The Ultimate Pistol/Pistol Discussion Thread

Hey, do you guys remember when we used to have ricochet?GO!

Losing Ricochet was pretty dumb, but the set is overall much better than it used to be, at least. Remember when Vital Shot did like half the DPS it needed to do to properly carry the set, for like 4 years?

I can't wait for Path of Fire, my gunslinger is ready. Six-shooters and a Winchester rifle with Deadeye spec complete with Outlaw outfit. It's going to be high noon somewhere in Elonia.

I have not forgotten the face of my father!

@flyingfox.6150 said:I can't wait for Path of Fire, my gunslinger is ready. Six-shooters and a Winchester rifle with Deadeye spec complete with Outlaw outfit. It's going to be high noon somewhere in Elonia.

I have not forgotten the face of my father!

Totally agree

@flyingfox.6150 said:I can't wait for Path of Fire, my gunslinger is ready. Six-shooters and a Winchester rifle with Deadeye spec complete with Outlaw outfit. It's going to be high noon somewhere in Elonia.

I have not forgotten the face of my father!

We should form a posse :U I got my Six shooters, a western themed Charr, and a rifle skin at the ready, and the outlaw outfit.

Can't wait to listen to Django Unchained Soundtrack on repeat!

If you love Pistol/Pistol so much just move to Engineer

@AnthonyPalomo.8753 said:If you love Pistol/Pistol so much just move to Engineer

I have one of those too lol

@Girbilcannon.8259 said:Hey, do you guys remember when we used to have ricochet?GO!

:tired_face:

I'm really liking the initiative change to Unload - I can bring it out more often :) Letting loose with a pistol in each hand is the main reason I wanted t play a thief!

Literally.

@AnthonyPalomo.8753 said:If you love Pistol/Pistol so much just move to Engineer

Eww, Engineer is way too messy with Pistols to be cool. Poisonshot, Fireshot, Lightningshot, Globbershot, useless exploding shots. And them Pistols sound weird.Thief with double Pistols is great! I just wish to have different looking projectiles for Unload. The Vital Shot bullet would be nice looking.

@Girbilcannon.8259 said:Hey, do you guys remember when we used to have ricochet?GO!

The bags/kills I used to get in wvw using richochet were extremely high then I brought it into spvp and then richochet was gone not too long after.

Theres been many more updates that completely ruined pistols like raycasting into every minion/pet etc on the map not hitting your target.

I started to make my thief all ascended armor for pistols as my main class since mesmer was ruined from gw1 to gw2 and i finally found my main and they changed/nerfed it into the ground so i dont have a main. Celestial was also the best amulet for pistols they do some bleeds and with celestial you run the torment poison stacking vulnerability in spvp otherwise you run immobilising poison in wvw which is now also the best curent option in spvp as well.

Pistols have the best crafted bar in the game sad they had to ruin them completely you got a spammable immobile button to stop the guy running if your team can kill it without your dmg, you got a damage button and interrupt button and a blind/stomp button.

I think pistols lost ricochet because the shortbow already had the area damage covered. Pistols can be already troublesome when you are chasing enemies around with them unless they have blocks or reflects, so I guess ricochet was too much. Hopefully they will eventually make some thief trait into the Shortbow one. Haven't you noticed Shortbow is the only thief weapon with no trait affecting it? Maybe Pressure Striking could be reworked into the Shortbow trait, like "Trick shot bounces to 2 more enemies, shortbow attacks deal increased damage to poisoned foes, enemies you interrupt are afflicted with torment".

I have played many RPGs with an action component, and I always liked when there's 'ammo' in them. I don't mean ammo you pick and you run out of it, but something that works a bit like iniatiative, but that makes you reload your guns. You know, like with shooter games that have infinite ammo, but limited clip size.

So I always found a bit annoying how bows and guns do not have that 'ammo' counter in GW2 and you can just spam them endlessly. So there's no "rhythm" to these weapons by having you recharge after a certain amount of ammo use. You'd be surprised how much better it feels to shoot and reload instead just shooting, when it's done right.

Imagine if each pistol equipped had 6 bullets, and Unload actually unloaded your clips, so it would be more powerful if you used it after a reload. So instead being something you use by basically holding 3, you'll try to use it more often after reloads for maximum effect. The pistol trait could also be something cooler with that mechanic in place. Like having extra bullets, reloading faster, or making the last bullet of a clip always a critical hit.

Pistols were our best direct damage aoe now given to staff. Shortbow is an extremely slow weapon compared to pistols and I cant even take it seriously other than using it for an escape weapon.

I sometimes troll people while playing pistol thief by running out with my shortbow only and auto attacking them before the game starts its so pathetic i laugh at it at times. Steal > quickness > bow auto attack while standing beside them.

