Double Barrel also has the benefit of allowing you to shoot twice in a row without reloading. There are also items that allow you to reload both with a single action once. I think Double Barrel grants you a lot of flexibility and adaptability.
One thing to note with BRACE: It doesn't just apply to the readied strike, but to all strikes until your next turn. So for high level fighters, combined with reach, you can really hand out some pain.
An interesting aspect of the two-hand trait that I've never seen discussed, is that they're often quite light for their damage die size. Bastard sword is 1 bulk while greatsword is 2 bulk, for example. This doesn't hold true for all cases, but it does for many. This alone bumps up two-hand and free-hand up a tier for me. A bulk saved might seem small, but that has huge potential. It could be tools, consumables, a casting staff, backup weapon or shield, loot capacity (spacious pouch is 1 bulk), anything really. You can do wonders with 1 bulk and a little preperation.
Just wanted to add a fun interaction with Jousting - it's of course a trait that is specifically made for Horse companions, but the one-handed aspect of it also lets it slip into the Ruffian Rogue's weapon limitations. Meaning it enables a pretty fun Ruffian Cavalier/Beastmaster/... Jousting Sneak Attacker (with Gang Up to enable permanent off-guard when mounted).
Disarm: The bonus +1/2/3 you get from the weapon's fundamental runes is nice. Also you can wield a 2h and still be able to disarm. Your list is great, but I think I'd value these higher. Edit: I originally wrote this for both disarm and trip, but you've rated trip as A+, so who can complain? =) I am not intelligent enough / too low Pathfinder Warfare lore to fully understand the potency of Disarm. I am sort of confident it isn't terribly strong all by it self because it's pretty much the same to you if you don't disarm the big bad enemy and attacks you thrice, or, if you do disarm (even 'fail') and the big bad enemy uses one action to reapply its grip then attack you twice. Instead, I think it must be combined with other things that wastes the enemy's action, like magic (slow et al.) and stepping/moving away. E.g.: You disarm, strike then move away. The enemy interact to grip, step up to you and then strike you. You've reduced your damage output by roughly 66% (Disarm is an Attack, so your Strike has MAP 5 (or 4)) and you've reduced their damage output by ~33%. Is that a good deal? Maybe, depending on party composition.
Fatal (S) vs. Deadly (A+) : Deadly scales with the fundamental runes: "This increases to two dice if the weapon has a greater striking rune and three dice if the weapon has a major striking rune." So a -/+1/+2/+3 potency rune rune will make a Deadly weapon add +1/+1/+2/+3 weapon dice. Thus at medium/higher levels a Deadly weapon can be about as good or even better than a Fatal weapon, I think. (haven't thoroughly mathed that out).
That will depend on the weapon itself (some have higher fatal or deadly traits, higher or lower base damage, etc), but in general, not really. A greater striking shortbow does 3d6 deadly 1d10, which means in a crit it does 6d6+2d10, so it's 21+11 =32 average damage. A dueling pistol would do 7d10 on a crit, which is 38,5 average damage. At level 19+ a major striking shortbow would do 8d6+3d10, while a dueling pistol could do 9d10. The average damage of the shortbow would be 44,5 , while the damage on the dueling pistol would be 49.5. The shortbow makes up for the difference because it doesn't have Reload 1, and has a better range, of course. But that's besides the fact that Fatal is better than Deadly for most cases. Deadly is better when the weapon damage itself is already high (so increasing it to fatal does little, or nothing at all). For example Scythes do 1d10 damage and 1d10 deadly, in that case Fatal will be worse at level 12+. But for the majority of standard weapons with the fatal or deadly trait, the fact that Fatal increase the regular damage makes up for the extra die of deadly at levels 12 and 19
@@gustavotriqui : Good break down! The archer could use a composite short bow for a few more damage, maybe as much as +5 damage at level 15. That will change everything! =Þ .. Alright, so the composite short bow would crit equally to the pistol at level 15? The normal hits should be better then: CSB: 3d6 + 5 = 15,5 damage DPistol: 3d6 = 10,5 damage. But this is comparing oranges to pineapples as AFAIK only Gunslingers would use a firearm(??), and they're all about the crits (fatal), and .. IDK. For melee weapons: I would have to do some heavy spreadsheeting and compare them peaches to bananas 😕
I haven't even begun to do the maths on this, and I'm not far enough into the video to know if this is already brought up, but in case it isn't: one interesting thing to note is that Fatal usually increases the die by two steps, whereas Deadly usually has a die one step larger. This of course varies, and varies far more with Deadly, but an interesting thing to consider if you're wanting to delve into the maths further. Also, the only Fatal exceptions I know of to this are the Greatpick, which is already a d10, and the Big Boom Gun, which is d6 Fatal d12, but also has the Cobbled trait, which risks a misfire on *every* miss.
