PleaseRecycle
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Without knowing exactly how interested in IOs you are, I'll simply say that the impeded swiftness damage proc is perhaps more useful in tar patch than in any other power in the game. Particularly if you're planning a high recharge build, having two and briefly three tar patches out at once is not only doable but desirable. Each one lasts 45 seconds, which is five chances to proc over its lifetime. The only power that can throw out more procs than that is quicksand, which you aren't going to be spamming as you will tar patch in optimal circumstances.
It's not that all of your tar patches are going to be saturated with 16 enemies at all times, unless you do nothing but farm, but I feel that one of dark's strengths is its ability to go absolutely bananas on damage procs in the course of slotting things for good values and set bonuses. Fearsome stare, dark servant, tar patch and darkest night all put out scads of proc chances in realistic situations. Why not take advantage?
As for ice storm, if you've got the kind of global recharge to have permanent double tar patch, ice storm is pretty much taken care of even with just five pieces of posi's. I was going to say that the impeded swiftness proc gets less mileage here because the power's "uptime" isn't as extreme as that of tar patch, but if you did go all procs all the time on the dark side, why not spread that love around? The one place where the proc would be a waste is blizzard since blizzard kills everything without any help in the first place.
edit: I guess I could have read that last post more thoroughly, eh? I have an ice/dark corruptor who is basically non-ioed, so I'm approaching dark from the perspective of my dark/sonic defender who is about eight seconds off of permahasten. 100% global rech before hasten, more than I actually needed. Mine is sitting at about 25% ranged defense with maneuvers and CJ, lower than I would typically aim for on a squishy but obviously dark is something of a special case. One application of fearsome stare, darkest night, or dark servant tends to ensure your safety against anything up to and including AVs.
I wouldn't put procs into single target attacks on a defender or corruptor unless they're part of the set you're slotting. Apocalypse, entropic chaos, and so on, since you need them for the recharge bonus anyway. That's mainly because I don't typically cycle a single target chain on anything but the hardest of targets. If you plan to solo AVs, it may be worth it. I also would advise that you try frost breath out on test or on a second build before committing to it, because even on my un-ioed ice/dark I usually felt like my time was better spent doing something other than fiddling with a short-ish cone and that ice storm was pretty much aoe enough. Its recharge is only sixty seconds base and if you're pulling new groups back to your tar patch with darkest night as the previous group is in the process of dying, such that there's always more targets being stormed, its damage is not dissimilar to rain of arrows.
But that's, like, my opinion, man. Maybe you'd get more mileage out of frost breath than I have. In any case, it's a great combo and it's hard to go too far wrong regardless of what strengths you focus on. -
Executioner's shot is on a 10 second recharge and does about the same DPA as pistols and dual wield, which is my main problem with it. You can get approximately the same damage as it provides by simply not taking it at all, filling in with piercing rounds. Piercing rounds takes twice as long to recharge, thus not fitting into a gapless chain, but is also a cone, has a more useful normal rounds effect, and does the same DPA as executioner's shot from twice the range. It isn't that executioner's shot is harming you if you use it, necessarily, but elsewhere in the set there are better powers that do its job more effectively.
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If you're shooting for ranged defense and recharge, which I can't imagine not doing on a squishy myself, a full set of cloud senses is far and away the best slotting for both fearsome stare and dark servant. I'd call it overkill in darkest night, however, and it is the most expensive set available for the purpose. So, so worth it, however. There's always some way to extract a slot from something else for bonuses that good.
