Rigel_Kent

I love Snow Storm for its de-fly alone. The interruption and slow is gravy.

As a general guide for your build, don't plan on skipping many primaries. Storm/elec is a strong primary, so-so secondary pairing. If you have to cut back on secondaries or power pools, that's fine, since your primary is highly self sufficient. If I were to roll storm/elec, my power breakdown would be: 9 primaries, 7 secondaries, 8 pools/APPs. Your tastes may vary.

A separate solo build with 8 primaries (no O2) is not a terrible idea.

It's a small difference, but defender Aim is 50% damage, corruptor Aim is 42.5%.

I'd say solo DPS is a close enough call, that maybe you should be looking at something else, such as team DPS, as the tiebreaker.

Fair warning: We don't typically use the word "healer" in advanced gameplay or build discussions. "Emp" will do just fine.

Defender's not a bad pick. Your self-heal (Healing Aura) will be beefier, and your Fortitude will buff damage better (redirecting aggro away from you a little better).

Still, overall, a level 50 to level 50 comparison will almost always favor controllers over defenders. More damage, more utility, and enough buff/debuff that the difference doesn't matter. There are exceptions, but empathy is not one of them.

GR will shake things up a bit. Whether to bring a controller or a mastermind on an MoSTF, now there's a tough question! Maybe wait a couple weeks before committing to anything?

I'm not sure this applies to you, but when I republish the arc, it updates on the server for anyone who starts playing it, but the copy I get if I edit it again somehow does not update. This means if I edit it a second time, the copy of the arc I'm working on rewinds back to its previous state, and if I republish, the previous edits are lost.

Logging out to the character select screen then relogging back in gets me a correctly updated arc to edit. Changing zones might work too, I haven't tried that.

To put it nicely, Dual Pistols are a great set for blasters and corruptors who want to focus on their secondary, and for defenders who want to focus on their primary. This makes your choice of other powerset more important than whatever it is you think you'll be doing with DP.

So, blaster manipulation, corruptor buff/debuff, defender buff/debuff, which will it be?

I just don't feel the same way about the ability to give up fire DoT for a small damage debuff. It's nice. It's not "Who needs Aim when I can do this" nice. (See: Tenebrous Tentacles.)

But I think we're all in agreement, at least, that Dual Pistols is neither the worst nor the best set available to any of the 3 ATs. That's a start. Once they've been available to the full playerbase for a while, and the shiny has worn off, we'll have a little more perspective.

EDIT: Also, the set is definitely high on fun factor. Everyone, myself included, seems to like it.

Empathy brings scads of regeneration and recovery. Also, Vigilance is a big end discount for all heal-teammates powers. You won't need Stamina at all, not even exemping, since defenders get RA at 18. You only need Health if you have Absorb Pain, and plan on using it while RA is down. You only need Dark Consumption if you have Thunderous Blast, which you might think about taking.

5xDoctored Wounds, not Numina's Convalescence, is the favored set for empaths, because of the 5% recharge boost. Empathy rule of thumb: MOAR RECHARGE.

Speaking of recharge, you don't need Hasten to be effective, but it's a good thing to have. Skip it only if you can't stand the fist graphics. Without Hasten, you'll still do fine, but recharge set bonuses then become very important.

Consider slotting Short Circuit for endmod and recharge, or a hybrid of damage, endmod, and recharge. Shutting down recovery on targets will be helpful in a slow team, or whenever a fight drags out for more than 10 seconds or so.

If Hover is just a throwaway power, slot it with the Luck of the Gambler recharge booster. The booster can also go into Stealth and Grant Invis.

Whoa, no Tesla Cage? Defenders are pretty good with holds, might as well take it. Shuts down the target's recovery, too. 4xBasilisk's Gaze plus 1 common EndMod will cover both bases, and score you a 7.5% set recharge bonus.

Sorry, I assumed from the first post that the OP was interested in a pacifist concept, but the OP's second post reveals some problems.

Maybe a better starting point for the discussion would be to figure out which set Dual Pistols is closest to, then make a comparison.

Hmmm, Energy Blast? If it's Eng, DP's looking pretty good in comparison. The side effects play nicer in teams, a beanbag instead of a knockback bolt, and a crashless nuke.

Or is it really Archery? Then DP has 30% better damage typing, and a little bit of resistance debuff, at the cost of double recharge on its Tier 9 and slightly slower animations. Might be an even trade.

Perhaps it's Fire Blast? If so, things don't look so good for DP. 70% worse damage typing at the gain of a crashless nuke and a beanbag. Worth it if you're farming critters without lethal resists, otherwise, lacking oomph.

Power Picks

I apologize, I know you're not looking for power choice criticism. But this looks very similar to a "my first defender" build. It's not bad, but it falls into some healer stereotypes that don't work out except in the worst PuGs.

If it were me, and I didn't want to take Vengeance, I'd just scrap the whole Leadership pool and the whole Fitness pool, and pick up the Blackstar + Dark Consumption combo instead since you've got fewer toggles to deal with. In a team, Blackstar ends the threat of anything it hits, either by killing it, or by applying the strongest tohit debuff in the game.

Without Gloom, you're looking at a serious lack of single target damage. Pure teaming build or no, damage helps your team.

You get more mileage out of Dark Pit than Petrifying Gaze. HT+DP stacking is nicer than PG. If you don't like Dark Pit, you will hate Petrifying Gaze. Dark Pit does, by the way, get pretty good with sufficient cheap stun set IO frankenslotting to bring its accuracy, recharge time, and duration up to snuff.

If you like Teleport as your travel power, Recall Friend is fine. Otherwise, forget Recall Friend, take something more useful to the team like Gloom or Stimulant or Provoke. (Yes, you can.)

