Raider's box choices

[Question2005]

Was wondering what people's opinions on these are.

The best options seem to be :

Dagger : 2d4 damage instead of 1d4, but the drow dagger at 21 has a much better crit profile and is lower level to boot.

Handwraps : 18-20/x2, I think thats much better than normal handwraps?

Rapier : 15-20/x3, not a bad choice for a swashbuckler, except for it being piercing damage

Shortsword : Unfortunately it gets broken by any enhancement bonuses to your weapon...which includes the arcane sphere EPL and the swashbuckler tree, which pretty much kills the most common build that uses shortswords.

Warhammer : 18-20/x3 is pretty great, downside is that warhammers are still a pretty niche build unless you are doing 2wf or swf.

Repeating crossbow : 19-20/x3 is pretty good, but i hear that great crossbows are better at higher levels anyway?

Bow : Its a bow, which most people say are worse than crossbows.

Quarterstaff : Its a quarterstaff. And they arent exactly in a good spot at the moment.

[lyrecono]

Was wondering what people's opinions on these are.

The best options seem to be :

Dagger : 2d4 damage instead of 1d4, but the drow dagger at 21 has a much better crit profile and is lower level to boot.

Handwraps : 18-20/x2, I think thats much better than normal handwraps?

Rapier : 15-20/x3, not a bad choice for a swashbuckler, except for it being piercing damage

Shortsword : Unfortunately it gets broken by any enhancement bonuses to your weapon...which includes the arcane sphere EPL and the swashbuckler tree, which pretty much kills the most common build that uses shortswords.

Warhammer : 18-20/x3 is pretty great, downside is that warhammers are still a pretty niche build unless you are doing 2wf or swf.

Repeating crossbow : 19-20/x3 is pretty good, but i hear that great crossbows are better at higher levels anyway?

Bow : Its a bow, which most people say are worse than crossbows.

Quarterstaff : Its a quarterstaff. And they arent exactly in a good spot at the moment.

Most of these aren't great, wich is to be expcted for a 5+ year old raid weapon.
It shows lack of imagination though, i still have alts with 1 of these boxes that i will never be able to play, the past life and reaper grind makes it impossible for me to keep up a stable of alts.
My mains already had 8+ weapons from this buggy and boring raid ( most of them eaten by now).
Like you said, most of them were sub par back then, now a lot of them are trash.
They might be nice for new players though.

[0ldschool]

Was wondering what people's opinions on these are.

The best options seem to be :

Dagger : 2d4 damage instead of 1d4, but the drow dagger at 21 has a much better crit profile and is lower level to boot.

Handwraps : 18-20/x2, I think thats much better than normal handwraps?

Rapier : 15-20/x3, not a bad choice for a swashbuckler, except for it being piercing damage

Shortsword : Unfortunately it gets broken by any enhancement bonuses to your weapon...which includes the arcane sphere EPL and the swashbuckler tree, which pretty much kills the most common build that uses shortswords.

Warhammer : 18-20/x3 is pretty great, downside is that warhammers are still a pretty niche build unless you are doing 2wf or swf.

Repeating crossbow : 19-20/x3 is pretty good, but i hear that great crossbows are better at higher levels anyway?

Bow : Its a bow, which most people say are worse than crossbows.

Quarterstaff : Its a quarterstaff. And they arent exactly in a good spot at the moment.

I'm a pretty new player and don't own any of these items. I just took my first toon, a rogue mechanic, to level 30, and have tentative plans to run a TWF dagger rogue assassin next. So I'd like to talk about the dagger, Agony.

I've spent a good bit of time trying to figure out which daggers to farm while I'm at 30 right now, this helped occupy my time during the 4 day downtime

My admittedly inexperienced conclusion was that Agony is VERY difficult to beat on paper. I have it as clearly the best DPS for named (non-crafted) daggers in ML23-27 range, under any variety of +W, Seeker, crit range and multiplier increases you care to look at (I'm assuming an Assassin Tier 5 / VKF Tier 4 build right now, with typical feats). I'm not sure about all crafted dagger options, but it's better than TF Tier 1 and ToEE Tier 1 daggers. There is a lot of talk about the Drow Dagger, but my math says that it just can't make up enough ground to catch Agony in DPS even with the expanded crit range. Epic Assassin's Kiss comes closest to Agony for non-crafted, but is clearly behind. TF Tier 1 with Flames gets closest, but the fact that Agony also has Improved Deception (which I found very tough to slot on my Mech) and accepts sentience put its firmly on top of the ML23-27 dagger heap, in my horribly uneducated opinion. I'm actually more intrigued by the Sacrificial dagger and its neg levels than I am by the Drow Weapon master dagger.

