Huntsman bow is my favorite bow. I used it all the way into the Ashlands. Perfect for sniping and killing things off without attracting attention. And because its an iron age weapon it uses almost no stamina.
It's funny how things change. When I first got into the game a few years ago everyone said not to even make the huntsman bow. Now everyone recommends it.
Love to see your opinion of weapons. Great insight. A bit like grading build pieces... Interested in an armor tier list from you. Hope it's in the mix.
Both are excellent options honestly, finewood is just crazy for how early you can get it. Tbh the last two bows should be down a tier just because everything is anti pierce lategame
Great video! I agree with everthing except abyssal razor not being A tier, I guess because you don't do sneaking, it is also the fastest way to gather wood except for trolls
I get the fact that actually staves are kind of OP, and I do like them, however, this kind of distances us from the whole Viking theme. Every time I tend to go into end-game, the fact of me playing as a mage saddens me, I want to be a Viking that smacks with true Viking weapons, but having these in the game is OK I guess, but we need more s tier melee weapons and game mechanics. At least they added dual axes, I was craving for those for a long time.
@@henrik9658 yeah, kinda wish that staves in the end would be reworked to give only like summoning abilities, barriers and maybe leech ability, so that you would more use those like a “side weapon” same as you with blood shield staff, you activate a barrier and then use any other weapon. They should not go in too deep with magic development as a class I think, staves should be a niche weapon, more like a talisman. Vikings should be Vikings 😎
The best thing with magic weapons is you can attack even though you run, dodge or jump because it doesnt use stamina. In mistlands and ashlands you continuously need to run, dodge and jump but after that you dont have stamina to attack. Even just this mechanic makes magic weapons op I think
100% agree, magic is totally cracked. not to mention they don't use stamina so your stamina bar is purely used for survival, and then magic foods give 3 stats.
Cool tier list, thx. About knives i think they are pretty good if you can use power combo consistently with them, even flint knife deal good damage with those combos.
Before even watching the video I want to thank you for doing this video. I am glad to see you doing videos like this as you are an extremely knowledgeable player. I have learned a lot from watching your play throughs and as somebody who has a lot of experience playing this game the bar is set very high when I evaluate how good a guide is. It is good to see you branching off and doing these kinds of videos. People should watch your guides because you truly do know what you are talking about. Now on to the video. I am one hundred percent sure it will be an s tier weapons tier video.
2:00 in and I like the fact that you start with the s tier weapons because that is what I and everybody else is most interested in. I rarely see this in tier lists and the reason is that other content creators would like you to watch the whole video. It would probably be in your own personal interest to leave the payday until the end. However, you don’t seem to give a fox about that. I like that about you 😂😂😂
13:00 in…wooden club is s tier. You can craft immediately without a workbench and use it deep into the game. So many mobs/bosses are weak to blunt. Few if any mobs/bosses are resistant to blunt. For players who are not as skilled as yourself this weapon is very cost effective as investing your time into this weapon provides them with such a great return on investment. Levelling up the club makes so much sense because they get so much return on investment. The club skill level transfers over to the two handed clubs. The stagbreaker is a game changer for normie players as they can safely complete dungeons and crypts which is huge for most players who have not mastered the game. Club can be relevant the entire game. There is a reason so many players use club weapons and have to force themselves to try other weapons. The wooden club is so cheap, very effective and can still be relevant late into the game. I see you have already acknowledged this in the comments but I feel it is important to point out that skill level is a cost, an investment and this weapon is OP when considering this factor.
I thought about it honestly but if people want to see what's in S tier they can just skip to the end of those videos anyway and get a quick overview of the tier list so I prefer to do it this way wood club is OP for sure A tier weapon. Don't forget the building hammer too, might be the number 1 op weapon :)
Huntsman bow is really good for clearing out Fuling villages because of the small agro radius. I would highly recommend less skilled players to dust this bow off and take it along with them when clearing fuling villages. It makes the job so much easier.
I mained a knife in my very first Valheim play though way back when the game first dropped. I loved the fast attack speed vs stamina cost. And on the third hit you can stagger early enemies. Where I got into a lot of trouble was in the mountains with wolves. That's when I took a look at atgeirs. Since then I kind of rush getting a level 3 bronze atgeir. I can take that through the Black Forest, Mountains and a good part of the Plains. The only other weapon I use is the club/mace for things that need blunt. I also make a sword for dealing with aboms but I didn't use swords at all until that update.
