Dual Pistols: Pain or Storm as secondary?

Probably mostly solo, but with SG teaming in there as well. Figure 80% solo.

Sounds like I have two votes for Storm so far. I admit I was leaning that way.

Thanks for the feedback so far!

I will be going Poison.

I'll be going /Dark myself, but for somebody who's 80% solo, the choice between /Storm and /Pain is pretty much a no-brainer in favour of /Storm.

First off, I admit I don't have much experience with /storm other than a level 18 defender and playing with others using it. I've looked it over in mids a few times, but not to any great extent. I do have a 50 DP/Storm on test due to the recent level bumps, but haven't gotten around to playing with it. With /storm it looks like you'll need most of the secondary powers in order to be effective with both Solo and teaming in mind. I know it's a very powerful set, but i've seen it cause havoc on teams as well. Since I have little experience with it, I'll try not to degrade it's playability based on that observation. As with any powerset, there will be those who swear by it and others who don't... At this point I can do neither. I do have quite a bit of experience with /pain domination, and I've found it to be a very solid secondary for soloing as well as teaming on corruptors. I have 2 level 50 DP/Pain corruptors on test that I've played a significant amount for the past 3 weeks both solo and teamed. On live I have a lvl 20 Sonic/Pain, lvl 26 Dark/Pain and a lvl 30 Fire/Pain and a few others.

Just to be clear before I go any further, I have a lot of alts and I like testing how primaries/secondaries work together for myself rather than taking others' opinions as gospel... I'm not in the "h34lz r ub3r" crowd, in case you were wondering.

One nice thing about /Pain is that you can have a very loose build with a lot of choices. It leaves your options wide open for personal survivability and can also make you desireable on teams. I'm not talking about being "duh ubah h34lz0r", but actually bringing a good mix of buffs, debuffs and healing both to the team, and yourself. You don't need every power in /pain to be effective on a team or solo. /pain can skip at least 4 powers and DP can skip at least 1 if not 2 (Empty clips or Sup. Fire) which leaves room for a travel power and pre-req, along with soem of the more desireable pool powers like stamina, tough, weave, Maneuvers, Assault, combat jumping/hover/hasten/tp friend (whatever wasn't your travel pre-req, I usually take hasten/SS for travel) a patron shield and another power like soul drain, power sink, hibernate, focused accuracy, conserve power, power boost or acrobatics if you took super jump as a travel.



Powers you'll want to take as /pain are:

Nullify Pain (no choice here) -Standard pbaoe heal a-la radient aura, warmth etc.

Soothing Aura (toggle: pbaoe team minor heal) -like a personal regen aura for the team. this power can heal about 90HP (slotted) every few seconds, which alone is able to negate incoming damage from even con minions. it has a 15' radius. since it's a toggle, you can slot the numina, miracle or regenerative tissure procs in it to keep them active at all times in case you want to skip health (or in addition to it)

World of Pain (pbaoe team +res all damage/placate, +tohit, +dmg) -gives you and your team approx 17% resistance to all damage (slotted), 10% tohit, 16% damage buff and resistance to placate, all for 90 seconds. It can be made perma, but doesn't stack from the same caster, fyi.

Anguishing Cry (pbaoe foe -res, -def (all)) - a 25' radius pbaoe debuff -30% defense (unslotted), -22.5% resistance debuff and can be slotted with the achilles heel proc. the power lasts for 30 seconds and can be made perma.




optional: take at least one ST ally buff, I recommend one of the following:

Share Pain (ally heal, self +dmg, -heal, -regen) -Share pain provides you with a nice damage buff for healing your teammate, but it kills your ability to heal by any means for 15 seconds and can get you killed if you don't use it wisely

Conduit of Pain (ally rez, self +dmg, +tohit, +recovery, +rech) -Conduit of pain boosts your damage, tohit, recovery and recharge by a good amount when you rez an ally, I personally find that I've rarely needed this power myself, so it can be situational depending on your play... of course, you can choose to *make* situations where you can use it for the buff. but since you're mostly solo, this power will probably be highly skippable.

Painbringer (ally +recovery, +regen, +dmg) -Painbringer is a huge ally buff that gives +800% recovery, +500% regen and a +50% damage buff, though of the 3 here, it's the only one that doesn't buff you as a secondary effect. You can however use it on mission NPC allies as well as patron pets etc. to boost their survivability and performance. This power can also be made perma.




One of my DP/Pain alts on test, built similar to the above framework is a very resilient alt and solo's mobs quite easily at +0/x4 difficulty. When I'm done slotting my IO's She'll have approx. 40% S/L/E defense, 30% ranged defense, 35% S/L resist, 30% toxic resist and 20% resist to all other dmg types while pulsing 90HP heals every few seconds and will have a backup heal aura in those cases where all the other mitigation just isn't enough (if I ever run into that situation ).

With the -res in piercing shot and anguishing cry, mobs fall pretty easily for me. aside from having moderate healing abilities, I can make myself, and my teams do more damage through both +dmg buffs and -res debuffs, raise their resistances, and make them hit easier and more often with the -def from DP and anguishing cry (plus world of pain's +tohit buff). Along with all the other buffs/debuffs, Painbringer turns any ally player or NPC into a virtual death machine that's hard as **** to kill... Futhermore, Taking focused accuracy means all my debuffs are going to hit (at least 95% of the time with DP's higher base accuracy+slotting) and it gives me perception and tohit debuff resistance which further enforces my personal ability to hit no matter what. Getting a psuedo build up from the Gaussian proc to boost overall DPS doesn't hurt, and slotting Suppressive fire with the Decimation: chance for build up proc further helps with an occasional boost. I normally follow up Sup. fire with executioner's shot to make sure that short boost doesn't go unused if it procs.

