Unarmed Combat

[Snaaty]

Hello Forum,

I just started playing a rather promising Ghoul of Qazlal. My question is about unarmed combat and the penalties, that are due to armour and shields.

In my testing, switching between "no armor" and a chain mail gave only a minimal difference in attack speed. (With zero Armour skill, that is.) It changed from "above average" to average. More armour skill could reduce that, even, I think.

Later, I tried a buckler to increase survivability and it actually reduced my attack speed from "quite fast" to "above average", even though I had already trained Shields up to level 8. I seem to remember though, that somewhere on the wiki it says that you can overcome the shield-penalty by training shields to a certain level.

So, I am asking for advice, whether using a buckler or shield is worth it, and/or if I should wear plate armour, because the penalty of heavy armours seems to be negligible.

Thank you.

[Patashu]

A buckler is not worth it, because it removes your auxiliary punch, which is a large nerf to your total damage output. In return, you get the defense of a buckler - not that amazing.
A shield is a better tradeoff - you still lose the punch, but the shield's defensive boost is more meaningful compared to the buckler. Especially if it's a shield of a good ego.
As for body armour, the penalty of body armour on UC may as well not exist, wear the armour that you would otherwise wear.

[intr]

By the way, for more precise assessment of your attack speed you can look at the number in parentheses right next to the time count (i.e. "Time: 2052.4 (0.9)"). This number tells you how long your last action took.

[Siegurt]

Also be aware when using that metric that unarmed's penalty from armour and shields is randomized, so you may have to try a fair number of times to get a good understanding of what the average is (it's also not a flat distribution)