The main problem with it is that with 50 slashing damage, you have little reason to use any other weapon even if you made a sizable investment in the relevant skill. Other end-game weapons like the Lirpa (or even the Cadaceus or Hexaxe of Magic Axelords) do not really compare at all, with the possible exception of the clockwork ravager. It becomes something of an item that's almost impossible to put down when you head to a mysterious dimension and find it even if it is not a weapon you are skilled in or if you are dual wielding without dual wielding skill. With say, 35, 10 and 10 or some other spread it'd still be an immensely strong weapon, but weapon specialization skills would have the oomph to make you drop it if you don't use swords (except for the exceptionally weak polearm-specific buffs but that is a whole problem on its own as polearms provides laughably little reason to invest further than Wallenstein's Inevitable Victory Stance, it hardly gives you any reason to actually use polearms, and late game polearms like the Lirpa tend to be on the weak side anyway).
Uh... Looking it up, that sword's commented out of the Wizardland's itemDB, at least on my end. And checking other weapons of similar level in all itemDBs, there's the Axe of the Solar Disc in Exp3 that does 30 , 15 , 10 while also setting the enemy on fire every hit, and the Moravician Bushdagger in the base game that does 45 plus a 100% proc that does 3 with a 50% to proc itself.
Well it shows up in my game, might be specific to the beta version. Those are also rather strong weapons and do indeed perhaps merit giving up a monofilament sword. There's still the issue of your melee power nerf from unskilled dual wielding being entirely mitigated by +50 even so.
Just an fyi for anyone interested - I just found this item (and yeah, it's rated at 50 ). I haven't tried it out yet, but I intend to ... soon.
OK, so this was necroed, but I must have missed it the first time. If anyone is interested in the (possible) origin of the monofilament sword, Science Fiction writer Larry Niven had something quite similar in his Known Space stories, which he called a "Variable Sword" because it could be extended or retracted by the user, and the monofilament in it was held rigid by a fluctuating stasis field. http://news.larryniven.net/concordance/main.asp?alpha=V (one of my all-time favorite hard science fiction series, btw). Also, the Star Trek animated series 'borrowed' this for one of their episodes, as well as the Kzin/Kzinti alien race (well, I believe actually that Niven wrote the episode, so it was with permission). It was an adaptation of his short story "The Soft Weapon" for the Star Trek universe. The weapon in the title was a device that could change shape and function (kind of like a super-futuristic Swiss Army Knife), and one of those functions was a Variable Sword. One of the problems with a Variable Sword (or Variable Knife) is that it is EXTREMELY dangerous to use. You know how your mom used to yell at you to not run with scissors? Well you could very easily lose a limb or worse, while running with a Variable sword, should you accidentally drop it.
Hmm, I guess I thought this was a Johnny Mnemonic reference, but in sword form. Ah well... (Caveat: I am posting at 2am again and may not have a clue what I'm thinking.)
Well, "The Soft Weapon" was first published in 1967, so if there's anything like that in "Johnny Mnemonic", it definitely came later. (I sorta vaguely remember the movie, but I don't recall a monofilament weapon in it). BTW, it's an excellent short story. It's either from his Tales of Known Space, or Neutron Star anthologies (both are must-reads for anyone interested in hard core science fiction).
