Weapon tier list for people struggling with apocalypse.

[Blight]

I've put a lot of hours into the game since the last update and I often read about people struggling to complete apocalypse 2+, and I think at the end of the day it really comes down to certain weapon types being unfit for competing with a swarm that they maybe weren't designed to compete with. So I wanted to make a tier list for anybody looking for one so they can tackle ascension with their best foot forward. I'll also leave general commentary on each weapon so you can better understand why it might be good/bad. These are just my opinions, so feel free to disagree.

Edit: Every weapon is an S tier weapon according to some comments. I'm sure they've all beat high ascension with their 1H crossbow doing 80 damage to the 132 health clawers and 1H swords killing 6-10 mobs/round with 50+ spawning so you should take their advice and ignore everything else. The point of this post is not what you can do on wave 10 with all of the best gear enabling weapons like 1H Crossbow to clear 30+mobs a turn, it's the wave 1-7 area where you rely heavily on the weapon's raw strength to succeed in apocalypse. Once you have your economy going and can buy gear to enable weapons, yeah, any of them work, but that's not how you beat high apocalypse, you beat it by surviving to the point where you basically can't lose in wave 7-8+.

~~~~~~S TIer~~~~~~
These are the best of the best weapons, and good in practically every situation.

~~2H axe:
Huge AoE ability that doesn't require mana, gap closer, damage buff, and an even bigger AoE all on one weapon. The best melee weapon in the game and possibly the best weapon in general because melee feels very strong right now because a lot of the melee perks are very good.

~~Druid Staff:
This weapon is fantastic for AoE clear, and it provides a lot of CC/utility that really makes a big difference in certain situations. Also has a single target nuke for the big boys as well.

~~Tome:
Single target nuke, and multiple high damage AoE mana spenders at HUGE range. If you run into damage trouble early on it even has a resistance reducer to give your skills more damage to be more mana efficient (if you haven't upgraded and aren't 1 shotting anymore, the res reduction will allow you to 1 shot again).

~~~~~~A Tier~~~~~~
These weapons can be incredible with minor scaling/specific conditions, but are otherwise still really good, just not as good as S tier

~~Longbow:
Huge range, big damage, huge AoE damage/CC. It's overall not as strong in AoE as the shortbow, or single target as the rifle, but it has both in one weapon with extreme range and low cost. It would have been S tier pre-nerf, but it's still good.

~~Shortbow:
Med range, big damage, huge AoE. Shortbow is a good all rounder, but it really requires upgrades because the single target damage starts to fall off pretty hard without upgrades and you might find it'll take a couple shots to kill things, but assuming you sufficiently upgrade it, it'll clear entire packs with single shots.

~~2H Hammer:
Huge damage, decent AoE abilities, gap closer, AND it scales extremely well with skill range. Not S tier because the AoE really isn't good enough to carry a wave by itself in ascension 2+, but it's the type of weapon that you'll be happy to have regardless.

~~Spear:
Big Aoe, multi hit attacks, and a nice momentum spender to clear out lines of big guys. The spear is a good all-rounder, but I'd caution to only use it on a guy with at least 8 AP, because all of its skills are 2 cost. If you have the 8 AP guy spear is A tier, if not, B.

~~Power Staff:
People underestimate this staff because it forces your mage into close ranges, but it's the highest base damage magic weapon and it has big AoEs. A little move speed to run from the remainder of the pack after clearing almost all of it in a single turn is all that's required to make the power staff feel great.

