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I guess maybe you tried to dualwield swords without considering the dualwielding penalties and tying to mitigate them, since otherwise i don't see an explanation for what you wrote.
This post, in fact, fully serious. I do consider Swords tree as the worst weapon tree.
Right. You can't do anything wrong if you're doing nothing. And this tree gives you nothing, so by investing in it, you're doing nothing wrong.
Like what? I gave you a concrete example of me being unable to deal with undead enemies, because they are immune to bleed. Because the tree has no raw stats for it and only measly bleed chances and pathetic 10% DMG, 5% Blaad chance, 5% crate and 15% cdmg from the entire tree. A single Pikeman Stance in Spear tree gives you triple this stats.
What about armored enemies? Not a single skill increasing armor piercing or dmg to armor. The only skill is the final dash, unlocked at lvl 12 iirc, that has only measly 35% pierce and only for this skill.
Jump back skill? It's very forgiving of your positioning. Especially in dungeons, where you need to play 5D chess to use it more then a single time. It's even more annoying to use then Determination spear skill. And Determination hits unlimited amount of enemies, even able to hit multiple times the same enemy!
Or maybe the most basic cleave skill? Every two handed weapon (aside from spear) has it as a freebie on every crit hit. Let's compare it to Impaling Lunge from spear. It has almost the same bleed chance (25% and 35%), additional Armor Pierce (10%) and like half of Bodypart Damage bonus (20% and 35%). On top of it, built-in full reset, additional range and much better hitbox in dungeon. Cleave also gives 10% counter for 4 turns for each enemy hit, but spear has even more from the passive One at a Time! (5% counter, 5% dmg, 10% block regen) for each adjacent enemy. Always, because it's a passive.
Now that's a direct lie. Even Spear has the same 1 skill pre-requisite and unlocked at the same level. Any stance requires level 5 or 6, i don't remember for sure and that means you have plenty of skill points to invest in the weapon tree + 2-3 free points to invest somewhere outside. I don't see any advantage here for sword.
Maybe we even compare spear and sword stances here? Maybe the fact that sword stance has almost none offence capability, always sits at 1st tier and runs out in the middle of the fight?
COmpare it to a Pickeman Stance, that gives you a lot of offensive buffs (double the bleed chance then the entire sword tree in a single spear skill LOL), some defensive (because the rest of defensive buff is distributed in passive, that always active) and never runs out, because it ticks down only when you move? And the entire tree is designed to encourage not moving.
Here i can't strongly refute. I play mainly spear and it's insanely energy hungry, combined with lack of energy recharging effects in a tree, it's a bit of a struggle. But I don't know how big energy costs for other weapons actually are and they do have good energy restoring effects. On the other hand spear tends to kill stuff and provides a lot of benefits for a lot of energy. Sword gives no benefits and demands no energy, it all works out.
And Spear has a whole max HP passive, that even gives 5% crate! Wow!
1. You reduce Cooldowns for 2 useless abilities, one of which requires 5D positioning chess for a single free strike and the other is arguably better then a normal attack and only agianst more then one enemy adjacent to you. But you just killed one of the enemies, so the starting amount of enemies must be at least 3, which leads to a second point:
2. All fights in Stoneshard can be divided in two groups: you're duking it out with a normal or strong enemy 1v1 and this passive is a dead weight OR you're against a bunch of weak enemies, where it still doesn't matter, because they can be killed in a few hits a little bit of counter will do all the work (which you already have from a single use of cleave) and reset only reduces CD by 2 turns for 2 skills with almost no offensive power and one decent skill with 8 turns CD.
There's also a third secret group, it's called "You screwed up". It happens when multiple strong enemies are fighting you at the same time and this passive will not help you here at all. Most likely you fail to kill even a single enemy to activate it, but also -2 turns on useless abilities is not going to help you any. Should we compare it to any of the spear passives, that work always un-conditionally and actually have an impact on the outcome of a fight?
On-kill abilities and passives in this game are pretty much trash. It's not the game where you're fighting the hordes of enemies and the most dangerous fights, where you might need all possible bonuses are 1v1, where inviting any additional enemy will do much more harm then any potential bonuses from killing said enemy beforehand.
Oh and Spear also has Maneuver. Which reduces cooldowns for actually useful skills, moves you on any adjacent tile, gives insane buffs and doesn't have any condition to be used. Sorry for me not being impressed with this Sword passive.
