[EenKogNeeto]

See I don't think Wazabane is actually much of a problem, sure its 15 hit and crit but the FP cost is insane on it for that bonus, 22 FP for a basic attack like that is usually not worth it, if anything Wazabane is in need of a buff to its FP Cost.

A class having all the solutions to its own problems inbuilt isn't good for balance. There's a reason Kensei works SO WELL. Even if someone has crit evade after you strip 30 of it with passives, you then also have Wazabane to effectively lower it by another 15. Not to mention it's used in countering evade in case god forbid, lowering their evade by up to 30 wasn't enough already.

I agree here, sacred art's never really been appealing for the damage itself, not only that but the elemental damage effect is actually resisted by armor somehow, making it nigh useless.

I considered suggesting it be made immune to armors/resists/etc but I felt like that wouldn't really fit in the purview of this particular post.

I feel as though with its cooldown, absolute fear has a decent amount of counterplay, including just being out of range of it, on top of other duelist counters currently present like sporting crit evade or slash/pierce resist, there should be a lot of threat present when a duelist is sitting in your face, thats sort of what mages have to plan for and prevent, instead of sitting there twiddling their thumbs like the hexer standard.

There is no counterplay. You get silenced. End. The most common opener in any PVP battle in the arena is 'Walk up and Absolute Fear' because it's that good. Hesitation and Fear decimate melee's ability to hit you and the silence requires at bare minimum a sacrifice of 10% maxhp to counter. It forces EVERY mage to bring a screamer or some similar counter to silence.

Sporting crit evade...Like that thing you can negate up to 60 of. Which completely negates an entire stats worth of Crit Evade (Equivalent to 60+ luck).

Planning for and preventing someone walking within three tiles of you and dropping a unresistable silence on you is a bit of a tall order don't you think? How would you suggest a non-wind mage counter this opening gambit with status resistance doing nothing to it?

When it comes to evade the only class in the game to be able to reliably run it right now -IS- Kensei, and thats simutaniously both a good and bad thing, its bad because evade can be unreliable, its good because that gives not too many classes checks to hit stacking, except Kensei, where it has a slightly higher than normal chance to avoid a basic attack, and only on certain conditions which are preventable. (IE: Having fear immunity/cures, and your first hit can be followed by autohits instead too if the hit penalty is too much.)

Actually, Evade is almost solely tied to Cobra dodging, Kensei has never been the main focus of evade builds. Now VA/ST Cobra builds do it best, the issue is that Kensei gets so much of it for free with no investment or buffing strictly required. A build with only 200 Evade can easily negate 300 hit with Kensei passives while most Cobra builds aim for 250+ to do the same. Fear immunity is rare, cures cost momentum for something they can just re-apply, and Autohits will still get evaded for 30% less damage and, though I didn't mention it here because this is about Kensei, not Duelist, Flottement stacks.

I can't actually agree with this because it erases class synergy which is super important for duelist to actually have builds outside of SWARD builds, why can't I be a gunner who excels in 1v1s, or critical hit checks like a deadeye? not to name other builds.

Kensei isn't about Class Synergy. There's a reason why its ONLY class weapon is the sword. You are going on the path of the blade. Commit or look elsewhere. If you want to synergize it...Guess what? You can offhand a blade just fine. You can, in fact, do everything in Kensei while using an offhand sword and a main-hand gun or even a bow like a real Samurai.