What are some ways Pistol/Pistol can be made favorable?

[Alaris]

Recon / sniper, I do like. It could be pretty cool if some of its stronger attacks rooted you in place, so you'd get the 1200 range, but you'd have to sacrifice mobility to get it.

Guardian longbow is mainly for coolness, but also for ranged AoE damage like the warrior longbow.

[nkuvu]

Right now, my thief runs dual pistols for single target, shortbow for AoE. It works pretty well for me, though I do have to say that I don't like the idea of decreasing range for the pistols.

As I was leveling, I found that the thief was extra squishy with melee. And my utility and/or initiative didn't recharge fast enough to really do well with the whole "get in, unload a lot of damage, get out" mindset (which I did try often). Though to be fair, this was all sub-level-40 experience, so many of the traits that regenerate initiative may help later on. Still, found that I like the thief just fine as a semi-ranged class.

I do like the Black Powder skill for near permanent blindness on a target -- not at melee range, but using it for its combo field. I don't know the rate of initiative regeneration off the top of my head (with or without traits) but I bet I could keep up a Black Powder field for a large portion of a given fight. Provided, of course, that I didn't want to do anything else. Like use other skills. Or move.

In short, I wouldn't mind seeing some changes to pistol/pistol, but please don't kill my range with them.

Guardian has scepter for range, which works well enough.

Well enough for bosses or soloing. I found that for AoE situations (like many events with large numbers attacking), the scepter orb moves too slowly to even tag many things. My guardian can AoE Smite stuff, but the auto attack is far far too slow for AoE situations. I've been using scepter as my guardian's ranged option, but I'm disappointed by it in many scenarios.

[Alaris]

I thought the orb was fast enough to connect most of the time... except in cases where foes die way too fast anyway like the karka or some events I considered bugged because foes barely appeared before dying. In most situations though, the orb connects. But I would suggest staff in those bugged situations, the AoE is more useful for tagging.

[Fluffball]

P/P are excellent for group play - particularly dungeons - where control and vulnerability really help your teammates. I don't see the need for a change. It is hella annoying to have to switch between P/P, D/D (or any melee really, they're all good) and shortbow in dungeons, but you can't have everything. There aren't a ton of situations where you need a lot of AoE in dungeons though, so if I'm lazy I go P/P in dungeons and shortbow in general PvE.

Pistols with cripple are pretty nice in WvW too. Chance for cripple from the trait, then just bleed the guy out, save the initiative for interrupting anything he tries to get away or heal with. It's a lot less effective than backstabbing, but it's easier and more forgiving as well, which goes well with medium sized battles (less than zerg size.)

Edit: to add, P/P is your only option for a ranged autoattack if you still want the control of offhand pistol. Since there is nothing else to compare it to, you could say it's as good as it needs to be.

[Raye]

I just love skill 3 of pistol/pistol... I use it the most. <__<

Also, Alaris: y u talk about guardians in thief sub instead of in guardian sub? u maek raye sad D= (yes, I typo'd that on purpose)

[shawn]

That's because unload does the most damage, with or without vulnerability. With the vuln-on-crit trait, there's basically no reason to waste init on anything else.

And to be fair, unload is pretty good, but there's still some tweaking they could do to the kit as a whole so that it's not so skewed that 90% of thieves use shortbow instead of dual pistol.

[nkuvu]

I have to admit that I also like unload simply because of how quickly it fires. I am amused by going to melee range and shooting things. In the face. A lot. (I really do try to stay at range, but some Risen like to pull me close for hugs and face chewing)

With the signet of malice for healing, unload also helps a fair bit with overall health.

[Alaris]

lol nkuvu for imagery

[Fluffball]

That's because unload does the most damage, with or without vulnerability. With the vuln-on-crit trait, there's basically no reason to waste init on anything else.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. I have about a 50% chance to crit with the occasional Fury being triggered to make it higher, and I hover around 1-3 stacks of vulnerability. With Vital Shot you have a minimum of 10, usually more like 16 or 17 stacks. That's a 16 or 17% damage increase to everyone on your team. It probably depends on how you and your team are specced, but Unload isn't inherently better than Vital Shot. For example, if your team is all condition damage, Vital shot would be worthless because your autoattack would be nullified by better bleeders and the vulnerability would add very little, so Unload would win. If your team is all power and you have condition length extended, your bleeding and vulnerability would get the maximum impact.

Edit: Wanted to double check my numbers. My crit chance is 49%, fury triggers for 13 seconds every 45 seconds when target is below 50% health. Using nothing but Unload I had a mean vulnerability stack of 0, with it varying between 0 and 3. Using nothing but Vital Shot it triggered a lot more. I'm not sure if that's luck or if Unload only counts as one really long shot. With Body Shot, it bounced between 10 and 22, with a mean of about 17.

[RadaArashi]

The way I see it, it needs to capitalize on Power/Precision builds since the ShortBow already gives thieves a ranged option for condition damage.

Body Shot instead should be replaced by a tumble kind of skill meaning a "free" (cost initiative instead of endurance) dodge + some damage, Vital Shot should deal extra damage if target foe's health is above 90% (kind of like an unsuspecting strike)