Whats The Best Weapon?

[Yandere]

Out of all the weapons I've gathered, none have surpassed the nightmare sword in any aspect so now I'm wondering, what is the best weapon?

P.S. I'm on chapter 7 so if its a story related weapon, please keep it vague.

[Valk]

The lightning sword obtained after beating the ancient lightning dragon (accessible from like ch4 onwards I believe?), upgraded to the charged form from the alter (but not evolved any further)

Easily stomps everything else.

Has access to both MAG% and STR%, and can be easily scaled up via reforging to the point it has a higher MAG% than any staff in the game, and then the STR gains on it are pretty much unparallelled.

[Reianor]

If we're talking raw stats then that's it, yes.
But stats of weapons mostly just matter for quick-hunting.
In actual combat it's more about the weapon's abilities and in that regard I don't think there's any weapon better than white wood staff.
Well, Life staff is also a decent option (for the same reason) but White wood is better.

The way this game is set up your MC is essentially "the party's tank" your horde of summons tends to deal more damage than you do even in easier battles where you can afford to go full offensive. And when you're facing an actual challenge all of your effort will have to go towards keeping yourself alive while they kill the enemy for you.

As such the game's real best weapons are the ones that facilitate survival. And those are life staff and white wood staff. DD sticks like nightmare and whatnot are only good when you're facing something that's doesn't classify as a real threat.

[Valk]

Originally posted by Reianor:

If we're talking raw stats then that's it, yes.
But stats of weapons mostly just matter for quick-hunting.
In actual combat it's more about the weapon's abilities and in that regard I don't think there's any weapon better than white wood staff.
Well, Life staff is also a decent option (for the same reason) but White wood is better.

The way this game is set up your MC is essentially "the party's tank" your horde of summons tends to deal more damage than you do even in easier battles where you can afford to go full offensive. And when you're facing an actual challenge all of your effort will have to go towards keeping yourself alive while they kill the enemy for you.

As such the game's real best weapons are the ones that facilitate survival. And those are life staff and white wood staff. DD sticks like nightmare and whatnot are only good when you're facing something that's doesn't classify as a real threat.

The abilities barely matter later on in the game, because none of them scale all that well. This means that in the latter half of the game, you cannot rely on things like the life staff to actually save your ass. Not to mention how you'd have to SEVERELY gimp your damage output in order to use those staves, as staves cannot be reforged. This is why the lightning sword, despite being a sword, has access to the highest raw magic pool of any weapon, higher than even an attack focused stave.

It also has to be said that for the bosses and difficulties where your weapon choice is going to have a major effect, none of them do such a low amount of damage that the life staff can keep up. They WILL go straight through that shield long before it has a chance to fully refresh the skill.

There's one other significant advantage to the lightning sword over any defensive based staff too. Raw stats. And I don't mean the STR/MAG from the sword. I mean the DEF potions being insanely easy to farm, and how you can get massive HP gains from Ralph and training. You will generally have to grind significantly less when using the weapon for offence, and raw stat gains focused on defence.

As for summons, I feel like you've not realised something. Summons scale based on your stats. Due to how weapons work in this game, the result is that weapons apply first. Your weapon isn't really "your stats + your weapons stats", it is "Your stats = your base stats multiplied by your weapon". This means that summons apply after your weapon. If you gimp your attack damage with a staff that doesn't scale, you also gimp your summons damage in the process. Not to mention how staves do not give you access to both stats, meaning you're stuck with mostly magic, meaning you can't really rely on physical summons that much either.

If there was only a slight difference between the two, then yes, defensive would likely end up as the priority. It isn't a slight difference though. It is an order of magnitude. There's no upper limit (at least that I've found) on how many times you can reforge, and all it costs is iron ore. You can very easily get the lightning blade to be providing 3-4x more MAG than any defensive staff in the game, and more than double an offensive staff, whilst also not irrelevating STR related things.

[Reianor]

Originally posted by Valk:

The abilities barely matter later on in the game, because none of them scale all that well. This means that in the latter half of the game, you cannot rely on things like the life staff to actually save your ass.

They do. I can. And I did.
Healing scales with your HP.
I finished this game on max difficulty with almost no grind.
The only real grinding I did was near the end of the game where I grinded bosses for "collectible" gimmicks that I didn't actually need, like materials to craft circle 7 spells (they suck, all 3 of them) and to upgrade other weapons.
The first time I beat some of the top tier bosses I DID have to resort to a few consumables here and there. Mostly AGI stimulants with an occasional potion or two near the end of the fight. I think a couple of story fights near the begging of the game required similar treatment.

