Somehow all my masterweapon waraxes end up with uber precision and poor damage, the stats remind me more of a greataxe than a waraxe... can anyone confirm that?

The announcement stated that waraxes would be heavy damage whereas greataxes would be heavy precision, and the regular waraxe/greataxe designs seem to work that way.

Nope. I forged a 322/360/140 and a 343/270/170 or something around those stats. Keep going.

Damage: 366 Precision: 315 Speed: 154 thats marcalo's waraxe

I forged a couple dozend and the results are all similar to the two posted above.

And, your first example has 322 360... how is that a weapon heavily biased on damage?

i was having the same problem you were trying to get the axe to crack over 300 damage, and daevos offered to forge it for me, and came back with the axe i got now. to be fair i assume it took him ALOT of reforges cause he was at it for at least 3 hours.

Aye. I got one for Tharruk that had halfway acceptable damage, but still wasn't anywhere near where I'd expect a waraxe to be. I mean it doesn't have to have 500 damage or anything, only I think it shouldn't have precision almost twice the damage stat on an average forging.

I would expect them to average less damage than its own precision. Saying it will lean towards damage does not mean it will have more damage than precision. Unfortunately, just because redoing forging after converting to-hit to precision would be an impossible task, the precision score tends to be higher than other stats. What you need to look at is your average damage compared to the average damage of other two-handed weapons.

The average damage I get on a masterweapon waraxe is just -barely- higher than a regular waraxe, whereas the precision is a whole lot higher

Roark-

Our concern, I think, is your statement before that the damage adjustment is made by doubling the damage stat, and you said that is how we should compare it.

Unfortunately, if we're forging 'damage biased' weapons with 250 on damage stat, that's the equivalent of a 125 damage flail, which blows chunks.

I've been forging claymores for about 3 hours, and although I've gotten two pretty decent forges, they were only the equivalent of 170 damage flails. Everything else was embarrasingly bad, average around 260. I'm also using a Daevos forge that's fully 30 points better in damage than anything I've forged in 3 hours.

Why are the claymores averaging 250 damage if they are supposed to be double the damage of things like flails and broadswords? That is our question.

I just forged 118 masterwork claymores. The average damage did come under what I expected compared to masterwork broadswords, but not by much. But the speed was actually a tad higher than I expected as well, so it may just be the law of samples vs. populations is why I am not exactly on the target I expect to see. I'll look into it after dinner, but I still suspect you just don't have a large enough sample size to see the full range of stats for the weapons.

The problem, as I see it, is:
1. There is a large variance in stats. 'Damage biased' claymores show at least 140 points of possible variance. I haven't tracked the worst sword I've made, but it was around that much lower than the one I'm using.
2. Stats are really, really important to warrior effectiveness.
3. Forging patterns with low-to-zero reforging costs create an incentive to sit around and forge for hours and hours on end to get a weapon that makes you competetive with everyone else. Everything seems to get balanced among the outliers, not the averages, which might be fine since we have a way to effectively all be outliers.

But sitting around forging for hours on end to get a competetive weapon is NOT FUN. Why can't the variance be something reasonable? Or lessoned on the stat that the weapon type is supposedly biased toward?

I don't think I should have to forge 118+ claymores to get a decent weapon or distribution that is on par with broadswords.

Is the distribution for two handed weapons in relation to their stats? I.e. if damage is twice as high, is the range of variance twice as high too? Can't you just cut that down to the same range as one handed weapons for us?

The sampling should be the same between the two. In other words, the quality of 118 claymore should be identical to the quality of 118 broadswords.

My stats skills are a tad rusty, so I'm not sure if variance is considered double in this situation. But basically if the worst claymore you forge in a sample should have double the damage of the worst broadsword you forge in a sample. Similarly, the best claymore in a sample should be double the best broadsword. The number of claymores above 360 damage in a sample should be the same number of broadswords in a sample above 180 damage. If anything, it ought to be easier to find a quality claymore since you only need to forge one claymore of X damage, whereas you have to forge two quality broadswords for Blademaster at X/2 damage. This means it should take twice as long for a blademaster practitioner to get his desired weapons. I am doing my uberforge script for the broadswords now to see how that comes out. I should have results soon.

