I think if DVS is going to remain a normal-only damage weapon, it needs its damage massively buffed. That, or it needs the poison chance to be closer to 50%, otherwise it has no chance in even competing with WHB, or any meta or slightly off meta weapons.

Wild Hunting Blade is perfect, it feels like a powerful weapon now and outperforms flourishes by a mile ( flourishes could also do with a buff )

Dread Venom Striker was in a perfect place being shadow + split normal, no idea why it has been changed to be normal damage again, just create a new normal damage variant or create a shadow variant to please everyone.

Gran faust changes are appreciated and sound good on paper but i would suggest to lower the self curse down to 5%, this would mean on average you would be cursed after around 20 charges, the self curse sounds fun but when you are actively trying to complete a level with the charge it just becomes a hindrance, the damage overall on the charge and basic attacks could be better too because it is a heavy sword class, currently acheron deals the same damage as gran faust so gran faust being heavy and slow, why would you ever use it? you'd just pick acheron because of its ease of use and same damage with no punishment on the charge.

Troika buffs were great, all id suggest for them is maybe a bit more damage on the basic swings and charge? these are the heaviest of swords in the game and are incredibly risky to use without max charge time reduction and attack speed increase, so them dealing high damage makes more sense for this class of weapon.

Judging by all testing that’s been done and the accumulated feedback I’ve seen, I don’t understand one bit why DVS was reverted to pure normal damage.

Both Wild Hunting Blade and Dread Venom Striker were nearly perfect in round 1, just needing their charge’s damage output to be a bit more worthwhile. Both slid neatly into unique use cases and cemented themselves as the fun “glass cannon” options for sword users. The split normal/shadow damage fit the theming of Dread Venom Striker and gave it a good use alongside Wild Hunting Blade being changed to normal/piercing, which also made sense. Now that it’s pure normal, it falls back into its “archetype” of being a very flimsy jack of all trades, master of none.

Please revert this reversion. A considerable amount of people who actually went in to test the weapon had very positive feedback on the round 1 iterations; way more than those suggesting otherwise, so I’ve seen.

Aside from the big one on the chopping block, the other changes I’d recommend looking into is not only bumping up both WHB and DVS’s charge damage, but also addressing DVS’s poison proc chance. Simply upping the proc chance across all hits isn’t entirely ideal, so instead, why not try to make one of the first 3 hits of its chain proc it instead? Most of the time the poison is barely noticeable since it almost never procs at all, and your target often dies before you can make use of it anyway. Having it proc on one of the first 3 hits in its chain will provide more visual feedback and utility. If people don’t like this particular tweak, fine by me. Just give us back the normal/shadow variant from round 1, thank you.

disappointed about the DVS nerf. i don't mind normal DVS typing as much as i mind the fact that now there's never a good reason to pick up the weapon. if it had even more damage, getting closer to its round 1 effective damage against slimes/gremlin but spread to all families (so that it's still good but never as good as it was against those weak to shadow specifically), this would be a welcome change. but what we are currently getting is not enough, i'd prefer if we got the round 1 DVS back.

other than that, loving the changes on GF curse, it was way too punishing before. i still dont really believe this will make it a viable alternative to acheron, but it's a change long due, self-curse is an interesting gimmick and i'd like it to stay, it's just that previously it was way too severe.

EDIT:
as a reminder, at 5* we only have:
- 2 shadow sword families (GF and acheron/OE);
- 2-ish piercing sword families (flourish and BTB which are very similar);
- 4 elemental sword families (WRH, DA, brandish, FoV);
- 5 normal sword families (calibur, spur, cutter, brandish, troika), none of which are good.

sacrificing cutter to enhance the variety for shadow and piercing sounds like a reasonable move to me. new troikas are a good example of an actually good normal weapon. the damage typing weaknesses system is the reason why normal weapons are subpar and new troikas work DESPITE that, new DVS unfortunately still doesn't work as a viable alternative.

