This may seem a bit weird but I recently took a Striker (the sword) to a T2 LD and found that it worked quite well. I spent my time trying to corner someone so I could flinch lock them in with rapid fast strikes.
I'm not certain that a WHB would do as well in T3 as a Striker (sword) in T2.
Is my plan a viable one or am I better off just praying to get a VH asi GF so I can play like everyone else?
There is a simple reason why you see a lot of people rocking the same gear.
After a certain amount of time it is made clear which loadout is the most effective for the current meta.
You can either join them, or try to find something that counters it.
That said, you shouldn't need ASI vh. ASI med is enough in practically all case, except maybe top 10% level playing.
Everything is viable, but few things are optimal.
If you want to play Lockdown for the challenge and entertainment, I think that's a great idea. The cutter weapons require a much different play style than flourish/heavy sword lines. If you're playing Lockdown to be the very best (like no one ever was), then I agree with Feyi. The metagame has evolved so that the most effective gear are the most common ones.
I don't know why Feyi made a distinction between ASI med and ASI VH though. ASI VH is clearly better. The only reason to get med over VH is because VH is more expensive, but then having no ASI is even less expensive. ASI is not a requirement for Lockdown. If you want to invest in it, invest in the best one you can get.
I don't recommend VH gear unless you're super rich. The cost difference between H and VH can be huge. For example, I believe it's at least 15k Energy with GF and DA.
I have med on like 90% of the gear I use, i support Med being super useful! Sometimes when I swing my flourish too fast it flies outa my hands :(
"praying to get a VH asi GF so I can play like everyone else"
Ok
*walks away*
I made that distinction because ASI med is the most cost effective level of ASI.
For most players it is all they'll ever need, while still being relatively easy to obtain.
Contrary to popular belief, ASI vh is only good if you can actually handle it.
Yet I see people whine everyday about how they can't compete because they don't have it.
So yeah, that's why I said that.
WHB is pretty crap in LD. DVS is a pure upgrade from it: faster, poisons, ghost swings are wider.
Having max ASI on a cutter is good for mobility, one of the swords strong points. You can use a DVS to make unpredictable movements and chase people or cover your behind quickly. They're also good with guardians and recons who have trouble escaping them.
It IS true that a GF/DA/hammer/flourish greater reach, damage and is as fast as you'd ever need a sword to be in terms of stun-locking, but using a DVS throws in that extra randomness factor that you can abuse to confuse and outmanoeuvre people with, and it DOES have great potential damage against charge spammers (bombers), hammer dashers and shock victims.
In Conclusion: DVS>WHB. Useful as a secondary side-blade, not main damage sword.
Pretty sure DVS doesn't have greater range ont he ghost swings. Some have argued that WHB has bigger range with its ghost wolvers but there's no real proof for it. Also, DVS may or may not have a speed cap according to Lancer Knightz' data. Said cap would be at Ultra, which means that having a High UV while playing as Striker would be as good as having a Very High UV.
Yeah not longer range but wider arcs is what I meant. whether its purely visual or not I don't know. I don't have aWHb so i can't test these things, I'm just going off what people say.
even if they're the same, DVS still poisons making it better.
*edit* Oh and about the lancer knights data,: they only tested for 1 minute intervals. because dvs and whb have the longest combos their combos per minute will be less accurate than other swords. Doesn't explain the discrepancy between the two swords but they need to be tested for longer than 1 minute to be more accurate.
It's like a really, really weird normal damage Brandish that happens to have a much larger and less useful combo/charge (unless your target has no invincibility frames, as Whimsicality pointed out.) There's really no reason to get it and use it other than it looks neat. DVS is definitely the better option if you absolutely want to use one of them in Lockdown. WHB ends up being the younger kid in the family nobody pays attention to.
That being said, I enjoy using mine (at first as a joke loadout, but it quickly became a main one) because it throws people off and they usually don't know how to react to or fight it. From personal experience, it tore through people who had no normal defense fairly well if used correctly, and did alright against everything except the Plate lines. What it comes down to is that it's not completely unuseable, just that it's only as useful and dangerous as the one wielding it.
I don't think DVS is superior in terms of dealing with people without invinciframes. If you can land some good DVS hits, you could also have landed some good Acheron hits. And that could, y'know, kill the enemy very easily.
The Cutter line is hardly viable unless:
1) Whoever you're hitting is Shocked
2) Whoever you're hitting is holding a charge and doesn't let it go.
3) Whoever you're hitting is flat-out braindead.
4) All of the above.