Best Sword - Page 3 - Guild Wars Forums

lennymon · Apr 07, 2006, 05:52 PM // 17:52

Check out this link: (Its the guildwiki swords page)
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Sword

and also here for weapon modifiers:
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Weapon_Upgrades

Any sword except quest rewards and green items can be upgraded
Any sword except quest/green or collector items can yield item mods (if they have) when expert salvaged

There is absolutely no difference between a longsword you pick up off the ground that has a fiery mod and a fiery dragon sword (all other stats being equal) other than appearance.

Poster # 4 says x dragon swords (there are x=fiery or icy variants) can do pure elemental damage (true) and can have 2 mods (false) every sword can have two mods, however in the case of dragon swords the prefix mod is already used by the fiery or icy. So to answer the last poster, no you cannot put a 10/10 sundering on an icy dragon sword, since it has an affixed icy mod, but any suffix can go in. A new suffix can 'replace' an old one as well. So in the case of the icy dragon sword with swordsmanship mod, you can just apply say a +30 health mod and it will replace the swordsmanship (although the swordsmanship mod will be destroyed). Also you CAN salvage out the elemental mod from fiery or icy dragon swords, but cannot 'upgrade' them.

I like to have multiple type weapons in my weapon switch slots so I can switch to optimize damage for an opponent. Like a general sundering mod for ignoring armor some, a zealous for energy gain, maybe a vampiric, or different elemental damage weapons. Generally the suffix modifier will have no impact on damage except in the case of the +1 to <swordsmanship> types. there are +armor +health etc often...

Malvagit · Apr 07, 2006, 05:59 PM // 17:59

so, let me get this strait, ice damage fire damage and so on, do not differentiate the amount of damage you can deal out amongst max swords?
ie: a max firey dragon sword is going to do the same amount as an icey dragon sword?

lennymon · Apr 07, 2006, 06:03 PM // 18:03

true number wise, but an opponent such as a fire imp for example will take less damage from fire (better armor vs fire) and more damage from ice. If you only want to ever use one weapon type, most folks prefer a utility mod such as sundering or furious (for swords)

linh · Apr 07, 2006, 06:05 PM // 18:05

It depends on target foe armor. FDS deals fire damage, IDS deal cold damage, both are elemental damage. So if the target foe has + armor vs elemental, FDS and IDS deal less dmg than other sword with slashing damage ( physical damage). And if target foe has +armor vs fire, FDS will deals less damage than IDS, same with + armor vs cold.

Malvagit · Apr 07, 2006, 06:17 PM // 18:17

OK cook, so in other words, the best set up is to have a max FDS a max IDS, and a max regular sword,like shadow blade max, all with +30 and 10/10 so that you are up for any situation? lol

lennymon · Apr 07, 2006, 06:20 PM // 18:20

thats the most efficient usually, best is play whatever you have the most fun with

semantic point only heh

RotteN · Apr 07, 2006, 06:23 PM // 18:23

best sword setup would be :

one zealous
one vampiric
one elemental (not realy needed, but nice against warriors)
one furious (to use between battles, as it does not have degen, can be used to build up adrenalin aswell)

i prefer +30HP over +5 armor, cause a warrior already has lots of armor, and the actual damage armor reduces decreases when your armor is higher (the damage difference between 60 and 65 is a lot bigger than between 100 and 105)

weapon mods are debatable, but i prefer 15>50. some say 15 while stance is better cause you pretty much always use a stance when spiking, but seriously, if you're using frenzy when <50 you could aswell just suicide :P

Don Zardeone · Apr 07, 2006, 06:48 PM // 18:48

BE CAREFUL
This thread was started over a year ago. pretty much all the information on page one of this topic is outdated and incorrect.

The "best" sword does not exist.
However, you can get good swords.

A good sword is a sword that helps you do whatever you want to do in the best way possible.

Miniguide on how to get a good sword (or the best one of what you are doing)

Our max damage sword will be this:

Code:

Sword
Slashing dmg: 15-22

Now, we want to do a lot of damage, therefore we need to customise it. Customising will make it do 20% more damage (don't know if it will actually do that but whatev..)

