self targeted stealth is what they’d use it for anyways). While still a bit painfully expensive for those that can only use it as a blind, it eeks that small edge that I think it needs.

Now I realize that my suggestions is a major boost to pistols, but for those that have played thief, realize that this (or something like this) is needed to fix pistols. Something like this would make P/P viable, bring completely ignored skills in use, and finally fix the auto-attack. Any love would be a help, and hopefully this will make it to a Dev to help point out that they need to be looked at.

[EDIT] – Updated suggestion for Black Powder

ANet doesn’t give a kitten about that, they want you to play S/D or D/P

Umm…. I’ve been hit by a 9k+ Unload before. That’s with about 1600 toughness. Soo….. I think something is working for pistol.

DeWolfe.2174:

Umm…. I’ve been hit by a 9k+ Unload before. That’s with about 1600 toughness. Soo….. I think something is working for pistol.

Umm, that’s 9k over a period of a few seconds. My warrior’s axe auto attack would do that in that amount of time. Or looking at Thief skills, the specs required to get a 9k unload would get a 9k backstab on that armor. Actually, you can name a class, and it could do more damage than that in the same or less time built the same way. And the only way to do that is a 25/30/x/x/x stats with every piece of equipment glass, and you still usually hit for less than 9k total after the full channel. It’s not utter worthless ignorable damage, it’s mediocre damage. It’s mediocre damage that takes over 2 seconds to cast, is horribly predictable so anyone with a brain cell will dodge/block/reflect it, so often they can outlast your initiative… which leaves you hitting for 1k per second with auto attack. Woo!

Eviscerate damage = burst. Killshot = burst. Backstab = burst. Mesmer shatters = burst. Etc, etc. Thief Pistol/Pistol has to pay out the nose to reach just the auto attack level of most weapons, as anything else on their weapon does nothing. How is that balance?

I think Anet just needs to decide what they want pistols to bring to a fight.

Daggers and Sword are pretty straight forward. With P/P you would assume it’s a DD set, as the heavy hitter is Unload. But, the stealth move is a quick stacking bleed ability. No one in their right mind is going to stack power and precision for a hard hitting Unload, and then use Sneak Attack as anything more than a filler. Even tho Thieves stealth abilities are supposed to be a big part of the profession.
It doesn’t make sense to me. To have a weapon set that screams DD, and then have a condition applying special ability.

Like I said. Anet needs to make up their mind. Make pistols condition based weapons with higher condition damage and duration on Vital Shot, or remove the bleeds from Vital Shot and Sneak Shot and up their direct damage.

For me, I hope it’s a made into a conditions play-style. Daggers and Sword are the DD weapons already. SB is the utility/AOE weapon. Pistols should be conditions.

(And if they decide to make pistols the condition weapon of choice, Unload should stack bleeds, like Sneak Attack, but the DD should be toned down.)

Thief doesn’t have many weapon options to begin with. Only 4 weapons, 1 of which are fairly weak unless in a combo with a different weapon (dual pistols fairly weak, as they offer no surviability without massive initiative expense).

TBh, thief should get the 1000 range base for their ranged. They are the only profession who doesn’t have a single ranged weapon which can consitently hit at 1000 range, and that’s huge in things like fotm and wvw. Range is vital, especially for squishy professions. The 2-5 skills are spammable to an extent so I don’t think they need much of a buff unless they cost a ton of initiative but the basic attack should be at par with other professions. Which includes the weak bleed the pistol basic attack does.

replicacloned.2809:

I think Anet just needs to decide what they want pistols to bring to a fight.

Daggers and Sword are pretty straight forward. With P/P you would assume it’s a DD set, as the heavy hitter is Unload. But, the stealth move is a quick stacking bleed ability. No one in their right mind is going to stack power and precision for a hard hitting Unload, and then use Sneak Attack as anything more than a filler. Even tho Thieves stealth abilities are supposed to be a big part of the profession.
It doesn’t make sense to me. To have a weapon set that screams DD, and then have a condition applying special ability.

Like I said. Anet needs to make up their mind. Make pistols condition based weapons with higher condition damage and duration on Vital Shot, or remove the bleeds from Vital Shot and Sneak Shot and up their direct damage.

For me, I hope it’s a made into a conditions play-style. Daggers and Sword are the DD weapons already. SB is the utility/AOE weapon. Pistols should be conditions.

(And if they decide to make pistols the condition weapon of choice, Unload should stack bleeds, like Sneak Attack, but the DD should be toned down.)

Shortbow already provides bleeds and poison – P has only bleed. With it’s low damage, I’ve always considered it the condition ranged weapon, and a DPS range weapon is needed. As for Pistols having bleed, a weapon containing a debuff is extremely common – that D/D has poison. Those bleeds actually tie nicely to the t3 DA minor of 10% against a target with conditions, though I’d be alright with that translating to damage instead as damage stacks infinitely and conditions do not in a party. The other reason I wouldn’t want it to be a condition set (despite the suggestion of adding a condition to P4) is that P/P is already a condition set on Engineers. The less copying, the better.

