Dual Blade Mechanics

I have yet to read this thread again so I might've missed out on some updates, but how does attacking speeds work for Dual Bladers?
1/ Blades and Daggers have separate speed values
2/ They only have Blade Booster? (Will check soon) Ido Booster, does it boost the speeds of both weapons equally, or only Dagger?

My assumption is the weapon speed chosen is the lower of the Dagger and Blade, which would usually be the Dagger, since most if not all Blades are Faster (3). Booster would be applied to both but it wouldn't matter since the Dagger is always slower.

I thought of it this way too and it seems to be the most logical assumption. It ruins the whole point of giving Blade faster speeds though.

Can you approximate chains of hell DPS with ONLY thorns, as well as final cut? (though i'd think you couldn't use final cut for DPS)

Only thorns as in no crit rings or SE.

Final Cut & Thorns: 2107.83%/s | 169237.36
Thorns: 1760.87%/s | 141380.22

Given the estimated attack speed of 2.3s per attack using Booster, and using the same stats as in previous examples.

Could be more, could be less. I'm not 100% sure that Thorns adds +250% on its Criticals alone. That may just be an effect when there's a Double Critical, and it could normally just be +150% when no other Criticals occur, which would be impossible to tell apart from SE in those videos since SE + Adventurer Ring = 150% Critical.

Thus, if that is the case, we see

Thorns: 1578.26%/s | 126718.57
Final Cut & Thorns: 1888.70%/s | 151643.37


Final Cut would be an approximation excluding the cast time. This is an average DPS output estimation over the full duration of Final Cut + Cooldown.

Are the DPS numbers in line with dusk's equipment standards? In which case it's safe to say dual blades destroy pretty much every class except corsairs?

Are the DPS numbers in line with dusk's equipment standards? In which case it's safe to say dual blades destroy pretty much every class except corsairs?

Yes, they should be, though I may have missed a stat or two.

The way Dual Blades were originally designed to be balanced appeared that the Blades were a more or less specific fraction of the weapon attack a Dagger provides; i.e. about half; thus, when a skill says 100%x2, you'd be getting roughly 1.5x+ your Dagger Damage would be equal to your Dagger + Blade Damage. What they didn't consider, however, is the massive damage boost that Apples and the like give. Factoring that in, Blades become closer to two thirds or three quarters of your Dagger Range, enabling an even steeper damage improvement slope, especially since Blades have such low weapon attack compared to the high amount an Onyx Apple gives. (End Game Blades should have less than 100, so you basically just doubled your Blade power, give or take from off-weapon attack bonuses.)


Another thing you should keep in mind with Chains of Hell is that it requires you to be in Dark Sight to use; unlike Assassinate however, you aren't guaranteed to exit Dark Sight after usage, so if you're struck while in Advanced Dark Sight, you may have trouble getting out to pot, and any excess amount of lag, even the smallest amount can prevent you from exiting, since you're required to either re-use Dark Sight, or click the icon at the top to guarantee an exit.

I think weapon attack pots are factored in as half per weapon.

ie. 50 for blade/50 for dagger if using an apple.

This is what I've seen, not really confirmed.

Another thing you should keep in mind with Chains of Hell is that it requires you to be in Dark Sight to use; unlike Assassinate however, you aren't guaranteed to exit Dark Sight after usage, so if you're struck while in Advanced Dark Sight, you may have trouble getting out to pot, and any excess amount of lag, even the smallest amount can prevent you from exiting, since you're required to either re-use Dark Sight, or click the icon at the top to guarantee an exit.

This remains to be seen as we still don't yet know how dummy effect works. If the dummy isn't hit by physical damage while in dark sight, but takes the magic damage while in dark sight, that's yet another plus for this class.

[COLOR="orange"]On your Upper Stab DPS chart, are the damages including the extra damage you get from the attack in the air or not?
In other words:Would Upper Stab replace Triple Stab or not?
EDIT:Sorry, let me rephrase, would Upper Stab outDPS Triple Stab on 1/2/3 mobs or not?[/COLOR]

You can save points when going from 1st job to 2nd job, and from 3rd job to 3rd job+.
Thus, you don't max dark sight before 20, you get a high level of Triple Stab. You really don't need a high Dark Sight that early, mastery, booster and triple would help alot. You put points into booster and dark sight at the end of 2nd job+, when you're out of skills.
Also, you dont need tornado spin and flash bang. You can get a very high level of flying assaulter and bloody storm or upper stab instead, right when you reach 70.

[COLOR="orange"]On your Upper Stab DPS chart, are the damages including the extra damage you get from the attack in the air or not?
In other words:Would Upper Stab replace Triple Stab or not?
EDIT:Sorry, let me rephrase, would Upper Stab outDPS Triple Stab on 1/2/3 mobs or not?[/COLOR]

The DPS table for Upper Stab considers two hits; the first hit tosses the monster into the air and the second hit deals extra damage from the toss effect. This scenario is always possible regardless of the Dual Blade's strength, unless the mob or Dual Blade is actually moved too far away to hit. Depending if they're stronger or not, they may be able to KB and maintain the monster in the air with successive Upper Stabs as well. The DPS column depicts the theoretical damage done, as opposed to just %/s as it's more relevant in the case of Dual Blades. Upper Stab does not out-DPS Triple Stab on mobs of three or less. (29621.84 vs 28329.58) There is, however, the prospect of using Upper Stab's high speed over Triple Stab's high damage output, reducing time-to-kill comparatively to just spamming a single skill. You can also combine the toss effect to Triple Stab, and possibly maintain a juggle as well though.

