Guide to Duelist
Introduction
The Duelist is a rank flexible hero capable of combining decent damage and utility while her paths can drastically change her functionality to fit various roles.
Her kit features two stances she can enter and alternate between:
- Aggressive stance.
- Defensive stance.
Managing the stances and predicting the situations where she will need the effects of each stance is key to the effective use of this character and where her gameplay complexity comes from. However, after some basic understanding of her skills and goals, one will soon discover that she is not as daunting to play as first impressions may hint.
Additionally, contrary to common first impressions, she is not a dancer unless the player wants her to be.
This guide will provide basic explanations of her skills and their uses for each path as well as some basic skill kits and team combinations.
She boasts the second highest speed in the game (after grave robber) with the lowest health in the game, instead she relies on plentiful dodge token generation to stay alive in the frontline where she often excels.
She also has above average dot resistances and the highest move resist in the game. Her stun resist is very poor while her debuff and disease resistances are average.
Paths
Wanderer
The default and most reliable path is often the strongest one. While duelist’s kit provides flexibility for a lot of gimmicky set ups, the most intuitive way to play this path is as a riposte frontliner, a package of damage, utility and safety through a lot of dodging.
While not incredibly crucial to her performance, the path’s stance effects reinforce the riposte playstyle by providing some semi-rare bonuses.
Touche can be misleading. As the first skill on her toolbar it can be mistaken as your basic attack skill and core of the character while in truth it’s primarily a repositioning or dancing tool. The damage of touche is good but the constant moving can be quite annoying if you haven’t actively built around it.
The stance gain on mastery can be convenient if you use the skill anyway but generally there are better skills to enter stance with that don’t require a mastery investment in the first place.
Mastery priority: medium
Feint is an incredibly flexible tool that can switch your stance no matter what it currenly is while generating some very desirable riposte and dealing some chip damage which can be used to clear tokens.
The mastery is certainly nice but often unnecessary so there are usually better skills to spend your mastery on.
Mastery priority: low
Disengage is a niche tool with three main points: moving back, entering defensive stance and disrupting enemy placement.
You would mostly want to use it to move back while switching from aggressive stance as touche could also be used to reposition while in defensive stance.
The enemy position disruption looks nice but it’s hard to justify when the boot skill exists which accomplishes the same thing with higher mastery efficiency.
It can also be used to enter stance from neutral although there is little reason to do so over using other skills.
All in all every individual aspect of this skill is outclassed by other skills, the only way to justify it is using it to get value out of multiple of these aspects at the same time which I haven’t found much practical use for.
It is technically the fastest way for her to reposition after fleche but that is a weak set up in the first place if you don’t have an ally reposition for you.
Mastery priority: medium-low
Flick is the true standard attack of the duelist. When compared to touche, flick deals 1 less damage but in return gains 5% more crit, token bypass and execution on mastery. The largest drawback is that it cannot be used from rank 3.
Enemy knowledge can help predict the stance you should be in order to take full advantage of the token ignore. For example carrion eaters generate block after eating a corpse so you can make sure you are in aggressive stance when there is a corpse available for them. Many fanatics in the sprawl generate dodge tokens so it can be a good idea to stay in defensive stance for more extended periods when fighting them.
Mastery priority: medium
Preparation is one of the two main (but not only) ways to enter a stance in round 1. This one is fairly simple, you enter aggressive stance and make up for the tempo loss with an immediate and enhanced hit in the next round. Often fleche is the ideal follow up.
Once mastered, using it from aggressive stance gives a crit which is usually not too worth the turn. The defensive stance effect on the other hand is very interesting and can lead to some incredibly high damage ripostes. One can technically alternate preparation and meditation but that is not a great tactic if you cannot force the enemies to attack her consistently. Instead it’s mostly an alternative way to enter aggressive stance from defensive if you don’t need the additional riposte tokens from feint. Duelist can work fine without mastered prep so it’s best to make sure the foundational tools of the hero and the team in general are upgraded before introducing mastered prep into your gameplay.
Mastery priority: low
The boot is a simple but effective position disruption tool. Repositioning enemies is one of the best ways to deal with them, notable targets for it include evangelists, knights, sacrificial, harvest child (kick da babe). Also consider that by pushing back the frontline you bring the backline to the front giving you several more enemies to counter such as heralds, bishops, maids, captains and more. The mastery is nice but not too important to the skill’s function so it’s usually best to spend your points elsewhere. A notable thing of the mastery which may not be immediately apparent is the crit increase. A potential crit increases the move resist pierce of the knockback.
