Daggers are faster than fists

[Boeroer]

Hi,

as the title says: daggers attack faster than fists. I find that odd.

I wanted to play a monk-ish character and use Iron Fists, but started with dual daggers until I had the right level. That turned out to be pretty fun (once you get the hang of melee combat in general) because you can stab so fast you let single enemies not much of a chance.

Then I picked up Iron Fists and ran around with that... aaand I retrained right back to dual daggers because the fists felt so very sluggish in comparison. Even though that means I have to upgrade my weapons all the time - which is a pain ita imo (atm the only real gripe I have with the game).

I didn't clock it but it seems swords have about the same speed as fists at the moment?

With Barbaric Shout and decent Stamina I can fill the stun bar of any enemy with rapid stabs in a comp. very short timeframe. It takes longer with fists and I get interrupted more often. Fists also deal less damage because they have zero enchantments (such as +10% fire damage etc.). 

It also seems that Iron Fists is bugged a little bit: it doesn't seem to apply 100% of times if you retrain into it? At least when I tried it out again later I would only get measly damage per hit. And the character sheet said I have common fists. But maybe a restart or reload would fix that, didn't try.

With another savegame where I retrained a high level arquebus guy into iron fists tier 3 it worked though.

Anyway, what do you think: should jabs and punches with your fists be slower than stabs and slashes with a dagger?

[Silvaren]

I think fists work as single weapon while dual daggers are faster thanks to dual wielding. If you alternate between LPM and RPM you are attacking faster than with for example single dagger with LPM spam. Is single dagger faster than fist? I didn't test it.

Fists can benefit from Xaurip's Paws (looted in Shattered Scarp) for +15% stun and fire lash from +10% damage. Stormdancer Boots adds +10% shock damage after dodge but I didn't tested it with fists. I don't know if it's a shocking lash or just shock damage modifier.

[Frak_the_2nd]

I think there is a discrepancy here, because if you spec into "iron fists", you're going for a kind of monk build. And that should have some benefits beside just upgrading gear. Unless the devs meant it as a kind of challenge run.

[Boeroer]

What I don't get is: lots of players say that dual unarmed+iron fists is so great.

But in my experience it's worse than most dual weapon setups, def. worse than dual daggers or sword + dagger (which I also tried for comparison).

Don't know what I missed...

Edited March 11 by Boeroer

[Frak_the_2nd]

They might be biased. Without combat logs, a lot of opinions regarding combat are also based on 'feels'. Unarmed is viable and it has a certain flavour that weapons don't have.

[Boeroer]

Yeah, a slower flavor. They creep up on you. 

Edited March 11 by Boeroer

[Silvaren]

Flurry of Blows can solve this problem, but it's a late game skill.

[Frak_the_2nd]

23 hours ago, Silvaren said:

Flurry of Blows can solve this problem, but it's a late game skill.

Doesn't flurry of blows also work with weapons?

[Silvaren]

7 minutes ago, Frak_the_2nd said:

Doesn't flurry of blows also work with weapons?

Yes.

[Frak_the_2nd]

Just now, Silvaren said:

Yes.

My bad. I meant that if flurry of blows also work with weapons, it doesn't change the difference between daggers and fists. Like Boeroer I have a hard time seeing the advantage of using fists over daggers.

In short; why punch, when you can stab?

[Silvaren]

1 hour ago, Frak_the_2nd said:

My bad. I meant that if flurry of blows also work with weapons, it doesn't change the difference between daggers and fists. Like Boeroer I have a hard time seeing the advantage of using fists over daggers.

In short; why punch, when you can stab?

I think it's just a flavor. In Pillars everything was designed to be at least valuable - maybe not optimal, but still playable. I see unarmed strikes in Avowed as such thing. You can surely use it and it will be efficient. You can use it to metagame crafting for example to prioritize upgrading armor first while using fist in combat and only later switch from fist to upgraded weapon.