How to Build 1H Sword (and get 19k Crits)

[Kerensky]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2882903341

I'm surprised to see people think 1H Sword is bad... I think it's my favorite weapon (2H sword is pretty incredible too).

So I just wanted to say a few words on it. To really make 1H sword work, you need a lot of movement points and it helps to have a lot of Skill Range.

Skill range will actually affect both 2nd (attack through target) and 3rd ability (attack through 3 targets). While it doesn't increase the number of targets you hit, what Skill Range allows you to do is launch your attack from much further away. And when you move from much further away, your 1st ability is being super charged with the Momentum stat.

It can be tough to use at start, against a early night dense horde you might need help from range to punch holes in the enemy formation to make room for your sword dashes to land properly.

But the 2nd and 3rd ability are there for dealing with weak swarms, and then you unload your 1st ability into a large target.

Something that will make 1H sword be able to operate on its own without help from someone punching holes in the BOOM Trait. You will often do massive overkill with your 1st ability, and splashing that damage in a dense enemy formation will clear the space you need to do more dashes to rebuild momentum.

TLDR:
Get a lot of Movement Primary Stat
Get some Skill Range Secondary Stat

And here is all of those words in action:

https://imgur.com/dlB4G72

[Kerensky]

Also, as a very fun quirk, 1H sword is the best melee weapon for taking on exploding boomer enemies.

While other melee weapons get splashed on in the death explosion, when you use the 1st ability on 1H sword to get a killing blow, you enter the square of the target you killed. The exploder enemy does not affect its own square, only the squares all around it.

So build up a giant amount of momentum, unload it into an exploder, and you will see you take no damage from the explosion.

[hilfazer]

One thing is how good a weapon is and another thing is how it's liked by a particular player (or players in general). It's possible that someone likes particular weapon a lot and that weapon is bad at the same time. Fortunately there's nothing wrong with liking weak/bad weapons and there's even something good about it because bad weapons are more likely to get buffed.

As for me i don't consider 1H sword bad but i'm also not disagreeing with that. I'd disagree if someone told me i don't like it as i like it a lot (:

[Bumc]

As much as I love 1h swords, they are quite impractical compared to axe, scepter or hammers.
Dealing 19k damage is irrelevant outside bossing (and even those have multiple solutions), and for multiple instances of 1-2k damage you don't need this kind of hyper-specialized character. Any crit or momentum user will suffice.
Most of my melees are boring "here, have every single block or dodge armor piece I found and tank this chokepoint. As for killing stuff, dunno, use scrolls or something. You get ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of free damage by being melee, you'll manage."

That being said, its still cool to zoom around and score big yellow numbers on enemies.

[ForeverUntoned]

Yeah, I love 1-hands. Fantastic weapon and mobility tool for moving around and using all your momentum to deal with elites as a back-up weapon.

Also stacking enough skill range and movement and you can move from one side of the map to the other: Teleport? waste of mana lol.

[ForeverUntoned]

Originally posted by Kerensky:

Also, as a very fun quirk, 1H sword is the best melee weapon for taking on exploding boomer enemies.

While other melee weapons get splashed on in the death explosion, when you use the 1st ability on 1H sword to get a killing blow, you enter the square of the target you killed. The exploder enemy does not affect its own square, only the squares all around it.

So build up a giant amount of momentum, unload it into an exploder, and you will see you take no damage from the explosion.

That is the follow-up tag, also available on sledgehammers, pistols, and power staves.

[Leiraion]

Originally posted by ForeverUntoned:

That is the follow-up tag, also available on sledgehammers, pistols, and power staves.

While this is true, you can also kill Boomers with any other Follow-up attack, not just the 1H sword's.... The big thing to remember is that 1h Sword has the only Momentum Follow up attack in the game. So, you can kill a Boomer safely with this.
Whereas with the other follow up attacks, you would have to first get it low enough for the respective follow-up skill to actually kill it.

[Zorop]

1h sword is so much better than 2h sword for whatever reason.
I'm actually pretty sure that the 2h sword is by far the worst melee weapon.

[Droopy The Dog]

The 2H sword's 1 AP charge attack that hits 3 in a line is a pretty nice move for a secondary weapon, as is the momentum hit. You probably don't want to be using all your AP with it though.

[Leiraion]

Originally posted by Zorop:

1h sword is so much better than 2h sword for whatever reason.
I'm actually pretty sure that the 2h sword is by far the worst melee weapon.

2h sword has pretty high base damage as well as a strong kit.
It has the highest % momentum attack, a good 6 target AOE for only 3 mana, and Charge is allowed to be cast without a target --- which means it can be used for mobility if needed as well.

I wouldn't say it's the weakest. I'd much rather have that then 1h hammer or 1h axe... and I don't hate those weapons either.
Different playstyles also compliment different weapons -- for example the 1h axe is a particularly useful secondary weapon due to it's debuff Intimidating Scream (-33% dmg reduction for 2 turns)
You can do some nasty stuff with it such as doubling up the cast on 3 Boomers. Now they all do -66% dmg and you can just let all 3 blow up into you.
It's 2AP skill, Axe Boomerang, works super well with the T5 perk BOOM! as the secondary targets that the overkill can hit from BOOM! is up to 10 targets.


One of my favorite pairings right now TBH is picking up Flexibility (T4) and then using a Scepter and 1h sword since they have the same momentum base now.

[hilfazer]

Originally posted by Letsatsi:

One of my favorite pairings right now TBH is picking up Flexibility (T4) and then using a Scepter and 1h sword since they have the same momentum base now.

It's still 5% base momentum for the sword's Slash. Scepter's Bash now has 15% (if that's what you meant).

[Leiraion]

Originally posted by hilfazer:

It's still 5% base momentum for the sword's Slash. Scepter's Bash now has 15% (if that's what you meant).

Oh, that's right -- I thought in the past it was 15% and the Scepter was 25% --- patch nerfed Scepter down to 15%

Either way, 1h sword still works out as a pretty solid weapon because of it's stupid levels of mobility.

[Keyen]

1H sword is weak because the difficulty in this game is dealing with swarms efficiently while sword two skills are just doing 1 cell per ap, and the last skill barely 3 cells for 2 ap, making it very poor.
Sure, you can deal very high damage to a boss, but so can a lot of other weapons, including at very high range. Sword brings nothing special to the table, and has a lot of shortcomings.

[Act Chill]

Originally posted by Keyen:

1H sword is weak because the difficulty in this game is dealing with swarms efficiently while sword two skills are just doing 1 cell per ap, and the last skill barely 3 cells for 2 ap, making it very poor.
Sure, you can deal very high damage to a boss, but so can a lot of other weapons, including at very high range. Sword brings nothing special to the table, and has a lot of shortcomings.

If you get the ability that the over kill damage applies to the surrounding, you could take out many in 1 hit. The issue is needing momentum and trying to move enough to kill 8 at a time. Easier to just use a short bow...Handbow is a monster weapon though