Guild Wars 2

So basically, pistols have been in a bad way since the beginning of time [Guild Wars 2 time that is], and us thieves have been asking anet repeatedly to fix this weaponset so that it becomes useable in SPVP, WvW and even PvE hopefully, although i only care about WvW and SPVP. I think that Pistols should be made into a condition only set for both P/D and P/P. This will mean anet can focus on skills that work well together and don’t try to overlap with doing both condition and damage. That means rework the auto attack and rework unload first.

What I would like to see for P/D and P/P is the ability to stack multiple conditions, rather than be stuck trying to stack bleeds and doing a poor job of that.

Firstly, sneak attack+ vital shot:
This skill is fine as it is, stacks some nice bleeds and does the job.

Vital shot needs a large buff. It needs to have a damage increase and fire twice as fast as it does now at least. This skill needs to properly stack bleeds or, it needs to be made into a fast acting chain that stacks multiple conditions. THis is the auto attack and should be the bread and butter for the build. Make it so that it is able to do its job and get those conditions down fast.

Second: Body shot
The immobilize on body shot was a nice addition and I have found it to be useful however its a little short. 1.5 seconds base seems a little better. Also anet, remove the vulnerability because it is useless and replace it with something worthwhile. I myself would love to see burning added to the thieves kitten nal. Currently, we are the only profession that can not burn in any way, save the use of terrible runes. I also remember one in one of the earlier interviews that arena net wanted to give thieves access to burning and I remember them saying they wanted to create something like “burning shot,” which sounds very much like pistols to me. I also remember them relating that to skill 2. So why not remove the terrible vulnerability that no one likes, and make body shot burn and immobilize.

Third: Shadow Strike
Shadow strike for P/D is good as it is I feel although any suggestions would be welcome that would help improve it.

Fourth:
Unload for P/P is the Problem. I am not going to go over this again as you can read the problems in multiple threads but basically, it fights with auto attack as the main source of damage and uses initiative in the process. Just rework this skill to lay some conditions/ remake a P/P dual skill that could fit with the condition only. P/P currently has know way to access stealth. Why not make the P/P duel skill

“rapidly fire 2 shots at your opponent, the first applies torment and the second stealth’s you.” this is probably too good but something like this would not go astray. P/P needs a way to enter stealth.

Fith: Dancing DaggerFor P/D
Dancing dagger is useless. Body shot does a much better job in most cases, does not become obstructed like Dancing dagger and is not a waste of initiative like dancing dagger. This skill also overlaps with S/D and infiltrators strike. It even overlaps with D/D and heartseeker. Just get rid of this terrible skill and replace it with a useful skill for offhand dagger that will help D/D, S/D and P/D.

Sixth: HeadshotFor P/P
Headshot is fine, but I think it could do with stacking 1-2 confusion.

P/D – cloak and dagger, absolutely amazing skill, no problems with this skill do not touch it.

P/P – black powder also fine

Any suggestions would be welcome

id be careful with unload. id increase the speed and add a lil small bonus on it. unload plus SoM is a really nice thing. i pair these 2 with ricochet and i have an amazing time in fractals. its prolly the best build in my opinion. 8-10k per 1st target and thousands extrafor ricochet dmg for nearbye targets which means hugeheals for thief. unload is the one skill that does decent dmg. although a bit slow. ricochet works nicely with head shot too. can stun up to 4 people. dont 4get to keep traits in mind. nice suggestions otherwise.

Dancing daggers is fine. People keep trying to use it as on single targets and get frustrated. Use it on multiple targets and you get four times as much effect. It doesn’t overlap with any of the skills you mentioned.

Well for shadow strike for p/d could use a torment buff. It currently deals direct damage twice, and applies a mere 5 second torment. Even if they buffed the stacks to 3 for 5seconds that would be great, you can’t easily spam (and shouldn’t) this skill, so for the short time it lasts let it do its job a little better.

I personally think p/x can remain the same condition/power build just rework where its skills effects come from. For example make the aa hit harder direct damage and keep its weak bleed but buff sneak attack to apply a much longer bleed base (8 seconds or more). Since p/d is more of a condi set than p/p, you will still have stealth access to justify sneak attack being your primary bleed source. P/p will have a more suitable aa since they don’t enter stealth as easy and buff unload to deal increased damage every hit (2% per successful hit, cap at 10%?). This would drastically improve ricochet (not that its horrible atm) to make reaching that bonus damage fairly easy. Each cast of unload would ofc reset that counter so you can’ sit at 10% bonus damage for everything.

