No need for Partisans

Playing a pole arm character with black smithing and found that the level four crafting recipes for pole arms are essentially worthless.

There are two recipes for crafting the naginata. One at craft level 4 that requires a Bo Staff and a Dao, and another at craft level 3 that only takes a Hefty Stick and an Iron Sword. That's 17 damage and 5 block for 3 Iron ingots and a stick. At CL3.

Also craftable at craft level 4 is the Partisan which requires a Steel Axe and a Hefty Stick. That's 3 STEEL ingots and a stick. The Partisan does an unsatisfying 13 damage and 3 block with 3 counter thrown in for funsies. At CL4.

Currently there is no reason (unless you MUST have that 3 counter chance) to craft a partisan.

Both of these items look really cool but the progression and costs seem off to me. The CL 3 naginata recipe should probably be removed and the partisan should be moved down to CL 3. Reagents should probably be changed too. Naginata needs more costly reagents, perhaps steel stuff, while the partisan should be less costly.

Edit: Also, redundant trident recipes. Easier to craft from just a stick than from a spear for some reason? Seems a little odd.

 

Having used the new weapons a lot i must agree that the partisans is useless it is better to not waste the steel on it and just use the steel to get the Guan Du

 

Honestly the naganita seems painfully overpowered to me. 17 damage is more than almost all of the level 4 crafted weapons, much less level 3. The Broader Axe, previously the most powerful smithing weapon craftable with no hidden recipes, deals that much damage - at level 5 smithing, for 6 steel ingots. This is so far out of the league of every other smithing weapon of similar ingredients and crafting level it's not even funny.

 

I was noticing this as well. I went Polearms + Dual Wielding, and by Dlev 3, I had two Naginatas. I felt like I got too powerful too quick. I also noticed the other polearms that I'd never end up crafting because it was weaker than the Naginata and didn't craft into the clockwork drill lance.

 

I was expecting a thread about Communism and what do I find? Spears.

That said, I think the spear recipies are a little balanced by the rarity of the hefty stick. Honestly, how many of those do you find in a run? I haven't even found two bronze ingots to make the base spear, which you can then smash down to a stick, nor have I found tin to make bronze with, and I'm on DL 4.

So part of this is probably the RNG, and part of it is definitely NTTG, but I haven't really noticed spears being that OP.

 

Bear in mind that you downcraft most spears and also the Bo Stick. Not saying they are common, but you will get some running through. I had Guan Doa by DL 2 and felt pretty badass

 

That's taking that ability into account. Thus my statement that if I could find enough bronze to make a spear from scratch I could then get a stick to make something better. Again, it's an RNG thing. I do feel that the level 3 Naginata recipe is a bit much. Perhaps it should be hidden? They'll never find it then!

 

Found a Thermic Lance recently. Very powerful and very dangerous. Would probably be really awesome with some clockwork knight style armor. Still running my naginata on DL5 with some crusts. Though I overcrusted it recently and it's taken to exploding on every hit. If I can just get my resists up a bit higher....

 

That seems a bit much. A katana is a CL 5 item. Naginata is CL4. You might have to shuffle some craft levels and stats around for that to work in a sensible way.

 

Don't forget, the Samurai Bot Mk. III bots drop katanas. Of course, that's still DL 5 and you'll probably have 5 by then. But hey, less steel required.

 

And Naginata is a rather good item for CL4, so I reckon having to hunt that one ingredient might be just what is required to balance it.

 

Maybe they should make the Katana the igredient for the Lv.5 polearm and the fine steel sword the component for the lv.4 polearm? Because that would make more sense to me.

 

I think that one borders on being a level 5 recipe, so it's up to us to test if it's viable and then we'll be able to comment.

 

It's important not to judge the polearms by the other weapon recipes. Notice that polearms are about 50%-100% more powerful than other weapons pretty much all the time. The difficulty lies in finding the right stuff to smith them, and the fact that their tree is balanced around a lot of trade offs. Most of the weapons themselves have tradeoffs built in, as well. Part of me wonders if the block bonuses on it should have been penalties...

 

I think they should've been, but whether we are right is something I don't know.