Pistols Grant Elementalists the Choice between Greater Damage and Defense

[Sylvyn.4750]

Not a fan of having more mechanics that rely on pre-casting a skill and having to cast again to utilize it.  And they wonder why skill lag is a thing in WvW?

[Arheundel.6451]

The main point to take is the bullets speed. I am expecting something relatively faster than scepter for 1v1 situations. 

[Uete.3805]

Do all bullets get consumed when using a matching elemental ability? As in, if we have fire and earth bullets using a fire skill also removes the earth bullet? From the trailer it looks like it does, so it would make little sense to accumulate different bullets, no?

[sumpwa.1849]

And here I thought it would be a power weapon. Oh well. Maybe they can retune scepter to make it a viable ranged power weapon.

[Arheundel.6451]

1 minute ago, Uete.3805 said:

Do all bullets get consumed when using a matching elemental ability? As in, if we have fire and earth bullets using a fire skill also removes the earth bullet? From the trailer it looks like it does, so it would make little sense to accumulate different bullets, no?

No. Only the matching element on core/cata and tempest. But both if on weaver and you are in fire/earth 

Edited November 15, 2023 by Arheundel.6451

[Arheundel.6451]

1 minute ago, sumpwa.1849 said:

And here I thought it would be a power weapon. Oh well. Maybe they can retune scepter to make it a viable ranged power weapon.

Why? Power requires glass stats...even more so in WvW with all the defence powercreep....power specs are awful to play if you can't back it up with more broken/op mechanics like stealth or mega mobility/easy boon fart

[LichOverlord.6329]

18 minutes ago, Szatko.8132 said:

I really loved the previous weapons, but it's interesting why you chose to make pistol a condi weapon. I thought scepter was supposed to be ele's condi mh weapon, so why add another one to compete with it? The fact we don't have a power mh or a proper support mh doesn't help and an additional condi weapon was the last thing elementalists needed. 

I feel like as far as support goes, elementalist is in an odd place because technically every weapon is both a support weapon and not a support weapon due to the existence of water attunement

So idk if it would be feasible to have a weapon be a support weapon across all four attunements, and have it be balanced - then again, im not on the balance team, so what do I know?

I do agree with you on the power, though, but you still run into the issue of no weapon being just power because earth and fire tend to have conditions (burning/bleeding) attached to them, and the closest we have is staff

Elementalist is a weird class in general due its attunements, and they're so ingrained into the class identity itself that at this point it's impossible to circumnavigate them, and basically you're just forced to work within them when designing skills

[LichOverlord.6329]

13 minutes ago, Uete.3805 said:

Do all bullets get consumed when using a matching elemental ability? As in, if we have fire and earth bullets using a fire skill also removes the earth bullet? From the trailer it looks like it does, so it would make little sense to accumulate different bullets, no?

No, they probably just used a skill that consumes all available bullets or something - but the way they're telling us it works here (on paper, at least) is that it will only consume a bullet if the skill is of said element

[Flaming.4250]

I am definatly going to have to beta test this wepon before I make up my mind on this one.

Two questions spring to mind how many bulits do we get per atunement, and how quickly do they recharge? 🤔 Or have I miss read/ understod the blog post?

I guess we will find that out on the 27th.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Flaming.4250

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

20 minutes ago, Flaming.4250 said:

Two questions spring to mind how many bulits do we get per atunement? 

From the showcase video, it seems you can only stock 1 of these special bullets for each attunement before consuming them for the big attack or defense.

I also wonder how they'll recharge since it's not mentioned clearly. It seems the only way to recharge for now is waiting for 2 or 3 to be off cooldown and press them again.

If so the intended playstyle seems to be "decide if you want to attack/defend and press 2/3 accordingly -> switch attunement ->  decide if you want to attack/defend and press 2/3 accordingly -> switch next attunement, hoping the 1st one recharged, rinse and repeat".

Edited November 15, 2023 by ZephidelGRS.9520

[Downstate.4697]

15 minutes ago, Flaming.4250 said:

I am definatly going to have to beta test this wepon before I make up my mind on this one.

Two questions spring to mind how many bulits do we get per atunement, and how quickly do they recharge? 🤔 Or have I miss read/ understod the blog post?

I guess we will find that out on the 27th.

You stock 1 or consume 1 if used in same element.

