Guild Wars 2

k so i would like to see P/P fix but first why does p/p suck in general ? because of retaliation. so this boom alone just hard counter playing P/P in any viable way. if there was a way to get in to cloak say to get trait heal and con removal that would be great. but only way to do that is to run a select utility. by running these set utility you unable to run stun break again limiting the play style. but not factoring any of that P/P just has overwhelmingly weak dmg output even if your running a full berserk er ultra glass cannon your dmg is just not there.

k so taking all that in to account how do we fix P/P to make it better one way i see fixing p/p would be to up unload dmg + give it torment.

another way would be changing skill 2 replacing physical projectile with a new blast finisher allow thief to combo in to cloak getting all his healing trait bonus off. you could lower the range of skill to like 200

final way i could see P/P being fix would be adding boom strip on final shot of unload.

i know there lots of post about P/P these just my idea on how to fix it

Making 2 a blast finisher is quite a good idea actually..

They should give unload the evade back that shortbow has, that would be pretty good.

The sheer amount of QQ that making pistol #2 a blast finisher would be hard to take.

Pistol stealth attack would be pretty hard to counter as well on condi builds using black powder+ pistol #2 and then stealth shot for 5 stacks of bleeds. (And then doing it again) That’s 10 stacks of bleeds while stealthing and also standing in a blind field. Traited with 2 ini back on stealth you could perform that 3 times in a row most likely, and unlike backstab it would connect most of the time

Although it would make P/P instantly viable, it would almost certainly be seen as overpowered.

Rather than making another spammable blast finisher, it would probably be better to give pistol 2 a new condition, or a high damage effect that only works if the opponent has ‘x’. It might be interesting if pistol 2 did extra damage based off of how many conditions the enemy had (similar to necromancer scepter 3 but more powerful) This would encourage the use of venoms and synergize well with pistol trait that causes cripple as well as torment from p/d #3, as well as black powder.

Like Rissou said, make Unload evasive. I imagine a directional flip while firing, and slightly speed up the firing rate. Not only would it look awesome, it would mean you’re not just a total sitting duck. Not sure what to say about the damage, but you COULD also reduce the initiative cost to 4, as the big problem with P/P is how much it starves your initiative just for passable DPS.

I would like to see unloads DMG be increased or more bullets…
Also see #2 skill changed to something like a reverse heartseeker however this would have to then be swapped for #4 to prevent p/d becoming stupidly op. But then nerf d/p cause #4 is a very good skill in this set.

To analyse p/p we need to see the weakness which is lack of defense and lack of punching power. Maybe creating a skill that gives both defense and offense.
Vulnerability lasting longer would increase the overall p/p DMG. Now maybe attaching a defensive to it would help… Weakness anyone?

This skill would then reduce incoming DMG (beats blind as blind only affects the 1st attack of whatever skill) and increase the damage against them. Current length of vulnerability means you only really get a chance to hit unload once or twice for 6k each and that can be dodged.

I doubt P/P was ever intended to be played outside of heavy damage builds so stand far back and hit hard in pure DPS gear….Try to do that in PuGs and you will get get kicked though, not sure why?

P/P Doesn’t suck because of retal wtf. P/P at most ticks 8 ticks of retal. Pistol whip ticks up to 25 in one cast and is still a better set that is one of the most suggested for PvE and useful still in pvp. S/P can’t stealth either, same with the shortbow.

P/P is lame because it’s a duck set with no mobility unlike literally every other thief set. Vital shot’s damage leaves something to be desired and body shots vulnerability has a duration that is simply too low.

P/P is suck because it has double the refire rate of ranger’s short bow with the same damage. There is literally no point in using the set.

The problem is mostly with initiative cost. The initiative cost of the weapon skills don’t really match at all. If you use Unload two times, you don’t have the initiative to defend yourself with Black Powder. The other thing is that pistol/pistol is both condition and direct damage. Auto-attack stacks bleed, but Body Shot stacks vulnerability? It doesn’t make sense..

For starters, I would take the initiative cost of Unload down to 3 or 4, then possibly add cripple on Body Shot instead of the vulnerability.

1) The auto stacks bleed, but the weapon set is direct damage.
2) Unload is your main source of damage and is spread over 8 shots which makes it extremely easy to evade.
3) Bodyshot is still terrible TBH, but can be ok if something else is changed.
4) Headshot is awesome and works on every set.
5) Blackpowder is awesome for sword and dagger MH, but is not as good for pistol… you don’t want to be in melee range.

So how can this be fixed without changing weapon skills to be for p/p only, which may not be feasible to do? Well, first we have to decide what the weapon set should be. To me p/p should be the direct-damage, ranged brother of d/d, which arguably has the same identity issues but still works fairly well.

1) The autoattack HAS to be the main source of dps.. the damage has to be increased or the cast time has to be decreased.
2) Body shot should be a blast finisher.
3) Unload should work in the same manner as Heartseaker but only be 4 shots. This will encourage people to wait to use it until the enemy is closer to death.
4) Pfff, its the perfect skill.
5) With a blast finisher, you can get access to stealth which this weaponset lacks and will allow you to trait into Shadow Arts to get all those nifty thief traits.

It simply should have its refire rate 0.54 and a small base damage increase.

My suggestion is P/P would change the off hand P abilities -so not the same as D/P pr S/P- what that dose is 2 things:

1) Anet can add x2 abilities specific for P/P off hand Pistol
2) Allows for D/P or S/P off hand set

Taobella.6597:

another way would be changing skill 2 replacing physical projectile with a new blast finisher allow thief to combo in to cloak getting all his healing trait bonus off. you could lower the range of skill to like 200

The problem with this is two-fold:

1. - Buffing pistol mainhand or offhand skils will not result in P/P being popular, it’ll just result in more people using P/x or x/P and continuing to ignore P/P. Half of P/P’s current problem is that there’s nothing it can do that other builds can’t do better.
2. - Your proposition basically amounts to making P/P into a stealth/condition heavy build similar to P/D. Except the /p offhand doesn’t support this at all, and it takes away everything unique about P/P in the first place.

