Bardiche, Fauchard or Glaive?

[Nero]

I know that almost everyone will say Fauchard for the higher crit range.
But on the other hand you have a feat tax to pay.

Glaive gets a book for +1 atk and dmg really early and has strong weapons for each act, eg Mutilated Angel
(For whatever reason the link is considered to be harmful, although it's the wiki, so I'll copy and paste:

This weapon is a +5 adamantine glaive. Whenever the wielder uses it to attack an evil creature, it grants a +5 bonus to the attack roll, and deals additionally 1d12 slashing damage on hit. Whenever this weapon lands a hit, it inflicts a -1 penalty to AC until the end of combat. This penalty stacks up to -5. The wielder takes a -3 penalty to their Charisma ability score.

Bardiche seems to be a wild card.

[Trolleur_Durden]

If we are talking about the weapon choice for your MC, then my answer would be: neither one of those.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of having reach in this game and really like the fauchard in Kingmaker. But in WotR, there's various new features that are tipping the scales towards non-reach weapons.

The main one is the easy access to some additional natural attacks, which don't have reach and are therefore wasted with a reach weapons. Main one is the gore attack provided by the Closer to Abyss Mythic 2 ability. There's also various ways to easily get access to a bite attack, for example by taking a specific Tiefling heritage or dipping into 1 Bloodrager lvl with the serpentine heritage (+limitless rage).

It's also possible to get reach through size manipulation (Enlarge at lower levels then Legendary proportions later) and have those buffs become pretty much permanents with Greater enduring spells.

Finally, we recently got access to a feat called Lunge, which provides reach in exchange for a -2 AC penalty, which don't really matter anyway since the idea is to go all-in on offense and avoid damage through being out of reach, not having high AC.

All those factors combined converge to a different answer for me, which is the falchion. 18-20 critical threat range, martial weapon (no extra feat needed), 2 handed, able to get reach anyway with size increase and/or Lunge feat and same reach as additional natural attacks.

[Icedfate]

build guides on fextralife say to take glaive with wenduag

[Chunky]

Probably Fauchard even with the feat tax.

Crit range disproportionately affects damage so it matters more than almost any item attributes.

That Glaive might be the exception but you only get it in Act 5 and Fauchard > Glaive for Acts 2, 3 & 4. Act 1 Glaive is best but you can use it without committing to the weapon type with weapon focus.

[Rex is back, baby!]

Whatever fits the aesthetic and tactical capabilities of your character.

I'm using a greataxe atm. Loving it.

I've used glaives in the past.

[Wither]

While Twohand weapon has more damage dice, you can compensate that with lightweapon + sneak attack. Dip in monk and knife master and put the rest in vivi or use sense vital.
You can have like 4d8 sneak dice per attack by level 4.

[hilburnashua]

If you do the Midnight Islands, there is an incredibly powerful Glaive that Songbird drops.

[Yannir]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

build guides on fextralife say to take glaive with wenduag

Yeah, build guides on Fextralife are a bit hit&miss like that.

[Rex is back, baby!]

Originally posted by Yannir:

Originally posted by Icedfate:

build guides on fextralife say to take glaive with wenduag

Yeah, build guides on Fextralife are a bit hit&miss like that.

I avoid any guide that suggests monk or vivisectionist dips, which all those fextralife guides nearly do! xD

[Nero]

Thanks for the detaild replies so far :)

@Trolleur_Durden:
This is really cool for Powergaming. I guess that's tending towards Jinx and the infamous Oracle Angel.
While this is strong, even after the patch that fixed the stacking of bites, going for a "mutant" isn't my style.
But I can imagine how strong this would be.

[Trolleur_Durden]

Originally posted by Nero:

Thanks for the detaild replies so far :)

@Trolleur_Durden:
This is really cool for Powergaming. I guess that's tending towards Jinx and the infamous Oracle Angel.
While this is strong, even after the patch that fixed the stacking of bites, going for a "mutant" isn't my style.
But I can imagine how strong this would be.

Then I would go for fauchards. The difficulty of this game is more or less a downward slope, which is why making a build specifically for a weapon you will get at the end of the game, once you have already beaten the most difficult encounters, doesn't make much sense to me. A good build should become efficient as soon as possible.

