This may be more of a simple question than a few others in the design space discussion, but it’s a question to be had nonetheless:
Scepters and Daggers are known for huge % bonuses but fairly low base damage.
The weapons I described above make far less sense to me - their % values are far lower than their magical weapon counterpart, but do they make up for it with higher flat? Better skill modifiers?
A similar issue came up in a specific case, but I wanted a more general discussion since it can apply to numerous weapons:
So are swords more Pierce based, Maces more physical based and Axes more Bleed based? How are their DoT values compared to caster weapons? How easily do they handle conversion compared to other weapons? I can understand their gameplay implications and the devotions meant to bless these weapons, but I’d like to know the more general design philosophy of the more “melee” style weapons compared to the more “caster” weapons so we don’t run into cases where the best melee has to use a wand or something silly like that (unless the wand’s coming from a Beef Wizard who has no qualms for design and just likes casting fist to the face).
swords, maces axes have same bonus stat values with different potential base dmg and speed. Swords being the fastest with least base dmg, maces being the slowest with the most.
That’s their base values
in the old days they all had base phys, with base magick being unique to caster weapons, but that’s since changed, specially for MIs
but all that goes out the window for end items, because their stats are much more variable, with even base dmg fluctuating massively up down on some axes/maces etc, depending on the whims of the devs
with bonus values from affixes being the same regardless on MIs ofc
the issue sometimes raised is it depends on whether or not you get 100% or high base conversion, or does so easily. In which case you effectively end up in the same scenario of getting flat values similar to a caster weapon, but without that same bonus %
Meanwhile if you do get high base phys conversion, you have more flats than a dagger/sceptre, and is highly useful to a WD build
They have higher flat which is only beneficial if you have conversion mods for your skills in use. If you don’t - you suffer, hence my argument in that thread. The game already revolves strongly around conversions on non-phys dmg sources, and when you also need to convert phys base of the weapon it adds insult to injury. Maybe the easiest solution would be to drastically increase the phys conversion on all prefixes? That way phys base would make sense, if you happen to want to convert it to some unconventional dmg type.
Which is to say, they’ve sort of overshadowed the design scope of the other three melee weapon types. (Soon to be four, with spears!)
In terms of design, it’s a question better answered from the time before Daggers and Scepters. In this time, we had a paradigm that rather mirrored Fire, Lightning, and Cold Damage via Damage Spreads. More specifically, Axes and Fire Damage both had damage ranges that were fairly moderate, enabling decent highs without having too-punishing lows. Maces mirrored Lightning ranges, albeit to a lesser extent, with the highest damage ranges of the trio of weapon types, resulting in inconsistency but the highest average power. And Swords mirrored Cold Damage with the tightest damage ranges, making them very consistent. Swords were also the fast one, Maces the slow one, Axes the dead-average one.
The introduction of Daggers and Scepters, and the proliferation and importance of Conversion and monodamage builds overshadowed all of that minutiae. Nowadays the difference between Swords, Axes, and Maces is really just thematic/decided by whether you want a given Devotion constellation (of which, Sword is really the only good one of the three…)
With Physical conversion values being as low as they have been since Conversion was introduced as a mechanic in Early Access, and with the overproliferation of non-Physical bases, Physical base items are sort of inherently worse than all others except in either Physical or Pierce (with high AP%) builds. I wouldn’t argue their other stats necessarily make up for this, but maybe that’s the idea.
You can find some of my saltiest posts from the era in which Conversion + Daggers and Scepters were being added to the game. My salt may have receded since then, but my opinions haven’t, and over time I’ve only felt more vindicated with how things have turned out.
which then also illustrates that disparity there might be if a build dont’ get high phys conversion, on a base phys mace/axe
sure you “only” get like 125 flat dmg on the high end up there on scetpres
but even if an axe/maxe has 150/200 base flat phys on the high end you need 50% conversion just to break even on flats, and even then the caster weapon still has the %dmg bonus being higher, because it’s 175% vs 300+% on casters
*there is 15 attack speed statted 80+ legendary daggers/sceptres, most of those with outright melee centric skills, like eor/fire strike shadow strike etc
not counting MIs
Biggest thing they have in common is lower base flat dmg but high % bonus ofc
With MIs that becomes a bit more muddied because both weapon prefix and suffix can come with bonus flat dmg, and is scaled the same as on axes/maces afaik
But they’re still weapons. You can hit with them. And basically since they were introduced, hitting with them has been pretty optimal. The likes of Malakor’s Infusion or Voidspire are kind of made for hitting.
There’s a reason I say “Every weapon is a Cadence weapon.” You won’t necessarily be setting speed records, but literally any weapon in the game can be used with Cadence and perform alright. So the idea of a “caster weapon” is really kind of oxymoronic to me.
