Passive Tree: Weapon Specialization Disparity

Since Patch 1.1, I have made comments in several places here on the forums, that there is a massive disparity between 2h'd weapons in terms of passive tree nodes. This leads to my stance that Swords are currently the best option by a very large, and clear cut margin.

A few people have asked me why I believe that to be so, both in game, and in various other means (multiple PM's over various platforms).

I have compiled my reasons, and I'm going to put them all here, in a single, concise post. Let's try and keep any discussion that follows both civil, and on point.

1.) Quantity of Nodes.
Part of the problem with this disparity is that swords come in both 1h'd, and 2h'd variations, and have appeal to all but 1 class in Path of Exile. I'm sure if you wanted you could make a sword wielding witch, and I'm sure some have. But by and large, they are the only class that doesn't have "easy" access to sword passives. So in an effort to ensure the classes that are generally melee have equal representation in the sword, there are an abundance of nodes.

Here is a list of the passive Clusters and individual nodes for each weapon class in the passive tree, sorted by QTY of nodes.

Sword
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Cluster 9
Individual Nodes: 49
Node with Life 8
Node with ES
Node with Armor 3

Axe
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Cluster 6
Individual Nodes: 33
Node with Life 1
Node with ES: 2
Node with Armor 3

Staff
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Cluster 7
Individual Nodes: 33
Node with Life
Node with Armor

Mace
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Cluster: 5
Individual Nodes: 27
Nodes with Life
Nodes with ES
Nodes with Armor 6

Claw:
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Cluster 4
Individual Nodes: 21
Node with Life 1
Nodes with ES
Node with Armor

Bow:
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Cluster 6
Individual Nodes: 28
Node with Life: 7
Node with Armor
Node with EV
Node with ES

Wand:
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Cluster 4
Individual Nodes: 25
Node with Life
Nodes with Es
Node with Armor

Dagger
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Cluster 4
Individual Nodes: 21
Node with Life: 4
Node with ES: 1
Node with Armor


(For the above, I have ignored implicit DW / 1h / 2H nodes, as those are available to all weapons.)

As we can see, and somewhat predictably, Swords have the most nodes allocated to them. It stands to reason that the weapon that is easily used by 6 classes, will in fact have the most specialization nodes allocated towards it.

But, does it rule the roost? I would say yes. In Path of Exile, you need to live if you are planning to deal damage. And if you plan on living, the best weapon to choose is going to be the Sword. You simply have the most Life coupled with your weapon damage. If you look at the other 2h'd weapon options, you will see that only one weapon has life on a node; Axes.


DO you know why that is?



2.) Defensive Quality of DPS Nodes.
There is the old adage that the best defense is a good offense. In some cases, in POE, that is true. But we don't plan around those. Or, at least we shouldn't. We should be planning for when the poo hits the spinning blades on the ceiling.

When you are playing a 2h'd character, unless you are playing staves, you really only have 2 "defensive stats" I'll get to why I say just 2 in a moment, but we'll stick with 2 for now. Life, and Armor.

We are sticking with those two, because when choosing your weapon specialization, specifically with 2h'd options, you are only presented with 2 "hybrid style" nodes accompanying your weapon spec that refer to defense. Armor, and Life. And Swords, Crush every other melee weapon in terms of Hybrid Life / Damage nodes. At the 1h'd Level, it's a 2:1 margin.

At the 2h'd level, it's 8:1.

Now, admittedly, you could choose to go maces, and beef up your armor at the same time. But, and what follows is personal opinion, Armor isn't good, outside of the 4.X seconds that your granite is active. If given the choice between getting more armor, and getting more life, most players using a 2h'er, are going to choose more life, every day of the week.


But, for the sake of including it, If you couple armor nodes with Life nodes, they still have a commanding 11-6 advantage.

Yes, Maces also offer Stun Threshold reduction / inc duration, but that's not an effective health component. It may allow you, or help you to stay alive, but it's not a constant. You can't "bank" on stun to save you in the same manner that more life, or even more armor can save you. Especially in that poo on the spinning ceiling mounted contraption circumstance.

In short, the changes to the passive tree hurt 2h'd phys builds that weren't using swords. It made swords the "auto" choice, if you are looking at it from a survivability standpoint. It removed the life nodes that were present in Maces, and the added bulk of the marauder tree, created a similar "roadblock" between the upper and lower portions of that side of the tree, preventing the previously faster travel that allowed the gathering of more defenses.

Now, admittedly, it would be incredibly hard to get every single Life / Sword node in the tree. I wont argue that. But, without a lot of work, every "melee" class that is interested in Swords can get to >75% of those clusters containing sword + Life nodes, with make them more attractive. When I'm able to choose clusters that have effective health, and DPS, it makes me more inclined to travel there, and invest points.

This is mostly all true with a couple exceptions, but it doesn't scratch the surface of the imbalances in this game. The skill gems and supports are completely out of wack.

