Guild Wars 2

There are some good things in there, but why in the world are they never addressing the issue with weapon skills’ attack speeds that is seriously impacting the playability of numerous sets across professions!?

Seriously: PLEASE FIX VITAL SHOT, WHICH IS VERY OBVIOUSLY WEAKER/SLOWER THAN IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE. I’m very disappointed this wasn’t done in this patch.

At least Richochet is significantly less terrible, even if it’s still kinda mediocre.

Regardless of what Anet says in the description of the ranger, defining entire classes around melee and ranged roles is just not how classes are designed in this game. Which is a good thing, because it’s a terrible and overly-simplistic paradigm for class design.

Being expert ranged characters does not mean that Rangers are worse at melee than they are at range, it just means that they have fewer melee options than ranged options, which is how it is in the game currently.

This really isn’t quantum physics.

reikken.4961:

yeah I’m not expecting any buffs, even though pistol is easily the worst main hand

They already stated that its damage is low and they are buffing it.

Ursan.7846:

Ayrilana.1396:

Barrage does more damage than what you’re suggesting unless I’m missing something. The damage scales up with each hit. I often get up to 3-4k with the last shot.

Also note that tomorrow’s update will increase the speed of the longbow.

That damage you see is the total cumulative damage done by a channeled skill. If you look at your combat logs, it will show the individual damage the ticks do.

Also they said they’ll increase longbow projectile speed, not firing rate. Though the projectile speed improvement is still very important and nice to have…

They really need to increase both. The firing rate on a lot of ranged #1 skills is not working correctly due to animation/cooldown issues and those sets suffer in DPS because of it:

Longbow – Ranger/Warrior
Pistol – Thief/Engineer
Staff – Ele Water/Air/Earth
Shortbow – Thief

Probably a few more, Rifles, Ranger SB, and Mesmer GS are actually the only ones that seem right.

atheria.2837:

So I have a great build, it’s better than all the builds combined, but I am not happy…

Melee isn’t my thing, Rangers are supposed to be “RANGED” and aren’t.

For the bazillionth time, that is not what the term “Ranger” means. At all.

Having said that, it’s frustrating that Longbows are so mediocre. It’s entirely due to a gimpy animation/recovery IMO making the #1 skill do less DPS than it’s supposed to.

karma.8763:

I agree, like the warrior is master of all melee, the ranger should be master of all ranged, they need to have firearms also. But anet also, needs to make ranger, able to 1vs1 the 2nd worse class in the game and win first.

sheesh, how many times must it be said? Ranger does not mean ‘ranged weapon master’, it means someone who roams ranges of land, as in a scout, sentinel, or nomad.

Warriors are weaponmasters (melee or ranged), rangers are versatile survivalists. I don’t think rangers should get rifles simply because they already lots of ranged options compared to their melee options.

Lymain.6723:

Tulisin.6945:

Whelm.9072:

Any thoughts about taking away Bleed from pistol entirely and making it a dedicated Power set?

I’m rather a fan of having condition damage or power damage be viable with any mainhand weapon, to the point where I’d rather see S/x get some way to apply burning/confusion than see other sets “streamlined” into one or the other. Following the “both these skills are awesome, just not necessarily with the same build” paradigm is a good way to mitigate the direct skill comparison thieves fact as a result of the initiative system.

On that note, an apply-burning-on-daze/stun trait would be an interesting way to boost Head Shot, Tactical Strike, and PW.

How is P/P even an option for a condition build as it stands now? Vulnerability doesn’t improve condition damage, so the only thing remotely condition-y about the weaponset is auto-attack.

If it’s important that P/P be an option for condition builds (personally, I don’t think it is), they should probably replace Body Shot with a condition attack, a la Heartseeker+Death Blossom for D/D.

It isn’t, and the only reason it isn’t is because Vital Shot is broken. That’s also the only thing that really needs to be fixed to make it more condition viable.

Tulisin.6945:

Whelm.9072:

Any thoughts about taking away Bleed from pistol entirely and making it a dedicated Power set?

I’m rather a fan of having condition damage or power damage be viable with any mainhand weapon, to the point where I’d rather see S/x get some way to apply burning/confusion than see other sets “streamlined” into one or the other. Following the “both these skills are awesome, just not necessarily with the same build” paradigm is a good way to mitigate the direct skill comparison thieves fact as a result of the initiative system.

On that note, an apply-burning-on-daze/stun trait would be an interesting way to boost Head Shot, Tactical Strike, and PW.

I have to say I agree with all of this. I’m not too keen on the idea of forcing weapons into specific builds; this would have the two-fold problem of weakening hybrid/experimental builds and restricting the number of playable weapons within each build, both of which are already bigger problems for the Thief than for other professions.

