I have been out in the frontier solo but never really encountered any solo fights. I just get mezz/steamrolled by groups, but if I'm in a group and the enemy is engaged in combat we have to let them fight it out fairly...

Teklom wrote:Yeah Thane weapon skill is a bad joke. In my experience 50weapon and high strength just isn't worth it because all thats going to do is bring your damage to a mediocre level. the secret vrs high weapon skill/defense classes is to use your storm calling and your ability to defend.

Yeah this is true if you think in terms of weaponskill, if I remember correctly going from 39 to 44 in weapon didn't give me much (I forgot how much exactly). This is because everything is multiplicative (on a side note, getting the last self buff had a higher impact for less points). However it still increased my 2H damage by a noticeable amount, because 2H gets a bonus based on your weapon line.

But weaponskill is a weird number anyway, I remember an old post from Blue saying that it isn't used for defense penetration directly, it may be possible that the weapon line has a much higher impact than strength on defense penetration, or maybe it's the opposite. Having played Valewalker for a long time, I can stay that its relatively high weaponskill for a hybrid doesn't do as much as people generally expect.

That being said, I currently value my melee damage more than my block / parry chance (except for solo). I found Guard to be highly ineffective on Uthgard even at 42 Shield (probably need MoB3+ and a few RR), and I'm currently much more useful following the melee train, stunning with my positional, occasionally interrupting, and DD'ing while rooted. Basically playing like a Valewalker. I'm at a point where I'm even considering dropping the side stun and going 50 SC 50 Weapon 23 Shield (rear stun).

wow bm really? So talk to me man what are you stats looking like ? also if you are some how able to respec can you give us some numbers on the damage increase you see. If weapon line has an affect then maybe man. just maybe that 2h troll thane is not that bad of an idea =)

I would love to be able to respec and test it.

But theoretically (according to the damage formula we can find here and there) each point in the weapon line increase the 2H damage multiplier by 0.005 (it starts at 1.1). So with 39+11 you have +35% and with 50+11 you have +40.5%. Meaning that 220 damage at 39+11 should becomes 229 at 50+11.

But this is without taking the weaponskill increase into consideration. From what I remember Charplan gives accurate numbers as long as you don't include non spec weapon points (no RR, no +skill from equipment). It gives 1106 WS at 39+0 with 293 Str, 1146 WS at 44+0 with 293 Str, and 1194 WS at 50+0 with 293 Str.

If I had to guess if would say that 50+11 does about 15% more damage than 39+11 with a 2H (ignoring the add damage buff). But this is a pretty wild guess.

I don't know why Guard is so ineffective, I remember Paladins around that time blocking more than half of the attacks. Currently I'm pretty happy if I block even one before my teammate dies.

those numbers do not look good man.

Well, yeah, we're on the low hybrid / bard WS table after all (x18), even Paladins are supposedly higher (x19). Giving the priority to Shield makes sense in a solo context, but so far I've been extremely disappointed by Guard. I encourage people to try playing defensively in groups and see how it works for them.

bm01 wrote:Well, yeah, we're on the low hybrid / bard WS table after all (x18), even Paladins are supposedly higher (x19). Giving the priority to Shield makes sense in a solo context, but so far I've been extremely disappointed by Guard. I encourage people to try playing defensively in groups and see how it works for them.

I agree, guard on my Thane occurs less often than it did on my Paladin back on Uth 1.0. Engage though, has saved my life.

wrong topic

bm01 wrote:I would love to be able to respec and test it.

But theoretically (according to the damage formula we can find here and there) each point in the weapon line increase the 2H damage multiplier by 0.005 (it starts at 1.1). So with 39+11 you have +35% and with 50+11 you have +40.5%. Meaning that 220 damage at 39+11 should becomes 229 at 50+11.

But this is without taking the weaponskill increase into consideration. From what I remember Charplan gives accurate numbers as long as you don't include non spec weapon points (no RR, no +skill from equipment). It gives 1106 WS at 39+0 with 293 Str, 1146 WS at 44+0 with 293 Str, and 1194 WS at 50+0 with 293 Str.

If I had to guess if would say that 50+11 does about 15% more damage than 39+11 with a 2H (ignoring the add damage buff). But this is a pretty wild guess.

I don't know why Guard is so ineffective, I remember Paladins around that time blocking more than half of the attacks. Currently I'm pretty happy if I block even one before my teammate dies.

15% more damage with 50 weapon over 39 weapon sounds exaggerated considering it's only 8% more weaponskill. That would mean that you're getting 2% more damage for ever 1% more weaponskill. I could see it being the reverse maybe, so that 15% more weaponskill gives you 8% more damage, but your wild guess sounds pretty wild to me.

It's +8% WS and +5.5% on the 2H damage factor. How much that really represents is difficult to guess.

The only tank shield in the game that can rupt healers/casters while defending.

Get mezz cured and use purge to drop roots. Its a good class.