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Quote:We've made much of the comparison to fire blast but I think it would do us some good to compare DP and archery. It seems to me based on the rooting around city of data I've already done that archery's primary advantage over DP is that rain of arrows recharges in 60 seconds rather than 120. It does not have a commanding lead in single target damage, if indeed it has a lead at all, it too has at least one utterly useless power, it does almost exclusively lethal damage, and I would say it relies much more heavily on its tier 9 than DP does to put out great aoe numbers.Originally Posted by Moonlighter
If the game is balanced with Fire and Archery blasters, the game would be fine fixing some of the DP issues.Certainly not. I use those ammo types for graphical variety when putting hail of bullets on auto while marketing*. However, as others have said in this thread and elsewhere, corruptors and defenders can leverage those ammo types to much greater effect. Why should they be improved for blasters when they are already quite good for debuff focused ATs? Take any other blaster debuff and it too is weaker than the defender version of the same set. It just doesn't seem like a big issue to me.Quote:Just to be clear, during your game play you use Cold and Acid ammo in equal amounts to Fire and Normal? I see no reason not to add typed defense to hail of bullets if it's going to have defense at all, sure, but if they don't get around to adding it for a while it isn't like the power is unusable in the mean time.Quote:The defense granted by our nuke doesn't work with our own defense powers. This is another thing I file under "better on debuff ATs" who also, I might add, may get more use out of normal rounds' knockback since they have less hp and tend to do less damage and thus be at greater risk to enemy melee.Quote:Piercing Rounds -Res gets messed up by other ammo types making it necessary in a group to ammo dance if you want to give the -Res benefit to your team mates (and you should). Every set has its albatross, one way or another...Quote:IMO Executioner's Shot could use some love, but the opinion on that seems to vary.
*may not actually occur -
Empty clips with inferno rounds, as we thoroughly established as being the relevant ammo type to compare earlier in the thread, hits significantly harder than every blaster cone except electron haze, frost breath, and fire breath. It has the same sized cone as every blaster cone other than howl and fistful. The one measure where you can even attempt to declare it lacking would be DPA and yet it beats howl on that front as well.
As for the set's overall performance, I suggest you read the thread, you may learn some new things about the strengths you didn't know your pistol blaster had. -
I don't especially care for crashy nukes but given how often my blaster, corruptor and even defender teammates tend to use them I can't imagine that developer datamining would find them to be underused or underperforming. Would it be nice if they were crashless? Well, maybe? As that situation is a counterfactual, it's up to your own whims to guess whether the devs would simply be content to remove the crash or whether the nukes, or the sets as a whole, would pay for it in some other way.
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Quote:Not if you like the game being balanced.Originally Posted by Lakevren_
Honestly, DP could be much better.Cool, I guess you also hate every other blaster cone since empty clips is pretty much dead average.Quote:
I hate empty clips simply due to the small cone and range and puny damage. Aside from these benefits, it completely lacks benefits!Quote:swap ammo ... does not give good enough benefits other than perhaps fire and normal ammo I was kind of hoping we'd moved past some of this by now but clearly not.Quote:Of course this is just repeating every one elses' complaints. Not really.Quote:of course I'd get better results on a fire blaster, but I really should not have to say that. -
Ah okay, I guess I was remembering the salad days of the first mission of the alpha slot arc, and probably have to mix in *aoe of choice* when speed boosted. It still gives better results while mezzed than most sets and still does mid-range single target with two powers and not a heck of a lot of recharge. Even with a power to spare I'd most likely skip executioner's shot if I were shooting for single target performance as I don't feel that getting close is particularly worth it since the rest of the set does function so well at 80+ feet, 50-60 when emptying one's clips.
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Quote:Thanks to the direction we've spiraled off into I think I can now articulate a decent case for DP's single target damage.Originally Posted by StrykerX
It's certainly outside the realm of how most people play, and it's far outside of what the game is actually balanced around (SOs).
I personally believe all Blasters (except possibly pure TF builds) need a solid single target attack chain. You need your tier 1 and tier 2 blasts because you will be mezzed frequently (again, unless you are only teaming) and you need something else with good DPA to fill out a chain because AVs, EBs, bosses, and so on are targets that need high DPS. Executioner's Shot is actually about on par with Power Burst if using Incendiary ammo, and I can't imagine not using Power Burst on my Energy/Energy Blaster.
After all, you'll never have an AoE-only attack chain so you need to be doing something while waiting for Empty Clips and Bullet Rain to recharge, and Piercing Rounds isn't going to fill that gap by itself. You'll pretty much have to be using at least Dual Wield unless you want to run in and punch stuff...
