So we defeat a god...and THF's get rewards that stink

[Khellendros13]

The fact that they are encouraging weapon variety is a good thing. DDO is much less interesting when khopesh, greatsword, and greataxe are the only valid weapon types.

Yet the old Esos is more valid than any THF weapons in CitW. To make other weapons viable, they need to be competitive with Esos, Holy Greater Bane 2W Khopesh and Lit2 Khopesh. The Khopesh base is the winner so even if a single weapon beats out the best Khopesh on non DR targets, we fall back to crafted khopeshes of some flavour, for the DPS race that matters, on bosses.

They should never have dropped slots on epic items and weapons - tokens were a good reason to repeat quests and the versatility could be amazing. STOP ABANDONING GOOD IDEAS!

If the new raid weapons had a red slot instead of underwater action or other useless ****, they would be competitive.

[LOOON375]

To make other weapons viable, they need to be competitive with Esos,

Why? Every weapon is already viable. Fricken daggers are viable, if you get or make the right ones, as long as you know how to play the game.

If the universe was to all of a sudden erase the eSoS from DDO, all the comparing would just fall to the next weapon on the tier.

People are able to complete all content without using an eSoS, so I don't get the "envy" part of this discussion. And that's exactly what it is, is weapon envy. "it has what this don't have and I don't like it".

It's in game "envy" that causes a gazillion cookie cutter builds to be running around DDO.

The same exact argument has always been made regarding Khopeshes. "the best blah...whatever". So what did I do after I saw Khopeshes everyfrickenwhere on Argo? I rolled all of my melee toons with weapons other than Khopeshes. I even rolled a dagger wielding rogue simply just to show that all weapons are viable.

There is a badarse quarterstaff that drops in the CitW raid. It's the best I have seen in the game to date melee wise..........by far. But when compared to the eSoS........"oh no, that weapon is gimped." All the weapons in that raid kick arse, but folks can't bring themselves to look past the eSoS.

Too many times you hear about "power creep" on these forums or how "the game is too easy". That would only get much, much worse if they tried to bring all new epic weapons in line with the eSoS. The eSoS is still a situational used weapon. (meaning it's not optimal for ALL situations)

[JOTMON]

see Alchemical tower shield

or Alchemical heavy shield

or Alcheimical light shield

In my opinion..Random drop Planar shields are superior, the alchemical crafted shields are not really shields they just look like them. They dont offer any real "Shield" crafting effects just secondary weapon effects.

Nothing overly usefull on these alchemical shields when tanking bosses which is really the only place you want to shield up and hold aggro. Possibly even round up mobs and intimidate if party got overwhelmed

No additional hate bonusses, no boss worthy guards, no Conc-opp/Torc effects, no Docent of Defiance effects, no Leviks random heal effect, No airguard, etc...

If you are running MA/LOB regularly and dont own a monk or a caster...
1st tier air/2nd tier earth is not terrible, but questionably not worth the grind vs picking up any random planar shield.
3rd tier is completely worthless


All crafting is based on shieldbashing (these are not guards), no defensive perks.

What use is a red slot on a shield when there are other shields that have...
violet slot:
http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Epic_Templar%27s_Bulwark
http://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Coronation_Shield
http://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Ward_of_Undeath

or even 2 slots - blue and violet slot
http://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Weathered_Targe
http://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Kundarak_Warding_Shield

[JOTMON]

Why? Every weapon is already viable. Fricken daggers are viable, if you get or make the right ones, as long as you know how to play the game.

No they're not...May as wll use clubs of the holy flame if you are using daggers.

All light single handed weapons are behind the curve in dps and crit profiles, dont do enough damage to beat through most DR..

DDO never adopted the weapon size to speed of attacks.
or restricted assasinates/sneak attacks to light weapons.

An easy fix for these small weapons would have been to incorporate a 50% doublestrike and 25% fortification bypass when weilding only light weapons.

This would at least make light weapon builds consider a dagger/Kukri vs a Khopesh.

Even your rogue uses rapiers..



Until then Khopesh is king.

[LOOON375]

No they're not...May as wll use clubs of the holy flame if you are using daggers.

All light single handed weapons are behind the curve in dps and crit profiles, dont do enough damage to beat through most DR..

DDO never adopted the weapon size to speed of attacks.
or restricted assasinates/sneak attacks to light weapons.

An easy fix for these small weapons would have been to incorporate a 50% doublestrike and 25% fortification bypass when weilding only light weapons.

This would at least make light weapon builds consider a dagger/Kukri vs a Khopesh.


