Guild Wars 2

All Pistol Skills need a faster refire rate, this is a universal problem.

Afterwords:

Vital Shot needs to be separated into three parts.

Vital Shot – Damage: 134
Bleeding: 4 s (170 damage)

Poison Shot – Damage: 134
Poison: 4 s (170 damage)

Vital Repeater – Damage: (x3) 254
(3 stacks) Bleeding: 4 s (510 damage)
_______________

Body Shot –
Damage at 1-400 distance: 254
Damage at 401-900 distance: 457
5 Vulnerability: 10 s
(This skill does more damage the further away the target is.)

Unload – Does same damage as before.
(additionally, does 3% more damage for each boon and condition on a foe.)
(each type of boon or condition, it doesn’t apply to stacks.)
(this means using other abilities besides just unload for damage works in your favor, you want the enemy to have many different stacks of conditions as possible, it also makes traits that apply conditions a lot better.)
_______________

Headshot -
Damage: 42
Daze: ¼ s
3 Confusion: 10 s (390 damage on skill use.) 1-400 distance.
1 Confusion: 10 s (130 damage on skill use.) 401-900 distance.

(4 second cooldown on Black Powder.)
Black Powder –
Damage at 1-400 distance: 654
Damage at 401-900 distance: 357
Duration: 4 s
Combo Field: Smoke
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
Range: 900

(Field Radius Doubled from what it was before.)
(This skill does more damage the closer the target is.)

Interesting change to unload. My problem with unload is that it’s too easy to dodge and takes to long to finish out. Although a majority of the people are too lazy to dodge or just don’t know about dodging…

Lofat.2406:

Interesting change to unload. My problem with unload is that it’s too easy to dodge and takes to long to finish out. Although a majority of the people are too lazy to dodge or just don’t know about dodging…

Well, it makes it so the dual skill does more damage the more conditions you have on your foe.

Also, because of the way the skills are designed doing more damage closer or further away, it makes spamming one ability almost impossible, you really need to watch what you use.

That’s what I like about it. It opens up the build to more than just unload spamming.

Why haven’t you been hired at arenanet yet? Regardless if these are good changes or not, they seem to be heading in a better direction than what we have now.

1. looks like it would make P/D too powerful, but every thing else looks good.

The Unload change is interesting, encourages use of other skills while not being so mandatory as to not allow Unload spamming in situations where you need burst.

I would swap the distance modifier on powder and body shot, and add some distance modifier on the 3rd auto attack. Point of these would be to make the changes viable for P/P (ranged weapon that prefers to stay near max range) and P/D (meleeish weapon that needs to get close to something in order to work).

You clearly have more imagination then I do, so this is a very basic idea:

Vital Shot – Damage: 134
Bleeding: 4 s (170 damage)

Poison Shot – Damage: 134
Poison: 4 s (170 damage)

Vital Repeater –
Damage at 1-400 distance: Damage: 150
Cripple: 4 s
Damage at 401-900 distance: Damage: (x3) 254
(3 stacks) Bleeding: 4 s (510 damage)

The close range could also benefit P/P if they wanted that extra condition.

Maybe also switch Head Shot and BP damage range modifier. With my previous changes this would make:
-Body Shot do more damage under 400
-Head Shot do more damage over 400
-BP…?

Topher.1684:

I would swap the distance modifier on powder and body shot, and add some distance modifier on the 3rd auto attack. Point of these would be to make the changes viable for P/P (ranged weapon that prefers to stay near max range) and P/D (meleeish weapon that needs to get close to something in order to work).

You clearly have more imagination then I do, so this is a very basic idea:

Vital Shot – Damage: 134
Bleeding: 4 s (170 damage)

Poison Shot – Damage: 134
Poison: 4 s (170 damage)

Vital Repeater –
Damage at 1-400 distance: Damage: 150
Cripple: 4 s
Damage at 401-900 distance: Damage: (x3) 254
(3 stacks) Bleeding: 4 s (510 damage)

The close range could also benefit P/P if they wanted that extra condition.

Maybe also switch Head Shot and BP damage range modifier. With my previous changes this would make:
-Body Shot do more damage under 400
-Head Shot do more damage over 400
-BP…?

I can hop on the poison shot. Though it would make Spider Venom totally useless. Maybe have to replace spider venom with some kind of burn attack maybe.

Black Powder is more of a close range attack, wheras Body Shot feels more like a Long Range attack.

Venom ‘s were always useless anyways, Switching to bow and using ’4’ I can pretty much apply many stacks of venom.

