Duelist sucks, let's make it better

That keystone passive of power charges only is a really cool one in my opinion. I also like the Einhander-ing keystone as well. Give those two things and related supports to the Duelist and you've got a couple options...

I feel an option for making low-HP builds better would help too. Duelists get armour and evasion, so lets help them use it. To rehash some ideas from elsewhere:

New Keystone Passives:

Defensive Roll
Always survive any hit taken when at X% HP plus (probably 75% or more) with 1 HP
Life recovery rate is quartered

This is good for evasion-heavy characters who don't want to invest in a ton of life, which is potentially an option for the Duelist; also the Ranger. It will synergise well with Acrobatics and block specialisation, especially if Acrobatics migrates its way down there a bit more.

Armoured Soul
Remove all elemental resists
Cannot gain life from passives
Armour rating applies to elemental and chaos damage against you.

With this, by sacrificing life that isn't from gear you literally use one defense stat for everything. I'm not sure exactly how it would interact with the resistance down curses and elemental penetration, though...

Defensive Fighting
Never get critical hits
Enemies never get critical hits on you.

Helps to mitigate one of armour's biggest weaknesses, that of burst damage. It should be as far away from Resolute Technique as is reasonably possible while still remaining useful to the Duelist.

And finally, because defence only is boring...

Reckless Assault
Converts all increased accuracy to increased critical strike chance and damage.

Well, it'll probably be much harder to hit, but those hits will hurt. Because it's crits, it's useless with Resolute Technique. Some kind of conversion would have to be put in placed for static increased accuracy bonuses like what you find on most enchanted gear or the support gem.

Good ideas manofdusk

Just to play devil's advocate

As of now duelist feels like the area that just makes mara go from good to very good, adding gladiator on top of the duration for endurance charges in duelist area would make maras be able to hold endurances for a very long time. I'm not really a fan of just making mara's better and making duelist more like mara.

Lust for battle is good, but I almost suggest 5-10% and another proc like LoH. As of now LoH isn't used much but if you have a passive is good with a class that has high aps makes it something people would be more likely to use/stack it.

Battle cry would give maras 9 charges. Armor is broken IMO because of charges and granites. Giving them more means they'd have to make armor more useless to balance around it.

I've already been told crit is an INT class thing so maybe do the opposite, power charges are converted to frenzy and give 1 extra charge only which come from being converted from power charges (possibly two). It would make voll's very useful for duelist who could use it w/o being hurt too badly from the 50% reduced mana.

dualies remind me of shadows a few months ago before the devs took time to really helpout their startspot with the addition of fantastic keystones and listening to player feedback (the life nodes and build flexibility).

I think templars could definitely use a little more identity but dualists are clearly in need of a real good look and boost.

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bingobill написал:

dualies remind me of shadows a few months ago before the devs took time to really helpout their startspot with the addition of fantastic keystones and listening to player feedback (the life nodes and build flexibility).

I think templars could definitely use a little more identity but dualists are clearly in need of a real good look and boost.

I'm trying my best. I just fear that most people just see duelist as maralite, so most suggestions tend to lean towards stuff that would make maras insane. Hence why I want to make use of their accuracy, suggested 1h w/o DW/shield, criting against frozen targets and block %. These are all things that the general mara player won't be able to use as effectively as a duelist, unless of course, they made a mara that was basically a duelist.

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Moosifer написал:

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bingobill написал:

dualies remind me of shadows a few months ago before the devs took time to really helpout their startspot with the addition of fantastic keystones and listening to player feedback (the life nodes and build flexibility).

I think templars could definitely use a little more identity but dualists are clearly in need of a real good look and boost.

I'm trying my best. I just fear that most people just see duelist as maralite, so most suggestions tend to lean towards stuff that would make maras insane. Hence why I want to make use of their accuracy, suggested 1h w/o DW/shield, criting against frozen targets and block %. These are all things that the general mara player won't be able to use as effectively as a duelist, unless of course, they made a mara that was basically a duelist.

IMO the parry mechanic + the 1hander keystone could be very possible. Scrap the charge ideas and such for now until the other stuff gets polished first of course. I'm interested to see what a dev thinks of this, as a parry would be fairly easy to implement - they could use the coding from tempest shield, save the animation (if any) until there is more free time available.

I still think Templar = shield toting totem master :P sorry mouse :P

I like the sound of the parry mechanic.

It could work as a damage returned to attacker based on a %% of your weapon damage. Rather than bringing in a whole load of extra buff/debuff durations.

For example: Blade Barrier Keystone
Cannot use shields
Gain 50% damage (or an increase in attack speed) when using a 1h weapon.
When using only 1 weapon (1h only?), gain a 20% chance to parry and riposte an attack. The riposte does damage equal to 70% of weapon damage.

then you can follow that like the A/PA circle, to increase the parry/riposte %%.

Last Keystone: Shadow Blade Barrier Keystone
You get no benefit from evasion or energy shield (so this can't be used with A/PA).
you gain a 20% chance to parry a spell. If a spell is parried, you flicker strike (lvl 1) to the enemy whose spell was parried.

What do you guys/gals think?

...moose. Mouze is another guy.

Don't mind the first one. Generally don't like thorns because it's either useless or OP. Once it gets to numbers where you can do real damage with it you don't need any skills, just extreme tankiness, some thorn passives and gear then just walk through the stage letting everything kill itself.

The 2nd one I'm not too much of a fan of. Again, I want to find a way to encourage duelists to use eva rather than find reasons not to use it. I want to build off what's already there rather than redesign it completely.

I posted up a thread about a new shield gem where you can bump people off


I want to make my character like a spartan so his shield is the main defence

'Some cool ideas in this thread, I like a lot of them.

Making Duelist the "shield class" would be interesting, but I think it'd be even more if both Templar and Duelist were. Templar can keep all his nodes but a keystone revolving less around block chance and more about having a shield and a one-handed weapon in general and putting it in Duelist territory would be awesome.

The one-handed-weapon-with-nothing-off-hand idea is a peculiar one but really grew on me, especially with the concept of parrying. Perhaps that concept would be better if it was based on the combination of evasion and accuracy rather than just one of either. It could also be interesting if parrying had to do with avoidance rather than evasion, so as to make parts of the Ranger tree a little more interesting to both classes.

Also, I see armor and evasion as the weakest combination of defenses available, even with Leather and Steel available. If there was to be a powerful keystone involving hybrid defenses anywhere on the tree, it'd be best placed in the Duelist area or right above him near the middle. I'm not exactly sure what it'd be, though.

Armour and evasion are the weakest of the defences because none of them give you extra HP-equivalent. Which, you know, works against everything.

So if we want the duelist to be able to use its accuracy to its advantage, what could we change accuracy boosts to in order to improve specific variations of duelists? I suggested crits earlier, and blocking's also been suggested. What else? Evasion/armour boosts? Straight physical damage? ...Elemental resistances somehow??

I think making both temps and duels shield specialists can be done by moving them in different directions. Duelists should get a lot of shield block nodes, while templars should get a lot of shield defense.