TLDR; using higher tier weapons is a net negative for the most part, imbuement doesn’t work very well, boss weapons don’t do much
I want to preface this by saying that the game is still fresh etc. and I’m sure these things will be balanced in due time. That said, I want to address these early on so that they can be fixed early on. I’d also love to hear alternate ideas for fixes or reasons I’m wrong.
Imbuement:
As a conjurer, imbuement is a big part of our kit and is all we get from our second awakening and should therefore make us stronger; See: 2nd magic for mages and damage increase, weapon aura and whatnot for warriors, and other classes barring vitality b/c spirit weapons aren’t a thing yet, get some sort of significant bonus. I can’t speak for how well warlock imbuement works because I haven’t played as one but it is possible issues are the same.
So with all that in mind, it makes no sense for imbuement to DECREASE damage, which it does. I ran numbers tests using the same equipment and weapons with and without imbuement and my spearthrow from my thunderspear did 196 damage with light imbued and 212 without any imbuement. I have issues with the spear itself as well but I’ll get to that later. This test holds true for other weapons; their unimbued counterparts do more damage than their magically fortified versions. I believe the reason for this is likely because my weapons stat is 10 higher than my magic stat, 120 and 130 respectively, but this still doesn’t make sense from a balancing or even realistic standpoint. A reinforced with magic weapon should on every level be better than one that is not and is being wielded the exact same way otherwise. The slight aoe buff that comes with some moves is not nearly worth losing damage off of our imbuement, and I believe that calculation should be additive, instead of what appears to be an averaging out of sorts between magic and weapons when coming up with the damage for imbued weapon hits.
Lower and higher tier weapons
It struck me as odd from the start that the old katana, regular katana, iron staff, spear, all have the same base damage but as I barely know what base damage does for a weapon I won’t say anything else about that. This problem is that outside of unlockable moves, an old katana is straight up the same as a regular one, and less expensive to wield. This doesn’t make sense; the old one is described as having put in decades of use and yet it does the same damage with the same moves, and those moves are easier to unlock. Sure, I can’t use anything past the first to with the old katana, but for a conjurer under level 150-170 that doesn’t matter at all, and it doesn’t align with its own lore. It could be argued that there are similar parallels in how the amulets of different tiers scale in the same manner, but at least in their case the levels add a raw stat boost; for day to day use an old katana is just as effective as a good one.
yo the spear kinda sucks:
A strong enchanted noble thunderspear does 212 damage on throw, and an unenchanted old spear does 208 on throw, presumably they do the same if they’re both strong, I wouldn’t know because I got bursting 4 times in a row on my spears and ran out of money. This is messed up. A boss drop spear should not do as much damage as a regular level 60 spear, and the skill is the exact same aoe wise as well. Considering the requirements for skill unlocks, this means that a level 50 old spear is going to be arguably better for me than lord ellius’ until around level 150. I get that to a degree though; as a conjurer I can’t expect the full benefits of weapon skills but the boss weapon is straight up worse in most situations right now when its base stats should be better for skills. Heck, stormcaller shoots more arrows than a regular bow with its skill, that would be reasonable, if the spear throw was more like a lance similar to the boss move with better damage scaling I’d be satisfied. I digress, though, as my real problem with spears is that they suck in comparison to katanas. My reasoning is simple; spears = katanas in damage but have less aoe at least for throw vs slash. katana dash might not set up combos but it has way better range in my opinion than the spear rush. Given that, buff the spear in damage a little bit at least for the throw to make it viable in place of the katana and it all makes more sense.
To conclude: I think the game is great and headed in the right direction, these are just some issues I have on the weapons side of things that don’t make much sense. I don’t have every item or everything kitted out so I probably missed some stuff but I think most of my problems would be resolved if
A. spears get a slight damage buff and at least an increase in damage when comparing spear toss to flying slash.
B. Boss items get worked in a way that makes them clearly better than the common variants
C. Magic imbuement becomes additive instead of a mean-value calculation so that conjurers aren’t punished for trying to train weapons.
P.S. why not use 130-120 magic-weapons, you may ask? well that’s because I wanted to unlock the 130 level sword move for the katana as opposed the the level 50 one on the old katana… imagine my surprise when they’re the same thing
I believe someone said that imbuements scale your damage based on your magic’s damage multiplier, shown when you first choose a magic. I do agree it’s stupid that lighter magics have a damage decrease and heavier ones only get a pretty small damage boost.
For the weapons thing, have you been upgrading them at a blacksmith? You didn’t mention any weapon levels so I’m not sure, I believe they may work like the power amulets?
