Let's have a talk about Maxwell's ShadowDuelist

[Mr.Gordon]

I have played as Maxwell about 2 thousand hours ,

about Maxwell ,i want to talk something.

As i know , the quantity of Maxwell's players is not the most , 

it's less than players of other character. 

Maybe he looks not pretty , maybe he is a little hard to play , 

But he is my favorite character .

I think this character is a gift to mature players.

The design of Maxwell is perfect :
I can do almost anything by myself , so i need not rely on others.

I think  that maybe  Maxwell is the most suitable person to use nightswords.

People often regards him as a worker , a collector , a helper , a logistics , a server ,

"Max ,we need logs plz"

"Max , we need rocks plz"

But infact , As a real maxwell player , 

when i cut the tree , its not for logs , its in oder to livelog.

Nightsword is the main weapon for Maxwell , 

So i often cut tree without anyone's ask , because i need living-log .

 As for maxwell player , logs are just the by-product , living log is our point.

maxwell's player need not to ask others for help , and they can give more help to others,

And a funny thing is :
When you want logs , it gives you living-log at the same time,

and when you want living-logs, it gives you logs at the same time , 

both of them could be regarded as a gift from each other,

its a interesting design , right ?

that is a point why i like this character.

Auto Sanity Regen is a important ability , it makes maxwell can live anywhere : even in cave.
In oder to avoid troller , many player build there base at cave , 

and Maxwell is the most suitable character to live at cave .

Most fetures  and design of maxwell  is perfect and pragmatic.

But about the ShadowDuelist , how i can describe it ,

I want to use a word: chicken ribs , it means useless , 

It holds a nightsword , but the damage value is just 40 , maybe it is a kidding ?

It means it hold a fake nightsword.

That is not the point , the point is , In whole game , ShadowDuelist is useless.

you want make it to help you to attack spders , hounds? 

No way , they have 75 health , and have no defense,

It means it will be kill by once attack from most enemy entities :

 worm , rook ,  and any boss.

It means you have the ability to summon it , but it can't give you any materiality help . ( funny ,right ? )

In whole game , i found just one way to use it :
Make it to help you to take the hurt from bishop .

ShadowDuelist has 15 value of health regen per 2 seconds ,  

You take a boomerang and pretend to attack bishop , 

ShadowDuelist will go to attack the bishop before you , 

with hit and kite and wait for ShadowDuelist's health regen , you can kill a bishop without hurt.

Woodie ,  Abigail both be modified ， 

I think ShadowDuelist had stay behind the scenes too long , 

Now , its time to make it stay In front of the stage , 

What ever to say , Maxwell is the Boss in the past , right?

We Maxwell player thirst for a modification of ShadowDuelist , 

to make it more usefull .

 

 

[HeatAndRun]

1 hour ago, Mr.Gordon said:

I have played as Maxwell about 2 thousand hours ,

For a moment I misread this as '2 thousand years' 

[Sinister_Fang]

Ah duelists, where do I begin? I think with some very simple tweaks they could be quite useful. If I could, I'd change them with the following:

1: They do not kite, and instead go for an attack when Maxwell does. 

2: They do not pull any aggro whatsoever. This keeps the attention on Maxwell himself and would pretty much make him fit in the glass cannon archetype. 

3: Either A: Some way to give them damage reduction or B: Make them completely immune to all damage, but they expire after a certain amount of time. 

[Scrimbles]

Recombine all the shadows like classic Max, but get rid of the limited timer, have shadows take player equivelant damage from bosses (some bosses like the Deerclops do 150 to mobs and 75 to players), maybe give them a bit of health regen and 100 health instead of 75.

 

Thats all I want out of a Maxwell rework, I would hate to see him become an afk machine in combat to match how he works when it comes to resource gathering.

[Cheggf]

If you're properly engaging with the enemy your duelists should live against anything other than a group of enemies you lost control over or an enemy with cleaving attacks. His duelists are difficult to use, but I like that a lot more than the "Summon ally, watch it kill everything for you" way that Abigail works.

[Primalflower]

1 hour ago, Ogrecakes said:

Recombine all the shadows like classic Max, but get rid of the limited timer, have shadows take player equivelant damage from bosses (some bosses like the Deerclops do 150 to mobs and 75 to players), maybe give them a bit of health regen and 100 health instead of 75.

I feel like this would just dissuade anyone from ever playing max despite the timer removal, similarly to how little people play him in DS (like really I don't think I've ever seen a single person play maxwell there aside from showcasing him)

[me real life]

7 minutes ago, Lbphero said:

(like really I don't think I've ever seen a single person play maxwell there aside from showcasing him)

The only person I've really seen playing Maxwell in DS is a friend of mine who played him for a good couple thousand days back when there was just RoG and SW... and I believe their reasoning was just the sanity gain and that 45hp with a meat effigy was fun to them. I really wouldn't want shadow minions to get bumped back down to DS-levels when they're so good and fun to use in DST.

