Dual Pistols - Early Thoughts since going live

I rolled a DP/Ice/Ice in beta and am doing so again on live. Pretty safe for me, especially once I get both Suppressive Fire and Freezing Touch to hold bosses. Doing a corner pull onto an ice patch and firing off Bullet Rain is just viscerally satisfying. And broadly speaking, I like all the tools available from both sets. While it's low-middle of the road in terms of damage, it's anything but routine (unlike my Sonic/Elec/Elec Blaster).

I think my DP is overpowered. I went DP/Fire/Cold. Rain of Bullets(with chem for debuff)+Flashfreeze+HoB+FSC is pretty nice all while Hot Feets is running. Working pretty good so far.

On a side note, i'm slotting for melee defense. Everyone says i should slot for ranged because it's a blaster, BUT its powers are PBAoE, not all ranged like alot of blasters. Good idea or no?

I'd suggest Smash / Lethal defense slotting. You can get some for free with Frozen Armor and it works against many ranged attacks and almost all melee. Melee and S/L defense are both a lot harder to get from set bonuses than Ranged with the powers a blaster uses, so it's good to start with the one you can actually pick up from an armor power.

My biggest impression of the set is that the DPA is meh. A cursory look at the actual numbers seems to support this, as well as the general consensus on these boards.

A large part of this seems to be how long the powers take to activate, which has the additional problem of rooting you. I very quickly discovered that it was hard to use the typical CJ tactics of staying out of melee and at ranged because you'll spend 90% of any fight completely rooted to the spot.

Using Flight (the other way to stay at ranged) with DP looks daft to me.

DP is also fairly end-hungry. I haven't checked the numbers, but the DPE feels off to me.

In any case, DP won't be winning any awards for the best ST or AoE damage, and it's not heavy debuff set. It is, however, quite pretty and the animations are great fun to watch. I'd be in support of more sets like this (even with the increased rooting time), if only that long animation and rooting were compensated for with more damage (or some other mitigating effect).

I'd expect most DP players to want to keep as many DP powers as possible, not only to avoid redraw, but because there's not a lot of point to the set if you're not enjoying the gun-kata / pistol-fu aspect.

Because of my desire to focus on DP and some of the advice from the Beta, I started with a DP/EM Blaster, but I found EM to be a fairly poor fit.

Initially, it had its merits: Power Thrust let me shove anything getting too close back towards the melee people, Build Up turned DP into a decent-damage set, but from there the fit started to fall apart on me.

Pistols and Dual Wield, like most of DP, have a long-ish recharge, and I like a smooth chain on my mezzed Blasters. Pistols and DW alone don't come close to that, and Power Thrust was only relevant if an enemy got into melee. That was a major problem for me.

The rest of EM had little to offer: a series of impressive ST melee attacks, but nothing to keep you alive during them, or to avoid the inevitable mez halfway through your attack chain.

DP is end-heavy, but without the sorts of spikes that make Conserve Power useful. Many of my characters run tight on End during AV fights, when all toggles are running and an ST chain is constant, but I wasn't experiencing End problems with my DP's ST chain; it was problems with the AoE chains. So, for my playstyle, CP's help on my Endurance would be erratic, rather than finding a better solution (i.e. End-Red and End-Mod elsewhere).

Power Boost only applies to Suppressive Fire in DP, so... meh. Boost Range isn't really needed; while it's a nice push for Empty Clips and Executioner's Shot, the mob will still probably be able to run up to you during your rooted animations.

Ultimately, I could only see the mix working well on a S/L softcapped build, but for my own concept reasons, I didn't want to have Frozen Armour on my DP/anything.

Since DP could never compare to the raw DPS of my other Blasters (both my Fire/Fire and Fire/MM humiliate it in terms of ST and AoE DPS), I opted for a mix of support and damage, and looked at Corruptors and Defenders.

The biggest problem with those ATs seemed to be picking a pairing that wouldn't generate too many redraw issues, i.e. where I'd fire off a bunch of de/buffs and then stick to DP for most of the fight. I also wanted to avoid sets that would obscure the DP animations, since that was a large part of why I was playing it (so Storm and Dark were out).

