Daggers Feedback

Discussion in 'Skills and Combat' started by Oba Evesor, Jan 13, 2016.

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  1. Mysticvermin

    Mysticvermin Avatar

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    I did some testing of various blade weapons: two-handed swords, longswords & daggers. They all swing at the same rate. There is also no difference in swing time for dual wielding. Glyph cooldowns & draw times are standard regardless of weapon used. I believe this to be by design. Due to the mechanics of the random draw deck system there is no way to balance for varying attack speeds. Also, if you removed the random draw glyphs and enabled glyph cooldowns to scale with weapon speed you would have a situation where a dagger wielder would burn Focus much faster than someone wielding a two-handed sword in order to achieve the same output. There would then need to be an active Focus regen mechanic in order to balance this, most likely involving auto/free attacks. That seems a rather large rework that probably won’t happen at this point of development.


    Understanding this makes it clear to me that all weapons need to be balanced for average damage output. This should include balancing dual wielding damage versus a two-handed weapon. To be honest, with weapons all having the same swing speed, why are there differences in the strength bonus? This, and the ability to charge for bigger hits, only reinforces the fact that the biggest weapon is the only choice. In the current iteration if you are not using the biggest hitting weapon for your build you are gimping yourself. If you are not using a shield there is absolutely no reason to not use a two-hander.


    For one handed weapons, without variances in attack speed, this comes down to crit values, both critical hit chance & critical hit damage. In my testing I've noted that critical hit damage appears to be 300% for all three weapons. On paper, using only the values listed on each weapon, excluding strength bonus, including critical hits, a dagger has an average damage of 9.1 and a longsword has an average damage of 10.71. This puts the longsword ahead by 14.95%. If we increase critical hit chance by 15% for each the dagger is then at 11.05 and the longsword is at 13.26 for a difference of 16.66%. The problem of the low base damage is not overcome by crit chance alone and is only exasperated by the introduction of even more crit chance. My solution is to have the native weapon crit also act as a percent multiplier for crit damage. This still results in a damage disparity, although smaller, and you would need to play with the overall numbers to get them closer. Due to both the lower base damage and lower strength bonus versus a target’s damage mitigation I would be in favor for the crit values to be tuned for higher average damage. It would be a gambler's weapon as you could have both bad or good streaks on crits.


    Tackling dual wielding is another beast altogether. Currently while dual wielding you do not hit with the offhand at all while using auto or free attacks. Only by speccing into the dual wield branch of the tactics tree can you do any damage with it. This really makes no sense as you could instead replace Offhand Attack with any Blades attacks and do more damage, especially considering any XP used to train the Offhand skills could be used to make Blades attacks even stronger. I think that those skills need some reworking, but I’ll go into that later. First things first, you need to balance the raw damage output versus a two-handed weapon. If you aren’t attacking with the offhand weapon, what good is it? I dislike the concept of this for dual wielding but the design of the current combat system makes the offhand worth nothing more than a stat stick. In testing dual wield set ups I haven’t been able to determine for certain whether the crit stats for both weapons are being used for the calculation. Crit rate has varied wildly and something appears bugged with it. In order for dual wielding to actually be a thing this has to happen! If the crit stats stack, along with the change to include crit damage, the comparative damage between dual wielding and a two-hander becomes a lot smaller. This still leaves the issue of a widening gap when more crit chance is applied. At this point we need to look at the Dual Wielding skills.


    As already stated the Offhand Attack skill makes no sense in its state. I think this should be changed into a passive buff in the form of attack speed. People like the idea of dual wielding due to the fantasy of being that lightning fast rogue/swashbuckler/dervish. This will help enable that fantasy. In practical terms this will help close the gap in damage versus two-handers. You still won’t be able to have the bigger charged attacks, but you can pull off more of them.


    We’ll use the Offhand Power skill to address another part of the fantasy of the dual wielder, the ability to use the speed of the two weapons to get inside of their opponents defenses. This will be reflected in a buff to all weapon damage while dual wielding. This is where dual wielding truly becomes competitive. If the weapons themselves have been balanced then I think this should remain a percentage buff.


    Although not required to fix dual wielding I would also like to see a change to the Offhand Defense skill. Dual wielding really seems like it should be naturally suited to buffing your ability to parry. Ideally I would like to see this turn the Parry skill into a toggled passive where every time that you parry Focus is spent with advancement in the skill reducing the Focus cost. Another thought is to have it buff the number of attacks that can be parried in a single activation as well as increase the duration of the buff. If all else fails just make it a simple Avoidance buff as that makes more sense to me than an offhand weapon increasing Resistance. Ideally this skill should then use the offhand weapon as the basis for this buff. What this does is cause the individual to have to make a decision on whether they want the full offense of a dagger, the best defense of a longsword or a compromise of the two with a shortsword. This should also function as a source of durability loss for the offhand weapon.



    TLDR:
    There needs to meaningful choices in weapons instead of just ‘Bigger is better.’
     
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  2. Ancev

    Ancev Avatar

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    I guess you could go a few ways with it - but I can see how some weapons should definitely benefit from the Strength Bonus stat. Daggers might not be one of them (although, I think having high strength might help with armor penetration purposes), but I can see how daggers might benefit from stats related to defense, as well as "weapon critical chance" and "weapon critical damage"

    So perhaps dagger damage wouldn't scale very high with strength, but dexterity might help increase the critical chance and critical damage bonus, accounting for more deadly and accurate hits.

