Unpopular opinions about shadow duelists

[King Maxwell]

I've been playing the beta a lot and have some unpopular opinions about the current state of duelists.
Firstly, I'm a maxwell player and I will continue to play mainly with him even if he becomes wilson with 75 hp and no beard so no, I don't want to make him weak on the contrary, I want to make him more fun, dynamic and versatile, I also think that having more useful ways to use a tool is better than having a way to use a very powerful tool, that being said, let's get to my opinions.
The general idea of duelists were better in [Game Update] - 529754, of course they weren't perfect yet and needed polishing but in general most of the complaints were about the kiting IA being dumb and this could have been fixed with the following changes from [Game Update] - 529972

• Phases out temporarily when hit, similar to other Shadow Creatures.
• Added a secondary attack where they dash forward to perform a stronger lunging strike.
• Removed kiting behavior to make them more aggressive as an area targeted command spell.

along with new aggro redirect mechanic to maxwell when shadow uses special atk and allow cancel book reading animation or decrease animation time.
I believe that if these changes had been made first before making Duelists super powerful, most of the community would be satisfied.

I will explain why I think duelists and maxwell would be better off that way.
Maxwell would gain more versatility and freedom in the way he could be played, would be weaker than the super powerful duelists we've had but that's not a bad thing.

Duelist vs Horde mobs:
They would be better in this regard, currently they are still useful for this but mediocre.

Duelists vs Bosses:
The afk combat using duelists would no longer be possible but it would open 2 different and fun possibilities of gameplay the first being maxwell invoking the duelists for an increase in dps, actively participating in the combat making the fights faster and a lower expense of nightmare fuel but if risking more the second would be summoner gameplay, he would use the duelists for combat while staying safe but expending more nightmare fuel.

Detailing summoner gameplay:
Duelists will no longer be able to tank as they currently do but with aggro being reset to maxwell it would still be possible for duelists to attack 1-3 times before being defeated which would imply that maxwell would need to run away from the boss and summon more duelists per combat making summoner gameplay much more immersive than summoning duelists, see him destroy bosses from version [Game Update] - 529972 and will need less direct participation of maxwell in battle if you want the current version [Game Update] - 529998, allowing to cancel spell animation or decrease animation is extremely important for this.

Summoner gameplay vs AOE bosses:
Against AOE bosses playing as a summoner would increase the cost but it would still be completely possible and functional as the boss would kill your entire army at once making you need to create them again more times than against single target bosses but it does all the work. sense that followers have more difficulty against AOE bosses, it's been like this forever and it makes no sense to have AOE if not to defeat enemy armies, but with the current aggro redirect duelists will still be able to hit those same bosses 1 to 3 times.

Conclusion, I think klei should revert the duelists to the [Game Update] - 529972 version along with the recent patch changes mentioned above, at least as a test, I believe the gameplay will be more engaging, with a different combat option of all the other survivors making it unique and a greater versatility than the current one.

[VindSama]

 I'm reading opinions about that rework for a long time and this one not only is a great way to make Maxwell fun to play while remaining balanced, but I think most of the people who like "Summoner" gameplay would be satisfied with this. I never played with Maxwell before and the pre nerfed duelists caught my attention, so I started to play it and it was really fun to play, now with the recent nerfs, I really don't feel like playing with Maxwell anymore. 

[SullyD]

I have said it before and I will say it again, the biggest problem with the recent patch is:
 

Quote

• Attack speed now scales based on the summoner’s proximity and participation in combat.
  • When the summoner is attacking the same target, Duelists will attack slightly faster than before, and when the summoner is idle, they will be slower.
• Attack damage now scales based on the summoner’s equipped shadow gear.
  • At the current max attainable level, they will be stronger than before, and with no shadow gear, they will be weaker.

The other people who think that the current patch is good probably haven't tested it, maybe they killed a tree guard, no more than that...

[Copyafriend]

6 minutes ago, SullyD said:

I have said it before and I will say it again, the biggest problem with the recent patch is:
 

The other people who think that the current patch is good probably haven't tested it, maybe they killed a tree guard, no more than that...

