Guild Wars 2

Explosive shot ( 1 on pistol) is way too weak imho: i have strong condition damage build and it heats for 120 damage + 2 sec bleed= 320 damage , it crits arround 200 damage, even if you use only <1> ability u can have maybe 4-5 stacks at the most on golem, but in matters of Spvp , when u need to dodge ,CC , e.t.c you maintain maybe 2-3 stacks. So whats the point of this ability if even in heavy condition damage build it doesnt do any damage, as a condition toon i keep up 2-3 stacks ……. needs to be buffed. Lets check other classes for condition damage: warrior has 7 sec of bleed with 600 damage on< 1>rifle without any condition damage ,just default, so 600+ 70×7=1100 damage and can be kept up to 12 stacks…..\

Ranger can keep max( 25) stacks, thief is same…i can say about other classes but its all the same , my Question :Why the class ,that can use only 2 weapons have it so weak compare to another classes?

Yeah but other than the thief those bleeds are only single target, right? We also have a few bleed traits…not sure about those other professions. Look at coated bullets and…wow!

Eviator.9746:

Yeah but other than the thief those bleeds are only single target, right? We also have a few bleed traits…not sure about those other professions. Look at coated bullets and…wow!

The 2s bleed is single target.

And traiting it to pierce only affects 2 abilities, 1 and 2.

A warrior can trait his rifle, which has a single target 6s bleed, to pierce and it affects 5 abilities, and it isn’t a grandmaster trait, AND it also reduces cooldowns by 20%.

Gooby pls…

Lyuben.2613:

Eviator.9746:

Yeah but other than the thief those bleeds are only single target, right? We also have a few bleed traits…not sure about those other professions. Look at coated bullets and…wow!

The 2s bleed is single target.

And traiting it to pierce only affects 2 abilities, 1 and 2.

A warrior can trait his rifle, which has a single target 6s bleed, to pierce and it affects 5 abilities, and it isn’t a grandmaster trait, AND it also reduces cooldowns by 20%.

Gooby pls…

Yep, I see you’re right about the 2s bleed. Other targets do get a very short bleed on the explosion, but not the full 2s.

What does Gooby pls mean?

Eviator.9746:

Lyuben.2613:

Eviator.9746:

Yeah but other than the thief those bleeds are only single target, right? We also have a few bleed traits…not sure about those other professions. Look at coated bullets and…wow!

The 2s bleed is single target.

And traiting it to pierce only affects 2 abilities, 1 and 2.

A warrior can trait his rifle, which has a single target 6s bleed, to pierce and it affects 5 abilities, and it isn’t a grandmaster trait, AND it also reduces cooldowns by 20%.

Gooby pls…

Yep, I see you’re right about the 2s bleed. Other targets do get a very short bleed on the explosion, but not the full 2s.

What does Gooby pls mean?

What do you mean ‘short bleed’, they get nothing? test it out in the mists, go hit those clumped up golems and see for yourself. They never get bleeds, save for procs from sharpshooter sometimes.

Here is the plan:

Go to mists.
Take off all clothes apart from a single pistol- no sigils
Put 30 points in explosives- no traits allocated though (for 30% longer conditions)
Hit a golem in a crowd.
Quickly swap to the golem next to him.

Eviator.9746:

Yeah but other than the thief those bleeds are only single target, right? We also have a few bleed traits…not sure about those other professions. Look at coated bullets and…wow!

The problem with traits that prolong the duration of bleed is comes from a bleed itself,
Example : warrior’s bleed 7 sec , war has 50% bleed duration from 1 trait so its 11 sec +30 % from traits + 50% rom runes so total is 16 sec( if u take everything wich no one would take.. just theorycrafting) and with attack each second u can and crits u can have up to 20 stacks of bleed just from spamming <1>
On engineer you have 2 sec bleed ,so 30 % from explosives and 50 % from runes so its 80 % bleed duration so even if u will take EVERYTHING to increase the duration, literaly everything u can u will have 3.25 sec duration, so basicly 3 sec
3sec compare to 16 secits 5 times longer and damagewise: 3 × 100(100 is as example )= 300, and on warrior 16 × 100= 1600

Lyuben.2613:

What do you mean ‘short bleed’, they get nothing? test it out in the mists, go hit those clumped up golems and see for yourself. They never get bleeds, save for procs from sharpshooter sometimes.