Mastery priority: low
Again is a very niche tool which unfortunately is less useful than it may first seem. There aren’t too many skills in the game with huge cooldowns. The most obvious pick is the vestal and double comfort is certainly good but one has to weigh it against the turn investment needed for again. The duelist has to enter her stance, use again and then spend another turn afterwards re-entering her stance. It has applications beyond vestal of course.
I’ve used it in the past to spam templar bulwark and tenacity more often but it is just a gimmick and not one I’d recommend. It can theoretically be used to reset healing skills in case of emergency, allowing you to use a second deathless in a row for example but pulling that off requires an impractical amount of foresight.
The mastery is mostly for allowing you to use the skill from defensive stance which has situational benefits depending on how you use her. The chance to prevent her stance is rng and thus cannot be played around, it’s just something that might happen and that’s hardly worth your mastery point.
Mastery priority: low
Fleche is a very damaging skill with rank 3 reach and lots of drawbacks. It is the primary reason one would want to incorporate dancers for duelist in order to push her out of rank 1 allowing her to use this skill repeatedly. It is ideally used from aggressive stance due to the bonuses it gains allowing it to truly stand out. The dodge removal puts duelist in a very risky position due to her very low health so it is recommended to have someone guard her when using this skill. The dodge token preserve on mastery and defensive stance makes the skill less risky to use but you miss out on the aggressive stance bonuses.
The skill can also be used to enter a stance from neutral and it is certainly ideal if the duelist already has a strength token from another source, otherwise it can be better to use prep first. Still it can be skill slot efficient if one doesn’t need prep for anything besides the first round.
Mastery priority: high
Meditation is the most important skill of this character and an utter sin that it is unlocked so late. It is one of the best ways to enter stance in round 1 and provides her with the necessary dodge to survive throughout the entire fight. Using it from aggressive stance gives riposte tokens making it by far the best way to switch stance from aggressive. While in defensive stance it can be used as an emergency button to relieve some pressure from the rest of the team if things are getting difficult. The mastery is very important as it makes her dodging much more consistent and the combo removal, while niche, can be appreciated against enemies like exemplar or collector.
Mastery priority: very high
Gun! Coup is the only skill of duelist that can reach rank 4 and one of the few that can reach rank 3 allowing her to contribute in finishing off enemies. Combined with the token ignore and execution it makes for a very handy tool with multiple applications depending on the state of the fight.
Mastery priority: medium
Another niche tool in duelist’s kit though this one has a few more applications. The 50% dodge isn’t awfully reliable so it is best used to give allies a chance to avoid big attacks like the waking dead, set back, etc.
The aggressive stance function of the mastery has 2 applications: damage leper and cruel intent. Setting up combo for leper is a much more efficient way to enable him as it doesn’t require a master and periodic refreshing of the buff while using it for cruel intent is basically the only way to utilise that trinket but ultimately still more of a gimmick than an actually effective build.
Mastery priority: leper or cruel intent
Wanderer Sample Build and Synergies
A kit such as this utilises wanderer as a static frontliner with lots of dodge, riposte and utility. Typically one opens with meditation in order to enter stance and generate dodge for safety. Using feint switches her to aggressive stance, setting her up for a high value meditation while activating riposte. From there she can meditate whenever there is a need to refresh dodge/riposte tokens or use other skills otherwise. Flick is the basic attack while the other 2 slots are flex picks for whatever the player may need. This example shows boot and coup but they can be switched for whatever else. Once spare mastery is available, preparation can be included as an alternative way to switch from defensive to aggressive stance (instead of feint if the player doesn’t need additional riposte tokens). This should primarily be done against enemies that target the frontline a lot such as evangelists, ignited flayers, ignited librarian, butchers, knights and more.
Another common way to play duelist is with fleche spam but that is ideal on the instructrice path and thus will be presented there.
This duelist configuration has no particular team requirements, it’s very plug and play. Ideally there shouldn’t be much taunt on the team so that she has more opportunities to riposte. A stealthed runaway in the front can help funnel more attacks into duelist, maximising her riposte potential, just be careful she doesn’t get overwhelmed.
Instructrice
A backline buffing path at core but with potential for many more different playstyles due to the universally useful stance effects. As a backliner she provides a unique damage buff that stacks with any other damage boost in the form of again as well as a guaranteed crit token in the form of mastered instruction. She also features a stress heal and an extra action.