Our sword will look like this:

Code:

Sword
Slashing smg: 15-22
dmg+20%
Customised for Don Zardeone

Our sword is nice but it's not really "perfect" yet. We want a perfect sword. Perfect usually means that it has an extra thingy that says "damage+15% while health is above 50%"
Some players don't like this and want +15% damage while in stance or enchanted or even better... unconditional.
Unconditional damage is hard to find but I'll talk about that later.

Let's say we want to have damage+15% while health is above 50%.
We can't put that on our sword, we need to buy one or find one.
We can buy one of those swords in Droknars forge. It is small and ugly but it has 15^50.

Code:

Gladius
Slashing dmg: 15-22
Damage +15% (while health is above 50%)

This cost 5000gold but for another 10gold, you can customise it for the 20% extra damage.
It will look like this:

Code:

Gladius
Slashing dmg: 15-22
Damage +15% (while health is above 50%)
Damage +20%
Customised for Don Zardeone

Now, depending on what we are doing, we will need to add modifications to it. Swords have pommels and hilts. Lets say we will fight monsters that are weak to earth elemental damage.
We will need an ebon sword hilt. Buy or find one and add it to the sword by doubleclicking the hilt and then clicking on our sword.
It will now be this:

Code:

Ebon Gladius
Earth dmg: 15-22
Damage +15% (while health is above 50%)
Damage +20%
Customised for Don Zardeone

As you can see, it no longer does slashing damage but earth damage. Slashing is physical and earth is elemental damage. Our sword now helps us kill monsters and players who are weak to (earth) elemental damage.

We added a hilt, now we need a pommel.
The most popular ones are "of fortitude" and "of defense". We want to kill tengu though.
Tengu are those birdlike monsters.
We could add a sword pommel of tenguslaying!

Code:

Ebon Gladius of Tenguslaying
Earth dmg: 15-22
Damage +15% (while health is above 50%)
Damage +20% (when fighting Tengu)
Damage +20%
Customised for Don Zardeone

We wanted to kill a tengu warrior who is weak against earth damage (is that even right?). The best sword for the job is our own customised ebon gladius of Tenguslaying.
Does that mean that en Ebon Gladius of Tenguslaying is the best sword in GW?
No, obviously not.

But for those who want "really good all purpose swords", i'll make a list:
"Sundering sword of fortitude" is worth a lot of money but sundering itself is, in my opinion, not worth the 30K you'll pay for it.
Vampiric, zealous and elemental hilts are good. Some like furious.
Pommels: of fortitude is good, of defense is good too. Some players like to use "sword pommel of swordsmanship+1 (20%chance). Those are usually players who use a boatload of swordskills though.

I hope this helps those who wanted to know this stuff and hopefully it will prevent players from using a Sundering spatha of pruning in Thunderhead Keep =P

(I got bored)

edit: I almost forgot about unconditional.
Some weapons have stats like these:
damage+15%
energy-5

This means you always have -5 energy but you will always have the 15% extra damage.
Others like this:

Dmg+15%
Health regeneration -1

Dmg+15%
Energy regeneration -1

Dmg+15%
Armor-10
(never seen one though)

There's other damage mod types too:
Dmg+20% (while hexed)

Dmg+20% (while health is below 50%)
etc...

Malvagit · Apr 07, 2006, 07:12 PM // 19:12

THANK YYOU SO MUCH! that thread was by far the most helpful, couple more questions, can you get a sword that steals enemy hp, but not yours... and what does health regen -1 mean?

Burakus Lightwing · Apr 07, 2006, 07:51 PM // 19:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malvagit

THANK YYOU SO MUCH! that thread was by far the most helpful, couple more questions, can you get a sword that steals enemy hp, but not yours... and what does health regen -1 mean?

vamp mod, best available vamp hilt for a sword is 3/-1

Meaning you steal 3 hp every time you hit. The adverse effect while you have this sword equipped, is that your health will degen at -1 pip on your health bar.

lennymon · Apr 07, 2006, 08:01 PM // 20:01

Like Rotten and I alluded to earlier thoug if you have BOTH a vampiric AND another sword say a fiery dragon sword, the common way to optimize is to only switch to the vampiric weapon while you are swinging (to minimize the amount of time you have the health degen without the positive effect of life stealing). Whenver you arent currently swinging on opponents you swap weapons to the non-vampiric. But whenever you are wielding any vampiric weapon you will have a -1 health degen.

