Dual Pistols

Did you forget about test?

Not a single DP user I played with on test skipped ES. They also used it almost all the time.

Big difference between a power that people want slight changes to be equal with other similar powers and a worthless power that no one wants to take.

Agreed.

Ok, I admit I may have stated that a little too strongly, but I do feel a lot of people will either skip taking Executioner's Shot or only use it when they have to (or to show off the animation). Having to get that close and then be rooted for nearly 3 seconds is bad...

All it really needs is the animation chopped slightly to speed it up to around 2 seconds like Power Burst. Both Executioner's and Piercing really kill the set's whole "high mobility gun-fu" feel, but at least Piercing has full range. At least for me (and several others I've talked to) Executioner's just feels too slow.

I agree it is slower than it needs to be and I also feel it is slower than it should be. I doubt many people will skip ES, despite its poor DPA, its tactical value is too high, IME.

I had been struggling to sum up my criticisms of DP but this does so very nicely. I agree with all of the above.

I will still likely create a DP character but only because I know I'll be playing with a regular team and a bunch of gun toting characters is very cool. The mitigation vs damage output is somewhat off and for its very flashy animation, Hail of Bullets is not reliable enough for its risk. There's a great set here waiting to break out, it just needs a few small tweaks to make it so.

If history is any guide, the set will eventually be buffed....

...in about a year.

There's also the same chance that the power does no damage which is even more underwhelming.

Personally, I think that HoB could stand some hefty powering up because it's lacking two things that RoA and FA don't: range and reliability.

FA and RoA can both be used from well away from their targets, allowing them to be used to initiate an attack rather than forcing you to run into melee. Precedent for powering up PbAoE nukes already exists: just look at Thunderous Blast compared to all of the others (all numbers are based off of use by a level 50 Blaster).

The PbAoE nukes deal 15% more damage than Thunderous Blast while having the exact same recharges. Rain of Arrows deals 225.21 damage and Full Auto deals 178.47. Hail of Bullets deals 166.62 damage. FA deals 7% more damage, and RoA deals 35% more damage. Something should immediately seem off when the targeted AoE "versions" are doing more damage than the PbAoE.

Even if RoA is intended to be an outlier and FA is the "average", HoB should still be doing at least 205 damage to keep with the existing pattern.

FA and RoA both deal a reliable amount of damage; what little variable damage FA has is a rather insignificant portion of it's total output (just 6.27 damage on average out of 178.5). HoB is completely unreliable. The damage exists on a perfectly normal curve so that you're just as likely to do well as you are to do poorly. When you're dealing with nukes, doing well means it's dead: doing better than that doesn't really do you much good because the target is already dead. Doing poorly, however, is substantially worse because doing poorly means the target survived, which isn't particularly good for a blaster in melee. The variance hurts Hail of Bullets more than it helps because upward variance results in overkill, which caps functionality. If anything, the variance should be skewed upwards a bit to account for that, though, rather than simply increasing the damage, the best way to handle this would be to increase the chance to 55-60%, so that chances are more likely that you'll hit, but that's just preference without much ability to compare to existing powers because HoB is kinda unique in that aspect.

The closest comparison I can make for the numerical precedent of balance is between Thunderous Blast (targeted AoE crash nuke) and Blizzard (area target crash nuke): Blizzard deals the damage over time, allowing targets to run away, and encourages them to do so by causing enemies in the zone to be Afraid. Blizzard can deal up to 507.68 damage to a target if they remain in the area. Thunderous Blast deals an average of 265.88 damage. This means that, if the powers are intended to be equitable, Blizzard is assuming to deal only 52% of its damage to its targets (90% more damage). Without immobilization effects, the damage tends to be much lower (roughly 28.5% factoring in Ice Storm), but the ability to manipulate that chance with the relatively common AoE immobilization effects is probably the balance (which HoB doesn't have the advantage of).

Essentially, presuming these precedents can be applied, HoB should have a max damage of 1.9 times what FA is capable of while having an average damage 1.15 times higher. The max damage should be 339.1 and the average damage should be 205.24 damage. Based off of these numbers and assuming that the number of damage attempts should remain the same, HoB attempts should have 12 60% chances to deal 19.78 lethal damage and 12 60% chances to deal 8.48 damage of your ammunition type.

