There’s been plenty of talk about rebalancing traits for battle wizard, but I think an exclusive weapon would help as well, as unchained is pretty melee heavy already. my suggestion:
Fire whip with a spiked gauntlet on the left hand.
Light attack pattern: similar to rapier attack pattern, 45 degree chained attacks back and forth with fire damage and stagger.
Heavy attack pattern: Cattleman’s crack. Single target, high damage, etc.
Push attack: punch em with the gauntlet, similar to the dagger. If it doesn’t make sense to have that gauntlet for one attack, then just a sweep attack with the whip could work too…
Make it a 6 foot whip, otherwise its range would be greater than any other weapon in the game. It would be similar to the rapier for WHC, crowd control and headshots, with some added fire DoT and stagger. I would use it!
i feel like unchained needs weapon both good vs armor and hordes.
so design it around whip for hordes, and some good double punch (similar to kruber’s halberd combo) with high ARP on heads.
I like the idea. Do it.
I just want a weapon for sienna that performs similarly to the 1h hammer, the mace feels too slow and i eat hits and the dagger doesnt deal with armour well enough.
Mace
It’s probably as close as you are going to get, though. Really don’t see how you can make them more alike without them turning into clones. Push-stab initated low damage high stagger horde clear, single target high AP overheads.
Honestly I wouldn’t use it much… and here’s why.
The only weapon I use on Battle Mage is the Dagger.
Reason being: For Battle Mage you spend more time in higher Overcharge states. This reduces your melee speed a great deal. Its why you don’t generally use the swords anymore either.
For a Battle Mage to be played correctly, you are on your melee weapon 90% of the time, always blocking. So you tend to run with your guard up. The only time the staff comes out, is when I quick swap for a Fast Charge AoE attack from the staff, Then I’ll do it a few times in a row and then swap back to dagger for guard up again and take a few swats at the enemies.
Melee isn’t really a primary weapon, its something to block with, and then occasionally take a few stabs or a charged attack with.
So while the idea on the surface sounds cool, reality is that it wouldn’t be used much anyway. And Dagger actually does all that anyway.
I prefer 1h weapons for mobility, i’d say the mace is closer to 2h hammer than 1h at the moment.
The biggest weakness of the mace imo is it’s single target attack at the start of light and heavy chains. I know you can push attack and go straight into the sweeps but its an annoying nuance that most other weapons dont have.
The mace is in movement definitely a 1h weapon, you get high movement speed while blocking, high dodges, really not sure what about it would make it a 2h.
The only alternative would be to not have the single target at the start, which would mean you’d have no way to spam single-target/anti-armor attacks.
Thats certainly the case for BW but i only play unchained, i use melee/ranged 50/50.
I’m really hungering for a versatile melee weapon for sienna. Every other career i have a go to weapon, sienna i bounce between all of them (highest play time is probably the dagger) since they all have a downside I’m not entirely content with.
Could remove the single target from the light chain so you still have the heavy single target attack, could even make the heavy attack exclusively the single target attacks in that case. I get that it’d pretty much be a pick then but i’d prefer the lack of versatility to the current awkward attack pattern.
Just checked and yeah im wrong about it reducing mobility, thought i felt it since the attacks are so sluggish.
Im happy if they leave it the way it is, its just not for me.
not sure why it would be BW exclusive? did you mean a sienna exclusive?
this idea or similar has come up a few times , i suggested something similiar in a flaming chain weapon a while back Unchained needs a weapon! and the whip iea has been posted a few other times. People keep coming to this idea FS …