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I'm using a superior longsword of vampire (lv61) but I just found a fine mace of vampire (lv47) with 20% chance of stun ( 3 turns ). Should I switch to mace because from what I read on forum: a lot of players consider mace is a must-have weapon for melee players.

Oh... And I was wondering why mage is rather ... "quiet" for quite a while now. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif)
Maybe I'll try estoc later today. I don't really have high hopes about it, though.

At least I'm not that quiet. Only there're too many melees in this thread right now (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif)
When is the last time anyone asking for maging advice here?

Phew.
Comments, anyone?

1. Mages and melees are indeed two different species. Lower-level melees have a certain advantage that they are able to play in higher difficulties than their mage counterparts, but this advantage disappears when they level up, since the difficulty is capped at x10. Then mages can simply facemelt everything with 1-2 clicks.

2. Relating bleed to action speed seems not that good, since it will make haste and scroll of swiftness too overpowered.
Stacking it seems to be a good idea, but you'll have to stack it many times in order to make it effective. Which means you'' probably be dead at higher difficulties.
How about that? Let prof. affect the number of times the bleeding damage is applied.
This should make the bleeding damage more aligned to level of the player, while at the same time not affecting any current system of bleeding damage.

I mentioned awhile back that just moving the proc of the bleed to the start of a round instead of the end would go a long way to making it less 'dangerous' to use.

I think the problem is that the bleeding damage is too low right now when youre at higher level.
It doesn't matter if you need more than 5 turns to kill a monster with bleeding.

I'm using a superior longsword of vampire (lv61) but I just found a fine mace of vampire (lv47) with 20% chance of stun ( 3 turns ). Should I switch to mace because from what I read on forum: a lot of players consider mace is a must-have weapon for melee players.

Mace is better than longsword right now.

At least I'm not that quiet. Only there're too many melees in this thread right now (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif)
When is the last time anyone asking for maging advice here?

When I said mage are "quiet" ... I meant that I didn't heard them whine.** (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif) This seem to be the case since... 0.6.1, I believe.

I wonder if this "quietness" is due to the last patch have some kind of herp-derp bug that made mages power to went over 9000 and absolutely broken more than ever before...? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

Melee camp can't answer this, of course... And the mage camp seems to have learn the lesson from the past (better to just shut up so no one knows, bug is good!) ... This mystery probably will never be revealed. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)


Please don't take this post seriously, k?


** Referring to the Tiap comment that mage seem to be able to facemelt now.

.......

Relating bleed to action speed seems not that good, since it will make haste and scroll of swiftness too overpowered.

I'm not saying this because that like the idea. But why do you think that this would be too OP when its come to bleed? This is exactly how non-bleed weapon works.

This post has been edited by buktore: Sep 25 2011, 09:31

When I said mage are "quiet" ... I meant that I didn't heard them whine.** (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif) This seem to be the case since... 0.6.1, I believe.

I wonder if this "quietness" is due to the last patch have some kind of herp-derp bug that made mages power to went over 9000 and absolutely broken more than ever before...? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

Melee camp can't answer this, of course... And the mage camp seems to have learn the lesson from the past (better to just shut up so no one knows, bug is good!) ... This mystery probably will never be revealed. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)
Please don't take this post seriously, k?
** Referring to the Tiap comment that mage seem to be able to facemelt now.

.......
I'm not saying this because that like the idea. But why do you think that this would be too OP when its come to bleed? This is exactly how non-bleed weapon works.

Meh, I don't find mage broken...at least I am not notified of those bugs. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif)

I think the idea's OP because bleeding deals damage whether you hit the monster later or not.
For stun and PA, you still need to hit the monster again to deal damage.
Of course I'm not a melee, I just try to compare grossly how things work, so it maybe wrong.

I'm using a superior longsword of vampire (lv61) but I just found a fine mace of vampire (lv47) with 20% chance of stun ( 3 turns ). Should I switch to mace because from what I read on forum: a lot of players consider mace is a must-have weapon for melee players.

Maces are pretty good, but they aren't the end-all be-all weapon.

If you're playing on lower difficulties (Hard->Heroic), they don't make so much of a difference. Now if you're playing on harder difficulties (Nightmare+), a good mace is a must have.

