I still don't see Duelist's identity

I really don't think there are many people who have played duelist more than I have. Not saying I've done the most but I sure as hell have exhausted the class, very few things I haven't played with. Even though I've tried alot of options (S&B, bow, 2h axe, 2h mace GS, 2h mace sweep, 2h mace sweep crit) someone said something that has stuck with me and has been bothering me for like a month. "Look at moosifer's build. He's one of the highest duelist on the ladder and he's basically a mara in duelist skin." Shortly after I made some changes and went from the 2h mace sweep to 2h mace sweep crit build. Even then it was basically dropping RT heading over to ranger for a few nodes.

I've played templar to 71 and recently started a shadow. Both you seem to get a feel for "what's their's" like what they have to offer that is pretty much unique to their class. Templar I get a strong sense he's meant to be a elemental melee guy, smash doods and maybe throw a FP in their face or an extreme range ice nova. Shadow seems to horde ALL the crit strike nodes. Good luck avoiding them if you don't want to do a crit shadow build. Also there's a bunch of MS and IAS nodes thrown into the starting area. So I get the sense shadow is meant to be a ninja like guy, sneak in, hit quick and in the right spots to do the most damage.

My last thread I said duelist was a life tank, someone said no they are meant to be reckless and dangerous. Ok, but I have yet to get an extreme DPS duelist, I'm sure some DW duelist have gotten higher DPS than my usual guy but they used rapiers which I found in the last post are designed more for shadow/ranger.

Had someone say they are meant to be more an armor/eva tank. There's a total of 4 armor clusters (l&s counted) and 1 eva cluster, I've never had/seen a duelist with significantly more armor or eva than a mara or a ranger (with or without IR).

Pretty sure I heard duelist is suppose to be a weapon specialist, hence all the speciality nodes. Well last time I checked a weapon specialist could use whatever weapon is in front of him so shouldn't it be a bunch of just "increased physical damage while using any melee weapons." Shouldn't matter 1h or 2h.

Everyone goes on about duelist attack speed. The fastest weapons are daggers, rapiers and a few swords. There's a ton of rapiers with 1.7 a/s, like previously pointed out because of the crit multi they are meant for shadow/ranger to either give rangers more multi or give shadows a balance to their crit strike passives.

So duelist isn't a life tank, armor/eva tank, a weapon specialist or where all the IAS nodes are hiding out.

As a duelist I really feel my tree is the mara overflow area. All of my nodes are extremely nice additives to the base maras have and feels more like a great middle of the tree section than distinct class.

If IAS and weapon specialist is going to be the focus of duelist, jack the IAS nodes so we can take a slow weapon and get it to 5-7 a/s or get stupid with a fast one and hit 9/10 a/s. Remove the stupid weapon speciality passives and just have increased melee damage or something else of use. I already said in a reply to another post, to play melee you need extreme EHP so spending points on 8% IPD w/ swords is just a waste, I'll get the 1h or 2h nodes and just use whatever weapon I find with the highest DPS.

Also let's go all in with this armor and evasion shit. Remove IR, raise the values on armor/eva gear, give rangers a shit load more life and lets commit to evasion rather than forcing everyone to get IR. Also removing IR makes US pointless for hybrid gear duelist and free for maras and armor duelist. Give it something extra or remove that too. Use some of the keystone passive ideas that people have thrown out there. Preferably one that boosts armor or eva when using hybrid gear. Maybe one that increases MS and AS when using hybrid gear.

Please let's do something to make duelist feel like a real class rather than just a mara or ranger wearing a red blouse.

I don't know what the duelists identity is either. None of the keystones do anything to clarify that either. The shadow passive tree usurped what I thought the duelist was supposed to do, except added the crit nodes. The shadow has the dual weilding and speed that the duelist appears to have, and life is everywhere.

I was hoping the last changes, from your last thread, that they would do something to define the duelist, but all GGG did was make a few nodes less crappy. Sadly, nothing happened, and I still have no idea what the duelist is supposed to do. Its just a bridge between marauder and ranger right now, and its worse than either. Theres some dual wielding, some elemental, some generic, some projectile, some block, some bow. Axe nodes are about the only thing the duelist has "specific" to that part of the tree, but those are lackluster. Theres nothing in the duelist tree thats better, or not splattered all over the tree, nor difficult for the ranger/marauder to branch into.