As instructrice is typically a backliner path, disengage’s back 2 serves as a very useful repositioning tool in case she gets shuffled. Unfortunately the path suffers from a severe lack of spare skill slots making it hard to include in a typical kit without major sacrifices.
Still, since there are very few back 2 skills in the game, it allows her to enable rare backdancing teams, an example of that is shown in the team section.
Mastery priority: very low
Ever wished you could weaponise all that stress your heroes constantly have? Now you can! Just 2 stress is enough to reach the power of a greater sharpening charm, at 5 stress it is equivalent to a strength token (that doesn’t get consumed and stacks with an actual token). This skill can get ridiculous very quickly and it doesn’t even require the hero to be close to a meltdown. It doesn’t even need a mastery!
The mastery function is interesting, it’s technically different than encore but not necessarily better.
Encore is a bonus turn meaning it doesn’t tick down cooldowns or activate start of round effects while again’s extra turn does. On the other hand, encore is instant, allowing slower heroes to borrow jester’s speed and it doesn’t tick dot damage. Most importantly, using the extra turn means you don’t get the aggressive stance damage buff which I consider much better.
Mastery priority: low-subjective
Coup becomes the primary attack of this path with decent backline damage, high crit and some extra utilities. The cooldown reset on kill allows for a second coup the next turn as well as STACKING a second again buff which is as broken as it sounds.
Mastery priority: high-medium
The second highlight of the path, the offensive stance effect on base version isn’t great but it turns into guaranteed crit on mastery, a very unique buff with multiple crazy applications. The stress can even be a good thing as it synergises with again. On defensive stance this skill turns into a stress heal much like inspiring tune with the crucial difference that it cannot be used on duelist herself.
Mastery priority: high
Instructrice sample builds and synergies
Typical backline buffer
This is the most simple way to play buffer instructrice. She wants to open with prep so she can buff her allies in the next round asap. The strength token is also nice for coup. Sometimes she can find herself with not much else to do but prep again so the mastery which provides a crit token on aggressive stance is a bit more useful on this path. After she has applied her buffs and the battle has slowed down she can use meditation to switch to defensive stance and start stress healing.
Meditation is also useful to give her safety with dodge tokens and riposte which becomes useful primarily in boss fights.
Other skills such as feint, disengage, boot or touche can also be useful but it would require sacrificing one of her buff skills in order to fit them in.
Lover’s glove trinket can be huge for this path as it automatically gives her aggressive stance on combat start, eliminating the need for prep and allowing her to replace it with something else.
Any damage dealer will greatly appreciate instructrice’s damage buffs but the crit token has some especially fun applications, particularly in powerful aoe moves.
Aspirant occultist’s anamnesis is my favourite as it almost wipes the entire enemy team on the spot. A buffed warlock can also output ridiculous amounts of damage.
Flagellant’s necrosis requires some more setup but successfully pulling it off is one of the most satisfying things in this game.
One of leper’s many issues as a damage dealer is the incredibly wide damage range of his attack, crits solve that issue since they maximise the damage of the skill.
Fleche spam
This is a very easy to play aggressive stance only playstyle that is ideal on instructrice since the path doesn’t change any relevant skills but the stance bonus of regen on kill is more useful than the wanderer effect. The concept is simple, you pair her with another character with a forward attack so you keep pushing her out of rank 1 allowing her to use fleche repeatedly.
Unless she already has a strength token somehow, it’s best to open with prep, giving your team time to remove potential defensive tokens from the enemies. Setting up a vuln token is especially rewarding. Since she uses fleche so much she is constantly in aggressive stance so it’s hard to utilise defensive stance effects and thus the rest of the skill selection takes that into consideration. Flick is still useful to deal with tokens while boot and feint give her some extra utility just in case she may need it. They can be replaced with anything else, meditation can be a useful panic button in case she gets in trouble.
While this build only needs a frontline dance partner to work, primarily man-at-arms or highwayman, one can build a full dancing team using any combination of the displayed characters with their forward attacks (lunge, duelist’s advance, rampart, hold the line, holy lance). Some things to note: highwayman should have the rogue path if used in a full dance team. Man-at-arms and vestal can both guard the squishy duelist so having at least one of them is very desirable. Vestal does not dance herself but her seraph path is made for dance teams, just put a consecration on rank 3 and get a bunch of value. She also provides guarding for duelist and team sustain.
