Dual Blunt Discussion

Kenway · February 2015

Brief samples of two of something like two-dozen spars. Fought many with rebounding up, fought many tumbling onto ground runes (which don't matter when you just die to engage or at best get out with enough health for a single arrow to drop). Won probably four times. I may have average health and zilch for arties but am also a runed up and shield wielding affliction spec'd knight. Not sure what other class is better equipped to handle DB frankly. I have never come close to death against any other DB user I've faced, all of whom, have been far and away more artied than @Yurdan. I'm not going to pretend I know a whole lot about DB, of all the specs it's the only one I never touched, but most of this thread seems to be complaints about viability and that is not what I saw from these couple-dozen fights.

Antonius · February 2015

You're unartied and only level eighty-two, so not exactly the subject of most of those complaints about viability. The (valid) complaints were that dual blunt wasn't viable the moment pure damage stopped being capable of actually killing your opponent, because the mechanics in place at the time (prior to classleads) meant pulp wasn't a realistic threat.

Yurdan · February 2015

I agree that it's not very conclusive. Let me borrow your high health pool one day and I will try and convince you.

Valdus · February 2015

So, like. I'm thinking about coming back once the Eleusis rennaisance is finished and I'm currently Runewarden.

Dual Blunt looks fun as HELL, but I'm confused as to what people are saying about it.

I've read the last couple of pages in this thread. Maybe I'm just reading wrong (could be!) but it looks like some people are saying DB is good and some are saying it's bad. Then some people are saying things were changed and now that more classleads are coming up I don't know what's going on.

Which is the case and why?

And, from Yurdan's logs, it appears damage killing people is viable unartied. True/false? (Plz be true.)

Antonius · February 2015

Damage killing people is viable unartied if they're also unartied. That's all I'd suggest taking away from that log. It may also be sufficient if they're artied too, but I've yet to see any evidence to conclude either way.

Classleads for the classes changed as part of the big change just recently finished, and dual blunt got some changes that make a huge difference to the viability of pulp. It's probably in a pretty good place right now.

Main issue I personally had with dual blunt was that playing it was just really boring. That's a personal preference though.

Valdus · February 2015

Antonius said:

Damage killing people is viable unartied if they're also unartied. That's all I'd suggest taking away from that log. It may also be sufficient if they're artied too, but I've yet to see any evidence to conclude either way.

Classleads for the classes changed as part of the big change just recently finished, and dual blunt got some changes that make a huge difference to the viability of pulp. It's probably in a pretty good place right now.

Main issue I personally had with dual blunt was that playing it was just really boring. That's a personal preference though.

Thank you @Antonius.

What about it did you find boring?

With Two Handed, is it varied enough that it doesn't suffer from the same thing?

Finally, what is your favorite?

Aedin · February 2015

Well all I know I used to love the spec was one of few people to run it really during testing anyways long story short I eventually left as the general mechanics of it all was just so linear and predictible in a lot of cases and could basically get shut down instantly through curare xentio looping.. You'll have next to nil momentum from it and no true way to really apply amy pressure outside of damage or breaking a limb which single breaks will only prolong the suffering.

Valdus · February 2015

Thanks Aedin.

I had originally thought I'd go Dual Blunt, but it seems like everyone is saying 2H is just plain better right now.

I invite everyone else to answer the questions in my above post. I'd appreciate your input.

Khorus · February 2015

Kenway said:

Brief samples of two of something like two-dozen spars. Fought many with rebounding up, fought many tumbling onto ground runes (which don't matter when you just die to engage or at best get out with enough health for a single arrow to drop). Won probably four times. I may have average health and zilch for arties but am also a runed up and shield wielding affliction spec'd knight. Not sure what other class is better equipped to handle DB frankly. I have never come close to death against any other DB user I've faced, all of whom, have been far and away more artied than @Yurdan. I'm not going to pretend I know a whole lot about DB, of all the specs it's the only one I never touched, but most of this thread seems to be complaints about viability and that is not what I saw from these couple-dozen fights.