I plan to take Agony out of the box, even knowing what I'm passing up with Needle. I have no knowledge of bows, so I'm not smart enough yet to regret leaving Pinion behind. Celestia gives me the most pause, the player base seems to have a love/hate thing going on with Celestia with its easily broken DR bypass. I've found threads where people have given up on it in frustration over the DR bypass being broken by various enhancements.

So I'm also looking for advice on what to take, with a specific focus on how worthwhile Agony is for assassins. I'm imaging equipping Agony at L23 with a sentient gem, maybe a TF Tier 1 dagger in offhand at L24, and then be off and running to L28. I could easily be wrong about Agony, and would love to know if that's the case.
Thanks!

[spyder7723]

I'm a pretty new player and don't own any of these items. I just took my first toon, a rogue mechanic, to level 30, and have tentative plans to run a TWF dagger rogue assassin next. So I'd like to talk about the dagger, Agony.

I've spent a good bit of time trying to figure out which daggers to farm while I'm at 30 right now, this helped occupy my time during the 4 day downtime

My admittedly inexperienced conclusion was that Agony is VERY difficult to beat on paper. I have it as clearly the best DPS for named (non-crafted) daggers in ML23-27 range, under any variety of +W, Seeker, crit range and multiplier increases you care to look at (I'm assuming an Assassin Tier 5 / VKF Tier 4 build right now, with typical feats). I'm not sure about all crafted dagger options, but it's better than TF Tier 1 and ToEE Tier 1 daggers. There is a lot of talk about the Drow Dagger, but my math says that it just can't make up enough ground to catch Agony in DPS even with the expanded crit range. Epic Assassin's Kiss comes closest to Agony for non-crafted, but is clearly behind. TF Tier 1 with Flames gets closest, but the fact that Agony also has Improved Deception (which I found very tough to slot on my Mech) and accepts sentience put its firmly on top of the ML23-27 dagger heap, in my horribly uneducated opinion. I'm actually more intrigued by the Sacrificial dagger and its neg levels than I am by the Drow Weapon master dagger.

I plan to take Agony out of the box, even knowing what I'm passing up with Needle. I have no knowledge of bows, so I'm not smart enough yet to regret leaving Pinion behind. Celestia gives me the most pause, the player base seems to have a love/hate thing going on with Celestia with its easily broken DR bypass. I've found threads where people have given up on it in frustration over the DR bypass being broken by various enhancements.

So I'm also looking for advice on what to take, with a specific focus on how worthwhile Agony is for assassins. I'm imaging equipping Agony at L23 with a sentient gem, maybe a TF Tier 1 dagger in offhand at L24, and then be off and running to L28. I could easily be wrong about Agony, and would love to know if that's the case.
Thanks!

Agony is more pure dps but the drow dagger with negative levels is better on everything that dosn't have deathward because it procs so many times when you consider things like doublestrike and the fast attack speed. Back when swashbucklers was the cool build they were extremely popular. There wss almost always 3 or more bards in a raid group swinging them. Trash mobs just melted.

Not saying you shouldn't choose agony, just saying don't discount the drow dagger so quickly. Having both is a good idea.

Edit: the thing with celestia is its nite piercing damage. It's light damage. That's why it was so popular. And back then there was no epic past lubes to break it.

[AbyssalMage]

I'm a pretty new player and don't own any of these items. I just took my first toon, a rogue mechanic, to level 30, and have tentative plans to run a TWF dagger rogue assassin next. So I'd like to talk about the dagger, Agony.

I've spent a good bit of time trying to figure out which daggers to farm while I'm at 30 right now, this helped occupy my time during the 4 day downtime

My admittedly inexperienced conclusion was that Agony is VERY difficult to beat on paper. I have it as clearly the best DPS for named (non-crafted) daggers in ML23-27 range, under any variety of +W, Seeker, crit range and multiplier increases you care to look at (I'm assuming an Assassin Tier 5 / VKF Tier 4 build right now, with typical feats). I'm not sure about all crafted dagger options, but it's better than TF Tier 1 and ToEE Tier 1 daggers. There is a lot of talk about the Drow Dagger, but my math says that it just can't make up enough ground to catch Agony in DPS even with the expanded crit range. Epic Assassin's Kiss comes closest to Agony for non-crafted, but is clearly behind. TF Tier 1 with Flames gets closest, but the fact that Agony also has Improved Deception (which I found very tough to slot on my Mech) and accepts sentience put its firmly on top of the ML23-27 dagger heap, in my horribly uneducated opinion. I'm actually more intrigued by the Sacrificial dagger and its neg levels than I am by the Drow Weapon master dagger.