Ricochet was really good when interrupting res as well.

Excelsior.Belive it or not, but Pistol/Pistol was the reason (and is still one of the reasons) I love Thief so much.I've been dragged in to GW2 because of the Engineer, and seeing the pistol shooting fire and glue was so goofy I cringed. But I liked the profession, so I went on for 1.5 years. One day I was like: "Man, they can't be serious about that, some profession must shoot ordinary bullets from the offhand pistol" and there was the thief. A little fire inside got ignited that night browsing the official GW2 wiki and stumbled over the skill. "Blast your foe repeatedly with bost pistols". I had to wait until vacation was over and when coming home, I created my little, murdering Asura twin brother, got 2 pistols ASAP and and once I fired my first unload into a Moa which died after 4 or 5 hits of bullets and the fact I vanish a bit during dodging and the sound effect made me love and stay with this profession. I don't know, the little gunpowder/smoke clouds, the sparks, the way the bullets travel while straving, the cuteness of an Asura doing that... Beautiful. Playing around a bit and replay it frame by frame shows how great it is designed, yet so simple. Asura tend to show their shark teeth after a few bullets, as if he is both excited and stressed of firing two pistols rapidly in a short amount of time.Gotta stick to Thief/Daredevil/Deadeye/Assassin. Probably forever. I have my principles, and Thief is digging so hard into that attitude of mine.

Daredevil might complete the last third I always felt it was missing. I can't wait for it.

Since I put aesthetics over pure numbers and there is no-one to judge me ingame, I run my dual dagger and dual pistols since I chose that profession. But I could barely say that out loud for all the "OMG READ GUIDEZ AND DAMAGE AND ENDLEZZ STEALZH0RZ". Headshot also saved me several times when accidently being trapped amongst a few Veterans.

You are either quick, or you are dead. Only 2 days away to dispense some frontier justice in the desert.

@Zedek.8932 said:Excelsior.Belive it or not, but Pistol/Pistol was the reason (and is still one of the reasons) I love Thief so much.I've been dragged in to GW2 because of the Engineer, and seeing the pistol shooting fire and glue was so goofy I cringed. But I liked the profession, so I went on for 1.5 years. One day I was like: "Man, they can't be serious about that, some profession must shoot ordinary bullets from the offhand pistol" and there was the thief. A little fire inside got ignited that night browsing the official GW2 wiki and stumbled over the skill. "Blast your foe repeatedly with bost pistols". I had to wait until vacation was over and when coming home, I created my little, murdering Asura twin brother, got 2 pistols ASAP and and once I fired my first unload into a Moa which died after 4 or 5 hits of bullets and the fact I vanish a bit during dodging and the sound effect made me love and stay with this profession. I don't know, the little gunpowder/smoke clouds, the sparks, the way the bullets travel while straving, the cuteness of an Asura doing that... Beautiful. Playing around a bit and replay it frame by frame shows how great it is designed, yet so simple. Asura tend to show their shark teeth after a few bullets, as if he is both excited and stressed of firing two pistols rapidly in a short amount of time.Gotta stick to Thief/Daredevil/Deadeye/Assassin. Probably forever. I have my principles, and Thief is digging so hard into that attitude of mine.

Daredevil might complete the last third I always felt it was missing. I can't wait for it.

Since I put aesthetics over pure numbers and there is no-one to judge me ingame, I run my dual dagger and dual pistols since I chose that profession. But I could barely say that out loud for all the "OMG READ GUIDEZ AND DAMAGE AND ENDLEZZ STEALZH0RZ". Headshot also saved me several times when accidently being trapped amongst a few Veterans.

I am the same way of sorts. I started playing Thief first because of the dual pistols. At the time when GW2 came out, not a lot of MMOs had pistols in their armory, so got super excited for it. I couldn't play it though because my computer was trash. I finally got a good PC last year, and one of the first things I did was build my Thief with dual pistols following my initial dream. I have stuck with it since I am also a very theme based/aesthetic person as well.I have tried the Engineer dual pistols, and I am not impressed with them. I don't find their skills that impressive or even worthy of dual pistols; there is not enough damage and too much utility with them.

When P/P first came out, it was utter trash on thief. P1 and P2 did almost no physical damage with P1 pointing it out as a condi weapon. P4 was an interrupt, which is nice and all, but also no damage. P5 was a bit useful as a field that allowed your shots to occassionally blind, but without leaps to give stealth or being melee for the pulses, was expensive for what it gave you. Then of course there was your Unload... a power skill on a weapon that did no power damage on any of the other abilities. Unload was slow and barely competed with auto attacks. It was convoluted and weak weapon set. P1 has since been given actual power damage, P2 has since been given condi utility with Panic Strike, and Unload has received multiple buffs. They made it less slow, then they buffed the damage, and finally they gave it Might stacking making it play even better when unsupported.

