WhyN0t
Master Sergeant
Hello. I would like to present my opinion about the current duel META . I had to test on several servers because I find it hard to find targets with duel items at my level on my main world. A slight deviation from the topic, first of all, I will ask you one more time to do something to encourage dueling, the tens of thousands of bonds for mysterious potions and duels with 10% motivation are apparently not enough and I don't want to intentionally lose hundreds of duels to lower my level, especially since even at low level there are not that many targets. There are more players, but not that many with duel sets.
Back to the duel.
Pearl's set is, not surprisingly, very strong, even after the small nerf it received. It is very strong with a build consisting in full dexterity, appearance and dodging. It's extremely hard to defend against (unless you are a soldier). Nat's set is good, but it's not enough. Some pieces from the clothes set are great combined with other merchant items (or 2 columbia/skeleton items and fancy leather hat), the horse set is good, but weapons are underwhelming. Harverer's are better. Unfortunately, all these items are not upgradable (only the harverster's weapons but they cost a bunch of nuggets and it's not worth it), and pearl's set (with vaquero/jaguar weapons/horse set) are. At the moment, the attack sets are much better than the defense sets. This makes sense for two reasons. The first is that on defense you can combine items according to your opponent's items, so it's easier. The second reason is that soldiers have an OP bonus. The problem is that the defense sets (with tactics) are too weak at the moment. Only a soldiers can use them in general, the rest of the classes only situationally when the opponent doesn't have much appearance.
If your opponent has too much shooting, you must play with tactics, but the problem is that it's very hard to play tactics with the actual sets (obviously, unless you're a soldier), including the nugget ones. Sarah horse set is useless, it's even weaker than Eire's. Lucky weapons have mediocre bonuses and very low damage, even if they have good tactics. Behan's weapons have a bunch of aiming and dodging, but very low tactics. It's the same with behan's horse set. And for clothes if you use sarah or marshall, you lose a lot of aiming (and dodging for Sarah). For horse sets you have to use mclaughlin or marshall, and these are not only old sets, but they were not even designed to be played with tactics and a+d. We need a new tactical set. One with higher tactics and decent aiming and dodging. Of course, some vigor wouldn't hurt, but don't add too much because otherwise it would be impossible to beat soldiers. 0.8-1 x lvl vigor for clothes set, 0.5-0.6 for weapons and horse set would be okay, but no more than this. The main bonuses should be tactics, aiming and dodging. Soldiers will make the most of these sets, but there's nothing we can do about it, it's impossible to balance the duel when one class has such OP bonuses. Double hp is not to be neglected either. The soldier is the only one who can play with a firearm without having to worry about low hp and the constant risk of fainting if you have a bit of bad luck and don't dodge properly.
As for the reflex sets, at the moment the items are sufficient, but some better weapons like the bounty hunter are missing.
Waupee's purple items look interesting, but they lack the most important dueling skill: aiming. Only the blouse has it, but for that it loses a lot of other skills, often being weaker than the blue one. I don't mind the set, it can be situationally good for soldiers in certain combinations, but there are items with more t/r than these, and those also have aiming, and with aiming you play it safe, with tactics you risk not always winning the bonus and staying with very low overall aiming. Some items are good in certain situations, like the purple pants which really have a lot of skills and can help you sometimes, but I can't say I'm fully satisfied with them. Very situational. And expensive.
A quick example is the yellow cowboy hat that has more tactics and t/r than waupee's purple one, being 5 times cheaper. You lose hp and vigor, but most of the time these are useless, because you use the t/r tactics when you are attacked by someone with a lot of toughness/reflex (but with low aiming/dodging) and you can't defend yourself otherwise, so you play the aiming dodging tactics and resistance/reflex enough to receive from the opponent minimal damage, both of you will deal low damage, but you will win because you will hit more often, so the vigor and hp on waupee's hat are useless in this context. Soldiers can use these purple waupee's items much better which is another undeserved advantage.
