Sampire: Switch Swords for Mace?

[Roland of Atlantic]

Hey all,

I stoned swords off my sampire and trained macefighting up on the advice of a guildmember who swears that macefighting has significant advantages over swords. Says that maces kill monster's stamina which will hurt their ability to deal damage, which I can see, but after trying to remake the mountains of swords weapons I have to their equivalents in macefighting, I'm running into obstacles.

First, the soul seeker has places where it can be used to great effect, like Lady Mel (because of the insane SSI, it makes her nausea debuff unnoticable) and the order essence spawn (where the 100% cold and insane SSI can be used to fight hoards of lavas with a couple fire demons thrown into the mix simutaneously instead of weeding out the demons and fighting them alone).

Second, while the Blackstaff is a more balanced weapon than either the double axe or the scimitar, it cant be non-runic crafted with any amount of elemental damage besides cold which is a pain when trying to remake some of my spawn weapons (example: undead weapons that need fire damage, which can be made easily in bronze metal for 40%). I dont have a carpenter, and I wouldn't be rude enough to ask a guildie to spend the hours burning runics to find the elemental damage I want without the garbage mods that I don't.

Third, I miss my daishos. Both the nunchaku and tessen have feint. But the nunchaku won't let me use feint without ninjitsu, which is stupid because supposedly feint works with bush -OR- ninjitsu, and I use feint all day long on the daisho without ninjitsu. The tessen does such pitifully low damage that it takes a year to kill anything, and often you will redline what you're fighting but you cant get the oomph to actually finish it. I can put best weapon on a daisho, but it wastes a mod that can make the difference between a struggle and an easy kill. People have told me I dont need feint, that spamming armor ignore with a war axe works just as well, and I tried that out on a paragon balron and got my ass handed to me. And I know that crap wont fly when fighting Rikki solo. LOL

I guess I need some opinions as to wether switching to macefighting is a wise move or not, and if it is, how to overcome the problems I'm facing.

 

[Taylor]

Can I throw a bit of mud in the water? After trying swords, macing, and fencing on my sampire, I finally decided to stick with fencing. Leaf blades are pretty awesome.

I know that mace fighting can work well, but you really need 180 stamina and some ssi to make it work. What's your stamina and swing speed? What weapons are you using?

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

Can I throw a bit of mud in the water? After trying swords, macing, and fencing on my sampire, I finally decided to stick with fencing. Leaf blades are pretty awesome.

I know that mace fighting can work well, but you really need 180 stamina and some ssi to make it work. What's your stamina and swing speed? What weapons are you using?

I'm running 190 stam currently, but I want to create a set around the tinker legs which will leave me at 182 I believe. I use the ranger cloak for SSI. I have been using the blackstaff, which runs at cap without any SSI on it, and I recently imbued one with 50% hit lightning AND 50% energy area, and was surprised that they work together. With a flame slayer talisman, It eats fire ants like nothing else, and also does well with raptors. If I end up going back to swords, I might throw that combo on a double axe, even though it would leave me at 1.5 swing speed. Since I haven't figured out the boss weapon, I have been using a best weapon daisho.

I dont know about fencing. The leafblade might be a good weapon, but it's only half the equation. It needs to be paired with a flexible, high damage whirlwind weapon to work well. I mostly solo spawns, so the whirlwind weapon is very important in my arsenal.

 

[Obsidian]

My mace fighting sampires use only 3 weapon types:

- War axe for AI
- Diamond mace for hard hitting 1h where AI doesn't give great dmg
- Black staff for whirlwind

IMO, there is no decent mace fighting feint weapon. I use 120 parry on my mace fighting sampire so I don't find feint a requirement.

Personally, if you have swords on the sampire, I would run swords. Put the mace on another char and make a second sampire.

-OBSIDIAN-

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

Hi Roland,

The benefit of causing targets Stamina loss is trivial compared to the loss of weapon choice and base damage.

Rebuilding a 190 Stamina 5 SSI suit with Tinker Legs would only be of benefit if you were needing more Dex for Bandages, or a little more Imbuing weight on your weapons. Otherwise it would only make your suit non medable and more than likely mess up the resists on the rest of the suit.

You're in a suit capable of swinging Ornate Axes at the cap there isn't anything further than that to aim for. Unless your resists or DI or something don't add up of course.

 

[[JD]]

I switched from maces to swords and I'm loving it.

After checking out Maces, it seems to be more for PVP due to weapon specials and soem other factors.

 

[Pinco]

I have all combat skills stoned, but I really like fencing.
But if you have to choose between mace and swords, I suggest to keep swords...

