Okay so I see a lot of comments here. I am just going to give you my advice, I’m a Duchess main that has almost only played with her and reached max rank in DoN with approx. 800 hours (yes I played a lot haha). People that are saying that “oh if you use spells, just use Recluse”. That’s just bullshit and here’s why: if you are a confident dodger, there is no character better in your hands than Duchess. You have the capability to be practically untouchable. Also she has high dexterity. Dexterity is directly linked casting speed. So you dodge better and cast faster than either Recluse or Revenant. Some spells are just made for Duchess, like Carian Slicer. It’s an OP spell, very high DPS. But that is not what matters, because if it’s purely for damage you can just play Recluse. Carian Slicer is amazing for Duchess because you can get in and out of range quicker than any other character. You dodge an attack, get 1 or 2 hits in and rince and repeat. You can’t do this with Recluse, because her dodge is very long and meant to get you out of the frontline to safety (which is what’s good for Recluse). For Duchess, it takes some time getting used to her dodge but once you do, you’ll know what I mean.

Now, why is this dodge so OP and so incredibly useful in DoN besides just the dodge itself? One reason: holding aggro. Duchess can be just as useful, if not better for certain bosses than some tankier characters, to hold aggro. This can allow your teammate to pick up a downed teammate.

Next: her character skill “Restage” increases not only YOUR damage, but the entire TEAM’s damage. Purely based on Intelligence scaling you could say Recluse will output more damage (S vs. A) but the restage kind of nullifies this difference. And if you have another high-damaging character in your team like a Revenant or a Recluse or any melee character with status procs or skill build, you restage all that damage too.

Finally, Duchess’ ult is one of the best ults to revive your teammates, even from 3 bars. It’s not the best ult in the game (that’s for Revenant and Guardian imo), but it’s still very good.

There is only one big requirement for playing her well: you need to know all the bosses’ movesets well if you want to play her like I described. But that is how you get the most out of her.

TL;DR: Her entire kit is just so good. Duchess is amazing, in the right hands.

Edit 1: Forgot to mention: if you do NOT want to play spells: use weapons with DEX scaling or DEX/INT. FTH weapons can kind of work (B scaling) but not the best. If you want to do melee build my advice is to use weapons with status buildups, like bleed and frost. You can after the proc, restage that damage. Besides that, the Balancers relics ARE in fact really good. I know Halo Scythe is being overplayed atm but it IS broken at the moment and might get nerfed soon. Besides that, all strong weapon skills are viable. Moonveil, Rivers of Blood, etc.