eSoS: End all be all?

[grodon9999]

does haste give lesser % boost to thf? or do you mean 15% on a slower attack weapon is less of a boost?

According to somebody's tests TWFing is getting 18% off of haste and THFing 15. Boosts go up the same proportion.

[Hendrik]

1. So yes, all other epic two handers should be brought in line with the esos.

2. The fact they made all newer epic two handers far inferio to basic greensteel was absolutely astoundingly bad design.

1. I disagree. Variety is the spice of life, and would not care to see all Epic TH weapons all the 'same'. SoS is one of the most coveted TH weapons in game and to make all TH'ers equal to SoS devaluates it, IMO. Additionally, under this combat revamp, why up the damage potential of more TH'ers when nothing lives more then a few seconds as it stands now? Why go through all that re-coding when your enemy will be long dead before you can even get in a couple extra swings, no matter the weapon in hand.

2. Agreed. I have stated in the past, and will again, GS was the greatest addition and the greatest mistake ever added to DDO. It should have been nerfed LONG ago and our game, IMO again, would be in a better position if it was.

[countfitz]

What game are you playing where you are making an eSoS before a Shroud item? How lucky did you get? I've got 3 shroud items on my main, and haven't even SEEN a scroll shard or whatever of the eSoS drop, ever. EVER.

I call shennanigans! Cheat!

Seriously, though, if you are that lucky then use your larges for either trade or for wearable items. Unless you already have epic claw set, abishi set, and everything else I could want but gave up on months ago when I started running epics and never saw one thing drop.

Actually, I've got 2 scrolls in about 4 months, I do an epic a day or so. One for the staff that level drains (probably saving for trade at some point) and the adherent's pendant (may or may not use for my pali, just made a concordant op necklace though, so don't see the reason). Of course, I do the epics the cheat ways, so mostly just run through without a kill the entire time till an end boss, unless it's last stand. I do last stand SO MUCH and only the one scroll, (the staff) and never even seen the ones I want (talisman, mostly, though any of the set items would be nice).

Anyway, you are a lucky son of a

[Chai]

My point is, it doesn't matter what its crit profile, or multipler said sword is... The devs CAN make a greataxe/maul/etc thats better then it, for specific scenarios, without breaking anything. They could of done that when it was x4 crit too. The fact they dont is stupid and makes the game less fun once you get it, as thats "the end" of the weapon upgrade game. Game over.

Ironic, that they nerfed transmuting so that people wouldnt make or acquire one weapon that was the best weapon they can use in any case scenario, because it would break all DR.

Now, its basically the same scenario, except instead of a weapon that breaks every DR, the weapon does so much damage that its better than most of the weapons that do break DR, in most situations, even though it doesnt break DR. In the situations where it isnt better, we craft weapons for those situations.

[Chai]

What game are you playing where you are making an eSoS before a Shroud item? How lucky did you get? I've got 3 shroud items on my main, and haven't even SEEN a scroll shard or whatever of the eSoS drop, ever. EVER.


Anyway, you are a lucky son of a

Lawl.

The game where khopesh is the best weapon, save for one two hander in the game, and youve had a couple khopesh laying around since early 2008. One could even use cove scimitars, and a couple holy dragon bane weapons until they get an eSOS, and never run the shroud, or any other epics. When they get their epic sword of a thousand truths, they can LR into rarely having to swap another weapon into the equipped slot.

[fluffybunnywilson]

its less the level, than purely how many ingredients you need

for a holy burst effect, youll need to deconstruct 100+ holy weapons at least, only have a vague estimation, but its probably faster just to make a min II then craft a hb silver of geob.....

I already have a pair of +3 Holy Silver Heavy Picks of Lawful Outsider Bane. Those cost nearly nothing to craft once you have the crafting level to make them. I was 60 XP short of being able to craft the +4 enhancement shard and I got impatient, but they're cheap enough to craft that I'll go back and make them +4 some time in the next week.

15 greater Good essences
256 lesser Good essences
10 greater Chaos essences
64 lesser Chaos essences
10 greater Arcane essences
64 lesser Arcane essences

That's a lot cheaper than a MinII and my crafting levels still aren't all very high.

