1,13 Heavy weapons vs normal weapons

There is only one thing that will affect heavy weapons average damage over a normal weapons average damage and that is that fact that you are attacking a monster half as many times so the damage reduction caused by the enemies armor is only factored in once.

Everything else affects the weapons average damage the same. Many people have said that heavy weapons will gain a higher boosted effect from str and EE thus increasing their multiplier by more then 2x and making them more effective. This is false. That base damage compared from a heavy weapon to a normal weapon is exactly 2. Therefore whatever multiplicative value the str/EE gives the heavy weapons it will be divided later by it's speed factor, which is 2. This then negates those effects.

However one factor that should affect your choice when going heavy weapons or normal weapons is the overkill factor. In fact, the higher EE your weapon has the greater the chances of overkill outweigh the undercut effect of monsters defense. This means that a 280EE normal weapon will outperform a 280EE heavy weapon as far as killing efficiency goes. I believe this phenomenon is even more evident in catacombs. Seriously, a 4k crit in catacombs is just a huge amount of wasted damage.

I'll throw this out very loosely but heres how I believe you should choose your weapons if your only factor in mind is killing efficieny.

Low EE weapons (0EE-100EE) -> wide range heavy weapons
Mid EE weapons (101EE-229EE) -> wide (medium) range heavy weapons if your going arena, wide (medium) range normal weapons if your going catacombs
High EE weapons (230EE-280EE) -> low range normal weapons

However the difference can probably be disregarded and I would foremost recommend you go with a weapon you enjoy or that can be used by a larger number of classes.

Heres a thread with discussion about heavy weapons vs normal weapons : http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=36311118&f=272

I don't quite agree with this. Rafaels and I did a mirror maze attempt a few weeks ago. His weapon was a 126EE Level 55 Hammer and my weapon was a 189EE Level 55 Sword. His actions were less than mine, but his damage was severely close to mine. The str/dex ratios were about the same. +/- 5 for either stat, I don't remember exactly.

This post was edited by rtcw14 on Nov 4 2009 09:18pm

Well I can't really address this without some type of screenshot to see what real numbers are, but heres some things that COULD have been happening.

With each new wave of monster your heavy weapon gets set back to 0. ie: you kill last monster you wouldn't have to wait that extra second to get another hit on new wave monster.

This would allow you to get more actions so more damage... But I'm not even sure if this is how heavy weapons work in catacombs, I'm just assuming it is.

Also it's important to make a difference between total damage and killing efficiency. Assuming both weapons have same amount of EE, both players have same stats etc.. the heavy weapon should show a higher damage output since the monsters defense is calculated less often.

However that doesn't necessarily change the fact that your killing less efficiently when you factor in the overkill factor.

Finally just for the sake of it, the difference in damage between both of you guys if your stats were the same should have been of 22%. When you factor in the defense thing that happens it could possibly be closer to like... 15-20%.

So now the only thing I would need to know really is if the ratio between you guys actions was very close to 1:2.

Even if it was somewhat off, it's easy to see where that 15-20% can seem very close when in reality the weapons are performing exactly as they should.

So yeah.

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Although there may be some *special* thing that happens with heavy weapons. Iunno. It's also a possibility.

This post was edited by arxyn on Nov 4 2009 09:54pm

Still working on reaching monk so i can do my 170/80 vs 150/100 damage tests

I'll hopefully get it done before McClain resets

In regard to 1.8 (where dex > str), one case i can think of where this may be the case is when killing the sneaky bastard in maze games. he has defence so high that pretty much anything sort of a crit hits for 0.

Anyways, this is by far the most useful guide I have ever read on LS. If everyone read this there wouldn't be any need for much asking at all in regards to 'hi wat is best bild 4 xxx thx'. Delete the sticky (most of it is outdated/not useful) and replace it with this imo.

This post was edited by Cloudfire on Nov 4 2009 11:40pm

vouch i pmed this to all our ls players gg guide for sure.

J_B and I have decided to expand on this, creating an epic project of unseen proportions

Expect this guide to get 3-4x longer O.o

If anyone has anything that you would like to have covered that you feel isn't currently explained well enough anywhere post it here or toss J_B or I a pm.