Why blunt is so good and piercing so bad?

[Amish]

Is that only my impression? I feel like every game I chose blunt because it’s the best in almost every biome, and now it’s the best in the ashlands too? It’s a little off balance

[Hoja Lateralus]

There are noticeably more enemies that are weak/neutral to blunt than those who are weak/neutral to piercing

[Johnson B. Tittywack]

Its balanced somewhat by weapon speed and range.

[knighttemplar1960]

Because the most potent weapon in the game prior to Mistlands is the bow so the devs soft nerfed the bow by making things resist piercing.

The other thing is If you look at the history of the Viking age and the creatures the devs included the resistances tend to make sense.

Arrows or a sword aren't going to be particularly effective on a skeleton or a blob but a club or a mace will be.

[HunApo]

Blunt is strong early, good against skeletons in black forest and against blobs, ooze, bonemass and growths.
But pretty much thats it.
By swamp, where draugrs are the main enemy type, all physical damage is the same.
By mistland, phys damage becomes weak in general as all the seekers are resistant to all phys attack.
Ashland is the same, either resistant or neutral at best.

And pierce has its use, very strong against trolls, lox, gjalls and ticks.

[Hoja Lateralus]

Piercing is good against wolves in the mountains and lox in plains

[Sotanaht]

Peirce=Bow. Bow=OP. Even with enemies having Pierce Resist, it's still incredibly strong. If you've never tried bow with 80+ skill you're missing out. It's also super easy to train Bow (much faster than any other weapon class), just find a bone pile and spam 0-charge wood arrows at the skeletons while wearing decent armor.

Too bad the Spear and Polearms suffer as collateral damage from nerfing the bow.

[HunApo]

Originally posted by Sotanaht:

Peirce=Bow. Bow=OP. Even with enemies having Pierce Resist, it's still incredibly strong. If you've never tried bow with 80+ skill you're missing out. It's also super easy to train Bow (much faster than any other weapon class), just find a bone pile and spam 0-charge wood arrows at the skeletons while wearing decent armor.

Too bad the Spear and Polearms suffer as collateral damage from nerfing the bow.

Well to be fair, spears are the fastest weapon to level as all spears get not only 50% more XP per attack than any other weapons, but have just a bit slower attack speed than the knifes.
And polearms are fantastic to handle pretty much anything in melee, from black forest up to ashlands.

[blprice61]

There are some factors that largely mitigate the pierce resistance slant:
a) Spears have speed, damage, and skill increase rate advantages
b) Bows have the capability to use elemental damage
c) Atgeirs secondary attack, properly used, staggers nearly everything

Then for blunt weapons, the knock back of the one-handed clubs/maces often gets in the way of damage per second.

Personally the only blunt weapons I tend to use are the two-handed hammers and sometimes Frostner. However these are all magical weapons that happen to do blunt force damage. The only truly blunt weapon I ever make is the unupgraded wood club and then mostly for training purposes.

Another factor in the blunt vs pierce matchup is the health of the targets. The lower health pierce resistant enemies die anyhow to the right spear or arrow. The blunt resistant enemies tend to have lots of health which makes a good case for not using blunt.

There are really only two enemies where blunt is generally considered the default choice, namely Bonemass and golems. Still, they aren't the only choice; Frost arrows do a number on Bonemass, though you need either high bow skill or another weapon to speed up the process. Golems are easily dropped into a pit where they make great bow training dummies.

In summary, I believe the blunt vs pierce resistance argument to be of no real consequence. Use the weapons you like that fit your combat style preferences. Just be aware of the effects of resistances in your tactics and choice of secondary weapons and/or ammo.

tldr; the blunt v pierce resist is not a significant factor

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by HunApo:

Originally posted by Sotanaht:

Peirce=Bow. Bow=OP. Even with enemies having Pierce Resist, it's still incredibly strong. If you've never tried bow with 80+ skill you're missing out. It's also super easy to train Bow (much faster than any other weapon class), just find a bone pile and spam 0-charge wood arrows at the skeletons while wearing decent armor.

