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.

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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.