Weapon uselessness

[jotmon]

DDO has 37 weapon types and yet only half a dozen are utilized by players.
There are too many weapons in the game that are comparatively inferior if not worthless.

Even with Update 61 that now gives a bump to kukri along with daggers in the Vistani tree.
There are effectively a lot of worthless weapons in the game..
Things like darts, handaxes, hammers, picks, maul, clubs, morningstar, etc.....
Generic boosts to weapon grouping like 'light' weapons would be of more overall game benefit that just selectively making specific weapons like 'dagger' have the enhancement tree boosts making all the other weapons pointless like handaxe, hammer, mace....

Pointless distinctions between light and heavy weapons light/heavy crossbow..
the 1d6/1d8 distinction favors heavy crossbow in every scenario making light crossbows comparatively inferior.
just dump the light/heavy distinction and have them be... crossbow, repeating crossbow and great crossbow.


I would like to see perks defined by weapon grouping instead of specific weapons being buffed and others effectively being neutered by neglect.
light weapons, one handed weapons, two handed weapons, ranged, throwing...
This way it doesn't matter if a player swaps between weapons like light maces or a dagger, the profile and boosts give the same effective weapon damage.
Instead of Vistani doubling damage for dagger's and kukri's while making every other light weapon pointless.

Without making all these weapons comparable and interchangeable over half of the weapons in DDO are effectively pointless and a waste of effort to even have in the game.

 

[FuzzyDuck81]

Of the specific ones you called out, darts are excellent for alchemists & throwing based bards, handaxes have a solid place for swashbucklers especially that very powerful swashbuckler/frenzied berserker combo & mauls are great for silvanus builds.

I agree there are a lot of underrepresented weapons but a number of them are simply somewhat more niche; specific abilities, universal trees & archetypes etc. have helped some of them & future ones could definitely add more & having more abilities benefit from specific weapon groups could be a big help too, eg. having both mace & morningstars count as favoured weapons for amaunator followers, maybe a "primal weapons user" archetype or universal tree that gets boosts for clubs & greatclubs, a dwarven one that gets extra boosts to mining-themed ones like hammers & picks etc.

 

[axel15810]

Some kind of primal tree that uses clubs and greatclubs I've always wanted. Maybe an idea for a future half orc iconic or half orc racial variant? Or some kind of primal melee universal tree.

Also, maybe Duergar race someday that focuses on picks.

 

[unbongwah]

Things like darts, handaxes, hammers, picks, maul, clubs, morningstar, etc.....
Pointless distinctions between light and heavy weapons light/heavy crossbow..

These are all niche builds but:

• Darts are good for a simple thrower build if you don't have Vistani Knife Fighter. (whether you should bother with a thrower build w/out VKF is another question...)
• Handaxes and light picks are good for bard / fighter or bard / barbarian SWF builds.
• Mauls are good for Silvanus paladins / clerics / Favored Souls / Dark Apostates.
• Light crossbows can work with Swashbuckling for Inquisitives; apart from roleplay flavor, it's the only way to get DEX to damage with a crossbow.
• Warhammers, heavy maces, and morningstars benefit from Knight's Training.
• Clubs, maces and morningstars benefit from Aasimar Scourge line. A Scourge Swashbuckler can have x5 crits with Skullsmasher.
• Sickles get +1 crit range from Swords to Plowshares and can become a ki weapon with Prescient Curve. (Not sure there's a good reason to ever use sickles instead of kamas on a monk but maybe you could do something fun with GMoF Swashbuckler)

That said, I do agree there are several weapon types which don't even have a niche playstyle that I can find:

• Throwing axes and hammers are strictly inferior to any decent dart / dagger / shuriken build.
• Greatclubs are the weakest 2H martial weapons apart from a couple of named options (e.g., Shining Devastation). Most of them can be buffed with Shillelagh but that's not enough to close the DPS gap and druids aren't proficient with greatclubs.
• Shortbows are inferior to longbows with fewer named options and no upside that I can see. (Maybe if you could Swashbuckle with a shortbow it'd have its own bardcher niche...)
• Except for Cranium Cracker, clubs are always going to be worse than heavy maces or morningstars as long as the latter work with Knight's Training and clubs don't. (Should at least add clubs to Swords to Plowshares.)