Afflictors and Slow-Prep (BM) are the most suitable counters to dual blunt, not someone who absolutely has to stand there and eat our attacks. I've also noticed fighting Zulah that flails incredible balance cost leaves you open to a bladepalm followed by impaleslash on pretty much every attack you make. Pretty silly. Easiest Brokenstars of life.

In any case, I've made a lot of complaints in this thread but for the most part I feel like Dual Blunt is pretty viable now. The biggest things I think need to be fixed are all related to expend. I don't mind the afflictions being mainly unusable, It's still always fun to give yourself that second of breathing room with expend head on a break. But as of right now I have a few pretty simple solutions I think will work.

1. Have expend torso simply prevent smoking for 4-5 seconds, making it a total of 12-13 seconds of no rebounding, 2.5-3.5 of which will be used recovering balance.

2. Allow 2 expends on a doublewhirl - this will open up a variety of different opportunities and open doors to new methods. I think we all agree that expend in it's current incarnation is pretty limited in it's uses.

3. *Allow -any- non-expend doublewhirl hit that lands to build momentum. This one is a little bit iffy, mostly because if torso expend was fixed as per number one, then this would reduce the cost of single torso expends to 1, leaving you able to pretty easily keep them permanently off rebounding balance, at the cost of hitting torso over another limb. Almost not a bad trade off in some instances.

4. Change the way momentum decays, as I find it pretty silly that it decays when I'm literally between attacks sometimes, as well as fracture doesn't seem to register to the game as an aggressive action (Doesn't build Kai), so maybe that's why momentum is decaying after fractures, unlike after doublewhirls.

Honestly if someone doesn't use rebounding, I generally don't have a hard time once I get to the kill sequence - it's all about getting there. But right now rebounding even defeats the kill sequence, which is frustrating considering tumble > our kill sequence already. On the off chance I chase well I risk either hitting rebounding or missing a fracture and losing precious momentum and time. I think I've managed to chase and land an assault -once-, usually momentum decay/rebounding stops it.

There's a few other nifty ideas I like, like maybe make PREDICT balance-less like battlefury perceive, or having DB have a counter-attack parry, but that stuffs just giggles.

Also, I noted that I could pulp Szanthax when he didn't have rebounding up, but that was prior to him changing his curing priorities. If someone simply changes their leg priorities to be above their head priorities, they will almost always stand by the time pulp should be going off, unless concussion slows their curing enough. Considering the cost of stun (Would be changed with my idea number 2), it's not practical at all to use stun expend on the head break while prone, which would be incredibly useful against people who you know are going to prioritize legs over head. It isn't that hard to manglelock people who cure head though, and I managed to kill Aegoth in dform once, so my complaints about damage not being possible have been neutered.

I've been failing miserably at logging anything, tried to use the mudlet logger but it feeds way too much info into the .dat and I have no idea how to see it any other way than replay in mudlet. Any help on that note would be appreciated. The only thing I can think of is dling vadi's screendump. Aaanyyway, enough about how newb I am.

Kenway · February 2015

Select all the text of your fight > Right click > copy html > paste here > click "Colourful HTML" > click "Paste it!" > c/p URL when the page loads
EDIT: @Khorus

Leviticus · February 2015

@Khorus and @Valdus . I love you double expend idea, would do wonders.

DB

CON *in my opinion

- Balanced around artefact weapons, if you don't got them. Good luck
- Trash hindrance even with the change to expend
- Pulp still incredibly hard if not impossible to pull off if facing an opponent who knows what they are doing
- Damage is descent won't kill people with higher health even if you assault head, and have bonus limb and prone damage still not enough.
- Momentum

PRO *in my opinion

- Amazing bashing 12 percent per dsl with normal weapons
- Fast breaks. Around 7-8 hits per limb
- Can target two limbs
- Expend has potential
- Looks cool

off the top of my head.

