Great video. Something I think would be interesting for discussion albeit maybe not necessarily a tier list per se would be a video on weapon combinations. The analysis in this video tends to discuss how good a weapon is at covering it's own bases - I think the phrase you use a lot is internal synergy. And to be fair, weapons with internal synergy are really powerful and are represented in the A and S tiers. The crossbow covers almost every single base you'd want in a single loadout and has all kinds of scaling so it's difficult to have a bad level up for a hero that uses it. But I think it would be fun to talk about how weapons that may lack that internal synergy can be paired up with other weapons. This could include what off-hand weapons to pair with your one-handers
@takyondg agreed I like this idea and I think the place where we'll cover it is in the "build guide 2.0" video... there I talk about how weapons synergize to bring to life builds and we'll definitely we talking about how good those builds are. I'm planning on a 3 potamus (star) system :)
Death Ray is S tier. a hero with mana collector and a means to teleport to the side of the wave(or just stand at a corner away from the wave b/c death ray has range) can solo 2 sides with double magic orbs and quick reload. "Longbow completely lacks any synergy" It quite literally synergizes with isolation, stun(opportunity), and dodge builds. Being capable of stunning 27 targets with quick reload is pretty nice. easily better than hammer in my opinion. I think Armageddon can work decently with shortbow for high density waves. Quality content as always!
So when Alden says it has no synergy: It has a primary isolation bonus skill, but no skills that do a good job of creating isolated targets (the game in general lacks ways to create isolated targets) so isolation is a nice way to increase you damage on specific targets, but it's hard to create a full build around (the closest build to an isolation build would be multi hit weapons getting extra AP from Legendary assasin) Yes Stun lets you proc opportunism, but normally if you are stunnning enemies it's because you want to slow them down or be able to deal with them later, yes stun means you cannot miss, and gives you opportunism, but unless you have contagion to spread the stun (which at the range you might be using a longbow is hard) you're going to be wasting the stun if you kill. as for long bow as part of stun builds, I could see the argument that arctic blast is better for stun builds than Hammers Stomp I think both skills are overshadowed by Sledgehammer, Power Staff and Cannon. I do think that quick reload is a difficult thing to acount for in these types of discussion, you need to have the AP to make quick reload useful, and ideally you would want to be able to use every skill available to you again. Dodge builds are I'm assuming just Adrenaline rush? Dodge is a tricky defensive stat, as there are enemy attacks that are undodgeable, and some enemies have very high accuracy, so if you care about survivablility you're better off using other defensive stats, and if you just want to get the AP then would all that stat investment into dodge not be better used for making more efficient use of the AP you do have?
@rogueduelist3137 thanks for the comment, there's a few interesting things to talk about here. I'm likely going to be doing a run with more magic orbs than I usually use, so perhaps I'll try this mythical double death ray build. It sounds prohibitively mana expensive even with mana collector, 3 rays per turn is 18 mana and you'll get only slightly over half that back, and once your quick reloads are done you're still operating at a 2mana per turn deficit. In your description you mention teleporting to the side of the wave, and I think that we at least agree that the skill requires some careful positioning to get value out of, which for me would keep it out of S tier for sure... but even then with the high price of AP and mana I could maybe see it coming up to B tier, but it might be a hard sell. As @abigailmcdowell4248 suggested, when I talk about synergy there's a few things I'm usually alluding to. Internal synergy is the characteristic of a weapon to enable itself to do amazing things, like intimidating scream on the axe enabling its shred ability. These synergies are few and far between as the game design would be a little boring if every weapon just made itself work really well. External synergies are where something like the power staff does an amazing job enabling opportunism for other weapons. The Long Bow really lacks both of these, it's very easy to waste a turn with the Long Bow trying to get an isolated target, it doesn't hit that much harder than other options when isolated targets are available, and it really doesn't help any other weapons do their jobs better... with the possible exception of dodge builds which you mentioned. Dodge is a tough stat for me to recommend mainly because of how many scary abilities can't be dodged (twisted rays, boomers etc)... as a result heroes that take dodge to get their AP need to get to 95% and then pray a little that they don't have a run in with those aforementioned scary things and also don't get XCOM'd by that 5%. As for Armageddon I agree... but generally feel that most of the time when it would be awesome something else would be pretty awesome too. Hence it being middle of the pack. All that being said thank you both for the excellent comments, cheers!
Love the video, the only thing I'd request would be showing the icon for the skill on the right side as well, near the description. Sometimes you'd drag it up early and I don't know all of the skill icons by name alone, and it was sometimes hard to identify exactly where you had placed it. Love the content!
@ultimate7433 great feedback, one thing I could perhaps do that's easy for future tier lists is have a red box around the "currently discussing" element of the tier list. That would remind me not to drag it too early and also make it easy for people to know what I'm currently talking about. Great feedback, thank you!
I like that you called out Bees being devastating if you’re not worried about where things die, I argued that same point in a comment on a recent video. I feel like Swing falls in a similar place, if less so. I’ve had some heroes that were basically edge of map threshing machines utilizing it. It can feel frustrating on weaker heroes early on, but late stage Elderlicht when you’re built to the nines it is pretty fun. You kind of touched on this in the overview, but I feel like it is worth calling out Triple Swipe feels expensive on mana, but it is pretty negligible when you’re paying easily recovered health instead. You gave points to Berserk for being able to be used on other characters, but didn’t call out Wind Walk’s ability to do the same. This ability is probably the one that has me most frequently yelling at my tv during those end of turn puzzle moments where you’re trying to find a way to get those last few enemies in awkward places. I love Lightning Bolt as much as you despise it, as I’ve said many times. Much like you’re (rightly so) infatuated with the pistol, I love building a propagate hero and watching the horde melt with one click. Again, it suffers in corpse strats, but I’m excited to try it out with an accompanying Gauntlet. I’m surprised you rated Ground Smash and Mega stomp as high as you did. Not because they’re bad, but because you never seem to use them. Maybe early on during one weapon nights I’ll see it occasionally, but I feel like I’ve seen more runs that they’ve never been used at all. So on one hand they aren’t terrible, on the other you’re just going to use that AP on power staff attacks instead. Most importantly, you ranked the 2h sword too high. As low as fits on the list, sure, yet somehow it still feels rated too highly! Thanks for another well informed Last Spell video. Even your longer videos like this never feel too long because it is all well thought out and informative.
I agree that swing is best when you're going all out on just killing. on solo hero runs, or runs where I only start with 2 heroes, Great Axe is an amazing way to clear the horde, it's just really efficient when you aren't wounding enemies or thining the horde out much I think Ground Smash and Mage Stomp are ranked pretty inline with how they are used by alden? they are skills you use when stuning the enemies just isn't gonna work and you need to deal some damage do a large group of enemies, and they are good at that. in the same way that Spear has multi hit Sledgehammer has propagate and you can sorta do the same blood mage thing , but then the relative cheap mana cost of ground slam makes it less impressive as a blood mage skill?
@carlmalheim7161 thank you as always! Here we go! Bees is love, bees is life! Swing I just think shred does more for 2 AP than Swing does... and you get 5 Shreds and an freaking offhand for a warp crystal or a shield! Wind Walk did pretty well in the tier list, but I use it all the time and do love being able to get other people out of jams with it. Perhaps it should have been bottom of A with Transfer. How do you feel when your lightening bolt takes a right turn and hits 3 targets? Or do you spend the 8 AP it takes to ensure that never happens ;) Ground Smash I use pretty frequently and like quite a bit, it's not a reason to take a Sledge, but it does work. Mega Stomp on the other hand I'd use a lot more if it was range modifiable. We needed a 2H Sword rank :( @abigailmcdowell4248 *wave*
I'm loving the gauntlet on my opportunism characters. I didn't care for it at first, but my heroes that utilize it always put out great numbers. I usually pair it with a 2h hammer. I enjoy it being a magic damage pair and it really puts in the work killing groups of CC'd enemies. Plus the hammer can utilize any bonus propagation you pick up. Anyway, love the content. Thanks for doing what you do!
@robertfusilier5180 very cool concept with Sledge / Gauntlet, I'll definitely think about this one. Having your Gauntlet user just create little alcoves of stunned enemies so they don't have to fully retreat is interesting! Thanks for the concept!
I've been having a good time recently with putrid ball, despite dismissing it before. It is controlled aoe poison that doesn't require multi-hit to do good work. With how good multi-hit is, there is value in having a build that doesn't require it so your other heroes can take that gear. In early days, putrid ball can be prepped on enemies so they die when they come into your haven. Later on it will one-shot regular mobs. I'd argue it fits in really well with corpse strats. With that said, I don't mind the idea of increasing the base poison so it didn't have such a stat tax on poison damage to start one shotting. To your point that not everything can be A tier, I don't think putrid is overwhelming good. But I don't think it's a the 4th worst spell in the game. I actually agree with your overall orb ranking though, simply because an isso hit doesn't play well with ball and I would much rather have an opportunity hit there.
