Guild Wars 2

Ok – so I’ve never played thief before but i’m quite attracted to the class and concept. I’ve been thinking of leveling a thief but for reasons that are beside the point i’d like to use pistols.

All the thieves i’ve seen in PVE and PVP so far use daggers / swords and other types of melee weapons.

So my question to you – the thief playing part of the community is this:

Are there any viable PVP and PVE builds for a pistol thief? Is there any chance that I could get to play this class the way I want and still be effective and not have people tell me " noob – reroll to this or that " .

Looking forward to your input. Thanks!

In higher level fractals, on certain bosses p/p can be half decent. In every other situation in pve, wvw, spvp however a skilled thief will do 2-3x more damage at melee and support much more with shortbow.

Its primarily because p/p as a set doesnt work together well at all, offhand pistol blends very very well with melee sets, since the blind field is small at at your location, whereas the pistol mainhand works better with dagger offhand, giving you access to sneak attack (mini unload). the auto attack is slow and bad dps, body shot is terrible.

Thats why you dont see many thieves running it, p/p has one skill that goes for it, unload, (headshot is very good in certain situations, but helps d/p and s/p just as much)

I can only suggest P/P for one part of the entire game.

Fractals of the Mist – Dredge Fractal – Boss Fight.

This will be vs an Ice Golem or a Dredge Suit (it varies)

The fight consists of kiting the boss into danger zones that circle the map. So all you do is run in a circle while doing ranged damage.

It’s really sad to hear this. But I pretty much noticed no thieves running dual pistols – so sort of anticipated this.

Still I had some hope.
It’s becoming more and more clear that Arena Net’s promised " Play any way you want" was just a puff of smoke designed to confuse us.
It’s really sad that each class only has a few viable builds and only a few viable weapons – since some options like you guys have said are MUCH more viable than others.

I hope this will be fixed in time since each weapon spec/ build should be good and worth taking – not just the one that’s best. The solution is easy : don’t nerf what works ( which is usually what they do ) just make everything work. If every build did well people would play what best suits them and what they feel more comfortable with.

There was a time when P/P was good, sadly it was in Beta.
Leaching Venoms would trigger with each venom strike and if you had multiple venoms on at once they all individually triggered Leaching Venoms.

Anyway I hope you appreciated the history lesson and I hope we get Pistol Buffs as well my friend. I have everything for the Quip save map completion. One day I hope to unload with either Dual Quips or with Quip and a new Legendary Pistol should they make another one.

Beep! Beep!
Jeep Out!

engies can do a dual pistol build I believe, you may want to give that a shot.
I actually enjoy p/d right now, its an odd playstyle, part melee, part shooting and good condition damage.

Actually, one of my guildies came up with a pretty decent and competitive build. I don’t remember it exactly, but if you send me an in-game mail I’ll try to respond as soon as I get home! I remember testing it out and it worked pretty good in tournaments, and I guess it will work pretty good in PvE too. I gotta say, people were caught off guard the moment they realized I was using dual pistols. Now when they have it a minor buff and buffed SoM too I guess it will work out even better

Will give it a try Geiir. I’ll hit you up in game!

I always use double pistols! I find they are great for both PvE and PvP – the third slot skill unloads 8 shots in quick succession which can do 4-5K damage each time with a few stacks of might and a good critical chance score. By the time you’ve used all your initiative the opponent is pretty much down or has blown their heal. If you tried that with a bow you’d be there all day trying to do that much damage. Plus, it is SO much easier shooting at things than playing cat and mouse with a pair of daggers.

