Need more h2h-weapons

[Razimir]

1. Wider variety of h2h weapons / raise other weaponskill caps.

SoE itemization is very poor atm. What are they thinking? There is one h2h weapon in Uqua (rather rare drop) and one from Cyno (3 days spawn,  non instanced zone, very rare), while pally/sk/other melee weapons drops from everywhere and are much more common. Surely we can use 1hbs and piercers, but h2h weapons are far superior to bsts and for some reason monks are very keen about h2h too. :p

-Raz

[Tastian]

The issue of lack of weapons is something that many beastlords are concerned with.  Originally more "Beastlord only" weapons was suggested.  Most now just want to see higher skill caps for the other skills so that they are more compareable to hth.  I do think that the lack of hth is pretty lame though, especially with them all being lore.  I so miss the days of 2 yaks or 2 ebony blades or whatever.  Blows my mind how you can have an item designed for a duel wielding class that is a solid weapon and have it be lore.  *shrugs*  we'll see if they finally listen and fix the skill caps and then we'll see about what to add to the list.

[Kherash]

To say there is a "lack" of 2hb weapons for Beast lords is a joke in comparison to H2H. It is bad enough I have to fight other Beast lords for H2H weapons, but worst even with Monks. Raising the weapon skill cap will solve allot of issues. If anything, just raise the 1hb. I would be happy with that.

[Chubaka]

Skill caps fix is all well and good BUT... Hand to Hand is better ratios than other weapons at any given point of the game.

Velium Inlaid Claws (17/20) vs Velium Gemmed 1handers (16/20).
If your guild is in Ssraa you will get oh Fangs (17/19) or a Ulak (17/20) while the other classes are getting 15/19, 16/20, etc. I am not an expert on the high end game but from what I have seen...Hand to hand  weapons top the ratio war for any given expansion.

[Tastian]

Yeah hth will always be what most would still aim for with equal skill caps for that reason and the "highend" of beastlord dps wouldn't change.  The issue overall is lack of hth, those wouldn't just be added at the highend, but throughout progression.  In PoP for instance you have Battle fists, EPWs, shinai and that's it for hth outside of the class specific pet weapons.  Yet you see others wielding stone etched mallets, timeweavers, GRMK, etc.  If beastlords were on even footing with piercers/2hb/1hb you'd see more options in that progression.  Yes at any given point a hth weapon would be better than another weapon, but I know some guilds in time that haven't had a single battle fist or EPW drop.

The itemization is poor at best imo.  I do think fixing skill caps would help a lot of people as it'd open up other weapons and make them upgrades or more compareable.  Simply adding more hth weapons or beastlord only weapons would work to, but it's unlikely they'd go back and add these weapons to existing mob drop tables.  Going forward I'd truely hope they itemize expansions a bit better, but for now raising the skill caps seems like one of the best ways to open up some other weapons to beastlords.

[Noxdowne Draggout]

They could just make an aa skill based on weapon skill similar to the one for tanian(sp) mastery that allows for GM skill in all trade skills.

I disagree with just giving a higher skill, but there would be nothing unbalanced about earning it.

Nox

[Tastian]

Could you please explain to me why beastlords should have to pay however many AA points to bring a weapon skill up to their others well other classes don't?  Could you please explain to me why they simply raised bard piercing cap awhile back, but leave beastlord skills other than hth at 225?  Could you please explain to me why a SEM is an upgrade for one class over an aug'd out SHO, but not for a beastlord?  I'd seriously just like to hear your reasoning why you disagree with just fixing the skill cap, but think "earning" it would be ok?

HtH remains the best weapons for beastlords with very few exceptions and this AA wouldn't really raise what a beastlord can potentially do, all it'd do is help combat the poor itemization that most go through.  Being able to actually use some of the planar 2hb without losing dps.  The ability to use an SEM and not lose dps over other weapons you might already have.  The ability to use 1hb, piercing, etc to bridge the gap well you wait for those rare hth that you simply might never see.  Beastlords already pay a bunch of AA for less gain than most other classes because of how beastlord damage is divided up.  Why exactly do you feel that they should have to pay even more AA just so that they can be equally inferior with all weapon types instead of just one?

