What is Your Experience with Dual Pistols?

[Arnabas]

I am taking another shot at playing a DP blaster. Overall, I think the set feels pretty average,  but I am sticking with it for the character's concept.

 

I am curious to know if anyone uses anything other than the Incendiary ammo. I guess the Chemical and Cryo would be useful against those with specific weaknesses, but the secondary effects seem rather uneven. Incendiary gives DoT, which is always useful, even if it's a small amount, but the slow and damage debuff effects from Cryo and Chemical seem pretty negligible. I can't honestly say that I notice them doing anything. And the Suppressive Fire secondary effect of Disorient/ Hold in underwhelming, lasting only 2 seconds, making it about as useful as the Fatigue effect in the fighting pool.

 

Do these effects actually improve and become worthwhile with s;lotting or higher levels? Or do you just focus on the damage?

[Psyonico]

Cryo and chemical rounds significantly improve the uptime of the hold in Suppressive Fire, so that's a use for them.

 

Other than that, a blaster is best served using incindiary rounds.

 

I believe DP is one of the better AoE sets for blasting in general though.

[High_Beam]

I love DP, have a total of six (6), three of which are Blasters and personally I have found the extra damage negligible between the three but because of Cryo's ability to hold LTs and can be stacked fast for bosses, I always keep mine on Chiller Rounds, unless its zombie killing time, then cure them with fire.

[Frozen Burn]

I also love Dual Pistols.  I have quite a few toons with it.  I generally use Incendiary rounds, but will switch to Cryo for mobs weak to it.  I rarely use Chem rounds. 

 

Suppressive Fire is situational for me but is really useful when you have another hold in your secondary or epic pool to stack with it.  But sometimes, I outright skip it, depending on the build.

Edited October 3, 2023 by Frozen Burn

[High_Beam]

4 hours ago, Frozen Burn said:

I also love Dual Pistols.  I have quite a few toons with it.  I generally use Incendiary rounds, but will switch to Cryo for mobs weak to it.  I rarely use Chem rounds. 

 

Suppressive Fire is situational for me but is really useful when you have another hold in your secondary or epic poo; to stack with it.  But sometimes, I outright skip it, depending on the build.

True that.  Radiation secondary on one of my DP's allows me to lock bosses quite solidly.

[SeraphimKensai]

I play DP on several toons. My favorite blaster pairing with it is DP/Devices with fold space. It goes in stealth lays some caltrops and a trip mine tps everyone in as I pop hail of bullets/bullet rain and does pretty decent damage. Then I reposition as necessary and reengage.

 

Otherwise I've also paired it with DP/Ninja for a character with similar playstyle to Deadpool. I'm a big fan of /ninja as it has a lot of tools to work with.

 

I have several DP pairings with Temporal as a corruptor for a time cop character and a TA/DP defender named Unlimited Ammo which that pairing is very satisfying to me and makes the most use of swap ammo where I'll stack them rounds with ice arrows and poison gas arrows for a lot of -damage. It's a huge form of damage mitigation. I'll then use incend for igniting oil slick. That toon is a force multiplier.

[UltraAlt]

On 10/1/2023 at 12:42 PM, Arnabas said:

I am curious to know if anyone uses anything other than the Incendiary ammo.

 

Sure.

I use Swap Ammo a couple different ways.

First is character conception. I have a couple of characters that only use Toxic ammo.

I have at least one character that doesn't even have Swap Ammo.

All the other characters I have try to use the ammo type that does the most damage against the group of enemies that I'm fighting. And that is really the purpose of Swap Ammo - to be able to change the ammo type in order to do the most damage to the opponent. 

 

 

[Arnabas]

On 10/2/2023 at 2:39 PM, Frozen Burn said:

Suppressive Fire is situational for me but is really useful when you have another hold in your secondary or epic pool to stack with it.  But sometimes, I outright skip it, depending on the build.

I've come to realize it's a fairly decent hold (with Cryo) if you get it to recharge fast enough and you're focusing on one target. 