Until then Khopesh is king.

You are making the argument from the 'what is best' standpoint. Im making it from the 'what works' standpoint.

You put daggers on a rogue, crit profiles don't matter nearly as much as SA damage. I tried putting daggers on a rogue, which would be much different had I put them on say a fighter. My dagger, Halfling rogue rolled through the same content as my rapier rogues just as easily.

The point Im trying to make, is that you can complete all content in this game, up to and including epic elites, regardless of the weapons you are wielding as long as you know how the play the game.

By the reasoning Im reading in the this thread, everyone in the game should be carrying Khopeshes, eSoS, eAGA etc. And if they aren't, they are wasting everyone's time because they aren't doing enough damage.

And this all goes back to the min/max arguments. If you aren't "maxing" out, you are gimped.

[LOOON375]

Even your rogue uses rapiers..

You put this in late. lol.

You have healed or ran with several of my gimps to include my main that is a rogue. For the most part, she has used rapiers most of the way. But at certain times, I will have her use daggers for crowd control purposes. The blade of the high priestess out of the new content absolutely rocks on trash.

The rogue that I experimented with regarding daggers has been shelved for the time being.

[JOTMON]

You are making the argument from the 'what is best' standpoint. Im making it from the 'what works' standpoint.

You put daggers on a rogue, crit profiles don't matter nearly as much as SA damage. I tried putting daggers on a rogue, which would be much different had I put them on say a fighter. My dagger, Halfling rogue rolled through the same content as my rapier rogues just as easily.

The point Im trying to make, is that you can complete all content in this game, up to and including epic elites, regardless of the weapons you are wielding as long as you know how the play the game.

By the reasoning Im reading in the this thread, everyone in the game should be carrying Khopeshes, eSoS, eAGA etc. And if they aren't, they are wasting everyone's time because they aren't doing enough damage.

And this all goes back to the min/max arguments. If you aren't "maxing" out, you are gimped.

Sure, anything works...you could also be a Horc Barbarian using daggers instead of a Great Axe.
or a Caster swinging a sickle for dps instead of casting spells.

Just because you can use daggers or other inferior methods of combat doesn't mean you should.

I had a ranger that dual wielded light Greensteel earthgrab picks, great when autocrit on earthgrab or stun ocurred. after that was changed the picks became worthless since without the auto-crit component they were meh... much like WOP, vorpals, etc...Not to say these weapons are completely useless, they are just no longer optimal.

Most will agree that to date Daggers and most other light 1-handed weapons are subpar vs the rest of the weapon choices.
The game changes from time to time, and there does need to be some balancing to make light weapons viable for the game.

There are some daggers that are decent like the FR ones, just like midnight greetings are good kukri's for a dex rogue, but as a player you will migrate to the ones that best suit the situations you encounter.

Those priestess level draining daggers are useless on bosses, so do you still use them or switch to something usefull.
Do you invest into bludgeoning feats if your favoured weaponset is slashing weapons.
If you pull a decent Drow weaponset do you continue to use the inferior weapon you had or do you switch to the newer more effective weapon.

If another Rogue is hitting crits of 300 and you are critting for 50, do you say to yourself my dagger damage is good enough or do you think huh, what can I do to get more out of this toon. What did that other rogue do that gives them that much more.

We have limited space and resources, so do you carry 50 weapons for every situation or do you find the best to suit the most combinations of optimal situations.

There are lots of variables Precision vs Power atttack, Halfing gile vs WF/Horc PA... there is not one path to the endgame, but some choices are more blatantly obvious vs others.

As we play we migrate to min/max to varying degree's or into niche builds to suit the style we like to play.

Besides playing for fun..we want evolve our toons be all they can be, to maximize damage output and mitigate damage input, otherwise why bother running more difficult content to get better loot.

[LOOON375]

Just because you can use daggers or other inferior methods of combat doesn't mean you should.

I agree with everything you wrote. And I always upgrade to newer and better weapons as I go on all of my toons. And yes, I carry different weapons for different situations.

For anyone wielding an eSoS or an epic Antique or other "top" weapons, the weapons they used while farming were good enough to use while farming those top weapons.

Just because there is one "all powerful" weapon in the game, doesn't mean that every other weapon in the game is gimped or useless. Sure, it may not be "optimal", but it sure got the job done getting to that "optimal" weapon.

Right now one of the "flavors of the day" is converting TWF to THF, since it appears that THF performes better right now due to destinies. So instead of doing what everyone else is doing, Im sticking with my TWFighter. Is it optimal at this point in time? Nope. But just because it's not optimal doesn't make it gimped or useless.