I plan to take Agony out of the box, even knowing what I'm passing up with Needle. I have no knowledge of bows, so I'm not smart enough yet to regret leaving Pinion behind. Celestia gives me the most pause, the player base seems to have a love/hate thing going on with Celestia with its easily broken DR bypass. I've found threads where people have given up on it in frustration over the DR bypass being broken by various enhancements.

So I'm also looking for advice on what to take, with a specific focus on how worthwhile Agony is for assassins. I'm imaging equipping Agony at L23 with sa sentient gem, maybe a TF Tier 1 dagger in offhand at L24, and then be off and running to L28. I could easily be wrong about Agony, and would love to know if that's the case.
Thanks!

All the CitW weapons are BiS from 23 to 26 with the exception of 2HF where ESoS remains king. Once you begin talking about 26+ weapons there are better thanks to TF, LGS, and RL.

The SS is the only weapon that breaks because of poor coding making it a 2nd tier weapon because it is unreliable.

[askrj1]

Was wondering what people's opinions on these are.

The best options seem to be :

Dagger : 2d4 damage instead of 1d4, but the drow dagger at 21 has a much better crit profile and is lower level to boot.

Handwraps : 18-20/x2, I think thats much better than normal handwraps?

Rapier : 15-20/x3, not a bad choice for a swashbuckler, except for it being piercing damage

Shortsword : Unfortunately it gets broken by any enhancement bonuses to your weapon...which includes the arcane sphere EPL and the swashbuckler tree, which pretty much kills the most common build that uses shortswords.

Warhammer : 18-20/x3 is pretty great, downside is that warhammers are still a pretty niche build unless you are doing 2wf or swf.

Repeating crossbow : 19-20/x3 is pretty good, but i hear that great crossbows are better at higher levels anyway?

Bow : Its a bow, which most people say are worse than crossbows.

Quarterstaff : Its a quarterstaff. And they arent exactly in a good spot at the moment.

Agony is a good dagger with all the [w] based effects in VKF. Drow daggers enjoy better crit as you mentioned, so it's a slight toss up, but Agony does have other procs that help offset the difference. Overall still a solid dagger.

I'll need to pull out my set of Antipode to check, but regardless it's probably the best set of wraps until Duality.

There's nothing wrong in particular with pierce. Belizarde is a strong choice for dex tempests too.

Celestia is only "broken" in the sense it no longer bypasses DR as "pure" light damage when other damage flags get added. It's still a relatively strong shortsword regardless, but mostly only used for the sunburst proc on throwers.

Warhammers are niche, period.

Repeaters are still strong particularly Needle with the multiplier, not to mention if you were on an artificer it's still pretty consistent when you're not holding down fusilade.

Monkchers and bow builds otherwise still exist, Pinion still a strong choice for those.

Sireth is awesome. You're not talking down on my lovely quarterstaves.

Most of these aren't great, wich is to be expcted for a 5+ year old raid weapon.
It shows lack of imagination though, i still have alts with 1 of these boxes that i will never be able to play, the past life and reaper grind makes it impossible for me to keep up a stable of alts.
My mains already had 8+ weapons from this buggy and boring raid ( most of them eaten by now).
Like you said, most of them were sub par back then, now a lot of them are trash.
They might be nice for new players though.

Some are sub par, not most of them. In comparison I don't think even newer raids have most or the entire collection being "useful". Keep in mind these are ML23 weapons added when it was cap25, and many of them were and still are relevant DPS pieces until you hit the unusually strong ToEE ones, LGS, high tier TF or current Legendary grade weapons.

Of course if you're considering those levels will be just "skipped" with WK or slayers then there really isn't any relevant discussion here.

[askrj1]

Agony is more pure dps but the drow dagger with negative levels is better on everything that dosn't have deathward because it procs so many times when you consider things like doublestrike and the fast attack speed. Back when swashbucklers was the cool build they were extremely popular. There wss almost always 3 or more bards in a raid group swinging them. Trash mobs just melted.

