Guild Wars 2

What if a rework of P/P included two of the following:

Skill 1 – Aftercast reduced (AS increase)

Skill 2 – Shadowstep to target location or Leap Finisher Execute (Leap to target location and fire single shot to the head. Deals Additional damage if target is below 75/50/25% hp)

Skill 3 – Ini cost reduction, or skill applies bleed (or Torment?), or direct damage is boosted.

Then no one would use anything other than pistols in PvE.

Until ANet changes its stance on dps of ranged weapons compared to melee, don’t expect to ever see a ranged weapon be on par or ahead of a melee weapon (well, outside of engineer grenades).

In PvP, this wouldn’t matter much since the problems with P/P aren’t really related to damage.

P/P needs 2 things:
Skill 1 to must first have aftercast reduced (to match listed cast time at least – look at warriors rifle – it has longer cast time, more damage and longer bleed but in game still shoots as fast as thief pistol)
Additionaly (optionally) skill 1 may either be separated into 2 faster skills – first one that applies bleed and second one that does a bit more damage or boosted with a trait like “whenever you apply bleed with weapon skill, you deal damage instead”.
For pvp what p/p need is either movement control (like chill/cripple on 2) or movement boost – for example swiftness on every unload hit or something like “move 33% faster while channeling”.
For pvp dagger has leap/stealth/cripple/evade, sword has teleport/immobile/cond remove/cripple and even shortbow has evade/cripple/teleport. Pistol only has a rather obvious blind and do-no-damage interrupt

I don’t think P/P needs much more tbh. Basically what Ichi said though im partial to just increase vital shots damage.
duration on Body shot increased to 4s would be real nice for wpn/swapping.
Unload to have movement speed boost while channeling, maybe 40% srs.

So how would it differ from dagger? What you listed would be “ranged dagger”.

The problems are:
- pistol 2 is bad
- p/p has no mobility

So what if p2 is changed to a mobility skill. What would it do?
- It can’t be a leap to target with damage (Heartseeker)
- It can’t be a shadow step to your target with damage (Shadow Shot)
- It can’t be a shadow step away with damage (Shadow Strike)

- It can’t be a gap closer since you still want to kite

So the options would be a (300? 350?)gap maker (basically withdraw without the heal) with additional effects like:
- damage (boring)
- short duration smoke screen (premeditated)
- evade (reactive)
- caltrops (ridiculous with caltrops on dodge)

Seetoo.9316:

So how would it differ from dagger? What you listed would be “ranged dagger”.

The problems are:
- pistol 2 is bad
- p/p has no mobility

So what if p2 is changed to a mobility skill. What would it do?
- It can’t be a leap to target with damage (Heartseeker)
- It can’t be a shadow step to your target with damage (Shadow Shot)
- It can’t be a shadow step away with damage (Shadow Strike)

- It can’t be a gap closer since you still want to kite

So the options would be a (300? 350?)gap maker (basically withdraw without the heal) with additional effects like:
- damage (boring)
- short duration smoke screen (premeditated)
- evade (reactive)
- caltrops (ridiculous with caltrops on dodge)

One of the options I included was a shadowstep on pistol 2. It may be boring but it would be a functional mobility skill. It would solve two problems for the set. the number 2 skill would no longer be useless and the set would gain mobility The skill doesn’t have to be exciting as long as it is useful.

The idea behind the leap finisher/execute numer 2 alternative was simple: if we leave the current attack speed on the pistol 1, giving it access to stealth for sneak attack synergy would improve the set overall, and giving the set an execute makes it more viable as both a condition and a damage spec AND solves the problem of unload spam being 100% of damage in a damage spec.

Fix – then – Rework

Rework without fixing brings in more things to fix. :/

How would you implement the shadow step on 2 (not that anything we say will actually affect what goes live)?
- Instant? A spammable, instant shadow step could be too powerfull
- Projectile based? Projectile speed could render it useless (for example: if I could outrun a 300 range IA by the time it lands)

- Ground targeted? Kinda awkward for a short range shadowstep (can’t outrange IA for less ini cost, its the 2 skill after all)
- Fixed direction? I can live with this (Like a mesmer’s Phase Retreat)
- Single targeted? Can’t shadowstep without a target (well, you CAN, but you’ll shadowstep in place)