[Diyon]

In my opinion..Random drop Planar shields are superior, the alchemical crafted shields are not really shields they just look like them. They dont offer any real "Shield" crafting effects just secondary weapon effects.

Nothing overly usefull on these alchemical shields when tanking bosses which is really the only place you want to shield up and hold aggro. Possibly even round up mobs and intimidate if party got overwhelmed

No additional hate bonusses, no boss worthy guards, no Conc-opp/Torc effects, no Docent of Defiance effects, no Leviks random heal effect, No airguard, etc...

If you are running MA/LOB regularly and dont own a monk or a caster...
1st tier air/2nd tier earth is not terrible, but questionably not worth the grind vs picking up any random planar shield.
3rd tier is completely worthless


All crafting is based on shieldbashing (these are not guards), no defensive perks.

What use is a red slot on a shield when there are other shields that have...
violet slot:
http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Epic_Templar%27s_Bulwark
http://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Coronation_Shield
http://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Ward_of_Undeath

or even 2 slots - blue and violet slot
http://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Weathered_Targe
http://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Kundarak_Warding_Shield

Small, point, but fire martial-air martial-fire mystical shields are absolutely awesome on animal form druids.

[Expalphalog]

All crafting is based on shieldbashing (these are not guards), no defensive perks.

Actually they do have guards. Including Air Guard, which you specifically call out Alchemical crafting for lacking.

[sephiroth1084]

They should never have dropped slots on epic items and weapons - tokens were a good reason to repeat quests and the versatility could be amazing. STOP ABANDONING GOOD IDEAS!

If the new raid weapons had a red slot instead of underwater action or other useless ****, they would be competitive.

Agreed. The only real problems with the epic augment system are that the cost is much too high (and incredibly unforgiving to item upgrades from the developers, and the necessarily changing of the loot from update to update), and we have too few options for some types (notably blue slots). You could add that there is also the issue of the augments becoming less appealing as loot scales beyond what they offer, but that's easily fixable.

Why? Every weapon is already viable. Fricken daggers are viable, if you get or make the right ones, as long as you know how to play the game.

If the universe was to all of a sudden erase the eSoS from DDO, all the comparing would just fall to the next weapon on the tier.

People are able to complete all content without using an eSoS, so I don't get the "envy" part of this discussion. And that's exactly what it is, is weapon envy. "it has what this don't have and I don't like it".

First of all, the other strong two-handed weapons are much closer in DPS and overall strengths than the ESoS is to anything else, so saying that if it were removed from the equation, the benchmark would merely move to the next lowest weapon is misleading. Cleaver and the EAG, for example, are fairly close, and both have their respective niches, so having both makes sense, and having both doesn't necessarily make a crafted greataxe unattractive.

As for why it matters that the ESoS is still the best two-hander after 2+ years, is that it removes incentive from running new content. Sure, you can settle for Cleaver, if that's what you want to do, because you don't need the ESoS, but when a big bulk of character advancement/building in DDO stems from acquiring better loot, having an unmoving benchmark for years at a time (and in a relatively easy quest/raid) isn't benefiting anyone.

Couple the lack of incentive with the annoyance to actually run CitW and you end up where we are now, with a lot of people who have zero desire to repeat the raid, which means fewer LFMs, fewer people learning the raid, and fewer people who do want something out of the raid getting those items. It's a sad state of affairs when I announce in the 4 channels I belong to, and guild chat, that I'm going to run a CitW, and no one wants to go, because there isn't anything there for them.

And the sad thing, is that if we removed the ESoS, the next best weapon would probably be the Epic Xuum, which is even older.

[Cetus]

I agree with everything you wrote. And I always upgrade to newer and better weapons as I go on all of my toons. And yes, I carry different weapons for different situations.

For anyone wielding an eSoS or an epic Antique or other "top" weapons, the weapons they used while farming were good enough to use while farming those top weapons.

Just because there is one "all powerful" weapon in the game, doesn't mean that every other weapon in the game is gimped or useless. Sure, it may not be "optimal", but it sure got the job done getting to that "optimal" weapon.

Right now one of the "flavors of the day" is converting TWF to THF, since it appears that THF performes better right now due to destinies. So instead of doing what everyone else is doing, Im sticking with my TWFighter. Is it optimal at this point in time? Nope. But just because it's not optimal doesn't make it gimped or useless.

