Maxwell's Shadow Duelists are so useless

[willowdead]

they always loses against any hostile monsters.

so weak and useless.

so in my opinion, delete these duelists and please add shadow archers (or an archer) so that they can help maxwell to hunt monsters.

or

if duelists died, make them revive later.

[TheKingDedede]

@ImDaMisterL, should this be moved? I'm kinda at a loss here...

[ImDaMisterL]

2 minutes ago, TheKingDedede said:

@ImDaMisterL, should this be moved? I'm kinda at a loss here...

I think so, so I moved it.

Man, busy night, huh?

[Sinister_Fang]

On 2/19/2017 at 11:56 PM, willowdead said:

so in my opinion, delete these duelists and please add shadow archers (or an archer) so that they can help maxwell to hunt monsters

Not sure if you've noticed this or not, but ranged combat in DST is usually costly or awkward to use. Shadow puppets with a ranged attack would just be way too imbalanced. The duelists just need some kind of buff instead of being replaced completely.

[Electroely]

All we need is the ability to equip armor to the duelists. The main problem with them is how easily they get killed.

[HamBatter]

On 2/21/2017 at 8:05 PM, Sinister_Fang said:

Not sure if you've noticed this or not, but ranged combat in DST is usually costly or awkward to use. Shadow puppets with a ranged attack would just be way too imbalanced.

Clearly they should throw Boomerangs with a 33% chance of hitting themselves on return.

[JohnWatson]

I have a solution, don't make Shadow Duelists. Maxwell is better for obtaining wood and rocks, rather than combat.

[Sinister_Fang]

1 hour ago, JohnWatson said:

I have a solution, don't make Shadow Duelists. Maxwell is better for obtaining wood and rocks, rather than combat.

That's not much of a solution now is it? People are already not using them. They're pretty useless unless you want to stay insane. People want to use them though, but they're just garbage. That's the issue here. Maxwell's main gimmick are the puppets. But we have one that's just extremely bad at the one job it's meant to do.

[Electroely]

inb4 Maxwell becomes the new bee queen 

[Clwnbaby]

I think the problem you might be having with the Duelists is that you want to treat them like Abi and they're not Abi.  You can't just give them a target and let them take care of it.  Though even with Abi you should ALWAYS be fighting whatever your adds are fighting.  Especially now that the duelist kite, if you fight whatever they are fighting you should be drawing the attacks of whatever it is and the duelist will stay alive no problem. 

[JohnWatson]

Frankly, the duelists would be more effective if they didn't kite.

[Sinister_Fang]

6 hours ago, JohnWatson said:

Frankly, the duelists would be more effective if they didn't kite.

You do know that the biggest issue with duelists is that they tend to die from 1-2 hits from anything right? Removing what little survivability they have left will only make them more effective at dying faster...

[JohnWatson]

15 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

You do know that the biggest issue with duelists is that they tend to die from 1-2 hits from anything right? Removing what little survivability they have left will only make them more effective at dying faster...

If they didn't kite, they would kill things faster and therefore have a smaller chance of dying. The way they kite is bad anyway, at least one of them will always be hit, especially since mobs in DST will switch targets.

[seyfitoplar]

12 minutes ago, JohnWatson said:

If they didn't kite, they would kill things faster and therefore have a smaller chance of dying. The way they kite is bad anyway, at least one of them will always be hit, especially since mobs in DST will switch targets.

Because of they kite you can save them from dying. For example;
Fighting with a Treeguard and you make Treeguard always focus on you. Duelists won't die but deal damage.

[Sinister_Fang]

36 minutes ago, JohnWatson said:

If they didn't kite, they would kill things faster and therefore have a smaller chance of dying. The way they kite is bad anyway, at least one of them will always be hit, especially since mobs in DST will switch targets.

I don't think you've ever used the puppets in DS have you? They don't kite and their combat potential is worse because of it. They have a delay between their attacks just like every other creature. At least DST's puppets are "smart" enough to spend that time running away instead of just just standing there like an idiot and begging to be hit.

[JohnWatson]

They can be coded to stop dodging after every hit.

 

[Sinister_Fang]

1 hour ago, JohnWatson said:

They can be coded to stop dodging after every hit.

 

Again, the issue with duelists isn't their damage output (I find it to be pretty reasonable as is). It's their survivability that's the issue here. Anything that you'd want to have a duelist help with (such as bosses) is capable of killing them in just one or two hits. Have them fight something that actually attacks back and we'll see how useful they still are.

Although, another thing I just noticed: You tampered with not just their attack speed, but damage too. Alone it took 8 hits to kill the test dummy, but when you showed off the single puppet attacking the dummy it only took 7 hits to take it down. Duelists only deal 40 damage, that's around battle spear damage. But these ones seem to deal more damage then a dark sword.