Malvagit · Apr 07, 2006, 08:11 PM // 20:11

lol, i still dont know what +15% -1 health regeneration means, im not stupid, i just cant tell that you answered it with the last two replies, what if you have a sword with just -1 health regeneration, what does that mean?

Cade · Apr 07, 2006, 08:33 PM // 20:33

Dragon Swords are NOT good, despite the fact that they can get elemetnal damage and 2 more modifications.
Why? Because most GOOD swords get 15^50 +2 modifications.
All a dragon sword is doing is sacrificing the 15% extra damage for fire damage BS.

EDIT: From what people are talking about, you might want a Victo's Blade.
It gives +30 HP, +15% Damage, and Max Life Stealing.
They go for cheap these days too.

lennymon · Apr 07, 2006, 08:40 PM // 20:40

To anwer you Malvagit,

So you can get a sword with (non upgrade) modifiers on them.
examples are : +11-15% damage while in stance or while enchanted
the downside to these is they are conditional.
the upside is no negative effects, just not always +damage

example is http://loptastru.org/images/FDS01.jpg

there are ALSO (non upgrade) modifiers which are less frequently found in my experience
+11-15% damage with
-10 armor while attacking OR -5 energy

example is http://loptastru.org/images/handaxe01.jpg

The downside: the -armor or energy
the plus: always/non conditional +damage

Malvagit · Apr 07, 2006, 08:44 PM // 20:44

LOLOLOL i feel like im talking to a brick wall, can anyone tell me what health regeneration -1 please?!?!?!?!?!?

CKaz · Apr 07, 2006, 08:46 PM // 20:46

well the guy singing the praise of a FDS did so more than a year ago so I find that OK lol. what's kind of lame is this thread being resurrected... can't we have a statue of limitations or insta-ban someone ressurecting a topic more than a year old

but also same... huh so swiftness pommels did exist?
missed that... yummmmmmmy... or it woulda been :b

Mournblade · Apr 07, 2006, 08:52 PM // 20:52

-1 health degen means that for as long as you wield that weapon, your hps will go down by 1 every second. If you wield a vampiric weapon and walk outside of a town and stand there, you will eventually die unless you have some sort of healing.

CKaz · Apr 07, 2006, 08:52 PM // 20:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malvagit

LOLOLOL i feel like im talking to a brick wall, can anyone tell me what health regeneration -1 please?!?!?!?!?!?

this is a basic mechanic of the game
have you ever been hexed or poisoned or diseased yet?

have you noticed those little '<' and '>' showing up on your health and energy bars, different levels at different times? when you're healing up more '>>>'s?

these are 'pips', +/- regeneration levels. we'll stick to health per your question.
every second for health you get +/-2 health per 'pip'.

normally you have no health pip. if you're at 'health generation -1' you're slowly losing health, 2pts a sec.

get it? got it? good

Malvagit · Apr 07, 2006, 09:02 PM // 21:02

thank you, that answered it perfectly, so why the heck would someone want a sword with health regen -1 and NO life stealing? cause ive seen those, and that would be stupid

