My friend and I will be soon starting a new project – she’ll be a pure Soldier tank to taunt and lock stuff down and I’d like to try a gunslinger Occultist/Demolitionist.
A couple questions: recommended stat distribution between physique and cunning – 50/50? Or 2 physique: 1 cunning?
I am thinking of keeping it simple with just focusing purely on the Fire Strike line – is Searing Strike and Searing Might needed?
What would be the most important constellations for the gunslinger at least at the outset?
Searing Strike and Searing Might are mutually exclusive, as the one requires a one handed melee weapon and the other requires a 2hander melee or ranged.
As for the other details, I found that my pyromancer did better focusing on fire damage and rifles at first and then switching to gunslinging later when I had a deviltongue and an exterminus to play with. You might consider thinking of this as a ‘ranged firestriker’ at first rather than a ‘gunslinger firestriker’ just to open up some options for your early game. YMMV on that.
Solael’s witchblade is a must for a fire strike pyromancer, and I would highly recommend crown and viper for resist reduction properties.
Thanks, Halcyon. Another thing that looks incredibly promising would be to have a wide-ranging Curse of Frailty with maxed Vulnerability trigger the Manticore’s Acid Spray. The enemy resistance reduction would be huge since it would be a double whammy from Vulnerability and Acid Spray at the same time before you’d actually use Fire Strike.
Stat: All physique. That’s a non-question, you will need the HP because of the squishy class combination
Firestrike: I assume you are asking about explosive strike and brimstone. You need brimstone for flat damage and the splinter shards. Explosive strike is less important
Constellation: you need Solael’s Witchblade for resistance reduction, and Viper. Everything else are up for debate.
Your friend: don’t go pure soldier, ask her to go Witchblade, because Curse of Frailty generate an absurd amount of aggro, so you will be drawing aggro if she doesn’t have curse
Let me save you both a lot of frustration by telling you how aggro works in this game.
The taunt mechanic is essentially worthless, what matters is how many “hits” a monster takes; whichever player hits a monster the most gets aggro from that monster. Curse of Frailty technically gets reapplied every second, which is why it draws aggro so well. In addition, the first hit seems to have extra priority, so if you start shooting before he gets there he won’t be able to aggro them off you.
For your tank I’d recommend either a Bleed Witchblade with Bloody Pox/CoF/Blade Arc (all 3 of those “hit” frequently) or a BWC Commando. Those builds will hold aggro reliably. Pure soldier will not hold aggro enough for a Gunslinger Pyromancer (between CoF and Brimstone you’ll be hitting everything like crazy) and if you’re doing hardcore you don’t want to risk getting aggro with such a squishy class.
I really dont get why most of people think that pyro is squishy class, I have few DW pistol pyro builds that can w/o any issues facetank all nemesis, not to mention caster setups that can beat gladiator cruci w/o buffs and banners.
Sigh. I was being lazy hoping you wouldn’t read that =P
Yes Pyromancers can be tanky if you know what you’re doing, but I’m going off the assumption that OP won’t care about being tanky even if he knew how, because he’ll be playing with tank partner, meaning whatever build he comes up with will be squishy.
To be fair, I shouldn’t have said it was a squishy class.