I am very confused by you saying youre "better off investing in strength" for finesse when for many classes thats just not possible. Yes a Rogue/Swashbuckler etc CAN have strength, but their key ability score is dex and thus youre going to have much less accuracy attacking with strebgth vs dex. Not to mention that finesse weapons are required by several of their class features.
Regarding Twinned: Have I just been misreading this trait all this time? I always interpreted the "of the same type" part as being the same weapon, e.g. having to wield two Dandpatta, rather than "type" referring to the weapon category, which doesn't seem fitting for the theme of twinned weapons.
Wow! That is a long video. I guess the next one is to actually look at weapons rather than just the traits. Looking at monsters I see almost nothing has resistance to Bludgeoning without also resisting Piercing/Slashing which is why I always look for a blunt weapon options first. Tekko-Kagi is also one of my favourite weapons since you can get the Parry trait while keeping a free hand. As far as I can see you do not even have to be proficient with Martial Weapons to use it for Parry.
The Tekko-Kagi are in fact very awesome! I love the imagery of them especially. As for Parrying, you must be trained or better with the weapon to use it in that way: 2e.aonprd.com/Traits.aspx?ID=667
@@lexchxn There we go if I had actually bothered to read the trait I would have answered my own question. Good job I have only been using it on a Bard who have martial training (now they are remastered).
This is the best breakdown of weapons I've seen. Still, I have some preferences. I'd love to see a study on how a few of the more potent traits work with different classes / feats / conditions / party tactics (spells?) / monsters? I'm thinking e.g. "Deadly scales with your bonuses to attack. Thus it's better for fighters and if you consistently apply Off Guard, Frightened (demoralize / fear spell), Clumsy - or other boni (which?). Weapons with the Deadly trait is about as good as weapons without for fighters in groups without good tactics / synergy or non-fighter martials with good group synergy/tactics." Or something like that. Oh, and I would like the tier lists to be in [fractions of ] damage die increase (e.g. d8 over d6) instead of A/B/C/D. E.g: perhaps one trait is worth ½ damage dice increase, or more or less. You scale seems to be "C means the trait is a wash.", but I am not sure.
I was given to understand that the main benefit of Capacity is getting to attack multiple times without needing to reload, meaning it was essentially a minor buff to action economy/tempo for ranged classes. Am I missing something, or is that not as exciting as it seems to me?
You're thinking of Repeating! Repeating weapons have magazines that require no reloads between shots, but have 3 action reloads to swap out a new one. Capacity weapons can be best thought of as manually rotated revolvers- You still need to Interact to reload them by spinning to the next chamber, the benefit is that it doesn't require a free hand to do so. The issue, then, is that it only benefits dual-wielding one-handed reload weapons, because you can already reload two-handed weapons- and if you're building a dual-wielder, there's a dedicated feat that does it better and allows you to then use stronger guns.
I think of kickback the same as propulsive, have 14 str, get +1 damage, and later if you want to upgrade it so you need 18 str and get +2 damage. Though it's still not really a big consideration for me, if I were to play a sniper gunslinger I would take an arquebus anyway, for the damage and range, but it is a nice bonus.
to give Razing a tiny amount of credit, many objects (i.e. wall spells) and creatures that are objects dont take extra damage from crits anyway, so having its extra damage not be affected by a crit either doesn't make much difference. It does still matter for attacking Shields though, which is probably one of its biggest use cases, so thats unfortunate
It's specific to Thief Rogue but Finesse is S tier for them (since they get to add Dex as damage instead of Str). There are a few I slightly disagree with but, overall, a very nice job on the tier list. For you tier lists, do you have spreadheets or something that give the list or only the videos? I like watching videos once but it would be handy to have a document of the tier list for reference later.
I wish Nethys weapon traits showed all the Martial arts stances as well, Stumbling Swing has great value due to it's traits and damage die but you would never see it unless you checked out the stances.
