some thoughts and ideas about weapons

[kyuubee]

this game is quite fancy about magic and stuff but imo there is a problem with the ordinary, mundane weapon in it

for one, there are three types of weapon right now that are united by one weapons mastery - swords, maces and axes
they are literally no different from each other - they use the same mastery, they use the same stat, they have the same stat for base damage multiplier, they have the same dual wield limitations (greatswords, greatmauls and battle axes are two-handed, waraxes, longswords and maces cannot be wielded off-hand unless you play reaver/giant), their only difference it's their names i.e. flavor and some accuracy bonus which counts differently for them, overall they look like the very same weapon with different names

then, this game really lacks the most historically common weapon, which also would probably be the first weapon of choice of anybody who wants to slay a monster without going too close to it (consider saint george (: ), yes, i mean spears. the only polearm in the game it's tridents, those have the same stat and multiplier like other two-handed weapons, but at least they use a different mastery...

also while the dual wielding system in tome4 is somewhat realistic (daggers were the actual off-hand weapon that was widely used historically after all, and they are the main off-hand weapon in the game unless you are a reaver/giant where it fits the theme or use a whip which is fancy), but still, many people prefer, at least for a while, to dual wield daggers because, well, you will need to train only one mastery - dagger mastery, instead of two - dagger mastery and weapons mastery, and since overall daggers do a similar damage to one handed weapons there is little initiative to go sword and dagger, even marauders dual wield two daggers very often

so, what i propose -

1) to differentiate swords, axes and maces in some way even if they use the same mastery, like different damage multipliers, different mix of stats (instead of pure strength for all of them), different limitations (i doubt people back then used to commonly wield a dagger with an axe or a mace, those weapons i believe were used with a shield)

2) to introduce spears, maybe with a whole class about their usage (knight/lancer/spearman theme)

3) to give a bit more initiative to go sword and dagger (but without forcing, say, normal-sized rogues to abandon their dual daggers which is cool for them) or maybe to introduce a class that is about using sword and dagger (duelist theme)

[Phantomfrettchen]

I've thought about this a bit and another consequence of this is actually equipment frequency. The rarity for daggers was since then adjusted from 5 to 4, but this is still a problem. So basically any class that utilises standard weapons has a comparatively higher rate of good weapon drops. Daggers are somewhat compensated here due to the sheer amount of enemies wielding them, especially early game in the base game.

Currently the only real difference is in the accuracy effects. As consequence all 2h base weapons as well as tridents feel the same and generally speaking random tridents are likely to never be worthwhile as they are too unlikely to be even comparable and the only actually usable one is a Randart. Whips have since been buffed via buffs of artifact whips, but i still feel like those are only situational fixes, rather than overall fixes. As every time we add new content to the game that cannot actually drop said items(rogue in EoR comes to mind, being mostly useless due to the lack of enemy rogues and no dagger drops).

Now the real question would be how to actually alleviate this problem.
Possibilities include weaponspecific abilities akin to block, for example parry for swords, block for shields, slash for axe or stab(low damage but very fast attack). This would also make Exotic weapons much more interesting as you could give them powerful effects like whips disarming people etc.
Another option would be altering egos on specific weapontypes, either through making or limiting egos for/to specific weapons or by giving a modifier to specific affixes depending upon weapontype. Specifically the techniquebased egos come to mind for this as they are the ones that grant us speedy slashing maces, quick greataxes and the likes. While i think this would make selection a bit more specific i am not sure whether this would actually change the feeling associated with these weapontypes. Only with really weaponspecific powerful higher egos could this occur... but even then the base weapontypes will not feel too different.