Actually, you have made my point precisely. The heart of this thread was concerning EXACTLY the fact that the devs did not provide us with alternatives to the esos in the form of EITHER another greatsword, or a nicer greataxe or falchion that I would have no issue swapping into.

The point is exactly this: I absolutely do NOT want a weapon thats better than the esos, I want a weapon that is more preferred situationally, so that there no longer is a "less optimal" bunch of weapons, but rather the content is diversified enough that those folks that have acquired the myriad of weapons available can perform better in some situations with an alternate weapon, and better still in others where the esos remains king.

[DarkForte]

Just because there is one "all powerful" weapon in the game, doesn't mean that every other weapon in the game is gimped or useless. Sure, it may not be "optimal", but it sure got the job done getting to that "optimal" weapon.

It is useless for anyone that has the 'end all be all' weapon. A player that had the eSoS 2 years ago has had literally NO weaponry progression since then. We used to have a situationally stronger weapon in the Terror, which was often the superior choice for clearing PKable trash before the nerf. Now, when does someone with an eSoS need to swap weapons when fighting? Pretty much never.

For mostly everything else, there are choices. For example, Grave Wrappings are great against trash, but when dealing boss dps, 3x air HWs are superior due to dr breaking, doublestrike and stuff. Save in unreasonable 100% fort situations (which aren't relevant due to things like destruction, improved destruction and improved sunder which are abound), eSoS dominates everything.

[Munkenmo]

In my opinion..

Nothing overly usefull on these alchemical shields when tanking bosses which is really the only place you want to shield up and hold aggro. Possibly even round up mobs and intimidate if party got overwhelmed

No additional hate bonusses, no boss worthy guards, no Conc-opp/Torc effects, no Docent of Defiance effects, no Leviks random heal effect, No airguard, etc...

You initially said

LOB was close but there just wasnt enough versatility to really make it viable, no shield crafting (big letdown)

I don't really care to argue with how useful they are / arent.

You're now acknowledged they exist, any further discussion is entirely opinion based, in a thread that's meant to be about the lacking 2 handed options in the new raid.

[Marewood]

Honestly devs, are you folks content with the reward system you've installed in this raid? The last adventure pack that featured a raid was the cannith pack that was released late august/early september last year. The gear in that raid was absolutely useless for two handers, not bad for TWF'ers, amazing for handwrap users, and situationally nice for casters.

Almost a year later, we get our next raid in DDO's first ever expansion. What do we receive as our reward? Some pretty nice TWF alternatives, and absolutely terrible THF options. Khopeshes, greatswords, and handwraps are excluded completely, divines and casters get shafted. Then, handwraps make their way into the raid - which are decent, but not absolutely game breaking.

blablabla...

So if you want to complain that the named loot sucks cause it simply lacks certain weapon types that people have specced in - absolutely agree. But basically your points are pretty ridiculous:

1) Your starting argument with respect to the last raid (house C, alchemical crafting if i got that right): "The gear in that raid was absolutely useless for two handers, not bad for TWF'ers, amazing for handwrap users, and situationally nice for casters." - The gear options are absolutely similar for all melee weapon types (perhaps with the exception of wraps) so i don't get you point here. Originating from the base weapon specs, alchemical weapons are customizable, and extend the base die to 2w[base]. Not sure, wheter I got that right, but if your point is: loot is only interesting where it generally or situationally surpasses previously available loot (that was already overpowered in the first place like the eSoS for greatswords), this is a lame joke, basically saying TWF needs better loot 'cause it needs to surpass the already decent lootoptions.

2) Regarding CITW: "Some pretty nice TWF alternatives, and absolutely terrible THF options." Umm, cool - i can run this again now - there are pretty nice TWF alternatives... Don't know what raid you are talking about - but there aren't more decent single handed weapons than THF options in this raid: Longsword is meh, Warhammer is situational, bastard sword is lala but almost nobody is specced for bastards, which also applies to the shortsword (which in fact is pretty decent). Belizarde - forget about it, cause currently it is slashing though it should be piercing and is thus subject to future change - which would require you to respec once again at that point, or dump it... Certainly not the kind of prospects I like to plan my gear layout upon.
Regardless of your title, you complain about the lack of a named Khopesh, which also falls in the TWF catagory if i got that right...

3) THF weapons:
a) Breach
b) Cleaver
c) Sireth
Those options obviously appear to be mediocre to you. Actually I would have been very very very happy if I had seen a scimitar with any of the mentioned specs.

