Kerillian - Dual Daggers

Been playing around more with Kerillian lately and have noticed dual daggers seem imbalanced. The weapon’s power level is quite high and I’m not sure why you’d run a different weapon on any of Kerillian’s careers (in terms of effectiveness).

With elf talents and some +power you can hit the light breakpoints to one-shot headshot fanatics and below, and the charged breakpoints to one-shot marauders, SV, berserkers, and packmasters, two-shot maulers, and three-shot chaos warriors. Plus you get what seems to be the best anti-boss melee weapon in the game, coupled with great block speed (for parry), dodge count, and dodge distance. Charge 1 is easily spammed with block cancelling.

You can compare it to dual axes (an amazing but career restricted weapon) and it has remarkably similar performance, all the same breakpoints but not berserker one-shots. I wanted to test specifically the boss damage and went to the modded realm to try out both weapons on slayer (no leap/pots/SS). Slayer dual axes solo killed a rat ogre about 50% slower than slayer dual daggers. ~60s vs ~40s. Get this, WS only using dual daggers solo kills a rat ogre faster than Slayer with dual axes, at 51s.

Then you start comparing dual daggers to other, non-restricted, weapons like 1h axe. It’s not even a contest, dual daggers blows them out of the water. Then every Kerillian career can take them. Imagine if you could take dual axes on RV or IB.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact problem with the weapon. It could be the charged attack damage, or the speed/mobility, or the high headshot multiplier. My idea to tone the weapon back would be to restrict it to shade (fitting her role as anti-elite/boss) and retain it’s power level, mirroring slayer and dual axes. Buffing other weapons to compensate doesn’t seem plausible given the high power level of dual daggers. Nerfing the damage down and causing it to lose some breakpoints seems feasible, even if I’m not sure what those changes would be.

What do other players think about this weapon? If it was changed, what elements would you want to keep?

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I agree, it doesn’t seem reasonable.

I also think it’s odd that DD performs better on WS and HM than on Shade (which is where they ‘should’ shine). Both the headshot damage and hero power talents let WS and HM immediately hit the SV one-shot/headshot breakpoint. But Shade needs a grim…

This is just compounded by the fact that WS has good ranged and aoe with her ranged/ult. And HM gets more ammo, a good aoe damage ability in her ult, and, arguably, a better stealth mechanic with her ult. So they are both better at ranged and aoe, and they also get DD.

I think it would feel okay if DD was kept roughly where it is, but restricted to Shade only. Honestly, that would probably make more sense and they feel about right on Shade – with her AOE and ranged limitations.

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I totally agree thad DnD is kinda absurd and it realy outclasses other Elven weapons, but there are a lot of points where your comparations seems wrong to me.

You compare DnD with Dual Axes, it’s preety good comparation, but you comparing only headsot damade of DnD to DA. And yes, if you hit every enemy with headshots DnD are a lot better, but I want to remind you, bodyshots od DA deals way more damage then DnD, especially vs Armour, with 11.52% Chaos/Armour you kill CW with 4 bodyshots, with 3.94% Chaos you kill Chaos zerkers with 2 heavy bodyshots, etc, also boss damage if you are not hitting headshots is not so different. But maybe you are just too good in this game and always hit any creature in the head, even from behind :grinning: BTW, I’m curious why don’t you compare daggers’ and axes’ push attack?

Comparation with 1h Axe seems kinda wierd… You compare top tier weapon with a bad one? Nice joke, if you want to compare it’s like comparaion of Crossbow with Brace of pistols.

  • Light attack is ok in my opinion but on the stronger side for sure.
  • Charged attacks bodyshot dmg is way too high headshot is kinda ok. It should be a bit like the rapier on whc in this reguard in my oppinion. Still why does it get elite headshot kills for 15% power and WHC needs 1% (thx FS), 25% HS (hidden), 50% HS (Deatknell) and heavily charged attack?
  • Current boss dmg is a result from 1.2 that buffed melee weapons but it seems to be an error as it was not listed for buffs in the patch notes:

Seems DnD buff is here, if I remember right Sword n’ Shield stab shares the same damage formula as DnD and SnD stab.

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The issue might be shared tables but I don’t know for certain.

That’s it:

My larger point is that DnD even coming close in a comparison to dual axes seems wrong. Slayer comes with restrictions to get such a weapon (presumably). Kerillian just gets it for everyone. But true, if you don’t reliably hit headshots then the power level of DnD drops, but even then it isn’t like DnD then becomes 30% worse than dual axes. Dual axes need to hit headshots too.

With AI turned off against a rat ogre: DnD took 25s to kill an ogre with headshots, dual axes took about 34/35 seconds to kill trying for headshots. DnD and dual axes both took ~36 seconds with just plain charged stabs in the back. Slayer using both weapons.

With AI turned on, I couldn’t tell a difference between kill time for either weapon against chaos warriors, about 5s. Was 1 on 1, but I wasn’t getting 100% headshots. Slayer for both weapons again.