Fun analysis! 1. Your comments about knives being disappointing are spot on. But IMHO the fundamental problem is that the entire stealth/backstab aspect of the game is nearly irrelevant (except for actual ranged shots). Knives also have speed on their side, but spears are almost as fast and much more useful. If there was an actual reason to backstab something the knife might be better. 2. I'm surprised you don't see the finewood bow as nearly a full tier better than any other bow just due to the "relevance" factor. The game isn't hard enough to make the crude bow necessary in early game. So you skip that, then you get a finewood bow... now why even upgrade or replace it? You've skipped from no ranged attack to yes ranged attack (which is obviously a massive improvement) and any upgrade is lackluster. The weird thing about bows is that the damage = bow damage + arrow damage, so the arrow is half the weapon. This means early game bows scale up surprisingly well in late game when you put better arrows in them. It also means that upgrading the bow itself only improves half of the equation. It's just not worth the resources. As soon as you get a taste of copper you can put needle arrows in your finewood bow and it's like a wand of death. As much as I like the later bows, I don't even really mess with them unless the mats fall into my lap. The improved aim is the best thing about them. TBH the huntsman bow is sort of my fav, but again, there's little actual need for stealth so it's more of a fun idea than a reality.
very true, finewood bow is best bow should be ahead of the rest. Huntsman and Draugr are pretty damn good tho, but yea spinesnap and on they sorta fall off, especially with crossbows becoming available and i prefer to use those instead.
Before the aslands update knives were really good since they are cheap and easy to level due to their few stamina consumption and fast attacking animation. It is really fun to one shot seeker soldier with skol and hati with a sneak attack but after you reach ashlands knives do nothing. That makes investing to knives all game long pointless unfortunately.
100% agree they're abandoned at ashlands, and are really fine until then. it's such a shame. Not only is there no good knife for ashlands but the pierce resist on charred kills them, you need like 8 hits to kill a single enemy there. Didn't know they'd be so strong in mistlands! I haven't played with them much, I might do a knife playthrough next to try it out! Lightning/Nature knife would be so cool in ashlands... :(
Staff of the wild has literally changed my feelings on the ashlands, it’s enjoyable now. Bronze mace in the c tier… you can get it almost right away, it carries you through burial chambers and the swamps which can be the longest and hardest part of the game. I think this was a mistake to put it in the c tier.
To be honest I don't ever bother with bronze mace, level 4 would club does more than fine, and for harder situations you got stagbreaker. Agree though staff of the wild makes ashlands a breeze, I had the same experience
I think the aggro radius difference for the huntsman bow is actually only half but that makes the circle/sphere a quarter/eighth the size of the other bows' aggro range, hence why it feels so much smaller.
In general I agree with most of your weapon rankings, but I think there are a few caveats. First although the shield staff is great, ESPECIALLY at higher difficulties, the power of it falls off a lot if you are trying to use higher armor value gear or are on standard difficulty. The damage the shield absorbs seems to be calculated prior to your gear/parry mitigation, so if you are using a shield and solid armor that would mitigate most of a hit you'll find it of limited use. When I tried to do a hybrid build I found that even my 400+ hp shield getting knocked off almost every parry even when the hit would do almost nothing to my armored body. I lost more life recasting than it saved me from the hits. This doesn't matter much if you are a caster or in higher difficulties since those hits would crush you and you need that extra life pool (and 1 hit would crush you anyways), but I don't think it is quite as universal as you make it out to be. I think you are overvaluing the fire staff a tiny bit as well. Yeah, it is the premier Mistlands weapon, but you aren't going to have refined eiter until you have spent a decent amount of time in the zone, and since you are spamming the fire shot you really want to have a full set of caster gear to go with it, which is again a huge cost making it only good REALLY late in the Mistlands. With it being just 'okay' and not great in Ashlands that makes the relevant time period it really shines pretty small. You are right that it will probably be much better in fighting like frost giants or whatever in the frozen north, but until we actually see it I don't think it is fair to give it points for that. You were singing the praises of the Himminafl, and I agree for even more reasons than you listed. You mentioned the secondary effect stun, but something that everyone who has used it also knows that sort of goes unmentioned is that the hit box of the polearm secondary attack is HUGE and even hits behind you. When you are swing it you are essentially