I like the current patch, my main problem with it is the size of the area for the shadow gear buff to work, its too small or should be re-evaluated

[King Maxwell]

1 hour ago, SullyD said:

I have said it before and I will say it again, the biggest problem with the recent patch is:
 

The other people who think that the current patch is good probably haven't tested it, maybe they killed a tree guard, no more than that...

The problem didn't start in the current patch, just removing that what you talked about comes back with afk maxwell gameplay which is a big problem.
Fun>>>Strength
And getting afk while duelists kill all the bosses is no fun.
In my opinion the problem started when the duelists were able to tank 5 atks from the bosses.

[Kronoshifter]

8 hours ago, King Maxwell said:

The problem didn't start in the current patch, just removing that what you talked about comes back with afk maxwell gameplay which is a big problem.
Fun>>>Strength
And getting afk while duelists kill all the bosses is no fun.
In my opinion the problem started when the duelists were able to tank 5 atks from the bosses.

For you, maybe. Managing minions while they fight for you is the main reason the Puppet Mastermind mod works so well. 

[arturako22]

I think with each update we move further away from the original idea of a frail and cheap throwaway troop that gave some dps support. For me that should have been the ideal duelist role but I guess now they plan to go in a different direction and there is no hope of going back, so there is no choice but to adapt.

 

15 hours ago, King Maxwell said:

The general idea of duelists were better in [Game Update] - 529754, of course they weren't perfect yet and needed polishing but in general most of the complaints were about the kiting IA being dumb and this could have been fixed with the following changes from [Game Update] - 529972

• Phases out temporarily when hit, similar to other Shadow Creatures.
• Added a secondary attack where they dash forward to perform a stronger lunging strike.
• Removed kiting behavior to make them more aggressive as an area targeted command spell.

along with new aggro redirect mechanic to maxwell when shadow uses special atk and allow cancel book reading animation or decrease animation time.
I believe that if these changes had been made first before making Duelists super powerful, most of the community would be satisfied.

I agree with everything you have said, with the only difference being that a shorter or cancelable reading animation seems more like a QoL to me than a necessary change.

13 hours ago, King Maxwell said:

In my opinion the problem started when the duelists were able to tank 5 atks from the bosses.

I agree again. If they had set the damage cap to a higher value the problem would have been solved.

I think that if they kept the regeneration with a damage cap of 50, together with the agro modifications, they would have managed to considerably increase the survival of the shadows (the main problem they had pre-rework).

I'm not sure how I feel about changes to duelist damage depending on what you have equipped:

• I think the previous base damage of 40 (60 with the lunge) was fine, being comparable with other special minions (merms warriors, abigail, bernie).
• If the base damage was reduced to 20 and the list of items from the last patch was used but the bonuses continued depending on the slot that the item occupies (+10 weapon / +20 chest / +10 helmet) I would not care too much

For people who are worried about maxwell spawning shadows without participating in the fight, the following could be done: disable the damage cap and the lunge attack in case maxwell is not participating in the fight for too long, which translates into shadows dying continuously which have to be respawned, the battle would eventually be won but it would be slower and more expensive in terms of nighmare fuel.

[Daniel14676]

Sorry, I'm having a hard time visualizing the specific changes you are thinking about. If I'm remembering correctly, you want to:

• remove the minimum hits to kill a duelist, but give them back their regeneration
• remove damage scaling based off equipment
• remove duelist changes over range (ie: slower atk speed if your far away and needing to be close-ish for damage upgrade)
• Lower casting time, so you can use it in combat easier.

(Please tell me if I'm forgetting a change)

Most bosses would just one-shot the duelists, meaning every summon would only get 1-3 hits before needing a resummon. Another way to think about it is a ranged attack that you refuel with nightmare fuel. Which, honestly seems reasonable, if you drastly-ish change the summoning time. 

This would recontextualize both the gear damage scaling, and the changes over range. They could be made to work with it or just removed. (I would like to see some kind of damage scaling over the course of the game, because that is cool)
 

So you just want to change their paradigm to make them more spammable but more fragile and make them better at hordes. My problem with this is that, is that I think this would end up forcing caster play. ie: stand back and summon minions. If you tried to join against anything with area attacks, there is little point to having them, against single target bosses, the boss would just kill the duelists, forcing you to either do caster play or just fight it normally.

