Engi Pistol auto attack fragmented shot :(

So we all know that engi pistol is a condition weapon. Long ago it was trait but eventually they made it baseline to have pistol auto attacks explode and do some aoe damage. What I realized last night is that it only does aoe power damage, the bleed that is part of the auot attack does not hit aoe. So really the aoe does almost nothing besides tag mods. Is this inteded? I feel like the bleed should also be aoe so that it actually contributes some damage.

If crit is high, could potentially cause bleed with firearms. It should be an explosive, which combos well with condi builds. But yeah, pretty weak.

Yeah. I think Chaith or someone pointed that out like .. years ago. It's really bad. The autoattack is barely worth using at all.

It could probably do double the stacks of bleeding and apply that everything the aoe hits and still not be OP.

Yeah, super bad. Would love to see pistol fixed to be a hybrid power/condi weapon since we have no MH power weapon and are not likely to see one added to core. Auto needs help for power damage and more stacks of bleeding. 3 also needs a buff to power and probably confusion stacks as well.

MH pistol even as a pure condi is just outright bad.

It is pants TBF. It really should apply bleed aoe and count as blast damage WRT explosive traits

@Peutrifectus.4830 said:It is pants TBF. It really should apply bleed aoe and count as blast damage WRT explosive traits

Really good suggestion, IMO.

Engineer pistols have always been bad, but the powercreep really makes them shine like a turd.

I'd also like them to fix the activation time. The tooltip (0.5s) doesn't reflect reality (0.8275s).

Just reduce the cast time from 0.5 seconds (which is actually 0.82 seconds) to 0.25 seconds and make the AoE damage from Fragmentation Shot apply bleed on enemies. Making Fragmentation Shot fire as fast as Poison Dart Volley would make it better as it would allow you to stack bleed damage easily and keep strong condition pressure on foes where hitting with grenades requires lots of prediction skill.

The pistols don't even need a complete rework, just rework certain skills. For example, Poison Dart Volley could work like Static Shot, where it fires a single dart that applies 5 stacks of poison in a radius. Static Shot could have the confusion stacks increased from 3 to 5 or even more. Blowtorch could have its range increased so you don't have to be super close to someone to apply the highest burning applications.

Renegade shortbow 1 is straight out better fragmentation shot, faster and aoe bleed. There is no point keeping fragmentation shot in its current state.

I don't think poison dart volley should be a single shot. I think its better as 5 shots they just need to be faster. If its a single shot aigis will eat the whole thing instead of just 20% of it. Also, I don't think comparing renegare shortbow 1 to engineer pistol 1 is a good argument because those weapon and classes have so many other things about them that could balance the auto attacks out.

Poison dart volley being 5 shots is really valuable actually. There are lots of skills and traits that cleanse condi quickly but only 1 stack at a time. Having pdv on your target while they're trying to cleanse ensures that poison is always the last stack, so your burns keep getting covered.

Honestly, at this point I'd just settle for the animation actually taking 0.5s like it says rather than the 0.82 or whatever. Aoe bleed would be nice though.

@Tapps.1479 said:I don't think poison dart volley should be a single shot. I think its better as 5 shots they just need to be faster. If its a single shot aigis will eat the whole thing instead of just 20% of it. Also, I don't think comparing renegare shortbow 1 to engineer pistol 1 is a good argument because those weapon and classes have so many other things about them that could balance the auto attacks out.

I specifically said that Poison Dart Volley should be a quick single shot similar to Static Shot that applies poison in a radius. It would work similar to Fragmentation Shot where it hits a target twice: once from impact and second from the AoE condition spread. Regardless is the target has aegis, the end result will always be multiple targets will get poisoned.

@Hoodie.1045 said:

@Tapps.1479 said:I don't think poison dart volley should be a single shot. I think its better as 5 shots they just need to be faster. If its a single shot aigis will eat the whole thing instead of just 20% of it. Also, I don't think comparing renegare shortbow 1 to engineer pistol 1 is a good argument because those weapon and classes have so many other things about them that could balance the auto attacks out.

I think this is actually worse behavior than the current 5 shots. A bit of aoe on the end would be nice, but I wouldn't want to give up the repeating poison application. That would make it much worse for fighting against classes with constant gradual cleanse, like some ele builds.

@coro.3176 said:

@Hoodie.1045 said:

@Tapps.1479 said:I don't think poison dart volley should be a single shot. I think its better as 5 shots they just need to be faster. If its a single shot aigis will eat the whole thing instead of just 20% of it. Also, I don't think comparing renegare shortbow 1 to engineer pistol 1 is a good argument because those weapon and classes have so many other things about them that could balance the auto attacks out.

I would be fine with the repeated poison application if the cast time just wasn't so long. Also, the cone pattern, like why does it even exist? If the cast time was shorter and the stupid cone pattern that can sometimes miss your target was removed, I'd be fine with it. Poison Dart Volley can remain a single target skill because we already have more than one way to apply poison in a radius (Fumigate, Poison Grenade, Poison Gas Shell).

@Hoodie.1045 said:

@coro.3176 said:

@Hoodie.1045 said:

@Tapps.1479 said:I don't think poison dart volley should be a single shot. I think its better as 5 shots they just need to be faster. If its a single shot aigis will eat the whole thing instead of just 20% of it. Also, I don't think comparing renegare shortbow 1 to engineer pistol 1 is a good argument because those weapon and classes have so many other things about them that could balance the auto attacks out.

The long cast time is a feature, not a bug. It's ~2 seconds of repeated cover condi where the opponent struggles to cleanse the other condi you've got ticking underneath it.

The cone pattern is annoying though.