Guild Wars 2

Since many of us agree we’re lacking a main hand that does range damage, main hand pistol seems like the most logical choice, as we can already use it in offhand.

• Auto-Attack: Similar to the thief’s pistol attack rate. Causes Bleeding. Projectile Finisher: 20% chance.

• Aimed Shot: Shortly charge a magic bullet at the target. Causes either Burning or Poison for 1s on every shot. 50%/50% chance. 5s Cooldown.

• Illusionary Thief: Shoot a bullet and remove a boon (With 10% chance to steal it), while summoning a clone at the same time. 15s Cooldown.

• OR

• Illusionary Cripple: Shoot a bullet that cripples while summoning a clone at the same time. 10s Cooldown. (If this one, remove the cripple caused by clones)

• Main Hand Pistol Clones: Attacks like your Auto-Attack except it cripples.

This idea is nice but, I think Mesmer needs more focus with the issues at hand before addition of more weapon choices.

While I do think we need another one handed option, I’m not sure a condition damage ranged option is the way to go. Nor do I think ANet will give us a new weapon for quite some time.

I think it’s unlikely they’d allow all 3 active damage conditions on a single weapon in any reliable fashion. Although, assuming Aimed Shot would have a decent cooldown, it’s probably ok. Would also tag it with a decent power coefficient. Burn would be like 1s, Poison maybe 1.5s. Depends on the ability’s cooldown tbh.

The shadowstep part of the clones sounds imbalanced. No other clone has that degree of active movement.

Also, I think it would be more balanced to have a lower cooldown and strip a boon rather than steal it. Also make it have a moderately good direct power ratio.

There removed the bleed on auto attack and added cooldowns. Also made the #3 skill remove it instead with a chance to steal. As for the clone, do take into account that they don’t do damage. The staff’s clone does condition damage, the pistol version would be warping around, while still doing next to no damage.

Well in your previous iteration, the clone would do the bleed autoattack from mainhand pistol with a Sharper Images chance for those build. E.g. it would basically do more single target DPS than Staff clones.

Edit:

I think the 10% chance to steal a boon is bad for RNG reasons. Either steal with a higher cooldown / less damage, or break with a lower cooldown / higher damage.

Boon stealing still seems a bit over the top. Also, ANet’s usual distribution for skills for MH Pistol seems to be Auto-Attack, some sort of distance maker, and a flavour skill. I would try and follow same pattern if possible if you were serious about wanting them to look into it.

Something like:

1) Thief-like AA. Not sure whether it should cause bleeding or not. I imagine it as a single-target DPS ranged weapon.
2) Spawn a clone, both jump back and shoot once while doing so. Causes Cripple on attack
3) Miss Fortune from LoL-style narrow cone attack that roots you in place dealing damage. Make it narrow enough that it doesn’t really do much as far as AoE is concerned but if someone walks into it they start taking the damage.

Gives you a VERY basic combo (2+3) that isn’t overly powerful (they aren’t rooted so can still get away from it) that still gives us good single-target DPS on PvE mobs and can be used in conjunction with the off-hands without being overpowered.

That’s a decent notion.

I would add and say that the condition damage should either be:

1. Bleed on 1.
-or-
2. %chance / mix Burning/Poison on the MF copy.

With GW2, I would say 3 volleys of 3 parallel shots over 2 seconds. Pew … pew … pew, triple shot each. Say each bullet has a 33% chance of Burning, Poison, or direct damage. 9 shots so you could shotgun them and get all of the above.

Call it “Prismatic Barrage”, lulz.

Edit: Could also do both, but the bleed on 1 would be minimal, like 2s.

There edited it a bit taking into account True seeker’s input.