After trying out the Dread Venom Striker changes, here is what I like and don't like:

+ Like: Loving the increased poison chance! This will continue to boost the DVS's damage while making the weapon a little safer by reducing enemy damage.
- Don't like: Not a fan of the Normal damage despite it being buffed compared to the live server version.

There are two issues that I found in regards to keeping the weapon Normal damage:

1. Inconsistent flinching. With the normal/shadow split DVS, I was able to flinch Giant Lichen Colonies, but with the new Normal version I am no longer able to do so. A few enemies in the Dreams and Nightmares mission also did not flinch on the third hit which I was consistently able to do with the DVS from round 1. It may be possible to flinch some of these enemies after poison is applied, but as this problem states, that is an inconsistent solution, and additionally is not possible against poison-themed enemies. This is a problem because flinching allows the player to plan their hits against an enemy to avoid taking damage.

2. Damage reduction. There is a significant loss of damage against shadow-weak enemies with these new DVS changes. While fiends and undead enemies were more resistant to the previous version of the DVS, the WHB could have been used in the DVS's place to deal a good amount of damage to those enemy types. Even then, due to the nature of how split damage works, the previous version of DVS did not fare terribly against fiends and undead -- in fact, it only dealt slightly less damage compared to the DVS from the live server.

I genuinely think DVS should be reverted to the split Normal/Shadow damage it had in Round 1.

The thing about DVS being split dmg wasn't simply that DVS was stronger than before. The main thing is that it felt like the sword finally had a reason to exist.

For quite a long time now, DVS has been one of those weapons which its concept is really fun, but there is almost none practical reason to actually bring it anywhere. Damage wise, it was obviously lacking, plus it wasnt even able to flinch enemies. And if u wanted to apply poison status, obsidian edge as a sword was miles ahead, being able to apply the status to many enemies at once, unlike DVS which their sole purpose was dps on a single target (which as a normal type weapon, cant even acomplish). Making it split Normal/Shadow changed that. Suddenly it had a real niche and became a viable option to Acheron, specially since its a really fun concept.

I don't think it would have replaced Acheron even if the poison had a higher chance of being applied (which i think it should be changed. either guarantee to proc it after 3 consecutive hits or a similar concept, or increase the chance of being applied). Acheron would still be the strongest sword in the game with its boring yet safe playstyle, but DVS wouldve given players an incredibly strong option with a fun playstyle, instead of every shadow-oriented loadout naturally pointing towards Acheron. And that is something I think the game desperately needs and benefits from: not necessarily replacing the strongest weapons, but creating alternatives that are good enough that choosing something else doesn't feel like deliberately handicapping yourself or grieffing your teammates.

Split damage also felt appropriate for DVS thematically and helped distinguish it from the other striker/cutter variants, which i think its more in line with what i feel it would be its identity.

With this Round 2 change, DVS being back to pure Normal damage feels like we're basically back where we started. Increasing its Normal damage and Poison chance is nice on paper, dont get me wrong, but it still has the same issues as every single Normal dmg sword in this game, and almost every Normal weapon in the game. Its just mediocre everywhere. Not only that, but now it loses the one thing that actually gave it a use case.

As i mentioned, i dont think it needs to dethrone Acheron. In fact, I don't think it should. It just needs to be strong enough that someone can reasonably say, "I want to use DVS instead bc its more fun" without that choice being obviously worse and straight up mediocre. Round 1 finally achieved that. It made DVS useful, distinct, and most important, fun. Round 2, unfortunately, makes it feel like DVS is going right back to being a weapon which its only purpose is for completionists-

Here to place my vote to reverting DVS back to shadow. Having a specialized weapon will probably always be better than having a mediocre all-around weapon. Now we are back to only having two options of sword families for shadow swords while the DVS is wasted on normal damage which almost nobody will put in their loadout anymore.