I wonder if the original vision would have been better served had “caster weapons” not been given any base damage, but maybe instead all had a proc/granted skill. Many of us wanted Scepters to “cast” a ranged bolt based on the weapon’s damage type, only to find that they were melee weapons.
Looking out over the extent of GD’s vast lifespan, I think “caster weapons” needed something like skill modifiers to actually justify their existence. Unfortunately, the tech for skill modifiers came much later, post-release, at a time when Crate couldn’t really “experiment” with uncertain game mechanics. And when we did get skill modifiers, they spread across all applicable item types fairly evenly, further diminishing the identity of all affected.
I think it’s worth asking whether any of this is really a problem, to which I wouldn’t have an answer I’m certain of. It’s easy to see the cracks in things, but cracks do not a disaster always make.
The global base damage is too high to mask the difference in weapons’ base damage. And caster weapons usually have better conversions, which means more global base damage. These reasons make many “caster” weapons be used as end-game “melee” weapons.
That’s very similar to a point I was thinking of and why I made the thread in the first place. From my understanding, spells are more “INT-based” where they are based on the innate difficult to grasp nature of spellcasting and more seasoned casters would do much more with them than a Hogwarts initiate. Weapons, on the other hand, are more based in “how big/tough is the stick” and more relegated to more STR-based classes. Hence, Warriors may not get big %damage values, but the base of the weapon is so strong that it accounts for those shortcomings.
With skill modifiers, and more specifically, adding %WD to caster spells like AAR (which was a way to provide leech before the devs relented and gave innate leeching to things that should absolutely not have them - like seriously, how is Stun Jacks a leeching skill?), the lines got more blurry. It allows for more flavorful characters in the GD universe, such as scepter caster with big stick, but how does it translate to gameplay?
As players, we simply want to get bigger numbers over time, and like having a diversity of options to get those bigger numbers, whether they be bigger flats, higher skill bonuses, reducing enemy resistances, higher crits and so forth. I vehemently dislike the “everything is a hammer” approach some developers (not saying specific names until I know the context around them) tend to take where people feel forced to funnel into a specific strategy instead of trying out multiple strategies and going on what gives the players their particular power fantasy.
What I don’t want is a weapon that’s beautifully designed and has a gameplay goal in mind, but is immediately thwarted because the category the item is in prevents it from fulfilling its function. I am aware of the other extreme, where everything just looks like “big stick” and there’s no differentiation between the items.
I think GD has straddled the edge here for a while. GD’s item → skill interaction pipeline is not so dynamic as to pull us away from every item in every slot essentially being a statstick. Casualty of the ENGINE, I suppose.
This is why I despise LE’s itemization.
For as much praise as one can give the dual-mastery system of the TQ/GD design, I think skilltrees as a whole are showing their age in the modern era, and this discussion is a symptom of that issue. When weapons can’t give themselves an identity, it falls to other systems to better express them, yet skilltrees that have strict weapon requirements feel too limiting to class fantasies than not.
But maybe that’s putting the cart before the horse, and is in any case, not what this thread was about.
To me it was never the problem if “caster” weapons were used for melee and the other way around. It kind fits the thematic of the game where you make wonders out of scrap metal.
You can say that even when caster weapons are used for melee they are still somewhat “caster” because they have much higher %dmg that boosts your procs and secondary skills.
What is the problem imo is phys base on magical weapons. Melee weapons need to have a guaranteed higher base flat for their supposed dmg type and not depend on conversion often coming from other gear pieces.
I assume by magical weapons you don’t mean specifically scepters / daggers but any weapon that conceivably buffs caster-based skills? Because I agree, there’s no reason for a weapon to buff a caster skill if the base of the weapon is far too ill-suited for the skill to function in the first place.
Hence my question of why do we even have these weapon differentiations in the first place if they can all be classified as “stick?” Like, why have an Axe that buffs magic skills if the category Axe is the thing that thwarts spells from being casted in the first place? I understand the concept of making wonders from scrap metal; I do agree entirely with you that there shouldn’t be blatant anti-synergies that prevent the item from doing its core function.
magical dmg = fire/cold/lightn/ele/acid/vit/aether/chaos
so magical dmg weapon but with base phys, eg Soulblade example,
you lose 50% of your base dmg because it’s unconverted/not fire yet clearly purely orientated to magick/fire/aether (weapon attacker) builds
Being caster oriented is probably the least of the issue, (depending on the cast skill), and is a bigger issue for weapon attackers needing or wanting that base weapon dmg
(Herald of blazing ends we kinda don’t care about the base phys dmg as a BWC build we have basically no way to use it)
I think it is possible to reinforce the identities of these weapons, however the inevitable issue is going to be sustain. Instant leech has caused the entire game’s weapon damage meta to more or less be warped around it: fast hits, high damage, instant recovery of your whole hp bar.