Ricochet had a brief hey-day from September 2014 to July 2015 with unload having the speed buff and range increase on both base distance and bounce distance, but I'll gladly take losing that for the overall quality of life improvements P/P got. And while I'm not sure about giving up Staff and the fun dodges of Daredevil, Deadeye's ranged Marking will play well with P/P.

@Drawing Guy.3701 said:When P/P first came out, it was utter trash on thief. P1 and P2 did almost no physical damage with P1 pointing it out as a condi weapon. P4 was an interrupt, which is nice and all, but also no damage. P5 was a bit useful as a field that allowed your shots to occassionally blind, but without leaps to give stealth or being melee for the pulses, was expensive for what it gave you. Then of course there was your Unload... a power skill on a weapon that did no power damage on any of the other abilities. Unload was slow and barely competed with auto attacks. It was convoluted and weak weapon set. P1 has since been given actual power damage, P2 has since been given condi utility with Panic Strike, and Unload has received multiple buffs. They made it less slow, then they buffed the damage, and finally they gave it Might stacking making it play even better when unsupported.

Ricochet had a brief hey-day from September 2014 to July 2015 with unload having the speed buff and range increase on both base distance and bounce distance, but I'll gladly take losing that for the overall quality of life improvements P/P got. And while I'm not sure about giving up Staff and the fun dodges of Daredevil, Deadeye's ranged Marking will play well with P/P.

Wow. I didn't realize P/P was that bad when it first came out.

@Drawing Guy.3701 said:When P/P first came out, it was utter trash on thief. P1 and P2 did almost no physical damage with P1 pointing it out as a condi weapon. P4 was an interrupt, which is nice and all, but also no damage. P5 was a bit useful as a field that allowed your shots to occassionally blind, but without leaps to give stealth or being melee for the pulses, was expensive for what it gave you. Then of course there was your Unload... a power skill on a weapon that did no power damage on any of the other abilities. Unload was slow and barely competed with auto attacks. It was convoluted and weak weapon set.

Unload was balanced due to the existence of Ankle Shot and Richochet. It used to deal so much damage without the might buff and was nerfed numerous times before bringing it back up again to what it is now. The current iteration of Unload is nothing even close to how effective it was back then with Ankle Shot and Richochet. Keep in mind, Pistol used to have 1200 range.

Unload never had big damage that was nerfed - I've had a thief since 2012. I don't think you remember how little it did - full glass cannon (max modifier traits and full zerker with food) would be lucky to break 8k if everything crit. You'd be lucky to get a 1k crit with Vital Shot (P1). Just watch videos of people running P/P pre-2015.

Ricochet and the range nerf (150 of that was a glitch) unquestionably hurt, especially considering the complete lack of 1200 range weapons Thief has. Rifle will give an option to close that lack, though that's a whole other discussion. I'd definitely want my Ricochet back, but I still have more fun with the more solid damage and switch to melee when I need to AoE than I ever did plinking with the bounce.

I think pistols need to be given 800-900 range. I am not very happy with the current iteration, just doesn't make sense. It's a goddamn gun.

@flyingfox.6150 said:I can't wait for Path of Fire, my gunslinger is ready. Six-shooters and a Winchester rifle with Deadeye spec complete with Outlaw outfit. It's going to be high noon somewhere in Elonia.

I have not forgotten the face of my father!

Too bad there's zero reason to use P/P and Rifle in a single set.

@Drawing Guy.3701 said:Unload never had big damage that was nerfed - I've had a thief since 2012. I don't think you remember how little it did - full glass cannon (max modifier traits and full zerker with food) would be lucky to break 8k if everything crit. You'd be lucky to get a 1k crit with Vital Shot (P1). Just watch videos of people running P/P pre-2015.

Keep in mind, the items back in 2012 are not as tanky as they are now, 8k was about 75% of anyone's health bar -- now 8k is about 50%. It takes 2 Unload to kill anyone. Also back then, Body Shot applies 5 stacks of Vuln at the cost of 3 init and lasts 6s -- which is plenty of time to Unload 2x. What made Unload devastating is not just its massive damage, rather its ability to continually CC everyone in range which has dominated in a lot of team fights. If I remember correctly, Richochet was proc-ing AoE sigils too. I remember doing a Body Shot -> Unload -> Steal combo (Mug used to deal a lot of damage and it can crit) to kill anyone.

As I've already mentioned, the slow shots of Unload were balanced then because of all the other things you can do when using P/P. Today, Unload might look good compared to the old with all the things that come with it, but just like the Unload then, it is now also balanced, albeit pigeon-holed. Now I can't even kill anyone even when I've dealt 15k total with 2 Unloads in addition to a lot of anti-projectile counterplays.