So Putrid ball has poison that lasts 1 more turn than all other poison, which means it can be very high scaling poison damage BUT means it is the hardest poison to plan around, and is bad at killing enemies the turn you apply it, so is bad with corpse strats. I agree that you want to have builds that don't need multi hit or prop, but I think the Poisnous perk is a better source of poison than magic orb, as the builds that people suggest running orb on are poisonous septic shock builds that want to be stunning enemies, possibly with toxic leech blood mage, and for those builds I think that your weapon should be axe or power staff or sledgehammer, to have some consistent damage and a way to reduce potential incoming damage (-damage debuff or consistent stun), being able to apply a targeted poison to a group of enemies is fine, but extremely awkward (in my own tierlist I had it in C tier, with orb as a package in D)
@polishlinks very interesting take... I've been trying to make putrid ball work lately and have found it just really expensive for what you get. If it cost 1AP maybe it'd be a different discussion, but as it is I find that it really draining my resources for a low all-be-it long lasting poison. A small buff would do it good. Here's a hotter take though, what if Putrid Ball was the one poison attack that came with contagion out of the box? Instead of having it hit 9 targets have it hit 5 in the standard X pattern that Armageddon uses but apply poison AND contagion. That way this could be the source of contagion for heroes that don't roll debuff tree but want to dabble in either sadism or poison. @abigailmcdowell4248 let me know what you think of the idea I dropped above... I think it could be kinda cool. The other thing that I think is rough is that enemies so rarely path exactly the way I expect, and it's always such a shame when I poison a enemy early and they fall short of getting into the have either because of wounds or just weird distractions.
The thing i love most about War Shield is that finally we can have a powerful defensive build, and it make me realize just how much easier it was to make a tanky hero compare to all the other builds. When I focus on just block, armor and resistance, the hero can be frontline and basically impervious to everything that's not boomer right from night 1. The problem before was just such a hero cannot do wave clear, and the mobs just passed them by. The kit of War Shield work with that playstyle so well, with added survivability, perk bonus that will compensate for all the offensive stats that we skipped, and huge AoE attack that's super efficient since our heroes will be in the middle of the pack most of the time. Definitely S tier for me too, and definitely the thing that I love the most from the DLC
It's S tier in my heart as well as on my list! It's true the shield is just amazing for it's capacity to single handedly enable a build. Part of me wonders if Perfect Guard was the T5 defensive skill if we'd see more diverse defensive builds than now. Having to use a specific weapon to enable a whole genre of builds feels a little limited. Seems to me perfect guard and the shield, while perfect together probably shouldn't be.
"I use arctic blast because Longbow has nothing better to spend it's AP on" is such a true statement lol. yet as a stun at range skill it's outclassed by Mortar and Stunning entrance
Those moments of clarity are 100% the reason I do these tier lists... I was just thinking about it and early game that's what happens every time, I'm always baffled by why my longbow guy is out of mana and it's always because i spammed Arctic Blast just so they were doing something.
Regarding Longbow in the context of corpse strats, it is really good at softening up the horde without killing so that they arrive in your haven at very low HP letting you easily mop them up.
@Pinstar very true... though when the kindest words you can say about a weapon is that it's bad at killing things outright, you might have a low tier weapon on your hands ;)
I had a fairly decent run with the Longbow the other day. I had a stun hero with Hex and being able to potentially stun 18 mobs a turn for 2 turns felt very strong. Also Watch Out can be combined with Blessing to feed a melee hero 60+ dodge from a large distance. I know dodge isn’t a reliable way to become invincible but it’s another defensive layer to hopefully keep the damage you take to a minimum. I am still learning the game though; so my experiences might only be indicative of Apocalypse 0.
Hi Alden, Sam here. I mostly agree with your tier list, the things I would have changed would be blaze (hand crossbow) as S tier, not only you can use it 3 times per round it also has a low cost (1 AP, 2 mana), it grew on me recently and whenever I build propagation character Tome and hand crossbow is my go to. I would put great axe at B tier because of the ability to significantly improve your damage (by over 20%) for low cost which in the beginning of the run is a huge buff, I agree it's hard to utilize and find 5 characters lined up in a line but overall I would say I like this weapon more than for example sword
Yo Sam! Thanks so much for the comment! Blaze is extremely good and I could definitely see it crack into S Tier, fair point. Great Axe is one that I will hopefully someday have really pop off... I think that's what I'm waiting on is an experience where it really goes well for me to feel like it's worthy of the praise.
Longbow is okay for softening up targets before they get into the haven for corpse strats. That seems to be most useful early/mid game, before your characters have solid wave clear. By itself, it doesn’t have much killing power.
@chandl34 that is definitely true, and also doesn't really make me reconsider it's placement too carefully :) You are right though, it does a great job not killing things for mana!
@Desocupad0 very true, though mana collector makes a lot of things free, and with some skill range the sledge's primary attack is 3 uses of a free long-ish range stun.
Would be good to see item modifiers included within the list - you cannot underestimate +2 multihit on lvl5 crossbow or wand, or exp on wand (and that really doesn't change the ratings), but I find having shortbow with exp gain really helping early / mid game, preferring it over any weapon (without any modifiers, other than hand crossbow)
@eithe5059 interesting idea... I think there's a tier list in there that I could do, where I rank each weapon type and give S rank to all the adamantium weapons because they're all so good :) But seriously it is a core facet of the game I haven't talked enough about... as a more experienced player being able to on sight identify an adamantium weapon in the shop and know you just found some multi-hit is a game changer. Thanks for the comment!
One thing about armageddon that i didnt hear in the video is that it will put you into overheat from 0, so if you wanna do some rocket jump aoe shenanigans (and then maybe have some AP to use mortal/cannonshot for more triggers...), it can be a nice enabler. Not that doing so often is wise, and i wouldnt bump it up on the tier, but i think its a fun mention
@Locklen as @ZealotOfSteal mentioned this was changed with the recent balance patch which I was a little bummed by. Now it take a minimum of 2 actions to get into overheating. It's still the best way to to get there, but it's slightly less efficient for builds that rely on it. I'm actually pretty excited that one of the community members actually submitted a build for our build guide that has a overheat theme to it!
But why? Because it hits a lot of targets? It only applied a debuff so you're probably better off with epidemic bees for contagion AND poison. If you're running a late-game (mana is good) sadist and also running a magic orb something has gone terrible wrong :)
I do want to point out that the intimidation scream is great on runeburg as a great way to deal with boomers (on spikey heros) since sometimes there’s too many boomers to kill at once (and they are pretty surprisingly fast and can easily catch up to your hero) you can just let them boom on you and take minimal damage. 2 procs on this scream can take the boom damage from 300+ to about 70-90 damage. Easily blockable by a spikey hero with high block. But its a very niche situation . Other than that its great early game for spikey heros to keep them healthy before they get their defense stats . Definitely not Op or game changing in anyway but useful
I like intimidating scream too, I hope that came across when I was discussing it. As far as debuffs go it's a pretty nice one all things considered, solid number of targets while also being nice and light on AP cost. I have been enjoying debuffing boomers though I've been using tomes and war shields a bit more than 1h axes. I should try it early game a bit more, as I think you're probably right that it's a good option for keeping up tanky heroes. Thanks @sisi6679 !
I think the way to really highlight why the two-handed sword is bad is to compare it with the spear. You have a 2 AP normal attack with spear hitting 3 targets, while sword hits 2. Spear is obviously better here. You have a momentum skill with the same scaling 15%. Spear one costs 2AP and hits 2 targets, while sword sword costs 1AP and hits 1 target. I personally slightly prefer the two-handed sword one slightly, because it's more flexible. You have an AoE skill, both of which cost 2AP, but triple-swipe is just so much more impactful with 9 targets instead of the 6 of sword blast. Well worth the higher mana cost of triple-swipe. Finally, you have 2 skills which aren't really comparable. Charge and flurry of strikes. Both good skills, but one is a movement + damage skill, while the other is a multi-hit skill. I think flurry of strikes is much more valuable in most situations even though it's a potato to apple comparison. All in all, it's pretty clear to me why spear feels much stronger than two-handed sword. The spear kit only lacks mobility and that can be made up with a second weapon or perks. Meanwhile the two-handed sword has 2 skills which are significantly weaker than the spear and the other 2 skills don't really make up for it. You can build a pretty strong momentum + boom hero with a two-handed sword, but that would be even stronger with a spear and some multi-hit.
I never really thought about just how similar they are and your post here makes a strong case for why they are... and by extension why the spear just outclasses the sword at every turn. At the very least they could have given the sword's momentum attack higher base than the spear, but no... not even that.
