Dual Blades

Playstyle

Core Philosophy

Dual Blades (DB) is the ultimate high-skill weapon. To master DB is to master the entire game.

• Light armor survival: Requires perfect positioning, spacing, and hitbox knowledge
• No unit-vs-unit tools: Forces you to learn unit matchups solo
• Assassin role: Must know every hero matchup
• Unique impact: No other class can cancel supply, flank with threat, or solo carry like DB

“You’ll have a brutal learning curve, but mastering DB means mastering the game.”

Your path to mastery: Die. Test limits. Learn matchups. Learn spacing. Learn how to bait spells. Press your map and ask, “Where should I be to be most useful?”

Skills (QWERTY Format)

Always full STR if playing butterfly, FULL HP can be played if bomb+shuri poke only (full str better if max potential used).

Shuriken/butterfly Playstyle (Recommended to start and learn with this build)

• Q: Alchemical Vapor
• E: Shuriken
• R: Butterfly/Skylark
• T: Mark of Death

No Ult Playstyle

• Q: Alchemical Vapor
• E: Shuriken
• R: Butterfly/Skylark
• T: Bomb

No Butterfly Playstyle (Strongest skillcap & impact high lobby) Start with this if confident and trusting yourself to learn the playstyle

• Q: Alchemical Vapor
• E: Shuriken
• R: Bomb
• T: Skylark or Butterfly in Meta where you can kill heroes, otherwise Mark of Death

Key Spell Mechanics

• Ambush (cross spell in invis) + Butterfly = ALWAYS back hit
• Alchemical Vapor/Shuriken/Bomb: Invisibility + CC-i window (0.4-0.7s)
• Horse: Free invis + 200% speed for 3s
• Alchemical Vapor: Keep for post-combo escape (engage with Dismount-Invis)
• The Q-spell from any invis should always be used at the end of the invis window (0.1-0.2s before it ends)

Combo Guide

Full Combo (All Spells):

• Bomb/Dismount/Shuriken: Invisibility
• E (Kick): AA x2
• Bomb/Shuriken: AAx1/2 then Ult
• Roll behind: Butterfly or Shuriken (Roll animation cancel with block)

Enemy on Horse:

• Sprint after them with ur horse, jump once no stam (they’ll also be out of stam)
• Horse Q: E (Kick)
• Butterfly into AA
• Ult IMMEDIATELY as horse death animation starts to catch mid-air

No Ult Chase Combo:

• Sprint: Shift attack (stagger)
• Butterfly
• Space (back-off) and shuriken/aa-spam

Movement & Awareness

1. Learn enemy spell CDs, bait them, punish greed
2. Know every map/object hitbox, use environment to survive
3. Movement is survival, every duel is winnable with good spacing
4. Autoattacks matter, squeezing AA will be a huge difference in DPS
5. Stay active. You should ALWAYS be looking to catch heroes, help dps units,..

Gear & Weapon Guide

Armor (Epic Schematic 4-piece):

• GOD TIER: Heal / Leadership
• S+: Crit Value
• S: Piercing Def
• A: Slashing / Blunt Def
• TRASH: Crit Def

Weapon (Min Requirements):

• Slash DMG 70%+ Max Proc
• Slash PEN 55%+ Max Proc
• Min Slash PEN: 1800+ for Siege, 2000-2100 for TW / Ranked / Tournaments

Weapon Stats to Aim For:

• Slash DMG
• Slash PEN
• Crit DMG Value
• Bonus: Piercing DMG/PEN

Addition from reddit commentary asking if alchemical vapor is necessary:

It is absolutely necessary, yes. While there can be debates about which build is better (No Ult build, Shuriken build, or Bomb build), all these builds include the escape skill because it’s your only cleanse of CC. In the current meta, where Poleaxe, Nodachi, and Shortsword are dominant, having your cleanse is non-negotiable. Honestly, in any meta, you’d always want it. The 0.4 seconds of CCI on Bomb or Shuriken is nice but will never replace a spell that can save your life multiple times in a single game.

As for your build, I see you prefer Skylark over Butterfly, likely for its lower cooldown, as many new players do. If I could give you some advice, it would be to start practicing with Butterfly instead. While Butterfly is less forgiving if you miss, its burst and overall damage are significantly higher. This becomes especially important when you have your Epic Schematic set, allowing you to reset your spells on kills. At that point, Butterfly becomes a must-have for maximizing damage output.