Having an auto-attack that causes several stacks of bleed and poison at range might be a bit over the top, I’d say you should make the first 2 skills identical while causing poison on the third (the stealth attack from P/D would feel a little pointless if you can do the same thing by just auto-attack). If the pistols would have a faster firing rate I would perhaps also decrease the poison duration to 2 sec just like the daggers so that you can’t stack it up (meaning that spider venom would still have a point).
I like the concept of the new body shot although I have no idea of how those numbers will look in practice. The same goes with unload.
Headshot… I’d rather have the cost decreased by 1 while keeping the current functionality (although it’s quite useless in PvE). 3 stacks of confusion for 10 seconds is already quite kitten powerful and adding that to a 4 initiative skill?… Decrease it to 1 stack for 6 seconds or 2 stacks for 3 seconds and it could be balanced. This is how the confusion stacks and durations looks currently:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Confusion
So… you get my point…
And IMO blackpowder is already fine in both PvE and PvP. Engineers Smoke Bomb just got nerfed so I don’t think we can expect anything here.

This seems like a refreshing change, and well thought-out.

As it stands, P/P is an incredibly underwhelming weaponset with no access to stealth—you know, our main survival mechanism—and condition damage through bleed stacking, which is arguably the easiest condition to shed.

It would also be nice to see a weaponset actually get a substantial improvement. I’ve been getting disheartened with all of our weaponset nerfs, especially since my favorite used to be s/d.

Personally, I’d like to see a pistol skill that applies the Weakness condition for a bit of synergy with Unload and prevent the pistol thief’s biggest damage dealer from being dodged so easily.

Changing Body Shot to apply Weakness rather than Vulnerability would be a good move as it’s definitely better to inflict slightly less damage than to have your target dodge everything and take none at all.

I mostly got my idea from Scepter necromancer and engineer pistol, but I agree.
3 Stacks of Confusion is a little too much, but it needs to be punishing, but you also have to add the stun in the duration as well, which makes it even shorter, also with the rediculous amount of condition removal everyone has, Pistols has to be made to be a good Condition AND Power weapon, since it has no stealth.

I could change headshot to be different as well, applying less stacks the further away the target is (this prevents needless spamming, and balances it out.)

At long range, head shot will apply 1 confusion, but at close range apply 3.

Not only does this prevent needless spamming, it prevents singling out a target in a zerg, and makes the pistoleer think about his attacks and targets, you could easilly waste 4 initative spamming that skill, but then again, since its a melee attack, it might as well be powerful.

The pistols weakness is the fact that its a single target weapon, and the fact thieves don’t have anything to spread the conditions to other targets like other classes get.

The pistol, since its a weapon that is based on a class with little to no surivability without stealth, and a single target weapon, with no way to aoe it, it needs to be powerful.

I’m not really sure why you think skill 1 gains value from having a chain. Melee weapons gain an interesting dynamic from them for PvP purposes, but ranged generally doesn’t since there isn’t the same pressures on kiting in and out of melee on them. There’s also the problem of animation support; scepter auto-attacks get chains simply because they use sword animations, and giving them a chain is the best way to keep the visuals clean. Adding a chain to pistol, on the other hand, adds nothing in this regard. So I don’t see the value of a chain over just boosting a couple numbers as appropriate.

The Body Shot change does not solve the fundamental problem of it essentially being interchangeable with Unload, with one being strictly better than the other depending on team composition. This proposal would simply make Body Shot stronger than Unload in more situations. So I do not think this change is worth doing.

The Unload proposal is decent, though I don’t understand why it goes on Unload. I like that mechanics like this backload damage, which lets you squeeze some more performance onto a skill without giving it gross burst potential. The issue I take is that it simply further blurs the like with Body Shot. As written, this proposal is essentially a blanket +15% to +21% damage boost to Unload vs dungeon and world bosses, while pretty meaningless in solo situations. Body Shot, on the other hand, is the stronger skill in those situations (especially with the proposed change).

So I think this is a good mechanic, but it is more appropriate to go onto Body Shot, not Unload.

Confusion on Head Shot is a good, flavorful idea that I like quite a bit. I prefer more stacks of short duration confusion to a single stack of long duration confusion. This is definitely a good way to take the skill and is worth exploring further.

The proposed change to Black Powder shot is terrible. It’s adding a ridiculous amount of power to the skill in melee situations (the proposed damage would make it an enormously powerful execute on S/P or D/P), where it is already really strong, while doing essentially nothing for it in ranged situations. This is entirely the wrong direction, and you’re kludging it up by making it the only weapon skill with a cooldown as well (I presume because you recognize how kitten this would be for melee otherwise). Weak idea, go back to the drawing board.

