Sabre now stronger than sword

[stadi]

After the new patch a sabre is not stronger than a fine sword. Was this intentional or is this a bug?

[Leferd]

The sword has the advantage of using the best of either piercing or slashing damage, while a sabre has only slashing damage.

[Caerdon]

Sabre already had higher base damage, which is why the damage buff seemed a bit odd to me. Sword is more versatile, but I wonder if that's enough...

[waretaringo]

Sabre already had higher base damage, which is why the damage buff seemed a bit odd to me. Sword is more versatile, but I wonder if that's enough...

it definitely is. most enemies with DR have a decent difference between their pierce and their slash on hard+; hitting the lower of the two keeps the sword *extremely* competitive. plus swords are more common.

Edited April 3, 2015 by waretaringo

[Caerdon]

 

Sabre already had higher base damage, which is why the damage buff seemed a bit odd to me. Sword is more versatile, but I wonder if that's enough...

it definitely is. most enemies with DR have a decent difference between their pierce and their slash on hard+; hitting the lower of the two keeps the sword *extremely* competitive. plus swords are more common.

 

 

Thanks, I'll take your word for it. I haven't paid all that much attention to these kinds of details yet.

[Adhin]

Yeah, swords are definitely the general better choice. I ultimately went with sabers on my main just because I liked the visuals, mechanics be damned. So happy to see them get a little buff. The 1 more dmg then swords was... not noticable.

 

As a side note, DR doesn't change even in Path of the Damned. It's identical through out... course, PotD has just about everything else upped by 50%. They get 50% more dmg, more accuracy, more defences and 50% more health. It's a hell of a shift for screwing you over. o.O

 

-edit-

Oh, and Path of the Damned is the only one that actually changes stats. A shadow on easy and hard are actually identical. Same everything, its the encounter its self (what monsters show up in a group, how big the group is) is what changes. Rock beetles, always have 30 slash DR (yeah... 30).

Edited April 3, 2015 by Adhin

[Atheosis]

Slashing DR is probably one of the most common types of DR so having a single damage weapon that is slashing is a pretty serious issue at times.  Swords are still better overall than sabres but at least now sabres are a more viable choice.

[stadi]

Ok, I did not take damage reduction into account. Still, at first glance the damage difference seemed huge. I thought that "fine" makes a big difference. This means that with damage reduction in mind I should re-think everything

[PrimeJunta]

Sabers aren't all that great because slashing only.

 

The Ruffian group is super-attractive for some builds though because of the blunderbuss (and the pistol, not as good but available earlier). 

[Veevoir]

Pistol ,being in the same weapon group, is a great alternative to blunderbuss when dealing with high DR enemies.

 

As for sabres - the advantage is only against low DR enemies. Note that what sabre has as extra damage mace has as DR. So against enemy with 3DR they both do same damage. Except high slash DR is much,much more common.

[Akos]

http://tinyurl.com/ojtqmf7
Link to the google doc spreadsheet that goes into more information. 

 

Running through the various armor types in game, Sabre should always out-perform Sword against Robes, Padded, Hide, Breastplate, and Brigandine. Leather and Scale armor are almost perfectly even with Sword performing 1 damage better if both weapons hit for their minimum values. It's not enough of a difference for me to give favor to one weapon or another, at any rate. 

Where Sabre runs into trouble is against Mail and Plate armor, where its' higher base damage can't edge out against the Swords more versatile nature. Against Mail Sabre has a range of 2.6-5 damage, while Sword is a more consistent 2.2-7 (weapons cannot deal less than 20% of their initial damage). Against Plate Sabre is at a major disadvantage as it can only deal 2.6 damage without some serious damage modifiers; Sword is only doing slightly better at a 2.2-4 damage range. 

Plate armor just kind of sucks for everyone. 

Since Sabre has a significantly higher base damage than sword it can eventually catch up to its' performance against Plate armor with a large enough damage modifier. At around a 1.5x modifier (or 50% more damage) Sabre is only slightly trailing behind Sword. At precisely a 2.4x modifier (140% more damage) it catches up to sword, and at that point it should be doing better damage than Sword against everything. That is, of course, unless the armor has further enchantments specifically against Slashing. 

 

Assuming you've taken Weapon Proficiency: Ruffian, there's little reason not to carry around a pair of Stiletto for dealing with Plate armor, which is probably a more practical solution. 

Edited April 7, 2015 by Akos

[PBJam]

Check here: (spoilers- monster names)

 

Monster Strengths and Weakenesses

 

Lots of creatures with high resistance to Slashing

 

With sword you will do Piercing damage against those creatures

 

Sabre doesnt look as powerful now?

Edited April 7, 2015 by PBJam

[Akos]

Thank you for that table, PBJam! I shall make another table, but I'm going to give mod values of 2x (essentially 100% more damage) to the weapons; some of the monsters on that list aren't meant to be encountered until late game so it would be silly to just report that sword and sabre do 80% reduced damage to everything. I'm only going to list enemies that have some kind of resistance to slash or piercing, since that's the only really relevant data.

Updating when I get finished. 

[Akos]

Double Post because your editing rules are weird. 

 

!!!! SPOILER WARNING - ENEMY NAMES - CLICK LINK AT YOUR OWN RISK? !!!!

http://tinyurl.com/kwrarce

Link to the Spreadsheet; Includes monster data and armor comparisons between Sword and Sabre.

 

-Red characters signify that the weapon is doing 20% of its' initial damage, and is therefor incapable of breaking through the enemies damage reduction.

-Darker colours signify which of the two weapons have an advantage against that particular armor or enemy. 

-Damage is listed as minimum damage range, maximum damage range, and then the average of those two numbers. 

-Mod 2x is each weapon at 100% of their base damage values. 

 

Kicking each weapon up by 100% starts to illustrate what I mentioned in my first post about the base damage of Sabre's being significant in that the higher damage it does can eventually overcome damage reduction obstacles and allow it to preform better than sword even though the enemy has Slash Resistance. That being said, the DR of some enemies is simply too high even with heavy damage modification for Sabre to be a viable weapon. While I *could* just keep increasing the damage modification until Sabre IS the best option, that isn't something you can actually do in the game so it's not really practical information. 

I might rescind my previous advice to always carry around stiletto for enemies with a lot of Slashing DR; You should instead carry around some kind of crushing weapon regardless of whether you prefer the Sword or Sabre. Luckily each weapon has a crushing option in their specialization groups; Club for Sabre, and Morning Star for Sword. Typically, enemies who are highly resistant to slashing/piercing have poor DR against crushing so it should it's generally safe to assume that if you notice your character doing dramatically lower damage against an enemy its' time to switch to a beatin' stick. 

Edited April 8, 2015 by Akos

[Benedictous]

I just noticed that virtually nothing is weak to slash and those that are are barely weaker than the base DR. Crush has much less HIGH resistance and more LOW resistance. Get rid of DR

[Nerdwing]

I just noticed that virtually nothing is weak to slash and those that are are barely weaker than the base DR. Crush has much less HIGH resistance and more LOW resistance. Get rid of DR

DR is kinda problematic for alot of weapons :\