The Dancing Dervish - An Insight into the Design Process

"

tretterag wrote:

Would it even be usable to kill any bosses with stages?

I'm wondering about that too. Even if we omit everything else - for the sword to manifest itself we need how many, 10 or 20 kills? So if a boss fight('s stage) doesn't have many ads, we are screwed. And if there is no steady stream of aforementioned ads, we are screwed again. Well, maybe Writhing Jar can help somewhat in that regard.

"

Rhys wrote:

It's big and fancy so you can see it easily when it manifests.

Will it be affected by character size modifiers while out of character's hands?

interesting read, cool and unique design, i also love animated weapons.


my reasons why this won't work as a build:


Facebreaker builds pretty much rely on shield nodes these days. they provide general melee damage (of which there is little in the tree otherwise) as well as "shield defense" and block chance, which will turn your high armour shield into a super strong defense.
You really need that defense since you're melee or you will get shit on. For face breakers there is basicly two helmet choices

1. bringer of rain

2. abyssus

bringer of rain has the downside of no chest armour - so you REALLY need a high armour shield to be tanky
Abyssus has a huge downside of incr phys dmg taken - so youu need a high armour chest + shield to cover up the downside.

So the new sword basicly takes away ALL the defense facebreakers ever had, leaving them more or less naked.

But it also takes away a crap ton of offense, since shield nodes also provided damage.

If i want to scale it properly, i can only take general melee damage and general physical damage now, of which there is some on the tree, but its spread out from marauder to shadow/force shaper. the only way to get decent defenses now is acro/phase acro, evasion and some endurance charges, which could work.


But i also fear that if you somehow fail to sustain rampage (backtracking, chat, phone call) in a map, you're pretty much screwed if you encounter a hard boss or other stuff (perandus box magic mobs, sudden beyond spawn, rogue exile etc) - since you did not properly invest in sword nodes, your damage is suboptimal, and the sword itself is not incredibly strong to begin with.



So basicly the thing being two-handed adds a huge downside of having no defenses compared to typical facebreaker builds, sub-optimal damage due to weird pathing.

the upside is you get to a cool dancing sword fighting alongside you. depending on how strong it is, but it does not sound too appealing.

the biggest problem of facebreaker builds was AoE/clearing. if the sword helps to tackle that problem, it is great, if not, i dont see much use in it.

Nice cool idea, and I like how it feels truly Unique, but as already pointed out, it needs ongoing rampage so it needs steady kills, and that can't be 100% of the time,e.g. what happens at boss fights with no ads?
Also it isn't easy to pick up efficient nodes on the tree, so the sword damage output should be stronger to begin with...

You could have a good shield on weapon swap, couldn't you?

Not for when the sword is dancing, but, for when you've lost Rampage and know you can't get it back. If you're using Facebreakers, you won't have the Nodes to do well with a Sword so you can swap it over to Shield for single targetting once you lose rampage.

Of course it relies on the Manifestation being not hugely reliant on Passive Nodes, as any that are "While Shield..." will have no affect.

@Rhys

Can you please post a video of the fight with that sword?
I think everybody will apreciate it.


p.p. grats for the unorthodox idea.


BR

"

Rhys wrote:

It's big and fancy so you can see it easily when it manifests.

Ok, i get it.

But it can be big and be elegant at same time.
Look at other twohanded weapon - it isn't big.

Hm, how to explain....

Look like it is disbalanced, too heavy for use.

It can be better with "two-side one hand" balance

<++++>--o--<++++>

"

Radonegsky wrote:

Hm, how to explain....

Look like it is disbalanced, too heavy for use.

I disagree, personally.

It would likely be awkward to use as a Slicing/Cutting Sword, but, design-wise it's aimed at Cyclone where you'd grip the sword and spin and the heavy nature of it would aid your momentum.

Another way of looking at it could just be that it's not designed to be "Used", and only works properly when Manifesting.

First: thank you rhys for the clarification.

Second to all the guys who are weeping that it is a bad sword. Tell me one unique that is really good. Even high value unique normally lack in many regards like resistances or basic defense or all of it. So whenever you equip a unique you have to compensate the wasted slot with better rares or spent skill points.
The task of unique is to enable you a special playstyle. An example: I would say the unique with the most advantages is shavrones wrappings. First it is only needed for low live builds cause it nullify the weakness of es tanks. But it is expensive and you normally want a 5-6 l chest armor. And for any other defense tactics there are much better and cheaper rare chest armors.
You can see this with any unique, they all got some nice gimmicks that are sometimes needed but are much worse then any possible high tier rare.

And as long as no one can present me a endgame (tier15 map) viable build with only unique equipment I stay by this comment and tell you to stop whining.

"

鬼殺し wrote:

"

Pyrokar wrote:

Even this sword is gonna be better than the goddess unleashed, because it can motivate people to try something new. Makes me feel bad about Charan.
Not happy to see another "6s means 6l" unique though.

Totally different streams. This is a 2 hander for reals. Different builds altogether.

Oh, and this was my gift to Rhys as thanks for everything he has done to make The Goddess item hunts so (painfully) memorable.

It was my last unique design and I realised I'd never top Unleashed. Not in terms of power but in terms of vision matching reality.

This sword of Rhys' could suck but as long as he enjoyed the process and is personally satisfied with it, I couldn't be happier.

Very generous of you to donate the design. I think it's obvious that Rhys had fun creating it by reading the design process.

Also Rhys's sword is pretty strong imo and i've already made a build that looks very satisfying. Can't wait to try it.

@Rhys I really like uniques that challenge your skill tree creating "skills" and i feel really awesome when i create a build that works in high lvl maps, despite the downsides of the unique it's centered on. Thanks for providing another challenge.

I love Facebreakers so I will definitely give this a try when it is released. I have big concerns about the survivability though. The attack and movement speed bonuses from the sword aura will need to be absolutely massive for this to be viable.

"

griffinzero wrote:

First: thank you rhys for the clarification.

Second to all the guys who are weeping that it is a bad sword. Tell me one unique that is really good. Even high value unique normally lack in many regards like resistances or basic defense or all of it. So whenever you equip a unique you have to compensate the wasted slot with better rares or spent skill points.

This is intended for an unarmed build. In case you have never played one before, unarmed builds MUST use 3-4 equipment slots on uniques (glove, belt, helm, chest) to get barely enough damage already. Every single slot means less resists, less life, less defense. With this weapon, you also have to give up the shield slot and your ability to block. There is no item or skill tree cluster to compensate for that.