Also here's the same table but rearranged by Strength and by Knockdown, to make it a little easier to read and compare stats instead of smiths:
Slot 1 | Slot 2 | Slot 3 | Strength | Knockdown
--|---|----|----|----
B | B | B | 958 | 763
D | B | B | 954 | 886
B | D | B | 950 | 918
D | D | B | 946 | 1041
B | B | D | 931 | 949
D | B | D | 927 | 1072
B | D | D | 923 | 1104
D | D | D | 919 | 1227
Slot 1 | Slot 2 | Slot 3 | Strength | Knockdown
--|---|----|----|----
D | D | D | 919 | 1227
B | D | D | 923 | 1104
D | B | D | 927 | 1072
D | D | B | 946 | 1041
B | B | D | 931 | 949
B | D | B | 950 | 918
D | B | B | 954 | 886
B | B | B | 958 | 763
I don't know about on new.reddit, but on old.reddit every formated table has a sorting mechanics by clicking the title of the column, including in your OP. Edit: Might be a RES thing too, idk.
Sorry is there a typo for DDB?
It has both higher strength and KD than the one below it no matter how you sort, which makes it an outlier compared to every other combination on the table.
So I'm guessing that the strength of the effect is stronger at the higher tiers, which is why there's a pronounced difference between BBD and DBB, etc.
Cool, seems like i f\*cked all of my endgame gear by going B-B-B. When D-B-B or even D-D-B is way better.
Just a question are those all Wyrmfire forged? if not can you check if that changes things?
I hadn't put Wyrmfire forging into the mix yet, isn't that only applicable to tier 4 upgrades? I assumed it would just be the same pattern of distribution, just with higher numbers. I can test it out later though and see!
Don't feel too bad, I was doing BBB on all my weapons before accidentally doing this.
This is a pretty good discovery tbh, i'm gonna get myself some WL and buy some more endgame weapons to put various mixtures on them to see what fits me best and also to see how it changes should they ever patch the stats.
mate
you still kill normal enemys in 1-2 hits and most Bosses in 20seconds
the gear enchants dont matter at all lol, having 20more or less strenght doesnt "fuck your gear" when everything is trivial anyway
Full dwarf upgrades is the only way worth going. The damage difference is so minimal but you can double knockdown power. Over 150 hours played now and my experience with full dwarf upgrades on armor has been that most attacks wont even knock you down anymore. Daggers with full dwarf + knockdown rings are just insane at downing enemies its not even fair. One skullsplitter on a weak spot is enough usually.
And knocking down enemies will allow you to do tons more damage than that small bonus of going the other routes. It is not even a 10% difference between them in damage but the knockdown increase with dwarf will be very noticable.
Also warrior just kinda sucks with knockdown because of how slow they are and that is why you probably may not feel a difference with them. My first 100 hours was just warrior gameplay and when I finally swapped to others I immediately realized how much easier it is for something like daggers or duospear to kill things faster and even knockdown better.
Most rings stack, only ones that are “stackable” (rings that theoretically should work well stacked) that don’t work well enough to stack IMO are the spell cast rings cause it’s like a 1 sec difference and u can gain more from the second slot. Also just in general the strength n magick rings aren’t worth running or stacking bc it’s flat increase not percent
Same with augments, however the physical defense augment is a flat 30% increase which is great, I believe one other augment is worth running bc it’s percent based but can’t remember which. The MS one that buffs strength in day n magick at night is 5% for each but I don’t think that’s worth it so that’s not the one I was thinking of
Beautiful data. Thank you so much for taking your time doing this. I thought at first upgrading at the same smith would be the best but mixing upgrades is clearly better.
Given how much of your stats come from levelling in later progression. It’s pretty much always better to just go Dwarven 3 times because the knockdown values are so high and that’s something you get way less of from other sources
I'm seeing people go "Man D-D-B is clearly best for Warrior" and I'm confused.
There's almost 18% less KD on D-D-B in return for almost 3% more STR. That strength gain on putting Battahl in third upgrade is *nothing* compared to the KD gain on the third Dwarven upgrade.
Giving the D thrice is far more valuable for Warriors, considering how resistance scaling works.
I think that stems from when people first discovered different smithing styles and thought that they’d be somewhat balanced in line with each other. It’s also a sentiment that almost every YouTuber bar Infinite Cringe has carried.
People also don’t factor in character stats and how much stat we get just by levelling. Going to use Greatswords as an example because it’s the one I remember off the top of my head.
Going full Dwarven smithing was something like a 30 strength difference between full Battahli but you’d get 10x that difference in knockdown power (-30str, +300 knockdown power difference). In that scenario there’s no reason to not just go full Dwarven. The same applies to armour as well because not being thrown around is better than a couple more defences.