~~Magic Orb:
Death ray is pretty hard to use, but putrid ball is an S tier ability. If you get a mage with poison scaling perks and a little poison on gear, you can one hit kill 9 mobs in a single cast for 2 mana (and you can do it twice). To top that off you have a single target nuke for Iso targets. Would be S tier if there was a way to ensure poison scaling, but without that it's a C tier weapon, so I figured A was a fine place given just how insane putrid ball and infect are.

~~~~~~B Tier~~~~~~
This tier you start to really need to scale the weapons with upgrades or perks, otherwise their viability starts to fall off a cliff, but assuming proper upgrades they are still completely viable/good.


~~1H Axe:
Could be A tier based on skills alone, 3 targets for 1 AP, and a good ranged AoE clear skill, but it suffers from being a 1H weapon and having lower base damage, so you really need to upgrade it to maintain viability. That said if you do get an upgrade for it, it'll perform very well.

~~2H Sword:
Decent AoE skills with a strong momentum finisher, but a weak main skill with low base damage for a 2H weapon. Charge is very good, and mixed with sword blast you can clear decent size packs, but it's a little awkward to use and really mana reliant because its main attack skill is pretty bad. Sufficiently upgraded with ways to mitigate mana though and you'll kill 15+ mobs a round.

~~Pistol:
Same as 1H axe, has good base skills with nice single target/mobility and a strong AoE, but it's held back by being a 1H and having low base damage so it needs upgrades to stay competitive. On top of that it's low range, so it doesn't have the same viability as something like a shortbow that also requires upgrades.

~~2H Crossbow:
Decent aoe, and good damage, but held back by the weird positioning mechanic. It's kind of a worse longbow/shortbow in practically every way solely because of the positioning mechanic. That said, if you can get the positioning, it's easily A tier because the damage and clear potential are great. On a map like Glenwald it is worse because of all of the obstacles on the map.

~~RIfle:
This weapon has no real AoE, but I am still giving it B tier because it is the highest base damage weapon in the game. Not something you would want as your primary weapon because of the lack of AoE, but a weapon you'd often want as a secondary for your ranger because it can 1 hit kill even elites assuming it's upgraded.

~~~~~~C Tier~~~~~~
This tier is mostly only useful as secondaries unless you get perfect perks/gear to enable them to be viable.

~~Dagger:
The dagger is for the most part a bad weapon because it pretty much does what things like the longbow or orb do much worse. If you can scale multi hit to obscene levels you can really start pumping out kills with Throwing daggers, but that's much easier said than done. It is fine as a secondary weapon to something like the 2h axe or spear that lack in strong single target/1 AP skills.

~~1H Sword:
This weapon is held back only by having very little in the way of AoE. The base skills on this weapon are all good and allow for extreme mobility, but the weapon requires upgrades to stay relevant (but not as much as even some weapons in B tier) and killing 6-10 enemies a round is just not enough on some waves in higher ascensions. I think if the main skill was "Slice and Dice" hitting through 2 enemies in a line instead of "Slice" hitting one, it'd be an A tier weapon. You can even make it so it only "Follows" the first mob hit so that way it isn't just a strictly better dash, dash gives maneuverability, "Slice and dice" gives better clear. That said, still very good as a secondary weapon to any other melee because of the mobility/single target, and the offhand is great to pair with any 1h for the mobility.

~~Wand:
This weapon just kind of feels bad in general because the damage isn't very high, and the AoE is pretty bad without scaling too. Like the dagger if you can scale multi hit like crazy it starts to pick up viability, but like all 1H weapons, it needs consistent upgrades to stay relevant, because the second your AoE stops 1 hitting this weapon is a liability.

