Would you swap damage for style?

So I've read a few people complaining about duel pistols so I made a duel pistol blaster and got her to 20. I found myself jumping alot for the extra style points in each attack.

So, here is the question. If you had to pick between style and damage, and only 1 of those 2 choices, what would you pick?

Personally, in a game like City of Heroes, I would go for style over power because of the huge emphasis I like on costumes, damage is nice, but I would rather look cool, spitting peas at someone, that have a boring generic power that murders everything.

I like powers that deliver visual "oomph." The animations don't have to be amazingly complicated, but the FX and damage really sells a power for me. The novas, Foot Stomp, Lightning Rod, etc. None of them have crazy elaborate "style" to them, but they're still showstoppers and look amazing.

It's not a binary question. There's going to be a point where the most beautiful poweset is going to start to annoy me if it's noticeably weaker than its peers by some commonly applicable metric appropriate to the set (time to kill for damage sets, time to defeat for mitigation sets). What's "noticeably weaker" is going to vary subjectively from player to player.

I will be more tolerant of lower performance for fancy effects/animations, but it's not going to get me to accepts what I think is outright poor performance.

I love the look of dual pistols and happily play it as a dp/rad corr
it is possible that the /rad makes up for issues with dp

as a blaster it is much harder to play with a subpar set as damage is all you have.

but then I play mostly tankers, so a dp/rad corr feels like it does a lot of damage comparatively

I often do, but it really should be my choice, and not a choice foisted on me by the developers.

For example, I often stick the Stupefy knockback proc in Thunder Kick. A 20% chance to send enemies flying with my basic Tier 1 attack is not conducive to maximum damage per second, but it looks great. That's all cool because I've chosen to do that.

Dual Pistols, however, I think, is held back by overly long flashy animations. These are not optional on a per-player basis.

I have different moods for different things. Sometimes I want to make the most overpowered combination and sometimes I just want to achieve certain theme or playstyle.

I think I look for uniqueness.

City of Heroes is one of the few games that I've played that actually have many animations. Most rpg games have short animation because their balance is based on "global recharge". When most attacks are balanced around global recharge, you can't have many fancy moves that take over 2-3s.

I don't feel Dual Pistol is that bad, even on Blaster.

However, I do like numbers and math behind each powerset. Believe it or not, the #1 thing I try to avoid is weapon redraw. LOL I just can't stand it. This means I will never make a toon like DP/Trick Arrow/Mace. Hell, the only reason I made a Beam Rifle Blaster (even though most people say it's harder to get Disintegration spread) is because if it's on Corr/Defender, I'll need to redraw when I use secondary powers.

Concept and theme are more important to me than overall power. That's why my Thug/Poison is still my main, I just love the character. Not that there's anything wrong with Thug/, but /Poison is another matter...

I have 2 DP characters, and I would gladly choose less "style" even if I didn't get any damage in return.

Well, let me put it this way: my main on CoH has been at 50 for about 3 years now and I still play her more than all my others. She's been Dual Blades/Willpower since the day I rolled her.

So yeah, I love powers with a visual oomph. I love my Earth/Fire dominator because of the stomp with Stalagmites, and my plants/storm controller for the visual chaos of Creepers and lightning and tornadoes everywhere. I like my powers big and beefy and feeling like I just hit someone hard or I'm doing cool stuff.

I pick powers based heavily on the visual effect, both in me doing the attack and in how it hits things. I love Knockback, almost as much as Knockdown/up. It's a guilty pleasure. One of my favorite things in Dual Blades is when my five foot three scrapper dives into the middle of a full swarm of Rikti and does Sweep. Watching a dozen seven foot aliens all fly off their feet at once is awesome.

Similarly, I quickly become bored with powers that use the same animations over and over, or just don't have that visual oomph. Mind control is a good example. I've tried mind controllers... I just get bored with it. It's much waving my hands or staring hard, not enough explosions or giant vines or earthquakes or knocking a dozen guys in the air.

Though in some cases, a good look can work with the animation. My giant robot character is inv/energy, and I find Energy Transfer is great for kind of a "powering up!" attack (I still want a Big O style mega-punch Judgement attack ).

Thanks, guys!

My only 50 hero is a MA/SR scrapper. Something about the Mortal Kombat goofiness of the old Storm Kick animation makes me smile.

It's not a bad set now for looks, but I'd stick the old, longer animation on at least one build just for laughs if I had the option.

Most definitely! A game like city of heroes Is all about making your own superhero, with his or her own backstory (sorta like a "make your own comic book" deal.)

A perfect example: My first character, an Energy/Energy Blaster.

