Dual pistols

Do any of the secondary sets allow you to keep the guns out?

nope

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe ::looks at RaikenX's signature:: Something funny.

If you don't like redraw, just mind when you would use the powers. Most of devices powers, for instance, are fire and forget or used before combat, minimizing redraw in combat. Even with Energy Melee, only use or switch to your melee attacks when you have a last mob or two up close to deal with. This means you don't have to redraw until you get to the next mob.

Really, redraw shouldn't be that big a deal on a Blaster... it's a much bigger deal on a Scrapper with a weapon set paired with Regen, when you probably will need to use your secondary more in combat, interspersed with your attacks.

Not sure what confused you. I mentioned most of Devices are toggles, so they're "fire and forget." The rest are best used before combat, as Trip Mines, Gun Drone, Smoke Grenade, etc., are a bit hard to set up mid combat. Even Cal trops is going to help more before combat. So you shouldn't have many redraw problems... especially if it bugs you.

And really, other sets are going to work better in a chain anyway, as I mentioned with Energy Melee. Especially (again) if you don't like redraw.

How anyone can say redraw isn't an issue when it shaved valuable time off Build Up powers puzzles me. Unlike all the other sets, as a Dual Pistol pays a redraw toll often:

~ You pay the redraw toll every time you hit build up.

~ You pay the redraw toll every time you use you ranged immobilize.

~ You pay the redraw toll anytime you want to use a melee attack for snap mitigation or you just want to dart in and make an attack of opportunity because a boss is controlled or stuck to a Brute/Tank.

~ You pay the redraw toll every time you use one of your secondary controls like Lightning Clap or Ice Patch.

~ You pay the redraw toll every time you work in one of the big secondary AoEs like Psychic Scream. And if you are MM and you aren't using Psychic Scream when it's up you are missing out.

Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if the animation times of the higher tier Dual Pistol powers weren't so ridiculously long, or if the AoEs weren't all DoT style deliveries that had you standing there the entire time exaggerating the long animation effect.

Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if the set's third single target damage power didn't have a 2.57 second animation a majority of which is you standing there motionless pointing a gun.

If Dual Pistols was a decent set I could see the argument that the redraw was an appropriate trade off, but... it's not.

Can I revamp my play style to only deliver secondary effects in their own bursts to minimize the redraw? Sure. Should I have to be limited in this way? Questionable, especially for a set that is pretty subpar.

If you think the animations are too long, then don't take Dual Pistols. Take something else if you dont want to stand there looking awesome. Fine with me.

If redraw bugs you so much, the "quick-draw" work around still exists. Hard to explain without breaking into steps, but what the hell.

You've thrown an Energy Punch and your other melee abilities are on cooldown, so naturally you go for your pistols. Before doing so, ESC - click ability - auto-targets nearest - mid-animation, at any time your character begins it, click the ability a second time:

Quick-draw, snip down animation time.

Yes, it's situational, and it's potentially a lot more to think about. But it -does- cutdown redraw -considerably- once you get the hang of it. Works the same for the Staves and makes a massive impact on hit delivery time, which is a big deal since you're usually going for a quicker kill if you're resorting to them.

The trick is to already be in the middle of the draw animation before the red cue graphic is placed on your intended attack. Clicking a power without a target does not actually cue the attack, it just acts as a primary and a means to auto-target the closest enemy.

With that in mind, if you're conscious about your positioning and that of your enemy, it's entirely possible to go through multiple pulls losing much less time on redraw (I won't say losing -zero- time, because the factor of human error is significant if you start getting into fractions of a second).

Moonlighter: Something from my post that you completely ignored: Redraw is only an issue if you're trying to max out your DPS.

The game is neither built nor balanced around maxed out builds. Break out your spreadsheets all you want, they don't matter. If they focus on high-end build, then it's not what the devs look at.

Also, something else that you're missing: Not everyone plays to have a twinked out, AV-destroying monster on every character. Max DPS is not the be-all and end-all of what makes a good set.

Yes, fire does MASSIVELY outdamage Dual Pistols. It does the same to every other set too. But when you've got a face full of enemies, is Fire going to Energy Torrent the crit-happy Council bosses away from you? Is it going to Tesla Cage the Sapper? No, it's going to try to burn them to death before they can kill you.

I solo. A lot. Easily 90% of the time or more. I love blasters. I currently have three, an Elec/Energy, a Fire/Fire, and a DP/Energy. All are moderately IOed out. You know which solos the best? The Pistol blaster.

The electric blaster is pretty much unkillable. But in order to achieve this, he's sacrificed a lot of his damage output, so he barely solos faster than a defender or a corruptor would.

The fire blaster outdamages the pistol blaster by an order of magnitude, easily. Or rather, he would, if he could keep his face off the floor.

The Pistol blaster can clear a +2x1 spawn with three shots, four if there's a Lt in the group. When he misses, and the enemies fight back, he can survive through sources of mitigation that the fire blaster doesn't have.

But you're not going to listen to this anyways. You're just going to treat it like everything else you've responded to and say "It doesn't matter because it does LESS DAMAGE". You're right. It does. But it doesn't matter in the vast majority of instances that the set is used. The sets are balanced around more than just the animation time and damage that you're obsessing over. And when it's all said and done, it boils down to one thing: It's highly unlikely that you play all the sets in the game, so you need to pick the ones you like best. If you don't like Dual Pistols, don't play it.

I don't really think it's that misleading, either. It might if you come to the discussion with the opening that there is a "redraw toll" to weapon sets, so you might have reacted to it as being misleading. Taking it from my angle, I usually only switch to my Blaster's secondary before a fight or when I really need to in the middle of a fight. With most secondaries paired with a weapon primary, redraw just isn't that much of an issue unless you absolutely hate hate hate redraw and want to randomly use your secondary whenever.

For me, it's just part of the strategic scenario. "What's the next best power to use?" For a Blaster, I want to attack, attack, and attack again. I will use positioning and my secondary to help this, but I lean on my primary first and foremost, as it's usually in a Blaster's best interest to kill it with fire fast. I don't ignore my secondary by any means, but my primary really is that for my Blasters.

Glad we got it all cleared up though... heh. More discussing than it really needed to be, but that's what happens when we confuse each other.

For what it's worth, I don't mind redraw that much, but I do avoid it when I can. Most of my melee weapon users have a paired powerset that won't require me to use it much (my Regen Scrapper is MA, for instance, and I wouldn't want to pair Fiery Aura with a weapon set). Hopefully a fix will come down the pipe, as we should have to redraw our weapon when we use a lot of secondary powers.

Or they could fix redraw my idea for weapon sets is make a toggle you have to activate to have weapons out this toggle would cost no endurance of course. No idea if this can be implemented but would solve lots of redraw issues.