[Nito]

The better one is drop STR as a whole and go for weapon finesse(Elven Curved Sword Second Chance gives attack Roll Bonus until you actually hit the enemy....this means you can completely focus on damage rolls)

But favorite weapon by looks Bardiche by a landslide

OR

Focus on missing/Crit Focus on building STR and pick the mythic ability that when you miss you deal sonic damage and taking the Mythic Feat you deal damage + str modifier and look for keen weapon with a natural crit chance so that you either miss or crit LOL both cases you are dealing damage

[Nero]

Originally posted by Trolleur_Durden:

Originally posted by Nero:

Thanks for the detaild replies so far :)

@Trolleur_Durden:
This is really cool for Powergaming. I guess that's tending towards Jinx and the infamous Oracle Angel.
While this is strong, even after the patch that fixed the stacking of bites, going for a "mutant" isn't my style.
But I can imagine how strong this would be.

Then I would go for fauchards. The difficulty of this game is more or less a downward slope, which is why making a build specifically for a weapon you will get at the end of the game, once you have already beaten the most difficult encounters, doesn't make much sense to me. A good build should become efficient as soon as possible.

Thank you again.

So fo whatever reason I never ever enlarged the tank either in KM oder in WotR (only reduced). I only eer enlarged reach weapon guys.
If the tank is enlarged or on LP-size: will other melees be able to "run past them" (like eg when you try to tank with a reach-weapon) or does the large tank still close the gap and no brain-dead AI runs past them?

I know, I could test it myself but I won't be able to play for like four days :-/

[Icedfate]

so, i recently read that players dump dex and then do a dip into scaled fist and then another dip into oracle to get double CHA to AC and then you can put points into STR. I don't know if this is viable. i also read that's not how it works in tabletop, but it works in this due to a bug, that the devs just decided to leave in because it's "more fun" for players to use it(?)

i realized that when given the choice, i always make a high DEX low STR character, unless the game give me someone like Lann, who already has a high STR, i don't put points into STR, except to leave it at 10, which then means, i can't really take advantage of any STR weapons or composite bows and stuff, except for Lann and there was that ranger guy in kingmaker, nobody else ends up using composite bow.

i seen arguments against DEX builds because thy are feat heavy, but now we have the mythic weapon finesse, or slashing grace.

one thing that bugs me about enlarge is it gives you a DEX penalty. i still used it in KM though, because the extra weapon damge made up for it.

[ayrtep]

For a primarily melee focused character I would usually go for Fauchards, the extra critical damage should pull its wait more than the extra perk.

If however you are short of perks or your character is not melee focused you might consider one of the other two. Maybe the build does a lot of damage with magic so extra melee damage is not such a big issue. Now you might prefer to use the extra perk to improve you magic.

I don't see much between Bardices and Glaives, their critical damage is comparable and if you are focusing on them then your not primarily a melee fighter so focus on your other areas.

If you are asking the question you are keen to to concentrate on reach weapons. Which suggests going for Attacks of opportunity and cleave feats. If you are doing this then your build is probably a melee specialist so Fauchards.

[Nero]

Originally posted by Trolleur_Durden:

If we are talking about the weapon choice for your MC, then my answer would be: neither one of those.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of having reach in this game and really like the fauchard in Kingmaker. But in WotR, there's various new features that are tipping the scales towards non-reach weapons.

The main one is the easy access to some additional natural attacks, which don't have reach and are therefore wasted with a reach weapons. Main one is the gore attack provided by the Closer to Abyss Mythic 2 ability. There's also various ways to easily get access to a bite attack, for example by taking a specific Tiefling heritage or dipping into 1 Bloodrager lvl with the serpentine heritage (+limitless rage).

It's also possible to get reach through size manipulation (Enlarge at lower levels then Legendary proportions later) and have those buffs become pretty much permanents with Greater enduring spells.

Finally, we recently got access to a feat called Lunge, which provides reach in exchange for a -2 AC penalty, which don't really matter anyway since the idea is to go all-in on offense and avoid damage through being out of reach, not having high AC.

All those factors combined converge to a different answer for me, which is the falchion. 18-20 critical threat range, martial weapon (no extra feat needed), 2 handed, able to get reach anyway with size increase and/or Lunge feat and same reach as additional natural attacks.

After I came across an item called Mask of Rapid Bites (Ulbrig DLC) which enables a second bite (wich is huge after the fix for bite-stacking) this concept got a lot more interesting.
Two Bites, one Gore

But Falchion? Because of Jinx? Or are there some I forgot?
Jinx is super micro-heavy.
There's always Grave Singer but this is too Meta/Mainstream and almost all other Greataxes are rather meh.