The Dancing Dervish - An Insight into the Design Process

Reading about the design process is always nice. Please do more of these. The sword is a perfect example of what a unique should be. It does something very unique and enables new or different playstyles.
The sword itself is hard to judge right now without actually playing with it or seeing what changes are coming next league. It should be good to play around with to see what kind of crazy interactions it can have.
What I am really hoping for is for some other unique jewel or unique armour that will synergize with this and realy push it to 'endgame' viabilty.

Thanks for the great summary.

At first i was about to write:
"But why didn't you ask Rhyz for flavour text" usually everyone of thou haveth specialities....

And when i was done reading i realised it was you ;)

Though the linked pictures fits perfectly with the sword. Be happy you just ravived the flame and im going to waste a fed tens of hour making an animate weapon (got an idea damn im gonna try it!) Build and then with the new league ill capitalize on what ill learn in the meantime

Nice read.

 I do hope that sometime soon you choose to make a minion that is powerful but we only can have a few instead of the standard minions of which we can get dozens but each one is pretty mindless stupid and weak. We've had them forever, now make something with better intelligence (yeah, I know, AI is hard to do... sigh!).

Curious to see how this weapon will, if it works, on animated guardian

very interesting read, thanks for taking the time to share it with us.

reading through the negative comments of the item not being overpowered: your attitude of "endgame viable or gtfo vendor" just introduces more power creep.

imho what the game needs is some serious negative power creep after the ascendancy buff without compensation in monster's power.

As many above suggested:

I don't see how it will work in game with facebreakers or any other melee char!

either the sword is so ueber that is can be easily used by spellcasters/pure summoners
or it's just a superstrong minion then ...
what we do at special boss fights - what we do at reflect maps


Here a different setting
--
)let it count as golem - you summon it - it's there, dancing around you - WONDERFUL!
)make it indestructable - but give it a close range around the owner
) so you have reached an unarmed char that acts at close range
--
even now: it's there everytime - dealing damage - we still have no defense or no damage

==
so it must have a buff that adds numeric damage (around 50-70) to unarmed attacks

making Abbysus & Merigor's Girdle obsulet ... so you can use a Helmet, an Armour and a Belt
-
and now ... just maybe as Champion / with the shield skills spared invested in
minion nods and even more life ... you may stand a chance
==


just my 2 cents
sincerely KIWI

PS: i still think a normal facbreaker going as Gladiator is superior

cant wait to get my hands on that dirty item.. :D

Good job ;D

WTB Dancing Dervish Offer 1c ;p

This seems like a neat weapon and I would totally try it out, but one thing frustrates me:

"

One more balance question: which base type to use? Initially, I wanted something around level 40-45, so players could use it from around Cruel difficulty through to endgame, however the problem was that the minion wouldn't scale with the player. Normal skill gems level up over time and become stronger with the player, but skills granted by items do not. To make it strong in Cruel would make it very weak in endgame Maps. Yes, you can add more links over time to add more supports to the minion, but even so it wouldn't be viable at endgame. The best solution was to increase the base type to be higher-level: Reaver Sword (level 59). This makes it more of an endgame weapon and so it doesn't need to scale as much.

There's a really obvious answer to this, and it's to make the weapon scale as you level, a la Pillar, Whispering Ice or Iron Commander. To be honest, most build-enabling uniques should scale somehow with level, so that they can be leveled with and not be too OP or too weak at any one point in the leveling process. Then you could put it on whatever base you wanted, and there'd be no dilemma. Now if I want to use it I have to slog through 60 levels of boredom before I can mess around with it and even see if it's honestly worth building around after all. Uniques should scale!