Sleepy.2647:

The skill cast time has nothing to do with animation time. As an example, crossfire has no cast but that doesn’t mean you’ll throw 1000 arrows per second.
Longbow has 3/4 cast time but animation is longer…plenty of skills have short cast time and longer animation.
Since no one but devs know how fast longbow is supposed to shoot, i don’t see anything wrong with longbow fire rate.

The problem though is that the recovery time is inconsistent across weapons/skills, and I would be surprised if it was intended to be this way, mostly because #1 skills with large differences in their activation speed and their actual recast are very noticeably underpowered (pistol, longbow) while those with little difference in the two do relatively well (rifle, mesmer GS). I feel it’s very likely to be a design oversight with the way animations/cooldowns work.

Regardless, it makes damage coefficients, etc., nearly impossible to balance on paper and means that activation speed is a useless metric for #1 skills, which is just messy and pointless.

Greataxes, polearms, whips, crossbows, claws, tomes

The end.

It’s also funny because it seems that does are not any less OP than stags even though they don’t have antlers. Those are some mighty kicks!

I still swear up and down that the Longbow’s damage specs were calibrated under the assumption of a faster rate of fire than it actually possesses.

In short, I believe the Longbow #1 skill (for both rangers and warriors) has a longer recast than it’s supposed to have and consequently does less damage than it’s supposed to.

I also believe this affects several other sets in various ways.

Tulisin.6945:

Einlanzer.1627:

MasterGeese.4756:

Vital Shot: Fix the stupid animation bug that is causing this skill to do garbage for DPS.
Body Shot: Increase the duration of Vulnerability to 11 seconds, and increase the damage output by 30%.

I think these 2 alone would make P/P solid mid-tier.

Azura.4172:

i personally just want the skill 1 to be FASTER.

Thank you for utilizing common sense instead of attempting to over-analyze every utilitarian function of the set prematurely. It couldn’t be more obvious that Vital Shot’s atrocious DPS (almost certainly due to an animation/cooldown oversight/bug) is single-handedly 75% of what’s “off” about both P/P and P/D.

I’ve yet to see someone disagree that a Vital Shot upgrade is warranted, just that it is the sole solution to pistol’s problems. An upgraded VS at worst does nothing for P/P since it wouldn’t be used anyways and at best just takes Unload’s place as the spammable damage skill for P/P, making Unload underused.

You could maybe, just maybe make this argument for builds that are specifically and solely optimized around P/P initiative refresh and Unload spamming for maximum direct damage. Under that situation (and that alone), P/P is mostly fine anyway and tweaks they may make to the other skills (such as BS) would be just as irrelevant. The only changes that matter for this set-up would be trait changes, a few of which I agree need to be addressed, in particular Ricochet which should really be more like 25%

But the main problem with P/P and P/D both is not that they don’t optimize well (even if it could be better), it’s that they lack effectiveness in general. So, this argument doesn’t hold up to much. By itself, a VS boost would be a very dramatic improvement because a larger chunk of the damage would be streaming from a steady #1 auto at no initiative cost, meaning the player can put more energy into tactical skill use and maneuvering. Consequently, pistols would stop being so overly-reliant on heavy optimization to even approach being effective. This in turn means they would be much more usable in a much broader range of situations, such as while leveling, and/or using hybridized builds.

More importantly, it’s as clear as it can be without a designer admitting to it that that’s what they intended and that VS is weaker than it’s supposed to be.

Yeah there aren’t nearly as many as there were a month or two ago,.

I’d bet they’re counting characters that exist on those servers whether or not they’re logged in game. That’s the only explanation.

Believe it or not, class changing would be more technically viable than race changing is. So to answer your question, I seriously doubt it.

Due almost entirely to Stealth-related bugs/issues, Thieves are a bit too fragile in PvE and a bit too OP in PvP, but they’re fun and playable regardless.

PvE Issues – Stealth frequently fails to get you out of danger like it should (doesn’t mitigate incoming attacks, doesn’t dump aggro, ends too quickly)

PvP Issues – Rendering issues make hard-hitting attacks too hard to avoid or mitigate, overly good trait synergy with stealth/burst combos.

That’s my experience anyway.

The clear solution to the dilemma is to give them the same weapon swap everyone else has but either disable it or have it on a much longer cooldown during combat.

So here’s the deal with Staff/Fire – it’s overtly stronger than Staff/Water, Staff/Air, and Staff/Earth. Why is that?

If you look, you’ll see that Fire #1 is supposed to have a 1 sec. cast while Water/Air/Earth #1 has a 3/4 sec. cast. However, despite that, they all fire at pretty much exactly the same rate.

This basically means that Fire outperforms the others because the others are gimped by some weird animation/cooldown bug that also affects several other #1s on non-chain weapons like the Ranger/Warrior Longbow and Thief/Engineer Pistol

I seriously, seriously hope it’s something that’s addressed this week.

PW is great for a few things:

Evading a big attack while still doing damage
Regen from SoM

Otherwise, it’s really meh. They overnerfed its damage due to Haste, instead of just nerfing Quickness which would have been the obvious thing to do.

