Scout vs Fighter

AguynamedBurt

Greenhorn
For my 1.6 play through I decided I would try scout for the first time. Really leaning into the critical aspect of it I went with desperado and added 3 aqua marines to my galaxy sword and I’m melting serpents and purple slimes like they’re nothing. I never thought this build would be so good.
 

LRangerR

Local Legend
For my 1.6 play through I decided I would try scout for the first time. Really leaning into the critical aspect of it I went with desperado and added 3 aqua marines to my galaxy sword and I’m melting serpents and purple slimes like they’re nothing. I never thought this build would be so good.
I enjoy desperado very much. What's your loadout looking like?
 

FilthyGorilla

Local Legend
If you're looking at the most damage, scout is pretty much the only way to go, even with very unoptimized builds the crit builds massively outdamage anything utilizing the fighter path. With innate enchants and good weapons (dragontooth weapons/iridium needle), crit builds are insane, doing far more damage (on average) than infinity weapons with the fighter/brute path.

The only advantage for that is the slight bit more health you get, and for players doing something like a skull cavern deep dive where they won't be killing any monsters at all and having more health is more useful than the 0 benefit from a damage buff you aren't using.
 
Huh! Maybe I should give Scout a try... I always felt luck-dependent stat boosts are useless, but maybe I should calc this a bit more carefully
I personally already use the Iridium Needle to hull my impure / incorrect slimes for slime breeding, so having a faster way to kill off some of the slimes would be nice.

And the sword is nice, but I'm kinda getting sick of only using one weapon class, and I think rocking Abby's Planchette with Iridium Needle stats would be pretty cool (There's not a lot of cool new Sword-class weapons this update... I wanted to try Sam's Old Guitar but Clubs are just toooo slow)!

Do we know if Iridium Needle mathematically is better than the Infinity Dagger?
 
Unless something has been buffed recently, Scout is incredibly inconsistent. Sure, it's max *potential* is far higher, and perhaps even when you average out crits and non-crits it edges out, but it can also leave you doing little damage and taking unneeded hits.

Remember: A 50% multiplier on your crit chance of 1% is only 1.5%. Even the Iridium Needle, with the highest base crit chance in the game of 10%, only ends up at a 15% with that multiplier. That's... not good.

Furthermore, the best crit weapons are also dagger class, which have really bad attacking arcs. A hammer, especially with its ability to hit multiple times by spamming left click after pressing right click, does more damage, and more consistently as well.

Infinity or Galaxy Hammer with base damage boosting gear and Warrior line will one-shot any enemy in the game. Crits are unnecessary. All you are doing by focusing on crits is giving yourself an opportunity to fail.
 

FilthyGorilla

Local Legend
I always felt luck-dependent stat boosts are useless
They're boosted by luck but not to a degree that they're dependent on it
Do we know if Iridium Needle mathematically is better than the Infinity Dagger?
It is yes, even the dragontooth dagger is better. Anything with crit power is instantly insanely powerful, especially with the new innate crit power enchant which affects damage multiplicatively, you can get crits in the many thousands of damage.

Remember: A 50% multiplier on your crit chance of 1% is only 1.5%. Even the Iridium Needle, with the highest base crit chance in the game of 10%, only ends up at a 15% with that multiplier. That's... not good.
Yes, but it applies last, with other crit raising techniques you can get that base chance up to like 30-35% on an iridium needle (and pretty high on even weapons with no base crit chance boost), where that 1.5x makes a massive difference.
Furthermore, the best crit weapons are also dagger class, which have really bad attacking arcs. A hammer, especially with its ability to hit multiple times by spamming left click after pressing right click, does more damage, and more consistently as well.
The whole dragontooth lineup is also amazing for crits, in fact, the best overall weapons are the dragontooth sword and hammer, the hammer being swung just like a regular sword because of the inability for the special attack to crit. They're already being used in things such as perfection speedruns because they're more optimal. In 1.5 and 1.6 you can really get a lot out of critting, it's far more reliable than it once was.
Furthermore, the best crit weapons are also dagger class, which have really bad attacking arcs. A hammer, especially with its ability to hit multiple times by spamming left click after pressing right click, does more damage, and more consistently as well.
No need to use only one weapon, oftentimes a dagger paired with a hammer is very powerful if not the most optimal way to play, the former being must faster to quickly land a special and good for single targets (or stacked targets) and the latter for crowds
Infinity or Galaxy Hammer with base damage boosting gear and Warrior line will one-shot any enemy in the game.
In regards to those two, I go scout and always recommend scout just because of acrobat, the special attack is incredibly strong because of it's associated bug and the halving (then quartering with artful) of the special attack is far better than the percentage increases over weapons you're only really using the special attack with (in being optimal)
 
