I know an elf using daggers can be very deadly, but what about swords? I'm going back and fourth on this, and cannot decide. Can someone tell me the pros and cons of using swords as an elf? Can I stay alive and actually do some killing when need be? Or, are daggers on an elf just to hard to pass up? I was thinking of flails as a second spec just for the entwine, but that's as far ahead as I've thought.

Any suggestions? anything I must know as an elf sword spec? Any legacy I must have besides STSF?

What i'm really looking for is someone to tell me that I am crazy for trying this and it wont work to well. Thanks in advance.

Swords have no innate lagging commands and the strongest burst damage move, namely flurry, is nearly useless to you since it seems to rely primarily on strength.

Of course, the imms in the past have disagreed with this statement, so you can take it with a grain of salt, but it has been my personal observation that low str high dex characters using flurry will hit less, for less damage, than their higher str counterparts. Counterintuitive, yes, I know. Entirely possible I'm wrong here, but I don't think so.

Also, due to low strength, your sword choices will be much more limited, especially at the high end weapon range. You won't be able to use as many vuln hitters or weapons with ridiculously high average - as opposed to say, storm giant, with average 28 good-only drowning swords available, or the possibility of wielding one of the best divine swords in the game (bal'talon).

You'll get lots of swiftstrikes, and combined with riposte thats pretty cool and all, but parry won't be very reliable, being str based, and your damage output won't be NEARLY as high as a storm giant of the same level.

Let us compare this to another spec which might fill a similar role to swords. Like swords, daggers have no lagging commands. However, unlike swords, every single dagger skill fulfills an important role for the elf.

Daggers complement high-dex elves very well at hero. Dodge, unlike parry, seems to be primarily based on dex, one of the best stats available to an elf, as opposed to strength. On an elf, I'd take concealed anyday over riposte and swiftstrike - though I think the damage from concealed and the damage from riposte/swiftstrike are potentially similar, concealed also fires off at things that riposte/swiftstrike does not, such as bashes.

A dagger player's most damaging skill (underhand) is more reliable than flurry, especially on an elf, and doesn't lag you for a ridiculous number of rounds if it fails. It has its own limits, but it is a very powerful skill nonetheless.

Finally, I would suggest that malediction, of which the sword spec has very little, is probably the most important equalizer for an elf warrior - in a battle where you and your opponent are both going pound for pound with your most damaging skills, an elf simply cannot keep up to most other warrior classes, with low strength to do damage with and low hp to absorb the damage with. Thus, malediction, which makes opponents hit less hard, hit less often, and causes a greater rate of failure on their spec skills, is crucial to allowing a warrior class with low power and low hp go toe to toe with extremely high damage opponents.

>Swords have no innate lagging commands and the strongest
>burst damage move, namely flurry, is nearly useless to you
>since it seems to rely primarily on strength.

To a degree that's true. However, see the helpfile on 'speed flurry' as well.

>Of course, the imms in the past have disagreed with this
>statement, so you can take it with a grain of salt, but it has
>been my personal observation that low str high dex characters
>using flurry will hit less, for less damage, than their higher
>str counterparts. Counterintuitive, yes, I know. Entirely
>possible I'm wrong here, but I don't think so.

I can't imagine who would have said that; nonetheless, the flurry helpfile makes it clear that it's a power move, not a speed move.

> as opposed to say, storm giant,
>with average 28 good-only drowning swords available

I don't know what this would be, but I'll take your word for it.

>You'll get lots of swiftstrikes, and combined with riposte
>thats pretty cool and all, but parry won't be very reliable,
>being str based

However, flourintine is dex based. For a sword warrior using swords it's more or less a wash.

>>You'll get lots of swiftstrikes, and combined with riposte
>>thats pretty cool and all, but parry won't be very reliable,
>>being str based
>
>However, flourintine is dex based. For a sword warrior using
>swords it's more or less a wash.
>

This reminds me...I've been meaning to ask...been playing with some characters, and I've noticed I can parry when I'm using only fists in my main wield, which makes me believe that parry much check your dual wield weapon for an opportunity as well. The helpfile never mentions anything along those lines. So, two parts.

A) Am I correct that parry allows for parrying w/ dual wield? Hence wielding a sword, and dual wielding a dagger, I'd parry less than dual wielding two swords with any standard character?

B) If part A is correct, does flourintine just up your chance to try to parry w/ your dual wield?

>I can't imagine who would have said that; nonetheless, the flurry helpfile makes it clear that it's a power move, not a speed move.

I was recalling this debate a few years ago about how flurry was nerfed and as a result there were no more arial sword specs. And in this debate you said that flurry had not been changed for a long time, thus making everyone think that either arials had always had crappy flurries and people were just beginning to notice, or flurry was never changed from the time when arial swords were strong in the first place, and results to the contrary were RNG mind games. Or at least, thats how I interpreted it.

