Guild Wars 2

I’m newish, and I made my first thief, and I really like duel pistols, but how viable are they at end game, or any part for that matter.

depends on what class you are vsing if you going at it against ranger spec you can do well if you vs a spec with lots in combat mobility you gonna get really frustrated. Though in group setting it can work as long people don’t focus on you.

“end game” is a very loose term in GW2 since there essentially isn’t any.

Pistol / Pistol is probably the Thief weapon-set that is least appealing, simply because it doesn’t have much of a niche. Anything P/P does reasonably well, other weapons do better.

Single target, ranged damage is really the only thing P/P is good at. Combined with Riccochet it has some nice AoE too, but is still beating out by just about every other weapon set in terms of damage and utility.

The whole weapon-set just doesn’t really have anything going for it. No good synergy, and no compelling play-style unless you love Unload spam.

Even unload spam is terrible in PVE compared to the shortbow auto attack and cluster bomb

Dee Jay.2460:

“end game” is a very loose term in GW2 since there essentially isn’t any.

Pistol / Pistol is probably the Thief weapon-set that is least appealing, simply because it doesn’t have much of a niche. Anything P/P does reasonably well, other weapons do better.

Single target, ranged damage is really the only thing P/P is good at. Combined with Riccochet it has some nice AoE too, but is still beating out by just about every other weapon set in terms of damage and utility.

The whole weapon-set just doesn’t really have anything going for it. No good synergy, and no compelling play-style unless you love Unload spam.

I would say that end-game is more the entire game, rather than nonexistent. There’s a brief levelling period, an even more brief gearing period, and then you have a level 80 with full exotics, which is all you ever need (ascended is nice but unnecessary).

To answer the OP, I agree with Dee-Jay.
Firstly, by taking P/P you severely hurt your ability to stealth, which is where a good deal of thief power is loaded., though some people (not me) are good at stealthless builds.
Secondly, it tends to not have quite the oomph you need on a stealthless weapon outside of unload, which pushes you into abusing that skill. There are much better weaponsets for thief to be spamming stuff on, like s/p which has pretty much all the benefits of p/p and more (a teleport that cleanses and immobs, a better auto, and pistol whip which is generally much better than unload).

Lack of evasion, teleports and stealth make p/p a risk. Also it is a hybrid set since the sustaining damage is both bleed and power, and only 1 of the skills does any damage while also leaving you quite vulnerable to either interrupts to a heavy hit. Its funny to play with ricochet but not effective against moderately skilled players.

Anything you’d like p/p to do, there is a weapon set that does it better. Kinda the reason we have an adept trait that gives 10% damage to pistols, it just screams, “I’m weak, feed me!”.

I ran p/p for a month once just for fun and here is what I got from it. (Yes Unload spam lol)

dual pistols***

Digno.6945:

dual pistols***

Dingo*

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Digno.6945:

dual pistols***

Dingo

Was already taken

It’s probably the worst set in the game, frankly. It’s technically viable, but it takes some hand-holding to even reach mediocrity.