Is DP THAT bad? My Findings Thus Far...

In the mind of a dev, good aesthetics is only balanced by being numerically terrible.

This is basically what Dual Pistols is.

Heh, sorry Stryker, I guess it may have helped if I'd said I was specifically responding to "min/maxers" who think DP is terrible, rather than simply thinking it to myself very clearly. You have a point about cheaper builds, but I suppose all I can say to that is that it would probably drive me crazy to play a squishy blaster in the first place so my first order of business would be to pick up some ios.

Looking at my pistols/energy build right now, this wouldn't cost more than a billion inf even if you straight up bought everything. Mostly posi's blast and thunderstrike, several lotgs, a celerity, some botzs, gaussian's... I would personally call this a cheap build, in that I don't see how you could reach level 50 without being able to afford pricier if you run a lot of tfs.

This gives me 35% ranged, 40% global recharge, and enough endurance to be permanently sustainable with conserve power, spamming aoes or not. Perhaps it's no coincidence that hail of bullets' defense boost is enough to softcap me for ranged, as I cannot recall ever dying during its animation. Not that I never die, but with rise of the phoenix, who cares? It barely slows down the mayhem.

If anything, I wonder if dp's detractors have ever even tried it past level 35 or so. At that point not everyone has started ioing yet, which underlines the above-average recharge times of most of its best powers at a time where you also lack much of your coming survivability. If I had tried to do nothing but solo the painful old midbie hero content on x4 on a half-finished dp blaster, I'd probably be angry with it too.

Fortunately for us all, there exists a thing called "tee-uh-ming." Tea Amming? Oh, teaming! That was it. I don't see the point of running any blaster solo in the first place, if you're farming you can do a lot better than that.

Really, what I use blasters for at all is what I find dual pistols to be best at: high speed, high level, high impact task forces. It does things most blaster sets simply cannot do in the world of aoe damage and in trade gives up having a top end single target chain, which it turns out is almost useless in the aforementioned task forces. I find anyone's claims of it being unsatisfactory to min/maxers to be questionable at best, unless their definition of min/maxing is radically different from mine, which would be weird because mine is probably the best way to earn huge amounts of merits.

Dual Pistols is a mediocre set, but only when compared to other powersets.

You can make a Pistolero who can hold his own just fine against critters, but it's always gonna pale in comparison to say, an archer.

I find DP to be a really good defender secondary. I can do passable damage solo, and on teams, i can up the damage mitigation I provide, or up the debuffs.... or just do damage... depending on team need. And as the OP stated, the animations make it enmoyable to play, even if its not to mathmatically the top set.

I'm certainly no expert on Dual Pistols, but I gotta say, the dismissal of Fire Breath as glacially slow seems a little misplaced given that it's only marginally slower than Empty Clips, Executioner's Shot, Piercing Rounds, and even Bullet Rain.

And Fire Breath does significantly more damage than any of the above powers that have comparable area of effect. Significantly.

I can certainly understand that preferences will differ; some people just dislike Fire Breath -- its range, its sometimes awkward positioning requirements. Some builds will also have difficulty leveraging Rain of Fire as a bona-fide attack (it's really more of a soft control power for solo Blasters without some reliable means of keeping foes in the area). Inferno is clearly inferior to crashless nukes like Rain of Arrows and Hail of Bullets.

So there's room to argue that Fire's on-paper AoE potential isn't realized in a lot of situations. If a given player gets more mileage out of Dual Pistols in practice, then that's great -- but let's also try to be fair. Breath + Ball with Aim and Build Up is about as good a combo as you're going to find for ranged AoE damage. If you can get away with using Rain of Fire as a damage power, then that's icing.

And at sufficient levels of recharge, that combo is available every 5-6 seconds. You don't need to break the bank to get there, either.

I wouldn't tell anyone what to play, but I'd suggest that anyone who dismisses Fire Breath at least try the power enhanced for range. It's pretty easy to frankenslot such that you have ~60 ft on the power, which gives Breath more than double the floor coverage. If you've only used the power at its base range, you might be pleasantly surprised.

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Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Moonlighter, you seem to be unaware that inferno rounds add a large amount of all-fire damage to every dp attack other than pistols and suppressive fire, and you seem to assume that this "high level blaster" leaves all of his or her powers unslotted for recharge. You also think it is ever a good idea to use a crashy nuke. Dunno what to tell you, man.