I'm kind of disappointed with the change being reverted to the original dvs and just giving it a damage and status buff instead, while it being normal damage sounds good for a generalist weapon, the values are just not worth it for This type of weapon, normal damage works with high damage or high burst weapons , like slug, troika or Even pepperbox, but in the case of strikers sacrifing the damage over a more general use is a step backwards because the weapon goes from filling some Niche uses pretty well to just being mediocre at Best in everything, i want the change to be reverted to the versión we had in the first round of changes.

A shadow split striker works because the damage backs it up, it goes from having a mediocre performance to actually being one of the Best options in niche cases, while acheron and OE do Indeed still outperform it in some situations, round 1 dvs had a higher single Target dps, filling a Niche and being usable in many slime and gremlin themed levels

Okay, so I want to throw my hat into the ring since I've tested the cutters now, in levels where they would be the most affected by these changes.

In Gremlin Levels (Deconstruction Zone) the DVS struggles, heavily. The damage decrease against gremlins makes them a threat to the weapon style again, and you have to play very slow to tackle them. This does make them objectively worse against gremlins again, which is OK if we want the DVS to be a bad weapon again, but not a good option if we want it to actually serve a gameplay niche.

In Slime levels, (lichenous lairs, clockwork tunnels) the DVS was similarly worse. It's better than the live servers for sure, but with max damage and max attack speed on the weapons, the only time they felt like the split shadow DVS was when I had a damage orb boost on top of it. The fact that's the only time the weapon felt good is a sign that the weapon will remain exactly the same as it was before - a niche pick that the average player will never bother with because you have to work very hard to get the same result another weapon already does.

In Fiend levels, I just swapped to my WHB instead because DVS was still just OK at dispatching them, but the WHB is now a monster at destroying fiends. I even went through some Dark Cities to see if I would prefer DVS or WHB against undead and honestly? They both feel exactly the same. The change to DVS' damage is something like 6 damage lower than WHB with no damage boost, and it gets a whopping 1 damage bonus over WHB at max damage.

This change to DVS is ultimately a negative one. It takes the DVS from having a gameplay identity back to only having a trivia identity. That being said, it doesn't make it worse than it was before. In fact, it is simply a better weapon with higher damage and the ability to flinch on the third ghost hit on max damage, and the charge can flinch other foes now, but it doesn't excel against anything, and the best use case we got for a cutter is split piercing on the WHB meaning DVS will quickly fall out of favor, considered useless like many other normal damage swords.

This DVS can exist, but only if we can get a separate, shadow split damage cutter in the near future. If it's just dropped in its own standalone update, no big fanfare, then that would really be all the DVS needs for an excuse to exist. If we can't get a new split shadow damage cutter right now, then the DVS should go back to the split damage version of the first round.

---

That's most of my cutter feedback currently. I see the mixmaster and orbitgun don't have increased damage on their return disks yet, but it looks like their damage types were fixed so they're still good fixes so far, but I think they'd be perfect with the bonus damage on return like the Mandolin has.

I haven't played with the troikas or sealed swords yet this pass, but I'll make another comment later if I have any feedback on that.

The Dread Venom Striker is severely underperforming now, due to the loss of Shadow damage. It's going to need that back or a BIG increase to base damage to make up for it.

The Divine Avenger feels a lot better, although it could use more damage, the charge projectiles could also use less knockback to get more hits in.

The Faust line could also use a boost to damage.

Right now, in the files, there is the model for another cutter variant that is used by Void Gremlins and Phantoms. This cutter is more cursed-looking.

This sword could very easily be a Dread Venom Striker sidegrade, using Vile Striker as it's 4* ingredient. This could be introduced so that players can have both a shadow and a normal damage cutter variant. The stats are already there to be used, so most of the work is done. You can just take the previous preview server DVS stats and keep those on one sword, and the new preview server stats on the second.

Not only would this make both sides of the debate happy, it also enables more player choice in what they'd like to use for very minimal work. Its addition does not need to be a big event either and is simply just an alternate 5* recipe.