    In the MMO Shadowbane, I always enjoyed the mix of character builds... some builds used STR based weapons such as axes, while others used DEX based weapons such as bows, daggers, elven swords, unarmed combat, etc. Dex based characters in SB usually had low to average hit points, high defensive capability, and superior damage output. Characters that used STR based weapons had good damage output, good damage absorption, but lower defense (easier to hit them with attacks), and large hit point pools that took advantage of hit point regeneration. Hit point regeneration on small to average hit point pools were much less effective.
     
    Last edited: Feb 15, 2016
  3. Katrina Bekers

    Katrina Bekers Localization Team

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    I've been dual wielding my entire SotA life but the last wipe.

    I can tell you that the dual wield build/subtree has a fantastic skill: Offhand Attack. And it must be considered as such.

    Why?

    Because it's a very, very, VERY fast "bonus attack" skill that has unique characteristics:

    - It doesn't use focus. Burning your focus at breakneck pace? Still that glyph you should hard-lock would be there to assist you.

    - It doesn't trigger global cooldown. It's the only skill to my knowledge that can be chain used without any delay whatsoever before any other. And trust me, when you chain offhand-offhand-offhand-offhand-offhand-quadslash (= nine attacks in around one second) the damage saturation is HUGE.

    Of course, I agree with weapon balance - especially serious crit reconsideration for smaller-yet-not-faster weapons. I tried to dual wield daggers and it was laughable, even considering the (now slightly fixed) range. I settled with two longswords at the end of R25, and even without pulling themolocks on my level (barely reached 60, GM only in blades), I was still able to solo trolls.
     
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  4. Oba Evesor

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    Just curious, do all the bladed weapons have the same 'charged attack' (non-auto attack) speed? I go back and forth btwn blades and bludgeon and I swear the 'charged attack' is slower w/bludgeon.
     
  5. Gix

    Gix Avatar

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    No, the daggers are much faster to charge.
     
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  6. Mysticvermin

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    I've been doing some more pondering on the imbalance between weapons. There's still a serious need to equalize damage on weapons. Even if/when this happens we will still have an issue with the varying bonuses from strength. This will continue to enforce the issue of the biggest weapon wins. Duke Lorimus & Ancev both got me thinking about Dex focused fighting & accuracy. One of the little tidbits I've learned along the the way is how Dex effects combat. The chance to hit, or dodge rather, is modified by ((Defender's Dex/2) - (Attacker's Dex/4)). What I'm thinking is that all weapons should have a Dex modifier as part of their stats as well. The smaller the weapon the larger the bonus. That would enable daggers to be the most accurate weapons. If balanced correctly the extra hits should make up the difference of the damage lost from the lower Str bonus. In order for this work adequately you would also need to address the issue of how many Str skills/passives are available vs those for Dex. The skill trees are not equal: Light Armor vs Heavy Armor and Earth vs Air.
     
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  7. Mysticvermin

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    Just saw this in the R27 notes:
    There is hope yet!
     
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  8. Gix

    Gix Avatar

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    I'm not expecting daggers to deal equal damage to a sword. I kinda want the "bigger is better" approach for DPS. Thing is, DPS shouldn't be the only factor.

    Ideally, I want them to give us reasons to sacrifice damage for something more practical (higher hit chance, cheaper to repair, faster attack speed, cheaper focus cost, reduced fizzle chances, etc).

    The new parry stuff looks good.
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2016
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  9. Radioman USN

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    Subterfuge skills should have bonuses when Daggers are equipped.
     
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  10. Arkah EMPstrike

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    This thread is 3 years old and daggers are now very formidable weapons that DO synergize well with subterfuge.
     
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  11. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    Ya, but can they do thiso_O?
    [​IMG]
    I think we can do better :)

    I use them on one of my characters, but swards are better, yet they do have great critical.
    It seems you also have to be really close to use them which makes moving targets a challenge :confused:!
    @Arkah EMPstrike , are they a preferred weapon in PvP that you know of?

    :D~TL~
     
    Last edited: May 15, 2019
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  12. Arkah EMPstrike

    Arkah EMPstrike Avatar

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    Daggers have a base 20% critical chance (crit chance is soft capped at around 30%ish when not bugged)

    Sylvan daggers are comparable to meteoric longswords in damage

    They block more damage with Parry than any other weapon

    They receive 50% increased poison effectiveness each, dual wield yields 100% increased poison effectiveness. which synergizes with subterfuge specialization giving up to 30ish% reduced poison cost
     
  13. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    :rolleyes: Yes and that is a big difference...
    I recently changed to double wielding broadswords and noticed things were very different in terms of creatures going down much more slowly than they had before when I used the daggers.
    [​IMG]
    :rolleyes: Some Items Taken Away Through Game Evolution:
    I have two "Bonesteel Daggers" (visual above) which are now stuck in my backpack, I'm suspecting that are now quest items, where before, I was using them and were then named "Hunting Knives"
    :rolleyes:~Time Lord~
     
  14. Boris Mondragon

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    @Time Lord ; Brother if you want to drop things quick with dual wield swords then you need the gear for it. I prefer bronze chain with high strength. Two bronze long swords with mainly str , crit, thrust and double slash bonuses that stack and throw in Bezerker stance at 120. If they run just body slam, turn and kill them before they come out of stun.

    Take bladed combat to 150, thrust and slash to 140 and rend to 120 or higher and they drop quick. Blades and tactics spec. Hit fast, hit hard and hit often. Haste potion and fleet flute to top it off “Grins”.

    Also tactics Spec gives a bezerker stance dmg bonus higher parry and you can drop coup at about one third health instead of 20%.

    R/Boris/El Pirata
     
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  15. Alley Oop

    Alley Oop Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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    report as a bug. hunting daggers are still a thing. i just went and picked another one up after you posted to test.
     
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