I currently have a Bladesin for PvP, and I’ve always seen most people go with 300+ Dex and use a Phoenix shield for its benefits.

But today I suddenly thought — why can’t a Bladesin go dual claws instead of Phoenix? It actually has some nice perks, especially with Plague off-hand:

- Main hand: you can still use a claw with +2 Assassin skill + xtra skills if any / fools / os (LoLo);

- Off-hand: Plague gives +2 all skill, 20 ias (doesn’t seem to stack for Sentinel, so whatever), up to 320% ED, DS scale, 25 Open Wound, -Pres if you go poison; and with a good base you can even get +BF, +Fade or +Sentinel depending on what you find;

- With all those benefits, the only thing you really lose compared to Phoenix (apart from Redemption, which is useless anyway) is -21 Fire Absorb and around 80% ED. Yeah, I know that’s quite a bit, but Blade Fury already deals huge dmg if you’re using Plague and a headgear with %ED;

- For block, just drop a few points into Weapon Block to reach around 60%;

- Finally, you can dump all your remaining points into Vit, while still maintaining solid dmg and decent defence;

I know we can only really determine if it’s viable by testing it in actual duels, but does that make sense to you? And which skill should I take points from to boost Weapon Block — Fade or Claw Mastery?

Ed on offhand CLAWS doesnt increase you damage, cause it takes from damage of main hand. You have to put claws with huge damage (plague, plague in eth base, rare claws with ed, chaos, fury etc) in main hand and claws with +skills in offhand.

IIRC, BF damage is 3/4 of your on-hand weapon damage (weapon %ED applied), THEN it applies %ED from other sources — that’s why Phoenix is so good, damage wise

All you get from off-hand plague is +2 skills, staffmods

You don’t benefit from its:
Ias
Ed
DS
OW

And both -psn res and ctc LR are pretty useless for a bladesin.

The only argument to go dual claw is purely defensive, so have access to weapon block… but even then, with high dex you normslly reach 75% block with phoenix… so it’s only better defensively vs non-phys and non-fire dmg

400ed is a huge loss

Dual claw is really not as good overall.
Some still try to use a chaos off-hand, just to go WW hybrid.
But I feel like a 1pt dtalon is better than WW on a bladesin.
It allows you to keep using phoenix for much better blade skills dmg, and your dtalon can pack a punch when you have that much ed%

So it turns out that ED from Plague or the off-hand weapon doesn’t work the same way as the ED from Phoenix? Even though both are Enhanced Damage from runewords? Or is it because shields and off-hand weapons apply ED differently?
This sounds really strange, but I guess I’ll have to test it myself to be sure.

Today I realized there’s actually another serious problem with Dual Claws: when you don’t invest Dexterity into the character (as you would with Phoenix for max block), your base AR (before modifiers) drops drastically — by roughly 250 Dex. That means my total AR would drop by around 10k, from 34k down to 24k (lv 91), which is a massive difference.

Of course, we can still raise Dex while using dual claws, but as many people on this forum have said before: “If you’re using a shield, you should go max block.”
In this case, the correct version would be: “If you’re already pumping Dex for AR, you should be using a shield.”

So it seems Dual Claws still isn’t the optimal setup for a Bladesin, sadly. Hopefully, there’ll be better solutions in the future.

You need to learn the difference between weapon ed and off-weapon ed.
Also weapon ed is applied to each individual weapon, they don’t apply to each other lol

Go on and test it if you want haha

This post was edited by SinsOfTheSun on Oct 14 2025 07:34am

correct. enhanced damage on a weapon increases the damage of that weapon, and that weapon only. enhanced damage on a non-weapon enhances ALL damage.

Dual claw is great as claws can block all kinds of things that shield can't. Also you can go full dex for more ar compared to 156+ str

Offhand claw also gives skills and can go ie 2os 18 str 18 dex that do give damage

The thing in pvp with blade skills is hits to kill, pretty easy to 3htk a 50%dr 4800 life hdin/smiter with blade fury in a dual claw setup and 2htk is nearly impossible anyway

Sadly blade shield doesnt do that much damage and blade sentinel has one hit check per frame per sentinel so its kinda bad.
Blade fury start is too slow to catch/chase people

This post was edited by NuuBeli on Oct 14 2025 09:17am

You lose ~390% ish ED, not 80%. On top of what you lose from not going MB and getting all the .75% ED per Dex point

And blade sin craves ED%.

So no, your idea is terrible. Not to mention you don’t even know game mechanics well enough to understand the difference

(3/4wepdmg+baseSkillDmg) * 5 = High damage bonus from phoenix