DeWolfe.2174:

Umm…. I’ve been hit by a 9k+ Unload before. That’s with about 1600 toughness. Soo….. I think something is working for pistol.

Anything that deals over 6k damage from a thief is considered overpowered by the community’s standards. I agree with OP, the Thief’s pistol shoots peas. The only way to get any damage done with a pistol is with high precision and hoping you land alot of crits.

@Zacchary – The painfully low base damage is exactly why a Thief HAS to build full power/crit to have a hope of killing something with these weapons. Even with mixed traits and non-DPS runes, my Warrior crits for 3k per shot on his rifle while my thief with glass cannon everything only hits 1k on his pistols per shot. They need to hit faster or harder. Maybe people in early level hot join sPVP think they’re ok against people that just eat repeated Unloads, but those same people would have died more quickly if I just went up and slapped them with a sword as I would have had real utility to go with better DPS just from auto-attack.

Pistols have been ignored in every update for Thief – and while I had hoped from the last SotG that they were looking at it from the comment regarding thief’s low base damage it has been missed yet again. I’m sure they realize pistols need work, but I’m hoping that some ways to look at them and pointing out that it is of concern will help make it hit this next update.

Drawing Guy.3701:

@Zacchary – The painfully low base damage is exactly why a Thief HAS to build full power/crit to have a hope of killing something with these weapons. Even with mixed traits and non-DPS runes, my Warrior crits for 3k per shot on his rifle while my thief with glass cannon everything only hits 1k on his pistols per shot. They need to hit faster or harder. Maybe people in early level hot join sPVP think they’re ok against people that just eat repeated Unloads, but those same people would have died more quickly if I just went up and slapped them with a sword as I would have had real utility to go with better DPS just from auto-attack.

Pistols have been ignored in every update for Thief – and while I had hoped from the last SotG that they were looking at it from the comment regarding thief’s low base damage it has been missed yet again. I’m sure they realize pistols need work, but I’m hoping that some ways to look at them and pointing out that it is of concern will help make it hit this next update.

May is bug fixing month from what I heard. :/

Dunno if any balance issues will be addressed unless it is game breaking or too strong. Seems like anything too weak gets ignored for several months cough ranger cough

Sadly I do realize that they said they’re concentrating on bug fixes – but they didn’t say there would be no balance changes.

There is one suggestion I read to Pistol #5 BP that would increase it’s utility without buffing D/P (and possibly even making it more difficult for them): Make BP targeted. Updating my OP to reflect.

In my opinion pistols need a lot of work-

Body Shot should just get a large damage buff or add more conditions i.e. Cripple or Immobilize would bring more control to the set.

Unload- There are several ways to improve the weapon, either buff the damage or make the skill unload and channel faster.
or
Leave the skill as it is, add a reverse lunge to the skill.
or
Make the skill two part, first part does the same damage and cost 4 ini and costs 1 more ini for a backwards roll/evade where you do a couple more shots while jumping back, however it remains for just 3s.

@jpnova – I’d rather see weakness added to Body Shot over cripple. The easiest counter to an unload is a dodge, and weakness helps stop that… but with little access to poison, it’s difficult to get with Pistols. Cripple is needed, however. There is a trait called “Ankle Shots”, but at this current time, it’s horribly weak having a 10s cooldown on the 3s cripple. RNG + long cooldown = fail. Personally I’d like to see this cooldown lowered to 5s, and I think this would help land it in more proper mobility control.

As for your other suggestions, my thoughts:
1) Yes, fits my suggestions too. I’m going double as I want pistols to be high risk high damage, but any increase is needed.

2) No. A reverse lunge works on SB as you’re constantly going in and out of melee range for Cluster Bombs. On Unload, you already are staying at arms length, so you’ll likely knock yourself out of range if not off a cliff. This would be a detriment to the move. Now if it knocked the target back, that would be nice. Though it can’t be a knockdown as that would be too OP.

3) This would be the movie dream of unloading during flips (as I’d want it controllable. Leaving it as just a backwards move would be just too much like Withdraw/RoI). To have it natively would affect its usability on the many dungeons that have narrow ledges, and to have it as a second activation would interrupt unload’s chainability… especially when you’re faced with those times where you don’t want to leap somewhere. However the cool factor and utility > usability issues this would cause, so I would gladly accept it. However balance may be of concern – it’s currently a slow channel. To have it cover that whole duration would be a bit overpowered. To have it cover only a small section would make the evade barely useable as it can’t be used as a reactionary move unless the evade is front-loaded. Making the move much quicker to keep the evade duration in check would work, but then the utility added would mean that the damage would need to be brought down (possibly 5 shots instead of 8 ).

TL;DR – the evade option would take a lot to balance, and would take a lot to code, so I don’t see it happening. Faster channel or harder hitting is pretty much all Unload needs IMO.