In regards to those two, I go scout and always recommend scout just because of acrobat, the special attack is incredibly strong because of it's associated bug and the halving (then quartering with artful) of the special attack is far better than the percentage increases over weapons you're only really using the special attack with (in being optimal)
Here's the thing, though. You're just crunching numbers. Let's look at a practical run, shall we?

You bonk with hammer, everything in your area already dies in one hit. Congratulations, your cooldown is now irrelevant because it will be back anyway before anything else can get in range. This makes Acrobat entirely useless in any practical scenario.

Hammer one-shots, and has a small AoE, obviating the need for either crits or cooldown reduction. Thus, the only benefit comes from the other side of the tree

I get your perspective, I genuinely do. However, you're missing a key point here. It is entirely pointless to do thousands of damage when hundreds will kill any opponent you find. You don't need to pierce the heavens, you just need to reliably defeat any enemy you encounter. It is entirely pointless to reduce your cooldown if there's nothing left to swing at in your vicinity after your initial attack is over. It is entirely pointless to have a chance to not one-hit because you didn't crit when you *can* reliably one-hit with every swing. And once you can do that, extra damage or capability is entirely useless.

Perfection is the enemy of 'good enough'. In attaining perfection, you fail to realize that you have left the goal behind long ago, and there is no benefit to surpassing it.
 
The whole dragontooth lineup is also amazing for crits, in fact, the best overall weapons are the dragontooth sword and hammer, the hammer being swung just like a regular sword because of the inability for the special attack to crit. They're already being used in things such as perfection speedruns because they're more optimal. In 1.5 and 1.6 you can really get a lot out of critting, it's far more reliable than it once was.
So you are saying I sacrificed an Infinity Sword to the Dragontooth Cutlass for nothing :toothy:, forged a worse weapon to a rarer weapon, that's what I get for making assumptions just because something feels more convoluted to obtain!

Time to use the Cutlass for what it really is and crit my way through the Magma Sparkers (I hope at least it is more effective in dealing with them because they are really the only monsters that annoy me...)

No need to use only one weapon, oftentimes a dagger paired with a hammer is very powerful if not the most optimal way to play, the former being must faster to quickly land a special and good for single targets (or stacked targets) and the latter for crowds
It's also a real estate issue though... if I could bring my whole house of items I would, but often times I'm running OUT of spots even with the biggest bag. Nowadays spelunking in the dungeons drop soooo much loot, you will be sacrificing things when you brought more items to them
 

FilthyGorilla

Local Legend
So you are saying I sacrificed an Infinity Sword to the Dragontooth Cutlass for nothing :toothy:, forged a worse weapon to a rarer weapon, that's what I get for making assumptions just because something feels more convoluted to obtain!

Time to use the Cutlass for what it really is and crit my way through the Magma Sparkers (I hope at least it is more effective in dealing with them because they are really the only monsters that annoy me...)
Both are totally valuable and workable weapons, you can create a crit build with the infinity sword and it's totally functional too. At that point with crit builds the exact weapon won't make the biggest difference outside of niche cases
It's also a real estate issue though... if I could bring my whole house of items I would, but often times I'm running OUT of spots even with the biggest bag. Nowadays spelunking in the dungeons drop soooo much loot, you will be sacrificing things when you brought more items to them
Yeah though a single slot usually doesn't make much of a difference, you can save a lot more by ditching tools when you go to skull cavern or by having chests at the top of the mines to deposit stuff
Here's the thing, though. You're just crunching numbers. Let's look at a practical run, shall we?

