Project: Community Skills Guide

Another good use for pets - regardless of the tree it's in or how many hits it can take - is to summon one in-between you and all the monsters in that Zoo you just opened up. The summoned pet now gives you 1-?? turns to back off (or teleport away) and let some AoE spells/thrown/bolts fly.

As for Golemancy in particular, I find it to be much like Promethian Magic as far as pets go: getting that Mustache Golem ASAP makes the first 2-3 Floors quite easy, but beyond that you better have a backup plan, because it's going to be up to you to kill things again once you reach Floors 4 and beyond.

 

I diggle the concept behind this thread. However, I really to want to ramble about something that's no longer the discussion topic. What's the one for this week? Golemancy?

 

Golemancy or Weapon Skills. I'll wait to add the Golemancy section to the PDF until after the weekend, so people who want to weigh in still can. BUT, it is Friday! Weapon Skills are now up for consideration.

Swords/Axes/Maces/Staves/Unarmed Combat
Type: Warrior
Role: Turbocharger or Payload
This skill group serves best as a way to augment more powerful skills, or can be used as a source of powerful late game advantage, frequently both. But it is not particularly powerful in the early game.
Theme: Skillful Use of Your Weapon (Not that one)
Weapon skills make a particular category of weapon (or no weapon at all) more advantageous to the character in a number of ways, including more damage and more combat related secondary stats. Each tree also offers an activated ability that creates an AoE attack and, sometimes, other effects.
Pros:
Weapon skills make combat easier. Sword skill decreases the damage you take and the damage you deal out by raising your counter attack rate. Axes deal a little more damage than swords, on average, and the Axes skill raises your Critical Hit rate, meaning your attacks will get countered less frequently and deal more damage in a single attack. Maces offers the same damage bonuses as Axes (one more than Swords) and a small critical hit bonus, but the real power is in the tree's two Knockback abilities and one of the best AoE activated abilities. Staves skill translates into more block, a little counter, some damage and increased magical abilities, plus it has pretty much the same excellent AoE ability as Maces. Unarmed Combat offers unparalleled secondary stat bonuses, two activated abilities with knockback and increases the damage of both melee and ranged attacks while leaving both hands free to carry tomes, orbs or shields.
Cons:
Weapon skills only provide bonuses when you are wielding the right type of weapon, meaning you will often find weapons with "better" stats than what you are using that don't get your skill bonuses, which can be disappointing, particularly when you find a Chest of Evil. Their damage bonuses are often smaller than one might like, as well. Unarmed Combat has a hard time dealing damage to creatures on later floors and probably won't hurt Dredmor at all (except for with its Aetherial damage).
Synergies:
All weapon skills combo well with Dual Wielding, as the bonuses from weapon skills will double as well. Unarmed Combat is fantastic with Tinkering (for crossbow bolts) and Blacksmithing (thrown weapons) as well as the relevant ranged combat skills. Staves is good for casters who want a little melee power, just in case, without sacrificing too much casting power. Blacksmithing lets one make the right type of weapon for your skill.
Takeaway:
While these skills are narrow in their outlook they are powerful in that narrow area. A person looking to maximize melee combat will benefit markedly from both Swords and Axes, a rogue looking for a melee panic button might look into Maces, a wizard without a stave is just asking for trouble and Unarmed Combat has surprising applications. These are good skills for people who like to build inexorable, but not terribly flashy fighters or are looking to add a little melee versatility to a long range character.

 

My 2 zorkmids: weapon skills are far too restrictive to be of use barring excellent RNG luck or a craft-heavy build. They are, as Admiral Ackbar so qualifiedly puts it:

 

I agree with Lorellian insofar as Weapon Skills are not worth it on their own. However, throw in dual wielding and you are looking at a different beast altogether because it doubles the passive benefits of each level of the tree (Also gives you silly stats from grabbing the capstone). Another important thing to bear in mind is the simple fact that you are wielding TWO BOOSTED weapons. Even with the tree boosts, a non-dual wielder will have a hard time punching through the of enemies that have it, but a dual wielder is generally guaranteed the full damage of at least one boosted weapon at worst.

