Best arms?

[Carryonnaire]

0. I consider a balanced melee warrior.
1. For a single lost arm there is nothing better than KLR arm.
2. For both hands there are two options:
2.1. KLR + KLR would give 20% STR and 20% DEX, 245 (490 total) HP each.
2.2. Lifter + Steady would give 23% STR and 20% DEX, 195 and 145 (340 total) HP.
With only tiny STR negative margin and huge HP positive margin dual KLR arms also seem to be the best choice.
3. What if my character has STR penalty (scorchlander, hiver)? Would Lifter + Steady pair become better?
4. Maybe there are other conditions which I overlooked?

[HidesHisFace]

Best arm depends really on gear you are planning and role.

1. Single lost arm - depends - if you use heavy weapons (except falling sun)/hackers/blunts, lifter arms may be better. Generally, the same rules as with both arms apply.

2. For balance, KLR series is great, as long as you don't plan on going with stealth and thievery. However, the bonuses these arms give are not really huge. They will give you some more "buffer" in terms of strength, or if you reach beyond 100 dex.
Dex bonuses max out at 100, anything beyond simply helps you negate debuffs from getting wounded. Str keeps on scaling blunt and unarmed damage, so there is that.

3. Str penalty is not a penalty to max str, just a speed of gaining str and until very high levels, it is pretty insignificant, to be honest. Bonuses and penalties seem to affect training speed as well, so by giving those characters items with str bonuses, you may actually slow down their natural progress.

4. The bonuses you choose should depends on gear, really.
Guys with weapons that rely on blunt damage or martial arts will benefit more from lifter arms. Not only are such weapons heavy, but blunt damage scales with str oven above 100.
If you want more defensive fighters, more balanced, lighter weapons, such as sabres will do just fine. With such setup get the most protective armour that also gives you the lowest dex penalties possible, preferably without any melee defense penalties - like the always popular samurai armor.

[Shidan]

In my experience it comes down to whether you want the character to be better defensively, or offensively. The optimum defensive choice would be KLR. Good HP, and gives a nice cushion to both Str and Dex to protect from injury penalties.

Offensively depends on your weapon.

Unless it's a a weapon with low blunt damage, you're almost always better off going with dual Lifter. A low blunt damage weapon, like katanas and sabres, would be better off with dual dex arms (Skeleton, Steady, Thief).

It's rare that you want to mix limbs, as the way the bonuses work they actually multiply each other, leading to higher bonuses than the items imply.

Originally posted by HHF:

(except falling sun)

Falling Sun also benefits more from Lifter than any other type of arm. Strength is worth more to blunt damage generation than Dexterity is to cut damage. You need a significant amount of more cut damage on a weapon relative to blunt for it to be worthwhile grabbing a dex arm damage wise.

Originally posted by HHF:

Bonuses and penalties seem to affect training speed as well, so by giving those characters items with str bonuses, you may actually slow down their natural progress.

Not true for Strength. Only affects certain skills. Melee Attack, Melee Defense, Martial arts, Dodge, and Dexterity.

[Carryonnaire]

Originally posted by Shidan:

It's rare that you want to mix limbs, as the way the bonuses work they actually multiply each other, leading to higher bonuses than the items imply.

I'm curious about this. Does it mean that dual KLR would give more than (10% + 10%) = 20% to each stat and dual Lifter would give more than (23% + 23%) = 46%?

[HidesHisFace]

Originally posted by Carryonnaire:

Originally posted by Shidan:

It's rare that you want to mix limbs, as the way the bonuses work they actually multiply each other, leading to higher bonuses than the items imply.

I'm curious about this. Does it mean that dual KLR would give more than (10% + 10%) = 20% to each stat and dual Lifter would give more than (23% + 23%) = 46%?

Correct - this is not a simple addition. Say, you have character with 100 base stregth.
Let's say you have arm that gives you... 23% - the lifter arm.
One arm will give you 123 str, as you would expect.
BUT second arm will give you +23% bonus FROM this 123 str.
So, your actual stregth will be something around 152, I believe, maybe slightly more (the percentages the game shows you are not entirely accurate and are strangely rounded) - for example, according to editor, KLR arms should have 250 hp at masterwork quality, but have 245 - it probably has something to do with how the game calculates quality, but I may be mistaken here.

At 100 str and dex, KLR will give you something around 121-122 - the bigger the bonus, the bigger the difference you will see.

[Ranoth_]

A lot has been said but I wanted to add something I didn't see mentioned, do not forget that you get hit much more often in the stomach and chest, hence having KLR on a human which only has 100 HP on these other parts might be entirely irrelevant depending on what gear you are wielding. Experience tells the tale you need to hear at the end of the day. If I wanted to use a falling sun with Samurai armor on a Greenlander for example I would first seek to get enough strength to wield it properly (with more to spare for the inevitability of when I get injured), which is 40 times the blunt damage of the weapon for every weapon in the game and then I would seek to get more dexterity as the Falling sun remains primarily a cut damage weapon with a bigger cut multiplier as well. My last concern would be for the arm's health value because as a Greenlander I am several times more likely to get KOed from my chest or stomach falling under 0 than to get one of my arms destroyed even if I used one of the weakest robot limbs because they would still have more HP than any other non robotic part of my body (considering armor coverage).

[Bandy]

Best arms are the ones that fit when you need 'em...