DP is one of the four sets that has a tier 2 blast recharging in six seconds or less, base. The others are archery, fire, and sonic. Though fire is the undisputed champ of single target, its tier 2 blast and archery's are at the bottom of the barrel for blaster sets as they were never normalized with the rest of them and do less than one damage scale per second. Just as fire makes up for this with blaze, to a lesser extent archery makes up for it with blazing arrow, yet without doing the math I have a feeling that blazing arrow simply pushes archery closer to breaking even, rather than zipping ahead. We'll get to sonic in a moment.
DP's first two blasts, like most other sets, do almost exactly one damage scale per second. This means that it is the only set with a full power tier 2 blast that does not recharge in eight seconds. The reason this makes any difference becomes more clear when we look at the average tier 3 blast.
Sonic, rad, and energy do what amounts to slightly more than one damage scale per second, and by slightly I mean about five percent. Elec and assault rifle don't have tier 3 blasts to begin with. Archery's tier 3 blast does a decent chunk more than that but it's tier 1 and tier 2 blasts do noticeably less than 1 ds/sec so the advantage diminishes. The only sets with tier 3s clearly worth maximizing the use of are archery, fire, ice and funnily enough, psy.
For the rest, dp included, the tier 3 does pretty much the same dpa as the tiers 1 and 2. To put it another way, their tier 3s do less than a non-purple proc's worth of average bonus damage. Now we come back to the recharge times. Any set can get its tier 1 back up fast enough to fire it back to back with the tier 2 with virtually no investment. The only sets that can get the tier 2 recharged fast enough to fire it back to back with the tier 1 with less than insane recharge are fire, archery, sonic, and dp. Fire wouldn't want to, archery wouldn't want to, I believe with blaster -res values sonic wouldn't want to chain just its tiers 1 and 2 either, and yet... dp kind of would.
And so it can! Sure it takes some ioing but my blaster is a speed boost away from having gapless tier 1 and 2 blasts, meaning if I could be bothered to buy some purples I'd be there, and I'd be doing basically the same single target damage as energy, sonic and rad, and better damage than assault rifle and elec. All of this with only two powers taken and slotted, and it also is the only set that can do full "standard" single target damage while mezzed.
That's better than a sharp stick in the eye, that is. -
Quote:It seems to me that the devs don't consider DPA as important as most players tend to, and I believe I can see why. Particularly with aoes, even if you have 150% global recharge before hasten, you will not have a gapless aoe chain just from your primary set. Alternate sources of good aoe are very limited for blasters - I don't know what PPPs they have access to but static discharge is the only "real" aoe available from a power pool, and aoes in assault sets have significant tradeoffs, largely being short range pbaoes.Originally Posted by Reiska
Even using Obitus' estimate of a 24% damage gain from fire rounds, all that happens with the fire rounds is that Bullet Rain ends up more or less on par with the other sets' targeted AoEs in damage, while Empty Clips is still awful. This would be fine, except that Dual Pistols gives up secondary effects to achieve this damage, and the other sets achieve this damage while still having their secondary effects.
What I can say for sure is that I don't support adjusting the actual damage of the attacks themselves - only the animation times of them, for that is where the actual problem lies.
Given all of that, animation time is unlikely to be a real factor in terms of the aoe output of almost any blaster. At 200% global recharge, only assault rifle has anything you could call a seamless aoe chain and mixing in outside aoes would only harm its dps as it would cause redraw. Dual pistols has the next most crashless aoes and can also only just chain them gaplessly at such a ridiculous level of recharge.
In that light, from the perspective of anticipating the total aoe damage output of a farming player, dual pistols is harmed by its animation times at total global recharges exceeding 200%. Fire blast, on the other hand, can never chain its aoes even at the recharge cap and would have to resort to using blaze as filler, I suppose. Even the worst "real" blaster aoe does more damage than blaze in the world of hypothetical saturation, of course, so having gaps in which to insert single target attacks is not particularly enviable.
Anyway, my point in all of this, I think, is that the devs probably care how many demons you can mow down with an insanely specialized build designed to do nothing but that, as that has a real impact on the game. Dual pistols is probably the second best set for the hypothetical perfect farmer because it can throw down the second most aoe damage overall ceteris paribus. If its aoe animation times were reduced, its farming potential would increase.