Jovolo · February 2015

DB is probably the worst of the lot, wouldn't touch it personally. Could use some rethinking.

Aedin · February 2015

That's why I quickly jumped ship as everything bout it even with lvl three flails and Morningstar's wasn't really pushing the envelope on what it should be. Personally I think the fracture system would be ideal to have on dual blunt over two handed. Just do to the fact its a blunt weapon and I'm pretty sure hitting someone with a giant ball with spikes would either break/fracture any limb. Although make the bleed a bit more noticeable after all giant spikes hitting people chances they get stuck= torn flesh when removed (possible idea) making it on random hits the flail stick into the target enabling a nice yank out. Lol

Kellonius · February 2015

Kenway said:

Brief samples of two of something like two-dozen spars. Fought many with rebounding up, fought many tumbling onto ground runes (which don't matter when you just die to engage or at best get out with enough health for a single arrow to drop). Won probably four times. I may have average health and zilch for arties but am also a runed up and shield wielding affliction spec'd knight. Not sure what other class is better equipped to handle DB frankly. I have never come close to death against any other DB user I've faced, all of whom, have been far and away more artied than @Yurdan. I'm not going to pretend I know a whole lot about DB, of all the specs it's the only one I never touched, but most of this thread seems to be complaints about viability and that is not what I saw from these couple-dozen fights.

Your are, unfortunately, a small sample size. Saying that a class is completely viable from fighting one person isn't a good idea for many reasons, one of them being, and please don't take any offense to this: no one is really sure of how "good" a fighter is until they reach that really revered level(read: Jhui and co), and also, you don't have any artefacts. Flail damage with high strength versus someone with medium to low health is probably going to seem high, whereas, flail damage against someone with high health is probably going to seem meaningless.

That said, the issues we're discussing here, or should be, are about the viability to specific classes as well as other lingering issues. For example, the afflictions given to expend are good, however, it takes a fourth of the total momentum, at the very least and really might not be that useful in correcting the problem that it was supposed to correct. Classlead 129 will provide all of the details. Essentially, against any class that can give two afflictions quickly, dual blunt becomes, well, pointless. In the beginning, there was no hinder. Now we have hinder that takes a fourth of our resource AND only lasts as long as it takes to cure. Which is about 1 second. The target will be unhindered before DWB can get balance back, even with L3 morningstars. The second issue is that, due to the lack of hinder, any class that can afflict the equivalent of 1 affliction per second(because Shamans) can always get DWB behind on curing and can totally negate its offense. I wont go into tons of details, but getting clumsiness and lethargy to stick is very damning to DWB offense. So DWB can either run away every 3 attacks from our opponent(a style that nobody likes) or try to tough it out, which never really works. They can switch to flials for, arguably, better prep (I'll save the argument about why flails might not be better for another post) but the reduction is balance speed will make it much harder to run away if you need to, and the same considerations for getting behind on certain afflictions still applies.

So again, while DWB is pretty good against some classes, its terrible against others and absolutely needs to find some middle ground.

Yurdan · February 2015

The only change I'd really like to see is expended hits having a higher chance to connect.

Khorus · February 2015

I think rebounding is still an issue. If expend torso actually -worked- then I think the class is instantly viable, atleast as Runewarden.

Kellonius · February 2015

Khorus said:

I think rebounding is still an issue. If expend torso actually -worked- then I think the class is instantly viable, atleast as Runewarden.

Not to mention, DWB relies so heavily on prep that using rebounding is out except against maybe serpents.