Hey, thanks for the video, really enjoying all your videos as a new player. I can’t wait for your builds video, really waiting anxiously for that one. Just wanted to mention about some passing comments you made about this tierlist. I think tierlists, if they want to be useful, they should generally avoid the idea of the bell curve scenario. The bell curve is what you would expect if you were to pitch all the weapons against each other AND taking the “average” weapon to be at middle tier. I don’t think it’s what you did here. In general, as a player, I’m interested in what weapons are “viable”, even in a broad sense, and looking to see what I may over/undervalue in my games. In general, I see A-S tier the weapons to aim for in the late game, B tier the situational or generally not too bad weapons, and everything below is something that you should move away from when you can, with varying degrees of how fast you should do it (F tier -> probably should pick second weapon first night; C tier -> decent, wait for a good opportunity). Obviously the real value of tierlists are the discussion behind you provide, but a tier gives a tangible visual indicator to us. Thanks for your work!
so the idea of the bell curve thing is more you want the weapons to be realitively spread out? you don't want 90% of the weapons to be in the same tier with no inclination of which would be stronger, at least from the point of generating discussion. Given in the Developers discord server I have seen people say that orb is a good weapon that you should be building around in order to have a better chance of winning Runenberf, and a different person say they use the weapon selection feature to remove Wand and have never looked back means what are the good/viable weapons is more down to you, the way you play and the types of descicions you can make with confidence than a lot of other things
@giacomozampaolo6780 thank you for the thoughtful comment, I'll try to do it justice! Also welcome to the game, I'm always excited when new players find a game I think has so much potential! So here's my take on the normal distribution (aka the bell curve). If you imagine all the weapons ranked in a row with some amount of space between them... it's easy to imagine basically no space between them or a huge amount of space. In the no space case you have all the weapons in a single row, they're properly ordered but they're all in A tier. On the other hand if you if they were too spread out perhaps they'd all be in S or F tier with a huge divide in the middle. In both of these cases we're losing the communicative power of the tiers. So instead I think our goal is to make the weapons relatively evenly distributed across the spectrum... and then we modulate the space between so that we can use the extremes as emphasis. For instance if you have 7 items in S tier it's not going to feel very special, and conversely if you put everything in F tier no one is going to appreciate how bad the 2H Sword is. So to that end the bell curve isn't forced, as much as an indication that we've used the space available and also reserved the extremes for making a point. To you point about viability, I see a lot of people in the discord renaming all the rows to things like "always good", "sometimes good"... and I'm not saying they're wrong so much as I think it overcomplicates things and removes some of the power that a tier list has. It also create these categorical statements that I like to stear clear of because a hand crossbow isn't always good, it's actually kinda trash on a bloodmage. So the use of letters gives me that flexibility to have A's meaning be a little fungible. In closing, the real value of the tier list is comments like this, so thank you! @abigailmcdowell4248 👀
Here's my like. Now let's get to the video. Best boss killer: Long bow with wand. Crit/isolation perk tree Best crowd clearing: Hand crossbow with druid staff. Need both propagation perks and maybe the initiator perk. Most fun: One hand sword with ANYTHING. Need relentless and the ither momentum perk.
Longbow wand is a curious combo, and then hand crossbow leaning more prop than multi hit is a choice. Initiator is also only a useable perk if you're struggling to find multi hit from other sources, it end up being a very bad perk for most weapons pretty quickly (you eventually get to the point where you need your multi hits to be killing, and so it ends up only doing good things for your first attack, so it's fine on spear and cannon, as their multi hit skills are only 1 use, so you can always get the full value, but it's still probably not worth the perk slot? ) I agree with you on how fun Sword is. Flying around the map is just wonderful
@MeanKno those are definitely some interesting pairings... I don't know that I see longbow how Wand is the best pair with Longbow, and if you're going for crit and multi-hit I'd expect that hand crossbow would just outclass it immediately. I can never condone using Quantity vs Quality as it's just asking for a -2 prop bounces by the end of a night. Swords are definitely fun :) All that being said, Long Bow + Orb may be in my future for the low tier weapons run :-o @kindatim we love interesting takes in these parts :) @abigailmcdowell4248 agreed.
Haha. Thanks guys. I agree with all of you completely, but weird combos are fun. It's known that longbow struggles because it needs another weapon or hero to create isolated targets. The wand helps to make it so at least you won't have to rely on other heroes (as much). Also with the iso/crit perks you can one shot every isolated target with either weapon. You use the wand to create iso and the bow to clean up, or if there are already iso targets you can clear all with wand and save bow for the ones too far away. But I said it was the boss killer because you can build stacks with 1 by 1 (other heroes plus long bow for iso) and then use wand to insta kill most bosses on spawn. I chose wand over HxB because I usually don't pair weapons of the same type together. Since LB is a ranged weapon I wouldn't pair it with another ranged. The HxB paired with Druid Staff can prio multihit over prop bounces, but both are needed. This pairing is NOT good for the corps strat because it literally clears the screen. If there was an endless mode and a way to keep your mana up, there is no wave too big for a hero with this combo. Even with a lot of multihit from other sources, initiator adds more on top of it so not useless IMO. Maybe there are things to take over that perk - I can concede that, but the aforementioned statement is still accurate in my mind. I use Hxb to soften up big units, soften up other units or kill stragglers and the Druid staff bees melts everything else. One side stays empty and you can then help another side as needed. @Aldenpotamus I understand your logic. I think what you said makes sense in regards to quality over quantity especially. For these builds I think the synergies are fun. Maybe you guys know of more min-maxed or practical pairings and that's fair haha. I am not a min-max player and try things simply for some story I developed in my brain, or I want to use a perk that I haven't used before. Feel free to share the better pairings you have in mind so I can try them too. Usually the brain story comes first and then the pairing, but I can do it in reverse.
I'm having a hard time finding reason to use anything other than the tried and trusted: power staff + hand axe for opportunist Poison daggers + hand crossbow for poison Wand + crossbow for multi hit The rest just don't seem to be as good. Momentum seems fun but takes too much setup because getting a hero with the required perk to really make it pop off is all rng. Isolation is just automatically applied to isolated targets and the bonus is universal, much like opportunist but doesn't have a combo that really makes it shine i feel. Best i found was multi hit but still multi hit is strong on its own so it just becomes kinda like a redundant bonus.
@bruhder5854 agreed those are some solid combos... I've found that most weapons fit into some type of build, but those are all solid ones. If you haven't already checked out some of my builds aldenpotamus.com/pages/build-guide-all you might find some inspiration for some new builds that could be fun. Generally speak Isolation's biggest weakness is two Bulkies standing next to each other, sometimes getting that isolated target can be really difficult, but I agree both Iso and Oppo are very strong. As for momentum, the payoff is so worth it if you have the requisite perks they can go crazy. My last run I had two heroes with final blows on the boss for over 18k and both were momentum attacks :)
Hello, Imma try to defend my beloved big weapons. I feel like runenberg made defensive builds a lot better, and I think that the great axe synergize insanely well with that. The rage makes it possible to skip damage entirely, especially if you have bless (bless is also great with shield-up). I realized that on a really awkward hero, without any clear perk path: lot of block but no spiky counter, vampirism and body builder but no blood magic etc... I made him a great-axe + war-shield, and he perfectly anchored an entire side in elderlicht (production). I do believe you need a way to reposition dead center of an enemy wave for it work perfectly, blink/stunning entrance/teleport consumable are good options, and I think it's should be considered to grade the weapon, after all multi-hit without any multi-hit isn't good, and sword/scepter/pistol only work on momentum heroes, so you already are dependent on some form of rng to make those insanely good weapons work, why not consider consumables on the same basis as perks or gear. I'm rambling but if you factor your hero as a tanky anchor, ranged enemies get stuck on you, trash mob get wiped by your aoe no matter the shape of the wave (and I often find good use for the whirlwind) and the few things you can't clear yourself become isolated for any ranged build to capitalize on. It's really good on Elderlich to get rid of the flames, since you probably have a lot of AP and don't even care if you end up stunned in the middle of a wave. That being said, it does work better with a lot of space to anchor on, so it's better on production than corpse strat. So yeah, to me great-axe is good because the only stat that matters is AP, allowing you to go uber-tanky. As for the greatsword... oh darn my message is sooo long already, I can't bore you with a long explanation of why the greatsword is a.... hmmm weapon. (jokes aside, any ideas? I really want to love them but I'm hitting a blank here)
@arthurdurand3509 defend away! :) You've convinced me 2H Sword is.... a weapon... I agree that War Shield has definitely put defense on the map, but I do still feel like spear is the better counterpart over Great Axe, but I see both sides. And defensive heroes do play really well on Elderlicht for sure. Moving Walls is a great reposition that removes some of the need for those other movements to get a tanky here where they need to be to concentrate enemies too!
