Guild Wars 2

This is one of those traits that I feel has been hindering pistol engineers for a long time now. Back when explosive shot had a four second bleed, this trait was used along with pistol to make a zerg killer, wiping them out with relative ease. Of course people were still learning to play back then but whats been done whats been done and explosive shot got drastically reduced to a 2 second bleed. That nerf really hurt those that do not take coated bullets, as it makes auto attacking with this skill near useless.
In so I am propose a buff to explosive shot, return it back to four seconds but give coated bullets a hinder, where you lose 2 seconds of bleed on ex. shot. Of course I could have waited till next week to see if something is done about the auto attack but I still wanted to throw this idea out there.

I disagree. Coated bullets was not OP with a 4s bleed in my opinion. Pericularly since the AoE explosion did not trigger the bleed.

Warrior MH sword (sever artery) is AoE and has a 8s bleed, and appearently it is not seen as OP.

I think that would successfully make Coated Bullets a far worse trait than it currently is. I didn’t think that was possible, lol.

How about Coated Bullets causes pistol shots to pierce, and increases the base condition duration on pistol abilities by 1 second.

BOOM (I’m so punny, didn’t even mean to do that), the Pistolier builds are back. 3s Explosive Shot, base, 3s Poison Darts, base, 3-7s Blowtorch, base, 2s Glue Shot, base.

^My favorite part about that idea is that Glue Shot and Explosive Shot would actually not be 100% forgettable.

coglin.1867:

I disagree. Coated bullets was not OP with a 4s bleed in my opinion. Pericularly since the AoE explosion did not trigger the bleed.

Warrior MH sword (sever artery) is AoE and has a 8s bleed, and appearently it is not seen as OP.

I agree now that we see it, its not really op, but thats not the way anet saw it back then (Or even now probably).

How about we remove Coated Bullets as a trait, make pistols pierce by default and instead create a trait that makes pistol´s explosions actually an explosion that works with traits like shrapnel etc?

Cero.5132:

How about we remove Coated Bullets as a trait, make pistols pierce by default and instead create a trait that makes pistol´s explosions actually an explosion that works with traits like shrapnel etc?

Also a good idea. That way Firearms Engineers don’t have to take a really bad trait in the Explosives Adept in order to get to Incendiary Powder.

Cero.5132:

How about we remove Coated Bullets as a trait, make pistols pierce by default and instead create a trait that makes pistol´s explosions actually an explosion that works with traits like shrapnel etc?

That works too, as long as something changes with the trait

That would give it vulnerability procs, 15% chance to proc a 12s bleed, a larger explosion radius, and all in an AoE. That is way over the top.

coglin.1867:

That would give it vulnerability procs, 15% chance to proc a 12s bleed, a larger explosion radius, and all in an AoE. That is way over the top.

You got a point there, but…
what if the trait was grandmaster? I think that would for once be a gm trait worth taking.

I know this is completely counter intuitive for a Pistol/Pistol build but I wish there was options to make a viable power based build/condition with all three weapon sets considering how we have such a limited amount. As well as such a large requirement to take a Kit in order to be a functional sPvP professions. I just wish we had more freedom and feel this could be done with traits like Modified Ammunition that could give a Large boost to power based damage but perhaps remove the rifle portion of the trait. As well as adding traits that would give Rifle more access to conditions for those that want it.

Like: Blunderbuss adds 5 Stacks of Confusion at minimum distance with “hallucinogenic Rounds” and “Barbed Wire nets”: Net shot now adds 2 stacks of bleeding per second. Ect..

I would just love to see/fight the strange builds, and creative techniques people would invent if they had more freedom.

coglin.1867:

That would give it vulnerability procs, 15% chance to proc a 12s bleed, a larger explosion radius, and all in an AoE. That is way over the top.

The extra bleed procs, larger explosion radius and the vulnerability procs you are talking about are all in the explosives tree. It’s not like you get all that stuff for free just for taking coated bullets, which is already a deep trait investment into firearms. That means you’d be down 50 trait points as a base to get all of that.

Though I don’t see it as all that useful anyway, since if you were specced that far in you would be using nades, not your pistol.

The skill is called explosive shot though, shouldn’t it be an actual explosive, or at least the name changed?

The considered a 4s bleed OP and nerfed it to death. So I have a tough time buying the argument that it should be okay for an auto attack to do all of that simply because of the trait cost. Particularly since you will already see lot of 30/30/x/x/x builds coming.

Heck, I already run a 30/30/x/x/10 build with my 100% condition duration build.

As far as your last question, we really shouldn’t base our presumptions of a skill based on its name alone, that is getting a little extreme.

I guess I’m an extremist for thinking that explosives should explode.

Am I wrong in saying that the 1 skill on the grenade and bomb kits is better than the autoattack on pistols (with coated pistols or without) in most situations and still would be if it was affected by explosive traits as described above?

Yeah I used to play piercing pistol condi build back in the day. It was pretty nice, I never thought it was overpowered, I felt it was quite balanced. Even if they buffed it back up to say a 3 second bleed, I wouldn’t mind. I really miss playing that build, I lost so much dps in that change.

icewyrm.5038:

I guess I’m an extremist for thinking that explosives should explode.

Are you suggesting “explosive Shot” doesn’t explode? Reads like it to me, but sir, I can assure you, it does.

Is Explosive Shot weaker then Bomb or Grenade? Absolutely. I do not feel it should be, but I agree with you it is much weaker. Would they still be stronger if we had a 4s bleed with the explosion in an AoE on the skill? As I run a 30/30/0/0/10, 100% condition duration build, hat would give me 200ish AoE direct damage with 1,010 AoE condition damage before any trait, sigil, or runes proc, in just Dire gear. So that would be 1210ish AoE on MH pistol AA. 550ish AoE on bomb AA, and Grenade AA would be around 475.

As of now In Dire gear i do 670ish with pistol, bomb does 50ish and grenade does 475ish, mostly because bomb and grenade auto attack before traits are purely direct damage skills.

I’m not suggesting anything. Explosive shot applies AoE damage, but it isn’t an explosive and does not benefit from explosive traits as already discussed.

For tooltip accuracy, it should perhaps be called “AoE shot with fake explosive effect” instead, or perhaps “fancy firework shot”.