Dread Spear vs. Giant Sword

[Zergs]

Update 7/10/2024 with added weapon tests:

https://ibb.co/KXGjK5g

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I've long wondered which of these two weapons is superior overall, so I put together a series of tests using Cosmic Forge and a character editor. I created four warrior characters with 3,200,000 xp (enough to put hybrids at level 15) supported by Rest All bishops and edited the starter crabs to have the defensive stats (AC and resistances) of a level 22 Rapax Warlock. I raised the crab HP and Stamina to be the rough equivalent of 10 Rapax Warlocks each (e.g. 2321 HP each). I edited the starter chest to drop a bunch of endgame loot.

I equipped a specific weapon on each of the 4 warriors (I started with 4 Mook Rangers) and then counted the number of rounds it took them to plow through the 3 crabs, as well as the number of times I needed to cast PL3 Rest All to keep the warriors swinging. Each warrior had one Ankh of Might (or Ring of the Road in the case of the Bard tests) and an Infinity Helm. Classes that couldn't use an Infinity Helm used the Robes of Rejuv instead. Each character has 80 in all weapon skills, 70 in close combat, and those that have 100 Strength have 22 Power Strike (numbers roughly based on HOK1970's reports for level 15 characters). All tests on Expert with PL 7 Enchanted Blade, but no other buffs.

I chose these numbers because my parties usually hit Rapax Castle around level 14 or 15, and my spells barely scratch these level 22 guys with Element Shield/Magic Screen I find there. That forces me to turn to melee, even with a magic party, so that is the period of the game in which I personally am most interested in melee performance. The results are below:

https://ibb.co/T0kdQSH

Obviously, there's a high degree of randomness in these tests, not just with swings and damage ranges (which should average out with 4 characters attacking for 10-15 rounds), but more with the random chances for status effects to proc. Still, I feel like I can draw some conclusions (and caveats) from this experiment:

1) This was a best case scenario for cursed weapons, short range weapons, and high-proc chance weapons. This is because cursed/short range weapons had 100% uptime against 3 very high HP enemies in melee range from round 1. The high proc weapons could land a disable early in the combat and then be able to pump 2000 more HP worth of damage into a stunned/paralyzed enemy. In a real battle, the proc weapons would have to continually attempt to reapply the disable to fresh enemies and the cursed weapons would often miss swings or entire rounds due to having no targets in range. Therefore, these tests overstate the power of procs/cursed weapons.

Or said another way, these numbers are directionally accurate for weapon performance against tough, high-HP bosses but not against groups of average enemies.

2) The Giant Sword and the Dread Spear came out very similarly in performance! The GS will overtake the Dread when it gets its second swing, but the Dread will also get to its 3rd quicker.

3) The Light Sword, Bloodlust, Ivory Blade, Muramasa, and Fang are all roughly comparable. The Light Sword is the best, with Bloodlust second, and the other three are pretty similar. But the Light Sword isn't as far ahead of the others as I thought it would be.

4) I've long felt that the Zatoichi Bo is the best overall weapon in the game. After these tests, I can comfortably keep it in the top 3.

5) The proc-based weapons are REALLY strong. The damage of the Zato, Staff of Doom, and Cane are not worse than the GS/Dread, but when they get lucky, they can really knock a big chunk out of enemies' HP very fast.

6) To my surprise, the type of proc (KO vs. Paralyze) matters a lot, at least against "Rapax Warlocks." I tested a ton of weapons with stun and the stuns pretty rarely procced. However, the 3 paralyze weapons procced very often. The best test case was the Zato, which has 15% paralyze and 15% KO, and procced a bunch of paralyzes but at most 1 stun. This is because Rapax Warlocks have 90 water resistance and 115 earth resistance. We know intuitively how good Blizzard and Iceball are in Rapax Castle, but I've never carefully watched how much more effective the water-based weapon procs are than other elements.

7) Implicitly, Mystic Arrows >>>>>>> Medusa Stones, at least when fighting the Rapax. Somehow this forum still underrates the Mystic Arrow and archery characters in general. 16-40 damage, with 35% Paralyze and 6% kill, and +6 to hit +3 initiative would be a great stat line if it was a melee weapon. Why are people still sleeping on this weapon combo?