Your not accounting for the certain builds and skill gems associated to the weapon types, although swords have the most nodes they aren't the most popular by far for builds. On top of were all of the nodes are located + es builds.

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RagnarokChu a écrit :

Your not accounting for the certain builds and skill gems associated to the weapon types, although swords have the most nodes they aren't the most popular by far for builds. On top of were all of the nodes are located + es builds.

Skill gem, is mostly irrelevant when looking at things for me. My current ranger in Ambush is a 2h'd sword melee, and I'm going to compare along the way, with my 66 marauder that is parked in Standard from Anarchy.

I can tell you, just based on where I'm at so far (level 49), I'm way ahead of where I was in Anarchy. Some of that, is gear.



Some of that, is just the better pathing / passives I'm able to use by going swords. My Marauder is sporting a fairly tanky 2h'd Mace Build, and wearing all the anarchy gear, save a chest that I had left in the stash from Domination.

I could use the same skill set for the ranger that I was using for the Marauder. HS + Leap Slam. This time, I'm using Double Strike instead, if only because it was one of the few melee gems that the Ranger was given access to while leveling, and the Leap Slam gem dropped for me pretty early.

Are there skills that lock you out of weapon choices? Sure. But, those have no bearing on your survivability.

If I'm looking to build an HC character, I'd be inclined to take sword, as I'm given more options to stay alive, through Health Nodes. There is no skill gem in the game that is tied to weapon specificity that gives an inherent EH boost over another, in the implicits of the gem.

On the other hand, some gems, have a negative effect on your EH, by locking you out, of the superior choice of weapon from an EH standpoint: Swords.

If I would have had a comparable DPS sword after the passive changes, I would have taken my 2h'd mace ST Scion from Maces to Swords. But I didn't, and as such, she'll sit, in standard, gathering dust, until they bring some balance to weapon passives, or I get the sword that allows me to make the swap with a passive reset. The margin is huge. Just based on the weapon passives I have allocated, my ranger (all other things being equal) at level 50, has a 36% HP boost over my level 66 marauder. Purely based on being able to spend points on DPS AND HP.

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RagnarokChu a écrit :

Your not accounting for the certain builds and skill gems associated to the weapon types, although swords have the most nodes they aren't the most popular by far for builds. On top of were all of the nodes are located + es builds.

I don't really know where you're coming from with this. Swords offer the best for several types of builds:
Any elemental build, swords have the fastest attack speed with 1.9 for rapier-type swords, which are still classified as swords by the game so swords win with any elemental based melee build.
Any dual wield melee build, you could go with axes, but swords and axes are the only weapons available for cleave, which is currently the game's ONLY real dual wield aoe skill.
Any big hitting 2h weapon build, swords aren't a necessity but they are still an option for almost all the gems. And 2h swords are still useable with cleave.

So what else is there left? Well, reave, lightning strike, leap slam, infernal blow, ground slam, and cyclone. Cyclone works just fine with a 2h sword or 1h+shield, reave works BEST with a fast 1h rapier, infernal blow just fine with a sword/swords, leap slam just fine with sword (rapier allows fastest movement), and lightning strike just fine with swords. The only things I'm aware of that swords can't do is sweep and ground slam, and nobody really does sweep anyways.

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Legatus1982 a écrit :

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RagnarokChu a écrit :

Your not accounting for the certain builds and skill gems associated to the weapon types, although swords have the most nodes they aren't the most popular by far for builds. On top of were all of the nodes are located + es builds.

I don't really know where you're coming from with this. Swords offer the best for several types of builds:
Any elemental build, swords have the fastest attack speed with 1.9 for rapier-type swords, which are still classified as swords by the game so swords win with any elemental based melee build.
Any dual wield melee build, you could go with axes, but swords and axes are the only weapons available for cleave, which is currently the game's ONLY real dual wield aoe skill.
Any big hitting 2h weapon build, swords aren't a necessity but they are still an option for almost all the gems. And 2h swords are still useable with cleave.

So what else is there left? Well, reave, lightning strike, leap slam, infernal blow, ground slam, and cyclone. Cyclone works just fine with a 2h sword, reave works BEST with a fast 1h rapier, infernal blow just fine with a sword/swords, leap slam just fine with sword (rapier allows fastest movement), and lightning strike just fine with swords. The only things I'm aware of that swords can't do is sweep and ground slam, and nobody really does sweep anyways.

But the best builds involves wand, crit daggers?

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RagnarokChu a écrit :

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Legatus1982 a écrit :

"

RagnarokChu a écrit :

Your not accounting for the certain builds and skill gems associated to the weapon types, although swords have the most nodes they aren't the most popular by far for builds. On top of were all of the nodes are located + es builds.