Armageddon overall to me is S tier with cannon probably A tier on basic usage. Iso enabler and only needs like 2 enemies under each 5 shot to be more ap efficient than something like 1h crossbow. Not much is going to out kill armageddon followed by magic missiles to cleanup. Health draining strats on the cannon can take it to S tier, but harder to walk that overheat line. Armageddon to overheat and then 2 jumps is crazy damage -- just hard to estimate what the fire blast is going to kill.
@peppeciv I don't think we're that far off... I can see the argument for it being a little higher up, I just find in practice there's a huge amount of collateral damage that I cared less about. Multi-hit's greatest strength is it's precision of targeting, and often to get enough damage on the big guys you end up stacking many hits on smaller guys that only needed one. In terms of isolation enabler, it would have been really interesting if it targeted in a diamond instead of an X so that you could really create isolated targets, to me the X is a little awkward to use for isolation.
@Desocupad0 this is a tough one for me mainly because of the point blank nature of mega stomp. To me the sledge craves skill range in a profound way and it rather hard to use before you get a bit of range on it. Mega Stomp not being range modifiable means that my heroes with sledges rarely if ever are standing next to an enemy to drop a stomp... blaze on the other hand can just be used at the end of a turn where you've got more AP than you know what to do with thanks to legendary assasin.
Obviously amazing video, but don't get some of the motivations. For spear you said for impale that it is top of C tier, saying 3 enemies "very high base damage, hitting pretty hard". Then you get to slash for the two handed and it is literally identical save for hitting one less enemy, but with higher base damage (101-138). All of the sudden that's in F-tier saying it "doesn't hit that hard". I do get the extra target adds *something* to impale, but I don't get how it can be the only positive difference if impale ends up in C and slash ends up in F...
I definitely see your confusion here, and perhaps Impale should have been a little lower on the list. I do think that an extra target in this case is 50% more damage by comparison which is far more than the base damage. 2AP to hit 2 targets will no upshot except slightly higher base damage is quite bad... 2AP for 3 target with slightly less base damage feels better. Perhaps not F vs C tier, but Impale definitely feels more usable than Slash which feels borderline unusable.
@ahemschmeyer admittedly I haven't tried that combo, but it's kinda interesting to me. Perhaps tis week I'll try it out, how did you build said hero? What were the key perks?
@@aldenpotamus my guess would be - range first and foremost, since it is really well-utilised by both weapons, probably volatile for the shockwave, some investment into multihit for armageddon, potentially prox shot for rocket jumping+overheat that would then get you into position for snapping. Just a rough concept, tho it does sound like an interesting hybrid crowd clearer. Also, just slap a heart of the party on it with, maybe, a blessing and you got yourself a 500 armor battery for the entire party 🥳
I like Sword Charge for sure, it's definitely the best the 2hander has to offer... but I'll take a spear or war shield over it any day of the week. It was bad pre-DLC and it's really fallen off in light of the new toys!
@DasShekati there are a few... there's a list of mods in my discord. Most recently a member of my discord did a pretty massive overhaul mod that made the two handed sword every interesting, they made Thrust (momentum attack) also have propagate, which is very unique. They also found a way to give weapons knockback which is crazy cool! If you're interested in learning more consider joining the discord discordapp.com/invite/9zy6C8vSEH
great video! its obvious that multihit is a bit out of control and what would you think if multihit damage would lower after each hit like propagate but having a fixed higher percentage like 90% so if you max out multihit on 5 it is not auto win and at the start the game all multihit attacks are as good as they were before cause damage doesnt drop much.
the thing that makes multi hit so strong, especially with hand crossbow, is the amount of scaling it can provide, most obviously with crit master, as well as with legendary assasin and mana collector in a way, but also with sadist and the medal Shower of Blows. the scaling can be so extreme that the starting damage would almost stop mattering
@markodespotov1455 it's definitely a tough one to balance, as @abigailmcdowell4248 pointed out the scaling really comes from the multiple hits triggering multiple crits which in turn can lead some some really crazy scaling where a 10% per hit penalty might not even be felt by the user. Generally speaking when it comes to these types of problems I'm most interested in finding ways to raise other skills up to be on a similar level, because nerfs in a single player game can feel kinda sad... but multi-hit is one of those that really doesn't make it easy, because it's been so strong for so long. I'd really love to see propagate start to give multi-hit a run for it's money with some additional consistency and "more hits per" type of scaling.
@@aldenpotamuspersonally I feel like propagate should switch diagonally without a perk and that the perk should be that it can skip a tile. This would maybe make it too strong but it would be a start, I like propagate in the beginning but it definitely loses out to momentum and multi hit big time
Boom and Contagion are something that I still really want to make work, they're so fun together. I still have dreams of momentum sadists that haven't ever quite popped off the way i wanted them to. And yes, I got a bit lost in the sauce on gauntlet overhauls there for a second :)
Back in my early days when I was still figuring things out, assassinating the Lakeberg boss with a 17.5k crit was a real highlight. Pretty tame in comparison to what momentum can do, but after failing my first run of the map it felt extremely satisfying.
Your bees decision really stings me. Its placed lower because it has too good wave clear. Corpse strategy aside when the enemies pommel my Walls in the later turns that is exactly what I want
@dauernutzung2381 I see what you did there 👀 But yes propagation in general is just too hard to tame and sometimes is WAY too powerful for it's own good. I love bees, but I only really find myself using it on final nights because it can take my economy out at the knees. I do think that for something to be S-Tier it really needs to have power AND control.
Rain of Arrows is just so good on early waves, and powershot is just so flexible and packs a punch. It really is a solid starter that you just can't build much around.
Severely bullied by a compound bow named Edgar... it's tough to talk about even now 72 years later *single tear* But seriously, Long Bow suuuuuucks... single target skills just don't scale well in TLS and the Long Bow has them in spades AND also has a basically useless buff mixed in there. It's a tough one to recommend, and not just because of how it treated me in elementary school :)
None of the weapons are garbage! And if you look through the comments you'll see people complaining about various weapons being too high or too low. The best weapon is always the weapon you can make the best use of, and that will depend on how much meta progression you have, how you like to play, and the specific situation you're in
@abigailmcdowell4248 speaks the truth... the difference between the highest highs and lowest lows on this list aren't massive. That being said @SoonerMike211 I do think that if you're not playing with some of the higher ranked weapons you may find a lot of power in them... things like the hand crossbow and wand are exceptionally strong once you get a bit of crit and multi-hit... and there are some really nice perks that play incredibly well with critting many times per turn (like Crit Master).
Entangle over suppresive fire is an insult to me and everything I stand for!!! How dare you slander the greatest best shaped snare in the game like that to fawn over some undodegable square! yes it almost hits the same number of targets but for a snare what you want is width so the whole wave gets blocked by the snared ones in the way, and if you want to do that with entangle now it's 2AP 4Mana! so much more mana than Suppresive fire! and then suppresive fire has -accuracy so it's useful even on enemies chewing on your walls AND it procs Sadist twice as much!!!!!!!!!
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Great video. Something I think would be interesting for discussion albeit maybe not necessarily a tier list per se would be a video on weapon combinations. The analysis in this video tends to discuss how good a weapon is at covering it's own bases - I think the phrase you use a lot is internal synergy. And to be fair, weapons with internal synergy are really powerful and are represented in the A and S tiers. The crossbow covers almost every single base you'd want in a single loadout and has all kinds of scaling so it's difficult to have a bad level up for a hero that uses it.
But I think it would be fun to talk about how weapons that may lack that internal synergy can be paired up with other weapons. This could include what off-hand weapons to pair with your one-handers
@takyondg agreed I like this idea and I think the place where we'll cover it is in the "build guide 2.0" video... there I talk about how weapons synergize to bring to life builds and we'll definitely we talking about how good those builds are. I'm planning on a 3 potamus (star) system :)
Death Ray is S tier. a hero with mana collector and a means to teleport to the side of the wave(or just stand at a corner away from the wave b/c death ray has range) can solo 2 sides with double magic orbs and quick reload.
"Longbow completely lacks any synergy" It quite literally synergizes with isolation, stun(opportunity), and dodge builds. Being capable of stunning 27 targets with quick reload is pretty nice. easily better than hammer in my opinion.
I think Armageddon can work decently with shortbow for high density waves.
Quality content as always!
So when Alden says it has no synergy: It has a primary isolation bonus skill, but no skills that do a good job of creating isolated targets (the game in general lacks ways to create isolated targets) so isolation is a nice way to increase you damage on specific targets, but it's hard to create a full build around (the closest build to an isolation build would be multi hit weapons getting extra AP from Legendary assasin)
Yes Stun lets you proc opportunism, but normally if you are stunnning enemies it's because you want to slow them down or be able to deal with them later, yes stun means you cannot miss, and gives you opportunism, but unless you have contagion to spread the stun (which at the range you might be using a longbow is hard) you're going to be wasting the stun if you kill. as for long bow as part of stun builds, I could see the argument that arctic blast is better for stun builds than Hammers Stomp I think both skills are overshadowed by Sledgehammer, Power Staff and Cannon.