Here is the plan:

Go to mists.
Take off all clothes apart from a single pistol- no sigils
Put 30 points in explosives- no traits allocated though (for 30% longer conditions)
Hit a golem in a crowd.
Quickly swap to the golem next to him.

Yep, must have been sharpshooter. I guess what the OP is saying, and you seem to agree, is that a pistol-based bleed condition build is not viable for engineers?

Eviator.9746:

Lyuben.2613:

What do you mean ‘short bleed’, they get nothing? test it out in the mists, go hit those clumped up golems and see for yourself. They never get bleeds, save for procs from sharpshooter sometimes.

Here is the plan:

Go to mists.
Take off all clothes apart from a single pistol- no sigils
Put 30 points in explosives- no traits allocated though (for 30% longer conditions)
Hit a golem in a crowd.
Quickly swap to the golem next to him.

Yep, must have been sharpshooter. I guess what the OP is saying, and you seem to agree, is that a pistol-based bleed condition build is not viable for engineers?

Don’t know if its not viable, its certainly the weakest of all the bleed stackers.

I prefer rifle anyway so I don’t know what to say.

Unfortunately, there is no reason for an engineer to use his Pistol Main Hand abilities. Grenades beat pistols completely on every aspect! (Except MINOR confusion which is out-damaged by grenade’s 1-attack.)

I said this before in a similar thread. Explosive Shot IS a kitten ability. At lv80, in cond/prec gear, i get less then 700dmg out of it with a crit. (<500dmg for the hit, and 2x 80bleed ticks)

I am not including traits or sigils because lets face it, these apply to ALL your abilities, and dont make Explosive Shot any better.

Now, i switch to a rifle. Mind you its the same prec/cond gear, and i am rocking almost 900 crits. And i dont need a trait for it to pierce. Ofcourse both pale in comparison to other professions, but thats a different subject entirely.

If the Bleed was 5 seconds, it would sport out to be a <500dmg crit but with 5×80 ticks of Bleed is another 400dmg. Now its almost a 900 hit. Thats more like it!
I have no idea what numbers Arenanet used when they nerfed Explosive shot, severely, back in the Beta.
But i cant get any decent hit out of it even if i’d go full on glasscannon.

tl;dr
Explosive Shot deals very poor damage. Buff please!

They need to buff it back up. It got railed around BWE3 time and hasn’t recovered.

Buff the bleed duration back to 4s. Done, fixed.

Remember the Magnetic Inversion bug back in BWE2 (I think)? That was also the same BWE where rifle got a small buff. I don’t think the “bug” was accidental. It encouraged players to try out different builds and specs. Could be the same thing here. Perhaps they think many people got it in their head that pistol condition build was the only sPvP viable engineer build, and they temporarily nerfed the pistol to encourage people to experiment. One can only hope.

My understanding (take that for what its worth…) is that rifles pierce automatically, pistols have to be traited. Pistols have the ability to have a shield go with them so inherently they are more of a defensive build anyways.

If rifle’s pierce automatically… doesn’t that make up for the straight damage difference? Not to mention you can add stacks every time you fire the pistol, where as the rifle bleed has a 10 sec CD (traits withstanding of course). I guess I don’t see the complaint point… of course pistols (1) ability isn’t as strong as the rifle’s, but the benefits you get from the off hand (whether just stats from the second pistol, or shield bonus) theoretically makes up for it does it not?

