Guild Wars 2

I’ve been wondering, why should I swap to D/D on bosses and use Backstab rotation when I can use Pistol Whip?

Let’s ignore Revealed Training since I still use the old 5/6/0/0/3. Pistol Whip has higher damage, costs less initiative, evades and hits multiple times stacking more vulnerability with Sundering Strikes. How is backstab more dps?

1) Dagger auto does more DPS
2) It takes much longer to do a full pistol whip than it does to do a single backstab
3) Cloak and Dagger also hits pretty hard
4) There isn’t much of a difference in vuln stacking when using Sundering Strikes since Cloak and Dagger puts up 3 stacks.

If you’re fighting multiple enemies, then of course, use pistol whip. D/D beats S/P easily on any single target fight though.

It doesn’t have higher damage on a single target. Even without Revealed Training, you have Kleptomaniac, Opportunist AND 15 Initiative to start off a boss fight, making the 1 initiative saved per skill completely irrelevant. Totally spamming PW is doing it wrong anyway since the majority of long term DPS is going to be the auto chain. You will easily be able to maintain First Strikes with zero effort with a Backstab rotation in that setup. The Vuln stacking matters little when CnD gives 3 stacks and dagger attacks extremely quickly, actually giving more sustainable Vulnerability than Pistol Whip spam on a single target boss fight.

Short answer, D/D rotation IS significantly more DPS on a single target than S/P under all circumstances. Anything said to the contrary is a lie and ignorance to hard numbers. S/P is for multiple target fights. You should only be using it on single-target encounters if you struggle to stay alive and need the evades or synergy with SoM. Otherwise, you’re wasting valuable DPS.