What's up with pistol

[Junkpile.7439]

How people even use this? I try to get 1000 ele pistol kills and it's a pain. Damage did feel bad and then i was thinking maybe whole point is to get 4 bullets and use that big dmg skill, but it doesn't do much dmg either. How it's more fun play core engineer and use 3 pistol skills or play thief and mainly use one skill than play ele and use 12 skills?
🙄

Edited August 19 by Junkpile.7439

[AliamRationem.5172]

The stupid achievement only counts if you actually make the kill with strike damage from the required weapon.  Conditions ticking don't count and make it really hard to get kill credit.

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

To farm that achievement:

Step 1: use full Berserker.

Step 2: use Air auto attack only.

Step 3: go to Urban Battleground Fractal, there's an area behind the starting tent where it spawns really weak enemies (die in 1 hit) in constant waves.

Step 4: profit.

[Reijii.1642]

Maybe I'm wrong, but if the main weapon needs a guide with crutches on how to use it, there's clearly something wrong with this weapon.😉

[Twilightmage.8309]

def one of the most underwhelming from last expansion.

[Jski.6180]

Pve only wepon kind of though it was kind of nerfed from pve use. This is why ppl fear what anet going to do to spear.

[Sweetbread.3678]

It desperately needs a custom ui for the bullets. It's actually kind of fun on Weaver, but that's mostly because the dual attacks will keep you from completely desyncing your entire rotation if you miss a bullet. I have absolutely no idea how anyone plays it in any sort of group content on any other espec though; miss a bullet and it'll be impossible to tell and resync due to the buff icons getting pushed all over the place and the floating bullets being nigh-invisible.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I've only used it on weaver myself.  It's slightly more rewarding than condi scepter, but that sequencing gets really hard at times, and the benchmark requires nearly frame perfect inputs or else you'll lose skills.  That said, I've found even casually that pistol can lay down the condition damage pretty hard.  When I was practicing on treasure mushrooms, I was doing 37k DPS from condi's alone.  The most difficult part is getting a grasp of the bullet mechanic and keeping track of the whole thing, but as others have said it is easier to do on weaver.  

I won't lie.  I spent days practicing it.  Even then, since I haven't used pistol in awhile, it would take me a bit to pick it back up again.  

[crosknight.3041]

you get credit for the cheevo if you have the weapon equipped when you get credit for killing something, unlike the original 5k kills with weapon cheevos.

you can easily cheese it in the 50 player instance event maps and playing a boon/healer or other instanced content with lots of mobs. cheesed the 1k kills on the support weapons that way with dragon bash dragon arena.

cheevo aside, the pistol is just not fun to play.

[draxynnic.3719]

4 hours ago, Junkpile.7439 said:

How people even use this? I try to get 1000 ele pistol kills and it's a pain. Damage did feel bad and then i was thinking maybe whole point is to get 4 bullets and use that big dmg skill, but it doesn't do much dmg either. How it's more fun play core engineer and use 3 pistol skills or play thief and mainly use one skill than play ele and use 12 skills?
🙄

The general principle, on non-weavers, is to identify which of the skills gets the bigger benefit from the bullet, and use them in a sequence that achieves that. For most attunements, that means using 3 to generate a bullet and 2 to expend it, but water does it the other way around. The 'collect all bullets and then volley them' is cute but in most circumstances I don't think it's something you actually want to do. Maybe as a means of resetting your bullets occasionally if you get them completely out of sync.

Weaver is just so complicated I've never tried it.

But yeah, it really is a weapon that has a lot of complexity with not a lot of payoff in terms of fun, even if it benches a bit higher than sceptre in a condition build. The high reliance on generating and consuming bullets by using skills in a precise order without having good signalling of where you actually are puts a high mental overhead on using the weapon, especially since the skills often feel like they're doing the same thing and the payoff for doing it properly is usually some passive buff that pushes you to also do the rotation quickly to maximise the use of that buff. I've personally just been sticking to sceptre.

[CafPow.1542]

7 hours ago, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

To farm that achievement:

Step 1: use full Berserker.

Step 2: use Air auto attack only.

Step 3: go to Urban Battleground Fractal, there's an area behind the starting tent where it spawns really weak enemies (die in 1 hit) in constant waves.

Step 4: profit.

Can’t one do the achievemnt with any class? Why don’t go dual pistol thief, use valluns meme build with endless unload and kill everything.

i mean i dislike thief and love ele but this would be so much easier. xD

[Dean Calaway.9718]

8 hours ago, Junkpile.7439 said:

I try to get 1000 ele pistol kills and it's a pain.

How's Shield and Warhorn 1,000 kills achievement?

If you want a quick way to do that, go to Urban Battleground Fractal alone, at the start make a right, you'll end in a little area with infinite spawning humans you can one shot. You might wanna make sure the following NPCs are dead so they don't steal your kills.

[Junkpile.7439]

36 minutes ago, CafPow.1542 said:

Can’t one do the achievemnt with any class? Why don’t go dual pistol thief, use valluns meme build with endless unload and kill everything.

i mean i dislike thief and love ele but this would be so much easier. xD

Because there is new achievements. You need to use class new weapon that anet added. Like necromancer sword, mesmer riffle, guardian pistol and so on.

[Arheundel.6451]

Devs were too afraid for average ele to do ranged dmg

[Eekasqueak.7850]

12 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

The stupid achievement only counts if you actually make the kill with strike damage from the required weapon.  Conditions ticking don't count and make it really hard to get kill credit.

Have they still not fixed that? 

[CafPow.1542]

5 hours ago, Junkpile.7439 said:

Because there is new achievements. You need to use class new weapon that anet added. Like necromancer sword, mesmer riffle, guardian pistol and so on.

Ohh okay thx! Didn’t know that. Well then ofc my suggestion is of no use. 😄

[Atoclone.4810]

On 8/19/2024 at 5:29 AM, Sweetbread.3678 said:

It desperately needs a custom ui for the bullets. It's actually kind of fun on Weaver, but that's mostly because the dual attacks will keep you from completely desyncing your entire rotation if you miss a bullet. I have absolutely no idea how anyone plays it in any sort of group content on any other espec though; miss a bullet and it'll be impossible to tell and resync due to the buff icons getting pushed all over the place and the floating bullets being nigh-invisible.

With tempest I use the overload time to have a quick look. It's honestly a lot more fun than I first thought. But yeah, whoever decided on how to display the bullets needs to be taken out back (along with the person in charge of the auto attack sound) and given a stern talking to

[draxynnic.3719]

7 hours ago, Atoclone.4810 said:

With tempest I use the overload time to have a quick look. It's honestly a lot more fun than I first thought. But yeah, whoever decided on how to display the bullets needs to be taken out back (along with the person in charge of the auto attack sound) and given a stern talking to

Yeah. I get the impression that because it's a weapon and not an elite spec mechanic, they're limited in what they can do graphically, but I think one thing they could do is have the skill item light up when there's a bullet available.

Weaver dual skill icons could be split into two parts that light up so you can see which bullets are available.