Guild Wars 2

As the thread states just wondering this… I have tried out several builds and nearly every weapon set/combo…. But I see few of the people that make builds and guides use the pistol in their weapon set… Even untraited this is a great weapon…The CC is also amazing… You can get a 2 second stun lock which is an eternity in a fast paced match… So just curious… Why do less people use the pistol as an off hand that what it seems? Pistol coupled with diversion and the offhand daze from a sword in the other set can keep an opponent completely shut down for the majority of a fight.

I think that the main reason that the pistol isn’t widely used is because many people perceive the swiftness from the focus as a necessity. You’re absolutely right; the pistol is great. I use it along with a scepter in my condition/confusion build and the stun is really handy for landing confusion from Confusing Images, stopping a heal, or just stopping someone long enough to prevent them from running away. Also, the duelist does great damage even with my low power, can apply bleeds very well, and can even apply confusion if I use combo fields correctly. Obviously that’s just how I use it in my build, but I think it shows what a great weapon the pistol can be.

Like I said, a lot of it has to do with mobility. People just prefer the swiftness from the focus (though it is certainly a potent offhand in other regards). Ultimately I think it is personal preference. I think that the great versatility and power of the pistol is more than enough reason to use it. Others want more mobility or AoE and go with focus. Others yet go with the torch for more stealth. It’s all personal preference.

TL;DR: The pistol is a great weapon, but it often gets overlooked because people want to use the focus instead for mobility concerns.

Additionally, the Pistol Phantasm gets overlooked a lot. Although it doesn’t hit as hard as a lot of other Phantasms (overall DPS) it does have a Projectile Finisher, which means you can self-combo to stack a lot of other Confusion and/or other debuffs.

However, the main reason why I personally find it unappealing is that I’ve currently fallen into the need for speed train. When I’m not hoarding all my speed, I tend to use a Sword offhand for a quick damage bonus. I’ve actually thought of using Pistol more often, but the main thing putting me off is the fact that my current Pistol has the wrong stats for any of my builds and I’m currently trying to get Rabid gear, but I’m getting it extremely slow because I have very little motivation and I’ve been acting a bit mean in dungeons recently (too much solo play, I think).

While I really like the pistol, I think there are a few things that arise from it’s skills that cause players to avoid it:

1. No speed buff

2. Bugged attack range (1200 player cast range and the phantasm has to move in to 900 range to attack)

3. Attack damage could use a slight boost at about 5-10%

4. No speed buff

5. Can’t dual wield pistols/offhand only

6. No speed buff

Also, illusionary warden tends to stay alive in most cases to complete it’s attack and it also deals more damage over the duelist.

The main reason I don’t use the pistol is because I’d much rather have a torch or a sword in my offhand. If I use a Focus it’s mainly for the phantasm.

Lets forget the swiftness on focus.

The focus still way out shine the pistol.

Warden then tc under it, to remove all conditions, also leap while on tc for 20 sec reta.

Tc and wardens both reflect once traited and so if done right, you can get a perma reflect wall.

Then the tc pull(which is on a shorter cooldown then the pistol cc move) and can do up to 5 instead of 3.

You can do a lot with that pull. Like cancel someones heal when they low hp… Pull a bounce of mobs into one place for easy aoe.

Among a lot of other things.

Basically Focus, is by far better then the pistol at lest to what ive seen,

You can still have high damage with the pistol and the base cooldown matches the CD of the warden when traited. Plus the stun-lock from magic bullet is amazing… I am just shocked as to why noone uses it… I have found it more useful against pesky thieves and warriors.. Even had one warrior gripe saying “I hate dueling you that stun lasts way to long” I love the focus and the torch sometimes lol… But the pistol is just so fun even with the bugged range. (still not as bug as the mage which your lucky if it even hits)

1. Duelist doesn’t do as much direct damage.
2. Sword/Sword and light armor is my favorite looking gear in the game.
3. Sword has a block on 11 (?) sec cd that does as much damage as the swordsman if a hit is blocked, or you can use it to fire a daze.

In all honesty, all weapons shine in their own moments and I would be lying if I said I don’t change my weapon load outs often in WvW and PvE.