You bonk with hammer, everything in your area already dies in one hit. Congratulations, your cooldown is now irrelevant because it will be back anyway before anything else can get in range. This makes Acrobat entirely useless in any practical scenario.
That's not necessarily what's happening though, and you're often facing enemies that come in successive waves rather than all at once.

If we take what you say at face value, then the extra damage doesn't make a huge difference when you're killing everything in one slam attack, then the ability to do that special twice as often if far more beneficial. As someone who plays a lot in the mines/sc and primarily with the hammer it makes a massive difference, especially in runs where you're moving between enemies quickly or facing enemies like spiders that can get temporary immunity, necessitating more attacking to be as thorough in clearing them, I'd highly recommend trying it out.
I get your perspective, I genuinely do. However, you're missing a key point here. It is entirely pointless to do thousands of damage when hundreds will kill any opponent you find. You don't need to pierce the heavens, you just need to reliably defeat any enemy you encounter. It is entirely pointless to reduce your cooldown if there's nothing left to swing at in your vicinity after your initial attack is over. It is entirely pointless to have a chance to not one-hit because you didn't crit when you *can* reliably one-hit with every swing. And once you can do that, extra damage or capability is entirely useless.
I don't really think I'm missing the point, and for a couple reasons:
1. I'm talking to a sword player and was giving advice to a sword player first off, which obviously doesn't use the hammer and its ability.
2. swinging is just objectively faster than special attack spam, going back to basics in practicality, for something that doesn't take much more effort to put together I can make my hammer incredibly powerful in critting when regular swinging and absolutely still capitalize on the special attack.
3. The halving of the special attack does make a difference in a practical setting, trust me, I've played enough with it to know and it's the popular choice for hammer users for a well founded reason

Perfection is the enemy of 'good enough'. In attaining perfection, you fail to realize that you have left the goal behind long ago, and there is no benefit to surpassing it.
There's a difference in chasing perfection and well thought out optimization, also it's oftentimes just fun to go for something better when it's still netting you tangible gains. I think it's an absolute fun killer to ground everything within perfectly measured approaches, especially in a game where the optimization is easy and perfectly possible to revert
 
Yeah though a single slot usually doesn't make much of a difference, you can save a lot more by ditching tools when you go to skull cavern or by having chests at the top of the mines to deposit stuff
The hoarder in me disagrees :laugh: I'd bring one more clay back if that means it's one more clay (I know this is inefficient :smug:)
But seriously, you have enlightened me to the broader world outside of Infinity Sword, I will have to experiment with the other weapons (and weapon class) a bit more!
 
The hoarder in me disagrees :laugh: I'd bring one more clay back if that means it's one more clay (I know this is inefficient :smug:)
But seriously, you have enlightened me to the broader world outside of Infinity Sword, I will have to experiment with the other weapons (and weapon class) a bit more!
This is why I like the upgraded trashcan. Aside from sap and soggy newspapers, I always bring resources back to the farm in case I need them for building something later. I will toss out those four topaz to pick up that clay. At least with the trashcan upgraded, I get something out of it. 😄
 
This is why I like the upgraded trashcan. Aside from sap and soggy newspapers, I always bring resources back to the farm in case I need them for building something later. I will toss out those four topaz to pick up that clay. At least with the trashcan upgraded, I get something out of it. 😄
Yeah I actually have the same strategy haha - nowadays I prefer to keep base resources more than rare resources... you never know when you will need a random 999 fiber for some crafting (...ahem), but the more valuable items I will just trash because I can always get them later (and they don't get much usage anyway so they will 99% of the time just sit in my chest) and they get recycled(?) for a pretty penny.
 

