Duelists were perfect before the latest update

[Cheggf]

The problem with duelists before the rework was that they cost a spear, which was incredibly clumsy to carry around. Now they no longer cost a spear, and their fuel cost is 10x cheaper. They also can be spawned independently of Maxwell making using them for things like bishop aggro management and animal hunting easier. They were great against groups and a variety of different things if you thought about using them instead of just refusing to ever try because you preemptively think they're useless.

Now they're worse against groups, and instead kill bosses on Maxwell's behalf. Instead of the fun and interesting duelists where you thought about how to use them in a variety of situations you now just spend 1 nightmare fuel to go afk and watch other things kill the boss for you. There's already 3 characters that do that, and 4 that kill bosses, so it's really disappointing to see Maxwell becoming much more generic and losing his identity. His low health is supposed to be a downside, but he no longer even had to put himself at risk. He can just sit back and spawn shadows without any fear of being attacked.

[Copyafriend]

you speak wisdom egg-man. honestly I would be fine with reverting them completely, but so many people wanted them buffed in some way that I've been arguing "At least make them take MORE damage per hit" instead of going full "just revert it"

[ArubaroBeefalo]

they sucked lol

[Gi-Go]

I don't think so. Plebs like deerclops get wrecked, sure, but how about bee queen for example?

You need to manage your sanity, time your cages, target your minions on her and not grumbles, and she always targets you. Nightmare creatures seriously get in the way, and things can turn deadly rather quickly on the last half of the fight. 

Also, i think Maxwell is special. A warrior unlike anything the world has ever seen. His previous identity was log grabber. 

[Copyafriend]

12 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

they sucked lol

They didnt though, They could easily solo anything short of deerclops without much help, and were practically free. Really disposable and weak is exactly how they should be for their price

1 minute ago, Gi-Go said:

I don't think so. Plebs like deerclops get wrecked, sure, but how about bee queen for example?

You need to manage your sanity, time your cages, target your minions on her and not grumbles, and she always targets you. Nightmare creatures seriously get in the way, and things can turn deadly rather quickly on the last half of the fight. 

Also, i think Maxwell is special. A warrior unlike anything the world has ever seen. His previous identity was log grabber. 

No i saw bee queen get wrecked with the starting nightmare fuel, all they had for equipment was a hambat and some sanity food.

[Gi-Go]

6 minutes ago, Copyafriend said:

No i saw bee queen get wrecked with the starting nightmare fuel, all they had for equipment was a hambat and some sanity food.

What do you mean saw? Shouldn't you be testing game yourself, if you gave such a strong opinion? Go fight her. 

[King Maxwell]

34 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

The problem with duelists before the rework was that they cost a spear, which was incredibly clumsy to carry around. Now they no longer cost a spear, and their fuel cost is 10x cheaper. They also can be spawned independently of Maxwell making using them for things like bishop aggro management and animal hunting easier. They were great against groups and a variety of different things if you thought about using them instead of just refusing to ever try because you preemptively think they're useless.

Now they're worse against groups, and instead kill bosses on Maxwell's behalf. Instead of the fun and interesting duelists where you thought about how to use them in a variety of situations you now just spend 1 nightmare fuel to go afk and watch other things kill the boss for you. There's already 3 characters that do that, and 4 that kill bosses, so it's really disappointing to see Maxwell becoming much more generic and losing his identity. His low health is supposed to be a downside, but he no longer even had to put himself at risk. He can just sit back and spawn shadows without any fear of being attacked.

I've been saying something similar for a while, maybe I can't express myself as I would like because writing in a language I don't know is tiring, good to find someone with a similar thought so I don't have to explain too much but for some reason a good part of the community liked this boring delivery of clearly overloaded power and the vast majority want to balance giving meaningless disadvantages to maxwell which would only increase the incentive to let their shadows fight without maxwell's participation, that said i disagree that the duelists were perfect needed little polishing and small is the key word here keeping the changes and going back on these 2 I think it would have the necessary polish to be perfect

• Damage taken per hit is now limited, improving survivability.
• Removed passive health regeneration.

A splash AOE damage on the "special" (50%/33%/25%/10%/5%) of atk on non-primary targets would be fun just because the animation looks like an AOE but it's not even remotely necessary.
One thing I really wanted but I don't see anyone talking about is faster animation when reading the codex to cast duelists, it's awkward to reset duelist if you're actively participating in a large scale fight against a lot of mobs, I usually don't summon new ones after the first few die and finish alone or stay away just invoking spam duelists to fight alone and at least for me it's more fun (and faster) to actively participate in the fight attacking, dodging and replenishing duelists when possible.