lennymon · Apr 07, 2006, 09:58 PM // 21:58

for the +11-15% damage always that they'll also posess

Apr 07, 2006, 05:52 PM // 17:52	#41
lennymon Forge Runner Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Seattle Guild: Odin's Hammer [OH] - Servant's of Fortuna [SoF] Profession: R/	Check out this link: (Its the guildwiki swords page) http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Sword and also here for weapon modifiers: http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Weapon_Upgrades Any sword except quest rewards and green items can be upgraded Any sword except quest/green or collector items can yield item mods (if they have) when expert salvaged There is absolutely no difference between a longsword you pick up off the ground that has a fiery mod and a fiery dragon sword (all other stats being equal) other than appearance. Poster # 4 says x dragon swords (there are x=fiery or icy variants) can do pure elemental damage (true) and can have 2 mods (false) every sword can have two mods, however in the case of dragon swords the prefix mod is already used by the fiery or icy. So to answer the last poster, no you cannot put a 10/10 sundering on an icy dragon sword, since it has an affixed icy mod, but any suffix can go in. A new suffix can 'replace' an old one as well. So in the case of the icy dragon sword with swordsmanship mod, you can just apply say a +30 health mod and it will replace the swordsmanship (although the swordsmanship mod will be destroyed). Also you CAN salvage out the elemental mod from fiery or icy dragon swords, but cannot 'upgrade' them. I like to have multiple type weapons in my weapon switch slots so I can switch to optimize damage for an opponent. Like a general sundering mod for ignoring armor some, a zealous for energy gain, maybe a vampiric, or different elemental damage weapons. Generally the suffix modifier will have no impact on damage except in the case of the +1 to <swordsmanship> types. there are +armor +health etc often... Last edited by lennymon; Apr 07, 2006 at 06:00 PM // 18:00..

Apr 07, 2006, 06:48 PM // 18:48	#48
Don Zardeone Wilds Pathfinder Join Date: Oct 2005	BE CAREFUL This thread was started over a year ago. pretty much all the information on page one of this topic is outdated and incorrect. The "best" sword does not exist. However, you can get good swords. A good sword is a sword that helps you do whatever you want to do in the best way possible. Miniguide on how to get a good sword (or the best one of what you are doing) Our max damage sword will be this: Code: Sword Slashing dmg: 15-22 Now, we want to do a lot of damage, therefore we need to customise it. Customising will make it do 20% more damage (don't know if it will actually do that but whatev..) Our sword will look like this: Code: Sword Slashing smg: 15-22 dmg+20% Customised for Don Zardeone Our sword is nice but it's not really "perfect" yet. We want a perfect sword. Perfect usually means that it has an extra thingy that says "damage+15% while health is above 50%" Some players don't like this and want +15% damage while in stance or enchanted or even better... unconditional. Unconditional damage is hard to find but I'll talk about that later. Let's say we want to have damage+15% while health is above 50%. We can't put that on our sword, we need to buy one or find one. We can buy one of those swords in Droknars forge. It is small and ugly but it has 15^50. Code: Gladius Slashing dmg: 15-22 Damage +15% (while health is above 50%) This cost 5000gold but for another 10gold, you can customise it for the 20% extra damage. It will look like this: Code: Gladius Slashing dmg: 15-22 Damage +15% (while health is above 50%) Damage +20% Customised for Don Zardeone Now, depending on what we are doing, we will need to add modifications to it. Swords have pommels and hilts. Lets say we will fight monsters that are weak to earth elemental damage. We will need an ebon sword hilt. Buy or find one and add it to the sword by doubleclicking the hilt and then clicking on our sword. It will now be this: Code: Ebon Gladius Earth dmg: 15-22 Damage +15% (while health is above 50%) Damage +20% Customised for Don Zardeone As you can see, it no longer does slashing damage but earth damage. Slashing is physical and earth is elemental damage. Our sword now helps us kill monsters and players who are weak to (earth) elemental damage. We added a hilt, now we need a pommel. The most popular ones are "of fortitude" and "of defense". We want to kill tengu though. Tengu are those birdlike monsters. We could add a sword pommel of tenguslaying! Code: Ebon Gladius of Tenguslaying Earth dmg: 15-22 Damage +15% (while health is above 50%) Damage +20% (when fighting Tengu) Damage +20% Customised for Don Zardeone We wanted to kill a tengu warrior who is weak against earth damage (is that even right?). The best sword for the job is our own customised ebon gladius of Tenguslaying. Does that mean that en Ebon Gladius of Tenguslaying is the best sword in GW? No, obviously not. But for those who want "really good all purpose swords", i'll make a list: "Sundering sword of fortitude" is worth a lot of money but sundering itself is, in my opinion, not worth the 30K you'll pay for it. Vampiric, zealous and elemental hilts are good. Some like furious. Pommels: of fortitude is good, of defense is good too. Some players like to use "sword pommel of swordsmanship+1 (20%chance). Those are usually players who use a boatload of swordskills though. I hope this helps those who wanted to know this stuff and hopefully it will prevent players from using a Sundering spatha of pruning in Thunderhead Keep =P (I got bored) edit: I almost forgot about unconditional. Some weapons have stats like these: damage+15% energy-5 This means you always have -5 energy but you will always have the 15% extra damage. Others like this: Dmg+15% Health regeneration -1 Dmg+15% Energy regeneration -1 Dmg+15% Armor-10 (never seen one though) There's other damage mod types too: Dmg+20% (while hexed) Dmg+20% (while health is below 50%) etc... Last edited by Don Zardeone; Apr 07, 2006 at 06:54 PM // 18:54..