Of course, in actual gameplay with builds that range from fairly below average to well above average, dpa certainly does matter because you will often be facing enemies that are actually a threat to you and your being rooted in place is very helpful to them, so even if you could sit there chaining aoes all day you would still value quicker ones for survival's sake. All I'm saying is that edge cases do matter to game balance and people have done much crazier things to amass loot than stick a lot of recharge onto a blaster. Even with empty clips in particular being a relatively slow cone, I've found that dual pistols does not have unsurmountable survival issues when going full bore on aoe. -
Quote:Huh? The only set that does more than 1% more damage than pistols in its tier 1 is assault rifle, which does 8% more. Flares does 1% more, i.e. is identical for all practical purposes. Every other tier 1 blast does damage scale 1, same as Pistols. Archery and sonic do 16% less damage, though at least shriek is balanced by its resistance debuff.Originally Posted by Moonlighter
In addition, the tier one does less damage than comparable sets with no DoT or anything else to balance it. It also lacks the fast recharge of the Archery tier one.
I would argue that the recharge times of the tier 1 and 2 blasts don't matter very much because with moderate global recharge and hasten you can chain them together indefinitely on any set. I suppose it's an advantage at low levels.
Edit: Okay, it takes closer to perma-hasten recharge to chain them gaplessly, but that's hardly outside the realm of how people actually play. Didn't bother on my pistol blaster as I typically have things I would rather be doing than using my tier 1 and tier 2 blasts, the exception being while mezzed of course.
In response to Reiska, just how much of a damage bonus would you consider balanced? Without even turning on inferno rounds, or considering tier 9s, dual pistols has stronger aoe than energy, psy, sonic, elec and arguably ice. Turn on inferno rounds and it immediately gains, to use Obitus' low estimate, 24% beyond that. That isn't enough? -
Actually if people are going by mids numbers and mids neglects to mention the fire dot with inferno rounds, that might explain a lot of the negativity about dp's damage. In most cases, the dot is exactly the same as the dot of the corresponding fire blast attack, if applicable. Bullet rain, for example, hits for almost exactly the same damage as fireball, both of them packing a large dot with an 80% chance to proc.
That would also explain why people seem to be using the 206 base damage number for hail of bullets when, dot included, it's more like 266, for an average of something like 250. -
I'll give you executioner's shot. I took it and used it while I was leveling my blaster up and while it does look fantastic, dropping it was an extremely easy decision at high level. In my view, piercing rounds more than makes up for not having a "real" tier 3 blast, because it fills a very similar role but trades straight up single target power for what I would call a much more interesting, and much more complex, mechanic. I don't even use it for its -res but that's yet another layer to it that a conventional tier 3 blast simply doesn't have. But, I do see how many wouldn't feel that it was worth trying to make the most of a power that is only numerically comparable to blaze if you always hit two or three targets with it.
The reason that doesn't bother me is not that I don't care about min/maxing, I most certainly do. Blaze itself is a huge outlier, however. It has, as I understand it, the highest DPA of anything other than perhaps corruptor blizzard which for obviously reasons is beyond the scope of this discussion. So, if dual pistols lacks an answer to blaze, it's time to look at what perks you get instead. For me, hail of bullets is such a huge perk that jealous thoughts of fire blast are ne'er to be found dancing through the vacant meadows of my noggin.
In summation, does dp suffer if a tier 3 blast is a high priority for you? Sure, but if it isn't, you're good to go. -
Given the profundity of the misunderstanding of the basic functions of dual pistols, it seems to me that perhaps its real problem was one of timing. Not so much its animation times, more its time of availability.
If we compare the four newest sets, the only one that stands out from the others in its power level is demon summoning, a.k.a. "the shield defense of mastermind primaries." Essentially peerless, it has every good feature about any mastermind set, including a few brand new ones. Kinetic melee and electrical control, by contrast, are quite similar to dual pistols - not the best at everything, and requiring some finesse to leverage properly.
No one seems to mind that in the context of those two sets however. Why not? Probably because they've been around for half as long as dual pistols and demon summoning. Or, to look at it another way, because they weren't released concurrently with demon summoning, the "good" set of the lot.
What can be done about this, now that the dual pistols is bad meme has had time to become thoroughly entrenched on the forums? I don't know, how much does it cost to form an awareness campaign with the Ad Council? Probably a little more than is merited by a video game balance misunderstanding.
