Weapon masteries

[JD_888]

Let's have a thread about weapon masteries. While I love the addition of these perks and the opportunity to specialize I think they need some work because they're not very well balanced. They all have the "25% less fatigue for attacks" (which itself is not as useful for some weapon types), so I'll concentrate mostly on the special abilities. Bear in mind a lot of this comes down to my personal play style, weapons I use, and weapon balance in general but here are my thoughts:

Mace mastery: knock out has 100% chance to stun.
Meh. Stun is situational and doesn't work on adult orcs, so it's a minor bonus to a niche ability. Fatigue cost reduction is good though. Mediocre.

Flail mastery: lash ignores shield defense bonus.
This is very nice combined with the reduced fatigue cost of lash, with high enough melee skill you can guarantee aimed critical hits at enemy heads and bypass body armor completely. Works beautifully against bandit raiders with low-tier helmets, plus you get their armor with little damage, and can be used as a brute force variant of puncture. I love it.

Hammer mastery: 33% more armor damage for destroy armor. Bonus to hit chance for shatter.
Hammers are good at destroying armor, this makes them even better. Simple and effective.

Axe mastery: split shield deals 50% more shield damage. Round swing +5% bonus to hit.
Not very exciting but if you use split shield you want this. Can't comment on round swing, I don't really use 2h axes.

Cleaver mastery: doubles bleed damage from 5+5 to 10+10.
10 additional hp damage over 2 turns if you hit the hp. Meh. I don't use cleavers much outside of early-mid game so maybe I'm biased but this doesn't seem very good.

Sword mastery: no penalty to hit for riposte, +5% to hit for 2h swords.
Swords don't benefit much from fatigue reduction but bonus to hit is always nice. It's alright.

Dagger mastery: reduced AP cost for dagger attacks.
Daggers are situational weapons but puncture is a very powerful attack, with reduced fatigue cost and 3 attacks per turn you can do some amazing things, even if that requires very high melee skill and fatigue. Awesome. Might get even better if daggers get another tier of weapons or better uniques.

Polearm mastery: +20% to hit on repel and hook
Fatigue is not very relevant for polearms and both repel and hook are rarely more attractive than just attacking, hook in particular I don't think I've ever used. Repel is much better but still situational, it only exists on early game weapons and doesn't work vs adult orcs. Probably the worst mastery, I don't even take this on dedicated polearm users.

Spear mastery: +10% to hit on spearwall.
I've never used that, so I'm not sure if I should comment but it appears pretty bad. Spears aren't the weapons you want to use by the time you get to mastery perks. I guess in theory you could create a very reliable chokepoint with a guy with high melee skill and this? Maybe?

Crossbow mastery: Crossbows ignore 20% more armor
Crossbows are good at armor penetration, this makes them even better. Kinda like hammer mastery: not terribly exciting but a no-brainer if you use a crossbow.

Bow mastery: +1 range for bow attacks, +1 view range
This is much better than I thought at first, 1 more tile with a war bow makes a huge difference, you can snipe enemy archers and casters from further away and sometimes engage enemies 1 turn earlier. Also the fatigue reduction for bows is really good. Very nice.

Throwing mastery: bonus damage at 2-3 tiles ranges.
I don't use throwing weapons often but from what little I do this seems situational but good for what it is, just like throwing weapons in general.

[Wyrtt]

Polearms You cant be more wrong. Single 25% fatigue is more than enough to take this perk.
Whole polearm strategy is adrenaline and 2 attacks in row. That allows to maul into porridge best figters in 2 turns, 4 attacks in row with 90 dmg weapons is quite powerful.
Only problem is fatigue. With right build you can pull off 2 adrenalines in row thanks to 25% fatigue reduction on attacks.

Same can be said about swords. 2 split of swings + adrenaline for 2 more if you are lucky.

Throwing. Very solid build with quick hads as you can interchange projectiles and main weapon with no cost and still use shiled compared to crossbow strategy. Additional dmg is just pure bliss,


Mace mastery. Pretty pointless. from 75% to 100% with stun not working on 50% of enemy types. Or just being useless as goblins die from 2 attacks anyway.

Flails ignored shield before but now its a mastery. Very good to farm armor but meh as main weapon.

Cleavers. The worst offenders. Enemy doesnt live long enough to really feel difference between 5 and 10hp, YOu ether kill him or die yourself. Its not a dagger to pierce trough armor which would nicely work with bleeding effect.

Crossbows. Effect is very small if you look at dmg done to ork warriors. While raiders indeed feel more pain from mastery. But Bow mastery superior in any way.

[JD_888]

Polearms attack only once per turn at 15 fatigue, regardless of adrenaline. Conserving 4 fatigue points per turn is almost nothing compared to other masteries. Garnted, I haven't tried that build, I think adrenaline is overcosted (30 fatigue is A LOT), but my polearm users usually go earlier in the turn than everyone else without it because they naturally have high max fatigue and initiative and just looking at raw numbers polearms fatigue reduction is much worse than for other weapons.