Apr 07, 2006, 09:02 PM // 21:02	#59
Malvagit Ascalonian Squire Join Date: Mar 2006 Guild: Lords of Good and Evil [LGE] Profession: W/R	thank you, that answered it perfectly, so why the heck would someone want a sword with health regen -1 and NO life stealing? cause ive seen those, and that would be stupid Last edited by Malvagit; Apr 07, 2006 at 09:41 PM // 21:41..

Apr 07, 2006, 05:59 PM // 17:59	#42
Malvagit Ascalonian Squire Join Date: Mar 2006 Guild: Lords of Good and Evil [LGE] Profession: W/R	so, let me get this strait, ice damage fire damage and so on, do not differentiate the amount of damage you can deal out amongst max swords? ie: a max firey dragon sword is going to do the same amount as an icey dragon sword?

Apr 07, 2006, 06:03 PM // 18:03	#43
lennymon Forge Runner Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Seattle Guild: Odin's Hammer [OH] - Servant's of Fortuna [SoF] Profession: R/	true number wise, but an opponent such as a fire imp for example will take less damage from fire (better armor vs fire) and more damage from ice. If you only want to ever use one weapon type, most folks prefer a utility mod such as sundering or furious (for swords)

Apr 07, 2006, 06:05 PM // 18:05	#44
linh Wilds Pathfinder Join Date: Jul 2005 Profession: Mo/	It depends on target foe armor. FDS deals fire damage, IDS deal cold damage, both are elemental damage. So if the target foe has + armor vs elemental, FDS and IDS deal less dmg than other sword with slashing damage ( physical damage). And if target foe has +armor vs fire, FDS will deals less damage than IDS, same with + armor vs cold.

Apr 07, 2006, 06:17 PM // 18:17	#45
Malvagit Ascalonian Squire Join Date: Mar 2006 Guild: Lords of Good and Evil [LGE] Profession: W/R	OK cook, so in other words, the best set up is to have a max FDS a max IDS, and a max regular sword,like shadow blade max, all with +30 and 10/10 so that you are up for any situation? lol

Apr 07, 2006, 06:20 PM // 18:20	#46
lennymon Forge Runner Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Seattle Guild: Odin's Hammer [OH] - Servant's of Fortuna [SoF] Profession: R/	thats the most efficient usually, best is play whatever you have the most fun with semantic point only heh

Apr 07, 2006, 06:23 PM // 18:23	#47
RotteN Forge Runner Join Date: Jun 2005 Profession: W/	best sword setup would be : one zealous one vampiric one elemental (not realy needed, but nice against warriors) one furious (to use between battles, as it does not have degen, can be used to build up adrenalin aswell) i prefer +30HP over +5 armor, cause a warrior already has lots of armor, and the actual damage armor reduces decreases when your armor is higher (the damage difference between 60 and 65 is a lot bigger than between 100 and 105) weapon mods are debatable, but i prefer 15>50. some say 15 while stance is better cause you pretty much always use a stance when spiking, but seriously, if you're using frenzy when <50 you could aswell just suicide :P

Apr 07, 2006, 07:12 PM // 19:12	#49
Malvagit Ascalonian Squire Join Date: Mar 2006 Guild: Lords of Good and Evil [LGE] Profession: W/R	THANK YYOU SO MUCH! that thread was by far the most helpful, couple more questions, can you get a sword that steals enemy hp, but not yours... and what does health regen -1 mean?