Doggie.3184:

Update includes fixes.
I can’t wait to see the much needed Pistol Thief buffs.

Need a non-trenchcoat armor buff too though.

This.

To be fair to Anet, I believe we’ll be seeing a lot of work done on both fronts. Expect good things, but not amazing things because then you increase your risk for disappointment.

I saw this. The difference was really too much before (10% is near useless), but I would have bumped it to 20% for rangers and eles and 30% for thieves, or something to that effect.

Of course, the signet itself is fine for thieves, it’s really stealth issues that need to be looked at as far as utility/survivability goes (it’s really too good in pvp and not good enough in pve)

MasterGeese.4756:

Vital Shot: Fix the stupid animation bug that is causing this skill to do garbage for DPS.
Body Shot: Increase the duration of Vulnerability to 11 seconds, and increase the damage output by 30%.

I think these 2 alone would make P/P solid mid-tier.

Azura.4172:

i personally just want the skill 1 to be FASTER.

Thank you for utilizing common sense instead of attempting to over-analyze every utilitarian function of the set prematurely. It couldn’t be more obvious that Vital Shot’s atrocious DPS (almost certainly due to an animation/cooldown oversight/bug) is single-handedly 75% of what’s “off” about both P/P and P/D.

Ichishi.9613:

If P/P is changed to be strict con damage set ill be mad

I will too; I don’t think it will be.

It’s cool to try creative builds and all, but P/P is not underrated, it very blatantly under-performs in damage and arguably utility as well, but rejoice, for it shall receive buffs!

It’s a passive, full-time 25% movement buff both in and out of combat. It’s a perfectly good signet, so calm down.

Kratholos, Tulisin, you can be snarky all you want but it doesn’t make you right. While I can’t claim to know anything with absolute certainty, there’s a helpful little thing we can deploy here called “deductive logic” to make informed guesses that have a certain probability of being correct without having to have full ‘proof’. That’s how science works and progresses and how discoveries are made.

Evidence #1 (primary) – the activation speed for Vital Shot is 1/2 second, while the activation speed for Bleeding shot is 2/3 second. This would imply that Vital Shot would fire 50% faster with no recovery time (many weapons currently do not have one, such as Mesmer Greatsword), and with the same recovery time you could estimate about a 25-35% difference. Bleeding shot’s bleed duration just so happens to also be 50% longer (4 seconds vs 6 seconds). The reality is that the pistol has slower recovery relative to activation than the rifle, making the two fire at almost exactly the same rate despite it being intuitively obvious that pistols should fire faster.

Evidence#2 (supporting) – all of the damage and effects specs for Vital Shot are significantly lower than for Bleeding Shot. Due to having little signficant difference in damage from other sources, P/P flat-out underperforms in DPS compared to the rifle (and many other sets), which can be observed through testing. In addition to stacking fewer bleeds AND doing less upfront damage in general, it has shorter range, which would imply it should be the opposite.

Rational deduction – the specs for the two skills were balanced on paper, with an observational oversight as to Vital Shot’s actual recast. It is intended to be significantly (though not necessarily 50%) faster than Bleeding Shot to compensate for the reduced damage, reduced range, and reduced bleed duration. It is likely no coincidence that virtually every bleed stacker #1 can maintain 8-9 bleeds on a target over time while Vital Shot can barely maintain 5.

It really couldn’t be more elementary. Either I’m right and it’s a design oversight, or you’re right and the designers are just plain stupid and/or intended for P/P to be weaker on every level than the warrior’s rifle (which it closely mirrors in application). I’m inclined to lean toward the former assumption.

Sleepy.2647:

By what Jon wrote, i believe he meant arrows projectile speed and not autoattack fire rate speed… i think many people missunderstood it…or i did :P

No, I think you’re right. The autoattack speed is lower than it should be on the longbow, though, just like Pistols, Scepters, and Staffs in some cases. It really needs to be looked at.

jkctmc.8754:

JonPeters.5630:

We are looking into this. I actually think P/P has a lot of utility. Blind field, daze, vuln stacking. However damage is a bit low. We are making some headway here in the12/14 build so be patient for one more week.

Jon

Please tell me you’re looking at sword as well. The Sword combinations are worse than the Pistol combos.

Nah, they really aren’t. The only problem I have with swords is Pistol Whip needing to be rebuffed along with a nerf to Quickness, and Flanking Strike needing to track better. Otherwise Swords are pretty good.

SpaceCowboy.1398:

Einlanzer.1627:

Please, only Vital Shot and Unload represent significant enough sources of damage to warrant consideration, and condition damage affects Vital Shot’s total damage output significantly more than power does (or at least it would if it was working as intended). Unload benefits only from power, but again, due to the initiative cost it is intended to supplement Vital Shot, not the other way around.