immune to any melee damage including enemies sneaking up behind you. It really is just that good. Similar to 2 handed maces you can also hit things on the other side of walls with it meaning you can cheese enemies with it quite easily (including the queen if you are feeling really cheesy). I also think you are overvaluing some of the later bows, although they are good, you REALLY feel that increased stamina cost from spinesnap on. They are still fine, and ranged tends to be better than melee, but I think only the finewood bow and maybe either drauger fang or huntsman's bow (depending on taste) really belong in that second tier. Each higher level one is sort of cheap to make, but the increased power gain is quite minimal, and you (rightfully) dinged the blackmetal atgier for that, no reason not to do the same for the later bows. I don't disagree with the positioning of the troll staff since if you are a caster build it is useful for clearing fortresses like nothing else, but I think it is important to note that unlike pretty much every other weapon in the game it WILL kill you if you let that aoe impact damage clip you, and it is larger than you might think. It can be a bit tricky if you are in a fight with a ton of mobs where the troll would be a great help. You spend a HUGE chunk of life and mana casting the troll, and you would like that impact of the troll hitting the ground to clear the stuff you are fighting, but it is REALLY dangerous to kite the enemies near the impact ring since the landing will very easily kill your squishy caster body. I am 99% sure it is multi-hit as well since I had it kill me once through a shield staff which in theory absorbs 1 hit no matter how high the damage. Something you didn't mention about Skol and Hati is that it tends to be fairly annoying farming rabbit meat in Mistlands, and since you can run at full speed using knives (and the wolf claws), and since they swing fast, they are invaluable for that if nothing else. It might not be super important for your combat setup, but they aren't useless in combat in the mistlands against the weaker enemies and having a very strong use case in the game puts them ahead of a lot of weapons (even if the use case has a huge asterisk). I also think lightning berserkir axes are a bit better than you give them credit for, a lot of the danger in Ashlands is just getting stuck in combat trying to kill/kite things while additional enemies respawn or aggro from a mile away. That doesn't happen if you are using the axes since it absolutely CRUSHES them, it does enough damage that you can kill pretty much anything in a single parry combo, and even stagger 1 star swordsman it hits so hard. Killing fast and not having to kite is a big deal when 4 more archers, 3 birds, 2 dogs, and a valkyrie are all yellow alert marching towards you while you slowly smack/kite things with a 'safer' weapon. A fully upgraded lightning ax also crushes Morgans like no other weapon, you can knock one out in like 10 seconds in a single stamina bar. It is so good I almost feel that it invalidates any other Ashlands level melee weapon, and it also has the bonus of using lightning gems to upgrade which tends to be uncontested since most other weapons (and crafting buildings) would probably prefer the one of the other 2 gems making it cheap along with powerful. The damage is so high I can't imagine it falls off much in the frozen north, but if the zone is super melee unfriendly we'll have to see. You sort of touched on how badly pierce damage falls off in the later zones, and I would guess that it is probably due to a ranged damage 'tax'. Even with pierce being greatly penalized both bows and crossbows are invaluable in the later zones, even doing 50% less damage in Ashlands. It is really hard to balance a melee range pierce weapon without making the mobs that it would be good against trivial to ranged weapons.
Some very solid takes, I do agree with you on finewood bow and huntsman+draugr being a step ahead of the later bows, didn't think too much about it but those 3 stay relevant much longer. I stand by my point on fire staff being top tier though, it's so much dps and really strong in ashlands; quite often you face many enemies grouped up and hitting all of them at once from a safe distance is super valuable - and it has a VERY generous area. Its also 100% the best weapon for queen fight, so even though it comes fairly late into the mistlands, you have it where it counts; and I get it fairly early on before making mage armor or upgrading stuff. It doesn't really come any earlier than mistwalker or lightning atgeir because you can break the forge and turn it into galdir table, and it's very good for that first fortress you clear (Which is the hardest) to clear the siege and spawners from a safe distance. Haven't used the lightning axes outside of normal difficulty to be honest because axes are a pain to level up. BUT they felt AWESOME on normal for sure. Yes bubble shield is not great if you are running heavy, it is most effective when running light armor; either full fenris or full mage set. The idea is to go completely hitless and stay mobile and keep that bubble always up, kite away and recast it when it gets popped. Appreciate you sharing your perspective!
