Would just like to point out that transmuted (and for that matter, non-transmuted) Primal Strike is not an auto attack replacer but an ability, and cannot proc WPS.
Indeed, but it still works greatly with Inquisitor. Even without his WPS, Inquisitor provides massive support for elemental damage.
Oh I agree (although I haven’t personally tested Primal Strike in a very long time), I was just clarifying for those who may not know and thus waste points 
I personally like dual-wielding guns as all damage on Inquisitor’s ranged WPS procs are doubled (as in, you apply the base flat damage for each shot) - a storm spread with 4 base projectiles means you fire 8, and that looks awesome!
I wish that were true. I just did some testing (I had done prior as well, but you made me do it again), and it’s a little deceptive on what is listed. It is possible to get Storm Spread to fire back to back and look like 8, but that’s rare. The pistols are not firing in unison either. I can tell because the DPS listed, from Savagery, is less than half of my 2h crossbow (Brute force doesn’t apply to pistols :().
I looked carefully at the base damage per savagery strike, and it’s not doubling the weapon damage. I believe it showing both weapons on the tooltip to show that it works for both hands, rather than just on the main hand, or off hand.
yeah ranged is a bit weak. tried to level a DW pistols purifier. after a while, i switched to a rifle because pistols suck (at least early on. seemed to be decent enough later on when you have tons of stacked flat damage). then i switched to a 2h mace because rifles also suck.
don’t know. doesn’t really seem worth it. it’s kinda fun against trash when you have enough firepower to mow them down before they get close, but facetanking them from inside inquisitors seal doing point blank shots feels silly. might as well use a melee weapon right away.
Their benefit shows in fights like Log, and the Master of Flesh. When you have to dodge, you can kite with a gun. Vindicator lacks any range closers, so it’s a pain to run up to everything to hit them, when you can use a gun to kill them at range. This helps quite a lot with the Seal usage. Melee have to run around chasing enemy and that hurts the usefulness of the Seal.
And once all that flat damage is stacked to a weapon, is the added damage of a melee version all that higher? The only thing that makes me consider doing this is for the Mythical Laviathan, but then again, I don’t usually like to change the personality of a character.
Yeah finding that with my AAR build too; haven’t been following any guide just adapting as necessary and with the mana pots your get from other characters and finding a good balance ranged just can’t keep up with it whether warder or mage hunter.
Fast high damage absolutely obliterates things before they have the chance to hit you so spec on a little lightning & aoe for things running through the beam and sucks to be them.
With Attack Speed capped I don’t think ranged would even be able to match it.
I found a few good pieces for it in multiple slots, it’s just that the bonus is cut into three pieces in comparison to other classes so you are probably better off just focusing on %fire damage and treating cold as a throw away.
Don’t know haven’t crunched the numbers on it.
Good stuff here. I almost gave up on my hardcore Tactician at lvl 30 b/c it was just turning into such a grind and I was stuck using mostly soldier gear and low level pistols, but I stuck it out and it got better by lvl 40 ( I think I used the Oathbreakers 2 piece set until lvl 50 haha), then pretty good by lvl 50, then just better and better as I went on.
Now I’m at lvl 99 and it’s fantastic. I’m using pistol/shield cadence build, with the elemental modifier, all resists are capped or higher with average resist 82%, 50k sheet dps, tons of extra damage from constellations and mythic sapphire/ruby, 2100 oa, 2450 da, 14k life, 10% life steal and 2234 armor. I have a good lvl 84 inquisitor shield that was a lucky drop, but the rest of my gear is just random crap that I threw together plus a few lvl 75 pieces that I’m still using. So, definitely I have tons of room for improvement on him.
I’d encourage you to stick it out, I think that you’ll find that the class is pretty solid.
I tested it a fair bit myself and I’m quite certain it does fire double… let me get back to you and see if I can prove or disprove something.
If every time Savagery fired, it fired both weapons, the animation wouldn’t alternate between weapons randomly.
If they did, you’d expect both weapons to fire at the same time.
If they did fire at the same time, removing 1 weapon, should make a much bigger change in DPS than what my test showed (I lost about 20%-30% damage by going back to 1 weapon).
And just firing at a test dummy showed that Storm Spread did not fire twice, at least in animation. On rare occasion, you’d see it fire back to back, but it would be consistent if it were a rule.
