Morning Stars?

• Claudia wrote on 2011-02-04 22:48
  So if you didn't already know, i'm dual-wielding Iron Maces. One i'm going to ego, the other is upgraded for crit.
  
  Basically, I was thinking about another set of weapons I could use if anything happens to my maces for some reason, and Morning Stars kinda caught my eye. I'm either looking at going for 97 or 218 as far as the upgrade path.
  
  A few questions, then:
  1. Are Morning Stars worth dual-wielding in place of Iron Maces if the situation arises? [Any other weapon you would use instead?] I like how they have MUCH higher crit than Iron Maces [i'm a crit lovin' girl], but their Max is a lot lower than the irons.
  2. Which upgrade path [either the two I listed or the others you can grab from the wiki] would be the best?
  
  That's all. e.e
• NotAnElf wrote on 2011-02-04 22:56
  Why bother with high crit on dual weild?
  Be happy with 30% crit for WM spam
  Have a crit glory sword for smashing alternatively. :C
• Claudia wrote on 2011-02-04 22:59
  I actually don't have 30% crit...my maces have 12% and 16% respectively, combined with my stats brings me to only 28.7%.
  
  I can upgrade the Morning Stars for 40% crit each.
  Also, I like dual-wielding because I enjoy raw power. And i'm on a budget, and my Glory Sword is expensive.
• Yanm wrote on 2011-02-04 23:18
  The morning stars are more for N+ while the Iron Maces would be better for smashing and windmilling mostly. As far as crit goes, this is probably REALLY far off for you, but if you worked on life skills enough later on, you can gain enough dex to wield a warhammer. Do the highest crit path and put something like Shadow Hunter Caliburn on it and combined with your Iron Mace ego when it's crit is maxed out at 8%, you'll gain +34% crit. That's about the best you can get mostly.
• Arsik wrote on 2011-02-04 23:19
  I wouldn't recommend Morning Stars, unless all you want to do it spam normal attacks all day. With their lower max damage and faster speed, they're not ideal for using skills, since you won't do as much damage to the enemy as you would with the other blunt weapons, and the enemy will get up from that attack faster, so if you're not prepared, then you could be in for some hurting. However, as I pointed out, they're great for normal attacks, since they do have decent max damage and Critical, and are 3-hit Normal weapons, so if you can kill a monster in one combo, then you'll love them. Other wise, look for a different weapon set.
  
  If you're looking for backups, get some War Hammers, and start proffing those, specifically the 250 Path (Trefor's Enhancement, Annealing 2, 3, Edern's Modification, Artisan). Eventually, you'll ditch your non-Ego Iron Mace for one of these, since they boast the largest attack for one handed weapons (non-ego/Sword of Elsinore), and have a pretty large amount of Critical. They're very cheap, so you don't have to worry about repair costs, even with enchants that increase the repair costs of the weapon, so maintaining won't be much of an issue. And the Artisan Upgrade improves this further (+7-17 Str, +16-70 Luck, meaning that you can get anywhere between 2 and 4 extra max damage, and anywhere between 3.2% and 14% Critical. However, they have no Balance, and the Artisan Upgrade makes it worse (-20 to -56 Dex; or -4% to -14% Balance), so you really need to work on your Life skills to get your Dex up as high as possible for these babies. But once you do, that plus your Ego will give you nothing but raw power.
  
  Alternatively, you can also get a Claymore, or if you have a little more cash, a Dustin Silver Knight Sword to pair up with a Vales Shield. High damage, high defense, and of course, the Smash boost for those weapons which gives you an extra 20% Damage and 5% Crit when using Smash with a two handed weapon will give you a higher burst damage, as well as let you tank slightly better. And of course, if you don't have a Battle Hammer/Broad Axe yet, get one now and prof them up for Giant Full Swing. Unless you're a Giant Mage/Alchemist, there's no excuse for you to not have one, and even if you are a mage/alchemist, you still want one. Giant Full Swing is that godly.
  
