Guild Wars 2

Dual wielding pistols is something we rarely, if ever, do. It’s just not on par with our other weapon sets, not in damage, mobility or utility. When I see thieves running dual pistols, I kind of feel sorry for them. They may do some damage, but nothing a sword or a dagger could do better, and all they do is spam one ability; Unload. It’s pretty much all we do with that set. We use Black Powder and Head Shot on rare occasions, but those are really rare… Vital Shot and Body Shot is a laugh, and nothing any thief serious about dealing damage would use. What this set really need is a buff to overall damage and some mobility.

So I were thinking, since the devs clearly have no idea how to fix this set, we should give them some help. What can we do to improve this set? Let’s get a discussion going and brainstorm together, because I really want to see this set where it should be

Pistols need the speed of a ranger’s longbow before such a thing happens.

seems like it’s okay for PvE for glass cannon thieves. Authority uses it in his latest PvE build

The main problem with p/p in my opinion is that mainhand pistol is kind of a mixed bag. Pistol #2 is just not really worth it in most situations. Pistol #1 is pretty weak compared to say, Necromancer Scepter #1 which both bleeds faster and poisons.

The first thing that would help would be to increase the autoattack speed by 10-20%. Then I’d like to see the trait “Ankle Shots” a 60% chance to cripple for 3 seconds/10 sec CD, buffed to 4 seconds. Pistol #2 is kind of a toss up, it could be used to add burning into the thief’s lineup. It could also have weakness added to it which would make it a lot better. Also, if the vulnerability duration could be increased to 5-6 seconds making it easier to cash in on that by swapping to a melee weapon and hitting for big damage then it might become viable. Unload is a decent damage skill and I don’t really think it needs to be changed. Pistol #4 is probably good, I just have trouble timing it.

I find when using p/p that pistol #5 has been difficult to use at best. It has a very high init cost and is a small, short lived, stationary field. For pvp situations and WvW its almost impossible to use properly, as the fight is constantly moving. Simply standing in it is not viable either as most enemies will just move on to another target or try to get out of range, which is not difficult because the pistol’s range is only 900.

That being said bp is a very useful skill in multiple other builds and it doesn’t need modification. I think the p/p build can be completely viable with the other 4 skills and #5 just left out of most rotations. I like the idea of adding burning or weakness to #2 and upping the cripple time on ankle shots.