Solar Weapons

[BoboYagga]

So I had originally thought that solar weapons counted as magic and would be able to hit ethereal beings easily, but then when testing it out a while back it didn't seem to work. I even had a friend in a MP game as Vanheim go against Nazca, he had Solar weapons but not magical weapons and when he hit it was effective, but he had a really hard time hitting because it seemed like the ethereal was preventing most hits.
Now I am reading on the description of Solar weapons that it says 'the damage is magical and thus will be effective vs ethereal beings'.
Did this change? have all of the tests that I did before just roll unlucky where they didn't hit? Honestly I have been running magical weapons on nearly all of my blesses because it is such a good counter that I haven't done just solar weapons in a long time. I might try just rolling up a test game against therados or something but I wanted to see if the community knew about this already

[Silence]

I think the normal weapon first have to hit, and thus bypass the ethereal, and then only does the solar weapon procs and deals its damage without further rolls.

==> Solar weapons is BAD, cheaper and much better is magic weapons

[BoboYagga]

Originally posted by silence:

I think the normal weapon first have to hit, and thus bypass the ethereal, and then only does the solar weapon procs and deals its damage without further rolls.

==> Solar weapons is BAD, cheaper and much better is magic weapons

okay, that's what I thought, but when it specifically said it was good against ethereal I was all "what!?"

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by BoboYaggatheTiny:

Now I am reading on the description of Solar weapons that it says 'the damage is magical and thus will be effective vs ethereal beings'.

I'll note that the manual may be out of date, but the in-game tooltip does not mention "magical" in its description at all. Rather, it simply says "the solar strike effect causes triple damage against undead and demons."

Originally posted by silence:

==> Solar weapons is BAD, cheaper and much better is magic weapons

Against ethereal undead, sure.

Against Undead Thugs / SCs, (Bane Lords, Tartarians, Dai Onis, etc) Solar Weapons can be great.

[Mount Nomad]

If you're going to get Astral anyway on an Imprisoned Pretender, take both Magic Weapons *and* Solar Weapons to cover a broader variety of situations. F4, S5 and +Att comes in handy on Paladins.

[BoboYagga]

Absolutely agree

[Uncle Al]

Short answer, the bless damage is ignoring the target being ethereal, but it's so low you're not seeing much effect.

Long answer:

Weapon blesses don't add to weapon damage. They add an extra damage channel alongside the normal weapon damage. So when you hit a target you make two separate damage rolls (or more if you stack blesses), one for weapon damage ( your normal strength + weapon value + DRN) and one for each elemental damage (bless value + DRN). The bless value varies by element but is usually pretty bad. Solar is 3AP, fire is 6AP and cold is 8, if I remember correctly. Strength is not added.

The 'bless' portion of the damage is magical, and will ignore ethereal, invulnerability and the like, but having a weapon bless (except for magic weapons itself) doesn't make your base weapon damage into magic damage.

Unless you're hitting undead or demons, solar weapons is just a damage 3 AP attack, so the lighest of armour is going to stop it, which is why it makes perfect sense that you don't see much benefit on ethereal targets if they weren't either naked, have 1 hp or are undead/demons.

[davetlow]

Solar weapons... is strenght added? I do not think so. 3 AP is pretty terrible damage. 9AP is also... I mean it's fine for killing naked vampires or great for wading through undead chaff troops. It's not a game changer for FS. I doubt it's good for killing banes and wights or anything like that. Magic weapons is +2 to hit and pretty cheap, but you probably took a lot of S on your pretender to avoid mind hunt so then you have a tough decision to make because almost all of those S blesses are nice.

[ÆtherNomad]

Originally posted by davetlow:

Solar weapons... is strenght added? I do not think so. 3 AP is pretty terrible damage. 9AP is also... I mean it's fine for killing naked vampires or great for wading through undead chaff troops. It's not a game changer for FS. I doubt it's good for killing banes and wights or anything like that. Magic weapons is +2 to hit and pretty cheap, but you probably took a lot of S on your pretender to avoid mind hunt so then you have a tough decision to make because almost all of those S blesses are nice.

Just keep in mind that it gets added on every single attack. Massable sacreds with several attacks can deal huge damage with it.

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by davetlow:

Solar weapons... is strenght added? I do not think so. 3 AP is pretty terrible damage. 9AP is also....

Keep in mind that the Solar damage is in addition to your sacred troop's standard damage -- so against non-demons / undead they do Str + Weapon Damage + 3 AP.

