Big Fail! Pistol is the worst weapon.

[CafPow.1542]

15 hours ago, FrozenEve.6875 said:

I feel like this is slightly reductive. It's clear many ele players play ele because of the class fantasy. Asking them to reroll defeats the whole purpose of why they were drawn to elementalist originally. 

It isn't unreasonable to be asking for a simple variant of an elementalist playstyle given the breadth of opportunity the design team has had for new weapons and elite specialisations. 

And i feel like a lot of players play ele cause they like how it plays and they like it to be a little more apm / skillusage than other classes. And making it something else would destroy that for those.

now who of us is correct? We don’t know. But rerolling means „my skill isn’t red but green now“ while the other one would mean that some players have nothing else left cause everything is the same.

whoever of us is correct, we don’t know but the argument about „we have to press so many buttons“ is, always was and forever will be silly nonsense.

 

/edit PS:

i am not saying pistol is fine tho. It can be bad nevertheless. But „i have to press many buttons“ will never be the reason for a bad ele-weapon. Other factors are.

Edited March 3 by CafPow.1542

[Hemdale.1520]

Despite pistol being a bit disappointing I still think there's hope for it, unlike hammer it doesn't have a convoluted concept that not even anet understands. The main issues that stand out imo are:

• Why is there such strict design on it being a condition weapon? every single ability is all about conditions it feels more like playing a necro than an ele. Where's the hybrid feel?
• The lack of utility. Where's the defense, mobility, boons, or anything. Have pistol offer something new that the other weapons don't have and also to offer it a more dynamic feel rather than "im just a turret shooting damage over and over"
• Bullets. It's a whole new mechanic that you have to keep track of... somehow. And yet all it really offers is a slight modifier that is either some minor utility or just some more of the same damage, it doesn't feel impactful to use, it doesn't even look different using them.

There's a lot more mechanical issues like the air 3 and where's the healing in water, but these three points are the general issues that have withheld being the most disappointing from when first trying the pistol till now.

Edited March 3 by Hemdale.1520

[Tinker.6924]

11 hours ago, Hemdale.1520 said:

Why is there such strict design on it being a condition weapon?

Certain weapons are clearly pigeon holed into specific categories and rarely divert from them.  

• Greatsword, sword, longbow, axe, rifle, staff are nearly always power weapons with high strike damage and vulnerability stacks
• Pistol, scepter, dagger, shortbow are nearly always condi weapons with low strike damage but lots of bleed and burning stacks

There are exceptions of course, but it shouldn't come as a surprise that pistol was going to be for ele condi builds.

[draxynnic.3719]

22 hours ago, Tinker.6924 said:

Certain weapons are clearly pigeon holed into specific categories and rarely divert from them.  

• Greatsword, sword, longbow, axe, rifle, staff are nearly always power weapons with high strike damage and vulnerability stacks
• Pistol, scepter, dagger, shortbow are nearly always condi weapons with low strike damage but lots of bleed and burning stacks

There are exceptions of course, but it shouldn't come as a surprise that pistol was going to be for ele condi builds.

More specifically, I don't think it's a bad thing to have some elementalist weapons that specialise. Not every elementalist is playing celestial, and having condition skills on a power build or power skills on a condition build often feels like a bit of a waste.

But if they're going to designate ele pistol as condi, they should commit and find a suitable condition for air. They've set a precedent for electricity inflicting confusion in other professions, that could work. Or just make it inflict a short burn or something if they REALLY don't want ele to have another damaging condition.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

Pistol is so bad, not even Lord Hizen finds it worthwhile. Says a lot.

[draxynnic.3719]

16 minutes ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

Pistol is so bad, not even Lord Hizen finds it worthwhile. Says a lot.

Hahah. I was wondering if Hizen would make something out of pistol, and wasn't surprised when he didn't.

[Ram.5981]

On 3/2/2024 at 9:07 AM, Infinity.2876 said:

The issue with pistol as I see it is that the bullets are too easy to block/reflect and prevent from gaining bullets which are a key mechanic. Also bullets last for one skill and are immediately taken away meaning that every other shot has a lesser effect. Additionally, each bullet can only be consumed in its respective element meaning that weaver is weakened if he doesn't use his dual attack before switching and a whole lot of brain games ensue. Even tempest, who is best suited for staying in one element needs the ability to swap to water to selfheal.

I propose that if bullets were to be added to the aa while keeping the spending bullets on the same skills then it would allow it to be more viable in competitive game modes. You would also need to adjust the maximum bullets to be 3 and get different effects for the amount. Example:

  Reveal hidden contents

Fire 2 (raging rocket): gain 1 stack of raging rocket effect per 2 bullets spent to a maximum of 6 bullets. Lower the coef to 2 or 3 percent per stack

One additional step would be to make bullets universal....

