Guild Wars 2

With Anet’s recent theme of buffing auto attacks for Thieves, I think it’s time they make a change to the Pistol auto attack. When I 1st saw this game in beta, my favorite thing was seeing an agile, evasive shooter with dual pistols like Dante or something. While I’m sure there’s plenty of things they can do to spice up P/P, one of its primary weaknesses is it’s extremely weak auto attack.

In my opinion, the 2 main problems with the auto attack are: 1) the slow rate of fire and 2) the bleed.

P/P has the fastest way to “unload” all of your initiative, yet it has the worst auto attack of all the weapon sets. Making a large part of your game play stale and not very effective. They should increase the rate of fire (whether by lowering it at the base speed, or by making a trait speed it up, like Rangers have for their Long Bow). And while it’s not a common theme for ranged auto attacks (if at all), they could perhaps make it a chainable attack series to give it additional effects and make it more appealing than just a dull shot (some animation changes to it wouldn’t hurt either).

As for the bleed (both the regular and stealth auto), it just doesn’t thematically fit into the burst-oriented P/P set (e.g., the pistol trait is in the Critical Strikes trait line). Now I know there’s the cheesy P/D build that has seen varying degrees of success that I’m sure plenty of people don’t want to lose. So my suggestion would be to add a trait that adds bleeding to the auto attack for those who want to still run that build. But as it stands now, it’s just a rather useless and non-cohesive element of the P/P set.

These changes will keep to theme that Anet is striving for with the Thief this year and it will make such a cool weapon set much more coherent, enjoyable, and viable.

Not going to read it but I’m going to +1 it just cuz of the title name.

Well I guess that’s where the dual weapons system shows its limit (aka first 2 and last 2 skills always remain the same). It makes perfectly sense with melee weapons (you use one, then the other), but IRL, if you have 2 guns, you’re gonna fire them at the same time: there’s no reason to keep firing the first one only. Skill 1 for dual pistols should reflect that, and change just like skill #3.

2 options IMHO: either you make it a chain attack, as you suggested (right pistol, left pistol, then both pistols for a mini unload), or you directly change #1 to a mini unload and maybe turn 3 into something else (for instance a “desperado” skill where you would shoot in every direction around you).

There could be a trait to increase attack speed for an offhand pistol, traits for using offhand weapons/multiple weapons at the same time are already in place.
But in order to compensate, they would need to nerf the main hand pistol, making p/d worse.

Alternatively unload could have its cost dramatically reduced and then be carefully tweaked to the point, where it actually becomes the ‘auto’ or ‘main’ attack, but that would loose you the cool burst skill.
Scrap that. just did some quick calculations. Unload deals a theoretical 2.4k damage over 1,75 seconds.
Dagger autoattack deals 2600 on one AA-chain, according to the wiki taking 1.7 sec / attack sequence.
If Unload just got lowered to an initiative cost, where it could be used almost constantly, we would be fine.
The ranged+projectile finisher could be seen as the counterpart to poison+endurance gain+ multiple targets on dAA.
I dont know about the power scaling tho, might have to look into it.

I’m still going to stick with my suggestion for P/P 1,2, &3.
1) Raise the multiplier of the #1 skill to 0.75 and have it apply 6 seconds of vuln. That means the auto-sustained damage comes out to 0.915mult/sec and results in a constant 7 vuln.
2) Make #2 apply 2 stacks of poison (6 sec) since its both a damage and utility condi. That will let P/D still be viable and synergize with the DA poison trait (this rounds out P/D to applying vuln, poison, bleeding, and torment consistently). Possibly adding boon destruction in addition may also make it useful.
3) Change #3 to a 4 shot backwards evasion (300 units with a matrix style roll) with a 2.0 multipler (0.5 per shot). That lets you stay at range, giving you the evasion the set needs, maintains burst, and limits spam due to the incresed distance. Note that a large chunck of damage from the set has been moved to the autos so you’re not losing anything, but instead gaining situationally useful utility like the rest of our successful sets. The evasion should be 0.5 seconds with a total skill time of 0.75 seconds to allow for counterplay.

Sir Mad.1092:

Well I guess that’s where the dual weapons system shows its limit (aka first 2 and last 2 skills always remain the same). It makes perfectly sense with melee weapons (you use one, then the other), but IRL, if you have 2 guns, you’re gonna fire them at the same time: there’s no reason to keep firing the first one only. Skill 1 for dual pistols should reflect that, and change just like skill #3.

2 options IMHO: either you make it a chain attack, as you suggested (right pistol, left pistol, then both pistols for a mini unload), or you directly change #1 to a mini unload and maybe turn 3 into something else (for instance a “desperado” skill where you would shoot in every direction around you).

I like these suggestions too. As I said before, I’m sure there’s plenty of ways to make it better, but it’s evident that the way it is now isn’t very good. I just want them to make it something that’s fun, coherent, and viable. Right now it’s none of those lol.

Pistol #1 and #2 need to be completely redesigned for the weapon to be viable.

But as Thief seems saddled with developers that are obsessed with tweaking numbers rather than making mechanical changes, doubling the attack speed of Pistol #1 and halving the initiative cost of #2 would be a good start.

Yeah. Gw2 has a lot of weapon sets with awkward moves that don’t really fit into the build, such as Daredevil Staff #3 and Pistol #2 which is rarely used.

If they “fix” the AA on the pistol you know they will screw up Unload. They so rarely “balance” a weapon set and not F it up.

How about changing up p/p and p/d for more variety?. p/d #2 could be it’s stealth burst mechanic with a high initiative cost and change it’s #1 stealth component to a pistol whip(backstab)/with a confusion condi application. I think that would make it synergize better with a precision build.

P/P unload should be conal to give it some AOE capability. I find myself clueless as to what it would need for#2 or it’s stealth burst ability.

Personally all think p/p need is rework unload i think in current meta if unload could destroy range projectiles it be enough to make it worth running.

P/P needs some aoe since they removed trick shot. Personally I think unload should be replaced with a ‘desperado’ style skill, where you shoot at all targets in a circle around you. Definitely make it a whirl finisher.

Then make Pistol auto attack the primary single target dps attack maybe with Pistol 2 being a nice spike attack.

Yeah the weapon set and/or traits for Pistol need to have something for AOE. Desperado type skill would be nice to give more incentive to weave in and out of combat instead of just sitting on the side shooting from a distance.

Casual.9260:

Yeah the weapon set and/or traits for Pistol need to have something for AOE. Desperado type skill would be nice to give more incentive to weave in and out of combat instead of just sitting on the side shooting from a distance.

You mean like a slide across floor and shoot animation. That would be boss!

DoingDaMinimum.4530:

Casual.9260:

Yeah the weapon set and/or traits for Pistol need to have something for AOE. Desperado type skill would be nice to give more incentive to weave in and out of combat instead of just sitting on the side shooting from a distance.

You mean like a slide across floor and shoot animation. That would be boss!

Leap finisher, flip over your target and shoot while you’re in the air

I care not for p/x as I do not play it. But for the sake of thief I would like to see a 3 stage chain. Stage 1 and 2 are the same with bleed. 3rd could trigger ricochet.