It use to be stronger, then carebears moaned about it and a-net nerfed it under the pressure.

Yeah, well, Engineer was THE condition class in bwe: lots of easy applicable conditions, aoe bleed, etc. You wanted condition, call an Engi.
Then rifle got buffed (cause it was weak compared to condition pistol builds), and pistol got nerfed, cause yeah it was a lot of bleeds, and ppl complained about condition damage.

Now a necro can put like 10 stacks of bleed+snare+poison+weaken on an entire group.
Thief Death Blossom spec will put 20+ sec stacks of bleed, 3 by 3.
I got a 30 sec poison today in hot join, still wonder where it came from.

And I’ve got a 2sec bleed on my pistol.
Neat.

That’s true, it need a bit more damage and at least 3 sec bleed duration.

Remember: is you trait the pierce, it will actually consider everyone hit by the pierce as a primary target, meaning it will apply the full bleed and cause additional explosions which will, again, cause even more aoe damage. And the piercing poison darts also get considerably stronger.

Sure, only two skills are affected by it, but they gain quite a lot.

Also don’t forget, that by using pistol, we are the only class besides the mesmer, that can reliably apply confusion. And we get free aoe blind.

I think the pistol does great consistent damage. It doesn’t have any burst, but then again, the engineer as a whole is missing some proper burst options.

Andazeus.1928:

Remember: is you trait the pierce, it will actually consider everyone hit by the pierce as a primary target, meaning it will apply the full bleed and cause additional explosions which will, again, cause even more aoe damage. And the piercing poison darts also get considerably stronger.

Sure, only two skills are affected by it, but they gain quite a lot.

Also don’t forget, that by using pistol, we are the only class besides the mesmer, that can reliably apply confusion. And we get free aoe blind.

I think the pistol does great consistent damage. It doesn’t have any burst, but then again, the engineer as a whole is missing some proper burst options.

That’s fine and all but remember:

Engineer- 2s single target bleed, traited to cause 2 skills to pierce with grandmaster trait
Warrior- 6s single target bleed, traited to cause 5 skills to pierce, and 5 skills to have a 20% shorter cooldown with a master trait

Its simply out of line.

Lyuben.2613:

That’s fine and all but remember:

Engineer- 2s single target bleed, traited to cause 2 skills to pierce with grandmaster trait
Warrior- 6s single target bleed, traited to cause 5 skills to pierce, and 5 skills to have a 20% shorter cooldown with a master trait

Its simply out of line.

I’m not sure if you can just compare it like that. It’s not just about the number of skills, that are affected, but also by how much these skills are affected.
I’m not too confident on my warrior knowledge, so I won’t comment on these, but for another example:

explosive shot gets exponentially stronger through all the secondary explosions caused by piercing. The rifle auto attack has piercing by default, yet it still sucks, because it has no useful secondary effects.

Just comparing by number of affected skills doesn’t always work out.

Let me ask this.

Is explosive shot’s aoe not appling its bleed aoe with coated bullets a bug?
And if so, would you consider it weak if it did properly?

If its only “weak” because of a bug, then /bug it. Its not weak, its just not working properly.

Traited. it can apply 2s burn aoe on crit, 5s bleed aoe on crit, vulnerability on crit.
It multi-hits do aoe explosion on pierce. Hitting each target 2-3 times direct, and having a chance to apply those conditions each of those times.
Direct hits apply an additional 2s bleed of course. (vul on crit is probably not ideal though)

Well, condition engineer rely more on having perma burning rather than bleed, with flamethrower toolbelt skill it’s really easy to keep long duration burn on target (and engi got easy access to all 3 damaging conditions).

I use a pistol and shield, mainly for the shield. The shield can counter Range and melee classes, and really powerful against a thief with a block that stuns, a knock back, projectile reflect, interrupt. the pistol on average i can stack bleeds up to about 6-7, while using elixer U easily get it to 9. I will happily sacrifice the extra condition and damage from rifle and grenades for more defense.