Please consider this as the preview server 1's DVS was extremely neat and would be great to have in the game in some form, but I ALSO understand that a lack of a normal damage variant in a line of weapons that previously had one can be disappointing.

While normally I think it would be unfair to ask for another weapon to be added when the goal is balance changes only, in this specific case, the asset work is already complete. The only asset missing is an inventory icon, which isn't really much. The stats have already been created and tested in both of these preview servers. The weapon would not need an upgrade tree as it would make sense to just use Vile Striker and be a single 5* alternate weapon.

Also here to drop my vote for Dread Venom Striker going back to the Round 1 Shadow version. DVS being normal + status makes it very unlikely to flinch and generally weak. There’s no issue with both DVS and Obsidian Edge being Shadow+Poison because they’re very different sword lines with different roles.

So, in a way, we've been given an opportunity to test the "boosted normal DVS" suggestion that was floating around.

Cool, cool.

So, we've tested that now.

Let's not do that, please and thank you.

Based on this round of changes, I suggest the following:

Dread Venom Striker:
Keep the increased poison chance, but return the weapon to split-shadow damage, like it was in Round 1.

Pure Normal DVS is pointless and will remain dead content, completely defeating the point of this weapon adjustment in the first place.

Even with the buffs, this pure normal DVS feels far less satisfying to play in testing, overwhelmed by pretty much any specialized option. It's gone from a thrilling shadow chainsaw which disrupts the long-established sword meta, to a floppy pool noodle which struggles everywhere and will just go back to collecting dust in the bottom of everyone's arsenals. It can't even meet flinch thresholds on certain enemies like lichen colonies anymore, so you can't effectively use it as a rush-down weapon. It's just back to being... bad.

It's difficult to express in words how disappointing this change is, but I'll try.

Even simply tallying the Round 1 thread revealed that a majority supported the new split-shadow DVS over a pure normal DVS:
https://imgur.com/a/gRZk1j0

24 in favor of split-shadow DVS. 8 amiable to the idea of a new shadow cutter instead. 3 hardliners against.

This it purely from tallying unique users in the Round 1 forum thread, without going into other media channels (which mirror or amplify this trend). This isn't some appeal to a phantom majority, or some personal clique of groupies, it's just hard numbers anyone can check. This trend will likely just repeat in this thread. The majority clearly want the split-shadow DVS.

You're taking away something many testers were overwhelmingly excited to take to live, in order to appease a loud minority which doesn't even really use the old weapon much in the first place.

Overruling a majority of excited testers to satiate the stubborn uncaring few who fetishize using bad "anti-meta" gear is a bad start to this balance testing and I hope to see this trend reversed quickly. There's a lot of gear to work through and it's a bad time to start compromising and getting cold feet. I get that we're still just testing, but we're also at a fork in the road now. Only one version of this weapon can make it to the live game.

From what we've seen of in-game chatlogs with GMs, adding new equipment isn't under consideration right now. So suggesting a whole new shadow cutter isn't tenable. There's no middle ground.

It's one or the other.

And if we have to choose one, I would, BY FAR, prefer the split-shadow DVS over the steaming pile of mediocrity that is pure normal DVS. Because even with the normal buffs, a normal cutter is just a pointless outclassed pile of junk.

We can add a normal cutter later, if certain people need that so badly (similar to how a normal damage brandish was added later, after brandishes in general were brought up-to-par). The rest of us were real excited for that split-shadow DVS, man. Don't dangle that buff in front of us and then just take it away because a few loud detractors got pissy. They'll get over it very fast. The rest of us won't.

"Welcome back brave testers!" brave? Lmao

Anyways, the feedback is clear that the round 1 DVS is the most liked by actual members of the community, but round 2 was good to test out the theory of keeping normal damage that the vocal minority wanted.

I could see the DVS being reverted to split shadow, but keep its reskin (Dread Cutlass) as the normal damage version to satisfy the vocal minority. Or introduce a 3rd cutter with split damage like what the graveyard phantoms use.