I do think that quick reload is a difficult thing to acount for in these types of discussion, you need to have the AP to make quick reload useful, and ideally you would want to be able to use every skill available to you again.
Dodge builds are I'm assuming just Adrenaline rush? Dodge is a tricky defensive stat, as there are enemy attacks that are undodgeable, and some enemies have very high accuracy, so if you care about survivablility you're better off using other defensive stats, and if you just want to get the AP then would all that stat investment into dodge not be better used for making more efficient use of the AP you do have?
@rogueduelist3137 thanks for the comment, there's a few interesting things to talk about here. I'm likely going to be doing a run with more magic orbs than I usually use, so perhaps I'll try this mythical double death ray build. It sounds prohibitively mana expensive even with mana collector, 3 rays per turn is 18 mana and you'll get only slightly over half that back, and once your quick reloads are done you're still operating at a 2mana per turn deficit. In your description you mention teleporting to the side of the wave, and I think that we at least agree that the skill requires some careful positioning to get value out of, which for me would keep it out of S tier for sure... but even then with the high price of AP and mana I could maybe see it coming up to B tier, but it might be a hard sell.
As @abigailmcdowell4248 suggested, when I talk about synergy there's a few things I'm usually alluding to. Internal synergy is the characteristic of a weapon to enable itself to do amazing things, like intimidating scream on the axe enabling its shred ability. These synergies are few and far between as the game design would be a little boring if every weapon just made itself work really well. External synergies are where something like the power staff does an amazing job enabling opportunism for other weapons. The Long Bow really lacks both of these, it's very easy to waste a turn with the Long Bow trying to get an isolated target, it doesn't hit that much harder than other options when isolated targets are available, and it really doesn't help any other weapons do their jobs better... with the possible exception of dodge builds which you mentioned. Dodge is a tough stat for me to recommend mainly because of how many scary abilities can't be dodged (twisted rays, boomers etc)... as a result heroes that take dodge to get their AP need to get to 95% and then pray a little that they don't have a run in with those aforementioned scary things and also don't get XCOM'd by that 5%.
As for Armageddon I agree... but generally feel that most of the time when it would be awesome something else would be pretty awesome too. Hence it being middle of the pack.
All that being said thank you both for the excellent comments, cheers!
"If we're putting everything in A tier we're not doing a good job with the tierlist" I have been called out so hard
A is for Aloe which is good for treating burns ;)
@@aldenpotamusA is for acetaminophen because that was a SICK burn
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Love the video, the only thing I'd request would be showing the icon for the skill on the right side as well, near the description. Sometimes you'd drag it up early and I don't know all of the skill icons by name alone, and it was sometimes hard to identify exactly where you had placed it.
Love the content!
@ultimate7433 great feedback, one thing I could perhaps do that's easy for future tier lists is have a red box around the "currently discussing" element of the tier list. That would remind me not to drag it too early and also make it easy for people to know what I'm currently talking about. Great feedback, thank you!
I like that you called out Bees being devastating if you’re not worried about where things die, I argued that same point in a comment on a recent video.
I feel like Swing falls in a similar place, if less so. I’ve had some heroes that were basically edge of map threshing machines utilizing it. It can feel frustrating on weaker heroes early on, but late stage Elderlicht when you’re built to the nines it is pretty fun.
You kind of touched on this in the overview, but I feel like it is worth calling out Triple Swipe feels expensive on mana, but it is pretty negligible when you’re paying easily recovered health instead.
You gave points to Berserk for being able to be used on other characters, but didn’t call out Wind Walk’s ability to do the same. This ability is probably the one that has me most frequently yelling at my tv during those end of turn puzzle moments where you’re trying to find a way to get those last few enemies in awkward places.
I love Lightning Bolt as much as you despise it, as I’ve said many times. Much like you’re (rightly so) infatuated with the pistol, I love building a propagate hero and watching the horde melt with one click. Again, it suffers in corpse strats, but I’m excited to try it out with an accompanying Gauntlet.
I’m surprised you rated Ground Smash and Mega stomp as high as you did. Not because they’re bad, but because you never seem to use them. Maybe early on during one weapon nights I’ll see it occasionally, but I feel like I’ve seen more runs that they’ve never been used at all. So on one hand they aren’t terrible, on the other you’re just going to use that AP on power staff attacks instead.
Most importantly, you ranked the 2h sword too high. As low as fits on the list, sure, yet somehow it still feels rated too highly!
Thanks for another well informed Last Spell video. Even your longer videos like this never feel too long because it is all well thought out and informative.
I agree that swing is best when you're going all out on just killing. on solo hero runs, or runs where I only start with 2 heroes, Great Axe is an amazing way to clear the horde, it's just really efficient when you aren't wounding enemies or thining the horde out much
I think Ground Smash and Mage Stomp are ranked pretty inline with how they are used by alden? they are skills you use when stuning the enemies just isn't gonna work and you need to deal some damage do a large group of enemies, and they are good at that. in the same way that Spear has multi hit Sledgehammer has propagate and you can sorta do the same blood mage thing , but then the relative cheap mana cost of ground slam makes it less impressive as a blood mage skill?
@carlmalheim7161 thank you as always! Here we go!
Bees is love, bees is life!
Swing I just think shred does more for 2 AP than Swing does... and you get 5 Shreds and an freaking offhand for a warp crystal or a shield!
Wind Walk did pretty well in the tier list, but I use it all the time and do love being able to get other people out of jams with it. Perhaps it should have been bottom of A with Transfer.
How do you feel when your lightening bolt takes a right turn and hits 3 targets? Or do you spend the 8 AP it takes to ensure that never happens ;)
Ground Smash I use pretty frequently and like quite a bit, it's not a reason to take a Sledge, but it does work. Mega Stomp on the other hand I'd use a lot more if it was range modifiable.
We needed a 2H Sword rank :(
@abigailmcdowell4248 *wave*
@@aldenpotamus You don’t control the lightning, you ride it! Pray to RNGesus and occasionally sacrifice a hero to a volatile propagate.
RIDE THE LIGHTENING!
I laughed SO hard at 51:50. He read my mind and called me out lol! I literally said shortbow seconds before him. Great watch alden!!!
@mr.goodkat1394 hah! Cheers to that! I've heard it before more times than you know :)
I'm loving the gauntlet on my opportunism characters. I didn't care for it at first, but my heroes that utilize it always put out great numbers. I usually pair it with a 2h hammer. I enjoy it being a magic damage pair and it really puts in the work killing groups of CC'd enemies. Plus the hammer can utilize any bonus propagation you pick up. Anyway, love the content. Thanks for doing what you do!
@robertfusilier5180 very cool concept with Sledge / Gauntlet, I'll definitely think about this one. Having your Gauntlet user just create little alcoves of stunned enemies so they don't have to fully retreat is interesting! Thanks for the concept!
I've been having a good time recently with putrid ball, despite dismissing it before. It is controlled aoe poison that doesn't require multi-hit to do good work. With how good multi-hit is, there is value in having a build that doesn't require it so your other heroes can take that gear. In early days, putrid ball can be prepped on enemies so they die when they come into your haven. Later on it will one-shot regular mobs. I'd argue it fits in really well with corpse strats. With that said, I don't mind the idea of increasing the base poison so it didn't have such a stat tax on poison damage to start one shotting.
To your point that not everything can be A tier, I don't think putrid is overwhelming good. But I don't think it's a the 4th worst spell in the game. I actually agree with your overall orb ranking though, simply because an isso hit doesn't play well with ball and I would much rather have an opportunity hit there.
So Putrid ball has poison that lasts 1 more turn than all other poison, which means it can be very high scaling poison damage BUT means it is the hardest poison to plan around, and is bad at killing enemies the turn you apply it, so is bad with corpse strats.
I agree that you want to have builds that don't need multi hit or prop, but I think the Poisnous perk is a better source of poison than magic orb, as the builds that people suggest running orb on are poisonous septic shock builds that want to be stunning enemies, possibly with toxic leech blood mage, and for those builds I think that your weapon should be axe or power staff or sledgehammer, to have some consistent damage and a way to reduce potential incoming damage (-damage debuff or consistent stun), being able to apply a targeted poison to a group of enemies is fine, but extremely awkward (in my own tierlist I had it in C tier, with orb as a package in D)
@polishlinks very interesting take... I've been trying to make putrid ball work lately and have found it just really expensive for what you get. If it cost 1AP maybe it'd be a different discussion, but as it is I find that it really draining my resources for a low all-be-it long lasting poison. A small buff would do it good.