This way the pistol would be generally buffed, and we could return to our normal playstyle of changing attunements to fit the situation. Not having to be limited by what kind of bullet we have, and weaver would be usable.

This isn't really a bad idea. I think I want to add to this thought.

• Make bullets universal. It makes sense to be able to have a stack of bullets and imbue it with what ever element you're attuned to. The current bullet mechanic is gimmicky, clunky and not very effective.
• Make bullets accumulate like Vit daggers or Thief initiative. This mechanic already exists in the game, so it should not be hard to add it to ele for bullet management. Creating this whole new ele bullet mechanic was rather silly.
• Skill 1 auto-attack replenishes bullets
• Skills 2 & 3 consume a bullet if available
• If the max bullets are available, allow a special action to unleash some type of powerful elemental blast.
• Don't limit each attunement to 1 condition, let them apply more than one if appropriate. This will allow a better spread of condi's to apply and makes it harder to easily counter in competitive modes with simple condi cleanses, also brings it more on par with other condi builds that apply multiple condis very easily. Also allow using skills 2/3 to apply boons, since they currently don't
  • Example: (just a quick thought here, didn't really think them through much)
    • Fire: Condis- burning, weakness; Boons: Might, Vigor
    • Air: Condis- Confusion, vulnerability; Boons: Swiftness, Fury
    • Earth: Condis- Bleeding, immobilized; Boons: Stability/Protection/Aegis
    • Water: Condis- Poisoned, chilled; Boons: Regeneration/

Edited March 4 by Ram.5981

[Tinker.6924]

2 hours ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

Pistol is so bad, not even Lord Hizen finds it worthwhile. Says a lot

Honestly I'm not keen on how the new pistol works, however when I was poking around for more info on it last night I came across snowcrows build rankings

https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks?filter=dps

Pistol/warhorn condi tempest is the #2 performing dps only build out of 33 they ranked.  Unlike other builds, snowcrows doesn't say it's complicated or has a high learning curve.  The rotation they show does use all 4 elements: very heavy fire and earth of course but also regular use in water and air.  I think the testing is based on golem because I didn't see any dps logs linked for this builds.

Interesting to note the gap between the #2 build and #33 builds is only 7k dps, but the gap between #1 and #2 is a slightly larger 7-8k. #1 dps build is axe/dagger condi deadeye.

If nothing else the build shows a lot of promise in raids and strikes.  

[scerevisiae.1972]

those of us who only play competitive modes continue to be stuck with the 4 original ele weapons from 11 years ago, which at this point, are super boring.

 

hammer and pistol both scream severe lack of design talent to me so IMO vote with your feet - go play elden ring or DRG or BG3 etc, downvote on steam etc.

Edited March 5 by scerevisiae.1972

[draxynnic.3719]

7 hours ago, scerevisiae.1972 said:

those of us who only play competitive modes continue to be stuck with the 4 original ele weapons from 11 years ago, which at this point, are super boring.

 

hammer and pistol both scream severe lack of design talent to me so IMO vote with your feet - go play elden ring or DRG or BG3 etc, downvote on steam etc.

Pretty sure sword has been doing well in sPvP a few times since PoF. Can't speak for the current meta, though.

[Nephalem.8921]

On 3/2/2024 at 2:15 AM, Mini Crinny.6190 said:

Yeah, this just proves you don't really have any understanding but let me explain so you can understand.

 

if we are looking at golems, then Ele has always had strong benchmarks, this is true, however, if we are talking about actual end game content like Raids or Fractals, then other classes can do similar damage with less effort, this makes Ele less viable, Pistol doesn't change that at all.  least to say that they haven't really gone all out on Pistol either, there is zero imagination, zero creativity and zero thought into it.

 

I forgot to add that other classes have access to more boons or CC as well without losing any dps

Tempest is doing the 46k+ dps with pistol. it shares a lot of boons.

I can get to 40k without even checking the rotation and pressing all the buttons. tempest is not that hard.

[Hemdale.1520]

On 3/3/2024 at 10:11 AM, Tinker.6924 said:

Certain weapons are clearly pigeon holed into specific categories and rarely divert from them.  

• Greatsword, sword, longbow, axe, rifle, staff are nearly always power weapons with high strike damage and vulnerability stacks
• Pistol, scepter, dagger, shortbow are nearly always condi weapons with low strike damage but lots of bleed and burning stacks

There are exceptions of course, but it shouldn't come as a surprise that pistol was going to be for ele condi builds.

