Would Duality working with combo effects be a bad idea?

[Jamillion]

So the devs can feel A Dream within a Dream is an amazing skill.

Yeah, that skill somehow manages to piss me off even more lol, 3 separate attacks that you have to roll crit on, bollocks! Bollocks, I say!

[RiceisNice]

So the devs can feel A Dream within a Dream is an amazing skill.

It's not anymore annoying than something like Ricochet getting it's latter potency split evenly with all targets (including invulnerable ones) whether you like it or not.

Back on topic though, I wouldn't thin duality would make any difference if it applied combo/secondary effects. The only thing it'd change is AC's hueton extension, and you're looking at a 60 second boost out of a 70 second maximum. Debuffs from dancing edge and shadow fang wouldn't stack either.

In the same case as BRD, none of their "secondary" effects from their weaponskills actually stack with each other; your buffs such as straight(er) shot don't stack, and your debuff applications don't stack. It also comes down to the only time you'd be using barrage is your strongest weapon skill (empyreal arrow) with all buffs active.

[MagiusNecros]

If Duality made AC a 60 second extend I certainly would not complain. You could fit an extra Aeo Edge in there.

[Viridiana]

Because that's the proper way to do it, as using duality on your next armor crush is a dps increase over holding it for your AE, unless you would AE combo right after AC (aka you don't have to mutilate/SF because they're still running and don't fall of soon), in which case holding it a few seconds for AE is worth it. Shasta's guide has the math for this, if your interested.

Since this disagrees with the math I posted earlier, I looked up Shasta's NIN guide. Neither his reddit post nor his forum guide go into the math beyond "don't delay it so long that you lose a chance to use it later." The math I did earlier says that it's fine to do AC->SF->MU->DualityAE, because that's still a pps increase over using it for AC (just barely). Until someone points out a flaw in my math, anyway...

[Sevyrr]

... I realise I could increase my dps by still using the dots reading this.
I don't really know (aside from sloth) why I ever stopped.

to respond to a few points made:

• Getting critical hits on Duality would be crazy good, but also require critical hits on Barrage which would be even more so. (Empyreal Arrow doesn't need three critical hits in one strike... think of the tank's enmity!)
• Dream within a Dream looks so amazing when you do get that rarest of rolls where all three hits proc a critical, but I've always been wary of that kind of skill because of unsurety about the relative scaling of potency to damage (is it flat/exponential, I don't know.)

[Viridiana]

Dream within a Dream looks so amazing when you do get that rarest of rolls where all three hits proc a critical, but I've always been wary of that kind of skill because of unsurety about the relative scaling of potency to damage (is it flat/exponential, I don't know.)

It's very nearly on a line shaped like ((X*Potency) - Y). Only sometimes that Y is basically 0, and other times it's not. Because SE hates me, or something. >_>

[Kenji1134]

I though that Duality did not consider combo bonuses?

So when you do AE under Duality, do both hits do roughly the same damage? Or does 1 hit do ~3x the damage of the other?

If the latter is true, then the best thing to use Duality on would be the 150 potency combo starter.

[Jonnycbad]

Stop thinking of Duality as something unique. Instead, think of it more as NIN's flavor of DRG's Lifesurge. The only reason they SPECIFICALLY say it doesn't double the bonus is because instead of just giving NIN their own 'next WS crits' was to make it seemingly set apart from DRG. In reality, NIN and DRG are very similar. Both get a 10% slashing/piercing ability at 38, both get a 360pot skill (Raiton/Full Thrust). Everything balances out. Start thinking of Duality as a functional equivalent and NIN's version of Life Surge--to be used on your highest potency WS (Duality doubles the potency compared to LS which just makes it crit;however Duality has a longer recast therefore it balances out in the end). They simply added the clarification that it doesn't double your bonuses so people don't get any silly ideas.

[MagiusNecros]

I though that Duality did not consider combo bonuses?

So when you do AE under Duality, do both hits do roughly the same damage? Or does 1 hit do ~3x the damage of the other?

If the latter is true, then the best thing to use Duality on would be the 150 potency combo starter.

Combo bonus Potency is added. Additional effects that affect the target or the Ninja(huton) are not.

So say you used Duality on Dancing Edge. The debuff placed is applied only once. But if used in a combo you land that 260 potency attack twice in a row.

So if you hit for say 1000. You would hit for 1000 again. Give or take.

With this said your highest potency weapon skill is Aeo Edge. So at rear you turn a 320 pot attack into a 640 pot attack.

[Viridiana]

I though that Duality did not consider combo bonuses?

It doesn't double Combo Bonus or Additional Effect. So Armor Crush has Combo Bonus of "Extends Huton duration by 30s to a maximum of 70s." And Mutilate has an Additional Effect of "Damage over time." But Armor Crush has a Combo Potency (listed separately from the Combo Bonus) of "220 (280 when executed from a target's flank)." Since Duality does not say it does not apply Combo Potency twice...well, you get the combo potency twice. It's actually pretty clearly written, once you look at a few other tooltips.

Edit: And now I need to go make a localization post about how AC and AE handle their potency descriptions differently...