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The Case Against One-Handed Weapons

Discussion in 'Release 28 Feedback Forum' started by Noric, Apr 7, 2016.

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  1. DaemienX

    DaemienX Avatar

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    that's what I was getting at, just not as eloquently. Since the skills are instant, if you hit a glyph after an AA has triggered, it shouldn't interrupt your next AA. I've been able to do this with surprising success while using flurry. I think I miss an AA every once in a while, but not too manyl
     
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  2. Noric

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    I do not believe that all skills can be considered "instant". Ground Pound for example is a great skill for many reasons but is slower at chaining auto attacks than other bludgeon ones.
     
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  3. Noric

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    @CrazyPhil Do you have any anecdotal experience comparing the effectiveness of your dual-wielding build versus a 2h build?

    I don't know many experienced players that opt to stay with dual wielding over the long term so I would appreciate any input you might have.
     
  4. DaemienX

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    Duh, of course. I've been staring at blade skills for too long.
     
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  5. Crazy Phil

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    Negative... I just hate the idea of two-handers. :p
     
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  6. Noric

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    Really can't blame you there... I wanted to make hammer & board work. However, when I realized I could use a 2h and even without the experience invested in shield skills doing anything still significantly perform better than using the shield, I opted to switch over.
     
  7. Noric

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    Sorry for the delayed response. Wanted to be able to type a bit in responding to this post.

    I actually think that it would make sense for one-handed weapons to have a lower DPS, just because of the defensive passives gained from the shield tree(dual wield SHOULD have incentives of its own of course). As far as attackspeed is concerned, I think Portalarium wanted to simplify the system as far as balancing items is concerned. If you were around for previous iterations of the crafting bonuses, you'll remember that attackspeed weapons really shifted the balance of power between auto attacks and skills. I do agree that it seems to make sense for attackspeed to be better on 1h weapons, however the glyph system makes modifying attackspeed have strange consequences.

    On the subject of onhit effects like ignite weapon, i suspect they are largely negligible as far as the game is concerned. At higher levels(from dex impacts largely), critical chance is pretty frequent. % damage modifiers and critical chance both impact weapon damage, but would not impact onhit damage. The other thing to keep in mind in the case of pvp is that fire resistance is available in several forms: Fire Proof(Fire Magic), Fire Attunement(Fire Magic), Douse(Water Magic), Shield of Ice(Water Magic) and potentially some future form of nonattunement magic resistance (as mentioned by Chris in a recent thread). This means that fire damage as small as ignite weapon tends to be is going to probably be a entirely trivial from a pvp perspective.

    Poison, i am less sure about what it is currently like as an onhit effect and the future plans for it.

    As for additional focus cost when using 2h skills - I suppose that is entirely an option as for finding balance between 1h and 2h. In general, I try to stay unconcerned in the form of the solution that devs choose to solve problems. That is not to say that i don't personally favor some, but I consider making devs aware of problems and their taking actions to address those issues to be much more important than the form of the solution (provided that it DOES address the problem).
     
  8. Noric

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    Okay, an update on dual wielding.

    Offhand defense is actually a worse % than the built in shield % block. (it is only like 2/3 of Shield % at GM)

    Offhand attack works very weird. It is one of the only glyphs which is almost always better locked. I could see it being useful for maintain attack cycling (could free up some glyphs for more buffs). However, I'm not sure the power of it was going to be much better than the power of my normal skills with 1h. Even if it does outscale them by GM - its not going to be by much and they all have their own strengths. Additionally, I'm quite positive that the offhand attack would not catch my normal skills with two-handers. So dual wielding gets you a bit of flexibility, a lesser degree of defense and maybe some better skill auto attack weaving. However, you lose the number of targets hit, lose auto attack damage and lose damage on most if not all of the skills.

    In some ways, dual wielding is in a more unique situation than shield melee users, but I'm not sure they are any better off.
     
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  9. Alcedes

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    I did quite a bit of testing with a "tank" build in r27, and i was left with a very sour taste. the fact of the matter is, that those "tanky" skills do work...tho often not very well, and often only work for a few seconds.

    my final takeaway was that even tho you take less damage PER HIT, you end up taking FAR more damage PER BATTLE. the fights last SOOOOOO much longer. so sure, im taking less damage per hit, but im taking double the hits! it is FAR more effective to just use a 2 hander.

    not to mention, those skills require CONSTANT spamming. so the constant spamming on top of the much longer battles, i find myself in "focus trouble" far more often.

    as things stand, there is absolutely no way in heck that i will ever build for a melee+shield again. its simply not worth the effort. considering the number of skills that have to be raised to 80ish to make the build even moderately useful, 2 hander or mage/shield is also cheaper (skill-wise) to build. Cheaper. Fast. More efficient. for me, thats a knockout blow to shield melee builds.
     