However, my problems with this paradigm could be solved if you could keep aggro while your fighting or if the duelists have a smaller damage cap with regeneration like arturako22 said (in fact I recommended that exact change in the earlier hot-fixes).
 

So wither way works, just depends on which paradigm the devs thinks fits Maxwell better and is easier for them to implement. lol
(and if they they agree with me, that either would work with some effort balancing)

[King Maxwell]

10 minutes ago, arturako22 said:

I think with each update we move further away from the original idea of a frail and cheap throwaway troop that gave some dps support. For me that should have been the ideal duelist role but I guess now they plan to go in a different direction and there is no hope of going back, so there is no choice but to adapt.

I hope they go back on this but I'm really hopeless, it seems it's been abandoned for good.

8 minutes ago, arturako22 said:

I agree with everything you have said, with the only difference being that a shorter or cancelable reading animation seems more like a QoL to me than a necessary change

With the current aggro redirection it becomes an arduous and tedious task to renew duelists so it would be necessary to decrease the animation time or be able to cancel.
But I agree that without it it wouldn't be mandatory since maxwell would have more time but being more dynamic is more fun. ^^

 

[arturako22]

4 minutes ago, King Maxwell said:

With the current aggro redirection it becomes an arduous and tedious task to renew duelists so it would be necessary to decrease the animation time or be able to cancel.
But I agree that without it it wouldn't be mandatory since maxwell would have more time but being more dynamic is more fun. ^^

Thanks to the pillars it is not difficult to re-summon them with the bosses but I will admit that against hordes like the hounds it is more problematic.

Although a problem that I have found is that it is difficult to summon them in advance, if the attack of the hounds (or some other creature) takes too long to appear, the duelists you summon may die before the fight begins due to the idle timer, despite It's not been so long since you summoned them.

[BB Marioni]

16 hours ago, King Maxwell said:

I've been playing the beta a lot and have some unpopular opinions about the current state of duelists.
Firstly, I'm a maxwell player and I will continue to play mainly with him even if he becomes wilson with 75 hp and no beard so no, I don't want to make him weak on the contrary, I want to make him more fun, dynamic and versatile, I also think that having more useful ways to use a tool is better than having a way to use a very powerful tool, that being said, let's get to my opinions.
The general idea of duelists were better in [Game Update] - 529754, of course they weren't perfect yet and needed polishing but in general most of the complaints were about the kiting IA being dumb and this could have been fixed with the following changes from [Game Update] - 529972

• Phases out temporarily when hit, similar to other Shadow Creatures.
• Added a secondary attack where they dash forward to perform a stronger lunging strike.
• Removed kiting behavior to make them more aggressive as an area targeted command spell.

along with new aggro redirect mechanic to maxwell when shadow uses special atk and allow cancel book reading animation or decrease animation time.
I believe that if these changes had been made first before making Duelists super powerful, most of the community would be satisfied.

I will explain why I think duelists and maxwell would be better off that way.
Maxwell would gain more versatility and freedom in the way he could be played, would be weaker than the super powerful duelists we've had but that's not a bad thing.

Duelist vs Horde mobs:
They would be better in this regard, currently they are still useful for this but mediocre.

Duelists vs Bosses:
The afk combat using duelists would no longer be possible but it would open 2 different and fun possibilities of gameplay the first being maxwell invoking the duelists for an increase in dps, actively participating in the combat making the fights faster and a lower expense of nightmare fuel but if risking more the second would be summoner gameplay, he would use the duelists for combat while staying safe but expending more nightmare fuel.

Detailing summoner gameplay:
Duelists will no longer be able to tank as they currently do but with aggro being reset to maxwell it would still be possible for duelists to attack 1-3 times before being defeated which would imply that maxwell would need to run away from the boss and summon more duelists per combat making summoner gameplay much more immersive than summoning duelists, see him destroy bosses from version [Game Update] - 529972 and will need less direct participation of maxwell in battle if you want the current version [Game Update] - 529998, allowing to cancel spell animation or decrease animation is extremely important for this.

