Uses for Shadow Duelists?

[Blue Moth]

So, I plan to start a run with a character besides Wigfrid for once, and I want to go as Maxwell. and i was thinking, are there any actual uses for Maxwell's Shadow duelists? I'm not gonna go in to how they are bad and they need a buff and stuff, but I was just wondering if there was a use for the shadow duelists we have now. Is there any real use?

[ArubaroBeefalo]

dragonfly but the agro must be on you all the time

[Owlrust]

Useful for tanking non AoE enemies like the Moose/Goose for sure.

[Viktor234]

If a shadow duelist strikes a spider once all nearby spiders will trigger on the shadow duelist allowing you to kill the spiders one by one as long as they keep their aggro on the duelist. i.e. they are useful as a distraction.

[BlueBaby701]

I used to play Maxwell alot, and I say:

Just use pigs

[HeatAndRun]

If you summon 2 duelists and 1 shadow worker your max sanity will be fixed to 20, ready to farm nightmare fuels.

They cost 6 fuels to summon, exactly same amount of fuels as Maxwell's starting item.

Good for early-game fuel mass producing.

[Brubs]

1 hour ago, HeatAndRun said:

If you summon 2 duelists and 1 shadow worker your max sanity will be fixed to 20, ready to farm nightmare fuels.

They cost 6 fuels to summon, exactly same amount of fuels as Maxwell's starting item.

Good for early-game fuel mass producing.

I think this is the best use for duelists at the moment.

[ShadowDuelist]

6 hours ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

dragonfly but the agro must be on you all the time

They also tend to interrupt the panflute effect on DFLY, causing more problems than benefits.

I guess if you can do the dance emote at lightning speed, then use the panflute, they could be useful. The other option is to add DPS when there's already more than 2 players (or a wolfgang) and DFLY will be stunlocked most of the time regardless.

1 hour ago, A Random Furry said:

I used to play Maxwell alot, and I say:

Just use pigs

I want to positively react to this comment more than once.

Just use them to farm fuel in the early game, and maybe to cheese enemies that have no attack against them, like the ewecus.
They are an awesome concept, that just won't work (probably until Maxwell rework) 

[.]

2 hours ago, HeatAndRun said:

If you summon 2 duelists and 1 shadow worker your max sanity will be fixed to 20, ready to farm nightmare fuels.

They cost 6 fuels to summon, exactly same amount of fuels as Maxwell's starting item.

Good for early-game fuel mass producing.

It's only reason I use them.

[Cheggf]

Mostly to stay insane or farm spiders, but they can help in any fight where the enemy lacks a cleaving attack. Their help relies on your skill, though, especially if they're helping against a group of enemies instead of a single enemy.

If summoning them didn't have such an awkward recipe they'd be really good, but since it does they're kind of niche.