DB FieldBattles/Conquest Win-Conditions

DB Win Conditions are:

• Final point cap
• Point near the final point one cap
• Canceling supply on B fight reset/during the fight (delaying the resetup, canceling the 2 units strats is enough for your team to get B)
• Cap supply and get units out of it (then either stay on it if you want to win by B, or go one of the 2 point you are pressuring)
• Pressure enough people for your team to have number advantages, dont feel forced to fight if it’s the case.
• Move a unit that can kill afk units in map border (there is a lot), and start your plan JUST BEFORE YOUR TEAM ENGAGE ON B (then worst case you will bait people out of B fight and make pressure), NOT DURING AS PEOPLE WILL RESPAWN.

Just need to understand that the “golden diagonal” is 3 pressure point:

• Final point
• Point near final point
• Supply

As a DB it’s IMPOSSIBLE to die if you don’t try to fight and just play safe. By playing around this golden diagonal, you have all the winconditions i quoted a top. If you manage to execute any of them, you basically win alone. And if you don’t do any of them, by moving around this diagonal you force the enemy to have 1 afk unit on final point, 1 afk unit on C/A and 1 hero chasing you / afk on supply, which is already insane pressure, more than any other class could ever achieve and yet even with that, you can still go for a supply cancel during B fight.

Ranked & Tournament value

As a DB, the kit of the class make you able to trade often more than 1 person, which should be the primary rules. “Always try to have a value better than 1 >” meaning that you aim to at any time to take atleast the value of 1 player and your goal is to have more obviously.

What count towards the value counter is:

• Players trade (unit trade vs them, blocking them somewhere)
• Supply blocking (add +1 to any player you block by not swapping units, when you cancel supply always try to NOT kill the hero on it until the end of the push if you can, try to cancel it at the end of every 7s (swap timer) to take the less risk possible, try to use your cd smartly)
• Cav flanking pressure (sometimes the best cav flank is simply to NOT do anything, make the enemy see you, make their vocal go crazy about potential cav flank, make the anticav afk right next to it, and then flank mid-end fight)
• Trouble you create in enemy team, going for crazy kill pick up when you know you wont even kill (but be safe) so they feel threatened, spam the vocal of “becarefull about this and this”

Often time your best value will be by going for supply cancel, but that you need to know how to do, useless to go supply cancel if the enemy will play around respawn, useless to pre-afk near supply, go at the same time of ppl swapping,.. but you should not think “i absolutly need to cancel supply” if you think it suck, it probably does and you should think about doing something else. But review your scrims, when you press map, analyze what u could have done better, better value, what u should change. When you die, why die, could you have dodged that death, or complet opposite wasn’t it better to die early for faster respawn? All these things have no “always right” rules, just big principle that you know and try to follow.

No ULT playstyle (bomb) or Ult playstyle?

THIS IS A BIT OUT-DATED AS YOU SHOULD PLAY BOMB+SHURI playstyle but it’s still good learning

Bomb is a 20% damage buff for heroes and a 30% buff for units. Opting for the bomb over the ultimate is particularly valuable in skirmishes due to its AOE CC, which boosts everyone’s damage. And it provides Ranged CC / 1 More invis / 4 Reset > 3 Reset.

However, sacrificing the ultimate comes with significant drawbacks, especially in specific scenarios like choke-point fights, 1v1 duels, and against CCi-Divers classes like Nodachi or Poleaxe. The ult provides strong 1v1 pressure, enables pre-combo rune activation, and secures kills more reliably. The build choice should also consider factors such as the number of enemy light armor (since playing without an ult can make you vulnerable if the opponent has theirs and knows how to play around it) and the frequency of skirmishes, as one build might prove more advantageous than the other depending on the context.

There are many additional factors to consider, especially when playing Duo DB like I do with GRK. In this setup, having one player without an ult and the other with an ult can be more effective than both using the ultimate. Situationally, both players might play noult, or one might swap out the shuriken for the bomb while keeping both ult in low amount of fights games. These decisions depend on the dynamics of every match and change a lot.

Ultimately, the key thing to remember for most is that having a bad game with a no-ult build is much riskier than an ult-focused player having an off game. A no-ult player might end up being relatively ineffective and farmed by the enemy lights, whereas a player with the ult still retains potential opportunities, even during pushes.

TLDR: Bomb is More Risk, More Snowball but More Potential Rewards while being also more Flop Potential too, need to know when you should play it, always be able to adapt, swap spells depending on the game mode/dynamics of the current lobby,..

It also heavily depend on the current meta, a slow meta full of shield and brace units like right now will favourite a no bomb heavily due to the low amount of skirmish happening.

Links

• Runes