Not saying you shouldn't choose agony, just saying don't discount the drow dagger so quickly. Having both is a good idea.

Edit: the thing with celestia is its nite piercing damage. It's light damage. That's why it was so popular. And back then there was no epic past lubes to break it.

Drow dagger is somewhat misleading, that is the Sacrificial Dagger from Impossible Demands. Drow dagger makes me think of something from House of Rusted Blades.

[0ldschool]

Drow dagger is somewhat misleading, that is the Sacrificial Dagger from Impossible Demands. Drow dagger makes me think of something from House of Rusted Blades.

Sorry, I picked up this convention from other threads. Drow dagger on this forum seems to usually refer to the Drow Dagger of the Weapon Master, indeed from House of Rusted Blades. It has a base crit range of 17-20, not using Keen. So it maintains a +2 advantage in crit range with the additions of +2 for IC: Pierce, and +2 for Knife Spec from Assassin. The extra +2 crit range is nice, but that's all you get. It doesn't even have a red augment slot. Neg levels are on the Sacrificial dagger. When I run the numbers, the Drow Dagger is simply not overly impressive DPS, and even Guardian of the Liturgy at ML14 gives it a very good run for its money.

[askrj1]

Sorry, I picked up this convention from other threads. Drow dagger on this forum seems to usually refer to the Drow Dagger of the Weapon Master, indeed from House of Rusted Blades. It has a base crit range of 17-20, not using Keen. So it maintains a +2 advantage in crit range with the additions of +2 for IC: Pierce, and +2 for Knife Spec from Assassin. The extra +2 crit range is nice, but that's all you get. It doesn't even have a red augment slot. Neg levels are on the Sacrificial dagger. When I run the numbers, the Drow Dagger is simply not overly impressive DPS, and even Guardian of the Liturgy at ML14 gives it a very good run for its money.

The dagger in question for the neg levels is Sacrificial Dagger that drops in Impossible Demands (first quest in King's Forest). With swash or now VKF it can quickly shave off non-warded targets.

[Memnir]

I'm just picking which one would be the best Glamoring bait.

[janave]

If you ever want to make "the other" good ranged option next to xbows, then celestia makes a good offhand item.

[FuzzyDuck81]

They're mostly solid items, though some are more niche than others.

Celestia is always a good bet, not just for the offhand proc on a thrower build but also because it's immune to ooze & rust damage, so is a good backup weapon against those enemies & old-style on-crit radiance plus an AoE blinding proc can give a good amount of combined damage boost & damage mitigation.

Warhammer is niche, but Mornh is a very strong weapon in that niche when you take into account scourge, knight's training & pulveriser from dreadnaught destiny.

Sireth is a strong quarterstaff - the commendations one is IMO still better vs. single targets, but Sireth has some nice AoE effects & crit range.

Needle is an excellent repeater - not only does it have the increased multiplier but it's got increased damage dice too - d12 vs. the usual d8 of a light repeater & as a light repeater it'll benefit from gnome racial boosts.

[Loromir]

Shortsword : Unfortunately it gets broken by any enhancement bonuses to your weapon...which includes the arcane sphere EPL and the swashbuckler tree, which pretty much kills the most common build that uses shortswords.

I'm going to come to the defense of Celestia here. It is true that there is a big glaring problem with Celestia....The light DR breaking. For sure, that is a bummer.

...but if you totally ignore that issue...Celestia can make you extremely survivable. It has 2 separate proc that very reliably blinds most mobs...Radiance and Greater Sunburst. You might be surprised how often these two abilities proc. Blinded mobs quickly become almost no threat at all. Blinded casters become weak melee mobs.

DPS of Celestia is pretty bad admittedly...but if your having a hard time staying alive...Celestia is your friend.

[Saekee]

I'm a pretty new player and don't own any of these items. I just took my first toon, a rogue mechanic, to level 30, and have tentative plans to run a TWF dagger rogue assassin next. So I'd like to talk about the dagger, Agony.

