devtrackers.gg
Hi there, I guess I should introduce myself first before I ask you to read a wall of text. I'm Bella and I started playing PoE around Incursion league. My partner wanted me to use chance orbs without me knowing exactly what they were capable of, and the first natural six link I dropped ended up being the trigger for them to urge me to use a chance orb, so I did. Then I had to try out a Scour, and I did. Of course I was made to to try again, and on this second chance orb it became The Dancing Dervish, and my love for one of PoE's most iconic unique items was born.
So first of all a primer on Dancing Dervish and its history.
As it works now, with it equipped, any kill by any ally adds a rampage stack to you. At 15 rampage stacks you see this counter, and what I call the starting fireworks start around you, your weapon slot gets disabled, and two vicious aggressive animated weapon-like minions begin cycloning as far as some of the best minion tether range around. A common way to start this was simply using various techniques to get worm flasks to recharge (Pathfinder ezmode), or have reduced flask charges combined with a belt and flasks to hit -36% charges used, in order to use 3 worm flasks 8 times (they have 3 each at that breakpoint). The current tree makes this really easy, as the flasks now count as health and mana flasks so the available to anyone health and mana flask regen nodes open up infinite sustain for everyone.
I didn't play back when it came out but when it was released it was literally a single animated weapon that basic attacked, and occasionally cycloned. It was cute and useless. I'm not sure of when exactly early changes happened, but the cyclone became constant, and there was a prophecy upgrade to double itself (I made it a tradition to always do that map double bossed) and it gained the ability to have a 25% chance to generate rampage stacks upon hitting a unique enemy. This is important to remember when we look at the changes to the sword GGG has made. It was also a hidden stat, which has sowed a lot of confusion. At some point minions also stopped benefiting from rampage.
I wont list detailed effects the game has had on individual builds, because those are a rollercoaster in many cases, but the swords stayed unchanged from 2.2ish onwards and from my end, it's been Final Boss capable since 3.2, and I actually was the deepest Delve summoner during Delve league with a depth of 702. But thats from who was visible on Ninja, so there might have been deeper other ones. But the point is, it was viable, and it was viable against the endgame with various aurabot builds. It also featured heavily as a great support for Herald of Agony builds.
The most recent change to Dancing Duo, believe it or not, was a nerf. And not an insignificant one at that, the melee weapon rework left it with better accuracy, yes, but at the cost of 5% overal dps, as well as devaluing Physical Damage minion jewels for any build, because the Increased Physical Damage stat got nerfed from 190% to 160%. Yes, underneath it all it's still just an animated weapon that gains the stats of the weapon you animate. A pretty much immortal, but targetable one at that, which makes it unique in that respect. As a side note, it's amazing to krangle because the negative disappears off you, and the swords dgaf about survivability negatives.
So after this nerf we come to the most recent change. The first change, is that the hidden stat is now visible, and got a buff at first glance. All hits count towards rampage, and yes your swords inherit this stat when they spawn, but you don't; This is because your weapon slot gets disabled, and with it goes the rampage hits stat. The sword is regrammared to summon multiple Dervishes which is honestly the least they could do, and otherwise there's no new additions.
Just a subtraction.
The inherent rampage buff is now missing. The implications of this are pretty strong. First of all, since your own melee hits don't generate rampage stacks while the swords are up, you still need to sustain rampage with worm flasks somehow, so sustaining rampage is unchanged, especially against phasing bosses.
Starting rampage is more limited now, yes once you get a hit off once it starts that hidden rampage counter mentioned earlier, but most methods suggested swapping out a gem slot in a very gem starved build. The most successful versions of this build are based on various aurabots, mine being chaos based and going 3 years strong, with its only real dip in Legion. I know a phys based Necro DD main who also functions as a phys Aurabot. The elemental aurabots speak for themselves and although I want it to work, I cant make unarmed + DD work, so if people have suggestions for that, please share it's such a fun concept.
Those that do play those builds, things remain unchanged for them as they easily hit, but aurabots would be uncomfortable with swapping out gems and going into melee range (and also probably racing support minions to get kills, with an unlinked cyclone and self accuracy that you would need to scale. Swapping out stuff on left click and gems also goes against the theme of a lazy, low click, relaxing build once you've got the basics down.
All in all its a nerf to the initiation capabilities of the minion, and the sustain options remain (hopefully) unchanged really. The only reason I can think of for removing the inherent rampage stack, is to prevent rampage cheese, but there's plenty of other options for that, why target an underpowered niche minion and nerfing it through no fault of its own in the process?
Please GGG, reconsider this change.
tl:dr:
Niche Minion build that had viable endgame capable builds, got its already convoluted summoning procedure limited through no fault of its own.
External link →