[fluffybunnywilson]

What game are you playing where you are making an eSoS before a Shroud item? How lucky did you get?

I'm guessing that they're making a character after most of the Epic stuff has been gathered on other characters.

...of course, if they have already gathered the Epic pieces that they'll need for a character, then they'll probably have a bag full of Shroud ingredients waiting for that character as well.

[Tirisha]

its less the level, than purely how many ingredients you need

for a holy burst effect, youll need to deconstruct 100+ holy weapons at least, only have a vague estimation, but its probably faster just to make a min II then craft a hb silver of geob.....

plz DO NOT deconstruct your wpns. Armor, Clothing and Jewelry give the same amount of crafting mats and are barely a fraction of the value of wpns. You don't have to Deconstruct holy to make holy. you just need Good Essences which you can get from deconstructing things like Deathblock.

[Attropos]

There are a few places that I'd still use other weapons rather than an Esos.

The big one that hasn't been mentioned is against undead: Triple Pos QStaff on my WF FVS is vastly superior against undead. I have been using +5 Anarchic GSword of GCB against portals as well (and terror vs. OOZES)!

Esos is a suitably "peak" weapon; the difficulty in getting the ingredients is equal to the reward for doing it. I've probably run 100 epic Dragons, and I've pulled 1 sos shard and bought another. Considering they drop on average about 1/10 runs, it seems like the time required to make it vs. the reward is pretty just.

[Cyr]

1. I disagree. Variety is the spice of life, and would not care to see all Epic TH weapons all the 'same'. SoS is one of the most coveted TH weapons in game and to make all TH'ers equal to SoS devaluates it, IMO. Additionally, under this combat revamp, why up the damage potential of more TH'ers when nothing lives more then a few seconds as it stands now? Why go through all that re-coding when your enemy will be long dead before you can even get in a couple extra swings, no matter the weapon in hand.

Variety is the spice of life, however, variety that is essentially non-competitive is pointless...as in almost every epic weapon in the game atm. DPS is the primary, and always will be, criteria by which a weapon will be judged. To make compelling weapons the developers have to make compelling DPS weapons. To make them be different there should be specialized weapons that do signifigantly more dps versus certain mobs then the next best choice, but do much less versus general mobs then the best generalized weapon...ie 50% more dps versus Gnolls then epic SoS, but 30% less damage versus pretty much everything else (or worse) then epic SoS. Awesome twink weapon for CoF, but junk tastic in chrono...

[Krag]

Yea option d:
Consistently bring other epic weapons into balanced territory?

The current nerfed esos is by absolutely not "god mode" For all but the most insane top 100% geared players, it does inferior dps to your common lit2 khopeshs. Given that its about 50 times harder to get then a set of khopeshs, I hardly call it overpowered. Whats wrong here is all the other epic two handers are vastly underpowered.

For some reason you completely ignore the to-hit advantage of eSoS. Unless you are talking about "the most insane top 100% geared players", people have to-hit issues in epic quests. Granted, the problem did not exist pre U9 when every trash mob was consistedly held so everyone and his grandmother could hit on a 1. Spellpass removed that crutch.

Oh, and eSoS is not "50 times harder to get". I don't know about other servers but ev6 is regularly pugged on Argo.

[Chai]

plz DO NOT deconstruct your wpns. Armor, Clothing and Jewelry give the same amount of crafting mats and are barely a fraction of the value of wpns. You don't have to Deconstruct holy to make holy. you just need Good Essences which you can get from deconstructing things like Deathblock.

Yeap exactly.

1. Roll up a monk.
2. Level to 20.
3. Take every single deathblock robe of ___________ as an end reward
4. ????
5. Profit.

Level 5 amount of good essences / deathblock, which drops like rain.

[sephiroth1084]

The ESoS needs to get nerfed, again, and other epic 2-handers need to be boosted.

The problem right now is that as more sources of base damage become available, the ESoS will continue to pull ahead of anything that gets boosted to or slightly above its level. Any monsters with very high AC will also favor the ESoS.

