Dual-Wielding Should Not Double your Melee Power Bonus

Ok, some background.

When you do melee damage, you deal weapon damage + melee power, which is roughly 1/3rd of your burliness. This means that in general your melee power is 2/3rds of your character level, if you are playing a melee type.

Weapons generally deal 2-10 damage, with the best weapons topping off at around 30.

If you use a weapon and shield, you'll eventually get ~10% block increase, and ~5 armor absorb.

Unfortunately, if you dual-wield you will deal twice as much damage - because in addition to another ~30 damage weapon, you also apply your melee power again! This makes dual-wielding much, MUCH better than using a shield. If you factor in the counter-chance granted by dual wield, it's even further afield.

Dual-Wielding is so good, it pretty much ruins the game for melee builds. If you balance the game for a single-wield character, a dual-wield character will almost certainly be overpowered. If you have points invested in the proper weapon type(s) you're also doubling your damage and stat bonuses from those points.

The final insult is that Dual-Wielding doesn't even require a single point investment to do all this.

I think two fixes would really help to bring this skill back in line:

1 - Apply your character's Melee Power only to your largest damage type, between your two weapons. Enemy's Armor still applies to the two biggest damage packets, as normal. This will mean that your second weapon does less and less damage as your fight enemies with significant armor.

2 - Have each level of Dual-Wield add +3, applied only to your secondary weapon. This would make points in Dual-Wielding roughly equivalent to points in your weapon skill. If you max out dual-wield, you would get an effect similar to what you get now with just the initial point.

 

Consider 1x melee power to main hand, 0.5x melee power to offhand.

That way dual wielding remains a sizeable damage boost, but is slightly nerfed.

Warriors have a tough life regardless - and many people have proven single wield characters work great.

 

Shields should also be buffed. The best shield in the game (in terms of pure ) gives 7 8 3 . Meanwhile the Imperial Boilerplate Helm gives 8 9 4 and a bunch of resists. Hell, the Magnetronic Shield (which has a massive -25 penalty) gives a measly 6 14.

If you're going to give up 30 damage, how about some decent and resists in return? It'd allow Shield users to wear lighter armour in the rest of their slots to enhance their combat stats.

 

Well, this is odd. I play Dual-wield all the time and I've never seen a huge power jump. I play on Elvish Easy, and I've never overwhelmed everything to where it's all a cakewalk, so I don't think it really needs uber-nerfing.
After all, floor 6 is the make or break point for a melee character. Those damn hard to get resists by that time turn your strong melee into a death dealer who can't tank hits, rapidly weakening his health.
Yes, sometimes I get amazingly lucky, and power through the first few floors due to a great drop, but I don't think a skill should be weakened when it relies on pure luck.
Maybe I'm doing it wrong, because I don't put all my points into my weapon skill on floor 1. I wait until I've gotten the Archaelology tree maxed before doing that.
I even have Smithing, and while by the end I do over 110 damage in melee, it's not due to an absurd melee power boost. Unless I really missed something. Which is possible.

I mean, the game is hard enough, even on easy skills, due to how balance is. Melee is still the weakest of the three classes. I don't think it should be nerfed until it's more viable than a Promethian Magic build.

 

melee users is already extremely weak compared to magic users. To be honest shields just suck. You don't really need much more armor than the basic imperialist armor and helmet give. Shield user should have a shield bash on block that stuns enemies and shield should have much more exotic resists and magic resists.

 

Have you beaten the game with a melee user? I find that maxing block is the best strategy. However, dual staves can do this pretty well and offers great magic power. So shields are probably still sub optimal. I think using a shield is still stronger than say dual wielding another weapon though.

If Shields are too weak it is because the shield bearer line does not work like the weapon mastery lines.

 

RTBMA?

 

Does Dual Wield double melee power? I've never noticed that in my damage calculations, either on the character sheet or during combat. Is this a new thing for the upcoming expansion?

Perhaps Dual Wield should actually be resolved as two separate attacks, one with each weapon, instead of adding all their damages together. That way, would be more effective against Dual Wielders, and would be less of an issue (but do we really want that?)

Totally agree with J-Factor regarding better shields. I'd specifically like to see some shields with exotic damage resists instead of just , since most warriors are swimming in that already.

 

Exactly what I'm saying. You can max block with dual staves or many builds could just use celestial circle. If shields could stun/paralyze monster on block (a proc put on all shields) and give exotic resist and/or magic resist then I would consider using them. I never had a build that wanted to use shields. Tomes outclass shield with unarmed or gish builds.

Killing things fast > Slightly more block and AA




Edit: I think both Shield Bearer and Master of Arms just aren't that fun or useful

Edit 2: I have not beaten the game on rogue with melee because I tend to die on the later heavy hitting monsters. The ability to healing, damage at a distance, knockback, and stop dreadmor from casting and burn him is just a lot easier. Melee can do all that just not as easily or do it as well.

 

Shields SHOULD be much better than they currently are. Or at least give much more block. or More damage resist. Orbs seem to give more exotic resist than shields do.

 

At first, I was all like "hell yeah!" Then I realized I have no idea what that would mean for the various attack="1" spells. Would you get 2 Axenados in one if you were Dual Wielding?

In short, as long as the system could be consistent across all uses of a melee attack (which I'm not sure it could be), I'd be in complete support of this idea.

