Speed Factor on weapons
SirBatince
Member Posts: 882
Can anyone fully debunk how speed factor works exactly or link me to such documentation?
I feel this is an extremely important part of weapons in IE but it's barely ever mentioned or documentated.
As far as I know it's the delay where your character waits before doing a swing long after targeting an opponent, regardless of your APR right? It seems to be most impactful on characters with low APR.
I feel this is an extremely important part of weapons in IE but it's barely ever mentioned or documentated.
As far as I know it's the delay where your character waits before doing a swing long after targeting an opponent, regardless of your APR right? It seems to be most impactful on characters with low APR.
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However, due to how APR work, this ends up a bit funky in practice. Since 1 round is only 6 seconds and you can have up to 10 APR, speed factor actually has a fairly negligible impact on overall performance. It does matter more with low APR (such as in BG1), but it's still not a huge deal the majority of the time. It's very likely never going to end up influencing your actual item choices, and as such it's mostly an under-the-hood mechanism you can for the largest part simply ignore.
I recall it once saved my life in trials of the luremaster where one of the specters had a slow axe and my warhammer hit faster, that way I could just quickly hit and get away, then repeat over and over
I object against the notion of speed factor being more important the less attacks you have. It's quite the opposite by my experience, the more attacks you have per round, the bigger the gain of your speed advantage.
Very often this means a dead enemy, before he could even strike back.
Imo, this is the biggest feat of the Kensai class. I'm always puzzled about how often Speed Factor is downplayed in this game.
I can add that the speed factor means a lot when backstabbing. A faster weapon means you will likely hit the enemy before she goes away.
I'm actually curious how speed factor affects things once you've got multiple APR. Let's say you're a Fighter with two attacks, wielding a slow Two-Handed Sword with a Speed Factor of 9. Do both of your attacks during each round land right at the end? Or would one go at the beginning and the other closer to the end?
And that's why Speed Factor matters, even if most people, like LT suggested, tend to overlook it in favor of raw damage output.
A low speed factor is hugely powerful for hit/run tactics. A quarterstaff is speed:4. Mediocre. With two pips in two handed style it becomes a speed 0 weapon. Awesome. It means, provided that you have not spent your attacks/round for that round, you roll your attack dices instantly when you initialise the attack. On top of that it has reach. So your character will attack instantenously when you order to attack. So you can get in range, do a lightning fast smack to a slow opponent like an ogre, and retreat back and kite/dance around the target, until the next round begins and you can do a quick smack again. By this way the slower melee opponent stands no chance to hurt you. And you can wear the opponent down to a bloody pulp with the modest quarterstaff if you are THAT skilled with it (two handed weapon style!)
It is also handy when backstabbing, an enemy can walk away if your weapon speed is high, when you attempt a backstab.
So weapon speed is important in normal settings where your attack/round is low. If you are running with greater whirlwind or improved haste with 5+ attacks/round, the weapon speed loses its importance, even a two handed sword will be swung like mad when whirlwind attacking.
So a dagger will hit before a two handed sword?! Note that there are times when you really don't want to use a dagger. Daggers have zero reach, you need to get to the opponent's face to attack them. You really don't want to do this against dangerous opponents like ghasts/vampires/jellies etc. Things that can do horrible things to you just by touch. And enemies tend to attack the nearest enemies in most cases which puts the dagger user in jeopardy. But a two handed sword, staff, halberd or spear can attack from behind a dedicated tank and still hurt the opponent without fearing too much of retribution. Thus, a kensai with a staff is infinitely easier to play/survive than a kensai who uses daggers in melee.
I'm not even kidding.
The poison dagger in BG1 is pretty strong, but mostly due to that being, you know, BG1.
Then there's Fire Tooth, the eternal king of all things dagger-y.
And then there's the putrid mass of filthy, useless junk that is every other dagger in the series.
I wish daggers were better. Diversity is good. But they're not. They're terribad.
But generally the category is lackluster. I agree with @CrevsDaak on Longtooth. An extra backstab bonus would help make that weapon great versus 'meh' mechanically (Longtooth is cool already flavor-wise though for sure!).
If you play with mods the Rogue Rebalancing mod adds a few new daggers with fun effects (as well as a few new clubs for the club-starved).
I like differentiating weapons based on APR. The SR mod already does away with much of the crazy APR stacking by removing the x2 from IH, and it does feel a lot better that way. Makes Grand Mastery and +APR offhands less OP, and gives room for more variance. This could possibly be expanded upon more, with things like procs vs. raw damage in mind. Powerful procs on weaker weapons like daggers with higher APR would make for interesting choices compared to more damaging but "slower" (i.e. less APR) weapons without debilitating procs. Right now damage just wins almost all the time. Even Celestial Fury has a hard time keeping up, and it has one of the most ridiculous procs in the game (if not the most ridiculous).
Also I believe it's RR that adds a second Dagger of Venom +2 to the fence in the Shadow Thieves' building. I always thought it would be fun to dual-wield those on an Assassin. Seems like a lot of potential for poison damage.
I agree that in a lot of cases there are better choices than daggers, but they can still do a lot of fun things. From a flavor standpoint, I see nothing wrong with using them.
Of course they're fine for flavor, but that's not really an argument. Not in that it doesn't matter (in fact, it matters the most to many people) but simply in that there is no discussion because you liking something trumps pretty much every rationale. However, from an objective, damage-performance standpoint, they are simply not good enough.
One more thing about daggers' usefulness is that you get both melee and ranged options with a single weapon proficiency (very good for thieves in BG1, since they get so few of them).
Ranged is somewhat of an argument, mostly because of Fire Tooth. Now that STR bonuses properly apply to ranged, it's an actual contender in certain setups. Then again, if you want ranged you may just want to roll an Archer in the first place...
I nearly always play solo and micro-manage my characters, which gives me a different perspective from most players. Having said that, in my games weapon speed is hugely important - much more so than small differences in damage or APR. In a lot of battles enemies using a slow weapon will rarely if ever actually hit with it as I've already hit them in the round and run away before they get a chance to retaliate.
Even in a standard party game without that level of micro-management I think weapon speed is significantly more important than most people realise. It makes a big difference to the outcome of combats if you are regularly hitting in the round before an opponent - that not only gives you a chance of killing them before they can retaliate, but can also actually reduce their number of attacks (due to the slight stuttering of the icon when hit). Kensais are so good offensively not just because of their bonuses to hit and damage, but also due to their extra weapon speed allowing them to get their retaliation in first
Calling BS on the part where SCS casters supposedly run around like chickens on crank. Because they just don't.
So.. this got me thinking about testing using the firetooth and another dagger on a dual wielding blade. Anyone tried it? Does the added APR from throwing daggers still apply to the dual wield so that a non-fighter, say a swashie or blade, wielding firetooth and ie belm get 4 APR? A +3 weapon with 3 APR and 2-8 damage is pretty good for non-fighters (the third APR from the off-hand speed weapon, if that works).