Originally posted by Valk:

Not to mention how you'd have to SEVERELY gimp your damage output in order to use those staves, as staves cannot be reforged. This is why the lightning sword, despite being a sword, has access to the highest raw magic pool of any weapon, higher than even an attack focused stave.

Lightning Blast (*nourished to 120%) - Increase MAG 180% +840 without nourishing it's 150/700
Lightning Blade - Increase MAG 50% +200

How much time did you waste reforging it to the point where something that starts as "+50%" left "+150%" in the dust?

Anyway white wood staff I was using had "MAG 84% +384"
My mag was ~2000 by the end. It'd be around ~3000 with a Lightning Blast.

Originally posted by Valk:

It also has to be said that for the bosses and difficulties where your weapon choice is going to have a major effect, none of them do such a low amount of damage that the life staff can keep up. They WILL go straight through that shield long before it has a chance to fully refresh the skill.

I tanked Zirconia, I tanked Nightmare, I tanked Ancient lightning Dragon, I tanked Blast, I tanked Aeris. Through ALL of them White Wood staff kept me alive. And that's on max difficulty. If those aren't the guys where weapon choice matters I dunno which ones are.

Originally posted by Valk:

There's one other significant advantage to the lightning sword over any defensive based staff too. Raw stats. And I don't mean the STR/MAG from the sword. I mean the DEF potions being insanely easy to farm, and how you can get massive HP gains from Ralph and training. You will generally have to grind significantly less when using the weapon for offence, and raw stat gains focused on defence.

You're telling the guy that didn't grind that he'd need to grind less if he played the way you did. That's both funny and fishy.

Originally posted by Valk:

As for summons, I feel like you've not realised something. Summons scale based on your stats. Due to how weapons work in this game, the result is that weapons apply first. Your weapon isn't really "your stats + your weapons stats", it is "Your stats = your base stats multiplied by your weapon". This means that summons apply after your weapon. If you gimp your attack damage with a staff that doesn't scale, you also gimp your summons damage in the process. Not to mention how staves do not give you access to both stats, meaning you're stuck with mostly magic, meaning you can't really rely on physical summons that much either.

I feel like you've not realised something - you sound like a prick.
I'm well aware that summons scale with stats.
I'm losing the same ~33% of my "potential" damage output that I would have had with lightning blast.
And AFAIK the only one that doesn't scale well without STR is the brillion, but by the time LS comes around there are more than enough alternatives to him.

Originally posted by Valk:

If there was only a slight difference between the two, then yes, defensive would likely end up as the priority. It isn't a slight difference though. It is an order of magnitude. There's no upper limit (at least that I've found) on how many times you can reforge, and all it costs is iron ore. You can very easily get the lightning blade to be providing 3-4x more MAG than any defensive staff in the game, and more than double an offensive staff, whilst also not irrelevating STR related things.

My last weapon upgrade was before meeting Elysion. And I used that weapon to beat Ancient lightning Dragon and the rest of his tier. Had I switched to any other weapon I'd either need to resort to using a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of consumables or to go grinding for stats.

To even GET a lightning blade you need to beat Ancient lightning Dragon AND be near the end of the plot line (for Reina's quest). By which point you can stroll into the pope's castle just as you are.
In other words you tell me I'd need to grind less if I threw ore at an end-game gimmick weapon. Yeah, right.

I'd theoretically be willing to listen if you were trying to push some other sword and STR-focused gameplay (or some other staff and Mag-based one) as an alternative to white staff (since I've actually have been wondering for a while what's it's like to play this without healing abilities), but you're not even TRYING to take this seriously.

[Valk]

Originally posted by Reianor:

Originally posted by Valk:

The abilities barely matter later on in the game, because none of them scale all that well. This means that in the latter half of the game, you cannot rely on things like the life staff to actually save your ass.

They do. I can. And I did.
Healing scales with your HP.
I finished this game on max difficulty with almost no grind.
The only real grinding I did was near the end of the game where I grinded bosses for "collectible" gimmicks that I didn't actually need, like materials to craft circle 7 spells (they suck, all 3 of them) and to upgrade other weapons.
The first time I beat some of the top tier bosses I DID have to resort to a few consumables here and there. Mostly AGI stimulants with an occasional potion or two near the end of the fight. I think a couple of story fights near the begging of the game required similar treatment.