[aymnad.9023]

Quas! Exort! Wex! The concept is fun but there is going to be too much WAAAYYYYYY too much to check to guess how it feels to play and fight. I was thinking some weapon mechanics could have been elite specs on their own making it hard to balance and this one does not look different.

Edited November 15, 2023 by aymnad.9023

[mezuzel.4987]

I'm far from an ele expert, but what I'm understanding from this blog post is... ele can now be a virtuoso?!

[Wulfhearth.7962]

2 hours ago, Helgaley.3619 said:

Noooo it's condi focused and not power 😭

I'm actually surprised that it's not a hybrid weapon. 

I'm getting my hopes up for offensive water/ice skills actually being allowed to do good damage rather than the just usual healing. 👌

Edited November 15, 2023 by Wulfhearth.7962

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

2 hours ago, Doggie.3184 said:

Gunmage looks really cool. Only Condi though across all like 50 dual skills? 👀

Then again it's probably fine since that leaves room to buff Thief Dual Pistols a lot more and fix it's bad 'Deadly Aim Trait' issue so it can fill the role of power pistols in this game 😛

Guardian probably planning to demolish it though.

as always we need ricochet back! RIP ricochet!

guardians better not get it 🙂

[Howluffu.7259]

4 minutes ago, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

guardians better not get it 🙂

we blue class abatablaaaaaast

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

Wow, look! Catalyst finally getting a weapon that actually has a mechanic that fits Catalysts name!
Probably doesn't have any revealed, condi cleanse, boon removal, evades, piercing or other important stuff.
Gonna test it, but it's probably just a gimmick at best.

[Twilightmage.8309]

Please give it some hybrid scaling. Ranged power weapons we got so far are pretty boring.

[NonNonBiyori.1428]

I did like what i have seen, but I do hope it has some power options..

Edited November 15, 2023 by steve.2945

[XgoroX.6920]

really? not a fan AT all about the new pistol for ele... let alone we are only getting MH????? why are other classes getting MH and OH weapons, when ele isn't? plus ELE NEEDS RANGE damage. you guys nerf the staff to nothing, and the hammer isn't much range at all... i'm really disappointed, and being an Ele main sense launch, this is making me think that Anet is just anti ele. what would've been better is dps rifle, not condi pistol.

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

The thing I take away from the article is that the boons granted by consuming the elemental bullet (EB) are not shared with others ("If an earth bullet is available, it’s consumed to grant the user barrier if the projectile successfully strikes an enemy.") Therefore, this is probably not a support weapon in the sense of boons. I also doubt that this has any combo fields, so unless a skill specifically grants an aura on consuming an EB, this weapon will not be useful for traited aura sharing.

 I'm sure by 'condi' they mean [condi + power] damage on the skills. It's just a question of how skewed the numbers are toward condi. 

 I also hope the EBs do not evaporate after 4 or 5 seconds, but instead hang around until used (or logout or map change).

[CETheLucid.3964]

I think the take away is that while scepter does good damage and has properties that don't let it get reflected for example, pistol is set/designed to be the big numbers weapon. Hard to infer much though. Looks like water has a multi-shot attack. Air has a stun. One of the fire skills looks to be some kind of exploding AoE attack. Can't really figure out things like max range, etc.

If it has better range than scepter (1200-1050), together with the ammo mechanic, it'll have it's own identity. 'Staff or not-quite-but-almost-staff-range but huge DPS and not so support'. If it's 900, it's directly pushing scepter out. 'Scepter but pew pew pew and better at what it does'. That's bad. After all the changes scepter got to get where it is I'd like it to keep it's mid-range niche and for pistol to push DPS at range.

[Serephen.3420]

Why did I hold out some hope we'd finally get a ranged power weapon? We already have scepter for condi. What even is the point of pistol other than being a worse version of scepter?

[Serephen.3420]

7 hours ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

Why? Power requires glass stats...even more so in WvW with all the defence powercreep....power specs are awful to play if you can't back it up with more broken/op mechanics like stealth or mega mobility/easy boon fart

Wvw is not the only game type, but since you mention it, most dps in a zerg are power. Condi bombs are less effective due to group cleanses. 

Edited November 16, 2023 by Serephen.3420

[Mandarinduck.6705]

What's up with the fascination of balls (orbs) in ele recently? The dev trying to tell us something?

Edited November 16, 2023 by Mandarinduck.6705