Guild Wars 2

First let me make clear THIS IS NOT A COMPLAINT THREAD!

Rather I want to ask literally what’s the point of the Pistol’s balance? The intention and “Proper” way to use them in PvE?

It seems everything it can do, my other weapons can do better. And EVERYTHING a pistol can do is completely outclassed by grenades! (Besides confusion..)

Some quick and dirty, lazy number crunching on the average damage I deal to level 80 Risen using my #1 attack:

Pistol: 300 + 160 dmg from 2s bleed(600-700 with Coated Bullets trait and the foe is aligned with another foe…)
Grenades (With 3x throw trait): 1800 + 3x vulnerability + 600 more range than pistol
Bombs: 1300 + 1 vulnerability
Flamethrower: 1400 + burn
Wrench: 917 + Vulnerability (1700 on third attack)

Now, I know this number crunching is very lazy, and I didn’t factor in many secondary effects. However, when I compare the 300 damage of Pistol to the 1000+ damage of grenades, I just don’t see Pistols as a DPS weapon.

So what am I doing wrong? Are pistols simply designed to be a weak-supportive type of weapon? Or am I using them the wrong way? Are there any particular traits to drastically improve my weapon damage?

The most DPS capability I can see if using Coated Bullets (Pistols pierce) + Poison Dart Volley, which should deal about 1900 damage in a line. However, isn’t the warrior’s similar Rifle ability about 3x as powerful as this? AND it has piercing as well?

Seriously, what’s the intention how to properly use the pistol? Or can we expect Explosive Shot to be buffed soon?

What kind of gear are you wearing? Because if you have gear that pumps your power but not your condition damage, then obviously pistols are going to underperform.

Pistols are indeed pretty weak.

Explosive shot needs to be brought up to 4s again.

My gear is Pow+Prec+Magic Find. So almost every strike I make is a critical, thus’ often activating traits like burning, bleed, vulnerability, etc…

However, regardless of condition damage, don’t grenades deal the same exact conditions with a larger base damage and AoE?

Can anyone possibly show me some more complex calculations showing off the true potential of pistols?

Kain Francois.4328:

My gear is Pow+Prec+Magic Find. So almost every strike I make is a critical, thus’ often activating traits like burning, bleed, vulnerability, etc…

However, regardless of condition damage, don’t grenades deal the same exact conditions with a larger base damage and AoE?

Not necessarily. For one, only two of the grenades provide condition damage, while four of the dual-pistol attacks do. For two, the grande abilities that do condition damage are on a higher cooldown than the pistol ones. For three, pistol’s 1 is both area of effect and has a bleed on its auto-attack. For four, it’s likely that grenades have higher base standard and condition damage to make up for the fact that they are all ground targets and thus it’s very easy to miss with them against moving targets.

I don’t doubt that, overall, the grenade kit does more damage, but I also don’t think it’s fair to compare the two if you’re using an inappropriate item build. If you’re going to use pistols, you ought to be stacking condition damage.

Your problem is that you’re using power/prec gear with the one weapon in the game that scales absolutely horribly with power. Pistols are for condition damage builds based around bleed stacking, prec/cond is the preferred stat pair for that. Power/prec is more rifle burst damage stats.

If you aren’t stacking condition damage, dual pistol is going to suck.
The big damage dealers on it are actually blow torch and confusion. Neither does significant damage if you aren’t stacking for it.

A big thing that takes it from “meh” to relatively strong is that its mostly AOE conditions. Confusion bounces, even poison will spread a little and blowtorch is a fairly big cone.

combination of both grenades being quite strong ( IF they hit) and pistols kinda weaker then supposed to… combine those 2 things and sadly the difference is quite a bit

People keep saying I should be using condition damage, but since I am properly traited, isn’t that pointless?

Grenades hit 3 times, keep in mind. So using Shrapnel Grenade, I stack a LONG duration of bleed on MULTIPLE targets THREE times! (Even more bleed if the bleed on crit trait activates!)

Not to mention that I also have a trait which burns on critical…Since grenades hit so many times, I am capable of stacking burn with no problem.

And while AoE poison deals no damage, it sets off a combo field to explode my sentry for AoE weakness. Pistol on the other hand is an inaccurate line of sight using the Coat Bullets for Poison.

The only condition pistol inflicts that grenades don’t have are confusion. But since confusion only works for 2 seconds, is it really worth it?

With the pistol’s short condition durations, can we be so sure that even with condition equipment, it could out damage the raw power and high duration conditions of grenades?

