Two-handed Weapon DPS

[tmoji]

Once 0 or near 0 recovery time is acheivable, are two handed weapons competitive with dual wielding DPS? I'm curious about the general case, but also specifically Tidefall for Barbarian/Rogue characters. 

[Niclole]

Everything is good, I barely ever dual wield on Path of the Damned and have done all content.  The question is: do you want good, best, or perfect.  I tend to actually hate 2 handed weapons in most games but in Pillars I find more often than not half or more of my party is carrying 2 handers lol.

 

I don't know the numbers, I only know what I've experienced: can two handed compete with dual wield?  Depends what you mean by compete and what the target is, what the weapons are, what the skills are.  Honestly, half my builds are just flavor builds that take relatively poor choices talent and ability wise and gear wise just for theme and I have very few to some issues on Path of the Damned.  My personal opinion is that anything is competitive if you play it right.  That said, mathematically, there is most likely always a "best case" scenario and from what advice I've seen it is: Dual wield.  But again, I've not run into much that just doesn't work and you can get quite creative and have a good time still.

 

Edit:

The one weapon I find I use in almost every play through is Tidefall.  Its by far my favorite weapon.  It looks cool, it feels cool, it has a cool name, it has good lore, and it has good abilities.  Love that weapon.  In fact I love it so much I wish it didn't exist so I'd be tempted to use other weapon types, mainly cause Greatsword and Pike (Weapon Focus: Talent) both have such a good selection of weapons that its hard to justify not picking that weapon focus and using Tidefall.  I have to force myself to use other 2handers.  Which is still my biggest complaint, the darn weapon focus talents rather than being able to select 2-3 weapons to focus on yourself.

Edited February 17, 2017 by Niclole

[tmoji]

Everything is good, I barely ever dual wield on Path of the Damned and have done all content.  The question is: do you want good, best, or perfect.  I tend to actually hate 2 handed weapons in most games but in Pillars I find more often than not half or more of my party is carrying 2 handers lol.

 

I don't know the numbers, I only know what I've experienced: can two handed compete with dual wield?  Depends what you mean by compete and what the target is, what the weapons are, what the skills are.  Honestly, half my builds are just flavor builds that take relatively poor choices talent and ability wise and gear wise just for theme and I have very few to some issues on Path of the Damned.  My personal opinion is that anything is competitive if you play it right.  That said, mathematically, there is most likely always a "best case" scenario and from what advice I've seen it is: Dual wield.  But again, I've not run into much that just doesn't work and you can get quite creative and have a good time still.

 

Edit:

 

The one weapon I find I use in almost every play through is Tidefall.  Its by far my favorite weapon.  It looks cool, it feels cool, it has a cool name, it has good lore, and it has good abilities.  Love that weapon.  In fact I love it so much I wish it didn't exist so I'd be tempted to use other weapon types, mainly cause Greatsword and Pike (Weapon Focus: Talent) both have such a good selection of weapons that its hard to justify not picking that weapon focus and using Tidefall.  I have to force myself to use other 2handers.  Which is still my biggest complaint, the darn weapon focus talents rather than being able to select 2-3 weapons to focus on yourself.

 

Instead of asking if it two handers were competitive, I should have avoided the subjectivity and asked what the difference would be in damage output, assuming no build differences other than the relevent weapon talents. 

 

I have noticed that Tidefall is on just about every tanky melee build along with Shod-in-faith. I'll definitely give it to someone, just not sure who yet. 

[secretmantra]

Once 0 or near 0 recovery time is acheivable, are two handed weapons competitive with dual wielding DPS? I'm curious about the general case, but also specifically Tidefall for Barbarian/Rogue characters. 

Seems like the answer to this is at least partially dependent on how "interruptible" you are. If your Concentration is low / average, you may experience some very long waits between swings with a two-hander in some battles.