Dual wield changes everything in those regards as well. If you are not dual wielding, you often find yourself in a situation where you have to choose between a weapon you did not specialize in to maximise your sheer damage, or to stick with a weaker weapon so you can retain the non-damage benefits (accuracy/counter/crit/etc) of your specialist weapon type. Considering you will typically need both to get by (i.e. sheer damage AND non-damage benefits), being routinely forced to choose between either one or the other is an unpleasant place to be. However, if you are dual wielding, you can simply equip both weapons instead of having to choose between either. With that barrier out of the way, on the balance of probabilities, you will find high tier versions of your specialist weapons eventually.

Special Mentions
Dual Wield Swords - The doubled parry stats (18) greatly mitigate the cost of not having a shield equipped. Also synergyzes with dual wielding to give you stupidly high parry stats.
Dual Wield Axes - Increases crit by 24 (!). This is great both for melee and range

Bottom line? If you are going to get weapon trees, get dual wield as well, or don't get them at all.

P/S: Dual Wield Maces - (To the best of my knowledge, the odds of passives procing don't double, but I could be wrong. Can anyone clarify)

 

I think DW is essential for any melee build. The odds are that you will usually have one uber weapon and one almost as uber by the mid game. So with DW and no weapon skills at all you are already doing tremendous damage in melee. Usually this is well worth trading a pathetic shield/orb/book for.

Face it, shields suck badly as they are. They are only worth carrying if you are melee only AND do not have DW. I cannot find a balance to this. Even the Clockwork Deflector is not good enough to bother carrying as anything other than a squishy mage that should never melee anyway.

I would like to see *ALL* specific types of weapons skills disappear from the game in favor of specializations that add generalized benefits to all types of weapons.

Instead of Sword, Axe, Mace, Stave, Shield, and Unarmed, you would have Damage, Accuracy, Counter, Blocking, Dodging, and Procs.

Dodging would be *Melee Dodging* so it would not replace Artful Dodger, but would supplement it in a way. Procs would look at what you can already proc and add to the chance of that actually happening.

Ideas?

 

Yeah Dual wielding is the way to go. Shield are pretty meh. If your using a heavy armor build you won't find yourself in dire need of the bonus AA or blocking. Imperial armor and helmet with a pair of serpentine pants is 25 AA which is enough for competely block all non exotic damage till about the last 2-3 floors. The rest of the equipment is better spent on resist, regen, and damage. I believe that mace or stave are the best tree because their last weapons have exotic damage that dreadmor isn't immune too. Since people already talked about most the stuff I thought I would chime in on unarmed.

I love unarmed gish builds.Tomes are very powerful and all of the expect little black book has chance at doing an extra effect that scales off of magic power. Both tomes have a chance at procs even if you wield the same type of tome. This means Dairy of Whills and your money problems are over (40+ gold a hit). 2 universal principles and almost nothing with be able to fight back after your first hit. Dual wielding tomes is a lot of fun but heavily relays on luck because CoE will not drop tomes and they are quite rare. Unarmed gives 14 counter, 11 block, and 7 dodge, making quite a bit harder to hit. Cloak of Sagan was made for this build. I like to take the astrology tree with this build to keep the Aethereal theme going. Just walk into a room throw down Star Aligned until monsters either dead or paralyzed then mop up with your feet and tomes.

 

I keep hearing this and it keeps not being true.

You can also gish.

 

FaxCelestis, you have serious *Uber* gear. You had nearly twice the as the . That is insane. It was literally +60 damage on any hit just due to . You did not need DW, but even as early as level 2 you can effectively double your damage without uber gear by having DW. No weapon skill can quite compare to that.

 

...which is why I say weapon skills are bad, not dual-wielding is good. You can do without dual-wield, but if you're taking a weapon skill you kind of have to take dual-wield to make it worthwhile.

 

For what it's worth, at least as of 1.0.9 the dual wield skill is not essential to make dual wielding worth it. It's a 38% penalty to only. IIRC your only applies once to each type, so two weapons with the same damage type might come out to less damage than one if you don't have dual wield. But if you have one and one weapon, you can come out ahead wielding both of them even after the penalty -- and you still get 100% of the exotic damages from both.

