Andor's Trail

It does specify that ”attack speed” means AP cost, but that seems counterintuitive.

Incidentally, I find it interesting that of the 3 given fighting techniques, Dual-Wield is the only one that is horrendously un-viable until you have maxed it out. I felt out of sorts with my dual assassin using a shield until lvl 30. Also, there seems to be a bug where dual-wielding a crit weapon in the off-hand only, gives you CH but does not increase your ECC/actually grant you the ability to make crits. Swapping said weapon (FSP as an example) will result in the same overall numbers but will allow you to crit at whatever your rate is. Should it matter which hand you have the crit weapon equipped in, if dual-wield skill grants all properties from both hands to your attack?

I've decided to go with Dual wield, so thanks for the tip about crit weapons in the off-hand. I am very close to level 30, and thus the second level of Dual wield. At level 32 I'll get the second level of Combat speed. I'm currently using either DotSP with a balanced steel sword, or two balanced steel swords (for crit immune monsters), and I have the JoF, so I think level 32 will be a big move forward for me. Either four strikes per round, or two strikes and a chance to flee, with the full benefits of two weapons, should allow me to really dish out the damage. That's the theory, anyway

Seems like you are on your path to a nice build.

From my calculation equipment can give about 50 critical, and if you take 5 critical skills this means 50*2=100 so it mast be 100% critical chance. Is it true? Is 100% critical chance possible?

Critical skill (CS) and Effective critical chance (ECC) are not the same thing, although they are related. A CS of 100 would give you an ECC of 39%.

Theoretically, you can get your ECC as high as 100%, but to do it you would need a CS of 552. So not so easy in practice

how does dual-wielding affect criticals? if one weapon has 2x and the other has 3x, what is the final multiplier?

This forum thread may help with your question:

http://andorstrail.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=4160

i am still not clear on how criticals are applied with dual wield at level 2. if one weapon has a 2x multiplier and the other has a 3x multiplier what will the multiplier be? does it only use the multiplier of the weapon in the main hand, or take the highest one, or what?

i believe ad, ac, bc and critical skill are straightforward. the values from the second weapon are added to the values of the first weapon and the standard calculations applied. correct? its the multiplier that i am primarily confused about.

is it possible to put together a dual wield build that does more damage than the quickstrike dagger over the long term? i mean for a high level character with 12 ap and high ad, which is where the qsd seems to outshine everything else. the ability to build an extra powerful critical character is the only possibility i can think of.

pokerjunky wrote:i am still not clear on how criticals are applied with dual wield at level 2. if one weapon has a 2x multiplier and the other has a 3x multiplier what will the multiplier be? does it only use the multiplier of the weapon in the main hand, or take the highest one, or what?

The multiplier of the weapon in the main hand.

pokerjunky wrote:i believe ad, ac, bc and critical skill are straightforward. the values from the second weapon are added to the values of the first weapon and the standard calculations applied.

Correct.

pokerjunky wrote:is it possible to put together a dual wield build that does more damage than the quickstrike dagger over the long term? i mean for a high level character with 12 ap and high ad, which is where the qsd seems to outshine everything else. the ability to build an extra powerful critical character is the only possibility i can think of.

To answer that, let's look at two builds that are about the same level. The dual wield build in my signature and the QSD build in fiernaq's signature: http://andorstrail.com/memberlist.php?m ... ile&u=3288.

For a monster with a BC of 100% that is not immune to critical hits the average damage per round for my character is 188. For fiernaq's character it's 278. That's a big difference, but my stats are when I'm using 2x Ring of the Protector to boost my BC, and fiernaq went all out on AC and AD and put very little into HP or BC. So we'll switch my rings to 2x polished ring of backstabbing, to make a slightly more attack oriented build, and take 10 off fiernaq's base AD (which would go into HP or BC), to make a slightly less attack oriented build. Then my average damage per round would be 227, and fiernaq's would be 221. That's close. The damage for fiernaq's QSD build applies to all monster though, where as the damage for my dual wield build applies only to monsters where there's a chance of a critical hit. For monsters that are immune to critical hits my average damage per round is only 155. So, in short, in this version of the game I do not think it's possible to create a dual wield character that does more damage than a QSD build. However, even with the adjustments above the dual wield build has a much higher BC and a lot more HP. So which is more powerful?

One last thing. Whatever character you choose to build, don't become too attached to it. Based on other posts I believe the way all this is calculated will change in the next version of the game, so whatever is "best now may not be "best" then.