Thief or Engi

[Marissa.4796]

Hello - returning player, asking for advice. I want to play a pistol-based character, and i'm stuck between engi or thief.is pistol engi (and then pistol holo/scarpper) viable for PVE?What about thief - i heard there was a big update, and they messed up thief a bit.

[Lily.1935]

Pistol Pistol Engineer is viable. I use a Kits build personally, and its feel is quite different than that of a pistol pistol thief. Its also rotation heavy so the vast majority of your time you'll be using kit skills as opposed to pistol skills. Engineer is viable but Holosmith is the preferred. Scrapper isn't taken with Pistol Pistol.

If You like running kits its a great build to play. Lots of fun. But if you don't, you want something simpler its probably not the build for you. I don't think its that hard to use, but a lot of people disagree with me on that.

[Konrad Curze.5130]

Pistol thief is super easy and boringPistol engi is super complex and annoying

Pick your poison

[Kodama.6453]

It depends how you want to play and what's actually important for you.

Since you want to play a pistol wielding character, it seems that thematics actually matter for you here.How do you envision that thematic in detail?

Do you want to feel like a gunslinger that is barraging the enemy with bullets and having awesome mobility for the gun fu feeling, then you should pick thief.Do you want to be the type who carries tons of ammo and picks the correct ammunition for every situation, having alot of different effects like exploding bullets, static bullets, using your gun as a mini flamethrower, or glue bullets, then you should pick engineer.

About viability, you should consider that engineer's mainhand pistol is not really a good weapon. Usually you use pistols in condition damage focused builds alongside 3 kits you are switching to regularly. If you really want to deal damage, then you basically just use pistol 4 for the damage and rotate though all the other skills the kits provide to you, so this might not be what you are looking for.

Thief pistols are often used in power based builds for the dual attack unload. If you want to have high crit numbers, then thief is also the go to class here.

[Arcaniaxs.4519]

Thief has great p/p set. High dmg and ez to play that also has lots of self sustain and boon generationI mained thief for 3 years now and i use p/p deadeye or daredevil when im going for soloing stuff in pve cuz its really good at themP/P deadeye can maintain alot of boons on it self if played correctly including ez 25mightAlso high dmg with great sustain considering u will use invigorating perception trait for main healing sourceAlso its very ez to use tooU just target and press 3 until ur enemies are ded xD

[Jobber.6348]

Depends if yu want Power or Condi.

Thief can be played both but Engi's pistol is horrible with Power and doesn't feel satisfying in any way.

[mizaru.1385]

The main flavor of playing dual pistols is to attack with both of them and go pew pew pew, and the only way to go is Thief dual pistol unload.

[haattila.5974]

There is no such thing as pistol engi, pistol means condi and a multi-kit build. So most of the time you'll be using your kit and not pistols.

[Lynx.9058]

@"haattila.5974" said:There is no such thing as pistol engi, pistol means condi and a multi-kit build. So most of the time you'll be using your kit and not pistols.

Yea, I'm discovering this going through on my first character (charr engineer). I saw the pistols and steampunk-style tech and turrets and thought "that class fits me perfectly!". I still love it, but 99% of the time now I'm using a flamethrower and my pistols hardly ever get shot. I made a dual pistol thief alt that I'll go gunslinger-style with.

[Dawdler.8521]

@Yasai.3549 said:Depends if yu want Power or Condi.

Thief can be played both but Engi's pistol is horrible with Power and doesn't feel satisfying in any way.What are you saying, it doesnt feel great to do less damage as berserker pistol engie than other classes do as minstrels?

[Jaruselka.5943]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Yasai.3549 said:Depends if yu want Power or Condi.

Thief can be played both but Engi's pistol is horrible with Power and doesn't feel satisfying in any way.What are you saying, it doesnt feel great to do less damage as berserker pistol engie than other classes do as minstrels?

The moral of the story is that Engi pistols are basically fancy interactive decorations

[ASP.8093]

The mesmer off-hand that you basically use to do one attack every 20 seconds feels more like a real srs-bsns pistol than the engie pistol.