Last week, Black Desert Online added the Dosa to its roster with the July 3, 2024, update. With 28 unique classes and most of those having multiple play styles, Black Desert clearly wasn’t lacking in variety; however, it was refreshing to finally see a new male option, considering that the Sage released in 2021 with five female classes in between.
As a fan of sword classes with flashy move sets, I was really excited for the Dosa after its initial preview. The Dosa wields a Hwando sword and Gombangdae pipe as his sidearm, clearly drawing inspiration from Korean culture. What I found most interesting was the combination of physical sword attacks and fog soldiers that provide supplemental damage with their own attacks.
Stirring Beginnings
Playing through a season with the Dosa had its fair share of ups and downs. Initially, the class seemed to do a lot of damage and shredded through quest mobs with ease while chaining a series of charged-up slash attacks. I found the leveling process a lot smoother than a few other classes that I’ve tried, such as the Guardian and Hashashin, while not quite as nimble as the Ranger or Dark Knight.
However, after unlocking Succession at level 56, the Dosa started to feel extremely clunky due to missing a number of key Prime abilities that weren’t fully unlocked until level 60. It was painfully obvious when a normal skill was activated versus a Prime ability during a combo, and certain mobs took longer to kill than they probably should have.
Thankfully, the grind from 56 to 60 is incredibly fast these days and learning how to properly weave attacks between dash abilities made finishing up the season a breeze. Obviously, anything fought during the season was just the appetizer, so it was time to test out the Dosa in PvP and endgame PvE.
Harsh Reality
In order to give the Dosa a fighting chance, I provided him a copy of my main gear set, which hovers around 720 gear score with optimal crystals and artifacts. I also took him for a spin in the Arena of Solare, where all equipment is equalized.
It saddens me to say that the Dosa doesn’t really measure up to the other classes in Black Desert Online at the moment. Sure, there might be a handful of classes and specializations, such as Succession Nova, that he is technically better at in the right hands, but the learning curve is steep, and other classes simply do what he does better.
The biggest problem with the Dosa is his sluggish movements, which are a problem across the board. His forward dash feels like it could be at least 50% longer and the sideways dashes feel like they take forever to go from startup to finish. While grinding a lot of weak groups of mobs this isn’t a problem because he has multiple flow attacks that can be chained immediately from a dash or other skills to close the gap but in PvP or against difficult endgame mobs they’re not particularly useful unless there’s a target standing in front of you.
The other side of this problematic coin is that while the Dosa has powerful attacks with large modifiers, they all have an incredibly long windup animation. Pair this with a relatively weak defense and it just doesn’t feel like a great kit. Imagine a Succession Drakania without the defensive buffs or a Dark Knight that requires an extra 0.5 seconds for any skill to activate and can’t easily dance all over the battlefield.
The idea for the Dosa seemed to be a melee glass cannon with fog and summon gimmicks, but it doesn’t feel cohesive. For example, when trying to take down the mechanical spiders in Yzrahid Highlands, it took literally 10 times as long to kill a leg with the Dosa compared with my Dark Knight. With the short, slow dashes and long-animation attacks, I could only get a couple of hits in before having to dodge the next flurry of AOE attacks.
On the PvP side, the Dosa has a potentially good kit on paper with a lot of protected, high-damage attacks and crowd control abilities but the problem again is his slow animations. They make it incredibly difficult to actually catch an opponent and the slow skill animations provide enough of a tell to easily dodge out of the way. Furthermore, the Dosa doesn’t even have a grab so he can’t bait opponents who get close on their own.
Hope for the Future
Despite the Dosa currently not feeling strong in either PvE or PvP, I absolutely love the aesthetic design of the class and, theoretically, how it should play. I’ve always been drawn to summoner classes where you can bring a horde of allied minions along with you, such as the Necromancer from the Diablo series, and the idea of having an army of fog soldiers in tow is neat.
Additionally, the class receives a series of buffs while weaving in and out of fog and executing certain attacks, which should make it incredibly deadly if it can keep a combo going. I really feel like they should have leaned into the speed, summons, and fog mechanics a bit more heavily, but instead, the Dosa ends up closer to a Ninja than a summoner class.
With all that in mind, I’m hopeful for the future. Pearl Abyss has definitely been known to update classes that feel underwhelming and the Dosa doesn’t have Skill Enhancements or an Awakening weapon yet. It’s possible we may still get that cool summoning class with a staff instead of another polearm or dual-sword melee build. However, until that happens, I’ll likely be shelving the Dosa unless he gets significant improvements in the meantime.