Depending on the stats on those weapons, I would recommend trying to get a better overall mace (with a focus on a higher % chance of stun, although 3 turns is awesome at those levels).

I've just bought a pair of maces on the Bazaar (you can usually find some nice ones on there, particularly if you don't participate in WTS Auctions very often), and I have another that I got as a drop. I'll moogle them over to you and you can compare stats.

Bleed weapon might work better than mace at low lv (and low OC boost) / low difficulty, especially when you don't have great status ... Do some experiments and see how its go would be a good idea.

I think the idea's OP because bleeding deals damage whether you hit the monster later or not.
For stun and PA, you still need to hit the monster again to deal damage.

I had requested Tenb so that when your attacks do proc bleed, it will do damage right away, similar to how vampire weapon works. He doesn't seem to like the idea. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sleep.gif) ... He did boost bleed damage afterward, though...

This post has been edited by buktore: Sep 25 2011, 10:13

Make bleeding percentage based instead?

So with this following exaggerated example:

25% damage per turn against regular mobs, 12.5% versus uncommon, 0.4% - requires 250 turns of bleed proc damage to kill - on rare/legendaries? Keep in mind, that's 250 turns of you doing 0 damage with your weapon and relying solely on bleed.

Seems like it would help on higher difficulties, but not so much on lower ones where it would actually be less useful.

All things unrelated:

How silly is it that you can still miss stunned monsters?

Referring to the Tiap comment that mage seem to be able to facemelt now.

I can facemelt up to Nightmare, anything higher I need 3-4 turns or more.
My EDB gear is far from being pefect though, so a better-equipped mage can probably wreak a lot more havoc.
hitokiri84 can facemelt in IWBTH, but then again, he has the firepower of a small army. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

Maces are pretty good, but they aren't the end-all be-all weapon.

If you're playing on lower difficulties (Hard->Heroic), they don't make so much of a difference. Now if you're playing on harder difficulties (Nightmare+), a good mace is a must have.

Depending on the stats on those weapons, I would recommend trying to get a better overall mace (with a focus on a higher % chance of stun, although 3 turns is awesome at those levels).

I've just bought a pair of maces on the Bazaar (you can usually find some nice ones on there, particularly if you don't participate in WTS Auctions very often), and I have another that I got as a drop. I'll moogle them over to you and you can compare stats.

Thanks for your help, after trying both of them in grindfest, I realized that my mace missed more than the longsword but the stun effect is truly good ( especially when I ecountered a Manbear pig ). I think I will stick with my sword a bit more - at least until I got a better mace ^^.

Edit: Oh, I just read your message, thanks again for those maces.

This post has been edited by hawkeyesvn: Sep 25 2011, 12:26

Ok, so no talk of nerfs.

Let's try with another angle then.
Maces are good, no talk of nerfs, instead we buff the other.

For rapiers/estoc, this is my suggestion.
We remove the penetrated armor, and instead make rapiers/estocs penetrate physical mitigation, meaning they do 100% damage against mobs no matter their endurance (take that giants). The only thing that mitigates their damage is the piercing-specific mitigation (and giants lost their piercing mitigation, ha ha).
But let's not remove penetrated armor completely, instead we'll keep it and make it reduce ALL mitigations to zero, including damage specific mitigations like that for piercing.
Now, our rapiers/estocs will truly do 100% damage. But it will also benefit other things, like spells, since all mitigations are gone.
It will also be a big boost for DW, since having a rapier off-hand will do wonders for the main-hand damage, if you manage to get it to proc. And possibly make the club+rapier into a real nasty combo, with PA for 100% "true" damage and stun for +50% damage.
DW could really do with that buff, so that would be nice.

As for bleeding weapons, they suck. My solution is to think outside the box.
Remove bleed entirely.
Instead, replace it with another skill, that decreases the affected monsters attack damage. Call it "deep wounds" or "lacerations" or "cut muscles" or whatever. This will reduce incoming damage as well, and do it more reliably than stun, since it can be stacked (or rather, renewed).
Ideally, it would reduce all damage, not just physical, but also magical (think of cut fingers or something, hard to do the magical gestures when you are lacking the right amount of fingers with which to do them).
Now, "bleeding" weapons will be more defensive, and maybe more suitable to 1-H, since reduced damage combined with higher base absorb should work to make the damage reduction more effective than for someone in light armor.
And double or maybe even triple the duration, so a 1-H can spread it around, to make full use of it. And maybe even retain the current bleed damage, 1-H and DW that spreads it around can still snicker and see their targets take some bleeding damage to soften them up after their initial wild sweep to proc "bleed" to all the enemy mobs, while they concentrate on taking down the main target.