 

16 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

More specifically, I don't think it's a bad thing to have some elementalist weapons that specialise. Not every elementalist is playing celestial, and having condition skills on a power build or power skills on a condition build often feels like a bit of a waste.

But if they're going to designate ele pistol as condi, they should commit and find a suitable condition for air. They've set a precedent for electricity inflicting confusion in other professions, that could work. Or just make it inflict a short burn or something if they REALLY don't want ele to have another damaging condition.

I think both of these illustrates the flaw and conflict with the pistol not being more of a hybrid. Yes weapons usually have specific roles but there's a reason why anet has avoided that design with all previous weapons for ele, ele is inherently a hybrid and it's not the weapon that dictates this, it is the attunements and the traits that are tied to them. Sure they can put confusion on air or whatever other condition but what's the point when all the condition traits are tied to earth and fire, they are still going to be the go to for condition builds. The traits them selves tell the direction of which attunements you are going to blend and which you are sacrificing and the weapon as well as the elite specs need to follow suit to that or otherwise be as universal as possible. Even if they did somehow manage to make pistol one specific role, I feel like it would take away the motivation even more than it already is to even switch between attunements with the pistol lacking so much in utility.

[draxynnic.3719]

5 hours ago, Hemdale.1520 said:

 

I think both of these illustrates the flaw and conflict with the pistol not being more of a hybrid. Yes weapons usually have specific roles but there's a reason why anet has avoided that design with all previous weapons for ele, ele is inherently a hybrid and it's not the weapon that dictates this, it is the attunements and the traits that are tied to them. Sure they can put confusion on air or whatever other condition but what's the point when all the condition traits are tied to earth and fire, they are still going to be the go to for condition builds. The traits them selves tell the direction of which attunements you are going to blend and which you are sacrificing and the weapon as well as the elite specs need to follow suit to that or otherwise be as universal as possible. Even if they did somehow manage to make pistol one specific role, I feel like it would take away the motivation even more than it already is to even switch between attunements with the pistol lacking so much in utility.

I pretty strongly disagree. Weapons being hybrid was, I think, more a factor of elementalist having so few weapons it couldn't afford to have specialised power and condition weapons. The price for that, though, was dead attunements. Sure, Celestial works great if it's practical and available in the mode you're playing, but earth (along with water) is typically a defensive-utility-only attunement for builds without condi damage, while air is usually straight-up dead apart from maybe a bit of mobility and CC if you're not packing power.

As the weapon lineup increases, though, elementalist can increasingly afford to have weapons where every attunement works well with the stat sets that weapon is intended to be used with.

Edited March 5 by draxynnic.3719

[draxynnic.3719]

Some shower thoughts I had on pistol:

It largely shows that elementalist weapons can't follow the same rules as other professions.

Because let's face it, mainhand pistols are usually, to a greater extent, boring. Most professions have a basic shot skill, a superior damage shooting skill, and a CC shot skill. Guardian trades the CC for a symbol, thief has some mobility on P/D, engineer's CC shot bounces, but they're basically variations on the same theme. But they can get away with that, because it's still a relatively small and basic part of the build - you can swap to another weapon (or kit) and in many cases there might be a transform available.

One attunement's worth of elementalist pistol skills would probably make for a good weapon on any other profession. Problem is that for elementalist, pistol isn't just 3/10+ of the weapon skills available to the build, it's 12/20 (18/26 on Weaver). Unlike other professions, the weapon is very important to an elementalist build's identity, arguably more so than an elite spec for non-support builds. And what does elementalist pistol provide? It'd be exaggerating to say it has four variations of the same theme, but not by much. You've generally got a basic 'shoot bullet' attack, a 'shoot bullet that does something special for more damage' attack, and a utility bullet. Fire and Air traded so fire has two damage bullets and air has two utility bullets. The special mechanic only serves to reinforce this, since many of the distinctions that DO exist get papered over by all attunements still sharing a 'use one skill to generate a charge, the other to expend one' gameplay.

Contrast this to staff and scepter, where while in some cases the numbers are bad, the attunements have different identities and playstyles. Consider scepter, for instance: fire is based around throwing blast AoEs around, air drills away at the target with a channelled attack augmented by instant cast skills, and earth is a projectile volley-fire weapon with a pulsing AoE. Arguably water is similar to earth, but is explicitly something you swap to for self-sustain. Similar observations, tempered by staff underperforming for mostly numerical reasons, apply to staff.