Summoner gameplay vs AOE bosses:
Against AOE bosses playing as a summoner would increase the cost but it would still be completely possible and functional as the boss would kill your entire army at once making you need to create them again more times than against single target bosses but it does all the work. sense that followers have more difficulty against AOE bosses, it's been like this forever and it makes no sense to have AOE if not to defeat enemy armies, but with the current aggro redirect duelists will still be able to hit those same bosses 1 to 3 times.

Conclusion, I think klei should revert the duelists to the [Game Update] - 529972 version along with the recent patch changes mentioned above, at least as a test, I believe the gameplay will be more engaging, with a different combat option of all the other survivors making it unique and a greater versatility than the current one.

i feel like removing the dmg reduction would just make them revert back to the old duelists where they just die in one shot

[King Maxwell]

7 minutes ago, Daniel14676 said:

Sorry, I'm having a hard time visualizing the specific changes you are thinking about. If I'm remembering correctly, you want to:

• remove the minimum hits to kill a duelist, but give them back their regeneration
• remove damage scaling based off equipment
• remove duelist changes over range (ie: slower atk speed if your far away and needing to be close-ish for damage upgrade)
• Lower casting time, so you can use it in combat easier.

(Please tell me if I'm forgetting a change)

That, I believe, are all the changes I would like to be reversed.
I don't know if I played the first version of shadows duelists but they were more fun for me just needing some modifications in the kiting mechanics that worked poorly.

10 minutes ago, Daniel14676 said:

Most bosses would just one-shot the duelists, meaning every summon would only get 1-3 hits before needing a resummon. Another way to think about it is a ranged attack that you refuel with nightmare fuel. Which, honestly seems reasonable, if you drastly-ish change the summoning time.

Yes, my idea is that the bosses would only take 1 to 3 hits from duelists (more in the case of bosses a target) and need to summon them frequently so I defend a faster summoning time (same as atk animation) or the possibility of canceling the animation, you would still be gaining a lot of dps in boss fights if you summoned duelists during the fight or just stay away summoning them (I'm not a big fan of this gameplay but a lot of people just wanted to stay away summoning shadows and for they liked it when they could do all the work against bosses) and duelists are cheap enough to not be very durable if 1 hit doesn't work a resist that allows the boss to 2 hit would be acceptable, resisting 5 hits is excessive.

18 minutes ago, Daniel14676 said:

This would recontextualize both the gear damage scaling, and the changes over range. They could be made to work with it or just removed. (I would like to see some kind of damage scaling over the course of the game, because that is cool)

I don't particularly see any problems with a damage scale.

19 minutes ago, Daniel14676 said:

So you just want to change their paradigm to make them more spammable but more fragile and make them better at hordes. My problem with this is that, is that I think this would end up forcing caster play. ie: stand back and summon minions. If you tried to join against anything with area attacks, there is little point to having them, against single target bosses, the boss would just kill the duelists, forcing you to either do caster play or just fight it normally.

What I would like is a reversal of the original idea of the rework the first version for me was very good needing only subtle tweaks, about being stronger against hordes is not something I really want but the changes I proposed would inevitably make them better against hordes than currently (as they were better against hordes before the first change).

About encouraging caster play I agree and disagree, I believe that whoever wanted to play more safely would be encouraged and whoever wanted an increase in dps and a lower cost of nightmare fuel would be encouraged to participate in the fight but this would only work with animation time lower or being able to cancel it otherwise summoning new duelists would be a loss of dps.

31 minutes ago, Daniel14676 said:

However, my problems with this paradigm could be solved if you could keep aggro while your fighting or if the duelists have a smaller damage cap with regeneration like arturako22 said (in fact I recommended that exact change in the earlier hot-fixes).

Aggro is already redirected to maxwell with a certain frequency these days and I would like to keep that but they have a damage reduction + healing that allows bosses to give 2 hits doesn't bother me but 5 as I said earlier is excessive.