[ADM]

I would just look forward an in-between, I've stopped to play Maxwell who was my first and a long time main because I couldn't find situations where I'd not prefer to deal with everything by myself with duellists and that's not because of the cost entirely (which was an annoyance too, for sure) but practicality too, I was doing better by myself and faster. In the current situation it's the whole opposite and I can't be totally satisfied with that for obvious reasons you'd point out, but I'd find it better than the old behaviours and stats, even with the different casting cost.
That's just to say that at no point I'd be personally happy with a cancel of the duellists rework but tweaks (so fair nerfs) should be heavily rolling during the beta to have something that plays out nicely for a majority of players without being absurdly powerful, it goes without saying.

[ShadowDuelist]

Wicker can still tentacle her way through bosses while AFKing. Winona can catapult her way through bosses. Wilson can bunnymen his way through bosses. Wendy can press F and kill bee queen on day 2.
I can go on...

The duelists were always a joke of a useless summon, the rework 1.0 made them better, but still pretty bad, and now that they finally are working, they want it reverted to useless? Maxwell only needs fine tuning, not complete scrapping, it's saddening to see people overreact so much.

EG:

• Making the new duelists and the new shadow prison require unlocking, instead of getting them from day one. All characters need to work to get their full power, Maxwell should be the same.
• Make bee queen, D-fly, toadstool, misery, immune to prison walls, and fuelweaver and the celestial champion extremely resistant to it (like 1 second duration on them, as they are mean to be super powerful beings). For the rest of the bosses I'd leave as it is, specially considering that spider queens and treeguards are tagged as "boss" 
• Make the duelists have a cooldown once you've summoned 6 and they died before their normal lifetime expired. Even if it's a minute or 2 it'd force Maxwell to do something.

It's easier to balance things out without removing the fun.

[Copyafriend]

10 minutes ago, Gi-Go said:

What do you mean saw? Shouldn't you be testing game yourself, if you gave such a strong opinion? Go fight her. 

I have been, I dont test everything myself. Watching a video of someone dunking on the bee queen by just repeatedly trapping the grumbles was good enough for me.

Id rather see how he plays in day to day situations.

 

But you dont actually care, you just wanted a funny zinger to toss and add nothing else to the conversation.

[MadMatt]

9 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

EG:

• Making the new duelists and the new shadow prison require unlocking, instead of getting them from day one. All characters need to work to get their full power, Maxwell should be the same.
• Make bee queen, D-fly, toadstool, misery, immune to prison walls, and fuelweaver and the celestial champion extremely resistant to it (like 1 second duration on them, as they are mean to be super powerful beings). For the rest of the bosses I'd leave as it is, specially considering that spider queens and treeguards are tagged as "boss" 
• Make the duelists have a cooldown once you've summoned 6 and they died before their normal lifetime expired. Even if it's a minute or 2 it'd force Maxwell to do something.

Although I hold issue with the examples provided, yes PLEASE just make it harder for Maxwell to obtain these powers rather than removing them. There's no problem with having a strong character but having one who can accomplish so much on his own without any obstacle or check is ridiculous. 

[Cheggf]

28 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Wicker can still tentacle her way through bosses while AFKing. Winona can catapult her way through bosses.

You're right, I forgot about Wickerbottom. Maxwell is now the fifth character to watch other things fight on his behalf, or sixth if you count Winona.

28 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

The duelists were always a joke of a useless summon, the rework 1.0 made them better, but still pretty bad, and now that they finally are working, they want it reverted to useless? Maxwell only needs fine tuning, not complete scrapping, it's saddening to see people overreact so much.

The people overreacting are those who think the basically free minion which is great against groups, hunts, bishops, anything you need to deaggro, etc is "a joke" or "useless". I don't think you tried them out very much.

28 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Making the new duelists and the new shadow prison require unlocking, instead of getting them from day one.

So now instead of the always useful and fun perk he has the same perk a third of the roster has, and you need to unlock it. That's even worse than the current version.

You even brought up bunnymen. Why not just use them as the "upgraded form"? Why remove the fun and useful old duelist and replace it with bunnymen, but shadowy?

28 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

It's easier to balance things out without removing the fun.

You literally started your comment by comparing him to the rest of the roster and bringing up how his unique duelists have been replaced with something that's identical to a dozen other things. How is homogenization fun? Why don't you just go play those other characters you brought up, or use bunnymen as Maxwell? Why should bunnymen be irrelevant as Max, why should Max's downside be irrelevant, and why should he have the exact same ability as several other characters? Nothing else came close to the old duelists, the closest was some of Walter's ammo but even that was very different. Now the biggest difference between them and spiders\bunnymen\merms\tentacles is the graphics.

