Is DP as bad as I keep hearing?

I keep toying with the idea of making a DP toon, but the number of negative comments I keep hearing about its very lack luster damage kinda scares me away. Is it as bad as people say, or is this just another example of people over exaggerating?

DP is fine for what it is, which is a versatile set with a few debuffs. I view its primary benefit as being the only set able to use knockback on the occasions it is useful, and have higher damage the rest of the time. The Toxic and Ice bullets unfortunately are mostly worthless.

Regardless, redraw drives me insane. Especially redraw on a set with long animations.

YMMV. I think it can be fun to play, but having played it once to 50 I dont feel a big draw back to it.

DP is better than half the sets out there.
DP is worse than half the sets out there.
DP without the mini-nuke is even lower on the list.

Fire Blast (the set) is broken, almost nothing compares, but it also pays for that in endurance costs.

I just made a dual pistols corruptor recently. I suppose I'd be lying if I didn't say that one of the biggest draws for me was the animation of dual pistols, which is a lot of fun to watch.

As far as low damage goes, yeah, it's not as high as some other sets, but it doesn't bother me that much. On the other hand, because I heard the same thing, I paired it with kinetics, which seems to be a popular pairing from what I've come across. Siphon power and fulcrum shift are really good at boosting the damage of the set, and generally, I've had a lot of fun.

It's not the easiest toon to solo at times, at least for me. But as far as the set goes, it's fun, and paired with kinetics, pretty effective.

Dual Pistols is actually fairly ahead of the single target DPS most 'blaster' powersets are capable of until around level 50, where other powersets are able to attain much higher ST attack chains due to having more global recharge to work with and more constant AIM/Build-Up cycles. It's AOE damage, however, stays reliably high for most of the game and is quite a bit better than a number of other powersets (not all of them; certainly not Fire).

All in All Dual Pistols is probably a 'middle of the road' set. Not terrible, not the best, but perfectly viable to play. Personally I pair it with Kinetics to take off the burden of not having Aim. It's hard to miss Aim when you have Fulcrum Shift, let me tell you.

As others have said, it's a solid middle of the road set. If the aesthetics of the set appeal to you and you don't mind redraw, you'll have fun with it.

You have to avoid the trap of "its not Uber so it stinks ". i have two DP toons and personally i dont make a big deal about Redraw ( I have a DP/TA so thats constangt redraw ). DP is a fun set that is solidly in the middle of the road as far as damage.

I believe the issue is that people expected it to be a Uber set and it wasnt.

I'd love to try a Dual Pistol Corruptor, the Swap Ammo mechanic seems really interesting, but I just can't get past the outright goofy looking animations...

I've teamed with a few DP blasters or corrs and they look like a lot of fun. I see what several of you have mentioned in the silly animations on the draw. While it is hard to see, because the numbers aren't mine, it didn't appear that the secondary affects of swap ammo really had any affect. The idea of being able to switch ammo is actually really cool and would make the set pretty versatile, if it actually worked.

Has this EVER been addressed by a dev?

Yeah, the secondaries have an effect. The damage is split 70/30 for pretty much every attack, 70% is *always* lethal damage, the other 30% is whatever your current ammo type is (that's why any single attack you'll see 2 numbers crop up) and they they will apply minor effects. Fire's damage over time effect offers generally the most bang for your buck, though that's not a lot of bang still, it's just a few more ticks of damage so even with it it doesn't really compare in damage to other ranged sets. The slow from cold is... really not worth it, if it included a -Recharge slow it might be more useful but it's purely speed based slow. The debuff from toxic is ok, but barely noticeable unless you're stacking it with damage debuffs from other sources.

See, the reality is, the 'minor effects' only apply a 10% effect. It's a spit in the ocean on its own.

Toxic's only 'claim to fame' is that a large majority of enemies don't resist it. Now this would be great to know except you really won't know what resists what unless it's stupid obvious (Hellions resist fire and are weak to ice) or you go hunting through second party sites to find the data. Switching your elemental type is a neat trick but it's only really useful if you have a way to know which type is most useful at a given time. So most people stay with fire ammo just because it (slightly) mitigates the lower damage.

Also, one of the more unforgivable crimes in the set is Piercing Rounds. As a -Res debuff it should help to make up for the damage right? Fire it off as your alpha and go to town while the debuff lasts. The problem is, for whatever reason the devs decided that, unlike Empty Clips which applies a defense buff regardless of ammo type, Piercing Rounds *only* applies a res debuff if you're using standard rounds, otherwise it just applies the standard minor effects. Just very very silly logic there ;9

The set is workable though. I've got a DP corruptor up to 28. Everything is very managable, but even with your strongest skills you're not 1 shotting or almost 1 shotting anything like a blaster.

It isn't uber but if you team then it is fine. I'm rolling with a DP/Dark corr and it isn't bad. I team almost all the time and the dark set helps teams a lot. The damage is meh but I'm not too worried about that. I hope, one day soon, they provide alternate animations to each power in the set. I like them as is but some variety would be great.

People have basically three problems with DP's damage output:

1) it's animation times are atrocious.

2) it doesn't get Aim.

3) it's not fire blast.

Not having aim is (imo) not a huge deal on a corruptor. Assuming you are tired of playing fire blast and don't mind DP's animations, DP is fine. The crashless nuke helps it do competitive damage, too. Redraw is an issue, but not a big one; DP's redraw is pretty quick and if you're noting playing a heavy click secondary you probably won't notice it much.

My DP character is a blaster, and I use fire ammo pretty much all the time. The debuff numbers are better for corruptors, but probably not by enough that you actually want to use cold or toxic against anything but the few enemy types that heavily resist fire. If you're interested in enemy resist types you can just craft a power analyzer temp and use it on stuff you're curious about.