Originally posted by Valk:

Not to mention how you'd have to SEVERELY gimp your damage output in order to use those staves, as staves cannot be reforged. This is why the lightning sword, despite being a sword, has access to the highest raw magic pool of any weapon, higher than even an attack focused stave.

Lightning Blast (*nourished to 120%) - Increase MAG 180% +840 without nourishing it's 150/700
Lightning Blade - Increase MAG 50% +200

How much time did you waste reforging it to the point where something that starts as "+50%" left "+150%" in the dust?

Anyway white wood staff I was using had "MAG 84% +384"
My mag was ~2000 by the end. It'd be around ~3000 with a Lightning Blast.

Originally posted by Valk:

It also has to be said that for the bosses and difficulties where your weapon choice is going to have a major effect, none of them do such a low amount of damage that the life staff can keep up. They WILL go straight through that shield long before it has a chance to fully refresh the skill.

I tanked Zirconia, I tanked Nightmare, I tanked Ancient lightning Dragon, I tanked Blast, I tanked Aeris. Through ALL of them White Wood staff kept me alive. And that's on max difficulty. If those aren't the guys where weapon choice matters I dunno which ones are.

Originally posted by Valk:

There's one other significant advantage to the lightning sword over any defensive based staff too. Raw stats. And I don't mean the STR/MAG from the sword. I mean the DEF potions being insanely easy to farm, and how you can get massive HP gains from Ralph and training. You will generally have to grind significantly less when using the weapon for offence, and raw stat gains focused on defence.

You're telling the guy that didn't grind that he'd need to grind less if he played the way you did. That's both funny and fishy.

Originally posted by Valk:

As for summons, I feel like you've not realised something. Summons scale based on your stats. Due to how weapons work in this game, the result is that weapons apply first. Your weapon isn't really "your stats + your weapons stats", it is "Your stats = your base stats multiplied by your weapon". This means that summons apply after your weapon. If you gimp your attack damage with a staff that doesn't scale, you also gimp your summons damage in the process. Not to mention how staves do not give you access to both stats, meaning you're stuck with mostly magic, meaning you can't really rely on physical summons that much either.

I feel like you've not realised something - you sound like a prick.
I'm well aware that summons scale with stats.
I'm losing the same ~33% of my "potential" damage output that I would have had with lightning blast.
And AFAIK the only one that doesn't scale well without STR is the brillion, but by the time LS comes around there are more than enough alternatives to him.

Originally posted by Valk:

If there was only a slight difference between the two, then yes, defensive would likely end up as the priority. It isn't a slight difference though. It is an order of magnitude. There's no upper limit (at least that I've found) on how many times you can reforge, and all it costs is iron ore. You can very easily get the lightning blade to be providing 3-4x more MAG than any defensive staff in the game, and more than double an offensive staff, whilst also not irrelevating STR related things.

My last weapon upgrade was before meeting Elysion. And I used that weapon to beat Ancient lightning Dragon and the rest of his tier. Had I switched to any other weapon I'd either need to resort to using a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of consumables or to go grinding for stats.

To even GET a lightning blade you need to beat Ancient lightning Dragon AND be near the end of the plot line (for Reina's quest). By which point you can stroll into the pope's castle just as you are.
In other words you tell me I'd need to grind less if I threw ore at an end-game gimmick weapon. Yeah, right.

I'd theoretically be willing to listen if you were trying to push some other sword and STR-focused gameplay (or some other staff and Mag-based one) as an alternative to white staff (since I've actually have been wondering for a while what's it's like to play this without healing abilities), but you're not even TRYING to take this seriously.

STR based pets that are extremely good at endgame:
Lucca. Easily the best pet in the game, and is exclusively STR. Also the fastest, so you'll have it active at the start more than any other pet.
Brillion. STR focused, but also a bit of MAG.
Zirconia Jr. STR focused equivalent to the 3 small dragons.
"That one free spoiler summon". STR based and does obscene damage with the reforge scaling.
This entirely ignores how the lightning blade has far higher MAG than anything else, meaning it is also the best for MAG summons too (let alone those that use both).

You also do not have no healing abilities in a sword based build. Not only do you have access to all blessings regardless of build, but you have black joe to dunk potions on you, and you also have lucca hurling free turns at you constantly if you desperately need the turn to drop an item on yourself.