[Zect]

The real use of cryo ammo on blasters is that it lets most DP powers slot +2 damage procs.

 

I personally use the exotic ammos more on fenders and corrs, who have other debuffs to stack with them - kins or TA's stacking -dmg with chem ammo are quite nice for example. On blasters, I prefer to focus on the damage - modern coh is increasingly about damage to the exclusion of all else, and damage is one of very few things in coh that is difficult to have too much of.

 

DP is very strong, and I really enjoy maximum-offense procbombing DP builds.

[BazookaTwo]

Since toxic does -dmg to the target and cryo does slows, it's all situational. You can do your attack chains and swap ammo as you go. 

 

Think about it this way... as a DP you can do kb/kd with a couple of attacks, then -dmg, then slows, then extra DoT. 

 

This is more noticable solo than on a team of course. And steamrolling teams won't care about your fancy style, unless you're helping to mitigate a hard target. 

 

And yeah what they said above about the hold is right. 

 

My Pistols/dark corr, I love tarpatch & cryo for the stack of it. The debuff toggles match well with toxic, etc. I tend to slow a whole mob, and try to debuff the hardest target. Again solo this feels like it maybe has more impact than it actually does. 

 

If Arctic air was a power you could have with a pistols build, I think cryo would be a waste then. 

 

And then on sentinels, cryo has a boosted range, and lots of Sents stack range bonuses through AT slotting anyway because it's easy to do. 

 

[pawstruck]

Sometimes it feels like I'm the only guy alive that loves blasters but doesn't like DP.

 

I don't get the set. The damage feels anemic, and one or two of the animations just feel stupidly long. I've read you can "proc the hell out of the set," but whatever... I don't have trillions of info and I like characters that feel better right out of the box.

 

My DP guy has a cool theme but I shelved him in his 30's, sadly. I've had a lot more fun with Elec blast and Psi blast guys.

[Cheveyo]

I have a love/hate relationship with Pistols.

 

On the one hand, I think they're cool and want nothing more than to make more DP characters.

 

On the other hand, the damage for pistols is so irritatingly low that it bothers me constantly. I can't play any pistols character after playing one of the actually damaging sets. You play Fire Blast, for example, then try playing DP and it feels like you've been nerfed. You go from complete devastation, to mild bodily harm.

[Saiyajinzoningen]

On 10/14/2023 at 7:21 AM, pawstruck said:

I don't get the set. The damage feels anemic, and one or two of the animations just feel stupidly long. I've read you can "proc the hell out of the set," but whatever... I don't have trillions of info and I like characters that feel better right out of the box.

 

On 10/21/2023 at 11:23 AM, Cheveyo said:

On the other hand, the damage for pistols is so irritatingly low that it bothers me constantly. I can't play any pistols character after playing one of the actually damaging sets. You play Fire Blast, for example, then try playing DP and it feels like you've been nerfed. You go from complete devastation, to mild bodily harm.

 

I feel like the cooler the animations are for a set the lower the damage is.

I could be wrong but my staff says nope.

[kelika2]

You really need some sort of buildup to have that feeling of clearing out a room.

Pistol/tactical is my new favorite blaster.  oil slick + fire ammo'd attacks just feels right

Pistol/fire was an attempt at a pbaoe monster.  worked but tactical arrow did it so much better

Pistol/plant was my excuse to use toxic ammo and it did well.  stacking holds didnt do much in groups

 

im not even ganna list the rest, just go pistol/tactical.

glue arrow is the lesser of the level 1 evils, skip net, ice, flash, esd

[ChetManly]

I am also a big fan of this set. Commenting on some of the things said...

 

On my Poison/DP Defender, I mostly use Chem rounds with some Cryo, jives well with poison. 

 

Chem rounds mostly on my DP/Dark Corrupter.

 

I don't remember on my Sentinel as I haven't played him in a minute.

 

On the DP/Martial Blaster i use Incendiary mostly.

 

Suppressing Fire:

It does more damage and range on a Sentinel iirc, but on every toon, i just proc the shit out of it and i always include a Lockdown +2 Mag hold proc and i just use that power as a solid damage/hold.

