Help on choosing a new weapon

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Arty wrote on 2011-01-29 23:06

I have owned my previous weapons for a long time: A 230 upgraded Topaz Thief Gladius and a 230 upgraded red Goddess' Burst Knight Gladius. The latter was a pain to repair.

My character: I am an all round magic/melee/ranger. Mainly focusing on magic and melee. My base dex is 96 with r2 refining. My base str is 153. I have r2 critical hit and r7 combat mastery.

With my gladius equipped, I have 80% balance with 19% crit. I'm considering upgrading to a different gladius upgrade, like 135, or maybe get 222 broads (are they worth it at ~ 100 dex?).

I don't know about any other weapons, but I prefer using swords, since I have r9 sword mastery.

Also, what enchants should I consider?
M wrote on 2011-01-30 03:31

Well gladius would probably be best with low dex. Idealy, broad swords or even battle swords would be the goal but those require 200+ dex. For enchants since you don't seem wealthy (and correct me if I'm wrong) Topaz or even wolf hunter (if you can get it) would be a good prefix. Not sure about an easy suffix, maybe fierce? (Trying to avoid 10x repair). Thief is good but I think you lose some hp, and is only 2 crit. While fierce is 5 str (two max) you gain hp.

Since you're human (I assume) I would overall recommend swords so you can dual wield if the situation calls for it.
Cryosite wrote on 2011-01-30 06:08

Raven is a pretty solid suffix. It's a little harder to get into place than fierce, but certainly a bigger damage boost.

wolf hunter and/or topaz are great prefix suggestions too. Even fox/fox hunter/apatite will work, and a new prefix, "glass shard" from theatre missions is worth considering.

As for 222-broadswords, going from stock NPC bought stats, you'll end up with 21% balance. Rank 7 combat mastery adds 9% balance to your melee attacks, bringing that to 30% (getting that to rk1 would give you another 6% balance). Rank 9 sword mastery gives +7% balance when using swords bringing you to 37% with no AP spent beyond what oyu listed you have. It would be great to get Sword Mastery to rank 1 too, along with your combat mastery. Doing so will give a total of 15% balance (7 more than what you get from the suffested rank 9). Both skills at rank 1 would result in 51% balance with your 222-broadswords.

Now on to dex. Essentially 4 dex = 1% balance. The full formula is (dex-10)/4. Meaning take your current dex, subtrace 10, and divide what is left by 4 and you see how much your dex is contributing to balance. With 37% balance listed above (with 51% being more ideal) you'll need to come up with 43% balance to hit the 80% cap (only 29% for ideal). That would be 182 dex (126 dex for ideal). Of course, you could easily make use of 222-broadswords without hitting 80% balance. 75% is probably plenty and you wouldn't notice much difference if any. You could probably even make due with as low as 65% balance.

You say you're a mix between range/melee/magic. You have refine at rk2, and I'm sure you have some of your range attack skill ranked. Do you have AR, crash shot, magnum, and/or support shot ranked? Working on those areas should easily boost your dex. Ranking sword mastery and/or combat mastery will also boost your balance as described above while boosting your melee damage pretty well.

You point out that you only have 19% crit with your gladii equipped. Going 135 path gladii would push you over the 30% point, as would going with 222-broadswords. the gladius would have 25% more balance at the cost of around 30 max damage and a little crit. I'd suggest going with the broadswords over the gladius, with the much cheaper repair costs of broadswords being an extra bit of benefit in their favor.

However you get there, I strongly suggest getting to at minimum 30% crit. That way you crit as often as possible against 0-protection opponents and against anything when you WM.

If you want a more definite answer instead of a lot of suggestions, I say get two 222-broadswords, go with wolf hunter/raven on them, and rank your combat and sword masteries to rank 1 each (along with the obvious wm and crit suggestions).
Arty wrote on 2011-01-30 06:09

Problem with upgraded gladii is that they have 0% crit, which doesn't really complement well with my r2 ranked critical hit. But I guess it's the best thing that I can use until I get my dex up.

Which upgrade sequence should I go for the gladius?

Quote from Cryosite;310693:
Raven is a pretty solid suffix. It's a little harder to get into place than fierce, but certainly a bigger damage boost.

wolf hunter and/or topaz are great prefix suggestions too. Even fox/fox hunter/apatite will work, and a new prefix, "glass shard" from theatre missions is worth considering.

As for 222-broadswords, going from stock NPC bought stats, you'll end up with 21% balance. Rank 7 combat mastery adds 9% balance to your melee attacks, bringing that to 30% (getting that to rk1 would give you another 6% balance). Rank 9 sword mastery gives +7% balance when using swords bringing you to 37% with no AP spent beyond what oyu listed you have. It would be great to get Sword Mastery to rank 1 too, along with your combat mastery. Doing so will give a total of 15% balance (7 more than what you get from the suffested rank 9). Both skills at rank 1 would result in 51% balance with your 222-broadswords.

Now on to dex. Essentially 4 dex = 1% balance. The full formula is (dex-10)/4. Meaning take your current dex, subtrace 10, and divide what is left by 4 and you see how much your dex is contributing to balance. With 37% balance listed above (with 51% being more ideal) you'll need to come up with 43% balance to hit the 80% cap (only 29% for ideal). That would be 182 dex (126 dex for ideal). Of course, you could easily make use of 222-broadswords without hitting 80% balance. 75% is probably plenty and you wouldn't notice much difference if any. You could probably even make due with as low as 65% balance.

You say you're a mix between range/melee/magic. You have refine at rk2, and I'm sure you have some of your range attack skill ranked. Do you have AR, crash shot, magnum, and/or support shot ranked? Working on those areas should easily boost your dex. Ranking sword mastery and/or combat mastery will also boost your balance as described above while boosting your melee damage pretty well.

You point out that you only have 19% crit with your gladii equipped. Going 135 path gladii would push you over the 30% point, as would going with 222-broadswords. the gladius would have 25% more balance at the cost of around 30 max damage and a little crit. I'd suggest going with the broadswords over the gladius, with the much cheaper repair costs of broadswords being an extra bit of benefit in their favor.

However you get there, I strongly suggest getting to at minimum 30% crit. That way you crit as often as possible against 0-protection opponents and against anything when you WM.

If you want a more definite answer instead of a lot of suggestions, I say get two 222-broadswords, go with wolf hunter/raven on them, and rank your combat and sword masteries to rank 1 each (along with the obvious wm and crit suggestions).

Thanks for the thorough advice. I don't have any ranged skills ranged, besides r7 ranged attack and rF magnum shot.
With r1 blacksmithed 222 broadswords, r1 combat and swords mastery, and > 116 dex, how much balance would I have in total?
I'm sure even with all that, my balance with the 222 broads will not be 80%, thus doing less median damage output than the gladii. However, they will have ~30 crit as opposed to the gladii's 0% crit. Would that compensate?
Cryosite wrote on 2011-01-30 07:42

As I pointed out in that thorough answer, 222-broadsword is 21% balance on the sword itself. CM and SM give +15% balance each at rank 1, for a 51% balance total. You only need to provide enough dex to push that to 80%, the cap or 29% balance. 29% *4 =116+10=126. You're only 10 points shy of that, and combat mastery and sword mastery both give dex. +18 more than you have for the sword mastery, +10 more than you have for the combat mastery. You will be perfectly fine using 222-broadswords. Also, rk1 blacksmithed broadswords should have even higher balance than 21%, though you are already going to be over the cap anyway.