The Tavern

I've become persuaded that choosing Long Blades for the riposte is a trap. Ba is the only species that has LBl as its highest aptitude. Long blades do less damage than M&F and require more XP than Staves. So is there any reason for a background that chooses a starting weapon to choose Long Blades?

I doubt it. To me, it looks like riposte is meant to make LB better on EV-based builds, and really making them an alternative, but it's just the first step in this direction, and, on its own, it's not sufficient.

Draconians can't bulk up in armour and have to resort to EV.

Merfolk like to be EV based and polearms are meh without allies.

Long blades are slightly worse than the other options, but not by a very significant margin, so it's not like choosing a really good long blade over a bad axe or polearm is the wrong decision.

I also sometimes choose to start with Long blades because they crosstrain with short blades on builds where stealth and stabbing is appealing (Getting enough short blades to one-shot stab things with a dagger by crosstraining from long blades is pretty easy) and on D:1 a falchion isn't any worse than a spear or hand axe.

I do think that when riposte was added, the delay of some of the long blades should've gone down slightly to compensate for the lowered damage (notably long sword should have gone down to 1.3 from 1.4) and there should be a damage 13, delay 1.5 (or 1.4) two-handed sword to occupy the same niche as halberds and dire flails (Maybe call it a broad sword or something)

I never choose long blades as starting weapon because of hydra. While axes have a problem with hydra too, they crosstrain with maces and provide more fun play style due to cleaving. Maces is default weapon category for me, polearms are used with Ce and Mf.

R.I.P. High Elf.

Why do the people in these conversations never mention brands? The brands for different weapon types are significantly different:

Code:: Whip Morningstar Eveningstar Other maces Long blades Demon weapons Dagger Other short* Axe Spear Other pole Quarterstaff Lajatang Launcher* No brand 34% 15% 8% 26.67% 23% 27% 20% 33% 31% 46% 36% 50% 34% 58% Antimagic 1% 2% 0.95% 1% 3% 1% 1% 2% 2% 2% 2% 4% Distortion 2% 2% 2% 0.95% 1% 1% 1% 2% 2% 2% 2% 3% Draining 7% 10% 19% 9.52% 5% 10% 9% 9% 3% 8% Electrocution 16% 10% 16% 6% 6% 11% 12% Flaming 6% 4% 6% 5% 7% 4% 4% 10% 7% 7% 16% Freezing 6% 4% 6% 5% 7% 4% 4% 10% 7% 7% 16% Holy wrath 3% 15% 15% 14.29% 23% 5% 5% 1% 1% 2% Pain 4% 2% 2% 0.95% 1% 4% 2% 1% 2% 2% 2% 7% Protection 30% 30% 28.57% 8% 6% 6% 12% 18% 9% Speed 10% 8% 12% Vampiric 5% 2% 2% 4% 7% 4% 4% 5% 5% 5% 12% Venom 16% 5% 6% 4.76% 2% 19% 28% 17% 8% 17% 17% 7% Vorpal 9% 6% 13.33% 15% 20% 16% 12% 9% 8% 10% *Naturally generated quick blades and blowguns never have brands.

Of course this isn't the whole story because monster equipment and vaults often override these brand probabilities, but surely some of you have noticed that maces get protection a lot more often than long blades do...

I never knew about that before wtf

Kinda hard to make a decision based on something you had no idea about lol

This table is not that useful without another table which contains chances to find the weapon at all. I find whips much more often than demon blades, for instance.

Edit. I mean if great maces have N% chance for electro brand and lajatangs have 2N% chance for electro brand, I am still more likely to find great mace of electro than lajatang of electro when there are thrice more great maces than lajatangs in the game.

duvessa wrote:Why do the people in these conversations never mention brands? The brands for different weapon types are significantly different:

None of this applies to scroll of brand weapon, right?

Right.

I'm not providing a table of probabilities to find the weapons themselves, because a great deal of the weapons in DCSS games come from monsters, so every level's weapon distribution is a little different.

Does do some monstes' gear (orcs, vault guards, etc) follow the standard drop tables, or does every monster that uses gear have its own?

Monsters randomly generated with the level have their own weapon tables, which you can look at in mon-gear.cc. Monsters that are placed by vaults can have some or all of their equipment specified by the vault, which is how you get stuff like the abyss rune surrounded by distortion/chaos ettins.

demonblade and double sword match up decently with their M&F counterparts but everything else is utter garbage. Especially when you look at triple sword which takes 24! skills to reach the same effectiveness as a great mace which is way more common and takes only 20 skills. Does riposte make up for this deficiency?

Long blades have only one use i think and thats for stabbers that are transitioning into more damaging weapons.

The real realization for stabbers, though, is to stop using short blades and instead just use actual good weapons because you don't need to do fuckbillion damage to a monster that is confused/paralyzed/asleep to kill it. Hexing would be good with no damage bonus at all.

Shard1697 wrote:Hexing would be good with no damage bonus at all.

Have you tried it with non-short blades? I have and I disagree.

Irony: a recent HONe went long blades because it found a +6 long sword with useful artifact properties in early dungeon. Alas I died (stupidly) before I could afford the +10 double sword in a shop.

I like them.

I do not know how well riposte translates into actual damage, but flavour wise its seems spot on and I like that it scales with evasion.

Please check for evasion and riposte before shield block.

I've perceived a lot of value in branded ripostes the few times I've developed the opportunity.

svendre wrote:Please check for evasion and riposte before shield block.

