WebShaman wrote...
...which sounds nice, until you consider that Favored Enemy only works on certain types of creatures, while Weapon Specialization works on everything
EXCEPT that WS only works on a specific Weapon type. What if the enemies encountered are immune/have resistence to that type of damage? Up the Creek without a Paddle, hmmm? How about Ranged Weapons? Unless one has taken it for Ranged...then what about Melee?
I can do without the snarky tone, thanks.
But how often does that problem really come up? If a Fighter specializes in battle axes, for example, he's going to wield a battle axe as often as possible, just to milk that Specialization for all it's worth; if the weapon that prompted him to take the Feat is exceptionally powerful, or if the weapon is part of the Fighter's theme as a character (since if you name your Fighter "Gorrgod Axe-Singer," he's probably not into swords), that goes up from a likelihood to a certainty. And sure, he's going to have trouble with enemies that resist Slashing damage (ie. skeletons) or punish Slashing damage in other ways (ie. ochre jellies). But unless you're playing on a server which is completely loaded with skeletons, ochre jellies, bone golems and various other Slashing-resistant or Slashing-immune monsters, that battle axe specialization is not going to be a problem very often; the creatures which don't have any kind of resistance or immunity to Slashing are typically the vast majority. Same goes for Piercing and Bludgeoning.
On the other hand, there 25 races of creatures, of which 24 races are possible choices for Favored Enemy (with Oozes being the exception here). So unless you're on a server which is heavily loaded with a certain race (ie. Undead on the Prisoners of the Mist server or the various Zombie Survival servers), and your Ranger has chosen that race for one of his one-to-five Favored Enemies, then most of the time he'll be "up the creek without a paddle," to use your own words.
To boil it down a bit, your typical server is like a big tub full of, let's say, 500 oranges and 20 apples. With Weapon Specialization, that server is telling the Fighter, "See those apples? Those are the only fruits in that tub which are going to give you trouble. Enjoy chopping up all those oranges." But with Favored Enemy, that server is telling the Ranger, "See those apples? Those are the only fruits that you're going to completely chop the living bajeezus out of. With all those oranges, you're just going to have to pay full price." Then your Ranger hits Level 5 (or 10, or 15, or 20) and takes another Favored Enemy, and some lanky guy in a janitor suit comes in, takes 20 oranges out of the tub and dumps 20 more apples into the tub. But most of the tub is still oranges, which your Ranger's not particularly good at chopping up.
Hey, I can see that you're a big fan of Rangers. I don't exactly think poorly of Rangers myself; my first character on that PotM server was a Ranger (with Favored Enemies: Undead, Shapechanger and Animal, of course). When Favored Enemy works, it's great, especially if you have a "Taunter" build or your favored enemy race has stealthers on that server. But it usually doesn't apply to most of the monsters you run into in your day-to-day ambling around between dungeons...not unless you know exactly where your favored enemies spawn on the server and spend a lot of time hanging out in those places, maybe.
I've gotten a lot more mileage out of Weapon Specialization, like I did when I played a battle-axe-specialist Fighter on PotM. After ten or twenty chops, those extra 2 points of Damage really add up. And then on top of that, you add in the extra-
extra 2, 4 or even 6 Damage from each Critical Hit, depending on your weapon's critical multiplier....
Ow.
But hey, at least Rangers get to summon a critter to help them dish out more damage, so take comfort in that.
Modifié par Wids, 17 septembre 2011 - 06:52 .