And yet again, weapon abilities just don't scale too well. That is what I said. Not "they don't scale at all". Lightning blast is utterly worthless if you're dropping maxed out spell on one turn, followed by an ultimate strike or sextuple swing the following turn to make use of the traces left over. That combination can easily take out most enemies and bosses in the game with only a few hits.

And no, it is not a grind to level up the blade. Iron ore is extremely abundant in the mines, and given that for most of the game, swords are just inferior, you end up with a pretty huge stockpile of it. Dump that all into the sword when you get it, and that sword ends up giving you easily double or triple the stats. For context, without doing very much grinding of the blade at all, or even a huge amount of grinding through the entire game on nightmare, my stat total with the lightning blade when I first obtained and reforged it with all my ore was somewhere around 16 000 STR and 10 000 MAG. You will not hit those kinds of numbers with that little effort on any non-reforgable weapon.

Does it kind of ruin the balancing and make every fight a cheesefest? Yes. But the OP didn't ask what is the most fun weapon to use. They asked what the best weapon is. The best weapon is the lightning blade. If you really don't want to use a sword, the best weapon now becomes the Ice Staff, due to scaling extremely well with the pets. Hell, they even said they have the nightmare blade which would imply they have conquered most if not all of the challenges in the game already, and are simply looking to find the most busted thing in the game.

[sukhmel.v]

Although I agree that White Staff was easiest for me to use due to healing ability "overflow", the logic behind reforging is more reliable.

What I mean is if something gives a bonus to MAG and STR and allows for reforging, it will be the best weapon IF you forge it long enough

[akame47]

the weapon dropped by nightmare

[Zaris]

Well for starters there's a wiki page with all available weapons:
https://witch-spring.fandom.com/wiki/WitchSpring_R/Weapons

Best looking ones to keep it short:
- Enchanted Staff Stage 4 / MAG 65% +160 / 33% mana on kill
- Life Staff Stage 4 / MAG 50% +130 / Mag Res 8% / PhysRes 20% / 20% hp on kill
- Flaming Starlight White Wood Staff / MAG 75% +360 /Ignore DEF 50% /
Ignore PhysRes 30% / Ignore MagRes 50% / 10% HP on kill, 24% mana on kill
- Lightning Blast / MAG 180% +840 / STR 36% / AGI +120
- Nightmare Sword / MAG 115% +576 / STR 173% + 1153

After finishing the game on normal i would say:
- for farming non minibosses (for example to reduce the respawn timer): whitewood staff because of the mana on kill so you can kill an enemy group with one 7-flame spell
- for bosses: Lightning Blast as mage or Nightmare Sword as fighter build because you can't profit from the mana recovery because they don't die in one hit (with mental traning 5 defense regains 20% mana and seed spirit pet also restores 10% mana per attack )
- for strong side bosses (like ancient lightning dragon): Life Staff Stage 4, in combination with the craftable 30% phys res armor and a ~12% shield you can get ~65-75% phys res and then just tank through their attacks and let the pets kill it

[Valk]

Originally posted by Zaris:

Well for starters there's a wiki page with all available weapons:
https://witch-spring.fandom.com/wiki/WitchSpring_R/Weapons

Best looking ones to keep it short:
- Enchanted Staff Stage 4 / MAG 65% +160 / 33% mana on kill
- Life Staff Stage 4 / MAG 50% +130 / Mag Res 8% / PhysRes 20% / 20% hp on kill
- Flaming Starlight White Wood Staff / MAG 75% +360 /Ignore DEF 50% /
Ignore PhysRes 30% / Ignore MagRes 50% / 10% HP on kill, 24% mana on kill
- Lightning Blast / MAG 180% +840 / STR 36% / AGI +120
- Nightmare Sword / MAG 115% +576 / STR 173% + 1153

After finishing the game on normal i would say:
- for farming non minibosses (for example to reduce the respawn timer): whitewood staff because of the mana on kill so you can kill an enemy group with one 7-flame spell
- for bosses: Lightning Blast as mage or Nightmare Sword as fighter build because you can't profit from the mana recovery because they don't die in one hit (with mental traning 5 defense regains 20% mana and seed spirit pet also restores 10% mana per attack )
- for strong side bosses (like ancient lightning dragon): Life Staff Stage 4, in combination with the craftable 30% phys res armor and a ~12% shield you can get ~65-75% phys res and then just tank through their attacks and let the pets kill it

Wiki page has many missing values though, unfortunately. Especially on reforgable things.