  Of course, there are also Bear Knuckles, which are a high max damage, high critical weapon, though with an extremely low stun time, what with them being a 5 hit Very Fast weapon, so they're great for field bosses with Adv. Heavy Stander, especially if you can get yourself a Chinese Dragon set. Also with practice, you can very easily land 10+ hits in a combo, and since they're considered two handed weapons, some of the more powerful enchants are available to be used on them. The best part? They're very cheap, and available to be bought from NPCs, so if you ruin one, just burn the enchants off of them, re-enchant it on another set, and then prof those suckers up. Like I said, the only real downside for these weapons is the low stun time, so they're best off against mobs you can kill in one combo, or else you won't be able to get many more attacks off without an opening.
• Claudia wrote on 2011-02-04 23:20
  Ooh, I posted right before you did, Arsik.
  You know like, everything. D:
  
  I definitely need more DEX...[48 base], so I think i'll grab some knuckles for now and then prof a warhammer.
  Thanks so much!
• Blassreiter wrote on 2011-02-04 23:23
  Ok here's how I am. I have different sets of weapons depending on the situation; a Defensive Set (Usually a 2H Sword with a Shield), a High Damaging Set (my highest attack dual wield blunts usually Iron Maces), and a Combo Set (My beautiful Knuckles). I would use Defensive on enemies with low HP and if they multi a lot. I use High Damaging for many cases where Combo and Defensive isn't that great. Combo is for low spawn enemies without HS they usually die from one full combo full of crits.
  
  Now for your questions:
  1. I say as a Giant that Morning Stars are not that great, so don't use them in place of Iron Maces. Why are they not great? Because they function just like Knuckles except there are two of them which means more repair costs, they don't have much combo opportunities like Knuckles, they're 1h weapons so you can't slap uber enchants on it like Destruction unlike Knuckles which are 2H (Who doesn't want a 26 damage enchant?). Basically Knuckles>>>>>>Morning Stars so Morning Stars have little or no purpose. Let me tell you a great Knuckle combo now that we have Assault Slash: 5 Hits with Knuckle>wait for like .5 Seconds then add in 2 more hits>use Stomp at the right time to knock them further back>Assault Slash>Smash or WM away(If you Smashed you can follow up with a Bolt>Charge for another Smash. Now are Knuckles amazing or what??). So overall don't use Morning Stars, if you have to just use Knuckles instead. A correctly upgraded Bear Knuckle can have 44% Crit and 43 Max, this is even better than Morning Stars (dont forget about the 2h Enchants such as Untamed for 16 max and Destruction for 26 Max, insane damage there.)
  
  2. But if you still want Morning Stars then I would recommend path 97 because weapons with slightly low damage but lots of hits should achieve a high critical chance so you rely on crits to deal major damage. (I love critting 600s per Knuckle hit, they're like my favorite weapons.)
• Yanm wrote on 2011-02-04 23:24

  Quote from Arsik;320397:

  I wouldn't recommend Morning Stars, unless all you want to do it spam normal attacks all day. With their lower max damage and faster speed, they're not ideal for using skills, since you won't do as much damage to the enemy as you would with the other blunt weapons, and the enemy will get up from that attack faster, so if you're not prepared, then you could be in for some hurting. However, as I pointed out, they're great for normal attacks, since they do have decent max damage and Critical, and are 3-hit Normal weapons, so if you can kill a monster in one combo, then you'll love them. Other wise, look for a different weapon set.
  
  If you're looking for backups, get some War Hammers, and start proffing those, specifically the 250 Path (Trefor's Enhancement, Annealing 2, 3, Edern's Modification, Artisan). Eventually, you'll ditch your non-Ego Iron Mace for one of these, since they boast the largest attack for one handed weapons (non-ego/Sword of Elsinore), and have a pretty large amount of Critical. They're very cheap, so you don't have to worry about repair costs, even with enchants that increase the repair costs of the weapon, so maintaining won't be much of an issue. And the Artisan Upgrade improves this further (+7-17 Str, +16-70 Luck, meaning that you can get anywhere between 2 and 4 extra max damage, and anywhere between 3.2% and 14% Critical. However, they have no Balance, and the Artisan Upgrade makes it worse (-20 to -56 Dex; or -4% to -14% Balance), so you really need to work on your Life skills to get your Dex up as high as possible for these babies. But once you do, that plus your Ego will give you nothing but raw power.
  
  Alternatively, you can also get a Claymore, or if you have a little more cash, a Dustin Silver Knight Sword to pair up with a Vales Shield. High damage, high defense, and of course, the Smash boost for those weapons which gives you an extra 20% Damage and 5% Crit when using Smash with a two handed weapon will give you a higher burst damage, as well as let you tank slightly better. And of course, if you don't have a Battle Hammer/Broad Axe yet, get one now and prof them up for Giant Full Swing. Unless you're a Giant Mage/Alchemist, there's no excuse for you to not have one, and even if you are a mage/alchemist, you still want one. Giant Full Swing is that godly.
  
