Guild Wars 2

As I posted in an other thread, there’s a very major issue affecting several weapons across professions. It is this issue that is gimping the Ranger’s Longbow and once it’s fixed Longbows will be a lot better.

It is the firing speed of the autoattack, in this case Long Range Shot. It seems to behave erratically from weapon to weapon and many cases makes the #1 skill recast much slower than it should be, crippling the overall offensive output.

In particular, it seems to affect Pistols and Longbows.

For people that don’t realize, due to animation bugs, Long Range Shot’s fire rate is about 65-75% what it’s supposed to be. It’s also a problem on various other weapons such as the Thief’s Pistol’s Vital Shot.

That is the main thing making these weapons feel weak and is should be the first thing fixed.

Signet of the Hunt’s buff was actually very short-sighted (much like a lot of the changes and lack of changes since the game’s launch). It should have been a buff to 15% that way it wouldn’t render other things useless.

It’s actually worse than ‘meh’, in pve at least, it’s laughably terrible. The stealth strait up does nothing, and the #1 doesn’t do adequate damage to be able to rally as easily as most classes.

I think Ricochet makes more sense than Piercing, it just still needs a bit of a boost to be useful. I think instead of being a flat 20% it should be 75/50/25. The same is true of Dancing Dagger, I really don’t know what their thinking is here.

Cempa.5619:

I feel like I’m on shrooms when using LB, the animation looks ‘to me’ like its on slowwww moootionnnnnn…….

Hate the weapon, makes me hate playing the game when I use it.

You’re correct. It’s the same problem as with Thief Pistol and a few other #1 skills. There’s an animation ‘bug’ in the game causing some of these attacks to fire much more slowly than they’re supposed to.

It’s such an obvious problem and it’s so obviously the cause the of all the “xxx is weak” threads that I’m amazed more people aren’t aware of it.

I repeat: Long Range Shot’s refire speed is faulty and needs to be fixed. That’s 80% of the problem with it.

Longbow #1 firing speed is faulty and needs to be fixed. That’s 80% of the problem with it.

Also, you’ll notice that the other 3 attunements are supposed to be faster than Fire but they actually aren’t.

These are very erratic and in many cases gimp weapon sets almost to the point of unplayability. It is very obviously not intended and wasn’t taken into account when balancing the affected skills. So far I haven’t seen any comment indicating the devs are even aware of it, much less working to fix or normalize it. It is my goal to increase awareness of this issue and the harm it’s doing to the game.

As an example, let’s compare the Thief’s Pistol to the warrior’s rifle, which have the same niche/role in-game:

Vital Shot (Thief)
low upfront damage
4 second bleed duration
900 range
.5 sec. activation speed
.3 sec. recovery
.8 sec. total recast

Bleeding Shot (Warrior)
low-medium upfront damage
6 second bleed duration
1200 range
.75 sec. activation speed
.1 sec. recovery
.85 sec. total recast

The obvious implication is that Vital Shot is supposed to be significantly weaker but substantially faster than Bleeding Shot when in reality it is significantly weaker while being only trivially faster (if at all). This is the main reason so many people complain about Pistols feeling weak.

It also seems to affect Warrior/Ranger Longbows (.75 activation speed, 1.25 recast) and at least the Elementalist’s Staff (1.25 recast for all skills whether .75 or 1 second activation speed).

In other words, the “recovery time” between non-chained attacks either needs to be removed altogether (for #1 skills at least) or normalized to something consistent such as .1 second. It is very obvious on many MH weapons that the #1 skill does not hit as hard as it’s supposed to.

ensoriki.5789:

Forget Vital shot.
Lettuce be real tea. It’s all on body shot.

Edit: Daecollo ninja’d me.
Einlanzer forget the autoattacks. Srsly.

Nope. Body Shot may need tweaks, but, right or wrong, it’s mostly working as intended while Vital Shot clearly is not. I’m not the kind of person that always insists that I know everything, but in this case I’m quite confident about being right.

Daecollo.9578:

Einlanzer.1627:

Daecollo.9578:

Its not the firing rate, Pistol Channel time IS actually 1/2 second, just like daggers, its the “refire rate.”

Thief Pistols have a 0.75 second REFIRE rate, so after they fire that 1/2 channel attack, they have to wait 0.75 seconds to fire again.

