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

[Chette]

The simple solution to this is to remove the ESOS from the game. I'll go start a petition, I'm sure it will get a lot of signatures

I'm kidding of course, I do feel your pain OP. There is a reason I don't have any THF fighters, barbs or paladins (I have a THF favored soul with an ESOS, but she does other things as well). Running around with the same weapon all the time is boring. There's nothing new to strive for, and I am fairly certain there will be nothing new to strive for at any point in the near future. The ESOS has bit numbers and does amazing damage sure, but it's also boring. I love my dual Celestia wielding Bard! Seeing that light damage go off, or the fire procs on multiple enemies, it just looks and sounds awesome! I love my Sireth using acrobat. Between Sireth, lightning mace, and charged cauntlets she's just constantly raining lightning death from the sky. Again, it looks and feels epic.

THF would be a lot more attractive to me if there was a better selection to weapons. If the devs could turn back the clocks and have never made the ESOS, I think it would have done a lot more for THF variety as it would get people excited about things.

It's too late to do that now though, and I don't want to see massive power creep. But there are some neat things they could do. More weapons with greater banes and AOE effects. More weapons with cool stuff like telekinetic, but that also do good base damage. Allow longswords and bastard swords at least to be wielded as two handed weapons (I'm not up on my PnP these days, but I don't believe rapiers and shortswords were ever allowed to be wielded in two hands).

Although I do feel your pain in not getting to have any of the "fun" weapons, I don't think this detracts from the overall power of THF. THF went up substantially in the expansion compared to TWF due to the synergy with the epic destinies.

[Artos_Fabril]

The simple solution to this is to remove the ESOS from the game. I'll go start a petition, I'm sure it will get a lot of signatures

I'm kidding of course, I do feel your pain OP. There is a reason I don't have any THF fighters, barbs or paladins (I have a THF favored soul with an ESOS, but she does other things as well). Running around with the same weapon all the time is boring. There's nothing new to strive for, and I am fairly certain there will be nothing new to strive for at any point in the near future. The ESOS has bit numbers and does amazing damage sure, but it's also boring. I love my dual Celestia wielding Bard! Seeing that light damage go off, or the fire procs on multiple enemies, it just looks and sounds awesome! I love my Sireth using acrobat. Between Sireth, lightning mace, and charged cauntlets she's just constantly raining lightning death from the sky. Again, it looks and feels epic.

THF would be a lot more attractive to me if there was a better selection to weapons. If the devs could turn back the clocks and have never made the ESOS, I think it would have done a lot more for THF variety as it would get people excited about things.

It's too late to do that now though, and I don't want to see massive power creep. But there are some neat things they could do. More weapons with greater banes and AOE effects. More weapons with cool stuff like telekinetic, but that also do good base damage. Allow longswords and bastard swords at least to be wielded as two handed weapons (I'm not up on my PnP these days, but I don't believe rapiers and shortswords were ever allowed to be wielded in two hands).

Although I do feel your pain in not getting to have any of the "fun" weapons, I don't think this detracts from the overall power of THF. THF went up substantially in the expansion compared to TWF due to the synergy with the epic destinies.

You mentioned Celestia as an interesting standout weapon. What about similar ideas for THF?

Maybe a great axe that does force damage with a force burst, force blast, greater telekinesis, and a lightning-strike level force damage proc? Or a thunder hammer maul that deals sonic damage, lightning strike, cacophony, and AoE blind and knockdown? Maybe a greatsword with a 1d4 base damage but 18-20/x4 critical profile like old school SoS. That might be the go-to weapon for a very high Str barb, or for a paladin. But wouldn't be much good for a Gish or warchanter.

[sephiroth1084]

You missed the point. Whole wall of text for nothing. :
1) One uses martial , pays nothing , and get enhanced weapon profiles (damage or crit) he should not have (balizarde ,esos , etc ..)
One pays a feat to get these enhanced crit/base damage profiles ,and dont get them.
So the first had the equivalent of a free feat and the other wasted one.
there is a problem.
Period.

Actually, you seem to have missed my point, that khopesh users aren't missing out anything--they can use Balizarde--and their EWP isn't a wasted feat, since it has allowed them to use the best 1-handed weapon for their entire career since they picked up the feat, and allows them to use khopeshes that are better than other weapons in the situations where Balizarde doesn't shine, such as against evil outsiders, which make up a big portion of DDO's endgame, since Balizarde doesn't bypass any DR.

