duelists are fine (but could use a small tweak)

[NoodlemanNed]

I really enjoyed the recent buff to duelists. It made them a great minion that function differently than pretty much everything we had before, and i think thats really fun to mess around with. Now i did in fact see some people get quite upset over how good they were, and im hoping to offer a suggestion that could work as a compromise to both those people, and individuals like me who appreciate a genuinely powerful minion.

The boring ideas:

Giving maxwell some sort of downside for summoning duelists. Ive seen people suggest him taking more damage, getting a max hp penalty, or being forced with more shadow creatures while duelists are active. These ideas do help since they allow max to have a low of power at the cost of putting yourself at a greater risk. I say these are boring ideas because fights are still rather trivial this way, but i have an idea that could hopefully remedy that...

My the better idea! - a dodge roll

Ok so what if duelists took full damage once again, just completely throwing that mechanic out the window. Oh and also stopping duelists from doing that dash attack they do on their own. Now to compensate for these changes maxwell would be able to manually trigger their dash ability(by attacking the enemy himself), which also makes duelists invincible for a very short amount of time (basically giving the minions a dodge roll [from dark souls]).

I think of all the potential "nerfs" this one can easily be the most elegant and engaging. It increases the risk in a fight because playing poorly will get the duelists picked off like flies, making them no better than before. You could also implement a fairly long delay for the dash ability (maybe 10 seconds or so?) that way it doesnt devolve into mindless spamming. It would be even MORE interesting to have those delay bound to individual weapons, so players could still get fully invincible duelists, but they would not only need to be accurate, but also being able to keep track of which weapons are on cooldown.

The manual dash doesnt even need to be the only nerf to maxwell. Implementing increased damage taken/ higher risk from insanity would compound the risk of having a powerful duelist army, forcing players to be even more competent in order to utilize maxwell. So overall i think the raw combat prowess of the shadow duelists is perfect as it stands, but making them very difficult to use would not only provide a great way for skilled players to grind for less materials, but it would add a cool new tactic that newer players can look up to and hopefully attempt some day in the future.

 

[SinancoTheBest]

agreed, this right here sounds like a great design for the dualists. Have them be fragile and strong; but only reach their ful potential with Maxwell participating in the battle, granting them phasing dashes that they can avoid death with.

[Guille6785]

cute idea, cuter poster

[astroapyr]

What if this dodge could be triggered by Max from a distance with an item like that one watch Wanda has but for minions instead of himself? This would absolutely make Maxwell take more part in the fights as a puppeteer.

The only downside to this I can come up with for now is you would have to choose between pillars and dodging cause it needs all your attention.

This said, having in mind klei already added phasing in and out for attacking duelists, I don't think they'll undo it.