 

33 minutes ago, Daniel14676 said:

So wither way works, just depends on which paradigm the devs thinks fits Maxwell better, is easier for them to implement, and if they agree with me/us. lol

Unfortunately they don't seem to agree but maybe it's because there was too much noise to make the duelists strong, I hope they go back a few steps but after people got the taste of super powerful duelists destroying everything I find it difficult. xD

23 minutes ago, arturako22 said:

Thanks to the pillars it is not difficult to re-summon them with the bosses but I will admit that against hordes like the hounds it is more problematic.

The pillar is also slow so it's still common to get hit at least once before launching, I don't know if you've already tested it but if you haven't, do it later, it's still doable and maybe I just want a more fluid gameplay.

11 minutes ago, BB Marioni said:

i feel like removing the dmg reduction would just make them revert back to the old duelists where they just die in one shot

Dying in one hit for such a cheap troop isn't necessarily a bad thing even more with the current aggro redirect that allows it to go unhit longer but I wouldn't mind if it survives 2 hits.

[arturako22]

7 minutes ago, King Maxwell said:

The pillar is also slow so it's still common to get hit at least once before launching, I don't know if you've already tested it but if you haven't, do it later, it's still doable and maybe I just want a more fluid gameplay.

When the first beta appeared, I created a survival world in which I have been playing with all the versions of the rework except the last one, for now I am in the second summer and I have fought against several bosses (but I did not fight against several like the whole chain of bosses of the fuelweaver or celestial champion)

I have also done tests with commands but mainly I have been testing the beta in my survival world.

[King Maxwell]

1 minute ago, arturako22 said:

When the first beta appeared, I created a survival world in which I have been playing with all the versions of the rework except the last one, for now I am in the second summer and I have fought against several bosses (but I did not fight against several like the whole chain of bosses of the fuelweaver or celestial champion)

I have also done tests with commands but mainly I have been testing the beta in my survival world.

We are in a similar situation so with the exception that I deleted the world and started a new one in this patch.
Maybe it's me wanting a more fluid gameplay, I'm deeply bothered by the spell cast animation time, it seems too clunky to me.

[Daniel14676]

Yea, the spell casting time is definitely clucky right now, hopefully they will make that better. I personally don't care which paradigm the devs choose (as long as they balance it), but I hope whatever they do, you will be happy with it, friend.
(Also, yay we understand each other, a surprisingly rare occurrence .)

[BB Marioni]

50 minutes ago, King Maxwell said:

Dying in one hit for such a cheap troop isn't necessarily a bad thing even more with the current aggro redirect that allows it to go unhit longer but I wouldn't mind if it survives 2 hits.

I'm not sure about that. The previous duelists would die before they could even do anything at all. Specially against enemies like Deerclops. So I wouldn't call it cheap if you got almost no value out of something you spent on, regardless how low the cost. Unless they bump the HP to like 200, I'd say the dmg cap was actually a good idea from Klei's part.

[Daniel14676]

The idea is that they would be balanced to only live a short while and get a couple hits in. Perhaps that would mean a high damage cap, so it would take 2 hits to kill them. That way you get value from them, but they are still expendable as all heck.

[King Maxwell]

22 minutes ago, BB Marioni said:

I'm not sure about that. The previous duelists would die before they could even do anything at all. Specially against enemies like Deerclops. So I wouldn't call it cheap if you got almost no value out of something you spent on, regardless how low the cost. Unless they bump the HP to like 200, I'd say the dmg cap was actually a good idea from Klei's part.

But now they have 2 things they didn't have before, now they start with dash doing damage and resetting aggro to maxwell, right after they have 1 free atk and depending on how long the boss will take to attack a second atk then they would attack at least 1 time sometimes 3 but I believe that surviving a little as long as you can't tank is not a bad idea.

7 hours ago, Kronoshifter said:

For you, maybe. Managing minions while they fight for you is the main reason the Puppet Mastermind mod works so well. 

I don't particularly like this mod but I understand who likes it and I agree that managing minions can be fun but managing minions is different from summoning minions and seeing them defeat bosses without having to do anything and that's the afk maxwell gameplay I want to avoid.
What I'd even like is that those who like minion gameplay could use it by participating with more ranged throws and minion summons, but of course the safety of doing this without directly participating in combat must come at a price in resources.