Guild Wars 2

Right now Pistol Whip is weaker than the auto attack (Sword/Pistol) and most of us S/P Thieves have no motivation to play gw2. Arenanet, Please fix it !

Generalizations aside, pistol whip is slightly more damaging and slightly more useful than #1 chain if you are in full berserker gear, the problem is the whole “slightly” bit.
Not to mention that is has a hidden 0.5+s cast time that isn’t reflected in its tooltip.

I love pistol whip, I activate it then steal (made possible because of cast time), stunning them and dealing between 4-7k damage while evading most of the damage coming my way during the animation. I use pistol whip all the time, great for interrupting heals, stomps and anything with a cast time. I feel vulnerable when using AA chain in comparison to when using pistol whip. even if the damage is similar I feel that pistol whip is eessential to my high survivability and damage output (even though im built fairly glassy).

Pistol Whip may be slightly more effective tan autoattack on stationary targets.
However, a soon as your target begins moving, PW is garbage. That alone restricts its usage for PvE Mobs only. Sure, you can activate utilities to keep your target in place, but this applies for every other skill, not only PW.

With the autoattack chain at least I can keep damaging & following my target at free cost. No initative, no utilities needed.

I dont use utilities with pistol whip, and yes it is 50/50 as to whether the whole attack will land, but I play alot of pvp and wvw and I find the evade during the animation is a life saver at times. this of course is my opinion and i do value the auto attack, but in dangerous situations I use pistol whip alot to deal pbaoe and mitigate damage.

Kratos.6293:

Right now Pistol Whip is weaker than the auto attack (Sword/Pistol) and most of us S/P Thieves have no motivation to play gw2. Arenanet, Please fix it !

Agreed. Pistol whip needs some type of a buff. I rarely see that build in WvW anymore.

I think that a buff will not come for pistol whip… However if it did come I would be forever in Anets debt!

I feel dirty saying this but… I sometimes use Pistol Whip… there, I said it. Happy now!?!?

:)

If I run haste trait and sigil and one of them goes off I smack that 3 button because I just LOVE the flying blender anumation on an Asura

Yeah I use PW alot it roots and with steal you can deploy it and follow someone evading. I usually Infiltrators Strike → PW→Steal. The root is a doober at times but the skill is not entirely without its uses and the evade can be nice too. I was defending a camp against 3 enemies they had most of the mobs down when I arrived, I think they had 2 thieves and a guardian. the thieves were spamming whirling whatever its called. i was ???? with pw and black powder and 3 of them that camp should have been down before I arrived. Anyways I digress. S/P I enjoy mucho.

S/P can be a great wep set even with the PW nerf especially in DG’s
combine PW with SoM and some omnomnom berry pie and you will almost never die (unless you play stupid)

in wvw I have used it with good results. I see a ele start churning earth or heal I headshot them and continue to smash their face in with auto attacks or PW

Coffeebot.3921:

Generalizations aside, pistol whip is slightly more damaging and slightly more useful than #1 chain if you are in full berserker gear, the problem is the whole “slightly” bit.

It really isn’t, unless you’re factoring in a higher hit volume allowing more food procs. If a skill has straight up less DPS than another skill, no change in gear that equally affects both skills is going to change that. PW and auto attack scale exactly the same with berserker gear, so at every individual point between naked and full berserkers, auto attack will be superior DPS.

I don’t have a huge problem with the current paradigm. PW is a situational skill that trades DPS, mobility, and conditions for an interrupt, evade, and hit volume. It definitely has enough upsides to make it worth using, even if the DPS isn’t one of those upsides.

What I don’t particularly see the point in is trying to shoehorn it into a burst opener by burning a bunch of cooldowns to close and spam it with haste. It’ll kill people, but if you want that play style back stab is generally more effective at offering it, PW is just not well-suited in any aspect but the fact that it has a tiny stun. In the vast majority of situations you could pull off the same kill with auto attack (more DPS, and you’d be crippling to keep up) without having to burn, say, venoms to keep someone in place.

I honestly believe that -any- skill that removes control of your character from you is bad.
This game is completely based on action and movement – locking yourself into a channeled thing that also controls your movement is the worst thing you can do.
Warrior’s Rush is another great example of failed skill idea.

The only time I ever use PW is in boss fights, where the boss is not a threat at all.

To be honest, I don’t see them flat buffing PW. They may increase the damage in PVE only, or maybe buff the Dual Skill related traits, but they obviously nerfed it for a reason (though I would like to hear the reasoning behind it), so I don’t see them reverting without some kind of catch.

Though even if it does have a daze and a evade, I really don’t feel like that justifies it having a relatively high ini cost, a self-root, and sub-par damage. Considering how unreliable the daze and evade both are, I feel like the ability has far more cons then it does pros, so I would love to hear a devs insight on why it has to do pitiful damage on top of everything.

It still does really good damage for berserker. Even though autoattack is stronger, the stun makes it worth it imo. Full zerker + haste can deal up to 24K against squishies with 3 whips

Yes, nerfing PW was an extremely hasty (no pun intended) and poor decision.

PW was never the problem, Haste was, and to some degree still is. Even then, it isn’t so much Haste that’s the problem as it is the Quickness buff. Why on Earth they think that 2x speed from that buff is better than 1.5 or even 1.25 or is somehow less of a problem than the original damage on PW is just mind-boggling.

It was just a ridiculously short-sighted nerf.

Dumbest nerf ever. S/P thieves had to bite the kitten cause people demanded thief nerfs. I honestly don’t know why backstab is OK and PW isn’t.

I doubt they’ll fix it, soon at least, cause if they do, they’ll admit they were wrong and had no actual base for nerfing it other than the fact that people cried. The damage wasn’t that out of hand and the fact that the thief gets rooted during it’s casting plus how easy it is to escape it, simply does not justify the nerf.

They should simply make haste time1 = time0 / 1.5 rather than time1 = 0.5*time.

Or just make it 0.75* and tweak up the durations on all Quickness abilities by a small amount (say, 25%).

Pistol whip has a few appreciable perks:
1. Stun(wither determination on champion)
2. Some evasive property that works sort of half the time.
3. 9 hits(15pts with critical tree)
4. Hits up to 3 enemies in front of the thief.

I basically run a “spam that 3 dual-skill” build and Pistol whip and unload are the only skills which allows me to spam the dual-skill nonstop while dealing a pretty consistent damage throughout.