Weapon Rationale

Ive tried to search the forums to no avail. I was curious about some of the base stats of weapons and abilities they could be used with. For example:

Foils/Rapiers can be faster than the fastest daggers... Do wha?
But you can cleave with a foil? (that just makes no sense what so ever)
So there is a whole category of "Thrusting Swords" for what purpose? It uses sword passives, it uses sword skills, but its faster?

Let's make a niche weapon but then we won't flush it out. Yah, it'll just be like all the rest of them but faster, with a different inherent bonus.

Seriously, did it occur to anyone to actually carefully think out a weapon set with attributes that made sense.

You can cleave with a foil//rapier as they are the STR//DEX - Duelist class weapons and since cleave is a STR skillgem it fits for them to use.

The 6th class shadow is just going to be introduced in the friday patch so I suppose that will redefine the roles of daggers and claws as it is an assasin type DEX//INT class.

It probably comes with a pack of new skillgems which may par with cleave to balance out as well.

So be patient for the new patch and check the odds and ends after that.

saki: rapiers are the pure-dex swords; you're thinking of the slashing ones, which cleave does make more sense with.

Allowing cleave with rapiers was actually one of the more internally-debated dev decisions for precisely the reasons you describe (they're faster, incidentally, to emphasize the fact that dexterity is the attack speed attribute).

Cleave is allowed with rapiers because the devs didn't want to be too heavy on weapon restriction (and at the time didn't have enough skills developed to provide alternatives), and making an extra distinction between "one-handed thrusting swords" and "one-handed slashing swords" in mechanics seemed a little wordy (and could be shown through gameplay anyway without having to say it).

And you can swing a foil sideways, it's just not going to win you any points in fencing tournaments.

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saki04 wrote:

You can cleave with a foil//rapier as they are the STR//DEX - Duelist class weapons and since cleave is a STR skillgem it fits for them to use.

OP is speaking of realism, not game mechanics. You cannot cleave in reality with a foil. (it's be more like a whip or something if you tried that)

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WippitGuud wrote:

OP is speaking of realism, not game mechanics. You cannot cleave in reality with a foil.

Indeed.

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Skivverus wrote:

...making an extra distinction between "one-handed thrusting swords" and "one-handed slashing swords" in mechanics seemed a little wordy (and could be shown through gameplay anyway without having to say it).

They did show that? Fantastic! Where? Because if you are going to go through the distinction on the items list, whats the point unless you follow through? Just show me the passive skills, skill gems, or support gems in the game play that is backing up your statement.

Might be wise to assume they do have plans to flesh out daggers and even foils further with new skill gems and such. 20+ more gems coming in the next few days, to start.

I'd like to see a Fencing style attack for rapiers instead of cleave too, sorta like 5 fast jabs at single/multi targets in front of you, more as it levels up. Melee version of bowazon strafe i guess.

Daggers have like no skill gems yet so interested to see what is on the way in the near future.

To be fair, rapiers have either one or two sharpened edges. They could cleave realistically. The foil and estoc can't, though, as they're both made without sharpened edges and are purely for thrusting.

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whiteBoy88 wrote:

To be fair, rapiers have either one or two sharpened edges. They could cleave realistically.

To be fair, no they could not. They simply are not designed to take a high force strain of that sort. The presence of an edge does not confer the ability to handle a swing of such force that it carries through multiple targets.

However, let's agree with your point for the sake of arguement. Congratulations, daggers could cleave too then realistically. Oh but wait, the stiletto is to daggers as rapiers and foils are to swords. But I don't see a seperate category for "Thrusting Daggers".

Either way the whole category doesn't make sense. It seems that someone had a certain idea in mind and instead of balancing it with the rest of a system they just threw it in there. Kinda like having an Avatar of Fire, with no Avatar for Cold or Lightning.

At least rapiers are long enough to give a lot more leverage than can be obtained by swinging a dagger...

Anyway, I don't see the need for all the hate. This is far from the only physically-illogical thing in the game. If anything, only 2-hand swords and axes should be able to use Cleave.

I concur with IrishKigoi here, even in reality you just can't damage your foe by cleaving with a rapier.

Never used rapier, but as it seems so, it really sounds awkward and not realistic, speaking honestly.

Maybe with a more set of additional weapons and more skills thrusting weapon category could be created, gameplay variety would be drastically improved by this also.