Well, this is something I have not experienced. I experimented with the Mists’ Heavy Golem only using Skill #1 Vital Shot. With Carrion / Rampager jewel it took far longer to bring it down vs Berserker. About ~5s difference in how quickly they go down.

I also question the notion that P/P is slanted towards a condition build. I mean look at Rifle Warriors. Their Skill #1 Bleeding Shot does even more bleed damage for longer (just looking at the tooltip). I have yet to come across any Rifle Warrior build guide urging players to spec for condition damage.

Anyway, that’s just my observation(s).

You’re missing the point I’m trying to make. It is not that Pistols currently function as condition primary, in fact P/P currently works much better (but still not amazingly) as a power set. I’m not arguing that you should go spec condition for P/P, I’m arguing that it’s supposed to be more viable with condition damage than it is. The reason Pistols feel weak offensively is primarily because Vital Shot is broken, and secondarily because of overly-situational utility and weak traits. This is the case regardless of your build.

I would bet anything that the intent was for Vital Shot to be about as good of a bleed skill as Bleeding Shot is. The reason why it’s pretty clear is because the activation speed for Vital Shot is 50% faster (even though the actual rate of fire is nearly identical) while the bleed duration is 50% longer on Bleeding Shot. In addition to firing as slowly as the rifle (meaning bleed stacks are fail), the damage and range are also lower, meaning that Vital Shot is altogether dramatically inferior to Bleeding Shot, which is almost certainly not intended, and is also almost certainly because no one noticed that Vital Shot fires more slowly than it was intended to.

Yes, I’ve always said that really every profession, but especially the thief, should have some reason, even if it’s slightly suboptimal to single wield. The best way to do this would be to give #4 and #5 utility skills when no OH is present, and boost the stats moderately on the MH weapon.

For thieves, it could be any # of things, a sap, a blowgun, or any of their existing utility skills.

If this is true, I actually don’t have that much of a problem with it, I’ll just look forward to more content to level through.

Trick Shot has the same problem many other ranged #1s have of not firing quickly enough for their damage specs. I strongly feel this is a design oversight and it needs to be looked at for scepters, staffs, longbows and pistols across professions along with the Thief’s shortbow.

Ensign.2189:

No one dies from auto-attacks - you should take them into account when deciding how to spec your character, but it isn’t the key to victory. You have to look at the damage output of common rotations over your most important play patterns.

P/D plays like a condition-focused weapon because Sneak Attack allows you to quickly stack a bunch of bleeds, which *does* kill people. P/D doesn’t have any large normal burst damage, so it benefits less from raw damage than many other sets. Every substantial attack you make is going to bleed, so you clearly spec for bleeds.

P/P cares about condition damage, but its main lethal attack is Unload, not Sneak Attack - so you necessarily need to be more power/crit focused. Again, condition damage matters for setting people up, but your lethal attacks are Unloads.

Warrior Rifle is like P/P - it’s more power focused but benefits from condition damage enough for you to want to pay attention to it. It’s power focued due to Kill Shot being so key, and Volley benefiting from power over all else. You’d certainly be happy to take some condition damage where you can get it, but you’re killing people with Kill Shot, not the auto-attack - so you’d be foolish to kitten Kill Shot for the sake of a stronger auto.

I don’t think it’s as clear-cut as you make it. Largely, it’s a factor of what you’re doing in the game. If you’re talking about sustained DPS then Bleeding Shot is going to be very significant, moreso than Vital Shot. Volley and Kill Shot both do much more burst, obviously, which is beneficial especially in PvP.

The choice you make is really condition vs. crit moreso than condition vs. power. Crit is almost certain to benefit you more in PvP and also in group PvE, but condition is fantastic for solo play. When I talk about "condition building" or "power building" I think people read it more literally than I mean it, which doesn’t help the arguments that keep occurring.

The bottom line is that the warrior’s rifle is nearly perfect, while the thief’s pistol is far from it. There are some relatively minor utility issues, but the main problem is that the rifle does good damage both from a combination of decent bleed stacking and decent direct damage, while the pistol does mediocre damage through subpar bleed stacking and decent direct damage. It therefore benefits less than it’s supposed to from condition and more than it’s supposed to from power/crit.

Blacksarevok.8104:

Einlanzer.1627:

Blacksarevok.8104:

I tried con damage Rifle Warrior for shiggles. Even with the trait that applies bleeds on crit, it was still terrible compared to pwr/crit Rifle.

You are banking way too much on a VS buff making condition damage-heavy P/P being supreme. It’s not gonna happen, not unless we are talking like 200% speed increase to VS or P/P is given some kind of reliable stealth mechanic. You keep clinging to this idea that auto-attacks dictate how a kit is to be played, and when you actually play the game you realize it’s just not true.

Even if this is true (which I doubt), it isn’t that relevant, and you (and many others) continue to argue with strawmen.

