Dual Blades

DUAL BLADES
DUAL BLADES
	“Close-range melee weapon that allows for quick successive strikes; can also be used in a defensive stance to block incoming bullets and deflect them back while the attacker is within line of sight”
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General Data
Related Quests

The Dual Blades is a melee weapon for Medium Builds: its primary attack is a fast, multi-strike combo with wide reach and forward momentum. It can also block and deflect incoming bullets in a defensive stance.

The first attack of the combo slashes twice and deals 50 damage per slash. The second attack slashes twice and deals 60 damage per slash. The last attack slashes once and deals 70 damage.

Reflect

The Dual Blades are a unique weapon that and block and reflect bullets back at enemies. Holding secondary fire will cross the blades in front of the user, reflecting all bullets from that direction towards the user's crosshair. While in the defensive stance, the user will move at walking speed and cannot sprint.

Damage Values

Reflected bullets do 100% of their original damage value, and cannot deal headshot damage. Damage taken from ranged attacks is reduced by 80% and damage taken from melee attacks is reduced by 66%.

Interactions

Melee attacks can also be blocked to reduce damage, but cannot not be reflected. For example, a alt-fire attack from the Sledgehammer typically deals 200 damage, but will only deal 66 damage to a contestant using the Dual Blade's defensive stance.

The Dual Blades cannot block the following: RPG, grenade launchers (CL-40 and MGL32), grenades, thrown objects (including canisters), mines, fire/flames, Winch Claw, cannonballs, Orbital Lasers, Meteor Showers, Alien Invasion/Retro Invasion 82.

The Dual Blades can block the following: Bullets from Guardian Turret, any melee damage (including the quick melee and Charge 'N' Slam), Throwing Knives, arrows from the Recurve Bow.

Hit Registration

Unlike other weapon interactions, the reflect is calculated and confirmed entirely server-side. What this means is that the reflect can miss even when the user is aiming directly at an enemy, or can hit when the user is looking away, if the server state at the time the shot occurs differs from what the user is seeing on their own client. This can be most noticeable when strafing close to a moving opponent, when needing to track a fast-moving target, or in cases of high ping. In these cases, the block can feel inconsistent and reflected shots may not line up with the user's crosshair.

This interaction differs from other weapons in the game, which use a combination of client and server hit registration (with most weapons the hit location is accurate to the client and is registered/timed on the server, however the block/reflect of the Dual Blades is handled entirely server-side). In practice, this means a Dual Blades user may at times have to aim ahead of a moving target to block their shots even with a decent connection, with this becoming more of an issue in direct correlation with the user's ping.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Very strong in close-quarters combat
Defensive stance can be used to close the gap on far away enemies
Defensive stance offers significant damage reduction against melee attacks

Cons:

The defensive stance can easily be countered if the user is attacked from two different directions
The defensive stance cannot block certain attacks, such as grenades, RPG rockets, and Flamethrower flames.
The hit registration used for deflecting can cause the weapon's defensive stance to feel inconsistent and unresponsive.