I mean it's tricky, right, cause at that point the question becomes if you should also list every ancestry feat or heritage that gives you natural attacks, and then next are spells, or items, or... It's just a bit of a Pandora's Box.
interesting take on fatal and deadly since both don't seem to cost damage dice deadly should be stronger starting at greater striking assuming its at least deadly d8. not sure how much that would change
Overall great video, but I think you overated combination(clunky), underrate concussive(bludgeoning often is the odd one out). I would add that while deadly is often good(such as on a rapier, which has the highest damage a finesse 1 hander will get), it does sometimes decrease the damage die, such as on the glaive, which is rarely worth it. And fatal aim in F is just wrong. "Fatal, but you cant regrip your weapon as part of a reload" is still fatal, and should be around b tier
Greats vid. Curious on your rating on fangwire since it has a unique mix of grapple, agile, deadly d8 and backstabber. Ive been debating if using it for press attacks like combat grab, orif one should stick to that higher 1d8 dmg die at the cost of higher map on that 2nd attack? I agree reach+grapple is great. Sadly im limited to 1 handed weapon. It seems good but not certain.
@@MagmaRiver my mom (who plays with me as a fellow player) has a Lance on her Fighter Centaur and let me tell you, the GM has already learned that her crits are scary
I disagree with multiple ratings in your list. Reach should be S tier. Grapple is nice to have. Trip is stronger compared to Grapple. Guisarme is a top tier weapon for a reason.
Double Barrel also has the benefit of allowing you to shoot twice in a row without reloading. There are also items that allow you to reload both with a single action once. I think Double Barrel grants you a lot of flexibility and adaptability.
A tier, I say! A tier!
@@lexchxn 💪💪
Not to mention how great it is as an Investigator.
Just want to point out that you are one of my favorite new channels for pathfinder, a real up-and-coming talent! Keep up the great work!
Yay a Tier List. Those are my Favorite videos to watch. Maybe a Archetype Tier List in future?
I'd love to see that but there are just a few archetypes...
One thing to note with BRACE: It doesn't just apply to the readied strike, but to all strikes until your next turn. So for high level fighters, combined with reach, you can really hand out some pain.
An interesting aspect of the two-hand trait that I've never seen discussed, is that they're often quite light for their damage die size. Bastard sword is 1 bulk while greatsword is 2 bulk, for example. This doesn't hold true for all cases, but it does for many. This alone bumps up two-hand and free-hand up a tier for me.
A bulk saved might seem small, but that has huge potential. It could be tools, consumables, a casting staff, backup weapon or shield, loot capacity (spacious pouch is 1 bulk), anything really. You can do wonders with 1 bulk and a little preperation.
In my research, it doesn't seem like Bulk plays any part in a weapon's Power Budget
Just wanted to add a fun interaction with Jousting - it's of course a trait that is specifically made for Horse companions, but the one-handed aspect of it also lets it slip into the Ruffian Rogue's weapon limitations. Meaning it enables a pretty fun Ruffian Cavalier/Beastmaster/... Jousting Sneak Attacker (with Gang Up to enable permanent off-guard when mounted).
Disarm: The bonus +1/2/3 you get from the weapon's fundamental runes is nice. Also you can wield a 2h and still be able to disarm.
Your list is great, but I think I'd value these higher.
Edit: I originally wrote this for both disarm and trip, but you've rated trip as A+, so who can complain? =)
I am not intelligent enough / too low Pathfinder Warfare lore to fully understand the potency of Disarm. I am sort of confident it isn't terribly strong all by it self because it's pretty much the same to you if you don't disarm the big bad enemy and attacks you thrice, or, if you do disarm (even 'fail') and the big bad enemy uses one action to reapply its grip then attack you twice.
Instead, I think it must be combined with other things that wastes the enemy's action, like magic (slow et al.) and stepping/moving away.
E.g.: You disarm, strike then move away. The enemy interact to grip, step up to you and then strike you. You've reduced your damage output by roughly 66% (Disarm is an Attack, so your Strike has MAP 5 (or 4)) and you've reduced their damage output by ~33%. Is that a good deal? Maybe, depending on party composition.
What a fun video! Your insights are always so useful as a newcomer to PF2e
I'd be curious to see your tiering of weapon critical effects as well
This is really useful for a beginner like me. Thank you!
ive just found this channel recently.
really enjoy the effort and depth of each video.
Fatal doesn’t doesn’t always come up but when it does it can decisive.
Pick for the win.
Fatal (S) vs. Deadly (A+) : Deadly scales with the fundamental runes: "This increases to two dice if the weapon has a greater striking rune and three dice if the weapon has a major striking rune."