What is funny about this, is a few days ago, someone told me the exact opposite. He was convinced that using a 2h ranged weapon, caused Storm Spread to fire twice, but not with 2 pistols, which is why I tested it recently and did it again today.
WPS skills like Storm Spread (many hits, weak %Weapon Damage for each individual hit) favour Fire Strike. Fire Strike adds lots of flat damage, which is NOT increased (or reduced) by %Weapon Damage modifier. So, if WPS does multiple hits, all those hits will deal far more damage than one might expect. This feature was used before by Saboters (Fire Strike + Nightblade’s WPS), and can be used by Purifier as well.
Storm Spread is not modified by Fire Strike in any way. It’s a Proc, meaning that when Fire Strike hits a target, it gives Storm Spread a chance to proc, and the damage of Storm Spread is calculated completely on its own. Storm Spread, Bursting Round and the like, add a bonus attack. They don’t modify the attack that caused it to fire.
Edit:
However, Brute Force, Ranged Expertise, IEE, Flame Touched, etc. do add damage to your weapon damage, so those do increase the damage of Bursting Round and Storm Spread. This is one reason Shaman favors 2h, as that Brute Force gets added to the procs and Savagery.
Sorry for another post on this, but I realized there is a much more conclusive way to test than I did prior. The tool tip shows you how much damage is added to the savagery skill. All you have to do is look at the damage it shows with both weapons, then remove one.
After doing that, I’m more confused than ever. It doesn’t remove the number listed in the tool tip, but it does remove a fair bit of damage.
Edit: I finally got to the bottom of this. I had to remove my procs from gear, and skills to make this easier to see. I tested with 2 weapons wielded, and 1 pistol. I bought cheapies from a vendor, to get rid of procs.
With 2 pistols, sometimes I fired at the same time, sometimes I didn’t, but they were always showing as separate attacks, ranging from 900-1300 damage. I unwielded 1 weapon, and did the same thing. The damage was the same per shot. I just fired less often. The attack rate with 2 pistols was inconsistent. It seems to be a percent chance both will fire at once.
I was confused on my tactician when I first started playing him, the dual wield damage displayed in the tooltip was actually lower when I added a 2nd pistol. It’s bugged, or at least it was last time I checked.
It seems clear, after lastnight testing.
The skill fires off of both the main and off hand, but only 1 weapon at a time, and all the damage bonuses are applied to each attack. Both weapons shown in the tooltip do not get added together in a single attack.
Dual wield has a percentage based chance to attack, which when it works, you see both weapons attack in succession (at least with pistols, not sure with melee if it’s one after the other or together).
From my best guess, that 2nd part is what makes what shows on the weapon damage tooltip on page 2 of your character sheet confusing. It appears to show the damage of your main hand attack + the chance your off hand fires * the damage it would do. So when I removed the offhand, it didn’t stay the same, as if it was showing a single Savagery attack, and it didn’t drop nearly in half, as if both weapons fired together every time. Instead, it dropped a percentage that resembles the chance the offhand would normally attack at the same time the main hand would.
dual wield only has a 50% chance to use both weapons on default attacks. the other half of the shots only take the left or right hand. that’s nothing new, really. has been like that ever since i started playing GD.
weapon pool skills for dual wield techniques (inqusitor for ranged, nighttblade for melee) always use both weapons when they proc.
i think the dps number on char sheet displays something like 75% mainhand dps+ 75% offhand dps (ie. the average damage you’d get from default shots) and doesn’t include weapon pool skills at all.
IIRC there’s also an attack speed penalty to dual wielding (15% or so?) which is incorporated in the dps preview.
all of this doesn’t really matter, though. the bottom line is still that DW benefits more from flat damage since it applies to both guns, even though the character doesn’t always fire them both at the same time. if he only fires 1 gun, you still get the full flat damage bonus. if he uses both guns, you get twice your flat damage bonus.
Well, i tested Zolhan’s Technique, and it HAS a chance to hit with both pistols at once, but it also has a chance with just one pistol while dealwielding. Probably, with same chance as default attack.
Well, every time you hit with a weapon, it has a chance to proc Zolhan’s, and similar procs as long as they don’t have a cool down. So if you dual wield, and swing both weapons, there is a chance both attacks proc Zolhan’s. This is the same for Storm Spread and Blasting Rounds.
This is one other advantage to dual wielding. You get more procs.
never really figured out if the 2 soldier WPS use one or both weapons or 50/50 RNG like default attacks. the nightblade and inq WPB skills should always use both afaik