[Noxdowne Draggout]

In the spirit of roleplaying Tastian I will answer your question.

Melee classes :

Warrior: enough said they are supposed to be masters of weapons.
Pally and Sk's: 2hp,2hs and 1handers with shield makes sense.
Rogue: Criminals use shanks in jail to pierce, kind of a cool reference
Ranger: bow masters in the end game
Monk: ever seen martial arts? they train in all types of weapons
Berserker: Picture the crazy freak from a slasher movie, the bigger the weapon the better
Bard: Give them whatever they want, damn musicians get all the girls and the money anyways.

Now lets picture a tarzan type.

Yep he looks like a big 2hb would suit him just fine.

Naw wait a second, raised in the jungle learning to battle with his fists?

Adding a hand to hand weapon that modifies that damage makes sense don't it?

Now as he matures he may be taught better skills and have access to weapons that are foriegn to him like 1hb 2hb and 1hp ,but would he ever feel as comfortable as the fists that were his defense all those years without intensive training?

Now as a full grown experienced "beastlord'" he may have access to others that could train him intensly to equal that skill, but it would be hard work and he would truely deserve the right to weild those weapons with authority.

Or you could just hand him the skill and say here ya go.

Nox

[Tastian]

Answer me in the spirit of game balance and mechanics.  If roleplay were sufficant justification for anything you and I both know some of the crazy stuff you'd see.  8P

[Deathclaw]

hmm even caveman used clubs....

[Rhaynne]

Historically, the first primitive weapons created were the club, staff and spear... in fact, in the books even Tarzan used these more than his bare hands.

[Bengali]

Nox,

Raising the skill cap isn't the same as raising the skill.  You'd still have to go out and "train" it.   A ranger in our guild had a piercing skill of 1 until she started to raise it a couple days ago.

In terms of game mechanics, the weapon caps are a "double penalty".  Not only are we limited in what weapons that we can use (i.e., there are entire types of weapons that we have zero skill in or can't use),  we suck at 75% of the ones we do get.  Not only will we naturally gravitate toward certain weapons because of ratio (HtH), or because of skills (we get dual wield aa but not 2h aa), but on top of that, even if we find a weapon with a better ratio it still can be a downgrade in dps.

It's downright stupid as a game mechanic.  As far as I'm aware, there are only three weapon-using classes whose skills don't all cap the same -- warriors, rangers, and beastlords.   Of those three, two have only a single weapon type that is behind the rest.  It's only 10 points behind, at that.

Only beastlords have a 25 point difference (67 atk) in their highest skill and their next-highest, and only beastlords have the *majority* of their weapon type choices suffer from this penalty.

[Noxdowne Draggout]

Answer me in the spirit of game balance and mechanics. If roleplay were sufficant justification for anything you and I both know some of the crazy stuff you'd see. 8P

Listen, I don't even want to think about what the Necro's would be doing with the pretty halfelfs in PoP graveyards.   :lol:

Seriously though, I realize primative people used tools and weapons, but somebody thought of it for the first time and showed the majority. Take a person from wherever who has never seen a sword and teach that person to use one as good as an Olympic fencer and you will get the idea that there is a far cry from people punching, swinging a stick with reckless abandon and knowing how to use a fine weapon in combat. If you are not trained practise means diddly which brings me to point number two.

I also realize that you have to practise weapon skills to raise them.

What would it take to raise from 225 to 250 a day or two if you put your mind to it? That is hardly proving your ability.

Again in the spirit of roleplay the earning of 1 aa per 5 weapon skills on your dream weapon of choice would be a moment in which you could say you paid your dues and now you have earned the right to weild the weapon masterfully and increase the skill through dedication AND practise.

Nobody says much about a lack of duel weild until we earn it by aa.

Nobody says much about increasing defensive skills such as CS,LR and CA.

Yet people jump up and down about earning a higher weapon skill?

Call it what you like, but I think you are all being jealous of other classes instead of being realistic about what SoE intended for our class.