To make the point simpler, here it is: Pistols do subpar damage, and that is the main problem with them. Utility issues are secondary. The source of the problem must be one of two skills – Vital Shot or Unload. Unload may not do stellar damage, but Vital Shot is very, very obviously weaker than it’s supposed to be.

Continually arguing about condition vs. power is really pointless and either way the facts don’t change. The simple fact is this: the designers have already stated damage is the problem, and it’s the easiest deduction in the world to conclude that when it comes to damage Vital Shot is the problem.

How is it a strawman? You on COUNTLESS OCCASIONS have stated auto-attacks dictate how a kit should stack stats. Warrior Rifle is generally considered to be the best ranged kit in the game, and yet it completely contradicts what you are stating as fact. Warrior Rifle does not stack con damage as it’s primary stat, despite it’s #1 attack applying a bleed. Condition damage doesn’t hurt, but you don’t actively seek over power/crit/pre. And if you don’t believe me, go ask any competent Warrior on the Warrior forum and you will get the same answer.

As for your last statement, nobody is arguing against a VS buff. Most of us agree it sucks, what we are arguing is that a VS buff will not magically make P/P an amazing kit, no will it make P/P a viable con set without sacrificing Unload entirely.

Not to mention them saying they are buffing P/P does not guarantee they will buff VS, let alone increase its speed (if they do buff VS, more than likely they will just increase it’s damage by 10%, as they did with longbow)

A few points here:

1. This is more an issue with conditions than it is an issue with condition-oriented weapons. It’d be silly in general to dump all power and crit for nothing but condition damage, good thing the game doesn’t even let you do that, much less force you to. The warrior’s rifle, much like the thief’s pistol, is a condition-power hybrid, but condition damage represents a much larger percentage of the rifle’s damage regardless of build, which is almost certainly the intention with Pistols as well.

2. Whoever said anything about not ever using Unload? That would be silly. Also, I never said it would magically become an amazing set, I merely stated that Vital Shot is the most significant single broken element of the set. And to that I stand. These would be examples of strawmen (and hyperboles).

3. It isn’t certain they are buffing VS attack speed, but Jon showed up on the Ranger board on a thread about the Longbow earlier talking about how the DPS is too low because the #1 skill fires too slowly. So even after buffing the damage on the longbow they determined it wasn’t enough and that the speed needs to be increased. It’s very likely they are looking into this very specific issues across various weapon sets and professions.

Nemo.6295:

Blacksarevok.8104:

I don’t think they will give VS a double shot animation, simply because then they would have to have separate animations for P/D and P/P, which in turn would cause every other class to whine about not having unique animations.

And yes, I think the WotLK comparison to be fairly accurate. They will buff Thieves, but very slowly over a long time span. When it comes to MMO’s, especially ones with competitive PVP, the mentality is usually “nerf fast, buff slow”.

Sure it can be. We have attacks that use the right hand pistol individually and we have attacks that use the left hand pistol individually. How hard would it be the make these animations play in succesion? It won’t affect the P/D set up cause no animation is removed.

Truthfully, I’d like to see this for other sets as well, I doubt it’s something that’ll happen anytime soon.

ZLE.8293:

JonPeters.5630:

We are looking into this. I actually think P/P has a lot of utility. Blind field, daze, vuln stacking. However damage is a bit low. We are making some headway here in the12/14 build so be patient for one more week.

Jon

Here’s an official ANet post concerning Pistols.They admit that some aspects of it are OK,but other are too weak.They will buff it.OK?
So @Einlanzer shut it already and stop embarrasing yourself anymore.
And don’t try to play smart to explain me that D/P and P/P are different things,they cannot buff P/P while nerfing P/D.I don’t think they will buff Unload(only),more like it buff Vital Shot… So GG @Einstein sorry @Einlanzer….

You’re clearly confused about a few things here.

Blacksarevok.8104:

I tried con damage Rifle Warrior for shiggles. Even with the trait that applies bleeds on crit, it was still terrible compared to pwr/crit Rifle.

You are banking way too much on a VS buff making condition damage-heavy P/P being supreme. It’s not gonna happen, not unless we are talking like 200% speed increase to VS or P/P is given some kind of reliable stealth mechanic. You keep clinging to this idea that auto-attacks dictate how a kit is to be played, and when you actually play the game you realize it’s just not true.

Even if this is true (which I doubt), it isn’t that relevant, and you (and many others) continue to argue with strawmen.

To make the point simpler, here it is: Pistols do subpar damage, and that is the main problem with them. Utility issues are secondary. The source of the problem must be one of two skills – Vital Shot or Unload. Unload may not do stellar damage, but Vital Shot is very, very obviously weaker than it’s supposed to be.