 

Well, it's been awhile since I've tried min-maxing a build but if I remember correctly staves were the only reliable way to achieve 100% block with a dual wield. Now I know combat ordering has been changed, but I remember block being the only reliable defense a melee has besides armor/resistances. Now I'd say staves are by far the best weapon line in the game, but for any other line I'd rather don a shield for another 6 armor and 12 block than to kill things in 2 hits vs. 3 later on considering how damage scales and how much random damage you pick up from gear.

I think the easiest and well most boring run I ever had was a dual shield heavy armor build back before the expansion. Sure I hit for 40 damage tops, but pre-nerf arch-diggles only hit me for 4 damage on a crit and block was the only way to mitigate all the exotic damage.

Anyway, now even one handed you'll end up doing 80 damage anyway. I'm more worried about spikes in damage from counter attacks and what not than dealing even more.

Now, there really isn't any reason to ever play a pure melee build. But if you do I think a shield makes a lot of sense.

Well, to be fair it's been since prior to the expansion that I ran a pure melee. But keep in mind that the benefits of both armor and block are not additive. Have 6 more AA might make the difference between taking 12 and 6 damage a hit from a particular mob. And having 12 more block might make the difference between getting double hit for 70% of your hit points one round vs. taking minor damage. I'll submit that I do not know how things have changed, but in theory 12 block and 6 armor can be stronger than killing things twice or even five times as fast on average.

 

Well I'm thinking the difference between 25-30 AA and +30-40 block and dual wielding (plus skill tree stats doubled) and 28-33 AA, +38-48 block, 10 magic resist, 25 magic reflect, some resist (I think filigreed silver shield is the best shield). I would take the dual wielding almost any day. Even if I didn't dual wield, I would prefer universal principles over a shield.


However I forgot to make my point a while ago (I'm going to this forum to procrastinate from a final I'm working on), My point is that melee isn't as good as magic in this game already. We shouldn't be nerfing melee but rather buffing the weak part that no one is using.

 

Hahaha

 

I dont think melee needs nerfs. It's already pretty weak compared to magic. But perhaps it could use some more interesting crowd control abilities and status effects. AOE knockback that does more than 1 space, attacks that put significant debuffs on enemies or DoTs, abilities that charge you in like Clockwork Knight, etc. Melee is honestly kind of boring right now. And the counter-crit-crit needs to be nerfed some.

Shields need a buff too, yes.

 

Code:

<ability name="Shield Savant" icon="skills/warrior/shieldbearer4_64.png" skill="8" level="4">
  <description text="It's like the shield is a part of you. If a part of you didn't get hurt when it got hit by things, and it was really tough, and you held it between you and bad guys. So it's really more like you're really good with shields. Grants a chance to execute the Defensive Bash in combat."/>
  <secondarybuff id="7" amount="8"/> <!-- block -->
  <primarybuff id="4" amount="1"/> <!-- Stubborness -->
  <secondarybuff id="10" amount="1"/> <!-- armour -->
  <resistbuff piercing="2"/>
  <targetHitEffectBuff percentage="10" name="Defensive Bash"/>
  </ability>

 

Doesn't block prevent you from getting crit now? You can eliminate the chance of getting counter crit crit. Instead of taking 90 damage from a counter double crit crit one round, you end up taking like 20 instead.

 

Nerfing Dual-Wield doesn't nerf melee - it positions it to actually be improved.

If we imagine that Dual-Wielding melee is currently on a par with magic, it follows that melee builds without dual-wield are, still, woefully underpowered. The existence of a skill which, with no points invested, DOUBLES your effectiveness breaks all builds which don't include that skill.

I think shield should be buffed, probably significantly. And Dual-Wield should be balance to be roughly as useful, on a point-for-point-basis, as that buffed shield line.

The shield line should provide bonuses when you use a shield, just like weapon trees do. It also needs some exotic damage resists - maybe a self-buff which increases exotic resists at the expense of nimbleness and melee power? That sounds awesome & thematic with huddling behind a shield.

 

I meant that each shield should have a proc that has a chance of stunning your enemy on top that that ability existing. Universal Principles is really the most defensive "shield" right now because it prevents the enemy from hitting you again and it has exotic resist.

 

I have never noticed this huge boost to melee power via dual wield at all.
I'm a little confused about that more than anything else.
I know I can hit for above 100 damage by floor 8 if I'm lucky with a dual wield, but I don't think that makes Dual-wield overpowered and in need of a nerf.

Also, in my experience, 70+ block is easy to get with a dual mace build with good armor, and enhanced with lucky Krong roll on gear.
Mostly I try to boost my dodge. 50 dodge and 65 block seem to be very useful, especially with 45 counter.

I don't think we should nerf something just because it might be considered useful.
Melee is already weak. We should buff it in all ways, before we should nerf it.
Seriously though, this game needs a massive nerfing of every tiny detail before melee becomes amazing.
I've beaten the game twice with melee build, and the first time I had to resort to shooting Dredmor with ranged attacks, and the second time, at floor 15, in 1.09 Rev B, I did finally manage to kill him in melee after hitting him in the face a few times at ranged. Thank you, Diggle God of Death.

Until one can melee Dredmor without worrying about his stats, it's not overpowered. If one can beat him without the Diggle God of Death, without taking much damage at all, then yes, it might need minor nerfing.

Also, how does one get counter double crit crit?