Great to see the speed at which GH can make these changes btw, seems like the code back end cleanup is going nicely.

i dont see any good reason for dread venom striker to stay as pure normal damage, whose toes would it be stepping on? cutters are struggling for relevancy as it is, and boosting the normal damage doesn't mean much when it's JUST normal damage. letting it keep the added shadow damage means that it will have far more use-cases than it does now.

even if it would be sharing uses with other shadow damage swords, i think that's actually a good thing because cutters play inherently different to other sword families

Heya, yeah please keep round 1 DVS :)

Grandish's concern in his later half of his message is extremely valid. That switch from normal -> normal + shadow just throws balance out the window. At this point, it's somewhat just too late to fix with the manpower I assume y'all have. Which is fair because we're literally talking about an adjustment of possibly every single weapon in the game. All you guys did was bring relevancy to ONE weapon, and went back on it and the community literally went to World War III overnight. That being said...

Respectfully, you guys have given us fairly high expectations in regards to your statements about the future state of the game. This isn't gonna come from small changes like increasing the dmg of a normal dmg type dvs when raw normal damage weapons are innately flawed or inferior to split damage weapons.

At the end of the day- ideally you guys (and what most players would want) would be for the game to FEEL good from multiple standpoints with stepping on as little toes as possible. This game gives little to no hint at what weapons perform the best. A combuster is equally easy to obtain as a dread venom striker yet one performs INFINITELY better than the other. And it's not like one is good, and the other one is amazing- a lot of players don't simply choose to run the typical FSC gear (+their alternative damage counterparts) because it's the best of the best. But because MANY other weapons simply FEEL bad. No one wants to spend the next 10 seconds slashing at an enemies health with a tissue to get it down to half health when the player right next to you put in the same amount of work to get their gear, and shreds a whole wave of enemies in the blink of an eye.

Unfortunately, this experience has already been treaded through for 90 percent of the player base and can't really be taken back. Players have invested time and effort into their knight's identities in order to live out the power fantasy that THEY CAN. We can't be swift slashing swordsmen or gigantic sword swinging giants because it doesn't f e e l g o o d to play those archetypes.

Give power to the archetypes already in the game, let players live their power fantasy as they should in any MMORPG, and I promise you guys will be heading in the right direction :) (as stated before- yes bring back the shadow DVS)

I was about to come test Round 2 to see how things felt compared to the first Round, but I got blocked at login. "This server is only available to customers who have spent at least $4.95 on Energy in the last three months."
Is there a particular reason for this change? I consider myself an active player on Live and one invested in testing and balancing, but I'm also one of many people who aren't in a financial position to regularly spend money on games. Maybe that means, regardless of activity, or streaming the game, or inviting and showing the ropes to my friends, I'm not the kind of Customer that the game or balance is intended for - at least, it feels that way.

Why this change?

You can only make them worse, because the originals are perfect.

Just make recolored modified copies, if you must.

Also, btw, this whole development, including all weapons, looming on the horizon seems to make players hesitant to spend IRL money on SK. They don't know whether it will be so bad, they won't make use of whatever they purchased.

What is the point of statuses indeed? Let's just remove the status effect off every weapon and increase the pure damage output instead.

Problem solved!

Anyway. The more I try the pure normal DVS, the more I crave the shadow DVS back. And, please touch Mixy. It's been so long since the confection prize box of 2014. It's time for all to get a hand on it.

i think the troikas need something to give them more utility/support instead of damage - maybe the charge attack leaves a 3* mist-bomb aoe? nothing bigger than the 4* mist bombs so the bombs themselves dont become troika without the damage. or maybe their status aoe IS a lot bigger, but with a much smaller proc chance than shiv - all enemies in a 10 tile circumference of the charge have a chance to be frozen to sell the impact of the sword's mountainous namesake while also giving it more support

Same damage for basic and charge attack
https://youtu.be/x7qhHg9Id6c

For Dread Venom Striker:

• Im also concerned about the DVS current changes on keeping it "normal" when the round 1 DVS was superior in all aspect.
  Posting also in favor of getting Dread Venom Striker shadow/normal changes back. "Why?" has better usage, more versatile, more use cases. Normal DVS falls apart on 4man party, even worse on hard content, doesn't even work risking sparks to just have a "poison niche normal sword" when we can have a superior shadow/normal poison sword that can do its job on killing single targets fast, easy and getting you out of trouble pretty fast.