Maybe just maybe they were thinking of things like this when they gave the Velium Inlaid Claws a better ratio than any other weapon made , but I don't see anyone here complaining about that.

You asked me for an explination about why I said what I said Tastian and I think I answered it well enough to justify the original statement.

If SoE does just hand the skill increase to us, I think it would be sad that they just rolled over under pressure from the community.

I would rather pay 5 aa's to increase my skill, then to think other classes would view us in a poor light. The five aa example I give would take most Beastlords at this level about 3 hours worth the work.

If they do roll over on this, I think all classes should get a 250 weapon skill in everything just to make it fair.

Warriors get better weapon skills than Knights better give them 250 as well.

Does that make sense?

:?

Nox

[Choppin]

No, it doesnt, knights have all weaponskillcaps (cept h2h duh) at the same value, favoring none.

SoE already upped weapon (and other) skills on different classes without having those classes pay an AA penalty. Its a balancing issue and actually takes pressure from them to give out more h2h weapons.

The beastlord epic 2.0 looks like a 1hb, I really hope its a shinai thing and h2h.

[Tastian]

"Call it what you like, but I think you are all being jealous of other classes instead of being realistic about what SoE intended for our class. "

This isn't about other classes it's a beastlord issue.  A lot of our issues do effect other classes, but this one is so beastlord specific it hurts.  Looking at beastlords you see that they already have "de facto" handicaps on weapon selection because of a few things...

-  HtH is rare

-  HtH has better ratios

This means that even with equal skill caps a beastlord is still going to want hth weapons and still not be at their max potential.  However, when you throw in the lower skill cap you make the issue even worse as you further limit weapon selection.  A SEM is an awesome weapon, 1hb, decent proc, good off-hand weapon, solid stats on it.  Yet because of the skill caps it's actually a dps DROP in the offhand for many beastlords over an aug'd out SHO.  What you see are a low number of hth weapons and a low number of alternatives.  

Take a beastlord and throw them into PoP progression with LDoN/Bazaar gear.  If they don't catch hth off TZ then they now have to wait until xeg wraps for the next hth!!  Now that's a very large progression jump.  However, it gets made worse by the fact that you have REBB, MSS, SEM, GRMK, and other weapons dropping during that progression.  These are all nice weapons, however, with the lower skill caps they simply aren't a dps upgrade for many.  Do you realize that you have beastlords in time still wielding SHOs and the like?  How many other classes do you see that have done the entire PoP progression that haven't gotten a weapon upgrade?  Ornate greatblade, ifir, talon from earth B, GRMK, SEWS, BoW, IHC, etc etc etc.  I don't know a single elemental warrior, rogue, ranger (not talking bow! lol), knight etc that hasn't gotten atleast one weapon upgrade.  

The truth is simply adding more hth weapons to the game, fixing drops and itemization, understanding beastlords and how weapons work for them would be the ideal fix.  More weapons, more hth, etc.  However, that isn't going to happen, they aren't going to go back and re-itemize PoP and GoD (god I wish they would lol), but atleast fixing skill caps can help the problem.  Going forward I hope they itemize hth better, but other beastlords will still have the choice or atleast have options if the RNG and the drop table just isn't in their favor.  

The fact that almost no other classes have this skill cap desparity, the fact that beastlords don't even have it until what level?  Seriously, this isn't even something that is there from level 1 where hth goes up at 5*level and everything else is 4* level.  Beastlords already pay bunches of AA for less gain than most and already get less from a weapon than most.  Please explain to me in a non-RP reason why this should be?  Also 5 AA in 3 hours isn't accurate.  This is a problem that effects beastlords before level 65 and elemtnally flagged.  The skill caps are different earlier than that and now you'd make others spend 10+ hours getting the AA for it and that's only if they stopped leveling to fix their skill caps otherwise they would still do inferior with them.  

Please understand that what I'm after is reasoning and explaination.  I am not trying to convince you I'm right, but I do want you to justify to me why you feel the way you do.  If you have valid points I want to take them into consideration, but giving weak RP reasons that others could just as easily use the other way and then stating you believe a beastlord specific issue is class envy just doesn't cut it.