Guild Wars 2

I just recently started playing and was wondering: How good can a dual pistol Thief be for PvE? What does it bring to a group? Does it do good damage? Is it interesting to play? Is it good at leveling?

I thought the Engineer would have a nice dual pistol setup, but it seems like the profession mostly uses kits and not the equipped weapons, which was a turnoff. But I like the pistols setup thematically.

Dual pistols have their strengths and weaknesses, much like most weapons. Their strength is its single target damage, easy access to daze and fairly decent defense (in most situations) through blind. However, it severally lacks in mobility and tackling multiple mobs at once, and if your target is immune to blind your defensive options will be virtually non-existant (so champs can be a bit of a challenge as you only have dodging to help you survive).

If you are focusing on elite mobs, and champions, then it can be a very good weapon in terms of damage, but like I say it will be more difficult in terms of survival. Against most normal mobs you would do much better with shortbow, as you can group a few together and hit them all hard with cluster bomb and trickshot. Plus, the mobility and defensive capabilities of SB are much better than Pistol Pistol.

It can be a fun set, and does offer some ok control with daze and immobilization, but to be honest, in my opinion, the daze is too costly for its duration and the same is true for the immobilize. If dual pistols had at least one multi target option, it would be a much better weapon, but as it stands at the moment it feels a little underwhelming in most situations unfortunately. I do have a lot of fun running PP from time to time, but I always swap back to shortbow after a short while, as it is so much better overall.

I main a thief, and I love the profession more than any other but a large margin, but I personally prefer the engi’s dual pistol skills much more than the thief’s. But if you are ok with the purely single target nature of the thief’s dual pistols, then you should have a lot of fun with it. And if you have daredevil, you can gain stealth via pistol skill 5, which adds extra defense and a free (slightly less damaging) unload skill as well. Daredevil makes PP slightly better, so that might be an option for you, but you will still lack that multi target capability. So maybe you can run PP with SB, to give you more options. PP for single target and SB for groups and situations where you need to get out of dodge quickly.

its not an ideal weapon. it doesnt bring anything really. its inferior to dagger in all ways except the fact you can use it with range.

shortbow is far superior at utility and dmg in groups.

but if u need ranged combat, and your just focusing on 1 opponent. p/p is better than shortbow at single target dmg.

i use p/p cause…well partially its in my character’s theme (i roleplay……)

and its worked out well for me. i’ll use dagger/dagger for most opponents, but if i’m on low hp, i’ll pull out pistol/pistol, and spam the 3 skill to build up my hp again using the trait to give u a portion of your crit dmg as hp.

P/P could really use a buff in synergy (make it so that the condition based 1 skill works with the pure physical based 3 skill. and make the 2,4, and 5 skills mesh with the 1 and 3 skills)

but overall. its not BAD. but its not ideal in most situations. its a very situational tool.

Its okay. I can get a bit of aoe with sigil of fire, but single target dps is very comfortable imo.

I prefer it when im not using d/d.

So it’s OK for a flavor/offspec sort of playstyle, but one should keep a different set of weapons for actually contributing to a group, no? The lack of any AoE damage sounds frustrating.

How often do professions see changes? Could it be possible that six months from now PP would have a multi-target attack, for example? Or buffs to its single target damage, as it seems to be the weapon’s specialty?

Edo.9048:

So it’s OK for a flavor/offspec sort of playstyle, but one should keep a different set of weapons for actually contributing to a group, no? The lack of any AoE damage sounds frustrating.

How often do professions see changes? Could it be possible that six months from now PP would have a multi-target attack, for example? Or buffs to its single target damage, as it seems to be the weapon’s specialty?

Once upon a time it had one…

i love dual pistol but to be quite honest with you i switch out dual pistol in PvE right away..

its horrible in PvE u hit 1 target only, and u run out of ini quite fast..
skill 1 is crap skill seems slow to me and low dmg
skill 2 not used in PvE
skill 3 = dmg skill but drains ini like hell
skill 4 not used in PvE
skill 5 no dmg coming from it..

i use P/P in WvW only where im beasting it up with this setup..
in PvE i use anything but a pistol in my main hand.

simply for 2 reasons pistol cant aoe
pistol 1 dmg is utter kitten and very slow compare to other weapon sets.

Edo.9048:

So it’s OK for a flavor/offspec sort of playstyle, but one should keep a different set of weapons for actually contributing to a group, no? The lack of any AoE damage sounds frustrating.

How often do professions see changes? Could it be possible that six months from now PP would have a multi-target attack, for example? Or buffs to its single target damage, as it seems to be the weapon’s specialty?

As Azure said, PP used to have a multi target option in the form of a trait that gave each pistol bullet a 50% chance to bounce. However, this was removed fairly recently.

There is always a chance Anet will add some kind of AoE capability to PP, you never know. A lot of players have been asking for it, and if the PP set is under utilized by the majority of players I am sure Anet will look into it at some point, its just a matter of when. Now HoT is out of the way, they can free up more resources to work on these things.

My only concern in this regard is that now we have the elite specialization system, our next decent ranged option may not come until the next elite spec. For example, if they create a sniper spec, which a lot of people expected the daredevil would be, I imagine only then will we get an improvement to PP. If we get rifle as a strong single target ranged weapon, they may change PP to be a mid range multi target weapon.

We’ll just have to see what Anet’s next plans are for the thief, but hopefully they can find a way to bring it up to par with SB at some point.

I’m not sure I agree with flavor, but off-spec is a fair description, or more accurately it is a more focused weapon set. It can still be a fun and capable set, in its designated role, it’s just not as versatile as other sets. It is a strong weapon when combined with another, more versatile, weapon set. Like I say, if you have SB on your other set you can make a pretty effective ranged build.

The reason I say SB is better is mainly because versatility is a very important ingredient to have on a weapon in GW2, but that’s not to say PP is a bad set. For example, PP will polish of a single target much faster than SB, and against most normal mobs black powder can be a more effective defensive tool. I would not give up on it completely, just don’t expect it to be as useful in most situations.