Comprehensive Duelist feedback

Waves

I guess the stun from leap slam and knockback from sweep make a huge difference for me or something. Usually I jump into a group, pot my bubbling flask, granite (there's ALWAYS a large dmg spike going into a large group) but after a couple of swings my life stays maxed with warlord/blood rage and blood drinker LL. Like I said I have 6k armor and 3.5k life with virtually no issues.

I play a pretty aggressive and reckless style so I have blindly jumped into some awful situations and haven't made it out (hence why I'm in default with HC at the end of my name) but I've only died twice in the 70s, the real killer is having 3k dps in a 3 person group. Takes forever to kill even white mobs.

Hi,

Thanks for making this post, I enjoyed reading it.

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Moosifer wrote:

First, here’s a picture that shows the issues. 4 of the first 6 paths are all damage related.

I think this is one of the biggest issues. There is no real choice when starting, it feels like trying to pick the best of the worst. If you want to play as melee you have to go through 5 damage nodes just to get close to life, and those damage nodes are useless early on. The starting area makes the duelist spec very early into what he should be speccing later - type of weapon for example.

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Moosifer wrote:

Right now duelist tree is better as a mara boosting area than it is as a standalone class.

I only seen this one mentioned once, so here it is again.

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Mr_Cee wrote:

the Duelist class represents a typical loudmouth, jaunty and loving to provoke the risks - its given from his story and proved by every decision around him: even the starting skill, weak against most of the situations at the strand and near to useless against the single-target boss Hillock...

Hehe, this one made me laugh.

As a final thought, I would like to add that I don't think you need to lock the duelist into a certain style - be it melee/tank or bow or anything else. The duelist is a hybrid class, which means it should have equal access to strength and dexterity based passives, so everyone can decide what they want to play. Althrough this probably does not apply to the 3h races, for obvious (min-maxing) reasons.

The main problem, atleast for me, is how elemental damage works. Its just bad how the only way to tank elemental damage is by stacking health, since resists are hard to get/not worth the effort. So you can stack as much armor or evasion as you like, but you will still be getting screwed by spellcasters and monsters with elemental damage.

Duelists gets the worst from this simply because they are the only class that focus on evasion and armor. Rangers have a truckload of evasion/health nodes, marauders have health, witches and shadows have ES, and templars can go either life+armor or ES+armor.


I know the devs wanted to make the Duelist a offensive class, but in the current state of the game right now, its just stupid to get a +6% physical damage node instead of a +8% health one.

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dzordzo wrote:

I think this is one of the biggest issues. There is no real choice when starting, it feels like trying to pick the best of the worst. If you want to play as melee you have to go through 5 damage nodes just to get close to life, and those damage nodes are useless early on. The starting area makes the duelist spec very early into what he should be speccing later - type of weapon for example.

I really dislike that the only option at the beginning is what weapon you are going to take. Which even then, you are choosing between 3 melee options.

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As a final thought, I would like to add that I don't think you need to lock the duelist into a certain style - be it melee/tank or bow or anything else. The duelist is a hybrid class, which means it should have equal access to strength and dexterity based passives, so everyone can decide what they want to play. Althrough this probably does not apply to the 3h races, for obvious (min-maxing) reasons.

I don't want him locked in either. But melee has to go tank and a bow duelist has to go to ranger to be good. I want duelist to be strong without having to rely on another class. This is why I want the health/resist mara has put at the start and the crit that ranger has put closer between the two.

I rather have the good options that mara/ranger have copied or closer to duelist.

My biggest goal is for duelist to be as polished as witch and mara are. I think those areas are fairly well done, I just want my favorite class to be as powerful.

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JeanKB wrote:

The main problem, atleast for me, is how elemental damage works. Its just bad how the only way to tank elemental damage is by stacking health, since resists are hard to get/not worth the effort. So you can stack as much armor or evasion as you like, but you will still be getting screwed by spellcasters and monsters with elemental damage.

Duelists gets the worst from this simply because they are the only class that focus on evasion and armor. Rangers have a truckload of evasion/health nodes, marauders have health, witches and shadows have ES, and templars can go either life+armor or ES+armor.


I know the devs wanted to make the Duelist a offensive class, but in the current state of the game right now, its just stupid to get a +6% physical damage node instead of a +8% health one.

I think duelist is the least offensive. Witch/shadow/ranger (even templar) have crit and high damage elemental options. Mara doesn't have to go as far to be tanky so can focus more on dmg. Every duelist I run goes 100% tank until 60-67 then I can get dmg nodes. Which at that time, a single passive point is worth alot. It doesn't feel great throwing a point that took me a 1 or 2 of work into a 4% IPD/2% IAS node, or worse a str node to get there.

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Moosifer wrote:

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JeanKB wrote:

The main problem, atleast for me, is how elemental damage works. Its just bad how the only way to tank elemental damage is by stacking health, since resists are hard to get/not worth the effort. So you can stack as much armor or evasion as you like, but you will still be getting screwed by spellcasters and monsters with elemental damage.

Duelists gets the worst from this simply because they are the only class that focus on evasion and armor. Rangers have a truckload of evasion/health nodes, marauders have health, witches and shadows have ES, and templars can go either life+armor or ES+armor.


I know the devs wanted to make the Duelist a offensive class, but in the current state of the game right now, its just stupid to get a +6% physical damage node instead of a +8% health one.

