You are legally obligated to take hail of bullets and bullet rain. Piercing rounds is also very good and very fun but if for some reason you hated having to line it up, it would be slightly skippable. Empty clips is about as good as psychic scream, the main difference being that one causes redraw and one does not. I wouldn't take both of them, let's put it that way. Psychic shockwave is numerically good but I just don't like it for some reason. It's a substantially larger radius than fire sword circle, really the only comparable power in a blaster secondary, so it has that going for it.
Really just take as much aoe as you need to supplement hail and rain, which are both excellent. For me that meant taking piercing rounds and empty clips, i.e. all the aoes from DP itself and nothing else, but dropping empty clips for scream or psw, or even both, would be quite workable.
I am leveling a Dual Pistols/Mental Blaster atm. Her name is River Song.(OH YEA!) I was toying around in MIDS and noticed the sheer amount of Cones and AoEs this toon is going to have. To take them all would surely be unnecessary. From a damage standpoint and from a IO Set building standpoint. I am planning to softcap S/L defense while bumping up recharge to perma Drain Psyche. This is not meant to be a farming toon as I have seen several do. I have no problem with redraw. I actually kinda enjoy it as I like the style and feel it gives my toon. (call me crazy)
Question:
Which of the Cones/AoEs/PBAoEs are skippable in a leveling build and Final Build?