Light weapons are rubbish

[Saice]

Now on my second playthrough and I am getting good damage from my strength based light weapon knight.
I also see how a straight dex based character could straight bee line to all the awesome dex weapons and be doing awesome damage for most of the entire game.
Sickle sword and bone blade are quite nice. Serpent is king if gained very early.
Bane and Meteor is a given for heavy and also in a places you might not be able to bee line straight to from the get go.
On hard those zombies are insane. and the spider swarm early... youch! (on hard mode that is) Of course everything can be successfully acquired.
However access to the light ones even the top dex based is doable very early on.
this yields a damage base over a longer period of time. which in my opinion is much greater than the shorter massive damage spike.

though I think this is all about how one plots their course and how they gain mastery over how to tweak the skill sets just right for consistent damage

here is my take on this whole train of thought.

Let us look at the game mechanics from the point of view of a new player with no foreknowledge of where these things are.

Being able to bee line to an item in game because you know where it is does not make a skill or mechanic balanced. This is one of my big beefs on magic in LoG.

So yeah of course on a 2nd play through you can make anything shine even firearms because you know just where to go when to go there to make it optimal.

[minmay]

Well yeah, it's a purely academic question in the first place - it only makes sense in the context of players that are spoiled already, since any answer to it would be a spoiler. Similarly, the way Grimrock is set up with essentially FPS combat, you can win every fight with a level 1 character wielding a loo roll if you want. But it's still fun to look at which options do more damage.

[steelsoldier]

The thing that I hate mostly about Light Weapons is the skill, they are only useful if you duel wield with them, Kinda wish that Light weapons skill gave some other bonus other than just making it a duel wield skill.

[Dr.Disaster]

Light weapons are about many fast attacks so you need to build your character this way too. Dual Wielding + Quick trait + Dodge 3 speed bonus + Bracelet of Tirin is the way to go with them. Otherwise they'll never make you happy.

[Vardis]

In my last playthrough I had 2 front fighters.
Minotaur barb with head hunter, gave him an immense amount of strength potions, 50 strength in late game, using dual wielding.
And an insectoid barb, 31 strength, using heavy weapon.

Who do you think did more damage over the course of a fight? Hint, not the one with 19 more points in strength.

What's the base damage and cooldown on the weapons you were using? Does your minotaur have crappy accuracy? If I ran those numbers giving the insectoid Bane and the minotaur two weapons like the sickle swords, the minotaur has like 50% more DPS.

[Jad]

People here need to give the Scythe some more credit! Late game with maximum critical skill it becomes amazing. I've seen hits well into the 1200s in my current game.

I did some theory crafting with 2 identical endgame barbarians, one wielding the best 2hander and the other wielding the best two 1handers. In addition I'll also gave them three points into dodge and the Bracelet of Tirin for a total of 25% reduced cooldown. I also gave them maximum weapon and critical skills and a high strength score of 50. (20base+15lvlbonus+9headhunter+6strengthpots/gear)

So in the end we have:

Total DPS for 2-hander = 53.51
Total DPS for dual 1-handers = 69.08

SpoilerShow

Meteor Hammer:
Base DMG: 70 + 188 / 2 = 129
Crit Mod: 2(20/100) + 1 = 1.4
Cooldown: 4.5 * 0.75 = 3.375
DPS: 129 * 1.4 / 3.375 = 53.51

Scythe:
Base DMG: 45 + 113 / 2 = 79
Crit Mod: 3(25/100) + 1 = 1.75
Cooldown: 3.5 * 0.75 = 2.625
DPS: 79 * 1.75 / 2.625 = 52.66

Bone Blade:
Base DMG: 37 + 89 / 2 = 63
Crit Mod: 2(20/100) + 1 = 1.4
Cooldown: 3.4 * 0.75 = 2.55
DPS: 63 * 1.4 / 2.55 = 34.58

Cutlass:
Base DMG: 36 + 86 / 2 = 61
Crit Mod: 2(20/100) + 1 = 1.4
Cooldown: 3.3 * 0.75 = 2.475
DPS: 61 * 1.4 / 2.475 = 34.50

So, when not using any special abilities and assuming we're attacking at every chance possible, dual wielding comes out ahead in terms of sheer DPS. However this is not taking the enemies protection score into account. We don't really know the formula for protection, but it's clear that it removes a flat amount of damage, not a percentage. Meaning that heavy weapons will suffer less from it than light weapons.