 

[Onyxia2016]

Mauls made it on the useless list?
That is the main weapon of choice in the melee cleric build which does really well.
Many of the light vs heavy versions are a nod to pnl D&D. The smaller races used the lighter versions. Even in DDO Gnomes have in their racial tree bonuses for various light weapon version.

 

[mbartol]

All those weapons, but no spears (or polearms).

However, look at all the flavor!

Seriously though, I agree completely.

 

[DBZ]

SCYTHES

 

[LurkingVeteran]

I am not a fan of D&D 3.5 weapon design but I think DDO did an OK job of making sure each weapon type is used by at least one build. That said, the game would be more approachable if builds were less hyper-specialized on one weapon.

 

[Douglas Glyndwr]

SCYTHES

I would love Scythes. And a lot of the mentioned weapons are really useful. I mean, Mauls? They're great on my SORCERER.

 

[adamkatt]

you put daggers on your list?? really?? my guildmates have several dagger builds and they do great...

 

[Karadon]

Mauls useless? I would assume every THF character has at least one Maul for Skeletons, Oozes etc. I know mine do.

 

[Bags]

you put daggers on your list?? really?? my guildmates have several dagger builds and they do great...

Jot wasn't saying daggers are useless. He was saying it would have been better to use Vistani to elevate a larger category of weapons, rather than just two.

 

[misterski]

Jot wasn't saying daggers are useless. He was saying it would have been better to use Vistani to elevate a larger category of weapons, rather than just two.

It's called Vistani Knife Fighter. How would it make sense to add additional weapons to it? Daggers and kukris are knives, what else would they add? Shortswords aren't knives.

 

[Ying]

There will always be winners and losers for weapon types. This is true even in Guild Wars 2 where weapons have specialized effects like OP opines for.

I couldn't care less that there's no viable mace build. I do care that noob traps like Scourge exist. Rinse and repeat that thought process for the other non-optimal weapon choices.

 

[LunaCee]

A lot of having a huge number of options is flavor. As for players avoiding using the non-meta stuff... welcome to players optimizing the fun out of the game. The problem being there will *always* be several at the top via virtue of minimal investment requirements, best-in-class output, or being incredibly common as a weapon type (longswords anyone?) with good named items.

So stop complaining about it so much. If they bring some of the simple weapons up other weapons will be displaced as "best". You are completely free to play a first life character using one of these statistically sub-par weapons in non-reaper and still do well.

 

[Zuldar]

Maybe they could solve two issues at the same time by making some of the useless combat feats like Sap have extra affects when wielding a specific type of weapon. So far example if you using a club and use Sap it acts as a stun instead of a daze or if using a Sickle than Slicing Blow has +2 crit multi (kind of an homage to a scythe).

 

[HoopleHead]

Still waiting on Pole-Arms

Lances, Awl-Pikes, Halberds, Spears..
.
...just thinking about it makes my chesticals all perky

 

[FuzzyDuck81]

Maybe they could solve two issues at the same time by making some of the useless combat feats like Sap have extra affects when wielding a specific type of weapon. So far example if you using a club and use Sap it acts as a stun instead of a daze or if using a Sickle than Slicing Blow has +2 crit multi (kind of an homage to a scythe).

Sap isn't useles, it's just that a daze is broken easily - but it dosn't have a save, can interrupt special attacks & spellcasting & if using it while eg. running through a group you can take 1 or more enemies out of the fight for a few seconds lessening the trouble on yourself, making it great for soloing.

That said, i like the idea of adding secondary benefits with particular weapon types to certain feats to help add more interesting options.

 

[Zuldar]

Sap isn't useles, it's just that a daze is broken easily

Feats are extremely valuable. That's far too high an opportunity cost for just a daze which is where the uselessness comes from.

 

[Coffey]

I couldn't care less that there's no viable mace build. I do care that noob traps like Scourge exist. Rinse and repeat that thought process for the other non-optimal weapon choices.

I agree the 17 AP to get +1 Multi on maces is too steep. You dont have to use Heavy Maces though.

The Scourge tree itself has other good points. You can use War Hammers, Long Swords, Battle Axes, or Scimitars instead and still gain 5% DS, 20 Hamp and a Favored Enemy for 6 AP for eg.

I dont play to be completely optimal though. Thats a different trap.