8) Bloodlust's bonus swing doesn't show up in the character sheet. Characters with 2/2 were often getting a 3rd swing when attacking with Bloodlust.

9) Martial Arts did reasonably competitive damage, but it's almost as stamina hungry as a Giant Sword! This test possibly also underrates Martial Arts, since the skill is so easy to train. Maybe a level 15 Monk would have 80 staff skill normally, but would have 95 martial arts skill if using it from the beginning of the game. One nice thing about Martial Arts is that the animations are super fast.

10) I don't understand why the Mauler underperformed the Dread Spear despite superior damage stats. Both had 2/2 on my various test characters. None of these weapons had meaningful procs, and given the huge number of attacks made, the damage swings should average out. Note on The Mauler--its animations are super fast. A nice little benefit if you play Wizardry 8 as if it's an FPS game, like I do.

11) Having played a Faerie Ninja, I know how strong the Cane is. However, I assumed that it was still behind a Fighter or Rogue with a powerful endgame weapon. I now believe that a Cane FN is fully the match of a Rogue or Fighter if it has full uptime (say against a boss, like Al-Sedexus, Nessie, the DS, the Lava Lord, El Dorado, etc.) The FNs in my test didn't even have max Strength or Powerstrike yet.

12) Biogoo once said that a party is strong if it has 3 warriors, with a Fighter counting as 1.5 warriors, and a normal hybrid counting as 1. I'd count a Zato monk or samurai as 1.2 or 1.3. This weapon is noticeably better than a Dread Spear.

13) The Monk is the strongest offensive hybrid in the game. With the Zato, it's the 4th strongest physical attacker in the game behind a Fighter, Rogue, and Cane FN. With the Mindblast Rod, it's the strongest spell damage dealer of any character for about 2/3rds of the game.

14) The Bard is a better hybrid than a hybrid. It beats Ranger/Samurai easily in spell damage, and Bloodlust is the 2nd best sword. Bard is the best Bloodlust user, even over a Samurai, because its 10-15 extra points of Strength (Caliban's, Ring of the Road) scale really nicely with Bloodlust's bonus swing. This would change when the Samurai hits 3/3 (way before a Bard will).

15) I am not sure how Bloodlust's native Berserk interacts with Backstab. For a Rogue, Fang seemed to be a better weapon. This might be because the +10 strength gets multiplied by backstab, whereas the berserk merely stacks additively (and Fang has much higher base damage). Still, the results were pretty close. If I have a Bard and a Rogue, I'd give Bloodlust to the Bard and Fang to the Rogue.

16) Staff of Doom appears to be the overall best weapon for a Fighter :) Although I haven't tested Excaliber, Light Sword, or any dual-wield setup.

17) Since just about any character can get to 2/2 pretty easily, I'd expect a Str/Dex Staff of Doom Alchemist or Priest to keep up pretty easily with an average Dread Spear/Giant Sword/Mauler hybrid.

18) I think a lot of the 2/1 weapons are very close to getting their 2nd swing. Notably, the Dread Spear Monks had 2/3 (they had 63 speed base, so the other Dread Spear users were probably just short of their 3rd swing). Haste might also make some of these weapons look a lot better.

19) Although these tests make the Dread Spear look relatively unimpressive, I want to reiterate that this was a best case scenario for cursed weapons and proc weapons. Spear characters also get to train their weapons from the beginning of the game and get many chances to train due to the extended range (see HOK1970's recent fighter comparisons). The Dread Spear is also available pretty early, is lightweight, has +2 initiative and +20 polearm, and Valkyries are also great. I'm willing to bet that a Dread Spear Valkyrie will be the first character to hit 3/3 in a normal game, other than perhaps a Martial Arts monk.

20) Rogues kind of suck. Given how much more you get from a Fighter defensively, I'd expect a Rogue to significantly outperform a Fighter offensively. But it doesn't really do that.

21) Lightning Strike did have a noticeable effect in my tests. However, this was also a best-case scenario for LS--many rounds of Samurai repeatedly attacking a single target. It seemed to make a bigger difference for Bloodlust (Samurai vs. Ranger) than the Giant Sword (no difference). This could just be randomness.

