Longblades?

I made the decision to switch from Ranged Laser Pistoleer to Longblades because all throughout playing the game I had an affinity for it but never answered to it until now. Doing my research and all, going through data from entropedia and the auction, I came up with this list.


From ~200 longblade weapons in game, I deleted the Limited ones and the Developer weapons and ended with 70 weapons. Then I removed all that you need level 100 for to max and this is the result. To the right you can see the availability in game. The ones with NO are mostly from weapons that either have very little auction data, most likely due to trading outside the auction on top of some that are rare or unique (Genesis Rainbow Sword/Improved Mako Fal).

I removed the (L) weapons from the list because for me personally I'm happier with a weapon I can keep. I removed the Dev ones for obvious reasons. The level 100+ weapons I removed because getting a skill that high in Longblades is really hard.

All results are unamped/unenhanced.

This gives a very small list of options and all those options are for Longblades skills below level 50. I totally understand the advantage of having a ranged weapon, as a lot of melee players do have a puller. That does not take away that I view Longblades as an underdeveloped weapon range.

I do know there are often (L) longblades on the auction that are not only on a very low MU that require skills over level 50. But who doesn't want to have a nice unl weapon you don't have replace after a few hunts?

What are your thoughts?

I am fully aware that the top 3 are not able to be sold in the auction.

 

Not really a melee hunter myself, but I often use my T 3,9 Shagadi + melee amp VI as a finisher. Occasionally I use it as a primary weapon for naked hunting on smaller mobs that I find boring.
Used it intensively for a while right after unlocking commando, gained hp very fast.

If I had a blade with a higher TT value (needing to repair it every 20 mins or so is a drag), better dps and a bit better eco, I'd probably go melee fairly often. It's very nice for building defensive skills.

5$ is the guy I'd go to for advice though

Hope you find something that suits your needs.
GL.

Ps: Clubs is also an option ofc.

 

You have gone to a lot of trouble there Lizzy, excellent & informative
If I have a regret - I had a falceta, but I sold it as it did not seem that good for me. Maybe I should have hung on to it.
I prefer knives to swords

 

Not only long blades but all melee (short blades, fists ect) are underdeveloped and not only up to lvl 50 but all lvls.
1. Mod merc or imk2 in melee do not exist if we don't count almost unique ark blades wich are not affordable for most of player base.
2. Almost all ul cheap melee have very low TT. Shagadi Disitegration Sword TT is only 160 peds.
I use mostly short blades. Would use also power fists but they are almost non existent, low damage an so on - in total way worse.
An Songkra Corrosive Dagger for example have 150 peds TT.
With imp melee trauma amp 6 you can do theoretically 36-37 oratan menaces (lvl 30) before it decay but normally apart crits you have also misses so you end up to kill 34-35 oratans.
You could put dmg enhancers but then blade decay even faster and cost to play is way another story.
So blade is not enough to do Oratan Pay back mission XV where you have to kill 100 mobs and to repair at least twice and that cant be compared with any gun.

As MA don't address TT issue in all this years would be nice from A-Team to give mission like they did for Viceroy armor that we can increase TT of blades and improve them.

 

I too am concentrating on shortblades for melee. I prefer the speed of the weapon, compared to swords and I think powerfists are underdeveloped compared to knives.

Agreed with that statement about weapon tt. It's a pain when your melee weapon decays every 15 minutes or so. If you want to be able to hunt for an hour or longer without having to repair often, it limits your weapon choices to those with higher tt then 100 peds. It is for that reason am using a Ranked Combat Knife currently. Max TT of 700 peds and it lasts for a while. Am already planning on my next upgrade for melee, and it will be something with at least 1k peds max TT.

Too bad, I really like the design of the Aakas knives...... if only they were at least 4x the current max tt of what they are now, I would have gotten them for sure.

 

I have not thought about the TT of the weapons, as I have not been very bothered with it currently. I am fine hunting for a few hours, and if I need to repair every 30 minutes - so be it.

For things like event hunting you do lose time if you need to repair, that on top of the fact you need to move more because of the range making ranged just a bit more superior.

It is true that I did not look into other melee weapons, but even with ranged it is best to get kill strike before getting some skills in other professions. That is possible with melee, but as an example of power fists mentioned here, there are very little of those in game. And those are fun to play with too!

Probably melee professions are lacking tools overall, and I am questioning why I am seeing it that way as we do have tons of options, but it's only a small portion compared to ranged options.

 

As you mention range need to add that ranged and melee are totally unbalanced.
Melee hunter have always to do with full HP mob in moment mob reach in close combat.
An ranged hunter have to deal with already damaged half dead mob when it come close.
Same is valid in PvP between two players - melee oponent is damaged if not dead before he reach the point in close combat range where he can deal damage.
Except in extreme cases where melee fighter have special sword with cold or electric damage and hope that oponent have other type of protection mele hunter have no way to give back damage he received when running to opponent.
We have no special skills (pasive or active) to deal more damage to compensate and balance range as in other games.

 

True, if you compare the two side by side it is more 'logical' to go with ranged over melee. I know enough people however who prefer melee. It might be the look, the 'normal MMO' feeling, because it's just different, because it's cheaper. When the amps came into play it made melee only a little bit more viable to play with, but to my feeling it wasn't enough.

Looking at the best possibility for dps purely, you can go up to about 100 dps with the Shagadi (T10 + amp), that is very nice but I would never even think about hunting creatures over 2000hp with that. I know you could go over that easily if you are not bothered about killing stuff slowly, but then you need to concider that you need the defensive skills to be able to stay alive for 30sec or more, evade enough to stay below that desired maximum 3% defense costs.

This comes down to preliminary views that melee is only good for low-mid level hunters. If you want to be uber melee, I bet you need to get a nice stash of peds and look at the PCF sales daily to find a good weapon that would allow you to grow.

