Dual Blade: Ignorning combos

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with this. I've been considering a DB/SR scrapper just for fun, but I've tried DB characters before and always worked with the combos which I absolutely just did not like.

However, the attacks seemed to be fairly good with a good mixed of ST and AoE attacks (even though two are cones)

I was curious if the damage output is considered good enough on DB to perform well without the regular use of combos?

This isn't a mathematical analysis, but yeah, I think they're good enough. I mostly ignored combos while leveling, and the top Dual Blade chains don't use combos anyway. Blinding Feint -> Attack Vitals is a great chain for the recharge, though.

Edit: OK, I looked at the DPAs. Assuming I still have the right numbers, they look fine as is, comparable to Broad Sword, say. Use as much Blinding Feint, Sweeping Strike and Ablating Strike as you can.

With really no recharge in your build, you can run Blinding Fient->Attack Vitals really easily. Top DPS chain is BF->AS->SS->AS but it takes a good amount of recharge.

Sweeping Strike and 1k Cuts are very good AoE's. Typhoon's Edge... not so much imo.

I didn't use combos on my DB until I could use Attack Vitals (lv26), and I was perfectly fine. Empower and Weaken don't do enough to justify fluxxoring around with your attack chain to pull them off. You are much better off just smashing the buttons until Attack Vitals and Sweep, which are actually worth utilizing.

The best combo takes a lot of recharge in Ablating Strike to get it working, a little over 300%. If you are going to go for this combo my best advise for you is not to sweat a fraction of a second of delay. My own build still has about 0.108 seconds of delay between SS and AB, and I promise that you will not notice it. I mostly mention this so you don't drive yourself insane sacrificing aspects of your build to get that 0.1 second.

I would assume BF>AS>SS>AS to be the best since incarnates. More attacks ending up in more reactive dots and more -res for Lore pets.

By calculation, I got BF - AS - SS - AS performing slightly better. It's a difference of about 5 DPS, though.

I'm not sure how BF - SS - AS is supposed to work. SS and AS together take 2.4s with Arcanatime to fully execute. You'd need BF to almost be at the recharge cap in order to run that chain without interruption.

You'll be attacking so quickly with either chain that -res procs can almost be assumed constant. They aren't a tie-breaker either way. Personally I say stick with BF - AS - SS - AS. It's hard enough to get the recharge for that string; BF - SS - AS just seems impossible, and it's not any better.

At 299% recharge, I have BF -> AS -> SS -> AS doing 18 DPS more. However, the CONE damage of the other chain is 24 DPS more. In other words, if you have two in your cone, the BF -> SS -> AS chain pulls slightly ahead. If you have three, the BF -> SS -> AS is comfortably ahead. If you have 305%+ and get speed boosted to actually get the chain gapless, I show the BF -> SS -> AS chain being barely ahead even with one target.

I think it could make a good general-purpose chain. It's not the top DPS chain, but in some circumstances it might be, and in maybe most circumstances (other than DPS tests), you'll probably do more damage with it.

All that is without incarnate powers calculated in. That might swing things a bit.