Too bad the Spear and Polearms suffer as collateral damage from nerfing the bow.

Well to be fair, spears are the fastest weapon to level as all spears get not only 50% more XP per attack than any other weapons, but have just a bit slower attack speed than the knifes.
And polearms are fantastic to handle pretty much anything in melee, from black forest up to ashlands.

The reason you can level bows faster than spears is because an uncharged arrow does very little damage (it also costs literally no stamina if you time your clicks). A Flint Spear still does 10 damage to a skeleton before Skill Modifiers, so ~20 damage towards the later skill levels. That kills the skeleton in 2 hits and you have to wait for a respawn, so you can't take advantage of the faster speed.

Alternatively I guess you could try to grind against a boss. I can't think of what you would use though. Elder dies pretty fast and grinding seeds takes a lot longer than wood for arrows. Bonemass is probably too dangerous to just spam on.

[blprice61]

Originally posted by Sotanaht:

Originally posted by HunApo:

Well to be fair, spears are the fastest weapon to level as all spears get not only 50% more XP per attack than any other weapons, but have just a bit slower attack speed than the knifes.
And polearms are fantastic to handle pretty much anything in melee, from black forest up to ashlands.

The reason you can level bows faster than spears is because an uncharged arrow does very little damage. A Flint Spear still does 10 damage to a skeleton before Skill Modifiers, so ~20 damage towards the later skill levels. That kills the skeleton in 2 hits and you have to wait for a respawn, so you can't take advantage of the faster speed.

Alternatively I guess you could try to grind against a boss. I can't think of what you would use though. Elder dies pretty fast and grinding seeds takes a lot longer than wood for arrows. Bonemass is probably too dangerous to just spam on.

Make an unupraded flint spear, use leftover antlers to summon Eithkyr. That need not be your only spear training method - like all other melee weapons Hugin should be your first training dummy up to at least level 10.

[Faceplant]

Originally posted by Amish:

I feel like every game I chose blunt

If that is true, then maybe you should try something else and maybe change your mind.

Looking at stats is very deceptive. You can't get a proper impression without actually using a weapon a significant amount of time.

I'm surprised that the benefits of knives haven't been mentioned. They're half pierce and half slash, and (IMO) one of the best weapons in the game. Second only to sword IMO, and better in many ways.

[katsuragi]

Originally posted by blprice61:

In summary, I believe the blunt vs pierce resistance argument to be of no real consequence. Use the weapons you like that fit your combat style preferences. Just be aware of the effects of resistances in your tactics and choice of secondary weapons and/or ammo.

If I were a YouTuber, you would see me under this paragraph, pointing up at it and nodding.
I use knives and swords because... I like knives and swords. I use a bow or crossbow when I need to. It's all doable with whatever weapons you like. Results may vary... but it's doable.

[Cattastrafy]

Yeah instead of just balancing bow progression they decided to level it out making a lot of stuff peirce resistant. This hurts atgeir and spear users bad in Ashlands sadly. Well, mostly spears probably. Tbf, spears are pretty op in all other biomes lol.

[A New Player]

If you haven't used the Atgeirs, you are missing out on how OP those are. A bronze atgeir(mine was lvl 2) can stagger fulings. It deals with blobs in just a few hits while maintaining distance, only struggling with golems/aboms. Get good with atgeir and spear combo, and you won't need to craft a bow until you get out to the ocean.

[SeasonedSoulsBorne]

Originally posted by A New Player:

If you haven't used the Atgeirs, you are missing out on how OP those are. A bronze atgeir(mine was lvl 2) can stagger fulings. It deals with blobs in just a few hits while maintaining distance, only struggling with golems/aboms. Get good with atgeir and spear combo, and you won't need to craft a bow until you get out to the ocean.

Iron atgeir's are my go-to for plains
Get surrounded? spin to win
Lone fuling? Triple combo
If you time the power attack right, you can jump, power attack midair and have it connect with a group of the lil green guys before you reach the ground, very kickass