[The Iron Duke]

I don't necessarily agree on the clever either, you have two hits of the cleaver with a mastery and that's 20hp bleed per turn. Pretty significant. It all depends on your play style and preferences.

[awc]

Originally posted by JD_888:

Polearms attack only once per turn at 15 fatigue, regardless of adrenaline. Conserving 4 fatigue points per turn is almost nothing compared to other masteries. Garnted, I haven't tried that build, I think adrenaline is overcosted (30 fatigue is A LOT), but my polearm users usually go earlier in the turn than everyone else without it because they naturally have high max fatigue and initiative and just looking at raw numbers polearms fatigue reduction is much worse than for other weapons.

He may have meant two attacks if a berserk procs and your polearm user hadn't moved.

[JD_888]

Sure, but that also applies to other weapon types in the game, just like using adrenaline, and that's still just 8 fatigue per turn at best. With hammer mastery you can destroy armor twice at 12 less fatigue per turn total without other perks, with dagger mastery you can do 3 puncture attacks at 15 less fatigue total etc. The raw fatigue cost reduction for polearms is tiny compared to that, you can work it in your strategy, I won't deny that, I just personally don't think it's worth a perk.

[laserg]

Originally posted by The Iron Duke:

I don't necessarily agree on the clever either, you have two hits of the cleaver with a mastery and that's 20hp bleed per turn. Pretty significant. It all depends on your play style and preferences.

Clever mastery and duelist work as a charm. I managed to start bleeding orc warrior who had like 50% of his armor (steel-leather one).

[laserg]

Originally posted by The Iron Duke:

I don't necessarily agree on the clever either, you have two hits of the cleaver with a mastery and that's 20hp bleed per turn. Pretty significant. It all depends on your play style and preferences.

Clever mastery and duelist work as a charm. I managed to start bleeding orc warrior who had like 50% of his armor (steel-leather one) using looted orc clever - revenge is sweet.

[Sir Clavius]

I found that only Bow mastery is worth to take. My frontline soldiers fighting without any mastery for weapons, its better one perk to spend for better things. Looks like these masteries for me arent worth to take (not talking about bow mastery who gives better accuracy)

[Sarissofoi]

Bow mastery is great. +1 range is great for counter fire any goblin or bandit troops.
I find to take sword mastery often but its personal taste I just like swords.
Rest is pretty meh and I find with current fatigue recovery system rely on swords and two handed swords +polearms as hammers are to costly to use. The rest I rarely use before.
But.
Getting one of rare orc cleavers orc axes and mastery for them for 25% fatigue reduction could be very strong.

[badnesso]

Polearm mastery: +20% to hit on repel and hook

I agree I think repel and hook are RARELY used, I personally have never found a situation to use either. I would like to see a +5% chance to hit head or maybe a status effect chance

[Wyrtt]

Originally posted by JD_888:

Polearms attack only once per turn at 15 fatigue, regardless of adrenaline. Conserving 4 fatigue points per turn is almost nothing compared to other masteries. Garnted, I haven't tried that build, I think adrenaline is overcosted (30 fatigue is A LOT), but my polearm users usually go earlier in the turn than everyone else without it because they naturally have high max fatigue and initiative and just looking at raw numbers polearms fatigue reduction is much worse than for other weapons.

who would use polearms without berserk?
So its 2 attacks per turn for 4 attacks in row.
They go first compared to heavy units but not the rest unless you wear nothing and thats can bite you against archers and light weight units like wolfriders, orcs, goblins and etc.

[Wyrtt]

Originally posted by JD_888:

Sure, but that also applies to other weapon types in the game, just like using adrenaline, and that's still just 8 fatigue per turn at best. With hammer mastery you can destroy armor twice at 12 less fatigue per turn total without other perks, with dagger mastery you can do 3 puncture attacks at 15 less fatigue total etc. The raw fatigue cost reduction for polearms is tiny compared to that, you can work it in your strategy, I won't deny that, I just personally don't think it's worth a perk.

hammers are only useful against orc warriors and knights. Anything else except that can be killed by billhoock with its huge armor dmg.

[zhukodim]

Originally posted by Wyrtt:

hammers are only useful against orc warriors and knights. Anything else except that can be killed by billhoock with its huge armor dmg.

Sorry for offtopic. But how and when I can fight vs knights? Im 220+ days in my current playthrough and I cant found any missions to fight vs nobles. Im allied with one house.

[NukacolaBottleCap]

Originally posted by zhukodim:

Sorry for offtopic. But how and when I can fight vs knights? Im 220+ days in my current playthrough and I cant found any missions to fight vs nobles. Im allied with one house.

Currently the only way to fight noble houses is to pick a fight with them. That means taking house contracts with an advance and breaking them, do that enough till they get pissed off enough that they'll start sending troops after you.

[30to1]

I think the only mastery even potentially worth taking is the spear or javelin mastery. In general it's better to just go with one of the really crazy OP masteries... which is a shame :(