@@henrik9658 My previous play through was a caster build, and I took a ton of extra time leveling up the skills once I got the staves built. I got blood up to like 50-60 with a skill farming setup in the swamp and took plenty of time to level up my elemental since, as you said, it is by FAR the best way to fight the queen. Okay, I want to go on a rant before going any farther...the Queen is just a badly designed fight. Ranged is pretty much useless since you can't see, any melee weapon does 50% less damage so it takes forever, especially with all the adds spawning. It feels like they wanted to force players to engage with the magic system by punishing them if they tried to do anything else. If you try to go with other weapons it will take 20+ minutes and you end up literally running out of durability and needing to repair it takes so long to chop through unless you just cheese her through the wall. I hate this design, and as you said, it might as well just say "Use fire staff here". No other boss in the game is like this. As a caster I took about 3 times as long to go through those last 2 zones which is probably at least partially due to dying 4-5 times as much in Ashlands along with the extra time leveling up magic skills. Most of those deaths were when I was trying to fight large groups of mobs with the fire staff. The melee you can kite, but they took an annoyingly long amount of time to kill just because those swordmen have so much hp. The archers are constantly knocking off your shield while you run from melee and dogs, and since archers stand still I had trouble aoeing them even though they were the things doing most of the damage. I could either take down the single thing doing most of the damage, or slowly aoe the things right on top of me that would kill me if I messed up the kite. Maybe it was just a (lack of) skill issue on my part but those huge fights were exhilarating but led to deaths. The vast majority of my clean success going through Ashlands as a caster was single pulling mobs from max range with the fire staff, and then using the frost staff which actually does a bit better most of the time in non-aoe situations. So I guess what I am saying is that the fire staff is absolutely unmatched in the queen fight, really really useful taking down the first fortress, and other than that it is just good. I think the shield staff and the himmilafl are literally game changing from the moment you get them for multiple zones in all situations which is why I would personally put the fire staff a bit lower. It would still be in the A tier, I was just nitpicking it being with the other S weapons.
Super vouch for the lightning axes, it absolutely decimates a huge army of mobs quickly (especially with Ask's endurance for overall stamina discounts). Rest of top tier is easy to agree on, I legitimately just use all of them + the axes on the same character in very hard ashlands. As for queen it can be done with melee quickly (~5m) but it relies on parking yourself in a corner to limit her movepool and getting into a reliable slash slash dodge rhythm (+ bile bombs). If she's not dead or close to it by the time bonemass runs out it might get weird though
@@henrik9658 Great to hear! The lightning axes are by far my favourite for all-around usage and have super high dps vs single and multiple targets. I got to the point of stunlocking and almost instakilling most ashlands enemies because of the stagger damage from the lightning. Even 0 star morgens are somewhat trivialized if the lightning activates while they're staggered
I would like to see a similar video, but the weapons are ranked on how badly they need a rebalance. This could be either to reduce damage (fire staff) or increase effectiveness (axes)
dead raiser can be a very goof distraction so that you can breath a bit, especially in the ashlands where there are no warring factions. Fracturing thing is very good if direct hits is what you're doing, in mistlands though, it sucked.
@@FizzyP really? most games I've seen tier lists for are usually 30 mins or more. like fighting games definitely, weapon tier list for action or RPG games, car tier list for GTA etc....
The thing is im actually giving reasonable explanations as to why i rank things where, all my civ 4 tier lists are also around an hour long i think it's a healthy length. what you don't want is it going 2-3 hours tho.
An important note about the Staff of Protection is that the shield doesn't inherit any resistances/armor that you may have, it's flat HP. Also have to mention that it takes damage from sources that the player is immune to, like Pickaxe and Chop.
It is a bug but this bug has existed since Hildirs quest and they've said on their discord they don't really ever plan of fixing it so gg it's a feature now
Club was too powerful to make this list
Yes I thought the same thing 😂😂😂
Where would you have put it,@@henrik9658?
Also, was black metal battle-ax (low) on the list?
Need best friends bonfire and campfire too
Yes it was. Club should be slightly below flint spear.
The building hammer (for camp-fires and cooking stations) is S tier
@@henrik9658 what about the hoe? Being able to manipulate land at a whim is crucial in some battles 😅
Huntsman bow is my favorite bow. I used it all the way into the Ashlands. Perfect for sniping and killing things off without attracting attention. And because its an iron age weapon it uses almost no stamina.
Yes! Huntsman bow is awesome
It's funny how things change. When I first got into the game a few years ago everyone said not to even make the huntsman bow. Now everyone recommends it.
Great tier list bro!
Love to see your opinion of weapons. Great insight. A bit like grading build pieces...
Interested in an armor tier list from you. Hope it's in the mix.
Great tier list. Only disagreement is, I'd bump hunstman bow over finewood (despite higher stam/cost) coz I do love a bow that shoots straight :)
Both are excellent options honestly, finewood is just crazy for how early you can get it. Tbh the last two bows should be down a tier just because everything is anti pierce lategame
Great video!
I agree with everthing except abyssal razor not being A tier, I guess because you don't do sneaking, it is also the fastest way to gather wood except for trolls
The abyssal razor is the fastest way to gather wood?