But who doesn't use special abilities? Well, in this scenario of DPS'ing in a vacuum, due to the delay before charging actually begins, the charge time itself, then finally the additional cooldown, it isn't all that much of an improvement. Energy is a factor too, but we'll assume at this point you have plenty of energy potions. With the charge time reductions, being a fighter here is actually higher DPS than a barbarian. Also the Scythe wins out here, since it has no additional cooldown after using its special attack.

So our numbers with special attack spamming are:

Total DPS for 2-hander = 64.72
Total DPS for dual 1-handers = 78.45

SpoilerShow

Scythe Ability (Fighter):
Base DMG: 37 + 98 / 2 = 67.5
Crit Mod: 10(25/100) + 1 = 3.5
Cooldown: 3.5 * 0.75 + 1.1 = 3.725
DPS: 67.5 * 3.5 / 3.725 = 63.42

Cutlass Ability (Barbarian):
Base DMG: 36 + 86 / 2 = 61
Crit Mod: 2(20/100) + 1 = 1.4
Cooldown: .75(3.3 + 2.0) + 1.85 = 5.825
DPS: 3(61 * 1.4) / 5.475 = 43.98

So which is better? That depends on a number of things. How often are you moving, how much protection does your opponent have, are you fast enough to click with all your characters, are you backstabbing, are you using rage or bear form, etc ,etc. In the end it doesn't really matter which is better anyways, you should have both in your group. You've got 4 characters and there's only so much good gear to go around, it wouldn't make sense to have two characters whom need the same type of gear, one or both of them would just end up subpar.

[minmay]

It's not really a fair comparison if you ignore backstabbing. It means your light weapons are doing 1/3rd of the damage (before protection!) than they should.

[Rithrin]

So, backstabbing isn't an ability built into the Light Weapons skill, so I'm not sure why it should be considered when comparing Light Weapons vs Heavy Weapons. And if we do take it into account, then it means Light Weapons require between 3-5 additional Skill Points to compete with simply 5 in Heavy Weapons.

Besides this, the times when you need your melee fighters to be at their maximum effectiveness is exactly when you are unable to backstab enemies. A lone monster or two is really no match regardless of character builds, so the fact that they can be easily backstabbed is irrelevant. When you are surrounded by snakes and medusae, your Light Weapons characters will be doing no backstabbing, while having invested up to 5 extra skillpoints than your Heavy Weapons user who is merrily cleaving down enemies left and right.

My issue with Light Weapons in this game is that they are completely viable if you purposely design a build for them from the very start of the game and work the team around them, but you can brainlessly create a Heavy Weapons character and he will completely wreck every monster you come across effortlessly with exception of the handful of Air Elementals.

[minmay]

Backstabbing with two weapons is 6 skill points (3 light weapons + 3 critical). Using Devastate is...6 skill points (5 heavy weapons + 1 critical). If heavy weapons are allowed the latter, light weapons should be allowed the former.
I never encountered a significant place in the game where it was necessary to get surrounded or cornered. Do you have a specific example? The only one I can think of is picking up the arquebus and that's not very significant IMO.

[Vardis]

Guardian battle in pyramid, good chance of getting cornered fighting the rat boss, you might get cornered in the desert although that's only a problem if something big is coming (apparently it's not interested in waiting its turn). The first and the last of those are the only places I died in my one full playthrough, and the latter one only because I thought a barrier of mummies would keep me safe, until they burned to a crisp. You're probably going to get cornered at the mines, although depending on when you get there, it might not be a big deal. You'll get cornered in the catacombs near one of the power gems, but you see that coming and can forcefield one side, so I'm not sure that really counts.

Really, I don't think you need backstabbing. My dex based dual wielding alchemist in the front did fine vs the barbarian, albeit I did buff him with a lot of dex potions. Still, every point benefits three things when you are in front. Damage, evasion, and accuracy. My barbarian ended up putting 5 points in accuracy and still had half the accuracy of my alchemist. But as Rithrin said, I did design my party around that. +27 dex in potions was too tempting to pass up trying out. I also got lucky with mutation and got +5 dex from that. Got me through insane ironman on hard pretty easily.