I think duelist is the least offensive. Witch/shadow/ranger (even templar) have crit and high damage elemental options. Mara doesn't have to go as far to be tanky so can focus more on dmg. Every duelist I run goes 100% tank until 60-67 then I can get dmg nodes. Which at that time, a single passive point is worth alot. It doesn't feel great throwing a point that took me a 1 or 2 of work into a 4% IPD/2% IAS node, or worse a str node to get there.

Agreed. The only thing "special" about the duelist part of the tree is attack speed, dual wielding and alot of convinient axe nods. Doing anything else pretty much forces you to explore marauder/ranger parts of the tree. There aren't even any keystones of note in the duelist area. IR is IR... BM/unwavering are Marauderish nodes. Vaal pact/iron grip/point blank are all niche keystones. None are even specifically "duelist" in location. All are defensive and better suited to other classes.

Good read, although I don't have much knowledge about the dualist as I never actually rolled one in all seriousness.

My 2 cents to the hybrid-class-dilemma:

• Templar:
  The Templar has several unique features in his general area: the totem increase, elemental damage, staffes and shield boosts (I disregard aura boosts like the -10% reserved and inner force atm).
  So we get one build defining Passive, the additional totem. I would count staffes (as there are no other staff passives in the tree) and elemental damage as well, but staffes are rarely used and elemental damage leads me to the shadow. (I should mention that someone usually strives into the marauder territory for survivability or the witch territory for dmg)
  
• Shadow:
  Now this one is a true successtory, in his area you'll find daggers, crit (which works wonders with elemental damage) and claws as well as ghost reaver. This is a region where you generally want to stay unlike Templar/Dualist.
  The only problem he has is early game survivability.
  
• Dualist:
  When i think of a dualist I generally think of 2 keystonepassives aaaaaaand the rest kinda blends into a Marauder/Ranger. Now, what can be found here? A LOT of damage. And dualwielding. And a bit of survivability.
  So you see the problem, there is nothing unique to be found here (Unweavering stance / Iron reflexes don't define a build imho). You will stay here for damage but all that can be found elsewhere in the tree and that's why you want to go to marauder territory. Or roll another character in general if you are not really keen on the dualist as a person.
  

Verdict:

• The Shadow is an all around well rounded hybrid class with deficit in the survivability aspect if he doesn't dip in other trees, ES is overall better.
  
• The Templar only stays in his generall area for niche builds and tends to dip into the neghbour classes to round out his other, more mainstream builds.
  
• As dualist it is pretty much mandatory lend from other areas and the skill tree area lacks uniqueness. He has no "niche" builds per se, so mainstream is the way to go.
  

I hope that was thoughtprovoking and keep in mind, that's how I see things so it's my opinion.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that it is ok to dip into foreing territory but you have to ask yourself if certain skillgrimage (yes I stole that from you chris) is mandatory, why pick this class (if not for personal preferance ofc).

Iron Grip needs to stay in the center of tree.

I don't necessarily disagree with your other points, though I don't think Duelist needs more defense - otherwise he just becomes a Marauder. I'd prefer if he got more interesting keystones to promote offense, as well as more critical strike options (right now, only DW is a critical strike option for duelist). Although the duelist has so many keystone options already, at least compared to the Templar or Shadow, I think he could use even more. It's the only way he can shine without becoming a Marauder.

Keystones that reward you for not using blood magic or IR, but keystones that reward you for going DW or 2h or 1h+shield. Keystones that work with critical strikes. Keystones that promote armor+evasion hybrid (meaning, not converting all your eva into armor).

One way to make the duelist more defensive without becoming a Marauder though, is to use a suggestion someone recently made: hybrid offense/defense nodes, or "X while holding a shield" nodes:

+6% attack speed with axes while holding a shield
+8% accuracy with swords while holding a shield
+20% critical damage with attacks while holding a shield
+40% critical strike chance with maces while holding a shield

You could even have a "parry" node pool

+10% dual wield block chance while holding a dagger in your off-hand

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Moosifer wrote:

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give us some crit: maybe. They can't give us terribly much, though. The mid crit nodes are already pretty cheap pickups.

I'm not asking for 95% chance and 1600% crit dmg, I'd like to see 40-50% and 500% though. When I mapped it out I figured I'd be around 20% chance and didn't bother doing dmg because with 20% chance it's a nice bonus but not really something you've built around.

There seem to be some interesting points here, and I encourage the community to continue discussing them, but I thought I'd respond to this one in particular - the Duelist should not be able to easily build for crit; in fact they should in theory have the hardest time doing so.
Critical Strikes are an intelligence thing, and the Duelist, being Str/Dex, is the class most opposite to int. That's not to say it should be impossible, but it should be difficult, for th same reasons, and to roughly the same extent as it's difficult for the shadow to build a life+armour tanking build.

The problem I have with critical strike chance is that it bias intelligent people too much. We have higher crit chance staves, daggers and wands, but that's it. We have critical strike passives, but most are contained far away from the duelist.

Everything else basically is 5% chance to crit and few critical strike nodes to even increase this low crit chance, which means we need 2000% increased critical strike chance, or at least half of that, to get a critical strike build working. Which is just too hard to get as a Duelist; it's nigh impossible really.

Even when we do get a critical strike build up and running, it's barely as good as making a normal build. I made a 2h shadow with high critical strike chance, and I couldn't get to end game maps in default with the build (mostly out of a lack of patience, but the build fell apart at level 50). Even as a Shadow, non-crit-biasing weapons are too hard to work with. Or at least, I couldn't do it. I'd love to be shown wrong by somebody.