dual sabres for Holy Slayer

[Ranger_1711]

Im playing a Holy Slayer (Goldpact - Streetfighter). Which sabres should i use to dual wield? Scordeo is probably the best but i dont want to follow Principi questline.

And Exalted focus or Ex endurance is better?

Thanks

[AeonsLegend]

Aldris Blade of Captain Crow is probably the best Sabre in the game in terms of damage output. Scordeo's Edge is ok and you don't have to side with the Principi I think to get it. In terms of damage output Grave calling is likely better than Scordeo's Edge and with dual wielding you're going to have very little recovery. 5% chance to ignore recovery is not a whole lot. You're better off dealing extra damage.

I'm not a fan of Exalted Focus, but you can go with it if you don't need the healing. Exalted Endurance is very strong, but the armor bonus doesn't stack with Goldpact bonus I think. The main reason to get it is because of the great AoE healing. That plus AoE armor for everyone. That is better than +5 accuracy and a 5% chance to crit and deal 25% extra base damage imo. For reference that's a 5% chance to deal 3.5 extra damage.

Edited April 13, 2020 by AeonsLegend

[AeonsLegend]

Tarn's Respite might actually be better for shorter skirmishes than Grave calling as it gives +15% cold damage right off the bat without requiring to stack it. Plus it has +1 pen. It can also reduce deflection on enemy.

[thelee]

to add my own opinion (which is similar but slightly different to aeonslegend), if you don't have a priest backup:

i suspect a streetfighter has so many damage bonuses that dual-wielding tarn + grave calling gives you the best of both worlds and will blow out what aldris can do -- the aldris crit effects will get drowned out by the streetfighter's huge other damage bonuses (even undermining them due to the heal) that you're probably better off with a straight-up higher lash from tarn or grave calling (since it's multiplicative).

depending on the difficulty you are playing with, it's also somewhat of a trick question, because animancer's blade will be one of the best sabres. the lower damage is made up for by the lower recovery time (basically cancelling each other out) and you can "dual-wield" it by putting a ranged weapon in your off-hand and never going at range, and you will output insane damage in situations where sabres' slash damage would normally suck. might be a good candidate for your second weapon setup.

 

depending on the difficulty, i would still rate scordeo's edge highly. without a priest for metagaming the instant recovery duration, i think its big attraction is the possibility of getting up to +20 accuracy on any weapon, which in some situations (mostly on higher difficulties) might outweigh what you can get with any lash. with a priest and salvation of time, scordeo's edge is probably hands down the best weapon in the game. even with high dex, negative armor, and streetfighter recovery bonuses, having all recovery eliminated for 20-30 seconds (not counting ways to get more salvation of time) is still a massive multiplicative increase in dps - a streetfighter could melt an entire battlefield by themselves in that time. you'd have to "dual-wield" the scordeo's edge with a ranged weapon to maximize the chance you trigger blade cascade each fight though.

edit - for comparison, my last streetfighter wielded daggers and with all bonuses taken into account had a recovery time of .9 seconds or so and an attack time of like .4 seconds... so roughly an attack every 1.3 seconds. even despite that speed, removing the recovery completely would still be a whopping 3x increase in damage.

Edited April 13, 2020 by thelee

[thelee]

 

5 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

That is better than +5 accuracy and a 5% chance to crit and deal 25% extra base damage imo. For reference that's a 5% chance to deal 3.5 extra damage.

just adding another difficulty-dependent note. on higher difficulties (especially PotD+upscaling) where PEN/AR is more of an issue, crit is way more impactful because crit can move you up from underpenetration into doing full damage, which could be as much of a 300+% increase in damage on a crit. even when juggling multiple weapon damage types, there will be fights where it's just really dang hard to have full penetration on the enemy's armor. So because of that i don't completely frown on exalted focus's hit-to-crit bonus. It also stacks with other similar effects (just an oddity with how hit->crit and other similar effects work), whereas like you said the base +armor effect of endurance is really easy to be redundant with other similar effects.

i would also point out that while the constant health regen of exalted endurance is really nice and can totally carry you in fights that you have no business winning, it's an anti-synergy with a streetfighter, since a streetfighter is best at sub-50% health and flanked.

personally i extremely prefer exalted charge - bonus stride can totally save your clothies from being hunted down by enemy rogues, you can use it to kite, and the hit->graze defense bonus can do much more for you than the constant armor effect of exalted endurance without undermining streetfighter bonus. but it's not for everyone.