A significant thing to note is that Triple Stab is the premier skill for sheer DPS on 2 and 3 mobs. It does 400% Dagger + 200% Blade, combined with its significant speed allows for a lot of prominence in play. Bloody Storm comes close, but is limited by its lower Dagger for a slightly higher Blade range; however, if you were to consider other skills: Upper Stab, Mirror Image, and Thorns, Triple Stab gains a higher advantage. Hitting three times instead of two, it has one more activation chance to Critical. It also has one more bonus from another Mirror Image hit, as well as having another hit to add the bonus from Upper Stab. This is not to say that other mob skills aren't useful; if you have more than three mobs obviously, you're likely to find more use in the other things in your arsenal, but it's definitely something to consider when playing instead of just spamming your new Third Job skills. Of course, what I want to stress the most is that hits/time-to-kill mobs is the most important factor in training.

I'll add this information to the main post later with some math to back it up.

You can save points when going from 1st job to 2nd job, and from 3rd job to 3rd job+.
Thus, you don't max dark sight before 20, you get a high level of Triple Stab. You really don't need a high Dark Sight that early, mastery, booster and triple would help alot. You put points into booster and dark sight at the end of 2nd job+, when you're out of skills.
Also, you dont need tornado spin and flash bang. You can get a very high level of flying assaulter and bloody storm or upper stab instead, right when you reach 70.

I'll add that as I review this new information for a better build. Thanks.

[COLOR="orange"]Uh...your Bloody Storm + Upper Stab + Mirror Image + Thorns DPS table seems to be off.
The mob DPS can't honestly be lower than the single mob DPS can it?[/COLOR]

[COLOR="orange"]Uh...your Bloody Storm + Upper Stab + Mirror Image + Thorns DPS table seems to be off.
The mob DPS can't honestly be lower than the single mob DPS can it?[/COLOR]

My bad. There was an extra column in the table I printed out that was displaying instead of the real mob DPS.

Smashing my head against a wall for hours trying to figure out how dual blader damage worked produced a few discoveries:

- The mirror image description is completely wrong. For some reason, it draws 80% of the weapon's damage range for flying assaulter and bloody storm while strangely doing 125% damage for tornado spin and bloody storm, completely unaffected by final cut and critical bonuses, even though it says 60%. Other skills' modifiers are unknown.
- Final cut doubles all non-mirrored damage and does not just add +200% to each hit.
- Thorns works as the description says, not giving an extra 100% like sharp eyes does. It's +250% for the caster, +125% for party members, 2.25x damage for magicians.

Smashing my head against a wall for hours trying to figure out how dual blader damage worked produced a few discoveries:

- The mirror image description is completely wrong. For some reason, it draws 80% of the weapon's damage range for flying assaulter and bloody storm while strangely doing 125% damage for tornado spin and bloody storm, completely unaffected by final cut and critical bonuses, even though it says 60%. Other skills' modifiers are unknown.
- Final cut doubles all non-mirrored damage and does not just add +200% to each hit.
- Thorns works as the description says, not giving an extra 100% like sharp eyes does. It's +250% for the caster, +125% for party members, 2.25x damage for magicians.

My God, Mirror Image, fu'cking why. If there's any Mirror Image DPS tables there, I'd have to rewrite them since I don't believe I updated them at all since finding out about this not multiplier garbago.

Wow, this reminds me of the Buccs tables where they were trying to figure transformed and untransformed, but this is on a level of its own.
+250% for the caster?!?! crazy. And it stacks with SE right?

My God, Mirror Image, fu'cking why. If there's any Mirror Image DPS tables there, I'd have to rewrite them since I don't believe I updated them at all since finding out about this not multiplier garbago.

Woops, I meant tornado spin and upper stab* are 125% mirrored hits. I wish fatal blow and chains of hell hits wouldn't go off the screen so I could figure those out, though I'm pretty sure they're 80% since 125% seems to only apply to single-hit attacks. It kind of makes sense for tornado spin since it's activated by pressing the regular attack key, but the extra damage on upper stab doesn't really make sense O_o

Wow, this reminds me of the Buccs tables where they were trying to figure transformed and untransformed, but this is on a level of its own.
+250% for the caster?!?! crazy. And it stacks with SE right?

Oh, I was just talking about standalone thorns with no other critical effects mixed in, dunno how exactly those work yet.

A post I read somewhere seemed to imply that Adv Dark Sight is required in order to use CoH. Is it so? If it isn't, then it would be better to not add any SP into Adv Dark Sight right? Not like it gives any advantages or anything...

I wish fatal blow and chains of hell hits wouldn't go off the screen so I could figure those out, though I'm pretty sure they're 80% since 125% seems to only apply to single-hit attacks.

You could go to the Skele Mini Dungeon or something and have a partner tell you the damages. xD

A post I read somewhere seemed to imply that Adv Dark Sight is required in order to use CoH. Is it so? If it isn't, then it would be better to not add any SP into Adv Dark Sight right? Not like it gives any advantages or anything...

The advantage is that if you manage to stay in DS after the CoH attack, you can immediately launch another instead of having to use Fatal Blow to combo out the delay.