Guild Wars 2

In my time playing the thief I found the pistols really weak compared to the short bow the pistols will lose every time since In WvW the only skill you can use is unload and its cost a lot of initiative.

I think they should fix the dual pistols or at least give it a bit more power spamming unload is not really that helpful and the thief does not have a lot of weapons to begin with compared to the other professions.

I do love the Idea of the dual pistols its looks awesome but it’s not useable. On a class that does not have a great deal of defends they should do a bit more damage or just do something with it please.

Please leave your thoughts on this.
Thanks

you are wrong pistol in main hand , or dual pistol 1 add nice bleeding if you spec cond damage
2 add a lot of vulnerability
you can use it 4 times and keep 15-20 vulnerability on your target. you can get criple on pistol (trait ) , and add bleeding or vulnerability sigil.

if you are full bersek you can go unload with haste, but that won’t guarantee you kill unless you got an fragile target

+1 Totaly agree with you. Pistol are very weak in compare with other weapon combinations. Developers all time care only about nerfing daggers but no about buffing weak pistols.

Rayya.2591:

2 add a lot of vulnerability
you can use it 4 times and keep 15-20 vulnerability on your target.

I think you’re the first person I’ve heard actually say something nice about Body Shot. The thing is that Body Shot has such low DPS itself you need a solid amount of other people attacking your target for those vulnerability stacks to pay for themselves. So lets go through it:

Solo – Body shot is a terrible idea, you’re doing half the damage of your auto attack, even if it stacked to 25 vulnerability it wouldn’t pay for the time spent using it, let alone the initiative.
Duo – Same deal, unless your buddy has way better offense than you do.
Trio – Very unlikely that the investment is worthwhile here. You’re still burning all of your initiative to boost two people’s damage by (at the very best) 20 % while lowering yours by (at least) half. Assuming each of you is contributing evenly to damage, you’re boosting 66 % of the group’s damage by 20 % (not realistic, more like 10 %), and reducing 33 % of the group’s damage by 50 %. Net loss of 3 percent~ of the group’s damage. More of a loss if you are outdamaging your group mates normally (not uncommon as a thief).
4-man group – This is probably your break even point, using Body Shot will probably leave the total damage output of your group the same.
5-man group – Here’s what you’ll be running dungeons with, and probably your best opportunity to make Body Shot shine. If you spam it right before your group mates use some high-damage abilities it may be a worthwhile investment. If any of your group mates are stacking their (probably easier to apply) vulnerability, Body Shot is again useless.
5-10 – Large potential for Body Shot here on champion and boss mobs, but it all goes down the drain if someone else is stacking vulnerability.
>10 – Your mobs of players only really seen in DEs. If your target is dying fast, vulnerability isn’t a worthwhile investment, if your target is dying slowly it’ll be 25-stacked without you using your expensive (in time/init) vulnerability skill.

Poor Traits, Poor Damage, Utility Costs too much.

(Vital Shot), Excellent Source of Condition Damage, but it does not go well with unload at all…

(Headshot), high initiative and suffers the same problem bodyshot does, it does 2 times less damage then auto-attack, might as well not do damage, spam it you do no damage yourself.

(Black Powder.), this does very little damage, costs 6 initative and only is good for its combo field does 2 times less damage then auto-attack, and the stealth field does not last long, spam it you no damage yourself.

(Body Shot.), this does very little damage, costs 3 initative, and is only good for others, and it does THE SAME damage as autoattack.

Honestly, Body Shot/Head Shot/Black Powder would be excellent if they were low-high cooldown attacks that didn’t cost initative, but because of how the system works these abilities just do not work.

These abilities were designed when initiative was 1 second regen rate, not 1.6.

Head Shot is an awesome interrupt, but honestly how many times do you “really?” need to use it as one, almost never, sure it can really save someone or really make a difference but its WAY too situational and costs too much initiative, it would be good if it has a 20 second cooldown, but we don’t have cool downs.

Black Powder is an awesome combo field, but ALSO very situational, it costs way too much for what it does, it does not really do damage and all it does is the stealth field, and its more of a melee attack since it drops the stealth field at your feet and not the targets feet.

Black Powder would be amazing if Vital Shot had a 100% Combo Finisher.
Headshot would be amazing if it did least 436 damage, and the 1/4 second daze.
Body Shot would be amazing if it did at least 256 damage, and the vulnerability.

The Trait needs to be 100% chance to bounce ONCE.

