Guild Wars 2

I have been playing p/p in PvP for as long as I can remember. It is a VERY strong setup, but it requires a lot of timing to survive.
I am posting this after reading the upcoming changes and to tell why these won’t make p/p more viable than it already is.

The weapon setup is p/p and s/d.

My traits vary a lot depending on the map and the opponents, but what never changes is my utility skills.

Utility skills

6: Withdraw

This allows me to stay mobile and it’s an additional evade.

7: Roll for inititive

This allows me to stay mobile and it’s an additional evade. Also a stunbreaker.

8: Shadow Refuge

A very deadly skill because of the projectile finishers that deal damage and this skill heals for around 3, depending on the amount of finishers you can get off.

9: Shadow Step.

This allows me to stay mobile. Also a stunbreaker.

0: Basilisk Venom.

For stuns and nukes!

My weapon set

As you can see my utility skills are there to make sure I have the right angle on opponents, to make sure I don’t get hit and to evade incoming damage.
If they catch you, you are dead while in the p/p weapon set. That is what we have s/d for.
S/D is for:

- countering blocking opponents to finish them when they are blocking while on low hp.
- surviving when being caught.
- surviving when you are out of initiative. (because of the nature of skill 3 you can go ‘in debt’. You can start it, and finish it when you have the other 2 initiative.)
- Surviving when you are on CDs. (shadow stepping to an opponent, running away, returning and shadow stepping into the other direction to create space between you and your opponent before returning to p/p when your CDs are gone.)

p/p is for:

-Damage
-immobilizing before throwing gunk.
-blinding to ensure finishing
-blinding for defense while on CD for your weapon swap. Dagger 5 is much more effective at escaping than blind.
-interrupting (stomps)

Traits

As for my traits, they are all about damage. If you play p/p, you play to kill before it can catch up to you and kill you. Ricochet is useless. It makes you weaker as you have to sacrifice 10% damage from minor 3 in power (10% extra damage while the opponent has a condition) alone. Aside from that you give away 100 power and 10% condition duration. Condition duration is amazing for cc conditions. Do NOT use ricochet, it’s a waste.

These are my traits:
Power:
- Mug, because it’s awesome
- sundering strikes, it keeps up the 10% damage bonus from minor 3. Also it can easily go up to 8 on an opponent. 8% extra damage for all allies on this target? yes please!
This one also has another cool aspect. For generic condition removal, the most recently applied condition or conditions will be removed first. This one will almost always be the most recently applied condition, so this also wastes their condition removal.
-Panic Strike, this is amazing for locking them down while you unleash your burst on them. It gives you time to wait for your CDs and to start over again. Most of the time it is best to auto attack now as they start blocking and you can dps them right when they use damaging skills.

Critical strikes:
Pistol Mastery for 10% extra pistol damage.
Combo critical chance. For 5% extra crit chance on unload and flanking strike.
Exicutor for 20% extra damage while they are below 50% HP

The other 10 points depend on the rest of what you want. Do you want to snipe Forest creatures? Get 600 extra range on steal. Do you want more DPS? Get fury on steal. Do you want more condition removal? Get condition removal on stealth. Do you want more evades? Get vigor on healing.

Runes and sigils

This is up to you. I suggest Runes of the pack and sigils of air and fire. This gives a lot of swiftness for mobility, damage from power, precision and on crit sigils.

You can also use Runes of Melandru to reduce the condition damage you take and to escape more easily from stuns. Sigils that cause chill can also be used to keep the edge on your opponent mobility wise.

Why don’t the new changes help me?

- Ricochet – In addition to bouncing your pistol shots, this trait now Increase the range of your pistol shots. From 900m to 1050m range increase. Also some bug fixes to how Ricochet works, it will bounce more reliability.

Ricochet is horrible. It is amazing if you want a lot of dps on a point with people, but you don’t. If you want that you so for S/P. It does a lot more AoE a LOT more effectively. You sacrifice DPS and it just sucks overall. The additional range is great and all, but it also means it is more easily blocked by line of sight AND it drops my dps by at least 15% because I put traits in the wrong line.

- Black Powder – interval of the skill increased from 1 to 2s while the duration of the blind applied decreased to 2s. The projectile still applies 2s of blind.

A nerf never helped anyone.

- Unload – Cast time reduced from 1.75s to 1.5s for overall 20% reduction

This only means I run out of intitative faster and it does nothing for my overal performance. I am a bit more spikier but that was never a problem to begin with. More spike damage in a game is not a good thing. It reduces skillful play.

- Panic Strike – duration of immobilization too long (5.25s baseline), reduced it to 2.5 s. Reduced the cooldown from 30s to 20s so you will be able to use it more often.

This change means an overall reduction in my time to rejuvenate while they are bound.

- Flanking Strike – Initiative cost of Flanking Strike and Larcenous Strike have had their initiatives costs changed. Flanking cost gone up from 3 to 4 initiative while Larcenous Strike gone down from 2 to 1 initiative cost. Flanking Strike now requires a hit to turn into Larcenous Strike.

This means I can no longer go ‘in debt’ as easily, making it harder to sustain myself. Also finishing people when they are low and blocking is no longer possible.

This is my personal view on p/p and why these updates are bad for me, personally, someone who has been playing p/p in PvP since forever. I am rank 60 with 3k hours on my Thief should anyone be interested in my internet points. If anything is unclear, feel free to ask!

I do not play dual pistols that often, so I can’t really say anything on that. But I can say something on ricochet;

It is far from useless! If you are lucky and all shots in one unload bounce all possible times, this means that your effective dps just increased by 400%. The best part is that in a chain of shots, each shot and every single bounce has a 50% chance to apply.

I notice that when fighting two or more players this is huge. If normally doubles my dps or just simply make it so I damage the other player almost as much as my target. For my P/D condition build I am definitely going to use the new and better ricochet.

Bullets cannot bounce more than 3 times. Also, bullets can only hit a single target once. If you are fighting 2 enemies, or a ranger and its pet, your damage against your target will not increase. In fact, all your on crit effects might activate on the wrong opponent. Against 2 enemies you will see a 50% increase of damage, overal. Taken into account you lose 200 power and 25% damage from traits, you trade 1.1 × 1.25 = 1.35-1.40 damage for 50% extra damage spread over targets like pets and other things you don’t even want to hit.
In a 1v2 or 2v2 scenario you gain only 10% damage at the loss of being in a 2v2 or 1v1.

If you fight against 3 enemies you will gain around 75% damage
Against 4 this is 88% extra damage.

On paper that is amazing, but in reality this does not happen. The ricochet range is very limited, so even when there are 4 enemies without pets there is a big chance you won’t hit them anyway. Like I said before, a lot of damage will be wasted on pets and minions. If 1 person blocks or evades the bullet anywhere in the chain it automatically won’t continue.

Aside from these limiting factors in dps, you just should not sacrifice 1v1 potential to play p/p in group fights , it won’t work! You die or you burst through your cooldowns and are forced to retreat.

Being significantly weaker in group fights compared to 1v1 is one of the weaknesses of the weapon set and it is exactly why p/p is generally considered bad in the meta. If you try to play p/p in group fights you’re doing it wrong. You’re much better off getting S/P and a short bow. The short bow also has much more effective damage/initiative ratio with cluster bomb. This won’t change just because of the ricochet changes.