And maybe even fix 1-H a little more, so that the counter-strike now always procs a stun, but only for 1 turn, but instead has a double chance of also proccing the weapons "bleed", PA or stun (if a club, and then for the clubs full stun duration instead of 1 turn).

This will of course again shift maces/clubs into becoming more of an offensive weapon by contrast, since "bleeding" weapons will now be the best choice for decreasing incoming damage.

An Estoc proc with complete penetration of both mitigation AND damage-type-specific-resistance is Bad. Plain Bad. As mentioned above it would break the game. We have Void-based weapons for that, you know.
I had an option of "Damage reducing proc" aswell. My idea was so that enemies afflicted by ArPen/Bleed status should deal approx. half or 2/3 of their damage while being affected. See, the point of Mace class now is so that stunned enemies deal 100% reduced damage (stunned) and take 50% increased damage. So other weapon classes might be dealing something like 100% increased damage (via ArPen or stacking bleed, either one of them) via procs AND lowering enemy damage by 50%. So we can either have 100% + 50% or 50% + 100%.


The reason to pick OVercharge @ late levels of 150+ is because we only have one tier of spells every 20 levels. That makes it 20 AP per tier, with 10 going to tanks/one permanent ability and 10 more are free to spend. Plus the points from training section.

1. Mages and melees are indeed two different species. Lower-level melees have a certain advantage that they are able to play in higher difficulties than their mage counterparts, but this advantage disappears when they level up, since the difficulty is capped at x10. Then mages can simply facemelt everything with 1-2 clicks.

2. Relating bleed to action speed seems not that good, since it will make haste and scroll of swiftness too overpowered.
Stacking it seems to be a good idea, but you'll have to stack it many times in order to make it effective. Which means you'' probably be dead at higher difficulties.
How about that? Let prof. affect the number of times the bleeding damage is applied.
This should make the bleeding damage more aligned to level of the player, while at the same time not affecting any current system of bleeding damage.
I think the problem is that the bleeding damage is too low right now when youre at higher level.
It doesn't matter if you need more than 5 turns to kill a monster with bleeding.

Right. And that is my point. "You'll have to stack it many times in order to make it effective, which means you'll probably be dead at higher difficulties", precisely. As I said, Mace class will still remain superior for Arena/Grindfest/IW farm where there are lots of low-level enemies, while the Bleeder class will be better only in RoB/Boss fights. That would make sense IMO. We dont need three types of weapons which are just the same so it doesnt matter if you pick a mace or an estoc since you can just lolfaceroll the numeric keypad in order to win with either one equipped.
Bleed damage concept itself does not favor "trash-mob farm", due to the duration. It is indeed faster and safer to poke an enemy once more to kill him instead of letting him bleed and therefore be agitated > risk being oneshotted.

Make bleeding percentage based instead?

So with this following exaggerated example:

25% damage per turn against regular mobs, 12.5% versus uncommon, 0.4% - requires 250 turns of bleed proc damage to kill - on rare/legendaries? Keep in mind, that's 250 turns of you doing 0 damage with your weapon and relying solely on bleed.

Seems like it would help on higher difficulties, but not so much on lower ones where it would actually be less useful.

...leads to lulz and giggles in IWBTH exp farm run. Slice the enemies within up to six turns irregardless of their HP/PL/etc just cause they're "regular".
Percentage-based bleed might be an option, yes, but that will almost completely wipe out the difference between a good bleeder and the bad one.

Thanks for your help, after trying both of them in grindfest, I realized that my mace missed more than the longsword but the stun effect is truly good ( especially when I ecountered a Manbear pig ). I think I will stick with my sword a bit more - at least until I got a better mace ^^.

Edit: Oh, I just read your message, thanks again for those maces.

Try to look for a good scythe or katana.

Ok, so no talk of nerfs.

You can't really propose balancing without nerfs. The alternative invites power creep which nobody really wants.

