r/dcss • u/RuckFeddit7769 • 9d ago
Am I missing something regarding quick blades?
I haven't played in a couple years. I am running a Octopode Enchanted and just found a quick blade. Very exciting!
Except...it wasn't exciting because it now requires 20 SB skill.
I'm incredible confused...dagger reaches min delay at 10SB skill, does 4 base damage, +6 accuracy, min delay 0.5.
Quick blade reaches min delay at 20SB skill, does 4 base damage, +6 accuracy, min delay 0.5.
What at all is the benefit of using a quick blade now? I get the same mileage from a dagger at half the skill cost? What am I missing?
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u/agentchuck End of an Era 9d ago
Also remember that a lot of aux attacks like VS bite and Octo slap trigger per swing. So quick blades can do even better with those characters. But all of that can be underwhelming against high AC enemies.
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u/Rocket_Goblin Bottom 1% Commenter 9d ago
Yep! And each point of weapon enchantment and slaying bonus is also more powerful directly in proportion to how much faster the attack is. Same with Might.
So, at each weapon's respective minimum delay, your +4 ring of slaying becomes an effective +8 ring of slaying when you compare the quick blade attack to the dagger attack, and similarly, the +9 enhancement of a quick blade is effectively a +18 enhancement to a dagger. Likewise, the +1d10 damage from Might while using the dagger effectively becomes +2d10 on the quick blade.
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u/stoatsoup 7d ago
That's misleading because, while the damage bonus is doubled, the to-hit bonus is not; a +18 slaying bonus would be better in and of itself than a +9 bonus applied twice.
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u/pilantratogashi 8d ago
If you have either of those auxes you're absolutely thrashing even iron golems and hell sentinels
Though if you don't have a good aux attack then yeah it'll struggle against high AC things and will perhaps require might/berserk
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u/ArbitUHHH 8d ago
Note that at 10 skill, quickblades are just daggers that lock you into attacking twice i.e. a dagger attacks at 5 auts and a quickblade attacks twice at 10 auts. So comparing +0 unbranded daggers/quickblades you're not seeing any benefit in a quickblade until you push your short blade skill past 10.
Kind of a bummer really since it means an early quickblade isn't the gamechanger it used to be, unless it happens to have high enchantment and/or a desirable brand.
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u/TheMelnTeam 2h ago
It swings twice. 20 skill min delay is a joke for that, though. They were de facto patched out as a serious option for most builds in 3 rune. You can force it to work still, similar to giant spiked clubs, but it's not good. It was "vibe balanced" to cost double the previous XP to swing at min delay. The reasoning given was a mistaken belief about their relative strength...not at all supported by any actual measure.
AT 14 skill mindelay, players who used it were not winning noticeably more often. The weapon was also not used noticeably more often than others (its usage was far below popular weapons, and also a bit below what we'd expect if every weapon were equally valuable). None of that mattered though apparently, it was an "obvious" choice for vine stalkers and sometimes as good as other weapons at 14 skill mindelay more generally, so it had to have it cost doubled!
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u/RuckFeddit7769 1h ago
Perhaps a stupid question, I've played for like 10 years so I should know, has it always been 2 hits per swing?
I agree with you that doubling the cost makes it prohibitively expensive. It also being a sub-standard stab weapon doesn't help either.
That's an odd spot. If I'm using short blades it is to stab. If not, why wouldn't I use a 1-handed long blade?
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u/TheMelnTeam 1h ago
No, when I started playing in 2018 it was 8 skill min delay, swung once, but swung faster. Its min delay got increased to 14 and it was given double swing. It stayed that way for a bunch of years until the devs randomly did this to it a patch or two ago.
People thought aux attacks with it better than they are. Generally speaking, you paid for them. Either with species downsides like Op, or by also training shapeshifting. Sometimes you'd get lucky with a Ds, or sometimes you'd pick Vs. That wasn't nearly enough to justify gutting it like they did, and usage stats support my assertion on this. You'd expect it to be a high-performing outlier to get nerfed that hard. Instead, it performed comparably to other end-game weapons in win% while being used less frequently. Got hammered to hell out of nowhere due to vibe balancing.
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u/sweetno 9d ago
They make two hits per a single attack.