Duelist (Offhand Dagger Generic Category)

[Fortescue]

Preface:
This category is ideally suited for Rogues and Shadowblades as a locked Generic category. Why? Because those classes do not have a "power defense" alternative to taking Armour Training currently, and even that by itself is fairly often not enough for a melee class. As well, I wanted something that would be compatible with light armour and Stealth builds. Generic points because they are precious and this is a POWER defense tree. I know Rogues get Misdirection from Scoundrel, but there is never anything wrong with having more choices to spend your category and Generic points on.

I would like to make this work for people who use a basic weapon (sword, axe, mace) mainhand w/ a Dagger offhand. Right now though, it would still be best with a Dagger / Dagger setup. Doctornull has submitted a patch to DarkGod revising Weapons / Dagger Mastery, while also incorporating the Exotics (whips into 1H, tridents into 2H), and I think that is a great idea that would really open up more weapon pairings.

Duelist - Dagger
These skills use an offhand wielded Dagger class item to enhance your offense and defense.

Disarming Feint
Active. Forego attacking this round and double your current melee defense value and evade chance from Parry and Dodge. If you are attacked in melee range (attack type doesn't matter, only your proximity to the actor), and the opponent misses for any reason (defense or Parry and Dodge), you slash them with your offhand Dagger for 150% weapon damage and Disarm and Disable them for 1+ (skill rank/2 round up) turns. Cooldown 8 turns (5 minimum). Cooldown goes down by 1 at rank 3 and another 2 at rank 5.

Deadly Riposte
Active. Lunge at your enemy with your main hand weapon for 250%-450% damage (+50% / rank). Cooldown 6. Cooldown goes down by 1 every time you avoid an attack (defense or evasion). At rank 5 this ability is also a guaranteed critical hit. May only be used against a Disarmed or Disabled opponent. Requires 1H Weapon in main hand.

Parry and Dodge
Sustain. Instant. While equipped with an offhand Dagger you gain a 5% per skill rank chance to avoid all damage at all times. Starting at rank 3, any time you evade an attack using this passive you gain 10% / 20% / 40% (max) global speed for 1 round. Must wear Leather or lighter armour to use. Costs x Stamina per Dodge attempt. 10 turn CD if turned off / forced off.

Fearless Bravado
Passive. For every enemy in your LoS you gain a stack of Bravado. Each stack of Bravado enhances your Parrying and Dodge evasion chance by 2-10% (2% per rank). At rank 3 you also gain 15% resistance to all negative status effects per stack. Max 4 stacks. Each stack of Bravado also reduces the Stamina cost of Parrying and Dodge attempts by x (1 probably).

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I'm kind of thinking Fearless Bravado could be made into a 5 turn duration skill and the Parrying Blade bonus chance made even higher. Candidates for this category are Rogue, Shadowblade, and Marauder.

[Mewtarthio]

25% Evasion that's on all the time and applies to non-weapon attacks as well? That's... insanely good, even without the ungodly 40% speed boost on top of it.

[HousePet]

Yeah, that is a little OP.

Maybe swap Parrying Blade and Deadly Riposte around.
Make Parrying Blade work like Block. eg. Activated. Would be a chance of negating a weapon hit, rather than a flat damage reduction.
Then have Deadly Riposte as an auto counter attack if you Parry an attack.

Disarming Feint is good.

Fearless Bravado is thematically very close to Dauntless Presence. Maybe change it to more of a witty insults theme.

[Fortescue]

25% Evasion that's on all the time and applies to non-weapon attacks as well? That's... insanely good, even without the ungodly 40% speed boost on top of it.

Yeah it is not bad. The thing is, this is a melee class. Once Stealth is off, how are you going to survive being ganged up on by x number of enemies possibly including ranged ones? That is why it doesn't just apply to melee attacks, ranged are the real killers of melee classes.

Shibari explained to me, there are certain Power Defenses (her name for them) that are top tier. They are Unstoppable, Aegis, Leaves Tide, Mitosis, maybe Blur Damage under the right conditions, maybe a few more. Those skills are what define some of the best classes in the game. Rogues and Shadowblades don't have any kind of top tier defensive talents, making them a lot less viable on harder difficulties. This is just a sort of early attempt at giving them something like that.

[Davion Fuxa]

Classes should be designed around Normal Difficulty. My take on all the talents is that they are all way too powerful:

Disarming Feint inflicting not only Disarm but Disable as well is a bit over the top - only really needed one of those effects. Deadly Riposte does WAY too much damage even if it is only your Mainhand when that REALLY short cool down 'that gets reduced when you avoid more attacks' gets factored in. Parrying Blade is pretty damn powerful as a Block Talent like Housepet suggests; but its beyond ridiculous as a passive. Fearless Bravado takes the ridiculous factor of Parrying Blade and pushes it past absurd.

There is some work that could be thought about for the ideas - Housepet obviously mentioned some ideas, but overall this seems all too overpowered for a category.