Edited April 13, 2020 by thelee

[AeonsLegend]

In all fairness I think it's near impossible for a well built Paladin to become bloodied in a fight. And if you do, then you're probably going to die. Any fight where I have a character going under 50% hp I there's some things to consider. How fast did it get to 50% hp? If it was fast than the character will likely go down. If it was slow ( meaning near end of fight) then how is streetfighter double bonus worth it?

Plus you have "escape" from rogue if you really need to get away. Breaks engagement as well. Moving around in combat with a Paladin is weird due to Stoic steel. You want him/her to stand still and draw aggro as much as you can. Sure exalted endurance messes with streetfighter double bonus, but I rather keep my peeps alive.

[Ranger_1711]

Thanks for these answers! I play on POTD no upscale, my aim is to beat the Oracle of Wael (megabosses are too hard for a noob like me)

Any advice on Unique Armor for my character?

[AeonsLegend]

reckless brigandine comes to mind. But devil of caroc's breastplate is always good.

[Kaylon]

For weapons I recommend Tarn's Respite + St. Drogga's Skull and for armor Magnera's Chain. Aldris Blade becomes strong only with high crit chance. Grave Calling is over rated because people always consider max stacks when in fact you'll spend most of the fights with less than half. (also Grave Calling works better with a shield because you attack more often with it than if you dual wield). However keep in mind that sabers do only slash damage and vs enemies with high armor resistance/immunity you'll be in trouble. Modwyr + Watcher's Blade is another great combo which doesn't suffer from that issue.

[AeonsLegend]

1 hour ago, Kaylon said:

 St. Drogga's Skull

Shame that's a pre order item and not everyone has access to that one.

[thelee]

13 hours ago, Kaylon said:

also Grave Calling works better with a shield because you attack more often with it than if you dual wield

you can equip grave calling in one hand and a single-handed ranged weapon in your off hand and you get dual-wielded attack speed but attack exclusively with grave calling. no problem with getting 10 stacks pretty quickly that way. (this is the same thing with scordeo's edge - is more mediocre if you're alternating with a different weapon--which is slower than just single-handed or shield style)

 

16 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

In all fairness I think it's near impossible for a well built Paladin to become bloodied in a fight. And if you do, then you're probably going to die. Any fight where I have a character going under 50% hp I there's some things to consider. How fast did it get to 50% hp? If it was fast than the character will likely go down. If it was slow ( meaning near end of fight) then how is streetfighter double bonus worth it?

while I agree that this is true for me as well generally, i think this is slightly different with streetfighter (and to a lesser extent when i'm metagaming human bonus). in such situations, i'm deliberately controlling damage being dealt to a character to get under bloodied and stay there as much as possible. if one is treating the bloodied aspect of streetfighter as a nice "extra" then I can agree with your standpoint, but I know with my various streetfighters I hate having a steady drip of healing that I don't have much control over (or is one extra thing to worry about switching off).

[thelee]

12 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

Shame that's a pre order item and not everyone has access to that one.

there's really no alternate way to access it? I know Matakau is normally available at start as part of pre-order, but if you don't have it you can loot it off a ship bounty.

[AeonsLegend]

5 hours ago, thelee said:

there's really no alternate way to access it? I know Matakau is normally available at start as part of pre-order, but if you don't have it you can loot it off a ship bounty.

I can add them through the console, but I've never obtained these weapons in the game. Although I'm not sure if I ever killed every ship.

[Boeroer]

Console is not accessible from... console (uhhh consoleception). 

Can a console player import characters that were exported by PC players? I guess not - but that would be a way to transfer items.

 

[Dyxx]

9 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Console is not accessible from... console (uhhh consoleception). 

Can a console player import characters that were exported by PC players? I guess not - but that would be a way to transfer items.

 

I don't think this is possible. Maybe if someone really knows what he does it is possible.

But if St. Droggas Skull isn't in the game files on console you won't import it anyway

[Boeroer]

They didn't remove those items from the non-preorder game version so I guess they also left them in for the console ports. But it's just that: a guess.

[AeonsLegend]

15 hours ago, thelee said:

while I agree that this is true for me as well generally, i think this is slightly different with streetfighter (and to a lesser extent when i'm metagaming human bonus). in such situations, i'm deliberately controlling damage being dealt to a character to get under bloodied and stay there as much as possible. if one is treating the bloodied aspect of streetfighter as a nice "extra" then I can agree with your standpoint, but I know with my various streetfighters I hate having a steady drip of healing that I don't have much control over (or is one extra thing to worry about switching off).

