Guild Wars 2

Just wanted to drop my suggestion for making this trait, and the pistol a bit better.

I like coated bullets for PvE… the way the bullet has a small aoe bleed makes for a great mob tagging weapon.

Really though it is still a pretty weak weapon overall… even with the pierce.

My suggestion is to make a small change to Pistol 1 skill to make Explosives Traits III and VII work with the pistol.

The pistol now does X dmg and Y bleed with a Radius of 120. What if Anet changed pistol 1 to do X dmg… with a split dmg number with 50% being direct dmg and 50% being explosive dmg with the pistol radius that causes 1 bleed stack as it does now.

At that point they could allow Explosives IX to boost the 50% explosion dmg on the auto attack… and for Explosives III to increase the radius of the explosion dmg from 120 to 180.

I doubt a change like that would be overpowered or even really have people trading in nades in PvE… still I think it could add some flavor and a reason to auto attack with the pistol more often.

Surprisingly, a lot of people do not know that coated bullets allows the #1 to do double damage.

I like the trait don’t get me wrong. I often use it… I would just love for it to synergize better. Most people don’t often consider putting points in the power line and using the weapon that is more aimed at a condi build. I think it would be cool if a combo of traits there could make going 4 and perhaps even 6 (with out nades) into power.

I think we have the best class to hybrid on… I would just like the pistol to have an option that helps that along just a little bit more.

WEXXES.2378:

Surprisingly, a lot of people do not know that coated bullets allows the #1 to do double damage.

Explosive Shot explodes every time it hits a target and again at the end of its flight. This can strike individual targets multiple times per shot, but does not cause extra bleeding.

No extra bleeding so kinda meh if you’re condition specced.

Coated bullets might be the only place to buff pistol main hand, without actually buffin the typical condi-engineer.

Pistol main hand does need a buff, it’s damage is rather low, even if it has decent utility.
But we can’t be buffing the pvp condi-engineer by giving them something they would incorporate in their build if it gets too good… Of course it would mean a sacrifice on other traits.

I like pistol shield a lot, but I can’t kill anything with just that, ever.
Coated bullets is more of a tagging mechanism than a real damage ability I’m afraid. It simply doesn’t do much by itself.
If you use a kit with that, you build around the kit, not around the pistol or even the shield.

Coated bullets you take if you already took everything else, it’s never a priority, it’s more that last trait when you have only minor stuff to fill in.

I agree Kimbald, right now it is pretty much something to take if you want to do things different or pve without wrecking your wrist. lol

As wexess says it is possible to light things up at 900 range or against another obeject and get the 2 hit on the main dmg now. Its nice and it rewards some good positioning, which is one of the reasons I enjoy using it.

What I would propose would split the dmg in 2… allowing for a possible 4 hits of direct dmg… which wouldn’t do to much to the overall dmg. I guess a slighly higher chance to proc sigils and traits, however most of those have an internal cool down anyway so there shouldn’t be much in the way of unforeseen dmg multiplications.

However by allowing the 2 explosives traits to effect half the dmg you allow for a slighly bigger hit box for possible dmg bonuses.

Right now its a high skill trait that you can if your really smart or a bit lucky get a very nice dmg boost out of… still its hardly the highest dmg option in our wheel house.

As someone who likes to splay with builds every day I play I just love the idea of giving the “condi” weapon a solid Direct dmg synergy.

Husanak.3769:

My suggestion is to make a small change to Pistol 1 skill to make Explosives Traits III and VII work with the pistol.

The pistol now does X dmg and Y bleed with a Radius of 120. What if Anet changed pistol 1 to do X dmg… with a split dmg number with 50% being direct dmg and 50% being explosive dmg with the pistol radius that causes 1 bleed stack as it does now.

At that point they could allow Explosives IX to boost the 50% explosion dmg on the auto attack… and for Explosives III to increase the radius of the explosion dmg from 120 to 180.

Howdy folks! Dancing monkery here, #5286th engi in NA and worlds Last rank 80! With a 100% Win ratio against Vee Wee in Combat !!!

It will never ever happen. Nothing makes that more evident then the recent name change to pistol skill number one. Personally, All I think this skill needs to improce, is a specific change for each shot.
Fragmentation shot – now does its bleeds off of the AoE fragmentation
Poison dart volley – stabilizes the shot so they all go directly at the target.
Static shot – Increases the number of bounces the shot does, from 4 to 5
Blow torch – widens the cone of the blast.
Glue shot – increases the pulse from 4 to 5.

I’m not all that impressed with Coated Bullet.

It only affects 2 out of 5 pistol abilities, and explosive shot is really very meager. Those traitpoints are better spend in my opinion.

Terrahero.9358:

I’m not all that impressed with Coated Bullet.

It only affects 2 out of 5 pistol abilities, and explosive shot is really very meager. Those traitpoints are better spend in my opinion.

IMO, coated bullets is decent for multi-target AoE direct damage, the problems are: 1) it competes with grenade kit in this regard, and grenade kit generally does superior damage, when it hits; 2) pistols are typically used with condition damage builds, and coated bullets doesn’t do much for condition damage.