As it stands, crushing weapons are the only type that serve both a defensive and offensive purpose. Before the 0.6.1 patch, they were also the only weapon type with a defensive proc and now they keep most of the old functionality (no more permastun) but also get a major damage boost. I would go so far as to suggest that the damage boost was given by Tenboro as consolation for removing permastun. Both uses of the crushing weapon type are quite broken when compared to the other types, imo. I think that a better option would involve both reducing stun's effect and adding some defensive effects on the other weapon procs.

You can't really propose balancing without nerfs. The alternative invites power creep which nobody really wants.

As it stands, crushing weapons are the only type that serve both a defensive and offensive purpose. Before the 0.6.1 patch, they were also the only weapon type with a defensive proc and now they keep most of the old functionality (no more permastun) but also get a major damage boost. I would go so far as to suggest that the damage boost was given by Tenboro as consolation for removing permastun. Both uses of the crushing weapon type are quite broken when compared to the other types, imo. I think that a better option would involve both reducing stun's effect and adding some defensive effects on the other weapon procs.

How long you're playing as a melee?

I feel like if you've given an enemy a large enough wound that they are bleeding out a sizable amount of their hp each round, that it would be logical to increase the chance your attack will hit, and perhaps cause them to take a tad bit more (not overly so) damage, due to the fact that their large, gaping wound will be hindering their movement, you could theoretically aim your weapon towards a more vulnerable spot.

When was the last time you got a huge cut anywhere on your body and were still able to move about the exact same as before? Particularly if it is on an arm or leg.

This post has been edited by Spartan0021: Sep 25 2011, 18:04

I feel like if you've given an enemy a large enough wound that they are bleeding out a sizable amount of their hp each round, that it would be logical to increase the chance your attack will hit, and perhaps cause them to take a tad bit more (not overly so) damage, due to the fact that their large, gaping wound will be hindering their movement, you could theoretically aim your weapon towards a more vulnerable spot.

When was the last time you got a huge cut anywhere on your body and were still able to move about the exact same as before? Particularly if it is on an arm or leg.

We've concluded from the case of estoc that any real-world logic doesn't apply on HV (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

Yeah ha, I also forgot that I have an extra 5 AP left over...but I've also bought 26 ability boosts ha.

I suppose that makes a rather large difference in how many points I've got.

From what I've been reading, I'm not even recommended to start getting OC boosts before level 120 or so, so I'd say I'm already well ahead of the curve (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif) .

But yeah, I know what you mean. Everyone has been saying OC doesn't make much of a difference under 120, but I would say it makes a nice difference. And once my ability tiers start coming in the 20s, I'll have a LOT of extra points to throw into OC.

Also, experience tanks works, so it's worth the AP to get them, if you want to level faster.
And every tier requires a total of 8 AP to get 10% OC (and a 3.3% damage increase when overcharge is full), so it's quite a heavy investment in AP for some pretty poor results.

@ Randommember

- You can't have PA remove specific mit. It breaks the game in so many ways.

- PA use to increase magic damage as well. Tenb nerfed it sometime ago...

- I already suggested about reduced mobs damage when they bleed. Tenb doesn't seem to be interested.

....
Melee character without maxed OC boost has no excess AP. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif)

An Estoc proc with complete penetration of both mitigation AND damage-type-specific-resistance is Bad. Plain Bad. As mentioned above it would break the game. We have Void-based weapons for that, you know.
I had an option of "Damage reducing proc" aswell. My idea was so that enemies afflicted by ArPen/Bleed status should deal approx. half or 2/3 of their damage while being affected. See, the point of Mace class now is so that stunned enemies deal 100% reduced damage (stunned) and take 50% increased damage. So other weapon classes might be dealing something like 100% increased damage (via ArPen or stacking bleed, either one of them) via procs AND lowering enemy damage by 50%. So we can either have 100% + 50% or 50% + 100%.
The reason to pick OVercharge @ late levels of 150+ is because we only have one tier of spells every 20 levels. That makes it 20 AP per tier, with 10 going to tanks/one permanent ability and 10 more are free to spend. Plus the points from training section.

Having piercing weapons bypass physical resists do kinda take away the value of an ethereal weapon, apart from the no-burden thing, so maybe that was a bit too powerful.
But maybe double the chance of proccing PA and have PA completely remove physical mitigation but not the damage specific mitigations (would make ethereal weapons good still, since I do believe their damage are still reduced by physical mitigation, just that there is no specific mitiation for void damage).