If what you’re saying about imbuements is right, then yes that’s extremely dumb, imbuement should be a positive, not a sacrifice. As far as levels go, leveling weapons does not appear to affect their damage, and it’s hard to say whether the strong enchantment does much either. I have tried levels from 1-60 and all have been within 15 damage of eachother when using skills. I think the differences were cause by clashes or status effects of some kind so I wrote that off.
strange about the weapon levels, I guess it’s that way so that weapons scale similarly to magic/fighting styles? both of them only scale off of the stat, it would be weird for weapons to scale both off of the stat and off of the weapon quality. I do think boss weapons should have some upside though
What you’re saying about weapons scaling off of just stat similar to magic/fighting styles is valid from a balance standpoint, but I’d then argue that making the identical skills on those weapons only useable at higher weapons stat levels is kinda dumb
hey so I’m gonna read this entire thing and reply to all the shit you’re talking about as I go along but this was your first fucking mistake
Light is one of the weakest magics in the game in exchange for IMMENSE amounts of speed, ontop of that if you rapidly hit someone with atleast fighting style imbued attacks light imbuement it causes it’s blinding status effect to affect them so you trade a bit of damage in exchange for immense speed and blinding capabilities, it’s fair that you don’t know this cause NPCs are fucking immune to blind for some reason
Wait so you’re telling me that the base damage of weapons DOESN’T increase later?
Whaaaat?
I wanted to use a pair of claws on my mage build to inflict bleed and have some m1’s
Imagine my surprise when I upgraded my rusty claws twice and got… No stat increases whatsoever.
I thought maybe iron claws would be stronger but if what you’re saying is true then IG regular weapons are completely worthless for non-weapon builds?
Sucks to suck if you pull up a sunken sword on a mage file ig.
It’s more than just a slight AoE buff; depending on the magic it’s a speed buff, or a size buff, or the ability to proc status effects with your weapon instead of using your magic. From what I’ve heard, imbuement used to be extremely overpowered before Vetex and the balancing team changed it to be more equal with other builds cause imbuement hybrids were just too stacked.
Weapon tiers are mostly for determining how many skills a weapon will have; higher tier weapons will have more skills later on, as well as ultimate skills.
Hey yeah so I have not messed around with other magics much, and therefore have only seen the effects on my own weapon but frankly I have not seen much of a difference in speed between the light imbued and unimbued attacks. I have tried aiming them at a fixed point and counting the time, an inconsistent method, unfortunately, but I saw no large difference. As far as damage goes, I get that, I still think imbuement should be an increase if small, and if other buffs work as intended. Blinding im not too worried about. Vetex stated that he intends to make blind effect npcs at some point so I know he’s at least aware of that.
base weapon damage IS in fact different for some weapons. For example, level 100+ ravenna sword has base damage 15 and thunderspear has base damage 25. These appear to only affect m1 damage but I haven’t done extensive testing in that regard. The damage difference is very negligible or non existent in weapon skills.
I am not quite sure whether bullets are hit scan, it’s a little hard for me to tell. I will say that piercing shot turns into a beam which is nice but I’m pretty sure the move already hit instantly anyway and the aoe appears about the same just with light particle effects instead of standard weapon explosion. I will concede that katana quickdraw has slightly more aoe, and so does flying slash, it’s a little hard to tell because it looks huge but most of the visual part of the slash doesn’t seem to be a hitbox. I am almost certain that spear throw hitbox and any grab type move doesn’t change in aoe and spear throw unlike gun does not become a laser (unfortunately) so I can’t vouch for speed increase there. The quick draw and m1 for bow similarly appears to not have a speed increase as nearly as I can tell, although the tip is glowy, but hitbox appears about the same. Once again. I understand not getting an aoe or size buff given that the magic light is not good at either of those necessarily, but there is no immediately apparent speed buff.
as far as weapon tiers go, yes, I see that is what weapon tiers are for. I’m arguing that they should be for a little more than that from a world building standpoint (vetex is the same one who wanted players to navigate without a player marker for that real world experience, a real world rusty claw is gonna be way worse to hit people with than a fresh sharpened one unless they missed their tetanus shot), but I understand if it just wouldn’t fit into game balance.
Yeah yikes, what the fuck, there should be a MASSIVE difference in m1 speeds alongside projectile speeds. I know there’s a significant difference for my light thermo warlock but damn
yes… that’s what I said but if you want a counter point; spear, claws, katana, dagger, sword, all have a base damage of 5 and they are different weapons
