After months of radio silence, Arc System Works unveiled new content coming to DNF Duel announced after the Grand Finals of Arc Revo Japan, with a huge new balance patch and the long-awaited announcement of a new challenger, Spectre!
The upcoming “Grand Balance Patch” promises tons of new adjustments made to the game, with a huge patch that updates over 100 moves with new properties, an increase in match-time across the board with buffs to HP and Guard Gauges, buffed awakening skills to make some characters more in line with others, and buffs to defence to make evades and guard cancels more effective!
And in addition the game’s also coming to the Nintendo Switch in Spring 2023, though unfortunately the game still doesn’t support crossplay, though with Guilty Gear Strive having its Crossplay update soon, there may still be hope for DNF Duel.
The Grand Balance Patch and Spectre are expected to drop in DNF Duel in December. It’s not known if Spectre will be paid or free DLC.
▍Grand Balance Patch Speculation
DNF Duel’s huge balance patch is just on the horizon. While DNF Duel hasn’t released any patch notes, we can take a look at the trailer a little to see what we can gather from it.
The trailer showed off a bunch of changes to moves, most notably in characters like Vanguard. Originally to do the follow-up to his MS moves you’d have to do one of his MS moves first either on-hit or on whiff to cancel. Now it looks like you can cancel the startup of the first MS button to immediately go into a follow-up. Not only does this give Vanguard players access to more moves immediately, it also gives Vanguard access to armoured options on-demand whereas before it would be very telegraphed.
Certain characters also have more cancellable normals, like Crusader who previously struggled with his light buttons as they wouldn’t be cancellable into any of their specials, and now he can cancel his light P into his counter, making it harder to punish his pressure on block.
Ghost Blade also received new change by having more access to mixup potentials, with being able to act out of his MS buttons more quickly and act out of his dash much sooner.
The striker also has a nasty change in being able to cancel her 6P into her MS moves, giving her access to a practically full-screen punish on demand if you’re not careful! No nerfs were mentioned in this patch or in official media, which means Arc Sys is looking to balance the game by buffing more characters and giving more options rather than nerfing existing ones, which will make the game more chaotic and experimental for players!
What kind of crazy buffs would you like to see on your favourite characters, and will this be enough to bring you back to the game?