On Wed, 22 Sep 1999, JasonF wrote:
>
> In other words, everyone knows that when their warrior picks up a Thulian
> Bladed Claw (5dam/19dly) they're hitting fast and light, with probably
> unspectacular (average) results. However, when they pick up a Blackened Iron
> Bastard Sword (BIBS at 20dam/47dly) they're GAMBLING. Anyone who has played
I still maintain that for the most part, having a good escape
plan for when you get a bad fight will far outweigh any
benefit from using a fast weapon vs. an equally efficient slow
weapon. I most often find myself fleeing (or dying) in
multi-mob situations (where mesmerize/Lullaby/Strike have a
much greater impact on the outcome than weapon damage
distribution).
On top of this you have variability of damage in the mob's
attacks that determines how long you get to swing your weapons
before you have to bail. Their attack delay is 30 (38 or more
if slowed), which if I'm to believe these other posts about
how variable the damage from slow weapons are, would mean the
variability in their damage should swamp out any consistency
you see due to less variability with your faster weapon.
Getting "bad rolls" during a fight is really only a problem
when I'm soloing. Usually my friends and I are pulling 2-4
blue-yellow mobs and fighting them one by one in succession.
So for each individual fight, we have a huge safety margin of
like 5x to 10x - even a 2x variability in our damage just
isn't going to make a difference - maybe I'll have to Strike
the next mob a few extra times, but over the course of
fighting all the mobs, we get pretty darned close to the
average; enough so that my friends and I have a pretty good
idea of exactly what we can and can't handle. The biggest
variability in fact comes from our inability to distinguish a
high blue from a low blue when assessing early on in a fight
whether or not we'll be able to take them all.
Oh, and other people dumping their trains onto us while we're
fighting - heck, 90% of my deaths are due to that. I can only
think of a half dozen times in the last 10 levels where we've
had to flee or died because we underestimated our pull, and
most of my friends use 2h weapons with delays ranging from
44-50.
--
John H. Kim
kim@...