AT Gunslinger - Questions about advantage on powers

tomqq

I started a couple weeks ago my new char and im now around 26-27 lvl and got some questions after some tests on his powers/advantages.

1) Debuffs
Both Breakaway shot and Parting shot has the "Armor Piercing" that debuffs the target for 15% Piercing and crushing and can be refresh with tapping the Bullet Hail with the advantage "Assault".
Also the Holdout Pistol has the advantage "Frail armor" that gives 18% Piercing damage

a) Does both these debuffs stuck ? like 15+18= 33% Piercing damage cause i didnt see the numbers to scale at 33% or does it counts only the biggest debuff advantage on the target ?
b) The "Frail armor" tooltip on the power says only 18% on Piercing but the tooltip on the icon on the debuff enemy/target includes also the crushing word - Do we know if thats some mistake and which tooltip is the correct ?

2) Two-Gun Mojo Power
These power has two advantages that increase his power aside the normal 20%

a) Close the gap at 35% , i read that due to some boss been too large (cosmics etc) these advantage tends to be not that good overall - Is that correct still and its better to go for the flat 20% overall ?
b) New advantage (cant remember name) that came on December that adds 10% damage max on 3 times (30% max) each time you maintain the power. Since im still leveling i strugle to maintain fully this power and i wanted to know if on 40 lvl and some good blue gear+OV on 40lvl il be able to do fine or it would be better to just take a straight 20% increase power Rank instead and be safe ?

3) Block Power choices
Antagonize vs Retaliation
Both give the same % protection to all damage but Retaliation gives a buff for 5secs to do 83% more damage to your next attack , after testing it on Bullet Hail/Holdout Shot and Two-Gun Mojo i didnt notice any increase on my damage - does this buff works only on melee powers and its better to just get the Antagonize Block.

Thanks in advance for your time

flowcyto

1. Yes, Frail Armor stacks w/ Armor Piercing. If there's Crushing also listed on Frail's debuff tooltip then that's just a bug, cause it doesn't actually debuff for Crushing in practice (nor is it meant to).

2. I'm unsure if Close the Gap is still an issue at Cosmics (prob is), but iirc it was due to the ranged check being based on the mob's center hitbox, which is hard to get very close to on large targets. As far as the Single Minded adv, it should be easy to refresh in fights that last a decent amount of time, since TGM is a main attack, it's pretty easy to afford w/ high-level gear, and there's not much else to your 'rotation', but you do make a good argument for just getting R3 when leveling. I'd prob opt for R2 + Single Minded if you're doing Cosmics at max level, and that gives you some flexibility w/ the range while still granting higher sustained dmg than just using R3.

3. Afaik, Retaliation's buff (which is on the general dmg DR) works for melee and ranged, but only applies to the first tick of any maintained power, so it's prob not that good for Muni (better suited for builds that use heavy charged attacks).