So what happened to dual wield ranged?

haven’t played in a while but i was a ranged dual wield enjoyer. don’t completely understand the ranged changes, the 100% passthru on skills seems sweet but the removal of passthru on weapons and basic attack replacers (can’t remember the term here, like righteous fervor) seems like it killed some things. anything fall out of favor or are some things viable now? whats going on here grimmies.

To my knowledge it got removed because those guns who had passthrough had a big advantage over those guns who didn’t have that, therefore to make it balanced in-between devs mostly added passthrough trough proc skills now like bursting round, storm spread, reaping strike, smite…

Builds utilizing and using proc skills, to me (I got 1 dual pistol build) still feel pretty good or even better.

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It’s basically “share the wealth” kind of thing that happened to ranged builds in general. Before you had like 5 builds with 100% passthrough, and 995 builds with 0%. Now it’s more or less evenly distributed among all builds.

Probably the only builds that really suffered are ultrameme ones, like Warlocks with Phasebreakers - or some such stuff.

Pretty good change overall, I would say.

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Ranged got much better on the whole!

Darkblaze still got nerfed fml. :cry:

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Some things were nerfed, particularly things that were OP. Most everything that wasn’t OP got a buff.

The Viper Sandspitter pistol used to give 100% passthrough to RF, that has been removed. I had a Rutnick’s + Sandspitter Oppressor who was OP, but is now merely very strong.

Many things which didn’t have passthrough before got it. Gunslinger’s/Marauder’s/Plunderer’s talismans and regular/mythical Korvaak’s/Pyroclasm marks got 70% chance for their procs to pass through.

Soldier, Necromancer, Inquisitor, and 2H Shaman got 100% passthrough applied to 1 wps proc, and Oathkeeper already had it.

The Brimstone modifier of Fire Strike (the shrapnel) now has slightly fewer projectiles, but overall Fire Strike got a buff anyway, since more passthrough means more overlapping explosions. The top end of Purifiers got nerfed a bit, but Purifiers are still strong. Other Fire Strike builds are now also strong.

Generally, there are more builds now available, and less of a difference between the top end builds and the rest. If you had a working build before, it still works, although if it were OP before, it may have been nerfed down to being merely strong.

Budget gear for ranged is now in a significantly better place for many builds, since the high end gear has less of an effect, and skillpoints now have more of an effect.

I’m working on a Ritualist gunslinger now, which used to be impossible. Not done leveling yet, but so far, it’s quite strong.

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I started from, scratch on hardcore with this build:

I am playing Ultimate now, leveling has been a blast, very strong and sturdy build even playing 100% selffound with suboptimal gear.

So yeah, dual wield range is not in a bad place atm, I think.

The only ranged builds that were killed are passthrough Upheaval (2H).

Everything else either didn’t change or got much better overall. Ranged is totally viable playstyle now and in my opinion one of the best.

Just take at least couple of passthrough WPS, load up with flat dmg you can find and you have a build.