Arcane Blade, Why not shields?

[Stome]

After some searching and digging around the net its clear everyone used to say go DW with arcane blade. But it seems something changed not long ago that makes that harder. A change to the stats needed to use daggers I believe?

Now the game itself tries to urge you towards twohanded but clearly all the class mechanics don't work that great with it (making me wonder why it is suggested.)

What I do notices though is that shield offense has a lot of skills that hit multiple (since the class is based off on hit abilities mostly.) times and one even gives auto crits which jives well with their abilities.

So my question is why do I not see any talk of this? Is there some major flaw with it I am not seeing? Yeah the damage is low but AB does not need high weapon damage as they have on hit abilities to make up for it.

Anyone have any thoughts they would like to share?

[phantomglider]

What changed is that Arcane Blade stuff used to use Dexterity instead of Cunning, and also they didn't have Shield Offense.

[Stome]

I think you have that backwards. After watching a vid from a few months back I can say with certainty that what changes is daggers used to use Cunning. But what changed does not matter to much.

So the shield offense is newer huh? Interesting. I am still surprised I have not seen any post on testing this. Just complaints about how thin one has to spread the points to DW now. I might give it a go then.

[SageAcrin]

I thought the game specifically tried to urge you away from it.

The only dualwield specific mechanic is that it halves the Arcane Combat chance. Sure, daggers run off Cunning, but plenty of melee classes have to build Willpower or Magic, and there's not a lot of weapons that run off those either.

At any rate, Dualwield has the highest potential damage in the game at this point, by a truly ridiculous margin(15k Flurry is possible), and a big post was made on this subject because it's amazing, flashy and probably needs to be nerfed a bit at the high end. This is probably why it's popular.

But Sword/Shield is probably more practical and well-rounded. As you noted, the pointspread on dualwield is very hard to get off the ground-you get a insanely good lategame, but getting there can be very hard. Sword/Shield gets a ton of damage potential as well and is much easier to get started, I think. Give it a go.

[tylor]

Can shield attacks trigger bolts?

[SageAcrin]

Yes.

[nukularpower]

At any rate, Dualwield has the highest potential damage in the game at this point, by a truly ridiculous margin(15k Flurry is possible), and a big post was made on this subject because it's amazing, flashy and probably needs to be nerfed a bit at the high end. This is probably why it's popular.

But Sword/Shield is probably more practical and well-rounded. As you noted, the pointspread on dualwield is very hard to get off the ground-you get a insanely good lategame, but getting there can be very hard. Sword/Shield gets a ton of damage potential as well and is much easier to get started, I think. Give it a go.

Flurry certainly could use a bit of toning down, but I have to wonder if the problem is more that the 2h tree is pretty lame in itself. I've always wondered, though - does a shield count as a weapon for the purposes of the Arcane Combat proc penalty?

[phantomglider]

Daggers have always been Strength and Dexterity as far as I am aware, unless you are a rogue with Lethality, at which point they are Dexterity and Cunning. It's been that way since at least b37.

[sofocles]

if you go shield you can forget about pumping dex, but the problem is that the main source for dmg in lategame is the free spell thing in "arcane combat" the other spell that is good midgame is the crit chance area dmg (which stops growing at around 130dmg) . DEX allows you to use weapon focus = meaning high chance of free attacks so high dex dualwielding dagger arcane blade can attack = get a free spell + free attack =get a free spell

I dont know exactly how to get those 15k dmg but im pretty sure you need flurry + insane high dex + weapon focus. If you want weapon focus to be worthwhile you need to max dex.

[nukularpower]

Flurry works with mindstars, right? Pumping Wil is probably easier than Str+Dex... hmm...

No way to get Psiblades, though

[HousePet]

Flurry with mindstars apparently does each attack at 100%.
Mindstars aren't allowed to go lower than 100% :/

[wobbly]

Can shield attacks trigger bolts?

Yes.

Are you sure? I've never seen it proc on shield pummel? Both assault & overpower include weapon strikes.

As for shield arcane blades in general, eternal guard + spectral shield reduces damage on each individual attack by 200-300 for 3 rounds on a high-end shield which is nothing to be sneezed at.

[SageAcrin]

Can shield attacks trigger bolts?

Yes.

Are you sure? I've never seen it proc on shield pummel? Both assault & overpower include weapon strikes.

As for shield arcane blades in general, eternal guard + spectral shield reduces damage on each individual attack by 200-300 for 3 rounds on a high-end shield which is nothing to be sneezed at.

I'm not absolutely certain, but I can't see any reason in the code, and several other people have told me that it works.

Shield Pummel works like any other weapon skill, and they all proc it.

[tylor]

If magic combat is more than 100% chance, then with dual wield you can have more than one proc per bump on average.

[b0rsuk]

My problem with Arcane Blades is they are a melee class lacking both effect immunities and good saves. You can always play them as a ranged caster, but then why not just play an Archmage ? With saves and resists as bad as they are, they are a negative status effect sponge. And die, unless built as glass cannons.

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It is true that 2H weapons mostly have bad skills.

Killing Blow "kill" effect almost never triggers when it matters. In my opinion it should *automatically* work even on bosses - it already requires you to bring an enemy down to 20% ! Additionally, stamina use at level4 is unreasonable. You can't regen stamina fast enough to make a decent use out of it.

Sunder Armor is an insult. It's an anti-player talent. Very, very few monsters have armor worth mentioning - even in the East you will usually find enemies with 0 Armor. Literally only a small number uniques and rares have good Armor, and it's not worth training this talent just for that. On top of it, 2H weapons by their nature have the least problem with armor, so the skill is fundamentally bad.

Stunning Blow, Death Dance, Berserker are the sole good 2H talents. Killing Blow too if you use 1 point.