Alter 2h'ers so people actually will use 2handed weapons!

[Aanein]

I'm not really one to use 2handers in any game due to the massive delay, but it sounds like so much is riding on the ability to actually hit the target... It seems a small fix would be to increase precision so it benefits 2handers more than others. I'd imagine even a .05% increase could help a bit.

[RogueTigeR]

Aanein, not a bad suggestion.... I think a skill edit would be a good thing. Just as 'Strike Through' has a added % for 2h'ers, I believe Precision should as well. It only makes sense; DW'ing (2-4 hits) you are more likely to land something, wherein with 2H'ers their damage is so erratic. So IN ADDITION to a DPS overhaul, I would suggest a re-edit of the skill ' Precision ' to effect 2H'ers a little more.

[StormGuardian]

I've fooled around a little bit with 2Hers...and...they're ok. Not great, not quite up to par, just...ok.

PvE: The problem is (still) that everyone wants to be able to farm at the same speed as everyone else, so it's "fair." Ok, understandable, but you gotta realize...it's incredibly complicated to get everyone farming @ the same speed(of course with ~= skill levels) with different weapon types that all have different skills that affect them in different ways.

PvP: 2Hs fit somewhere in the lower-middle, with sorta average offensive dps, with roughly the same weak defense as non-shield and non-DW people. Only boost they really get is mirrors, which, thanks to a few certain people, aren't as good as they used to be since the self-pres patch.

They don't need a huge buff, as DW should still have more dps than 2h+mirrors, but (imo) they need a slight...SLIGHT...boost to offense and to defense. As is, 2H dps is closer to 1h+shield dps, and 2h defense is closer to DW defense(only slightly better b/c of mirror). 2H should fall more in the middle.

So, a few solutions that wouldn't require huge changes or new skills(this is playing off of suggestions from WW and rogue):

1. Change vengeance to .25% for 1H and .5% for 2H per lvl. This would give 2Hers a little boost to dps since they actually take the damage when they mirror, so aren't at full health as often, and since they take longer to kill...are more likely to have less health during the fight, so this would help them a little more even!!

2a. Change self-preservation to BOTH sides of the mirror skill. So instead of taking 100% and dealing back 67%(@100 skill lvl), you would take 67% and give 67% back. Lets face it, in a real battle this would be like a "counter-attack," and you would fuel the blow you took into the counter-strike, extra momentum and all that jazz.

2b. Give 2H a skill that reverses self-pres(or add to mirror), 1% per lvl, so at lvl 100 of this skills/mirror/self pres, you would take 67% damage and mirror 100%. This skill/addition alone would be a huge improvement to 2H for both offense and defense. (I like this better than 2a...both 2a and 2b could be made for melee/ranged only to not affect staves)

3. Precision being doubled for 2H was already mentioned, but that was on my list of brainstorming as well

4. Take out self-pres period, and put something else in it's place...this would actually help those high lvl boss killers after mobs got self-pres rofl

5. A "multi-attack" skill for 2Hers in arena(like AoEs and arrowrain) has been mentioned/suggested at least 10 times in the past, and I'm still all for it. Something along the lines of "Cleave - Each level in this skill provides a .25% chance to hit an additional target when you strike an enemy." Anywhere from .2% to .33% i think would be acceptable. Strike would include block/parry/etc. Allow it to trigger twice to hit all 3 people(1/25th to 1/9th chance depending on base %, and slightly lower since 2nd and 3rd target could avoid/growl/etc). This would be a great addition to 2Hers in arena.

6. Add a small damage % to the 2H skill, so 2Hers crit harder. Slight problem w/this on though, is 2H is incredibly strong very early, and you get this skill right away :\

Or you can always increase base damage on all 2H weaps, or add a different new skill. Anything would work, as long as it's not too much.

I know this thread seems to bend toward dps, but as a suggestion on the defensive side if dps isn't buffed, maybe it would make more sense to have Mirrored Blade reflect rather than mirror (and a name change for consistency's sake).

DPS-wise, and related to Stalking, a skill that buffs the accuracy of 2H weapons while more mildly increasing delay might be a semi-decent buff.

EDIT:
All of Stormwizard's ideas look incredibly viable. With regard to the buff to the 2H skill itself, the problem Stormwizard has mentioned for low levels can easily be remedied by scaling the damage as well.
(e.g.: Two Handed - +20% base chance to crit with two handed weapons; +0.2% chance to crit with two handed weapons and +0.1% increase to all damage done with two handed weapons per level of this skill.)