Kenway · February 2015

Kellonius said:

Kenway said:

Brief samples of two of something like two-dozen spars. Fought many with rebounding up, fought many tumbling onto ground runes (which don't matter when you just die to engage or at best get out with enough health for a single arrow to drop). Won probably four times. I may have average health and zilch for arties but am also a runed up and shield wielding affliction spec'd knight. Not sure what other class is better equipped to handle DB frankly. I have never come close to death against any other DB user I've faced, all of whom, have been far and away more artied than @Yurdan. I'm not going to pretend I know a whole lot about DB, of all the specs it's the only one I never touched, but most of this thread seems to be complaints about viability and that is not what I saw from these couple-dozen fights.

lots of well reasoned stuff

My issue is and has always been that the entry level of combat seems to keep getting higher. When I started playing it was like level 60, no arties and you could start getting into it. Now it's more like 80 + an artie or two and you're good to start. You're absolutely right that I'm not a good example and that's what I have a problem with. I'm level 82, I'm a knight, I have algiz, I'm high hindrance. I have bracelets. I'm tri-trans. I'm trans avoidance. I'm trans survival. So your reasoning is accurate, but it leaves a lot of the player base out in the cold. Perhaps the scaling of the damage should be looked at. Something like n+%maxhealth. As is, it's kinda the same issue that old knight had where if you have under like 4500 health don't even bother trying. (Not saying I won't bother, I actually enjoy fighting them but again I'm probably one of the most well-suited classes to do so.)

This is all my opinion though and yeah, not entirely the topic this thread is looking to discuss so I'm happy to drop it but as the game moves to be more and more PvP-centric, it's something I worry about. I got into combat at around level 65 and I've always been mostly unartied but I've still been able to fight against people who are a lot more artied than I am. I wouldn't still be here if I had needed to get to 80 just to start fighting or needed to buy arties just to get in the door.

Khorus · March 2015

GG to this spec. RIP wonderful idea!

Jovolo · March 2015

Kenway said:

Kellonius said:

Kenway said:

Brief samples of two of something like two-dozen spars. Fought many with rebounding up, fought many tumbling onto ground runes (which don't matter when you just die to engage or at best get out with enough health for a single arrow to drop). Won probably four times. I may have average health and zilch for arties but am also a runed up and shield wielding affliction spec'd knight. Not sure what other class is better equipped to handle DB frankly. I have never come close to death against any other DB user I've faced, all of whom, have been far and away more artied than @Yurdan. I'm not going to pretend I know a whole lot about DB, of all the specs it's the only one I never touched, but most of this thread seems to be complaints about viability and that is not what I saw from these couple-dozen fights.

lots of well reasoned stuff

My issue is and has always been that the entry level of combat seems to keep getting higher. When I started playing it was like level 60, no arties and you could start getting into it. Now it's more like 80 + an artie or two and you're good to start. You're absolutely right that I'm not a good example and that's what I have a problem with. I'm level 82, I'm a knight, I have algiz, I'm high hindrance. I have bracelets. I'm tri-trans. I'm trans avoidance. I'm trans survival. So your reasoning is accurate, but it leaves a lot of the player base out in the cold. Perhaps the scaling of the damage should be looked at. Something like n+%maxhealth. As is, it's kinda the same issue that old knight had where if you have under like 4500 health don't even bother trying. (Not saying I won't bother, I actually enjoy fighting them but again I'm probably one of the most well-suited classes to do so.)

This is all my opinion though and yeah, not entirely the topic this thread is looking to discuss so I'm happy to drop it but as the game moves to be more and more PvP-centric, it's something I worry about. I got into combat at around level 65 and I've always been mostly unartied but I've still been able to fight against people who are a lot more artied than I am. I wouldn't still be here if I had needed to get to 80 just to start fighting or needed to buy arties just to get in the door.

This is unfortunately a natural progression that is inevitable as the game continues to continue, as more and more people achieve level 99 and more and more people purchase artefacts. This wouldn't in and of itself be a significant problem but for the actual strength of artefacts in which a disparity between those who have and those who do not have grows. I feel like this has been exacerbated by the gradual "balancing" of classes - that is to say, the previous status quo of RPS prevalent in Achaean combat has diminished - to the point where most classes can stand on an equal footing.

It's also just that people have gotten better at utilising the current climate of PvP, and the gap between "very skilled" and "has the prerequisite levels and abilities" lessens. A good thing for the casual PvPer that can invest time and/or money, and thus probably a good thing for the game overall. If only the paywall, or pay-to-win threshold was a bit smaller. I doubt that will change what with Achaea's business model and all, though.

