Who actually uses pistol?

[Keyto.3672]

I play it, and i love it because it feels good to play and the weave self part is a good piano-like moment. And when i don't feel like playing with pistol i play scepter.

I clearly agree that tracking the bullets can be hard and some UI modifications woold be cool, like having indicators over your elements, but I took the habit of looking at my buff bar exactly where the bullets icons should be and i'm currently ok with it.

I still don't know why people are so mad about having a scepter variant, and i don't get why people say it's cluncky and super hard to play. Yes you have to memorize whats spells do and when to use it but that's the same for every class imo.

[Lonewolf Kai.3682]

3 hours ago, Keyto.3672 said:

I play it, and i love it because it feels good to play and the weave self part is a good piano-like moment. And when i don't feel like playing with pistol i play scepter.

I clearly agree that tracking the bullets can be hard and some UI modifications woold be cool, like having indicators over your elements, but I took the habit of looking at my buff bar exactly where the bullets icons should be and i'm currently ok with it.

I still don't know why people are so mad about having a scepter variant, and i don't get why people say it's cluncky and super hard to play. Yes you have to memorize whats spells do and when to use it but that's the same for every class imo.

I agree slightly with this.  It’s fun, and I actually like the bullet mechanic, but competitively, which is what I mostly play, the pistol is sorely lacking to the point of not being remotely viable. 

[draxynnic.3719]

On 5/3/2024 at 5:40 PM, zeyeti.8347 said:

referring to traits who don't work as mecanist ?

htemp is not awfully bad , you can do most of endgame content with it , but it's way more hard and risky to play than any other meta healer and for not any bonus , you are not a better healer in term of raw healing , you don't give any special boon like resistance and have cluncky aegis and stab on a 30 sec cd, only props htemp has is "rebound" .

I played all meta healer and for now i am sticking with chrono and healscourge and those two in my opinion are far beyond other healers , maybe druid has better raw healing while in avatar , but scourge and chrono are well more balanced to me

mecanist is still pretty efficient with the fact the mech can boon from afar while you kite mechanics now and scrapper need some updates to be on pair with other healers, that's the problem now with all classes having the ability to give either quickness or alacrity , many people are gonna stick with what they feel is the most efficient , and as data shows the healers who takes the cakes are : chrono , mécaniste , scourge, druid and herald (maybe the dps counterpart trouble a bit these numbers) but they are mostly alac healers because you have herald as a quick dps who covers most boons with 0bd... and who's the dps/support number one choice , not ebacsue of his dps but because of the isane boon coverage thismonster have.

Either way when pistol came out ele playrate got even more bottom feeder, prove that most people don't want a "versatile" weapon , what people want from ele is a weapon who is pretty simple to use (cause ele is complicated enough like that) and straightforward.

Also that mentality "every dps should have +- the same dps" is a no no for me , if i take a squishy class who is complicated to play and do the same damage as 3 apm class with double my hp , well it's a no go and i feel like looking at the data i am far to be the only one thinking like that , numbers don't lie , for strikes (the most recent updated endgame content) : catalyst below 1% playrate , and tempest/weaver below 2% while you have virtuoso staggering at kitten 14% ... peopel like what is efficient , not too hard to play and have literally 0 downside.

virtuoso has sustain , great dps uptime , penetration/cleave , big cc , utility (like push or blink for kiting) , ele has none of that if you play the dps traitline and play full offensive and idc about some kitten celestial open world builds hitting like a wet noodle , compare that to a reaper playing full zerk or a herald hitting like a truck with his 25 might fury and quickness 100% uptime...

i wished so much that alac was given trough auras ... and for a tempest dps alac counterpart (first nobody play that or maybe 25% of the player inside the 2% playrate of tempest ... lol) they can rework some traits in water to be effective in condi focused build like Piercing Shards and Flow like Water also affecting condi dmg, the overloads while being fun to watch feel like a too big punishment , i wish also like a trait allowing you to dodge while overloading without cancelling it.

 

I don't think 'you're glass, so you get more damage' is something that's likely to fly - that way leads to all DPS being pressured to be eles, and that's not healthy. However, they absolutely can take into account that most people aren't pulling off complex rotations against anything that fights back. They could also compensate for the glassiness with more active defences (see guardian) and group utility (again) - and I don't mean pressing 2-3 instead of 3-2 to give yourself an aura.

On 5/5/2024 at 8:55 PM, Keyto.3672 said:

I play it, and i love it because it feels good to play and the weave self part is a good piano-like moment. And when i don't feel like playing with pistol i play scepter.

I clearly agree that tracking the bullets can be hard and some UI modifications woold be cool, like having indicators over your elements, but I took the habit of looking at my buff bar exactly where the bullets icons should be and i'm currently ok with it.

I still don't know why people are so mad about having a scepter variant, and i don't get why people say it's cluncky and super hard to play. Yes you have to memorize whats spells do and when to use it but that's the same for every class imo.

First, it's the difference between learning 4 for two mainhand weapons (not counting autos because they're usually pretty basic) and learning 8... 14 if weaver. On top of that, if you really want to engage with the main selling point rather than memorising a rotation, you need to know what both the bullet and no bullet version of the skill does, so that balloons up to 16, and much higher for weaver since weaver pistol skills have two bullet effects each.

