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Check out the v.257 - Tallahart: Grave of the Gods Patch Notes
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Give Dual Blade a proper IED Passive
Dual Blade is pretty much the only class that doesn't has IED as a passive skill. Having proper IED is essential in dealing damage to bosses, but the way the class is flawed is the IED is placed on our attacking skills instead of being made a passive skill. This creates issues as it makes some attack weaker since they aren't ignoring the boss's defense.
Our primary bossing move is 4th Job Phantom Blow, Hyper Skill Asura and Blade Clone, Fifth Job consisting of Blade Storm, Blades of Destiny, Blade Tornado and Haunted Edge, and Sixth Job boosting everything mention as well as introducing a new proccing skill tied, "All Must Die," to the 3rd HEXA Core. All of these skills Ignore a certain percentage of the boss's defense except for Blade Clone (including its HEXA) as well as All Must Die which don't come with built-in, and thus would be weaker. Aside from that, Common Skills such as True Arachnid Reflection and Solar Crest would be a lot weaker since they are not boosted by an IED source since the developers decided to give Dual Blade IED on a per skill basis (not all skills.)
Dual Blade's IED focus is also laughably bad when you look at how bad Dual Blade's Hyper Passive options are also another skill that doesn't need IED but the devs put on anyway. Dual Blade's 4th Job mobbing skill Blade Fury ignores 20% defense. This is useless as Blade Fury is a mobbing skill and IED doesn't improve mobbing. The Hyper Passives are another mistake where the 2 weird options are Blade Fury +20% IED and Blade Ascension +20% IED. 2 IED Passives to boost mobbing skill is a waste of Hyper Passive options when they could had improved other skills we used in a more meaningful way. What is also funny is Blade Fury HEXA having no IED when its 4th job version does. I know putting IED on Blade Fury HEXA is useless, but this is funny seeing KMS forget something.
KMS should give Dual Blade a 20-30% IED passive to our existing passive skill such as Sharpness or Katara Expert. By moving Dual Blade's IED from the attacking skills and moving it onto a passive, all of our skills current and future will be more effective against bosses since our IED won't be limited to some skills. Blade Fury and Blade Ascension IED bonuses should be removed from the menu and be replaced something useful (no clue to what it should be yet but I wish Dual Blade's and other certain classes should have some Hyper Passive and Fifth Job boost nodes be consolidated so they can enhance more skills at once but might be a different topic.)
Comments
Here are the best base value explorers in each base class. (Using 100% uptime skills)
And here are the worst explorers. (Base values)
Dual blade is strangely the only class without any IED built into the base (For explorers, anyway.)
For the individual skills this seems to be the breakdown.
20% boost nodes puts it roughly in line with cannoneer, the second lowest on IED.
Based on a old post on reddit, someone suggested using 93% for end game which with phantom blow would land it around 97.3% IED before other IED sources from outside your own class.
That's a 10% damage reduction on 380% PDR bosses, but for the common skills that's a 26.6% damage reduction.
Other classes are going to have a much better experience with these skills than DB because of that.
If other classes stop at 97% then their skills do roughly 20% more damage.
It seems to me (outsider looking in) that the class is mostly balanced around this and that it's fine for the majority of the class, but that some skills are going to be inherriently weaker due to the way the class is designed.
Seems like a good idea that doesn't hurt anything and just helps cover some bases for dual blade in particular.
Dual blade friend seems to agree that the class is fine without the base IED but also that the common skills do no damage.
Yes I forgot 5th Job boost nodes do offer some defense piercing. Yes our Will and Seren skills do not have the benefit of IED due to us not having a passive so they are a lot weaker during our burst window. Our upcoming new skill in our 3rd HEXA is good on paper, but isn't backed by IED so it would be weaker. Our Origin and future Origins will be weaker since it only has IED from the level bonus and not from DB's own kit. If any of the Common Skill Cores are attacking skills, they would be a lot weaker for DB due to aforementioned lack of an IED passive. I don't see it impossible for them in the future to add an IED passive to Sharpness or Katara Expert and still keep the IED on the attacking skills as there are classes that have both an IED passive and a skill that ignores a portion of the enemy's defense such as Demon Slayer whose innate IED comes from Binding Darkness and their bossing skill Demon Impact also ignores defense as well as a couple of other classes.
There are other poor design choices such as giving Blade Fury IED and giving Hyper Passives that further give Blade Fury and Blade Ascension more IED. Also our upcoming Blade Fury HEXA has no IED so consistency goes out the window. Wishing they replace those 2 Hyper Passives with something useful as Dual Blade in the past had many questionable Hyper Skill options such as boosts for Bloody Storm and Sudden Raid and not having a boost for Blade Fury until RED where they mistakenly give it IED as a Hyper Skill option.
I just feel that even though Dual Blade seems balanced, it is a mess and it would be cleaner to have an IED passive than sprinkling IED on most of its skills and forgetting one.
Darkknight instantly comes to mind for me, it has very good IED on the skills and also a little bit in the base as well.
31% from Dark Resonance (with DCO) and another 11% from the active (100% uptime). Then being a warrior it also has 16% on Weapon Aura which is almost 80% uptime anyway.
Then you have a few skills that have a pretty decent chunk on them as well such as Gungnir's Desecent (40% Hexa, 20% Node Boost, 20% Hyper Passive).
Blaze Wizard also comes to mind, 31% on Fires of Creation (The fox/lion mode summon) with DCO, but then it also gets 50% on Orbital Inferno (The bigger orbital flame in 5th) and 50% on Inferno Sphere (The main damage/burst skill).
Not as extreme as Dual Blade, but they have a lot of IED packed into some skills and Nexon still added some into their base kit.
I think the lack of base IED is a unique part of DB, but if that's part of the core design of the class then Nexon needs to make sure that all the skills intended for bossing have some IED built into them.
In a weird way, it allows DB to ignore the common V Skills when bossing which a lot of people don't like those skills in the first place so that might be a blessing in disguise.