Oh well, I suppose the important thing is that those of us who bother to learn the intricacies of the set are rewarded for doing so, much as those who stray from the cloying hooks of nickelback and coldplay often stumble upon hidden gems off of the well-trodden path of the pop charts. -
While I have no idea what the hell your DB/WP scrapper has to do with anything, or how we can consider a bunch of random numbers taken from mids and ignoring inferno rounds to be relevant to the discussion, I was hoping someone would bring this up:Quote:The funny part is that you go on to ignore the fact that archery pays for this by way of its tier 1 and tier 2 blasts being straight up inferior to those from any other blaster set. Dual pistols' t1 and t2 blasts are so far ahead here that I don't think I would have brought this up if my goal were to show that dual pistols relatively underperforms for single target.Originally Posted by Reiska
Blazing Arrow and Rain of Arrows are in the same set. Fail.
Then we have the other last few posters making claims ranging from "trick arrow is a more damaging attack set than dual pistols" to the apparently popular belief that hail of bullets is weaker than either full auto or rain of arrows. We've even got one claim that hail not only does way less damage than either, but also hits way less (sic) targets! Fantastic.
I guess dual pistols must really be a below average set in the bizarro universe where any of this is true. I'm glad I don't live there.
Edit: Oh yes, and didn't someone say something about how dual pistols suffers because it requires you use so many more slots than other sets? It is literally the only blaster set where the maximum number of slots you could spend on the primary is 40 and not 45. -
All I have to add to that is that I hope you enjoy mass carnage, being a mere two levels away from my favorite power in the set and one of my favorites in the game.
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Long time listener, first time caller here. I have to say that the reason I'm still playing this game after six and a half years with occasional breaks is largely due to the sharp improvement in balance upon Castle's ascent to main guy who fiddles with powers-hood, and it only got better from there. Most of my current favorite sets were thoroughly Castled at one point or another. Great job at prolonging the addiction of myself and so many others!
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Quote:I do have boost range but I hardly ever use it except on tfs or to kill an especially obnoxious boss. It's great for soloing generals on Stop Romulus or killing the pylons on apex (and then on the battle maiden fight, it's phenomenal) but unless you actually need that kind of distance it's annoying in the same way aim is.Originally Posted by Obitus
To be fair, Energy Manipulation can turn just about any Primary blast set into a (comparatively) long-range damage dealer.I strongly disagree with this. The best reason why dp would not be better off for executioner's shot being good is that hail of bullets would be a crashy nuke instead. There is no way they would have allowed both of those in one set, and by now I hope you can tell which one I prefer. That's of course not the only way they could have shifted the balance of the set but given the overall performance of crashless nukes it seems to me far and away the most probable. Then there's the fact that I think having more range is more fun and if executioner's shot were good, piercing rounds would be harder to justify using as a staple power. Prima facie effectiveness at the measurable expense of fun!Quote:
As for whether Fire is penalized with respect to range, I confess I don't find your argument terribly convincing. Playstyles do differ and preferences vary, but I wonder: If Executioner's Shot were a carbon copy of Blaze, would you take it and use it every chance you get? I'm betting you would. So whether Dual Pistols is actually better suited to a long-range playstyle or not depends on how you choose to spin it. From where I'm sitting, the lack of a good tier-3, 40' attack isn't an advantage. As I see it blasters are almost always better off with aoe than blapping these days. On the other hand, in another thread I saw someone suggest the sonic/em combo and I imagine a chain of shriek -> scream -> energy punch -> shriek -> scream -> bone smasher would be rather bestial.Quote:There's not a whole lot of cannon in the glass cannon unless you specialize in burst AoE (which is admittedly very nice but usually requires a closer range at least some of the time), or unless you blap. Preferably both. Hover is perhaps the ultimate example of a power that is numerically advantageous in many cases that I could never stand to use. You lose so much maneuverability (even at the flight speed cap) compared to two slotted hurdle with cj that what you gain in safety and I suppose aoe ability seems hardly worth the loss in strategic contingencies. For one thing you're going to need a bind for hover, or perhaps a macro to power boost and then hover, apparently, in addition to the hopefully standard cj/ninja run bind. Maybe it's doable but I wouldn't feel nearly as confident in my ability to get over to the teammate that just went down and hit vengeance before he grumpily hosped or the lollygagging controller rezzed him. Or, to do a little bunny hopped circle around the room to distract my melee entourage so I'd have enough time to get back and fire off a resuscitation myself. I base this on typically being able to do that at least twice on a pick up 30 minute ITF.Quote:Hover is more of a judgment call, but I can't imagine rolling a ranged-DEF build without it. Doesn't mean you have to use it all the time; the point was that even at Hover speeds I don't find Blaze's range unworkable. The other point that occurs to me now is that Hover helps to prevent Fire Breath's activation time from forcing you into melee with angry mobs (as you noted earlier). Hover blasting is another thing that's made more comfortable by Energy Manipulation, too (Power Boost does, or at least used to, boost fly speed considerably.)