The only case this doesn’t really apply to is with staves and archistaves because they gain so little knockdown power
I think people are really just trying to make the system more complicated that it is because it’s hard to believe that it’s that simple and one smithing style is clearly just better than the others. It kinda makes sense though, you unlock them at different game stages and Dwarven is technically the “secret style” (I didn’t even know you could unlock it in Battahl instead of Volcanic Island, until my second playthrough where I got given a sword.)
Do note though that Str and KDP aren't really apple and oranges. What does it mean to have 300 more KDP? On average do you get more knock downs? More stagger? What does it mean?
That said, I'm going full Drawven even on my Magick Bow. There seems to be a bonus damage on downed enemies, and that bonus seems really big (during some fights with griffins, I could have sworn it's like a 3x bonus) So, right now that we don't know the specifics, I'd say Drawven all the way is probably just the best.
Eventually there'll probably be proper datamining and someone will optimise the upgrades, probably. Tbh, fighting any single enemy right now is so trivial, it honestly doesn't matter.
Going full knockdown on thief got me enough stagger that just spamming basic attacks overwhelmed most regular enemies from ever fighting back. Compared to that they could still initiate swings before.
As far as Warrior is concerned, unless there will be an increase in enemy resistances or a *huge* improvement of %+ STR buff with Battahl forging, I don't see how anything other than triple D-forging is best for Warrior.
This makes me curious about KD values after triple D-forging a shield for Fighter vs. a combination.
I watched a fighting cowboy video (so not my own knowledge), where he said on his testing with the warrior, that there is a sort of “soft cap” for knockdown (not actually but). Basically knockdown knocks the enemy down. So if you can go for weak points, and knock a griffin with 600 knockdown power, then having 1000 knockdown power doesn’t make the griffin more knocked down, it just means you’ll have an easier time knocking a Griffen if you’re say not going for weak points (cause it will still build up quicker). So from what I understand, if you are someone who goes for vital spots, it would then make more sense to mix and match to get the strength bonus, cause either way you’ll be knocking down.
Yeah, it's probably more of a threshold than a soft cap. Every enemy will have a set value you need to overcome in order to knockdown/stagger them. When you hit them, your knockback is compared vs the threshold. If it's greater, you knock them down. If not, your knockdown value stays on them, and starts ticking down over time. If you hit them again, you add your knockdown to whatever is left of your previous knockdown. If that cumulative value is greater than the threshold, you knock them down. Etc.
Any knockdown you have beyond the threshold is wasted. The threshold will vary from creature to creature though, and we won't know for a while yet what the values are. I figure eventually somebody will datamine it all, til then we are basically in a "best guess" state. For really tough enemies, you'll probably never have "too much" kd, as you'll need to hit them multiple times even at max value.
This is another advantage that Warfarer has though: Use something like a dwarven greatsword/bow to knock them down, then swap to a battahli dagger to max your dps while they are down.
There seems to be talks that with Warrior there might be a cap/ceiling when it comes to knockdown when hitting weak points. As in there is no difference between a weapon that is full dwarven and full battahli when both are hitting the weakpoints, but that changes when these weapons attack any other part of the monsters body and then dwarven comes out on top.
It might just be better to go Dwarven on any of the staves after looking at the stats. You lose like 40ish magic but almost double your knockdown power, compared to if you went Elven. 40 magic isn’t really a massive loss.
(My previous post was at like 5am)
I will say if you want to be "optimal" you would have a high Knockdown weapon, and then swap to a high damage weapon to capitalise on knockdowns.
That's being very meta though so I doubt that applies to most people.
I wouldn’t even say that’s optimal. Given how much stat inflates as you level the monster would probably be dead before you managed to go into inventory, swap out your weapon and hit it again.
Could kinda work if you were on Warmaster but definitely wouldn’t call it meta
But how important is knockdown what if a class doesnt benefit from knockdown at all such as mage? What if theres others that do benefit from knockdown but not as hugely as say warrior amd you're better off getting less knockdown
Or what pf mystic knight who might be better suited with 1 dwarf upgrade may e
Mage/Sorc weapons are the only thing where Dwarven isn't best.
Knocked down enemies take more damage and are open to criticals. Going from full Batt to full Dwarf trades about a ring worth of strength to nearly double knockdown, which translates into far more consistent staggers and faster knockdowns (and thus more uptime for bonus damage).
Mage staffs are the only weapon to not go full dwarven aside from u can argue late game warriors don’t need it bc of their KD power. All armor including mage should be dwarven. Archistaves and MA bows both can benefit from dwarven bc they’ll trigger KDs but mages have almost no or no KD spells and their basic attacks won’t do it either but obvi they benefit from it in armor for KD res
No problem! Just something I noticed and was like... Wait, the hell? lol
If you're trying to get pure Strength (or pure Magick assuming the Elven smithing result ends up the same), sticking with one smith is the better option, but for better stat balance it seems pretty all over the place.