Interestingly enough, the damage numbers for each proc aren't altogether that much different than those listed (19.44 and 8.33 damage respectively). The primary difference is an increase in the chance to proc of each tick to 10%. Increasing the proc chance by that much and reducing the recharge time down to 1 minute would put it almost exactly in line with every one of the existing nukes and nuke precedents we've already got.

Meanwhile add optional knockback to Energy Blast, Fire Blast, Ice Blast, and Sonic that they can turn on when they want it and off when they don't.

Are you out of your mind? FA, no, not necessarily over powered. But holy cow yes, RoA is overpowered, Shield Charge is Overpowered, and Lightning Rod is over powered.

What's in common with all of these? They're all new.

I think the dev's wouldn't allow themselves to add another ridiculously overpowered attack in to the game, as bad as that makes it look when there are now better choices.

I consider this about equal with full auto, PBAoE is more worthwhile than FA's cone in my mind when teaming. Being centered in the spawn is not very dangerous due to teammates presence, and the greater target cap makes up for the rest of the difference.
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Yes, I've personally used every crashless nuke extensively, it's not just heresay.
However, that said, it should probably have at least FA's recharge, and the other problems still need addressing.

As long as the new knockback is lower proc chance and the existing secondary effects are all universally weakened to account for it, what you're saying here actually makes sense!

Dual Pistols isn't getting the ability to choose between 4 full strength secondary effects at will. It's getting to choose between 4 secondary effects roughly 2/3rds as effective as a normal secondary effect. You're paying for the ability to choose by having to choose between 4 weaker effects.

The Dual Pistols secondary effects are nowhere near as strong as their counterparts in sets that don't get to choose. Acting as if DP has some inordinate advantage when the options are all weaker is simply stupid. Sure you can choose between -dmg, a bonus DoT, -def, and -rech, but none of those are going to be as strong or last as long as if the set were designed to only have one of those.

DP's secondary effect is the ability to choose between 4 weaker options. It doesn't provide anything more to the powerset than the secondary effects of other powers does and, in fact, costs something that other sets actually get additional functionality for: Aim.

Don't be so blinded by the shiny newness and prettiness of Dual Pistols to ignore that there is a definite, known numerical disparity between it and other sets. The damage is lower (Standard Ammo and Incendiary Ammo are the highest damage options and only just equal to sets like Energy) and the secondary effects and utility capabilities are lower (no Aim, shorter durations and smaller debuff sizes).

Attractive aesthetics and balanced performance are not mutually exclusive concepts. Most of the changes that people have been suggesting to improve the sets performance would have no affect on the aesthetics of the set while allowing the set to compete in the powerset numbers game without having to rely on the attractive animations in order to draw in players. If you only care about aesthetics, you shouldn't care because the aesthetics of the set are pretty much guaranteed to remain as is. If you care about the numbers, then you already realize that something is amiss.

According to mids, Fire Sword Circle has almost the same base damage as SC, LR, with about a minute less recharge time. Golden Dragonfly is more powerful than all of those with even less recharge. You can use GD 2 times for each FSC and about 7 times per Charge. Maybe EVERY power is "overpowered"??

They are NOT overpowered. We have to refer to SO's because the game is still based on those. If you don't think so then head to the market section and complain about the prices and they'll tell you.

The reason people think the charges are over powered is because you get 2 when you choose Elec and SD. You have to be reminded that both charges have a 90s rech. so what are you gonna click for 90s while they are recharging? You better be soft capped.

Mids' doesn't handle rolling DoTs correctly. FSC really has a base damage of 121.44.

Mids' also doesn't have the proper damage on Shield Charge because it wasn't increased to account for the AT mods change. SC really has a base damage of 200.2 damage.

Golden Dragonfly deals 164 base damage in a 10' long, 20' arc. You can get 2, at most 3, target with a single application of GD and it requires a decent bit of placement. The hard cap on the number of targets is 10, but it's literally impossible to fit that many targets into the area of the effect so that number is pretty useless.