Warrior Rifles have a 3/4 channel attack, but they only have to wait 0.50 seconds to fire again.

This is why Rifle/Pistol fire at almost the same rate. (rifles seem to be 0.1 seconds faster.)

Actually, the refire rate for rifle might be even faster then that, maybe even 0.30-0.40 seconds.

Yes, I realize that. That’s why it’s obvious that it isn’t working as intended. The pistol was obviously meant to fire faster than the rifle but due to the difference in the recovery period between the two it doesn’t.

Because Vital Shot’s damage and bleed duration were calibrated under the assumption that its recast would be about 30-40% faster than it actually is, it is currently an extremely gimpy autoattack and is the main reason that Pistols just feel weak. I actually think this problem is weapon based rather than profession based, as Engineer pistol is the same way, and Longbows for both Rangers and Warriors fire very slowly and thus have weaker-than-expected #1 skills. Curiously, only rifles seem about right.

Come to think of it, the Thief’s Shortbow, while being a solid weapon in general, has weaker than expected damage on the #1 as well.

Well, we use “2” for short bows damage, if Pistol had a decent “2” attack we would probably use that as well.

Right, but that’s not what I imagine the design intent to have been due to the way the Initiative system works. The #1 skill should be capable of providing significant DPS by itself, supplemented by tactical use of the other skills.

Daecollo.9578:

Its not the firing rate, Pistol Channel time IS actually 1/2 second, just like daggers, its the “refire rate.”

Thief Pistols have a 0.75 second REFIRE rate, so after they fire that 1/2 channel attack, they have to wait 0.75 seconds to fire again.

Warrior Rifles have a 3/4 channel attack, but they only have to wait 0.50 seconds to fire again.

This is why Rifle/Pistol fire at almost the same rate. (rifles seem to be 0.1 seconds faster.)

Actually, the refire rate for rifle might be even faster then that, maybe even 0.30-0.40 seconds.

Yes, I realize that. That’s why it’s obvious that it isn’t working as intended. The pistol was obviously meant to fire faster than the rifle but due to the difference in the recovery period between the two it doesn’t.

Because Vital Shot’s damage and bleed duration were calibrated under the assumption that its recast would be about 30-40% faster than it actually is, it is currently an extremely gimpy autoattack and is the main reason that Pistols just feel weak. I actually think this problem is weapon based rather than profession based, as Engineer pistol is the same way, and Longbows for both Rangers and Warriors fire very slowly and thus have weaker-than-expected #1 skills. Curiously, only rifles seem about right.

Come to think of it, the Thief’s Shortbow, while being a solid weapon in general, has weaker than expected damage on the #1 as well.

CrazyAce.3842:

Daecollo.9578:

D/D can have blind as well, but also do lots of burst damage…
S/P can have blind as well, but also do lots of passive damage…
D/P can have blind (AND STEALTH) as well, but also do lots of passive damage…
P/D can blind (AND STEALTH) as well, and do lots of burst damage…
P/P has blind, but does little to NO damage after they use it…

Please think a little.

I am. It’s you who’s not thinking.

If you’re using pistols, you should trait for it. As long as it’s traited, they hit hard and refill your initiative on critical hits.

Blinding is a defensive skill. Not an offensive one.

When I blind combo field I can typically get 2 bursts out of Pistol 3 if I get lucky with my crits. Even better if I stealth with Blinding Power in the combo field, followed by the stealth burst of Pistol 1, followed by another Pistol 5.

I only have issues with that strategy if I get stunned/dazed at beyond 900 range, or stacked with confusion.

Typically though I can get away with just spamming Pistol 3. Unless I get confusion stacks or the person has retaliation, they go down fast.

P/P has it’s weaknesses, but no more than any other weapon set from any other class. Anything else is just people complaining. You just need to use them right, with the right traits and Sigils.

False, P/P has a single very dramatic and very obviously unintended weakness (Vital Shot’s painfully slow firing speed relative to its activation timer and offensive specs), layered with lots of individually less significant weaknesses: the overly-situational Body Shot, so-so Unload damage, mediocre traits, 900 yd range, lack of cripple/knockback, and lack of Stealth access. All of these things end in a recipe of fail.

