Best Secondary for DP?

Hey all

My girlfriend's gonna give the game a try. She's a big Laura Croft fan and wants to emulate her a little by rolling a Dual Pistols toon. In an effort to make her game time as enjoyable as possible I'm looking into secondaries she could use.

She hasn't chosen an AT yet but she's completely new to MMOs so ease of use is key. Nothing that requires a lotta knowledge of buff/debuff mechanics or would put a lotta pressure on her in teaming situations (i.e. Having to watch teammate's health bars)

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give.

Time Manipulation would be cool as well. Don't know if she's going to be VIP or not though, so it may not be an option. It's a pretty well rounded set that can do a lot of different things, and it isn't particularly difficult to use.

/Devices is just awful. DP isn't the best set in the world to start with, don't have her pair it with super bad set.

Traps/DP or DP/Traps would be a feasible combo, but Traps isn't the simplest set to play. You don't have to monitor your group or anything, but it requires more of a tactical approach than most. On the bright side it doesn't suffer from constant power use so it won't force redrawing the pistols all the time.

Edit: I would, personally, not pair Time Manipulation with a weapon set, but I find redraw extremely aggravating to deal with often (Time is a very active set and requires you to monitor both healing and a couple long recharge buffs to peak performance, as well as monitor the special debuff effect of Delayed).

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

Yeah, traps on a corruptor is fairly decent. Not the fastest or the most damaging, but traps complements DP well, once you start getting some of the key toys like caltrops (it's a *lot* better than it sounds) the shield generator and acid grenade.

Its not complex, but you do kind of want to play set up before going up against a hard enemy, making sure you deploy things you'll need.

This sounds like the perfect situation for force field.
Force Field sure does suck but it is easy. Turn on a toggle and use two buffs every 4 mins, it doesn't get simpler.

Also, don't let your GF hear you say "Laura" Croft like that, if she is that much of a fan she might not like it!

I really love DP paired with Kinetics on a Corruptor, but that's not really the most simple combination for a new player.

I honestly think that a blaster is going to be a better AT choice for someone with no experience at all. The Blaster's secondaries have a much smoother learning curve than the Corruptor's. I have a DP/Dev blaster and don't have a huge issue with the combination, but I like DP more than a lot of folks here seem to. /Dev also fits the concept better than much else except for maybe traps which could annoy her because of all the stationary pseudopets that can take a while to master. Mental Manipulation seems to be a popular combination with DP because it adds good AoE and damage that is often unresisted. I'm also fairly intrigued by DM as it includes many of the best powers from Dark Melee with a little Dark Miasma thrown in for good measure.

Personally, I think Dual Pistols / Dark Miasma Corruptor is the way to go. You do a decent amount of damage, lets you get up to melee range in relative safety for the crashless nuke, the debuffs are yummy, and it doesn't require a lot of clicks.

DP/Mental Manipulation is fun to play, and at least one of my friends new to CoH has found it easy to learn. MM provides a character with some "get the heck away from me" abilities good for pushing unwanted attackers out of melee range, a handy cone attack fairly early on, and all kinds of goodies at higher level.

And "psychic gunslinger" is just a swell character type.

Dual Pistols is fairly weak on Blasters. It looks cool and can mow down mobs when the mini-nuke is up, but for most spawns you're going to be doing mediocre damage (not horrible, but a bit below average) with weak secondary effects or average damage with no secondary effect... in practice you'll either always use Incendiary Ammo or you'll usually use Incendiary and sometimes use Standard for the KB. Adding Devices to an already low-to-medium damage primary will result in one of the lowest damage Blaster combinations possible (except every few spawns when you can use Hail of Bullets) unless you want to go really slow and use lots of Trip Mines. That's a perfectly valid way to play, but it's not beginner-friendly and doesn't mesh well with teams so I wouldn't recommend it.

Defenders and Corruptors tend to do better with DP because they get stronger debuffs, so Chem and Cryo rounds actually become at least marginally useful instead of being pointless like they are on Blasters. Since the whole swappable ammo thing is one of DP's main features I prefer to use it on ATs that can actually justify using all the ammo types though... if you just want to shoot flaming bullets at things and look cool doing it then the Blaster route works fine. (Ok, honestly that doesn't sound so bad...) My suggestion would be a DP/Traps Corruptor though... Traps is far better than Devices and Corruptors still do decent damage while also getting more utility out of the various ammo types. The nice thing about Traps is that you really don't have to worry about teammates... just drop a Triage Beacon if it looks like you'll be fighting in one spot for a while and spend the rest of your time shooting and dropping mines and mortars. Plus having FFG to provide mez protection makes for a much more newbie-friendly build.

A second vote for DP/MM blaster.

I really have to go around making one as they just are a pure joy to watch in action and amazing synergy between the two sets.

DP/MM is what I got

Well, firstly I'd completely disregard any comments about how weak DP might be on whatever. Sounds to me you want a concept toon - so keep to the concept.

If you want something simpler, then blaster sounds like the way to go. Defender would indeed require her to be more attentive to the status of her teammates. Blasters just shoot and watch out for themselves. Let the other defender worry about them.

DP/Devices or DP/traps seem like a good fit. DP/traps would also be the exception to the defender/corruptor comment I made below as /traps don't really have to worry too much about their companions.

I love my DP/EM blaster.

I love my dual pistol/dev, mainly due to cloaking device, and smoke grenade.

Keep cloaking up, smoke grenade a mob, and toe bomb a trip mine. They have -preception, so they don't notice you, and just queue up hail of bullets, so right as the mine goes off, your shooting your guns. everything dies.

With enough recharge, you can do it every 20 or so seconds, or you can throw caltrops, and kite your way around mobs shotting at them in the face as they crawl over your caltrops.