Continually arguing about condition vs. power is really pointless and either way the facts don’t change. The simple fact is this: the designers have already stated damage is the problem, and it’s the easiest deduction in the world to conclude that when it comes to damage Vital Shot is the problem.

ensoriki.5789:

Einlanzer.1627:

ensoriki.5789:

Einlanzer.1627:

ensoriki.5789:

Lol wut.
The only DoT on P/P is vital shot, outside of that, the only thing it benefits from is Power and condition duration. Sure you can include Sneak attack if you disregard P/P’s lack of stealth access.

The only power damage on P/P is Unload, and it sucks up large amounts of Initiative, therefore the damage is supposed to be supplemental to the primary source of damage, which is Vital Shot.

Think harder please.

Take your own advice.

Power and condition duration benefit P/P the most.
The bleeding on Vital shot gets stronger by just increasing it’s kittening duration.
Vital shot?
Body shot? What benefits it?
Power and condition duration?
Unload? Power.
Headshot? Power.
BP? Power and condition duration.
Vital shot? Power, Condition damage, and condition duration.

The split between direct dmg and bleeding damage keeps the Pistol flexible otherwise P/D would only deal condition damage with sneak attack. However as a whole P/P benefits mostly from Power, not condition dmg, straight and to the kittening point.

Pistols benefit from power and condition damage, but they are condition primary. Again, arguing that point is just goofy. Despite that, building around Vital Shot currently is folly, because it is weaker than it’s supposed to be. Therefore, building power and spamming Unload is the only viable way to play P/P, and that’s the entire problem with the set, and is obviously not working as intended.

Therefore, your argument is supporting my points, not countering them.

That is only true for VS and Sneak attack which again are not the only considerations in a P/P build, this shouldn’t have to be reiterated. Painting the Pistol as a hybrid weapon is significantly as generalizing as calling the dagger one. Check the significance of conditions on D/P….exactly.
Thus the lol. If Unload caused Bleeding or Sigil of Earth was improved, P/P would be more relevant to the Pistol as a whole leaning to conditions when the reality is only 1 skill on the bar does, and 2 if you count stealth which dual pistols cannot readily access!
Making Tulsin correctly in that Pistol is only as condition focused as you want it to be, but lettuce be real tea. P/P is a power set.

sigh. This is so ridiculous. It should be clear that you’re talking about what is while I’m talking about what’s intended. And what’s intended is not some misty, subjective area; it seriously could not be any clearer.

The intention: MH Pistol is a condition weapon, P/D is mostly condition-utility while P/P is condition-power due to Unload. Regardless, bleed stacking is the main purpose of MH Pistol, meaning that it’s primarily a condition weapon. Therefore, it benefits significantly from condition damage and condition duration, while the supplemental damage from Unload benefits from power. This makes P/P viable with either a power or condition build, but condition is slightly more optimal as the baseline of its damage from Vital Shot is mostly maintaining large bleed stacks while the damage is supplemented by periodic/tactical Unloads. Therefore, P/P operates as a condition-power set with good DPS.

The reality: Vital Shot is weaker than it was originally intended be due a fairly obviously unintentional discrepancy in its firing speed and damage values. Along with kittening MH Pistol’s damage capabilities in general, it skews the intended percentages of condition vs. power damage coming from the set. This essentially means that to maintain anything resembling decent damage you have to rely excessively on Unload Spamming and therefore Vital Shot (and bleed stacks) represent an unintentionally lowered percentage of the overall damage output. Therefore, P/P operates as a power-condition set with mediocre DPS.

ensoriki.5789:

Einlanzer.1627:

ensoriki.5789:

Lol wut.
The only DoT on P/P is vital shot, outside of that, the only thing it benefits from is Power and condition duration. Sure you can include Sneak attack if you disregard P/P’s lack of stealth access.

The only power damage on P/P is Unload, and it sucks up large amounts of Initiative, therefore the damage is supposed to be supplemental to the primary source of damage, which is Vital Shot.

Think harder please.

Take your own advice.

Power and condition duration benefit P/P the most.
The bleeding on Vital shot gets stronger by just increasing it’s kittening duration.
Vital shot?
Body shot? What benefits it?
Power and condition duration?
Unload? Power.
Headshot? Power.
BP? Power and condition duration.
Vital shot? Power, Condition damage, and condition duration.

The split between direct dmg and bleeding damage keeps the Pistol flexible otherwise P/D would only deal condition damage with sneak attack. However as a whole P/P benefits mostly from Power, not condition dmg, straight and to the kittening point.

Please, only Vital Shot and Unload represent significant enough sources of damage to warrant consideration, and condition damage affects Vital Shot’s total damage output significantly more than power does (or at least it would if it was working as intended). Unload benefits only from power, but again, due to the initiative cost it is intended to supplement Vital Shot, not the other way around.

Pistols benefit from power and condition damage, but they are condition primary. Again, arguing that point is just goofy. Despite that, building around Vital Shot currently is folly, because it is weaker than it’s supposed to be. Therefore, building power and spamming Unload is the only viable way to play P/P, and that’s the entire problem with the set, and is obviously not working as intended.

