Guild Wars 2

The upcoming change preview for Pistol Whip was listed as this

Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.

Initially I agreed that this was a needed change and a step in the right direction for buffing pistol whip. However, I recently have been playing more sword pistol and have found that the after cast duration following the stun, while somewhat clunky at first, is my primary source of real-time positioning. Basically, I did not realize how much pistol whip relies on being able to stun and reliably take a few steps to better position the followup flurry. With that said, I am beginning to worry that this change will ultimately be a nerf to the play style of sword pistol. Yes it will buff the flat spammability of pistol whip, it will nerf the skillful aspect of landing the entire flurry. Furthermore, I feel this will further worse the “Root” aspect that people so common complain is the worst feature of pistol whip. (All that said, I am emphasizing this for really all fields of game play, but it has the most implications arguably in spvp).

While I still agree that pistol whip will likely need some form of buff to make it more viable to the general community, I do not feel this will work out very well. Just an idea, Let me know what you all think about this. Mind you I understand that a few steps may not seem like much of anything, but I ensure you that a few steps could be crucial to make this viable.

TL;DR
The after cast reduction purposed will effectively nerf pistol whip because the after cast allows for alot of the set up that is needed to make pistol whip viable damage, especially in pvp. Something else, or NO change at all would be much better in my opinion.

Thanks