Powerset Idea: Swashbuckling Assault

Hooray for Insomnia!

I feel that Dominators are lacking a good weapon set… but what would work for them? Throwing axes? A bit specific and a touch lame. Throwing knives? A bit better, as a lot of dual-blades animations could be re-used, but I think there’s an all-around better option. Sure, there’d be redraw issues (which can be mitigated slightly with the right redraw animation—a more casual ‘draw from the hip’ rather than a ‘pull from behind the back’ could speed things up; or animation times could be adjusted downward slightly to compensate for more constant redraw).

So, just as a mental exercise for me; I decided to create a sword-and-pistol dual-weapon set for Dominators. I’m sure it doesn’t meet any of the damage scale guidelines, since I don’t know the math, so all numbers would be approximate and/or possibly wishful thinking on my part.

Anyways, enough of my pointless insomniac ramblings! On to the powerset!



Swashbuckling Assault:

1) Snap Shot
You fire a quick shot from your pistol, damaging your foe and reducing their defense for a time.
* 4s recharge
* 0.9s animation (to compensate for redraw) or 1s (if Swashbuckling Redraw is kept as short as thorny assault redraw)
* 52.8 damage
* -8% defense for 8s on hit

2) Thrust
You stab your foe with a quick strike of your sword, reducing their defense for a time.
* 8s recharge
* 1.33s animation
* approx 85-100 or so damage
* -15% defense for 5s on hit

3) Spray and Slice
You fire several shots down range while additionally slicing at nearby enemies with your sword.
* 45-degree arc, 40m range
* 16s recharge
* 1.5s animation
* approx 40-50 damage at range, with an additional 20 or so damage to foes within 7m

4) Rapid Fire
You fire several quick shots at your target, which can also reduce the target’s defense (functionally equivalent to ‘burst’, but with only 3 tics of damage)
* recharge 8s
* 1s animation
* approx 3 ticks of 20-30 or so damage
* 50% chance of -10% defense for 9s

5) Boost Attack
You boost the combat abilities of all your swashbuckling attacks.
* Boost Attack is one of the Swashbuckling signatures. For the ranged attacks in the set, it functions as Boost Range. For the melee attacks, it provides the same damage bonus as build-up without the to-hit bonus. It doesn't boost the range or damage of any of the Dominator's primary powers.

6) Feinting Shot
You flourish your blade stylishly to distract a distant opponent, then surprise them with a shot to the legs to greatly reduce their speed.
* recharge 16s
* 2.33s to 3s animation
* approx 70-ish damage
* -60% movement speed, foe -fly, foe -jump

7) Feinting Stab
You fire several shots randomly into the air to catch your foe’s attention, then surprise them with a piercing thrust.
* recharge 16s
* 1.66s to 2.33s animation
* approx 90-ish damage
* has an inherent base accuracy of 90% rather than the standard 75%

8) Execute
A short-range but devastating attack that does bonus damage to foes with less than 33% health remaining
* recharge 20s
* 1.5s to 2.5s animation
* approx 90 damage, plus an additional 50 damage if the target has 33% health or less

9) Grenade Trick
You drop your sword and pistol in mock surrender (bonus points if it leaves a physics object sword and pistol on the ground!), then pull several micro-grenades from behind your back and toss them into the air around you.
* recharge 90s
* 3s animation
* 15m radius PBAoE
* Approximately 80 to 120 or so damage
*75% chance for a mag 0.67 knockback (knockdown). Additional 25% chance for a mag 1.33 knockback (only affects foes affected by the knockdown).



In my mind, Swashbuckling Assault was designed to fill a few niches: The lack of a mostly stabby weapon set to make proper use of the rapier model; the lack of a dominator weapon-set; the lack of a pure lethal-damage dominator set; the lack of a piratey-themed set to counter all the ninja-themed sets; and a sword-and-pistol set just seems... appropriate for an assault set, since they both do lethal and both typically do -defense.

Anyways, thoughts? suggestions? I'm not sure about grenade trick, but without it the set will be a bit lacking on AoEs. Anyway, I'm going to bed.

It looks like it would be alot of fun by itself, but I think to be viable it would need a control set to match it. The nature of dominators means they have very few toggles or passive powers, and because of this the redraw issue is very real for them because of how much they need to switch between their secondary and primary sets.

At one point, I had suggested a pair of powersets using a Kusari Fundo (a ninja weapon which is effectively a blade on the end of a long chain) but I'm sure the post is long gone now.

I did mention redraw as a possible issue, but IIRC Thorny Assault also suffers from redraw and has a slightly higher damage to compensate. Alternatively, so long as the redraw is kept quick (a 'draw from the hip' animation rather than a 'draw from behind the back' animation), a lot of the redraw issues can be mitigated.

Redraw doesn't have to be that bad, which is why the Tier 9 is actually designed to force redraw (you dropped your sword and pistol!), poking fun at how often the set will have to pull the sword and pistol back out.