Some spear build questions.

[ArrangedKarma]

Hi there.
Decided to start a new as a melee character using a spear, and Ive some questions on some things going forward.

First, blocking. Is it worth getting a shield, not the energy kind, the riot gear kind. After consulting the wiki, the amount of damage blocked is entirely dependant on the spears overall quality, but the chance to block is increased via feats and the shield. Is it a better idea to invest into the feats while saving myself some armour penalty, or should work on getting one.

Second, Armour. What is the best armour for a spear user or a melee user in general. Since it has a shield, riot seems to be the way to go, but is worth getting some tichrome or super steel amour for the resistances instead. On that subject, is there any unique armours worth using, or should instead focus on crafting my own armour?

Finally, feats. What are some absolute, must have feats for a melee user, specifically a spear one. While im sure the answers are obvious, i dont exactly want a feat that gives me a new gun ability that ill never use, but are there any that are not obvious or ones that are so important they bear worth mentioning regardless.

Just for the record, my build is a spear and psi build of TC and PK, and im playing on normal.
Thank you.

[Drokmon]

Been playing a spear build recently with solid success, so I'll weigh in.

Blocking: rely on spear and feats. Spear Guardian with 2 spec points = 100% block chance. Fend increases block amount to 250% of stated value. The Glaive unique spear hits 100% block chance for 75 damage with Fend; the Trident unique spear hits 112. Bear in mind that Fend is effectively only active for one turn, but the cooldown is short. Use it whilst walking around in real time to (hopefully) stop crawler ambushes.


Armor: I went with heavy leather to really lean into the melee protection theme. Sea wyrm scale armor with high density foam can hit 50%/25 mech resist/threshold with a +70% bonus vs melee. Combined with your blocking and you can reliably stop a lot of damage.

Most armor is very situational, so carry a few sets and equip as needed. Tesla unique armor is practically the only reliable protection against electrical attacks. Riot armor blocking can stack with spear blocking, but it has unimpressive resistances.


Feats: Spear Guardian and Fend for blocking, if that's your thing. Impale and Sweep for reliable crits and unbalancing debuff. If you use The Glaive unique spear for its Sweep/Fend mechanics, then get 25 TM skill for LTI and you can pull off 4 sweeps in 3 turns using PTC or adrenaline shot. Kinda neat to have a melee weapon with a solid AoE effect.

For general feats, Cheap Shots and Critical Power to make Impale hurt a lot. Expose Weakness to bypass high mech resist. Sprint since you'll already have 6 Agility for Sweep, and movement on a melee build is king.

Personal opinion on a tanky build: Yell with 3 spec points and the Intimidation skill. It scales with Strength and gives you a 0AP debuff in an eight tile radius that drops stealth (hello crawlers) and reduces enemy weapon skill by half of your melee skill, provided you keep it maxed. This is a massive reduction to incoming damage, since they'll deal less damage even if they don't miss. It will help your health/energy shield last longer, too.

Hope it helps!

[ArrangedKarma]

Originally posted by Drokmon:

Been playing a spear build recently with solid success, so I'll weigh in.

Blocking: rely on spear and feats. Spear Guardian with 2 spec points = 100% block chance. Fend increases block amount to 250% of stated value. The Glaive unique spear hits 100% block chance for 75 damage with Fend; the Trident unique spear hits 112. Bear in mind that Fend is effectively only active for one turn, but the cooldown is short. Use it whilst walking around in real time to (hopefully) stop crawler ambushes.


Armor: I went with heavy leather to really lean into the melee protection theme. Sea wyrm scale armor with high density foam can hit 50%/25 mech resist/threshold with a +70% bonus vs melee. Combined with your blocking and you can reliably stop a lot of damage.

Most armor is very situational, so carry a few sets and equip as needed. Tesla unique armor is practically the only reliable protection against electrical attacks. Riot armor blocking can stack with spear blocking, but it has unimpressive resistances.


Feats: Spear Guardian and Fend for blocking, if that's your thing. Impale and Sweep for reliable crits and unbalancing debuff. If you use The Glaive unique spear for its Sweep/Fend mechanics, then get 25 TM skill for LTI and you can pull off 4 sweeps in 3 turns using PTC or adrenaline shot. Kinda neat to have a melee weapon with a solid AoE effect.