I do too… And I completely agree that weapons have their really good situational uses. Focus is great for sieges and the swiftness to pull people off walls. Not to mention if it is traited the damage from reflects is great. I actually run scepter sword for the non-defensive type builds and use runes of centaur so speed uptime is not as big of an issue. I just like the pistol for duels and the insane stun lock… In group situations or condition builds I go with focus or torch for the other off hand…

If we got Mainhand Pistol, I’d probably run Pistol/Sword Sword/Pistol. Just saying.

Something else that would be very cool… I must agree… Thanks for the responses guys. They are really helpful on peoples opinions. I love my pistol and I honestly change my weapons/builds multiple times a day depending on where I am and what I am doing. But I was just curious as to why more people don’t use them as often. If mesmers got the passive speed buff I think more people might also use the pistol over the focus in certain scenarios.

Pistol is a great weapon especially for CD builds and the stun. Personally I prefer OH sword tho for the same role in a power build which I run now. It just has more utility (block→dmg/line daze) and a better phant in power builds.

Gaiawolf.8261:

Pistol is a great weapon especially for CD builds and the stun. Personally I prefer OH sword tho for the same role in a power build which I run now. It just has more utility (block->dmg/line daze) and a better phant in power builds.

I also use that but paired with the scepter… I only use the staff in a defensive based build… And as long as the greatsword is major suckage atm this seemed like the next best option especially since the fixed the range on the very powerful blocks

I like the pistol, but the speed buff from focus is too much of a necessity to use pistol off hand in my ranged set. If we had another reliable source for open world movement speed…then I would definitely go back to using offhand pistol. I’d much prefer to have main and off hand pistol. Currently i’m stuck using a scepter as part of my ranged set, despite hating the scepter. It baffles my as to why ANET did not implement pistol main hand.

I use sword/sword and scepter/focus currently. I don’t like to mix ranged and melee weapons in the same set for multiple reasons. One, I don’t want to have half of my abilities not be useful when either at range or in melee. Two, it just seems odd to be firing a pistol at point blank range. Three, I wouldn’t want my iDuelists to be in melee range just because i’m in melee range trying to use a sword.

ANET could make a lot of mesmers happy if they equalized movement speed options for mesmers like they did with all other classes. This would make focus a less mandatory off hand weapon choice. I can’t see why its so hard to take the swiftness proc off of signet of inspiration and make it passive 25% effect on the signet like they did with both of the other cloth classes. Its not like we don’t have swiftness at all, so its not going to change the game balance to have us be able to choose a different off hand while being able to move across the map like everyone else.

I’d love to have dual pistol as my ranged set. I despise the slow and clunky animation of scepter main hand. I also hate the weak direct damage it does. I’m stuck with it though because there are zero other ranged main hand options. Pistol would be perfect for this spot.

I think there have been a lot of great answers here already, but I’ll go ahead and give my own:

I swap between 3-4 different weapons and weapon sets, the pistol is definitely one that I use, but on certain situations/occasions. I have a power-based build that I am currently rocking, and a confusion spike build. I use my duelists in conjunction with my fields for confusion flavor, when I need to, but otherwise, I’ve found that the duelists do not do as much as the wardens (from focus) do.

Allow me to elaborate a bit here…

My duelists get up to around 7-8k ? Maaaayyybe… and that’s a stretch. Usually hovers around 6-7k. My wardens? 10, 11k, no problems.

Proof
http://i.imgur.com/IJ1KFMn.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/CXtqiH3.jpg (11,988 — had to block chat, please excuse)
http://i.imgur.com/Gx789zX.jpg

(these screenshots were taken from a live streaming event I did where we ran all dungeons in 1 day)

Multiple screenshots to show that it wasn’t a ‘fluke’, it happens pretty often, and my Berserker does decent damage as well (certainly higher than duelists), but not as high as my wardens.

Overall, pistol should be used, and not overlooked. It is worth using for those situations that call for it, but overall, raw damage-wise, it is certainly not the optimal go-to weapon of choice.

:)

Please tell me what gear were you running to get your warden to spike for 11k damage… That is crazy lol and in PvP people just move out of the way of the warden and oh their fine now… and unless you are traited all you are doing is mitigating damage if you stand in the bubble.

Pistol is slow, imo. I’ve tried it in PvP, but when matched with other good players, you’ll find that the 1-shot daze and phantasm really just waste your time in trying to get an upper hand on your opponent.