None of that has anything to do with dual pistols, but I find hoverblasting to be a baffling enough concept that I had to address it. -
Well yeah, full auto should be a couple points lower and hail should be a couple points higher, but might as well err on the side of modesty for dp.
I'm not sure why anyone would switch ammo types for a ten second -13% resistance effect when simply leaving inferno rounds on results in, as I recall, 30 extra base fire damage to the stuff that is hit? It takes more time to turn off and then turn back on inferno rounds than it does to line up two or three targets, doubling or tripling the already substantial damage (and increasing the chance of a posi's proc, no less). -
No argument with most of the above but I'd like to note that hail of bullets is actually the hardest hitting of the crashless nukes the majority of the time. It's possible to get unlucky and fail to kill a minion but you'd be unwise to bet on that happening on any given saturated use of the power. The average damages are: 180 for full auto, somewhere between 150 and 225 for rain of arrows, not sure because I'm not sure what triggers the third tick failing, and 250 for hail of bullets.
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Quote:Particularly for powers you don't actually intend to use, such as boxing and brawl, forget the triple enhancer from KC and just use the proc instead. It's pennies on the dollar, as it were.Originally Posted by Squishor8
Wow, how did Kin Combats get so pricey recently. I need to ticket farm like who to try and get them. They are going for 160mil a pop now. They were 40-60 like 3 weeks ago hehe. I still really like this build but have not put it in place. Is my end going to be okay with my chains here?
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Quote:You know what, it was stupid of me not to quote that previous post before the edit, because that really sums up the thrust of this discussion. You don't actually believe dual pistols is underpowered at all, you feel that it is in your interest to argue that it is so that the devs will be duped and buff it up to shield defense levels. I can see why you'd think that since they already threw you a bone with the absolutely senseless buff to hail of bullets, which was an amazing power when the set launched.Originally Posted by Moonlighter
Um, you're the one that brought up the Fire comparison. People are just responding to that.
The point isn't that the set sucks. My main blaster is DP. The point is that the AoE of the set is average for a blaster and doesn't, as you claim, make up for the other areas that are lacking.
My problems with this attitude are threefold. First, it's dishonest, because obviously dp is in no way underperforming. I like honesty because Mr. Rogers told me it was a good thing to do. Second, it presumes that the devs are stupid. I'd like to believe that this is false, and that their datamining means more to them than people carping about how the unspecified "numbers" are totally bad, man. They're so bad! It's obvious. Third, and this is the key part, it keeps people from playing the set because they think you're actually trying to give useful advice rather than simply making an idiot of yourself to lobby for powers changes. This is a problem because the set is fun and people play this game to have fun. I would actually argue that the set is more fun now than it would be if you had your way and all of the powers animated in .63 seconds.
