My experience with Spears.

[Pixel Peeper]

I like spears in general, and was very confused by their stats in the game. They take two hands to wield, but do less damage than one-handed weapons. And they are known to be particularly easy to wield, but here they suffer Energy Cost penalties equal to those of two-handed maces.

Wanting to know what that was all about, I proceeded to test a Spears character.

Picked Arna. Went primarily for Perception, but also, since spear skills pointed at a certain basic strategy (keep enemies immobilized 2 tiles from you and spam abilities on them), I went for Willpower to reduce the cost and cooldowns of my abilities.

Went Spears, a lot of Athletics, some Warfare, and some Survival.

The early game was the early game. Not many abilities yet, most fights are just dumb slugfests. My spear felt weak because it didn't do much damage. Even when things went perfectly right, it took forever to defeat enemies.

The early-mid game was pretty rough. I had more abilities, but still did little damage, while enemies were becoming tougher. My first 3-skull dungeon was awful, there were armored undead enemies I couldn't do much against (they were resistant to Immobilization, and took almost no damage from my weak spear strikes). In the end I couldn't finish the dungeon, I just grabbed the quest objective and ran to get the contract money. To this day it remains the one dungeon run where I didn't go for the boss and the boss chest.

After some grinding, I got my weapon from Tier III to Tier V. It made a big difference, but I was still shaken about my inability to deal with certain enemies. I shifted my strategy. Instead of leaning into my strength and just win more against enemies that can be Immobilized, I started trying to remedy my weaknesses.

Wounding Spearhead was a game changer. Suddenly I could hurt enemies. Had I known, I would have gotten for it much sooner, and put everything I could into Crit Chance. Spears being naturally trash, you need this to make them work.

From there it was passable. I did a few 4-skull dungeons and succeeded in all of them.

Got to level 30 and immediately tried for a 5-skull.

For a lot of it, I was OK. Took a bunch of damage from casters and crossbowmen. I kept most enemies Immobilized, and my crits eventually got the better of them.

But those Kingsguard in full plate... they were a nightmare. Whether I could beat them or not was based entirely on luck. Most of the time, I did nothing to them: no damage, no Immobilization. But sometimes I crit, and the +25% Immobilization chance from the crit managed to get through their Move Resistance.

I was lucky that I didn't get too long of a streak of bad luck, because I would have died doing the equivalent of poking a tank with a chopstick. Got freakishly close to death, twice. To this day I have only had to drink a total of four Vivifying Essence doses; 1 was during the Manticore fight, and 3 were against those damned armored Kingsguard in that one dungeon.

Cost me a ridiculous amount of consumables, and one nasty hangover from the Abasa, but I did succeed, just barely. Got the Hermit ring and that head artifact that saves you once a day.

My final opinion of Spears?

They're way too uneven. You'll have overwhelming victories against "soft" enemies that don't have much armor and can be Immobilized, but you'll be barely able to do anything to heavily armored targets, relying entirely on luck to beat them.

If you do try Spears, my recommendation is to rush Wounding Spearhead and stack Crit Chance as much as you can. That's the only way you can touch those super tough enemies. Those are the ones you need to care about.

Personally I'll be happy never to touch them again. The low damage and cruel energy cost penalties are just insufferable.

[money3030]

Did you use Slashing Spear type for Crypts though? 🤔 Cause uh well Piercing would ofc do miniscule damage and yes Mighty Kick is Mandatory for Blockers, even Startling Volley Shot on a Crossbow as pre fight opener for Shieldy Blocky boys. Also War Cry to if it pops confusion. As an after though you should consider Nets When stuff gets dicey, you could still loot after Dungeon objectives done lol.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by money3030:

Did you use Slashing Spear type for Crypts though? 🤔 Cause uh well Piercing would ofc do miniscule damage.

The base damage of Spears is so low that flat damage reductions (like Protection and Block, which is what those particular enemies have) nullify the damage either way. I hit for 35, they reduce the damage to 0, and then their Piercing Resistance reduces the damage from 0 to 0.

Admittedly, they have only 60% Slashing Resistance VS 70% Piercing Resistance, which is an enormous difference. I should probably have bought the Sabre spear and switched for this particular dungeon.

But in the end the problem remains the same. Either you crit and do considerable damage, or you don't crit and do basically nothing.

If my Armor Crusher passive made any difference, I did not feel it.

[money3030]

Originally posted by Pixel Peeper:

Originally posted by money3030:

Did you use Slashing Spear type for Crypts though? 🤔 Cause uh well Piercing would ofc do miniscule damage.

The base damage of Spears is so low that flat damage reductions (like Protection and Block, which is what those particular enemies have) nullify the damage either way. I hit for 35, they reduce the damage to 0, and then their Piercing Resistance reduces the damage from 0 to 0.