Attack speed for duelist might be off the table, which is quite sad. :( There was a dev post recently saying they think attack speed is super powerful and they don't want to give it to players in large amounts.

I can see where they are coming from cos attack speed is indeed the most powerful thing you can stack, but that doesn't explain why gems give massive attack speed boosts while the nodes on the skill tree have values of 2-4% with very few exceptions.

Like if I'm doing the ultimate attack speed build I would be combining frenzy-faster attacks-blood rage with a crazy fast rapier and 6 frenzy charges and not really be concerned with the attack speed nodes on the passive tree.

On an unrelated node bow duelist with the idea of blood magic, iron grip and frenzy+chain as main attack skill and only life + life regen as defences is a pretty sexy build. Funnily enough that build still requires to connect the marauder starting area, cos of the regen nodes there.

Why didnt you make a 2h blade duelist? its pretty clear by looking at the tree that duelists are basically masters of the blade.Use Hyrbid armor , get about 40% eva and 40% Dr, get the accruacy nodes so you dont have to rely on resolute technique. Theres things a duelist can do, that other classes cant.

You can also try dual wield duelist, simply for the block chance and the dual wield physical damage nodes, no other class can get as many of them as the duelist.

you can make a duelist be in a class of its own, you just have to find the right build for them, dont make a build that other classes can do better.

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VictorDoom wrote:

Why didnt you make a 2h blade duelist? its pretty clear by looking at the tree that duelists are basically masters of the blade.Use Hyrbid armor , get about 40% eva and 40% Dr, get the accruacy nodes so you dont have to rely on resolute technique. Theres things a duelist can do, that other classes cant.

You can also try dual wield duelist, simply for the block chance and the dual wield physical damage nodes, no other class can get as many of them as the duelist.

you can make a duelist be in a class of its own, you just have to find the right build for them, dont make a build that other classes can do better.

It's a numbers game victor. Sure, that may be the duelists intent, if so, the class needs some buffs and love. Not only does the class lack any clear keystones or trees that indicate this is their identity, but more so, you can do what moos did, and go 2h sweep with a hammer for MUCH better effect.

In the end, if you want to optimize and be the best duelist possible, he has no flavor or leverage of his own. Duelists are the doppleganger class, as they do not actually have anything of their own that excels outright, rather, they are in a favorable spot to go several different ways and "Pretend" to be another class, which retaining a few perks, while losing some.

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VictorDoom wrote:

Why didnt you make a 2h blade duelist? its pretty clear by looking at the tree that duelists are basically masters of the blade.

you can't put much into DPS nodes playing melee period so regardless if there are alot, none are really much better than others, balancing and all, so weapon really just comes down to what skills you want to use and personally I couldn't hate a skill more than I hate cleave. As swords only give accuracy bonus I see no reason to use a 2h sword almost ever. I get enough dex to never worry about accuracy combined with the fact I can go rapiers for speed/crit multi, mace for stun or axe for high DPS. I forgot to mention that in the main post but I did touch on in my last one. Swords are garbage. If they are the "duelist" weapon give them a IAS implicit mod that has a range similar to wands and SD. At least that helps to define them and the class.

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drakar8888 wrote:

Attack speed for duelist might be off the table, which is quite sad. :( There was a dev post recently saying they think attack speed is super powerful and they don't want to give it to players in large amounts.

maybe that's part of the solution. Scale skill IAS down and put more on the tree. Then again with melee needing so much EHP it means another thing you can't easily get for higher DPS.

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indczn wrote:

I was hoping the last changes, from your last thread, that they would do something to define the duelist, but all GGG did was make a few nodes less crappy.

They did make some changes, I do like the life change that was big. I wish they changed the L&S at the bottom, still won't be using that. I don't have 8 nodes to invest in armor especially when it won't be that much more useful. Also after the IR move I agree with Charan it just needs to go. It's a band aid on the evasion problem and it's just free for maras. After the change someone said it best "every mara is now 3 lvls lower."