There you go, looks like we all agree whether you're willing to admit it or not. -
Quote:If one person who would otherwise have been dissuaded by the non-stop hatefest on the forums tries and enjoys dual pistols, I'm satisfied. I was kind of tired of blasters myself before rolling up my own dp/em, but I've found it offers a long range, high aoe playstyle that other sets don't have in the same way, with hail of bullets always a tantalizing excuse to get personal for a moment.Originally Posted by Obitus
I don't want to get involved in a point-for-point comparison because I have very little personal experience with Dual Pistols. Actually, I'm encouraged to give them a try based largely on what you've said in this thread -- though frankly at this point I'm a little down on Blasters as an AT.There certainly is, and at this point I'm a little tired of fire blast bashing, so I'm happy to admit that I do in fact find it to be an excellent set that has no trouble doing aoe damage. I also find it extremely boring to play, for many of the same reasons I can't bring myself to even start a shield defense character. In a more perfect world than this, people would be able to look beyond the sets with obvious, lopsided strengths and discover that intelligent play can create unique, equally useful strengths in more nuanced sets, such as dual pistols.Quote:
There's a difference between having one attack that does huge AoE damage in ~2.9 seconds (Arcanatime), and having four attacks that each animate in that same ballpark period (ranging from 2.64 for Bullet Rain to 2.772 for Executioner's Shot). Rhetorical flourishes are fine and I don't wholly disagree with your point, but the distinction is worth noting in bold and underline. Good points both but if I have an extra slot in an attack, a proc is going in there. Not that gladiator's javelin is cheap either, but... As for hover, it'd be a lot more appealing if it didn't preclude jumping around like an imbecile with cj.Quote:FWIW, if you're willing to pay, five slots of Apocalypse with either a generic Range IO or a Centriole will give you 48-50 feet on Blaze, which I find more than adequate on a Hover Blaster. Yeah, I know aim is technically worth using in most cases, and I do have it on my fire blaster, I just don't like it. In normal enemy defense situations it's substantially weaker than popping a small red, it takes a power selection, and it requires you to bother to use it as often as it's up to validate its existence. I wouldn't say that dual pistols is a low-effort set to play well but I get much more enjoyment out of lining up good cones while avoiding the melee fan club I tend to accrue than I do out of constantly monitoring the availability of a only-just-worth-it damage buff.Quote:Aim
I can't decide if it's an unfair comparison or not to pit aim against swap ammo. If it isn't, well, inferno rounds are ludicrously powerful compared to aim and you get to set and forget, remembering to retoggle any time you experience an unexpected hitpoint depletion scenario. In this case, yeah, dp's attacks underperform for damage but make up for it with one of the best self buffs available to blasters, if not the best.
Alternately, we can take inferno rounds to be the baseline for dp in which case it lacks anything like aim but has damage that keeps pace with pretty much any set, by one metric or another. The one real complaint I can see is that dp's tier 3 blast is garbage, and yet instead of a snipe you get what amounts to an overpowered tier 3 blast that has a long recharge. Is that worse? I don't feel that it is, and I'm not sure why having a different layout than other sets inspires such ire in the hoi polloi.
Take it or leave it, really, but anyone who just looks at the values in mids and says "this sucks! fire or bust!" is missing out on the most unique set available to blasters. -
Moonlighter, you seem to be unaware that inferno rounds add a large amount of all-fire damage to every dp attack other than pistols and suppressive fire, and you seem to assume that this "high level blaster" leaves all of his or her powers unslotted for recharge. You also think it is ever a good idea to use a crashy nuke. Dunno what to tell you, man.Quote:You're correct of course, I was being hyperbolic. If dp is being panned for its slow attacks, fire should get the same treatment because its attack is slower than any of them. The only way for fire to be at all competitive in its aoe is to use that slow attack every time it's available, so... is fire overall quicker animating than dp? It sure is. Does that mean all of its powers animate quickly? Obviously not. Some people seem to have problems with this and I was driven to flippancy.Originally Posted by Obitus
I'm certainly no expert on Dual Pistols, but I gotta say, the dismissal of Fire Breath as glacially slow seems a little misplaced given that it's only marginally slower than Empty Clips, Executioner's Shot, Piercing Rounds, and even Bullet Rain.What I don't like about fire breath and blaze is that between the two of them, the fire blaster lives at close range, effectively melee range given the animation time of fire breath. I do enhance it for range which helps a great deal, but you simply can't enhance blaze's range while slotting it well. Now with cardiac core boost you do have an option there but I've found that fire is such an endurance-light set that it would be a waste to use the alpha slot's potential on such a niche application. On the other hand, it would alleviate one of my main problems with the set so maybe it's worth it.Quote:
And Fire Breath does significantly more damage than any of the above powers that have comparable area of effect. Significantly.