[Davion Fuxa]

Figured I'd mention some thoughts then I had just now on that sort of rework your talents a bit with Housepet's suggestions incorporated into them.

Disabling Feint (Because I don't think I've seen Disable in game yet and it knocks off one of the effects) - An Active Attack talent where you aim to distract the enemy - feinting with your Offhand Weapon before striking them with your Main Hand Weapon and attempting to Disable them.

In a special instance I also imagine that if the target is Blocking, then your Feint hits their Block but you don't get Counterattack debuff as it is a pretended blow. You get an automatic followup with the Main hand strike that also attempts to disable.

Parrying Blade - A Sustain THAT DISABLES your offensive use with the Offhand Weapon but gives you a Sustained Buff called Parrying. Parrying is disabled when you use a Talent that requires both your Main Hand Weapon and Offhand Weapon - except when using Disabling Feint. When the Sustain is turned off their is a Cooldown of 10 turns.

Parry works pretty well like Evade but Ranged Attacks are also negated as well. Doesn't stack with Evade (Parry occurs before all Evade chances have taken place). Much like with Block there would be an opponent count - so just with Parrying Blade you can only Parry once per turn. Shouldn't have the Global Speed boost, just the Parry buff (not to high though or Deadly Riposte will be triggering way too often).

Deadly Riposte - A Passive skill that triggers whenever you successfully Parry a blow with Offhand Weapon under Parrying Blade. When Deadly Riposte is triggered, you Riposte with your Main Hand Weapon against the enemy and attempt to hit their vital spots. Talent Level 5 could still have it's autocrit.

If the target is suffered from Disabled Status then the skill will have an autokill chance attached to it that may trigger regardless of how much health the target may have left.

Fearless Bravado - Another Passive or perhaps a Sustain. If following Housepet's idea it could be like Daunting Presence and trigger off a successfully Parry and give you a buff and/or give your opponents a debuff - Could be your speed increase (or vice versa a Slow on enemies) or whatever.

I seriously have no idea though how this one might be worked however. Only thing I might suggest is that it lets you Parry more foes with Parrying Blades.

[Fortescue]

You say it is "overpowered" and ignore the talents I was comparing it to. So I guess those should all be nerfed since they are way overkill for Normal? Never going to happen.

For easy comparison:

25% dmg block chance passively that can scale up to 65% vs. 4 enemies

vs. 5 to 7 turns of 100% dmg block chance whenever you feel like it

[Davion Fuxa]

Your skills should be scaled to the other skills on the class you'll be pairing them up with. I assume that your Duelist tree would be another replacing the Marauder's Bloodthirst and Battle Tactics along with the Tools of the Trade set you were thinking of. The question is less of what Duelist compared to Unstoppable and more so what this tree compared to Poisons, Tactical, or whatever Talents Tools of the Trade might come to be.

This goes doubly so when tied into Rogues, Shadowblades, or whatever other classes would be gaining this category tree.

[Fortescue]

Davion, having looked at your revisions I can see some of the logic, but don't really like autokill skills. They are only appropriate for popcorn monsters, and those types die easily anyway, it is why they are popcorn. What I like about the Feint / Riposte combo is how they explicitly use one weapon or the other, so it encourages you to put something like a weapon with "on crit" effect in your mainhand. It isn't a lot, but it does add a little more to player decision making. I talked with Shibari a lot this morning and came up with a set of nerfs to the existing set:

Parry and Dodge
Sustain. Instant. While equipped with an offhand Dagger you gain a 5% per skill rank chance to avoid all damage at all times. Starting at rank 3, any time you evade an attack using this passive you gain 10% / 20% / 40% (max) global speed for 1 round. Must wear Leather or lighter armour to use. Costs x Stamina per Dodge attempt. 10 turn CD if turned off / forced off.

Fearless Bravado
Passive. For every enemy in your LoS you gain a stack of Bravado. Each stack of Bravado enhances your Parrying and Dodge evasion chance by 2-10% (2% per rank), and your critical damage by 5-25% (5% per rank). Max 4 stacks. Each stack of Bravado also reduces the Stamina cost of Parrying and Dodge attempts by x (1 probably).

[HousePet]

Instead of requiring Light armour or lighter for Parry and Dodge, you could apply the fatigue modifier to the stamina drain instead. So x * (1 + fatigue).
That penalises heavier armour without a restriction, and would make it apply to slots other than body armour.

[Fortescue]

As I explained in IRC, allowing Heavy Armour would actually defeat the one weakness in this defense, which is multihit melee opponents. Armour Training shits all over that type of attack specifically.

[Davion Fuxa]

I still don't think much of the Global Speed Boost Idea on the Parrying. You already get an Attack Speed Bonus with Momentum (Marauder, Rogue, or Shadowblade) which greatly increases killing speed without other sources like Blinding Speed and this Parrying Talent getting added into the mix. However, a potential idea that sort of preserves your idea with a speed effect - negative Global Speed Debuff to enemies that get Parried.

