Guild Wars 2

Seeing the pistol was bugged slightly (cd reduction etc.).
Is there still hope for pistol piercing? Will it ever be baseline?

Pistol piercing needs to come back. Would love to see it baseline.

This is the one effect I miss the most from all of earlier Engineer balance. If piercing 5 targets is to much, just make it pierce once or twise. Write Pierce: X in the tooltip as a new template for pierce skills.

I could definitely get on board with this. I understand the need to continue encouraging Hot sales, but sacrifice the other power weapon. Make pistols viable. I would vote a trait or two in scrapper that has pistol ammo piercing, or what not. P/p condi scrapper is so so close to being a thing. Give it the nudge anet.

There is no reason at all to put a trait in the Scrapper line for pistol piercing. That would be horrendous. It just needs to be made baseline, or merged with one of the pistol traits in Firearms. The only effect it will have is making the pistol more capable of sustaining condi pressure against multiple targets that are grouped together. So mostly looking at QoL improvements for PvE with that. And it would only effect pistol 1 and 2, so not really a big deal just, again, a QoL improvement.

Single target vs. Aoe. Qol. Not make it a risk/reward factor. No dude, no. I don’t want engi to be easier for you to alt it. I want engi to require skill and class knowledge. So that those who play engi, really, can give up sustain for dmg because they are familiar with how to stay alive.

Since our rifle is already piercing with it’s AA baseline, I would rather see the bleeds from pistol 1 made aoe. If I remember correctly the bleeding was aoe once, but because of the piercing trait they had to change it. This trait doesn’t exist anymore, so there is no reason that the bleeding isn’t spread to all targets hit by the explosion…. sry I meant “fragmentation”

Shaogin.2679:

It just needs to be made baseline, or merged with one of the pistol traits in Firearms. The only effect it will have is making the pistol more capable of sustaining condi pressure against multiple targets that are grouped together. So mostly looking at QoL improvements for PvE with that. And it would only effect pistol 1 and 2, so not really a big deal just, again, a QoL improvement.

I would be on board with seeing it folded into Heavy Armor Exploit, just for the opportunity in having a reason to pick something other than Chemical Rounds. With the recent CDR to (most) pistol skills this would provide a contender against what is currently the only viable adept trait for a pistol build. However, this does nothing to fix Pistol 5 (Glue Shot), which has been effectively useless since release; a product of poor immob duration and lack of reward (allies/foes) for successfully landing the attack. I would like to see a glue puddle that now pulses Immob AND Cripple as cover to better secure targets when it has been skillfully positioned and utilized.

I’m fine with Fragmentation Shot not piercing. Heck, I’d actually prefer if they kept it non-piercing and instead just increased the AoE radius a bit and let the bleed spread to other targets. It differentiates it more from Rifle, which is nice, and makes more sense conceptually since a shot that was weak enough to fragment (or explode) wouldn’t be able to pierce a target at the same time.

Dart Volley, on the other hand, absolutely needs to pierce. Its already got a pointless spread on its shots which makes it a bit unreliable on distant targets, it shouldn’t also be hindered by the fact that if you’re fighting multiple enemies half your shots will be blocked by other enemies as well. And the extra AoE / cone damage from piercing shots would be very nice to make the skill more appealing.

basz.6129:

Single target vs. Aoe. Qol. Not make it a risk/reward factor. No dude, no. I don’t want engi to be easier for you to alt it. I want engi to require skill and class knowledge. So that those who play engi, really, can give up sustain for dmg because they are familiar with how to stay alive.

I’ve mained Engi since launch buddy. Don’t confuse AoE with piercing, not the same. Also, I play core Engi, not Scrapper like youself, and don’t want this nice QoL change that once belonged to core Engineers to be locked behind the Scrapper traitline just because some random guy thinks it’ll introduce more risk/reward.

Afaik it bugged with the auto attack, since every pierced bullet caused the aoe wich was ridiculously op in some places.

Altough I’d like to see some buffs for pistol #1 and #2. Real buffs, not stuff like +10% power damage for aa … well ty anet … T_T

Xyonon.3987:

Afaik it bugged with the auto attack, since every pierced bullet caused the aoe wich was ridiculously op in some places.

Pretty much the only senario where the multi hit was “op” was when a WvW zerg stacked in one spot and nobody had retaliation. There were no dungeon or fractal encounter where you could take advantage of it and sPvP does not have give this kinds of opportunities.

If the chance to hit 25 times on each trigger was a problem, they could limit the number of pierces it does from 5 to 2 or 1.

I remember they nerfed Explosive Shot from bleeding in aoe from it’s blast to only bleeding the target hit by the bullet.
This nerf was due to pistol piercing proccing 5 explosions (1 per target) and as a result proccing bleeds 5x on these 5 targets. Allowing you to aoe hit the bleed cap of 25 on 5 targets(back then it was capped at 25).

The nerf was done because anet couldnt change the mechanic to make only 1 explosion proc bleed, or to only proc the explosion on 1 target.
Since the piercing effect is entirely gone, and with that the reason the mechanic was changed, i’d like to see the bleed come back to the explosion. Bleeding in an aoe once again.

1. Explosive shot could have 180 or higher radius.
2. Poison volei could pierces.
3. flame shot could pierces.