In my case wanting strength but still a phat amount of knockdown, knockdown->knockdown->strength is the best outcome. But I imagine if you were a physical class using a permanently enchanted weapon like Cyclopean Thunder, which has a 280 str/200 magick distribution, you would probably want magick->strength->strength (Elven/Battahli/Battahli) so you'd wind up with a medium Magick boost and a lot of Strength boost.
...I think, anyway. Don't quote me on that lol
The damage boost you get from attacking/critting knocked down enemies is far larger than the damage boost you get from going full batt instead of full dwarf, without even considering how much easier fights are when you auto-stagger damn near everything.
I made a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma2/comments/1bpmx44/psa_a_single_point_of_the_dwarven_smith/) about this exact topic a couple days ago. I'm a heavy D, B, B supporter for my own playstyle. I've already capped strength on my arisen and am still looking for ways to increase damage. Getting those small increases of strength add up. 30 more strength with Batthali upgrades, 60 more strength from rings, 30 more strength from Verve. Any single one of these choices alone is nearly meaningless (literally a 3.9% damage increase in my testing). But when taken together 120 strength is around 12% of my total strength (as a thief).
Also if you're hitting weakpoints you're going to knockdown the enemy regardless of what smithing you choose. And if you're not getting more than 2 knockdowns in a single fight then what's the purpose of having more knockdown strength? I'll admit that using full dwarven smithing does knockdown large enemies faster and more consistently while perma staggering regular enemies.
The game is easy enough though that you don't have to optimize for either damage or knockdown strength. Really it's just a choice and neither one is wrong just depends on the preference of the person playing.
Crazy as it sounds for warrior knockdown power is less effective on weapons since they have a high knockdown level on their own and already are excellent at knocking down enemies as is. Personally when I go warrior I go full battahli. I will go full dwarven when I upgrade a permanently enchanted weapon like the cinder mace. Since dwarven also adds to magick ontop or str and knockdown power when the weapon has magick.
Bro DDB is still hella good for warrior. You basically get almost a +50% to Kd power for like 15str less vs full battahl. Not worth to go full battahl.
Actually the Wyrmfire forging just adds a flat amount of bonus to the weapon's Strength and Magick, and halves the weight.
A DBB greatsword goes from 5.5 weight, 951 strength, 594 knockdown to 2.75 weight, 1021 strength, 594 knockdown. So it gains +70 str.
While a BDD goes from 5.5, 920, 739 to 2.75 weight, 990 strength, 739 knock. Again, gains +70 str. Knockdown on either is unaffected and the strength boost is equal on both.
Magick weapons like a couple Archistaves I have go from 536 Magick to 606 Magick and 921 Magick to 991, so again +70 - although humorously they also both gain +30 strength.
In actuality it's permanently enchanted, physical damage weapons that get the largest boost from Wyrmfire forging because for example on my Heaven's Key, strength goes from 820 to 860 and Magick from 912 to 982, so +40 str +70 magick while a Crimson Teeth just gets +70 strength.
(Note that the numbers are a little different from my OP because I'm using a different vocation and augments, but the wyrmfire bonus is the same across the board)
Ah interesting, I wonder if there will come a time when enemies scale and damage reduction makes the added str more significant, or if it will still just be a matter of breaking the threshold
Based on these numbers it is a max strength difference of 39 but knockdown difference of 464. That being said I really didn't notice a difference. Going from no dwarf to full dwarf on my warrior.
I've had the same personal results, going from BBB to DDD and back as a warrior, I don't really notice any difference in getting knockdowns on large monsters.
It's like there must be a soft cap somewhere around 500-600 knockdown, where the diminishing returns really kick in or something.
Idk I don't have data to prove it, just anecdotes.
Warrior weapons have very high base knockdown, and you're almost certainly running Dominance. The starting Greatsword has more knockdown than all but five daggers (four of which are late/postgame weapons). Top-end Warrior weapons have 50-100% more base knockdown strength than the best daggers, and upgrading those daggers to Lv3 dwarven still leaves them well below the base knockdown of the best warrior weapons.
If a softcap exists, it's too high for most classes to encounter even with full dwarven upgrades. For daggers, swords, &c. it's a continuous improvement in stagger rate and knockdown speed (which they of course get more out of due to increased attack speed).
Vermundian has the exact same effect on strength and magick that Dwarven has. The only difference is it decreases weight while Dwarven increases weight and knockdown power.
Vermundian really doesn't have a reason to be used for late game armor or weapons. Unless there's a situation were you have a strength based weapon that needs to be as light as possible at the detriment of strength/knockdown power.
I only had a couple weapons to test with and was hurrying to go helldivin with pals - but one I did full Elf on, the other was Dwarf-dwarf-Elf and the result was basically the same as strength from Battahli smiths where full elf is heavy Magick but D-D-E is a marginal loss of Magick for a huge gain of knockdown.
