Weapon upgrade advice

[cbarchuk]

I'm on my first play through of the game with a rogue that just hit level 12. I wanted to grab weapon focus as my level 12 talent. The issue is I'm not sure which weapon focus to grab. I'm currently using Vierina's Leaves and Drawn in Spring so I naturally thought I would grab the noble focus. I also have resolution and misery's end though both of those are only at exceptional enchantment level. So I'm just mixed on what focus I should go with between noble and ruffian. Thanks for any guidance. 

[Guest]

1) technically you can take both

2) at some point, it's a matter of choice/playstyle

[Omnicron]

Noble seems fine, it allows you to take a very nice superb mace you can buy in Hearthsong as well if you want to swap from a fast weapon to a medium one. Sabers are the best and deals the most damage so they are ideal for a rouge, but you need the sky dragon kill and then you can only upgrade to superb for one character. 

[Guest]

Sabres only do slash damage and only 6 creatures are explicitly vulnerable to slash (about a third are equally weak against everything, including slash). So be cautious about looking at damage only. Enemy DR matters, especially against harder opponents.

 

Ruffian gives you bonuses with clubs (crush), stilettos (pierce), and sabres (slash).

 

Noble gives you bonuses with maces (crush), rapiers (pierce), and daggers (slash).

[cbarchuk]

Thanks for the feedback. So is sticking with my rapier/dagger combo a good idea for sneak attacks? Or am I better off using resolution/miserys end even if they are a lower enchantment level? I just got to twin elms in the game. I'm just worried about picking the wrong focus and then finding better weapons from another group. I do prefer the sword/dagger type combo as opposed to maces, spears, or going two handed.

[Guest]

"Better" is going to depend entirely on you playstyle and the encounter, so looking for some hard-and-fast rule is probably going to work against you.

 

Rapier/dagger is going to be faster than sabre/stiletto. Does that matter to you? Sabre/stiletto is going to do more damage. Does that matter to you? Mace/stiletto are going to offer more DR than either. Does that matter to you? Quarterstaff has extended reach and will allow you to use other party members as a shield. Does that matter to you?

 

I'm sorry that I can't give you the answer your looking for. At the end of the day, this is a complex game and nothing is going to substitute figuring out the mechanics for yourself and making your own decisions. Anyone who doesn't at least acknowledge this in their response to you is probably giving you bad advice.

[cctobias]

noble is fine since it has maces.  crush and/or pierce will cover most bases and maces have DR penetration.  Noble can dual wield two weapon with +speed daeenysis Rapier and march dagger and is very accuracte.

 

The only real issue is that it has poor ranged and two handed options.  There are actually some good sceptres so its not terrible, but you have no hard hitting options.

 

Against high DR your best option is basically mace and many high DR things are extra DR against slash/pirece (plate armor, adr animat) so in general DW mace is probably comparable to an estoc on those guys.  For the most part its pretty good.

 

It sounds like you want to dual wield and I would say your main concerns should be a option against high DR and to a lesser degree a high accuracy option for certain opponents.  Noble is fine on accuracy.

 

As for sabres since they do extra damage they essentially have DR penetration but scale on %damage a bit better.  They are ok for ruffian as a nedium DR option (like 12 or lower), but really using slash against an Adra Animat is just pretty poor unless you hit like a truck anyway (arbalest/guns).  But ruffian does have pistol for that.  Clubs are actually pretty good weapons.

 

Anyway I see no reason not to go for noble, I personally really like peasant for the DW spears.  Some excellent spears exist.  DW hatchets is intersting options and quaterstaff with reaching is nice for rogue.

