Duelist sucks, let's make it better

No, I'm not talking about Gallantry itself. In any case, it doesn't matter in the long run - we can spot potential (dis)advantages to particular builds in actual play-testing, which is what this suggestion ultimately needs.

In efforts to keep this alive until Qarl gets back, as it seems we have this riposte shit wrapped up.

Someone suggested that duelist should specialize in all weapons. How about a notable node that gives 15% IAS for 2-5 seconds after a weapon switch?

I realize I'm really late to this thread. It's 14 pages long, and I can't possibly get a full context. I just want to throw in three things, hopefully I don't crash this party too badly.

1) The claw wheel is there for shadows, not duelists.

Everyone that's a ranger/shadow/duelist will find themselves in that Thick Skin/Mana Flows area. I've made a few claw characters, and that particular claw circle is about the most attractive one for any build that stacks frenzy charges (because it's focused heavily on %phys, which helps to alleviate frenzy's mana problems). Please leave it. It doesn't have to be for duelists to be in that spot.

2) Generic offensive clusters in the starting area are a few percent weak

Water dancing and executioner are fairly weak buys
Water dancing: for 3 points, 18% phys, 20 dex, 3% IAS.
Executioner: for 3 points, 14% phys, 20% acc, 3% IAS.

Compare those to other comparable 3-point clusters. I know they're weapon-generic, and weapon-generic points are undertuned on purpose. But there's a general lack of generic points about, so please consider tuning these up at least 1% IAS and maybe a couple percent phys.

3) I'm still not 100% sure how to express this: skill support. Big main thing.

Hybrid defenses should be damn good now. 104% leather and steel (especially with arrow dodging!) models so incredibly well at this point. I honestly think the duelist's biggest problems center on skill support for axes and swords.

Look at the duelist area, and count the types of offensive clusters. You have:

- Berserking, arcane efficiency, enough said. Faasssssttttt
- Fencing, wrecking ball, water dancing, executioner, generic
- Fury bolts, Master fletcher: bow
- Cruel blade, deft blade, blade master: sword
- Hatchet master, slice and dice, headsman, splitting strikes, axe
- Twin terrors, Gallantry, Bravado, Dervish, dual wield

It's pretty obvious where we're intended to go with the duelist: axe or sword. 1h,2h,dual wield don't matter, but we're given plenty of dual wield passives in an attempt to make that a good choice. It doesn't work.

Bow duelists are in an OK place, I think. But someone else who has endgame experience with that would have to interject here. I'm not 100% sure.

On the other hand, starting in the duelist area just makes you want to build an axe/sword character. Like, if you're not doing that, there's every reason in the world to start someplace else. Thing is, the much larger issue is here - axe and sword are a trap. The skills we have that lend themselves thematically to our skilltree are:

- cleave (which geometrically requires you to take a 180 degree surround before it does good dps - defensive problems)
- double strike (meh, my feelings on this skill are complicated)
- dual strike (yes, possibly the only skill in this list I'm happy with. Thumbs up)
- sweep is a possibility I haven't tried with duelist. Sweep has even bigger defensive problems than cleave, too. It does that wierd thing that GS used to do, where it has a pre-determined duration independent of weapon speed? What's that. I don't get it. Overall, sweep would be a thing to give a solid try to, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
- Ice shot. I admit it, this would be pretty amazing as a duelist. Haven't tried it.
... Fill in the blank here. What else goes? Nothing. Any skill you add in here would be better off starting in a different area of the skilltree, unless you're specifically after other defensive/utility/support passives in the duelist area.

Lightning strike? Please PLEASE go to the templar or shadow area and start over.
Ground slam? Again. Due to all mace and staff passives being southwest->northwest, make a different class.

Any other skill you can put here doesn't fit in thematically. Maybe I've missed one, but I don't think so.

Blood rage should be an obvious choice, but it has pretty severe geometry problems. That is, compare blood rage's rate of degen to your leech rate against a single target. Now assume your damage is being reduced by physi DR, and cut a portion off your leech rate. Most people need about 200% DPS uptime to make a fair trade of leech for degen, in the mid-game and late-game (not talking about super endgame here). If you're fighting 50% of the time, that means that to just barely break even you need to always be wading in aggressively, surrounded by and hitting 4+ mobs at all times. But then: your damage intake went up, too, so where's the passive 10% armour/%evasion rating bonus per frenzy charge, with blood rage running?

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I made a few very long-winded posts about maximizing duelist defense, long time ago. I still think people are avoiding determination, but you really shouldn't. Hybrid gear should be very strong with 104% leather and steel, as long as you carry tons of leech and regen - things duelists should be very good at, yes? If you run determination, gear must be armour focused; a little bit of evasion rating goes a long way, though.

But every time I've tried things like this, they fail at some point. Not HC-viable. I go back to blaming the skill selection.

I specifically disagree with trading %phys for more IAS, in general I find myself trying to get higher phys after picking up berserking just so I can leech enough mana. Even with arcane efficiency bought up. Wouldn't mind more IAS being available, as long as I didn't lose access to %phys. Wouldn't usually buy the IAS.

