Hold on to your rusted weapons!

[TheDudeAbides52]

Rusted weapons can cause torpor and poison; and the higher the enhancement, the higher chance they can inflict debilitations.

torpor = pwnage :)

[Striker]

I always carry both the rusted bow and a conventional (or BBI) one at all times. Very few monsters are immune to topor and a slow monster is easier to kill than a fast one. The pawns have a field day whacking on slow critters.

[Guh~hey~hey~♫]

Also golden weapons apply silence, aneled weapons apply blindness and tarred. Only usefull on specific ennemies though... silence on caster (dragons are casters), tarr on ennemies weak to fire and blindness on cockatrices (it's the only ennemy on which it has a noticeable effect).

Elemental weapons also have their own debilitations. Ice freeze, blaze set on fire (flyer cant lfy anymore, most ennemies have a different behavior that prevent them from attacking when burning), dark has a chance to multiply your damage 8 times, holy absorb damage dealt to restore your HPs, thunder shock (short stun that cancel ennemies actions, on ennemies weak to thunder like cyclops, the stun last way longer).

For torpor, it's not usefull for every vocations and against every ennemies. Obviously it's useless against ennemies immune to it, but it's also counter-productive for vocations like mystic knight. For a mystic knight it's most of the time better if ennemies arent torpored, that way they attack more often for you to counter them with your shield spell, and so stack stagger effect faster than they can recover from it (especially when playing on hard). This allow to knock them down often and reliably, offering a massive damage boost or some time to cast spells...

[Fredericks of Cursewood]

I thought the Rusted Magick Shield to be pretty good. Perfect Block and torpor at the same time. Abysmal Anquish also applied torpor to your main weapon. What is not to like.

I know there are not a lot of people who play Warrior. Arc of Obliteration with a Rusted weapon hits almost as hard as with the Devil's Nail and will instantly torpor at the same time.

Rusted Archstaff + Maelstrom is the best CC in the game.

[Guh~hey~hey~♫]

Rusted shields are a trap. If your shield is too weak, there's some attacks you just cant block without getting staggered. And shield is a weapon, a weapon that require to be attacked to be used the most efficiently. A torpored ennemy is slower so it attack less often, so less opportunities to counter it.

That said against some particularly agressive ennemies, torpor can be a good thing: enraged elder ogres, garms or enraged gorecyclops are a good example of this. But you wont be able to block their attacks with a rusted shield, it's just too weak.

Rusted archistaff + maelstrom isnt the best CC in the game... maelstrom takes ages to cast. If you wanna torpor something with a rusted archistaff, use miasma or focused bolt. Though it's a good, kinda cheesy too, way to initiate a fight from a long distance, out of agro range, when you're able to.

But the best skills to torpor are probably brain splitter and corckscrew arrow, closely followed by tenfold and fivefold flurry. Works with all type of debilitating/elemental bows/daggers.
Also bows have the advantage of special arrows to add even more debilitations per shot (petrification, sleep, tarr, silence).
Then I'd say desecration feint which has a very high rate for torporing.

Applying debilitations is all about stacking the debilitating effect repeatedly on the target untill you beat the resistance thresold, so the best skills and weapons to do so are those that attack fast or do a lot of hits. Long cast are definitely not a good pick for this.

[Fredericks of Cursewood]

I don't play MK that often, but I can"t see any difference between using different shields in being staggered or not being blocked. I have not tried it on every enemy, but I know it stops a Fire Drake in its tracks and they have one of the hardest attaks in the game.

Maelstrom has a bit of a wind up, but considering that it can drop all the Dragon's in BBI, kill Eliminators outright, and drop Condemned Gore Cyclops; your argument ring hollow. Also the spell last long enough so that you can chain cast it as long as you have Stamina.

[zadymek]

Messaggio originale di Fredericks of Cursewood:

I don't play MK that often, but I can"t see any difference between using different shields in being staggered or not being blocked. I have not tried it on every enemy, but I know it stops a Fire Drake in its tracks and they have one of the hardest attaks in the game.

No they don't. I mean, it depends on the attack.
Volley punch, wing flaps, tail spin for instance are pretty "light" to withstand, the bite or slam not so much. With single hits it really doesn't matter if you can withstand the attack cause the shield will stop the damage anyway, but combos will be a problem with rusted stuff.

BTW Different shields definitely have different blocking ability, If you wish to test your blocks go and wake up some eliminators of saurians ;)

[Fredericks of Cursewood]

I really could not tell any difference between Rusted shield and other Magick shield as far as blocking. Blocks Eliminators fine. Blocks all Fire Drake attack just fine. Is there supposed to be a stagger build up? I have never seen it. I have played MK only occasionally.

[zadymek]

Messaggio originale di Fredericks of Cursewood:

I really could not tell any difference between Rusted shield and other Magick shield as far as blocking. Blocks Eliminators fine. Blocks all Fire Drake attack just fine. Is there supposed to be a stagger build up? I have never seen it. I have played MK only occasionally.

