Dual Pistols Idea - What do you think?
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-04-12 15:58 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
Well it definitely works. Not sure exactly how much more survivability it adds. Still though, I think I actually kinda like it. I'll have to use it for a little bit more before I'm sure if I like it or not. Having to doubletap each power really doesn't add as much time as I thought it would. I barely even notice it. Course if you tap too quickly it skips over the ammo swap for some reason and just puts you on lethal ammo. Still pretty cool though I think 
I would think the best use for something like this is making your weaker or opening attacks use toxic rounds, then swapping to fire for your bigger hitters, or maybe lethal for the kb depending what you prefer.
Randomly swapping ammo to spread the effects wont matter much because the debuffs don't really last long enough to build on top of each other.
Finally if you swap your binds around to say:
Powexec_toggleon chemical ammunition$$powexec_name Bullet Rain
That might save you the 2nd press I think. It reads from right to left and should be clever enough to use a clickie and a toggle in 1 press, I know other binds do similar things for other AT's.
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Originally Posted by Aggelakis
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I'm pretty sure it reads from right to left, and that you'll end up firing Bullet Rain with your current ammo and THEN switch to your chemical rounds.|
Originally Posted by PrincessDarkstar
It reads from right to left and should be clever enough to use a clickie and a toggle in 1 press...
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It reads right to left for my SR Scrapper's toggle binds, anyway... I had to "/powexec_toggleon" them in the reverse order from how I wanted them to activate.
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
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You are right now I think about it.
But it would still work if you have an attack chain that you always work off. Make sure each attack in sequence then changes to the right ammo for the next attack.
Might be more complicated that it is worth mind.
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Originally Posted by Aggelakis
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Unfortunately not. The way binds work is they read left to right but if you have multiple power execution then only the right most one will activate, essentially the others queue up to activate but are immediately replaced by the next one in line. In general you can only activate one power per click although there are a few things you can do to partially circumvent this. First you can use the command powexec_toggleoff to turn off any number of toggles with a single click. Secondly you can use powexec_auto to set a second power as your auto attack (so it queues up immediately after the one you're executing). Finally you can take advantage of the powexec_toggleon (as the OP is) to have a macro that either turns on a toggle or executes a click power.|
Originally Posted by PrincessDarkstar
That might save you the 2nd press I think. It reads from right to left and should be clever enough to use a clickie and a toggle in 1 press, I know other binds do similar things for other AT's.
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In regards to the OP, it's an interesting idea, although given the 4second recharge for the ammos you'll need to be careful with your attack cycling (and possibly l;eave out the ammo change for Pistols and Dual Wield. Ihe one thing I would definitely change is Piercing Rounds. It only applies the resistance debuff if you're using lethal rounds so it would be better to use:
powexec_toggleoff chemical ammunition$$powexec_toggleoff incendiary ammunition$$powexec_toggleoff cryo ammunition$$powexec_name Piercing Rounds
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Woah!!! You serious? I did NOT know that. I'll definitely change it to lethal then.|
Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
It only applies the resistance debuff if you're using lethal rounds so it would be better to use:
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Yea, I think the biggest advantages of this will be making piercing rounds always lethal and Hail of bullets always Fire Ammo.
Besides that I think I might change it to just coast on cryo or chemical ammo for the rest of my attacks.
I liked using one of the debuff ammos regularly but I always wanted to use hail of bullets with fire ammo so I could get the max amount of damage out of it so I often ended up just using fire. This should help I think. It's too bad macros don't recharge like our power buttons
that would really be a nice QOL thing.Oh and in response to another thing: putting the toggle on before the power execution works.....but only if there's nothing for you to target. If there's anything on screen it'll auto target them and attack. If not it'll turn your toggle on. So yea, doesn't work for what I'm trying
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You could solve this problem the easiest; just use binds instead of macros.|
Originally Posted by Ice_Storm
EDIT: forgot one of the other problems, the buttons don't recharge like the power buttons so I'll have to move the power buttons somewhere else on screen so I can see what's actually recharged and what isn't. This is mainly just a problem with bullet rain and Hail of Bullets since they're longer recharge
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/bind 1 "powexecslot 1 $$ Powexec_toggleon cryo ammunition"
Etc...
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Originally Posted by Ice_Storm
There are some problems. You gotta hit the button twice everytime (once to toggle on the ammo and once to fire off the power). I've been noticing that if the ammo you're switching to isn't already recharged then the power won't fire.
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If you're a blaster you could also reassign your shift+# to the ammo you'd like to use in that slot. So like /bind lshift+1 powexectoggleon cryo ammunition" then whenever you're interested, you do shift+1 then 1 instead of 1 then 1. That way if it's not recharged, you just don't swap ammo for this round. This might also work better for close fights against a single target, when you wouldn't want to be swapping ammo every attack. Then you could put whatever you want of Cryo ammo into 1, alt+1, ctrl+1, and then repeat with another ammo for #2.
Shift+# right now selects the teammate of that number, so depending on the primary/secondary I wouldn't give them up so readily on a defender/corruptor.