  Of course, there are also Bear Knuckles, which are a high max damage, high critical weapon, though with an extremely low stun time, what with them being a 5 hit Very Fast weapon, so they're great for field bosses with Adv. Heavy Stander, especially if you can get yourself a Chinese Dragon set. Also with practice, you can very easily land 10+ hits in a combo, and since they're considered two handed weapons, some of the more powerful enchants are available to be used on them. The best part? They're very cheap, and available to be bought from NPCs, so if you ruin one, just burn the enchants off of them, re-enchant it on another set, and then prof those suckers up. Like I said, the only real downside for these weapons is the low stun time, so they're best off against mobs you can kill in one combo, or else you won't be able to get many more attacks off without an opening.

  
  
  Might be a double post but although I will admit you probably know a lot more about giants than I do, I don't think it's worth it to get an upgraded Dustin Sword. Granted, I don't know the Artisan for it but those 2handed swords are more for crit smashing than anything else and a Claymore/Glory Sword can get 40+% crit and still have nearly 100 max while a Dustin Sword can cap out at around 106 max and 21% crit without Artisan on it. The repair costs are higher, but I still see them as better than a Dustin Sword, though I do not know what the Artisan gives for Dustins.
• Sunureu13 wrote on 2011-02-04 23:27
  Artisan for DSK is comparable to the artisan for Broadsword. Not worth it 95% of the time.
• Ryoko wrote on 2011-02-04 23:52

  Quote from Yanm;320395:

  The morning stars are more for N+ while the Iron Maces would be better for smashing and windmilling mostly. As far as crit goes, this is probably REALLY far off for you, but if you worked on life skills enough later on, you can gain enough dex to wield a warhammer. Do the highest crit path and put something like Shadow Hunter Caliburn on it and combined with your Iron Mace ego when it's crit is maxed out at 8%, you'll gain +34% crit. That's about the best you can get mostly.

  
  
  Shadow Hunter is risky, to put on something though. If you want to put it on anything, enchant it BEFORE the upgrades, despite the repair cost. The Caliburn afterwards can be put on after all the upgrading is done if you have enough money, because it IS 10x repair, and would probably save you the trouble of repairing constantly as you prof.
  
  Since you're on your budget, I recommend you not do this till you get more money to keep up with you earn more than you spend on repairs daily. Even something like Wolf Hunter's Spike will do for cheaper to get enchants. Spike is risky as well, if you want to use it, enchant it before you upgrade your weapon of choice, unless you want to be spending the Nx on enchant protection pots or go against the destroy the weapon, or not destroy the weapon. Since Spike is Rank 5, what do you think will occur more often?
  
  If you're using the Morning Stars, then if you would like more crit, put Stiff as a prefix onto them as a start, and Metal Needle on your armory later on. At that level though, you should focus more on ranking certain skills that will be key for the enchants you plan to use in the future. Even something cheap as Giant or Fierce should do you good still for a suffix until you can replace it with a better one.
  
  If getting an ego though, you'd have to feed it, and low on budget now doesn't seem to be the right time to get one quite yet.
• Yanm wrote on 2011-02-04 23:59

  Quote from Ryoko;320457:

  Shadow Hunter is risky, to put on something though. If you want to put it on anything, enchant it BEFORE the upgrades, despite the repair cost. The Caliburn afterwards can be put on after all the upgrading is done if you have enough money, because it IS 10x repair, and would probably save you the trouble of repairing constantly as you prof.
  
  Since you're on your budget, I recommend you not do this till you get more money to keep up with you earn more than you spend on repairs daily. Even something like Wolf Hunter's Spike will do for cheaper to get enchants. Spike is risky as well, if you want to use it, enchant it before you upgrade your weapon of choice, unless you want to be spending the Nx on enchant protection pots or go against the destroy the weapon, or not destroy the weapon. Since Spike is Rank 5, what do you think will occur more often?
  
  If you're using the Morning Stars, then if you would like more crit, put Stiff as a prefix onto them as a start, and Metal Needle on your armory later on. At that level though, you should focus more on ranking certain skills that will be key for the enchants you plan to use in the future. Even something cheap as Giant or Fierce should do you good still for a suffix until you can replace it with a better one.
  
  If getting an ego though, you'd have to feed it, and low on budget now doesn't seem to be the right time to get one quite yet.

  
  
  I wasn't talking about her doing it now. According to her character info, she's not even over ttl 100 yet so of course she couldn't do that. That was just an example of getting the crit that I was talking about from a Warhammer. She doesn't even have the dex to wield it properly yet anyway. This was more for future reference if the low crit with the Iron Mace Ego started to bug her.
• Blassreiter wrote on 2011-02-05 00:15
  This is why Knuckles are AWESOME
  
  [video=youtube;yfbfflcRzD0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfbfflcRzD0[/video]