Mind you this could all be invalid with 1.0.10. Haven't checked.

 

I don't have that much to add, but the fact that the staff weapon skill has an on hit stun proc as well as a controlled 6 square attack that has a 50% chance to stun makes it... stunningly good for a gish character imo. Both of those basically serve to increase defense. While it certainly won't hold up to CoE weapons, if you get a CoE staff that isn't as good as another weapon type, the bonus can carry it above imo.

The 14 block, 4 magic power and more EDR than you can shake a stick at from wielding two with DW doesn't hurt either.

 

I encourage all debate about Dual Wielding to be saved for the Dual Wielding skill, as opposed to the weapons skills. =/

 

They are, unfortunately, intertwined. You can't really discuss one without the other... at least you can't discuss weapon skills in a vacuum without DW. You probably could discuss DW without weapon skills.

 

I disagree. I've had plenty of sword and board characters with a weapon skill but no DW. I agree that they didn't do as well as those with DW, but optimization isn't the point of this thread, its to carefully look at each skill individually. Yes, you can make notes of synergies, but discussing DW without mentioning weapon skills =/= a synergy, its wandering off topic.

 

If we are going to say DW does not belong in the discussion about weapon skills, then I suppose Shields and Armor Mastery does not either? What about Artful Dodger?

If we limit it like this then we should put this topic of DW off for next time around. What weapon skills are best and what need serious work?

And back to the idea I had earlier, why not replace weapon skills with more general skills? Here is a quote so you need not scroll up:

"I would like to see *ALL* specific types of weapons skills disappear from the game in favor of specializations that add generalized benefits to all types of weapons.

Instead of Sword, Axe, Mace, Stave, Shield, and Unarmed, you would have Damage, Accuracy, Counter, Blocking, Dodging, and Procs.

Dodging would be *Melee Dodging* so it would not replace Artful Dodger, but would supplement it in a way. Procs would look at what you can already proc and add to the chance of that actually happening."

Struck through since FaxCelestis is correct below.

 

This is not the Suggestions forum.

 

Correct on all counts. While I think Shield and Armor Mastery can be combined, a la weapons/unarmed, I would like to see all of these discussed separate from weapon skills, as they really deserve their own treatment. What are their pros/cons, what are their synergies, ect.

 

Welp, let's see.

Swords are a Rogue's bread and butter. Counter naturally runs highest for Rogues (Cad+Nim), and generally Rogues prefer low- armors, so scoring high Counter (and Dodge) is the best way to stay alive. The Trompenant is also good for getting a pre-emptive strike on a closing foe, which is golden.

Axes are for Warriors. Criticaling means less swings per kill in the long run, which means less opportunity to get (counter-)attacked. The Axenado is kind of pointless, though, because as a Warrior the last thing you want (at least until the Inverse Minion Law is fixed) is to be surrounded.

Maces are all-purpose weapons. After all, who doesn't want to keep their enemies away from them? Rogues get more time to throw/shoot stuff, Wizards get to cast another spell or two, and Warriors can buy time to slug a potion or an omlette and get back to hacking.Maces also share the most useful template (imho) with Staves when it comes to activated abilities.

Staves are clearly Wizard fare, but the ability to stun a foe is by far the best proc for Warriors, who benefit most from having an extra turn with the enemy right there in Melee range. This skill just screams for a gish to take full advantage of it, but even a straight Warrior can take decent advantage of a single skill point put into this tree (remember, you don't need to be wielding a staff to get the proc!)

 

I'm not trying to argue with you or derail your thread, this is just me trying to give some input on your final goal of a community driven skill guide (which is an absolutely awesome idea, by the way!). I will also abide by your wishes of course.

The thing about that Lorrelian is that talking about weapon skills in the absence of DW can have people saying things like 'well, don't take this because the benefits aren't worth it' when, with DW, stacking them twice might make it viable. I'm not saying discuss the skills of DW (since that obviously has no place with weapon skills and should be separate), but why would you not include the fact that you can double some of the pros of weapon skills by referencing DW?

And that is awesome Essence! I had no idea you could get the proc without using staves! This changes everything for my gish characters. :3