Recently I decided to switch from Blademaster to Pureblade, purely because I loved the idea of the skillset. And wanted to finally get away from the IRE requirement that all warriors wield dual weapons to be effective. Anyway, as I've played with with the skillset, I've noticed a few things. Which I will share with you all right now.

Skill Assessment:

First of all, I have to say that I really like some of the new skills that are in this skillset like Openchest, CrackElbow, AmputateLeg, AmputateArm, Furrow, and SliceBicep.

There are a few flawed skills like Cleave though, which is basically our equivalent of Lunge/Crush. But it is a poor equivalent because even though it costs no power, its other costs outweigh its advantages. To explain more indepth though, it allows us to cut through a person shield and rebounding, and then strike once in the same move. But it also decreases the wound damage and health damage of that strike by 33%, has a increased balanced recovery time, and no guarantee that the strike will even hit since it can be blocked by stances/parry. I can understand the damage decrease, but the speed decrease is a little too much.

There is also a need for more active skills in all of the weapon specializations but especially Pureblade and Axelord. I can easily see how the lack of a true Lunge/Crush equivalent will hurt us. And yes, I am jealous of the Axelord's Roundhouse skill, since Decapitate is no where near as useful in comparison since warriors have no easily sustainable passive attacks that can hinder their opponent's movements. Furrow was a really nice start, but more are needed.

One last problem I see with Pureblade is that most of the skills that were taken from Blademaster, are just not that useful with singular attacks. For example, LegArtery, ArmArtery, and SliceEar are all three minor wounds that were good for stacking afflictions. They can not serve that purpose with singular attacks because you can only give one of these affliction at a time, giving your opponent more than enough time to cure it before you can attack again. It is also quite disappointing that two skills that would have been extremely useful for Pureblade were not included, namely Impale and Rend. I would also like to see a power feat skill in both skill sets that would allow us to double swing so to speak. A downward slash followed by a forward thrust for Purebladers and what ever for the Axelords, which would bypass stances and parry but be blocked by rebounding and shield. It would also have half the damage output while maintaining its wounding damage.

One handed vs Two Handed:

I think alot of the problems so far that I see with Pureblade and by extension Axelord come from the fact that we have only singular attacks in a game that has been balanced so far for dual attacks. Pureblade/Axelord masters have half the affliction rate of their counterparts and no real way currently to make up for that fact. One reasonable solution to it though, is to increase the venom affliction rate of two handed weapons to 100%, because of the fact that they cut deeper and thus increase the chance of infection. While that wouldn't solve the problem totally, it would help quite a bit.

There is also a small imbalance in the effect weapon stat modication skills and artifacts have on one handed weapons vs two handed ones. For example, forging runes offer one handed weapon users a overall increase of 50 points of additional stats. 10 points to each of their weapon's damage, 10 points to each of their weapons's precision, and 10 points to each of their weapons' speed. Which in practice equates to 20 points of higher damage, 20 points of higher wound damage, and 10 points of faster speed. Thus I think all stat modifications should have double the effect on the damage and precision of two handed weapons.

Don't forget about puissance and how that has not been adjusted for two handed weapons...

- Venoms: are quite absolute for two handers at the moment yeah, giving them a 100% success rate and shrug from there with resilience would balance that.

- Puissance: is too strong for two handers, since unlike with one handers, it increases all the damage. It needs to be downgraded and balanced so it's equal to puissance used by a one-hander.

- Cleave: is too slow, the damage should be reduced as it is, but the wounding and speed should stay identical to a normal strike.

- Wound afflictions: we need impale and rend, but not pinleg. There is currently no reason at all why anyone would want to stance or parry to protect his gut against a pureblade or axelord right now.

Another suggestion, since almost every useful affliction for two handers is given by slashes:



Should change to:

I like that idea, Thorgal. Slashing is far too random.

I like Thorgal's idea on changing swings, but would it make blademasters/bonecrushers overly accurate in swings, since they can have two strikes per round?

As for puissance, we have seen how unbalanced it is in conjunction with omen. But keep in mind that three out of four warrior guilds do not have omen. Using puissance alone is just doubling the damage for 5 power. Pulp give similar damage but also increases the chances of a wound affliction firing and costs 8 power. I would hate to see Puissance being downgraded to the point of uselessness. It is a transcedant ability afterall.

puissance increases a 2 weapon person by 50%, a 1 weapon person 100%... same power cost...

