polearms vs skeleton = bad

hey guys I am very advanced in the polearm skill tree most of my skills are 100 or very close to that yet I only do very limited damage to skeletons, even with a + 11 trident/spear. Im thinking this is by design maybe a bludgeoned weapon would be better suited for skeletons but this means I have to change my main skill in order to access harder areas of the world that contain skeletons. when I say I do very limited damage to skeletons I mean 3hp and under per hit most of my hits are blocked or parried by them.

I can solo a troll but cant take two elite skeleton footman. i really dont want to put the work in in order to change my primary weapon type. please fix

 

I am also high in pole arms and I agree. I just assumed it was me though as there are so many buffs.

 

Polearms vs Skeleton = Poking Bones ~TL~

 

Bludgeon weapons work well on some undead.

 

Elite Skeletons are much tougher than Trolls. I am level 119 (123 with blessings), I have mace skills at an average of 120 and I have a white dragon as a combat pet that does incredible critical damage. My pet and I can kill a troll with one hit, but the elite skeletons take a lot of effort. It's not a problem with the weapon, it's that the elite are tough, but tough, tough.

 

Pretty typical. Most D&D type games it's the Bludgeon weapons that work the best against the undead. You can do it with polearms. It just takes more effort.

My base pole arm level is 140 with pull at 125. And it still takes a bit of work ;D

 

Archery is also less effective against skeletons. Still works, just takes longer.

 

From my personal, limited experience I died once as an Archer vs. the cooperating Skeleton combo in the Lost Whiteguard Silver Mines (behind the locked door) and when I had changed to Spear + Shield, and a patch reduced the aggro radius of some skeleton there I had a far easier time.

So vs. Skeletons I personally feel Spear+Shield > Archery

 

It's a half-baked idea as so many are. If you are going to do the whole "Enemies have different resistances to different damage types" you need to go all-in. List the damage you do by type, bows and polearms do piercing, swords thrusting or cutting and maces do blunt. Then, give players options, bows can fire broad head arrows to do cutting, polearm users can grab a halberd to do cutting and sword users can pummel strike to get blunt. If you aren't going to go all in and you just sprinkle a few here and there, don't even bother.

 

AFAIK, they have high damage resistance and high damage avoidance and those only affect physical damage. Physical damage isn't broken down into sub-categories.

 

So Bludgeon attacks don't do physical?

 

They do. Perhaps they simply get a bonus vs skeletons or maybe they mostly ignore damage avoidance.

 

If it is the former, that's just back to half-baked damage types, and if it is the latter, I'm surprised that Piercing Shot still seems to ineffective against skeletons, though I guess there DR might not be associated with armor though Break Armor in the bludgeon tree seems to affect DR directly regardless of armor as its name implies.

 

I have never found Piercing Shot to be effective in PvE. Maybe it's only good for PvP? Anyway, Break Armor might be the reason that bludgeon does better? I can't say because I only use ranged.

 

Off hand, just some general observations: when discussing specifically Elite Skeletons, they seem to have high physical resistance. So for these creatures you will also possibly need to incorporate magic attacks like fire related magic to help increase your damage to them. Also Searing Ray and Banish. Although for bizarre reasons I think they also seem to have Life Resistance, which is equally even more bizarre. But I would have to test further.

 

Their magical resistances are high as well, I've had plenty shrug off GM level lightning with single digit damage and my 90 or so level fire attacks do 0 damage and tick for 2 or 3. Banish works better, some, they still just deflect it with magic resistance half the time and it maybe does 40 damage against a 2000+ HP skeleton?

 

Banish Undead has a wide range of damage, always starting from 0 damage (e.g. 0-81 life damage at start). Only when Life specialized does Banish Undead gain a minimum damage above 0.

 

Has anybody ever complained of other mob types being resistant to certain weapon types? Or did the devs literally just go "skellies resist slashing and piercing type weapons" and then stop there?

 

Yup, even at GM'd level it tops out around 50 versus skellies without a crit. I'm assuming their resistance are to blame, for example skelly mages are more likely to completely resist compared to footmen, but the latter have so much more HP and fancy feet so it balances out.

 

To quote the patch notes from a while back