Short version: Confusion on Head Shot and damage per condition are good ideas (though the latter is better on Body Shot than Unload). Pursue those ideas further. Go back to the drawing board on the rest.

I rather like your idea for Headshot and Unload, but I kind of disagree on Vital Shot and Black Powder. The former just needs an appreciable boost to its refire rate (it should be .6 – .7 rather than .8 – .9) while the latter is pretty much fine as is.

Body Shot is really the only skill I’m on the fence about. There’s a part of me that thinks Head and Body Shot should be reversed (Body Shot is an OH while Head Shot is MH), but I think that’s mainly for thematic reasons (you would be able to aim better with your MH). Regardless, I feel the real problem with Body Shot isn’t the skill itself but the way Vulnerability works.

I dunno, there are a thousand different ways you could dissect it. Only one thing is for sure: Pistols need more work.

I think headshot is fine it is pretty powerful as it is now. Denying a heal is not really hard at all and if you interrupt it then it goes on a almost 3 sec cd thats pretty strong when someone is about to die.

Vulnerability isn’t a bad condition there is a thread on guru that explains that 1 stack of vulnerability is about 1.5% increase in damage not the 1% like the tooltip says. The problem is maintaining stacks with body shot so you can take advantage of it. Maybe increase the vulnerability to about 7 seconds usually if you body shot then try to dump unload on them they have dropped a few stacks anyway by time the cast is done or they dodged half of it.

What about making Body Shot a spread*5 shot? Each shot applies 1 Vuln (if you hit with all of them, you apply the same Vuln than now). Each separate shot does less damage than the current BS, but if you hit with all of them (point blank) you can do around the same damage than Unload.

This way you have an alternative to Unload (and being 5 impacts, it benefits from the same traits that you use for Unload), if you want to play “in your face”, synergizing with Black Powder as it’s a melee skill. You get “cheaper unloads” and use the extra initiative on blinding the opponent, risking your safety as you get into melee range, but being able to burst and surprise some opponents with the blind and a lot of Vulnetabilty and damage.

Suddenly Body Shot still has it’s spiritual idea, but now it’s useful for your build instead of being a mathematical waste!!! And it isn’t op or close to it as you risk your HP by jumping into melee range.

And depending on the situation (do you have a lot of space to maneauver? do you want to force someone to abandone his position?) you can mix Unloads and BP+BS tactics.

An alternative idea would be this:

- Body Shot is the main attack (applying only 1 Vulnerability. Trivia Note: At early stages of the game, Body Shot WAS the main attack, I never understood why the changed it). Having Vuln. on the main attack synergyzes much better with ALL Pistol dual attacks than condition damage.

- Sneak Attack becomes the second skill, named Vital Shot and is middle ground between both in term of bleeding (with maybe adding something more and less bleeds to compensate, like cripple as the old Vital Shot did, or wakness) so there is potential for condition damage in pistol builds (without needing to use stealth all the time).

- Headshot becomes the Stealth Skill and applies Confusion (as it won’t be as spammable, it would be viable to make it stack around 3 to 5 confusion stacks, if it were in the main bar you could stack a lot of confusion, which is the problem with initiative). Headshot SOUNDS like something you put in the stealth slot, and I’m sure hitting your head will confuse you a lot.

- Put some sort of movement control (self or opponent) into the now empty 4th slot.

This way your main attack synergyzes with your dual attacks, P/D users will still get their Carrion benefits with Confusion, a very strong condition if used right and also the second skill will allow you to put bleeds without needing to constantly go into stealth mode.

Option 3:

Black Powder stealths yourself on use (not pulsing , only on casting) but its limits acts like Shadow Refuge limits, so you can’t leave it if you want to be stealthed. The purposse of this is access Sneak Attack in every Pistol set. CnD is harder to land BUT it’s much better for survivality as you’re free to move and reposition yourself as many WvW videos show. This would allow you to use your Pistol Sneak Attack (Sword and Dagger don’t change their playstyle as they can’t reach opponents back unless he’s super stupid), and this way Black Powder can still cost 6 initiative (same role on melee sets, and now good for pistols too).

Now you have access to both Condition Damage and Direct Damage on P/P, so you can adapt to both High Tough and High Vit opponents.

I would be happy with any of those options, but more than one would be too strong I think.

Instead of poison shot maybe add a short-mid range front cone attack?

I love double pistols but I hate that there is no AoE at all to the weapon at all.