Moonlighter

I made a character on an alternate computer with lower graphics setting using the Armor Plate settings. When I made the character I noticed the updated Armor Plate pieces had this cool reflective quality that worked well to make the character look like Brass. I liked it.

I got home to my high end machine and started playing with my friends and I noticed the Armor Plate pieces were no longer reflective. I started looking into why; visiting the tailor, changing graphic settings, etc.

What I found is if I turn off Environment Reflections under my graphics settings options my character once again looks reflective! Wait, that's totally counter intuitive to me. Why would the Environment Reflections options turn my costume pieces non reflective?

I *love* the sewer trial. It's fast, fun and gives good boosts that remove the tedium from low level play.

I also haven't had any problems either joining or forming teams for Posi 1 and 2 recently so I don't see the problem with here. I even formed a Synapse team of 8 with no sewer trial interference. If I can form a team with no issues for a mind bogglingly bad TF like Synapse I see no detriment from the sewer trial.

(This is on Virtue in case you are wondering.)

In my mind the sewer trial is awesome and I haven't seen any detriment except we don't have to do the crappy King's Row stuff.

Here's my problem with Regen.

Because it requires so much relative time activating defenses it is the only secondary that actively reduces my damage output.

Every other set has at least one power that boosts offensive capability, or a taunt aura to prevent you from chasing runners which I consider an offensive boost. Even SR has Quickness. Meanwhile the only offensive advantage Regen used to have, extra Stamina, has been watered down by inherit fitness, IO and Alpha endurance management tools, and even the sewer trial Endurance buff.

While most soft sets have increased DPS as the reward for exceptional builds and playstyle, Regen still forces lowered damage with no real benefit.

Don't underestimate the of Frozen armor. Not only does it help cap S/L (~15 fully slotted) but it also accepts Resistance IOs, meaning you can slot Steadfast +3% defense (and the PvP +3% defense if you are hardcore enough to get it) without taking Boxing/Tough/Weave.

This allows you to work on capping S/L with only Combat Jumping and Manuevers, giving you Tactics for cheap S/L slots and allowing you to take both Hasten and Aid Self.

I hate the blocky graphic though and always go for Scorpion Shield even though it's annoying as heck to slog over villain side to procure it. But if it fits your concept it's a very good power.

I've never had my pets bug out.

As for the AI being "broken" - it's annoying but it isn't broken. The ranged pets seem to have a cycle of attacks they use, the lowest priority being the lone melee attack. When all other attacks have cycled the pets will resort to the melee attack. This can be dangerous for them if you need them huddled in your force field or something.

The way to combat this is to get a feel for the rhythm of their cycle and click the "gather to me and ignore enemies" option when it's time for the melee attack, or when one starts running forward and then tap "Attack the selected target" option followed immediately by the "Defend" option.

If you get the timing right the F1... F2 F3 move will essentially allow them to reset their attack chain and start at the beginning of their ranged attack cycle again. Each pet type has a different delay between F1 and F2 to let the first ranged attack recharge.

First, to get this combo to work you will really need to build towards survivability. You best damaging combo will be Soul Drain + Nuke, followed by Soul Drain + Bullet Rain + Empty Clips when that is down. As such, there will be like 5-6 seconds where you will be standing in the middle of the spawn animating your AoE damage.

You might be able to fully slot Dark Pit and work on ToHit buffs to get it up every 18 seconds or so to mitigate minion damage, but Lts. and higher are still going to turn and try to hammer you.

DP is bad enough without needing to set up Soul Drain. If I was going with this combo I'd push for soft capped S/L and Energy defenses at the very least. Then you can at least farm specific groups fairly well. Until then you will be running on base difficulty and will probably want to pick up Aid Self to get you through.

I love Two Pistols conceptually, but I hate the goofy animations. But that's personal preference.

My problems with the set:

~ Your third single target attack will either be Piercing Rounds or Executioner's Shot and both have atrociously long animations. (The first two single target attacks are standard length for blast sets.)

~ Your cone and targeted AoE attacks are both long animation DoT attacks. So while Fire Blast, Archery, Dark and similar sets lay out the AoE damage before the enemies return fire allowing you to already be moving or starting a heal, the Dual Pistols character will be eating the alpha return fire while the first AoE is still animating. This is my biggest complaint of the set I think. I'd be fine with it if either Empty Clips or Bullet Rain had guaranteed knock down to mitigate return damage.

~ No Aim.

~ Redraw. If they could fix this just for secondary powers it would help.

~ The crashless nuke is great, but it requires you to be in the middle of the pack which is a disad.

~ Losing my -Res from Piercing for running Fire ammo is annoying. (Fortunately I hate the animation so much I tend to skip the power.)

~ You need Swap Ammo to bring your damage up to par, so basically you don't get Aim so you can waste a power to bring your damage on par with middle of the road sets. To put it another way, if the set was changed to have extra Fire damage and the chance to knock down it still wouldn't be as good as Archery or Dark.

Let's not compare the set to Fire since a lot of people just love the raw damage. Let's compare the set to Archery which I think is a fair comparison. Archery is awesome. It has a lot of little perks like reduced recharge on the tier 1 attack and full 80 range on the tier 3 attack. These, combined with the crashless nuke that can be used at range, make up for redraw. In addition, the Archery standard AoEs fire fast and don't agro enemies until the damage is actually delivered. I can get off my cone while kiting, for example, which I can't do with Empty Clips.

After playing Archery I go back to Dual Pistols and the set just fights against itself. I take so much more return fire because of the long animation AoEs that deliver DoT and the point blank nuke.



Now some advantages of Dual Pistols that aren't obvious.

~ Because it has so many secondary effects and accepts so many weird sets into its attacks there are interesting IO set bonus games you can play by slotting knockback, slow, and similar sets.

~ It is sometimes useful having a single target control power that can be a disorient or a Hold, especially where Hold sets have some good set bonuses for two or three slots.

~ If you can survive a point blank alpha the crashless nuke is awesome.

~ Being able to sacrifice damage for knockdown is an interesting game choice.

If I had room on a build for fun powers I'd take Spring Attack with decent recharge just to teleport out of stacked Caltrops in the Knives tip mission when running at higher settings. The damage is bonus.

Thoughts:

Brutes: Increased Fury generation from attacks.

Scrappers: Increased *damage* from criticals, as opposed to increased critical chance.

Tanks: Bruising effect increased.

I'm working on a Broadsword/Fire Brute, and I am toying with the idea of soft capping both melee (with one use of Parry) and S/L. I can fill the holes with 90% resistance to Fire and decent E/N defense.

Do I even need Headsplitter? If Mid's is to be believed the DPArc is mediocre at best, no better than Disembowel or Hack. So far I have had limited success lining up more than one target consistently. I have much better luck just using Whirling, Slice and Burn with Parry for AoE. I am finding limited use for Headsplitter.

If I dropped it I could pick up Slash or Air Superiority for a Kinetic Combat mule, soft capping S/L in the process.

With Hasten up I am thinking my single target attack chain would be something like:

Parry -> Hack -> Disembowel, throwing in Burn as it recharges.

Most of the time I would be skipping Hack and Parry for Slice and Whirling Sword. The only use for Headsplitter would be replacing Parry every other chain for 58 DPArc instead of 51 for Parry. I can't justify the slots in Headpslitter unless it replaces Slice.

Am I crazy? Do people regularly get multiple opponents in Headsplitter? What do people use as a single target attack chain?