[thatperson]

i refuse to read 15 differnt page long posts so im gonna just go with rogue supports so i refuse to support

[RogueTigeR]

Dear Stormy.... are you really to tell me that you believe that 2H'ers... a weapon type known for it's DPS (not locally, but globally), should have less than DW'ers?... NO WAY! DW has better defense (dual parry), as well as the thing everyone always takes for granted when talking about OP,UP, Weapon/build types... OPTIONS!!!! w/ dw you can add a shield, you can add a whip. You know what 2H'ers only option is when times get tough?... take your skills, and get them to 100 b/c there is NO other option. 2H'ers regular DPS + Mirror should definately definately (in theory) beat out DW DPS.


Secondly, all that aside, I really really really love your suggestions; they are well written, thought out, and argued.
1. Vengeance- This just makes sense, you are completely right, it would make the perfect coupling with mirrored blade... seeing as you are Taking the dmg before mirroring it.
2a. I like this idea, making 2H'ers a little more defensive. It would really help in groups when 'trying' to tank or when my Ego gets the best of me and I try to see what bosses I can solo. But.... if it comes down to one or the other, defense vs offense, I personally would like to see us take the offensive road.
2b. Pure Brilliant.... if I could take a (100dmg) hit... only take 67 of it and mirror back 100 on a regular basis due to my kick ass skillz and tons and tons of xp in the right places, I would be a very happy tiger.
5. Helll YA!... I have suggested this numerous times and maybe this is the time when mel.... well... "A" melee can finally do what ranged, healers, DD, and DoT casters have been doing forever at the envy of the poor poor meleer's, effect, in this case attack, multiple targets at once. If I had to vote for any two of these suggestions, one of my votes definately goes here.

COME NOW GLITCHLESS!!! LETS GET PPL EXCITED ABOUT 2H'ers AGAIN (if they ever were before).
ppl love their whip+pet combos, casters wont leave home w/o their staves, with testudo and the ability to dual parry shield users got one of the luckiest breaks in Nod, and archers, well, they now have a haste aura, and can equip shields and whips, which may be hybriding in your book, but as a weapon type that does NOT have those options, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to throw on a whip or two w/ my 2h'er if I needed to go tank. NOW is the 2H'ers moment to show people they have the potential to shine too; so lets make them extra shiny and get some more 2H'ers in Nod! ... if for no other reason that so I can reign supreme over a larger set :P

smashbros you primitive mofo, kiss my ass

I don't get how people can consider Mirrored Blade a defensive skill. It does ZERO damage mitigation. On top of that it's rarely a true "mirror" of the damage received, often times I'll reflect a spell that does 100 dmg to me, only to do 10 damage to the caster. It's a weak damage skill hiding over in the prot tree.

Two Handers are down at the bottom of the "defensive" types as staff users. Dual Wield does more damage, plus they get dual parry on top of parry.

I understand people's concerns about "kill speeds" being equal... and no, they don't need to be equal, but if a whipping bm can kill as fast as a two hander can, plus not have to worry about taking any damage due to Fire and Ice, there needs to be some dps added to the two handers.

STAFFS ARE 2 HANDED as one of like 4 people that use staffs/stave damage I hope to see some (albeit lesser) damage buff there as well.

[thatperson]

a damage buff to 2hers will likely not include staves

[RogueTigeR]

Originally Posted by thatperson

a damage buff to 2hers will likely not include staves

I agree w/ TP in that it probably wont... and I'll go a step furthur and say that it shouldn't. Staff Melee Dmg just recieved a buff w/ the edit of Angelic Aura description a few weeks/month ago.

already suggested this.... no reply from glitch,this will be the same

[RogueTigeR]

So.... I've been thinking and thinking and trying to make the most informed/easily smooth transition/best decision for what the 2h buff should involve... putting my self in Glitch's shoes.. at this moment in time w/ the given suggestions and my own brain storming.. this would be my solution:

- Mirror dmg dealt stays the same so as not to negate the new skill created 'self preservation'
BUT
- Mirror dmg taken, a new skill, or perhaps self pres effects this... ATM its 66% for others.. so I would give 2H'ers 50% reduction to dmg taken when mirroring at lv 100.
- Then to add to DPS, crit is already ours, changing every 2h'er in the game to a higher base DPS is too much work, so I surmise a good solution is double attacks where there is a % chance to hit all enemies. This is a skill i suggested not too long ago but modified for AoE:
- Weaponry (Lv. 60)Ambidextrous: Because of your innate ability to naturally backswing, every poing in this skill provides an additional .25% chance to double attack with two handed weapons, excluding staves. During this 'Ambi swing' there is a .33% chance per level to attack all enemies.


