Swords. They're... a bit useless?

[Mesond]

So let's examine the stats of hammers and the like. DPS is right up into the 9+ area. One handed ones by the way. You need a high strength to use them but that's easy enough. I can have the con for the best armor as well. I can't juggle magic with this build becuase all the stats go into strength and con but that's how it goes.

Now I have an archer. Dex and con. Simple. Bows and spears. And maybe dex swords. But wait, swords are only in the 5 DPS area? So even if you have a dex 10 character the character with 10 strength still has an extra +4 edge? Now sure, I could use a bow but what if I want a close range character instead with a sword?

I like swords but I'm forced to use hammers. They tried to balance swords out by giving them a mix of strength and dex requiments, but if you have to go halfway with stats in the first place you already handicapped yourself to begin with. Does anyone really put less points in con with a tank build or less int in a mage build? Some hybrud builds I can get some use out of (mages with heavy armor) but with strength AND dex it doesn't work so well.

Strength: Damage output.
Dex: Another form of damage output.
Con: Health.
Int: Spell damage (or effectiveness rather, since healing doesn't harm).
Wisdom: The amount of focus you have

Con+strength with a little int and wisdom works. This would be a tank build.

Int+con with a bit of wisdom works. Can't really use most weapons but they're more staff uses anyway.

Dex+con with a bit of int and strength works too. If only for range.

But the moment I come up to strength+dex (which swords have to have both of) I'm stuck. I need the con for heavy armor too. And then there's nothing left for int and wisdom. All other "hybrid builds" work out until I involve dex and close range.

And even if I do use a sword it will never be as good as a one handed hammer. Which doesn't exactly give me much incentive to use them. Now if swords needed only dex I might see more reason to use them. You can focus on just dex and get use out of con and still have points for int and wisdom. the moment I need to put points in dex without maxing it out for certain dex only characters it feels like I'm going "jack of all trades". Since I like to focus on heavy armor for all my characters.

but what really holds swords (and spears) back is the lack of abilities with them. It's the same with spears too. How about more damage with whirwind when using a spear or something?

Now if I could easily switch weapons between a sword and a bow that could get some more use out of swords too (and spears). Making use of both weapons with the sword as a backup. But there's no switch weapon button (Games like Battle for Middle Earth have this on some characters). And no one wants to fiddle with inventory in the middle of combat. Even then I struggle to see how a high con, high dex close range spear fighter can get more use then a high con, high strength hammer fighter.

Basically it feels like swords and spears have been dumped into the "not as useful" item pool. To be used only as a backup or last resort.

[jerkyboy7256]

Realistically speaking swords should have the highest overall dps in game but easily mitigated by armor and shields. Hammers should have the least damage but not easily mitigated by armor or shields.But yes swords are useless in this game. Axes and Hammers simply offer much better dps.

[Farlon]

You only need the dex requirement then just max the stat that scales with the sword. (either str or dex). But tbh I do find the lack of swords compared to maces etc dissapointing but then again, blunt weapons were always the more effective ones.

[ggsnake]

Swords have crit chance, maces do not. I think the dps display does not reflect that. That's why maces appear to have higher dps. In the long run (100 hits on an enemy) their damage should be even though. I haven't checked the numbers exactly, but I guess/hope the devs have.

Also, the higher you level up, the more stats you have to spend. This means that eventually you will have strength and con maxed. You could then spend the rest of your points in dex to maximize dps via crit. At that point, swords are superior to maces because they allow you to crit. Maces will be useless at that point because they cannot crit.

[Mesond]

Well if crit evens things out then that makes swords and spears worth using then. As for putting the rest of the points in dex that comes late game. Need some in int and wisdom too (just a bit) for the healing skill. I could have 8 con instead of 10 mid game but I got some really good drops with heavy armor. Even ended up with two titan armors mid-game.

What I do is go straight for 8 con, work on strength, then int and wisdom then eventually dex if I need that too. But if I work on strength and dex... Hmm... This is where it gets more techincal again. 10 strength with a hammer will make use of al that strength. 10 dex with a bow will make use of all the dex. What happens when it's 5 strength and 5 dex with a sword? Don't they use only one attribute for damge output?

[Archivist]

Weapons only scale with one attribute, so if the sword is dex based then the strength will act as weapon requirement.

[jerkyboy7256]

Shouldn't the crit hit chance be at least 20% ish to make crit damage worth it? How much crit multiplier do we get anyway?

Also in real life, 2 handed swords will inflict nastier wounds than blunt weapons do against unarmored or lightly armored opponents. Its dps isn't represented correctly in this game. If it upsets the balance issue, they can just give crit chance and block chance to axes and hammers too.

[killerproblem]

It wouldn't be quite as bad, if the requirements for a weapon type were more consistent... Depending on the enchantment on a weapon it'll become a strength or dexterity based weapon, so a ice sword is Dex but another type is str... Makes D/W a bit harder to find weapons for... Don't even go into daggers...

There are 1h swords with 8+ DPS, and I'd love to have a faster attack overall... But even if you work hard to increase your crit % (using the base of the ranged tree and lots of dex) you don't even come close to the actual combat utility of a set of hammers on a str build. I tried to do a leech build and failed badly...

Ianna's melee dex tree is the only one that can do this at all, her tree should be available to the player as an option instead of the bow tree...

[Mesond]

Hey, devs, if you're reading this do you think you could work on melee dex skill trees in the future DLC that's bound to come out? Maybe even slip it into a patch eventually? That would encourage more playstyles and therefor target a larger audience.

Perhaps daggers could be reworked into high dex weapons with better stats? An "assassins tool" or something. Since mages have staffs there's no reason to use them at all. Maybe a dex tree could have swords/spears on one path and daggers on another?

[Marc]

i still like the attribute system from spellforce one (order of dawn) much more. In that game this problem doesn´t exist.

[Dozand]

Originally posted by Taramafor:

Even ended up with two titan armors mid-game.

can you say where this armor drop? i restart game after last patches and now in everlight, but still not get it, in last game i have it here

[Mesond]

Originally posted by Heart of Fury:

Originally posted by Taramafor:

Even ended up with two titan armors mid-game.

can you say where this armor drop? i restart game after last patches and now in everlight, but still not get it, in last game i have it here

Can't remeber. Even if I could the drops are probably random. Might need to be a high enough level to get them too.

I may have brought one in a shop late game. I got at least one of them before the main quests (drop). Meaning I got it in one of the first faction quests.

[Darth Revan]

Originally posted by Taramafor:

Originally posted by Heart of Fury:

can you say where this armor drop? i restart game after last patches and now in everlight, but still not get it, in last game i have it here

Can't remeber. Even if I could the drops are probably random. Might need to be a high enough level to get them too.

I may have brought one in a shop late game. I got at least one of them before the main quests (drop). Meaning I got it in one of the first faction quests.

i think the early game one is a drop from a shrine, i think it is on the prologue map where you escort the refugees but i am not 100% shure, i think shrine drops are not random but i can be wrong with that.

if its the shrine i assume you need a high constitution to get a drop at all.

I also got at least 4 merchants in mulandir which sell the armor but i dont know if the merchant inventorys of this merchants are random or not, i hope not because 1 of this merchants also sold me the awesome looking armor and helmet the paladin or keeper or whatever the golden mounted unit of the humans is called in the englisch version wear, a other one of this merchants sold me just the helmet.

[Archivist]

https://my.mixtape.moe/rxbjsn.png