Difference between revisions of "Strategy:Dualgunner"

Latest revision as of 02:55, 12 July 2024

Dualgunner

0.9.9.7

No significant changes to the trait

Dualgunner

This trait is the pistol-maniac's dream: the ability to use two pistols at once! This advanced trait requires two levels of Son of a Gun to be completed. Your current pistol and prepared pistol will now both be fired simultaneously for a total fire time of 120% the average of the two. They can be alt-reloaded simultaneously for again 120% the average reloading time. You can also instantly swap your two pistols around for quick access.

A must for Angel of Marksmanship (unless you're looking for a Sharpshooter build). Using two pistols at once greatly increases damage done to any enemy, and paired with Dodgemaster, you can become quite formidable.

I find Dualgunner to be most effective when using two different pistols, a powerful weapon in my prepared slot and a weapon with a preferably larger clip size in my hands. The reason being is that my guns will not run out of ammo at the same time. The bigger clip in my hands just makes it easier to keep shooting even though my prepared, more powerful weapon may be empty. Once the threat has ended, I can then reload as necessary.

Bottom line? Dualgunner is a GREAT trait to have when working with pistols. As much as 2x+ the damage you'd normally deal, and an instaswap thrown into the mix. Nearly nullifies Juggler on almost any pistol build. One downside is the slightly increased fire time and it eats through ammo MUCH faster.17

GinDiamond (talk) 22:46, 14 October 2013 (CEST)

(0.9.9.7) One extremely significant milestone offered by the very level you get Dualgunner is that it allows you to fire two Aimed Shots in one attack. Aimed shots raises your accuracy at max sight range from 74% to 95%, and a single two-bullet volley with Son of a Gun 2 kills all basic formers about 98% of the time if you hit both shots, which is about 90% likely, giving you a total likelihood of 88%. Imps also die to this attack 86% of the time, for a total of 77% of all trigger pulls. After Son of a Gun 3, it always kills formers if you hit, and you can now not only aim two shots faster than you can fire a chaingun, it now kills imps 98% of the time as well. This lays waste to all the early-game enemies, and saves so much health and stress it's not even funny.

Important note! This definition of "Formers" does not include Former commandos, which have twice the health and some innate armor! You'll need two volleys for them no matter what, so if you try this trick with them you may get your ass blasted, and their plasma rifles hurt. You could die from as high as 84%, so don't screw around with them!

But against the three basic Formers, it is always better to use Aimed Shots before you have Eagle Eye. Without aimed shots, you're only going to hit both bullets in your volley 54% of the time, which is not worth the time saved whatsoever. If you hit both shots while aiming, the enemy you fired at won't even get a turn anyway because it's dead, so the extra time cost doesn't matter unless you're surrounded. Even then, however, with Son of a Gun 3, you still fire aimed shots in less than a second each, so if you choose to stand and fight, you're better off getting guaranteed kills rather than wasting bullets on missing, and potentially also getting hit by the enemy you could have killed. Missing also increases the likelihood that you'll have to reload, which takes more time than Aimed Shots by this point. Of course, if enemies close the distance and get within 3 tiles of you, you can stop aiming and go wild, using the pistols' fast fire speed to end the fight quickly. This is particularly likely to happen against Demons.

A good strategy to use against Demons in particular is to aim your shots until they close the gap on their own, which they'll do rather quickly, then fire normal shots once they get within the "point-blank" distance of 3 tiles. They'll almost never get close enough to attack you and you'll almost always have bullets left in the chamber for anything else that got too close. With Son of a Gun 3, Demons die in 3 volleys 99.9% of the time if all bullets connect, so if you use 3 aimed volleys, you can kill a Demon in half a clip about 73.4% of the time, which could potentially let you kill a second Demon before you have to reload. Demons can die in two volleys 29% of the time as well, and high damage rolls can make up for misses, so the probability of killing two demons in one Dualgunner clip is more likely than you might think.

