Guild Wars 2

Since anet will not make a radical redesign, we will have to work with what we have.

Pistol has the right idea, but 2 skills need tweaking, 1 and 2.

Skills 1 is okay except for the very low damage coefficients for power and give the bleed at least an extra second or two of duration. I get it that this weapon is supposed to be a hybrid for P/P and P/D but it just isn’t that good for either.

Skill 2 needs its imob to be increase by a half second more and the vuln needs to increase to at least 5 seconds.

Yea, Im just back to the game after a year off. I ran p/d since beta and was curious if it is even still viable? Its gonna be hard for me to switch, cant teach and old dog new tricks!

How2fixpistola.

Pistol 2 is useless. Pistol 5 is useless unless you’re a daredevil. Unload costs too much initiative considering competent players will just laugh at you and dodge through it (like every other volley, but the initiative drain makes it harder to rely on other weapons for escape/plan.

Body shot needs to become more potent or simply be changed into a short ranged gap opener, like a mini withdraw. Give it a bonus where if you actually dodge an ability, a portion of the initiative is refunded.

As for black powder……

I’d change it entirely or give theives the option to toggle it. BP is vital for D/P but useless for P/P. Honestly, if my suggestion for body shot is done, I’m not sure how they’d tweak BP without breaking P/P.

Make #2 a ,,heartseeker’’ of pistol, but with damage scaling with range instead of target’s hp. Highest damage in melee range, lowest at 900 range. Max damage should be slightly lower than HS, and min damage should hit like auto attack. Set initiative cost to 3. Also, channel time should be 3/4 second, and be visible.

Then, change unload to something similar to shortbow #3:
- quickly fire both pistols, each apply 3 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds (damage like 2x auto attack),
- leap backward (can trigger stealth with #5),
- 2x combo projectile,
- 4 initiative cost.

GG, entite weapon set fixed. Predicted fix introduction time: by 2030.

I think your suggestion is interesting, Dagins, but you’d basically be turning thief’s only ranged set into a melee set.

@SlayerSixx.5763
Thief is supposed to be a close range duelist/burst class, and my suggestion keeps it this way. We have also shortbow as ranged weapon; it just needs a buff to auto attack projectile speed and reverted cluster bomb range nerf (plus projectile speed buff).

Keep it mind, just like heartseeker is not always used when target is below 25% hp, so my version of body shot wouldn’t. Getting into close range with pistol is dangerous, as opposed to sniping from some ledge, so damage increase is a fair trade off here. Now, playing in close range with P/P is only punished, without any rewards.

Ooooor…hp to up 1 tier as baseline and prep baseline…then I can go DA/CS/DD and just blast that kitten .

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Thief

Experts at stealth and surprise, thieves can move through the shadows, vanish into thin air, or steal items from their opponents and use them as weapons. Thieves practice an agile, acrobatic fighting style, which can make them very hard to hit.

Says nothing about them being restricted to melee.

You’re playing a ranged setup. Your efforts should be focused on maintaining distance. Of course you’d be punished for going into melee with a ranged set.

What I’d personally like:-

1 Ditch the bleeds and increase RoF to make crits (and their procs) more likely.

2 Increase projectile speed and Immob duration. Make it dirt cheap, losing the Vuln if necessary.

3 As is.

4 Make it cheaper.

5 Make the blind field move with the Thief, in line with their thematic run ‘n’ gun nature.

Either #2 or #4 (depending on which works best with P/x and x/P sets) has 1200 range, so we have that option to shoot from outside death field range, like every other class has; especially in view of our extreme squishiness.

Bonus points for Steal switching to Reload when P/P is equipped. Reload is primarily an Ini regen (~4-5 Ini).

Double bonus points for the Daggerstorm animation switching to an ‘Equilibrium’ style, TSW bullet ballet animation… I know, I know….

If they did all that, I’d never need to play my other MMOs to get that proper ’Slinger done right fix.

make P/P more “acrobatic” anet plz

@SlayerSixx.5763
By being close-mid ranged, you utilize agility and elusiveness the most. There are a little reasons to invest into agility and acrobatics while being long ranged.