What it all ultimately boils down to is that weapons in the game need to be balanced in a way that things that are powerful in a certain situation or against a particular enemy are necessarily going to be better in those situations than the generalist weapons. A Min II is not as strong as a Holy Burst of GEOB, but is useful in many more situations. The ESoS, however, is the most generally useful weapon (highest to-hit, highest base damage, best critical profile) and the most powerful in nearly every situation. Xuum should be quit a bit stronger vs. monster susceptible to fire, but it isn't. Simply making Xuum stronger won't work because if it ends up 2-5 points ahead of the ESoS, players will still probably just use the latter since it will be useful everywhere fire damage doesn't work. Players tend to move away from the golfbag of weapons for every situation at a certain point, and the ESoS just applies to too much of the game for other weapons to be meaningful unless they bypass it by a lot.

As it is, with enough base damage, the regular SoS is better than a Lit II. What this tells us is that crit profile is something the devs need to be extraordinarily careful playing around with as it is just so hard to balance.

Now, Lit II weapons are in a similar boat, mostly because so much of our end game lack lightning resistance or immuntiy. If we saw more of that in a lot of relevant content, the Lit II would be less of the go-to weapon before acquiring an ESoS and we might see more of the other Shroud recipes getting used. The new crafting system throws a wrench into all of that by offering the possibility of readily available medium-plus Holy of Greater Bane weapons that bypass a single metal DR, making those a new standard that Shroud weapons have to seriously be measured against. Min II still looks attractive, as it consolidates backpack space, but isn't complete junk. Still, how many people are going to craft a Min II (or a pair) rather than a set of appropriate high-DPS DR breakers?

[Tirisha]

Yeap exactly.

1. Roll up a monk.
2. Level to 20.
3. Take every single deathblock robe of ___________ as an end reward
4. ????
5. Profit.

Level 5 amount of good essences / deathblock, which drops like rain.

I swear I get 5 deathblock robes to choose from every quest reward on my monk O.o

[Hendrik]

Variety is the spice of life, however, variety that is essentially non-competitive is pointless...as in almost every epic weapon in the game atm. DPS is the primary, and always will be, criteria by which a weapon will be judged. To make compelling weapons the developers have to make compelling DPS weapons. To make them be different there should be specialized weapons that do signifigantly more dps versus certain mobs then the next best choice, but do much less versus general mobs then the best generalized weapon...ie 50% more dps versus Gnolls then epic SoS, but 30% less damage versus pretty much everything else (or worse) then epic SoS. Awesome twink weapon for CoF, but junk tastic in chrono...

As always, thanks friend for the reply.

[Tirisha]

The ESoS needs to get nerfed, again, and

What it all ultimately boils down to is that weapons in the game need to be balanced in a way that things that are powerful in a certain situation or against a particular enemy are necessarily going to be better in those situations than the generalist weapons.

Pos Pos Pos Wpns are now uber against undead /hugs my 2Posx3 longswords that I used all this time just for flavor.

[Attropos]

The ESoS needs to get nerfed, again, and other epic 2-handers need to be boosted.

The problem right now is that as more sources of base damage become available, the ESoS will continue to pull ahead of anything that gets boosted to or slightly above its level. Any monsters with very high AC will also favor the ESoS.

What it all ultimately boils down to is that weapons in the game need to be balanced in a way that things that are powerful in a certain situation or against a particular enemy are necessarily going to be better in those situations than the generalist weapons. A Min II is not as strong as a Holy Burst of GEOB, but is useful in many more situations. The ESoS, however, is the most generally useful weapon (highest to-hit, highest base damage, best critical profile) and the most powerful in nearly every situation. Xuum should be quit a bit stronger vs. monster susceptible to fire, but it isn't. Simply making Xuum stronger won't work because if it ends up 2-5 points ahead of the ESoS, players will still probably just use the latter since it will be useful everywhere fire damage doesn't work. Players tend to move away from the golfbag of weapons for every situation at a certain point, and the ESoS just applies to too much of the game for other weapons to be meaningful unless they bypass it by a lot.

