Guild Wars 2

Anyone have any information and advice/tactics for dual pistol rogues?

Thieves, it’s thieves.

As for your question, Dual pistol consist basially on Unload spam, due to its effiency/initiative cost compared with other skills:

- Body shot is garbage for the initiative cost, unless you’re against a huge monster with 50 players shooting at him.

- Most times you will prefer to continue with the damage rather than interrupt a heal with HS. Every now and then you will use it, but Unload is more productive (specially if you build traits to maximize it).

- Black powder is much better when paired with a melee weapon. I usually get Smoke Screen when I play P/P as I prefer to reserve my initiative unless completly necessary. It’s good to stomp a downed player in PvP though.

About the builds, Unload spammy builds work well with a combination of trickery, acrobatics and critical strikes.

Try to get every trait you can to maximize Initiative use (15 initiative, 2 initiative each 10 seconds, initiative on crit which synergizes with Unload, etc…), and investing at least 15 in acrobatics helps you a lot to keep distances with your opponent.

Instead of ankle shots, I recommend to use Sigil of Ice, as you will be able to snare without using a trait slot for it.

As utilities I recommend Hide in Shadows for stealth and condition damage removement, Smoke Screen as it synergizes great with Unload and makes fights against ranged opponents, ambush as it makes fighting melees easier and either a snare like devourer venom, or signet of shadows to increase your speed even more and keep those melee guys away. My favourite Elite is Thieves Guild, it really helps and the smoke powder of one of the thieves synergizes well with unload too.

The good part is that P/P is really easy to play and understand, and if traited correctly you can spam unload a lot (like 5 or 6 times before needing to wait for some time), while you have defenses against both melee and ranged opponents.

The bad part is that this ends up being really boring, as you basically spam the same skill all the time, with tactical uses of your utilities and constant backpeddal to survive. You aren’t either as great at damaging as one would assume of spamming a “dps skill” so much, so you will be grinding a lot in your combats dodging, running in circles and unloading.

During the betas and part of headstart I had a lot of success with my P/P build, nearly always being the match leader on PvP so the set can compete if used right. But it ended up boring me a lot as all your fights are the same sequence6. I currently play a support and condition damage P/D set that also has a lot of success and I find it much entertaining to play with.

P/P needs some tweaks to make it an entertaining set.

Lokheit gives a good summary of P/P. If you want a more dynamic setup that still utilizes lots of pistol shots you might consider P/D which has some great synergy with condition damage and a sort of mini-unload style ability with the C&D→Sneak Attack combo.

Rather than create a whole new topic I thought I might as well ask the question here since some knowledgeable folks have replied previously.

I play mostly PvE and a bit of WvWvW (no normal PvP ) and I love using the dual pistols in PvE and have done since about level 5 (alternate weapon is shortbow for support).

With the auto-attack is this hitting solely with the main hand pistol and then the off hand only used with unload or the other abilities?

I’m a fairly casual player so have only hit 60 recently but after finding I was able to mow through most mobs I’m finding a big slow down on how quickly I can finish off a mob and group fights are now next to impossible. I’ve specced up in Acrobatics to get hard to catch and then split the rest between Trickery and Shadow arts as I wanted the caltrops on dodge ability and will probably go up Shadow Arts for more stealth.

Am I barking up completely the wrong tree here? should I be speccing into Deadly Arts for the extra power? Is critical strikes worth it for the 100% crit in stealth chance for the stealthed 1 ability?

Is P/P ever viable for WvWvW given the zerg nature of most combat? I seem to spend most time firing my shortbow into crowds of attackers not knowing if I’m really helping or not rather than knowingly killing targets.

@Freigan
Visually, you only use the off-hand pistol when using skill 3,4 and 5.

With regards to spec with traits, its really up for personal preference, if you want to kill things faster, maybe you can get power/ crit on your gear. Right now, your spec is focused more on the surviviability than burst dmg. Whilst it might take you longer to kill mobs, you may find that you survive longer because of your traits. I personally built for more balance, so my build is 10/30/20/0/10, now that i look at it, its really spread out, but it works for me.

As for p/p being viable for WvW, in a team fight, you may be contributing something but overall, shortbow is better at dealing with multiple targets.