I've spent a good bit of time trying to figure out which daggers to farm while I'm at 30 right now, this helped occupy my time during the 4 day downtime

My admittedly inexperienced conclusion was that Agony is VERY difficult to beat on paper. I have it as clearly the best DPS for named (non-crafted) daggers in ML23-27 range, under any variety of +W, Seeker, crit range and multiplier increases you care to look at (I'm assuming an Assassin Tier 5 / VKF Tier 4 build right now, with typical feats). I'm not sure about all crafted dagger options, but it's better than TF Tier 1 and ToEE Tier 1 daggers. There is a lot of talk about the Drow Dagger, but my math says that it just can't make up enough ground to catch Agony in DPS even with the expanded crit range. Epic Assassin's Kiss comes closest to Agony for non-crafted, but is clearly behind. TF Tier 1 with Flames gets closest, but the fact that Agony also has Improved Deception (which I found very tough to slot on my Mech) and accepts sentience put its firmly on top of the ML23-27 dagger heap, in my horribly uneducated opinion. I'm actually more intrigued by the Sacrificial dagger and its neg levels than I am by the Drow Weapon master dagger.

I plan to take Agony out of the box, even knowing what I'm passing up with Needle. I have no knowledge of bows, so I'm not smart enough yet to regret leaving Pinion behind. Celestia gives me the most pause, the player base seems to have a love/hate thing going on with Celestia with its easily broken DR bypass. I've found threads where people have given up on it in frustration over the DR bypass being broken by various enhancements.

So I'm also looking for advice on what to take, with a specific focus on how worthwhile Agony is for assassins. I'm imaging equipping Agony at L23 with a sentient gem, maybe a TF Tier 1 dagger in offhand at L24, and then be off and running to L28. I could easily be wrong about Agony, and would love to know if that's the case.
Thanks!

Agony can also get Planar focus which gives you +15 PRR and +4 artifact hit and damage. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, its larger base damage gives it greater benefits with the +W effects in Vistani etc and a centered dagger wielder twisting Dance with Flowers could even add 1.5W. I think it is closest to Assassin's Kiss which also has Improved deception but the latter has an extra crit multiplier. Anyway I think Agony is the best choice due to the Vistani tree since so many different builds could use it. I have advocated for assassins to use the drow dagger with a mythic boost as their sentient weapon since the crit multiplier (13-20 with knife spec) 'ages' well with the character as they go up epic levels--the increase in seeker, deadly, MP etc will make that crit boost really scale well as one levels and Agony was out of reach; a grind that would be better for some other later endgame weapon. Plus you can use it earlier. However, you can use both--just load up a drow dagger with sentient boosts and then use Agony in the offhand. In the end it is the sentience boosts that make the weapon and the problem with the sacrificial dagger is that it heals undead--one of the tougher enemies for dagger-wielders--and many enemies are immune to neg leveling (the ones that are not die very fast to assassins anyway).

I have a epic ToEE set that I use at level 26 which messes up a lot of my clever plans to balance the drow dagger with an improved deception weapon (I usually run with the Epic Phiarlan Spy Dagger in the offhand until level 26). I have been tempted to make the EKiss my mid level and endgame sentient weapon (since I have a +4 mythic boosted one) but I want to test stuff out with Agony first.

I have two Celestias and never use them.

[SpartanKiller13]

I'm considering Hewer, because it looks super cool. If I could use the mirror on a maul, I'd do it in a heartbeat. However, AFAIK greataxes have a separate set of animations so...

Otherwise yeah, Celestia for a thrower build in the future. Or Needle, for a repeater build.

[Razor_Wit]

Is Pinion still the best longbow in the game when fully upgraded? Don't see anyone mentioning it here but I thought it was still holding its own today. If not, whats the best longbow..plz don't say TF.

[Swimms]

Is Pinion still the best longbow in the game when fully upgraded? Don't see anyone mentioning it here but I thought it was still holding its own today. If not, whats the best longbow..plz don't say TF.

Pinion is not even close to the best longbow, it is fine for low-mid epics but for end game you will want a Chaosbow, Void, or Epic Sapphire Sting. The next tier would be the easier to get bows such as Barovian/night Mother and Inferno Sniper. Pinion is not even in the top 5.

[drathdragon]

the quaterstaff is spectacular though

[HungarianRhapsody]

Celestia.

Even if you rarely use it, it's really handy because it's a great weapon in the times when you need that particular feature. Just don't keep it equipped most of the time so that you don't accidentally get some weapon buffs on it.

[drathdragon]

Celestia.

Even if you rarely use it, it's really handy because it's a great weapon in the times when you need that particular feature. Just don't keep it equipped most of the time so that you don't accidentally get some weapon buffs on it.

i builded a toon on it and it was very fun, believe me.
but then.. i TR him and now that weapon is useless.