I don't really know where you're coming from with this. Swords offer the best for several types of builds:
Any elemental build, swords have the fastest attack speed with 1.9 for rapier-type swords, which are still classified as swords by the game so swords win with any elemental based melee build.
Any dual wield melee build, you could go with axes, but swords and axes are the only weapons available for cleave, which is currently the game's ONLY real dual wield aoe skill.
Any big hitting 2h weapon build, swords aren't a necessity but they are still an option for almost all the gems. And 2h swords are still useable with cleave.

So what else is there left? Well, reave, lightning strike, leap slam, infernal blow, ground slam, and cyclone. Cyclone works just fine with a 2h sword, reave works BEST with a fast 1h rapier, infernal blow just fine with a sword/swords, leap slam just fine with sword (rapier allows fastest movement), and lightning strike just fine with swords. The only things I'm aware of that swords can't do is sweep and ground slam, and nobody really does sweep anyways.

But the best builds involves wand, crit daggers?

I don't know what planet you come from where wands and crit daggers are the best builds. To begin with wands aren't even melee so aren't really in the same classification as swords, and daggers are as much a spellcaster item as a wands are, neither of which compare to swords in terms of flexibility and build options as well as being the "best" at what they do. And there are also no natural AOE skills for wands, just like there aren't any for daggers, since like I've said swords are actually BETTER for reave than daggers are.

And let's not even get started about crit in HC.

"

I don't know what planet you come from where wands and crit daggers are the best builds. To begin with wands aren't even melee so aren't really in the same classification as swords, and daggers are as much a spellcaster item as a wands are, neither of which compare to swords in terms of flexibility and build options as well as being the "best" at what they do. And there are also no natural AOE skills for wands, just like there aren't any for daggers.

And let's not even get started about crit in HC.

In elemental damage build, sword nodes are +physical damage only.
Almost all dual wield melee builds are any 1h weapons with mostly dual wield nodes or crit based.
almost all big 2h weapon builds are groundslammers or spectral thrower which is any weapon you can get your hands on.


Your arguing that swords are the best but all of the sword nodes are life + p damage or accuracy. If your going to make a post make it about specifically all of the sword nodes compared to all of the other weapon types that sword nodes are going to be compared too.

You don't know what low life shav builds are or wanderes? I'm not going to even explain them too.

If your talking about the specific context of hp physical damage based builds that conventionally attack stuff, then swords by far are still are not the "most popular."

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RagnarokChu a écrit :

"

I don't know what planet you come from where wands and crit daggers are the best builds. To begin with wands aren't even melee so aren't really in the same classification as swords, and daggers are as much a spellcaster item as a wands are, neither of which compare to swords in terms of flexibility and build options as well as being the "best" at what they do. And there are also no natural AOE skills for wands, just like there aren't any for daggers.

And let's not even get started about crit in HC.

In elemental damage build, sword nodes are +physical damage only.
Almost all dual wield melee builds are any 2h weapons with mostly dual wield nodes or crit based.
almost all big 2h weapon builds are groundslammers or spectral thrower which is any weapon you can get your hands on.


Your arguing that swords are the best but all of the sword nodes are life + p damage or accuracy. If your going to make a post make it about specifically all of the sword nodes compared to all of the other weapon types that sword nodes are going to be compared too.

You don't take sword nodes in an elemental build. You don't dual wield 2h weapons. I don't even know what this post is attempting to say, your english isn't very good :(

Swords are the best for elemental builds because they attack the fastest, which is one of the ways you increase your dps with elemental builds.

It's also the best with reave because the fast attack speed allows you to get more stacks.

I don't know anybody who does a dual wield crit melee build. I've been trying to do this since the game was invented and it has never been viable.

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Legatus1982 a écrit :

"

RagnarokChu a écrit :

"

I don't know what planet you come from where wands and crit daggers are the best builds. To begin with wands aren't even melee so aren't really in the same classification as swords, and daggers are as much a spellcaster item as a wands are, neither of which compare to swords in terms of flexibility and build options as well as being the "best" at what they do. And there are also no natural AOE skills for wands, just like there aren't any for daggers.

And let's not even get started about crit in HC.

In elemental damage build, sword nodes are +physical damage only.
Almost all dual wield melee builds are any 2h weapons with mostly dual wield nodes or crit based.
almost all big 2h weapon builds are groundslammers or spectral thrower which is any weapon you can get your hands on.


Your arguing that swords are the best but all of the sword nodes are life + p damage or accuracy. If your going to make a post make it about specifically all of the sword nodes compared to all of the other weapon types that sword nodes are going to be compared too.

You don't take sword nodes in an elemental build. You don't dual wield 2h weapons. I don't even know what this post is attempting to say, your english isn't very good :(

You could stop ignoring what the post is obviously trying to say.

Your arguing that swords nodes are the best in the game with obviously many builds choose many other weapons for different reasons because not everyone makes a life/physical damage build with a shield.

You can explain to me that swords are the best for certain builds because of attack speed or w/e but that has nothing to do with sword nodes within the game itself. It's simply because the weapon is a stat stick that can acquire 2.0 aps, which yet again has nothing to do with the sword nodes.