Guild Wars 2

Greetings Tyrians!

Over the course of my playtime, I have come across many rifles and pistol drops, and I thought to myself, “Which one should I sell?”
Well, if you have the same problem, you’re in luck.
Really, it depends on who and how you are. Instead of writing a list of a bazillion genetic combinations and Pedigree Charts, I thought I would just provide a list of the negatives and positives of these 2 weapons. Also I am a Charr, so any specific abilities may not apply to your race.
-
~Rifles~
+Increased damage
+Great abilities for damaging multiple targets
+Jump Shot allows you to reach areas you couldn’t reach before outside of battle
-Less accurate (I don’t see it actually, but it’s there)
-Lower firing rate (Doesn’t really matter to me)
~Pistols~
+Higher Rate of Fire (Again, doesn’t matter really to me)
+Accurate (also a very unnoticeable difference)
+Has a bit more trap abilities
+Good support
-Abilities are barely useful outside of battle
-Abilities are best suited for 1 on 1 battles

And it doesn’t end there folks, then there’s the way you use them. That list? That’s just to get an idea of the pros and the cons, but you have to use them to your advantage, even the cons, and I’ll leave that to you guys to figure out. Hope this helped. Adios!

I’d go with the rifle, at least in PvE. I like having better flat damage, and control at that. The pistol is more suited for PvP with it’s condition for battles of attrition, but the AoE auto-attack is nice when combined with Coated Bullets for group tagging.

In all honesty though, I rather like the Shield the most. It gives defense and control in just two skills, which come in handy in more situations than I can recall. It’s also the Engineers main form of damage mitigation (Since, Engis were originally designed as a heavy class, the shield was given in order to compensate).

rifles. always

also im p sure that the pistol rate of fire is bugged and its the same speed as the rifle.

pistols! condition havoc and they DO have a small AE on #1 (plus 3 and 4). They can pierce at 30 in firearms, too.
You can use a shield when you need it but I usually just stick with 2 pistols.

For PVE, a zerker build with nades and a rifle is my standard- offering vuln stacks and decent damage.
For PVP, I will always use a pistol shield (bombkit build) or dual pistols (nades)- the ability to get tankier with a pistol build and having access to multiple conditions and working so well with might stacking really makes it more suited to my playstyle.

Rifles have the better design, think that is no argument.
They have natural piercing, longer untraited range, more damage, better utility, shorter cooldowns.
You need 30 points worth of traits to end up with pistols that can match an untraited rifle…
If you spend those 30 points on your rifle, the damage and utility have become beyond compare.

Pistols have one thing going for them: one of our more popular strong builds is working on conditions and might (HGH) and that naturally uses pistols.
If not for that (type of) build, the rifle would win in every way.

But I like pistols more.
I just do.
Aso because I like the shield so much of course.

If you go condition, go pistol.

If you go power, go rifle.

Pistols all the way. P/P has great condition dishing (burn, bleed, blind, cripple, poison, confusion). And it’s just fine for multiple targets: #1 explodes for aoe damage, #3 bounces, #5 is an aoe imm/crip. Fantastic for single or multiple targets.

Plus, I look gansta with 2 gats and I love my Asura animation when she spins her pistol.

I want to like rifles, but once you step out of melee half the skills become useless. So in the end i rock pistol and shield, because at least i do more than hit one and wait for the mob to drop.