Edit: It is worth noting that tightening the variance for two-handed weapons means that your top end weapons will be less than double the damage of a top end broadsword or flail. I don't think that is desirable.

You're right, I didn't think about the upper end problem. Please don't take my suggestion and change the variance

I guess it just feels like there is something wrong forging over and over and having the best claymore I've made in roughly 3 hours of forging over a few months be around 340, which is like 2 170 damage broadswords. By no means cream of the crop.

Anyway, thanks for all your attention and stuff Roark, I know you're working hard for us and we do appreciate it

I agree with zero/low cost reforging being a huge problem. There's basically nothing then stopping you, save time (which some people have too much of) from getting excellent weapons. Once a few fighters have them, everyone needs them to be competitive. It makes having an average weapon and a range just a point of annoyance.

Uh, you're kidding right? The exquisitively crafted draconic broadsword is a fairly low forge one for me, taking only 5 leather and 5 garnet to reforge. I've have had to reforge it in excess of 150 times by now to get some moderately decent stats. That's roughly 750 leathers and garnets. The problem isn't those are exceedingly expensive, it's rather that some comms are limited, such as garnets. Also, there are only a handful of weapons and helms that are all metals. All helms seem to have a cap on them right now.

Since you are not a warrior, you could simply say that low/no cost reforging is a problem. Since your entire offense doesn't revolve around your weapons and your methods of killing people don't involve them. Seriously, try out as a warrior and you'll see why we have a need for low/no cost forging items.

Seriously, if it was up to me, I'd make weapons have set stats, and kill forging.

The only reason you need low/no cost forging items is because you need high end outlier stats on your weapons. The same reason I blow craploads of gold in Diablo gambling for rares. If average weapons were truly average, it wouldn't be a problem.

Sylphas has a point. The definition of "moderately decent stats" is arbitrary; easy and inexpensive reforging is what made that as high as it is.

On the other hand, the point that isn't being considered is the virtue of taking Forging for your tradeskill. Each tradeskill has some advantage that isn't about trade, ranging from utterly useless (Jewelry) to quite useful (Herbs, Alchemy) with a lot of middling stuff in between. Forgers generally consider forging to be in the middle, but I think they're not seeing the big picture. It's not just the armor. The ready and constant access to dwarven runes is a big one -- even when you say "just ask and I'll rune your stuff", 99% of the time it's not that easy. But that's not the real advantage of forging. Asking someone to forge you a sword is hard enough most of the time; asking someone to forge you a sword 150 times until it's perfect is really uncommon. But forgers will do that for themselves regularly. As a rule, forgers have by far the best weapons and armor (which makes sense, really) and that's a big, big advantage.

Considering that Forging is economically one of the worst possible trade skills, possibly only behind Poisons, I don't consider the fact that we are equipped with the best armor and weapons an unfair advantage. There are various reasons for Forging being a weak tradeskill, namely because armors and weapons last a very long time, ranging from 150 to over 300 months. In addition, the existance of Greatrobes make it more likely that a Guardian would use it over leather (no contest here) or chain mail. Leaving only warriors that use fieldplates but that pretty much means you can get a guildmate to forge it for free.

Also, not all of us have the time or patience to sit around forging all day. I tried forging some exceptional rapiers but after around 200 or so forgings I just gave up and paid someone to do it for me.

Honestly, if weapon and armor stats didn't vary, you know how boring that would be? Why don't you just make all magic attacks not vary in strength at all then too, then Cosmicfire, Blast, Staff, Cudgel, Curse would all do the same and we'd have one hell of a boring combat system.

All Cosmicfire at the same int DOES do the same damage. All Cudgel blasts at the same int DO do the same damage.

I'm honestly surprised when I find good warriors that don't have forging... I kind of thought it was a must. (untill I got my weapons artified)

And if you have Night or Moon, being a blacksmith just makes your rock.

However, you sacrifice not having a trade income. which is fine since you mak enough gold bashing.