Dual Pistols buff rumors true?

I am still fond of speeding up the animation on Executioner's Shot.

I'd like to see Excecutioner's Shot have no range penalty. Similar to archery, it'd be a nice boon to have full range with the ST attacks in exchange for redraw and damage late in the animations.

Oh.. and I'd like to see Peircing Rounds give it's -resist in other the forms besides just lethal.

Would a buff encourage more people to make dual pistol builds?

Would that increase the value of the sought after Maelstroms pistols costume recipe?

What is the drop rate of that anyway?

I vote making the set a more run and gun set... no more rooted (or less rooted) on all the powers, to me that would make the set much more playable.

Just as an FYI, a poster in the open beta process for Dual Pistols broke down the animation for Executioner's Shot, and there's really not anything that can be sped up or trimmed out that doesn't drastically affect the look of the animation. And if you start taking out parts of the animation (a pistol spin, etc.) you WILL get into the territory of ticking off people that like that part of the animation. Like me, for instance.

And as the numbers earlier on this thread showed, Executioner's is not really that dramatically different in animation time from the other tier 3 heavy ST blasts. As with other things in the set, it's not the best, but on par... something that people always seem to ignore.

At most, I'd agree that Swap Ammo could use more viability. The debuffs of cryo and toxic aren't enough to be worth it to a Blaster player, though it seems/sounds like they are closer for a Defender/Corr. Not sure if adding a DoT to them is the best solution, or upping the debuff amounts, or even making particular adjustments for each AT (if that's even possible). No matter what, I just want each ammo type to have a viable time to use it. Fire and lethal are about it for Blasters, which is kind of a shame.

I think, from my experance thus far (I have a level 44 DP/Dev Blaster) that maybe a slight damage buff is warrented, but I think making the Swap Ammo abilities should be made a little more potent (Even the Fire Ammo's DoT) and give out more exotic damage. As in 50/50 rather than 70/30. Or, hell, even 30/70, with the bulk of the damage exotic.

That being said I still love the set. It's a lot of fun.

I'd be totally thrilled and completely satisfied if they just allowed an alternate animation. One that has all the same numbers, but looks less time-wastey.. I'd take the Malta Gunslingers as the model... Do that, and I'd call it all fixed and be thrilled..

I like the idea to increase Executioner's Shot's range, to be on par with Blazing Arrow. That in and of itself would be a boon to the set, and wouldn't touch the more sensitive numbers like damage and animation time. I mean, it's a bullet for crying out loud, 80 feet is nothing.

and doves fly out in slow motion

Well, I wrote out something longer with lots of numbers and comparisons... but the forum ate it . So here's the short version.

The downsides I see as fair in exchange for flexibility

• The set lacks aim.

• It has a commonly resisted damage type as part of all of its attacks. Remember that someone is attacked by an attack with multiple damage types they will use whatever defense value is highest.

• It has weaker secondary effects than the sets its ammo types model (Cryo Ammo has 3/4ths the slow/-rech and 4/5ths the duration of ice blast).* This is exacerbated by the fact that if you slot to enhance the secondary effects by one ammo type, those slots will be wasted when using a different ammo type.

• *Incendiary Rounds are not adding a reduced % of damage compared to the extra damage the Fire Blast set gets. This is acting as a crutch for the next problem while making them substantially more useful than the other ammo types. It should probably be reduced when/after other issues are fixed by maybe 1/3rd (or replaced with a different effect. Call them hellfire rounds and make them give a minor -res debuff or whatever).

• 70:30 Lethal:Elemental is low compared to other mixed damage sets (Ice Blast, Sonic Assault, and Energy Blast) which generally have 50-80% elemental (thanks to all the extra damage added by fire rounds, they get about a 54:46% lethal:elemental ratio). This also makes the different ammo types largely irrelevant when dealing with enemy resistances. 50:50 lethal:elemental seems like it would be fair.

• Damage is in line with low activation time powers, but the powers themselves have high activation times (see next section). Any time I suggest cutting an animation, be aware that I consider increasing the power's damage proportionally an equally legitimate (if less desirable) solution. This ties in with the next point.

• Standard (lethal) Rounds are not giving the same bonus with all attacks, which removes a tool for balancing. If they had a consistent effect, such as -def, other secondary effects such as knockback could be used to balance out individual powers instead of relying only on damage/animation/recharge.

• Pistols - attacks with Incendiary/Cryo/Chemical Ammo need to apply their secondary effects. There isn't really anything about this power that seems to warrant not having them.

• Empty Clips - has the animation time of a high damage cone (2.5s breath attacks), the damage of a fast cone (1s), and lacks the extra secondary effects/width/depth of medium cast time cones (2s). Either cut the cast time by 1-1.5s or cut the animation by ~0.5s and make the cone bigger (or use secondary effects. See comments on Standard Ammo in previous section).

• Chemical Ammo - since the debuff has a small magnitude and duration it's hard to stack it to useful levels for a blaster, and requires full time attention to keep at a useful level as a corruptor or defender (in which case you might as well use Incendiary Ammo). If animation times get reduced that will solve this problem. If not, I think a small magnitude buff is warranted (going by the reasoning that magnitude would increase the net effect more gradually than a duration buff). Edit: It would be interesting (not critical though) to give it a small -special effect (the opposite of power boost) or -regen to make it a bit more distinct from cryo ammo as they both generally fall under the category of damage mitigation.

• Bullet Rain - has a longer animation (2.5s) than rain patch powers (2s), and the damage of a fast cast aoe (1s). In this case I think the best solution is to reduce the animation time by 1-1.5s. If there's one power that I think is best to fix by changing the animation time, this is it.

• Executioner's Shot - Damage is in line with similar powers, but the animation is far too long. It needs to be faster to be part of a single target damage chain (Shout from Sonic Assault need the same thing). Either cut the animation by 1-1.5s to bring it in line with Blaze and Bitter Ice Blast, or cut the animation by a 0.5s and add a strong secondary effect to bring it in line with the likes of Cosmic Burst and Will Domination.

• Piercing Rounds - For some reason they're getting a smaller boost from Incendiary Ammo compared to other attacks. It's kind of a weird power, the ranged version of a melee cone, but I thinking having a long animation on it is fine. Kind of a wish list thing, but it would be nice if they did -res with all damage types instead of or in addition to their regular secondary effects. As someone who generally enjoys gun-fu and the animations in this set, even I think this animation looks absurd

• Dual Wield
• Suppressive Fire
• Hail Of Bullets
• Cryo Ammo (aside from not having a high enough % cold damage)

You can slot endoplasms/gravitons/calcites or peroxisomes/glutons/amethysts to buff both stun and hold durations. It would be nice if they added a universal mez duration to/do/so/io though.