Tactical Weapon Question?

I’ve been playing for a few weeks - and having a lot of fun. When it comes to optimization of melee damage output (DPS?), what’s the consensus approach? Is high base weapon damage most important? What about slow 2H weapons vs faster 1H weapons?

The Meteoric weapons seem to pack a good punch - but I’m curious about other player’s strategies.

 

Depends a lot on your progress. When you're getting started and using fairly junky weapons, 2h is pretty good because you'll do more auto/free damage and more glpyh damage than with dual wield. Once you get to the point where you have nicer weapons, dual wield is usually better because you just get a ton more stats and bonuses and also do slightly better glyph damage. Offhand attack just keeps getting better as you progress also.

Meteoric weapons generally out damage bronze, but if your +critical damage gets high enough, bronze becomes better. Bronze becomes a lot more viable for tactics specialists, because of the big crit damage bonus on berserker stance. Also, bleed attacks can't crit, so meteoric tends to be better than bronze vs. beefy mobs that can bleed, regardless of tactics spec.

There are a lot of good special weapon components and artifact weapons that are better than the normal stuff too. Mossy handles, sylvan blades, etc. Some of that stuff used to not be practical to use all the time, but it's pretty easy to get good masterworks and enchantments on rare weapons since re rolls were added to crafting.

edit: Talking about PvE here btw. I don't PvP much, but I think it's fair to say that big hits and big crits are a lot more valuable in PvP than they are in PvE.

 

Im extremely biased because the following strategy has never failed me in other mmos, and I also love the playstyle:

crit crit crit

All of the metal in my gear is copper or bronze. I wear mostly all supple leather. My weapons (2h polearm) are usually always bronze. I am subterfuge spec, and spend combat points focused on Armor Weak Points, Backstab, Sneak Attack (about to hit GM as I type this!), and the polearm tree (2nd spec) - my next big mission is to raise Bec de Faucon from 81 to GM. My goal is to first maximize my critical hit chance, then maximize my critical hit damage. Ideally, Id like to expect to critical hit around 75%-90% of the time. I can tolerate as low as 50% .

Tactically, when fighting a group of mobs, Ill sneak up and open with sneak attack (or Sap if I am in the mood), and then quickly Skewer any melee fighting mobs. I usually use Leg Sweep on mages and archers to break their running (high dex mobs almost never take the immobilize effect from Skewer). I spam Puncture such that every mob Im fighting has the max number of bleeds. Given my strategy as described above with skills and bronze/copper/supple gear, my bleed effects often crit for like 50-60 dmg. I am GM Flurry/Swiftness, so I auto-attack swing the polearm fast too. For bigger fights, Id use fully charged GM Dodge, Evade, Flurry, Ignite Weapon, and use lots of Push. Oh, also Im GM Poison, so theres poison dots ticking away as well. So this basically creates this massive spamfest of ticking effects that all crit much of the time, with melee opponents struggling to strike me more than 2-3x the encounter (theyre either immobilized, knocked down, or constantly getting knocked back).

This makes me pretty useless against something like a wyvern As an assassin, I dont expect to solo magical creatures like wyverns. Thats for you pala... warriors to do .

Most other game systems let me achieve a diff strategy of 1-2 shot kill for things around my level. My base damage is dinky and I can only occasionally 1-shot a green large timber wolf. However, I do not mind taking on crowds with the polearm and draining them with many DoT effects that each crit often, its kind of funny to watch. My playstyle in other games would never last against all the Rouges and Bandits in Elysian Foothills. With this AOE crit-frequently-for-lowish-dmg strategy, they mostly stand there immobilized with damage tickers spewing yellow numbers out of them.


Oh, wait a sec...

...then why do mine have crits and yellow numbers when they tick? Im so confused now!

 

Apparently there's a bug(?) that let's you crit on the first bleed tick of puncture. Tested just now and that was the only tick that ever crits out of a few hundred attempts. I don't have polearm spec, so I can't test the spinning attack bleed, but rend was intentionally nerfed to not crit a very long time ago.