Weapons of choice / variety / offensive spells

[eLPuSHeR]

Hello.

Now that I am on my third playtrough and I am level 11 I am going to digress a little about weapons in the game.

HEAVY WEAPONS seem to be the weapon of choice. Because there are plenty of them. You can use most of them "out of the box" and they have very high damage output. To balance things, I think AH should have considered "heavy weapons" anything requiring both hands to wield only (unless you get the "ogre grip" feat of course). Everything else should have fallen in the "light weapons" area.

LIGHT WEAPONS. Just meh. Not bad but not impressed with them either. Just because most heavy weapons can be used with one hand and by almost everyone (due to the new skill system), I would go for heavy weapons instead. Correct me if I am wrong. Tried investing a few points for "dual wield" trait, but it didn't paid off well. I should have spent skill points elsewhere.

THROWING/BOWS/CROSSBOW. Not bad if you are into this type of ranged combat. Personally, I prefer to invest some points in accuracy to get the "reach" attack to perform melee attacks from the back row. Too bad some of them require to invest points to be usable.

FIREARMS. A big meh that needs rebalancing. Not worthy at all in my humble opinion. Low/mid output damage. Need ammo which cannot be created at the moment (and it weights down a little). Can backfire on party. You get the picture...

OFFENSIVE SPELLS. It seems there isn't any great variety in spells, as I have seen so far. It seems it's best to invest in fire magic school first. Haven't found any air or water based offensive spells yet. I can assume lightning bolt and such are out there somewhere. By the time I got them, i got fire magic almost maxed out.

So, what are your preferred weapon loadouts?

[Drakkan]

Hello.

Now that I am on my third playtrough and I am level 11 I am going to digress a little about weapons in the game.

HEAVY WEAPONS seem to be the weapon of choice. Because there are plenty of them. You can use most of them "out of the box" and they have very high damage output. To balance things, I think AH should have considered "heavy weapons" anything requiring both hands to wield only (unless you get the "ogre grip" feat of course). Everything else should have fallen in the "light weapons" area.

LIGHT WEAPONS. Just meh. Not bad but not impressed with them either. Just because most heavy weapons can be used with one hand and by almost everyone (due to the new skill system), I would go for heavy weapons instead. Correct me if I am wrong. Tried investing a few points for "dual wield" trait, but it didn't paid off well. I should have spent skill points elsewhere.

THROWING/BOWS/CROSSBOW. Not bad if you are into this type of ranged combat. Personally, I prefer to invest some points in accuracy to get the "reach" attack to perform melee attacks from the back row. Too bad some of them require to invest points to be usable.

FIREARMS. A big meh that needs rebalancing. Not worthy at all in my humble opinion. Low/mid output damage. Need ammo which cannot be created at the moment (and it weights down a little). Can backfire on party. You get the picture...

OFFENSIVE SPELLS. It seems there isn't any great variety in spells, as I have seen so far. It seems it's best to invest in fire magic school first. Haven't found any air or water based offensive spells yet. I can assume lightning bolt and such are out there somewhere. By the time I got them, i got fire magic almost maxed out.

So, what are your preferred weapon loadouts?

Light / Heavy weapons - I generally agree. My thought was making Knight with good one-handed weapon and shield. But till end game no good light weapon found, so I just end up with two handed heavy weapon. Also majority ligt weapon has + DEX bonus, so no use for warrior classes. Definitely Heavy weapons much better (not mention the damage...)

Throwing / missile - I think quite nice damage could be produced, also it is range, not bad choice if you like using bows / crossbows, or just throwing stuff.

Firearms -absolutely agree, I was very dissapointed with guns. Firearms overall ARE nice if you save your ammo for boss fights and you have good weapon (in sense you are dealing little more dmg than with missile weapons). But when you are not using gun, you need use something different and there are just not enough skillpoints for that.

Offensive spells - disagree here. Just Shock spell is one of best, better than fireburst, cost min mana, you can spam it even in middle game, dealing excelent dmg, before fidning lighting bolt. Overall offensive spells are nice, perhaps I expected more dmg, but it never miss and burn "whole" square with enemies, so thats ok.

My scoring
1.Heavy weapons / Offensive Magic
2. Light weapons / missile weapons / throwing stuf
3. Firearms

[eLPuSHeR]

Thanks. Haven't tested air school of magic spells.

[Dr.Disaster]

During my just finished Insane Ironman game i found that Light Weapons can become extremly deadly when build right.

The party had a front row using Light Weapons only: a human knight and a human rogue, both going Skilled and Aggressiv.
As i found out during play these things are key in using light weapons in battle:
- accuracy -> maxed for the knight while the rogue took care of this with Dex
- critical -> maxed for the rogue, 3 for the knight (should have went for max too)
- dual wielding -> went for it with my rogue while the knight stayed sword/shield
- mobility -> depends on player metality (people who tank stuff don't move much)
- attack speed -> my initial choice of both race and traits was bad; Insectoids with Quick trait seem perfect here
- short cooldowns -> definately less than 4 seconds, less than 3 if possible

In the end my knight could not keep pace with my rogue due to faster weapons (Boneblade vs. Fist Dagger and Backbiter), better crit and backstabs; a dagger doing 350+ damage is hard to argue with! After my knight attacked my rogue could land at least 3 dagger hits before my knight's cooldown was up and once i added the Bracelet of Tirin for my rogue it closed in on a 1 to 4 attack count comparison.

[eLPuSHeR]

Interesting. Too bad I dumped three skill points to firearms for testing. I should have invested them in accuracy/critical instead.