So a -/+1/+2/+3 potency rune rune will make a Deadly weapon add +1/+1/+2/+3 weapon dice. Thus at medium/higher levels a Deadly weapon can be about as good or even better than a Fatal weapon, I think. (haven't thoroughly mathed that out).
That will depend on the weapon itself (some have higher fatal or deadly traits, higher or lower base damage, etc), but in general, not really.
A greater striking shortbow does 3d6 deadly 1d10, which means in a crit it does 6d6+2d10, so it's 21+11 =32 average damage. A dueling pistol would do 7d10 on a crit, which is 38,5 average damage.
At level 19+ a major striking shortbow would do 8d6+3d10, while a dueling pistol could do 9d10. The average damage of the shortbow would be 44,5 , while the damage on the dueling pistol would be 49.5.
The shortbow makes up for the difference because it doesn't have Reload 1, and has a better range, of course. But that's besides the fact that Fatal is better than Deadly for most cases. Deadly is better when the weapon damage itself is already high (so increasing it to fatal does little, or nothing at all). For example Scythes do 1d10 damage and 1d10 deadly, in that case Fatal will be worse at level 12+. But for the majority of standard weapons with the fatal or deadly trait, the fact that Fatal increase the regular damage makes up for the extra die of deadly at levels 12 and 19
@@gustavotriqui : Good break down!
The archer could use a composite short bow for a few more damage, maybe as much as +5 damage at level 15. That will change everything! =Þ
..
Alright, so the composite short bow would crit equally to the pistol at level 15? The normal hits should be better then:
CSB: 3d6 + 5 = 15,5 damage
DPistol: 3d6 = 10,5 damage.
But this is comparing oranges to pineapples as AFAIK only Gunslingers would use a firearm(??), and they're all about the crits (fatal), and .. IDK.
For melee weapons: I would have to do some heavy spreadsheeting and compare them peaches to bananas 😕
I haven't even begun to do the maths on this, and I'm not far enough into the video to know if this is already brought up, but in case it isn't: one interesting thing to note is that Fatal usually increases the die by two steps, whereas Deadly usually has a die one step larger. This of course varies, and varies far more with Deadly, but an interesting thing to consider if you're wanting to delve into the maths further.
Also, the only Fatal exceptions I know of to this are the Greatpick, which is already a d10, and the Big Boom Gun, which is d6 Fatal d12, but also has the Cobbled trait, which risks a misfire on *every* miss.
I am very confused by you saying youre "better off investing in strength" for finesse when for many classes thats just not possible. Yes a Rogue/Swashbuckler etc CAN have strength, but their key ability score is dex and thus youre going to have much less accuracy attacking with strebgth vs dex. Not to mention that finesse weapons are required by several of their class features.
I pick up a few Bolas as a grappler. flyby attackers showed up a few weeks ago, and I had the perfect item to knock them out of the sky.
Regarding Twinned: Have I just been misreading this trait all this time? I always interpreted the "of the same type" part as being the same weapon, e.g. having to wield two Dandpatta, rather than "type" referring to the weapon category, which doesn't seem fitting for the theme of twinned weapons.
You're in my top 3 of PF2e youtubers! Keep up the awesome work - I love your videos and you have very sophisticated insight into the system imo!
Wow! That is a long video.
I guess the next one is to actually look at weapons rather than just the traits. Looking at monsters I see almost nothing has resistance to Bludgeoning without also resisting Piercing/Slashing which is why I always look for a blunt weapon options first.
Tekko-Kagi is also one of my favourite weapons since you can get the Parry trait while keeping a free hand. As far as I can see you do not even have to be proficient with Martial Weapons to use it for Parry.
The Tekko-Kagi are in fact very awesome! I love the imagery of them especially.
As for Parrying, you must be trained or better with the weapon to use it in that way: 2e.aonprd.com/Traits.aspx?ID=667
@@lexchxn There we go if I had actually bothered to read the trait I would have answered my own question. Good job I have only been using it on a Bard who have martial training (now they are remastered).
This is the best breakdown of weapons I've seen.
Still, I have some preferences. I'd love to see a study on how a few of the more potent traits work with different classes / feats / conditions / party tactics (spells?) / monsters?
I'm thinking e.g. "Deadly scales with your bonuses to attack. Thus it's better for fighters and if you consistently apply Off Guard, Frightened (demoralize / fear spell), Clumsy - or other boni (which?). Weapons with the Deadly trait is about as good as weapons without for fighters in groups without good tactics / synergy or non-fighter martials with good group synergy/tactics."
Or something like that.