Casia.4281:

Let me ask this.

Is explosive shot’s aoe not appling its bleed aoe with coated bullets a bug?
And if so, would you consider it weak if it did properly?

If its only “weak” because of a bug, then /bug it. Its not weak, its just not working properly.

Traited. it can apply 2s burn aoe on crit, 5s bleed aoe on crit, vulnerability on crit.
It multi-hits do aoe explosion on pierce. Hitting each target 2-3 times direct, and having a chance to apply those conditions each of those times.
Direct hits apply an additional 2s bleed of course. (vul on crit is probably not ideal though)

No, it’s not a bug. The skill was changed in Beta so that the bullet applies a bleed, not the explosion. Tooltip was not updated though.

And no, it can’t apply burn aoe on crit, Incendiary Powder has an icd of 2s. Same thing for Sigil of Earth.

No, as mentionned many times in similar posts, each bullet hit doesn’t explode, you get only one explosion at the end of range. At most you’ll hit targets twice, if they’re very, very, close to each other and at max range.
You can check that for yourself.

So the only thing you can expect from Coated bullet is some extra bleed/vulnerability from Firearms traits, and the extra 300 aoe damage.

A little weak imo from a third tier trait that works only on 2 of the pistol skills.

For more fun compare it to the thief pistol 1 as well, it also completely blows explosive shot away.

I’d personally would like some extra base damage and not bleed, to make a hybrid damage/power with pistol+shield somewhat viable :p

Vuh.1328:

I’d personally would like some extra base damage and not bleed, to make a hybrid damage/power with pistol+shield somewhat viable :p

They already buffed it massively during the betas.

I think its the condition damage that needs help now.

Prelude.3817:

No, it’s not a bug. The skill was changed in Beta so that the bullet applies a bleed, not the explosion. Tooltip was not updated though.

And no, it can’t apply burn aoe on crit, Incendiary Powder has an icd of 2s. Same thing for Sigil of Earth.

No, as mentionned many times in similar posts, each bullet hit doesn’t explode, you get only one explosion at the end of range. At most you’ll hit targets twice, if they’re very, very, close to each other and at max range.
You can check that for yourself.

So the only thing you can expect from Coated bullet is some extra bleed/vulnerability from Firearms traits, and the extra 300 aoe damage.

A little weak imo from a third tier trait that works only on 2 of the pistol skills.

hmm. ok. tested the aoe. and yes. it seems it only on proc burn one at a time.
Fire arm traits do proc aoe. The bleed and the vul.

Explosion procing on only final max range has no be remotely my experience. See screenshot. Every direct hit, procs explosion.
Also, adds a bit more then 300 damage don’t you think?

This is ONE shot. Clearly hitting a dummy behind me with explosion. point blank. While I am targeting the farthest one. dummy to the right, is not hit by a direct shot at all, gets hit twice.

Pistol condition builds are viable and very strong (with or without coated bullets) it’s just the focus is shifted away from bleeds. The Engineer gets access to every single damaging condition in the game on one weapon set, this inevitably means our bleeds can’t be as strong as other classes.

That being said, the pistol auto attack is, in my opinion, very weak and after blowing my other four pistol skills I generally swap to a kit.

Lyuben.2613:

Vuh.1328:

I’d personally would like some extra base damage and not bleed, to make a hybrid damage/power with pistol+shield somewhat viable :p

They already buffed it massively during the betas.

You seem to be confusing the term buff with the term nerf. It was nerfed in the betas not buffed.

Bargaw.4832:

Well, condition engineer rely more on having perma burning rather than bleed, with flamethrower toolbelt skill it’s really easy to keep long duration burn on target (and engi got easy access to all 3 damaging conditions).

I think its the condition damage that needs help now.[/quote]

Your making assumption now, with intention to pigeon hole a class, This is not a wise stance to take. We have a lot more conditions then just burn. Bleeds stack with intensity, thus can be much faster damage the burns.