~~1H Crossbow:
This weapon has some of the lowest base damages in the game and the skills are pretty bad as a result, but this weapon with obscene multi-hit scaling will go from a C tier to an A tier because both the AOE and (double) single target scale off it. If you are able to scale multi-hit prioritize using this weapon, otherwise avoid it.

~~~~~~D Tier~~~~~~
No real redeeming qualities, never use these.

~~1H Hammer:
This weapon kind of just does everything worse than other melee weapons. I'd practically never use it. Even as an offhand, the AoE just has bad scaling and isn't worth using.

~~Magic Scepter:
This weapon also does practically everything worse than other mage weapons AND requires you to be in melee range. It doesn't scale well and chugs mana as well because the main skill is single target.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


That's my take on the weapons in the game. After the recent update and where weapons currently lie, I probably would avoid ranged damage weapons for the most part because they feel weak on the whole. The longbow/shortbow with slightly more base damage scaling would make me feel otherwise, but as it is ranged is the most reliant on consistent upgrades to continue being viable, and that hurts in higher ascensions when you need to heavily invest in economy for the first 5 waves or so. Mage overall feels good because it has a lot of innate AoE and good base damages, and the same goes for 2H melee. 1H melee really suffers from a lack of AoE in higher ascensions even though the damage outputs of its single target abilities exceeds 2h weapons. It's generally safe to have a secondary weapon be a 1h for the single target/movement abilities that your 2h is probably lacking.

In general I would avoid getting a ranged 4th/5th/6th hero because of their reliance on upgrades to stay relevant, and I would prioritize melee because melee has the right balance of base damage/aoe to not be taxing on your economy while still clearing 10+ mobs a turn. Mage is perfectly acceptable to get though because their AoE potential is better than melee, they just have lower base damage so they struggle more without upgrades in later waves.

Changes I would make to increase viability of weapons:

Magic scepter: I'd remove the mana cost on Shocking touch and slightly increase the base damage scaling. That'd turn this weapon from a 4-8 kill/turn weapon to a 8-12 kill/turn weapon that doesn't chug mana for it to be viable. You have to spend a minimum of 4 mana/turn in melee range to do the equivalent of what weapons like 2h Axe can do better in 4 AP/0 mana or tome can do at 10 range.

1H hammer: Just needs a base scaling increase. Stomp hits 8 targets, and Crush costs 1 AP for 2 kills which is great, but crush requires set up and only has 2 uses, and stomp is never 1 shotting anything regardless of scaling, so it just gets outshined by everything. I think if it gets buffed to allow Stomp to 1 shot with scaling and Bash to always 1 hit low tier mobs, it'd be in a fine B tier spot.

1H crossbow: Just needs higher base damage, the skills are well designed on this one, but you're never 1 shotting anything, not even on wave 1. That's pretty insane. I think with a 25-50% base damage boost, enough to let quickshot 1 shot (2 hits) a 100 health (base wave 1) mob, this weapon would shoot up to A tier.

Wand: Also just needs higher base damage, once this weapon is unable to 1 hit with magic missiles it's so bad it's the worst weapon in the game. I think with a 10-20% damage boost it'd move up to B tier because it'll be able to kill 12 mobs/round (more with multi-hit scaling ofc), but it'd still be a mana chugger that needs scaling to stay relevant.

1H Sword; I said it in the Tier list itself, but if its main skill was a 2 line attack it instantly shoots up to A tier with no other changes required because the design of this weapon's skills are good, it just doesn't do enough to be viable in ascension barring that change.

Dagger: Base damage increase, and 1 more base multi hit on throwing daggers. It lacks heavily in AoE so it struggles hard in ascension, and its base damages are low enough that it doesn't scale well either. With slightly higher base damage it can better manage as a single target secondary weapon, but still C tier. With slightly higher base damage and an extra base multi-hit on throwing daggers though, it can become a B tier weapon that functions as a tactician in a wave that picks off stray mobs and assassinates high priority targets killing 8-12 mobs a round (with poison after the fact).



That's all I got, I hope you enjoyed the read and I hope I was able to help people struggling prioritize weapons that will help them succeed in beating the game!

TLDR: Strong AoE good, ranged damage in general just ok.

[Lorska]

Personally I started to really like 2H crossbows recently.
While other ranged weapons are more based on AoE, that one is the absolute king of just destroying single targets.
