dominion 5 dancing trident vs stone bird

[Shinoskay]

so, I cant tell exactly what these do... well, I can tell what the bird does but not the trident.

the bird has a base damage of 9 and does 4 attacks.

the trident has a base damage of 19 and does.... 1? attack? it says it hovers around the owner and fights their enemies.

personally, the bird sounds better, so then why is the trident a higher tier item? I know dominion is infamous for not really explaining things.

[soulfreezer]

Both items will give you additional attack(s) without requiring a hand slot and the trident is usually the better choice:

1) protection reduces the damage of every hit, the bird with several weak attacks will do very low or even no damage at all to enemies with good protection
2) each weapon can only attack a single enemy each round in dominions, no matter how much attacks it has, so even if you are fighting against enemies with low protection, the bird will not be able to kill more than one per round

[terve886]

The way protection works, is that low damage attacks like the one from the bird will barely ever do damage against semi protected target due to too low base damage. That being said, the trident also doesn't do too much damage on its own right.

The main purpose of these weapons however is not to deal damage, their main advantage is in their length 5 parry, that makes thugs with high attack skill able to avoid some incoming attacks. The stone Bird also doubles as extra harashment penalty, which might make it some what viable against high defence skill thugs like elves, but generally you would want your counter thugs attack skill to be high rather than relying on harashment penalty. Especially the 10 gem cost on the item is rather expensive for just counter thugging, especially if you have access to dwarven hammers and would be better off with 2 5 gem items instead.

[Shinoskay]

so, the idea is that the bird does 4 weak attacks... good at killing swarms... but the trident is a single good attack which is better at overall and hopefully at hurting bruisers (or good in 1 on 1 like arenas)?

follow up question about what you said about each weapon and 1 attack, so if I have gore, chi boots, and a sword... I can do 3 attacks to a single target? but if im surrounded then I can do 4 (or was it 6? I cant remember if chi boots are 2 attacks or 4, regardless).

[Dast]

If you have Gore, a Sword and a Stone Bird then I think the most enemies you could ever kill with them in a single round is three, one with each weapon. The Stone Bird hits a single target 4 times, and each other weapon can hit a targeted enemy a single time, so if all three do well you could get 3 kills. All three weapons could hit the same enemy if they survived the first two attacks.

So the bird it not going to go that crazy against swarms. I suspect it is best against an enemy with very low protection and very high HP, where it can hope to land a lot of damage. Others have spoken about the harassing penalty, so the bird also its possibly better against a single enemy whose attack and defense skills you want to temporarily reduce.

[Maerlande]

The bird is signifcantly more expensive

[Shinoskay]

so... the bird is better. and the snake is better then either of them. (unless the enemy is immune to poison)

can the snake combo with the bird?

[terve886]

Originally posted by John:

so... the bird is better. and the snake is better then either of them. (unless the enemy is immune to poison)

can the snake combo with the bird?

Better is really relative here. I would personally most of the time prefer the dancing trident over the stone bird simply because it is cheaper and is enough to trigger the length 5 repel checks. The higher base damage on the trident also makes it generally more useful as a damage source, as the 9 damage on the stone bird is really weak against 15 or so protection, which is quite common.

The stone bird does have harassment advantage, but once again, if you need to harass single target for additional 3 attacks, you might as well take a different magical weapon with higher base attack skill modifier that will actually do some damage, like GreatSword of Sharpness.

The astral Serpent, while it does a lot of poison damage, it is far more likely that the enemy you are poisoning would die from actual damage before the poison kicks in, as 35 poison damage would mean just 4 additional damage assuming the enemy lasts more than 1 turn in melee combat. It is also length 3, so repel wise it is much weaker compared to the other two. If you really need to rely on the poison to finish the job after the initial attack because your commander died, a Serpent Krys is cheaper option.


That being said, you can totally equip multiple of the items for as many attacks as your character can fit. Keep in mind though, that huge gem investments on single commanders offensive capabilities don't necessarily scale that well. It is usually better to use gems on increasing the defensive layers of the commander, such as increased protection from armor + other protection increasing items, blesses or spells.

[Alias]

Originally posted by John:

so... the bird is better. and the snake is better then either of them. (unless the enemy is immune to poison)

can the snake combo with the bird?

The main weakness of the bird is running against vine shield/astral shield and giving the x4 chances to snare your guy.

The main upside of the bird is applying weapon blesses like Unholy Weapons x4.

There are variety of small differences, eg the trident +1 def, the bird is +2 def.

[Shinoskay]

ah, these are actually what i was hoping to hear, ya... that 4x chance vine shield, I didnt think of that. or astal shield... even more painful.

there arent many weapon buffs though, right?

[freek_o_nature]

I'm not 100% sure of this, but I believe that nether the Bird nor the Trident receive a Length advantage from Size, for whatever that's worth. If someone would like to test it to prove me wrong, or if someone just knows better, I invite them to correct me, but I'm pretty sure that the weapons of a Size 4+ unit will display their Length bonus, and I'm pretty sure neither the Bird nor the Trident display such a Length bonus. I always assumed this was intended, as the weapons aren't actually wielded by the unit (they fly), but I may be wrong!

[Shinoskay]

makes sense though, freak.

but also, can the snake combo with the bird?

[Rovsea]

Originally posted by John:

makes sense though, freak.

but also, can the snake combo with the bird?

If you have the slots available for it, yes.