For Grand Faust / Divine avenger

• Im on support on giving GF and DA a boost on their damage, "why?" because current values on said weapon would add a dominant area of use cases, right now both weapons colides with 3swing counterpart while they felt like 2handed weapons that should have more damage as they only have 2swings, also said weapons are only obtained by farming a boss having the feel of "why would i farm this boss if i can get better results with a hall of heroes sword that, on top, also does 3swings?", giving them their boost on damage not only will make them appealing on why farming 20 seals for each sword and hunting the recipes on aunction house/basil, but also giving reasons on why to use 2handed sword that sacrifices speed for heavy blunt damage.

Okay so this is fun!

Dread Venom Striker

THE GOOD:
- Poison proc is good! Feels nice to proc it.

THE BAD:
- Pure Normal ain't doing it. It falls behind even WHB on Slimes and Constructs at time and I don't know why.
- The Flinching for DVS is bad. It feels super inconsistent.
- I genuinely tried it with fully Normal-only damage but it doesn't do well. REVERT IT BACK TO NORMAL + SHADOW PLEASE
- For both cutters, I think the knockback of the regular combo should be reduced heavily.

Triglav and Sudaruska

THE GOOD:
- In round 1, it did well!

THE "MAYBE CHANGE":
- A lot of talk has been made between other players and there's one thing that is brought up. "What will its niche be?" Hopefully, there can be more content down the line where this weapon is made more useful. Ideas can be: More than 3 monster families in a level, apply status affects certain enemies more, or having an enemy that is resistant to everything BUT Normal damage.
- If the content mentioned above WON'T happen, then I suggest a change to the charges of these weapons. The 5-Star weapon charge needs to PULL in enemies. Why? So it can be more generalist and more selfish without needing support of other weapons. That way, it can be used more as a weapon that doesn't necessarily require weapons like Electron Vortex.

Gran Faust and Divine Avenger

THE GOOD:
- The charges are better.

THE "MAYBE CHANGE":
- These weapons need damage buffs honestly. They are still outmatched by Brandishes and with how SLOW they are, they are can usually be high risk, mid reward.
- I suggest instead of just getting a flat damage buff, that maybe there can be something more unique to their moveset. Perhaps the second swing can be MUCH faster and deal MUCH MORE damage than the initial swing, or maybe make the charges deal more damage.
- Gran Faust. The curse is still meh. Curse is not a great status against enemies. Yes, at +12 Curse resistance, you cannot take Curse damage anymore. But you put so much resistance into it that other armors would've been better. Maybe make the charge 3 blades like the Divine Avenger? Or perhaps make it inflict Curse a lot more? That way the status can be viable if it is proc'd a lot more.

Diskguns

Fine where they're at.

Other weapons

I think it is a good time to bring up other weapons not mentioned in this Round. Flourishes, Caliburs, Shard Bombs, and Antiguas. Flourishes are now outplayed by the WHB. Caliburs have always been low powered and frustrating to use. Shard Bombs fall into the same frustration category. And Antiguas need a quirk or niche to them that isn't just "more bullets".

Thank you again for letting us test these weapons! I do not mind that this round 2 happened. Infact, I am very happy to TRY Normal-only DVS and KNOW that it is not for me and probably not for most people. These changes are always appreciated and please, take as much time as possible.

If it's numbers you need then I also preferred the DVS the first time around. Although, having a normal/shadow version as a new weapon might be good for both sides (except those who had UVs on their existing DVS, lol)

I hope the Troika reskins will also get the damage buff since they were overlooked this time.