Where to put Duelist

[Bookie]

I've been trying to make this class work for a bit, but she doesn't really feel worth a team slot. She can contribute strictly single-target damage and some stress healing or offensive debuffing with the correct Path, but lack of AoE and utility is a bit taxing on the rest of the party, and it's tough to find a good rank placement since she tends to move around a lot. Also, her single-target damage output is not as outstanding as I would want it to be to make up for that. Meditation is the only skill that really feels good to press (imo).

What are you doing with your Duelists?

[Ivan "Coyote"]

Personally I think her health is too low to be in the front 2 ranks, so I keep her at 3. I usually use her as utility than damage (stress healing, execution, token removal)

If I get the Trophy from the General where my team cannot be moved for 5 rounds, only then do I switch up her skills and put her as damage.

There could be very powerful combos with her, but I just can't bring myself to get to know how to use her properly other than support without her dying to a single Fell the Tree or Hull Break, or get slapped around by the rabble. For some reason the enemies really like rank two.

[Polyurethane]

The most successful duelist comp I had was Seraph Vestal, Soloist Jester, Instructice Duelist, and a Crusader, I think it was just a wanderer. I took the hatchling crocodilian, and the Crusader had breacher. I would focus on high movement abilities and chaining the Seraph's consecrations.

For the Duelist, I would mostly just alternate between Fleche and Meditation with an occasional Disengage if she floated to the front. Fleches were regularly hitting for 11-15 and critting in the 20's, which isn't the best, but the Duelist was usually decked out with dodges and buffing allies in the process so she was well worth the slot.

Also without Breacher, I would take Man-at-Arms.

[goobie snoobert]

Originally posted by Ivan "Coyote":

Personally I think her health is too low to be in the front 2 ranks, so I keep her at 3. I usually use her as utility than damage (stress healing, execution, token removal)

If I get the Trophy from the General where my team cannot be moved for 5 rounds, only then do I switch up her skills and put her as damage.

There could be very powerful combos with her, but I just can't bring myself to get to know how to use her properly other than support without her dying to a single Fell the Tree or Hull Break, or get slapped around by the rabble. For some reason the enemies really like rank two.

pretty much this. she's way too squishy to be upfront, and dodge is not a reliable means of defense
antagoniste in the back is a really solid support, she can put on a ton of negative tokens with it, and it also lets her just straight up stun with the gun
intrepide is a complete and utter meme. your entire survivability plan relies on passing multiple 75% checks in a row, and if you've ever played darkest dungeon, you know anything below 100% is not to be trusted, especially if it can end up with you getting 1 tapped down to death's door

[Gal Kraft]

So far the only "Sahar would be the best choice here" for me is the Wanderer riposte tank. Once she gets Pristine Lure from the shroud (Gain taunt on hit), she's the tauntiest tank there is. Just meditate, feint, meditate, feint... Score yourself the Lover's Glove trinket (start in aggressive stance) then she's up and running on turn 1. Must master Meditate right away, Feint soon after, and she's less reliable until getting that Pristine Lure, but worth it. Just beware of Bishops.

Antagoniste or Wanderer pairs well with Leper, particularly because of Ruthless Instruction (blind ignore).

I've only ever used Intrepide in a dance team, as someone else mentioned, but definitely prefer pairing with MAA for Hold the Line. Feint for Dodge tokens. Disengage or Meditate for defensive stance, to prevent losing Dodge. Or just have MAA guard her when needed.

I never really got comfortable with Instructrice, though others swear by her superiority. Buff others with stress damage and Coupe de Grace every other turn. Something like that.

She's low health because she's so hard to hit. IMO.

[Polyurethane]

I was using Instructrice because it makes her Disengage have back-2 for extra movement buffs, and I don't like Intrepide because it replaces Riposte with Dodge on Feint. Even though Feint is probably my 4th or 5th skill with that build, when I do want to use it I want Riposte.

The MaA is way better than a Crusader in a rank dancing comp for sure. I only used Crusader because he had Breacher and that basically allows you to go ham with all 4 characters turn turn 1.

[No One]

If you're thinking about a specific slot, the duelist isn't going to work well. She needs to move around. Even if you want her to tank - and she can be a perfectly acceptable tank - you want to start with disengage. The party has to be okay with being shufled a bit.
Yes, med, especially med+, is her best button. Agg stance med+ is completely bonkers.

Possible movement exception: use an antagoniste for debuff spam. Touche all day every day, plus boot for occasional free stuns. Weak or vuln on demand. Not to mention flick for block pierce, dodge pierce, or both. Pick and stealth-dagger.throw on one button, at the cost of range.

Sahar's best strategy is in fact not-Sahar, it's supporting someone else who wants to move. She can forward or back on demand, with little loss in power. Unlike the jester, a duelist can also cheerfully stand still on demand, with meditation, coup, ruthless instruction, flick; this lets her deal with bad turn order RNG or when her dance partner doesn't want to use their movement ability.

For the second-best strategy, I would recommend being very fast. A GR or HWM can do more damage than Sahar, but you can have all three. A jester can also spam triple dodge+ on himself and can burst harder than Sahar (at the same time!) but you can have both. Sure you can do much more damage per turn with a tempest/ravager front line, but only at the bottom of the turn; meanwhile a Sahar combination prevents damage by killing the source before it can act. VES-GR-DST-RUN, spend turn 1 with a giant pinpoint alpha strike, turn most matches to 4v3. Then spam dodge+ (or stealth) and let the vestal regen any incidental damage.

--

Nevertheless, let's talk a bit about Sahar in isolation.