Well, the graphics and the fact that they're basically free and can be respawned instantly. 

[ShadowDuelist]

23 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

he people overreacting are those who think the basically free minion which is great against groups, hunts, bishops, anything you need to deaggro, etc is "a joke" or "useless". I don't think you tried them out very much.

I did, been playing maxwell for about 7 hours in many different scenarios, and unlike many testers I've been playing him normally (without spawning things or with godmode). I agree that they shouldn't be able to kill bosses on their own, but they finally are good for something, have a unique attack, and became decent surviving, they only need fine tuning, not scrapping.

23 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

So now instead of the always useful and fun perk he has the same perk a third of the roster has, and you need to unlock it. That's even worse than the current version.

Wickerbottom used to unlock 95% of her books just with an alchemy or a prestihatitator, both things you can craft in a day or 2 (I used to do them in 2 days at most). Now she requires her library which is somewhat more complex to craft, and some of her better books are locked behind rare materials. Wanda needs to craft a shadow manipulator, and go on a quest to the ruins or the archives to keep unlocking her powers. The "mage" characters of this game need to work their way to get to her full potential, and so should Maxwell.

Removing the current duelists and the current prison from day one is only a big loss for speedrunners, realistically nobody used the old duelists and all Maxwell had in the early game were his gatherers (which are now better and cheaper).
Having Maxwell go on a small quest to unlock his better powers sounds completely fair in the new theme of reworks.
 

23 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

You literally started your comment by comparing him to the rest of the roster and bringing up how his unique duelists have been replaced with something that's identical to a dozen other things. How is homogenization fun? Why don't you just go play those other characters you brought up, or use bunnymen as Maxwell? Why should bunnymen be irrelevant as Max, why should he have the exact same ability as several other characters? Nothing else came close to the old duelists, the closest was some of Walter's ammo but even that was very different. Now the biggest difference between them and spiders\bunnymen\merms\tentacles is the graphics.

I don't think you are getting my point, I never said making all characters the same is fun, the new perks Maxwell got are fun, if people are concerned about cheesing bosses, that could be made in hundreds of different ways before whatever they add to Maxwell, and will probably allow new ways no matter what changes are made.
Of course that can be avoided to a certain degree, like the examples I gave of limiting the prison on certain bosses or giving a CD to duelists. 

I call overreacting to beg to scrapping mechanics just because they are not balanced as soon as they were implemented. It's a Beta after all.
The new duelists unlike bunnymen/merms are stationary, only last a short time, and seem to be intended to aid in short battles. The fact that they can now solo bosses is a side effect that will not last once the nerf comes.

The point is HOW the nerf is made.

What bothers me is that Klei always had a strong hand for nerfs, and if people overreacts, they may all the way scrap these new cool features.
I personally think that It'd be better if people helped figure "hey, we got something new here, that could be interesting, it's not working ATM, but we can work out some tuning". Or at least that's my take on it.  

[Thrul]

Just make them move slower and them unable to taunt things, so you still need to be skilled enough to dodge and you get extra damage as payback.

Also every creature hates him, under Charlie's command, including beefalos.

If that's too much it can be lowered a little, so that civilised creatures don't hate him (pigs, bunnymen), but they start getting aggressive the closer it gets to a full moon, to the point that even meat farms don't work if he's nearby, they'll ignore every player and chase him.

[maeslay]

took the words right out of my mouth honestly. they were perfect and really didnt need to be buffed 

[Gi-Go]

Yeah...

[JosePapp]

5 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

I did, been playing maxwell for about 7 hours in many different scenarios, and unlike many testers I've been playing him normally (without spawning things or with godmode). I agree that they shouldn't be able to kill bosses on their own, but they finally are good for something, have a unique attack, and became decent surviving, they only need fine tuning, not scrapping.

Wickerbottom used to unlock 95% of her books just with an alchemy or a prestihatitator, both things you can craft in a day or 2 (I used to do them in 2 days at most). Now she requires her library which is somewhat more complex to craft, and some of her better books are locked behind rare materials. Wanda needs to craft a shadow manipulator, and go on a quest to the ruins or the archives to keep unlocking her powers. The "mage" characters of this game need to work their way to get to her full potential, and so should Maxwell.

Removing the current duelists and the current prison from day one is only a big loss for speedrunners, realistically nobody used the old duelists and all Maxwell had in the early game were his gatherers (which are now better and cheaper).
Having Maxwell go on a small quest to unlock his better powers sounds completely fair in the new theme of reworks.
 