All in all, MH Pistol in general tends to do about 75% of the sustained damage it should do, mostly because of Vital Shot. Additionally, its utility is arguably weaker than any other set in the Thief’s repertoire. Both of these issues are somewhat diminished through carefully optimized traiting/gearing, but that does not mean Pistols are fine. Anyone arguing otherwise is blind as a bat- its problems really couldn’t be more obvious. A significant boost to Vital Shot to make it capable of maintaining 8 or 9 bleeds like it’s supposed to instead of a mere 5 would be a huge start.

The Longbow needs one fix first and foremost before anything else is even looked at.

The recast for the #1 skill needs to be reduced to about .8 seconds rather than 1.25 seconds to match the rifle. The erratic recovery of autoattack skills is a problem affecting most ranged weapons (rifles and scepters seem to be the only exceptions) across professions, and even if people don’t realize why, it’s the main reason these sets feel weak and get complained about a lot.

Daecollo.9578:

I made this a long time ago when I thought people cared:

I play both a level 80 Thief/Level 80 Warrior, both are glass Cannony.

Volley/Unload.
Volley has an 8 second cooldown if traited.
Unload has no cooldown, but uses 5 initative, which means you have to wait 8 seconds to use it again, which pretty much means it has an 8 second cooldown, since 5 × 1.6 is 8.
Volley has more Range, costs nothing but a cooldown, you can use other abilities after you use unload, like the knock back, blind and vulnerability.
Unload can be used 3 times, but after this you must wait, and you cannot use any other abilities. (you must wait 24 seconds to get your initiative back.)

Volley does 755 more damage. (we have near identical stats, same gear as my thief on my warrior.) has more range, and a bigger advantage because you are not stuck using 1 skill for damage.

Bleeding Shot vs Vital Shot.
Same Cast/Channal time, regardless of what it says.
Vital Shot does 50 less damage in power, and 298 less damage in bleeds, this means Vital Shot does 348 less hypothetical damage.

Bleeding Shot and Volley have 100% chance to pierce, meaning they are AOE Attacks.
Again, this is using traits/gear I use for both, meaning its similar but not, but from the way I see it the math is skrewed because they have different traits/different builds, but the numbers don’t lie.

Rifle Shot/Volley are much better, Unload should be brought in line with Volleys damage, infact it should do more damage since its less range.
Vital Shot either needs a speed boost, or damage should be increased by 25-33%.
Global Cooldown for Vital Shot should be decreased by 33%, it should be firing 33% faster then it currently does.
Theoretically, Both Unload/Volley share the same cooldown (8 seconds.)

Volley does almost 30-40% more damage, AND has longer range…
Bleeding Shot/Vital Shot share the same cooldown/gcd, regardless of what it says, and Bleeding Shot does 30-40% more damage, AND has longer range…
And… its all AOE!

Melee Vs Range Argument is silly for thieves, because it doesn’t really matter if thief is in melee or range, because we have the most gap closers of any class.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Steal – Always have it.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infiltrator%27s_Strike – Sword.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Heartseeker – Dagger.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadowstep
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infiltrator%27s_Signet

Trust me, range does not really matter to us at all, we have so much of it we can stuff our melee weapons down our enemies throats.

Pistols deserve decent damage, they lack ONE thing that makes thief not squishy… STEALTH.

Thanks for this. It’s painfully obvious to anyone with half a brain that something(s) is massively off with the Thief’s MH Pistol.

Very quickly after shifting from warrior/rifle, I discovered that the offensive specs for thief/pistol were dramatically weaker than I was expecting to the point that I gave up on it altogether and decided to stick with melee.

It was also immediately obvious to me that something was wrong with Vital Shot in particular and that it should be firing a full 30-40% faster than it does. Vital Shot doing 60-70% of the condition damage it was almost certainly intended to do alone makes the set terrible, everything else is just vomit frosting on the doo doo cake.

Jericho.4521:

I heard some other people talking that there was a hard cap on pistol bleed durations for some odd reason.

Anyways, 6 – 7s is really pretty decent anyways when you factor in sneak attack. It WOULD be really nice though if they buffed it to base 5s, like the necro’s sceptre 1 skill.