As it is, with enough base damage, the regular SoS is better than a Lit II. What this tells us is that crit profile is something the devs need to be extraordinarily careful playing around with as it is just so hard to balance.

Now, Lit II weapons are in a similar boat, mostly because so much of our end game lack lightning resistance or immuntiy. If we saw more of that in a lot of relevant content, the Lit II would be less of the go-to weapon before acquiring an ESoS and we might see more of the other Shroud recipes getting used. The new crafting system throws a wrench into all of that by offering the possibility of readily available medium-plus Holy of Greater Bane weapons that bypass a single metal DR, making those a new standard that Shroud weapons have to seriously be measured against. Min II still looks attractive, as it consolidates backpack space, but isn't complete junk. Still, how many people are going to craft a Min II (or a pair) rather than a set of appropriate high-DPS DR breakers?

Ferrum,

Esos excels in most situations, but you have to remember that it is the "pinnacle" of THF. I hate to agree with Axer, but he is right; as it is now, a pair of GS Khopeshes will deal as much damage as the Epic Sword of Shadows. I know you know how hard it is to get the Esos as compared to some tier 3 gs, so nerfing the Esos would just be putting 2HF behind TWF by a substantial amount again. As it is, THF and TWF are comparable, but that's based mainly on the fact that the Esos is so good.

There's a huge reason that we see so many 18/2 or 12/6/2 barb and fighter splits, and that's because even with an Esos, TWF is comparable (or better)

[maddmatt70]

Well they can only do that by severely nerfing a greensteel kophesh down.. So that idea is out.

And no, they, or anyone who can run a simply dps calc program like barrage can and should add better weapons, while keeping both styles balanced.

Would be easy enough to add a cool new twf weapon that does say 5-10% more dmg versus a specific enemy then a lit2 khopesh. Wouldn't break the game, and would give end game players goals besides boring TR'ing.

Hell there already is one available, which U9 finally brings into balance as it was previously useless due to its **** multiplier (x2):
The anceint vulkorim dagger. Superior to even a lit2 khopesh. Heres the numbers:

edit: mm screwed up the numbers, its very slightly inferior to a khopesh , tho better then a dwarven axe. But the point remains ,they could make an epic bane thats actually well designed so its just slightly better then a lit2 for its 1 specificly enemy.

I liked what they did with the vulkorim dagger although it should be a little stronger. I am surprised they did not make alot more weapons like the dagger, but what have you. The end game is kind of a mess as is. Hope they get it fixed prior to the new end game quests coming out. Hopefully they invest alot into the end game soon. Almost has me trying to sign up for the test server because my guess is there is not enough end game representation there oh well..

[LordPiglet]

Ah yes I left out DQ. The DR there is relatively high as well I believe however I still use my ESOS.

Whether the numbers are lying or not I've found myself losing aggro with the antique equipped and taking it right back even after pausing to equip the ESOS.

Actually, the boss information thread show her to have like 20/dr on epic so that's pretty minimal.

[sephiroth1084]

Ferrum,

Esos excels in most situations, but you have to remember that it is the "pinnacle" of THF. I hate to agree with Axer, but he is right; as it is now, a pair of GS Khopeshes will deal as much damage as the Epic Sword of Shadows. I know you know how hard it is to get the Esos as compared to some tier 3 gs, so nerfing the Esos would just be putting 2HF behind TWF by a substantial amount again. As it is, THF and TWF are comparable, but that's based mainly on the fact that the Esos is so good.

There's a huge reason that we see so many 18/2 or 12/6/2 barb and fighter splits, and that's because even with an Esos, TWF is comparable (or better)

That's a problem with THF (and maybe TWF) then and should NOT be balanced by a single, hard to acquire, available only at level 20 weapon! I'm really tired of seeing this argument tossed out whenever someone suggests further nerfing the ESoS. What are all the THF characters doing between level 12 and 19? The 20s who have dozens and dozens of dragon completions without a shard or scroll?

I'm sorry, but this argument is simply invalid for this discussion.