They haven't wasted a feat, and they aren't without a good weapon choice in the raid. If you don't want to use Balizarde just because it isn't a khopesh, you're being foolish, unless you're a Kensei, and even then you're probably being ridiculous, since you're only losing +2 attack and +2 to +4 damage in order to use a very strong 1-handed weapon.

Should there have been a better weapon for clerics, bards and favored souls? You bet! For (TWF/scimitar-using) druids? Yeah. Should there have been a greatsword? Maybe... Should there have been a two-handed weapon that is actually worth acquiring if you already have an ESoS? Absolutely. Should there have been a khopesh? Sure, but it just isn't as important as the above, because, unlike the bards, clerics, favored souls, druids, and ESoS wielders, there is an attractive weapon in the raid for you if you use khopeshes, so there is a reason for you to run the raid, and you can gain something from it, while the aforementioned demographic really doesn't.

You mentioned Celestia as an interesting standout weapon. What about similar ideas for THF?

Maybe a great axe that does force damage with a force burst, force blast, greater telekinesis, and a lightning-strike level force damage proc? Or a thunder hammer maul that deals sonic damage, lightning strike, cacophony, and AoE blind and knockdown? Maybe a greatsword with a 1d4 base damage but 18-20/x4 critical profile like old school SoS. That might be the go-to weapon for a very high Str barb, or for a paladin. But wouldn't be much good for a Gish or warchanter.

There's certainly a lot of ways that we could have seen a better than ESoS in X situation weapon.

• Could have a weapon with stats close to that of the ESoS, but with a smaller crit multiplier that gets bigger vs. a particular type of enemy.
• Could have a weapon with stats a bit behind the ESoS, but that gets HUGE boosts against a particular type of enemy (+[W], Epic Bane, bonus to crit multiplier, Greater Banishing/Smiting/Disrupting, all new abilities that have significant effects).
• Could have a weapon with slightly lower stats, but with strong CC abilities, so it would work better on trash because it can isnta-kill or CC them. Terror was being used by people with an ESoS, despite it's garbage stats, because it could kill stuff faster.

[SealedInSong]

I like a lot of the suggestions in this thread.

It seems to me that there are two main paths diverging from eSoS: one of nerfing it to be comparable to other epic weapons, and one of raising new epic weapons to its power and beyond.

I understand why Turbine's first and likely only nerf to eSoS didn't make it as (not) valuable as, say, eWhirlwind. They made a mistake and didn't punish the players who ground it out for that mistake. I get it.

It's a big problem, however, that they haven't started to raise other epic weapons to the power of eSoS and particularly beyond it in the ways described in this thread--against particular foes.

The drow weapons were a great idea because they uniformly raised the power of all weapons in a standardized way. Caught in the Web not only inconsistently raised the power of very specific weapons in a nonstandard way, it completely precluded some classes of weapons from consideration.

Moreover, it locked those precluded weapons out of several powerful set bonuses. This makes very little sense and in the end just wastes everyone's time. It would take very little effort on the part of the developers to just make all relics have more consistent power levels, i.e. 1) give all relics an increased critical multiplier, and/or 2) give all relics one extra (half) damage die that doesn't cost an arm and leg in commendations, and/or 3) create some of the greater/superior effects mentioned in this thread and that I have mentioned elsewhere (greater deception, improved assassination +3, greater smiting, superior _____ bane, etc.) and/or 4) leave some of the traditionally underpowered weapons (i.e. quarterstaff, war hammer, long sword) with expanded threat ranges and such like Sireth (not Tinah--that sword is a travesty).

Instead we have more inequity, not a lot of advancement (some would argue none in comparison to eSoS) in power level, a whole lot more grind, and some people completely left behind.

I'm excited about some of the work Feather_of_Sun has done and mentioned for the future (random loot generation, augment changes, and such) but I do think that the relics and endgame gear in general needs to get a hard review. If they can throw Antipode in after the fact, they can expand Tinah's threat range, etc.

[MRMechMan]

Cleaver isn't bad. But it isn't great either. Some decent CC/debuff action going for it and 6% doublestrike but...dps brings home the bacon and cleaver doesn't quite have it. Epic elemental greataxe of fire is similar dps (higher if you have doublestike slotted somewhere), antique is pretty close too particularly when cleaving...none are even close to ESOS generally...i guess what it boils down to is....

...any weapon a 20/x3 or 19-20/x2 or 18-20/x2 multiplier is gonna be far, far behind ESOS on high str builds.

Cleaver should have been 20/x4 or 19-20/x3 IMO.