Which weapon effects to have?

[somenewnoob]

Just wanted to throw out a general question to the melee population about what type of weapons you consider essential.

I've tried to collect a good mix of different weapons with different effects: holy, flametouched, acid, frost, ghost touch, different banes etc. and was wondering what most people considered the "must have" weapon effects (suffix and prefix effects) to have in your arsenal?

Getting to the point where plat isn't much of an issue, and I'm trying to expand my armory.

[Vernah]

As far as damage goes, anything holy or pure good is great as most of the monsters in this game are evil. Acid/Lighting isn't too bad also but lots of monsters have immunity to fire/cold. Ghost touch is great against, well ghosts, and +x xxxx of greater xxxxxx bane is great for whatever you're fighting (dragon, evil outsider, construct, etc.)

As far as non damage, paralyzers are pretty good. I haven't had too much experience with anything other than a paralyzer though.

[LoveNeverFails]

i don't know much about meleeing, as I usually play a barbarian until just grabbing an axe and swinging isn't acceptable anymore, then i go back to my casters, but curspewing is also a nifty tool.

[Bolo_Grubb]

It depends a lot on level and where you are hunting/questing etc

at low levels holy/holy burst of pure good can be an awesome weapon but there are many other good ones too.

Ghost touch is an important one to have at low level. Delera's chain (level 4-8 or so) needs ghost touch, holy and or pure good to deall with all the monsters in there.

I found that paralyzers work great in GH and the vale. If you are a TWF you can have a paralyzing in one hand and maybe a cursespewing (or other damage type) in the other hand. Several good combos you can use that way.

Be sure to have a muckbane or everbright for oozes and rust monsters.

[Templarion]

Improved Destruction and Cursespewing for epic quests. Before the quest begins, ask who wields them and if your DPS weapons are worse than other have, then volunteer to do it.

Always carry Greater Construct Banes with you. Either you go in Shroud or you face golems somewhere else.

[sirgog]

At mid level, you can't go wrong with high '+' Holy weapons, and Shock of Pure Good (or similar) for the few non-evil mobs (they are immune to Holy).

As you near endgame you need to be able to bypass some tricky DRs and so you will need weapons that are simultaneously Silver and Good (examples from uber to mediocre: +5 Holy Burst Silver, +3 Holy Silver, +5 Metalline of Pure Good, +3 Metalline Flametouched Iron), and, less often, weapons that are simultaneously Cold Iron and Good. Much less often you will want weapons that are simultaneously blunt and adamantine.

Then you'll want some utility weapons (i.e. weapons with potent non-damaging effects). The most potent are Improved Destruction, Vorpal, Destruction, Paralyzing and Strength Sapping, probably in that order.

Finally, you'll want Greater Banes for the foes you spend the most time fighting.



Personally I carry the following on my main:

General damage weapon - Epic Sword of Shadow (basically this is a weapon that does ridiculous damage but has no other significant properties than deadly crits and lots of them - this surpasses all the Greater Banes I'd otherwise carry). Other possible replacements that are easier to get: +5 Holy Burst weapon, +5 Holy of Pure Good, non-epic Sword of Shadow, a Shroud-crafted Great Commander Greensteel weapon of Lightning (Supreme Tyrant is better but takes a lot longer to make)
Pit Fiend DR breaker - +3 Holy Silver Greatsword of Pure Good
+1 Holy Cold Iron Greatsword of Improved Destruction
and some Vorpal weapon, almost never use it so can't remember its stats.

For epic clay golems (who have the aforementioned DR/Blunt AND Bludgeoning) I presently just use the epic SOS and accept a loss of 20 damage per swing. If they still had the 40-odd DR that they used to, I'd bother with carrying an adamantine blunt weapon of sorts. I do carry a Shroud-crafted triple-positive blunt undead beater (basically about equal to a +5 Holy Burst Maul of Pure Good with a weaker version of Disruption)

[fuzzy1guy]

Until the next update which will change things slightly...

Standard stuff is usually

paralyzer
vorpal
smiting
some sort of good weapon. holy/puregood xxx/puregood holyburst/puregood ghost touch flametouched iron ect..
Metal DR+good weapon. Metalline/puregood. Silver/puregood Cold iron/puregood

Damage weapon. Shocking burst of pure good or something like that.
Debuff weapon. Cursespewing/destruction. Improved on both if u can get it.
Stat damage weapons. maladroit, bonebreaking, wounding, puncturing, weakening.


That covers most everything until you start crafting some that will replace various ones later on.

[Illiain]

The first thing to consider is having the proper combo to break DR. Raid boss devils need silver+good. Lialat requires cold iron+good, since she's a demon. Holy, Pure Good and Flametouched Iron all add good to the damage type. Metalline will add all the normal metals to your damage type, otherwise you need to find silver or cold iron.

