Sun Paladin basic weapon comparison

[Tryble]

So, you can use Developer mode and the Shertul training room to check out how well the DPT of various setups works out.
Since I wanted to know how well Grisly Constitution worked (or didn't) compared to normal 1H / Shield setups, I took an Ogre in there and checked out the autoattack damage over a few hundred turns in various setups. Checked staff too, while I was there.

This is by no means rigorous testing, I just took a naked ogre, slapped some weapons on him, turned on all sustains, and smacked around some target dummies.

I got size category +4 by using boots with massiveness ego, behemoth hide, and the giant wraps/belt set.
For the tests without, I left Giant Wraps on, took all else off, and used a STR+6 amulet to have identical STR on both tests. I used an amber ring to match the 4% crit/8% damage lost from the boots.

The character had mastery capped on both weapons and staves, and had 62% crit (righteous strength included).
I used Summertide as the shield for all these.

PROBLEMS:
Massiveness boots provide 4% phys crit / 8% phys damage - I used an amber ring to counterbalance it, which is +4 ALL crit / 8% ALL damage. This means the no size test is likely about 3~4% higher damage than it actually is, since 50% of damage is light. I have recorded unmodified numbers here.


Various 2H + Shield, No Size bonuses / Size + 4:

Borosk's Hate: 6270 DPT / 6600 DPT
Champion's Will 6650 DPT / 7100 DPT
Warmaster Gnarg's Murderblade: 7270 DPT / 7650 DPT
Murderblade + Arcane Might: 9820 DPT


1H Sword / Shield:

44 DMG White Longsword: 4800 DPT
Spellblade: 5050 DPT



2H Staff / Shield, Size +4:

Telos Spire: 6920 DPT
Bolbum's Big Knocker: 6600 DPT
Bolbum's Big Knocker + Arcane Might: 8520 DPT


2H Weapons + Shield, +4 Size, without Righteous Strength:

Borosk's Hate: 4250 DPT
Bolbum's Big Knocker: 4450 DPT

BONUS!

Legacy of the Naloren, Size +4:
At Mastery 5: 7370 DPT
At Mastery 10: 8430 DPT
With Arcane Might: 10,380 DPT



Initial Conclusions:

So, as far as the power penalty goes reducing damage...it's pretty minor. The power loss itself is reasonably significant.

However, the offhand damage proc penalty does seem to do serious damage to Sun Paladin's offense; see the difference between Borosk's Hate's 4100 DPT and the 1H'ers 5300~. However, Righteous Strength adds a lot of damage, more than enough to outweigh the loss, and can easily be considered the entire reason a Sun Paladin would want to use a 2H in the first place. If you go this route, 5/5 it immediately.


In any case, this is just bump damage, so take from it what you will. I was merely curious how 2H + Shield, 1H + Shield, and Staff + Shield all compared to one another in very, very broad terms, and whether Grisly Constitution was worth it at all.

Fun fact: The most potent activated abilities, assault and brandish, do anywhere from 20,000-25,000 damage, without crit mult bonuses.

[Jahf]

If you get it and have the same char handy at the time ... I'm curious how Champion's Will compares. I'm guessing low (the benefits from it are in buffing Talents) but I found it worthy enough to build around it on an Ogre (posted in a different thread).

[Tryble]

I went ahead and remade the test character and re-compared the setups, this time including Champion's Will.

It's pretty much in line with the other weapons, doing a little better than most. Warmaster's Blade still is king of sustained damage, though; apparently they count as 'Living' to trigger it's +20% damage bonus. To be honest, I think that's pretty much the best 2H in the game. It's just so dang good.

[grobblewobble]

It would be great if you could also show us how this compares to Legacy of the Naloren at Exotic Weapon Mastery 10.

Hint: it's going to make the Warmaster's Blade look bad.

In the 1H category, you should definitely check Dawn's Blade + the Unsetting Sun set. I would also give the Butcher sword a try.

[Tryble]

I redid the tests, again. But this time, I included Legacy of the Naloren, both at 5 and 10 mastery, just for fun.
I also checked the Murderblade, the Knocker, and Naloren with Arcane Might added in.

It turns out that either Arcane Might OR Naloren are fine damage prodigies; they improve your output by pretty similar values. The big winner is Naloren + Might, wrecking all other weapons and doing the most damage.