>I don't know what this would be, but I'll take your word for it.

Well, in that specific example, I was thinking of the blade of shimmering waters.

Relevant to the bigger picture, a lot of the best high-average swords which hit vulns I know are two-handed or rather heavy, rendering them rather useless to low-strength non-giant-sized elves. Of course, there are indeed several decent one-handed swords, some of which are better than many two-handed counterparts - its just that any medium-sized sword spec will have a much lower selection of powerful weapons than an equivalent giant sword spec, and in elves its particularly noticeable because there are also several decent 1-handed swords too heavy for you to wield.

I always thought it was a nerf to riposte - more specifically deathblow won't fire on riposte and that it got changed to fire less often, that led to the demise of arial sword specs.

I think elf sword is decent and almost certainly is the character that would see the most swiftstrikes; that being said, I think you need to have a plan for how you're going to actually kill people, and I think "entwine, then switch to swords" is a really overrated one.

If you're going to kill someone with swords then you need to either do a whole crapload of damage really fast (and by that I mean "unexpectedly fast") or you need a way to keep the guy in combat. Either by preventing fleeing, or by total command denial. What are we looking at other than entwine:

Pole+cutoff? Eh. Then you're not really using swords. Are you just going to use swords until the guy's wounded, then switch to polearm? Cutoff certainly won't be ideal on an elf. How will you kill the guy who, having died to you once, immediately tries to flee/word whenever you attack him?

Drive legacy? Trip lag. You're probably not killing people with trip lag.

STSF? Nice, but doesn't stop people who can magically transport out of combat. (Though could pair with dagger). Also requires someone to let you charge it up. Guy who has died to you in the past and wants nothing to do with you- probably not dying to STSF.

Against people you outclass, "lash;entwine" seems like a good tactic. Especially if you get the jump on them. Their margin of error is one command. If they've spammed anything at all then the entwine will go through before they can flee. Since it's someone you presumably outclass, once they're entwined (assuming they can't magically leave combat or knock you out) they should be dead.

I'm thinking elf outlander warrior, sword/whip, balance + {whirlwind | ward | fist}. Whirlwind only because of ancient instincts.

>Against people you outclass, "lash;entwine" seems like a good
>tactic. Especially if you get the jump on them. Their margin
>of error is one command. If they've spammed anything at all
>then the entwine will go through before they can flee. Since
>it's someone you presumably outclass, once they're entwined
> assuming they can't magically leave combat or knock you out)
>they should be dead.

My experience is that, basically, it's really rare to get at hero that you can kill that way that you wouldn't be as or more likely to kill an even easier way. I mean, yeah, it's pretty much certain death to most people dumb enough to come at you + a healer and let themselves get entwined + cursed as you get pumped full of rejuvs, but you probably can just trip or enlarge yourself and bash down anyone that terrible.

(Yes, I realize there are an awful lot of logs of Empire whip warriors doing this very thing to terrible Fort guys.)

Mostly toss out everyone with word or another class-based way to escape from combat in most cases -- so there goes pretty much all of the mages and communers and assassins and Enigma warriors and all manner of miscellaneous builds. Probably, you want to count anyone who can fairly reliably force you to flee and break the entwine as well (e.g. bards)

(Also toss anyone who has someone moderately competent handy to word them.)

That leaves us with, what, berserkers, thieves, rangers, and other warriors?

Probably, a ranger shouldn't allow you to entwine them out of the wilderness; in the wilderness they should pretty well have your number. Entwined berserkers have last stand working in their favor. Thieves are probably in bad shape, assuming they let you get the jump on them. Other warriors are probably your best bet.

If you have an at all close fight, it's just really hard to give up that two rounds minimum to entwine someone, and a lot can tend to go wrong. You get blinded before you can switch to swords, or you start getting bashed before you can switch, or you've gotten boneshattered or hit with another good maledicting move meanwhile. The list goes on.

If all that goes right, you need to hope you can kill them before entwine wears off, which you might not do.

I don't know, I can see the argument for it on paper, but I've played sword/whip a handful of times and it in retrospect it almost always seems like I'd do better with a different spec or at least a different tactic. YMMV.

>I'm thinking elf outlander warrior, sword/whip, balance +
>{whirlwind | ward | fist}. Whirlwind only because of ancient
>instincts.

I think you might be a little disappointed with what AI would do for you there, since I know you have a ranger perspective on it.

EDIT: I was corrected that Quel was dagger first. Oops. I made the assumption that specs were listed in the order they were chosen in the PBF. Consider this post significantly more moot.

Queliryon was sword/dagger, but went 55-0 before hitting 40 and having second (dagger) spec, before deleting at 68-2.

In all seriousness though, with the right equipment (mainly some decent stat gear), swiftstrike + riposte, and some edges, I think elf sword is very viable and well underplayed.

But not many exceptional examples out there.