 

Edit:

Keep the following in mind an Exceptional weapon with Coordinating is better than a Superb if you are always attacking with a friend.  You can enchant Excpetional yourself pretty much as much as you need, but Superb you can only enchant yourself once.  So when considering weapons for endgame take into account that you can only make one non-superb unqiue into a superb and also that some non-superbs are still "better" than a supreb for certain playstyles.  For example when I craft cladhailth I purposely chose marking/coordination and then I enchanted it to exceptional.  But one of the option for that spear will swap that Marking for for Excpetional which is a complete waste since you can enchant exceptional but not marking.  Since this was for  a ranger the coordination+Exceptional make that spear the same accuracy and more damage than flat superb.  The same (well not quite since its only damage) can be said for the Vicious brand especially for rogues and rangers(due to flanking).

 

So for example even though there is only one superb unique club I know about, there is a Fine unbique club with vicious brand.  By enchant this to Exceptional you are essentially wielding something very close two superb clubs (one has more damage by less accuracy) and could save the Superb for a stilleto or whatever (for ruffian focus).  Similarly the Daenysis Rapier has both speed and Rending which combined with upgrading to exceptional is enough to make it close to a superb rapier.

 

Some weapons types seem to have no naturally superb occurences (like flails and stilletto) at least that i am aware of.  If you plan to use those, then you want to save the superb enchant for them.

Edited May 14, 2015 by cctobias

[cbarchuk]

I really like the vierina's leaves. It's already got the superb enchant as well as the vicious enchant. It just seems like a natural sneak attack weapon. But the sneak attack damage from it I think has been overall less compared to my exceptional resolution saber. I just like it for some reason and maybe I'm putting too much stock in the fact that it's a superb weapon. I'm also new to the game and am still learning. So that's probably not helping either. I appreciate the feedback guys very much. Thanks.

[Omnicron]

I really like the vierina's leaves. It's already got the superb enchant as well as the vicious enchant. It just seems like a natural sneak attack weapon. But the sneak attack damage from it I think has been overall less compared to my exceptional resolution saber. I just like it for some reason and maybe I'm putting too much stock in the fact that it's a superb weapon. I'm also new to the game and am still learning. So that's probably not helping either. I appreciate the feedback guys very much. Thanks.

 Well that is to be expected. Rapiers have 9-13 base damage whereas Sabres have 13-19 base damage. The cap off point of the rapier is the starting point for Sabre damage But Rapiers are more accurate and faster. the wiki has many flaws but I find the weapon info up to date: http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Weapon . I would go with Noble Focus, go and pick up Aimoranet in Hearthsong Market and see how that works for you   http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Mace

[Meisterhobbit]

You can enchant Excpetional yourself pretty much as much as you need, but Superb you can only enchant yourself once.

Really just one single possibility to enchant superb? Might well be, can't remember more than one of those enchantments made in my first walkthrough... but didn't mind all the ingredient points too much or really watched too close to what stuff is needed for which crafting (except for this one buff-food made of dragon meat ). I just collected whatever I could and enchanted whatever possible with it^^.

For the second playthrough, I'm going to be more aware of these things... so first: what stuff exactly is needed for enchanting superb? And is there really just one single source for this stuff, or could there possibly be others, traders or something to look out for?

[JONNIN]

I like to pick weapons that do best of 2 types of damage.   Very few (really, just bosses) enemy resist two damage types at a high level.   I also dislike fast weapons as after mid-game they begin to lose more and more per hit to DR.   If you hit a guy 10 times for 10 damage each against a DR of 5, you did only 50 damage.  If you hit the same guy twice for 50 each with a 2h, you did 90 damage instead... made up numbers of course... in game due to weapon speeds etc 1h are not quite that bad but you still lose a lot to DR.   Also I like crush damage of the 3 it seems to be one where few enemy resist it, and of those, several are super weak enemy types like those stationary mushrooms that can't even damge you (they just dominate one character before you splatter them). 

[dudex]

by level 12 weapon focus insnt really that good. Its only really good early on when your base accuracy is so low as it increases your accuracy by nearly 20% to your accuracy at level 2.

 

u can just go with another talent.

[srlapo]

 

You can enchant Excpetional yourself pretty much as much as you need, but Superb you can only enchant yourself once.

Really just one single possibility to enchant superb? 

 

You get enough mats for two one handed weapons or a single two handed.