I can't for the life of me remember where I read this but some where, some how, I saw a post that said Rangers should only use Piercing weapons as our de-buffs are all piercing.....This true? Should i be swaping my sword and axe for two daggers? what would be the downside if I carried on using the sword and the axe? Thanks
The debuffs that I've seen so far are all for piercing, so the answer is probably yes. However I'm just level 23 so maybe those further ahead can speak more on this.
Thyey are better anyways, duel steel stilleto's is what im using atm, before that I used carbonite leafblades, I wouls really like to find some steel leafblades.
Our debuffs ARE piercing (see Impale) -- that doesn't mean you can't use a piercing and a slashing, that's what I'm doing and you don't lose anything. Just make sure your primary is Piercing. (Willow Wood Hunting Blade really is fantastic until level 25 or so, at least)
Once you hit 20 go to qeynos harbor and buy some new carbonite weapons, by 20 the willow wood stuff is crap.
That's not true at all -- Willow wood hunting blade cons even at 24 and has the same dmg/delay as Carbonite, but Carbonite doesn't have any stat boosts.
Iron Tribal Spears are nice also. Sold in Willow Wood, they are some of the highest damage dual wield piercers I have seen yet and are only 5s and some change. At the moment I have the spear in main hand and the WIllow Wood Hunting Blade in offhand, very nice combo. Endevor
Iron Tribal Spears are nice also. Sold in Willow Wood, they are some of the highest damage dual wield piercers I have seen yet and are only 5s and some change. At the moment I have the spear in main hand and the WIllow Wood Hunting Blade in offhand, very nice combo. Endevor 19 Predator Butcherblock
Heh not sure what you had cause at 22 I had one that was blue...and carbonite has better stats for example I was using the carbonite leafblade, 7-22 @ 2.0 speed. That is much better then the what 5-16 or so the willow wood has, and you have room to grow with the carbonite. Unless you are doing mostly solo work you want to use the high dmg/delay stuff, now you cant solo as easy with it but its much better in groups. Basically with any items you want to keep up with them at yellow con. Dont wait untill your greay to upgrade items. Its not that hard to get much money and weapons really dont cost that much so upgrade as much as possible. As soon as I hit 30 im going to feyiron even though the steel weapons may still be yellow con.
I prefer speed over Damage, so I'd be looking at the Carbonite Kris, which is something like 5-17, Very close to the Willow Wood hunting blade, but without the + to agility and str, resists etc...thats what I meant about stats. I was just going to purchase carbonite the other day, but I looked at my weapons again and decided against it. ah well, to each his own
One thing I think most of you are missing is that your default melee attack is teh only thing that matters fo rthe speed on the weapon. Most of the time I am using special attacks all of the time anyways. So speed is kinda pointless.
If you can fight in Thundering Steppes, Stell Stiletto is the way to go and Weighted Spatha of Battle.. Stiletto drops from giants, spatha drops from Centaur captain.. also steel short spear drops from the Overseer.
Piercing, hmm... ok thats good to know, will save me some hassle later on as I'm only level 9 ---also former SWG Addict----
I like to carry extra weapons with me. I found out in beta later on in the game you will face mobs that are immune to certain weapon types. Had a group in Stormhold that fought a named salamander that was immune to peircing, none of my combats arts inflicted damage while i had piercing weapons in my hand, that also meant all of my bow attacks failed.
jcrazy thnx for that last bit of advise, i was about to sell off my slashing weaps for piercing, but i'll keep them for back up !! guess i'll be off shoppin for some new weaps anyhow.. thnx for the great posts peeps !!
Yeah...I learned this from Diablo II and other games where enemies can be immune to damage types. You should always carry a variety of weapons that do different types of damage. You may run into somebody who just smiles at you when you hit it with your favorite weapon. Starting as Scouts, we specialize in piercing damage. Our buffs do, indeed, favor our piercing damage. I can only speak through level 20 so far, but I do not believe that changes, at least not significantly. So, I favor piercing damage weapons. However,in addition to my two dual wield peircing weapons, I carry two dual wield slashing weapons. This allows me to do both hands piercing, both hands slashing, or piercing in one hand and slashing in the other. For normal fighting, I do the latter. I have a Rapier (piercing) in my primary hand and a slashing weapon with equal speed in my off-hand. This keeps both my piercing and slashing skills maxed. That is important because if I do have to switch to pure slashing damage because the monster was immune to piercing damage, I would hate to realize that not only were my piercing damage buffs and debuffs moot, but I am now facing him with weapons with which I have a skill rating of 50/100. As it is, right now, both my piercing and slashing skills are at something like 102/102.
This did not have to be the case. I know with Iron Arrows, there are Iron Arrows and there are Iron Hunting Arrows. Iron Arrows do piercing damage, but Iron Hunting Arrows do slashing damage. I have not investigated the more expensive arrows because they are, well, more expensive, but I am sure there is probably an equivalency in the higher end arrows as well. Thus, you can carry both piercing and slashing arrows for the same reason you carry piercing and slashing melee weapons. Message Edited by Sotaudi on 11-30-2004 02:59 PM
Weapon speed definitely affects specials as well. When I got my bow from the subclass quest, I switched from using Gregor's Old Bow to it. Gregor's is long bow, so it has a 7.0 speed. The subclass quest bow is a short bow, so it has 4.5 speed. There is a noticable difference between how long it takes to fire off the next special, to fire another arrow in just normal attack, or to switch to melee attacks using Gregor's bow compared to the quest bow. Example: A typical scenario would be to start off with a Back Shot to damage the critter and to pull it in. With Gregor's bow, I would normally get off only the backshot. And against particularly fast creatures, I would have to stand there for a couple of seconds once they got to me before I could start hitting them with melee skills. With the quest bow, I can usually get off Back Shot and Wounding Arrow and be in melee mode very quickly. So weapon speed does affect specials as well.
