Dual Pistols, possible solutions.

I don't think anyone will say that DP is a terrible set. I think nearly all will agree that a few minor changes could really make it shine. I have a few I'd like to purpose to you all today.

1. Incendiary Ammunition (Part 1)

Choice is fun, and unfortunately Incendiary Ammunition often feels like it takes the choice from Swap Ammo away. To remain competitive in terms of damage with most other sets, you're forced into using IA, and I'd wager that most will use it over cryo or chem for that specific reason.

What happens when someone gets shot? They bleed. I propose the removal of the added damage effect from Incendiary Ammunition, and instead add it as a "bleed" DoT effect to all of DP's powers.

This will have several effects on the set as a whole. First, adding the bleed effect regardless of ammo type is an easy way to increase DP's damage output, without increasing it's burst potential in PVE/PVP. This will bring it more in line with other blast sets.

Second, removing the damage component from Swap Ammo suddenly frees up a lot of choice in the power. People aren't forced into the mindset of "Damage is King" anymore. But what of the fate of Incendiary Ammunition?

Incendiary Ammunition (Part 2)

What do people do when trapped in burning buildings? Cower in the corner. I propose that instead of a damage component, Incendiary Ammunition should add a short term Mag1 fear effect to shots, with longer animation time powers having a longer fear duration. The stacking of the fear effect, when it eventually overcomes the target's resistance, could cause them to cower until enough stacks fall off that the enemy is able to attack again.

Even if most of the time the target's fear effect ends before or shortly after the next pistol power finishes animating, the time that the target spent cowering was time spent not attacking. This sort of idea runs along the same lines as the rest of the Swap Ammo choices, adding soft control, and making it Mag1 will keep the effect from becoming too powerful. With people no longer being forced to IA to compete in damage, suddenly Swap Ammo becomes possibly the coolest thematic power in the game, allowing you to tailor your ammo choice to situation, or character concept.

The basic premise here is taken from the idea that, if there's an option to cause more damage, most people will take it, even if it's not necessarily fun.

2. Redraw

As a set with mostly longer animation times, DP is affected more by redraw than most weapon sets. I propose the redraw from the set be removed entirely to compensate for its greater than average animations. Pistols are small, they're not two swords, not a battle axe, and certainly not a beam rifle/assault rifle. You can climb a ladder with pistols in your hands, after all. The removal of redraw from this set wouldn't affect characters that use dual weapon sets either, as those sets already have redraw built in. Meaning the pistol character with two weapon sets (TA/DP for example) will still have to deal with redraw regardless.

Now having said all that, this is going under the assumption that redraw is built into weapon sets ONLY. It may be that the game is coded to remove all weapons from the player character as soon as a power from another set is activated. This could have been caused by not considering redraw an issue when the game was originally designed, meaning removing it from dual pistols would require an entire revamp of the way powers work. If that is the case, I won't hold my breath .

Those changes could really round out the set, as it has great potential, a cool idea, and some of the best looking animations in the game. If you've made it this far, thanks for checking out my ideas. Let me know what you guys think!

Cheers,
Rhio

I'm beginning to think I should have put this in a different forum .

I don't agree with the incendiary ammo changes. The bleed damage would likely be lethal damtype - not an improvement. And Mag 1 fear would not actually do anything (you need Mag 2 to affect minions, Mag 3 to affect Lt, and Mag 4 for bosses).

Damage is king because damage is a versatile, usually permanent, and fairly universal solution. If you want to get people out of that mindset, then you need to offer competitive alternatives that are equally powerful and versatile.

Personally I'd make Cryo ammo proc a chance to hold on all attacks, and double the -Dmg on chem rounds to -20% dmg a shot. I'd also make swap ammo change 100% of the damtype into the selected element, up from 30% currently. That might actually get people swapping ammo to deal with elemental weaknesses or resistances.