The two main reasons for that and why you can't really pick it up every run is the existence of two particular perks:
1) added range but less reliability
2) crit chance based on missing mana.
The reason is that this weapon doesn't need reliability at all, it's nearly useless because the damage range is so small. You also don't really need a lot of mana because your normal attacks are your bread and butter. I love just running double crossbow and oneshotting anything that is inconvenient for you AoE classes to hit.
It's extremely satisfying being a literal human ballista pumping out crits. There's also a lot of damage increases around through cheer, 2H axes and potions so you can move the kill threshold up enough.

[Zymeth]

Overall, useful guide and tier sorting.

Weapons I would sort differently and why :

1h Hammer D -> C
Good aoe , Good double opportunistic attack - it can be useful when combined with AoE debuffs which there are many, especially poison. Ocasionally, it can be valid weapon, but a bit less obvious.

1h Sword C -> B
Very comparable with a 2H sword. I agree, it is slightly worse, shield wouldn't compensate alone for it too, but the main adventage is its momentum attack. It is very easy to build it with such mobile kit - much smoother than 2H sword.

Rifle B -> C
Swords can 1-shot with momentum any enemy, many other things can deal comparable damage to the rifle anyway (2 isolation-based attacks as an example), since rifles stronger attack requires 2AP. This wouldn't be too much, but the issue is that it is almost everything this weapon offers.

Pistol B -> C
Too low damage, especially its short-ranged AoE. Using the hook to build momentum / move around is problematic due to the lack of skill to easily retreat, not enough damage to kill full hp target and a lack of AoE to weaken the enemy to fix the previous issue. I mean - there is an AoE but its a close range one. Also, momentum punch is low. Overall it is much less reliable in wiping enemies compared to 1H sword.

[Bumc]

My swordsman is consistently getting the best performance even outweighing monsters like druid. Keep in mind that 1h sword mobility skill scales from skill range. Also swords have really good implicit modifiers, from +armor for early game to +AP for later. Arguably daggers are better for crit, but Bully lets you have 100% crit on everything for really low investment (for example, contamination perk + mark, especially as AoE actually spreads contamination as it goes instead of killing all units at once).
And for AoE I just pack scrolls with spear nuke. They are dirt cheap (probably because players really hate anything labelled "consumables") and reliable against real blobs of enemies.
Sure, by the end game when everyone is rocking tier 5 legendary weapons sword falls off the cliff, but having a hero clearing waves having a wet noodle of a rusty T1 weapon on night 5 indirectly boosts your economics enough to actually get to the end game.

[Porkie]

Yeah that list isn't good. Druid staff? absolute crap.


S TIER ARE:

1) Wand:
extremely cheap, can give your other S-tier weapon handlers extra AOE effects by donating APs, couples fantastically with +multi-attack items/skills, and especially the "initiator" or "instigator" or whatever they call it skill.

2) Big Crossbow:
Best cheap damage potential of any weapon in the whole game with the "lined up" shot that just trashes anything in its way with very high damage


You can happily do the dryad level with just wands and crossys, but since ur forced to take a melee guy, may as well take a hammer or a sword.
Hammer will 1 shot anything u get close to, so it's very useful with harder monsters



OK but I would still switch:

Longbow (isolation is not useful except niche, a crossy would do enough damage to kill whatever it is anyway in one shot. BUT a long range STUN effect is good for completely stopping the back-rank zombies from moving forward as the front rank is stunned.
Probably the best ability in the game if it wasn't for being a pretty crap damage dealer overall.




Diversity-Hire-Tier ARE:

1) Druid staff that does next to 0 damage and piddly poison that does next to nothing except give enemies extra time to live and destroy your walls etc, at high costs.

2) Tome of secrets (yes it has the single best damaging spell, but it costs 6 mana so over a battle you end up with less damage than the more reliable multi-hit wand, and are then restricted to a few piddly single target hits

And the absolute worst:
3) 1 handed pew pew crossbow, that can't kill anything, on any level, anywhere. If you get this weapon, just restart and save yourself the annoyance of pew pewing stuff a million times and getting carpal tunnel

[Bumc]

Another thing that cuts in the mage's power is them having worst scrolls. Sure, you have your big nuke for 6 mana on a weapon that doesn't really have anything else to offer, I raise you my 30 gold scroll of Rain of Arrows that lets me do similar 6 mana flashy move... for zero AP with any ranged weapon (weapon isn't required, but without % ranged damage you fail to do enough damage with a scroll).