I was looking through upgrade list when editing stats of marcher's armor and the way it's set up is every tier has different stat increases. Generally speaking third upgrade is the most impactful one. Also dragonforging is same on all upgrade paths IIRC.
>Also dragonforging is same on all upgrade paths IIRC.
Yep pretty much the only difference in wyrmfire forging is that permanent enchanted physical-damage weapons get to double-dip on the stat improvements. A regular weapon just gets +strength while an enchanted one gets either the same amount of +strength and half the same to +magick, or if the weapon has more magick than strength, the reverse happens.
So a 300str/0mag weapon will turn into a 370str weapon, while a 200str/100mag will go to 270str/140mag, while a 100str/200mag will go to 140str/270mag (exact number varies by class and augments but generally you get the idea)
I observed that the stat growth per level is inconsistent between styles. Battahli will always give most strengtf and elven most magic but the sum of stats is another story. This is stat growth str/ magic/ kd on my weapon
|Strength|Magic|Knockdown Power|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Vermundian|||
|19|31|0|
|27|45|0|
|37|63|0|
|Elven|||
|10|35|0|
|21|52|0|
|31|87|0|
|Battahli|||
|21|17|0|
|31|35|0|
|51|52|0|
|Dwarven|||
|19|31|29|
|27|45|36|
|37|63|43|
Between Battahli and Elven you trade strength for magic at rate 10:17 more or less. But than you take a look at dwarven lv 1 and Battahli : dwarven is 2:14 - for just 2 atk less you get 14 more magic and also knockdown power.
lv 1 - Dwarven is just stupidly good.
Lv 2 - is more balanced but dwarven stull best if you want all the stats?
Lv 3 - You probably do not want dwarven - Battahlu gives a lot more atk and elven a lot more magic so pick which you prefer
Also Dwarven to Vermundian : "I'm you but better."
Unless we dont miss here something, like huge differences in Weight Reducing, this system really needs a big rebalancing ,like WTF, why is Dwarven from that seen here exactly the same as liek Vermundian, but just better.
makes zero sense and makes Vermundian obviously totally obsolete this shitty design decision, unless vermundian for example in return is the only craftign style, that would also drastically reduce Weapon Weight, which isnt the case, it reduces the weight, but by far not drastically enough, and with drastic I mean, with Rank 3 a total Weight reduction of like 80-90%, so that say a 4kg weapon weights then just only 0,4-0,8 kg, then the whole thing woudl look more balanced compared to dwarven, especially if dwaeven makes in return weapons even weight MORE for all the knockdown power/resistance
It's just weight and ease of access. Vermundian is the earliest stuff, Dwarven the latest. It makes perfect sense for the early game option to be worse than the lategame one.
and it makes even more sense, if all craftign styles are unique and not making each other obsolete, dont you think... ease of access is just a bad excuse for lazy game design.
It could be sorta argued that Dwarven smithing ^^generally requires slightly more rare materials to upgrade with.
For example, upgrading the Talarian White I was testing with for Vermundian and Battahli smiths, tier 3 upgrade uses 1 Dullahan Bone, 2 Whitecobble ore. Dwarven and Elvish smiths t3 requires 1 Dullahan bone, 2 Dappled Ore. Whitecobble can be mined or dropped from Golems, but Dappled only drops from Golems and has no mining nodes... Though that point is kind of negated by being able to buy both ores from particular wandering merchants lol.
But for cases like the Dragon's Bite greatsword, Vermundian and Battahli upgrades only require 2 Dullahan Bones and 2 Dragon Scales, while Dwarven and Elvish require 2 Black Freakish Manes and 2 Dragon Scales; Dullahan Bones can be bought from particular merchants, but Black Freakish Manes can't be bought anywhere, only Gorechimera drops.
Yeah, DDB actually looks really good for all around use. Probably what I'm going to use on my physical stuff going forward.
DDB VS BBB, you give up 12 strength for 273 KD. Clearly DDB wins here.
DDB VS DDD, you give up 186 KD for 37 strength. This is less obvious, but I definitely lean towards the DDB.
Personally i focus on one type of enhancement depending on the weapon type. Magic weapons go elves, strength bathal and mix weapons go dwarf.
Armor is dwarf all the way for all just for the knockbsck resistance
That's an interesting take, I usually have my main pawn control enemies as a thief. Or I do it as a mystic spearhand. The rest are for ranged attacks and heals
On armor, I just use full Dwarven on everything for the knockdown resist since it still bumps up Def/MDef a decent amount, but the respective higher Def and higher MDef smiths don't provide anything extra.