I eventually went for Kinetics for several reasons: Siphon Speed helps with the slow recharge of DP, Siphon Power and FS improve its mediocre damage to reasonable (even impressive) levels, Speed Boost is a team-multiplier, and Transfusion and Transference are great debuffs and top-up powers.

I opted for a Corruptor due to the higher damage, the fact I could S/L softcap, and therefore really enjoy the full benefits of both sets.

As for the DP set itself:

Given the -Def added to Lethal, I'm underwhelmed with Swap Ammo. Fire ammo might edge out all-lethal in terms of solo DPS, but if you're playing in a team, then the -Def seems to be more effective.

The only decent argument I've seen for Swap Ammo (beyond fun) seems to be for turning Suppressive Fire into a Hold, but you'd have to also look for a PPP Hold to make that investment worthwhile. 3 powers for an ST Hold is quite a commitment, particularly on a low DPA set. With other combinations, I can see this being a good investment, but not with the Kinetics pairing.

Suppressive Fire also feels completely skippable to me as a DP/Kin. It can be useful in the lower levels, esp. solo, but a PPP AoE immob is a lot more useful for my playstyle in the upper levels.

I like the other seven powers just fine, and, with the aid of FS and Siphon Speed, can maintain a respectable ST or AoE DPS.

I will have to admit after playing it on the test server fully slotted I was extremely underwhelmed. This set should have been a lot better and it should have been introduced with a secondary of its own.

Very Nice animations.. all flash.. no substance...

IMO a failure.. If this is supposed to be part of effectively what is the CoH relaunch with GR they nee dto go back to the drawing board.

Oh and yes, the adult version starts with Dual too... anyways.

The set as I have seen so far (pre-SO) the cones are much tighter than most cones I have seen. If they expanded the cones a bit wide and distance it would be better, not sure why they make it like they did.

The damage is very noticably different than other powers. It looks like ice damage level, but with the redraw of the original bow powers.

It is a very sexy powerset as far as eye candy... and I'll still use it, but I expected it to be more on par with other powers. It has reduced range, reduced damage, but it does have on the fly utility that does stack with other DPs and powersets.

The Swap Ammo is by far the greatest feature of this powerset. The problem is that they really need to get the DPS up to par using the Fire Ammo, and have the chance to proc a knockback increased with the default ammo.

But everyone has their opinion.

Well I got up to level 46 with my Traps/DP, and began to put some IO;s here and there. I am already softcapped to AOE, and soon will be softcapped to ranged with a few more slots and purchases. I am actually at least 37% defense to anything, so not to bad considering I'm not 50.

The IO's and procs help a lot (as with any build you could argue). I haven't had endurance problems, but I'm on a defender, so not quite as rough.

It is very very fun to play on teams. I actually do like the animation. Still needs some love however. Hail of Bullets could be dangerous actually for a blaster. For me, I use as a finisher, not an opener (so usually aggro is already off of me). Piercing Rounds is sort of silly for animation and has the absolutely smallest cone (a straight line - almost) that could exist, so I consider single target (where you sometimes get lucky). I will finish to 50, and will probably only invest a total of 200-300 million in the toon with IO's (which isn't much, but traps is so easy to softcap to aoe and range anyway, may as well).

Style over substance still.

Devs, a few recommendations to bring in line with other blast powers.

Speed up animation time on executioner's shot. Change Piercing Rounds to single target and increase the damage 25% and add knockdown ( an increase in recharge time is a fair exchange here) . Swap Ammo should be a DP inherent. Replace swap ammo with aim. Decrease the Hail of Bullets recharge time 25-50%. Leave Bullet Rain alone, it works pretty good, although animation gets a bit silly to some. I'm sure others will have feedback.

Finally, when are we getting unlockable pistols. I want my rularuu that shoots eyeballs.

I went with a DP/Dark Corruptor, and I really enjoy it. The /Dark set makes up for some of DP's shortcomings and makes for a very fast-paced and fun character. /Dark keeps me safe while blasting away, plus, on teams, makes the entire team look better. (Then again, /Dark makes EVERY primary powerset look better!)

I'd looked at the numbers beforehand and saw that DP was a little slow and a little underpowered compared to some other sets. Since I have a hard time playing Blasters anyway (damage only?!?), I went with the Corruptor.