Does make another weapontype for a DW do more damage, but gives no benefit for mages.

With the +50% damage to stunned targets, that means a monster will have more damage done to it with PA than with stun, if they have more than 30% physical damage mitigation.
I don't really know what most monsters physical damage mitigation is at, but even with longer durations for PA and the ability to renew it, it still wouldn't match up, since even damage makes it worse since the mob still attacks back.
Maybe add in a +50% damage to a penetrated target just as for a stunned one?
That would give rapiers/estocs a double damage bonus essentially, not only removing physical mitigation but also increasing the damage for some truly awesome hits.
And have PA apply before the hit, which would make crits really damaging, since it would proc PA which would then apply to the following critical hit, increasing it's damage and removing physical mitigation.
Suddenly, playing DW with a rapier of balance in the mainhand and a crit-enchancing weapon in the off-hand takes on a new dimension, playing hard on the crits.

It would also make more sense, if you hit a target with a blunt object, they will be dazed after the hit, but if you hit them with a thin piercing object, you will penetrate them together with the hit, not afterwards.

Or maybe, to think outside the box, make the penetrated armor into a instant proc instead of a debuff applied to the target. Something along the lines of vampire and illithid, that applies to the target instantly and only for that hit. Then you could really beef up the damage, and have a penetrating hit ignore physical mitigation and maybe do +100% damage (again, a crit would be truly devastating) but it does not leave a debuff on the target and no other hits will benefit from it.


As for bleeding weapons and reduced damage.
Maybe make it be a slowing debuff then? That would make the bleed part a bit weaker, but would reduce incoming damage since they would get fewer attacks. Would also work nicely to reduce heavy damage from skill attacks since it would take longer for them to get the mana/spirit to use them, compared to the players action speed.
Question is if that would benefit 1-H or not, since fewer attacks mean less incoming damage, but also means fewer attacks to block an fewer chances to proc a counter-attack.
Which would mean 1-H would be more stuck with rapiers.

And I still like my idea about a 1-H buff, in a 100% chance of a 1 turn stun on a counter-attack, with a normal chance for the weapon to also do it's normal proc (or even procs, if a vampire/illithid/banshee).
I really think 1-H is in need of some love.

I'm using a superior longsword of vampire (lv61) but I just found a fine mace of vampire (lv47) with 20% chance of stun ( 3 turns ). Should I switch to mace because from what I read on forum: a lot of players consider mace is a must-have weapon for melee players.

Maces are the primary 2-handed weapon IMO. And bleeding weapons are the worst.
Also, of vampire is kinda bad, since it does little damage to them and the heal you get from it isn't really worth it. Better to have a of slaughter or possibly of balance, that kills the mob quicker instead.

I personally favor of balance, since I like having a high hit chance, which helps with domino strikes a bit. And the crit is nice too for the added chance to proc.
With my current mace I got a 30% chance to stun for 4 turns, and a 23% chance to crit (which means an automatic proc).

This post has been edited by Randommember: Sep 25 2011, 18:10

Should I bother investing in Regen, or should I stick to Cure magic? I have the distinct feeling the HP restoration from Regen is quite a bit less than the Cure spell.

Should I bother investing in Regen, or should I stick to Cure magic? I have the distinct feeling the HP restoration from Regen is quite a bit less than the Cure spell.

Definite yes if you are going light armor.

You guys should start moving your discussion to 'a few request' thread.
It has become too professional for anyone asking for experts' help. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

Should I bother investing in Regen, or should I stick to Cure magic? I have the distinct feeling the HP restoration from Regen is quite a bit less than the Cure spell.

It depends.
Regen may cure more or less, but it's main use is to stabilize your hp.

Hey guys im a mage type character and i was wondering if it is worth it to invest in the tier2 nukes (meteor, blizzard, etc....) then their tier 1 equivalent (inferno, snowstorm, etc). I didnt try it much but the damage increase is neglible to the increase in mana consumption but that might be because im low level.
Also should i be pumping my AP into elemental resist or just go with the passive abilitys?
Oh and ive been using light armor because i feel like im taking to much dmg, should i be using cloth?

Thanks in advance! (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

This post has been edited by SuperHuy: Sep 25 2011, 18:46