On the Defender, i have that, the hold from the Poison set and Dominate from the epic; all three proceed, giving me 3 ST holds and three of my highest damage powers.

 

I love that power and would never skip it.

 

I am going to do DP/Tactical, and one i never considered until i read this-DP/Devices.

 

Chet

[Force Redux]

Numbers discussion aside, my dual pistols/Martial looks and feels good when playing, don't notice much of a difference between my ice blaster or beam rifle blaster. Clear time is reasonable on teams or solo. I do solo+2x4 however, so this isn't me worrying about pylon times or anything. 

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

I have a few DP type toons to fit different concepts. DP/NInjitsu and DP/Devices have been great fun for my Agents type characters, plus a DP/Empath combat healZ0r.

Thinking about making a two-fisted Indiana Jane type next and not sure whether to go /Martial or /Energy.

 

Agree that Fire is your best bet all round round, but Toxic and Cold are situationally useful against enemies that don't resist them well.

Cold can also put the brakes on big crowds a little... and very handy for snow displays this time of year.

Tox's -DMG isn't quite as useful as if they'd made it, say, -Regen.

[victusfate]

My favorite blaster is a DP/Mind. I enjoy the insane regen and endless endurance of drain psyche combined with pbaoe style. Feels as effective as my TW/Bio scrapper for damage considering mobile target scenarios.

[tidge]

My experience has been that I can't play Dual Pistols with the sound on, because the dog that is scared of fireworks goes into a panic.

[lemming]

3 hours ago, tidge said:

My experience has been that I can't play Dual Pistols with the sound on, because the dog that is scared of fireworks goes into a panic.

You might look into the CoH modder.  I think there are some sound mods for Dual Pistols that could help.

Though I found out, my cats freak out if I use the Demon Cat replacement.

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

On 12/10/2023 at 6:06 PM, lemming said:

You might look into the CoH modder.  I think there are some sound mods for Dual Pistols that could help.

Though I found out, my cats freak out if I use the Demon Cat replacement.

Sounds terrifying. I don't think I could beat that, as I haven't got the core strength to dual wield vacuum cleaners.

[High_Beam]

On 12/10/2023 at 1:06 PM, lemming said:

You might look into the CoH modder.  I think there are some sound mods for Dual Pistols that could help.

Though I found out, my cats freak out if I use the Demon Cat replacement.

Oh man I am so putting that mod in tonight, maybe the Buki cat will finally get the message about parking behind my monitor and having weird "kick your feet" kitty dreams.

[lemming]

Oh, and just to be clear.   The Demon Cat mod is for Demon Masterminds.

 

There are two Dual Pistol mods that start with the description of Dual.

[Two5boy]

On 10/3/2023 at 2:07 PM, SeraphimKensai said:

I play DP on several toons. My favorite blaster pairing with it is DP/Devices with fold space. It goes in stealth lays some caltrops and a trip mine tps everyone in as I pop hail of bullets/bullet rain and does pretty decent damage. Then I reposition as necessary and reengage.

 

Otherwise I've also paired it with DP/Ninja for a character with similar playstyle to Deadpool. I'm a big fan of /ninja as it has a lot of tools to work with.

 

I have several DP pairings with Temporal as a corruptor for a time cop character and a TA/DP defender named Unlimited Ammo which that pairing is very satisfying to me and makes the most use of swap ammo where I'll stack them rounds with ice arrows and poison gas arrows for a lot of -damage. It's a huge form of damage mitigation. I'll then use incend for igniting oil slick. That toon is a force multiplier.

I’m thinking of DP/Nin for concept. How is the weapon swap mechanic? I was thinking it be a pain but never tried either 

[Frozen Burn]

54 minutes ago, Two5boy said:

I’m thinking of DP/Nin for concept. How is the weapon swap mechanic? I was thinking it be a pain but never tried either 

 

I  have  DP/Nin and it's a really great and fun combo!  The weapon swap is fast and barely noticeable.  Go for it and have a Blast!  (pun intended.)  😄