I kinda wish dancing dagger was replaced with some poison source. P/d has no poison access on its own, and torment isn’t all that impressive so its just bleeds for the most part doing your work, and condition removal will reset all that work. Like if dancing dagger was replaced with

Venomous trickery- Throw a dagger that bounces between and cripples foes (3s). The last target is punctured by the time bomb(4 seconds, does not stack). Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile. 3 initiative
→Detonate- Detonate your time bomb to create a poison field at your target’s location. Field duration 3 seconds, field radius 120 units. 3 second poison per pulse, pulses every second. Combo Field: Poison. 2 initiative.

You’d still be able to keep the cripple effect for chasing (although body shot would be better even if it costs 1 more initiative) or spend a bit more initiative for a field you can combo off. Usually 1-5 weapon skills the last 2 are something special and for pistol it is, but for dagger only CnD means something. Even in wvw it would be good, because you can throw it onto a stack and have them collect all that poison and reduce their heals without getting so close with sb and risk being choo choo trained.

I wouldn’t give thief confusion so easily, especially if its spammable. We already have such short lasting conditions because of our inititive system its why we lack sufficient condition duration compared to ranger or necro or engineer. I’d leave it, d/p doesn’t benefit from DoT and for ranged direct damage neither does p/p.

The main thing that is needed, plain and simple, is a moderate to large buff to Vital Shot, preferably by reducing its aftercast to make it fire faster- it desperately needs to do about 20% more damage than it does now so that you aren’t forced to dump all Initiative into Unload to be at all effective. Unload should supplement Vital Shot, not the other way around. Modifying Unload to be more utilitarian rather than all direct damage would help as well by bringing in-line with other utility skills and therefore indirectly buffing them.

I do not believe that buffing Vital Shot will break P/D either, as P/D is actually a pretty weak set as well, but its weakness is masked better by the condition damage brought by external sources such as Caltrops.

NinjaEd.3946:

Well for shadow strike for p/d could use a torment buff. It currently deals direct damage twice, and applies a mere 5 second torment. Even if they buffed the stacks to 3 for 5seconds that would be great, you can’t easily spam (and shouldn’t) this skill, so for the short time it lasts let it do its job a little better.

I personally think p/x can remain the same condition/power build just rework where its skills effects come from. For example make the aa hit harder direct damage and keep its weak bleed but buff sneak attack to apply a much longer bleed base (8 seconds or more). Since p/d is more of a condi set than p/p, you will still have stealth access to justify sneak attack being your primary bleed source. P/p will have a more suitable aa since they don’t enter stealth as easy and buff unload to deal increased damage every hit (2% per successful hit, cap at 10%?). This would drastically improve ricochet (not that its horrible atm) to make reaching that bonus damage fairly easy. Each cast of unload would ofc reset that counter so you can’ sit at 10% bonus damage for everything.

I kinda wish dancing dagger was replaced with some poison source. P/d has no poison access on its own, and torment isn’t all that impressive so its just bleeds for the most part doing your work, and condition removal will reset all that work. Like if dancing dagger was replaced with

Venomous trickery- Throw a dagger that bounces between and cripples foes (3s). The last target is punctured by the time bomb(4 seconds, does not stack). Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile. 3 initiative
->Detonate- Detonate your time bomb to create a poison field at your target’s location. Field duration 3 seconds, field radius 120 units. 3 second poison per pulse, pulses every second. Combo Field: Poison. 2 initiative.

You’d still be able to keep the cripple effect for chasing (although body shot would be better even if it costs 1 more initiative) or spend a bit more initiative for a field you can combo off. Usually 1-5 weapon skills the last 2 are something special and for pistol it is, but for dagger only CnD means something. Even in wvw it would be good, because you can throw it onto a stack and have them collect all that poison and reduce their heals without getting so close with sb and risk being choo choo trained.

I wouldn’t give thief confusion so easily, especially if its spammable. We already have such short lasting conditions because of our inititive system its why we lack sufficient condition duration compared to ranger or necro or engineer. I’d leave it, d/p doesn’t benefit from DoT and for ranged direct damage neither does p/p.