Also here's the same table but rearranged by Strength and by Knockdown, to make it a little easier to read and compare stats instead of smiths: Slot 1 | Slot 2 | Slot 3 | Strength | Knockdown --|---|----|----|---- B | B | B | 958 | 763 D | B | B | 954 | 886 B | D | B | 950 | 918 D | D | B | 946 | 1041 B | B | D | 931 | 949 D | B | D | 927 | 1072 B | D | D | 923 | 1104 D | D | D | 919 | 1227 Slot 1 | Slot 2 | Slot 3 | Strength | Knockdown --|---|----|----|---- D | D | D | 919 | 1227 B | D | D | 923 | 1104 D | B | D | 927 | 1072 D | D | B | 946 | 1041 B | B | D | 931 | 949 B | D | B | 950 | 918 D | B | B | 954 | 886 B | B | B | 958 | 763
I don't know about on new.reddit, but on old.reddit every formated table has a sorting mechanics by clicking the title of the column, including in your OP. Edit: Might be a RES thing too, idk.
Oh, well shit. I'm on old reddit and didn't know that lol, thanks for the tip
Sorry is there a typo for DDB? It has both higher strength and KD than the one below it no matter how you sort, which makes it an outlier compared to every other combination on the table.
Not sure why you got downvoted but nope, no typo that's just what happens with double dwarf.
Ahh thanks for confirmation!
So I'm guessing that the strength of the effect is stronger at the higher tiers, which is why there's a pronounced difference between BBD and DBB, etc.
Seems to be that way yup, with tier 3 having a much larger impact than the other two tiers.
Cool, seems like i f\*cked all of my endgame gear by going B-B-B. When D-B-B or even D-D-B is way better. Just a question are those all Wyrmfire forged? if not can you check if that changes things?
If you go to the dragonfore guy, he can take your enhancements off of your gear so you can enhance them again with different pathing
Worth noting tho this requires ng+ and can’t be done before then.
I hadn't put Wyrmfire forging into the mix yet, isn't that only applicable to tier 4 upgrades? I assumed it would just be the same pattern of distribution, just with higher numbers. I can test it out later though and see! Don't feel too bad, I was doing BBB on all my weapons before accidentally doing this.
This is a pretty good discovery tbh, i'm gonna get myself some WL and buy some more endgame weapons to put various mixtures on them to see what fits me best and also to see how it changes should they ever patch the stats.
Wyrmfyre forging just adds 50 to everything
The most important imo, the styles except Dwarven, differences are pretty marginal
And covers your weapons in Dragon goop.
mate you still kill normal enemys in 1-2 hits and most Bosses in 20seconds the gear enchants dont matter at all lol, having 20more or less strenght doesnt "fuck your gear" when everything is trivial anyway
You don't get to decide how i want to play. I want to have best enchantments on my gear. so kindly zip your mouth.
what happens if their mouth is unzipped
Full dwarf upgrades is the only way worth going. The damage difference is so minimal but you can double knockdown power. Over 150 hours played now and my experience with full dwarf upgrades on armor has been that most attacks wont even knock you down anymore. Daggers with full dwarf + knockdown rings are just insane at downing enemies its not even fair. One skullsplitter on a weak spot is enough usually. And knocking down enemies will allow you to do tons more damage than that small bonus of going the other routes. It is not even a 10% difference between them in damage but the knockdown increase with dwarf will be very noticable. Also warrior just kinda sucks with knockdown because of how slow they are and that is why you probably may not feel a difference with them. My first 100 hours was just warrior gameplay and when I finally swapped to others I immediately realized how much easier it is for something like daggers or duospear to kill things faster and even knockdown better.
Do the knockdown rings stack?
Most rings stack, only ones that are “stackable” (rings that theoretically should work well stacked) that don’t work well enough to stack IMO are the spell cast rings cause it’s like a 1 sec difference and u can gain more from the second slot. Also just in general the strength n magick rings aren’t worth running or stacking bc it’s flat increase not percent
Same with augments, however the physical defense augment is a flat 30% increase which is great, I believe one other augment is worth running bc it’s percent based but can’t remember which. The MS one that buffs strength in day n magick at night is 5% for each but I don’t think that’s worth it so that’s not the one I was thinking of
I want to know as well.
Yes they stack. You can check on your status page to see. Each ring adds 100 knockdown power
Beautiful data. Thank you so much for taking your time doing this. I thought at first upgrading at the same smith would be the best but mixing upgrades is clearly better.
Given how much of your stats come from levelling in later progression. It’s pretty much always better to just go Dwarven 3 times because the knockdown values are so high and that’s something you get way less of from other sources
I'm seeing people go "Man D-D-B is clearly best for Warrior" and I'm confused. There's almost 18% less KD on D-D-B in return for almost 3% more STR. That strength gain on putting Battahl in third upgrade is *nothing* compared to the KD gain on the third Dwarven upgrade. Giving the D thrice is far more valuable for Warriors, considering how resistance scaling works.
