Teker, thanks for looking into the fighters.
To answer your questions:
1.Personally, when I play a solo bard, I use dodge, not counter, so my weapon needs +2 charisma (to compensate for the dagger of dreams), have high damage dice and maybe a proc or +1-2mana regen.
If I were making a choice to get a hd set for grouping, only a weapon with significant damage or +2-3persons affected -5-10% song cost would keep me from doing it.
Like Yang said, in groups few songs need charisma and if they do, it happens rarely.
If you want bards to go full charisma, keep their +charisma weapons on, and buy +bonus-charisma eq, make charisma boost the number of ppl affected by the bard and song effect, such as:
- 10 charisma: gods of war is 9 damage, 0 ppl bonus
- 12 charisma: gods of war is 10 damage, 0 ppl bonus
- 14 charisma: gods of war is 11 damage, 1 ppl bonus
- 16 charisma: gods of war is 12 damage, 1 ppl bonus
- 18 charisma: gods of war is 13 damage, 2 ppl bonus
- 20 charisma: gods of war is 14 damage, 2 ppl bonus (current cap at 1x40)
- etc
See more
here.
# of ppl affected matters, because in large groups sometimes a bard isn't enough and he can't do anything, other than leveling to 9x40 to use his instruments, to affect more ppl. Maybe more +ppl bonus/-mana cost% eq would help here.
As for necros, same deal about solo: +high damage dice,+mr and damage procs.
Some druids pick the staff of the elders - +2mr fireball proc - as tri40 eq. Try to emulate this one.
Actually back in the days, weapons with procs were prized posessions, such as Raven's Fire or even the crimson rapier. These days, it's more of a toy, because a strike is better than any random proc, and mostly, these weapons have lower weapon dice, so doesn't really boost damage noticeably, compared to prime or tri40 weapons.
The only few damage proc weapons that are worthy are the Kladenetz blade (4d4 +2 +2 and a massive proc) and the a bone hilted tempered sword: high damage of 3d5 +2 +2 and a burning debuff with a duration. Other weapons include the black kris of power and the golden dagger of the black thieves, because the damn/blind on stab. Maybe necro weapons that debuff with weaken and crimson scourge can work: the spear of pestilence is a nice weapon name with +uc, maybe you could add these procs to it.
tldr; make awesome procs for weapons with high damage dice for ppl to use them or they'll go with tri40 weapons or barehanded.
2. When capped at 60, flail does about 50-120 damage and is less, than a strike with hand dam (also note that I get an extra attack, if I go bare-handed, as Kung has demonstrated above).
More often, than not, flail does about 60-80 damage and is just a minimal addition to tank damage. I'm simply using it, because there sometimes is nothing else to do, because I'm either singing or out of mana or saving mana for heals.
When I change to my wd mode (paradoxically, I have 40 flail in it, because I use the +wd rune on the saurian sleeves), flail does less, as far as I can tell, so rarely bother with it.
Broadside does even less damage, doesn't have +stat eq and doesn't work on 5m+ mobs. It's as useless as it gets, except I use broadside on small mobs, when I don't want to do area damage on death in the elemental school.
The way I see it about strike/flail/weap damage:
- there is little weap dam items for warriors to grow in damage, compared to hand damage
- broadside/flail don't scale with levels, like strike does (7av master strike)
- therefore, broadside/flail are rarely used for damage
- anything but capped weapon damage doesn't compensate for flurry, it's just a great monk skill.
So, it looks like broadside and flail need major boosts in damage to be used for damage dealing warriors for real, maybe multiply weap dam for it, so warriors would consider switching to wd instead of going barehanded.
Also, I disagree that an addition to damage only has to be passive: we already have riposte and massive crit hit Warriors do need an active skill or two they can choose to use in fights, otherwise weapon damage modes will be boring. Shieldbash for tanks?
Though, practically, what if flail at its current state becomes a toggleable skill that gets added at the end of the round and doesn't create any lag? Then broadside could be the go-to skill for active offense.
Thanks again for your assistance.