22) Muramasa is not worth save-scumming.

23) Save-scumming extra SoDs might be worth it if you have a bunch of Fighters :) I have also gotten multiple Zatos on 2 of my last 3 parties that made it to AP.

23) I expect the Giant Sword to perform much better against earth-weak enemies (not sure what these are other than the robots).

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In hindsight, my Mindblast Monk+FN MDP was a really strong party. FN is a hybrid caster with fighter-level damage, the Mindblast Monk is just broken, and the Bard is in the next tier of physical attacker after the FN and the Zato users. The only really good nonfighter melee character that party was missing was the SoD Str/Dex Alchemist. Not sure what character I would have dropped for hit, or maybe I would have had the Gadgeteer use the SoD.

TL;DR - if you have a chance to use the Cane, the Zato, and the SoD together, do so. You won't regret it.

P.S. - I am happy to test other weapons at people's request. Missile weapons will be hard because of how I have my test saves set up.

[mpnorman10]

Thanks as well for checking out the Diamond Eyes option. It confirms my informal observations.

I liked your practical approach to the comparisons, opening the door to numerous party design options that can be crafted this way or that to suit other considerations, all within the scope of powerful party designs.

[HOK1970]

The fact that the value of 200 or 300 in swing progression is not a fixed value is an interesting theory and there is much to suggest that it is so. Maybe peddroelm or kaymarcy will find out something about this?

I also see it that Bloodlust is the best weapon at the beginning, but as soon as a Polearm Fighter gets his 2 attack, he pulls away on kills because of the weapon's extended range. In practice, more kills simply happen. A Bard with Bloodlust is a strong character over many stretches in the game, but in my experience, the later class change from Mook Bloodlust Bard to Giant Sword Fighter is an upgrade.

For a long time, I underestimated the abilities of a bard with Bloodlust for a long time. I doubted MPNorman's claim that the bard with Bloodlust is on par with a Sword Fighter in melee combat and thought I could prove it in a test. In the test, however, it even came out that the Bloodlust Bard was even ahead of the Sword Fighter (without Bloodlust) in kills up to level 15 and can also take on support tasks compared to the Sword Fighter. However, neither Sword Fighter nor Bloodlust Bard could not compete against a Polearm Fighter. Unfortunately, I have to say that a sword fighter without Bloodlust is generally mediocre in early and midgame. There are many good swords in the game, but except for Bloodlust, they are all hard to get.

I'm also one of those people who underestimated the monk's abilities for a long time. Monks are easy to play, because no magic must be trained in Psionic, because there is the Mindblast Rod.
The strong MA right at the beginning and later training in staff for Zatoichi and we have a good character. The only argument against a monk is that there is already a good monk as an RPC with RFS. It is similar to the Valkyrie with Vi.

[Horpner Sneed]

The good early swords are Enchanted Broadsword, Diamond Epee, and Demonsbane, I think. They are pretty good, really.

[Mardoin69]

I'd like to 'balance' out most the weapons while modding it. I like the idea of every character, regardless of class, having a 'good' weapon of their favored weapon type. I mean, I wouldn't want all my characters to need to learn swords or clubs or axes or polearms... in order to be right up there in # of kills. If there's good choice weapons of each weapon type for every class, then you can focus each character in a favorite right from the beginning of the game so long as there are early game weapons they can get easily enough to start training with. I'm just not sure HOW I will make modifications to weapon values yet.

For example, I really like the idea of the Muramassa blade for a Samurai. And, I want the Samurai to perform as well as any other class with their chosen weapon... with exception that a pure class fighter 'should' be able to outperform Hybrids ofc. So, I would give the Muramassa a little more oomph! Same goes for some other earlier game weapons. I'm still on the fence about it though cuz I don't want to make everything OP either.

I prolly should start a thread on this to get your all's ideas on appropriate changes to weaponry. For one, most things are weighted all wrong--thus the reason characters run out of stamina so quickly. It is NOT how Medieval day weapons were weighted. On the other hand, not sure how the devs might of coded weight for stamina loss and wouldn't want to make weapons OP cuz of being too light either. All these things make it quite challenging to mod this game the way I want. Cuz, I really don't want to make all characters OP to point they seem 'broken' as people consider a Mind Blast Monk, lol.