PS As an additional development of this line of thinking, I think the gimmick mechanic is actually one of the big factors dragging pistol down. For instance, fire has a ricochet skill 2 and skill 3 is actually a pretty cool explosion... but are you thinking of this when you use it, or are you just thinking that you need to make sure that you consume any fire bullets with skill 2 in order to get that 5% condition damage bonus. And so on for the other attunements. Removing the mechanic (with appropriate compensation), putting a damaging condition on air, and making the fire and air autos more interesting in general would probably go a long way.

Edited March 5 by draxynnic.3719

[Jski.6180]

So an issues with ele weapons has always been there auto attk not having enofe effects on them when they are only 1h. A 2h wepon lets the ele not need there auto attk at all due to other skill use and the ability to swap atuments. Even sword a 1h wepon had an chan attk as well as an added duel skill for being what was once weaver only. Scpter seems to be the only wepon that the auto attk was mostly ignore but that has more to do with scpter being an non wepon wepon where its more about about FA builds for spike dmg with some big skills (getting back to the ability to swap atument to make up for the lack of good auto attk.)

The pistol not having a lot on its auto attk will hold the wepon back form having an good use. Anet needs to add more to the auto attk condi soft cc or even support to make it usable.

What i would like to see would be add in both an load bullet on auto attk and maybe an use bullet (for just added condi support etc.. effects) this may make the fire 4 bullets at once impossible. I think it would go a long way to making pistol have a very non spam game play they where going for where you must use an skill to load and time another skill for max ammo use. The delay of 1 auto attk to get the most out of an skill 2/3 would be way better then having to burn 1 of the 2 ammo skills have an real effect.

Its that or add in some F5 or utility that works with the bullet system in the same way we saw other weapons that are balanced more base off of there elite spec and non general use kind of the issues we are running into with letting all weapons be of use and something that the weapons should be made with in mind going forward.

 

[Hemdale.1520]

6 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I pretty strongly disagree. Weapons being hybrid was, I think, more a factor of elementalist having so few weapons it couldn't afford to have specialised power and condition weapons. The price for that, though, was dead attunements. Sure, Celestial works great if it's practical and available in the mode you're playing, but earth (along with water) is typically a defensive-utility-only attunement for builds without condi damage, while air is usually straight-up dead apart from maybe a bit of mobility and CC if you're not packing power.

As the weapon lineup increases, though, elementalist can increasingly afford to have weapons where every attunement works well with the stat sets that weapon is intended to be used with.

I don’t doubt that this could be done when only considering how stats pair with a weapon, but then you would have to scale the weapons baseline so high that the spec didn’t matter. The question is, where does air and water fit within a condition build? Are people going to pick these trait lines for a condition build even if the weapon has conditions in those attunements? And vice versa, would people still pick those traits knowing that water isn’t going to heal and that air isn’t going to have any burst damage? Since that would be the price for having those attunements have alternative strengths. At that point I feel like it’s changing dead attunements for dead traits/specs, which can be fine and work,  but I’d rather have a more universal weapon that isn’t trying to homogenize each attunement, although that opinion might be different if the pistol felt more dynamic in other ways the begin with… who knows.

6 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

PS As an additional development of this line of thinking, I think the gimmick mechanic is actually one of the big factors dragging pistol down. For instance, fire has a ricochet skill 2 and skill 3 is actually a pretty cool explosion... but are you thinking of this when you use it, or are you just thinking that you need to make sure that you consume any fire bullets with skill 2 in order to get that 5% condition damage bonus. And so on for the other attunements. Removing the mechanic (with appropriate compensation), putting a damaging condition on air, and making the fire and air autos more interesting in general would probably go a long way.

Yep, and this is one of the reasons it is not very dynamic. The bullets are not very exciting and feel more like a routine. It was actually the same situation with hammer and orbs, but I guess anet disagrees.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

I just don't get why bullets have to trigger different effect depending of the skill and element.
It has insane learning curve, but even before that it just punishs "skill on demand"; you need to spam skill into a void to get your cleanse on air #3 ?
But if you do the opposite without condition you just waste the bullet for nothing ?
But fire-earth-water have different effect, and not even on same "role" (buff, dps, sustain...); why water "heal" is on water #2 and not #3 like fire aura, barrier, condi cleanse  ? 
No need to speak about weaver; new dual skills were not enough, for the same bullet you now have 2 different effects depending of the second element ...
...
It's a mess.
Make it as simple as thief's Axe, or ranger's maces, IDK...  You loads bulletS with AA or #2, you unload with #3 and then the effect varies depending of the current element or each bullet.