Luckily I just started at the bottom again by recreating my account, so by the time I finished the missions I could do easily with the current availability with weapons - I hope that it looks better for melee players in the long run and I can continue to hack & slash creatures.

I do like the idea of a viceroy-esque missions to improve upon the current melee weapons on Arkadia. Lore-wise I believe that could not be done to the weapons dropping in aakas/mining, but those are the ones that are most available to the players. Yet people have noticed a decline in their availability recently.

Maybe melee just need a whole overhaul. Have someone from MA have a good look at things.

 

I have re-added melee to my portfolio because it helps a great deal to improve defensive skills, which are drifting terribly out of sync in your professional development with ranged weapons. Both by boosting strength and agility attributes from the weapon itself, and then of course evade and combat reflexes directly by getting hit more.

Therefore I find there is more than one way to see how things are unbalanced. You need to allow getting hit as much as hitting yourself if you want to keep it in line. This costs, any which way you look at it. Well-chosen armour is cheaper than fapping, unless you want these skills, too, for which you pay again. If you can afford a Restoration Chip, this changes everything, but you will have again paid for it a good while in advance until you reach break-even.

I chose shortblade because they are faster, less damage per hit but it means you can be a bit more lazy with finishers. It also means, more importantly when on a budget, you get fitting amps from the affordable common range much longer.

For now I find myself well-equipped with the two Ozpyns, RSB S1X1+2. I had originally planned to upgrade to Ranked Combat Knife as soon as I can afford one, but since Ares rings and other items with buffs are getting so common and affordable lately, the threshold of 50 dps is made even without consideration of tiers. This is good enough for a very long grind.

The equivalent Arkadian weapons are great, too, of course. But the low loadable TT value has been mentioned, and taking a possible future upgrade mission in that direction is a great idea.

Where the melee branch is really suffering from being unbalanced imo is in the crafted section. Since every bit of markup reduces weapon economy directly, hardly anyone wants to manufacture them. Till today I am lacking a bright idea how to address this. Then there is the imbalance with ranged hunters who can take advantage of universal ammo by gaining 1% from shrapnel conversion, as well as getting a better exchange rate when purchasing it from the webshop. I filed a suggestion to compensate for this here.

 

You wrote some good points and I agree, San.

Crafted weapons, even looted, the higher the skill req. for it, the lower the MU seems to be. This has been my observation on Limited weapons. With the current state in crafting, you may as well just click the EP. Kikki would know more about this.

The idea to introduce more unlimited weapons through crafting would either result in a crash of the melee weapons MU, or it will generate a lot of unlimited weapons that require a skill level only a handful of people have. Having some bigger weapons in loot or an upgrade mission would not overflow the market too much to crash it, and it gives a medium oppurtunity for people to go bigger if they want to.

 

I think some form of ranged gear will complement melee. Just concentrating on pure melee is not possible, I think. You need a tagger or pre damager of some sort.

One big advantage of melee over guns is, it's cheaper to get similar eco / dps melee weapons (compared to guns). My IV Amp and knife setup cost me about + 1.5k peds for 54.x dps at 2.9x. If I can find the rare (expensive amp V), I can get slightly better eco and dps.

Show me another gun setup which costs similar for similar dps / eco. Including my buffs and other gear, am doing an easy 75 dps with that setup now.

My next planned upgrade will probably cost me double the mu I paid for my current melee gear, but at about base 70dps and better eco. With my buffs and other gear, should be pushing around 90dps.

Am already killing mobs with over 2k health in about 30 secs with my current knife setup. I don't see an issue progressing further in melee, cheaply. I tend to hunt naked mostly, so defence costs are very low as well.

Personally I prefer guns here mostly, it's just the cost that is making me move more to melee. I don't mind the extra strength or health or evade, lol. I don't think I will ever be a pure melee hunter. I will be mixing it up with guns / MF / etc, depending on my gear.

Hopefully they will get around to more melee options one day.

 

Yes, the costs for melee are still low, I think that is mostly due to the fact that most people go for ranged over melee. And currently hunting with a combination of ranged and melee doesn't seem a bad option, however there are some unlocks someone would/should prefer to get before trying to combine weapons.

I think MF is currently even worse off than melee, but that does not take away it being a nice option for pulling or side-skilling.

 

I just checked and I noticed that the Laconian Sword is missing on the list.

 

You missed off the Labrys from the list which while being an axe, counts as a longblade weapon. Falx, Falcata and Labrys were all Next Island weapons and can only be got now in person to person trade. They are all UL and good for skilling longblade on low level mobs - Carabok to low maturity Halix range.

I did the Carabok and Gallard missions using them and an UL whip (to skill up in whip)

 

as an aside, I have often used up long and short blades that drop from mobs because of the fact that they improve strength which means I can carry more loot and this extends the length of my mining runs

 

Laconian is in line 33

 

Thank you, I thought it would be higher up.

 

Ozpyn RLB blades are looted. (and they still drop - check rare loot on EL)

Falcata is still available from a mission in Ancient Greece - got mine like two weeks ago. It's worth noting AG blades can't be amped though.

Also, various Embra blades - I've seen a couple of those on sale on PCF.

 

I see the embra blades are looted from mobs, although I can't tell their droprate or if they still drop seeing the TT.

And yes, there is still the blade you can get from NI.

 

Some good info and ideas presented here. I've been about 80% longblades last few years using an arsonistic chip as a pre-damage/pulling wep and a portable repair tool to address the occasional inconvenience of having to repair in an instance or event. I still think the best armor you have is your skin, and the strength/HP gain with melee is undeniable.

Like others have mentioned we are way overdue for some meaningful upgrade missions for melee weps, would love to see an adj/imp/mod Dehera or Shagadi!!