Engineers really need another mainhand option suited for non-condition builds.
I suggest another shield. So that you can have some dual wield shield action.

the burn on crit trait has a cooldown. You can only burn one target at a time. The bleed trait can hit aoe.
Pistols direct bleed, is only applied directly. the aoe hit doesn’t, although piercing will.

Direct damage 2 handers completely outclassing 1 handers is starting to convince me.
An exotic rifle has a max damage of 1205. An exotic pistol 1029.
They have the same attack speed.
so rifles will do 18% more damage just innately. Damage scales directly off weapon damage. 300 power is 18% stronger for a rifle then a pistol. Same with crit and crit damage.

Now grenades don’t use weapon damage, as they have a hidden kit damage value. 969 weapon damage.
But we still have power x crit x crit damage x weapon damage scaling, vs just flat +cond damage which scales with nothing.

Lets say I have 70% crit, and 200% crit damage. (+50% I think) crits doing 150% is base. not sure if addition crit damage gear is additive or mult.

Grenade 1. If I add 300 power
.163 scaling per hit. (weapon damage x .163 x power/916)
+51.9 damage per hit, without crit. 70% chance for 100% more damage is easy to math at 1.7. for +88 average damage per hit.
Total damage added for +300 power, per 3 hit volley. 264/s

Pistol 1. +300 condition.
Bleed scaling .05
15dps. 2s duration.

264 vs 15…

For reference,
300 power for p1.
.131 scaling, exotic pistol 1029 (1029x .131x 300/916)
44 damage/hit added. 74.8 with 70% crit at 100% damage.
Double hit 150 average dps increase.

Ready to keep going?
Condition damage does NOT gain from traits such as +10% rifle damage, or +5% damage vs bleeding targets, or +5% damage while not full endurance. only direct damage does.
Condition damage does NOT gain from vulnerability, only direct does.

*Grenades hit 3 times, keep in mind. *

Sure… IF they hit… but in pvp only idiots stand in areas and stand still while being attacked nowadays..

still grenades truly are better choice then pistol atm yeah :S

Kain Francois.4328:

People keep saying I should be using condition damage, but since I am properly traited, isn’t that pointless?

Honestly, It reads as if you do not want to use pistols and want to focus on grenades. Every time someone attempts to explain it to you or advise you, you argue against it. Appearing tomake having asked the question kid of moot.

If you have condition damage stacked to to the point that bleeds are hitting for 150, and trait for the pistol and conditions, you basically have 2- 4 stacks of bleeds up all the time with sigil of earth. that is 300-600 bleed damage going off. Whats that? Every second? That is not counting the poison or burns.

For the sake of data, I have +300 condition damage due to traits, plus the trait which increases condition damage 5% of my toughness (forgot its name..)

Kain Francois.4328:

People keep saying I should be using condition damage, but since I am properly traited, isn’t that pointless?

No.

First of all, traited conditions are a separate entity entirely. Throwing them into the mix just confuses things. For one thing, they stack with other sources of condition damage, so nothing really inherently makes ‘nades work better with them than pistols besides the number of hits, and therefore crit chance. Even that is questionable, however, because the vast majority of “proc” traits have cooldowns, even if they aren’t advertised in the trait.

From the standpoint of just raw numbers, ‘nades have exactly two attacks that inflict conditions: shrapnel (2) and poison (5). Pistol’s 4 (blowtorch) does more condition damage than those two abilities combined when used at point-blank range.

Now, if you’re in gear with power but no condition damage, your gear is benefiting ‘nades far more than it’s benefiting pistols, because ’nades do more direct damage (remember, only two ’nade attacks do condition damage normally.) Four out of five pistol attacks do condition damage, which means that pistols scale with condition damage far better than ’nades do.

Now, yes, ‘nades do more damage because they’re ground-target. But again, if you’re wearing power gear and not condition damage gear, you’re favoring one weapon or the other, and that’s not a fair comparison.

“The most DPS capability I can see if using Coated Bullets (Pistols pierce) + Poison Dart Volley, which should deal about 1900 damage in a line. However, isn’t the warrior’s similar Rifle ability about 3x as powerful as this? AND it has piercing as well?”

I looked into this statement.

Warrior volley is 10s cd.
5 hits
.96 skill coeff. It reads differently, listing aggregate value. It’ll read 2900.

Poison volley is
.655 skill coeff.
And it reads per hit. so will be like 213, when its 213×5 for 1065.

Additional variance will be pistols top of 1025, vs rifles top of 1205

So about 50% stronger if venom is not counted. Practice seems much higher due to stacking power. A rifle war running around with 2k+ power, while a pistol engi running around with like 1.2k power, and 1.2k cond.

Pistols are for asuras.

5+ confusions OP