How much does redraw actually matter?

I was making a joke at one point about building Captain Redraw, the TA/DP/mace defender.

The question is: How much impact does redraw actually have on combat performance?

None whatsoever. I have that combination on a corruptor, and it's my favorite toon to play.

Quite a bit. Probably the worst of the worst are the Thugs pistols. I like the powers for ranged damage goodness, but I wait to pull them out for when I've got a nice big window of downtime, and then try to stick to them before switching to Heat Mastery powers, since I'd have to redraw again.

I'm no min/maxer. I don't gague my performance in dees, pees or esses. But the redraw is so obnoxious on its own that I take steps to avoid it.

The OP specifically asked about combat performance.

The answer is "redraw is almost always detrimental to combat performance."

Redraw adds time to an attack chain without increasing the damage of the chain.

DPS is calculated by dividing damage by time. As time increases, DPS decreases.

Possible exception: An attack that will cause redraw is so good that adding it and the associated redraw time creates a higher DPS situation than leaving the power out of the chain.

Example: It was my hope that a claws brute would be better off with the single target chain of followup, focus, slash, gloom, redraw, repeat than he would be with followup, focus, slash, strike, repeat. After calculating the DPS of both chains, I found my hope dashed.

One possible explanation for the dramatically different responses you got above (and may get more of) is that, if I understand correctly, in some powersets the redraw time is "baked in" and you will take the same time to use a power whether or not the redraw animation plays, but in other sets the power animations have been redone from scratch and redraw animations will add to the total animation time of those sets.

I'm ignorant of Corruptor mechanics, but with Scrappers, for example, redraw is still "baked in" to the Spines animations but not the new Katana animations. So a Katana user pays the animation-time price for redrawing (but, conversely, gets the benefit that a continuous, uninterrupted chain of Katana attacks is faster than before the animation change). A Spines user literally loses nothing by redrawing -- but that means he doesn't get the speed advantage.

When they balance the various powersets, is redraw factored in?

One big factor is your attack chain. For instance, consider an Archery/Electric Blaster... if you open up with your Archery AoEs (and maybe Blazing Arrow) and then wade in punching then redraw isn't an issue. But if you try to alternate your single target shots and your punches the redraw will noticeably reduce your DPS. With TA/DP/Mace it actually shouldn't be too bad... you'd generally use one or two TA debuffs at the start of a fight and then start shooting things with pistols. All the TA powers tend to be once per fight (or once per 2-3 fights) due to longish recharge so the only redraw would be the initial pistol draw and any mace powers used, and those are also longish recharge and not the sort you'd spam.

In order to understand the impact on performance, context may be important. What do you mean by "performance"? What are your goals. If you are interested in things like maximum DPS or maximum rate of debuff application, then redraw may matter. If you are worried about whether your character is going to be useful to a team, redraw isn't likely to be a major factor.

I've played a couple different toons that have to deal with redraw, and it seems to affect them differently.

My archery/NRG blaster didn't mind it at all. I would mostly use the NRG buffs before a group, use my archery AoEs and blazing arrow, then finish up with the NRG punches. So I only had to draw the bow once. And since I would usually open my AoEs with rain of arrows, the redraw wasn't so noticeable next to its 4.5 second animation time.

I tried a DP/MM blaster when DP first came out, and couldn't stand it. I tended to use my MM powers more in the midst of a fight, rather than NRG which was used at the beginning and at the end, so I ended up doing a lot of redrawing. And the DP animation seems to be one of the longest. That was a major factor in me deleting the toon.

Overall, redraw will have a negative impact on your character's performance. How major this impact is depends on what you're playing and how you're playing it. Whether or not it really bothers you just kind of depends on what kind of person you are.

I think it is worth mentioning that redraw is way more noticiable for me in PVP than PVE. In PVP every second counts, and a redraw can feel like watching grass grow.

How you view the character in question can have a lot to do with where you find redraw on the "nuisance" to "oh, gods below, the horror" scale.

Example:

I min/max my main a lot. As he uses claws, anything causing redraw is downright earthshatteringly detrimental. During pylon runs I bounce between not allowing PB to fire off at all or only allowing it to fire off as it's crashing and then only by skipping the lowest DPA attack in the chain and letting PB fill that hole.

On my dp/storm corruptor, I couldn't care less about redraw. She's all about style and her performance is based on "can I solo this mission? well, goody, her performance is fine."

Yup, that's quite how I would put it. I almost put a line in there about if you can't stand to lose any DPS at all, redraw will bug you: but that's about it (and at the extreme end of performance needs). Heh.

Back Alley Brawler posted, two or three years ago, that redraw time could be "up to 0.67s". There was no more information given than that. It could be that different weapon sets, or powers within sets, have varying redraw times, or it could be that the some animations are just shorter due to the type or style of attack.

At any rate, how much it actually matters depends on how you play and how much it bothers you. If you're frequently switching between weapon and weaponless powers, or two different types of weapons, then it will matter to some extent, in that it will slow you down, and it may annoy you quite a bit. If you're focusing on your weapon powers for one part of combat and using your other powers for the rest of combat, such as debuffing a spawn with Trick Arrows powers, then switching to Assault Rifle attacks for the rest (or most) of the fight, then the actual impact of redraw time is so low that it's almost immeasurable over the duration of combat, and shouldn't bother you at all.

We used to have long, annoying pauses between weapon power animations, even when the weapon remained drawn during usage of multiple powers, because the additional time necessary for redraw was "baked in" to the total animation time for each power. It was so frustrating that I gave up on three Broadsword scrappers because the coffee breaks between attacks were so long. What we have now may be slightly more complex, but it's ten million times better and less noticeable than what we put up with before.

redraw happy characters of mine

AR/Kin
Arch/Dark
Fire/TA
DP/Kin

love them all

It seems like redraw can interact unfavorably with lag, forcing me to make more than one attempt to perform an attack because it sometimes doesn't activate properly when I click.

Gameplay-wise it only really matters if you're an extreme min-maxer, for general play it doesn't make enough difference to really matter. That being said while it isn't critical in terms of attacks the extra animations do break up the flow of motion which I find a little annoying, especially if I have to do it a lot.

Unless you're a min/maxer trying to maximize your DPS against AVs or GMs, redraw may only have a minor impact on your overall gameplay

Constantly keep redrawing simply makes fighting aesthetically less pleasing to look at and conceptually awkard to understand (I am fighting with my claws; retract; Sand of Mu or Practiced Brawler or Burn; and there are the claws again).

I have tried to cope with it and now to the point of ignoring it all together.

By the way, does Kick from the Fighting Pool cause weapon redraw like Boxing does?