So the point is not: CITW lacks TWF options (and TWF options that surpass eSoS in particular), but CITW lacks many weapon options, which many ppl would have liked to have seen in this raid. What makes this worse is that if the type of weapon is not available in this raid (mediocre or not), you are also excluded from the planar focus set bonuses. Anyway, if you are not satisfied with what you get from CITW - welcome to the club. But the flat argument TWF gets the shaft is pure nonsense.

The dividing lines do not run between THF and other weapons, but between the folks who - depending on their weapon specialization - either get a) decent loot b) not so decent loot c) no loot option at all.

[DarkForte]

but if your point is: loot is only interesting where it surpasses previously available loot (that was already overpowered in the first place like the eSoS for greatswords), this is a lame joke

SNIP

but there aren't more decent single handed weapons than THF options in this raid: Longsword is meh, Warhammer is situational, bastard sword is lala but almost nobody is specced for bastards, which also applies to the shortsword (which in fact is pretty decent). Belizarde - forget about it, cause currently it is slashing though it should be piercing and is thus subject to future change - which would require you to respec once again at that point, or dump it...

Feat respecs are free at 25. Switching IC: S for IC:B is trivial for a lot of builds. Also, mornh is very strong the way it's set up when compared to its predecessors, and it breaks lob DR with an artificer. Celestia is best in slot for both rogues and ninjas. TWF has 2 best-in-slot options here. You know how many situationally best in slot options THF gets? None!

New, higher-level loot needs a point to it: it needs to be at least situationally the best choice. Else, anyone that already has the old weapons has zero need to run it.

[JOTMON]

I don't really care to argue with how useful they are / arent.

You're now acknowledged they exist, any further discussion is entirely opinion based, in a thread that's meant to be about the lacking 2 handed options in the new raid.

I did digress a bit on a tangent, however 2 handed weapons are not the only thing lacking in this current endgame raid. A couple weapons are shiny... but most of these weapons are lacking any real umph.


Even the +4 tomes on the 20/40th end reward list if you are lucky(yes you have to be lucky) are BTC +4 tomes.
and still no sign of any +5 tomes.

So if You are running this for tomes you are better off farming the flagging quest side chests or the trade channels.

[sephiroth1084]

Belizarde - forget about it, cause currently it is slashing though it should be piercing and is thus subject to future change - which would require you to respec once again at that point, or dump it... Certainly not the kind of prospects I like to plan my gear layout upon.
Regardless of your title, you complain about the lack of a named Khopesh, which also falls in the TWF catagory if i got that right...

Going to point out that, unless you are a fighter, it doesn't matter whether Balizarde ends up going to piercing or stays slashing, because it comes with Keen, which is typically the only feat most builds invest in that requires a certain type of weapon. And Balizarde is a pretty strong weapon at that.

The EWP: Khopesh folks complaining about no option really boggle me (again, non-fighters): a khopesh is 17-20/x3, Balizarde is 15-20/x3, and has Keen so you can pick it up and use it just as well as you could a khopesh, except it has a better crit range.

Breach and Cleaver aren't worth using if you have an ESoS; if you don't have an ESoS, then the weapons are pretty attractive...except that running EH VoN 5 and VoN 6 is faster, uses fewer resources, is easier, nets you more XP, gets you at least a couple of Epic Tokens, and a shot at red dragon scales (which are still highly tradeable commodities) in addition to working toward acquiring pieces for a better weapon (the ESoS), compared to CitW.

Also, note that the ESoS isn't just a better DPS weapon, it's also set-up to bypass DR, which neither of the two aforementioned CitW weapons can do. The ESoS starts out bypassing Adamantine, and can be slotted to also bypass one of Good, Metalline, Good+Cold Iorn, Good+Silver, Aligned... So, not only does it hit harder, but it punches through DR, has a higher to-hit, and is overall a more flexible weapon, while also being comparable in acquisition (overall time-wise, since you need 4 pieces to the CitW's 1, but CitW takes longer to run than Von 5+6). Also, there are some incentives for healers to run VoN (or at least few/no disincentives), whereas that isn't really true for CitW.

[DarkForte]

So, not only does it hit harder, but it punches through DR, has a higher to-hit, and is overall a more flexible weapon, while also being comparable in acquisition (overall time-wise, since you need 4 pieces to the CitW's 1, but CitW takes longer to run than Von 5+6).

For now. Once u16 hits, we'll need 16 pieces from CiTW. Not to mention the favour.

[sephiroth1084]

For now. Once u16 hits, we'll need 16 pieces from CiTW. Not to mention the favour.

For what? Pretty sure the ESoS ends up being better than the upgraded versions anyway, so why bother?