Making OH pistol function as a second MH

[oscuro.9720]

Obviously a point of consternation for warriors is that OH pistol is melee when mid range is a completely unfilled niche on Warrior. So what if OH pistol functioned as a defacto mid-range MH while sitting in off hand?

 

How would this be achieved?

By parsing dragons roar to 1 shot per activation instead of firing all the shots at once while removing the kockback. Expand the range to 600 and make it an on-target explosion (similar to necro being an on-target range skill). 
Additionally, slightly increase the damage per shot (from .333 to something around .45). 
Add a .25s recharge between shots so they can be fired in quick succession but not spammed all at once. This would give the option for consistent ranger pressure or a burst when setup properly. 

 

As a kit this would provide a defacto mid-range auto attack with a leap on 4 to pair with whatever offhand you want. 
 

Would this work? I have no idea. Just an idea. 

[Kalthea.4326]

I'm still livid that we only got one pistol that functions almost identically to an off-hand axe, and would very much have preferred if it was a focus with skin that looks like an arm-mounted gun or something. Warrior range has been in need of some love for a while, and to get yet another melee spec with a kit to replace their burst skills, it just seemed off to me. As a master of weapons, you would expect to be able to dual wield pistols, which is now out of the question because of some weird decision to just make another melee weapon.

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

1 hour ago, oscuro.9720 said:

Obviously a point of consternation for warriors is that OH pistol is melee when mid range is a completely unfilled niche on Warrior. So what if OH pistol functioned as a defacto mid-range MH while sitting in off hand?

 

How would this be achieved?

By parsing dragons roar to 1 shot per activation instead of firing all the shots at once while removing the kockback. Expand the range to 600 and make it an on-target explosion (similar to necro being an on-target range skill). 
Additionally, slightly increase the damage per shot (from .333 to something around .45). 
Add a .25s recharge between shots so they can be fired in quick succession but not spammed all at once. This would give the option for consistent ranger pressure or a burst when setup properly. 

 

As a kit this would provide a defacto mid-range auto attack with a leap on 4 to pair with whatever offhand you want. 
 

Would this work? I have no idea. Just an idea. 

That's a great idea, oscuro. It would definitely help pistol fill a roll in BS's kit.

 

The biggest objection I forsee would be from the pve folks who use DR to rapidly max stacks of fierce as fire. Turning DR into a ranged AA of sorts would make it harder for them to do that.

 

Of course, that issue could be easily addressed, either by lengthening the duration of each FaF stack or by having the stacks refresh each time a new stack is generated. So I still think changing to your proposal would be a good thing.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

CMC: "Warrior off hand weapons is a crowded design space..."

Me: "Then WTF are you crowding it even more..."

[oscuro.9720]

20 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

CMC: "Warrior off hand weapons is a crowded design space..."

Me: "Then WTF are you crowding it even more..."

Indeed. It doesn’t seem to fill much of a role that isn’t already there. Mainhand mid range? Uncrowded. Off hand mid range? Uncrowded. Pistol? A mid range weapon. Perfect, let’s give it melee damage! 

This change is basically just adding artillery slash lite to OH pistol so that it can maintain that midrange pressure, which would differentiate it as an off hand imo. 

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

1 hour ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

CMC: "Warrior off hand weapons is a crowded design space..."

Me: "Then WTF are you crowding it even more..."

Agreed. Thing is, it doesn't have to be that way...

 

Shield: CC and defense

OH sword: condi and defense

OH axe: damage

OH mace: ranged CC and dmg

Warhorn: boons

Torch: condi dmg

OH dagger: currently just dmg; should probably be mobility and boon rip 

Oscuro's pistol: ranged attack and a little mobility

 

The problem is that most of these things suck and/or don't perform their niche roles very well. Additionally, warrior has such a big need for either DPS in PvE or survivability in competitive that it is hard to move away from either OH axe or shield, respectively.

 

Many weapons need updates, as we've discussed ad nauseum. But I also think it would help if some of warrior's obsolete utility skills were reworked to have more active defense components, like evades or aegis, so that you could consider giving up a defensive OH. That would improve build diversity.

[eXruina.4956]

wupz

Edited November 26, 2022 by eXruina.4956

[eXruina.4956]

ranged mainhand pistol would've been ideal, it falls in line with what the warrior community was asking for at the time.

 

warriors were asking for better ranged options or dedicated support.

 

bladesworn is not only neither of those, but in fact bladesworn is almost the complete opposite of what warriors were asking for.

[Shagie.7612]

50 minutes ago, eXruina.4956 said:

ranged mainhand pistol would've been ideal, it falls in line with what the warrior community was asking for at the time.

 

I don't really understand why it didn't happen, honestly.

Like, with Spellbreaker, they specifically said that warrior as a master of arms doesn't feel right to only get a weapon in 1 hand. I don't see why that shouldn't apply to pistols as well.

I suppose it could have been a built build limiting with the way ammo works on the spec, but having double pistols for range options and gunsaber for melee as the "standard build" is at least interesting, rather than the current state of warrior offhands.