I prefer defensive types over offensive for an offhand. Even a sword has that nice block =D

jportell.2197:

Please tell me what gear were you running to get your warden to spike for 11k damage… That is crazy lol and in PvP people just move out of the way of the warden and oh their fine now… and unless you are traited all you are doing is mitigating damage if you stand in the bubble.

20+ stacks of swiftness, most likely eatting curry butternut squash soup and possibly traited into illusion/phantasm damage.

The real reason the pistol is so often neglected is that there is no decent main hand to go with it. I would love to use the pistol. But I don’t want to go into melee. And the scepter, with its weak Confusion beam, no clone on demand? Pass.

So I’ve got two choices and none appeal, thus no pistol.

jportell.2197:

Please tell me what gear were you running to get your warden to spike for 11k damage… That is crazy lol and in PvP people just move out of the way of the warden and oh their fine now… and unless you are traited all you are doing is mitigating damage if you stand in the bubble.

I am running 20/10/0/10/30 — traits are III,X — II — IV — I, X,XI respectively.

I am running zerker’s gear, with rune of strength (although I have been contemplating on going ruby orb — I feel as though I do not need the additional crit, as almost every one of my attacks crit). I have exotic and ascended accessories.

3,480 unbuffed attack
42% unbuffed crit chance
77% unbuffed crit damage

I use Omnomberry Tarts as food and Superior Sharpening Stone

Here’s another picture for good measure.
http://i.imgur.com/3P4ZZbC.jpg

Note: Might stacks and Vuln stacks also help your dps — but pay attention to the screenshots, my highest attacks have very low might stacks or vuln stacks on the target.

Also notice I do not have bloodlust stacks! I use Sigil of Rage on almost all of my weapons.

As far as PvP goes
Yes, by far, warden is one of the most useless phantasms for pvp. You only use the focus for the pull/push and speed boost. I personally run greatsword/staff in pvp (wvw, spvp)— or I run sword/pistol in spvp/tournies. You -still- have that focus though, for speed.

Isn’t Pistol still the best offhand so far?
There are enough AoE Swiftness from other profession so I don’t think we are desperately need the Focus.
PvP wise, focus is ok but not great. The pull is predictable, people will dodge it because of the short delay. 2s stun from afar is a much more reliable cc. Warden do no dmg in spvp and die in a few cleave. Actually most melee clones do. That is why iDuelist is better because it is easier to position them. In term of DPS sword offhand is the best. But who would trade a 1 hit block for a 2s stun anyway.

PvE wise. Warden is still not that great again mobile mobs. Swordsman dies in a cleave. So iDueliist is still more reliable in phantasm build. Of course, iBerserker is still the best since it is AoE and also applies cripple.

Offhand wise, I don’t think other weapon can come close to what Pistol can offer. Just my opinion thou.

Pistol is the highest most reliable single target damage Phantasm mesmers have. In one burst, mine hits for around 20k+ dmg leaving 8 bleeds. The only phantasm that does more dmg is the focus. The focus phantasm is extremely unreliable (though I use it 50% of the time). Most of the time things move out of the phantasms attack… and temporal curtains pull is extremely erratic throwing mobs all over the place. Rarely does the skill work the way its attended and pulls to the middle of the curtain.

That being said, I swap between the two depending on the situation.

Vanillea.5764:

Isn’t Pistol still the best offhand so far?
There are enough AoE Swiftness from other profession so I don’t think we are desperately need the Focus.
PvP wise, focus is ok but not great. The pull is predictable, people will dodge it because of the short delay. 2s stun from afar is a much more reliable cc. Warden do no dmg in spvp and die in a few cleave. Actually most melee clones do. That is why iDuelist is better because it is easier to position them. In term of DPS sword offhand is the best. But who would trade a 1 hit block for a 2s stun anyway.

PvE wise. Warden is still not that great again mobile mobs. Swordsman dies in a cleave. So iDueliist is still more reliable in phantasm build. Of course, iBerserker is still the best since it is AoE and also applies cripple.

Offhand wise, I don’t think other weapon can come close to what Pistol can offer. Just my opinion thou.

I agree with some of your statements to an extent.

Like I said, duelist has it’s place. I run with a pretty solid core group that groups everything into melee range into a nice little clump where I can just frenzy/warden (sword 2/focus 5), and deal a great amount of aoe dps to trash.