That said, I do think the trait is underestimated, and I have used it to decent effect in WvW for splash damage with a direct damage build (generally 600-1k damage on crits on many targets). I think the primary use of coated bullets (CB) is the auto-attack, and looking at it this way, I break down the damage from autoattack into two components, the bleed damage (single target) and the explosive damage (direct damage, multi-target). In this way, the damage dealt is as follows:

without CB:
primary target = B+D
secondary targets (each) = D

with CB:
primary target = B+nD
secondary targets (each, hit by pierced shot) = B+nD
secondary targets (each, not hit by pierced shot) = nD

-B = bleed damage; D = direct damage (from explosion); n = number of targets hit by pierced shot
-This assumes that all targets are clustered together and are all hit by the fragment shot radius. This will certainly not always be the case, but often in PvE or WvW, it is.

So in this scenario (all targets clustered together), we can see that, with coated bullets, direct damage per target scales with the number of targets hit/pierced, whereas bleed damage is capped at one application per pierced target. In this regard, I argue that coated bullets is best used with a direct damage build for AoE damage.

Terrahero.9358:

I’m not all that impressed with Coated Bullet.

It only affects 2 out of 5 pistol abilities, and explosive shot is really very meager. Those traitpoints are better spend in my opinion.

There is no longer any such skill as “Explosive Shot”. They changed it to “Fragmentation Shot”.

Coated Bullets completely melts trash if you aim rather than using a target.
5 target cap doesn’t do much good if there’s 7 individual AoE explosions on each shot =)

CB is gold in some very specific scenarious, mostly in pve, on Orr temple events against the mindless zombies that come at you all lined up… Well, at the very least it looks good with the damage numbers concealing themselves :P

The suggested effect will not come to pass though. Explosive Shot was renamed to Fragmentation Shot for the sole purpose of not making anyone think that any explosive trait would effect the skill. It was the cheap and unimaginative way out, and Anet took it, so there is that.

Husanak.3769:

I like coated bullets for PvE… the way the bullet has a small aoe bleed makes for a great mob tagging weapon.

The tooltip never used to make it clear, but just FYI, fragmentation shot does not cause an AoE bleed. It will cause bleeding on the target it hits, and only do direct damage to those in the AoE.

Coated bullets allows you to score more bleeds so long as the bullet pierces and directly hits multiple targets, but the AoE damage from the ability will only cause direct damage, not bleeds (they can be inflicted with bleeding from things like on-crit procs though).

I’ve always felt that it should cause an AoE bleed, but the danger with this, especially in conjunction with coated bullets, is that it can allow the engineer to get much higher bleeds stacks on targets. Right now, one of the only things keeping their condition pressure from being completely overpowered is the reliance on incendiary powder and the fact that they cannot stack massive bleeds easily.

Back in the beta days, you could perform elixir U bursts that could cause 20+ stacks of bleeding on a target with the auto-attack alone, which I believe was the main reason they removed the AoE bleeds.

However, this does mean the pistol has a relatively weak auto-attack as a result.

I don’t think they’ll ever make the AoE radius any bigger considering the ability is not entirely slow (compared to something like fireball).

Also, coated bullets only really benefits fragmentation shot. Poison dart volley has that asinine pseudo-conical attack pattern that makes the piercing properties much less effective unless you’re attacking a stack of mobs at point blank. But if you’re doing PvE stuff you’ll just use bombs or grenades for AoE damage anyways.

I guess that is part of my frustration with the pistol. Pve wise when you do get a large group it is pretty powerful now. For an auto attack its one of the best. The lower the number of targets though and the skill just becomes so bad. Against a single target with Nades I can stack 9-12 bleeds within 2 throws. Not to mention that often times the same target has 20-25 stacks of vuln on them if you take Firarms V.

That is powerful vs single targets as well as groups… it just makes the pistol seem so meh. Really with the very short bleed duration on the pistol… I can’t see it being over powered if a larger explosion radius would give it a bit more direct dmg.

Really thinking about it I would say they should likely change it around completely… making the pierce simply do dmg… and have the shatter add the bleed stack. Could we stack bleeds fast sure… but the pistol bleed duration would keep it from becoming OP imo. I mean compare it to nades where Explosives 2 adds 15+s bleeds… meaning that when you land 3 or 4 good nade hits bleed stacks are sticking around. With the pistol auto attack even if someone decked out in Krait runes ect I don’t see the pistol stacks lasting more then 3 or 4 ticks of dmg at most.

Imo they should increase the pistol autoattack bleed to 4 secs base, I think it is the worst bleeding autoattack from game, if you compare it to other weapons for example:
-Vital Shot. 4s base bleed (thief pistol autoattack)
-Blood Curse/Rending Curse. 5s base bleed (necro scepter autoattack 1st and 2nd chain)
-Bleeding Shot. 6s base bleed (warrior rifle autoattack)
-Winds of Chaos. 7s base bleed (mesmer staff autoattack when it procs bleed)
-Crossfire. 3s base bleed (ranger shortbow autoattack when you meet the requisites)

I know those skills have different cast times and some are 2 handed weapons, and that the engineer can use many weapons kits that can deal conditions like grenades,bombs,elixir gun,etc. But I think they should be able to stack a decent amount of bleeds with pistol alone.