FilthyGorilla

Local Legend
The hoarder in me disagrees :laugh: I'd bring one more clay back if that means it's one more clay (I know this is inefficient :smug:)
Haha, I just mean that oftentimes you don't really need to bring your axe with you to the caverns, may as well ditch that, bring the actually useful weapon, and have a net neutral on your inventory space. I do agree that it's sometimes better to just have one weapon though.

A good trick for this is to have junimo chests in the house and entrance to sc/volcano/mines
That way even if you forget to ditch your weapons in the morning you can get the reminder when you see the junimo chest, pop them in there (maybe have your bombs in there that you then take out in turn), and don't have to worry about not having them instantly when you wake up the next morning.
 

AguynamedBurt

Greenhorn
I enjoy desperado very much. What's your loadout looking like?
My loadout at the moment is an Infinity Sword with 3 aqua marines. And Vampiric. It’s nice because it seems like vampiric pops more often with crits so I hardly have to heal even in dangerous mines/caverns.

other then that I have I believe mermaid boots and go between a perfect ice rod (skull caverns) or a lvl 4 parrot egg (dangerous mines lvl 50-60 with monster musk)

Also, dont waste qi gems on galaxy souls… when you farm money in the dangerous mines with musk and the parrot egg I would usually get 1-2 galaxy souls a day.
 

AguynamedBurt

Greenhorn
Unless something has been buffed recently, Scout is incredibly inconsistent. Sure, it's max *potential* is far higher, and perhaps even when you average out crits and non-crits it edges out, but it can also leave you doing little damage and taking unneeded hits.

Remember: A 50% multiplier on your crit chance of 1% is only 1.5%. Even the Iridium Needle, with the highest base crit chance in the game of 10%, only ends up at a 15% with that multiplier. That's... not good.

Furthermore, the best crit weapons are also dagger class, which have really bad attacking arcs. A hammer, especially with its ability to hit multiple times by spamming left click after pressing right click, does more damage, and more consistently as well.

Infinity or Galaxy Hammer with base damage boosting gear and Warrior line will one-shot any enemy in the game. Crits are unnecessary. All you are doing by focusing on crits is giving yourself an opportunity to fail.
I’ve done a hammer build with artful where you have basically unlimited heavy hammer attacks, then pressing the other attack button to add a bunch of added attacks… it was fun, and good. I find the crit build to be better. But that’s only based on observation while playing the game.
 
Having crunched the numbers and tested weapons for quite a bit myself (though in 1.5 not 1.6), I'll say I agree to an extent with both perspectives.

First, I'll say that Hammer spam is the faster and more effective and safer clear method, in general. Building for non-crit is the only route for hammers since the special can't crit, and artful / acrobat on hammer really does just melt basically everything quite reliably, with remarkable speed. It hits 360, at great range. For farming enemies for materials I'd greatly prefer using it.

Second, I'll say that I personally find the crit builds to be *nearly* as effective, and a lot more fun. Giant damage numbers are cool, the reliability of kills is quite high, and the sort of exceptionally high health dangerous enemies which gives some pause to hammer builds get shredded on average with a good crit build. Specifically the 500+ HP foes like royal serpents, dangerous skeletons etc get killed on average twice as fast with something like a dragontooth cutlass in a crit build vs hammer swings. When going through areas with enemies and specifically just looking to carve a path through them rather than farm them I'd generally prefer using them.

However there are times where you get unlucky with your crits and even at a 1/3 chance or so you have on 1 of 10 such enemies 3 swings at them none of which crit. And typically, I don't need the materials at all, to the point where I'm not looking to even carve a path through, I'm looking to ignore. So I don't stack either - I stack Defense. Dwarf Sword with triple topaz, double crabshell rings was my actual favorite setup for running skull cavern etc. Remains to be seen how trinkets and especially inherents affects things though.
 
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