Exotic Weapons Improvments

[Cyr]

Sure, any of those could be used as a reason to oppose a suggestion that provides incremental improvement.

But they all allow for further discussion.

For example, is the BSword suggestion a waste of dev time? We can compare it to the glancing blows change. That appears to be significantly more complex than a simple fortification bypass, yet the Devs were willing to do it for the sake of a combat style that is still extremely marginal.


"We need to fundamentally change the game, anything less is useless, but I have no idea how to change it" helps nothing, and allows no further discussion.

Ah onto specifics

Is the proposed bastard sword change in the OP a waste of dev time?...Not in my opinion I like it alot actually and think it would change the weapon into a valid choice as it would be top dps versus 100% fort mobs and against certain raid bosses on rogues. Heck, I might even take it on a build.

Was the glancing blow change that the devs made a waste of developer time? Meh. It certainly was not the way to make either feat a good choice and it clearly is effecting the design of bastard swords with the chimera fang rework into a s&b weapon. Is it adding inertia to Turbine implementing something that would actually be effective in making bastard swords not such a mediocre feat choice for the lion share of builds in the game? That is an open questin.

As the fundemental change, but I don't have any ideas...yeah that is pretty weak sauce. Great if someone doesn't think it goes far enough then offer a suggestion. That's how these discussions progress.

[Ungood]

First of all, I like the idea of "If you haven't taken the Feat, you don't get the benefits." better then just the -4 pen.

Second, the REAL problem with Shield and Sword is the SHIELD does nothing. The DEVs need to make the Shield an active componet in DPS with Shield and Sword fighting. I have always like the bashing added with either glancing blow or tripping chance or both glancing blow and tripping chance. This would open up the S&B fighting style give more love to BSwords and DAxes with their glancing blows that the Khopesh does not have.

I think you are on to something with this idea of making the shield a more active part of combat or maybe improving the way it works in the game.

[Scraap]

Given that
a- one of the major arguments against the worth of S&B vs twf is damage mitigation over damage output loss not equating to enough to justify the extra time spent
and
b- the biggest weakness in glancing is DR heavily impacting the proc without specific breakers per mob-type. After all, the very fact that you *get* a second set of numbers in and of it's self bypasses fort, to a degree, in those situations.

Perhaps one of the glancing enabled weapons could be given up to, say... 5 DR bypass?


As far as what it takes to improve the system as a whole, well... Right now, we've one accepted strategy for dealing with any given fight. Pile on and pour on raw DPS while the divine spams heals. IMO, exotics at a minimum should serve to amp up alternate strategies to the point where various approaches are valid.