Big Fail! Pistol is the worst weapon.

[draxynnic.3719]

12 minutes ago, Puck.3697 said:

Well of course there is, there’s several things they could do.

- buff easier aspects of the class to raise the minimum damage and reducing the dps loss because of misplays

- return staff as a good dps weapon to give ele proper ranged options in competitive environments

They could make each weapon flat in terms of dmg type, I.e reduce the attunement pool to 3 and remove fire or air based on the weapon choice to reduce buttons.

they could add more dmg in pve to the water / earth elements, where all the defensives are.

remove quickness from jade sphere into a trait which applies it from a passive effect on abilities and jade sphere be only static area dmg pulse.

there’s lots they could do to simplify ele down, and imho they should. The core playerbase can’t play ele, that is a problem realistically  

Some of those they could do, some I'd raise eyebrows over. 

As for your conclusion, I don't think it's that people can't play ele, it's that most people find it problematic to perform complicated rotations while also doing mechanics, keeping an eye open for any oneshot or near-oneshot attacks, and so on. So people learn the encounters on simpler builds, and then they stick to those builds because they work. Meanwhile, for people who are open to switching to builds with more complexity, there's greater reward in builds where 'more complexity' means having options to take pressure off the group or to handle mechanics you previously left to more experienced squadmates than to master a 132-step rotation where you do not much more damage than everyone else (and noticeably less when something disrupts it).

[Puck.3697]

17 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

As for your conclusion, I don't think it's that people can't play ele

Well yes, most people against the dummy could pull 35k dps, but tbh the second issue is across the board, ironically if you look at the medium dps across the board on wingman, every class including ele sits at 20k 

The whole X is easy mode and Y is hardcore, isn’t strictly true. Realistically every class in this game the core majority struggle to play effectively in actual gameplay.

things in this regard won’t change i am afraid, the concept of doing mechanics while also hitting a active rotation isn’t something the average player can do at a high level, thus was the purpose of auto attack builds and low intensity builds that achieve 20k dps or higher.

A lot of the classes in raid / fractal environments are too hard for the playerbase to execute in a active environment.

imho the reason ele is so low popularity is because of open world content, the lack of really being a mage in actual gameplay and strictness in builds.

a engineer can run scrapper in berserker gear and run absolutely fine, same for reaper, scourge can go strict viper etc etc

try doing ele without a celestial build, I’ve even seen posts on this from Reddit and when people say “u need to get a celestial set” their immediate response is “that’s a lot of work just to do the story”

imho people don’t play ele, because the actual journey is so strict for ele, they don’t start and just choose a option that can float through the games story, by the time they’re raiding why would they then play a elementalist 

I have a elementalist, I build ascended sets to cover everything did map completion and raided with it, my issues with ele were never trying to play it in raid, my dps was fine with it, what eventually wore me down to playing another class, is it feels like it’s 4 expansions behind every other class in QoL.

my scrapper can just run with berserkers, I don’t need to worry it can sustain fine, ele requires so much effort just to start the content it’s tiresome. 
 

grimjack made a build for ele do like 25-30k dps in one attunement with only a auto attack, it has access to easy builds for decent dps, it’s just not fun 

my Favorite build was always hybrid weaver, I do still play ele sometimes but I think since my break a lot of my love for it has disappeared I’ve been enjoying my scrapper a lot more 

Edited March 11 by Puck.3697

[CETheLucid.3964]

Giving pistol the engineer rifle treatment (make it's unbuffed rate of fire much quicker) and allowing elemental bullets to auto generate would be massive QoL buffs for pistol. The first one is even more pertinent to ele because engi can still weapon swap. Ele has to commit to the weapon choice. I liked the auto bullet idea since I saw it pitched during the beta test. Maybe give it a few aesthetic buffs. Make the powder spray unique (or even just exist) depending on the element, etc. Little things. But a rate of fire buff and auto generating bullets would be big ones.

Don't agree with OP though. Pistol is alright. It's a solid concept. Just needs a little more polish.

[Uete.3805]

After trying it out for a bit, I find the movement in air 3 a bit wonky. I think the skill might work better if it was the other way around: you shoot, then can do a full dash. Either that or make it a mini-lightning flash, so that we have more control on where to land.

The main issue, however, seems to be figuring out whether you have a magic bullet or not. I think adding a bullet marker (like the bladesworn ones) on top of each attunement could do the trick. If you have a magic fire bullet, show it above the F1, etc.

The rest seems alright, although giving it some small cone like spell ala engi pistol 4 might allow for some more variety in its skills visuals.

Edited March 13 by Uete.3805
Added UI update idea