I don't think you are getting my point, I never said making all characters the same is fun, the new perks Maxwell got are fun, if people are concerned about cheesing bosses, that could be made in hundreds of different ways before whatever they add to Maxwell, and will probably allow new ways no matter what changes are made.
Of course that can be avoided to a certain degree, like the examples I gave of limiting the prison on certain bosses or giving a CD to duelists. 

I call overreacting to beg to scrapping mechanics just because they are not balanced as soon as they were implemented. It's a Beta after all.
The new duelists unlike bunnymen/merms are stationary, only last a short time, and seem to be intended to aid in short battles. The fact that they can now solo bosses is a side effect that will not last once the nerf comes.

The point is HOW the nerf is made.

What bothers me is that Klei always had a strong hand for nerfs, and if people overreacts, they may all the way scrap these new cool features.
I personally think that It'd be better if people helped figure "hey, we got something new here, that could be interesting, it's not working ATM, but we can work out some tuning". Or at least that's my take on it.  

Klei please listen to guys like this 

[dzzydzzy]

Hard Disagree on this take. I just played a Dfly battle with another maxwell and wicker and with all our shadow minons, it was still a clumsy fight but not only that- It was SO MUCH FUN! With balancing your minions, health, gear, and the new shadow prison move- it makes for much more exciting gameplay and beating off  all the nightmares. I'd hardly call it afking. And I'd also argue that not just anyone can walk in and lazily slaughter a raid boss afk. It actually takes a bit of skill in order to properly manage your minions in a way where you take 0 dmg. Klei, pls don't change this, the duelist's animations are extremely cool, the player feels powerful. i think the nail's been hit on the head.

[Lil Jay]

The servants before the update are basically useless, you don't play maxwell so you say such things.
You don't want to see this character get better at all, you just want him to be the useless maxwell he was before.

[Cheggf]

3 hours ago, Jorsef said:

The servants before the update are basically useless, you don't play maxwell so you say such things.
You don't want to see this character get better at all, you just want him to be the useless maxwell he was before.

Everyone who actually plays Maxwell instead of just whatever the most overpowered character currently is knows that the duelists have always been useful.

[Copyafriend]

4 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Everyone who actually plays Maxwell instead of just whatever the most overpowered character currently is knows that the duelists have always been useful.

Man im just gonna have to full disagree with you, the duelists were too fragile and expensive to be of any real use before this rework started. Even if the recipe didnt include the spear , they were just too unreliable for any fight where you’d actually want or need help. Their niche (skirmishes with low damage enemies) was too small, most of the time it was easier for me to just kill it myself than to summon a shadow or two to help, and. That includes the ruins

 

(obviously the duelists, the harvesters were pretty good)

[00petar00]

There is power creep currently with every rework except maybe two that happened that i won't name as i don't want to argue about it.

When Wanda was released i was wondering how is it possible for character that versatile with such good abilities to exist so everything after that felt like it would not be able to match her and while i won't say if this is good or bad for the game i think that it is more like in between.

There was no reason to pick some characters over others if you wanted to go for efficiency or at least a character that can partially match some of the strongest so that they are at least an option to me when i want to play a character i don't often pick.

[Copyafriend]

38 minutes ago, 00petar00 said:

There is power creep currently with every rework except maybe two that happened that i won't name as i don't want to argue about it.

When Wanda was released i was wondering how is it possible for character that versatile with such good abilities to be released so everything after that felt like it would not be able to match her and while i won't say if this is good or bad for the game i think that it is more like in between.

There was no reason to pick some characters over others if you wanted to go for efficiency or at least a character that can partially match some of the strongest so that they are at least an option to me when i want to play a character i don't often pick.

Generally speaking i consider power creep as a bad thing. It can be negated by them simply no longer continuing to majorly tweak the characters though. 
 

power creep is just too easy to lose control of imho, you always want your newest rework to be competitive because you worked hard on it

[DanielCP]

6 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Everyone who actually plays Maxwell instead of just whatever the most overpowered character currently is knows that the duelists have always been useful.

Their main purpose was to spam 2 of them and 1 digger / chopper and keep my sanity very low to farm nightmare fuel.

For combat? A totally joke! That's a fact.

[Cheggf]

10 hours ago, DanielCP said:

Their main purpose was to spam 2 of them and 1 digger / chopper and keep my sanity very low to farm nightmare fuel.

For combat? A totally joke! That's a fact.

Please read my previous posts. They discuss some uses the duelists have for people who actually play Maxwell. Objectively they were perfect, and that's an inarguable fact.