Recent experienceswith these swords i finally managed to make them work and I noticed a big issue there.
That issue lies with Amarasta’s Blade Burst.
Why does a 1h weapon give bonus to it? The swords are clearly meant to be dual-wielded but they give bonus to ABB - a skill that doesn’t support dual-wield at all. You only hit with your off-hand if you go DW-ABB
My solution-
Change +bonus to ABB to something else (Lethal Assault, maybe?)
Make it so that ABB hits with both weapons like it does for pistols
Well, perhaps they give a bonus to ABB because that skill has not the greatest synergy with dual-wielding; to make up for that lack of synergy?
Apart from that I’ve never had a problem with it; dual-wielding already is strong in itself.
In this regard your poll might be a little bit less suggestive and offer a choice to say that there isn’t a problem with the topic at all.
I had never ever played a Saboteur, not even mentioning Nex and Ortus set, but since I’m a self proclaimed guru of theorycrafting, I think I’ll participate.
First of all, I think that second suggestion needs to be ruled out. I think making ABB work for both mainhand and offhand is a fine stand-alone idea, but it won’t help O&N set at all. Because there’s no way I would use ABB over Flamestrike, and there’s zero reason to use both ABB and FS. The point of Sabo always was mixing high FS damage with DW procs, including AOE ones, and with Explosive Strike now being AOE on melee builds as well I don’t need extra AOE from ABB.
So I would go with the first option. I honestly dislike the idea of using ABB just for buffing (if I was able to put skills on autocast on the next melee attack when they are off cooldown without placing them on LMB it would be different business entirely), but at least it makes sense from the viewpoint of overall build consistency.
Another thing is I need a damn good reason not to use the Warpfire instead of Nex on Sabo. Ortus is a very decent sword on it’s own, so I can imagine myself playing a sabo with Ortus + Warpfire. Nex is weirder, but I can imagine building a coldbreaker with Nex + Crescent Moon. From that point the optimal would be making Nex into an ABB/LA + AQC blade and Ortus into FS/Exp. Strike. But that would totally ruin the set design. To make them lucrative as paired blades the set bonus must be MUCH better than it’s now.
Also I hope we’re getting an upgraded Elemental Balance set in the expansion, because O&N synergizes crazily with it.
If you are a Spellbreaker you can easily do 140K DOT along with ridiculous SS burst damage. Really powerful stuff under the right circumstances. Bleed tricksters could use a skill that adds dot to % weapon damage. It’s the only dot without such thing
If anything, the set bonus(es) should make you think [b]“should I use this set, or am I better off using two of the same swords or another combo that is stronger than it?”
[/b]Currently the answer is practically always no.
I sincerely hope they make some appropriate changes to these swords.
I love the final granted skill, it’s good for CC.
The heal proc is useless as it goes off mostly when i’ve barely lost any hp.
Shadow bolt proc is pretty neat
But the +skills to ABB and lack of other lucrative set bonuses put these swords in an awkward spot