Ok, keep the stupid claw shit there. It doesn't make much sense to me as a shadow would get to mana flows through middle of the tree or going down ranger so putting it near the MS ring (to the right of it where there's room) seems to make sense. Shadow can still access it easily and it gives duelist room for shit it could actually use. It would be like putting ES nodes there, it just doesn't make much sense but whatever.

I've been begging for new skills for a while, I think act 3 has really put those on the back burner.

Dual strike is really awesome but I hate cleave so much I refuse to build a DW toon. I tried to toughen through it on my S&B toon and the entire time I was just annoyed with cleave.

Sweep on the other hand I think is one of the best skills, I think it's better than GS personally (maybe not objectively). Early game it's great because there's very little re-positioning and has good range with 2h weapons (especially staves, wish duelist had more savant nodes), late game you can play extremely aggressive haphazardly jumping into groups and allowing your leech to carry you through the situation, never having to kite either. I really enjoy sweep, if you haven't tried it give it a go.

You seem to come from ranger/shadow/temp territory forgetting that duelist has easy access to BM and a bunch of LR. While a mana duelist is possible, if you want to get decent DR (11 nodes for both L&S circles), decent life (need high life to use stuff like cleave/sweep) and still want to actually do damage, it's hard to get enough mana for 5-6l gear. Even with a bunch of mana leech ceto ended up taking BM at lvl 80 just to save himself the trouble.

This is why most duelist don't see determination as an option, reserving 40% of their life, with skills that require extreme tankiness, is pretty suicidal. Hell even the builds where I wanted to run determination/hatred/purity I ended up using BM gems for active skills and reserved all my mana for auras. I know if I don't say this you are going to go all robocop on me and show me the math that it's POSSIBLE for duelist to use mana, but really it's just a shit load easier for them to get BM.

sorry, edited this in late so don't think you saw it. Pls forgive the repost.

Yeah, you're right, I avoid blood magic. I don't like it. Everything I say is colored by that inclination.

Blood rage needs to work without CI, right now it really isn't good enough.

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Blood rage should be an obvious choice, but it has pretty severe geometry problems. That is, compare blood rage's rate of degen to your leech rate against a single target. Now assume your damage is being reduced by physi DR, and cut a portion off your leech rate. Most people need about 200% DPS uptime to make a fair trade of leech for degen, in the mid-game and late-game (not talking about super endgame here). If you're fighting 50% of the time, that means that to just barely break even you need to always be wading in aggressively, surrounded by and hitting 4+ mobs at all times. But then: your damage intake went up, too, so where's the passive 10% armour/%evasion rating bonus per frenzy charge, with blood rage running?

Blood rage needs a rating bonus along with its leech bonus. To make the leech bonus even work we need more face time, and the leech bonus is meant to offset the degen penalty. Need a rating bonus to offset higher face-time and being hit more often. The rating bonus should be generous, more generous than the ranger's 5% ev/charge bonus.

didn't know sweep doesn't work dual wielding, my bad. Like i said, never tried it. It just got a mention because it's one of the only skills that fits thematically with duelist.

Yeah, here it is:

"

Requires a two-handed axe, two-handed mace, or staff.

editing my original post.

I didn't even notice your noob mistake lol, sweep uses mace/staff/axe (would like if it used swords too but eh).

I get to be zaka to zaka for once. Blood rage works with CI and duelist almost only. Duelist can support the chaos damage from the LR just on their tree alone, if they go to get troll's blood they can have a surplus then all the leech covers your skill/mitigation (use warlord's when BR leech isn't enough).

I know this because it was the center of my sweep duelist build.

I just don't think BR adds enough defense to offset the degen. I've made a few blood rage builds and they are quite dangerous. I still play HC only, remember.

6% leech vs
3.8% degen.

For the 6% leech to cover 3.8% degen over 3000 life, I need my dual strike to show 2k DPS. If 30% of my damage is being reduced (not unlikely, I'm attacking very quickly) I need my dual strike to show 2800 physi DPS. Eh, not impossible by a long shot, but certainly only doable with pretty good gear I'm not likely to get until a long time into endgame.

Now let's have a look at cleave. Assume the damage reduction went up to 40% when we lost damage effectiveness thanks to dual wield. I need cleave to show 1600 physi dps if I'm hitting 2 targets. Again, these aren't impossible numbers but it only works if you have good gear. If I meet the dual strike criteria, I meet the cleave on 2 targets criteria.

The thing I'm pointing out is that just covering the degen with leech isn't good enough. I have to play much more aggressively just to make that bit work; so there's more damage coming my way. Without DPS much higher than that 1600 I won't be able to cover that difference. So, let's see; I need cleave to have 3,000 physi dps to cover the degen AND offset the extra damage I'll take playing offensively. Now we're in "not likely" territory. Those would have to be some pretty good weapons.

I want a defensive bonus beyond the 6% leech on blood rage. I'm proposing a significant bonus to defensive ratings while BR is active (I phrased it as a defense per frenzy charge bonus). Wouldn't unbalance things too much for the blood magic/regen stackers, just adds power for endurance/reduction stackers.

Do you still think I'm wrong? I just feel like my point didn't come across. I don't want troll's/golems to provide the regen for blood rage; I want troll's/golems to provide defense. I want to cover the degen from blood rage with the leech from blood rage.