It would be, but the reason it’s 4 seconds is because Vital Shot is supposed to fire faster and therefore be able to maintain a higher stack. I think, as I’ve mentioned 100+ times, that boosting Vital Shot’s recast speed to something closer to what was originally intended would do wonders.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Daecollo.9578:

Autoattack/Unload need about a 40-50% damage increase.

It’s better to fix fundamental kit issues before worrying about numbers, especially at this early point in the game’s life.

For the love of God, the most fundamental (and obvious) issue with Pistols by far is Vital Shot’s dramatically sub-par offense for an autoattack, which, in firing at roughly 66% its intended rate, fails to provide adequate sustained DPS and forces an over-reliance on Unload and/or Sneak Attack for even mediocre damage.

It isn’t so much a skill-damage issue as it is a speed issue resulting in a damage issue, but this needs to be fixed first and foremost, then we can look at what other tweaks need to be made.

Okay, that makes sense. I never realized there was a hard cap on bleed duration, that explains why Vital Shot is even more problematic for condition builds.

If there is I was unaware of it, so I’m curious to know. One of the main issues though is that the base 4s bleed duration is very short for Vital Shot’s firing rate (which is very likely a bug with its recovery animation). Because of that, MH Pistol will always struggle to maintain the same number of bleed stacks that other bleed weapons can. This is a large percentage of why it feels under-powered.

It’s something they seriously need to look into.

The problem with Longbows is the exact same problem with Pistols (thieves) and a few other ranged weapons that don’t chain attacks for their #1 skill, and it’s a very major one that alone cripples those sets:

The autoattack recast is significantly slower than it should be

Rifles have a recast roughly equivalent to their activation speeds, about 3/4 secs. (just slightly slower), while the Longbow’s #1 also has an activation speed of 3/4 secs. but the recast is more like 1.2 seconds. This means that the #1 attacks of each have roughly the same offensive statistics, but rifles fire almost 50% faster than Longbows do. That is nothing short of ridiculous.

I find it absolutely stunning that this has not been addressed or commented on in some way, so stunning that it almost single-handedly has made me lose any faith in the developers and QA testers.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

The best pve sets are:

melee/Pistol (black powder for AoE blind pulses)
Shortbow (ranged, high aoe damage, cluster bomb spam for dynamic events)
Pistol/Dagger (strong, versatile set when running condition damage builds)

And possibly Dagger/Dagger for Death Blossom spam.

P/P is currently one of the weaker sets given the lack of synergy between the condition damage auto-attack and the direct damage dual skill, the lack of synergy between ranged combat and Black Powder, and the overall weakness of Body Shot.

You forgot the overall weakness of Vital Shot, which is actually a more significant issue than both the hybrid style and Body Shot.

Yes, as others have said the Earth autoattack is good as-is and is much better than the other 3 elements. Fire needs a substantial boost in upfront damage, while Water and Air are functional but could use slight boosts.

Yes, the main problem with Staffs is that the autoattacks for Earth, Air, and Water are not faster than the auto attack for Fire like they’re supposed to be. This basically means that other 3 elements are unintentionally weaker than Fire. I don’t know if Fire is as fast as its supposed to be, but the other 3 certainly aren’t.

In fact, speed/recovery issues are something affecting auto attacks on various weapons across professions, such as the Thief’s Pistol, and is the main reason why some weapons just intuitively (to smart people) feel weaker than they should.

It’s absolutely ridiculous that it has not been fixed or commented on yet, and frankly it single-handedly makes me question the competence of the people doing QA. It also amazes me how many players don’t seem to notice it or care about, when really its existence and its detrimental impact on the game couldn’t be more obvious.

Pistols are clearly intended to be primarily a damage weapon and not a support/utility weapon, which is why the bigger problem with them is their low damage numbers and not their situational utilities. The designers have even stated that at this point.

It’s very easy to diagnose why their damage is low as well, and it’s a very simple reason. A reason I’ll go ahead and choose not to repeat here.

Great post OP. It never ceases to amaze me, though, Vital Shot is far and away the biggest problem with Pistols. It does roughly 66% of the damage and bleed stacking it’s supposed to. Read again: 66%.

This means that any build that isn’t entirely built around avoiding Vital Shot dependence for basic/normal DPS through constant usage of Unload or Sneak Attack is absolutely terrible, and it also means that even well-optimized builds over-rely on constant spams/Initiative dumps (P/P) or melee range skirmishing (P/D) in a frantic, neverending attempt to be mediocre as opposed to terrible.

