by Buggy Virus Sat Sep 08, 2012 8:14 pmCaptanSpudsy wrote:In my opinion, the weapons that absolutely need buffs are the thrusting swords. They don't do enough damage to warrant them w/o a buff. It usually takes 5-10 pokes with a Richard's +15 w/ CMW to kill someone. As opposed to the 15-20 pokes it'd take w/o CMW. It is quite hard dodging other, more damaging attacks long enough to get those 20 pokes in. But yes, on some weapons buffs are incredibly OP.
I thought you meant straight swords, but you meant rapiers. Rapier attack speed and poke ability greatly make up for their damage, well maybe actually they are a little weak, but buffed certainly brings them over the effective threshold of most weapons.
Knight Alundil wrote:Spurgun wrote:ChizFreak wrote:
At 120 all builds are balanced. It's the perfect level. Why do you think they are OP? One great magic barrier and they are denied. Crest SHield +5. Good dodging. At that level one should have at least one tool to counter magic-based attacks. Either good endurance for dodging, a good shield, good heavy armor, or miracles. They are not OP. Only thing that were OP, were backstabs. And in the PC edition their damage was reduced along with ripostes. And the Hornet's Ring was nerfed to +30%.
And highest critical damage weapon in the game (the Dark Silver Tracer) can't be enchanted.
As i said, i go to lower sl's. That solves the problem for me.
And sl 120 builds aren't balanced. Buffs rule. Any pure dex/str build is weaker than a buff build (i beat people with buff builds, but that's because of skill. Not because my builds are more powerful). And good luck stopping SLB with a GMB.
Almost everyone has more than enough endurance to dodge, it isn't an advantage.
Shields doesn't stop the chip damage, or bleed, or deadangles, or BS's.
How do miracles help against buffs?
And heavy armor doesn't help that much.
Buffs gives them a minute to attack you, dealing alotof damage with every hit. And you can trade blows. So you have to turtle or dodge. And when their buff runs out, you'll probably been hit at least once, and they either have a weapon that is still very strong or they can switch to one. So the "real" fight will start with you at lower health.
This is going by your skill, not everyones. Many other people including myself can counter buffs easily with these abilitys.
Maybe I couldnt with you, but that doesn't mean that no one could.
But this is the point, if someone buffs a Dex weapon they could easily make it so you trade blows with ever swing, and unless you are using a buffed strength weapon they are still going to be doing more damage than you.
So yes, your option is to run away for a minute until the buff runs out because there is no effective way to launch an offense.
Jansports wrote:I think you underestimate the actual damage difference from 420ar down to 332, it's sizable. And splitting AR is a pretty big deal as well.
You are making trade offs for investing the points to cast a buff, if it gets turtled/kited off then you're weaker for the rest of the fight, any fight you cannot buff for it's similar. You buff? No 45dex cast speed, no easily past diminishing returns scaling from str for 2handing with 30 (saves 10 points) No extra health No extra burden no Homing soul mass/ no WoG/
That's the point. When you CHOOSE to make a character a certain way you trade X for Y and Z for W, A for B and D for T. You don't get everything. You get what you choose.
If, as you say, a 30fai Divine weapon's damage is "Comparable" to a 40dex's Pure AR then currently Elemental weapons(Chaos and Lit both have higher total AR than the divine you proposed) would out put similar damage to a 40dex Scaling weapon, which we know to be untrue. Else EVERY build would be an Ele vit gouge. (also we empirically know 420 pure AR is better than the 498 split of the lit uchi, making the 431 split of the divine proposed for use when a buff runs dry is certainly a handicap)
Sure 88 damage doesn't seem like much on paper, but if we look at it the other way going from 332 to 420 is ~about~ a 33% increase. All the time. AND if 500 split AR is not as profitable for damage as 420 pure (comparing 40dex +15 to +5 chaos) then a mere 20% increase to 700 split AR. temporarily, is perhaps not as overwhelmingly more powerful than first imagined.
You mentioned that buffing you lose access to be other unique builds, but yes of course you do, but I am arguing that of the possible unique builds to use buffing builds are the most powerful.
When my friends started playing the game they quickly adapted to making a few buff builds. After about two weeks my best friend refused to buff his weapons in matches. He said it just left a bad taste in his mouth, and from then on he only reserved it for other buffers.
Further if you can buff, it isn't as if you can only buff. Players who use wrath of gods or CHSM respectively to their buff. They aren't really sacrificing anything if they are already a miracle or magic build to have one atunement slot used to give themselves the undenyably strongest weapons in the game.
On AR, for the buffed AR, although it is split, the damage from both splits is high enough that both end up getting increasing returns at the range that they are at so the penalty is much less due to split damage. We don't really have to go off our general math here, we have both played Dark Souls, we know that buffs lay down serious damage.
On the other hand the weapon unbuffed is much less than if 40 DEX was used (33% you said), but that was with my straight canned example build. It wasn't built to maximize damage, simply to showcase the advantage of a buff on the simplest DEX build. If I worked a little harder and shaved off points where it would have made more sense on END and such I'm sure I could have worked the weapon unbuffed up to 28.
http://tinyurl.com/9fzbkgw
Even so with the backup divine weapon (which is not an elemental that will be nerfed post-patched), although that doesn't have as much damage, split damage around that range still does a reasonable amount of damage for players to fear. Not to mention the obvious advantage that many players choose to ignore in these weapons which is chip damage.