Here's a hotter take though, what if Putrid Ball was the one poison attack that came with contagion out of the box? Instead of having it hit 9 targets have it hit 5 in the standard X pattern that Armageddon uses but apply poison AND contagion. That way this could be the source of contagion for heroes that don't roll debuff tree but want to dabble in either sadism or poison.
@abigailmcdowell4248 let me know what you think of the idea I dropped above... I think it could be kinda cool. The other thing that I think is rough is that enemies so rarely path exactly the way I expect, and it's always such a shame when I poison a enemy early and they fall short of getting into the have either because of wounds or just weird distractions.
The thing i love most about War Shield is that finally we can have a powerful defensive build, and it make me realize just how much easier it was to make a tanky hero compare to all the other builds. When I focus on just block, armor and resistance, the hero can be frontline and basically impervious to everything that's not boomer right from night 1. The problem before was just such a hero cannot do wave clear, and the mobs just passed them by. The kit of War Shield work with that playstyle so well, with added survivability, perk bonus that will compensate for all the offensive stats that we skipped, and huge AoE attack that's super efficient since our heroes will be in the middle of the pack most of the time. Definitely S tier for me too, and definitely the thing that I love the most from the DLC
It's S tier in my heart as well as on my list! It's true the shield is just amazing for it's capacity to single handedly enable a build. Part of me wonders if Perfect Guard was the T5 defensive skill if we'd see more diverse defensive builds than now. Having to use a specific weapon to enable a whole genre of builds feels a little limited. Seems to me perfect guard and the shield, while perfect together probably shouldn't be.
"I use arctic blast because Longbow has nothing better to spend it's AP on" is such a true statement lol. yet as a stun at range skill it's outclassed by Mortar and Stunning entrance
Those moments of clarity are 100% the reason I do these tier lists... I was just thinking about it and early game that's what happens every time, I'm always baffled by why my longbow guy is out of mana and it's always because i spammed Arctic Blast just so they were doing something.
Regarding Longbow in the context of corpse strats, it is really good at softening up the horde without killing so that they arrive in your haven at very low HP letting you easily mop them up.
@Pinstar very true... though when the kindest words you can say about a weapon is that it's bad at killing things outright, you might have a low tier weapon on your hands ;)
I had a fairly decent run with the Longbow the other day. I had a stun hero with Hex and being able to potentially stun 18 mobs a turn for 2 turns felt very strong.
Also Watch Out can be combined with Blessing to feed a melee hero 60+ dodge from a large distance. I know dodge isn’t a reliable way to become invincible but it’s another defensive layer to hopefully keep the damage you take to a minimum.
I am still learning the game though; so my experiences might only be indicative of Apocalypse 0.
Hi Alden, Sam here. I mostly agree with your tier list, the things I would have changed would be blaze (hand crossbow) as S tier, not only you can use it 3 times per round it also has a low cost (1 AP, 2 mana), it grew on me recently and whenever I build propagation character Tome and hand crossbow is my go to. I would put great axe at B tier because of the ability to significantly improve your damage (by over 20%) for low cost which in the beginning of the run is a huge buff, I agree it's hard to utilize and find 5 characters lined up in a line but overall I would say I like this weapon more than for example sword
Yo Sam! Thanks so much for the comment!
Blaze is extremely good and I could definitely see it crack into S Tier, fair point.
Great Axe is one that I will hopefully someday have really pop off... I think that's what I'm waiting on is an experience where it really goes well for me to feel like it's worthy of the praise.
It has happened as it was foretold in the ancient scro- wait... I'm feeling something of a deja vu...
Deja vu all over again... this time with timecodes that match and no false starts ;)
Longbow is okay for softening up targets before they get into the haven for corpse strats. That seems to be most useful early/mid game, before your characters have solid wave clear. By itself, it doesn’t have much killing power.
It's funny that mana collector makes it a free long range, reusable stun
@chandl34 that is definitely true, and also doesn't really make me reconsider it's placement too carefully :) You are right though, it does a great job not killing things for mana!
@Desocupad0 very true, though mana collector makes a lot of things free, and with some skill range the sledge's primary attack is 3 uses of a free long-ish range stun.
Would be good to see item modifiers included within the list - you cannot underestimate +2 multihit on lvl5 crossbow or wand, or exp on wand (and that really doesn't change the ratings), but I find having shortbow with exp gain really helping early / mid game, preferring it over any weapon (without any modifiers, other than hand crossbow)
@eithe5059 interesting idea... I think there's a tier list in there that I could do, where I rank each weapon type and give S rank to all the adamantium weapons because they're all so good :) But seriously it is a core facet of the game I haven't talked enough about... as a more experienced player being able to on sight identify an adamantium weapon in the shop and know you just found some multi-hit is a game changer. Thanks for the comment!
One thing about armageddon that i didnt hear in the video is that it will put you into overheat from 0, so if you wanna do some rocket jump aoe shenanigans (and then maybe have some AP to use mortal/cannonshot for more triggers...), it can be a nice enabler. Not that doing so often is wise, and i wouldnt bump it up on the tier, but i think its a fun mention
Armageddon heat generation was reduced from 7 to 6. So you'll need to use another skill to get into overheating now.
@Locklen as @ZealotOfSteal mentioned this was changed with the recent balance patch which I was a little bummed by. Now it take a minimum of 2 actions to get into overheating. It's still the best way to to get there, but it's slightly less efficient for builds that rely on it. I'm actually pretty excited that one of the community members actually submitted a build for our build guide that has a overheat theme to it!
Acid spray is good for sadist when AP and Mana are no longer scarce
But why? Because it hits a lot of targets? It only applied a debuff so you're probably better off with epidemic bees for contagion AND poison. If you're running a late-game (mana is good) sadist and also running a magic orb something has gone terrible wrong :)
I do want to point out that the intimidation scream is great on runeburg as a great way to deal with boomers (on spikey heros) since sometimes there’s too many boomers to kill at once (and they are pretty surprisingly fast and can easily catch up to your hero) you can just let them boom on you and take minimal damage. 2 procs on this scream can take the boom damage from 300+ to about 70-90 damage. Easily blockable by a spikey hero with high block. But its a very niche situation . Other than that its great early game for spikey heros to keep them healthy before they get their defense stats . Definitely not Op or game changing in anyway but useful
I like intimidating scream too, I hope that came across when I was discussing it. As far as debuffs go it's a pretty nice one all things considered, solid number of targets while also being nice and light on AP cost. I have been enjoying debuffing boomers though I've been using tomes and war shields a bit more than 1h axes. I should try it early game a bit more, as I think you're probably right that it's a good option for keeping up tanky heroes. Thanks @sisi6679 !
I think the way to really highlight why the two-handed sword is bad is to compare it with the spear.
You have a 2 AP normal attack with spear hitting 3 targets, while sword hits 2. Spear is obviously better here.
You have a momentum skill with the same scaling 15%. Spear one costs 2AP and hits 2 targets, while sword sword costs 1AP and hits 1 target. I personally slightly prefer the two-handed sword one slightly, because it's more flexible.
You have an AoE skill, both of which cost 2AP, but triple-swipe is just so much more impactful with 9 targets instead of the 6 of sword blast. Well worth the higher mana cost of triple-swipe.
Finally, you have 2 skills which aren't really comparable. Charge and flurry of strikes. Both good skills, but one is a movement + damage skill, while the other is a multi-hit skill. I think flurry of strikes is much more valuable in most situations even though it's a potato to apple comparison.
All in all, it's pretty clear to me why spear feels much stronger than two-handed sword. The spear kit only lacks mobility and that can be made up with a second weapon or perks. Meanwhile the two-handed sword has 2 skills which are significantly weaker than the spear and the other 2 skills don't really make up for it.
You can build a pretty strong momentum + boom hero with a two-handed sword, but that would be even stronger with a spear and some multi-hit.
I never really thought about just how similar they are and your post here makes a strong case for why they are... and by extension why the spear just outclasses the sword at every turn. At the very least they could have given the sword's momentum attack higher base than the spear, but no... not even that.
Hey, thanks for the video, really enjoying all your videos as a new player. I can’t wait for your builds video, really waiting anxiously for that one.
Just wanted to mention about some passing comments you made about this tierlist. I think tierlists, if they want to be useful, they should generally avoid the idea of the bell curve scenario. The bell curve is what you would expect if you were to pitch all the weapons against each other AND taking the “average” weapon to be at middle tier. I don’t think it’s what you did here. In general, as a player, I’m interested in what weapons are “viable”, even in a broad sense, and looking to see what I may over/undervalue in my games. In general, I see A-S tier the weapons to aim for in the late game, B tier the situational or generally not too bad weapons, and everything below is something that you should move away from when you can, with varying degrees of how fast you should do it (F tier -> probably should pick second weapon first night; C tier -> decent, wait for a good opportunity).
