Very viable, it’s what I use mostly in WvW. I have a lot of success with it. I die maybe once or twice per evening (4-5 hours) of Eternal Battlegrounds.
Shortbow – extra kiting, escaping, pretending you’re a cannon, trick shot is great against classes with pets or to hit people by bouncing off downed targets
P/P – Only used for 1, 3 and 4. You can interrupt certain AOEs or just prevent someone from using skills while your team kills them or simply stacks some bleeds and then burst them with 4-5k dmg Unloads. More bleed stacking if you stealth with utility skills.
Pistol/Pistol is weak in PvE. It’s viable, and I use it just because I’m too lazy to switch traits everytime, but you won’t kill things very fast. Daggers do more damage. It works great for bosses though.
Shortbow is good for everything as long as it involves more than one target. Or in rare cases to apply long duration posion to counter heals.
Yes, weak is the right word. Dagger/dagger damage output completely destroys Pistol/Pistol. Because of that someone using pistols will take as much damage as someone using daggers… especially if you go 15 points into Deadly Arts. Daggers are also capable of good AOE damage.
I think to make pistol/pistol good in pve you need to use and abuse the traits that grant you initiative back.. through stealing/stealth etc.. unload just eats up initiative so fast.
Haven’t tried using a pistol/pistol build myself.. i’m kinda interested now… might go try :P
Pistol/Pistol is the boss with … Bosses … and I like using it when I’m in a group, but for soloing I use Pistol/Dagger – it gives you a lot more mobility. Of course, when you’re fighting ranged enemies you want to get in close and use melee weapons, so a d/d or s/d backup is usually good to have. (and steal is great for closing gaps)
But it depends … mostly I like the way it looks and feels, which is more exciting than Pistol/Dagger. Using Ambush and Thieve’s Guild also keeps enemies off me so I can spray them pretty well. (though that cone effect of unload sometimes pulls in those randomly wandering animals, which can get irritating)
I’m sorry I stepped outta yer box, don’ worry, if
ya whine enough they’ll put me right back.
Kind of boring, but that’s my opinion of course. The main-hand pistol and the dual skill just seem too 1 dimensional… Not nearly as busy or flashy as a dagger or sword. D/P, though? I love that. Black-powder is a dream for melee thieves.
Not only do you have zero skills that can hit multiple targets, but you don’t have any useful status effects aside from bleed.
The shortbow is the only way to go for ranged fighting because:
1) Its default attack hits up to three targets with one shot
2) It does more damage and has the same fire rate
3) Its cluster bombs can be combined with your venoms to hit multiple enemies.
Not only do you have zero skills that can hit multiple targets, but you don’t have any useful status effects aside from bleed.
Breaking news: Daze and Blind are useless status effects!
EDIT: Heck, even Vulnerability is useful from a support standpoint, especially because of how heavily the pistol can stack it safely, or consistently it can keep 5 / 10 stacks up.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