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EpsiIon wrote:

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VictorDoom wrote:

Why didnt you make a 2h blade duelist? its pretty clear by looking at the tree that duelists are basically masters of the blade.Use Hyrbid armor , get about 40% eva and 40% Dr, get the accruacy nodes so you dont have to rely on resolute technique. Theres things a duelist can do, that other classes cant.

You can also try dual wield duelist, simply for the block chance and the dual wield physical damage nodes, no other class can get as many of them as the duelist.

you can make a duelist be in a class of its own, you just have to find the right build for them, dont make a build that other classes can do better.

It's a numbers game victor. Sure, that may be the duelists intent, if so, the class needs some buffs and love. Not only does the class lack any clear keystones or trees that indicate this is their identity, but more so, you can do what moos did, and go 2h sweep with a hammer for MUCH better effect.

In the end, if you want to optimize and be the best duelist possible, he has no flavor or leverage of his own. Duelists are the doppleganger class, as they do not actually have anything of their own that excels outright, rather, they are in a favorable spot to go several different ways and "Pretend" to be another class, which retaining a few perks, while losing some.

I agree with the fact that duelists do need some more attention but as is the class has 2 clear strong points Blades and Dual wielding (its the easiest class to get a LOT of dual wield damage and all the dual wield block chance nodes).

I have to point out that Arrow dodging keystone would be best suited for the duelists area since its the best class to go for if you intend on using eva/ar hybrids.

It must be given a bit more attention with this i agree, but i fail to agree with the idea that it has nothing unique to it.

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VictorDoom wrote:

I agree with the fact that duelists do need some more attention but as is the class has 2 clear strong points Blades and Dual wielding (its the easiest class to get a LOT of dual wield damage and all the dual wield block chance nodes).

I have to point out that Arrow dodging keystone would be best suited for the duelists area since its the best class to go for if you intend on using eva/ar hybrids.

It must be given a bit more attention with this i agree, but i fail to agree with the idea that it has nothing unique to it.

Reg (ceto on forums) showed me that DW is best for ranger due to crit which duelist doesn't have. Like I said last reply swords just blow and the skills around them aren't much better either.

I don't think there's no unique passives it's just there's no real connection to make them duelist passives. We have BM and US but everyone sees those as mara passives. We have IR and point blank but those are seen as ranger passives. Hell even little shit like mana flows is used more by rangers (and epsi's shadow) as most duelist break down and go BM.

edit: I mean I'm not looking for viable or unique builds. That's not my thing. I'm looking for the GS mara duelist build. That flag ship go to. DW just isn't it even though it's viable and 2h swords doesn't compare to maces/axes. The closest thing I've found is 2h axe and with GS mara popularity it's much easier to find a high damage mace than it is a high damage axe so my flagship is basically 2nd best mara build.

why not try to make a DW duelist better than cetos ranger? im sure it can be done, you can get more survavbility and quite a lot of physical damage via the blade passives.

You dont need crit to make a good dual weild build.. look at my RT shadow.

edit: well thats maybe why you dont see the duelists identity, because you went for the most common marauder build, GS mara, only you're doing it on a duelist.
Kind of hard to see the identity of a class when you're doing the build another class is doing.

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Moosifer wrote:

They did make some changes, I do like the life change that was big. I wish they changed the L&S at the bottom, still won't be using that. I don't have 8 nodes to invest in armor especially when it won't be that much more useful. Also after the IR move I agree with Charan it just needs to go. It's a band aid on the evasion problem and it's just free for maras. After the change someone said it best "every mara is now 3 lvls lower."

Making the life nodes accessible doesn't define the duelist at all. For that matter, I only hit those life nodes half the time I feel the need to kill a duelist because the surrounding nodes are so lackluster. Back in the day, when I won a 3h race with the duelist, it was all attack speed + cleave/flicker (old tree, pre shadow). The new tree doesn't even really allow for that, and the shadow does the same thing as well.

I agree, the duelist doesn't have a "pre-defined build" thats obvious from the passive tree/reward gems, opposed to all the others that clearly have something laid out.