Depending on the boss, I may use pistol, I may use gs, I may use focus. It’s entirely up to the gameplay and my style, that’s why I love swapping weapons. If I know a boss won’t be moving, and I don’t have to worry about a cleave or aoe dmg, I definitely will -always- pick warden over any other phantasmal. The damage I have seen, and proven, can not be denied. (And yes, there are a lot of bosses that just don’t have many mechanics and don’t move. I do an entire 1-3 CoE path run in full sword/focus, nearly never swapping to anything else.)

Not to mention the warden’s projectile protection field is great for instances like the Harpy fractal.

In spvp, like I said, warden is worthless. Curtain is really the only thing you use on focus in pvp. The interrupt/pull is still valuable though, don’t knock it too harshly. I agree the daze is nice, and I run sword/pistol in spvp/tournies. WvW I run GS/staff/sword+focus.

Remember: You won’t always be around an ally to give you a speed boost. Having a focus in your inventory can really help.

Hmm Warden is good for trash mobs if you have a tank and of course for the projectile reflection. But in term of dps, i think it is lacking. Even if all hits connect, there is still a huge delay between casts (not to mention the cast time itself is relatively long). I think it is around 8s for Warden, 5s for Duelist and only 3s for Swordman. That is why Swordman is superior for dps.

As for the Swiftness, I use rune of centaur. I do miss out some bonuses from rune. But oh well, it makes me a AoE Swiftness goddess so…..

I like focus but it hurts our offensive ability in spvp. In pve anything works I guess

Vanillea.5764:

Hmm Warden is good for trash mobs if you have a tank and of course for the projectile reflection. But in term of dps, i think it is lacking. Even if all hits connect, there is still a huge delay between casts (not to mention the cast time itself is relatively long). I think it is around 8s for Warden, 5s for Duelist and only 3s for Swordman. That is why Swordman is superior for dps.

As for the Swiftness, I use rune of centaur. I do miss out some bonuses from rune. But oh well, it makes me a AoE Swiftness goddess so…..

I like focus but it hurts our offensive ability in spvp. In pve anything works I guess

Ouch. Centaur runes will definitely hurt your own dps. That’s probably why you don’t see it hitting that much. I try to have 3 wardens up at all times, and frenzy in-between. Honestly everything dies before I really need to stack them, so what I use them for is superior.

SPvP, again, duelist, is obviously the superior phantom, I don’t think anybody is denying that. It definitely is superior single-target DPS, but again, it has it’s place. I definitely am -not- hating on pistol! I love my pistol, and use it.

Because

A: Pistol 4 shoots the target

and

B: Pistol 5 shoots the target.

Essentially all the pistol does is directly attack the target. Yes, you get the stuns, bleeds, combo effects etc etc, but there’s no real utility here. It’s effects are boring which most classes ignore, and once in melee range don’t bring anything additional to the table.

Pistol aint weak, but it’s a bore.

When traited for reflect on focus skills the focus also shuts down ranged attackers.

Pistol can’t do anything close to that.

The main reason i don’t use a pistol in pve is 1) then i have no main hand (can’t rely much on sword spamming blurred frenzy once per 10sec and do nothing while it recharges if not swapping weps), if they add a main hand pistol and it doesn’t suck like Torch/Scepter then pistol in offhand will be my main. Reason #2 it has no aoe. Duelist is nothing special when dealing with tones of enemies at once and magic bullet is plain useless with its 1y CD (talking about pve here and not pvp)

EsLafiel.4517:

Warden then tc under it, to remove all conditions, also leap while on tc for 20 sec reta.

Thats a great tip. I never remember that its a combo field, unless I accidentally Sword 3 leap over it.

On topic… I think that if I liked scepter better I might use the pistol more. I do like the fact that iDuelist is ranged and not near the target when summoned and the fire rate is great compared to iWarden, but when I use sword MH it doesn’t seem to synergize(also when stacking the weapon trait with celerity i think warden cd is 1 sec less than duelist). In dungeons standing on a trash pile with iWarden and using blurred frenzy is a great AoE field, that I don’t get with pistol. Maybe if GS wasn’t so great, I’d have a swap set of focus / pistol instead.

MB is nice, but it doesn’t seem to be as useful as TC for the long cd, especially where thieves get an on-demand daze from offhand pistol. TC can give the party swiftness, cripple enemies or Pull with into the void (and traited it acts like a mini feedback wall). Maybe if the trait for pistol gave it some extra utility, like the focus does, it would be more attractive (maybe a swiftness stack for each bounce, solving the other major complaint about having to slot focus for speed! or it could just be random like winds of chaos).