To make P/P viable, it needs to be given a viable and desirable niche, not made into a weak version of an existing build. This means single skill changes aren’t going to work (unless there are some huge changes to #3), the entire synergy of the P/P set needs to be looked at in the context of all five skills as well as supporting traits.

P/P lacks evasion which is Important for the Thief, and since Body Shot isn’t really a good
skill how about you make a Teleport or an Evasion out of it? How about a short shot
followed by a short sidestep teleport, in a similar manner like the Dimensional Anchor?
Make it about 300 – 600 range, and while we are at it remove one condition?
Also it should port you in the same side you are walking right now, or default to right,
but not forwards or backwards since other skills allready do that.

Unload needs some kind of secundary powers, like flanking strike has.
So maybe 50% more projectile speed, and built in reflection and/or
retaliation immunity?

Cyhann.2609:

P/P lacks evasion which is Important for the Thief, and since Body Shot isn’t really a good
skill how about you make a Teleport or an Evasion out of it? How about a short shot
followed by a short sidestep teleport, in a similar manner like the Dimensional Anchor?
Make it about 300 – 600 range, and while we are at it remove one condition?
Also it should port you in the same side you are walking right now, or default to right,
but not forwards or backwards since other skills allready do that.

Unload needs some kind of secundary powers, like flanking strike has.
So maybe 50% more projectile speed, and built in reflection and/or
retaliation immunity?

If they reduced the number of shots and increased the damage of each shot indirectly reducing the cast time, unload would become more bursty with less of a chance proc sigils and traits balancing it out and it would simultaneously become less susceptible to retaliation. This is similar to the change they recently made to pistol whip (reducing the time between stun and flurry) which wasn’t the fix that was needed, but at least a step in the right direction. Both PW and Unload suffered in the wake of the quickness nerf and need some sort of compensation. Adding additional features to both could come later.

Some good suggestions. My thoughts:

If Body Shot was a blast finisher, P/D would be obsolete and condi P/P would be FAR EASIER to troll with. I’d love to let P/P use Shadow Arts traitline too, but it would just be too strong.

In another P/P thread, someone suggested Unload be AoE (Graves buckshot, MF’s bullet time). Well, if people are complaining about retaliation now…
…plus in my mind, P/P should be a single target, bursty weapon. Leave the zerging to SB.

At the moment P/P is good for:
Single target ranged DPS (better than SB at least)
Some ok support options with Black Powder and Headshot
Ok, that’s about it.

It’s problems are:
Too ini hungry
Caught between condi and power
Support OR damage, not enough ini for both
Damage is way too telegraphed
Cannot interact with Black Powder on #5
Far too reliant on your ability bar

So, with a single-target, no-stealth, power-based weaponset in mind, what does P/P need to work?

Sustain:
- Non-stackable, party-wide regen on Body Shot (5-10 seconds)
- On Body Shot, for the next 5 seconds, all attacks Lifesteal (scales with power)

Evade/escape:
- Teleport on bodyshot (teleports you 600 units behind your target, 600 range) This would also be great to chase as when a player is trying to leg it, suddenly there you are waiting in front of them.
- Dodge roll on Body Shot (Like Withdraw, but normal distance. Yes, yes, Body Shot needs work doesn’t it)

Damage:
- Drop vulnerability from Body Shot and give a 2 stacks of vuln to each hit from Unload (like ranger’s setup) so the longer you channel Unload, the more damage it does. Ie, you are rewarded for landing this long, loudly telegraphed attack.

Ini:
- As the primary source of damage, make Unload cost 4 ini down from 5, like Death Blossom
- Quicken the #1 auto-attack rate slightly to alleviate some (but not all) of the damage duties for Unload. (You shouldn’t be able to spam damage as well as spam support skills, especially from range).

So P/P might look something like….

1. Faster auto
2. Teleport behind target and fire a shot that grants regen
3. Unload 9 bullets on your target that grant a short lasting but powerful vulnerability
4. Unchanged Headshot
5. Unchanged Black Powder (still no interaction here, but it still works well within a group)

It needs a blast finisher, some sort of evade/boon rip and something for mobility to even consider making this a “viable” weapon set.

As a Thief who only grab P/P into his battle as his main set, I honestly disagreed with people who asked for Stealth on this set. I really don’t think P/P need to be another stealth weapon set. What this set really need is being an interesting and unique set to play.

If anything, my suggestion would be these:

#1, Improve the attack rate a bit better.

#2, Reworks Body Shot. Making Body Shot works like “Binding Blade”(Guardian’s Greatsword skill) that last on the target for 4sec(?) and doing about 300dmg per sec at max Power. Body Shot will remove Protection and Stability from the target and making the target immune to Protection and Stability. If the target being daze while suffering from Body Shot that target Knockback instead and Body Shot ends instantly. Non-stackable.

#3, Removes “Ricochet” trait and build it into Unload instead and keep the chance at 33%

P/P is pretty bad imo:

1) nothing to offer for siege warfare….compared to shortbow’s cluster bomb.
2) No defense…pure offense…. lacking shortbow’s infiltrator arrow, evade shot.
3) offense sucks because it’s single target….shortbow gets AoE auto and AoE cluster bombs
4) prone to retaliation, which is a very common boon when it comes to organized zergs…you would just kill yourself. any versatile build would not get hard countered
5) skills cost too much initiative…using initiative for the majority of your damage can get you killed

more talk on P/P? ok heres the secret for P/P build.. 3333333333333333333333