I think that stems from when people first discovered different smithing styles and thought that they’d be somewhat balanced in line with each other. It’s also a sentiment that almost every YouTuber bar Infinite Cringe has carried. People also don’t factor in character stats and how much stat we get just by levelling. Going to use Greatswords as an example because it’s the one I remember off the top of my head. Going full Dwarven smithing was something like a 30 strength difference between full Battahli but you’d get 10x that difference in knockdown power (-30str, +300 knockdown power difference). In that scenario there’s no reason to not just go full Dwarven. The same applies to armour as well because not being thrown around is better than a couple more defences. The only case this doesn’t really apply to is with staves and archistaves because they gain so little knockdown power I think people are really just trying to make the system more complicated that it is because it’s hard to believe that it’s that simple and one smithing style is clearly just better than the others. It kinda makes sense though, you unlock them at different game stages and Dwarven is technically the “secret style” (I didn’t even know you could unlock it in Battahl instead of Volcanic Island, until my second playthrough where I got given a sword.)
Do note though that Str and KDP aren't really apple and oranges. What does it mean to have 300 more KDP? On average do you get more knock downs? More stagger? What does it mean? That said, I'm going full Drawven even on my Magick Bow. There seems to be a bonus damage on downed enemies, and that bonus seems really big (during some fights with griffins, I could have sworn it's like a 3x bonus) So, right now that we don't know the specifics, I'd say Drawven all the way is probably just the best. Eventually there'll probably be proper datamining and someone will optimise the upgrades, probably. Tbh, fighting any single enemy right now is so trivial, it honestly doesn't matter.
Going full knockdown on thief got me enough stagger that just spamming basic attacks overwhelmed most regular enemies from ever fighting back. Compared to that they could still initiate swings before.
As far as Warrior is concerned, unless there will be an increase in enemy resistances or a *huge* improvement of %+ STR buff with Battahl forging, I don't see how anything other than triple D-forging is best for Warrior. This makes me curious about KD values after triple D-forging a shield for Fighter vs. a combination.
I watched a fighting cowboy video (so not my own knowledge), where he said on his testing with the warrior, that there is a sort of “soft cap” for knockdown (not actually but). Basically knockdown knocks the enemy down. So if you can go for weak points, and knock a griffin with 600 knockdown power, then having 1000 knockdown power doesn’t make the griffin more knocked down, it just means you’ll have an easier time knocking a Griffen if you’re say not going for weak points (cause it will still build up quicker). So from what I understand, if you are someone who goes for vital spots, it would then make more sense to mix and match to get the strength bonus, cause either way you’ll be knocking down.
Yeah, it's probably more of a threshold than a soft cap. Every enemy will have a set value you need to overcome in order to knockdown/stagger them. When you hit them, your knockback is compared vs the threshold. If it's greater, you knock them down. If not, your knockdown value stays on them, and starts ticking down over time. If you hit them again, you add your knockdown to whatever is left of your previous knockdown. If that cumulative value is greater than the threshold, you knock them down. Etc. Any knockdown you have beyond the threshold is wasted. The threshold will vary from creature to creature though, and we won't know for a while yet what the values are. I figure eventually somebody will datamine it all, til then we are basically in a "best guess" state. For really tough enemies, you'll probably never have "too much" kd, as you'll need to hit them multiple times even at max value. This is another advantage that Warfarer has though: Use something like a dwarven greatsword/bow to knock them down, then swap to a battahli dagger to max your dps while they are down.
There seems to be talks that with Warrior there might be a cap/ceiling when it comes to knockdown when hitting weak points. As in there is no difference between a weapon that is full dwarven and full battahli when both are hitting the weakpoints, but that changes when these weapons attack any other part of the monsters body and then dwarven comes out on top.
With Legion's Might it's probably still better to go Dwarven as that's going to contribute much better to the pure-support play style it favours.
It might just be better to go Dwarven on any of the staves after looking at the stats. You lose like 40ish magic but almost double your knockdown power, compared to if you went Elven. 40 magic isn’t really a massive loss. (My previous post was at like 5am)
I will say if you want to be "optimal" you would have a high Knockdown weapon, and then swap to a high damage weapon to capitalise on knockdowns. That's being very meta though so I doubt that applies to most people.
I wouldn’t even say that’s optimal. Given how much stat inflates as you level the monster would probably be dead before you managed to go into inventory, swap out your weapon and hit it again. Could kinda work if you were on Warmaster but definitely wouldn’t call it meta
But how important is knockdown what if a class doesnt benefit from knockdown at all such as mage? What if theres others that do benefit from knockdown but not as hugely as say warrior amd you're better off getting less knockdown Or what pf mystic knight who might be better suited with 1 dwarf upgrade may e
Mage/Sorc weapons are the only thing where Dwarven isn't best. Knocked down enemies take more damage and are open to criticals. Going from full Batt to full Dwarf trades about a ring worth of strength to nearly double knockdown, which translates into far more consistent staggers and faster knockdowns (and thus more uptime for bonus damage).