Edit…
Well after reading a lot of the forums today and doing some testing in the mists I think I’m gonna take back a little of what I said. I am gonna try to have my cake and eat it too by dropping GS and using scepter / Pistol for my ranged swap. Without getting too far off topic, I think the GS has better damage, scepter has better utility. The iduelist is way better than izerker for single target damage and MB is better than wave on range and cooldowns (plus the stun is better control in all situations except on the edge of a cliff). If you are running at least 15 in Dueling (20 for IX Duelist’s Discipline) Sharper Images really makes the iduelist stand ahead of the pack with bleeds for every crit. With a 50% crit rate and Phantasmal fury you can easily get 4+ bleeds up to 8 from each salvo. This can be as good as another 2 crits from the duelist, which pushes it past iswordsman on damage(4 × 5 ticks x 45 dmg/ bleed = 900 extra damage)

Just tried switching from staff to sword & pistol for my pve playing in orr. It feels more fun to me than the staff. My whole game play is around creating fields and then using them, so I typically have feedback, time warp and radiation field (asuran racial).

With sword and pistol, I have more ways to create combos off my own fields. And in combination with greatsword, I have five total finishers to use on those fields.

I’m still basically a power, precision, and crit damage build. But it’s fun to get the extra effects “for free”. And with 30 points in domination, those conditions last a while (so confusion seems to stick long enough for the mob to use a skill).

I’ll need to try it out in a dungeon to see how it works there, but the duelist blazing away just seems more fun (and I’m getting better at using blurred frenzy which is pretty high on the fun factor).

i much prefer pistol to sword or focus offhand in pvp; the stun is stupidly handy and you can spawn the duelists a bit away from the fight so they wont get taken out by cleaves/random aoes

in pve (if i dont need the range) i like going sword+focus/none+pistol (switching to GS if i need the range), wardens get kitten anytime an enemy goes out of range whilst duelists will attack whenever; so they’re better when an enemy is being kited or moving about a lot

When traited the iDuelist is a 100% projectile finisher (an unfixed bug? Yet it has been known for months and no word from Anet still). Combine with Sharper Images and Ethereal Fields and you got a mean condition damage Phantasm, far far better than the wimpy iMage. 4-6x Bleeding and 8x Confusion for ~5s? Yes please.

In PvP/WvW, you can drop iWarden on a downed player. Unless it’s a thief or ele, he won’t move away

And Temporal Curtain is just incredibly good. There a so many great uses in WvW for it, I can’t even count them. The pistol stun is really weak compared to this.

Best thing about pistol: It’s straightforward. You simply read the tooltips and know how to use it.

Focus on the other hand has a learning curve. When you try it for the first time you think it’s utterly crap, except for being our one and only source of swiftness. Uuugh! But if you give it a real try, you’ll find out how powerful it actually is. I’d say focus is one of the most complex and hardest to master tools on the battlefield out there.

Snoxx.7943:

In PvP/WvW, you can drop iWarden on a downed player. Unless it’s a thief or ele, he won’t move away

you can do that with any phantasm… or clones… sometimes i spawn the sword leap clone just to have it prevent a downed player healing themselves

… except duelist/swordsman will follow eles/thieves/mesmers

Sure you can use any phantasm against downed players, but the iWarden is probably the best phantasm for the job since it deals the most damage and also hurts anyone who attempts to rezz.

If you just want to stop a downed player from self-healing, even a clone who deals 5 damage is good enough. But the iWarden causes serious pain to the victim and anyone helping him …

Yes, eles/thieves/mesmers will move away, but they’ll have eaten a chunk of the iWardens damage already, and the iWarden forced them to use their movement skill (in other words: they wasted their stomp counter). They wouldn’t use the movement skill when there is an iMage shooting at them.

btw, a downed guardian can kick the iWarden away, but after that you can go stomp him with no problems.

And don’t forget, the reason why you should use Focus is the #4 skill. As we are talking about downstate here, Temporal Curtain stops multiple enemies from rezzing their friend. It’s one of the best anti-rezz tools in the game if you ask me. The iWarden isn’t as good, but can be useful as well.