There are several reasons to DVS being underused :
- it's normal. Normal weapons don't compare to non-normal ones in terms of damage.
- it's dangerous. While you can shield almost when you want, the fact is that it makes you go in the middle of mobs, while not having a wide swing arc
- its mechanics are not favorable. Most swings WILL miss, be it the normal or the ghost swing. Except on stationary targets or very big targets, there is no way around I think.
- the charge isn't outstanding. It roots you several seconds in place, leaving you very vulnerable, for not that much more than just swinging.

As for Wild Hunting Blade, no, it's not worth it to sacrifice poison for beasts bonus. The only reason to get it is to fire some wolvers, which is ultra cool.

I like to use DVS against Vanaduke body and mask (requires watering in P3 and P5 obviously), but I'm not even sure it does more dps than Blitz charging.

Just a note, I actually own DVS and WHB, and tried to make them work a long time ago, but gave up because the damage was simply underwhelming.

1) well, if I take 2 non-normal swords, I can use them against everything, and still do more damage against everything. Unless you intend to take only 1 sword, but even then with arsenal stations .... Not convinced anymore by normal weapons.

2) Attacking and dodging a target at the same time is hard. It will result in you getting hit a non-negligible amount of times, unless you got good enough to always dodge with certitude. I find it too hard to do reliably all of the time. Especially since it's hard to attack-cancel enemies (I stopped relying on that mechanism with that sword)

3) Every time you click, there are 2 swings : the normal and the ghost one. Most of the time, one of them will miss, especially if you don't use auto-aim (which you can't do if you want to do 2) ASI would probably have an effect on this, but I didn't test it.

4) The only use for the charge, apart from Vanaduke Mask, is turrets : you have to start the charge just after they shoot, it will result in a certain kill I think.

On the topic of WHB vs DVS, WHB has a slightly larger hitbox with the wolver ghosts and more interruption, it's not simply beast damage.

A friend I regularly play with got DVS as his first sword. He brings it to FSC for slimes and the mask, but apart from that it's mostly specialized damage swords now.

My friend has one, he says it wrecks guardian shields.

Also, the beast damage bonus on WHB used to be much more useful when Spiral Knights launched, for three reasons. First, there were no piercing swords (which are much better than WHB against beasts, let alone fiends). Second, wolvers used to track you through their attack animation, so that they weren't trivially easy to beat. Third, there were no damage trinkets or Barbarous Thorn Shield or Snarbolax armor. The only way to get damage bonuses on swords were UVs and Skolver. Nowadays, there are many options for getting blanket damage bonuses.

It's amusing to use, it poisons stuff, and it deals normal damage against everything which is good if I decide I want to use a haze bomb as a sidearm. :U If you see me in Clockworks, then I might be using it to dance around Lumbers. Or maybe I might be heating up my Lionheart.

The annoying part is the long combo and the lack of flinching ability - I have heard that WHB gets marginally more range and flinching power, but I don't own one myself so couldn't say from personal experience.

The charge should be called 'Seppuku'. It's even worse than a hammer charge, at least that finishes quicker and doesn't leave you stuck in one place for so long; its only real use is for Vanaduke's mask.

@the person above me
Dps of the dvs is something like 300, not sure if that's with damage bonuses, asi etc.
if an enemy is coming at you, it'd be far better to use the first swing of a toothpick, or a heavy sword, for their range, damage and knockback. Remember, the ghost swing does 50% of the first swing's damage.
Also, even if used properly in ld, cutter lines are still grieviously outclassed by toothpicks, ss lines etc. The only thing they're really good for is mauling guardian shields, and even then they're far from the best sword for that

Tsubasa-no-me

@Zeddy: Yeah, I was a bit miffed when I realised that was the case.
I mean, they're the same weapon line, they should have the same kind of attacking stats other than status and damage.
To be fair, both weapons could really do with some tweaking; the DVS's flinching power and range should be in line with the WHB, and the WHB could possibly do with conversion to split normal/piercing damage - although then I suppose some bombers who use it as a normal-damage sidearm might get annoyed if they use it on constructs frequently.

I don't have WHB, so I am always intrigued to see side-by-side comparisons of it and DVS. Here are two details that I notice in the video that Zeddy linked to.

* The video uses only charge attacks. WHB users seem to like the charge. But keep in mind that DVS can poison even in regular attacks.

* The WHB charge does seem to interrupt better than the DVS charge. At one point, the player takes a zombie swipe while trying to complete the DVS charge. However, at another point the player takes damage from a second enemy, while completing a WHB charge. And these are some of the slowest monsters in the game. Neither charge is really super-safe.

Does WHB interrupt better than DVS in regular attacks as well? (Sorry if this has been answered here already --- probably multiple times.) I never noticed any problems with DVS' regular attacks interrupting, but it's been a while.

Right. That's why it's surprising that the video focuses on charging so much. But I have to say that, despite my disdain for WHB, its charge seems to be slightly safer than DVS' charge. But only slightly.

There's a parallel situation in guns, where Argent Peacemaker and Sentenza are really fast, with a large clip size, but with charges that take a really long time to complete.