I would love for redraw to be gone - but given that BAB tried to eliminate it and couldn't, I'm resigned to it being some sort of fundamental limitation in the game engine. Instead, I think DP would do well with just an animation time tweak (in particular, reducing Exec shot's cast time, the second longest of any T3 blast in the game) and shortening the nuke's recharge to match that of Rain of Arrows. Archery gets a ToHit bonus (above and beyond the one that all weapon sets get), built-in endurance reduction, 80ft range on its T3 blast, and yet its nuke recharges shorter and is usable from range. That's an imbalance however one looks at it.

You should probably have posted it in the Archtypes and Powers section.

Dual pistols is easy to fix:

1) Increase base damage by 10%.
2) Put the secondary effects for ammo type into the tier 1 power.
3) Decrease the animation times of all powers T3 and higher by 25% (and PLEASE make Malta/Wild West style animations available when the animation times are decreased)
4) Switch the damage ratio of lethal to elemental from 70/30 to 30/70
5) Increase the secondary effects of each ammo type by 50% (including the extra damage component in incendiary)
6) Reduce the recharge time of the T9 power to 60 seconds OR increase the base damage by 50%, make the damage ratio and types 25% lethal, 25% fire, 25% cold, and 25% toxic, and have it apply full value secondary effects of each ammo type to each target hit. (If its going to look like Death Blossom it should work like Death Blossom)

I think you might be on to something.

Incendiary, damage is king, etc., etc. is definitely a good point, and I think most would agree. But I think it's actually a symptom of a deeper problem, namely, that dual pistols "paid" for ammo swapping by losing Aim, that is, by losing some burst damage capability. If players are often using Incendiary 24/7, that means players are just trying to mitigate the loss of Aim's added damage, and are uninterested in the supposed benefits of the other ammo types. That is, they're settling for Incendiary but really wish they had Aim instead.

So what would I do?

Make Swap Ammo worth the loss of Aim. Make the different ammo types do lots of their exotic damage types, fire, cold or toxic, not just mostly lethal with a bit of exotic mixed in. Make the secondary effects of those cryo and chemical rounds nasty. Indeed, make the secondary effects of the lethal rounds nasty too, since you've lost Aim whether you use the special rounds or not. Also, add the secondary effects to the tier 1 attack "Pistols", since the tier 1 attack has lost the benefit of Aim just as much as the other tiers.

It's not only that Rigel. Because of the way that Dual pistols is set up you can really ONLY effectively slot secondary effects for one type of ammo (and maybe not even then if you want the 6th bonus of an invention set). That in essence locks you into using just one type of ammo, defeating the purpose of the swap.

I actually usually use the default lethal ammo so I get the -resist effect from peircing rounds (the other ammo types don't do -resist from that power). In most teams I'm on that's going to add more damage then my weak little fire attacks.

Eh. I have a Pistols blaster who I love dearly, and I honestly don't think the set needs much.

1. Improve the animation times of Empty Clips, Bullet Rain and Executioner's Shot. They're all too long at the moment (note that this has been mentioned as something the devs are aware of already).

2. Give us a reason to use something other than Incendiary Ammunition. The debuffs are too minor to care about, and the necessity of using Incendiary rounds to bring damage output up to par means that there's no reason to ever use the others at all.

That's really all it would take.

Let players use two ammo types at the same time, with huge diminishing returns for using the same ammo type twice. Super offense? Incen/Standard! Mega mitigation? Cryo/chem! Be a bit more Balanced? Mix up cryo and chem with standard or incen depending on what you're fighting.

I've gotta say, I don't find that 2Gun really needs fixing, except perhaps to allow a choice of a different animation style like they did a while back for several other powers. Otherwise, it seems pretty well balanced. Is the best set ever, no. Is it really underperforming in some way, not really, that I can see. So then, I'd suggest the only thing it needs is the aesthetics tweaked, to allow for it to appeal to people who like the idea of handguns, but aren't gun-fu fans.