Bleeping small weapons, how do they work?

[PrimeJunta]

I haven't had much luck with small/fast weapons. They just don't seem to do enough damage to do much to tanky enemies (and I always felt that being able to mow through scrubs faster is kind of a bad trade-off). I've tried a few, played a while, felt that it was grindy and frustrating, gone back to greatswords, and felt "Ah, that's more like it."

 

Any of you succeeded in making godly builds with daggers, stilettos, rapiers, or the like? Preferably ones that do not rely on unique characteristics of particular weapons (e.g. Boeroer's awesome time-leeching barbarian). Basically, how do you rack up enough damage or armour penetration per hit to make it worthwhile?

[Boeroer]

I also did a monk build with Rapier and Dagger and it's damage is good. You will have higher attack speed and less damage per hit. It's right that that's a problem with high DR foes since most of the time you only apply the MIN damage that will go through the armor no matter how thick it is. You have to make good use of any DR reductions that you can get. For example the cipher has a power named Body Attunement that steals -7 DR on one target, the wizard has Expose Vulnerabilities that does -5 DR in a huge AoE and so on. These things can stack.

 

The faster your attack rate is, the more you profit from DR bypass. It's like a flat +x bonus to each of your attacks, not %-based. So the faster the better.

 

There ale also some of those fast weapons that have inherent -3DR bypass like all stilettos (Bleak Fang has even -6), a unique rapier (Sword of Daenysis) and maybe others, can't remember.

 

So in order to make fast/small weapons work, you need to become as fast as possible and at the same time stack as much DR bypass as possible. Then they are superior to slow, hard hitting weapons. And there is another advantage: constantly interrupting a single target (or even AoE with a barb) is easier and better with fast hits. There's also a rapier that has a very high interrupt timer (Mosquito, 0.75 instead of 0.35 like other rapiers). A barb can use that rapier (durgan refined) with a small shield (also durgan refined) to interrupt-lock a whole bunch of enemies.

 

Another small/fast weapon I really like is Drawn in Spring. It has the wounding enchantment which is awesome if you have high MIG and INT. I think few people realise that this enchantment is influencend by both stats. You can't guess it because the description says that it only does 25% damage over 5 secs and that's it. Crits also prolong the duration of the wounding. Like Tidefall, this weapon is great for builds with high MIG and INT like chanters, fighters, barbs, paladins and so on sometimes have. And you can put a lash on top of that so that you will cause more than +95% with weapon enchantments alone (25% wounding, 25% lash, 45% superb).

 

I just did a test with a barb and Spelltongue + Mosquito because I wanted to test if Fighting Spirit gets prolonged by Spelltongue. I couldn't manage to get unter 50% endurance because my barb was hitting so fast with Gauntlets of Swift Action (+15%), Dual Weapon Style (20%), Spelltongues time siphon (+15%) and Frenzy (+33%) that all the Ogres where interrupted all the time and Mosquito, besides causing long interrupts, leeched lots of endurance via carnage-draining. At first I thought he doesn't do a lot of damage because there where only number like 5 to 8 popping out of the ogres' heads, but they died rather quicky because I was so lightning fast. I think it would have taken more time if I've had a two hander because then they are not interrupted so often and will knock me down. If I'm on the ground I can't attack...

 

So as you can see I kinda like small/fast weapons.

Edited January 5, 2016 by Boeroer

[PrimeJunta]

Thanks, that makes sense... sort of. I haven't played very far with small-weapon builds, and at least early on they just feel way underpowered. About at which level does the balance start to tip?

[Boeroer]

Oh... I don't know exactly. I don't even know if they are better at any point - just not bad anymore.

 

But it's true that you lack means of DR bypass and +attack speed mods in the early game. Stilettos are an exception.  

[KDubya]

A Monk's fists attack at fast weapon speed but does average weapon damage, basically they attack as fast as a rapier/dagger/stiletto and do damage like a battle axe or sword/spear. They also auto upgrade as you level up. A superb, durgan enchanted weapon with a damage lash and/or a speed boost will out pace a plain fist but those weapons are quite rare. Until that god tier weapon is obtained you can run the entire game on PotD just using fists.

[Boeroer]

I read somewhere that unarmed is even a little bit faster than daggers and the like. Is that true?

I think monk's fists are awesome by the way. But only monk's. Novice Suffering is badly implemented and doesn't work well with +dmg mods.