[George_Truman]

For sustained auto attack damage I think instant two hander wins (I say think because I dont think that dual weilding affects attack speed animation but I could be mistaken). But so long as you are reasonably overcoming dt threaholds dual wields work better with abilities like heart of fury or flames of devotion because you get double value. The exception being early game firebrand which easily does more damage per swing than two fine weapons (although you are gonna have a hard time hitting insta speed with fb in the early game/ever)

Edited February 18, 2017 by George_Truman

[KDubya]

If its a full attack, such as heart of Fury or Torment's Reach, then dual wielding is the best.

 

If its auto attacking and you have zero recovery than two handed weapons hit harder and will attack at the same speed as dual wielding. For that matter sword and shield (non-bashing) will attack as fast as dual wielding if both have zero recovery. Dual wields advantage is that it is much easier to get to zero recovery but once there its advantage diminishes.

[stiven]

Once 0 or near 0 recovery time is acheivable, are two handed weapons competitive with dual wielding DPS? I'm curious about the general case, but also specifically Tidefall for Barbarian/Rogue characters. 

 

Can a ask, are melee even viable on PoTD? Cause it seems like you can't be a melee and a dps in the same time on PoTD. Maybe only if on main char. All melee is dying in one moment inside of those hordes of enemies on PoTD, or they got paralyses/confuse/dominated/stunned/prone instead, and you need to have at lest 2 priest + scroll in order to keep it from happening. I have Pallegina as tank, all hers pallas defense bonuses + defense talent + items against confusion and affliction, and she STILL catching affectation statues on the first line, if unbuffet by priest. And damage of any melee is so small in comparison to any AoE, that why even bother? Are im wrong, or im right? I honestly tried to make melee dps on PoTD and their performance as dps always was weak, compare to wizard/druid/cleric/ranger or rogue with war bow. I haven't tried barbarian yet. Maybe barbs with their immortality mode would be viable.

[Niclole]

My top damage dealers in my last two playthroughs on Path of the Damned were both melee.  2handed Barbarian in the first and a dual wield flail monk.  Flail...monk.  Top damage.  I think melee is doable, in fact in both playthroughs most if not all of my characters engaged in melee range in almost every fight.  My second top damage in the first play through was a mace and shield priest of Skaen wearing padded armor.  Admittedly a lot of his damage came from his spells but he was almost always in melee range in fights to cast the shorter range priest spells.  In both play throughs I had only two ranged damage dealers, wizard/cipher in the first playthrough and priest/wizard in the second (who still spent more time in melee cause more often than not I just had her cast per encounter Parasitic Staff and beat on peoples faces).  But yes, prepare to use Immune spells.  

 

 

Edit: To add to this the most fun Priests I play are always melee range priests.  Long Range priests frustrate me cause of the fact a lot of their spells that I want to use have such limited range that they are always running around in already clogged up situations.

Edited February 21, 2017 by Niclole

[KDubya]

 

Once 0 or near 0 recovery time is acheivable, are two handed weapons competitive with dual wielding DPS? I'm curious about the general case, but also specifically Tidefall for Barbarian/Rogue characters. 

 

Can a ask, are melee even viable on PoTD? Cause it seems like you can't be a melee and a dps in the same time on PoTD. Maybe only if on main char. All melee is dying in one moment inside of those hordes of enemies on PoTD, or they got paralyses/confuse/dominated/stunned/prone instead, and you need to have at lest 2 priest + scroll in order to keep it from happening. I have Pallegina as tank, all hers pallas defense bonuses + defense talent + items against confusion and affliction, and she STILL catching affectation statues on the first line, if unbuffet by priest. And damage of any melee is so small in comparison to any AoE, that why even bother? Are im wrong, or im right? I honestly tried to make melee dps on PoTD and their performance as dps always was weak, compare to wizard/druid/cleric/ranger or rogue with war bow. I haven't tried barbarian yet. Maybe barbs with their immortality mode would be viable.

 

 

 

Most all of my PotD runs have been with melee heavy or melee only parties, all without priests. A Juggernaut 3.0 Monk with high Might and Con and using gear that also raises defenses like the Wayfarer's Hide, supported by a Chanter and a Paladin with Zealous Endurance for the hit>graze will shrug off most fortitude attacks like the fish people's paralyze and those he can't shrug off will merely be grazes and his DR and health regen is sufficient to just face tank what damage occurs.

