what is the advantage of axes and maces?

[Icedfate]

when i look at the stats, they look like terrible weapons. i have been selling them every time. low damage, only x1 hit and massive accuracy penalties compared to swords and daggers.

is there some other advantage to ises this weapons?
i see the axe says "defense penetration ", but is it worth it to cut my dps in half just to bypass some armor?

the mace says "stun", but is it worth cutting my dps in half for a chance to stun. .especially since my front line all has stun bash attack skill?

[AbraCadaver]

stuns are huge sometimes.....sometimes. I keep one on priests

[Icedfate]

my priest has 2 handed staff for extra divine stat. I just pulled a holy wand and a defender of faith shield, gotta spend some gold to see if it's better.


yeah, it would be good if alice could stun on melee, but i dunno how that works though, if she can't hit anything because the priest already has low accuracy and the mace has an even bigger penalty.
I could put a bunch of + accuracy gear, but then i have to sacrifice some other stat. I have mostly +divinity, + action speed, + defense on her.

right now, alice has 160 divinity with her staff. If i put a mace on her, the stat drops to 80 and then she has crappy accuracy, only 32, at level 40, compared to my front line who are all in the 70's and still have trouble hitting some enemies. it would take a lot of + accuracy items to overcome that, to give up half of my healing power , and all my other equipment stats bonuses just to become a melee attacker doing 1 dmaage with a chance to stun?


as for the axes. I pulled a 4* steel axe, but it has 117x1 damage, compared to me steel sword that has 123x2 damage. and the axe has lower accuracy.
maybe it's better if i upgrade it , but i don't want to sink a bunch of resources into a weapon i might not even use.

gold is really scarce. i mean. i'm getting 10's of thousands of it. but immediately spending it. my gear needs a ton now, like 10-20k per upgrade

[Daguza]

2 Handers have higher attack Variance, So ATK on 2 hander counts for more VS one handers. And I think Axe probably has the highest. Also, Follow-Up- Attack passive works best with 2-Handers. One handed when Follow-up procs get only 1 extra attack at 50% damage. 2hand gets 100%.

More info here but TLDR. It says one isn't definitively better then the other.
https://wizardry.fasterthoughts.io/appendices/equipment/weapon-types/

[Icedfate]

yeah, i put a steel greatsword on gerulf. I prefer 1h + shield, but gerulf gets bonuses with 2h.
i noticed the follow up attack and that"# really good.

my question wasn't about 1h vs 2h.
it's axes and maces vs swords.
mace has the stun effect, but the damage is so low, it seems like it's just utility. instead of doing 200 dmage, i do 1 damage with a chance to stun? and stun is really good, but i jave stun bash on my 3 front liners already.

guy above suggested mace on priest and yeah, they would be great. .if the priest had decent accuracy. and it feels like it's not worth it to lose half my spell effectiveness, just for a chance to stun on melee.


the axe, i'm still unsure about, because it has half the attack power of a sword, but it ignored defense, but it's more hidden info. the description says it ignores "a portion" of defense, but doesn't say how much.
i pulled a 4* iron axe and would like to try it, but i already have +10 steel 3* sword and it would take too much gold and ores to level the axe to +10 just to compare and then i might end up not using it.

i have olive in my party and she's an elf fighter with high DEX and i built her around high evasion and using a dagger and i'm not even sure daggers are good. she does a lot of damage when she gets a surety strike, but sometimes against high armor enemies, she only does 2 damage. she pretty mich has to spam skills to do damage.

lana is a,knight and also has a steel sword. her damage and accuracy are lower than MC.
maybe she could use an axe or mace. I get it that knight is supposed to be a tank, but i can't figure how to make her tank effectively. her tank skills, like cover and attract hit don't seem to work.


edit - and ok well thanks for that link. it says axes ignore 30%. and the maces have "evasion hit" property, which means they never miss, but imstead do half damage when they would have missed (?), so i see why accuracy doesn't matter then with the mace.
i'm still not sure ot's worth sacrificing half of my divine power to do mediocre damage with a 10% to stun


i'm aware that swapping weapons mid combot does not cost an action, so i guess the intent was for you to carry multiple weapons and swap in the right one as needed?
i'm already carrying undead slayers to swap to just in case i need them.
haven't seen any undeads in abyss2, about to reach the second floor of,the pirate ship at the end of the chapter, right before arena.

[Daguza]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

yeah, i put a steel greatsword on gerulf. I prefer 1h + shield, but gerulf gets bonuses with 2h.
i noticed the follow up attack and that"# really good.

my question wasn't about 1h vs 2h.
it's axes and maces vs swords.
mace has the stun effect, but the damage is so low, it seems like it's just utility. instead of doing 200 dmage, i do 1 damage with a chance to stun? and stun is really good, but i jave stun bash on my 3 front liners already.

guy above suggested mace on priest and yeah, they would be great. .if the priest had decent accuracy. and it feels like it's not worth it to lose half my spell effectiveness, just for a chance to stun on melee.


the axe, i'm still unsure about, because it has half the attack power of a sword, but it ignored defense, but it's more hidden info. the description says it ignores "a portion" of defense, but doesn't say how much.
i pulled a 4* iron axe and would like to try it, but i already have +10 steel 3* sword and it would take too much gold and ores to level the axe to +10 just to compare and then i might end up not using it.

i have olive in my party and she's an elf fighter with high DEX and i built her around high evasion and using a dagger and i'm not even sure daggers are good. she does a lot of damage when she gets a surety strike, but sometimes against high armor enemies, she only does 2 damage. she pretty mich has to spam skills to do damage.