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I thought that was for each different command? So powexec_name would only activate once, so would powexec_toggleon and powexec_toggleoff, meaning you could technically do 3 things in 1 key press (Or more but I can't remember any more bind commands off the top of my head)?
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Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
Unfortunately not. The way binds work is they read left to right but if you have multiple power execution then only the right most one will activate
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Originally Posted by Aggelakis
PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"
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It tries to execute all the powers at once meaning the last power will activate if you use powexec_name as it will override all the previous ones listed. I'm not sure about toggleon as a lot of them have casting times.|
Originally Posted by PrincessDarkstar
I thought that was for each different command? So powexec_name would only activate once, so would powexec_toggleon and powexec_toggleoff, meaning you could technically do 3 things in 1 key press (Or more but I can't remember any more bind commands off the top of my head)?
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However you can toggle off all powers at once as there isn't a casting time to toggling off. You can toggle off while resting or casting another power even.
Also, if you put a + in front of the macro it should activate it twice, once on pressing the key and once on releasing it. Might help you some.
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Nope. In my experience, you can do as many toggleoffs as you want in a single command, but only one toggleon or powexecname.|
Originally Posted by PrincessDarkstar
I thought that was for each different command? So powexec_name would only activate once, so would powexec_toggleon and powexec_toggleoff, meaning you could technically do 3 things in 1 key press (Or more but I can't remember any more bind commands off the top of my head)?
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And that or is exclusive.
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It's not a function of the slash commands, it's a function of how the power system works. If you are in the process of casting a power and select a second power to activate you'll notice that you get a red ring around the second power, this is used to indicate that the power will be automatically activated once the current power is done. When you use any of the powexec (except abort, auto and unqueue) this is equivalent to selecting a power by any other means (such as clicking on the icon).|
Originally Posted by PrincessDarkstar
I thought that was for each different command? So powexec_name would only activate once, so would powexec_toggleon and powexec_toggleoff, meaning you could technically do 3 things in 1 key press (Or more but I can't remember any more bind commands off the top of my head)?
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When you have a macro with multiple powexec commands what happens is it queues each of them to activate in the order given in the macro. It queues the power up to activate but then immediately unqueues it in order to queue up the next one with the end result that only one power gets activated. Now obviously nothing happens truly instantly in computing and it is possible for the first power in the macro to activate (rather thna just being queued) before the macro finishes. However CoX servers operate on Arcanatime (0.132 seconds) meaning that when you select a power to activate it doesn't actually get activated until the end of the current 0.132 second step. So in order for this to happen you would have to time it so that the severs performed an update step in between when the command to activate the first power arrived and when the command to activate the second one turned up. Since we can't use any sort of command delay in macros this is impossible in practice.
Now two of the powexec commands (powexectoggleon and powexectoggleoff) do behave a little weirdly in all of this. First, turnign a toggle off is, to use the D&D parlance a Free Action; it doesn't impact our power queue so a macro can turn as many toggles as you like off in one click. Secondly if you use powexectoggleon to activate a toggle that is already on then the command fails and it doesn't impact the currnet power queue.
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I acutally use this little feature to put all of my armor toggles (for example) into one bind. I keep pressing the same button to turn them all on in turn.
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Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
Secondly if you use powexectoggleon to activate a toggle that is already on then the command fails and it doesn't impact the currnet power queue.
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I don't believe I saw this mentioned and if it has I'm sorry for repeating it. With binds you can set it so that a down key press will do one thing and the release another. You will need to pause in the middle to allow events to occur, but it can be done. I don't recall of the top of my head how to do this, and I'm not sure that it's practical in the midst of a fight.
I have seen this used to shift between hover and flight with out having to use the power trays, or even toggling on/off Super Speed for quicker movements without the constant end usage of flight/SS.
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Originally Posted by PapaSlade
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Ok so I was thinking the other day about macros to help me switch ammo while fighting. The biggest reason I was thinking is that I feel like switching ammo a lot will help get all the secondary effects out there and possible increase my survivability (Not that I'm not survivable enough but it could help). So here's some macros I've been fooling around with.
powexec_name Dual Wield$$ Powexec_toggleon cryo ammunition
powexec_name Executioner’s Shot$$ Powexec_toggleon chemical ammunition
powexec_name Hail of Bullets$$Powexec_toggleon incendiary ammunition
powexec_name Piercing Rounds$$Powexec_toggleon incendiary ammunition
powexec_name Bullet Rain$$Powexec_toggleon chemical ammunition
There are some problems. You gotta hit the button twice everytime (once to toggle on the ammo and once to fire off the power). I've been noticing that if the ammo you're switching to isn't already recharged then the power won't fire.
I'm gonna be taking it for a test run in a bit. What do you guys think? Am I barking up the wrong tree even trying to do this? Is there a way that'll work a lot better?
EDIT: forgot one of the other problems, the buttons don't recharge like the power buttons so I'll have to move the power buttons somewhere else on screen so I can see what's actually recharged and what isn't. This is mainly just a problem with bullet rain and Hail of Bullets since they're longer recharge