[HOK1970]

Автор сообщения: Horpner Sneed

The good early swords are Enchanted Broadsword, Diamond Epee, and Demonsbane, I think. They are pretty good, really.

These swords are only good because there are no better swords in the early game and unfortunately there is only one Bloodlust. An Awl Pike does more damage than these swords, can be bought on every corner and also has an extended melee range.

[Horpner Sneed]

As long as you avoid awarding bonus swings or giving +regeneration bonuses, I think you can get away with quite a lot of boosting to some of the weaker weapon types.

@HOK1970: I agree Polearms are great. The fact that they are 2-handed isn't that big of a deal in the vanilla game. The Awl PIke (and a lot of other low-level Polearms) are really slow, but nobody cares about this until 2nd attacks and swings are even possible.

[Momonga]

do fighter still have KO ability using "Spear type" weapons?

[CeterumCenseo]

Автор сообщения: HOK1970

Автор сообщения: Horpner Sneed

The good early swords are Enchanted Broadsword, Diamond Epee, and Demonsbane, I think. They are pretty good, really.

These swords are only good because there are no better swords in the early game and unfortunately there is only one Bloodlust. An Awl Pike does more damage than these swords, can be bought on every corner and also has an extended melee range.

I can confirm this. I did a Bard solo some years ago, the walkthrough is here in the forum, and at that time, Bloodlust was out of question, because I needed ranged damage in that setup. I used the vorpal blade as the best pre-Fang weapon available, a random drop from Baron Englund in the cemetary dungeon. I made another, in hindsight, mistake in that game, because I trained DEX instead of STR. Vorpal has avg. damage of 11, small bonuses to initiative and CtH, poison effect, so doesn't sound too bad.
Overall, this solo was the worst I ever had, it took ages to get down a single Ravenous Swallower, as long as I only had that weapon (and 50 STR, do not know what slowed me down more). Since I play bards with Bloodlust, they go like butter through most everything.

So I certainly would subscribe to any statement that there is a huge gap between Bloodlust and any other "early sword".

[Zergs]

@Momonga - yes they do

[Momonga]

Автор сообщения: Zergs

@Momonga - yes they do

thanks for the info....

I would probably create a spear fighter on my next game....

[Pebble]

I already said so in the other thread, but thanks for all the work you did compiling this data, Zergs. It was really useful for me in planning out my current party.

If you felt like doing more testing, I am really curious to see how PL7 Haste would change things. I'd expect much bigger DPR jumps in weapons going from 2/1 to 2/2 than from weapons going from 2/2 to 2/3. Mauler and the Mauler+DE combo in particular I think has room to grow.

I also noticed Ivory Blade was only tested on a Samurai. I'm interested in seeing in how it compares to Excaliber on a Fighter (or really specifically, a Bard 15 -> Fighter 1), particularly with Haste when Excal is 2/2 and Ivory is 2/3. Giant's Swords are cool and all, but I'm specifically thinking about Saxx and that's not an option for him.

[Zergs]

It feels like too much work to go back and re-run all of the results with PL7 Haste, so I can't commit to doing that for now. I would originally have agreed with your theory that some weapons will benefit more from Haste than others, but my current theory is that the breakpoints for extra swings are "linear", meaning the closer you get to the next breakpoint, the higher percentage chance of getting an extra swing. For example, Mauler rarely gets the second swing even when it says 2/2 on the character sheet. A weapon that is much closer to 2/3, I *believe* (not confirmed), will get the second swing much more often. PL7 Haste would boost all weapons towards the next threshold by the same amount.

However, if you want me to test more combos under the existing variables (level 15, PL7 Enchanted Blade, 1 strength boosting item) then I'm happy to do that. You want

- More runs of Excaliber fighter
- Ivory Blade fighter
- Ivory Blade bard
- I'll do Mauler+Nunchuks monk as well since you're thinking of using that character
- Mauler+DE on what class?

Anything else?

Give me a few days and drop in any other requests you have under the current parameters.

(I am also happy to email you my testing saves if you want to run your own tests.)

