Passive skills should benefit arcane weapons too

[hardy bay]

Theres entirely no reason not to use the intelligence dirk offensively or defensively

[zinc plover]

Which passive skills do you mean? Wizards have a Skill Orb to increase Arcane weapon damage, and Sorcerer has the +element damage to help wands and staves. They're the main 2 who run Arcane weapons anyway (in theory).

[hardy bay]

Anything that says it only affects melee weapons, theres really no reason for the limitation

Even the orbs you mentioned are awful

Heres a good example. Why only bows? Staves also get a slow movement speed. Melee weapons do not. This could say "All weapons" and it would only affect bows and staves.

These could do nothing for staves, but realistically they make sense, seeing as bows do MORE damage per shot than any of the staves do, and use thier skills quicker

Why this restriction? Paladins, the hybrid strength class, doesnt have access to ranged spells anyway? Why cant I use this passive at a distance?

This is 20% better than any weapon speed ability that DOES affect staves, so whats the difference if it affects them or not? Or bows for that matter? Every orb of this skill works fine without using a melee tag so who cares

I wont do any more, but every single skill with this tag makes no sense.

All it does is restrict the weapon type down to the dirk if you're using spells (from my understanding, every class including leap lol) because it provides 1 handed massive parry and defensive stats are king.

Then on top of that, shield pairing

[meager verge]

Because archery benefits ranger's marked shot and rain of arrows active on top of the bow equipment types

[meager verge]

Paladin does not have access to ranged spells. It's passive makes sense to me. It's a buff for weapon/str builds

I'm confused by your point in conviction. It does indeed not have ranged, so why are you against a passive that benefits melee?

For a melee focused class

[hardy bay]

My point across the board is simply that there is no reason for these passives to not affect all weapon types.

• If the class is a melee focused class, why can the paladin even use bows, crossbows, wands, or staves?
• if the ranger is bow-focused, why are other options available?

From my understanding, every class is pumping whatever spellpower stat and spamming the primary spell over and over, and changing the passives to affect all weapons would allow build diversity outside of spell spamming, and reduce the clear debuff of wearing a single piece of equipment that takes two slots over two equipment that provide twice as many stats

[violet maple]

I generally agree. If each weapon has its own unique moveset that's expected to be used, and each class can theoretically use any weapon, an effort should be made to increase the potential for synergy. Weapons are 1/3-1/2 of the active skills in the game but most of them have no synergy with the bulk of classes and aren't worth using on their own.

I'll disagree on Slice & Dice though, that passive defines the Rogue class (Though theoretically you could have a Rogue build that uses spells to build and maintain stacks and still benefit a ranged weapon, it would be incredibly tedious and likely require a macro).

Conviction at range could be interesting but it has a passive that deals damage on trigger. It could allow for a more healing-oriented Paladin in co-op but it could potentially be too good.

I'd venture to say that overall the build variety is quite low due to lack of weapon synergy and potency, probably out of excess caution at creating anything too absurdly powerful. It's easier to know there's no potential for game-breaking synergies when class-specific spells are the main source of damage, and weapon builds are strictly limited to melee or bows.

[zinc plover]

Now you have me wondering how zeal would work on flame staff... Would be easy enough to organise...

[violet maple]

I tried to make flame staff Radiance Paladin work but even with like 5 things of weapon mastery it was underwhelming at best, the unupgraded ult was outshining it

[quiet abyss]

Assuming all passives applied to all weapons, why would you use anything but the strongest ranged option? This turns into the classic ARPG issue of melee being obsolete when ranged can do the same damage, but safer.

[hardy bay]

The melee weapons provide defensive stats, the ranged ones do not, and as it stands, the bow is the only weapon with any passives that affect it outside of a non-zero damage increase that may as well be zero.
The balance comes with build diversity, where being in melee allows you to avoid attacks like avatar swipe, but being ranged still requires you to travel back and forth at shadow face.
All of the builds currently, today, are to spam your primary skill over and over with the highest available cooldown reduction and cast speed, so the "classic" ARPG issue of [Not using weapons at all because they dont matter] seems worse

[quiet abyss]

All builds fight avatar in melee range, and the melee defensive buffs are pretty much irrelevant. Parry only works against melee enemies, which are not a threat in the first place

Also it's not all melee weapons that give parry, the only good ones that do are dirk and dual daggers

[hardy bay]

Just so everyone is aware, The following weapons provide parry:
the STR weapon Sword w/ 20%,
Dex Weapon Dagger w/ 30%,
Dex Weapon Dual Daggers w/ 50%,
Int Weapon Dirk w/30%

It insanely makes no sense why a two-handed version provides more parry than the others, with the effectively longer weapon for strength providing less as if building strength (enabling shields) balances this. Every class may choose every stat, and may wield a shield.