For general feats, Cheap Shots and Critical Power to make Impale hurt a lot. Expose Weakness to bypass high mech resist. Sprint since you'll already have 6 Agility for Sweep, and movement on a melee build is king.

Personal opinion on a tanky build: Yell with 3 spec points and the Intimidation skill. It scales with Strength and gives you a 0AP debuff in an eight tile radius that drops stealth (hello crawlers) and reduces enemy weapon skill by half of your melee skill, provided you keep it maxed. This is a massive reduction to incoming damage, since they'll deal less damage even if they don't miss. It will help your health/energy shield last longer, too.

Hope it helps!

Wow dude. Thank you so much, seriously. This is pretty much the perfect breakdown I wanted.
Its quite annoying to find any decent information on melee and spear builds due to there not being alot of posts about it either on steam or the forums. Trust me, I checked.
While im not playing on hard or dominating so im sure i could blunder my way through a not so optimal build, this will help a ton.
Thank you again. <3

[Drokmon]

Originally posted by ArrangedKarma:

Wow dude. Thank you so much, seriously. This is pretty much the perfect breakdown I wanted.
Its quite annoying to find any decent information on melee and spear builds due to there not being alot of posts about it either on steam or the forums. Trust me, I checked.
While im not playing on hard or dominating so im sure i could blunder my way through a not so optimal build, this will help a ton.
Thank you again. <3

One more thing: when compared to most other weapon types, I found the various unique spears to all be useful, to some degree.

The Glaive: neat Sweep/Fend mechanics, can be obtained early.

Rust Maker: scaling acid damage, very potent against robots. Requires the Jet Eater random event in your game, which you won't know is present until you reach Core City docks.

Trident: ends up dealing atypical crit damage, but should not be used against heavy armor. Handy for playing with poisons, particularly cave ear / blinding to debuff enemy Perception.

Lemurian Spear: sweeps with this can drop a lot of different damage types quickly. Get Versatility if you want to shoot regularly.

Hoddurform: scaling acid damage and infinite leper/heartbreaker poison. Diabolical.

[ArrangedKarma]

Originally posted by Drokmon:

Originally posted by ArrangedKarma:

Wow dude. Thank you so much, seriously. This is pretty much the perfect breakdown I wanted.
Its quite annoying to find any decent information on melee and spear builds due to there not being alot of posts about it either on steam or the forums. Trust me, I checked.
While im not playing on hard or dominating so im sure i could blunder my way through a not so optimal build, this will help a ton.
Thank you again. <3

One more thing: when compared to most other weapon types, I found the various unique spears to all be useful, to some degree.

The Glaive: neat Sweep/Fend mechanics, can be obtained early.

Rust Maker: scaling acid damage, very potent against robots. Requires the Jet Eater random event in your game, which you won't know is present until you reach Core City docks.

Trident: ends up dealing atypical crit damage, but should not be used against heavy armor. Handy for playing with poisons, particularly cave ear / blinding to debuff enemy Perception.

Lemurian Spear: sweeps with this can drop a lot of different damage types quickly. Get Versatility if you want to shoot regularly.

Hoddurform: scaling acid damage and infinite leper/heartbreaker poison. Diabolical.

I see, thank you again.
Would you say that one of them is flat out, the best , or moreso that all of them are circumstantially the best.
Also isnt it kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥ how we only get 1 spear in the base game, and the really good ones are locked behind many hours into expedition.

[Tamiore]

Originally posted by ArrangedKarma:

Also isnt it kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥ how we only get 1 spear in the base game, and the really good ones are locked behind many hours into expedition.

Well, spears aren't in the base game, they only appear with the expedition DLC.
You get access to normal spear right away, too. It's just that the unique spears are mostly in the DLC area.

[Serendipitous]

In terms of pure damage, the best one will be crafted. Uniques are situationaly useful and have decent damage depending on the point in the game. Iirc in terms of damage uniques tops off at something like 135q, while you can get super steel plates up to 180q. That is a significant difference in damage.