  10. Noric

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    Your experiences match mine a good deal.

    My primary farming location in r27 was a control point, and i went from taking ~24 minutes to ~18 minutes to clear a set number of waves just by switching from 1h to 2h. That was with 140 points between two passives and 80 points in an active in shields. And the truth of the matter was that i couldn't even really tank much better with the shield on.

    Now, R28 did add another 8% passive block chance to shields and there are still a few bugs to fix that might make shields better. However, even if that makes shields good, it is still just going to result in shield mages being better and one-handed users staying weak.

    Oh and yes i experienced the same need for skill spamming which resulted in needing to take a lot of glyphs/time/focus
     
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  11. Sara Dreygon

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    Fascinating thread here so I thought I'd throw my comments in.

    First off, I charge all polearm attacks to 6 bars and then after attacking I immediately use a glyph then repeat. I don't have the data but despite the fewer attacks I do more overall damage and fights last less time. The crits when I'm not charging up are around 80 while with charging up are often upwards of 320.

    The benefit to this is that instead of standing toe-to-toe with mobs I can charge up, run towards and attack, and repeat (think guerilla tactics). While I'm getting off the same amount of attacks as the mob (actually more with the glyph added in) mine do far more damage.

    I never saw the need of getting wailed on by a mob if I didn't need to. Attacking this way I'm able to finish off high level mobs even at low health. I'm not sure this way would work very well with weapons that do not have many charge bars though...
     
    Last edited: Apr 9, 2016
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  12. Noric

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    The issue i always found with charged kiting was glyph stacking (mostly i use it for buffs). I may have to play around with it more in the future.
     
  13. helm

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    Could you please elaborate, what exactly is the issue with glyph stacking? UI related perhaps?
     
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  14. KuBaTRiZeS

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    I think he's referring to this
    The proposal is that unless you get a 4-5 stack the chance of missing makes stacking less useful. Something we compulsive stackers noticed in form of frustration, but Noric exposed objectively :D
     
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  15. Noric

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    Actually, I was more referring to something UI related. My experience with charging attacks while kiting was that it really messed up with the way i interacted with glyphs. Although you can stack glyphs keyboard only, I find it not particularly convenient when actively moving with the same hand. When charging an attack, I essentially lose the ability to use mouse to stack glyphs. I'm sure there might be some keybinding workaround, but it all seemed very awkward to me.

    Edit: On the subject @KuBaTRiZeS mentioned, stacking buffs is not really adversely impacted like other skills. The duration extension of buffs is always useful, and even a minor increase of bonus stats doesn't hurt. Not to mention the fact that buffs can't miss (though they can be interrupted).
     
    Last edited: Apr 10, 2016
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  16. KuBaTRiZeS

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    Oh, i'm the one that missed that then :D I do agree keybindings are a bit messy but they definitely do the job. I've been asking to transform the "initiate combo" button into a modifier button since i pledged in, with the intention of changing the current implementation of 1ºpress button to initiate combo, 2º press hotkey A 3º press hotkey B -> combined skills appear in A to a 1ºhold combo button 2º press any skills you want to combine together 3º all combined skills appear in the slot of the first hotkey pressed. But no answer so far.
    Yeah it's true buff stacking always come in handy. Nonetheless, it could be interesting to know if the chance of miss of a single glyph has been taken in consideration while scaling the stacked glyphs.
     
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  17. Noric

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    I would suggest either making a feedback thread and flagging involved devs or making a bug report thread about stacked glyphs being less effective. It is not one of my own personal priorities(and i have tons of open bug reports and a few open feedback threads atm), so it would make sense for someone else who finds glyph stacking a priority to start a dialogue with devs.
     
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  18. KuBaTRiZeS

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    I've been busy around here as well but i plan to open a thread regarding general issues about combat interface and balance. be sure i'll include that!
     
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  19. Noric

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    I would be careful about making a thread that has too broad of a purpose(I suppose i am one to talk). Not everyone may agree with your vision for a better combat system, but if you identify the most flagrant issues(that most people agree with) then your ideas are more likely to have a broad base of support.
     
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  20. KuBaTRiZeS

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    Yeah, i've been through that :D I'm planning to make that as a way to identifying problems, not offering solutions. My idea is to briefly go through things that could be improved about the combat system, because next releases are going to be used for combat balance and there's no harm in writing that stuff. So i wont actually be looking for support, just to communicate the message is enough :D

    I plan other kind of posts regarding all those balance, focusing in specific points and possible ways to solve them. Stuff like this usually don't draw lot of attention so i go around the forum advertising myself! Have you seen my thread about innates and why i hate them so much? i'd love to hear your opinion, and that goes for the rest of the folks around :D
     
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