I did tried dual wielding after sword + shield was too little offensive and didn't work on lvl 6+ enemies. Mostly armored ones. Game doesn't really explain anything about dual wielding, only ambigious "offensive parameters".
I mitigated what I can with Dual Wielding tree, but what exactly there is? Pumping dexterity is joke, for a whopping 10 DEX you get only 5% effectivness, counter chance which is okay, fumble chance that already deep in negatives, 10% dodge, which also very meh and something else, i don't remember. Strength seems much better on returns. I don't remember hand effectivness affecting accuracy or something.
Maybe you can explain how else you would offset hand effectivness malus? Not that I'm hoping much, considering you failed to explain any of your points and limited yourself to throwing buzz words only.
Actually i did bother a bit so here is a playthrough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0Qj4tHFK8E at the 3h mark is a Mannshire undead dungeon, and he faces some Skeletons with shields, also at 3h 2min you can see where he spent his attribute points. And here is a troll kill at lvl 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3ZSYigMQIU weak gear but you can see stats and skills chosen, other vids i see are older so not as relevant.
But even in both videos you're showing they have completely different attributes distribution? The one went full on agility and the other is a mix of strength and agility with a point in perception (i think jorgrim starts with 10).
Attributes are probably the most confusing part, I don't see where's the value in going hard on Agility. Strength seems much better, especially when I'm going more into block then doubling down on dodge chance. Also doesn't help that wiki and in-game description seem to have completely different stats.
I'm having a problem, because instead of investing hard in DW tree I went for Swords tree and found myself in a tight spot the moment enemies switched to midgame ones. Probably messed my attributes too.
One of the players here talked to me about this a few weeks ago. He didn't learn any ability on the left side of the Swords skill tree, and only focused on getting the centre and right side of the skill tree, getting to Onrush. There are only 5 AP used in this case.
After that, also learn all DW skills except Enough For Everything and its passive. This means 8 AP used.
Include Athletic skill tree's Disengage, Dash and Elusive, that is another 3 AP. So the build is pretty much complete with only 16 AP spent (15 if you skip the tier 3 DW passive). This means the build can potentially be completed at level 14.
The way to play this specific build is you start a fight with using Concentration, then use Fencing Stance, then use the backstep attack (I forgot its name, I haven't played Stoneshard in 2 weeks), then use Onrush... You only need to take 1 attack before you use Whirlwind, which is pretty much instant kill for any enemy. No bleed needed, which is why none of Sword skill tree's bleed passives are necessary in this build.
Someone who uses Swords should not even think about using Skinning. This goes the same for axes as well, which is why your Dirwin should not swap to swords nor axes if you plan on skinning animals for pelts.
Don't underestimate Dexterity. 5% more hands efficiency means an extra hit on Whirlwind. It also means slightly increasing the status effect chance on your weapons, as well as bodypart damage and other various stats including crit. It doesn't look like a lot but hands efficiency is one of the most difficult-to-raise stats in the game, and it greatly affects you. When you have an extra +10% hands efficiency (I tend to stack Dex to 25 which gives me 7.5% hands efficiency, and get the remaining 2.5% from Berserk Tradition), and then get Concentration stacks to 4, that becomes +30% hands efficiency total. This makes your attacks hit for 105% mainhand damage and 80% offhand damage. 15% dodge is also really good, and you can raise the dodge chance by learning several different passive abilities. I usually don't go full Dex because I want to reserve some stats for VIT or PER. Swords lack armor penetration, so the 7.5% extra armor penetration from 5 PER goes a long way. Meaning, 15 hp also helps a lot because you are always going to be out-ranged by Geomancers.
My general advice is try not to rely on dodge too much, because a single hit that isn't dodged will f*** you up. This is exactly why DW Swords is really good; you only risk 1 attack before you end the enemy for good. And since you've activated Fencing Stance, by the time you use Onrush you would have 3 stacks of Fencing Stance, which gives you just over 10% dodge and block chances.
Comparing DW Swords with Spear is a bit of a mismatch. Spear is good but plays differently from DW Swords. DW Swords fights in melee range, Spear abilities mostly have 2-tile range. And if enemies get close, you can knock them back or Maneuver away. With DW, you aim to kill the enemy asap before he can do anything major to you. It is apples and oranges.