You make some good points here and I like what you suggest. Poison would be nice on a P/D set although i’d much rather see burning on either pistol 2 or dagger 4. We can get a poison from steal from 5 in deadly arts, which is good enough for now but poison on dagger 4 wouldn’t be bad at all. If dagger 4 was to have poison I would much rather it be a quick dagger strike that leaves them crippled and poisoned, because Dancing dagger is so terrible with LoS. I feel it overlaps too much with Body Shot, which does a far better job at gap closing.

I see what you mean about the confusion for pistol 4 however, I don’t think 1 stack would be terrible, as spamming would only give 4 stacks max from 16 initiative and that would leave you well and truly vulnerable.

I agree that Shadow Strike could do with a torment buff. 3 would be nice as it is 96% impossible to spam unless you are on the edge of a cliff or similar haha.

Quoted:[I personally think p/x can remain the same condition/power build just rework where its skills effects come from. For example make the aa hit harder direct damage and keep its weak bleed but buff sneak attack to apply a much longer bleed base (8 seconds or more). Since p/d is more of a condi set than p/p, you will still have stealth access to justify sneak attack being your primary bleed source]
I understand what you are saying about the auto attack for pistols as you have access to stealth on P/D however, that still doesn’t justify what an auto attack should do. It should be the bread and butter for the set. A buff to sneak attack would be nice but its not necessary. Right now, Vital shot needs a 20% damage increase and needs its aftercast delay reduced so that it can fire 4x in 2.50 seconds instead of 2x in 2.50 seconds.

My concern with vital shot is based on the weapon selection thief has. We put on d/d, its power (or conditions for kittens), we put on sb its more utility, p/p although not the best is our ranged power build. P/d is clearly condition but the aa for p/p or p/d doesnt lean 1 way or the other, its a hybrid and for a class who can’t multi spec (pvp atleast) they can’t work with that. If they were to buff the aa bleed only, p/p is still going to be weak. Since stealth pistol is imo strictly condi based, it deserves a buff. Its the only skill thie has that applies multiple stacks of bleed, quickly putting pressure on the enemy. Thief lacks this as well as long lasting conditions that damage. Id be all for buffing vital shot an sneak attack but it’d be nice to set a fine line between ranged condi and ranged power so we dont feel like a wana be ele or engi.

Ive wanted to give p/p a try but 1 skill as a source of dps is sad, even if its better than sb.

I made my thief pretty much only for P/P. I’ve tried countless builds and utility sets, but I just can’t get the needed control for that weapons set.

Ankle Shots has to be changed from “Critical hits with pistols have chance to cripple foes(60% chance, 3sec cripple, 10s cooldown” to something useful. Like “Apply 3 second cripple when you immobilize a foe” with no cooldown.

Grandmaster trait for P/P would be pretty sweet too. Like:

30 point Acrobatics -trait
Pistolero
When wielding pistols, you dodge 20% farther and activating a pistol skill has chance to grant bonus initiative.
40% chance to grant 2 initiative.

I do not mind which kind o f changes and at the end the developers never respond to the customer advices, so…
Just buff pistols somehow!!!!

Best,

Haltair, one of the Twelve Shadows

pistol mainhand is so horrible. mainly #2
and the P/P set offers like no mobility or escapes

Noss.4105:

Grandmaster trait for P/P would be pretty sweet too. Like:

30 point Acrobatics -trait
Pistolero
When wielding pistols, you dodge 20% farther and activating a pistol skill has chance to grant bonus initiative.
40% chance to grant 2 initiative.

I see what you want but I doubt they’ll buff initiative regeneration after the last patch.
How about restoring endurance based on initiative spend, similar to the heal. Not as much as permanent vigor, but something like 5 endurance per point initiative?

Also, how about the idea that buffing (condition on) the Shortbow for condition setups would actually help P/D as weaponset. What I feel lacks in P/D is use in battles (but I might underestimate it), for both the weaponset itslf as the shortbow – or another secondary weponset.

If you reduce the burst on Unload you are going to take the only real burst away from P/P.

As it is right now the only real use for P/P in WvW is bursting on low hp people and finishing the downed off. I’ve been running p/p for over a year.

You want to take a weapon set with no real escape option and try to make it a cond build which would be better to slot venoms .

SB does as much or more auto damage as Pistol, has some escape options and helps in siege.

I’d say increase Unload burst along with Auto.

CookieCrumbz.6328:

pistol mainhand is so horrible. mainly #2
and the P/P set offers like no mobility or escapes

No, mainly #1. #2 is only bad because you have to reserve all your Initiative for #3 because of how bad #1 is.