Endurance

I feel I do not need Stamina or Dark Consumption if I'm only running one toggle all the time (Shadow Fall) and one toggle some of the time (Darkest Night). If I add Leadership toggles to the mix, I would add either Stamina or DC, depending on whether I have the nuke. With the nuke, I need DC anyway; without the nuke, it's a choice between the two.

IO Slotting

I don't think set bonuses are quite so important to a D3, in comparison to most builds, because it's not so critical to be "perming" a click like Hasten or AM. Frankenslotting becomes a little more important, since you have powers like Tenebrous Tentacles that you want to do two things (damage and root) both well, and powers like Fearsome Stare, Tar Patch, and Howling Twilight you want to slot for maximum recharge but individual sets don't have much recharge. Look to HOs to solve the TT dilemma (since damage sets don't enhance root, or vice versa). Frankenslot to solve the FS, Tar Patch, and Howling Twilight dilemma (since full sets are light on recharge enhancement).

For example, you might see something like this on a build of mine, but the customary set slotting is OK too if you feel you must have permahasten:

Tenebrous Tentacles, HO'd out:
Centriole HO(Damage/Range), Centriole HO(Damage/Range), Peroxisome HO(Damage/Immob), Endoplasm HO(Acc/Immob), Lysosome HO(ToHit/Acc), Membrane HO(ToHit/Rech)
vs. Tenebrous Tentacles, customary slotting with 6.25% recharge set bonus:
Positron's Blast(Acc/Dam), PB(Dam/Endredux), PB(Dam/Rech), PB(Dam/Range), PB(Dam/Acc/End), some kind of Acc such as Endoplasm HO

Fearsome Stare, frankenslotted:
Glimpse of the Abyss(Acc/Fear/Rech), Nightmare(Acc/Fear/Rech), GotA(Fear/Range), GotA(Fear/Acc), Membrane HO(ToHit/Rech), Membrane HO(ToHit/Rech)
vs. Fearsome Stare, customary slotting with 6.25% recharge set bonus:
Glimpse of the Abyss(Acc/Rech), GotA(Endredux/Fear), GotA(Acc/Endredux), GotA(Fear/Range), GotA(Acc/Fear/Rech), some kind of Rech such as Membrane HO
vs. Fearsome Stare, debuff set variant with 6.25% recharge set bonus:
Cloud Senses(Acc/ToHit), CS(Acc/Rech), CS(ToHit/Endredux/Rech), CS(Acc/Endredux/Rech), some kind of Fear, some kind of Rech

After checking the numbers to make sure they haven't been patched, it's with some sadness that I add the following powers to the list:

Impale: 2.46 damage + 0.75 DoT, immob, -fly, -movespd, -recharge, 8s recharge
Shuriken: 1.98 damage + 0.75 DoT, 8s recharge
Hurl/Hurl Boulder: 2.46 damage, 50% knockback, -fly, 8s recharge
Focus: 2.085 damage, 100% knockdown, 6.4s recharge

Some blasts in melee sets are direct ports of ranged blasts, but these five are stronger than tier 3 blasts and have faster recharge timers. Impale outdamages a sniper blast, even, and Shuriken comes within 2% of a sniper blast. You can use these sparingly, since their Alpha values are a little higher than average, but playtest the critter carefully for difficulty.

For comparison:
Sniper blast: 2.76 damage, 3s interrupt, 12s recharge
Tier 3 blast: 1.96 damage, 10s recharge
Tier 2 blast: 1.64 damage, 8s recharge

To avoid these powers without invoking the 40% XP cap, pair the melee set with a second melee set without these powers, or a blast, control, summon, assault, or manipulation set, and grab a ranged attack from that other set.

For example, you can take a Martial Arts custom critter and avoid the Shuriken-o-doom by pairing it with the Broad Sword set and only Throwing Knives from that set. The critter won't draw a sword to use Throwing Knives, and will do only a bit more damage than a Tier 2 blast every 8 seconds, instead of a bit more damage than a sniper every 8 seconds.

Dear Mr./Ms. Clobber Folks with -2000 Rep Instead of Replying In-Thread:

I invite you to prove I don't know what I'm talking about. The animation time numbers are not disputed and plain to see. Do you have some other numbers to contradict them? I claim Dual Pistols is an average set at best. What evidence do you have that Dual Pistols is, contrary to my claim, significantly better than average?

Careful, at the opposite end of that, is stuff like Rularuu, where the fact that you have to overcome a variety of different offenses and defenses in every spawn adds significantly to difficulty. Casual soloers would have to steer clear.

The secondary effects are nice, but if we're talking comparisons to other sets, other sets have secondary effects, too, and often better ones. It's as though DP's secondary effects are all just a bit lower than their equivalents in other set's -- i.e., we're paying in debuff strength for the ability to choose on the fly. Lethal bullets' defense debuff don't match Rad's, the DoT on fire bullets don't seem quite up to Fire Blast level, cryo bullet debuffs aren't quite as nice as ice or psi's. That leaves toxic, which is unique, but there are no toxic damage vulnerable critters in the entire game, so you're giving up damage.

Nevertheless, for defenders, dual pistols aren't the bottom of the barrel, but it's in the middle of the pack at best. That's because of duds like /elec and /AR that offer the same poor performance with less eye candy.

For blasters, DP compares better thanks to blasters' wider selection of crap primaries, and is quite likely a medium rather than low performing set. Again, this has less to do with Dual Pistols itself and more to do with sets that are even bigger duds.

AVs and GMs have a little taste of it, too, with many (roughly half? not gonna bother counting) debuffs being made weaker than a small insp buff or TO enhancement. Still, trinity gameplay in CoX is safely the exception, not the rule.