Meanwhile, while there's a lot to learn in order to make good use of it, there's not a lot that actually FEELS different as a payoff. Scepter and staff feel very different depending on your attunement. Pistol is pretty much a sequence of 'fire bullet' skills with the odd AoE and a mobility skill in air. So it has a high requirement for memorisation, but in gameplay it doesn't really feel like you're using a wide range of skills, just one basic skill ("I cast bullet!") with over a dozen different modifiers. The complex rotation only adds to this, because while a volley fire skill might be able to feel special on an engineer or necromancer, on elementalist... I know there's one or two in there, but I wouldn't be able to say which they are off the top of my head because what I'm thinking about is what the bullets are doing and what I should do next in the rotation.

The need to track the bullets is just the icing on the dren cake. You might be content with staring at the buff bar and picking out the bullets from the 25 other things on that bar, but most people aren't.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

There is a lot to learn with weaver;   a single bullet as 3 differents effects depending of the dual skills (+core + #2), each dual skill has its own 2 differents bullet effects ...wow !? Was it necessary ?
Not all effects are visually noticeable, nor even effective (delay, daze in stab etc) which doesn't real help to apprieciate them. But most importantly you add an other step in the prospective ! ! ! !

Already you learnt some combo and rotations between elements to fluidify off hand skills and dual skills in anticipation.
Now you have to add #2 (sometimes ~1sec cast) to load a bullet before even using the dual skills if you want the heal, the frost aura, the daze ... ? Where is the "skill on demand" developpers wanted to promote? Okai why not ... but you can also play dagger, sword, scepter for better burst, better cleave, better cc etc ...
It's just useless complexity. I like the piano style ... but most importantly I like the melody, not the garbage music.

[draxynnic.3719]

So, as part of a process of at least trying to give pistol a fair shake, I gave it a try with Tempest...

It's... better than with Catalyst? Initiate condemnation by faint praise, but it's less hectic in general, the overloads line up reasonably well with the cooldown of the 3-2 combo, and the overloads also give you breathing room to check the status of your bullets.

On the other hand, it feels like the traditional weaknesses of Tempest have been further brought into focus. You're packing a ranged weapon on an elite spec that makes you spend a significant minority of your time in melee range (or close to it) for overloads. You're also even more prone to interrupts. Getting an overload interrupted is always bad, but now there's basically no time when an interrupt isn't highly frustrating - as it means you might not generate a bullet when you needed to, or an existing bullet isn't consumed at the time it should be.

If you can compensate for these issues, I think pistol on tempest becomes... okay. I'd still prefer scepter or dagger from a fun perspective, but I can see why it seems to be more accepted among people who mostly play tempest.

In the meantime, I'm actively dreading trying to keep track of everything on a weaver...

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

On 5/18/2024 at 9:19 AM, draxynnic.3719 said:

So, as part of a process of at least trying to give pistol a fair shake, I gave it a try with Tempest...

It's... better than with Catalyst? Initiate condemnation by faint praise, but it's less hectic in general, the overloads line up reasonably well with the cooldown of the 3-2 combo, and the overloads also give you breathing room to check the status of your bullets.

 

It's okai on tempest, because overloads heavily carry the DPS, and as you say give you time to breath; recharge CD, prepare rotation...
But yeah, it gives the same issues as scepter or staff ; you have a condi ranged weapon, but you need to cuddle intimately the targets.💕

This isn't true for Weaver and catalyst, on contrary you expect the weapons to carry the whole e-spec, and pistol sucks.

[Jski.6180]

There a lot wrong with pistol that dose not seem to carry over to any other of the new weapons added as far as i can see. The lack of cleave on all of the skill is an massive issues that only is not an issues vs golem dps. I am not sure why anet made an body blockable set of skills that are not even 3 target aoe for an aoe base class.

Its just an bad mind set for the means of balancing from the dev that seems to be infecting there player base who want to win arguments more then make real builds for more then pve single target game types.

There is something there for support in wvw for pistol but all of the pistol are detection base and will self inturpe if you ever target some one and fire in the wrong way something that comply destroys any real game play in wvw unless you can some how never target and that often just happens as part of the caouse of wvw.

There just feels like there a lot wrong with the wepon and we are getting close to the end of the current expansion for it to sill be this lacking. Over all there been next to no real updates to the new weapons set even the beta did not seem to update things enofe to call it an real test. Pistol may just be an abandoned wepon maybe every thing from this expansion has just been abandoned.

We may of been better off having an split between pve content and every thing else for expansion going forwarded. A story expansion and then every thing else expansion.

[draxynnic.3719]

On 5/20/2024 at 1:58 AM, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

 

It's okai on tempest, because overloads heavily carry the DPS, and as you say give you time to breath; recharge CD, prepare rotation...
But yeah, it gives the same issues as scepter or staff ; you have a condi ranged weapon, but you need to cuddle intimately the targets.💕

This isn't true for Weaver and catalyst, on contrary you expect the weapons to carry the whole e-spec, and pistol sucks.

Not to mention that scepter doesn't care if Eparch's lizard microdazes your phoenix or dust devil - your dragon's tooth or hurl followup will hit just as hard regardless of whether you got the preceding skill off.