Peacekeeper and Hail of Justice slot positions / Symbol of Ignition placement

[Gaiawolf.8261]

I've spent some time in the open world and world vs world with the new pistols, and I keep coming up with strategies that use a few different weapon combos other than p/p. In particular, pistol/torch feels like a solid option.... UNTIL the time comes to drop Symbol of Ignition with no good projectile skill to follow up when I'm outside 180 inches of my target. I know a bunch of us complained during the beta that the slot positions for Peacekeeper and Hail of Justice should be switched to help resolve this issue (or change the symbol's range/placement), but the devs obviously have other plans.

I can't figure it out. Can anybody help me decipher the intent here? There seems no situation where the current skill loadout is in favor except when chasing optimized benchmarks on a golem while standing in melee range the whole time, and even then Snowcrow's builds aren't using p/p. So what am I missing? 

Edited April 1 by Gaiawolf.8261
Additional pondering over Ignition symbol.

[Kuya.6495]

Not a comment on the validity of your suggestion, but condi firebrand on SC does use p/p and the latest condi willbender benches seem to be pointing to the use of p/p along with p/t.

[Gaiawolf.8261]

17 minutes ago, Kuya.6495 said:

Not a comment on the validity of your suggestion, but condi firebrand on SC does use p/p and the latest condi willbender benches seem to be pointing to the use of p/p along with p/t.

Oh? They moving away from sc/p + p/t on wb? Still, that's only one use, and other combos are still viable.

[ArchonWing.9480]

It's been really confusing.

Condi Q Firebrand on snowcrows is p/t, p/p

Condi Firebrand is A/t, p/p

Condi WB is p/t, s/p

A lot of it isn't applicable outside of instanced content, where you are always in melee range.

And lol, tbh, I don't even bother with offhand pistol outside of CCs; messing up is a tremendous dps loss   and yea I suppose for most average players that aren't chasing golem benchmarks, it may not be worth it. The offhand pistol skills are for when you have downtime and thus nothing else to press.

You can ignite with peacekeeper, but it has a weird interaction where it ignites like a melee attack so keep that in mind.

Honestly you should probably just try parsing without offhand P and see what the dps is, and then compare it with the rest.

 

 

Edited April 1 by ArchonWing.9480

[Gaiawolf.8261]

8 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

It's been really confusing.

Condi Q Firebrand on snowcrows is p/t, p/p

Condi Firebrand is A/t, p/p

Condi WB is p/t, s/p

A lot of it isn't applicable outside of instanced content, where you are always in melee range.

And lol, tbh, I don't even bother with offhand pistol outside of CCs; messing up is a tremendous dps loss   and yea I suppose for most average players that aren't chasing golem benchmarks, it may not be worth it. The offhand pistol skills are for when you have downtime and thus nothing else to press.

You can ignite with peacekeeper, but it has a weird interaction where it ignites like a melee attack so keep that in mind.

Honestly you should probably just try parsing without offhand P and see what the dps is, and then compare it with the rest.

 

 

That's really the problem I'm having. The weapons' effectiveness is pretty good when you are on top of something, but it just drops off outside of the tiny symbol radius. Every time I try to get something out of its range, I feel like I'd be better off switching back to my scepter. I mean, what's the point of making them pistols?

[Eekasqueak.7850]

Wish they hadn't made the symbol melee range in the first place. 

[Kuya.6495]

They could make the symbol automatically drop on the target when you are in range and click the button and it would be indistinguishable from how it works at melee range now except it would actually work better at range now too (peacekeeper would make the symbol burn even if you're not in it).

Imagine a ranged weapon working at range

Edited April 1 by Kuya.6495

[Gaiawolf.8261]

3 hours ago, Kuya.6495 said:

They could make the symbol automatically drop on the target when you are in range and click the button and it would be indistinguishable from how it works at melee range now except it would actually work better at range now too (peacekeeper would make the symbol burn even if you're not in it).

Imagine a ranged weapon working at range

Yeah, we have a few threads discussing how to make it better, but it seems the devs have no intention of changing it on that level, at least for now. At this point I'm just trying to figure out what the kitten the balance team are thinking. I have one theory that they only care how it performs in instance PVE/golem benchmarks, and I hope I am wrong, but... 🤷‍♀️

[ArchonWing.9480]

13 hours ago, Gaiawolf.8261 said:

That's really the problem I'm having. The weapons' effectiveness is pretty good when you are on top of something, but it just drops off outside of the tiny symbol radius. Every time I try to get something out of its range, I feel like I'd be better off switching back to my scepter. I mean, what's the point of making them pistols?

Well like I said, that's why you have to take benchmarks with a grain of salt, especially how sometimes seem to take a lucky parse and go with that.  The point is to determine the ceiling of the build and not typical fights.

And yes, the game is mostly designed around instanced pve content and melee has always been the norm, with ranged being an exception. Even in organized anything else, melee tends to be better just because of how short range things are.

I suppose Cele healbrand in instanced pve can benefit from because larger symbols but that's also an exception.

Main problem is they treated p/p as a single weapon and intended to use as a set, but offhand pistol is definitely the weaker half.

 

Edited April 1 by ArchonWing.9480

[Gaiawolf.8261]

20 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

The point is to determine the ceiling of the build and not typical fights.

This is part of my suspicion. I don't think they are just treating instance pve meta builds as ceilings but also using them to determine where weapons (and traits) have a place for the entire profession.

I use Honor in my OW celestial/support build, and it's definitely appreciated but still way too small. I guess it's a small consolation that I can swap out a pistol for my axe, but scepter is still sometimes superior due to the GT symbol. I also like the theme and skin for my scepter better, so I'm not too salty about that. I just wish I had a decent ranged condi dps option for my Vip/Rit build.