The difference is that Headshot and Black Powder are useful in ways not just concerned with putting out maximum damage, whereas Body Shot is an ability specifically meant to increase total damage but fails to do so in most situations.

Headshot is already quite powerful as-is and it would be risky to decrease the initiative on it. I favor giving it a 100 % crit rate to allow some unique synergy with crit procs.

Black Powder is incredibly powerful as well, moreso in PvE than PvP, but the pulsing AE blind field is very strong in the right hands. If anything, I’d like to see the skill changed to be applied on the target’s location instead of the thief’s.

Tulisin.6945:

The difference is that Headshot and Black Powder are useful in ways not just concerned with putting out maximum damage, whereas Body Shot is an ability specifically meant to increase total damage but fails to do so in most situations.

Headshot is already quite powerful as-is and it would be risky to decrease the initiative on it. I favor giving it a 100 % crit rate to allow some unique synergy with crit procs.

Black Powder is incredibly powerful as well, moreso in PvE than PvP, but the pulsing AE blind field is very strong in the right hands. If anything, I’d like to see the skill changed to be applied on the target’s location instead of the thief’s.

Making Vital Shot a 100% Projectile Finisher would fix Black Powder. (or lowering the initative cost to 3.) (it would also make pistol/pistol stealthy.)
Making Head Shot not so situational by giving it the same damage as “rush”. (or lowering the initiative cost to 1 or 2).
Making Body Shot cost 2 initiative would fix it.

Body Shot should at least do the same damage as other abilities that cause vulnerability from other classes.

Projectile Finishers stealth you in black powder’s field, right?

20% is way too low for the skillset’s overall dps and skill choices, it leaves too much “random” over “skill.”

Daecollo.9578:

Tulisin.6945:

The difference is that Headshot and Black Powder are useful in ways not just concerned with putting out maximum damage, whereas Body Shot is an ability specifically meant to increase total damage but fails to do so in most situations.

Headshot is already quite powerful as-is and it would be risky to decrease the initiative on it. I favor giving it a 100 % crit rate to allow some unique synergy with crit procs.

Black Powder is incredibly powerful as well, moreso in PvE than PvP, but the pulsing AE blind field is very strong in the right hands. If anything, I’d like to see the skill changed to be applied on the target’s location instead of the thief’s.

Making Vital Shot a 100% Projectile Finisher would fix Black Powder. (or lowering the initative cost to 3.) (it would also make pistol/pistol stealthy.)
Making Head Shot not so situational by giving it the same damage as “rush”. (or lowering the initiative cost to 1 or 2).
Making Body Shot cost 2 initiative would fix it.

Body Shot should at least do the same damage as other abilities that cause vulnerability from other classes.

Projectile Finishers stealth you in black powder’s field, right?

20% is way too low for the skillset’s overall dps and skill choices, it leaves too much “random” over “skill.”

Projectile finishers blind, only explosions and leap stealth you (it would be quite OP to make projectile finisher stealth the shooter).

Initiative cost 3 would make BP insanely OP with Sword or Dagger mainhand. The problem with this one is only on P/P sets, maybe ground targetting would help with it.

HS effect is nice as an interrupt, but the daze is practically non-existent (I understand the logic as being spammable would be OP). Being a skill named Headshot (popular culture name meaning incredible overkill), the damage is veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery disappointing. Making it either be very high damage (the secondary effect isn’t really worth 4 initiative, but it’s a delicate condition which shouldn’t be allowed to use many times, so there is a need of something else) or applying something else, like supresing the daze, maintaining the interrupt and putting some Confusion stacks (I’m sure a hit in the head can confuse you, I would supress the daze because it doesn’t synergize with Confusion which requires you to act) could help with it.

BS needs to go, it isn’t worth it unless you have 223984 players, but then, they will be aplying the 25 stacks by themselves.

Yeah…

Dagger/Pistol would be way OP if it costed three…

… don’t know what to do then, Pistol Condition Build needs reliable Stealth.

Don’t really know how to fix P/P without making everything else OP, sucks.

Perhaps making Black Powder Stealth you, that would break the “Infinite Stealth” combo, because you would already be stealth and if you leaped someone it would reveal them, instead of leaping after and then stealthing after damage is dealt.

It would be cool if Body Shot/Sneak Attacks spots were switched.
Lower the damage a lot but keep the bleeding damage.