TL : DR
Back to the duel.
Pearl's set is, not surprisingly, very strong, even after the small nerf it received. It is very strong with a build consisting in full dexterity, appearance and dodging. It's extremely hard to defend against (unless you are a soldier). Nat's set is good, but it's not enough. Some pieces from the clothes set are great combined with other merchant items (or 2 columbia/skeleton items and fancy leather hat), the horse set is good, but weapons are underwhelming. Harverer's are better. Unfortunately, all these items are not upgradable (only the harverster's weapons but they cost a bunch of nuggets and it's not worth it), and pearl's set (with vaquero/jaguar weapons/horse set) are. At the moment, the attack sets are much better than the defense sets. This makes sense for two reasons. The first is that on defense you can combine items according to your opponent's items, so it's easier. The second reason is that soldiers have an OP bonus. The problem is that the defense sets (with tactics) are too weak at the moment. Only a soldiers can use them in general, the rest of the classes only situationally when the opponent doesn't have much appearance.
If your opponent has too much shooting, you must play with tactics, but the problem is that it's very hard to play tactics with the actual sets (obviously, unless you're a soldier), including the nugget ones. Sarah horse set is useless, it's even weaker than Eire's. Lucky weapons have mediocre bonuses and very low damage, even if they have good tactics. Behan's weapons have a bunch of aiming and dodging, but very low tactics. It's the same with behan's horse set. And for clothes if you use sarah or marshall, you lose a lot of aiming (and dodging for Sarah). For horse sets you have to use mclaughlin or marshall, and these are not only old sets, but they were not even designed to be played with tactics and a+d. We need a new tactical set. One with higher tactics and decent aiming and dodging. Of course, some vigor wouldn't hurt, but don't add too much because otherwise it would be impossible to beat soldiers. 0.8-1 x lvl vigor for clothes set, 0.5-0.6 for weapons and horse set would be okay, but no more than this. The main bonuses should be tactics, aiming and dodging. Soldiers will make the most of these sets, but there's nothing we can do about it, it's impossible to balance the duel when one class has such OP bonuses. Double hp is not to be neglected either. The soldier is the only one who can play with a firearm without having to worry about low hp and the constant risk of fainting if you have a bit of bad luck and don't dodge properly.
As for the reflex sets, at the moment the items are sufficient, but some better weapons like the bounty hunter are missing.
Waupee's purple items look interesting, but they lack the most important dueling skill: aiming. Only the blouse has it, but for that it loses a lot of other skills, often being weaker than the blue one. I don't mind the set, it can be situationally good for soldiers in certain combinations, but there are items with more t/r than these, and those also have aiming, and with aiming you play it safe, with tactics you risk not always winning the bonus and staying with very low overall aiming. Some items are good in certain situations, like the purple pants which really have a lot of skills and can help you sometimes, but I can't say I'm fully satisfied with them. Very situational. And expensive.
A quick example is the yellow cowboy hat that has more tactics and t/r than waupee's purple one, being 5 times cheaper. You lose hp and vigor, but most of the time these are useless, because you use the t/r tactics when you are attacked by someone with a lot of toughness/reflex (but with low aiming/dodging) and you can't defend yourself otherwise, so you play the aiming dodging tactics and resistance/reflex enough to receive from the opponent minimal damage, both of you will deal low damage, but you will win because you will hit more often, so the vigor and hp on waupee's hat are useless in this context. Soldiers can use these purple waupee's items much better which is another undeserved advantage.
TL : DR
- Pearl set is very strong. Maybe too strong for the moment.
- Nat is good, especially in combination with other items, but the weapons sucks.
- We need a better set with tactics, especially with strong weapons and horse set (high tactics and aiming+dodging, but low vigor!)
- We need better reflex weapons.
- Waupee purple items are mediocre at best.
- Soldiers are OP.
- Very few people duel, and there is no reason to do it except for the pleasure of dueling, which most players do not have. We need reasons to duel, promote pvp!
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