 

About benchmark, yeah wow a new DPS dedicated weapon (on paper and golem at least) does more than previous ones after years of nerfs, wow. Guardians have step up too, and from further; and reactivity isn't complete 😺  Untamed too, despite the hybridness of maces. Thief ? Still it's tempest; tempest viability outside golem is  ... situational.
It counters the argument "low dps" sadly not everything in the game is a 4M hp golem, nor elementalists are running with quickness/alacrity and DPS traits, but it doesn't counter the clown design of pistol.
And once again, the whole rotation is about looping a modifier attached to the weapon ... What the hell Anet !?!?!?!?!? Why is this this complicated to just buff base power and coeff ? Why Elementalist have to suffer from this madness even to include new modifiers from weapon skills ?????

Edited March 6 by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[draxynnic.3719]

2 hours ago, Hemdale.1520 said:

I don’t doubt that this could be done when only considering how stats pair with a weapon, but then you would have to scale the weapons baseline so high that the spec didn’t matter. The question is, where does air and water fit within a condition build? Are people going to pick these trait lines for a condition build even if the weapon has conditions in those attunements? And vice versa, would people still pick those traits knowing that water isn’t going to heal and that air isn’t going to have any burst damage? Since that would be the price for having those attunements have alternative strengths. At that point I feel like it’s changing dead attunements for dead traits/specs, which can be fine and work,  but I’d rather have a more universal weapon that isn’t trying to homogenize each attunement, although that opinion might be different if the pistol felt more dynamic in other ways the begin with… who knows.

I'd consider having traitlines that you just don't use with a certain weapon to be better than having attunements that you just don't use with a build. The reason being that you can choose your traits according to your stats and build. A condi build is probably not going to use the air or water traitlines because they're intended for power or support respectively, but that's okay: you can choose the traitlines that DO work for your build.

Dead attunements, though, are something you're stuck with as part of your build. You don't have the option to go 'well, air doesn't work with my condition build, I'm going to trade it out for acid instead'. You're stuck with an attunement you're just not going to use unless you need a CC or there's a 'make the player cycle through all attunements' mechanic like Weave Self.

[rotten.9753]

On 3/4/2024 at 8:24 PM, Tinker.6924 said:

Honestly I'm not keen on how the new pistol works, however when I was poking around for more info on it last night I came across snowcrows build rankings

https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks?filter=dps

Pistol/warhorn condi tempest is the #2 performing dps only build out of 33 they ranked.  Unlike other builds, snowcrows doesn't say it's complicated or has a high learning curve.  The rotation they show does use all 4 elements: very heavy fire and earth of course but also regular use in water and air.  I think the testing is based on golem because I didn't see any dps logs linked for this builds.

Interesting to note the gap between the #2 build and #33 builds is only 7k dps, but the gap between #1 and #2 is a slightly larger 7-8k. #1 dps build is axe/dagger condi deadeye.

If nothing else the build shows a lot of promise in raids and strikes.  

This just mean pistol will be nerfed numerically because its benchmark is too high.

[rotten.9753]

On 3/5/2024 at 1:04 AM, scerevisiae.1972 said:

hammer and pistol both scream severe lack of design talent to me

They were both designed by the same person.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

I just want to see a livestream where they show weapons, and the guy be like "Yeah, elementalist's pistol is so entertaining, it's my favorite design"  pushing random keys with no clue what he's doing, and dying miserably against a veteran mob.

[Mini Crinny.6190]

1 hour ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

I just want to see a livestream where they show weapons, and the guy be like "Yeah, elementalist's pistol is so entertaining, it's my favorite design"  pushing random keys with no clue what he's doing, and dying miserably against a veteran mob.

I remember they almost died when showing off Tempest for the first time 

[Ragnarox.9601]

pistol feels like they gave some warrior profession dev to make us a weapon....

[Yer.8096]

To me elementalist pistol looks like an engineer pistol.
I have a great respect with Arenanet design; but this weapon was a mistake to me. Looks like they forgot elementalist (based on ele staff I really can believe they forgot elementalist at all).
o me pistol was bad desgined (specially on PvP), with boring and stucked skills. Its animations looks like enything else besides an elementalist.

We need to think what skill to use, in a usual scenario (speacially PvP), based on what do you need for the combat... You do not use heal if you dont need, right? With pistol, looks like you need to waste a skill just to get a bullet or loose that effect at all! I feel rolling dices...

The greatest idea on this forum imo, was the butllets being charged on skill 1. THAT make a really sense and make pistol more attractive. Second... Please ANet, make the pistol skills LOOK a elementalist weapon.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

17 hours ago, rotten.9753 said:

This just mean pistol will be nerfed numerically because its benchmark is too high.

Or, worst case scenario, everything else will be nerfed around pistol instead.