Is the Mace bad or am I doing it wrong?

[Ancient Toaster]

I was under the impression the Mace was a great weapon. Early on in the game it does pathetic damage to even the Undead Soldiers in the burg, doing somewhere around 38 one handed per swing with 15ish strength on a Cleric. It's slow to attack and has a huge animation.

I upgraded it to +5 after defeating the Gargoyles and the thing just flat out sucks on anything that isn't a heavy armor enemy.

[CazadorDeLobo]

One-handing sucks in general. Lower poise break, lower damage, lower strength bonus to weapon... Shield dependency results in poor damage output, and a lack of intuition towards how you might be able to achieve better damage with the weapon results in your grand confusion. So try two-handing. Give up shields for a bit. All in all, the Reinforced Club is a far better weapon, with better base damage and moderate scaling.

[Ancient Toaster]

Well, I switched to two handing pretty early on becuase I was not happy with the damage and speed of the Mace

It just feels so wrong to two hand that weapon

[CazadorDeLobo]

Originally posted by AncientToaster:

Well, I switched to two handing pretty early on becuase I was not happy with the damage and speed of the Mace

It just feels so wrong to two hand that weapon

Two-hands on the weapon is the most practical way, historically, to use the weapon. Shields get in the way. The body mechanics of the player's swing with hammers, admittedly, remind one of a constipated brutish creature, like an Ogre.

[Pennsylvanian]

Mace is fine, but it's pretty much only useable with 2-handing. It has a B scaling in Strength.

[Ancient Toaster]

Originally posted by Wulf Hunter:

Originally posted by AncientToaster:

Well, I switched to two handing pretty early on becuase I was not happy with the damage and speed of the Mace

It just feels so wrong to two hand that weapon

Two-hands on the weapon is the most practical way, historically, to use the weapon. Shields get in the way. The body mechanics of the player's swing with hammers, admittedly, remind one of a constipated brutish creature, like an Ogre.

Ah, I see. Good to know.

Originally posted by Pennsylvanian:

Mace is fine, but it's pretty much only useable with 2-handing. It has a B scaling in Strength.

Seems like an OK weapon for awhile, but probably going to switch to Claymore and pump Faith and make it Divine. Wise choice?

[nomoreblues]

Originally posted by AncientToaster:

Claymore and pump Faith and make it Divine. Wise choice?

not if melee damage is what you want (best max normal path with dex and str)
if you want miracles you must expect to "pay" with less melee dmg

edit: also don't let numbers fool you, divine does "split" dmg (magic and normal) which kinda nearly doubles the resistance of enemies, so don't do deep math, or if, then real deep

[MaenaZ]

Personally I wouldn't even consider using any hammers other than Reinforced Club, but I guess at high levels the B scaling helps?

The difference being that Claymore scales C-C in Strength and Dex, and to make it successfully 'divine' you need to remember that scales MUCH better with Faith.

Out of greatswords, Man-Serpent Greatsword is the best for primarily Strength builds.

[Ancient Toaster]

Well, I guess maybe I should post what kind of build I'm going for right now.

I started as a Cleric, and plan to be basically a Cleric/Knight build that has decently high Faith, but high strength as well.

Miracles I'll be using will be primarily support related such as Force, Heal etc. I think I might squeak in a blast like Lightning or something?

I was reading some stuff on the Mace being a decent weapon to keep reinforcing to +15 for the entire game, but I guess I just need to keep at it and keep reinforcing it. The damage against non-armored targets is pretty disappointing but it seems great against things like the Stone Guardians in the forest, where it two shots them with ease, but it's pretty poor against the Plant creatures.

[Ancient Toaster]

If the Claymore is not a good Divine weapon, what other weapon should I consider? Maybe making the Mace Divine? From what knowledge I have of the game, I'm not going to get a Divine weapon until pretty late.

[nomoreblues]

Originally posted by AncientToaster:

If the Claymore is not a good Divine weapon, what other weapon should I consider? Maybe making the Mace Divine? From what knowledge I have of the game, I'm not going to get a Divine weapon until pretty late.

no no, if divine clay is actually good (because decent base dmg) - it's just you complained about melee dmg and going divine will, in general, be not as good for that than going the normal upgrade (naturally, since you gain other benefits - would be poor game balancing otherwise)

if you wanna focus on melee combat it's best to level dex or str or both and upgrade weapons on normal path

[Autism Scrub Lord]

Quality builds are good choise in this game.Weapon varety.

[🎃MaximusBlastalot🎃]

Originally posted by nomoreblues:

Originally posted by AncientToaster:

If the Claymore is not a good Divine weapon, what other weapon should I consider? Maybe making the Mace Divine? From what knowledge I have of the game, I'm not going to get a Divine weapon until pretty late.

no no, if divine clay is actually good (because decent base dmg) - it's just you complained about melee dmg and going divine will, in general, be not as good for that than going the normal upgrade (naturally, since you gain other benefits - would be poor game balancing otherwise)

if you wanna focus on melee combat it's best to level dex or str or both and upgrade weapons on normal path

It makes a good split dmg weapon but you lose out on being able to counter attack as effectively with the stab.

That being said the weapons that scale well with the split dmg paths still do decent dmg, they are just vunerable to being "shut out" but even then you can just switch the type.I would suggest you look up the weapon and put your stats into the build calculator so you can see which weapons do scale well with those paths.

Also there are advantage to split dmg too such as chip dmg (not as relevant thought due to dead angling in 1) and that they allow "variety" in caster/gouge/hybrids builds etc.

25 int/faith is going to give you about the same as the chaos with 10 humanity.
50 is going to give you ~80 more and your going to hit around 360 magic dmg and 220-240 physical (for comparsion moonlight does 480 magic).
Now the zweilhander will get about 50 more magic dmg but its slower and lacks the stab.

[CazadorDeLobo]

Originally posted by nomoreblues:

Originally posted by AncientToaster:

If the Claymore is not a good Divine weapon, what other weapon should I consider? Maybe making the Mace Divine? From what knowledge I have of the game, I'm not going to get a Divine weapon until pretty late.

no no, if divine clay is actually good (because decent base dmg) - it's just you complained about melee dmg and going divine will, in general, be not as good for that than going the normal upgrade (naturally, since you gain other benefits - would be poor game balancing otherwise)

if you wanna focus on melee combat it's best to level dex or str or both and upgrade weapons on normal path

Didn't you know? Bastard Sword has about 10% higher damage on the infusion upgrades than the Claymore. Claymore suffers considerably from the elemental infusions.