ClawsandEffect

A lot of it also has more to do with how you are viewed by the public than how your character views themselves.

A hero who starts doing bad things for the right reasons will be viewed by the general populous as being a vigilante, because they haven't quite crossed that line into being a villain. Once you start killing indiscriminately for your own ends, or letting people die so you can profit from it, the public is going to see you as a villain, regardless of what you have to say about it.

There's not going to be any "Oh, Fireguy let a bunch of innocent people die so he could make off with some stolen property, what a rogue!"

If the public thought of you as a hero before, and you start doing things like that, chances are they aren't going to see a difference between Villain and Rogue. They aren't really going to care what you call yourself, they've already made up their mind about you. In their book, you've turned your back on everything you formerly stood for, and that makes you a villain.

As far as the other direction goes, starting as a villain: other villains will start trusting you less when you display a sense of morals. You can still call yourself whatever you want, but how THEY see you is what determines where you fall in it. You start saving people's lives when you could be profiting from their deaths, chances are the other villains will start calling you variations of "goody two shoes" and assorted badguyisms.

The Hero-Vigilante-Villain, and Villain-Rogue-Hero paths seem to me to be much more about how other people see you than how you see yourself.

I had an issue with the endurance consumption of them, so I quit using them.

I don't think I've even claimed the vet attacks on my last 10 characters.

But I didn't feel it was worth a forum post complaining that they are useless, because they aren't. They just don't mesh well with my playstyle.

Anyone who complains that something is useless, yet continues to use it, deserves any ridicule they may receive.

I have about 22 actively played characters.

I honestly don't remember if I ever used the second build on any of them, so lets just call that "none"

Doesn't look like this thread is having the desired result. Since very few people seem to actually use the second build, what is the justification for handing out freespecs for it?

I mean, they ALREADY hand out freespecs to characters that are completely unaffected by any changes that may have been made. If Fireball gets changed, your Energy/Energy blaster gets a freespec, even though the change has no effect on him at all. They could datamine and only give freespecs to characters impacted by any changes.

Be glad they don't.

Katana/Dark will be an AV soloing beast. DB/DA is solid, but Kat/DA is the better combo.

Both of them will suck in PvP. Just throwing that out there. I have a Broadsword/DA that I've dabbled in PvP with and he drops way too much. Largely due to the fact that Dark Armor's heal requires targets in melee range of you, and no one is going to just stand there and let you heal off them.

When I asked for advice for a Defender, I was told to skip Aim because I wouldn't get much mileage out of it compared to other things I could take. From what I've seen, that is actually fairly common advice for Defenders.

When I asked for advice for a Corruptor, I was told that Aim was optional because Corruptors don't get Build Up to stack it with.

To my sense of balance, it makes sense to leave a power out of a set when 2 out of 3 ATs it is available on will skip it a lot of the time.

Defenders and Corruptors are stuck with the craptastic Energy Blast, which actually isn't a bad set for blasters.

Ice Blast works a bit better for Corruptors, because of Scourge in that case (I KNOW Ice Storm and Blizzard both scourge per tick, unless they changed that recently)

I think Sonic probably WAS intended more for Defenders and Corruptors than blasters, because they both get more out of it.

Blasters get more out of almost every blast set shared among the 3 ATs with ranged attack sets. It's only fair that something come along that the other 2 get more out of.

Intentionally or not, certain sets end up being better for certain ATs.

In fact I disagree with who Willpower works best for: I think it works best for brutes, they have the same HP cap as tanks (or did until i18), and the weak taunt aura isn't as big a deal for them, because they aren't expected to hold agro all the time.

Shield Defense works better for scrappers because they get more benefit from damage buffs.

Invulnerability works best for tanks, because they have higher bases for defense and resistance, making it easier for them to make it nearly unkillable.

And apparently Dual Pistols works better for Defenders and Corruptors because it lacks Aim (which they don't really need) and has secondary effects that synergize better. Blasters don't really have any powersets that synergize with DP all that great, but the other 2 have many that do.

I did have another thing occur to me that may explain why Dual Pistols didn't get Aim in the first place. It's kind of a radical idea, so bear with me here:

Maybe Dual Pistols wasn't designed with blasters in mind (gasp!)

I recall hearing something quite a while back that Dual Pistols was going to be a Corruptor set first, and then proliferated later. If that was tru at one point, it could very well be that it was designed to work best when used by a corruptor.

It makes sense when you look at the set:

1) It's AoEs are all DoT, which benefits greatly from Scourge.

2) It has secondary effects in it that are underpowered on a blaster, but stack very nicely with effects in Corruptor secondaries. The -dam in Chem rounds doesn't do much for blasters, because they have nothing to stack with it, but it stacks VERY nicely with Enervating Field, Darkest Night, Siphon Power, and Benumb, among other powers I can't think of right now. Same with the slow effect in Ice rounds, only one blaster secondary can really leverage it, but it stacks nicely with a lot of Corruptor and Defender powers.

3)It doesn't have Aim, because most Corruptors and Defenders don't need it, having either better ways to increase damage output, or less need to due to more team oriented focus.

4) It's nuke doesn't crash your endurance, making it ideal for those powersets that have toggles in them you don't want dropping (Rad's toggles, Darkest Night, Disruption Field, Dispersion Bubble, etc.) It's PBAoE nature also makes it a wonderful pairing with Fulcrum Shift, in case your Defender wants to actually deal some damage once in a while.

5) The variety of debuffs it offers means they stack very well with other DP users, something that is much more commonly done with defenders and corruptors than blasters. (Not that all blaster teams never happen, they just aren't as common)

*Shrug*

Fine.

Aim is going to make the set slightly less mediocre, and once you get it, you are very unlikely to ever get anything else, even if it doesn't fix the problem.

If the set gets Aim, and I start seeing people saying "Hey, we got Aim, why does Dual Pistols STILL suck?!" I'm going to laugh, because you will have gotten exactly what you wanted and it didn't fix anything.

So, don't complain if you get your precious Aim and the set still blows because that wasn't what it needed to fix it.