Needs both Strength & Weapon to be effectively used
While that makes sense given its likely a heavy weapon requiring knowledge of wielding, logically speaking you could still use it (and its skills) if you were only one of those two stats, and by extension allowing more builds to use them to less of an effect. Below is an example of how a Lions Halberd could be affected with this logic in mind:
Weapon, No Strength: Can be used skillfully at the cost of barely being able to swing it, its skills come out and/or charge slower.
Strength, No Weapon: The halberd is swung unskillfully but still usable, its skills are a lot less precise
It nots a perfect idea, but it gives an idea of how it could be implemented and how it allows much more variety in a builds.
tl;dr - more build options, at the cost of balancing and having to animate the difference.
Yea, Warlord’s entire gimmick is strength weapons, which usually have large AoE’s. Not a good idea to take away from it’s uniqueness (although Savant already did technically).
Eh, at least only Mages and Savants will get something good out of them. Weapon builds don’t have any spells to bind to arcanium weapons: they would use artisan, vitality, or strength weapons instead.
Arcanium Weapons on the Trello
Weapons forged out of Arcanium metal which allows them to conduct magic. When equipped, you can select what magic you want to bind them to, and then create a spell to bind to the weapon. Different weapons will have different “boosts”/affects on these weapon-created spells, for example an Arcanium Bow may increase the damage and speed of spells exponentially, but reduce AoE size by a ton, making the attack similar to an arrow.
These would likely start being available at Level 100.
These weapons will scale with Magic and Weapon level, so they are most effective when used by Conjurers (Magic/Weapon hybrid builds), but also decent when used by Mages (Magic builds) and Warriors (Weapon builds)
As someone with a Warlord file myself I think this idea is… barely fine. If you compare this to how Mages and Warriors can use arcanium weapons, then strength and weapon builds should be able to use strength weapons. A big issue with this suggestion is that it will barely add anything to the game while taking time to develop. If you make the downsides too extreme, then nobody will use it, but if the downsides aren’t big enough then Warlords will lose their identity since too many people will use them. Seriously, if you had a 20% dmg and attack size penalty for using strength weapons as a non-Warlord, who’s gonna use it? And if it was like 5% then it would be almost negligible, so too many non-Warlords would use it. You probably have to get really creative with the nerfs for this to work, with stuff like attack speed or random spread or higher requirements or something.
There is an argument to be made though that developing things for a small fraction of the playerbase is not worth it though. If you add a new weapon, roughly 1/3 of the playerbase will experience it (not entirely true but it kind of makes sense when you factor in multiple files and the fact that not everybody will progress to that point or obtain that item). If you add a new strength weapon, even less of the playerbase will ever touch them. By making stuff more accessible you are making your developing time worth more, so therefore strength weapons should be more accessible even if Warlords lose their identity. IMO strength weapons don’t feel that unique right now, it feels like I’m only using my weapons anyways since imbue + strength weapons heavily encourage me to play like a weapons user. I’ve though of special fighting styles that involve weapons or magic, but that’s for another day.
IMO the best solution is to not change anything and wait until Warlords (and probably Conjurers) become more fleshed out. Then we can make a decision on Warlord’s playstyle and whether or not the exclusive items should be more accessible.
honestly I don’t think mages or warriors should be able to use arcanium weapons.
mages don’t know how to swing a sword or shoot a bow effectively and no matter how skilled a warrior is, they’re missing the whole point of the weapon by using it without magic.
The whole point of strength / warrior weapons is so its warlord exclusive, yes i know conjurer can feel left out but having the ability to infuse magc is enough for me imo, doesn’t feel the same infusing fighting styles in weapons for warlords ngl
what i think should be good could be arcaniumm weapons, should still be usable by warriors but better with conjurers