This is really what we need that will bring Riposte from being mostly useless to being actually maybe useful. Gaining levels in shields shouldn't nerf your mainhand weapon.

mattlistener wrote:I've perceived a lot of value in branded ripostes the few times I've developed the opportunity.

It's pretty funny when I'm playing a mage with a stat stick artifact sword that has zero training, and something suddenly dies of electrocution from a riposte. "Wait, what? Oh yeah, this is a long blade..."

PseudoLoneWolf wrote:
svendre wrote:Please check for evasion and riposte before shield block.

This is really what we need that will bring Riposte from being mostly useless to being actually maybe useful. Gaining levels in shields shouldn't nerf your mainhand weapon.

You can already play with 2H long blades and see that this isn't really true.

It is still true that evasion/riposte should be checked before shield block though, it's a very weird anti-synergy

Riposte is useful if you are spellcasting and you haven't got or plan to get an appropriate staff.

Maybe it is just me, but well-branded long blades (such as elec) do well on builds that end up with insane EV. I was on a run that ended up well over 50 EV (items helped, and by the time I died I had switched to different gear combo), and riposte triggered ridiculously often, to the point that I was killing quite a number of creatures with riposte.

I would still say that cleave is directly better than riposte in many ways, but the fact that riposte can trigger on every attack means that if it was balanced right riposte with a branded LB would actually deal more damage than axes when you are the brunt of numerous attacks (not true as of yet). I will say that this works rather well with Statue Form because of the jacked damage, and the slowed attack speed reduces the effectiveness of cleave (triggering when you attack) while leaving riposte (triggers when you are attacked) untouched.

I run LB builds regularly, and almost never fail to find a flaming blade (scimitars are common due to efreets and that one unique woman that I just forgot). So that's a minimal concern.

The big thing, really, is that I usually run LB when I do Chei and plan on going Statue Form. I can get super high EV and high AC, and have incentive to take advantage of the passive triggering bypassing the slowed actions.

Long story short, circumstantially LB can be good. CAN. With current set-ups, however, they are generally not worth the investment.

P.S. -- Had an offline game where I had an exec axe, fencer's gloves, AND boots of the assassin. Cleave + Stab + Riposte. That was fun, and will probably never happen again (found them all once in one online game, but died promptly before I had enough gold to buy them all).

Good reasons to pick Longblades:

- If you're more EV based, since Riposte activates from Evasion.

- If you don't want to heavily invest in a weapon skill; since Riposte is independent of weapon delay. A caster can wield a Longblade and still benefit from Riposte while casting.

- You found the Fencer's Gloves; which increases Long Blade Riposte chance from 33% to 100%

- You are a small race, and thus can't hold a big mace/flail/axe; but can use Demon Blades and Double Swords [Although this one stops you using a Shield].

- You found a good artifact

- You're transitioning from Short Blades.

Good races for Longblades include Halflings; Merfolk; Barachi; Deep Elves [Key example of the 'Dosen't want to invest hugely in melee but can benefit from Riposte']; Tengu; Draconians [Train Dodgeing since no Armour skill] and Octopodes [See Draconians]. It's worth considering on any hybrid or caster build that's got a focus on dodgeing.

If you're going full melee however and relying on AC more than EV; then Longblades are not for you.

Riposte's benefit for damage does not scale significantly with EV if you are attacking at mindelay. Taking EV from 10 to 30 is about a 10% damage increase against a stone giant, assuming we are attacking at mindelay. People greatly overestimate the impact of EV when considering riposte. It is not significant enough to affect your armor choice or skilling decisions on its own and is rarely significant enough to affect weapon choice, which should be based on the best weapon you have available and/or prior skill investment.

Fencer's gloves increase riposte chance to 66% when used with a longblade, but they also let you riposte with a non-longblade weapon so there's not any incentive to switch weapon types.

Hellmonk wrote:Fencer's gloves increase riposte chance to 66% when used with a longblade, but they also let you riposte with a non-longblade weapon so there's not any incentive to switch weapon types.

in fact, if anything fencer's gloves are incentive to switch to axes. cleave and riposte is about as strong a combination as you'd think!

raikaria wrote:Good reasons to pick Longblades:

- If you're more EV based, since Riposte activates from Evasion.

- If you don't want to heavily invest in a weapon skill; since Riposte is independent of weapon delay. A caster can wield a Longblade and still benefit from Riposte while casting.

- You found the Fencer's Gloves; which increases Long Blade Riposte chance from 33% to 100%

- You are a small race, and thus can't hold a big mace/flail/axe; but can use Demon Blades and Double Swords [Although this one stops you using a Shield].

- You found a good artifact

- You're transitioning from Short Blades.

Good races for Longblades include Halflings; Merfolk; Barachi; Deep Elves [Key example of the 'Dosen't want to invest hugely in melee but can benefit from Riposte']; Tengu; Draconians [Train Dodgeing since no Armour skill] and Octopodes [See Draconians]. It's worth considering on any hybrid or caster build that's got a focus on dodgeing.

If you're going full melee however and relying on AC more than EV; then Longblades are not for you.

I think you have part of this backwards. The last time I checked, small races could wield an eveningstar with a shield, but not a double sword.

svendre wrote:I think you have part of this backwards. The last time I checked, small races could wield an eveningstar with a shield, but not a double sword.

Oh yes; my mistake.

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Is there any reason to choose Long Blades?

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