Oh, and I would like the tier lists to be in [fractions of ] damage die increase (e.g. d8 over d6) instead of A/B/C/D. E.g: perhaps one trait is worth ½ damage dice increase, or more or less.
You scale seems to be "C means the trait is a wash.", but I am not sure.
I was given to understand that the main benefit of Capacity is getting to attack multiple times without needing to reload, meaning it was essentially a minor buff to action economy/tempo for ranged classes. Am I missing something, or is that not as exciting as it seems to me?
You're thinking of Repeating! Repeating weapons have magazines that require no reloads between shots, but have 3 action reloads to swap out a new one. Capacity weapons can be best thought of as manually rotated revolvers- You still need to Interact to reload them by spinning to the next chamber, the benefit is that it doesn't require a free hand to do so.
The issue, then, is that it only benefits dual-wielding one-handed reload weapons, because you can already reload two-handed weapons- and if you're building a dual-wielder, there's a dedicated feat that does it better and allows you to then use stronger guns.
@@lexchxn Oh, oops! :P Thanks for the clarification!
This is amazing. Wow.
What about Brutal? No weapons have it but it technically exists haha
Agile is also a solid trait for the 2nd weapon when you go double slice build.
I would rate ranged trip in A+ it is one of the few possibilities for Strenght based charakters to get flying enemies into their range.
I think of kickback the same as propulsive, have 14 str, get +1 damage, and later if you want to upgrade it so you need 18 str and get +2 damage. Though it's still not really a big consideration for me, if I were to play a sniper gunslinger I would take an arquebus anyway, for the damage and range, but it is a nice bonus.
to give Razing a tiny amount of credit, many objects (i.e. wall spells) and creatures that are objects dont take extra damage from crits anyway, so having its extra damage not be affected by a crit either doesn't make much difference. It does still matter for attacking Shields though, which is probably one of its biggest use cases, so thats unfortunate
It's specific to Thief Rogue but Finesse is S tier for them (since they get to add Dex as damage instead of Str).
There are a few I slightly disagree with but, overall, a very nice job on the tier list.
For you tier lists, do you have spreadheets or something that give the list or only the videos? I like watching videos once but it would be handy to have a document of the tier list for reference later.
Orcs can get forceful on their unarmed strikes and bleed on critical hits. Orc monks are great.
I wish Nethys weapon traits showed all the Martial arts stances as well, Stumbling Swing has great value due to it's traits and damage die but you would never see it unless you checked out the stances.
I mean it's tricky, right, cause at that point the question becomes if you should also list every ancestry feat or heritage that gives you natural attacks, and then next are spells, or items, or... It's just a bit of a Pandora's Box.
Do you have a link to the final list for future reference?
Where did you find the power budget for traits?
interesting take on fatal and deadly
since both don't seem to cost damage dice deadly should be stronger starting at greater striking assuming its at least deadly d8. not sure how much that would change
Overall great video, but I think you overated combination(clunky), underrate concussive(bludgeoning often is the odd one out). I would add that while deadly is often good(such as on a rapier, which has the highest damage a finesse 1 hander will get), it does sometimes decrease the damage die, such as on the glaive, which is rarely worth it. And fatal aim in F is just wrong. "Fatal, but you cant regrip your weapon as part of a reload" is still fatal, and should be around b tier
Greats vid. Curious on your rating on fangwire since it has a unique mix of grapple, agile, deadly d8 and backstabber. Ive been debating if using it for press attacks like combat grab, orif one should stick to that higher 1d8 dmg die at the cost of higher map on that 2nd attack?
I agree reach+grapple is great. Sadly im limited to 1 handed weapon. It seems good but not certain.
The exquisite sword cane is one of your favorite weapons?
yeah I bet, since it's a broken weapon that gravely exceeds its power budget LMAO
Thanks, nice video ^^ !!!
noooooo fatal is bait don't do this to yourself!!! don't gamble when free hand and reach weapons are right there with so much value
LETS GO GAMBLING! I CANT STOP WINNING
Fighter weapon proficiency goes brrrr.
Fatal is fun af tho! Imo, it depends on the class. Fighter makes, by far, the best out of it with their higher attack proficiency
As a GM, I tremble in fear of my Gunslinger's dice
@@MagmaRiver my mom (who plays with me as a fellow player) has a Lance on her Fighter Centaur and let me tell you, the GM has already learned that her crits are scary
I disagree with multiple ratings in your list. Reach should be S tier. Grapple is nice to have. Trip is stronger compared to Grapple. Guisarme is a top tier weapon for a reason.