I mostly will agree with Lokheit, but there is one detail i would want to point out to answer Freigan’s question: Unload is by far, the most damage/initiative efficient ability (except cluster bomb in melee range), so extra initiative only adds to its usefulness – speccing all over into initiative regen would mean at least 20 in acrobatics and 15 in trickery and critical strikes (but you must have a solid 30 + % crit rate). This allows spammable flurry of attacks with decent damage and more theoretical crits/second for sigils/food that proc on crit.
The other way to go, the one I went, is maximizing the damage of a single unload. For purposes of pvp it is 30 deadly, 30 critical strikes, 10 trickery as it offers following: mug (specced glass cannon solid damage addition to unload), dual strike damage (straight benefit to unload) and either immobile on 50% (works wonders with unload) or one more tick on basilisk venom/devourer venom (to hold opponent with them even longer). If you are not comfortable with these, you can take vuln on crit (for pve).
From critical strikes you get 5% damage with guns (solo pve/pvp) or flanking strikes if you are able to get behind enemy at some times (you can also take fury on 50% for awesome synergy, but only if you fight rarely enough or can switch traits regularly), the dual skills crit rate and the bane of all, the 20% on opponents under 50% health.
From trickery you take the 5% damage from behind, or caltrops/buffs on steal for solo pve.
In pve, regular mobs with fall down with vital shot (to get condition up for 10% damage) + unload + pair of vital shots, with stacks of bloodlust/crit rate and omnomberry pie/crit damage food most of the time even just vital shotunload will be enough. (This all in full zerk gear)
In spvp with low surviving ability you won’t be able to do much for team in terms of cappping, but you will have a great damage advantage over many people and rare, but outstanding stopping power (see wvw part)
In wvw this is actually one of the few thief builds that can be efficient in almost any group, ranging from one more person with you to huge zergs, and even alone. As long as you can prevent yourself from being targeted (in groups) or attack first (small group, alone) you will have advantage over almost anyone. Basilisk venom is key ability here, can be coupled with haste (risky, but fun) to attain burst that most people (sadly) do not know how to deal with. Without instant removal of immobile you will most likely get opponent down to 50% with first unload. At this point, your opponent will be immobilized again (if proc is not on cd), and a second 20% boosted unload will most likely destroy what remained of your foe. At 900 range, you will outdamage any ranged dps, but being weak in melee, you have to carry hide in shadows and one more utility to be able to withdraw to safe distance at any time

bodyshot is stupid, it says it has same cast time as vital shot, but its rate of fire is 30% slower

yes i did some minor tests with this skill

savage.3469:

bodyshot is stupid, it says it has same cast time as vital shot, but its rate of fire is 30% slower

yes i did some minor tests with this skill

yes, we all agree that p/p needs a complete rework so that the skills synergise better with each other, auto atk inflicts bleed for condition dmg but unload is burst dmg. what were thinking.

Personally (and I may be wildly off base again) I’d love to have Headshot or Bodyshot do a bit more to improve survivability so maybe some kind of knock back\down as well? Something that makes it worth the high int cost rather than just an interrupt, at this stage for me I find that I’d rather dodge something than attempt to interrupt though obviously I know that doesn’t apply to things like heals etc.

Either that or Headshot should be a blind utility and we get a better last ability (or improve the skill so that it makes a better combo field than currently.

I runnin’ a Stealth/Pistols build right now an’ havin’ loads ah fun with it. Me traits are set at 0/30/30/0/10, an’ I can tear some monsters up poppin’ in an’ out ah sight around them.

In Shadow Arts, though, I don’ think I’ve ever seen that Smoke Cloud go off when I hit 25% health, or my enemies get blinded when I stealth … anyone know if there’s a known bug here?

Whatever, I’m still pretty hard ta pin down between Black Powder, Hide in Shadows, Blindin’ Powder, an’ Shadow Refuge.

I wonder, following on from adding blind to head or body shot, the last ability could be something like a reverse death blosom where the thief flies backward firing off a sweep of bullets (and/or a swing with a dagger/sword) that would damage all enemies in front of the thief and slow them. Something that would mean you’d have to be slightly more cautious in how you approach a pistol Thief as a melee class or a way to back off from a group of mobs should things get too spicy.

My only disagreement with the general tone of this thread is: don’t underestimate the usefulness of Head Shot. In dungeons especially, it’s a good way to interrupt high-damaging skills with a lot of windup, or just interrupt combos. (AC Necromancers, CM Snipers, etc) It’s even got its uses on Bosses: You can peel stacks of Defiant off very quickly, making sure to leave the boss exposed to a big CC (from you or your teammates.)

Heck, even in WvW, it’s a funny way to interrupt a stomp over and over and over again.

P/P is not viable, wielding two nerf guns and shooting nerf darts at the target would do more damage then P/P currently does.

Softspoken.2410:

My only disagreement with the general tone of this thread is: don’t underestimate the usefulness of Head Shot. In dungeons especially, it’s a good way to interrupt high-damaging skills with a lot of windup, or just interrupt combos. (AC Necromancers, CM Snipers, etc) It’s even got its uses on Bosses: You can peel stacks of Defiant off very quickly, making sure to leave the boss exposed to a big CC (from you or your teammates.)

Heck, even in WvW, it’s a funny way to interrupt a stomp over and over and over again.

i agree. while i’m not very high level so i’ve still alot to learn and encounter yet. But so far there’s been many a fight against veteran mobs where head shot has made the difference between taking a big hit or not. So far though pistol has been alot of fun.

Daecollo.9578:

P/P is not viable, wielding two nerf guns and shooting nerf darts at the target would do more damage then P/P currently does.

I’ve been rockin’ Straights of Devistation with P/P all week, so I gotta disagree with ya there. But ta get the best use outta it, ya do have ta trait for it.

An’ Head Shot is nice when interuptin’ special attacks. In SD those wizards always start with this blast spell, so if ya shoot em once, then follow with a Head Shot, ya disrupt em an’ make the fight easier.

I just have to say, this is one of the best and most useful threads ever. Really good solid advice here, makes me want to go P/P again! Thanks!