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Originally Posted by Obitus I'm certainly no expert on Dual Pistols, but I gotta say, the dismissal of Fire Breath as glacially slow seems a little misplaced given that it's only marginally slower than Empty Clips, Executioner's Shot, Piercing Rounds, and even Bullet Rain.

You're correct of course, I was being hyperbolic. If dp is being panned for its slow attacks, fire should get the same treatment because its attack is slower than any of them. The only way for fire to be at all competitive in its aoe is to use that slow attack every time it's available, so... is fire overall quicker animating than dp? It sure is. Does that mean all of its powers animate quickly? Obviously not. Some people seem to have problems with this and I was driven to flippancy.

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And Fire Breath does significantly more damage than any of the above powers that have comparable area of effect. Significantly. I can certainly understand that preferences will differ; some people just dislike Fire Breath -- its range, its sometimes awkward positioning requirements. Some builds will also have difficulty leveraging Rain of Fire as a bona-fide attack (it's really more of a soft control power for solo Blasters without some reliable means of keeping foes in the area). Inferno is clearly inferior to crashless nukes like Rain of Arrows and Hail of Bullets.

What I don't like about fire breath and blaze is that between the two of them, the fire blaster lives at close range, effectively melee range given the animation time of fire breath. I do enhance it for range which helps a great deal, but you simply can't enhance blaze's range while slotting it well. Now with cardiac core boost you do have an option there but I've found that fire is such an endurance-light set that it would be a waste to use the alpha slot's potential on such a niche application. On the other hand, it would alleviate one of my main problems with the set so maybe it's worth it.

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So there's room to argue that Fire's on-paper AoE potential isn't realized in a lot of situations. If a given player gets more mileage out of Dual Pistols in practice, then that's great -- but let's also try to be fair. Breath + Ball with Aim and Build Up is about as good a combo as you're going to find for ranged AoE damage. If you can get away with using Rain of Fire as a damage power, then that's icing. And at sufficient levels of recharge, that combo is available every 5-6 seconds. You don't need to break the bank to get there, either.

Well, technically that combo is available every time build up is up. With aim it loses some punch, and even with permahasten you will cycle the combo at least twice with neither. Rain of fire is absolutely underrated and is one of the better powers in the set, but I find it hard to enjoy the blaster version knowing that corrs get to have their cake and eat it twice.

Oh yeah, Another Fan, I really shouldn't have said blasters "shouldn't" farm, but I do think it's hardly the ideal AT for it if you're trying to maximize dropzz.

Obitus, I completely agree.

Playstyle is everything. I play hop and spin back and forth over the groups. I target a mob in front hop over aim/buildup trigger fireball and then back away 10-15 feet. I use firebreath and then if on my fire/fire FSC - then if anything is alive - I fireball again or mop up the boss/Lts.

If solo I use RoF to slow and take the incoming damage off. In a group - I count to 4 after the melee/controller locks it down and then fireball, firebreath rain of fire and pick off whatever is left. People only complain if anything survives long enough to escape the RoF.

On my fire/fire it is very easy for a chain, I fireball moving forward firebreath, FSC and Combustion then Consume and if anything is left - Fireball again. It is seamless and smoothly flowing. If I have a controller or dark maisma on a team I will start EVERY group with Rain of Fire - tarpit makes it magic.

You know what - Recycle you like DP, great.

I have played both DP and Fire and solo and in teams Fire is superior and you can spin numbers and play weigh this and weigh that and I have experience with both.

I have personally SEEN what they do and you can Baghdad Bob the set for all its worth but it is a vanilla set that does nothing great but all pretty good. Can you take it to 50 and have fun - yes.

But after true CoH fashion we spin into a min/max discussion talking 2.xx seconds activation times and blah blah blah. I use chains to attack and I don't have to WAIT for anything to cycle. I can vary to a single attack if an AoE isn't up and drop the Boss or Lt down or keep spamming the AoE love as needed. I use hasten, I use combat jumping and having played both DP/Fire and Fire/Fire really shows the difference quite well.

One cycle of Fireball, Firebreath jump in and FSC, Combustion and Consume and everything is dead or within a blaze or another fireball from death.

The very fact your Nuke does no more damage than Rain of Fire + Fire breath says it all.

No argument with most of the above but I'd like to note that hail of bullets is actually the hardest hitting of the crashless nukes the majority of the time. It's possible to get unlucky and fail to kill a minion but you'd be unwise to bet on that happening on any given saturated use of the power. The average damages are: 180 for full auto, somewhere between 150 and 225 for rain of arrows, not sure because I'm not sure what triggers the third tick failing, and 250 for hail of bullets.