Explosion procing on only final max range has no be remotely my experience. See screenshot. Every direct hit, procs explosion.
Also, adds a bit more then 300 damage don’t you think?

I stand corrected, you are right. I guess my dummies weren’t close enough when I tested it.

But you sir, have a lot of power to get such numbers.
Too much power for a pistol condition build.
Best I can do with Rampager’s amulet (the best mix of precision, condition damage and power), is 300 crit on the same dummies.

Oh I see you are rank 1. You probably didn’t change your amulet, did you?
Cause the problem with the pistol AA is also its efficiency in sPvP:

You will never get tight packs of enemies like in the dummy training field, nicely aligned for you to get the perfect explosion setup.
You may not be able to take the Coated bullet trait in the first place, there’s much more important to have.
You will not have a power amulet with a pistol equiped.
Your ennemies will have between 10 and 30k hp. How many explosions will you need to take them down?
You will experience ennemies taking you down with only their own auto attack.
That’s called being “#1 shot”.

You can experience that from yourself.

coglin.1496:

Lyuben.2613:

Vuh.1328:

I’d personally would like some extra base damage and not bleed, to make a hybrid damage/power with pistol+shield somewhat viable :p

They already buffed it massively during the betas.

You seem to be confusing the term buff with the term nerf. It was nerfed in the betas not buffed.

Bargaw.4832:

Well, condition engineer rely more on having perma burning rather than bleed, with flamethrower toolbelt skill it’s really easy to keep long duration burn on target (and engi got easy access to all 3 damaging conditions).

I think its the condition damage that needs help now.

Your making assumption now, with intention to pigeon hole a class, This is not a wise stance to take. We have a lot more conditions then just burn. Bleeds stack with intensity, thus can be much faster damage the burns. [/quote]

No, I’m not.

During the early betas, the direct damage portion was tickle worthy.

Nowadays, its not exactly that bad. It got significantly buffed during one stage. I believe it was when it was a 4s bleed, but no longer AoE.

Prelude.3817:

Explosion procing on only final max range has no be remotely my experience. See screenshot. Every direct hit, procs explosion.
Also, adds a bit more then 300 damage don’t you think?

I stand corrected, you are right. I guess my dummies weren’t close enough when I tested it.

But you sir, have a lot of power to get such numbers.
Too much power for a pistol condition build.
Best I can do with Rampager’s amulet (the best mix of precision, condition damage and power), is 300 crit on the same dummies.

Oh I see you are rank 1. You probably didn’t change your amulet, did you?
Cause the problem with the pistol AA is also its efficiency in sPvP:

You will never get tight packs of enemies like in the dummy training field, nicely aligned for you to get the perfect explosion setup.
You may not be able to take the Coated bullet trait in the first place, there’s much more important to have.
You will not have a power amulet with a pistol equiped.
Your ennemies will have between 10 and 30k hp. How many explosions will you need to take them down?
You will experience ennemies taking you down with only their own auto attack.
That’s called being “#1 shot”.

You can experience that from yourself.

yeah, spend my time in WvW. HotM is mostly for testing builds. I don’t remember what I had equipped at the time. Just cared about max crit%. I was testing a full power/crit grenade previously I think possibly.
Let me assure you. Tight packed enemies happens ALL the time. Illusions, turrets, pets. Standing on capture points. Standing together for combo fields, healing, etc.
What happens when someone tries to revive a target? They stand right on top of them.
And this is spvp.

WvW. flame rams, oil, choke points, capture points, arrow carts, ballista. Nothing BUT tight packed enemies. (quaggan/hylack packs)

Pve, again tight packed often. Guardians even have an aoe pull that makes pve runs just lawltastic.

Looking at the pvp gear. I would probably go rampages neck. high prec, moderate cond, and power/vit low.
Then rabid jewel.