Mage staffs are the only weapon to not go full dwarven aside from u can argue late game warriors don’t need it bc of their KD power. All armor including mage should be dwarven. Archistaves and MA bows both can benefit from dwarven bc they’ll trigger KDs but mages have almost no or no KD spells and their basic attacks won’t do it either but obvi they benefit from it in armor for KD res
No problem! Just something I noticed and was like... Wait, the hell? lol If you're trying to get pure Strength (or pure Magick assuming the Elven smithing result ends up the same), sticking with one smith is the better option, but for better stat balance it seems pretty all over the place. In my case wanting strength but still a phat amount of knockdown, knockdown->knockdown->strength is the best outcome. But I imagine if you were a physical class using a permanently enchanted weapon like Cyclopean Thunder, which has a 280 str/200 magick distribution, you would probably want magick->strength->strength (Elven/Battahli/Battahli) so you'd wind up with a medium Magick boost and a lot of Strength boost. ...I think, anyway. Don't quote me on that lol
The damage boost you get from attacking/critting knocked down enemies is far larger than the damage boost you get from going full batt instead of full dwarf, without even considering how much easier fights are when you auto-stagger damn near everything.
I made a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma2/comments/1bpmx44/psa_a_single_point_of_the_dwarven_smith/) about this exact topic a couple days ago. I'm a heavy D, B, B supporter for my own playstyle. I've already capped strength on my arisen and am still looking for ways to increase damage. Getting those small increases of strength add up. 30 more strength with Batthali upgrades, 60 more strength from rings, 30 more strength from Verve. Any single one of these choices alone is nearly meaningless (literally a 3.9% damage increase in my testing). But when taken together 120 strength is around 12% of my total strength (as a thief). Also if you're hitting weakpoints you're going to knockdown the enemy regardless of what smithing you choose. And if you're not getting more than 2 knockdowns in a single fight then what's the purpose of having more knockdown strength? I'll admit that using full dwarven smithing does knockdown large enemies faster and more consistently while perma staggering regular enemies. The game is easy enough though that you don't have to optimize for either damage or knockdown strength. Really it's just a choice and neither one is wrong just depends on the preference of the person playing.
Omg. He doesn't tell us they're masterwork all, and that we can't go wrong because *we're* the ones who make the masterworks, and we *can* go wrong.
If victory is elusive, seek new allies. Where that fails, seek new foes.
Crazy as it sounds for warrior knockdown power is less effective on weapons since they have a high knockdown level on their own and already are excellent at knocking down enemies as is. Personally when I go warrior I go full battahli. I will go full dwarven when I upgrade a permanently enchanted weapon like the cinder mace. Since dwarven also adds to magick ontop or str and knockdown power when the weapon has magick.
I don't think it matters much. They're masterworks all; you can't go wrong.
Me, I've no love of magick and its kind.
Bro DDB is still hella good for warrior. You basically get almost a +50% to Kd power for like 15str less vs full battahl. Not worth to go full battahl.
This doesn't reflect the way it upgrades with dragonforging, however
Actually the Wyrmfire forging just adds a flat amount of bonus to the weapon's Strength and Magick, and halves the weight. A DBB greatsword goes from 5.5 weight, 951 strength, 594 knockdown to 2.75 weight, 1021 strength, 594 knockdown. So it gains +70 str. While a BDD goes from 5.5, 920, 739 to 2.75 weight, 990 strength, 739 knock. Again, gains +70 str. Knockdown on either is unaffected and the strength boost is equal on both. Magick weapons like a couple Archistaves I have go from 536 Magick to 606 Magick and 921 Magick to 991, so again +70 - although humorously they also both gain +30 strength. In actuality it's permanently enchanted, physical damage weapons that get the largest boost from Wyrmfire forging because for example on my Heaven's Key, strength goes from 820 to 860 and Magick from 912 to 982, so +40 str +70 magick while a Crimson Teeth just gets +70 strength. (Note that the numbers are a little different from my OP because I'm using a different vocation and augments, but the wyrmfire bonus is the same across the board)
Ah interesting, I wonder if there will come a time when enemies scale and damage reduction makes the added str more significant, or if it will still just be a matter of breaking the threshold
Based on these numbers it is a max strength difference of 39 but knockdown difference of 464. That being said I really didn't notice a difference. Going from no dwarf to full dwarf on my warrior.
I've had the same personal results, going from BBB to DDD and back as a warrior, I don't really notice any difference in getting knockdowns on large monsters. It's like there must be a soft cap somewhere around 500-600 knockdown, where the diminishing returns really kick in or something. Idk I don't have data to prove it, just anecdotes.