 

The damage output from a well built Monk with his own +25% lightning lash, a Turning Wheel fire lash of 5-40% and a chanter's +25% fire lash spamming Torment's Reach which adds another +50% crush lash, in a full attack that hits a large cone is YUGE! Best of all you stand right in front of the enemy without fear of getting killed because you are not squishy in the least.

 

Your squishy spell casters or glass Rogues appear to do a lot of damage but you are not taking into account the fact that half to three quarters of your party are tasked with keeping that arcane cannon alive and safe from the enemy. Take away that protection and they go down like a drunk chick on prom night.

 

Melee is sturdy and can survive, all while dishing out damage. Remember that a knocked out character does zero damage.

[rheingold]

What KDubya said. No priest and wizard is fine though I woud definitely take one caster and a chanter. In my case I tend to take a druid but a cipher would be as good/better.  I find melee heavy parties easier and more fun. Having a paladin, chanter, barbarian, monk and/or a fighter makes a solid frontline, and with 4 characters the damage is spread over all of them. I wouldn't go with more melee though as they can get in each others way the exception being a rangers pet. That leaves 2 ranged toons. If you are still struggling put them in the heaviest armour you can find. I only miss a priest for maybe 3 fights in the game - out of how many hours of gameplay. Scrolls can help then.

Rogues are good on any difficulty except Potd where they take a hammering. Still a melee rogue is very viable but needs more defense than usual. Some people like shields. I just can't bring myself to use one, so instead I take high resolve/con and all the defense talents/abilities which help a huge amount. It's possible to get pretty good deflection that way.

Still dishes out a serious amount of damage with dual sabres but is really micro intensive.... But fun.

[indika_tates]

It depends the mobs you are facing. Two handed dps is solid, estocs are nice and there are awesome weapons. Dual wield is more late game stuff when you have high tier equipment. But as you said Tidefall & Rumbalt are available very early on and there are also very good estocs you can get before level 7-8. You can't be wrong if you go the two handed path. The thing about this game is that every weapon is viable. Even one handed weapons can do pretty solid damage with proper equipment & skills.

[Crucis]

The thing to always keep in mind is that 2H weapons are better than 1H weapons when it comes to overcoming higher DR's.  So while 1H's may have higher DPS, if you're not getting past some enemy's DR's, all that potential DPS may go to waste if you're not doing actual damage.

[stiven]

Well, if some melee build has sort of cleave attacks, then its indeed changing things. But wizards is quite a tanky chars too. Just let them buff themselves and let priest give them +10 buff duration, blessing, and then they are ready to go deep into horde lines and do some aoe. Also im not sure are this is a bug or something, but if let wizard buff himself with Eldritch Aim + Merciless Gaze + Kalakoth's Minor Blights + Citzal's Martial Power ( it's all instant casts), then wizard starts to aoe-blasting in veeery wide area. For example my wizard has cleared entire "trash mobs" in Alpine dragon cave, just in 3 attacks, lol. Not sure that any melee can do it. Can you give some links to melee-only PoDT videos? It just, you saying that melee is viable, but im playing right now, and even my tanky Pallegina with tons of +def against afflictions, still got herself paralyzed as easily as back line casters ;/. And every pack of enemies is sure death for tanks if casters not CC the pack faster that enemies CC tanks. For example in White March 1, there is fish-like enemies with "Broodmothers" among them with 100+ defs, and Cleansing Flame. Fight starts - broodmothers just Cleansing Flame-ing all my front liners + 6 sec + all front liners is nearly death even with Durance clearing debuffs. But with 2 wizards and dru, it is a different story - fight starts + wizard buffs for +acc + first wizard CC horde, second debuff it + then 2 wizard and dru starts landing aoe after aoe (not any aoe, but the one's which attacks most lower defs after debuffs) on disabled and debuffed enemies. Usually it is clearing packs very effectively. And while on my second playthrough im honestly trying to build some decent melee dps, it just doesn't seems like any melee would even be as effective as AoE extermination squad when it comes to dissipating big packs of enemies.