If a Demon is bearing down at you, depending on how close it is, it can actually be worth it to shoot a smaller enemy dead so it doesn't shoot you, and then use three fast volleys to kill the Demon. It is almost never worth it to be using fast volleys with no Eagle Eye at max sight range against a Demon, since the deadliest mistake you can make against one is reloading in its face, so it's more important to hit your shots while it's still far away than waste half your bullets missing and have to pray none of the rest of them miss.

Naturally, if you get 1-2 levels in Eagle Eye, you no longer need to aim your shots at all and can just freely fire away all these volleys at max speed.

No matter what though, if something like a Baron of hell shows up to a monster party that you're surrounded by, you should probably run away and get to cover rather than stand and fight. The only Dualgunner mastery that even remotely stands a chance of beating a Baron of Hell in the open without taking a pummeling is Gun Kata, because they can fire two volleys in between dodges, and they get Hellrunner/Dodgemaster naturally.

Ya Girl Juniper (talk) 19:14, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

While Dualgunning Pistols looks amazing on paper with some mind-boggling DPS numbers, I find much of the time it is just an "on paper" deal and Dualgunner veers on the realm of being awesome but impractical. No matter how nice those DPS numbers look, it ignores the severe bottleneck that is having to reload pistols, which already have slow reloading speeds, and then you times that by two... This issue is compounded farther by the small clips of the basic Pistol, while even the unique Trigun and Anti-Freak Jackal suffer from a clip of only 6 bullets. When Dualgunning in big fights and against bosses, you'll find your clips running out quickly, while you now have the problem of having to reload two pistols while enemies bear down on you. On the other hand, by just having one pistol, you can equip an 10mm ammo chain (or Power battery if you're using an Energy pistol) in your prepared slot, making reloads an almost non-issue and allowing you to keep up a near constant barrage on enemies without having to desperately flee or else get pummeled as you try to reload your dual pistols. Sure Dualgunning can blow away a non-boss enemy 1-on-1, but generally it's pretty overkill when a single souped up pistol would have done the job, while the ease of reloading that one pistol + ammo box gives you will allow you to handle the actual difficult fights much more safely. Gun Kata can alleviate this issue by its perk of instant reloading whenever you kill an enemy, but that perk can be really finicky to try utilizing and you can still more often than is comfortable end up in the same bad situation of facing down a hoard with both your pistols empty (nevermind Gun Kata's own problems as a mastery, such as the large amount of additional traits it demands to be effective). You could argue getting Dualgunner anyway and then just equipping an ammo box when you need to, but if you find yourself doing that often, you could have gotten another trait instead of Dualgunner that will buff your solo pistol (such as Son of a Bitch, which stacks very nicely with Son of a Gun) or some other trait to actually help you survive those tough fights.

That's not to say Dualgunner can't be good, but you really need to be able to build a Nanomachic pistol, find a Blaster alongside a Nano mod to make it infinitely fireable, or at least a find Combat pistol that you're then able to Bulk mod to have a massive clip. Even just having one will make Dualgunning much better, as it ensures you'll still be able to keep firing after your offhand pistol runs out of ammo. Alternatively, you can invest into Reloader to alleviate the reloading bottleneck (which will be especially effective with Reloader's buff in the upcoming 0.9.9.8), but pistols already demand such heavy trait investment and so you'll likely find it infeasible to fit in Reloader outside of Angel of 100/666 games. Because of this issue, even if you're not running Sharpshooter, I actually recommend against picking up Dualgunner as a Pistol build unless you're intent on running Gun Kata or Bullet Dance, despite how counter-intuitive it sounds, at least until you're able to procure one of those infinite or huge clip pistols, or otherwise do spec into Reloader. Trust me, you'll find it less painful just stacking SoG and SoB together on a single pistol while you got ammo boxes solving the reloading problem. Omega Tyrant (talk) 02:55, 12 July 2024 (UTC)