Yes, pistols are very viable. I just posted this in another thread, but this is probably one of the strongest options for pistols in PvE right now:
0/30/0/15/25
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlUmSO3eS+E/5Ex2DgmTe6zgsit/wVB-jAyAYLioRySEpCCZJviox2GKiGruGT5SEVbvLiWtMAVLA-e

do NOT bring pistols into PvP!

ppl with /laugh on your corpse

Volrath.1473:

do NOT bring pistols into PvP!

ppl with /laugh on your corpse

I did, and I was the one laughing

Dahkeus.8243:

Yes, pistols are very viable. I just posted this in another thread, but this is probably one of the strongest options for pistols in PvE right now:
0/30/0/15/25
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlUmSO3eS+E/5Ex2DgmTe6zgsit/wVB-jAyAYLioRySEpCCZJviox2GKiGruGT5SEVbvLiWtMAVLA-e

I run a p/p zerker/valk gear thief with a similar build in wvw, the new pistol bounce is great when dealing with multiple targets and the access to dmg buffs/fury/might make it that much better. I keep haste for utilities and sigil of rage for more access to haste, makes unload a lot of fun

Harper.4173:

I want and still be effective and not have people tell me " noob – reroll to this or that " .

Any time someone tells you that stuff… man… do what you want to do even HARDER! That goes for life too. Haters to the left.

Dahkeus.8243:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlUmSO3eS+E/5Ex2DgmTe6zgsit/wVB-jAyAYLioRySEpCCZJviox2GKiGruGT5SEVbvLiWtMAVLA-e

This guy made a good build, try it out!

OIIIIIO.7825:

I can only suggest P/P for one part of the entire game.

Fractals of the Mist – Dredge Fractal – Boss Fight.

This will be vs an Ice Golem or a Dredge Suit (it varies)

The fight consists of kiting the boss into danger zones that circle the map. So all you do is run in a circle while doing ranged damage.

Shortbow is probably still better unless you have someone else who will be activating the molten container drops. You can teleport to all but one of the platforms from the ground by using Infiltrator’s Arrow on the bottom of the platform.

That’s the other problem with P/P. It doesn’t really offer utility like Shortbow does.

P/P isnt that bad as people claimed to be, it is probably top 3 single range DPS in the game if speced correctly.
You can pretty much spam 3 unload in every 10 seconds, which deals around 7k~12k damage depends on the buff you have, add in the autoattack damage from pistol 1 and bleed,it’s dps is actually much better than melee weapon when you cant dps on the target with 80% uptime.

I have seen lots of people in high level FOTM used shortbow/Melee weapon but then they usually never bother to use their melee weapon and pretty much just autoattack and clusterbomb with their shortbow even when they are on single target.
So why not just used shortbow/dual pistol if you never used your melee weapon at all?

Conclusion:
For pve, it is actually the best single target dps weapon for thief, unless you have the confidence that you can melee on boss with more than 80% uptime.
For SPVP/TPVP, it is bad, dont use it.

Does Ricochet trait work well with Unload?

I played P/P from lvl1 to lvl80 and never once I felt P/P is crap in PvE. But you have to at least good at using ranged weapon and not just rely on the weapon too much to save your kitten . P/P is not Shortbow where you can just press#3 and you can avoid damage, you have to avoid damage by yourself.

Brumen.9720:

Does Ricochet trait work well with Unload?

It does, the bounced bullets are piercing the target. So it is likely you can hit up to 5-6 targets if they are closed to each other.

Dahkeus.8243:

Yes, pistols are very viable. I just posted this in another thread, but this is probably one of the strongest options for pistols in PvE right now:
0/30/0/15/25
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlUmSO3eS+E/5Ex2DgmTe6zgsit/wVB-jAyAYLioRySEpCCZJviox2GKiGruGT5SEVbvLiWtMAVLA-e

Personally I would take Quick Recovery over Lead Attacks.

You are going to be spamming unload as soon as it is available – so your ini is always going to be low, so Lead Attacks won’t give much boost in damage – Quick Recovery combined with Infiltrator’s Signet that you already have will get you a bonus unload every 20 or so seconds.

While I think P/P as a main set is quite weak due to relatively low damage output and low defence capabilities, I found it to be quite good as a second set together with my D/D in WvW. After I burst someone down to 30% hp or so he usualy tries to use gap opener and heal, at this moment it’s (at least I found it to be so) quite efficient to change to P/P interrupt and finish him with unloads (to burst down anybody from 100% hp with unloads is much more difficult and most probably ini will be over faster then enemy goes down).