1handed crossbow got hit hard by past balance changes (perks being stronger in general, while fewer perks that make sense on 1h cbow, multishot is harder to stack), but I'm pretty sure it still has one of the highest ceiling. Multishot + propagation combo can wipe full screens of enemies. Its just that investment is so high by the point you get there you might've already won the game.

[Blight]

Originally posted by Zymeth:

Overall, useful guide and tier sorting.

Weapons I would sort differently and why :

1h Hammer D -> C
Good aoe , Good double opportunistic attack - it can be useful when combined with AoE debuffs which there are many, especially poison. Ocasionally, it can be valid weapon, but a bit less obvious.

1h Sword C -> B
Very comparable with a 2H sword. I agree, it is slightly worse, shield wouldn't compensate alone for it too, but the main adventage is its momentum attack. It is very easy to build it with such mobile kit - much smoother than 2H sword.

Rifle B -> C
Swords can 1-shot with momentum any enemy, many other things can deal comparable damage to the rifle anyway (2 isolation-based attacks as an example), since rifles stronger attack requires 2AP. This wouldn't be too much, but the issue is that it is almost everything this weapon offers.

Pistol B -> C
Too low damage, especially its short-ranged AoE. Using the hook to build momentum / move around is problematic due to the lack of skill to easily retreat, not enough damage to kill full hp target and a lack of AoE to weaken the enemy to fix the previous issue. I mean - there is an AoE but its a close range one. Also, momentum punch is low. Overall it is much less reliable in wiping enemies compared to 1H sword.

Thats a very fair assessment I think. You are giving credit to the weapons I didn't give credit to in the post and taking away credit ones I did. 1H sword was the hardest to place for me because it really does feel good to use when it works well, and thats why even in the changes section I said it needs the least of all of the changes I mentioned to be very good, but it also feels like it needs good positioning (and mob positioning] to really shine, and it still maxes out at 10 kills/turn with 8 AP so I just felt closer to C than B, but ultimately having it in B is perfectly acceptable too, I almost did.

I'd keep rifle at B personally because in high ascension glenwald you often have to split your guys into lanes all by themselves while you build economy and having a rifle secondary on your relatively weak long/shortbow guy feels like a necessity if an elite ends up in that lane or a fatty gets buffed by the buffers, but other than as a secondary I'd never use it.


Overall I liked your comment and reasoning. Thanks for contributing!

[Atma]

Originally posted by Blight:

~~1H Crossbow:
This weapon has some of the lowest base damages in the game and the skills are pretty bad as a result, but this weapon with obscene multi-hit scaling will go from a C tier to an A tier because both the AOE and (double) single target scale off it. If you are able to scale multi-hit prioritize using this weapon, otherwise avoid it.

The hand crossbow becomes hands down the best weapon in the game with just a small amount of multihits. Considering how easy it is to get 3 extra multihit on the weapon+trinkets alone there's no way the hand crossbow shouldn't be an S tier.

[Blight]

Originally posted by Atma:

Originally posted by Blight:

~~1H Crossbow:
This weapon has some of the lowest base damages in the game and the skills are pretty bad as a result, but this weapon with obscene multi-hit scaling will go from a C tier to an A tier because both the AOE and (double) single target scale off it. If you are able to scale multi-hit prioritize using this weapon, otherwise avoid it.

The hand crossbow becomes hands down the best weapon in the game with just a small amount of multihits. Considering how easy it is to get 3 extra multihit on the weapon+trinkets alone there's no way the hand crossbow shouldn't be an S tier.

I agree with you and that's why I said for sure make it a point to use it if you can scale multi hit, but without multi-hit it's the worst weapon in the game because it can't even 1 shot regular zombies without upgrading/scaling it. Even a weapon like scepter can 1 shot early on, and has multiple AoE's but it's still D tier. I chose C as the place for it because scaling multi-shot is easier said than done. You either get lucky and get it as a level up bonus (awesome) or you get it in like wave 7/8 on gear from the shop after it's upgraded (earlier if you're lucky), at which point any weapon will do really well. I do agree though that the range of possibilities for this weapon is S tier easily, but if a majority of the game and majority of play throughs it's D tier, I feel safer putting it at C than S and saying it needs XYZ to achieve it.