@@FizzyP cutting a sapling takes a fraction of a second and very little stamina, try it out
I get the fact that actually staves are kind of OP, and I do like them, however, this kind of distances us from the whole Viking theme. Every time I tend to go into end-game, the fact of me playing as a mage saddens me, I want to be a Viking that smacks with true Viking weapons, but having these in the game is OK I guess, but we need more s tier melee weapons and game mechanics. At least they added dual axes, I was craving for those for a long time.
100% agree, its way more fun playing melee. magic spam is kinda cringe and a completely different vision from original valheim.
@@henrik9658 yeah, kinda wish that staves in the end would be reworked to give only like summoning abilities, barriers and maybe leech ability, so that you would more use those like a “side weapon” same as you with blood shield staff, you activate a barrier and then use any other weapon. They should not go in too deep with magic development as a class I think, staves should be a niche weapon, more like a talisman. Vikings should be Vikings 😎
The best thing with magic weapons is you can attack even though you run, dodge or jump because it doesnt use stamina. In mistlands and ashlands you continuously need to run, dodge and jump but after that you dont have stamina to attack. Even just this mechanic makes magic weapons op I think
100% agree, magic is totally cracked. not to mention they don't use stamina so your stamina bar is purely used for survival, and then magic foods give 3 stats.
Cool tier list, thx.
About knives i think they are pretty good if you can use power combo consistently with them, even flint knife deal good damage with those combos.
Before even watching the video I want to thank you for doing this video. I am glad to see you doing videos like this as you are an extremely knowledgeable player. I have learned a lot from watching your play throughs and as somebody who has a lot of experience playing this game the bar is set very high when I evaluate how good a guide is. It is good to see you branching off and doing these kinds of videos. People should watch your guides because you truly do know what you are talking about. Now on to the video. I am one hundred percent sure it will be an s tier weapons tier video.
2:00 in and I like the fact that you start with the s tier weapons because that is what I and everybody else is most interested in. I rarely see this in tier lists and the reason is that other content creators would like you to watch the whole video. It would probably be in your own personal interest to leave the payday until the end. However, you don’t seem to give a fox about that. I like that about you 😂😂😂
13:00 in…wooden club is s tier. You can craft immediately without a workbench and use it deep into the game. So many mobs/bosses are weak to blunt. Few if any mobs/bosses are resistant to blunt. For players who are not as skilled as yourself this weapon is very cost effective as investing your time into this weapon provides them with such a great return on investment. Levelling up the club makes so much sense because they get so much return on investment. The club skill level transfers over to the two handed clubs. The stagbreaker is a game changer for normie players as they can safely complete dungeons and crypts which is huge for most players who have not mastered the game. Club can be relevant the entire game. There is a reason so many players use club weapons and have to force themselves to try other weapons. The wooden club is so cheap, very effective and can still be relevant late into the game. I see you have already acknowledged this in the comments but I feel it is important to point out that skill level is a cost, an investment and this weapon is OP when considering this factor.
2 star wolves are s tier enemies. No doubt about it 😂😂
I thought about it honestly but if people want to see what's in S tier they can just skip to the end of those videos anyway and get a quick overview of the tier list so I prefer to do it this way
wood club is OP for sure A tier weapon. Don't forget the building hammer too, might be the number 1 op weapon :)
Huntsman bow is really good for clearing out Fuling villages because of the small agro radius. I would highly recommend less skilled players to dust this bow off and take it along with them when clearing fuling villages. It makes the job so much easier.
I mained a knife in my very first Valheim play though way back when the game first dropped. I loved the fast attack speed vs stamina cost. And on the third hit you can stagger early enemies. Where I got into a lot of trouble was in the mountains with wolves. That's when I took a look at atgeirs. Since then I kind of rush getting a level 3 bronze atgeir. I can take that through the Black Forest, Mountains and a good part of the Plains. The only other weapon I use is the club/mace for things that need blunt. I also make a sword for dealing with aboms but I didn't use swords at all until that update.