Admittedly, they have only 60% Slashing Resistance VS 70% Piercing Resistance, which is an enormous difference. I should probably have bought the Sabre spear and switched for this particular dungeon.

But in the end the problem remains the same. Either you crit and do considerable damage, or you don't crit and do basically nothing.

If my Armor Crusher passive made any difference, I did not feel it.

Well if we only had Hybrid Spears that can use Hooking Chop,Two Handed Axe Skills like Dismemberment and Reign in Blood would be great for Slashing Spears even the Stance itself.

If you ask me it's not Hard to put the Tag Spear/Two Handed Axe it might be However wonky Animations and well double passives stacking which makes it overpowered 🤔. But if it's limited to Active ones and Stances maybe not.

Other Axes could probably also Hybrid into Axe/Spear if they ever decide on getting shayt good

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by money3030:

Well if we only had Hybrid Spears that can use Hooking Chop,Two Handed Axe Skills like Dismemberment and Reign in Blood would be great for Slashing Spears even the Stance itself.

Yeah, the difference between the two weapons gets really iffy. Some 2H axes look more like spears than axes, and some spears look more like axes than spears.

Axes have so much better stats, though...

[Ellavina]

So basically really good at clearing trash mobs but fights against tanks are gonna be painful.

I actually just started a Spear Arna but after hearing this now I suddenly don't want to play spear as much

[spikeartin]

Interesting. I playing a "wuxia"style dodge-heavy spear character now. So I add a comment.
My dodge-spear character 's main damage sauce is bleeding. Kick enemy and poke them from distance, and enemies will succumb to bleed to death. Hence not-bleeding undeads are my character 's bane. And energy run-out is my character 's demise.

[laveley]

Didn't had any problems with my spear run.

Used spears + magic mastery, using seal of finesse + insight and power combining with pikemen stance and other skills that benefits from staying at the same tiles.

Stomped everything.

[money3030]

Seal of power,Body and Spirit,Jolt, Residual Discharge fixes everything. More broken on Dual Hand daggers though with Triple stab from double strike and Flurry x4 stabs. But yes it will work for Spears..

[Mani]

Originally posted by Pixel Peeper:

that head artifact that saves you once a day.

Does that even work in permadeath?

[money3030]

Originally posted by Mani:

Originally posted by Pixel Peeper:

that head artifact that saves you once a day.

Does that even work in permadeath?

Supposedly fixed in latest patch, it would once a day, but if you're still bound to die then uh 🤔.

[Mani]

Originally posted by money3030:

Originally posted by Mani:

Does that even work in permadeath?

Supposedly fixed in latest patch, it would once a day, but if you're still bound to die then uh 🤔.

I don't have the guts to test it. Hope someone can and confirm :).

[Zeel Ara]

Originally posted by Mani:

Originally posted by money3030:

Supposedly fixed in latest patch, it would once a day, but if you're still bound to die then uh 🤔.

I don't have the guts to test it. Hope someone can and confirm :).

Can always just manually backup your save for testing purposes.

[Gamerzilla]

I know this dips into staves a bit, but all you really need is to add an attack with a low cd like 1, that deals close range bludgeoning damage + knockback with the haft of the spear. This would cover the same role as mighty kick, but doesn't require you to have that. Or have both for extra knockback!

[funkmonster7]

I'm playing a spear build now, and my experience is the gameplay is kind of tedious and slow-moving.

Basically, in order to cause immobilization etc on certain enemies with high move res, you need -move res debuffs on them. So, your stats should pivot towards buffing those debuffs.

I don't actually think increasing crit chance is the way to go here. Instead I buff weapon damage up as high as I can, while maintaining some tanking ability. I also use the shout lure liberally.

The strategy is basically, whenever I detect a group of enemies via Pathfinder-buffed Examine Surroundings, I only pull 1 enemy to me and I charge up Pikeman Stance with him. After that, I inch towards the group and either pull 1-2 guys to thin out their numbers, or I just reveal myself to them and kill them with my maxed-stacks Pikeman Stance.

My rotation is mostly: Nail Down, Impaling Lunge, Determination, Leg Sweep, Impaling Lunge x2. Once I have Regroup, I will sneak in Regroup after Determination, before using Leg Sweep strat. To deal with ranged enemies, I plan to use a crossbow.

Str is planned to be 20-25, Vit is planned to be 20. Armor is medium or heavy, although right now I'm leaning towards medium. I also want to have 15 Wil, a bit more -cd, -skills energy cost help quite a bit.

[Ellavina]

Originally posted by Gamerzilla:

I know this dips into staves a bit, but all you really need is to add an attack with a low cd like 1, that deals close range bludgeoning damage + knockback with the haft of the spear. This would cover the same role as mighty kick, but doesn't require you to have that. Or have both for extra knockback!

Mighty kick is goated. Single handedly allowed me to clear T5 Miasma Crypt