[JohnWatson]

8 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

Again, the issue with duelists isn't their damage output (I find it to be pretty reasonable as is). It's their survivability that's the issue here. Anything that you'd want to have a duelist help with (such as bosses) is capable of killing them in just one or two hits. Have them fight something that actually attacks back and we'll see how useful they still are.

I have a solution: Don't use them against bosses.

8 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

Although, another thing I just noticed: You tampered with not just their attack speed, but damage too. Alone it took 8 hits to kill the test dummy, but when you showed off the single puppet attacking the dummy it only took 7 hits to take it down. Duelists only deal 40 damage, that's around battle spear damage. But these ones seem to deal more damage then a dark sword.

Many people here are not aware of this, but players have an innate 50% damage resistance against other players. So the Dark Sword dealt 34 damage per swing. Duellists are not considered players so they still dealt 40 damage per swing.

200 / ( 68 * 0.5 * 0.75 ) = 7.84 = Eight swings to kill an unarmoured Wigfrid with a Dark Sword

200 / ( 40 * 0.75 ) = 6.67 = Seven swings to kill an unarmoured Wigfrid as a Duellist.

[Sinister_Fang]

Just now, JohnWatson said:

I have a solution: Don't use them against bosses.

Aaaaaaaand we're back where we started...

In most cases the duelists aren't really needed when fighting normal enemies. So your "solution" is to, again, just not use them.

2 minutes ago, JohnWatson said:

Many people here are not aware of this, but players have an innate 50% damage resistance against other players. So the Dark Sword dealt 34 damage per swing. Duellists are not considered players so they still dealt 40 damage per swing.

200 / ( 68 * 0.5 * 0.75 ) = 7.84 = Eight swings to kill an unarmoured Wigfrid with a Dark Sword

200 / ( 40 * 0.75 ) = 6.67 = Seven swings to kill an unarmoured Wigfrid as a Duellist.

Huh. Did not know that. Ok, so I guess the damage wasn't increased.

[JohnWatson]

8 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

Aaaaaaaand we're back where we started...

In most cases the duelists aren't really needed when fighting normal enemies. So your "solution" is to, again, just not use them.

I still don't understand why you folks think that Maxwell's Duellists has got to be buffed. Maxwell already offers a great advantage in terms of resource collection, being able to chop down trees and mine boulders faster than anyone else can. Especially since it's harder to obtain wood in DST because the pinecone glitch is gone, Bearger has been nerfed, and Old Bell has been removed. Remember that when you're buffing Duellists, then you're also buffing Maxwell in the process.

[HamBatter]

9 minutes ago, Sinister_Fang said:

Aaaaaaaand we're back where we started...

Wendy has AoE, Webber has swarm, so ranged can be Maxwell's thing. For balance the ranged attacks can have long delays or a timer/way for the puppets to off themselves.

Though it's iffy in the parity area in terms of both single player and damage reward... I guess it could be a new puppet

[Sinister_Fang]

9 hours ago, JohnWatson said:

I still don't understand why you folks think that Maxwell's Duellists has got to be buffed. Maxwell already offers a great advantage in terms of resource collection, being able to chop down trees and mine boulders faster than anyone else can. Especially since it's harder to obtain wood in DST because the pinecone glitch is gone, Bearger has been nerfed, and Old Bell has been removed. Remember that when you're buffing Duellists, then you're also buffing Maxwell in the process.

Yup. We're back where we started for sure. Let me just quote myself because I've kinda answered that already...

On 2/26/2017 at 1:29 AM, Sinister_Fang said:

They're pretty useless unless you want to stay insane. People want to use them though, but they're just garbage. That's the issue here. Maxwell's main gimmick are the puppets. But we have one that's just extremely bad at the one job it's meant to do.

The idea of having a shadow puppet assist you in combat sounds fun, but it's current implementation just falls flat. We just want duelists to get a buff so they're actually worth using.

[JohnWatson]

3 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

Yup. We're back where we started for sure. Let me just quote myself because I've kinda answered that already...

Yes, repeating that sentence is quite easier than providing an actual argument, isn't it?

[Sinister_Fang]

1 minute ago, JohnWatson said:

Yes, repeating that sentence is quite easier than providing an actual argument, isn't it?

Right. Because you didn't repeat yourself already...

On 2/26/2017 at 0:08 AM, JohnWatson said:

I have a solution, don't make Shadow Duelists.

 

14 hours ago, JohnWatson said:

I have a solution: Don't use them against bosses.

Anyway, I'm done discussing this. This is starting to get really petty now. I don't see why you're so against buffing duelists, but let's just agree to disagree and leave it at that.

[JohnWatson]

I have already explained why I don't think they should be buffed, haven't you read my post? You honestly just ignored one of my posts and placed a copypasted response. You also have never provided any proper reason to buff duellists other than "yea it would be lovely if they were better."

You seem to be playing Maxwell oddly anyway. You shouldn't use his shadows like they're Abigail, instead you should use his shadows like they're Woodie.