[ADM]

I've seen so many ideas on Max's shadows on the forums and all of them sound neat, I can only hope Klei will considerate some of those for the rework, especially the shadows, I like how the book and worker crafting works for the moment, DS Maxwell was annoying as hell since you needed tools and work by yourself continuously to make shadows work in a mediocre way, pigs were better. It doesn't have to return to monkey his old gameplay.

I've played Maxwell over 2k hours, and used the fighters only a couple of time since nightmarefuel is not a big deal with Maxwell, my recommendation would be to change the recipe to night sword since we always have living log and fuel in our inventory, crafting a spear is not very common and would allow fighters later in the game, but damages should change as well, give them proper kite features according to the player distance on the target and as they're (at least) useful to keep yourself insane, they should have the ability to attack shadow creatures, it would makes sense to me.

[Scrimbles]

1 hour ago, Lbphero said:

I feel like this would just dissuade anyone from ever playing max despite the timer removal, similarly to how little people play him in DS (like really I don't think I've ever seen a single person play maxwell there aside from showcasing him)

He was still a pretty good character, but his shadows just needed some buffs.

 

Not the "im going to go afk and farm 100 trees in half a day" kind of buffs, or "im going to dig up the entire map while afk" kind of buffs, but longer lasting shadows, that didn't just get instakilled by enemies sometimes.

New Max is too rewarding for very little effort.

 

edit: I could also describe this situation as "amputating an infected arm" instead of curing the infection. And then replacing the arm with like, a chainsaw or something. Okay its neat, but having a full arm that can be controlled and is multi functional is still preferable. I lost what the point of this analogy was.

[ShadowDuelist]

4 hours ago, Mr.Gordon said:

about the ShadowDuelist , how i can describe it ,

I want to use a word: chicken ribs , it means useless

I was summoned to this post.
 

Spoiler

I agree with everything.

Please buff shadow duelists.

 

[Yuma Arcl]

A simple solution would be to make the duelists 'untargettable' / 'invincible', move slower and any attacks made by them counts the aggro towards Max

So, for example, if the duelists hit Deerclops, it'll go after Maxwell and ignore the shadows. This way they can keep attacking if Max is standing still or kiting, but they won't be able to if he is running away (assuming the boss would also be moving), just like when you're trying to hit a butterfly when it is flying away.

This preventing Maxwell from engaging 'Wendy mode'

 

[Brubs]

I would like his shadows to absorb damage for Maxwell. Everytime he gets hit a duelist dies. That would help him survive and would enhance Maxwell's concept of his shadows being an extension of him. It also rewards the player for kiting properly

[Cheggf]

3 hours ago, Yuma Arcl said:

A simple solution would be to make the duelists 'untargettable' / 'invincible', move slower and any attacks made by them counts the aggro towards Max

So, for example, if the duelists hit Deerclops, it'll go after Maxwell and ignore the shadows. This way they can keep attacking if Max is standing still or kiting, but they won't be able to if he is running away (assuming the boss would also be moving), just like when you're trying to hit a butterfly when it is flying away.

This preventing Maxwell from engaging 'Wendy mode'

 

This would be considerably more Wendy more than Wendy because your duelists are invulnerable. You could just run circles around the boss as the duelists kill it, or barely bait its attacks out to cause it to hold still for a long time, or do anything else to impede its movement.

[smeagolheart]

Instead of being invincible make them die but then have them respawn after a short time.

So you'd still want to take it easy and not be too reckless but if they die you don't have to waste materials to summon them again.

[bagherthegamer]

I think allowing them to wear armor is the change i want. 

[Yuma Arcl]

9 hours ago, Cheggf said:

This would be considerably more Wendy more than Wendy because your duelists are invulnerable. You could just run circles around the boss as the duelists kill it, or barely bait its attacks out to cause it to hold still for a long time, or do anything else to impede its movement.

It's not like Wendy since she can stay out of the fight because Abigail aggros and can be targeted. You wouldn't be able to do any of this you listed when facing, for example, Dragonfly. Unlees you got some very good timing and kiting skills (and why could not that be rewarding?).

The duelists aggroing monsters as if it was Maxwell who hit them would make up for them being untargettable. Also they hit single-target. So it's not a big deal to make them like this. 

[ArubaroBeefalo]

Well they are shadow creatures so have sense to be intargetable

[CameoAppearance]

On 8/13/2020 at 1:13 PM, Sunset Skye said:

The only person I've really seen playing Maxwell in DS is a friend of mine who played him for a good couple thousand days back when there was just RoG and SW... and I believe their reasoning was just the sanity gain and that 45hp with a meat effigy was fun to them. I really wouldn't want shadow minions to get bumped back down to DS-levels when they're so good and fun to use in DST.

I've tried playing him in DS on multiple occasions and in multiple gamemodes, but I die too fast and too often. The shadows are definitely a lot more useful in DST than in DS where they're not much more than reskinned pig followers, but to be honest, the main thing that makes me want to play Maxwell in DST but not DS is that you can cheat death without having to sacrifice almost half your pitiable old man health bar or remember to put on an amulet immediately before you die.