why duelist is so unpopular?

"

myownclone wrote:

I was also very surprised that the duelist was so unpopular in the two weeks race :(

When i look at the duelist tree,
i see a lot of dual wielding passives; so the duelist was probably meant to shine at dual wield.
May be it will now, with the latest DW change.

I'm not surprised at all.

Look at how these races work: most competitive players will play whatever allows them to progress as fast as possible. Attack builds are disadvantaged, and spells are favored because of lesser gear demands, SL4Y3R called it spot-on on page 1. It was Searing Bond, now flavor of the month now is Detonate Dead. People see Mr. Streamer playing it, or whatever, so everyone and their mother will play the same skill. Hell, even Exalton wrecked his awesome Invasion Shadow to play DD.

Is Duelist optimal for all this? No, it's one of the least optimal classes for this. Duelist is for attack builds, and you can make a great Duelist attack build.. but you're not gonna make one in a 2 week race. You're not gonna make a Duelist playing Detonate Dead, Arc or Searing Bond either. You're gonna see less Duelists in this race, that's just a fact.

Here's the thing - we shouldn't ever confuse Duelist not being suited for current flavor of the month (or 2-week) builds in a 2 week race for Duelist class somehow being broken. Duelist is fine.

"

raics wrote:

It's possible results are skewed in this infographics, but duelist had identity problems since a long, long time ago, whatever he can do other classes can do better.

No identity problems at all, Duelist area screams attack builds, duel wield builds and early nodes are good. We shouldn't confuse identity with popularity.

Also, all those Duelists running around permanent leagues with the awful red shirt showing doesn't help. Put the chest on, people.

P.S. It's funny, but people also said witch is weak and anything you can do with witch, you can do better with other classes. Look at the numbers for the 2-week. We have threads like this every time any infographic is released, whichever class is at the bottom is perceived as somehow "broken", despite nothing actually being wrong with it.

Some of the arguments here aren't holding up according to the data.

"

toyotatundra wrote:

P.S. It's funny, but people also said witch is weak and anything you can do with witch, you can do better with other classes. Look at the numbers for the 2-week. We have threads like this every time any infographic is released, whichever class is at the bottom is perceived as somehow "broken", despite nothing actually being wrong with it.

Unlike in some cases, we have the data with the totals, so nobody can say "there are just less overall". There aren't, it shows there are 13.3% total shadows and 6.9% at 80+. That's not a popularity issue, it's a performance issue. Same goes for duelists.

As for witch, data shows witches doing very well. If people are saying witches perform poorly, the data shows otherwise. The data isn't the end-all be-all of the debate, but it's the only objective indicator we have atm.

"

SL4Y3R wrote:

The shadow tends to be known as the squishy class. It's critical focused, and has less HP. I wouldn't necessarily expect them to be in the highest rankings. Dead or alive.

This season is interesting for 1 reason, the massive buff to fire damage overall. Many fire builds can keep at a distance. Which is a plus in high level play.

To me at least, the class differences are pretty darn close. Much closer than back in CB. So quite a bit of balance progress has been made. There will always be something better than others based on what the current meta is. Tweaking is always welcomed, however, I don't think we're that far off the target anymore.

I am still a heavy proponent of changing IR, and doing something to make CI builds differ in a significant way. Both would be difficult to change though.

Well again the infographic shows classes starting out average and getting better or worse as levels go up. There are some MASSIVE differences too; duelists and templars start with only a 5% difference and end up with a 22%ish difference. That's a MASSIVE falloff.

As for shadows, shadows aren't really much squishier in my experience. I've made shadows with insane HP and MoM/EB builds are somewhat accessible, though MoM seems like it's in a weird place on the tree and should probably be moved closer to EB.
To me, it looks like a bigger issue with the passive tree and the builds available. For example, I can make a spell caster build with only about 15-20 points in damage. For crit dagger, I have to get dagger nodes, crit nodes, multi nodes, accuracy, attack speed, it's a LOT of nodes, and then I have to get multi and accuracy on gear as well. Builds like SB don't have to use that much, they can put 10 points in damage and stack HP. That's why I level as SB.
The other "shadow build" is traps. Traps would be good, but they don't scale in parties due to the charge limit not increasing when mob HP increases. They are builds that perform well in solo and poorly in parties, which I've made a feedback thread about before and seems to have gone largely ignored. Once again, ignored Legatus1982 feedback comes back in people's faces.

I will say the big question mark is that I'm not sure what's going on with duelists. I don't play the class so I can't really know, but it looks like duelists have good nodes and strong build options. If there's a hole in my argument, my lack of understanding about duelists and why they are underperforming is it.

Main reason is that he's not visually attractive as a character that fights through the "dark" and evil Wraeclast.
Red Dolce & Gabbana shirt on a Danny Tanner isn't really the thing in this type of game.
It's an overall horrible appearance even with armour tossed on him and the way he holds a shield is just hilarious, not to mention that there are a lot of graphical penetrations of the body armour through the shield.

