How's DB these days?

My Spines/Regen Stalker is nearing 50, so I'm looking at making a new one. I'm leaning toward a natural, martial arts/thief-ish slant for my next character, so I'm weighing Martial Arts, Claws, and Dual Blades as primaries (I just plain don't enjoy Ninja Blade and Broadsword.) No matter what primary I pick, Ninjitsu will be the secondary.

I've played Claws/Ninja to 32 as a Stalker before, so I know what to expect there. Martial Arts is pretty straightforward, especially on a Stalker, so I know what that's like too. Dual Blades, though, I could use a bit more info on.

I remember that there was a bunch of talk about it being underpowered years ago, but I don't recall many specifics of why it was considered to be underpowered. Looking at it, the only real drawback I see is Empower--the combo's just weird compared to how it works in the other ATs. Being all lethal damage is probably one of the primary drawbacks, but that doesn't really come into play when comparing it to MA and Claws.

While I'm at it, do the combos work like ParagonWiki says they do? Stalker Attack Vitals is still listed as a Cone +DoT, which seems a little weird for a combo made entirely of ST attacks.

Stalker dual blade is what I call a very good mix of ST and AoE damage. It has better ST damage than Spines for sure and two high damage cones.

It offers some versatility but two of the combos are tied with BU, AS, Placate which means you can only choose one at the beginning of the battle.

Attack Vital is definitely ST and it's a very good source of ST damage. The problem with DB is that you have to wait until lvl 18 to get the first combo I think.

The advantage of DB's for stalkers is that you don't rely on the combos all that much. I am only a low level, but I am surprised at how smooth the set feels, and how much damage it does for a lethal set. Attack Vitals is nice, but I am thinking of dropping one of the attacks in the chain to pick up sweeping strike or I could end up taking all the attacks in the set. :P

As you can probably tell from my sig text, I'm fond of the set... Three of the six Stalker toons I have at the moment are DBs. (For comparison purposes, the other half of my sneaky folk are Claws, KinMelee and Elec-)

I've done pretty well with them, over-all. While I always find myself missing Typhoon, between Thousand Cuts and Sweeping they still have a decent balance of AoE and single target damage. Their knock-downs are useful, and I've found the Sweep combo in particular good for mitigation purposes. In spite of it being dependant on using the build-up and AS, it does have its uses.

On a less technical note, the animations are nice and flow together pretty well. That's one of its big appeals for me, since I tend to prefer smooth, "perpetual motion" attack chains when I'm scrapping with mobs... My biggest complaint with my Katana scrap (and with the Ninja Blade stalker set, honestly-) is that they have such stilted pauses and breaks between attacks... But that's very much a subjective, personal-opinion kind of thing and in no way affects the "numbers" side of the game. Ninja Blade, after all, is popular for a reason. XD

Down sides? That "perpetual motion"-business eats blue like there's no tomorrow if you don't take Stamina or slot some end reduction. The set doesn't have any sort of ranged attack like KinMelee's, and while I haven't looked at the stats, it *feels* like they take a bit longer to chew through groups in general than my Claws stalker does at the same level. Also, as was already mentioned up-thread, it takes awhile to get your first combo... and their damage is mostly Lethal, with all the good and bad that comes with that.

While I haven't played DB very far I do remember having both the Sweep combo and the Empower combo Pre Travel power.


IIRC
Bu-AS-Placate is Empower
Bu-AS-Ablating is Sweep

both of which should be available in the earlier levels.

For a Stalker set, I'd say it's one of the ones the AT gets that actually pumps out good AoE dmg with the additional attribute of doing good sustained DPS. Attack Vitals may be ST, but you have to remember that the damage of the combo relies on the damage of the last attack in the combo and Vengeful is the hardest hitting ST attack of the set (barring Assassin's Blades).

But like has been said, you don't have to rely on the combos...or even the same combination of combos. You could start off with the sweep combo then placate 1kcuts for good AoE damage. Or the empower combo then right into attack vitals to take down a hard target. Or you can just use BU and 1kcuts from hide and disregard the combos as sweeping strike is a pretty nice and fast cone to capitalize on.

If you ever decide to play Stalker Dual Blades, I'd suggest picking up all the attacks at first so you can try out all the combos and decide what you like. Since you're taking /Nin with it, there's also combining the -ToHit from Blinding Powder and Weaken combo but the limited experience I had with it didn't take my breath away...