Khorus · March 2015

Yea I think it's extremely daunting to new players to consider entering PvP at this point, and this spec was a good one for that with how simple it is on the surface, but the lack of hindrance and the ease of being hindered is too much in todays PvP atmosphere. Affliction classes walk all over Dual Blunt, and there's a lot of them.

Dochitha · July 2015

Haven't been seeing many dual-blunts, but I have a chance of sparring one lately, based on my limited combat knowledge, I think Dual Blunt has got one of the best killers in game.

While they can't hinder, they can't afflict, and can easily mess up limb counts if opponent hit their rebounding, they are quick to prep and bypass parry with numb.

@Makarios said:
Pulp isn't really there to be an instakill in the typical sense, its there as a threat to force people to have to cure in a suboptimal way if they want to avoid it. If they spam restoration to legs to get up ASAP, you can pulp. Otherwise you'll use what the class is more based around: the damage modifiers on prone/broken limbs.

Break both legs and prone > break head > exhaust head > pulp, is almost unavoidable and can be completed within 8s of rebounding window. If target tumbles out, follow and continue, there's not much of error.

To avoid this, I have to ignore the legs and pre-apply to head (curing head on break won't work). And I guess this is what @Markarios is referring to as forcing opponent to be sub-optimal in curing to avoid pulp. By pre-applying head, pulp won't work, but any dual-blunts can easily see that and exhaust Torso instead, and keep whirling on torso. It only takes a break on Torso, an exhaust, and a single dual whirl to kill me from 7000 health.

So yeah, it's either pulp or damage modifiers prone/broken limbs (torso).

Dual blunt is fierce killer. I kinda think it's more unavoidable than S&B's torso DSB.

Aquil · July 2015

I think personally full strength with hugalaz runes sketched into the brokenstars/flails are seriously super strong against people who underestimate it. Damage can just come out of no where.
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/0f77769c

Dochitha · July 2015

Aquil said:

I think personally full strength with hugalaz runes sketched into the brokenstars/flails are seriously super strong against people who underestimate it. Damage can just come out of no where.
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/0f77769c

For the record, she is artied with L3 gauntlet. But yes, damage does come out of no where. Runeblade procs during breaks are annoying.

Well in fact, at this point, if you get a double break with a prepped head and torso, you are dead.

Aerek · July 2015

DWB damage is kinda unfair against anyone in the mid tier; anyone with less than 4200 health or so should just never fight DWB, ever. But once in the "ideal" health range of 4500-5000, Assault @ 2.5s when using morning stars is my only cause for concern. With DWL at 2.5 as well, that puts the Pulp at 7.5 seconds after the leg breaks, (break legs, break head, Assault, Pulp) which means if you apply to either leg at all, you'll die, even if you prio head properly. Have to completely ignore both legs and wait for the head break, which leaves you prone for roughly an eternity.

By contrast, Assault w/ flails is just over 3 seconds, which means if you prio properly you'll dodge the Pulp, but still be prone for long enough to let the DWB punish you for curing "correctly", and that's great. Should probably just make Assault a set speed regardless of weapons.

Arador · July 2015

Was that a change? I am almost sure I recall assault being the same speed (3 seconds) with either. Only difference was the damage.

Aerek · July 2015

You know, I swore that was true, specifically tested it when I was DWB, and I was sure that Assault was the same for both. Always Assaulted with flails for that reason, and did well enough. But then I switched away and one of our DWB'ers recently proved that Assault was faster with stars, so I don't know if it was a stealth change or I'm just losing my mind and memory. You being confused about the same thing makes me feel a little better.

Arador · July 2015

Maybe we are just getting old.

Antonius · July 2015

Assault speed was definitely not weapon/speed stat dependent when Knight changes were released.

Mizik · July 2015

Says it does in AB.

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