So.. at this point in time, thats what i would do. This may change with more suggestions, but as i said, this would solve the key problems that are keeping 2h'ed weapons out of main stream weapon usage and out of the race just to be a good weapon.

Originally Posted by RogueTigeR

- Mirror dmg taken, a new skill, or perhaps self pres effects this... ATM its 66% for others.. so I would give 2H'ers 50% reduction to dmg taken when mirroring at lv 100.
- Weaponry (Lv. 60)Ambidextrous: Because of your innate ability to naturally backswing, every point in this skill provides an additional .25% chance to double attack with two handed weapons, excluding staves. During this 'Ambi swing' there is a .33% chance per level to attack all enemies.


So.. at this point in time, that's what i would do. This may change with more suggestions, but as i said, this would solve the key problems that are keeping 2h'ed weapons out of main stream weapon usage and out of the race just to be a good weapon.

Massively support the concept.
Key issues:
- modest increase in DPS, in general through increased effectiveness of non-stave 2H'ers, to get farm speeds up to , say 85-90% of DW.
- significant increase in effectiveness of self preservation skill for 2h wielders.
- Moderate to significant chance to hit multiple enemies in PvP, independent of crits.

One other possibility: tweak the effectiveness of the 2H stat skill to provide additional benefits to dex, or otherwise increase accuracy, lower miss ratio. With a 2H you invest a LOT in each swing.. misses should be less frequent.

ANd.. I am Not a 2h"er.

It has been suggested to increase the dps of 2h weapons, but Glitch said that in his original plan 2h should have been defensive weapon, and as long as mirrors has nothing of defensive features, this would be a good way to put 2h weapons under the defensive build..

If we want 2h to become more offensive, i've read very good ideas in the thread..
this post is to help 2h in the defensive way..


Here is an idea to help 2h in boss fights:

the base of my argument is that against a boss u should have a way to heal yourself, whips if u're a meleer or gems if u're a caster..
archers uses whips to take pet bonuses and dual wielders should use a combination of shield and whips.. but for 2h there is no way to mitigate the damage..

- one solution could be a life magic skill like this (i say life magic cos i refer to the gravebound 'counterpart' as a death magic skill):

''Holy Blade''
for each point in this skill u gain a 0,5% chance to heal yourself with a 2h weapon.

(the formulation of the skill should be reviewed, also the percentage of the chance) no bonuses applied to heals so if your weapon has 100 as max damage u can heal yourself for 100 max each time that the skill will be triggered (crits and other bonuses not applied)
the advantage is that this is not a vampiric heal, not linked to the fact that u hit or miss, so a miss is not a huge problem anymore..
(the base idea is that for a 2h'er the weapon is a sort of religion, u dedicate your life to your weapon, so why don't influence it with a sort of Blessing?)

- another way to solve the problem is to give this healing bonus as a special proc.. u can find it at the seer cos at the end the seer implores u to defeat the boss so he should give u some instrument to do that

i didn't thounght at all the details but the base idea is this.. all sort of comments that aren't *pull yourself off a bridge* are welcomed

on the other hand there is PvP system.. and we cannot give a free healing power to 2h.. unless we find a way to mitigate it with a ''like-gravebound'' effect..

just a suggestion

Originally Posted by Raggarth

Here is an idea to help 2h in boss fights:

''Holy Blade''
for each point in this skill u gain a 0,5% chance to heal yourself with a 2h weapon.

i didn't thought at all the details but the base idea is this.. all sort of comments that aren't *pull yourself off a bridge* are welcomed

on the other hand there is PvP system.. and we cannot give a free healing power to 2h.. unless we find a way to mitigate it with a ''like-gravebound'' effect..

just a suggestion

Nothing wrong with making 2H ACTUALLY defensive.
I do beleive that farming speeds shoould be comparable.. but, there is really nothing to stop you from being a dw for farming, and 2H for PvP or arena, except for the extra investment in 2H skills.. and that is a matter of choice.

so 2H should be .. different. OK.. that means they should be really good at SOMETHING. Say they keep their dps in farming at about 80% or a touch more than dw...

defensive:
healing power.. nice.. doesn't increase dps, but sure makes you harder to kill. How about roughly a vamp level heal, but inconsistent.. x% (around 10-12% per swing to heal some fair number of hits, based on your opponent's offense, or your weapon max.
One way to make you 'pay' for this is to link this to the mirrored blade skill.. make it actually defensive.. that is, as suggested, reduce the damage you take by what you mirror... including DD.

increased parry: well, since dual parry is denied to 2H, it seems like you could make the parry skill simply a lot better for 2H'ers, or create a new level 40 skill that is 2H which is more effective than the dual parry skill.