lana is a,knight and also has a steel sword. her damage and accuracy are lower than MC.
maybe she could use an axe or mace. I get it that knight is supposed to be a tank, but i can't figure how to make her tank effectively. her tank skills, like cover and attract hit don't seem to work.


edit - and ok well thanks for that link. it says axes ignore 30%. and the maces have "evasion hit" property, which means they never miss, but imstead do half damage when they would have missed (?), so i see why accuracy doesn't matter then with the mace.
i'm still not sure ot's worth sacrificing half of my divine power to do mediocre damage with a 10% to stun


i'm aware that swapping weapons mid combot does not cost an action, so i guess the intent was for you to carry multiple weapons and swap in the right one as needed?
i'm already carrying undead slayers to swap to just in case i need them.
haven't seen any undeads in abyss2, about to reach the second floor of,the pirate ship at the end of the chapter, right before arena.

For high defense enemies, you have to use skills to deal good damage if when using 1-handed to bypass the defense threshold e.g. Heavy Strike or Precision Strike, that's how devs intended them to pierce high defenses. And you can drop the undead weapons, I don't recall seen any in the 2nd Abyss. Plus, their base stats(Bronze tier?) are far behind steel grade so you probably wouldn't wanna use em anyway. Maybe put em in storage for Mausoleum or future use.

And Knight is not doing well in the meta right now. They suck apparently, altho Lana is very good thanks to her passives. But most people just use 3 fighters. So, probably a good idea to change Lana to fighter when possible.

[Sarissofoi]

Switching weapon is free action. So you use staff for spells and hammer for smacking.

[Icedfate]

i'm keeping the undead weapons for now, because of the new event, to slay the necromancer. lots of undeads in there.

and lana. .feels essential. her passive ability saves so many resources. I dunno how people would play without her.
i plan to change her to fighter asap, but that could take months with the randomness of the gem shop, offering 2 random scrolls per week and they could be anyone, ever people i don't have or it could be just for their base classes to change them back.

there's no way i'm beating all 3 proving grounds at the level i'm at to be abke to exchange for her scroll that way either. it seems those are meant for level 60 characters.

[Daguza]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

i'm keeping the undead weapons for now, because of the new event, to slay the necromancer. lots of undeads in there.

and lana. .feels essential. her passive ability saves so many resources. I dunno how people would play without her.
i plan to change her to fighter asap, but that could take months with the randomness of the gem shop, offering 2 random scrolls per week and they could be anyone, ever people i don't have or it could be just for their base classes to change them back.

there's no way i'm beating all 3 proving grounds at the level i'm at to be abke to exchange for her scroll that way either. it seems those are meant for level 60 characters.

Lana is one of the best characters in the 1st Abyss so she's fine for now. It's just that Knight falls off hard by the 3rd Abyss and other hard content. Hitting for pitiful low numbers. Made worse by cover mechanics not being great in this game. So it feels like they dont contribute thar much.

As for the new event, the beginner difficulty can be beat at Lvl 40. Intermediate and advance is 50 and 60 respectively. I haven't mathed it out but I think could enough currency to get the job scroll.

[Icedfate]

i thought i read that the proving grounds currency can't be farmed. you only get it once for each difficulty.
i looked at the mission rewards and they are 25,25,100,100,150.

so at the bare minimum, i have to beat beginner, then medium and finally advanced 3 times to get the scroll. unless, am i getting wrong information again? can beginner mode be farmed?

[Daguza]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

i thought i read that the proving grounds currency can't be farmed. you only get it once for each difficulty.
i looked at the mission rewards and they are 25,25,100,100,150.

so at the bare minimum, i have to beat beginner, then medium and finally advanced 3 times to get the scroll. unless, am i getting wrong information again? can beginner mode be farmed?

One time clear for each difficulty + mission rewards. I think you can get 100 for clearing begginer 5 times. But idk what items you can get with just beginner rewards.

[Icedfate]

i got 50 for finding the master the first time. 25 from the mission rewards for finding him twice. and 25 from the mission reward before him.
intermediate is for level 50 and advanced is for 60. i'm not even close to that.

i had accidentally spent 24 a while ago, thinking whatever i gave up on the event. i just managed to beat beginner twice and now i have 76.

100 could have gotten me a skill book.
there's still a follow up skill book for 75. i'll probably end up getting that to teach/level follow up attack to someone.

my question would be is this event going to come back around again in the future and will we keep our points or do we have to spend them before it ends?

[Daguza]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

i got 50 for finding the master the first time. 25 from the mission rewards for finding him twice. and 25 from the mission reward before him.
intermediate is for level 50 and advanced is for 60. i'm not even close to that.

i had accidentally spent 24 a while ago, thinking whatever i gave up on the event. i just managed to beat beginner twice and now i have 76.

100 could have gotten me a skill book.
there's still a follow up skill book for 75. i'll probably end up getting that to teach/level follow up attack to someone.

my question would be is this event going to come back around again in the future and will we keep our points or do we have to spend them before it ends?

I imangine this would be some kinda reacurring event. It look like it has that type of template that is ripe for recycling. Exxept next time it'll probably focus on differnt classes.

[Icedfate]

i'm just wondering if the points we earn carry over or if i have to spend them now or else i lose them

[Guurt]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

i'm just wondering if the points we earn carry over or if i have to spend them now or else i lose them

If you read the patch notes about the proving ground then you will find the answer... or at least that is what I heard... I spent all my points after completing the event, so the answer didn't really matter to me...

[Icedfate]

it says "any unused points will be lost", so okay then. that's the answer.
i'm buying a follow up book, then.