Against Demons Undead, each sacred with an active Solar Weapon bless does Str + Weapon Damage + 9AP additional damage. If you have even a small handful of sacred blessed troops, you're doing much more damage against undead/demon troops that you would otherwise.

[Althaea]

It is also an extra chance for a critical hit. A small one, but given that the cost is so low, it seems fairly priced.

[Silence]

Originally posted by DasaKamov:

Originally posted by davetlow:

Solar weapons... is strenght added? I do not think so. 3 AP is pretty terrible damage. 9AP is also....

Keep in mind that the Solar damage is in addition to your sacred troop's standard damage -- so against non-demons / undead they do Str + Weapon Damage + 3 AP.

NO, solar weapons DO NOT inflicts Str + Weapon Damage + 3 AP. What you do is :
- first : Str + Weapon Damage
- second : 3 AP (or 9 AP vs undead/demons)
==> these are 2 separate damage rolls each rolling against full prot (but only 1 attack roll to get through defense)

That's why I consider it rather bad. In the game I made an AAR of I had solar weapons and considering what I saw in the battle logs it was overral really inefficient (even against the ethereals of therodos, the magic weapons did most of the damage while solar weapons only kicked off if the target survived the initial weapon+str damage, which was rather uncommon)

[sunbeam]

Personally I quit messing with the weapon blesses besides the mentioned magic weapons.

If I want more damage I take +Str. I also take attack a lot, which is more damage, but works to add additonal hits instead of enhancing damage on an attack.

All these weapon blesses (cold, flaming, solar, withering) are disappointing. I guess withering might be interesting if your sacreds had multiple attacks, but I dunno.

No idea about poison weapons (who's going to take a death scale, like ever, unless you are playing a popkill nation or maybe Abyssia?). Death weapons cost too much, only way I'd take it is if I were taking a pretender who was heavy, heavy, death.

[Scourge012]

Yes. Magical Weapons is generally better against ethereal targets than any of the elemental blesses. That's because magical weapons is intended/fuctions as a direct counter to ethereal units. Whereas Solar Weapons/Infernal/Flame/Cold/Thunder is about exploiting the games "paper, rock, scissors" elemental damage scheme. For example, Solar Weapons are awesome against Blood Nations and EA Yomi who tend to spam or get demon free-spawns. It's awesome against MA Ermor, since they are all undead and would be eating that 9 AP bonus a lot AND on top of that they don't really have ethereal units as the mainstay of their army (and the ones they do get, kinda suck eggs).

Solar Weapons alone is usually a safe bet as a lot of nations can summon undead and demonic units in the meta. And for a variety of reasons a lot of nations already get a fire bless point with astral. However, if you KNOW you will go up against Sceleria or Therodos or something, save the points and go for Magical Weapons. Spend your Astral and Fire points elsewhere in that case. If you wanted to roll deep with Solar Weapons along with Magical Weapons for RP reasons, like I do on EA Ermor, know that you are virtually guaranteeing an imprisoned pretender. Not that it would matter if Solar Weapons/Magic Weapons is your main bless, but if you have any incarnate meta in your build, it will be that much harder to get going.

FYI: Solar Weapons is that Astral equivalent of Blood's Infernal Weapon bless (which does 9AP extra damage against holy/divine units). It really doesn't fit in the meta beyond being the mirror image of that blood bless (and vice versa).

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by silence:

these are 2 separate damage rolls each rolling against full prot

Although I phrased it poorly, that's what I meant. Also note that the Solar Weapon quality is Armor Piercing (hence the "AP" tag), so it actually ignores half the target's protection.

All in all, though, it looks like we have a general roundabout consensus -- against Ethereal Undead like ghosts/spectres, you'd want to take Magic Weapons. Against Corporeal Undead / Demons, Solar Weapons can be situationally a boon.

[Alias]

Originally posted by DasaKamov:

Originally posted by silence:

these are 2 separate damage rolls each rolling against full prot

Although I phrased it poorly, that's what I meant. Also note that the Solar Weapon quality is Armor Piercing (hence the "AP" tag), so it actually ignores half the target's protection.

All in all, though, it looks like we have a general roundabout consensus -- against Ethereal Undead like ghosts/spectres, you'd want to take Magic Weapons. Against Corporeal Undead / Demons, Solar Weapons can be situationally a boon.

Magic Weapons is far superior v corporeal undead too, as many of them have high Invulnerability or can cast Invulnerability.

At the moment Magic Weapons bless is miles ahead of any weapon bless.

Second place goes to Strength blesses (Surge included).

Third to Withering Weapons, probably.

Solar is somewhere after that.