[Drokmon]

Originally posted by ArrangedKarma:

I see, thank you again.
Would you say that one of them is flat out, the best , or moreso that all of them are circumstantially the best.
Also isnt it kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥ how we only get 1 spear in the base game, and the really good ones are locked behind many hours into expedition.

Yeah, I think that's why The Glaive and Claymore were added to the base game. Though to be fair, Trident can be obtained very early into Expedition. And crafted spears are still nice; energy edge emitters deal the most damage when used in a spear vs other melee weapons.

I found myself using The Glaive a lot, due to how early you can get it and the mechanics.
Rust Maker became the replacement weapon for single targets, with The Glaive on switch for AoE and Fend. The other unique spears were definitely more situational.

[ArrangedKarma]

Thank you guys so much for the help <3

[Tamiore]

By the way, is this your first run with a melee build?
I'm not saying spears are bad or anything, it's just that when it comes to melee build specifically, I have a feeling they might be one of the more knowledge-intensive weapon type to play to their full potential.

[Serendipitous]

Originally posted by Tamiore:

By the way, is this your first run with a melee build?
I'm not saying spears are bad or anything, it's just that when it comes to melee build specifically, I have a feeling they might be one of the more knowledge-intensive weapon type to play to their full potential.

Spear IS most tactically demanding melee weapon, i agree. On the other hand it does provides plenty of tools, like crit on demand, area attack or semi ranged capability. I think he will be fine, especially on normal.

[King Fossil]

Originally posted by ArrangedKarma:

Also isnt it kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥ how we only get 1 spear in the base game, and the really good ones are locked behind many hours into expedition.

At least they're not as bad as shotguns. Unique shotguns are sad.

[ArrangedKarma]

Originally posted by Tamiore:

By the way, is this your first run with a melee build?
I'm not saying spears are bad or anything, it's just that when it comes to melee build specifically, I have a feeling they might be one of the more knowledge-intensive weapon type to play to their full potential.

Yeah it is, its going alright.
But ive also gone abit into psi powers and liberal use of grenades, so its going decently well.
And yeah, it is on normal, so its not like im soft-locking myself

[Tamiore]

Originally posted by Serendipitous:

Originally posted by Tamiore:

By the way, is this your first run with a melee build?
I'm not saying spears are bad or anything, it's just that when it comes to melee build specifically, I have a feeling they might be one of the more knowledge-intensive weapon type to play to their full potential.

Spear IS most tactically demanding melee weapon, i agree. On the other hand it does provides plenty of tools, like crit on demand, area attack or semi ranged capability. I think he will be fine, especially on normal.

I agree. It's just that spears have so many things going on at once (including all the poisons), with some of the more obvious ones (hardcore block stacking) being of questionable practicality.

[Tamiore]

Originally posted by ArrangedKarma:

Originally posted by Tamiore:

By the way, is this your first run with a melee build?
I'm not saying spears are bad or anything, it's just that when it comes to melee build specifically, I have a feeling they might be one of the more knowledge-intensive weapon type to play to their full potential.

Yeah it is, its going alright.
But ive also gone abit into psi powers and liberal use of grenades, so its going decently well.
And yeah, it is on normal, so its not like im soft-locking myself

Got it.
One more tip: keep in mind spears can use all poisons. With some poisons being really strong (Black Dragon disables psi, Hyperallergenic toxin can completely wreck a humanoid in one stack) and some being really cheap (cave ears are basically free).

[ArrangedKarma]

Originally posted by Tamiore:

Originally posted by ArrangedKarma:

Yeah it is, its going alright.
But ive also gone abit into psi powers and liberal use of grenades, so its going decently well.
And yeah, it is on normal, so its not like im soft-locking myself

Got it.
One more tip: keep in mind spears can use all poisons. With some poisons being really strong (Black Dragon disables psi, Hyperallergenic toxin can completely wreck a humanoid in one stack) and some being really cheap (cave ears are basically free).

I see, thats a good idea. I dont suppose theres any place to buy poisons?. The only place i think to potentially buy poison ingredients is kimi in junkyard