Once you have your basic boss beaters (BBs), you then have to increase the damage they do. Pure good adds 1d6 damage. Holy adds 2d6 damage. Bane weapons add +1/+2/+4 hit and damage and adds 1d6/2d6/4d6 untyped per tier as long as you have the proper one for each type of monster, evil outsider bane, construct bane, elemental bane, undead bane.

So unless you have Shroud crafted weapons, or epic weapons slotted with extremely rare epic gems, a holy silver/cold iron bane weapon will greatly increase the damage you do to these bosses. Greater Bane is always the best, but the others still work fine.

As for other types you can keep elemental combos, such as ice burst for fire elementals, acid/fire for trolls, and so on. It's also a good idea to have a sets of Vorpals/Banishers/Smiters/Disruption weapons to help kill trash faster, though everything but the Vorpals will become mostly useless after 16 or so. Banishers and Smiters require you to crit, and then they get a save vs DC 17 or so, so they'll most likely make the save.

[Caine33]

At mid level, you can't go wrong with high '+' Holy weapons, and Shock of Pure Good (or similar) for the few non-evil mobs (they are immune to Holy).

As you near endgame you need to be able to bypass some tricky DRs and so you will need weapons that are simultaneously Silver and Good (examples from uber to mediocre: +5 Holy Burst Silver, +3 Holy Silver, +5 Metalline of Pure Good, +3 Metalline Flametouched Iron), and, less often, weapons that are simultaneously Cold Iron and Good. Much less often you will want weapons that are simultaneously blunt and adamantine.

Then you'll want some utility weapons (i.e. weapons with potent non-damaging effects). The most potent are Improved Destruction, Vorpal, Destruction, Paralyzing and Strength Sapping, probably in that order.

Finally, you'll want Greater Banes for the foes you spend the most time fighting.



Personally I carry the following on my main:

General damage weapon - Epic Sword of Shadow (basically a weapon that does ridiculous damage but has no other significant properties than deadly crits and lots of them - this surpasses all the Greater Banes I'd otherwise carry)
Pit Fiend DR breaker - +3 Holy Silver Greatsword of Pure Good
+1 Holy Cold Iron Greatsword of Improved Destruction
and some Vorpal weapon, almost never use it so can't remember its stats.

This is a great list...I would add banishing and disruption to the 'utility' list as they make The vale and necropolis bearable.

[PNellesen]

My melees so far have both been Tempest Rangers, and my setup is usually something like this (changes as I level up, obviously.):

Dual high-damage weaps (+5s, with Holy Burst if possible)
Dual "boss beaters" (Metalline of Pure Good)
Dual Flaming or Acid (Troll/zombie/mummy beaters)
Dual bludgeoning weapons ("skellie beaters", usually with good/holy on them when found)
Dual Everbright weapons (usually bludgeoning if I can, for ooze/rustie beating)
Improved cursespsewing in main hand, paralyzer in offhand (curse first, then they fail save on paralyzer)
Dual Cold/Icy Burst weaps (fire ele/mephit/giant beaters)
Dual Vorpals (mainly for raid trash mobs like Shroud, VoD, and HoX)

I've also started playing around with cursespewer/disruption setups for undead, which seems to work pretty well so far on mummies/zombies in the Sands, but haven't tested it extensively yet to see if there's a huge difference.

[sebastianosmith]

Improved Destruction and Cursespewing for epic quests.

Yes. Excellent suggestion. Those work quite well in non-epic content as well. All melee types with the feat count to do so should also take Quick Draw. It saves loads of time when one's posterior is on the front line and allows for very rapid exchange of the aforementioned effected weaponry which greatly increases their effectiveness.

[fuzzy1guy]

Destruction weapons don't do a whole lot outside of a few higher end quests and epics...

but cursespewing and also roaring.... damm nice.. And not used NEARLY enough. because their damage is crappy.

but drop their saves -2 -4 -6.... They're gonna fail on something and die.

Shattermantle will also start being needed more post update as well. Something else we don't see enough of.

[sirgog]

This is a great list...I would add banishing and disruption to the 'utility' list as they make The vale and necropolis bearable.

Personally I don't find either to be worth the inventory space at present. Most mobs that aren't immune to the effect don't have so many hitpoints that DPS weapons are inefficient.

Disruptors work on very few 1500+ hp undead (the only ones that come to mind are Cinderspawns in elite Inferno of the Damned and the two in Sins of Attrition), and the only 1500+ hp outsiders I can think of that are banish-able are in elite Vale quests.

On the other hand, Vorpals have more of a place due to them working on a fair number of ~4000hp outsiders in the Subterrane and Shroud.