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[Zarin]

Hello, all,
I've already seen this wonderful piece of equipment once (it got me through Angel of Purity challenge - see my post mortem "killing everything with a Blaster!") and was really impressed.  Now, I've started Ao100/HMP for a zillionth time and found it again.  I quickly started putting some skills towards maximizing this toy and so far haven't regretted it.

The biggest point for Blaster (for me, at least) - this unique, while powerful (twice the shooting rate of a regular pistol, slightly better damage, no need to reload), is not powerful enough to make you too reckless (which is what gets me killed most of the time in this game).  It has 6 (six!) traits that can increase its damage (SoG(3)+SoB(3)), basic firing rate of 2 shots/second (which quickly becomes 0.30s/shot with a couple of SoG levels), so it has good chance of pushing back even the fastest enemies (Arch-Viles and Revenants) before they can react.  Thanks to my tendency to take Cat(2) relatively early I always get the first shot.

I used to keep double shotgun as a backup (has some really good damage output and is good for groups of closely standing enemies next to you - the worst situation for the Blaster) but recently found an advanced plasma rifle and decided to keep that instead.  I kill enough Arachnotrons to keep decent amounts of ammo.  I also have an advanced rocket launcher.  Too bad I don't get enough good weapon modifiers (magazine and accuracy mostly, some speed, not a single reload or damage so far - in over 30 levels!)...

Another thing to consider - I've just found a Butcher's Cleaver and decided to keep it.  If I happen to find an invincibility globe and there are enough enemies right around the corner, it works faster than the Blaster, helping me maximize the kills before the effect wears off.  It is somewhat tempting to go Brute(2)->Berserker route (I get enough levels in Ao100) - should I do it?  Right now I'm IM(1),TaN(3), HR(2), SoB(1), SoG(2), EE(2), Cat(2).  I'm getting three types of dungeon levels - cavernous with Arachs, regular or maze with 4-5 AVs surrounded by Barons, Mancubi and Revenants (and some stray Arachs as well) and levels with huge masses of various former marines (not too many commandos, fortunately) and 0-2 Arch-Viles.  My Blaster works well on the first and third type of levels, while the AV-infested ones are first razed with rockets and then cleaned up with the Blaster once all the Arch-Viles are dead....  I get NO Pain Elementals/Lost Souls as well as zero demons and imps.  I'm somewhat at a loss as to what to do next because I have never wandered so deep (level 32 or 33 right now).

Any advice will be appreciated!

Zarin.

[myuzinn]

Blaster is my favourite unique weapon. It has its downsides (namely large specialised trait investment), but I love weapons for which I don't have to manage ammo for (like the nuclear plasma/bfg). Although you can actually outstrip its ammo recharge speed while berserking.

That said, I wouldn't recommend going melee specialised in Ao100 unless you've truly got nothing else to spend traits on. Although I've only survived to mid-30s in Ao100 myself, my guess is that melee would be harder without the Longinus Spear's innate protective aura. I'm not sure what the innate effect of the DragonSlayer is, but you'd essentially be hoping it gets generated in order to be useful in melee. And you'd need the required traits to wield it beforehand (I wish someone would chime in to what those are though).

[Anarchic Fox]

In my winning AoM game I found both the Blaster and the Grammaton Cleric Beretta.  My firing rate was 0.36 seconds per doubleshot, and of course, some of those were more like septuple-shots. ;)  I had 96% health after killing the Cyberdemon -- his one missile shot did some splash damage.

The RNG loved me in that game, by the way: I got the Beretta in Hell's Armory, the Blaster on level ten, Malek's Armor on twenty-two, and the Gothic Armor in the Lava Pits.

As for the rest of your run: I'd say build up your pistol specialization since you have such a great artifact.  Get Dualgunner, SoG(3), Finesse, and Whizkid if you find an advanced pistol.  I also found Juggler to be very useful on my Ao100 win, though having pistols may invalidate that approach.

[myuzinn]

I also found Juggler to be very useful on my Ao100 win, though having pistols may invalidate that approach.

In one of my better masochism games, I switched between a blaster and an advanced rocket launcher. It worked very well, and with juggler would work even better. Dual wielding pistols carries a speed penalty, and if your offhand pistol is crap, then single wielding a powerful pistol is actually better. I took down cybie once fairly easily with a single heavily modded advanced pistol.

[Zi]

I really like the Blaster as well, which is compounded by my love of pistols.  While the damage doesn't look much better than a regular pistol - it fires twice as quickly, which makes a huge difference, plus you don't need to stop to reload.  Also, now a large amount of inventory slots (for me, anyways) dedicated to 10mm ammo can be freed up for alternative uses.

It's not a good idea to dualgun the Blaster with a normal pistol.  Assuming Son of a gun 3 (you need 2 to dualgun anyways), the blaster can fire every 0.2s, or 5x in 1 second with average damage of (6 + 3) per shot, or 45 average dps, if everything hits.  But when paired with a regular pistol, the firing time per dualshot becomes (0.2 + 0.4)*.6, or 0.36s.  Average damage of each dualshot is (6 + 3 + 5 + 3), or 17 damage, so you end up with 47.2 average dps, a very tiny improvement (<5%) for 1 trait point which could be spent elsewhere.

[rekenne]

Your math on firing speed is very wrong.
First, there are diminishing returns on speed reductions. It's (speed)*.8*.8*.8, not -20% of original value each time. Also, DG does it as the average of the 2 speeds then with the penalty. Not the sum of.
So, yeah, if you find a Blaster, you could save the trait, but... In most cases, the dg works better

[Anarchic Fox]

The bigger consideration is that you probably acquire DG long before you find the Blaster, if you're playing a pistol game.

Edit: Also, what's the chance of a pistol player using unmodded guns?

[Zi]

Your math on firing speed is very wrong.
First, there are diminishing returns on speed reductions. It's (speed)*.8*.8*.8, not -20% of original value each time. Also, DG does it as the average of the 2 speeds then with the penalty. Not the sum of.
So, yeah, if you find a Blaster, you could save the trait, but... In most cases, the dg works better

From what was posted here: http://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php?topic=1814.msg14396#msg14396, I believe that Son of a Gun acts differently, and actually gets better with more levels.  You can also test this by going >100% health, and firing off pistol shots and seeing how many shots you can fire before your health diminishes (with no levels of Badass), then dividing by 5 to get shots per second.  And summing then multiplying by 0.6 is the same as averaging and multiplying by 1.2, but is simpler.

Finally, I know that the pistol player will probably mod their pistols, but unless you have a significant amount of mods, the benefit of dualgunning Blaster and a pistol is still very small compared to the benefit you could derive from picking another trait.