Theres no reason to have puissance be twice as effective for a single weapon then for someone with two weapons.

Exactly.

I don't think it can be compared like that though. Pureblades and Axelords depend a lot more on damage then Blademasters and Bonecrushers because i) the single chance of poison going off and ii) single chance of wound affliction going off. As long as you have the triggers, curing for most of the afflictions is going to be so easy that it is not even funny.

Damage aside, it is like someone slinging runes at you once every 2 - 4 seconds, except he has no demon/angel/demesne attacking on his side.

2 handed weapons allreayd have double percision, so while yo ucan't stack afflictions, they will probabbly happen more reliably. (i.e. you can predict it going off better)

Precision (for wounds) and Damage (for damage) stats have been tuned up for 2-handed weapons so that the damage/wounds over time is on par with using two 1-handed weapons. As far as predicting wound afflictions, I failed to see how Pureblade or Axelord can predict them better.

Some notes...

The assessment of cleave is wrong. It's intent was to compensate for the fact you cannot do a raze and a slash in a round like those with dual weapons. As for wounds and poisons, this was compensated for by making your weapons forge with more than double precision. This may not be noticeable due to a lack of materwork. Thus there is less wounding and poisons, but the wounds you inflict are worse (easier to get amputations, etc.). As for wounds like rend and impale, it was intentional to make it so that different specializations will focus on different body parts. I expect axelords to strike the legs more than any other specialization, for example, due to the kneecapping ability and the amputation strike. It would not be desirable from a design standpoint to have every body part have awesome climaxes for a specific specialization, like giving one specialization impale/rend, concussion, behead, amputations of arms and legs, kneecapping, and a crushed chest.

Puissance will be looked into today. Expect something to change (not sure what yet).

the problem i see is the abilty to 'stack' afflictions like duel weapons.

with the right amount of skill and a little luck, I can get 2 regen-mending breaks, or i can go for knockdown - smite down or breakleg smite down for the kill.

a 2 handed weapon user, well they can't do that. their attacks are stronger yes, but you can't really stack afflictions to keep someone from curing something else.

also, behead seems utterly useless, no offence intended but how is a warrior meant to keep someone prone for 10 seconds straight?

i mean, If i hit someone with every affliction i can give venom and wound wise, even with poor curing they won't be messed up for 10 seconds straight.

Wait, they have to -stay- prone the whole time? That IS useless. If they only had to -start- prone, no.

It's the exact same thing as behead in Achaea. Literally recycled the same code. So however the knights do it there...

More accurate venomlock related things, plus falcon keeping people off balance? Iunno.

knights there have guaranteed reliable venom combos, plus guaranteed reliable breaking of limbs, a good knight could get you to a stage of being prone for that long, especially with the falcon, 2 double-breaks and a heap of other afflictions from their fast rate.

Behead would be much better as a 10 second instakill, like judgement or the like....he are already screwey here because of an unworkable sacrifice (insert whine here)

but seriously, I was going to take up pureblade or axelord, but after looking at the skillsets, its clear that BC and BM are far superior, hence I'm staying as a BC

The problem with pureblade, is they don't have any way to kill...they don't have knockdown or stun to slow down their healing, they don't have rend to stack up bleeding, all the afflictions are given by swings, which randomly hits one out of three limbs.

Behead and Decapitate are way too easy to avoid. The skillset is amazingly cool, especially with a katana! ..but unless you have omen, puissance and a 380 damage claymore, I just don't see any options to actually kill someone.

But I don't have much experience with it yet, my assessment is purely theoretical, maybe someone else has some insight in how a pureblade knight can kill?

On a sidenote, giving pureblade gut-impale and rend would solve that part.

The thoughtfulness behind Cleave is nice but most warriors rarely use a raze/strike combo because i) raze balance is sufficiently fast, and ii) a strike/strike combo is preferable because it can give multiple afflictions, i.e. stacking of afflictions. Cleave is even worse than raze/strike because of the increase in balance regain time.

As for the example of Axelords going for the legs, there is no way to even touch the legs if the opponent is stancing legs, or any other body part, since there is no ability to bypass stancing like crush/lunge.

Perhaps, with an added power cost, make Cleave work like crush/lunge which ignores stance, parrying and aura but stopped by shield?

I don't see how the assessment of cleave is wrong, other than my saying it is our Lunge/Crush equivalent. Compared to raze/slash and even double raze then double slash, Cleave is inferior. And thats because of the increased balance recovery requirement that it has.

Edit: damn