IMO +1 Multi-hit > B Tier, 2-3 multi-hit> A tier, 4+ multi-hit> S tier. I Wouldn't put it S tier earlier than 4+ multihits because it still doesn't 1 shot anything, so you'd still need to use 2 of those multihits on the same mob at least. With 3+ multihits your AoE becomes one of the best AoEs in the game, and with 4+ your single target kills 3 mobs in 1 shot, which is still worse than greataxe in general, and still worse than similarly scaled Tome/Druid/Orb.

[kisada FLEXIS]

One thing I'd add is that the map you're playing on has a tremendous impact on the effectiveness of many of these weapons. So something like the death orb, while incredible on the default map, suffers a lot on a map like glenwald because the mob packs are fragmented. But something like the druid staff absolutely shines because the bees snake around and hit hard to find areas, and with the volatility perk this weapon just carries for you, and solves so many issues.

Anyway, there's a lot of opinions and going line by line isn't really necessary. I'll just say the times I beat glenwald on A6, my key weapons were the greataxe and the druid staff. And some combos of shortbow/1h crossbow, greatsword, dagger, tome and death orb would fill the gaps. Shortbow I'd still consider to be top tier FWIW but I don't think is as good because of the changes to thrifty and mana collector not making it as consistent without devoting extra resources to the mana side of things.

[Dead2Rights]

Hand Crossbow being a C is a joke, right?

Don't pretend that it's not easy as hell to get multi-hit and propagation bonuses. At the bare minimum you can get +4 bounces and +2 hits from just Perks on the right character.

You have Druid staff as an S, but clearly that's with propagation bounce bonuses and poison damage bonuses + contagion. Try playing it without those bonuses and it's no where near an S tier weapon, hell the 2h sword would be better without any bonuses or Perks than the Druid staff.

Also., you are seriously under valuing 1h swords and pistols, but you probably don't know why.

[HappyFir3]

Two handed hammer and axe don't seem to be in the game anymore, or am I crazy?

[Trip Fisk]

with the right perks these are my goto weapons:

S-tier: 1 handed axe + contamination, sadist, bully perks
intimidating scream a group and your normal attack basically becomes a lawn mower murdering d00ds. drawback is the basic attack is inaccurate.

A-tier: scepter (1 hand sword too) + relentless, inertia
I don't understand the hate scepter gets. magic bash has inertia and can 1 shot just about any non-elite enemy. relentless and inertia generate a lot of move points. shocking touch is also low cost ap/mp and does good damage on tiny groups. hammer of faith is kinda garbage though.

other personal ranking:

D-tier: long bow
no idea why OP rates it so highly. of the 2 hand ranged weapons, it has longest range, but lowest damage, right? and it only has 1 AOE attack that stuns and doesn't do much damage. snipe is the only attack that does good damage, but can only be used 2x a turn.

[Bumc]

Scepter is just a bad version of sword.
Your momentum skill is worse, your damage type is generally worse (disabling vampirism and not gibbing armored enemies for a melee char is no bueno).
Your aoe isn't even a real aoe, at this point scrolls are better to fix your lack of crowd thinning with if you don't have boom in skill tree.

[Trip Fisk]

Originally posted by Bumc:

Scepter is just a bad version of sword.

Its a sword that does magic damage instead of physical without the weirdo movement limitations. Scepter's bash does better damage than basic ranged magic attacks. It turns your magic user into a competent melee fighter good at picking off individual enemies if you've got the movement points for it. That's what makes it good IMHO.

No trolling. It's an underrated weapon undeserving of the hate it gets.

Originally posted by Bumc:

Your momentum skill is worse (is it, though?), your damage type is generally worse (disabling vampirism and not gibbing armored enemies for a melee char is no bueno).

obviously scepter sucks if you're putting it on a physical melee fighter... (vampirism is trash btw, buy better armor). Damage type is perfect for a magic user.

Originally posted by Bumc:

Your aoe isn't even a real aoe, at this point scrolls are better to fix your lack of crowd thinning with if you don't have boom in skill tree.

that's why you pair it with a ranged magic weapon with good AOE crowd control, genius....

[twan]

I also likes scepter, it's not just a magical damage version of the sword, more like having both a sword and a hammer in one weapon.

I don't think you even need more crowd control when you get a propagation stun ability. The only thing preventinh it to be a S is you need some investment in both stun chance and propagation bounces to use all its huge potential. But once done it's the weapons that may save your ass even when enemies are too close for slows to be useful, or not positionned ideally for fixed zone aoe. So I'd rate it around B.