I picked energy/energy because...well i dont remember. The point is that I've heard people complain that "NRG's knockback sucks" or "Worst DPS." In the end, none of that matters. I love seeing an entire group flail like mad when I use Explosive blast, and the overpowering feeling of a point blank one handed energy burst to the face is pleasing. I even took whirlwind for more KB fun ^_^

I'm greedy, I want both.

More specifically, I want a buff for Dual Pistols. Namely cutting down on the animation times and upping the damage. Or even changing the split in damage so that Swap Ammo was actually useful.

That said, I have plenty of characters min/maxers would cry over because they're using sub par sets or are slotted weirdly. Concept always trumps efficiency in my book.

The old Storm Kick should be Tier 9 attack. That looks wicked!

The old Crane Kick looks kinda stupid. Why raising the hand and said "Look, I am ready to kick"!

I love my Peacebringers... That alone probably says everything I need to about where my "style vs. power" preferences fall.

Here's the thing about City of Heroes... We shouldn't have to choose between Damage (or lets just say effectiveness, since that often goes beyond just damage) and style. With relatively few exceptions, what your character looks like and how it functions are completely separate matters (those exceptions being weapon based powersets, and with things like ice shields and celestial pistols that look more like blasters, there's even some leeway there).

Unfortunately, once you get past your costume and into your power selection, you're often stuck with the animations and power effects that someone else thought worked best with that power function. Don't get me wrong, in recent years, we've made vast strides in power customization... but there is still a great deal of room for improvement.

Some examples:

My primary Dual Pistols character is a fairly serious sort. the attack where he throws the gun up in the air and then fires after catching it is just too absurd for me to deal with watching in combat and still get the same enjoyment out of playing the character. I love the functionality of Piercing Shot, but every time I see it I'm reminded of the pic on the net of some guy shooting a pistol with thrusts of his crotch. I'm sure it's fine for some character concepts, but not mine. All it would take to fix it and make me very happy with the power would be an alternate animation to use the Executioner's Shot animation instead (takes about the same time), but since it's a "Weapon Set" it will be a long time before it gets alternate animations, if it ever does, because theoretically being able to change the gun being used is enough customization for somebody's tastes...

Let's take it a step further... If we could alternate the animation we use on a weapon power, it would open up the possibility to use the Assault Rifle powerset with Energy Blast animations, and then put a "Gun Glove" on the hand so a character could have a gun built into him.

There's other examples, like some Dual Blades attacks looking great for swashbuckly stuff, but lame for heavier blades. Or Claws (years of rants on this subject available by numerous posters elsewhere).

My hope is that one day, we have "Total Power Customization", where we can build (or rebuild) our powers effectively from the ground up. Take the base functionality of the power from the archtype, powerset, and tier for what type of damage or effect it creates, but be able to increase or decrease damage (or effectiveness) by altering animation time, base recharge time, base endurance cost, and so on to get the unenhanced functionality we want for the power (within certain caps based on AT and Tier, so you don't have Tier 1 powers acting like finishing moves). Then, once we've finished building function, we build form... We choose whether the power uses a "Weapon" from your weapon set if applicable, we choose an activation animation and sound effect that fits within a range appropriate to the "animation time" chosen for function, as well as a set of reaction animations and effects and we choose a power effect and if applicable, emanation point.

My vision for Total Power Customization is not about being able to twink out the performance of a power so it can be uber-l33t and pwn suckas. It's about loving the functionality and timing of the Claws powerset, but wanting to use it with a pair of axes in your hands, or wanting to take a fire blaster, and emanate all its attacks out of a flamethrower weapon held like a rifle, or taking a Force Field/Assault Rifle defender and emanating the attacks from beneath outstretched arms so I can wear my PPD Hardsuit costume all the time and appear to be using the forearm mounted rotary cannons... or being able to take energy melee and reduce both the damage and the recharge on the Tier 1 attack so it acts as a light, fast attack like it used to (Doing the same for Defensive Sweep in Titan Weapons, reducing effectiveness in trade for a quicker animation, would make that set much more palatable)

If we'd been able to do something like this from the beginning, we wouldn't have so many powersets out there that so clearly overlap each other's functionality (like Axe and Mace... Aside from the costume piece, they're nearly identical). It's my dream to put as much control over the character, not just what it looks like, but how it works, into the hands of the players.

There's a long way to go. I don't expect us to get there right away (Well, I'm actually pretty disappointed that "That other Super Hero MMO based on the tabletop game that all the devs used to play" didn't do this outright... it's what it should have been... grumble grumble grumble). But as long as our developers keep bringing us closer to the ideal in my vision, I'll hold on and keep playing (and probably keep nagging about what I think could be better)... As long as somebody else doesn't come along and offer exactly what I'm asking for, like some sorta GURPS Online or something...