Obviously the real value of tierlists are the discussion behind you provide, but a tier gives a tangible visual indicator to us. Thanks for your work!
so the idea of the bell curve thing is more you want the weapons to be realitively spread out? you don't want 90% of the weapons to be in the same tier with no inclination of which would be stronger, at least from the point of generating discussion. Given in the Developers discord server I have seen people say that orb is a good weapon that you should be building around in order to have a better chance of winning Runenberf, and a different person say they use the weapon selection feature to remove Wand and have never looked back means what are the good/viable weapons is more down to you, the way you play and the types of descicions you can make with confidence than a lot of other things
@giacomozampaolo6780 thank you for the thoughtful comment, I'll try to do it justice! Also welcome to the game, I'm always excited when new players find a game I think has so much potential!
So here's my take on the normal distribution (aka the bell curve). If you imagine all the weapons ranked in a row with some amount of space between them... it's easy to imagine basically no space between them or a huge amount of space. In the no space case you have all the weapons in a single row, they're properly ordered but they're all in A tier. On the other hand if you if they were too spread out perhaps they'd all be in S or F tier with a huge divide in the middle. In both of these cases we're losing the communicative power of the tiers. So instead I think our goal is to make the weapons relatively evenly distributed across the spectrum... and then we modulate the space between so that we can use the extremes as emphasis. For instance if you have 7 items in S tier it's not going to feel very special, and conversely if you put everything in F tier no one is going to appreciate how bad the 2H Sword is. So to that end the bell curve isn't forced, as much as an indication that we've used the space available and also reserved the extremes for making a point.
To you point about viability, I see a lot of people in the discord renaming all the rows to things like "always good", "sometimes good"... and I'm not saying they're wrong so much as I think it overcomplicates things and removes some of the power that a tier list has. It also create these categorical statements that I like to stear clear of because a hand crossbow isn't always good, it's actually kinda trash on a bloodmage. So the use of letters gives me that flexibility to have A's meaning be a little fungible.
In closing, the real value of the tier list is comments like this, so thank you!
@abigailmcdowell4248 👀
Here's my like. Now let's get to the video.
Best boss killer: Long bow with wand. Crit/isolation perk tree
Best crowd clearing: Hand crossbow with druid staff. Need both propagation perks and maybe the initiator perk.
Most fun: One hand sword with ANYTHING. Need relentless and the ither momentum perk.
That certainly is an... Interesting take
Longbow wand is a curious combo, and then hand crossbow leaning more prop than multi hit is a choice. Initiator is also only a useable perk if you're struggling to find multi hit from other sources, it end up being a very bad perk for most weapons pretty quickly (you eventually get to the point where you need your multi hits to be killing, and so it ends up only doing good things for your first attack, so it's fine on spear and cannon, as their multi hit skills are only 1 use, so you can always get the full value, but it's still probably not worth the perk slot? )
I agree with you on how fun Sword is. Flying around the map is just wonderful
@MeanKno those are definitely some interesting pairings... I don't know that I see longbow how Wand is the best pair with Longbow, and if you're going for crit and multi-hit I'd expect that hand crossbow would just outclass it immediately. I can never condone using Quantity vs Quality as it's just asking for a -2 prop bounces by the end of a night. Swords are definitely fun :) All that being said, Long Bow + Orb may be in my future for the low tier weapons run :-o
@kindatim we love interesting takes in these parts :)
@abigailmcdowell4248 agreed.
Haha. Thanks guys. I agree with all of you completely, but weird combos are fun.
It's known that longbow struggles because it needs another weapon or hero to create isolated targets.
The wand helps to make it so at least you won't have to rely on other heroes (as much). Also with the iso/crit perks you can one shot every isolated target with either weapon. You use the wand to create iso and the bow to clean up, or if there are already iso targets you can clear all with wand and save bow for the ones too far away.
But I said it was the boss killer because you can build stacks with 1 by 1 (other heroes plus long bow for iso) and then use wand to insta kill most bosses on spawn.
I chose wand over HxB because I usually don't pair weapons of the same type together. Since LB is a ranged weapon I wouldn't pair it with another ranged.
The HxB paired with Druid Staff can prio multihit over prop bounces, but both are needed. This pairing is NOT good for the corps strat because it literally clears the screen. If there was an endless mode and a way to keep your mana up, there is no wave too big for a hero with this combo. Even with a lot of multihit from other sources, initiator adds more on top of it so not useless IMO. Maybe there are things to take over that perk - I can concede that, but the aforementioned statement is still accurate in my mind. I use Hxb to soften up big units, soften up other units or kill stragglers and the Druid staff bees melts everything else.
One side stays empty and you can then help another side as needed.
@Aldenpotamus I understand your logic. I think what you said makes sense in regards to quality over quantity especially.
For these builds I think the synergies are fun. Maybe you guys know of more min-maxed or practical pairings and that's fair haha. I am not a min-max player and try things simply for some story I developed in my brain, or I want to use a perk that I haven't used before.
Feel free to share the better pairings you have in mind so I can try them too. Usually the brain story comes first and then the pairing, but I can do it in reverse.
@@aldenpotamus Looking forward to the video. It's videos like yours that inspire me to have fun with the Last Spell instead of just trying to beat it.
I'm having a hard time finding reason to use anything other than the tried and trusted:
power staff + hand axe for opportunist
Poison daggers + hand crossbow for poison
Wand + crossbow for multi hit
The rest just don't seem to be as good. Momentum seems fun but takes too much setup because getting a hero with the required perk to really make it pop off is all rng.
Isolation is just automatically applied to isolated targets and the bonus is universal, much like opportunist but doesn't have a combo that really makes it shine i feel. Best i found was multi hit but still multi hit is strong on its own so it just becomes kinda like a redundant bonus.
@bruhder5854 agreed those are some solid combos... I've found that most weapons fit into some type of build, but those are all solid ones. If you haven't already checked out some of my builds aldenpotamus.com/pages/build-guide-all you might find some inspiration for some new builds that could be fun.
Generally speak Isolation's biggest weakness is two Bulkies standing next to each other, sometimes getting that isolated target can be really difficult, but I agree both Iso and Oppo are very strong.
As for momentum, the payoff is so worth it if you have the requisite perks they can go crazy. My last run I had two heroes with final blows on the boss for over 18k and both were momentum attacks :)
Hello, Imma try to defend my beloved big weapons.
I feel like runenberg made defensive builds a lot better, and I think that the great axe synergize insanely well with that. The rage makes it possible to skip damage entirely, especially if you have bless (bless is also great with shield-up).
I realized that on a really awkward hero, without any clear perk path: lot of block but no spiky counter, vampirism and body builder but no blood magic etc... I made him a great-axe + war-shield, and he perfectly anchored an entire side in elderlicht (production).
I do believe you need a way to reposition dead center of an enemy wave for it work perfectly, blink/stunning entrance/teleport consumable are good options, and I think it's should be considered to grade the weapon, after all multi-hit without any multi-hit isn't good, and sword/scepter/pistol only work on momentum heroes, so you already are dependent on some form of rng to make those insanely good weapons work, why not consider consumables on the same basis as perks or gear.
I'm rambling but if you factor your hero as a tanky anchor, ranged enemies get stuck on you, trash mob get wiped by your aoe no matter the shape of the wave (and I often find good use for the whirlwind) and the few things you can't clear yourself become isolated for any ranged build to capitalize on. It's really good on Elderlich to get rid of the flames, since you probably have a lot of AP and don't even care if you end up stunned in the middle of a wave. That being said, it does work better with a lot of space to anchor on, so it's better on production than corpse strat.
So yeah, to me great-axe is good because the only stat that matters is AP, allowing you to go uber-tanky.
As for the greatsword... oh darn my message is sooo long already, I can't bore you with a long explanation of why the greatsword is a.... hmmm weapon. (jokes aside, any ideas? I really want to love them but I'm hitting a blank here)
@arthurdurand3509 defend away! :)
You've convinced me 2H Sword is.... a weapon...
I agree that War Shield has definitely put defense on the map, but I do still feel like spear is the better counterpart over Great Axe, but I see both sides. And defensive heroes do play really well on Elderlicht for sure. Moving Walls is a great reposition that removes some of the need for those other movements to get a tanky here where they need to be to concentrate enemies too!
Armageddon overall to me is S tier with cannon probably A tier on basic usage. Iso enabler and only needs like 2 enemies under each 5 shot to be more ap efficient than something like 1h crossbow. Not much is going to out kill armageddon followed by magic missiles to cleanup.
Health draining strats on the cannon can take it to S tier, but harder to walk that overheat line. Armageddon to overheat and then 2 jumps is crazy damage -- just hard to estimate what the fire blast is going to kill.