Therefore, your argument is supporting my points, not countering them.

Tulisin.6945:

Einlanzer.1627:

Tulisin.6945:

Einlanzer.1627:

Kurow.6973:

Einlanzer.1627:

Ugh, it drives me crazy that almost no one sees what is very clearly the main issue with pistols – it isn’t Body Shot, it isn’t Unload, it isn’t weak traits, and it isn’t lack of stealth.

The weakness of P/P is 75% due to Vital Shot and its weak sauce damage/bleed stacking due to buggy rate of fire. This is what they need to fix before they do anything else.

…or maybe…just maybe…others don’t like sounding like a broken record repeating the same thing in almost every single thread. There’s a lot of “issues” with pistols and P/P. Not just one.

There is one that is much, much more prominent than any others, and that’s the aforementioned VS issue. Everything else is peripheral. Just because someone refuses to see that does not make it not so, and forces me to bring it up at every opportunity in an (apparently vain) attempt to increase awareness.

Here’s the thing:

Say VS gets tuned up, and becomes a more viable way to do mixed-type damage for free, that doesn’t help power-based P/P at all. Either the “fixed” VS is better than Unload DPS-wise (like all of the other auto attacks) and you’re better off just running condition damage (and consequently most likely just using P/D), or the fixed VS is still worse than Unload and people continue to spam Unload for mediocre damage. Literally the only thing boosting VS would do for P/P is boost a utility-heavy thief where you spam VS with +condition gear for your DPS and conserve your initiative to burn on #2/4/5 skills. Not a popular build, and not really that good at what it does. That is just the unfortunate truth of how the initiative system makes all thief skills in direct competition.

VS is a bad skill, but fixing it won’t fix P/P.

Tulisin, you realize that Pistol is supposed to be a condition weapon, right?

At which point you’re arguing intent. It either is or it is not. Pistol has never been a condition-only weapon. You can desire to make it one, but a VS boost alone isn’t going to do it, especially since even with a viable VS that is a single skill slot out of the 9 that constistute P/P and P/D that does condition damage.

Want to push for Burning, Poison, Confusion, etc on pistol skills? Awesome, go for it, but that is presenting a new direction to take the weapon set to make it viable, not merely making it do what it is “supposed” to do.

I never said it was condition only, I said it was condition primary, and frankly I feel like it’s silly to try to argue that point. The #1 is very obviously meant as the primary source of sustained damage (at least for non caster weapons), and that damage in this case is condition based. Arguing that the pistol “may or may not be” a condition-primary weapon is about as nonsensical as arguing that the dagger “may or may not be” a power-primary weapon.

Again, P/P and D/D are both hybridized sets, but the damage from Unload, just like the damage from Death Blossom, is intended as a utilitarian supplement to the damage on the #1 skills, which represents the baseline of sustained damage output.

Improving VS in and of itself may not make the Pistol perfect, but it will make a greater difference in its usability than any other one change would. It would allow it to kill with adequate speed, reducing reliance on stealth and defensive maneuvers (given its range). It would simultaneously reduce the dependence on Unload spam for halfway decent damage, freeing up more initiative to get better use out of the utility, which results in the set not only being more functional but also more fun to play.

There are definitely traits that need refinements, and Body Shot is no doubt questionable as a skill, but I’m telling you, those items are comparatively insignificant.

ensoriki.5789:

Lol wut.
The only DoT on P/P is vital shot, outside of that, the only thing it benefits from is Power and condition duration. Sure you can include Sneak attack if you disregard P/P’s lack of stealth access.

The only power damage on P/P is Unload, and it sucks up large amounts of Initiative, therefore the damage is supposed to be supplemental to the primary source of damage, which is Vital Shot.

Think harder please.

Tulisin.6945:

Einlanzer.1627:

Kurow.6973:

Einlanzer.1627:

Ugh, it drives me crazy that almost no one sees what is very clearly the main issue with pistols – it isn’t Body Shot, it isn’t Unload, it isn’t weak traits, and it isn’t lack of stealth.

The weakness of P/P is 75% due to Vital Shot and its weak sauce damage/bleed stacking due to buggy rate of fire. This is what they need to fix before they do anything else.

…or maybe…just maybe…others don’t like sounding like a broken record repeating the same thing in almost every single thread. There’s a lot of “issues” with pistols and P/P. Not just one.

There is one that is much, much more prominent than any others, and that’s the aforementioned VS issue. Everything else is peripheral. Just because someone refuses to see that does not make it not so, and forces me to bring it up at every opportunity in an (apparently vain) attempt to increase awareness.