Fun analysis! 1. Your comments about knives being disappointing are spot on. But IMHO the fundamental problem is that the entire stealth/backstab aspect of the game is nearly irrelevant (except for actual ranged shots). Knives also have speed on their side, but spears are almost as fast and much more useful. If there was an actual reason to backstab something the knife might be better. 2. I'm surprised you don't see the finewood bow as nearly a full tier better than any other bow just due to the "relevance" factor. The game isn't hard enough to make the crude bow necessary in early game. So you skip that, then you get a finewood bow... now why even upgrade or replace it? You've skipped from no ranged attack to yes ranged attack (which is obviously a massive improvement) and any upgrade is lackluster. The weird thing about bows is that the damage = bow damage + arrow damage, so the arrow is half the weapon. This means early game bows scale up surprisingly well in late game when you put better arrows in them. It also means that upgrading the bow itself only improves half of the equation. It's just not worth the resources. As soon as you get a taste of copper you can put needle arrows in your finewood bow and it's like a wand of death. As much as I like the later bows, I don't even really mess with them unless the mats fall into my lap. The improved aim is the best thing about them. TBH the huntsman bow is sort of my fav, but again, there's little actual need for stealth so it's more of a fun idea than a reality.
very true, finewood bow is best bow should be ahead of the rest. Huntsman and Draugr are pretty damn good tho, but yea spinesnap and on they sorta fall off, especially with crossbows becoming available and i prefer to use those instead.
Before the aslands update knives were really good since they are cheap and easy to level due to their few stamina consumption and fast attacking animation. It is really fun to one shot seeker soldier with skol and hati with a sneak attack but after you reach ashlands knives do nothing. That makes investing to knives all game long pointless unfortunately.
100% agree they're abandoned at ashlands, and are really fine until then. it's such a shame. Not only is there no good knife for ashlands but the pierce resist on charred kills them, you need like 8 hits to kill a single enemy there. Didn't know they'd be so strong in mistlands! I haven't played with them much, I might do a knife playthrough next to try it out! Lightning/Nature knife would be so cool in ashlands... :(
@@henrik9658 I'd love to see a knife play through! Knife/bow
Staff of the wild has literally changed my feelings on the ashlands, it’s enjoyable now.
Bronze mace in the c tier… you can get it almost right away, it carries you through burial chambers and the swamps which can be the longest and hardest part of the game. I think this was a mistake to put it in the c tier.
To be honest I don't ever bother with bronze mace, level 4 would club does more than fine, and for harder situations you got stagbreaker.
Agree though staff of the wild makes ashlands a breeze, I had the same experience
I think the aggro radius difference for the huntsman bow is actually only half but that makes the circle/sphere a quarter/eighth the size of the other bows' aggro range, hence why it feels so much smaller.
i knew it was something around there, it's awesome though and makes a huge difference.
You should try putting lightning onto the Ashlands bow, the chain lightning can more than double your dps it’s kind of wild!
Lightning axes to me are S tier.
Yea for normal mode they're awesome but very dangerous in harder difficulties
@@henrik9658 not if mastered the aggresive use dodge roll
In general I agree with most of your weapon rankings, but I think there are a few caveats.
First although the shield staff is great, ESPECIALLY at higher difficulties, the power of it falls off a lot if you are trying to use higher armor value gear or are on standard difficulty. The damage the shield absorbs seems to be calculated prior to your gear/parry mitigation, so if you are using a shield and solid armor that would mitigate most of a hit you'll find it of limited use. When I tried to do a hybrid build I found that even my 400+ hp shield getting knocked off almost every parry even when the hit would do almost nothing to my armored body. I lost more life recasting than it saved me from the hits. This doesn't matter much if you are a caster or in higher difficulties since those hits would crush you and you need that extra life pool (and 1 hit would crush you anyways), but I don't think it is quite as universal as you make it out to be.
I think you are overvaluing the fire staff a tiny bit as well. Yeah, it is the premier Mistlands weapon, but you aren't going to have refined eiter until you have spent a decent amount of time in the zone, and since you are spamming the fire shot you really want to have a full set of caster gear to go with it, which is again a huge cost making it only good REALLY late in the Mistlands. With it being just 'okay' and not great in Ashlands that makes the relevant time period it really shines pretty small. You are right that it will probably be much better in fighting like frost giants or whatever in the frozen north, but until we actually see it I don't think it is fair to give it points for that.
You were singing the praises of the Himminafl, and I agree for even more reasons than you listed. You mentioned the secondary effect stun, but something that everyone who has used it also knows that sort of goes unmentioned is that the hit box of the polearm secondary attack is HUGE and even hits behind you. When you are swing it you are essentially immune to any melee damage including enemies sneaking up behind you. It really is just that good. Similar to 2 handed maces you can also hit things on the other side of walls with it meaning you can cheese enemies with it quite easily (including the queen if you are feeling really cheesy).
I also think you are overvaluing some of the later bows, although they are good, you REALLY feel that increased stamina cost from spinesnap on. They are still fine, and ranged tends to be better than melee, but I think only the finewood bow and maybe either drauger fang or huntsman's bow (depending on taste) really belong in that second tier. Each higher level one is sort of cheap to make, but the increased power gain is quite minimal, and you (rightfully) dinged the blackmetal atgier for that, no reason not to do the same for the later bows.