Just remember the days when you couldn't "wear" an armour with BoR.

"

tinko92 wrote:

Main reason is that he's not visually attractive as a character that fights through the "dark" and evil Wraeclast.
Red Dolce & Gabbana shirt on a Danny Tanner isn't really the thing in this type of game.
It's an overall horrible appearance even with armour tossed on him and the way he holds a shield is just hilarious, not to mention that there are a lot of graphical penetrations of the body armour through the shield.

Just remember the days when you couldn't "wear" an armour with BoR.

Well again, I'm not saying they look good, I'm just saying the infographic illustrates a performance issue, not a popularity issue. You're right in that they seem unpopular, but the performance issue still exists too.

This seems to be a common misconception for some reason. Even the OP asks "Why are duelists and shadows so unpopular?" The answer to that question is, they aren't. They're almost just as popular as other classes:

Marauder: 17.5%
Witch: 17%
Ranger: 13.4%
Scion: 13.4%
Templar: 13.4%
Shadow: 13.3%
Duelist: 12%

Granted, they are at the bottom of popularity as well, but those starting numbers aren't too far off from ranger, scion, and TEMPLAR. There is 0.1% difference in the number of shadows at templars (1.3% difference for duelist and templar), but templars skyrocket to 21.9% at 80+ and shadows drop to 6.9% (duelists fall to 3.9%). So yes, they are slightly less popular classes, but there's a clear performance issue. And the slightly lower popularity may be due to experienced players who understand that these classes aren't performing, too.

The audio of the duelist sucks as well. He doesn't say anything like:

"And stay dead..."(Marauder)
"Go to bed little nightmare."(Scion)
"Go with God."(Templar)
"Life is fleeting!"(Witch)
"Back into the ground with you." (Ranger)
"SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" (Shadow, occasionally when casting, personal favourite)

So maybe that's one more reason people don't pick them? He has a lot of strong passives and many builds go his way for block or sword nodes.

It's easy, most of the Duelists are either DW or 2-handed builds, and they suck in survivability.


EDIT:
That's why you can see a lot of Duelists in 80's, where death penalties aren't that bad to make you do something about it.
In map rotations when I played them, there was only 1 more Duelist beside me, and he wasn't DW/2-hander.

Or maybe people just screwed him and started with someone else because he's fucking ugly and you can barely make him look good even with skin transfer, his appearance really starts being frustrating with time, it's a big deal, believe it or not.

"

tinko92 wrote:

It's easy, most of the Duelists are either DW or 2-handed builds, and they suck in survivability.


EDIT:
That's why you can see a lot of Duelists in 80's, where death penalties aren't that bad to make you do something about it.
In map rotations when I played them, there was only 1 more Duelist beside me, and he wasn't DW/2-hander.

Or maybe people just screwed him and started with someone else because he's fucking ugly and you can barely make him look good even with skin transfer, his appearance really starts being frustrating with time, it's a big deal, believe it or not.

Well, marauders are one of the good-performing classes and they are primarily 2h builds. You're probably right that DW builds are bad, 2h seems to be doing ok though. Unfortunately I have serious doubts the DW fix GGG is implementing will fix anything.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

Well, marauders are one of the good-performing classes and they are primarily 2h builds. You're probably right that DW builds are bad, 2h seems to be doing ok though. Unfortunately I have serious doubts the DW fix GGG is implementing will fix anything.

Maybe if they play a Spectral Throw, even Ground Slam marauders are rare in 90+ levels.

But overall, melee 2-handers and DW are very rare in 90+ levels, and a good chunk of those have serious survivability/leveling progression issues.

Plus, Marauders are very versatile characters, from melee to casters to archers, while Duelists aren't.

Duelists are mostly for melee builds (2-handed and DW), and that's it.

"

tinko92 wrote:

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

Well, marauders are one of the good-performing classes and they are primarily 2h builds. You're probably right that DW builds are bad, 2h seems to be doing ok though. Unfortunately I have serious doubts the DW fix GGG is implementing will fix anything.

Maybe if they play a Spectral Throw, even Ground Slam marauders are rare in 90+ levels.

But overall, melee 2-handers and DW are very rare in 90+ levels, and a good chunk of those have serious survivability/leveling progression issues.

Plus, Marauders are very versatile characters, from melee to casters to archers, while Duelists aren't.

Duelists are mostly for melee builds (2-handed and DW), and that's it.

It's definitely true that duelists are a melee class and marauders can do a lot of stuff. Marauders get easy access to totem builds and ST probably is the best thing to do with 2h (ST was 4th I think in the top 5 gems).

This is kind of why I wanted to see the whole gem list instead of just the top 3-5. I'd like to know where dual strike/double strike are, where puncture is, where ground slam is, where viper strike is, etc. But we don't have that information.

I've always held the view that this game is designed to kill melee players and is only realistically HC-viable for ranged, but lots of people have been saying lately that melee is in a good spot. We need the missing data.