Armor.. doylak vit/toughness. lyssa. Definitely prefer the stay alive here. some of the +might durations to add into H.G.H.

Armor.. doylak vit/toughness. lyssa. Definitely prefer the stay alive here. some of the +might durations to add into H.G.H.Sigils, air. its op, even without stacking power.
Maybe agony x2? dunno. never really put them to the test well.

Bargraw.. Engineers relying on perma burning instead of bleed? … Even with full burning runes/traits and all.. Your bleeds will still do more overall dmg and your burning will surely not be perma since even duration stacked and traited you wont be able to keep it up that long (i do give the fact it has quite a duration then BUT.. 1 condition removal and say bye bye to ur dmg), while bleeding is being reapplied every shot.

Let me assure you. Tight packed enemies happens ALL the time. Illusions, turrets, pets. Standing on capture points. Standing together for combo fields, healing, etc.
What happens when someone tries to revive a target? They stand right on top of them.
And this is spvp.
WvW. flame rams, oil, choke points, capture points, arrow carts, ballista. Nothing BUT tight packed enemies. (quaggan/hylack packs)
Pve, again tight packed often. Guardians even have an aoe pull that makes pve runs just lawltastic.

Yeah, that’s why you were testing GRENADES for that, not a pewpew weak AA with the explosion radius of a hit box.

And come on! enemies reviving? You really wanna make me believe you’re gonna keep them from reviving with Explosive shot? Seriously.

And sorry to be the l2p guy here, but you just can’t take advices from a guy that posted a screenshot showing clearly he has never stepped a foot in sPvP.
And Hot-join IS NOT Structured PvP.

Warmage Timeraider.5861:

Bargraw.. Engineers relying on perma burning instead of bleed? … Even with full burning runes/traits and all.. Your bleeds will still do more overall dmg and your burning will surely not be perma since even duration stacked and traited you wont be able to keep it up that long (i do give the fact it has quite a duration then BUT.. 1 condition removal and say bye bye to ur dmg), while bleeding is being reapplied every shot.

Agreed, cause you have no easy way to apply long burns except for 1 long cooldown (Incendiary ammo, 60sec cd), or melee attacks (pistol Blowtorch, Fire bomb, Rocket Kick) which fail miserably with just the movement of the enemy.

Meanwhile almost every other condition class will easily, quickly apply multiple durable stacks of bleeds and other conditions, wether it is from max range (necros, rangers), passively (through Mesmer illusions, and again, Ranger pets), or while evading attacks (thief Death Blossom, pistol stealth skill).

A funny as playing Inspector Gadget can be, Engineer has no efficient way to keep the pressure with conditions, except for its AA. And it’s weak.

Actually it is a really nice benefit. In the BWEs before it got buggy, when you used coated bullets, you got an explosion splash effect for every player in your line of fire. I find it very good for AoE damage actually

And before you claim “l2P” and pretend to be a a PvP guru, perhaps you should join PvP discussions. Anyone with any knowledge or skill as an engineer that I see, raves how coated bullets, for this vary reason are spectacular.

Also I see several posters stating that you cannot AoE bleeds with explosive shot, but you absolutely can do so. With splash crits, all of your sigils as well as “on crit” damage traits take an AoE effect.

I think we’re talking more about the bleed inherent with explosive shot though, before other effects.

Never pretented to be a pvp guru, just stating facts.
Arguing of the efficiency of Coated bullets in sPvP with someone with no apparent experience in the matter is pointless.

There’s no class specific pvp discussion unfortunatly, pvp and pve skills being the same, any skill discussion must be brought here.

As far as I know, coated bullets is not popular at all in sPvP. Never saw him once in builds used by fellow Engineers or sPvP streamers.

But as a weapon skill designed to apply conditions, not direct damage, you surely will all agree Coated bullet or not, Explosive shot condition application is weak.

