Identity of One-Handed Weapon Types - What's working, what is not

thanks so far for the input.

the main problem with slow weapons i see is the scaling of fix damage. fast weapons scale better with fix rolls on itself AND on other gearpieces. I dont know of a single modifier that benefits slow weapons more than fast weapons.

also i think some thoughts about what the weapon types should represent would be welcome.

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simnel wrote:

I find it a bit weird that you basically look at scepters and regular maces as one item, when they're essentially two different types of items. It's not surprising that you find the differences contradictory, they're not the same class of item. You do the same thing with swords and rapiers, which are also different weapons.

Still, this guide is an interesting concept, and I appreciate the work!

why is this weird?

maces and sceptres are both categorized as maces and profit from the same nodes.

as is, maces have nothing going for them except for the skill glacial hammer. they are slow AND have low crit. it is close to impossible to get 300 dps on a mace.

sceptres have the potential to go for crit but the implicit mod on them doesn't help in that regards. if you wanted to provide good elemental damage crit weapons, the sceptres would have to be fast to scale elemental damage affixes. but as they are slow, their implicit mod only really helps casters (and potentially avatar of fire chars)

swords and rapiers also profit from the same nodes and even have the same amount of crit. due to attackspeed AND range on rapiers being higher, they actually are the only endgame option for swords.

@Fruz:
what is the advantage of having high accuracy for you? not going the way to resolute technique? because i assume you won't be critting to often and if you dont crit often then resolute technique is not only an easy but most often the best choice

The advantage is simple : crits.
You don't need to fully specialize on crits to see the difference, a 10%q flicker strike is enough for example to have a real one.
Plus I'm saving a lot of points that I can use to get more dmg/survability.

With that, I can add adiamond flask against rare necros and it's more than enough to have a significant different.

( I have no crit modifiers on my axe )

...It's weird for the reasons I said :-)

Yes, they're both "maces". But the reason the nodes/abilities seems schizo to you is because they're two separate weapons that have two separate roles to play in the game. As a result, if you try to analyze "maces" as a whole, you get what looks like an utter mess. Sure, Galvanic Hammer (10% phys 20% elemental w/maces) is usable with a Bladed Mace. But why would you? It's clearly designed for scepters. If you break them up into two subcategories - and look at the idea that they can take nodes designed for the other subcategory as a bonus rather than a negative - they look a lot better.

Edit: I'm not sure why you think it's particularly hard to get 300+ dps on a mace... I'm using a 270 dps that was dirt-cheap, when I bought it there were tons of higher-damage maces available. Right now, the top 10 nemesis weapons (by pdps) on POE.XYZ include 4 swords, 3 axes, 2 maces, and 1 claw. Seems about right to me.

And i told you that it's not. Elemental damage works neither with stun-maces nor with implicit-ele-maces aka sceptres.

If you look at a split-up weapon type you will realize that you are seriously lacking in damage boosting passive nodes.
If you want to deal decent damage with a sceptre you have to pick the stun-mace-type nodes and then it's maces with and without crit again.

I feel like you're totally missing my point :-) In any case, as I said, I found this to be an interesting and solid analysis - thanks!

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simnel wrote:

I feel like you're totally missing my point :-) In any case, as I said, I found this to be an interesting and solid analysis - thanks!

again: you say that sceptres and maces are two separate items.
i say: they are both maces. if you have a normal mace with explicit crit on it, it will fulfill the same role as the sceptre for physical crits, if it has triple elemental roll it will work the same way the sceptre with triple ele does.

they work with the same skills and passives, the only thing that divides them is their base stats.

daggers have the same differentiation. the kris weapons and the ambushers/slaughter knives have different base values by a fair margin, still both are daggers.

that leaves the implicit mods.

so your point is just what's written on the implicit mods?

a resolute technique sword user knows no difference between a sword and a rapier. both implicit affixes don't matter. for a physical dpser the implicit mods on maces dont matter in the same way.

in conclusion seeing that the similarities by far overweigh the differences i don't see your point of declaring those two basetypes as different weapons and the passives as related to one but not the other.

and that is the main issue. the passives are way too generalized to work out a specialized subclassing of the base weapon type mace. i can see the intention in what they did, but the result does simply not work.

shameful selfbump

bumpety bump

Agreed, a lot of things in the game are useless or don't make much sense.

I'm gonna mention another one of those, related to elemental skills and weapon types.
If you look at skill gems and the tree, from skill distribution and those +30 specific weapon element nodes you can easily spot the connection str - fire, dex - cold, int - lightning.

However, elemental weapon skills just don't follow that.
Infernal blow (STR) - sword, axe, mace, staff and unarmed as bonus
Glacial hammer (DEX) - mace, staff
Lightning strike (INT) - all weapons

If you look at it, only infernal follows the STR pattern by being useable with STR weapons or str hybrids and the other two make no sense at all. Daggers and claws can use only LS, and mace and staff can use all three, which really doesn't look very fair.

And it's real easy to do it right:
Infernal blow (STR) - sword, axe, mace, staff and unarmed
Glacial hammer (DEX) - sword, axe, dagger, claw
Lightning strike (INT) - dagger claw, mace, staff

See? Each weapon got two elemental skills to choose from, each skill got four weapons and stat alignment skill-weapon fits. The only snag is glacial hammer would have to be reworked to 'frosty rend' or something... wait, that sounds like a cocktail.

that's also true.

frosty rend doesn't sound too bad though