However, the murderblade with Arcane Might is really not far behind at all, dealing only about 5% less damage than the dual-prodigy eating Mighty Naloren. Plus, the murderblade's -20% damage taken from living enemies probably puts it ahead as far as total package goes, in my opinion at least, but that's debatable.

I forgot to include Dawn's Blade + Unsetting sun before I learned Arcane Might, so I left it out. My bad.

[bpat]

These numbers are really interesting. Did your Naloren numbers count the damage from Stunning Blow and Spit Poison procs?

[Tryble]

All I did was hold the arrow into the training dummy for about 500 turns and jot down the average damage. So it should have (I know I was hearing the constant blob spam of spit poison going off), but I wasn't paying very close attention to the damage breakdown.

[bpat]

In that case, I don't understand how Murderblade count have almost as high damage as Naloren when Naloren has better everything aside from damage to living, unless the dummy counts as living for some reason. Was the Arcane Might Naloren number at mastery 5 or 10? If 5 it makes more sense.

[Tryble]

The mastery was at 10.

I specifically asked about it in chat one day, and people were saying that the dummy counted as Living. How anybody knows that off the top of their head I don't know, but looking at the murderblade's performance I can only assume they're right. If it's getting the +20%, then its DPT would be closer to 7850 before that kicked in, which is pretty much in line with the other numbers.

[Majestix]

I would be interested to see how a 1-handed staff compares to your numbers. When I played Sun Palas, I found that on a staff build the 2H option was really not very interesting. The point here is that on a staff build, you can neglect strength to a point, and instead get your crit rate to 100%, using cunning and dex.

[grobblewobble]

Okay, it turns out the Orcs add-on has a weapon that beats Naloren by a large margin.

Sawrd.

[Tryble]

I would be interested to see how a 1-handed staff compares to your numbers. When I played Sun Palas, I found that on a staff build the 2H option was really not very interesting. The point here is that on a staff build, you can neglect strength to a point, and instead get your crit rate to 100%, using cunning and dex.

You can neglect STR when running a 2H Staff same as 1H. There's no difference. 2H Staff Pally only has requirements and perhaps shield damage to consider as the only reasons to take any STR at all. See my insane winner.

The problem with 1H is you lose out on the exceptional MAG scaling artifact staves midgame, and the gigantic crit mult egos late game.
I...may...run the numbers at some point, eventually, but I simply ignored short staves because they're strictly worse than the 2H option - the worst part of a ogre staff pally run is the pre-2H early game, where you're either running a short staff or a typical 1H you don't have the stats to properly support.
I suppose non-ogres may be interested in how a short staff stack up against other options.

Okay, it turns out the Orcs add-on has a weapon that beats Naloren by a large margin.

Sawrd.

Don't have the expansion, so I won't be adding it in any time soon.

[grobblewobble]

Don't have the expansion, so I won't be adding it in any time soon.

Okay. It is a weapon with a low basic power rating (30-48), and "multiple attacks: +3".

That means it strikes 4 times with every hit instead of once. And yes, it does seem this applies to special attacks, so for example a flurry with this weapon is ridiculously devastating.

I don't have a character editor myself, but just to give you an idea, I did a quick comparison with a level 29 halfling doombringer.

Average bump damages over 500 turns:

With Murdering Blade: 558 bump damage / turn average
With Dethblyd (special doombringer weapen): 546 bump damage / turn average
With Sawrd: 1565 bump damage / turn average

The Legacy of the Naloren prodigy suddenly looks very pale.

edit: I'll mention this in the ideas section, this looks like a little too much of a good thing..

[St_ranger_er]

Okay. It is a weapon with a low basic power rating (30-48), and "multiple attacks: +3".

That weapon perform 3 attacks per bump (not 4 like you said), instead of 1. Can't remind how it works woth flurry and other stuff (like telekinetic wield or so).

I don't have a character editor myself,

There are developer mode in options menu, which i found very nice to testing things. For not so deep things even no need to know console commands or game architecture.

[Tryble]

So now that I have EoR (and know how to properly manipulate things like level without using semi-godmode), I wanted to update this thread with better, more realistic values. Problem is, it's difficult to generate certain artifacts; murderblade and sawrd in particular. They can't be created spontaneously with the create item/create all artifacts commands, and finding them manually is more trouble than I'm willing to go for.

Maybe someone knows a lua command to generate items on the fly? The relevant wiki page doesn't have any info here.