Sample back dance team utilizing instructress disengage
This is one of my favourite teams I’ve discovered, duelist doesn’t do too much here but the team wouldn’t be possible without the back 2 of disengage. Most of the team damage comes from arsonist’s dragonfly (which you should master asap)
Grave robber remains static and serves as the team tank as wanderer with her fantastic self sustain, repartee should be the other skill you master immediately. She often finds herself in rank 1 so pick and glint are the ideal attacks for her to have. Duelist mostly disengages which pushes runaway and jester to the back, allowing them to use dragonfly, fade to black or finale. Her skill kit is like the sample buff build kit with disengage instead of again but it can be modified. Jester mostly uses finale and fade to black, sometimes encore. He is either virtuoso path and starts with solo into finale or soloist starting at the front and using finale off runaway’s smokescreen setup, this is a more risky configuration since he is vulnerable until he takes his turn. If you use star of the chosen flame you can pick virtuoso in the front and finale immediately.
Antagonist
A rank flexible path that focuses on debuffs, combo synergy and stuns. She has a very flexible skill kit that can be adjusted depending on her exact team, this means that it is also hard to recommend a build that works for everything. The aggressive stance effect makes her debuffs land more consistently while her defensive stance hits make the enemies more vulnerable to debuffs for her entire team to utilise.
Touche does become her bread and butter on his path, she can easily spam it, constantly applying debuffs to her enemies. It also gains rank 3 reach although it has less damage. Vulnerable is one of the strongest debuffs in the game with the potential to amplify damage a lot. Weak on the other hand can be used to shut down high damage threats like the general’s waking dead, dockers, knights and many more.
The stance enter on mastery is more convenient on this path as she can exit her stance a lot with coup and using touche to enter it again is efficient. The damage increase is also nice considering how much you’ll be using this skill.
Mastery priority: high
A stun and knockback at the same time is extremely powerful allowing you to shut an enemy down for multiple turns. Note that on this path, the move is usable on defensive stance as opposed to the wanderer version which is for aggressive stance. Mastering it allows you to use it in aggressive stance as well, making you able to knockback at any moment. The combo can be nice to set up for the rest of your team like a plague doctor disorienting blast stun or a grave robber dagger throw. It’s essentially like a maniac punish which is very good. Just like wanderer, the mastery also gets a big jump in crit which can pierce move resistance but also stun resistance.
Mastery priority: medium-low-team dependent
Confessor judgement cries in the corner.
This skill almost does enough to warrant the entire path on its own. It is great at shutting down large threats as the double vuln allows the rest of her team to do a lot of damage very quickly while also it also provides defensive value through the weaken. Remember that her aggressive stance effect gives her a passive 20 res pierce making all these tokens land more easily. The mastery allows it to be an unconditional stun on defensive stance which is even more useful on a skill with backline reach. The aggressive stance version is better used on big threats with high stun resist or generally high health and damage while the stun is better used for annoying enemies that can do a lot of harm if left unchecked like the cultist heralds.
Mastery priority: high
Disengage becomes more useful on this path although it still has some issues. Applying combo is always nice but this path can only move forward with fleche since touche no longer dances. This means that if she doesn’t want to use fleche she will need a dance partner and I’m not sure disengage does enough to warrant all that. The blind on mastery is probably the main appeal of this move and while it’s nice, the mastery requirement hurts and I often struggle to justify it when I can just use that combo with the boot.
Mastery priority: high
Antagonist sample build and synergies
As mentioned previously, it’s hard to recommend a single antagoniste kit since it depends a lot on her exact team.
This is the one I usually start with and then modify if needed. If i don’t have touche mastered i use prep or med to get into the stance i want, it’s usually aggressive at the start unless i have mastered coup i wanna use immediately to stun. If I do have touche mastered then it depends on what position I have duelist sit at because that affects the stance I get.
Feint is an easy way to switch between stances while meditation is always nice for the safety it provides. Of course touche, boot and coup are the main skills of the path but they can be switched. For example boot can be replaced with something else if your team doesn’t utilise combo as much while conversely, disengage can be equipped if you utilise combo even more.
Due to the nature of vuln, antagoniste finds better use with characters that rely mostly on raw damage rather than dot, however she can still provide value to dot teams through stuns and weakens to slow down the enemy. Having someone combo for her is great so she can get lots of stuns with the boot while of course she can be used to set up someone else’s combo as well. Disorienting blast and thrown dagger are great examples of that as mentioned previously.
Intrepide
Disclaimer: I personally think intrepide is a problematic path that needs way too much effort for not a proportional reward. This is due to duelist’s base damage being relatively low meaning it doesn’t scale as well with damage buffs. Additionally, the way dot damage shuts the path down completely makes her very frustrating to use while she straight up cannot do anything against chirurgeon and barricades which make her bleed when she attacks them. Nonetheless I will try to be objective and describe the path’s tools and how to use them.
