If nobody else is applying burn or poison, then P/P is way more damage than rifle, and more utility.
I would argue that p/p doesn’t have more utility. But the main reason I quoted you is that in practice, p/p is rarely more damage than pistol when you’re playing with 4 other players.
Many classes apply burning and bleeding as incidental damage and just one person doing that can really destroy our condition damage output. It’s much, much safer to play with a Rifle and stack power because of this.
In my personal experience, I rarely run into another player applying burns on a long term duration, and almost never run into anyone using poison.
I use both P/S and P/P fairly regularly depending on the fight, and both are good. I don’t know how you could consider rifle having more utility than pistol though, it (rifle) has more damage against a single target (unless you’re abusing coated bullets, then pistol DESTROYS rifle in DPS).
For debuffs, the pistol wins pretty much hands down. It also allows use of a shield for even more control/defense, and a nice blast finish for combos on fire and water fields.
Ah yes, and last but not least – I vastly prefer condition damage, especially longish duration ones, because it allows me to apply my damage, and then switch to kits to use their skills while my conditions continue to damage things. Which rifle doesn’t really provide (Yes the bleeds on 3, but that’s not very much in comparison to Pistol 2/4)
At the end of the day DPS isn’t the most important thing, but the overall package that you bring to the group. (dat refined kits + elixir gun, mmmmmm good)