Here’s the thing:

Say VS gets tuned up, and becomes a more viable way to do mixed-type damage for free, that doesn’t help power-based P/P at all. Either the “fixed” VS is better than Unload DPS-wise (like all of the other auto attacks) and you’re better off just running condition damage (and consequently most likely just using P/D), or the fixed VS is still worse than Unload and people continue to spam Unload for mediocre damage. Literally the only thing boosting VS would do for P/P is boost a utility-heavy thief where you spam VS with +condition gear for your DPS and conserve your initiative to burn on #2/4/5 skills. Not a popular build, and not really that good at what it does. That is just the unfortunate truth of how the initiative system makes all thief skills in direct competition.

VS is a bad skill, but fixing it won’t fix P/P.

Tulisin, you realize that Pistol is supposed to be a condition weapon, right? And P/P is hybridized, but it’s still supposed to be skewed toward condition in the same way that D/D is a a hybrid set skewed toward Power. While P/P does and should benefit from Power, it does not need to be fully optimal with a Power only build. I don’t believe that was ever the intention behind it.

Kurow.6973:

Einlanzer.1627:

Ugh, it drives me crazy that almost no one sees what is very clearly the main issue with pistols – it isn’t Body Shot, it isn’t Unload, it isn’t weak traits, and it isn’t lack of stealth.

The weakness of P/P is 75% due to Vital Shot and its weak sauce damage/bleed stacking due to buggy rate of fire. This is what they need to fix before they do anything else.

…or maybe…just maybe…others don’t like sounding like a broken record repeating the same thing in almost every single thread. There’s a lot of “issues” with pistols and P/P. Not just one.

There is one that is much, much more prominent than any others, and that’s the aforementioned VS issue. Everything else is peripheral. Just because someone refuses to see that does not make it not so, and forces me to bring it up at every opportunity in an (apparently vain) attempt to increase awareness.

Ugh, it drives me crazy that almost no one sees what is very clearly the main issue with pistols – it isn’t Body Shot, it isn’t Unload, it isn’t weak traits, and it isn’t lack of stealth.

The weakness of P/P is 75% due to Vital Shot and its weak sauce damage/bleed stacking due to buggy rate of fire. This is what they need to fix before they do anything else.

JonPeters.5630:

We are looking into this. I actually think P/P has a lot of utility. Blind field, daze, vuln stacking. However damage is a bit low. We are making some headway here in the12/14 build so be patient for one more week.

Jon

Thanks for the response Jon. I don’t want to beat a horse here, but I would stake money that the primary issue with P/P is Vital Shot firing more slowly than it was designed to.

It is likely either a bug with the activation speed, or a design oversight with the recovery speed between shots. It fires at almost the exact same rate as the Warrior’s Bleeding Shot (despite supposedly having a 50% faster activation speed), while the latter hits harder, has a longer duration bleed, and has greater range. Regardless, it is only able to stack about 5 bleeds (which is pretty sad) while other condition #1s stack 8 or so.

I think some of the issues with Pistol’s efficacy are masked by how good Caltrops are, which gives thieves another good source of condition damage and makes the issue with Vital Shot appear less pronounced than it actually is. It seems likely to me that Caltrops are working better than intended (it stacks 2 bleeds/tick rather than 1), while Vital Shot is weaker than intended. So, in short, I believe Vital Shot should probably be buffed while Caltrops should probably be nerfed. This is of course in addition to other unrelated items like Stealth’s bugginess and the rather shoddy implementation of Venoms.

I believe it’s likely the rate of fire issue also affects other ranged #1 attacks and is much of the reason why you see so many complaints about Longbows, Scepters, and Staffs across professions.

Also, most of the traits that benefit Pistols are on the weak side.

As I’ve posted on multiple other threads, P/P is a bit lacking in the useful utility department, but its biggest problem is actually damage output. The primary issue affecting its damage output is Vital Shot’s slow firing rate relative to its weak damage and short bleed duration. If they buffed Vital Shot to fire about 20% faster than it does currently (which was probably the original intention), you’d almost certainly see many more people using it.

Tulisin.6945:

Einlanzer.1627:

a lack of useful utility on other skills.

It isn’t that P/P lacks utility, it is that all the good utility it has is on the off-hand, which means you can take S/P or D/P and use it. Pistol off-hand isn’t weak, main-hand is where the problem is.

Yes, I agree.

Dispari.3980:

For PvE only, my feedback would be that my thief is the least durable of all the characters I have. I have one of every class. I don’t have much ability to deal with groups or hard-hitting single targets. Which basically just means dealing with small groups of regular enemies.

Since thief has so few support abilities, my options for not dying pretty much just involve stealthing and running away, or spamming dodge skills. I don’t feel that the damage they do offsets their squishyness. Pretty much the safest and most viable build I found was to just go D/D and spam Death Blossom and do nothing else. It’s boring, and even then not as safe as basically any of my other characters.

No opinion on PvP..

Pretty much this. Stealth is not as reliable as it should be and their defense is way more bad than their offense and utility are good. They just happen to cause a lot of fits in PvP because of some of the gimmicks baked into their class.