There are other problems with Pistols (actually there are a lot of other problems), but even so every one of them together is neither as significant nor as clearly unintended as the problem with Vital Shot. I mean I seriously for the life of me cannot understand how it isn’t as plain as day to anyone who spends 5 minutes playing a Pistol thief in any game mode at any level with any build that Vital Shot is significantly worse than other autoattacks and almost entirely single-handedly destroys the playability of both P/P and P/D. It fires no faster than the rifle’s autoattack even though it has a 50% faster activation speed and much lower offensive specs.

I totally agree that Body Shot isn’t amazing and that Unload’s damage could stand to be a little higher, and that the lack of either a cripple or a knockback is obnoxious, but Vital Shot needs to be fixed first and foremost, because its weakness/slowness single-handedly causes both P/P and P/D to average about 75% of the damage they should do and creates an overdependence on Unload/Sneak Attack. After that, we can take a more microscopic look at how Pistols are performing and discuss tweaks to other skills and traits.

Koga.7215:

from their point of view warrior should not do 20% more dmg in melee, and likely shouldn’t do 20% more at range either. This means that either they dont actually do this much more (you can not really tell in this game as we have no way to really accurately check dps) or we have a bit longer to wait until we reach the balance they are seeking.

They do, though, that’s the problem. The Warrior’s rifle is very noticeably superior in every way to the Thief’s pistol. Volley and Kill Shot outdamage Unload, Bleeding Shot outbleeds and outdamages Vital Shot even backed up by Sneak Attack, plus the rifle knockback, a cripple, and superior range, all while the Warrior possesses vastly superior health and defense.

It’s not even a contest. Something is obviously not working as intended.

Tulisin.6945:

Loading.4503:

Lemme just start off by saying, im pretty sure imam get bashed on by people already saying pistol is garbage, and imma just say………… “….ok”

There’s nothing wrong with P/D, mainly because P/D takes almost nothing from pistol.

That said, I wouldn’t go high-crit with P/D unless you were intending to run condition damage anyways and double-stack crits with a bleed-on-proc sigil. I’m sure it works for you, but most of P/D’s potential lies in the bleed stacks.

I wouldn’t say there’s nothing wrong with it, just that it’s a bit closer to being functional than P/P because most of its DPS is Initiative free. The biggest problem IMO is that it relies on skirmishing to do decent damage, it’s pretty awful if you attempt to use it as a fully ranged build. And considering that you have to spend a lot of time in melee range you might as well just use melee weapons.

Again, the problem mostly surrounds Vital Shot and its complete inability to do maintain an acceptable amount of DPS while you’re maneuvering or recovering initiative.

ens.9854:

Mufa.1326:

1. Unload is ranged, sword is melee. If you want safety of the range you should have lower dps. I do not know why people think you should be doing the same dmg standing safely on the ledge at 800 range as going into the melee and taking all the risks that implies.

This

Who, exactly, are thieves competing with for ranged burst? Rifle warriors? Cause thieves are already beating them out.

Except they aren’t, not even close. They also have better range and better defense.

Viable? Yes. Optimal? No.

SB and Pistols are both limited a bit by 900 range and slow #1 skills, but SB does have much more generally useful skills and AoE capability without sacrificing too much in raw damage.

P/P and P/D are both kinda gimpy due to mediocre damage and lack of AoE. Both require building around Unload and Sneak Attack optimization to hit adequate offensive levels.

Wiredgunslinger.5480:

Einlanzer.1627:

Wiredgunslinger.5480:

And any decent P/P isn’t using Vital Shot as anything more then filler in wvw anyways.

If anything I’d remove the bleed off Vital Shot and make it a burn so your not relying on it stacking (Call it powder burn or some crap ;p).

Or they could just fix the animation issue causing it to fire at almost half the speed it’s supposed and consequently tunneling the viability of Pistols only to builds that min/max for Unload spamming.