[Pebble]

Автор сообщения: Zergs

It feels like too much work to go back and re-run all of the results with PL7 Haste, so I can't commit to doing that for now. I would originally have agreed with your theory that some weapons will benefit more from Haste than others, but my current theory is that the breakpoints for extra swings are "linear", meaning the closer you get to the next breakpoint, the higher percentage chance of getting an extra swing. For example, Mauler rarely gets the second swing even when it says 2/2 on the character sheet. A weapon that is much closer to 2/3, I *believe* (not confirmed), will get the second swing much more often. PL7 Haste would boost all weapons towards the next threshold by the same amount.

Even if that is the case, that doesn't translate to an equal increase in DPR for different weapons. PL7 Haste would be effectively adding .7 expected swings, assuming ≤55 base speel and the 200 attack speed threshold is already met. That means that anything that is right at that threshold will be getting a 70% DPR increase from Haste, while something that is right at the cusp of three swings will get about half that. I'm pretty confident that Ivory Blade will beat Excaliber while Excaliber is always at a single swing, but less so when that changes.

Автор сообщения: Zergs

However, if you want me to test more combos under the existing variables (level 15, PL7 Enchanted Blade, 1 strength boosting item) then I'm happy to do that. You want

- More runs of Excaliber fighter
- Ivory Blade fighter
- Ivory Blade bard
- I'll do Mauler+Nunchuks monk as well since you're thinking of using that character
- Mauler+DE on what class?

Anything else?

Give me a few days and drop in any other requests you have under the current parameters.

(I am also happy to email you my testing saves if you want to run your own tests.)

Well, the idea is that the Nunchaka Monk would become the Mauler + DE Fighter after a class change, and you've already done Fighter tests with that (without Haste). I suppose if you're testing the pre-change Monk, then a Lord would be a good point of comparison, as I think that's the only other class that dual maces makes sense on.

As for the saves, perhaps at some point I'll take you up on that, but as it is I'm finding enough distractions from actually playing the game right now. :P

[Zergs]

@Pebble / math

Let me rephrase to see if I understand what you are saying, all under the assumption that my theory is correct (we both agree it might not be):

1) +0.7 expected swings translates to a different PERCENTAGE improvement in DPR for different weapons (I agree)
2) If a weapon is already very close to the 3rd swing guaranteed, it benefits far less from Haste (I also agree)

In my tests I don't think any characters are very close to the 3rd swing. One Dread Spear Monk test was showing 2/3, but I think that was some kind of visual bug. Didn't look like they were actually swinging 3 times in battle.

If there is another point you're making, I'm not comprehending it. I'll ask you to rephrase in different words if you can.

[Pebble]

@Zergs

I think you understand my point, that Haste will improve the slower weapons more than the faster weapons, and that if Haste were added, they might move up over faster weapons on the results sheet.

Let me try a concrete example anyway, using the Excaliber and the Ivory Blade. Let's ignore Berserk and take procs, misses, and failed penetration out for simplification's sake. Let's assume a level 22 Fighter with 55 Speed, 100 Sword skill and 125 Close Combat. His swing speed for a weapon with neutral initiative is 55 + 125/3 + 2*100/3 + 4*21 = 251.33.

The Excaliber's -5 initiative results in -50 swing speed, dropping it to 201.33. It will average 1.0133 swings, at 27.5 average damage each, totaling ~27.9 expected damage per attack (EDPA).

The Ivory Blade's +5 initiative adds 50 swing speed, making it 301.33. It should get on average 2.0133 swings, averaging 19 damage each, totaling ~38.3 expected EDPA. On paper, it outdamages Excaliber handily by 10.41 EDPA.

Now add 70 swing speed, to account for Haste. The Excaliber's swing speed goes up to 271.33. It starts averaging 1.7133 swings, totaling ~47.1 EDPA. The Ivory Blade's swing speed goes up to 371.33, and it starts averaging 2.7133 swings for 51.5 EDPA.

Alright, so I made this a best-case scenario for Excaliber, but actually mathing it out, it turns out Ivory Blade is still outdamaging it with Haste on paper. However, now the difference is less than half what it was, only 4.4 expected damage per attack. At this point, the Excaliber procs could make it win out in actual testing. (I think I just convinced myself that Ivory Blade is probably better at level 16 though).