Yes, there's a stagger buildup, like with all stagger mechanics.

[TheDudeAbides52]

BBI shield and rusted sword if you don't wanna use a rusted shield???

[Guh~hey~hey~♫]

fire drake ? the one at devilfire grove, next to shadowfort ? It hit as hard as an asthmatic wet noodle... but the same can be said about any ennemy in gransis. Most ennemies in gransis quickly become underleveled, the only hard hitters are in BBi.

For maelstrom...

Yeah and ICBM can kill flies, but a fly swatter is usualy enough and require less time to deploy...

For the dragons, I'm not sure what you call "drop" ?
Anyway it surely doesnt mean "kill", because cursed dragons are 90% resistant to dark so maelstrom barrely tickle them.
Fire drake and thunderwyrms are 50% resistant, frostwyrm 60%... that's about it for the dragons you can encounter in BBi...
So casting for around 15 seconds, especially with just a rusted archistaff.... just to torpor them for aproximatively the same amount of time that the time spent casting the spell...
And I wont talk about the awfully long recovery time of maelstrom....

Maelstrom is not a spell for debilitating ennemies with, it's a dark-based nuke, designed to be synch-casted like most sorcerer spells, and It's main purpose is to take down ennemies weak to dark, or at least not resistant to it, using your best weapon to do so...

[CasualGamer]

Messaggio originale di Guh~heh~heh~♫:

Rusted shields are a trap. If your shield is too weak, there's some attacks you just cant block without getting staggered. And shield is a weapon, a weapon that require to be attacked to be used the most efficiently. A torpored ennemy is slower so it attack less often, so less opportunities to counter it.

A fighter can attack with sheild proactively. They have skills to do that--(cymbal attack?)

[Fredericks of Cursewood]

Rusted Magick is at 4:30 if you don't want watch the first part.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1786931278



Rusted Archstaff
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1776293470


2:35 for Rusted Archstaff with Fulmination vs Cursed Dragon.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1758199739


More:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1352817638

Rusted Archstaff on a level 33 pawn.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1511293231

[Guh~hey~hey~♫]

Messaggio originale di CasualGamer:

Messaggio originale di Guh~heh~heh~♫:

Rusted shields are a trap. If your shield is too weak, there's some attacks you just cant block without getting staggered. And shield is a weapon, a weapon that require to be attacked to be used the most efficiently. A torpored ennemy is slower so it attack less often, so less opportunities to counter it.

A fighter can attack with sheild proactively. They have skills to do that--(cymbal attack?)

Yeah they can, but it's a costly trade-off not being able to block the most dangerous ennemies... though you can also just swap shield when you want to torpor things...
I still think it's more efficient to keep ennemies un-torpored so you can counter them more often when they attack and so build up knock down faster. A KD ennemy takes pre-emptive damages, because he no longer is in a fighting stance when KD.
Now fighter's counters are way less efficient than MK's counters, so maybe for fighter it's an acceptable trade off...

Yeah even with a rusted archistaff maelstrom can rekt even resistant ennemies (on normal)... but in the time you spent casting one single maelstrom, if you manage to complete your cast, how many faster and more efficient spells could you cast ?
And the point of maelstrom is to deal as much damage as you can in a single spell, so if it can already rekt an ennemy with a rusted staff, it would probably kill it immediately with a better staff. So what would be the need for torpor at that point ?

Now if you're gonna explain me that you fight garms/dragonkins/elder ogres/cyclops/living armors in CQC with maelstrom... yeah sure...

[Fredericks of Cursewood]

All the videos are on Hard difficulty.
Sorcerer has 5 other skill slots. If I inferred that Maelstrom is all you need, that is my fault. Fulmination works wonders too and especially against living armour. Comestion, Ingle, Miasma, HFB, and Levin all work well with the Rusted Archstaff.

I typically carry a Rusted, Golden, and Sanquine Stalk or a Caged Fury. Switch between all of them but I use the Rusted staff about 80% of the time.

[Guh~hey~hey~♫]

Yes that'pretty my set-up as a sorcerer. Though for spells it depends if I'm solo (in that case I prefer faster non-synchable spells, one of each element, namely frigor, levin then either
comestion or ingle) or with pawns (maelstrom, fulmination plus seism or bolide), but maelstrom never leave my skill barre once I learnt it (aswell as miasma and necromancy), it's too good to pass on.

For affinities it depends if I'm in BBi or not, in BBi thunder affinity tends to be more interesting since there's a few ennemies resistant to holy and it's an enclosed space perfect for the riccochets (and garms/edler ogres are weak to thunder).

Though I never use maelstrom as a crowd control spell, even if it has some of the qualities for it (lot of hits), it's a nuke designed to deal massive damages to an entire room of ennemies.

I also carry rusted, golden and a caged furry, along with a sanguine stalk (or the beest staff I got) because of dragons. They are impossible to handle with the caged furry, because the wind from their wings count as a hit and cancel the charges...