Sorry but that wouldn’t help jack in WvW (and I have over 120 hours of exp with P/P S&B in WvW on the #1 server). If I have to use Vital Shot at anytime it means I’ve exhausted my initiative completely and either my target is dead or I should be out of sight until I got some more intitiative to burn. When factoring in any changes with thief damage 2 things have to always be kept in mind……..stealth and the ranged factor. Those 2 things make us P/P’ers hard to kill..especially adding in the mobility movement of the shortbow (throw some chill on it for swap to…and no one is keeping up). You can’t make a P/P first tier damage or overnight you’ll kill off several classes.

By the way as someone who used to work in the field. The more you go on about this…the more likely the devs/community team have tuned you out as too obsessive about the subject and therefore blinded by it.

Frankly, your explanation is an illustration of exactly why Vital Shot is the main problem. With optimized builds that rely on Unload (P/P) and Sneak Attack (P/D), Pistols are only somewhat underpowered and can still be fairly viable. The reason why is because those builds are built around avoiding any reliance on Vital Shot, because doing so in any capacity immediately tanks your DPS. A dramatic improvement to Vital Shot would shore up the mediocre DPS of these builds by providing a stable base of damage in the interim, but since the bulk of the damage is still built around Unload/Sneak Attack (cutting into Vital Shot), it won’t really bump them into the OP range.

But with hybrid builds or in a supplemental role, both P/P and P/D are severely underpowered. The entire reason why is because Vital Shot, in doing roughly 66% of the damage it should be doing, utterly fails to manage a steady rhythm of baseline DPS on its own while being supplemented by other skills, which is the way Thief attacks are supposed to work. A dramatic boost to Vital Shot for these builds will actually make MH Pistols feel adequately strong while using them in general, such as while leveling or experimenting with your builds.

I’m not blinded by anything, it’s just a very, very obvious issue. So obvious it boggles my mind that there aren’t more people talking about it. Btw, I do QA myself.

Red Falcon.8257:

P/P is great single target DPS, very good on bosses.

Also, epic against the elemental/robot because you can plow through his defiant and rupt his heal.

That’s the thing – it isn’t great, it’s a stretch to even call it average although it can situationally reach that.

reikken.4961:

That’s pretty depressing.

It should come out faster. That would help make P/P not suck

For the life of me, I can’t fathom why there are some few select people continuing to act as if there’s not something very obviously off with Pistols.

I’m a Vital Shot crusader, but while I maintain that’s their biggest problem, it certainly isn’t the only one. Body Shot is way too situational and Unload only does so-so damage. It doesn’t take much analytical skill to see that they always have and continue to underperform, fairly dramatically. I feel like people who think they don’t just don’t have enough experience playing other sets and/or professions or just aren’t very good at analyzing things.

Rannulf.9417:

Einlanzer.1627:

Rannulf.9417:

Einlanzer.1627:

Rannulf.9417:

I agree p/p is pretty awesome atm.

0
30 (V/X/XI)
5
15 (III)
20 (II /X)

Ruby orbs
Sigil of force/ Sigil of rage

EDIT: i use Withdrawl, RoI, ShadowStep and thieves guild.
Plus my SB has superior sigil or energy.

No, it factually isn’t.

Care to give an explanation of whatever you meant to say?

I have given multiple explanations, as have many other people. MH Pistol is (still) seriously plagued by two big problems:

Vital Shot is severely underpowered, possibly the weakest autoattack in the game, due to a design issue with its animation/attack speed relative to its offensive stats. We’re not talking about something insignificant here, Vital Shot should be doing at least 30% more DPS than it currently does.

Body Shot is an overly situational utility and is far more often than not a counterproductive expenditure of Initiative.

Therefore, any build using Pistols will rely almost exclusively on the repeat usability of either the #3 skill (P/P) or the Sneak Attack (P/D) to maintain anything resembling adequate DPS, and in the former case there is the additional problem of lack of utility due to situational skills and starved initiative. In both cases, there is a problem of them being very reliant on min/maxing to be even remotely effective.

In any case, the problems with MH Pistol become very apparent if you play a rifle warrior or try to use it with a hybridized build.

My dps is fine thank you in pve or WvW., and i enjoy my build.

You may enjoy your build, but that doesn’t mean Pistols are fine. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Rannulf.9417:

Einlanzer.1627:

Rannulf.9417:

I agree p/p is pretty awesome atm.

