Guild Wars 2

For me it would seem that the best way to play pistol/pistol, would be to play it exactly as you play pistol dagger. You lose some things, and gain some things, is it spec breaking? I guess we can all decide on our own.

Lose- Cloak and Dagger
To me the biggest loss. I plan on running stealing, stealth’s you, which will also change my taking of mug. So this is a pretty decent damage loss. I play in power,prec,condition gear. So for me it is a decent direct damage loss.

Solution-With stealing causes me to stealth, I think the play style will be similar. I also plan on using blinding powder and shadow refuge as utilities, so i’ll have a stealth on a 27 second timer, and to others on varying timers. Still you lose stealth on demand, which for some may be game breaking.

Lose-Shadow strike. This is a pretty decent hit, it’s nice for getting away from your opponent. I struggle landing this and cloak and dagger on highly mobile opponents. I’m sure if I practice more, I could be a lot better with it. Also two stacks of Torment is nothing to sneeze at.

Lose-Dancing dagger. I use this to try and stop runners, and to get better position in a fight. But for me personally, this is the least of my losses.

Gain- Unload. One of pistol/pistol thieves’ bread and butter. I run sigil of torment on one of my pistols. So that’s one way of applying torment, one stack isn’t as great as 3, but it’s not a complete loss. The rapid multiple hits almost ensure a sigil proc.

Gain-Headshot. I love me some headshot. I usually run with friends, and it provides pretty decent stomp protection in wvw. I’ve been able to interrupt some telegraphed attacks as well.

Gain-Black Powder- More stomp protection, and a very powerful blind. I use this in combination with blinding powder for longer stealth duration.

Now onto the spec I’m going to try and run, and see how it goes.

http://tinyurl.com/ohbufq7

My rotation will be
Steal, sneak attack, unload, black powder, blast with blind powder, sneak attack, unload, ect ect.

This isn’t my final draft. But it has enough of what I’m looking for that I may try it. Also the gear has been left blank, until I figure out exactly what I’m doing.

Just a quick note that mug will not break you out of the stealth from stealing grants stealth. The damage from mug will apply first then the stealth.

Interesting as I was speculating on the same tactics. I am going to try something like it out given I played a lot of p/d.

Shadow Trap also gives stealth (5 seconds) when you activate Shadow Pursuit, which also breaks stun and gives fury and 10(!) stacks of might. It might double as stunbreaker (replacing shadowstep) but you’d need good timing on when to deploy it as it’s only in a 10 second window after being triggered that you can either use Shadow Pursuit or Destroy Shadow Trap. If you don’t like loosing Shadowstep it might replace Blinding Powder.

Edit: wiki has it wrong

There are essentially two ways to play P/P, both of them are mediocre but not quite terrible.

One is pure zerk/Ini regen Unload spam. This will give you decent ranged burst at the expense of everything else. This works somewhat better in PvP than in PvE.

One is power based condition hybrid. This is actually a much more functional all-purpose way to play the set. You get substantially better mobility and utility without sacrificing much sustained DPS. The only thing you lose is some burstability. This works about evenly well in PvE and PvP.

If you start getting really close to ‘full’ condi spec though, there’s no reason not to just switch to P/D – you gain more than you lose in doing so.

Is P/D completely Condi spec? Is there a way to make it work with power? Or is it just better as a condi spec?

This playstyle seems pretty interesting, I may try this one day.

I used to run a power p/d d/p set and it was a lot of fun and it did work. I wouldn’t run it as my main damage set though.

Lamuness.3570:

Is P/D completely Condi spec? Is there a way to make it work with power? Or is it just better as a condi spec?

This playstyle seems pretty interesting, I may try this one day.

P/D works nicely with power too although you won’t get as much dmg from it as from other sets. Works best against melee classes as they need to get close to you, skill 3 can hit quite hard and creates gap so they often end up chasing you just to get hurt. Also a lot of people assume you run condi spec and try to cleanse the condis.