As a Dual Blade player that mains the class since 2010, I've been holding myself from talking about my disappointments since 6th job came out.
However, with the recent changes to the class I would like to go over some stuff.
When dbs came out, it was one of the most powerful classes of the game. It was also the first job to have a secondary weapon.
The class was not that good for mobbing but it was certainly among the best for bossing. That was the balance between weakness and strength for this particular class.
We had some reworks along the years that improved the class ability to grind, through new skils and added mobility, which was good overall.
However, when 6th job came out I started to notice how the class is being given way less attention than other classes.
While many jobs such as Bishop, Paladin, Kanna, Night Lord and Bowman have beautiful animations for the Origin Skill, Dual Blade origin animation was short, faded and not very interesting. In the other hand it was still very functional. The combination of hitting the enemy to consume the stacks and give a death blow at the end was designed in a very clever way.
But now with the duration of Blade Storm skill reduced from 5s to 2s there was a big reduction of the overall performance and gameplay of the class.
Even though the cooldown was reduced to 60 seconds, Ring of Restraint became way less effective for the skill usage because of its duration reduction, since RoR cooldown wasn't adjusted along. Also it is much more inconvenient having to swap rings between RoR and Weapon Jump Ring every minute during boss fights. So for me personally I would prefer to rollback that change.
Since DB's are considered a burst class, Phantom Blow skill never dealt a lot of damage as other Continuous Ring classes, such as Bowman.
But with the recent changes it feels like Dual Blade lost its identity and I don't feel it got the appropriate adjustments.
Finally I would like to talk about design.
Being very core to the class, the most recent design of Final Cut skill looks horrible compared to the original, made almost 20 years ago.
It looks like the art of the most recent design (blue daggers) was drawn in paint, literally.
https://imgur.com/a/mAJgv8t
I still remember the old skill design, when you could pierce the enemy from one side to another.
Rampant Cyborg on Darknell boss fight still uses the old Final Cut, which is pretty cool.
The old skill mobility used to add some dynamic to the combat while getting that extra % damage enabled.
Another thing I noticed is that there are not cash shop weapons for Kataras, at all. So that would be a nice addition.
Suggestions TLDR:
- Rollback Blade Storm duration reduction. Very negative impact on gameplay and performance of the class.
- Redesign Origin Skill Animation, including the animation behind the char when origin skill is activated (I like the erda disruption animation from explorers better). Golden weapons effect is ok.
- Bring back old Final Cut animation and gameplay (piercing further distances).
- Bring Kataras Cash weapons, such as japanese katanas and so on.
Thank you.
Comments
I recall ROR4 being a 180CD dropping down to 120 and Blade Storm was 90CD dropping to 60. So in both 2m and 3m versions, every other burst would have a ROR4 + Shadow Walker in it and the others would be WJ4. The duration cut for Blade Storm was done on purpose so it and Asura can fit better in a ROR4 time period. Making it, Asura and Ori wouldn't allow the entire burst to fit in the limited time offered by ROR4. They should had increase the tick speed or incease the damage of Asura and Blade Storm instead of just cutting the time in half. I remember Destiny KMST, Dual Blades complained with how Asura and Storm were so long that each ate up a whole ROR3 and ROR4 barely fit them in and it made sense DPS wise to cut Blade Storm/Asura early since BODNADOing was more damaging than letting Storm or Asura run normally. It would be better just to buff the damage or decrease the attack intervals instead of extending the attack and missing out on BODNADOs and worrying about fitting your whole burst.
Final Cut was changed from blasting forward to a strong forward stab to alleviate the problem with blasting out of ROR auras which is no longer an issue today. Playing since Chaos, I got used to its forced dash and I stumbled when Destiny came out. Reintroducing it to us wouldn't be as good as enabling a command that allows players to gain the FD% without dashing or to use old dash as an iframe to charge into the boss without fear. Destiny gave 2 commands for our friend Cannoneer for their 5th job skill which were 2 toggles. One toggle allowed their rockets to slow down when colliding with bosses so they can easily land all the hits instead of passing through it and firing with a down command allowed Cannoneer to fire all 3 rockets at once. I hate the devs gave classes options and just forced a style change on Dual Blade and removed a lot of movement from Bloody Storm, Slash Storm and Final Cut instead of giving them commands/toggles for players who recycle their old mobbing skills at movement skills. Destiny barely changed our damage performance and we instead get robbed of mobility and get a gross art style that remained with us until New Age.
Some other things worth asking for DB.
Adding an IED Passive: This will allow our skills outside PB, Asura, our 5th jobs to be more potent in bosses. It would allow our Will and Seren skills to be better in bosses since they would be boosted by an IED bonus instead of individually assigning IED to DB's entire kit. The IED passive can be granted to Katara Expert or Sharpness without removing it from Phantom Blow since there are classes with IED on both the attack skills and on a passive like on Dark Knight, Cannoneer and Demon Slayer. At the same time, remove IED as a Blade Fury Hyper Option and give us a better feature like Phantom Blow Boss Rush.
Sweetwater Shop: This is exclusive to GMS, but Dual Blades don't have good access to spare Sweetwater Kataras. Currently, it is as rare as a Pitch Drop and costs as much. The upcoming 30 star cap would make players need to push their items further to 25 or beyond to become stronger so there will be greater need in them. It isn't fair all the other classes can buy theirs cheap from an NPC or redeem from PNO and they only need one since they would never break theirs due to not needing to scroll or starforce it. Introduce choice Weapon/Armor box for Sweetwater gear like how it exists for Abso, Arcanes and Eternals, go with pieces you can trade in like in CRA or EMP, or just include it in the shop for Denaros. It's bad enough we have to star and scroll our secondaries aside from the Pot/Bpottings like other classes. Dual Blade is expensive, underwhelming and shouldn't be more expensive to get a clean Katara.