Even for direct damage as far as I can compare with a piercing rifle Hip Shot, with a power/crit build, or a simple grenade spam.

With splash crits, all of your sigils as well as “on crit” damage traits take an AoE effect.

No they don’t, as mentionned before, they have internal cooldowns and can occur only once over a few seconds.

Are you sure the “on crit” traits (NOT sigils) are on cooldown? I’m fairly sure my Flamethrower manages to stack vulnerability and bleed fairly easily during crit chains thanks to sharpshooter and precise sights, which wouldn’t happen so easily if there was indeed a cooldown on them. Granted this is in PvE, so it might be different in PvP. This is of course separate from whether explosive bullets cause AoE statuses on crit.

coglin.1496:

Also I see several posters stating that you cannot AoE bleeds with explosive shot, but you absolutely can do so. With splash crits, all of your sigils as well as “on crit” damage traits take an AoE effect.

1. sigils share cooldown, this means 2 sigils with internal cooldown wont work together.
2. due to internal cooldown sigils will affect only one target.

the only effect that will proc on the AOE on regular basis are firearms on crit proc traits and sigils without internal cooldown (and from my knowledge there arent many without internal cooldown)

The bleed could be longer and the explosion radius and direct damage higher. That would be a start and fairly simple to implement.

Warmage Timeraider.5861:

Bargraw.. Engineers relying on perma burning instead of bleed? … Even with full burning runes/traits and all.. Your bleeds will still do more overall dmg and your burning will surely not be perma since even duration stacked and traited you wont be able to keep it up that long (i do give the fact it has quite a duration then BUT.. 1 condition removal and say bye bye to ur dmg), while bleeding is being reapplied every shot.

It takes 5 bleeds to match the d/s of a burn in scaling. The base scaling on bleed vs burning is closer to 8 bleeds, if you had no +cond gear. without any secondary factors, such as +duration. Effectively, you need 6-7 bleeds at +1000 cond damage, to match burning.
Burning then is more dps 99% of the time, since you can’t really stack that many bleeds, that quickly.

Psaakyrn.5794:

Are you sure the “on crit” traits (NOT sigils) are on cooldown? I’m fairly sure my Flamethrower manages to stack vulnerability and bleed fairly easily during crit chains thanks to sharpshooter and precise sights, which wouldn’t happen so easily if there was indeed a cooldown on them. Granted this is in PvE, so it might be different in PvP. This is of course separate from whether explosive bullets cause AoE statuses on crit.

The firearms traits work.
Sharpshooter. 5 point trait. 30% chance to cause bleeding for 3s. This is applied aoe on explosive shot.

Precise sights: 50% chance to cause vul on crit. This is applied aoe on explosive shot.

Target the maimed. 5% increased damage vs bleeding targets. Cond damage is not buffed by this. only direct damage.

explosives traits:
Incendiary powder. 33% chance to cause a 2s burn on crit. This will proc on any target hit by the aoe explosion. BUT only once. you can hit 10 targets, and explode hitting each 3 times. But out of those 30 hits, only 1 burn will proc.

Explosive Shot total bleed condition dmg = 0.1000 dmg/(condition dmg stat)

Condition dmg does not scale well with any pistol ability.

CptCosmic.3156:

1. sigils share cooldown, this means 2 sigils with internal cooldown wont work together.
2. due to internal cooldown sigils will affect only one target.

the only effect that will proc on the AOE on regular basis are firearms on crit proc traits and sigils without internal cooldown (and from my knowledge there arent many without internal cooldown)

This is simply not accurate. If you have two identical sigils they share a cool down,but sigils in general do not share cool downs. I have sigil of earth on my pistol and fire on my. Fire sigil is AoE, it clearly states it in the tool tip. So I am unclear how you claim they are all single target.

Why cant Anet explain how sigils work. IF i have a earth and fire on my pistols.. will they both proc, do they have the same cooldown? how does this work?