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

Yeah, what made me think macefighting was nice is when I trained it up and imbued a blackstaff. The blackstaff is a bit slower than the scimitar, and a bit faster than the double axe, which is my usual crowd control weapon. Problem with the double axe is that it won't swing at cap without SSI. Usually I like to throw area effects and a slayer on my whirlwind weapon, which when combined with HSL and HML, eats up any room I might have had for SSI. I wish I could make exceptional weapons without damage increase.

The scimitar just plain can't make the damage that the blackstaff or double axe can. I pretty much stopped using them.

Oh well, without SSI on the double axe, I can still run the double at 1.5 with my current setup.

About the Parry, I'm running 120 parry too but only 30 DCI because I dont want to ditch the M&S glasses or lose the mods on my legs to run the fey legs. Plus, with the fey legs, I'd lose a mod on the gloves too, which currently only have 1 resist imbued and 4 buff mods. There wouldnt be a way to squeeze the fey legs in without 2 resist mods on the remaining 4 armor pieces. Or maybe if I were the luckiest sap in the game and found a slither, that would get me to 40 DCI. But as long as I'm dreaming....

As it stands, with my DCI at 30 and 120 parry, I still die occasionally on Rikki, and thats using feint. Without it I'd be dead meat, regardless of how many times I spammed AI.

I think I'll stick to swords.

 

[[JD]]

only takes 35 ssi plus appropriate stam to hit cap on a dbl axe. can get that with the ranger cloak, and occasionally find non optimum turq rings with like one unwanted thing such as +chiv, +tac, +fire, etc (which can actually be quite useful) for cheap in the 1 mil range.

i prefer hit area on my ww weaps also, but a slayer will do far more damage usually. my slayer dbl axes are:

di 38
ssi 30
hml
hsl
(superslayer)

it would be nice if i could drop the DI and put it all on my suit, but that would compromise my casting abilities. maybe in a future revision...

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

only takes 35 ssi plus appropriate stam to hit cap on a dbl axe. can get that with the ranger cloak, and occasionally find non optimum turq rings with like one unwanted thing such as +chiv, +tac, +fire, etc (which can actually be quite useful) for cheap in the 1 mil range.

i prefer hit area on my ww weaps also, but a slayer will do far more damage usually.

With 190 stam alone, I'm 1.75, with the ranger cloak I'm 1.5. All of my HCI and DCI is on my jewelry so switching to a non optimum turq ring would just be screwing myself. A turq ring that came up with good stuff on it would be an upgrade, though.

The superslayer might do slightly more damage consistantly regardless of how many you are swinging at, but if you're surrounded the area has a better chance of netting more damage, because the damage compounds according to how many enemies you hit with it. Now slayer PLUS area is devastating. I suggest you try it.

Also, if I'm not wrong, the area damage is outside the damage increase/slayer/honor/EOO caps, because it hits separate from the strike itself, so it's all free damage. It also hits incoming enemies that aren't directly next to you, so thats a plus. I'm not sure, but you might also leech from it, but I might be wrong. Like it actually matters if you're hitting 9 enemies in 1 swing. LOL

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

I used to use a double axe on my sampire for spawns. Then I discovered a superslayer radiant that has 50 area. I just replaced the SSI that was on the double axe for the superslayer on the radiant. Now the radiant hits just as hard as the axe did and I get the area too. I dont have to worry about missing once or twice and my stam getting low...and I have a pot hand if needed.

I tried the scimmies and the damage wasnt there. It has no finishing power. I stopped running the SSI on the axe because the swing difference was only 1/4 of a second, and having an extra effect on there was more valuable to me. With a reptile slayer hit energy area double axe, the Rikki spawn is actually fun. LOL There is the risk of getting low stam, but 1 hit cures that and any health problems you might have. When you whirlwind, there is no chance that you wont leech anything. Its 10 hits in one swing, and at a 50% chance of hitting stam and mana leech, thats 5 that are going to hit, plus 5 that are going to trigger the area effect, which hits all the enemies around you plus the ones in a two tile radius for 5x the damage of a single energy spell like hit lightning.

Thats a lot of damage going around. I have missed 3 times in a row and bought the farm once or twice to be sure, but those instances are few and far between. Usually, even if I miss twice and get low health and stamina, the next hit brings me right back to full. Plus double strike is handy as hell, and bladeweave sucks.

The only time I use a scimmie is in the order essence spawn when you have a mixed group of lava elementals and fire demons on you. Then I use the soul seeker because of the cold damage and 60 SSI. The fire demon breath will take your stamina away in 1 hit and if you have 2 hit you at the same time, plus the 10 lava elementals, then you have a problem. The best solution to that is to have a 1.25 swing even at half stamina to have every chance of sneaking in a hit between breath attacks.