Comparison of the 5 Melee Weapon Skills

You have always got the bonuses twice for having two weapons equipped. Dual Wielding is very powerful as a 1 point skill.

 

@Killington That is fascinating! I wonder why the stats don't change on my screen. *goes to investigate probable causes*

 

Unarmed Combat,allows you to yield two shields,while still having a good melee attack.
I think it's the best skill for going tanky or archer characters.

 

@killington: Unarmed is not overpowered. It's damage is lackluster compared to any of the other combat skills, and while it gives better stat boosts than any other in theory, in practice any other combat skill will better those stat boosts because you can double them by dual wielding, and 2x any of the weapon skill stat boosts ends up being higher numbers than the Unarmed skill's stat boosts.

So really, Unarmed is only good for niche uses, namely archers and mages who want dual shields. I guess it has benefits when you're comparing it to a warrior who doesn't dual wield... But what kind of warrior doesn't dual wield?

 

Unarmed doesnt "let you" wear dual shields, you can always do that regardless of skills. Unarmed is also terribly terrible if you don't invest points it in, which makes it useless for mages. Archers might still want it, but 5 points is too much of an investment for an early game mage.

 

@GammaPaladin The reason why Unarmed is so good is because its the only melee ability with two active's, and both of them are knockbacks. Not only that but you can wear 2 shields making you nearly unkillable in melee combat(i've only ever died to acid traps on unarmed chars).

I'm currently running a Dual Wield Sword, I will prolly run mace or unarmed after this. I like to mix it up. I think the game has alot more balance than most people think.

Axe could use love, Necronomiconomics or whatever could use some love. I hear the archer one is bad, too, but I have never tried it.

 

Axe could use some love because it brings nothing particularly unique to the table and you can get better counter with swords, crit/piercing with maces, and stun/magic power with staves.

Archery and Throwing could use some love because they have no active skills, are less efficient to use than melee weapons in the early game, and don't really do anything unique at all.

 

Archery and Throwing do have a unique ability - both passively increase their respective ammo recovery rates, but unfortunately only for the killing bolt. This means that if you're two-hitting your enemies, you get (at max) 15% ammo recovery on 1/2 your bolts or 7% ammo recovery (I think, these sorts of calculations can have pitfalls).

Of course, it would be more fun if they had some active abilities too (like maybe an AOE missile spam attack or something)

 

@Tacroy That's not really unique if you look at it from the abstract perspective that Melee Weapons have 100% ammo recovery after every kill The skills are not necessarily bad, just rather boring.

It would be very neat if Archery had something like Sniping - Deal Base Damage + 20 Piercing, but stun you for two turns afterwards. Useable every 80 turns. Also if Throwing had something like Ricochet - 3x3 square ranged AOE. Useable every 40 turns.

 

The problem with Archery and Throwing Talent trees,is that they are first of all not fun and only 3point long.
Second, is that the recovery rate only applies to the last shot and the skills only marginally increase it,which means it's not that important to have it even if you go for an archer-like character, I would say Tinkering is more important, which indicates something is not right.

To fix this,they should make archery/throwing talents as long as the rest of the talent trees, with 5-6 skills in and have the recovery rate should apply for all the ammo used,not just the last one.

If that is technically not possible,then they should add a chance for dropping more than 1 bolt for recovery,for instance a 25% to drop 3arrows,25% to drop 2arrows,25% for 1 and 25% for none.Some restrictions should apply,like for the arrow of mass destruction.

 

As it is Archery=Tinkering. You can't do without it. The best way is leveling asap Tinkering to 4 and make an Iron Crossbow (the one with 10dmg+5dodge reduction), then a couple of enchantments and buy bolts/make them.

 

The AoE on axes should be on proc OR have double range to two cells.

 

All I know is that iv been running around Dual Wielding Staves and kicking butt, the proc's and bonuses are pretty insane, take a hybrid magic tree like the Viking tree and your laughing.

 

Dual Wielding Staves are awesome.

Even just looking at it at the standpoint of it's melee potential, it is still competitive enough to warrant it's use. Combine that with the option of low cost support spells (I choose psionic, but anything from astrology to viking will work), and leech bonus from vampirism, I just can't use the other 4 weapon skills anymore.

 

Now you're making me feel bad for going Sword & Board