How can you have a slow weapon be considered good in such an environment? For example if we gave swords +max attack speed, doubled the base damage of maces but cut their speed by half and provided them with armour shred, and did something to axes (inc. aoe somehow? not even sure what to do here), the very first thread that would pop up is “my warborn cadence build no longer functions”.
The obvious answer is to give slow weapons way too much damage. But outside of mastery combos which get regen, you will still have sustain issues…and your damage still might not be better than fast weapons because your damage uptime might be worse (you have to kite after taking damage). Furthermore there is no inherit–or systematic–upside to using slow weapons: slow weapons dont get free or low-cost increased aoe. Poe1 slams are a great example of slow weapons done well (theyre slow but you only need one attack to kill a whole screen), but doing something similar would be tricky in this game.
M Earthsplitter is an example of such an attempt, but where is the additional aoe to forcewave? Is the additional damage even enough compensation? This is just one specific example of an axe with the kind of changes I am discussing and not a systematic implementation-- the axe is hardly used.
In poe2 they have restricted skill gems to weapon types much more heavily than in poe1. I have mixed feelings about this, and this kind of solution doesnt suit grim dawn, where you select your masteries first and worry about weapons much later. The devotion system reinforces weapon identities, but does so in a statsticky way and offers little help if you are using a weapon outside of the supported damage type. Moreover, with the little modularity we have on the weapon level, how would you even implement something like increased aoe in a systematic way such that it affects every aoe skill (but not non-aoe skills) without help from new tech?
Reinforcing weapon identity seems like a really nice idea but I only see problems that would require a lot of motivation from zantai+friends to solve.
You don’t really want to end up in a situation where you are barred from using a weapon that is really good for your build just because it is the “wrong” base type. I don’t think there is a need to mess with the current system aside from some changes to make the weapon specific devotions more interesting. Like,are shieldmaiden and kraken really on the same power level?
I think that at this point, this is a gd2 kind of discussion. This is the way I’m thinking about it: you have a mastery skill that scales %wd and requires a weapon; what is going to differentiate between using that mastery skill with a sword or an axe? Consider forcewave: how is forcewave going to feel different if I use an axe versus a mace or sword? Sure, we could mess around with weapon stats–their base damage, base attack time, and such; but what if the mastery skill didn’t utilize the base attack time and instead had a cooldown–like forcewave? Should the base attack time of the weapon impact how forcewave works? If it didn’t, then swords (as I proposed above) would be a very poor choice for forcewave; maces–with their much higher base damage and much slower base attack time–would be a no-brainer. Maybe that is okay, but it would be more interesting if swords and axes interacted with forcewave in a useful way too.
Unfortunately the game wasn’t designed with this way of thinking. Mastery skills don’t consider what kind of weapon type you are using outside of a binary: “is this weapon legal?”. Conversely weapon types dont implicitly affect how mastery skills function–they are just statsticks that the mastery skills take as input.
Just messing around with weapon stats is going to have little differentiating impact–insofar as identity is concerned–in a game where most of the skills that use them don’t significantly change according to weapon type.
what if, mostly for daggers/sceptres considerations/weapon attacker disparity, caster class weapons had their flats nuked, and or conversely melee weapons had theirs buffed
then any offbrand dagger/sceptre dealing with AAs/weapon attacker skills, got their dmg specifically compensated on those intended modifiers.
So instead of Voidspire being basically equal to a chaos sword/mace (outshining chaos axe), it because default weaker, but specifically is good for its then intended purpose, so it’s only “equal” when being a firestrike etc build, because it has “all” the conversions and idono fat TDM mods
TDM mods seemingly being a relatively simple way of making up for caster dmg deficiency in intended skill use/boost. While then also staying “magical” in some way because of the special modifiers.
And while i know there is 0 chance in heck it would eeeever happen, because Crate aint messing with skill trees, a way to differentiate melees amongst themselves could be making it more than a binary/“is it legal”, by having more weapon class specific transmuters in trees.
So ex forcewave has the 2h spam transmuter, sure, but then on the otherside it could have an axe transmuter granting 50% crit or armour shred
*this then also prevents weapon class specific effects being entirely gated off to a single specific weapon/only having 1 axe with the cool FW modifier (that we’re locked in to now)
and something some might have desired for a while could be secondary effects, which could then be tied to weapon class, “if using a sword or dagger blade arc strikes twice from hitting on the backswing”.
“If using a mace Cadence adds upheaval effect/ground tremor”
again, fully aware even if pigs were flying there’d still be 0 chance of this happening, but there is definitely options besides just tweaking numbers on the weapons