2H "Growl" : Call it what you will, but a kite / growl sort of skill that is more effective than those skills would work fine, too.

Resistance to non DD effects.. this is quasi offensive.. Give 2H'er a large effective (not actual Cnt) resistance vs. non damage spells and effects, inclduing those that dont normally get 'saves' against. Not being mezz'd stunned, dazed, sloth'd... etc nearly as often as others is a defense.. but means more time swinging you sword, and pulling out gems. Now THAT is different, and even gives a neat flavor during farming... (encumbered? meh.. not THAT big a deal, really..).. your normal dps stays the same, but your effective dps goes up.

and for pure offense, the recurring idea of allowing 2H'ers to hit multiple opponents sometimes is a very neat flavor.. not THAT huge, actually, unless all three members are doing it, (and then you are still keeping one opponent around longer), but, it just feeels right.

[RogueTigeR]

Great suggestion Rag.. i love it... 1 way to solve the PvP problem is just to not include Holy Blade as a PvP skill, kind of like Temperance....

and to Aneron:

1. going dw for farming and 2h'er for everything else is something I did for a long while... it is just not very effective strategy in bettering yourself... its an effective strategy for impressing ppl w/ your total xp and then losing to them in a duel b/c the xp was in wrong places.

2. 2H 'growl'/kite... I really like this idea.. and maybe it can highly depend on Agi as well... this will create many diverse builds... b/c as currently stands, an almost all Dur w/ some Cnt is best build now b/c u want as much HP as possible b/c u WANT to get hit in order to mirror more.

including a highly dependant Agi skill would create lots of various builds for 2H'ers.

3. Resistance to non-DD effects, very very interesting. Definately not seen before. And this would open up many doors b/c would free up aura space for different auras/gems.

4. AoE 2H strike... I'll say it again, I WANT THIS

[StormGuardian]

Originally Posted by RogueTigeR

Dear Stormy.... are you really to tell me that you believe that 2H'ers... a weapon type known for it's DPS (not locally, but globally), should have less than DW'ers?... NO WAY! DW has better defense (dual parry)

Dest said the same thing in the OP more or less, but he was wrong, as you are remember incorrectly. I was going to reply to this, but Raggarth beat me to it:

Originally Posted by Raggarth

It has been suggested to increase the dps of 2h weapons, but Glitch said that in his original plan 2h should have been defensive weapon, and as long as mirrors has nothing of defensive features, this would be a good way to put 2h weapons under the defensive build..

2H is SUPPOSED to be more defense...so melee dps wise, should be:

DW > 2H > 1H+shield

Defense wise, should be:

1H+shield > 2H > DW

Yes, DW got dual parry, which i was against. it was another buff that wasn't needed imo, but of course got put in place anyway.

As is, 2H is too close to the lower ends on both dps and defense, which is why i suggested the things i did...small changes that would raise the bar on both dps and defense slightly, without making them too close to the upper end for both sides of the battle.

[RogueTigeR]

I did not mean that comment offensively... I just meant that considering all in all the way things ARE.. not the way they're supposed to be theoretically in Glitch's perfect world. Yes, in a perfect Nod, 2H'ers would be more defensive than DW; but DW can dual parry, 2H'ers cannot. I believe this is why Glitchless put mirrored blade under protection skills, even thou it is a completely offensive skill and does nothing to protect the user.
As is, 2H'ers seem to want a DPS route, even thou, yes..... I read the 1.5 yr old post where Glitchless said 2H'ers were a more defensive weapon, mirrored blade (offensive (miscategorized)) and much higher crit dmgs (offensive).

[hotshot64]

Originally Posted by StormGuardian

PvE: The problem is (still) that everyone wants to be able to farm at the same speed as everyone else, so it's "fair."

Exactly. Different weapons have different strengths. You're not going to use a 1H + shield for farming. Unless you're under 20. Or farming ultrablacks. Or an idiot.