How would you do that? I mean control a character becoming and staying bloodied?

[thelee]

1 hour ago, AeonsLegend said:

How would you do that? I mean control a character becoming and staying bloodied?

typically no easy solution - lots of micromanagement. i run in recklessly and use party-unfriendly spells (fireball, pillar of holy fire) to help drop down into bloodied to begin with.

to stay alive and bloodied - 

easiest - barring death's door and salvation of time and don't give a damn bout how low my health gets. But outside of cipher/brilliant exploits, this only means about 20-30 seconds of carefree time and it comes pretty late.

harder - using things like escape or invisibility to relieve myself of getting too much enemy hate if i start dipping too low. things like nemnok's cloak or that brigandine that gives you +AR as you get lower also help because you might start getting really tanky by the time you are bloodied already (though the trade-off is that wearing that brigandine lowers your dps potential a lot, but i found that on a tankier streetfighter you still get a lot of damage done). regardless of how much hate i get, if I drop into near death i almost always have a withdraw or lay on hands ready as an emergency (i just have to fall back into bloodied afterwards). or, better yet, i have revive the fallen which will just revive me but put me back into sub-bloodied for continuing my rampage. 

 

it also helps that over time, i've made sure that my streetfigthers have tons of health - dumping resolve (makes it harder to use sparkcrackers to trigger flanked anyway) in favor of constitution (as well as other dps stats) as well as picking up Tough. It makes it harder to get bloodied, but not that much harder with powerful party-unfriendly spells at hand, but more importantly it gives you lots of buffer room and room for error once you are bloodied.

Anyway, micromanagement-intensive but feels really rewarding to pull off.

 

i suppose in an ideal world you have exalted endurance or chanter's ancestor's memory and just remember to switch them off if you get too close to getting above bloodied, but it's one extra bit of micro i don't think it's worth (at least for me) to have to worry about. (the one time i ran a streetfighter with a chanter, i preferred the damage shield chant on a troubadour because the refreshing 10pt shield basically acted like regen, but in a way that didn't undermine my streetfighter and actually helped control how much damage they were taking).

Edited April 14, 2020 by thelee

[AeonsLegend]

24 minutes ago, thelee said:

typically no easy solution - lots of micromanagement. i run in recklessly and use party-unfriendly spells (fireball, pillar of holy fire) to help drop down into bloodied to begin with.

to stay alive and bloodied - 

easiest - barring death's door and salvation of time and don't give a damn bout how low my health gets. But outside of cipher/brilliant exploits, this only means about 20-30 seconds of carefree time and it comes pretty late.

harder - using things like escape or invisibility to relieve myself of getting too much enemy hate if i start dipping too low. things like nemnok's cloak or that brigandine that gives you +AR as you get lower also help because you might start getting really tanky by the time you are bloodied already (though the trade-off is that wearing that brigandine lowers your dps potential a lot, but i found that on a tankier streetfighter you still get a lot of damage done). regardless of how much hate i get, if I drop into near death i almost always have a withdraw or lay on hands ready as an emergency (i just have to fall back into bloodied afterwards). or, better yet, i have revive the fallen which will just revive me but put me back into sub-bloodied for continuing my rampage. 

 

it also helps that over time, i've made sure that my streetfigthers have tons of health - dumping resolve (makes it harder to use sparkcrackers to trigger flanked anyway) in favor of constitution (as well as other dps stats) as well as picking up Tough. It makes it harder to get bloodied, but not that much harder with powerful party-unfriendly spells at hand, but more importantly it gives you lots of buffer room and room for error once you are bloodied.

Anyway, micromanagement-intensive but feels really rewarding to pull off.

 

i suppose in an ideal world you have exalted endurance or chanter's ancestor's memory and just remember to switch them off if you get too close to getting above bloodied, but it's one extra bit of micro i don't think it's worth (at least for me) to have to worry about. (the one time i ran a streetfighter with a chanter, i preferred the damage shield chant on a troubadour because the refreshing 10pt shield basically acted like regen, but in a way that didn't undermine my streetfighter and actually helped control how much damage they were taking).

Man thanks for the explanation. It's not what I was hoping for. I'm a lazy person and this sounds like too much work for me to get the most of this class. Dang.

I mean I'm the guy that keeps going back to building Devoted/Shattered Pillar with Lord Darynns Voulge to instawipe a whole room of baddies.