Intrepide is a risky path that utilises its stance effects (mostly the defensive one) to stack high amounts of offensive boosts whenever she successfully dodges an attack. These effects do not activate if she is guarded, she has to be the one to get attacked and dodge. If she gets damaged she will lose all her stacks.
- Any dot damage will remove her stacks
- Trinket damage such as temptation does not remove her stacks
- Quirk damage such as blundering removes her stacks
- Non-damaging attacks such as behold, breath of the sea, ideation, etc. do not remove her stacks even if she fails to dodge them.
This path does not fit in any random team, you have to build your entire team around it.
The buffs stack up to 5 times each but you do not have to and in fact shouldn’t try to get them to max stacks. Around 3 stacks is enough.
Intrepide feint generates dodge instead of riposte. This means that the path is generally less able to utilise ripostes; however the additional dodge helps her make sure she always has spare dodge tokens. Base dodge is never reliable on this path, dodge+ is crucial however there are other skills that take priority in mastery.
Mastery priority: medium
Intrepide’s base version preparation is the same as wanderer’s but the mastery defensive stance effect cures dots instead of buffing riposte damage. This effect is problematic because by the time she gets to use it she will have already taken dot dmg losing all her stacks so it is a very slow way to recover. Having an ally cure her dot before she acts is a much more ideal solution.
Mastery priority: low
Disengage is used to try to keep her safe after she has built a satisfying amount of stacks. Using it in defensive stance grants her stealth which makes her less likely to get targeted however she still isn’t safe from aoe attacks. The aggressive stance effect on mastery is more effective at protecting her but can be hard to use because she usually stays in defensive stance and it requires very deliberate hero placement to have someone suitable end up guarding her.
Mastery priority: team dependent
Coup can be used to convert the stacks she has built up into backline damage. It can also be used to deliberately remove her stacks if you think she cannot keep up with the amount of targeting she receives and is gonna get hit soon. The damage of the skill is almost equivalent to a flick with 1 lower minimum damage on mastery and less overall crit.
Mastery priority: medium
Intrepide sample build and synergies
The path’s exact kit depends on the particular team, meditation is the only mandatory pick which needs to be mastered asap otherwise the path does not work. As always, feint is used to conveniently switch stances and flick is a solid attack all around. Touche imo is actually the ideal attack for this path as the 1 dmg difference over flick can really make a difference. Coup can be replaced if you don’t need backline damage.
The most reliable way I’ve found to play her is as a dodge tank that alleviates some pressure from the team and later switching the roles, turning into a damage dealer for her team to protect. To achieve this, defensive stance meditation is used for the taunt in order to draw attention away from her team and give her consistent opportunities to build up her stacks, she can open the first round with disengage or mastered touche in order to have med available right after. Just pray that she doesn’t receive a dot in the first round before she gets to med. Against teams that are really likely to target her anyway, like evangelists it can be viable to med immediately.
If she gets the dark lanthorn trinket it makes her much more reliable as it allows her to start in defensive stance and open with a very powerful, taunting med immediately. Plague doctor and jester can help make intrepide’s dodges more consistent through their blinds. Jester can be particularly synergistic as he can use fade to black to dance with duelist’s touche or disengage. Do note however that intermezzo is probably the worst pick for intrepide as the bleeds will remove her stacks.
Dots are by far the biggest problem of intrepide so having a character that can cure them can greatly amplify the potential of the path. Plague doctor, vestal and flagellant can all alleviate duelist’s dots. Resistance trinkets are great to ensure she doesn’t get doted in the first place while appalling aron is a particularly nice pick as it deals with the problem of hitting barricades or the chirurgeon himself. The regen can also counter other dots as they will not remove intrepide’s stacks if the regen is higher or equivalent to the dot dmg.
Finally, guards are the best way to protect intrepide after she has built her stacks. Man-at-arms, vestal and templar crusader can all achieve that. One thing to keep in mind is that if the guarder and the guardee both get targeted by the same attack then the guard will work. This mostly concerns cleaves which target both ranks 4-3 (e.g. herald first trumpet) or ranks 1-2 (e.g. evangelist blood bond). For this reason it is ideal if the duelist and guarder do not share these rank groups. For example, if the duelist mostly operates in the back (ranks 3-4) it is ideal for her guarder to be at the front (rank 1-2). Similarly, if duelist is in the frontline then it is best for her guarder to be in the backline.
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