I can certainly understand that preferences will differ; some people just dislike Fire Breath -- its range, its sometimes awkward positioning requirements. Some builds will also have difficulty leveraging Rain of Fire as a bona-fide attack (it's really more of a soft control power for solo Blasters without some reliable means of keeping foes in the area). Inferno is clearly inferior to crashless nukes like Rain of Arrows and Hail of Bullets.Well, technically that combo is available every time build up is up. With aim it loses some punch, and even with permahasten you will cycle the combo at least twice with neither. Rain of fire is absolutely underrated and is one of the better powers in the set, but I find it hard to enjoy the blaster version knowing that corrs get to have their cake and eat it twice.Quote:So there's room to argue that Fire's on-paper AoE potential isn't realized in a lot of situations. If a given player gets more mileage out of Dual Pistols in practice, then that's great -- but let's also try to be fair. Breath + Ball with Aim and Build Up is about as good a combo as you're going to find for ranged AoE damage. If you can get away with using Rain of Fire as a damage power, then that's icing.
And at sufficient levels of recharge, that combo is available every 5-6 seconds. You don't need to break the bank to get there, either.
Oh yeah, Another Fan, I really shouldn't have said blasters "shouldn't" farm, but I do think it's hardly the ideal AT for it if you're trying to maximize dropzz. -
Quote:That's interesting, because I believe it was all of one paragraph later where I opened the shining gateway to the magical realm of aoe discussion. I admit that reading can be hard sometimes and it does make me sleepy.Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
I read this and it made your entire post nonsense.That isn't an attack chain at all and if your complaint about dual pistols is that the animations are too long, it's funny that you don't care about spending even longer than that on fire breath at close range. Conversely, if you're jousting into cover, animation time becomes completely irrelevant, rendering bullet rain exactly as good as fireball (because they do the same damage!).Quote:
I open with fireball solo and step behind a wall drop Rain of Fire, then Fireball is back throw it again, fire breath, single target shoot any boss or Lt. who is near and Fireball is back and everything is dead. Then perhaps the average fire blaster should consider playing a better aoe set, such as dual pistols or archery. Fire's principal advantage is its extremely powerful single target attacks, or perhaps I should say attack, because it only needs blaze and your goal should be to do anything that allows you to fire blaze as often as you can.Quote:The average fire blaster is not considering a single target attack at all. I am running at -1 x 4 at level 14 on my newest incarnation of a fire/fire blaster. I want HUGE groups and I shred them leaving the Lts to try running out of RoF as I tear them up, all their minions long dead. That's about the only use for aim that I can come up with and is how I use it on my fire blaster as well. The annoying part is that this adds a huge amount of animation time in the long term for a marginal gain in actual damage. Build up is worth it because it's nearly twice as powerful as aim, and guess which one of the two dual pistols can be paired with?Quote:Aim is not worth it? Seriously have you never popped Inferno and it fizzled not killing a single mob? I alternate Aim on 1st group, destroy most of that group move forward pop Buildup and fireball the next group pulling them to me - drop RoF, Fire Breath, Fireball again, Consume and clean up what ever is left.
Inferno? Heh, no comment.I wouldn't use dp on a corr either. Why? Mostly because redraw sucks if you have to do it multiple times a fight, which you do with a debuff secondary. Of course, fire blast is also a much better set for corrs than for blasters because rain of fire is brokenly good with double scourge. That alone makes up for many of its other shortcomings.Quote:You say this as if we have never PLAYED DP! Of course I did and I did it with the ultimate secondary - Dark Maisma. Comparing a Fire/Dark Corr with a DP/Dark Corr tells you all you need to know. DP is not even close to Fire in sheer damage. Welp, I kinda did, and will continue to do so, because it does. If it would make you happy for me to specify that this is only true for blasters, I will do so just this once. Dual pistols is only better than fire blast for blasters, not for corruptors.Quote:If you like it - great! I am saying it doesn't have anything that stands out to me as better and if you like it because its fun! Awesome - don't even try and say it compares in damage to fire.
Edit: to Another Fan above, I didn't say they can't, I said they shouldn't. Run a controller, scrapper, or brute instead.