Are 2H swords the best at... anything?

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raics wrote:

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Bars wrote:

The phys damage variant is good, for elemental damage you simply can't compete with one-handers, they have a crushing attack speed advantage and can be dual wielded for even more attack speed.

Yeah, 2H weapons make up for lower attack speed with higher ele rolls, however once you add in external sources of flat damage they start to lose the battle. Yeah, who would of thunk that an ele build would want to stack additional ele damage, makes no sense, right?

Probably the same kind of person that would expect a 2H weapon to be stronger, not break even in best case scenario.

Well, as far as phys damage goes, two-handers are stronger. The problems are mostly cost and availability.

You could make an excellent 2H crit flickerstriker or spectral thrower with a solid exquisite blade. Just thinking about a 2h sword crit abyssus juggernaut makes me want to build one.

Maybe I'll build one.

All GGG has to do is allow 2H swords to use whirling blade.

They would be if close range melee skills got a 100% buff. real problem is lvl 1/20 cyclone discharge does more deeps than 21/20 cyclone in a GG weapon. Its all a math game at the end of the day and melee been short changed.

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Bars wrote:

Well, as far as phys damage goes, two-handers are stronger. The problems are mostly cost and availability.

Yeah, physical is pretty much fine, higher base and higher flat damage rolls multiply with damage mods nicely, the equivalent of a 250dps 1hander is something like a 450dps 2hander, which is theoretically worth the trouble (if we assume we need the extra dps in the first place, the game being what it is).

However, elemental rolls have no local scaling, three T1 elemental rolls give you something like ~400 base dps on a 2aps 1hander and ~550 base dps on a 1.6aps 2hander. When you add both flat damage auras and some loose damage from other gear for, say 200 base damage you get some 800dps with a 1hander and 870 with a 2hander, and you can stack external base damage much more easily than roll three T1 ele rolls so in reality it's even worse.

I think it would have been a better idea to give weapons a 'more weapon elemental damage' roll which would go higher on 2handers instead of giving them higher flat rolls and maybe in addition to that.

Another train of thought if we start going there: There is no reason for 2H swords to have a slower attack speed than 1H swords. If you ask someone doing HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts), and these guys fence with all types of historical swords from rapiers to broadswords to longswords and zweihanders, they'll tell you one handed swords aren't really faster apart from some very light and not particularly strong light dueling thrusting weapons.

A sword moves as fast as you can swing it and most one handed swords are even slower than two-handers because they might be lighter, but not as lighter as people think, and you do have to swing them with one hand. A standard two-handed longsword would actually be easier - and faster - to wield than, say, a rapier (which are surprisingly heavy and have nothing in common with fencing epees).

This is all completely irrelevant as we can't look for realism in an ARPG. I just thought it's an interest piece of information.

To the point: They could easily make 2H swords with as much attack speed as the fastest one-handers, which would be a good solution to the 1H vs. 2H elemental damage issue.

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Bars wrote:

A sword moves as fast as you can swing it and most one handed swords are even slower than two-handers because they might be lighter, but not as lighter as people think, and you do have to swing them with one hand. A standard two-handed longsword would actually be easier - and faster - to wield than, say, a rapier (which are surprisingly heavy and have nothing in common with fencing epees).

This is all completely irrelevant as we can't look for realism in an ARPG. I just thought it's an interest piece of information.

To the point: They could easily make 2H swords with as much attack speed as the fastest one-handers, which would be a good solution to the 1H vs. 2H elemental damage issue.

True enough, two hands on the hilt provide tons of leverage, and 2h swords weren't nearly as bulky as they're presented in media. Pop culture is wrong on many accounts, for instance a longsword was a 2h weapon and that's something PoE gets right and what we refer to as a longsword was a different weapon. Actually, I saw only two games to date that classify Estoc as a 2h weapon that it actually was, one is Pillars of Eternity and other Castlevania SOTN :)

About attack speed boost, yeah, it would solve the sword problem, but staves, axes and maces would still suck. That's the main reason I wanted a damage multiplier in this case, it's independent of speed, though it would require a rebalance of damage values.

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ThatsSoGoodman wrote:

For sub-mirror-tier 2-handers, I can't think of a single build that I would rather use a 2h sword for than an Atziri's Disfavour.

Maybe because sub-mirror-tier 2-hand swords are just not as good as Atziri's Disfavour?
But on the other hand there are ways to build a cheap and very strong char with:

Here is someone using it with horrible gear and with a low level char. Maybe that could give you an idea what you could do with good gear and a high level char:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH8wZ-wsqsw

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666lol666 wrote:

I strongly oppose fixing core game problems with uniques, it's a matter of principle.

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raics wrote:

About attack speed boost, yeah, it would solve the sword problem, but staves, axes and maces would still suck. That's the main reason I wanted a damage multiplier in this case, it's independent of speed, though it would require a rebalance of damage values.

Staves could also easily get an attack speed boost, as for axes and maces, it would be grossly unrealistic there. Of course, once again it's pointless to speak about realism and if we heave to get technical:
- axes were rarely used as battle weapons, only one handed and weren't a particularly good weapon
- two handed polearms, on the other hand, were an incredibly potent fighting weapon and swords were mostly a sidearm and were used for convenience as a civilian weapon since you can't go on your day-to-day business carrying a big fucking polearm (same goes for spears and pikes)
- maces, flails and warhammers were again used only onehanded and were strictly specialized weapons for use by heavily armored fighters against other heavily armored opponents


TLDR: staves can get an attack speed boost, 2H aces and maces could get some type of damage multiplier as you suggested but I think having them remain specialized phys damage weapons is not bad at all.

About Pillars of Eternity: looked promising but quickly got me bored which was a huge disappointment as I've made perhaps 10 full playthroughs of Baldur's Gate 2 and was looking forward to reliving the experience. It's either subpar or I'm burned out from too much BG2.

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666lol666 wrote:

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ThatsSoGoodman wrote:

For sub-mirror-tier 2-handers, I can't think of a single build that I would rather use a 2h sword for than an Atziri's Disfavour.

Maybe because sub-mirror-tier 2-hand swords are just not as good as Atziri's Disfavour?
But on the other hand there are ways to build a cheap and very strong char with:

Here is someone using it with horrible gear and with a low level char. Maybe that could give you an idea what you could do with good gear and a high level char:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH8wZ-wsqsw

lamo that guy talks like Christopher walken with german accent