Not that I want to get on the bad side of the /storm advocates, but what exactly can you do with /storm that will make it better than /pain for both solo and team play? I'll be trying /storm further than level 18 at some point, I just don't currently see how it compare's to /pain and why it's been recommended so much more. Are the recommendations strictly from an SO-slotted standpoint? for that I'd probably agree that /storm might be better (and I admit also that I've never tried to do a full IO set build in mids for /storm, so I'm really not sure how it would compare IO'd). given that it seems to have a higher AoE potential could also be a factor. Any further elaboration on why storm is a better choice would be appreciated.

Painbringer is Instant Healing + Righteous Might + lol end issues + can be perma'd. I wouldn't consider that "optional".

I agree that Painbringer is a fantastic buff, albeit only for other people. For an 80% solo build, as the OP stated his will be... I'd call the fact you can't use it on yourself "optional". You CAN use it on NPC allies and patron pool pets though, which is very valuable even solo, but not absolutely necessary. Of the 3 powers I listed as optional in this specific case, Painbringer is the most recommended for obvious reasons.

having soothing aura is akin to having +regen at a set HP healing amount independant of your max HP. It gives you more "regen" than a numina and regenerative tissue proc combined, and it affects your teammates too... what about that is "poop" exactly? In the particular case of DP and the topic of this thread, having soothing aura active doesn't cause redraw on your pistols, nullify pain does, and you can't choose to not take that power. The OP said he'll be playing 80% solo, and Painbringer with all it's glorious goodness, can't be used on yourself, while not having SA will effectively decrease your dps during battle with dual pistols if you need to use NP, as well as your ability to recover more than 1 ally's HP. YOMV but in my experience SA is far more useful solo.

No offense, but I don't think anybody's made that claim; lots have suggested /Storm over /Pain for somebody who predominantly solos, which isn't quite the same thing. /Storm offers its big AoE debuff (Freezing Rain) at level 16 compared to Anguishing Cry at 35, and it also offers a meatier -res debuff, slows, knocks down, recharges in half the time, and works at range. Hurricane and Steamy Mist combine to give pretty reasonable +Def/-To-Hit/Stealth, compared to the minor +res and heal from Soothing Aura/World of Pain, and again are available earlier. /Storm also offers some decent AoE damage in Tornado/Lightning Storm, which helps bump up DP's rather anemic damage output.

In a nutshell, for a soloist /Storm offers superior mitigation, debuffs, and damage output, and it offers them sooner. For somebody who teams 80% of the time, /Pain's really solid collection of ally buffs makes it a much more attractive choice.

Check the open beta forum for a list of powers. DP is good at looking pretty, having delightful animations, and flexibility (its CC power can be a hold or a stun, you can change the damage type of 30% of your damage, and you can change the very minor secondary effects of your attacks) in exchange for average to below-average ST and AoE damage output and really long animations.

No offense taken. It wasn't my intention to offend anyone either.

Thank you for answering the question and listing some good points for /storm. getting buffs/debuffs earlier is certainly benefcial. When compared flatly against /pain power-for-power it certainly seems to be a better set for solo as you said. I think in some cases it will come down to playstyle and whether someone likes delving into powers not available within a set. /storm doesn't seem to have many skippable powers without weakening it's overall mitigation, which will limit your selection regarding power pool access.

Based on what you listed above for /storm, I'd say it's a better choice for someone who finds themselves soloing and/or taking a majority of the secondary powers in their build. /pain will probably be better for someone who wants a more open build and likes dipping into multiple power pools, or for someone who does more teaming. does that sound about accurate?

I dunno, for that 20% I'd still say Painbringer is a fantastic enough buff to make it definitely needed. For a primarily solo build I'd just skip the rez and Share Pain.

I say Soothing Aura is poop because it's easier than writing out the whole song and dance.

Since I do also love a good performance, here it is:

Soothing Aura, fully enhanced, heals for about 80 hp per tick. It ticks every 4 seconds. A Corruptor with no +hp of any kind has 1070 hp at 50. Animation free healing is nice, but its such a paltry amount and ticks so slowly it's really not worth it.

If you get hit for 80 damage it'll heal it right back up again in the next 4 seconds, but 80 damage is nothing. If you get hit for 2-3 ticks worth of Soothing Aura heals, say 150-300, you're much better off using Nullify Pain. Instant, 240ish hp.

The situation in which Soothing Aura would be great is if you were constantly taking 80 points of damage or less every 4 seconds. In which case, awesome. It'll keep you alive for not much endurance, animation time free and looks pretty to boot so girls will want to touch you.

But that's not a realistic scenario. The touching by girls and the 80 dmg or less every 4s. Yes, you can also heal allies with SA. But again, 80 points every 4 seconds. It's even worse when you compare the numbers to other ATs who have more hp.

The way I see it, if an ally needs only a small amount of healing to top them off (so Soothe isn't warranted) either they've taken so little damage that their natural regen can handle it (100 pts or less) or enough that I'd need to stand right next to them and stay right on them for 8-12 seconds to heal them back up with Soothing Aura. It's simply much more efficient to use Nullify Pain.

If you or an ally has taken enough damage that leaving it to natural regen would be unwise, it takes Nullify Pain 2 seconds to do the job Soothing Aura takes 12-16 seconds for. Plus Nullify Pain is on your schedule. You hit it when you want its healing. Soothing Aura would be much more useful as a regen buff, like the MM version. Even better as a click +regen buff.

Soothing Aura is good for:

• set bonuses
• looking pretty
• Masterminds
• a static team stacked with pain corrs where everyone has it