I'd also say the constant stamina drain sounds annoying too since Parrying would chew up your Stamina which you could have used to kill the enemy with Flurry, Dual Strike, etc. One of the reasons I suggested it cut off the offensive power from your Off Hand Weapon was to preserve your stamina for other talents you might use while giving it a major enough drawback.

I'd also note that one of the reasons I didn't say Parrying would negate Spell damage is because it sort of makes no sense - how is your dagger suppose to parry a Fireball. I realize you added Dodge in there in your recent post, but that seems nonsensical to me. At least your can parry an Arrow out of the air and divert it's path away from you, but generally you can't parry an Explosion from a spell.

Fearless Bravado would be absurdly powerful as a LoS passive. As a LoS active talent it is also still too powerful, but not so absurdly as it would be as a Passive. Personally I think the LoS idea should be dropped and the buffs should require the enemy to commit an action (such as a Successful Parry) like Daunting Presence does. Additionally stacking could occur through subsequent Parry's in following turns but you'd have to build up your stacks.

One idea I think I'll throw in is that if you really want Fearless Bravado to be just connected to LoS - maybe change it so that you debuff your enemy instead of buffing yourself. If you want it to be connected to Parrying then you might use my idea from above on the debuffed speed penalty when you Parry them - and then enhances the debuff top their speed even further when you Parry them. You might also make it so that they get a Critical penalty that reduces all opponents Critical Chance from occurring - or just the Parried Foes (not sure if you meant all or just Parried actually). Further stacks could reduce Critical Chance further (maybe to zero) too.

[bpat]

First off I'm not really sure Disable does so I don't really know how to comment on Disarming Feint. I would have it give you 100% evasion chance instead of doubling defense though since defense is a worthless stat outside of Normal.

Parry and Dodge is pretty much a passive Leaves' Tide clone with some other stuff added in. I don't really see how it makes sense thematically to let you dodge spells or mind attacks so I suggest making it only give evasion for physical attacks. It also shouldn't give you global speed because global speed is way too good to be in a generic category unless it doesn't stack with Blinding Speed, which I don't like for other reasons. Instead, it should do something specific to the enemy, like Disarm, lower Defense, or give you a free crit on your next attack on them. Since this would make it not overpowered anymore I would remove the stamina reduction, Rogues and Shadowblades have enough stamina issues as it is with Combat Veteran locked for both of them

This category gives a very large amount of offense for a defensive category. I would tone down the offense a lot and make it much more defense oriented. The two talents that I feel are problematic in this way are Deadly Riposte and Fearless Bravado. Deadly Riposte should do about half the damage you suggested (maybe 150-220%) and instead do something like Daze and knock Off Balance since 250-450% is way too high, especially for a generic category. Deadly Riposte could also take less than a full turn to make up for its poor damage. Fearless Bravado should do something more utility oriented like Stun, Confusion, and Pin resistance and movement speed (attack speed would be too good and overlap with Momentum). This stays in theme with fearlessness but it's more defense and utility oriented this way without giving too much offense.

[Fortescue]

Instead, it should do something specific to the enemy, like Disarm, lower Defense, or give you a free crit on your next attack on them.

??? These effects already happen with the first 2 skills.

Deadly Riposte could also take less than a full turn to make up for its poor damage.

It already does take less than a full turn if you activate it out of a Parry and Dodge evasion.

Numbers are just place holders until testing can confirm what works, so people should stop being so hung up over them. All I'm giving you is a general idea. If you think this is overpowered, then good, it is meant to be competitive with Unstoppable and I doubt you'd say it is more powerful than that (because it obviously isn't, especially 1v1 when your avoidance is only 35%).

Disable is a generic debuff that will do whatever I want it to do, with the intent that it can be applied to any actor, not just ones that hold weapons, enabling your Riposte. Lower speed, lower accuracy, most likely. I know that Defense is unreliable as a stat, which is why avoiding damage using Parry and Dodge is also valid for activating that skill.

[Fortescue]

Fearless Bravado would be absurdly powerful as a LoS passive. As a LoS active talent it is also still too powerful, but not so absurdly as it would be as a Passive. Personally I think the LoS idea should be dropped and the buffs should require the enemy to commit an action (such as a Successful Parry) like Daunting Presence does. Additionally stacking could occur through subsequent Parry's in following turns but you'd have to build up your stacks.

LoS scaling for defense on a melee class is a really good way to tackle the problem of melee being exposed to more danger than ranged classes when facing multiple opponents / the increased likelihood of having to fight multiple opponents. Expect to see more talents from me that take advantage of it in the future.

As far as "why would it block all damage" I don't have to answer that. Why does Leaves Tide? Why does Unstoppable non-magically prevent your body from being destroyed by magic, weapons, mind effects, etc...? Every defense I design from this point uses Unstoppable as the golden standard for power, because until that gets nerfed every class who doesn't have something as good or nearly as good as Unstoppable are objectively inferior. I don't think Unstoppable is going to get nerfed any time soon either, so there you go. It is the go-to when balance concerns are brought up.