FSC, SC, and LR are all PbAoEs with 10' and 20' radii respectively. FSC can easily target all 10 targets for its target cap and SC and LR can easily target all 16 of their targets.

Don't attempt to compare a power that has a tiny bit of AoE capability as a tangential asset with powers that are legitimately AoE powers. You're comparing apples to oranges in an attempt to make the question of balance irrelevant. Welcome to the required Straw Man facepalm. If you're going to do it the same way next time, at least try to make it a bit harder to tell along with actually getting the numbers right. Maybe use Shadow Maul instead of Golden Dragonfly, because at least Shadow Maul is intended to hit multiple targets.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

I agree with your post, but it is not impossible to hit the target cap for GD. Highly unlikely. Very odd. Makes me giggle when it happens. Definitely not impossible.

That is the issue, there was given solid feedback, people were clambering to have HoB, ES, and EC, changed but they did not listen.

No. You're also paying for it with lowered damage. You would like to pay for it with weaker effects only, but that isn't how the powers are currently balanced. I'm not against upping the damage Dual Pistols does, but that decision has to be accompanied by a reevaluation of how much utility being able to switch damage type, secondary effects, and mezz types brings. That decision is entirely subjective, however much you would like it to be decided by a table.

But we've already had this discussion, during the beta test. I think you have some good observations but are too quick to dismiss the set's utility. I also think you are trying too hard to create an "Archery 2" rather than a powerset that stands on its own. And finally that your approach, which basically consists of telling people "I'm uniquely able to see how this set doesn't work and anyone who disagrees is just mesmerized by the newness and the graphics" is not going to win people over--in particular, game developers, who are the ones who really matter if you really want change and not just kudos from fellow posters.

Niether is overpowered, nor is blizzard. Your tier 9 power should be something that actually want not something that is meh optional.

The set has a horrific redraw penalty. Until that is fixed the set needs to be significantly better than it is.

If the set were balanced around having lower damage, the set wouldn't follow the standard dam/rech/end formula. If you actually look at the numbers rather than what you want to believe about them, you'd see that. All of the attacks in DP (with the exception of HoB because it follows a different rule system) follow the standard dam/rech/end formula. Now look at Sonic Blast. Those attacks contribute -res so the damage is actually lower than would be indicated by the dam/rech/end formula. Sonic Blast pays for superior secondary effects with lower damage. Dual Pistols does not. The secondary effects are designed to be balanced exclusive of the damage of the set.

What hurts DP's DPS isn't the fact that it has a variable secondary effect with the ability to modify 30% of its damage type (which, comically enough, the devs have admitted doesn't have a substantive quantification as far as powerset design is concerned, which is why Psychic Blast follows the same dam/rech/end formula as Fire Blast and Archery); what hurts DP's DPS is the fact that the animations for all of the attacks are significantly longer overall, slowing the entire set down and reducing its damage over time. The fact that the set pointlessly sacrifices Aim in order to get access to what it should have from the very beginning (imagine having to take a power to get access to Fire's rolling DoT or Cold's -rech) is a secondary concern, because Aim doesn't have a significant effect upon damage. The primary usefulness is actually in the additional survival afforded to frontloading damage in a fight.

No, what I'm trying to create is a set that is well balanced, aesthetically appeasing and interesting to play. I have no designs on it being turned into "Archery 2". I'd much rather the set was simply capable of achieving the same level of average performance as we've come to expect from other sets and shouldn't lose any functionality just to have access to a trait that is fundamentally ingrained into the set.

Except that I'm not uniquely capable of seeing how the set doesn't work. A large number of people that actually know the numbers and have checked them out empirically rather than simply relying on gut reaction observation and "feel" that has as much to do with aesthetics as it does legitimate balance agree with me that DP is doing too little damage and isn't capable of enough utility to account for that lower damage. The only advantages that DP has, at the moment, are shiny newness and pretty animations. The ability to vary one damage type is a rather minor advantage because it forces you to change your secondary effect, lose out on PR's -res benefit (unless you change on the fly, which is demands a good deal of frenzied clicking), and have a commanding knowledge of enemy resistance types that you can call upon on the fly in order to take advantage of it.