I don't disagree with the positioning of the troll staff since if you are a caster build it is useful for clearing fortresses like nothing else, but I think it is important to note that unlike pretty much every other weapon in the game it WILL kill you if you let that aoe impact damage clip you, and it is larger than you might think. It can be a bit tricky if you are in a fight with a ton of mobs where the troll would be a great help. You spend a HUGE chunk of life and mana casting the troll, and you would like that impact of the troll hitting the ground to clear the stuff you are fighting, but it is REALLY dangerous to kite the enemies near the impact ring since the landing will very easily kill your squishy caster body. I am 99% sure it is multi-hit as well since I had it kill me once through a shield staff which in theory absorbs 1 hit no matter how high the damage.
Something you didn't mention about Skol and Hati is that it tends to be fairly annoying farming rabbit meat in Mistlands, and since you can run at full speed using knives (and the wolf claws), and since they swing fast, they are invaluable for that if nothing else. It might not be super important for your combat setup, but they aren't useless in combat in the mistlands against the weaker enemies and having a very strong use case in the game puts them ahead of a lot of weapons (even if the use case has a huge asterisk).
I also think lightning berserkir axes are a bit better than you give them credit for, a lot of the danger in Ashlands is just getting stuck in combat trying to kill/kite things while additional enemies respawn or aggro from a mile away. That doesn't happen if you are using the axes since it absolutely CRUSHES them, it does enough damage that you can kill pretty much anything in a single parry combo, and even stagger 1 star swordsman it hits so hard. Killing fast and not having to kite is a big deal when 4 more archers, 3 birds, 2 dogs, and a valkyrie are all yellow alert marching towards you while you slowly smack/kite things with a 'safer' weapon. A fully upgraded lightning ax also crushes Morgans like no other weapon, you can knock one out in like 10 seconds in a single stamina bar. It is so good I almost feel that it invalidates any other Ashlands level melee weapon, and it also has the bonus of using lightning gems to upgrade which tends to be uncontested since most other weapons (and crafting buildings) would probably prefer the one of the other 2 gems making it cheap along with powerful. The damage is so high I can't imagine it falls off much in the frozen north, but if the zone is super melee unfriendly we'll have to see.
You sort of touched on how badly pierce damage falls off in the later zones, and I would guess that it is probably due to a ranged damage 'tax'. Even with pierce being greatly penalized both bows and crossbows are invaluable in the later zones, even doing 50% less damage in Ashlands. It is really hard to balance a melee range pierce weapon without making the mobs that it would be good against trivial to ranged weapons.
Some very solid takes,
I do agree with you on finewood bow and huntsman+draugr being a step ahead of the later bows, didn't think too much about it but those 3 stay relevant much longer.
I stand by my point on fire staff being top tier though, it's so much dps and really strong in ashlands; quite often you face many enemies grouped up and hitting all of them at once from a safe distance is super valuable - and it has a VERY generous area. Its also 100% the best weapon for queen fight, so even though it comes fairly late into the mistlands, you have it where it counts; and I get it fairly early on before making mage armor or upgrading stuff. It doesn't really come any earlier than mistwalker or lightning atgeir because you can break the forge and turn it into galdir table, and it's very good for that first fortress you clear (Which is the hardest) to clear the siege and spawners from a safe distance.
Haven't used the lightning axes outside of normal difficulty to be honest because axes are a pain to level up. BUT they felt AWESOME on normal for sure.
Yes bubble shield is not great if you are running heavy, it is most effective when running light armor; either full fenris or full mage set. The idea is to go completely hitless and stay mobile and keep that bubble always up, kite away and recast it when it gets popped.
Appreciate you sharing your perspective!
@@henrik9658 My previous play through was a caster build, and I took a ton of extra time leveling up the skills once I got the staves built. I got blood up to like 50-60 with a skill farming setup in the swamp and took plenty of time to level up my elemental since, as you said, it is by FAR the best way to fight the queen. Okay, I want to go on a rant before going any farther...the Queen is just a badly designed fight. Ranged is pretty much useless since you can't see, any melee weapon does 50% less damage so it takes forever, especially with all the adds spawning. It feels like they wanted to force players to engage with the magic system by punishing them if they tried to do anything else. If you try to go with other weapons it will take 20+ minutes and you end up literally running out of durability and needing to repair it takes so long to chop through unless you just cheese her through the wall. I hate this design, and as you said, it might as well just say "Use fire staff here". No other boss in the game is like this.