@peppeciv I don't think we're that far off... I can see the argument for it being a little higher up, I just find in practice there's a huge amount of collateral damage that I cared less about. Multi-hit's greatest strength is it's precision of targeting, and often to get enough damage on the big guys you end up stacking many hits on smaller guys that only needed one. In terms of isolation enabler, it would have been really interesting if it targeted in a diamond instead of an X so that you could really create isolated targets, to me the X is a little awkward to use for isolation.
I only like deathray on very mobile characters, I actually find decent usages for it, but from a backpack slot not from the weapon
Death Ray on scrolls is indeed worth grabbing once and a while. It'll definitely get some use once we do our low-tier weapons runs though!
Mega stomp stacks both damage and debuff on multiple hits. It's like 150% better than 1h xbow's blaze.
@Desocupad0 this is a tough one for me mainly because of the point blank nature of mega stomp. To me the sledge craves skill range in a profound way and it rather hard to use before you get a bit of range on it. Mega Stomp not being range modifiable means that my heroes with sledges rarely if ever are standing next to an enemy to drop a stomp... blaze on the other hand can just be used at the end of a turn where you've got more AP than you know what to do with thanks to legendary assasin.
@@aldenpotamus Legendary Assassin is bonkers for xbow. But then body builder, stunning, hex and several other perks are great for the hammer.
Those are all excellent for the hammer... I love a good stunner hero, they can stop a wave in its tracks!
Thx for the guide!
@Alexandragon1 thanks as always for the support!!!
@@aldenpotamus ;)
Very good guide
Thank @mug224 hope it helped! The perks version is well on the way and should be out in a few days (probably on Monday)!
Obviously amazing video, but don't get some of the motivations.
For spear you said for impale that it is top of C tier, saying 3 enemies "very high base damage, hitting pretty hard". Then you get to slash for the two handed and it is literally identical save for hitting one less enemy, but with higher base damage (101-138). All of the sudden that's in F-tier saying it "doesn't hit that hard". I do get the extra target adds *something* to impale, but I don't get how it can be the only positive difference if impale ends up in C and slash ends up in F...
I definitely see your confusion here, and perhaps Impale should have been a little lower on the list. I do think that an extra target in this case is 50% more damage by comparison which is far more than the base damage. 2AP to hit 2 targets will no upshot except slightly higher base damage is quite bad... 2AP for 3 target with slightly less base damage feels better. Perhaps not F vs C tier, but Impale definitely feels more usable than Slash which feels borderline unusable.
I had a gauntlet and cannon combo on one toon and it was very effective.
@ahemschmeyer admittedly I haven't tried that combo, but it's kinda interesting to me. Perhaps tis week I'll try it out, how did you build said hero? What were the key perks?
@@aldenpotamus my guess would be - range first and foremost, since it is really well-utilised by both weapons, probably volatile for the shockwave, some investment into multihit for armageddon, potentially prox shot for rocket jumping+overheat that would then get you into position for snapping.
Just a rough concept, tho it does sound like an interesting hybrid crowd clearer. Also, just slap a heart of the party on it with, maybe, a blessing and you got yourself a 500 armor battery for the entire party 🥳
It's certainly interesting...
Sword blast is slash times 3. Slash is like a 2 square canon ball. So it's crap by dlc's standards
This being said - it's a nice vampire weapon - spamming charge and sword blast is nice. With thrust for elite.
It's also a good weapon for BOOM!
I like Sword Charge for sure, it's definitely the best the 2hander has to offer... but I'll take a spear or war shield over it any day of the week. It was bad pre-DLC and it's really fallen off in light of the new toys!
Nice guide. I think you mentioned that you modded some weapons? Are there any public mods that make bad weapons like the greatsword more viable?
@DasShekati there are a few... there's a list of mods in my discord. Most recently a member of my discord did a pretty massive overhaul mod that made the two handed sword every interesting, they made Thrust (momentum attack) also have propagate, which is very unique. They also found a way to give weapons knockback which is crazy cool! If you're interested in learning more consider joining the discord discordapp.com/invite/9zy6C8vSEH
great video! its obvious that multihit is a bit out of control and what would you think if multihit damage would lower after each hit like propagate but having a fixed higher percentage like 90% so if you max out multihit on 5 it is not auto win and at the start the game all multihit attacks are as good as they were before cause damage doesnt drop much.
the thing that makes multi hit so strong, especially with hand crossbow, is the amount of scaling it can provide, most obviously with crit master, as well as with legendary assasin and mana collector in a way, but also with sadist and the medal Shower of Blows. the scaling can be so extreme that the starting damage would almost stop mattering
@markodespotov1455 it's definitely a tough one to balance, as @abigailmcdowell4248 pointed out the scaling really comes from the multiple hits triggering multiple crits which in turn can lead some some really crazy scaling where a 10% per hit penalty might not even be felt by the user. Generally speaking when it comes to these types of problems I'm most interested in finding ways to raise other skills up to be on a similar level, because nerfs in a single player game can feel kinda sad... but multi-hit is one of those that really doesn't make it easy, because it's been so strong for so long. I'd really love to see propagate start to give multi-hit a run for it's money with some additional consistency and "more hits per" type of scaling.
@@aldenpotamuspersonally I feel like propagate should switch diagonally without a perk and that the perk should be that it can skip a tile. This would maybe make it too strong but it would be a start, I like propagate in the beginning but it definitely loses out to momentum and multi hit big time
@TheSnisel jumping a tile would 100% kill my heroes all the time... and i kinda love the idea! Lol!
Yeah, would be nice if gauntlet had 7 targets-debuff-1cost-longrange basic ability... Laughed too hard at this moment)
One quick note! It works great with Boom and contagion, you just need to apply contagion on secondary target
Boom and Contagion are something that I still really want to make work, they're so fun together. I still have dreams of momentum sadists that haven't ever quite popped off the way i wanted them to. And yes, I got a bit lost in the sauce on gauntlet overhauls there for a second :)
As the Discords resident Rifle supporter... yeah, assasinate is better as a scroll
It's a great scroll though! Moving Wall is another great scroll too!
Back in my early days when I was still figuring things out, assassinating the Lakeberg boss with a 17.5k crit was a real highlight. Pretty tame in comparison to what momentum can do, but after failing my first run of the map it felt extremely satisfying.
17.5 is still really strong... I think the biggest hit I never got (but saw on a tooltip) was 46k on a momentum rush with the spear.
Your bees decision really stings me. Its placed lower because it has too good wave clear. Corpse strategy aside when the enemies pommel my Walls in the later turns that is exactly what I want
@dauernutzung2381 I see what you did there 👀 But yes propagation in general is just too hard to tame and sometimes is WAY too powerful for it's own good. I love bees, but I only really find myself using it on final nights because it can take my economy out at the knees. I do think that for something to be S-Tier it really needs to have power AND control.
Shortbow is shockingly high....
I like it as starter weapon but it never sticks around long.
Rain of Arrows is just so good on early waves, and powershot is just so flexible and packs a punch. It really is a solid starter that you just can't build much around.
@carlmalheim7161 this, 1000x this.
This guy got picked on by a longbow as a kid. 😂😂
Severely bullied by a compound bow named Edgar... it's tough to talk about even now 72 years later *single tear*
But seriously, Long Bow suuuuuucks... single target skills just don't scale well in TLS and the Long Bow has them in spades AND also has a basically useless buff mixed in there. It's a tough one to recommend, and not just because of how it treated me in elementary school :)
Here I am watching this video realizing that I’ve been using a lot of garbage weapons! 😩
None of the weapons are garbage! And if you look through the comments you'll see people complaining about various weapons being too high or too low. The best weapon is always the weapon you can make the best use of, and that will depend on how much meta progression you have, how you like to play, and the specific situation you're in
@abigailmcdowell4248 speaks the truth... the difference between the highest highs and lowest lows on this list aren't massive.
That being said @SoonerMike211 I do think that if you're not playing with some of the higher ranked weapons you may find a lot of power in them... things like the hand crossbow and wand are exceptionally strong once you get a bit of crit and multi-hit... and there are some really nice perks that play incredibly well with critting many times per turn (like Crit Master).
Support comment!
Thanks @rosselliott6515 !!
Entangle over suppresive fire is an insult to me and everything I stand for!!! How dare you slander the greatest best shaped snare in the game like that to fawn over some undodegable square! yes it almost hits the same number of targets but for a snare what you want is width so the whole wave gets blocked by the snared ones in the way, and if you want to do that with entangle now it's 2AP 4Mana! so much more mana than Suppresive fire! and then suppresive fire has -accuracy so it's useful even on enemies chewing on your walls AND it procs Sadist twice as much!!!!!!!!!
😂😂😂