If you want damage out of Sahar, you want a rotation with agg-stance fleche and ripostes. fleche-disengage-feint
Fleche's +30% damage seems to be a deliberate design waterline, as it's also exactly what a leper gets out of revenge+ and roughly what lunge is worth over face pick. Fleche won't hit as hard as a nightsworn lunge, but a) as above, you can have both b) you only need back 1 to reset and c) Sahar has ripostes. Even one riposte is low-key huge.
However she does have very low HP, and if you guard her she can't riposte. Hence there's the dodge-spam school of thought with fleche+, which can retain the dodges. With three dodge+ up Sahar is nigh-unkillable with an effective 112 HP, not to mention the stress resistance. Though she does need to be healed immediately if the dodge fails - if nothing is between her and death's door but a dodge token, you will regret it very very often.
If you try touche spam (not antagoniste) you'll find she does acceptable damage, except she either ends up stuck to row 1 or row 4, and touche has no range. Why not take HWM or LEP instead? Consequently, try fleche+-med+-disengage. Spams dodges and ripostes, while extending her reach to 3.

With an antagoniste, fleche-disengage lands a combo, which means they're open for a boot stun. There's also the coup+ stun, and she can pause the cycle to lay down debuffs with touche, not to mention disengage is still adding dodges and deleting enemy ripostes.

Instructrice has the best offence, because her disengage swaps stances instead of setting def stance. fleche-med-disengage sets up for agg stance fleche. She has lots of dodges for 2/3 steps in the cycle, plus kills from agg stance add 3 regen, which is a lot like 9 max HP. 33% or so in this case. Also off-brand jester with inspiring tune expy.

If intrepide is supposed to be good, nobody is aware. Deliberate meme path. Amusing, but Sahar will just pop like a bubble sometimes.



There's always the nightsworn team. Go fleche-med for dodge and riposte, then nightsworn repartee for the very nice taunt+riposte combo. Even better, prep+-med+ for additional riposte damage.



P.S. Default ruthless instruction is 2 dodge, which seems pointless at first, but consider it like a no-threshold OCC heal. It has a 25% chance to do bupkis, but the other 75% of the time it not only "heals" damage, it "heals" debuffs and stress. If you want to heal someone who is already above 50% health (and don't have mantra+/FLG) instruct them ruthlessly.

[Polyurethane]

Originally posted by No One:

If intrepide is supposed to be good, nobody is aware. Deliberate meme path. Amusing, but Sahar will just pop like a bubble sometimes.

The way to avoid this is to work Block (or Block+) into your build when you start building up a dodge chain. She won't lose the Block token if she continually dodges, and when she inevitably gets hit, it'll be half as devastating.

[Polyurethane]

I think I have a new favorite Duelist. I just had an Intrepide Duelist with the Breacher quirk and a Proxy Doll. She would be rushed to the front and often first. She would drop into battle with 5 buffs and one of them Strength (so automatic +100% damage opener). I also gave her the flame trinket that gives you a 50% crit token if you have 10 or more speed. This meant I could avoid setup (if I so desired) and just Flick someone in the face for 31 outright.

On longer fights, I would opt for an early discipline and play her as an evasion tank, and it worked great because the Block+ would prevent her from getting one shot on a hard recoil.

Proxy Doll comes from the Academic's Study labeled "Faceless Fascimile".

Side Note: I would have used the Love Glove if I found one over the fire trinket.

[Saigon]

Look at the dots on the character sheet it shows the recommended spots. So when dealing with bosses that shuffle your characters around, she’s good to have

[The Face]

Wanderer if I want her to riposte and attack sadly. Her other attack paths are all gimmicks. And the wanderer heals from ripostes. Pristine Lure on an always dodge plused riposte monster is fun

Or instructice in the back

[Saigon]

Have you unlocked all of the her abilities? That’s what I’m doing right now working on unlocking every single character ability for all of them. I try to have a build that deals damage of all types blood burn blight & make sure at least 3 characters has healing

[Rhacius]

She is a glass cannnon which can be very tricky to run,
the riposte dodge thing can work, but I doubt anyone here enjoys having their build depend on that 50% dodge chance working out.

The build I finally found that worked best for me is utilizing duelist helion, put helion in front and keep nailing her to that frontline spot with tip toe. This not only ensures taunt to protect duelist from getting blown up half the time, but it also opens up duelist to use thrust every turn, which crits easily and can do like 30 damage, while negating its usual downside of moving duelist in to the front rank as helion occupies it allowing you to thrust again.

Backranks are flexible but Seraph Vestal has the most synergy as it can give helion block and doge which she doesnt generate naturally and give attack modifiers to duelist allowing you to keep thrusting.

[CyrusWindstrider]

Learning some good details in this thread from people who have evidently been thinking much harder about this game than I have, neat stuff.

Personally, I've taken to playing her in a comp with Sharpshooter Highwayman, Seraph Vestal, Antagoniste Duelist (Only for the modified Touche and Disengage), and Vanguard Man-at-Arms.

Not the highest damage comp, sure, but I'm hopeful on getting a grand slam with it, with just the first two bosses left to go. It's reliable and can hit most targets quickly, and is (most of the time) relatively trivial to reorder from a bad shuffle.

In short for my own experience, Duelist works, so long as you keep her maintained with dodges and take care of DOT enemies first, or have lots of relevant curatives equipped. Stress can be healed later, and straight damage doesn't bleed you on Death's door. (Incidentally, I find her to be *great* with the Chirurgeon's apron, since her low health pool makes percentage healing and DOT effects on her... pretty terrible... but regen works amazingly well.)