As a caster I took about 3 times as long to go through those last 2 zones which is probably at least partially due to dying 4-5 times as much in Ashlands along with the extra time leveling up magic skills. Most of those deaths were when I was trying to fight large groups of mobs with the fire staff. The melee you can kite, but they took an annoyingly long amount of time to kill just because those swordmen have so much hp. The archers are constantly knocking off your shield while you run from melee and dogs, and since archers stand still I had trouble aoeing them even though they were the things doing most of the damage. I could either take down the single thing doing most of the damage, or slowly aoe the things right on top of me that would kill me if I messed up the kite. Maybe it was just a (lack of) skill issue on my part but those huge fights were exhilarating but led to deaths. The vast majority of my clean success going through Ashlands as a caster was single pulling mobs from max range with the fire staff, and then using the frost staff which actually does a bit better most of the time in non-aoe situations.
So I guess what I am saying is that the fire staff is absolutely unmatched in the queen fight, really really useful taking down the first fortress, and other than that it is just good. I think the shield staff and the himmilafl are literally game changing from the moment you get them for multiple zones in all situations which is why I would personally put the fire staff a bit lower. It would still be in the A tier, I was just nitpicking it being with the other S weapons.
Super vouch for the lightning axes, it absolutely decimates a huge army of mobs quickly (especially with Ask's endurance for overall stamina discounts). Rest of top tier is easy to agree on, I legitimately just use all of them + the axes on the same character in very hard ashlands.
As for queen it can be done with melee quickly (~5m) but it relies on parking yourself in a corner to limit her movepool and getting into a reliable slash slash dodge rhythm (+ bile bombs). If she's not dead or close to it by the time bonemass runs out it might get weird though
going to have to mess around with it on current series :)
@@henrik9658 Great to hear! The lightning axes are by far my favourite for all-around usage and have super high dps vs single and multiple targets. I got to the point of stunlocking and almost instakilling most ashlands enemies because of the stagger damage from the lightning. Even 0 star morgens are somewhat trivialized if the lightning activates while they're staggered
I would like to see a similar video, but the weapons are ranked on how badly they need a rebalance. This could be either to reduce damage (fire staff) or increase effectiveness (axes)
Good idea!
the bow skill scaling is very similar to historical bow vs crossbow warfare, bow are better but require a lot of training
Interesting yes but it's extremely imbalanced
@@henrik9658 Why did you rank the bows below crossbows then
crossbows in general are better IMO.
@@henrik9658 yeah bolts going in a straight line is not exactly realistic :P
great video. agree with a lot of the choices. would love to see you and thread do one of these together
dead raiser can be a very goof distraction so that you can breath a bit, especially in the ashlands where there are no warring factions. Fracturing thing is very good if direct hits is what you're doing, in mistlands though, it sucked.
42:50 - "Moving on, because I don't want this to go too long." ~ Henrik, 45 min into the worlds longest tier list video.
@@FizzyP you realize most tier lists of every game are usually at least 30 mins+? goofy....
@@usern4metak3ns Are they?! I was unaware. I've never seen one this long.
@@FizzyP really? most games I've seen tier lists for are usually 30 mins or more. like fighting games definitely, weapon tier list for action or RPG games, car tier list for GTA etc....
The thing is im actually giving reasonable explanations as to why i rank things where, all my civ 4 tier lists are also around an hour long i think it's a healthy length. what you don't want is it going 2-3 hours tho.
@@henrik9658 LOL My silly throw away joke is being taken way too seriously!
Finally good valheim weapon tierlist 🙏
An important note about the Staff of Protection is that the shield doesn't inherit any resistances/armor that you may have, it's flat HP. Also have to mention that it takes damage from sources that the player is immune to, like Pickaxe and Chop.
It's true but that just means you can run full glass like full fenris or mage and use the shield to survive
the troll has the stats of a 2 star troll
Good to know
With torch I can skip most of the black forest enemies so I can go to the swamp faster
Yes the torch is awesome
roots difficult scaling seems bugged :P
It definitely is but even normal difficulty dmg is really strong, just summon more!
It is a bug but this bug has existed since Hildirs quest and they've said on their discord they don't really ever plan of fixing it so gg it's a feature now
@@yagoa the root stav is perfectly balanced....
next armor tier list or enemy tier list? or glitch tier list
will see how the metrics do and i might make more similar stuff :)
Flametal mace, was that covered?
For some reason this template didn't have it but imo it's identical to the flametal sword
The knoife disrespect......
Please don't say o p Ness again lol