Apr 07, 2006, 08:01 PM // 20:01	#51
lennymon Forge Runner Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Seattle Guild: Odin's Hammer [OH] - Servant's of Fortuna [SoF] Profession: R/	Like Rotten and I alluded to earlier thoug if you have BOTH a vampiric AND another sword say a fiery dragon sword, the common way to optimize is to only switch to the vampiric weapon while you are swinging (to minimize the amount of time you have the health degen without the positive effect of life stealing). Whenver you arent currently swinging on opponents you swap weapons to the non-vampiric. But whenever you are wielding any vampiric weapon you will have a -1 health degen.

Apr 07, 2006, 08:11 PM // 20:11	#52
Malvagit Ascalonian Squire Join Date: Mar 2006 Guild: Lords of Good and Evil [LGE] Profession: W/R	lol, i still dont know what +15% -1 health regeneration means, im not stupid, i just cant tell that you answered it with the last two replies, what if you have a sword with just -1 health regeneration, what does that mean?

Apr 07, 2006, 08:33 PM // 20:33	#53
Cade Academy Page Join Date: Mar 2006 Guild: Knights of The Scorched Earth Profession: W/	Dragon Swords are NOT good, despite the fact that they can get elemetnal damage and 2 more modifications. Why? Because most GOOD swords get 15^50 +2 modifications. All a dragon sword is doing is sacrificing the 15% extra damage for fire damage BS. EDIT: From what people are talking about, you might want a Victo's Blade. It gives +30 HP, +15% Damage, and Max Life Stealing. They go for cheap these days too.

Apr 07, 2006, 08:40 PM // 20:40	#54
lennymon Forge Runner Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Seattle Guild: Odin's Hammer [OH] - Servant's of Fortuna [SoF] Profession: R/	To anwer you Malvagit, So you can get a sword with (non upgrade) modifiers on them. examples are : +11-15% damage while in stance or while enchanted the downside to these is they are conditional. the upside is no negative effects, just not always +damage example is http://loptastru.org/images/FDS01.jpg there are ALSO (non upgrade) modifiers which are less frequently found in my experience +11-15% damage with -10 armor while attacking OR -5 energy example is http://loptastru.org/images/handaxe01.jpg The downside: the -armor or energy the plus: always/non conditional +damage

Apr 07, 2006, 08:44 PM // 20:44	#55
Malvagit Ascalonian Squire Join Date: Mar 2006 Guild: Lords of Good and Evil [LGE] Profession: W/R	LOLOLOL i feel like im talking to a brick wall, can anyone tell me what health regeneration -1 please?!?!?!?!?!?

Apr 07, 2006, 08:46 PM // 20:46	#56
CKaz Jungle Guide Join Date: Feb 2005	well the guy singing the praise of a FDS did so more than a year ago so I find that OK lol. what's kind of lame is this thread being resurrected... can't we have a statue of limitations or insta-ban someone ressurecting a topic more than a year old but also same... huh so swiftness pommels did exist? missed that... yummmmmmmy... or it woulda been :b

Apr 07, 2006, 08:52 PM // 20:52	#57
Mournblade Furnace Stoker Join Date: May 2005 Location: Houston, Texas Guild: Dawn Treaders [DAWN] Profession: W/Mo	-1 health degen means that for as long as you wield that weapon, your hps will go down by 1 every second. If you wield a vampiric weapon and walk outside of a town and stand there, you will eventually die unless you have some sort of healing.

Apr 07, 2006, 09:58 PM // 21:58	#60
lennymon Forge Runner Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Seattle Guild: Odin's Hammer [OH] - Servant's of Fortuna [SoF] Profession: R/	for the +11-15% damage always that they'll also posess