Spear gets out-ranged by enemies with charge attacks, like Heroic Swing or Onrush. If enemies Dash up to you, they also get +20% dodge, and dodge makes your normal attacks turn into fumble, which makes all status effect and crit chances zero. So if you are approached that way, you can be put in a bit of a pickle. DW Swords eliminates that entirely since you're rushing into the enemy, so he won't get to use Dash or a charge attack, the latter which usually hits hard.
So, by nerfing armor penetration, every enemy hits you for less damage, even though you hit them for less damage as well, you can't out-dps 2 enemies hitting you at the same time...
Unfortunately, this same nerf will also mean your swords will have very low armor penetration values. There are ways to mitigate this, but they don't come easily, just as how Stoneshard is meant to be played.
Hm, sounds like a plan. Thank you, I'll try this one.
I'm mostly even thinking about skinning because of how good of a money maker it is. Other sources are pretty dry, especially when you completed first 3 contracts and Mannshire ones are too strong yet. You still have some chance to get the pelt and tier 3 buff to skinning should give you pretty good chance even if you're cosplaying living lawnmover.
That's kinda the point, even if you go hard in Agility by a whole 15 points, you'll only get 7.5% hand eff. It's really nice, but Strength still outweights it for me, mainly due to focus on blocks. You get plenty of block chance from swords and stance, so it synergises well. If Agility gave you accuracy instead of fumble chance and maybe armor pen, then i would surely take it.
Yeah, that's my gripe with Dodge, it's too unreliable and equipment that gives you bonuses to dodge have much lower defence, that makes any hits hurt more and considering it only halves the damage instead of avoiding it completely (unless enemy fumbles)...Essentially it only protects from negative effects. Which block does too, while also blocking (duh) damage completely and not limiting you to some flimsy clothes.
You don't need to walk into rushing enemies, your skills specifically point you into punishing enemies trying to get close, be it by simply walking or charging into you. You activate the Pikeman Stance, then Determination when enemy is in dash range and enjoy seeing them impaling themselves trying to close the distance. Plus your skills have a hidden +25% accuracy and you have several passives giving big buffs when enemies are standing on adjacent tiles. So no, Spear doesn't become vulnerable to enemies trying to hug you. The only threat is ranged enemies, because Spear doesn't have good mobility and that's why you spend 2 points into Athletics for a dash.
DW and Spear do have completely different playstiles, but I was mostly comparing raw stats given by Spear tree and Swords tree and pointing out how dry Swords tree is in comparison and that swords themselves don't have some stellar stats to compensate. Which is why I don't understand the notion about Sword tree being "the most forgiving and consistent tree" when it gives you literally nothing. Spear gives you so much raw stats and bonuses that it doesn't matter if you meesed up your attributes or your gear is too weak, you just need to invest more into the Spear tree and it will carry you.
At least in case of two-handed swords, before the latest patches (haven't played current version), there's little to no real issue with skinning.
Personally I recommend ignoring the bleed passives on the left hand side of the skill tree, they simply aren't necessary; spend the extra skill points on combat mastery or athletics. The skill tree as a whole isn't fantastic but keeping distance and onrush are extremely powerful, the stance is well balanced and lends itself more towards outlasting the enemy than killing them in a few hits (although RoT sword builds can hit hard). Counter chance is very underrated.
Level 2: Dual-wield training
Level 3: Flurry
Level 4: nothing
Level 5: Concentration, Fencer's stance
Level 6: Deflect
Level 7: Disengage
Level 8: Dash
Level 9: Dying Fervor
Level 10: Berserk Tradition
Level 11: Whirlwind
Level 12: Endurance training
Level 13: Onrush
This will differ between characters though.
Also agi scales your sword skills damage, both of your weapons damage, how many spins on whirlwind, counter attacks. fumble chance doesn't really matter past like 5 points in agility anyways bc concentration covers all of it.
Sword builds should have Armour Crusher high on their list of priorities; RoT doesn't need it so much but then they're already part way there. The bleed skills are kinda bad because they're unnecessary for bleeding stuff and do no help against your worst weakness. Onrush is hilariously good.
Best sword build is imho RoT + Onrush + Athletics (search Forums for "fencer Arna"), then shield with Armour Crusher (very strong defense, a bit weak on offense, needs Armour Crusher). DW swords is worst in my experience for aforementioned reasons, although it's been ages since I played one.
Anybody dunking on dodge should do a 2h hammers + Athletics run.
It's just not true. dw sword and sword/shield are miles better than rot sword. dw sword has better offense and defense than rot sword. and sword and shield needs no introduction. Rot sword is probably the worst way to play sword.