0
30 (V/X/XI)
5
15 (III)
20 (II /X)

Ruby orbs
Sigil of force/ Sigil of rage

EDIT: i use Withdrawl, RoI, ShadowStep and thieves guild.
Plus my SB has superior sigil or energy.

No, it factually isn’t.

Care to give an explanation of whatever you meant to say?

I have given multiple explanations, as have many other people. MH Pistol is (still) seriously plagued by two big problems:

Vital Shot is severely underpowered, possibly the weakest autoattack in the game, due to a design issue with its animation/attack speed relative to its offensive stats. We’re not talking about something insignificant here, Vital Shot should be doing at least 30% more DPS than it currently does.

Body Shot is an overly situational utility and is far more often than not a counterproductive expenditure of Initiative.

Therefore, any build using Pistols will rely almost exclusively on the repeat usability of either the #3 skill (P/P) or the Sneak Attack (P/D) to maintain anything resembling adequate DPS, and in the former case there is the additional problem of lack of utility due to situational skills and starved initiative (meaning that P/D is actually a bit more functional overall than P/P is). In both cases, the efficacy is overly-reliant on gimmicky set-ups that exploit ways to avoid having to rely on Vital Shot to provide a steady baseline DPS the way it should be able to.

In any case, the problems with MH Pistol become very apparent if you play a rifle warrior or try to use it with a hybridized build.

Krathalos.3461:

Einlanzer.1627:

Wiredgunslinger.5480:

And any decent P/P isn’t using Vital Shot as anything more then filler in wvw anyways.

If anything I’d remove the bleed off Vital Shot and make it a burn so your not relying on it stacking (Call it powder burn or some crap ;p).

Or they could just fix the animation issue causing it to fire at almost half the speed it’s supposed and consequently tunneling the viability of Pistols only to builds that min/max for Unload spamming.

Because P/D condition builds aren’t good or anything. Nope, totally not viable at all.

The only way P/D is viable at all is by working everything around stealth blasting so that you cancel out any dependence at all on Vital Shot in a frantic and perpetual attempt to stop it from instantly cratering your DPS. It’s the exact same issue with P/P and Unload spamming. Both P/P and P/D are reliant on very specific min/max oriented set-ups to even come close to performing as well as pretty much any other set in the game can with a very thrown together and/or hybridized build.

You people just sound like you have an inferiority complex or something, like you can’t admit that something you’re playing is borked.

Wiredgunslinger.5480:

And any decent P/P isn’t using Vital Shot as anything more then filler in wvw anyways.

If anything I’d remove the bleed off Vital Shot and make it a burn so your not relying on it stacking (Call it powder burn or some crap ;p).

Or they could just fix the animation issue causing it to fire at almost half the speed it’s supposed and consequently tunneling the viability of Pistols only to builds that min/max for Unload spamming.

Projectile speed buff is nice, but there’s still a problem with Obstruction and overall attack speed for the Longbow.

- Attack speed issues with numerous skills, especially #1 skills on auto.

Rannulf.9417:

I agree p/p is pretty awesome atm.

0
30 (V/X/XI)
5
15 (III)
20 (II /X)

Ruby orbs
Sigil of force/ Sigil of rage

EDIT: i use Withdrawl, RoI, ShadowStep and thieves guild.
Plus my SB has superior sigil or energy.

No, it factually isn’t.

The main problem with Staffs is that the #1 skills for Air/Earth/Water cast more slowly than they’re supposed to and therefore gimps the DPS of those attunements while using Staff. This is why you see most people staying in Fire while using a Staff.

I think Scepters were just a little overnerfed, especially Air. The others I don’t find to be too bad, they just struggle a bit in PvP due to the slow casting.

eXs.6210:

snipped for brevity

This is precisely what I’ve been saying for weeks. The design intent becomes very apparent when you play a rifle warrior and a pistol thief back-to-back. It also becomes very apparent (especially considering the difference in activation speed) that Vital Shot is supposed to fire much faster than Bleeding Shot due to lower upfront damage, shorter bleed duration, and reduced range but in actuality does not, or if it does only very marginally so.