[eXruina.4956]

22 minutes ago, Shagie.7612 said:

I don't really understand why it didn't happen, honestly.

i don't know either, but i suspect that it is deliberate.

 

whatever the case may be its out of our hands.

[Jzaku.9765]

I just think that if you made the tiny change of Gunstinger (Pistol 4) to cover twice the distance with a little less CD it would turn the weapon into MH Sword, but in your Offhand, which would be incredible for gap closing, thereby significantly reducing the need for a midrange weapon in the first place. 

[Kodama.6453]

2 hours ago, Shagie.7612 said:

I don't really understand why it didn't happen, honestly.

Like, with Spellbreaker, they specifically said that warrior as a master of arms doesn't feel right to only get a weapon in 1 hand. I don't see why that shouldn't apply to pistols as well.

I suppose it could have been a built build limiting with the way ammo works on the spec, but having double pistols for range options and gunsaber for melee as the "standard build" is at least interesting, rather than the current state of warrior offhands.

Just the community setting itself up for disappointment, as usual.

That statement about warrior being a weapon master and how a single dagger didn't quite feel cool enough have just been explanations from the devs for why spellbreaker got to break the general elite spec design rule by getting access to both mainhand and offhand.

But people ran with these explanations and took it as "warrior now will always break this design rule!", taking it as a general principle instead of the exception it was supposed to be.

Fact is that giving dual wield to spellbreaker was not only because of thematic, but because the elite spec still had quite some power budget to spend. The class mechanic, full counter, is quite simple and doesn't add way too much to the class. It is a single dodge with CC and some damage added, nothing too spectacular, so they had still room to give it the dual dagger.

That has not been the case for bladesworn. The spec comes with an entire new weapon set as the class mechanic (gunsaber), on top also flipping over to the dragon trigger which is another complete set of skills, including the hardest hitting attack the game has ever seen.

No need to also give that spec a dual wielded weapon on top. The class mechanic was already giving the spec plenty of new tools, so just using an offhand for it was totally fine.

[Khang Xithyl.1742]

Trueshot should be made castable while moving in the Nov 29th Patch

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

7 hours ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

I just think that if you made the tiny change of Gunstinger (Pistol 4) to cover twice the distance with a little less CD it would turn the weapon into MH Sword, but in your Offhand, which would be incredible for gap closing, thereby significantly reducing the need for a midrange weapon in the first place. 

That would be a decent niche for it. Mobility+DPS, though the knockback on P5 would need to be removed.

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

9 hours ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

I just think that if you made the tiny change of Gunstinger (Pistol 4) to cover twice the distance with a little less CD it would turn the weapon into MH Sword, but in your Offhand, which would be incredible for gap closing, thereby significantly reducing the need for a midrange weapon in the first place. 

Also a good idea. There are multiple ways to go about this, and this is one of them.

 

Increasing range of gunslinger and giving it a reduced CD a/or a second ammo charge (thematically appropriate) would go a long ways to making pistol more viable.

 

Dragons roar, however, is just junk. It is clunky to use: 0.5s to point your gun, then another 0.5-0.75s while the explosions are going off--and you're animation locked the whole time. Your target practically has to be Cc'd to have a realistic chance of landing most of the damage. Compare that to, say, Eternity's Requiem, which actively tracks and targets multiple enemies. Or Willbenders sword 4 and 5, which includes an immobilize and gap closer so it can land it's big damage burst. Dragons roar is just so poorly designed in comparison.

 

Speeding up the cast of DR (both the pointing of the gun and the explosions) would help a lot. The pushback should be removed.

[eXruina.4956]

 

18 minutes ago, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

Speeding up the cast of DR (both the pointing of the gun and the explosions) would help a lot. The pushback should be removed.

yeah that pushback on p5 should definitely be removed.

 

they should also probably remove dragonspike mine's backflip, its senseless.

 

actually looking at the bladesworn utility skills introduced, most of them are quite terrible and impractical. the useful ones bring no utility outside of boosting damage in pve and only after they were reworked. its a glaringly obvious fact specially since none of it sees any practical use in competitive.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

Warrior is the only class without a single medium-ranged (900) weapon. Warrior and Dragonhunter longbows should also be 1500 just like Ranger longbow, even if it requires a trait..

 

I'm still confused on why we got dual daggers but not dual pistols.

Edited November 26, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[eXruina.4956]

rytlock ran around with a sword and pistol back when he was still a warrior.

 

traitor jumped ship, but i can't say i blame him, he probably injured his eyes after seeing what anet's balance team had planned for warrior. the whole mists thing was just a coverup.

[Vancho.8750]

@oscuro.9720 

In the beta Pistol almost worked as a off hand weapon with an auto attack with Lush Forest but it still had too long cd to feel fine. I think I suggested they should make Lush forest a pistol trait so you could do that or reduce the cd on the dragon roar stacks so you could have off hand  as main hand weapon, but fun is not allowed and they nerfed lush forest to be on the first charge instead of the last and now the trait is almost useless and pistol is only good for keeping a boring damage multiplier for PVE.

Edited November 29, 2022 by Vancho.8750