Having armor pen on the dual axe lights is a perk, but they are generally poor DPS (would rather hit with a heavy). The only time I’d want to do lights against armor would be to finish off a SV with a single remaining hit.

Fair point. Dual axe has a great push stab (launches you forward) and does a heavy. With stamina regen mechanics you can spam it as long as you kill targets. But dual axe charge attacks are less easy to headshot with (especially the X attack).

DnD gets a mediocre push stab (a light equivalent stab) so I don’t use it. But it does free up stats for other things as a potential plus (+crit/atkspd/power). The charged 1 attack is easily spammable and good for headshots, also has a slight movement speedup similar to the dual axes pushstab. If you do run out of stamina (no kills/blocked attack) then you can still spam charges as normal instead of trying to push stab when you can’t.

Ha, fair enough. I picked 1h axe because it’s presumably a single-target anti-elite/armor focused weapon.

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Yep both got monster buffs. Dual daggers from 85 to 127.5 on monster headshots. Dual axes from 53 to 88.5 on monster headshots.

DD and SnD got unintended huge buff

Before 1.2, you need both huntsman and shade to kill troll 15s acheivement

But after 1.2, shade can do that acheivement alone

Shade can kill rat ogre, chaos spawn, stormfiend with 4 ult hit and troll will be downed with 1ult + 1 charged attack

All 3 elf careers can do this with dd and snd
clear horde very easily
Kill sv 1 shot
Kill mauler 2 shot (1shot if crit)
Kill pack master 1 body shot
Kill chaos warrior 4 shot
Kill boss 4 shot if shade has

Snd has one more merit from dd
It makes shade as bounty hunter

Compared to 1 hand axe and fire sword,
It makes me very sad becuz there are weapons still got no love from dev

I love 1 hand axe and fire sword but they need more love

You can get up to 720 ult dmg meaning you can 3 shot every boss.

Yeah but i change my setting to kill special after 1.2
Power versus monster and 75% talent…
Even without these, monsters are ezpz
Sometime got complain from bh or hs that why shade kills special, elite and boss at all XD

Ofc you forgot to remid us that we need 14.19% Pwr vs Skaven/Armour to kill SV (Slayer needs 6.44% Pwr vs Skaven/Armour to do the same), and you also “forgot” to remind that you need headshots.

No need to remind about 31.87% (or 14.67% with 15% Pwr tallent) Pwr vs Infantry/Chaos with 2 headshots, meanwhile Slayer with 29.88% Infantry/Chaos kills Mauler with 2 bodyshots.

And your “1shot if crit” is kinda bullcrap.

Slayer does the same, also with 15.29% vs Skaven/Monster he kills it with 2 light bodyshots.

Slayer do the same, and of course you are not telling us that you need headshots to do it. And Slayer can kill CW with 4 bodyshots stacking 11.52% vs Chaos/Armoured, how many Pwr vs shold Elf stack to do the same?

At least I can totally agree with this, overall DnD boss damage (including Infiltrate) buff was unintended and unnecessary

Another one comparing best weapons with worst :man_facepalming: Let’s try compare Elven Spear and Soldier’s Halberd, I don’t even know which one is better…

3 Likes

I have spent a lot of time playing as the elf. The damage output of the daggers is great and the single target damge is amazing but they have their short comings in other categories. The light attack lack Cleve so their ability to clear hordes that are surrounding you Is pretty weak ( compared to duel swords, or spear for example ) small block angle requires quicker reactions to catch multiple strikes with a block with out getting staggered. And they lack reach. They are not nearly as versatile as many of the elf’s other weapons and I don’t believe any where near as survivable if your the last man standing.

I’d take the spear over the daggers if my group needs a tank or better special control, it’s ability to sweep and damage with a push strike is great. It’s also fantastic at stabbing a elite, special, berserker or boss while being out of range of a counter attack is super useful. And with the correct attack patterns it can make pretty short work of armor. It’s also super easy to push stuff off ledges with it.

Duel long swords are amazing for crowd control, stack Crit chance and Crit power and watch your flurry of light attacks take the heads off and stagger armored targets. And the stabbing block attack will drop bigger stuff with well placed shots to the head while only leaving your guard open for a brief moment.

Sword and dagger combo is the best of both the long swords and daggers once you master attack combos based on you current targets.

Single long sword is crazy useful, with a large mix of different possible attack patterns and a power attack the melts armored targets as well as a anti armor lunging stab it’s great for both tanking as well as more rogue like game play. As well as a good option for the waystalker if you find yourself constantly using your bow and your teammates are not watching your back while your dump arrows.

These are a few reasons why I don’t always take daggers as the elf.

I

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What about beam staff?

Sure
Remove crits for 0,1s after new target (beam).
Revamp heatsinc or her passive and it’s all ok.

But what about the heat wipe on ultimate?

You troll you…

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Is that still a thing? I thought peole realized by now how ineffective this build is compared to other options.

Beamstaff pyro is still here.
It’s not about the beam wiggling in particular but the staff\career combo as a whole.