I would argue it’s very likely that the P/P set for Thieves is supposed to slightly outdo the Rifle for warriors in DPS due to the reduced range of the set and the much weaker defense of the thief, but in actuality does substantially lower DPS while also having weaker utility AND trait support. Something is seriously amiss, and majority of the problem IMO lies with Vital Shot, which should do a full 30-50% more damage than it does mostly through bleed stacking. That is why this patch failed utterly to do much to improve the set and why I’m losing confidence in the designers’ ability to locate and correct issues.

No, they aren’t. At all

Vital Shot is still broken and Body Shot is still mostly useless. In short, MH Pistol is still terrible.

Pistols remain underpowered because updating the traits did nothing address the core issues with them, which remain untouched and not commented on after 4 months.

For most builds, the DPS of Pistols is very significantly lower than it should be because Vital Shot is much slower than was almost certainly intended, causing it to stack a pathetic number of bleeds and do terrible upfront damage, destroying the set’s viability with Condition builds. Secondarily, Body Shot is overly situational and only very rarely worth using over other skills.

Generally speaking, Pistols should be doing a full 25% more DPS than they actually do, and the trait updates did virtually nothing to impact that. Pistols can function relatively well offensively only with maximized Unload spam builds (power/crit/initiative), in which case they reach decent damage by zeroing out dependence on Vital Shot to sustain any baseline DPS while bursting, but at the cost of being an Initiative hog and rendering every other skill in the set mostly non-usable to maintain good damage (and being boring as hell IMO).

In short, for Pistols to be truly a decent choice, Vital Shot needs a very significant buff to either its power/bleed duration or its rate of fire, and Body Shot needs to be retooled to be more generally useful.

So let’s see what priorities for changes that still need to happen are.

Here’s my list:

MH Pistol skill improvements (VS in particular)
Venom overhaul, the current implementation is very weaksauce and uninteresting
Downed State in PvE is really bad. More damage + more reliable escape needed
Stealth rendering still breaking PvP
Stealth still very buggy in PvE, doesn’t properly dump aggro or stop incoming damage.

I just wish they had done something with spirits, and the attack speed issue with Longbows. That’s it.

Ayrilana.1396:

Einlanzer.1627:

Ayrilana.1396:

Einlanzer.1627:

2.) No dungeon loot rebalancing, Fractals still the only way to get Ascended.

Ascended items have a slot for infusions. Infusions provide agony resistance. Agony is only in fractals.

What’s the issue?

The issue is that Ascended gear is better than exotic gear, and is only available in the Fractals dungeons. This means that at the level cap most people aren’t doing anything but running Fractals over and over, which is harmful to the game.

It’s not rocket science.

Marginally better.

I fail to see how it’s harmful to the game. You can still do the other dungeons. There’s still plenty of people to do WvW. Orr events take a hit but a lot of them had been glitched so there was no point in doing them.

There’s more than just ascended items as a reason to farm fractals. It’s a great source of income. Especially after all the decent sources in Orr were nerfed. Fractals isn’t ruining the game.

No, Fractals isn’t ruining the game, the distribution of loot is.

Levistis.8356:

Einlanzer.1627:

1.) Attack speed issues on numerous weapon sets such as Ranger Longbow and Thief Pistol that continue to go unaddressed and cripple the viability and enjoyability of those sets.

I thought they increased the speed of ranger longbow by 30% and increased the damage on some pistol/pistol related traits.

Love the notes btw, GJ ArenaNet, lots of nice changes.

They increased the projectile speed for the Longbow, not the rate of fire (both needed fixing), and the Thief’s pistol changes were just to a couple of weak traits and do little to fix the core issue of Vital Shot being very underpowered and crippling Pistol’s DPS.

Ayrilana.1396:

Einlanzer.1627:

2.) No dungeon loot rebalancing, Fractals still the only way to get Ascended.

Ascended items have a slot for infusions. Infusions provide agony resistance. Agony is only in fractals.

What’s the issue?

The issue is that Ascended gear is better than exotic gear, and is only available in the Fractals dungeons. This means that at the level cap most people aren’t doing anything but running Fractals over and over, which is harmful to the game.

It’s not rocket science.

There are some decent changes, but quite a few things I’m disappointed about as well. In particular:

1.) Attack speed issues on numerous weapon sets such as Ranger Longbow and Thief Pistol that continue to go unaddressed and cripple the viability and enjoyability of those sets.

2.) No dungeon loot rebalancing, Fractals still the only way to get Ascended.