(uses sneak attacks animation.)
Body Shot attack with rapid fire from your pistol and make your foe bleed.
Damage (5x): 168
5 Bleeding: 4 s (850 damage)
Combo Finisher: Projectile
Range: 900

(uses the same animation as poison dart volley)
Poison your foe with a sneak attack.
Damage (5x): 605
Poison: 6 s
Combo Finisher: Projectile
Range: 900

Change the trait to give you a 33% chance to apply vulnerability on criticals, no CD.

I hope the developers are reading our ideas, P/P must be the most boring weapon set ever made.

Somehow I (active user of P/P) feel discriminated in this topic.
I would agree that body shot is bad and vital shot needs a tweak.
But please, do not say it is boring. I am not going around telling people how boring they are, now am I?

I enter WvW and sPVP with P/P and destroy people. 3 unloads generally kill 1 person at 900 range. If I pop haste I can do that in half the time. nothing is broken with P/P it is working as intended.

Traits are so bad for P/P .

Generally all traits that benefit P are weaker than other traits you could pick up !

ddrake.5436:

I enter WvW and sPVP with P/P and destroy people. 3 unloads generally kill 1 person at 900 range. If I pop haste I can do that in half the time. nothing is broken with P/P it is working as intended.

Unload is one of the most avoidable thief skills while having mediocre DPS. If you’re killing people with Unload spam, they’re bad.

Unload is probably the best thing a thief has to killing Thieves and Mesmers who thrive on abusing culling.

I love P/P. Body shot just has a slow animation. If it was sped up like Headshot, it’d be perfect.

As for Vital Shot, it’d be great if our traits for pistol weren’t so laughable. By itself it’s fine though, but the Engy’s own 1 with pistol makes it look like child’s play when traits get involved.

Couldn’t agree more with the OP. For our single target ranged damage loadout, the overall DPS is downright lousy. It only gets worse in PvP when anyone with half a brain can dodge Unload nearly effortlessly and we have no other skills on the weapon to lock it out.

The traits to supposedly support it are even worse. There is only a handful directly relevant to the playstyle and most of them are almost comically weak (Ankle Shots come to mind. The 10 second CD nerf was straight up moronic).

It is little wonder so many Thieves resort to abusing the hell out of D/D.

Tulisin.6945:

ddrake.5436:

I enter WvW and sPVP with P/P and destroy people. 3 unloads generally kill 1 person at 900 range. If I pop haste I can do that in half the time. nothing is broken with P/P it is working as intended.

Unload is one of the most avoidable thief skills while having mediocre DPS. If you’re killing people with Unload spam, they’re bad.

Well 95% of player base IS that bad. So I don’t think P/P is THAT weak

I’d say bodyshot only has two uses :
- it’s a 100% projectile combo finisher on a not too expensive cost with the added bonus it applies vulnerability XD
- it’s a good way to kill the guild claiming NPCs faster when they got their buff

Unload, and all ranged direct damage abilities are supposed to deal much less damage than melee.

Unload lasts longer than the dodge evasion, and even with no traits you can unload 3×. So dodging it helps, but doesn’t make you immune or anything.

It’s easy to LoS, but the unloader should be using some other ability (or weaponset) if that’s going to happen.

Not that I’m defending the P/P in general. The set needs work. But the problem is not unload

i currently run d/d p/p as a con thief. and ive used duel pistol the entire time leveling. from what ive noticed p/p is a great secondary weapon choice for bleeds but as far as maining it, it can deffently use some tweeks. and in all honesty i say hit it in the traits. loose the bad 5% chance to bounce trait and make it be an aoe.

Explosive rounds
every 5th shot explodes dealing 50% damage to all targets withing 120 range and causing burning for 1 sec. only procs with auto attack.

alter as needed to make it not so op if you all think it is

I think my Thief would have better results trying to kill someone with nerf guns…

i am actually surprised that someone are actually using those useless builds (p/p)

- Vital Shot base damage needs a buff (needs to at least be on par with Trick Shot. Yes, VS has a bleed but TS bounces to 3 targets so from a general stand point they both should have about the same damage, maybe have VS do slightly more).
- Body Shot needs to be reworked entirely. I suggest a cone AoE.
- Unload is pretty much fine. Maybe a small damage boost (5-10%), but I wouldn’t cry if they left it alone. Vital Shot is what really needs the buff.
- Head Shot just needs to do more damage.
- Black Powder is fine. It seems weak because Vital Shot is week. Buff VS, and Black Powder will also become more appealing.

I don’t mind P/P being as it is functionally, but I would definitely like more “gunslingerish” animations for both attacks and movement with pistols.