All weapon sets we have already follow this idea (except P/P, which is a mess). Thief is supposed to be high risk/high reward. There is no risk at long range, therefore you can’t have big rewards = not really what a thief would do.

With my proposition, you could stay at long range if you liked, but most rewarding would be jumping into dangerous melee range to finish the business, delivering big burst – or dying.

The vuln on Body Shot needs to be extended/buffed and it needs to strip a boon or two to be decent.

Heck, lower the ini cost by one and remove the immob altogether plus the above changes and it would be good too.

Not all of these ideas are mine, but I feel like pistol/pistol would become relatively competitive as a weapon set if the following things were changed:

Body shot
Remove vulnerability applied.
Now is unblockable.
Reduce initiative cost to 3.
Now chains to Backpedal when you successfully hit an enemy.

Backpedal
Has a 0 s cast time.
Costs 1 inititative.
Shadowsteps you backwards or directly away from your target.
Has a range of 450.

Unload
Reduce initiative cost to 4.
Now chains to Reload when you successfully hit an enemy.

Reload
Has a 0 s cast time.
Costs 1 initiative.
Blinds for 5 s.
Is a blast finisher.
Has a radius of 120.
Is unblockable.

Replace the Ankle Shots trait with Ricochet.

This would allow for some much needed mobility and cleave on this weapon set as well as practical finishers with its own combo field.

You know what might make Pistol more viable, but might be impossible in their current engine? Make Unload cancellable (with cost saving). Make it so that it’s a channeled ability that only costs Initiative as you use it, so instead of costing 5ini no matter what, it only costs 1 ini per half-second of cast time. This way, you can fake people out by using Unload and then instantly cancelling it, taking only 2 shots and wasting only 1 ini, but they burn a dodge or other defense, and then you use it again. That would provide some interesting play/counterplay options as you’d have to judge whether or not it’s time to fully Unload, or to just fake them out, and they’d have to do the same.

Dagins.5163:

@SlayerSixx.5763
By being close-mid ranged, you utilize agility and elusiveness the most. There are a little reasons to invest into agility and acrobatics while being long ranged.

All weapon sets we have already follow this idea (except P/P, which is a mess). Thief is supposed to be high risk/high reward. There is no risk at long range, therefore you can’t have big rewards = not really what a thief would do.

With my proposition, you could stay at long range if you liked, but most rewarding would be jumping into dangerous melee range to finish the business, delivering big burst – or dying.

I’m not sure if youve faced any decent players, but even if pistols were to be given 1200 range, it’d still be very high risk considering the absurd amounts of mobility literally almost every class has. With my build, I’ve only kited necro successfully and they’re capable of just soaking my damage up all day and everyday. Every other class (save for warrior) can simply tank everything and keep teleporting after me. Trying to get into melee to do damage with a ranged weapon set is redundant. You may as well go with a weapon set designed for melee dps.

Also, YOUR definition of the class isn’t what the devs define the class as. High risk doesn’t always have to involve you getting close since range really doesn’t matter since HoT dropped (UA would like to say hi).

Quoting myself from a different pistol fix thread:

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 chunk 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.

Liking a lot of these ideas for body shot.

How about a condition transfer type of thing , or a boon steal that cherry picks a subset of boons off the target like stability and aegis.

They need to add more utility for pistols to make them less boring and more sustainable.
They could also put bleeds on unload and decrease physical dmg a bit.

Kicker.8203:

They need to add more utility for pistols to make them less boring and more sustainable.
They could also put bleeds on unload and decrease physical dmg a bit.

don’t you dare decrease my unload damage! XD

What if Vital Shot removed boons? Legit question. Might make the autos worth, and it’d solve the retaliation problems…

Serious Thought.5394:

What if Vital Shot removed boons? Legit question. Might make the autos worth, and it’d solve the retaliation problems…

Man, as much as id love that. I can hear the nerf cries already on that. Although, something like an addition of 1 might stack per Vital Shot auto similar to ranger axe main hand might be something not too over that top.

I’d love boon removal. Its lackluster, and complaining on that begs the question why can Mesmer have it? Aren’t we a boonhate class?

Mesmer rips/shreds/steals boons, Necro Converts and rips boons, Thief steals. Why not shred too? :C But ye they’d go “omg so op”.