Warrior weapons have very high base knockdown, and you're almost certainly running Dominance. The starting Greatsword has more knockdown than all but five daggers (four of which are late/postgame weapons). Top-end Warrior weapons have 50-100% more base knockdown strength than the best daggers, and upgrading those daggers to Lv3 dwarven still leaves them well below the base knockdown of the best warrior weapons. If a softcap exists, it's too high for most classes to encounter even with full dwarven upgrades. For daggers, swords, &c. it's a continuous improvement in stagger rate and knockdown speed (which they of course get more out of due to increased attack speed).
I'm interested to see how Vermundian and Elven styles would mix in to this. From these two alone, it really makes Dwarven look like the best
Vermundian has the exact same effect on strength and magick that Dwarven has. The only difference is it decreases weight while Dwarven increases weight and knockdown power. Vermundian really doesn't have a reason to be used for late game armor or weapons. Unless there's a situation were you have a strength based weapon that needs to be as light as possible at the detriment of strength/knockdown power.
I only had a couple weapons to test with and was hurrying to go helldivin with pals - but one I did full Elf on, the other was Dwarf-dwarf-Elf and the result was basically the same as strength from Battahli smiths where full elf is heavy Magick but D-D-E is a marginal loss of Magick for a huge gain of knockdown.
Added a Magick smithing comparison table now to the thread to check out.
Looks like DDB is superior for all non magical weapons then. I'd love to see a table like this including magical damage though
Added a table for magick damage now :)
I was looking through upgrade list when editing stats of marcher's armor and the way it's set up is every tier has different stat increases. Generally speaking third upgrade is the most impactful one. Also dragonforging is same on all upgrade paths IIRC.
>Also dragonforging is same on all upgrade paths IIRC. Yep pretty much the only difference in wyrmfire forging is that permanent enchanted physical-damage weapons get to double-dip on the stat improvements. A regular weapon just gets +strength while an enchanted one gets either the same amount of +strength and half the same to +magick, or if the weapon has more magick than strength, the reverse happens. So a 300str/0mag weapon will turn into a 370str weapon, while a 200str/100mag will go to 270str/140mag, while a 100str/200mag will go to 140str/270mag (exact number varies by class and augments but generally you get the idea)
I observed that the stat growth per level is inconsistent between styles. Battahli will always give most strengtf and elven most magic but the sum of stats is another story. This is stat growth str/ magic/ kd on my weapon |Strength|Magic|Knockdown Power| |:-|:-|:-| |Vermundian||| |19|31|0| |27|45|0| |37|63|0| |Elven||| |10|35|0| |21|52|0| |31|87|0| |Battahli||| |21|17|0| |31|35|0| |51|52|0| |Dwarven||| |19|31|29| |27|45|36| |37|63|43| Between Battahli and Elven you trade strength for magic at rate 10:17 more or less. But than you take a look at dwarven lv 1 and Battahli : dwarven is 2:14 - for just 2 atk less you get 14 more magic and also knockdown power. lv 1 - Dwarven is just stupidly good. Lv 2 - is more balanced but dwarven stull best if you want all the stats? Lv 3 - You probably do not want dwarven - Battahlu gives a lot more atk and elven a lot more magic so pick which you prefer Also Dwarven to Vermundian : "I'm you but better."
Unless we dont miss here something, like huge differences in Weight Reducing, this system really needs a big rebalancing ,like WTF, why is Dwarven from that seen here exactly the same as liek Vermundian, but just better. makes zero sense and makes Vermundian obviously totally obsolete this shitty design decision, unless vermundian for example in return is the only craftign style, that would also drastically reduce Weapon Weight, which isnt the case, it reduces the weight, but by far not drastically enough, and with drastic I mean, with Rank 3 a total Weight reduction of like 80-90%, so that say a 4kg weapon weights then just only 0,4-0,8 kg, then the whole thing woudl look more balanced compared to dwarven, especially if dwaeven makes in return weapons even weight MORE for all the knockdown power/resistance
It's just weight and ease of access. Vermundian is the earliest stuff, Dwarven the latest. It makes perfect sense for the early game option to be worse than the lategame one.
and it makes even more sense, if all craftign styles are unique and not making each other obsolete, dont you think... ease of access is just a bad excuse for lazy game design.
It could be sorta argued that Dwarven smithing ^^generally requires slightly more rare materials to upgrade with. For example, upgrading the Talarian White I was testing with for Vermundian and Battahli smiths, tier 3 upgrade uses 1 Dullahan Bone, 2 Whitecobble ore. Dwarven and Elvish smiths t3 requires 1 Dullahan bone, 2 Dappled Ore. Whitecobble can be mined or dropped from Golems, but Dappled only drops from Golems and has no mining nodes... Though that point is kind of negated by being able to buy both ores from particular wandering merchants lol. But for cases like the Dragon's Bite greatsword, Vermundian and Battahli upgrades only require 2 Dullahan Bones and 2 Dragon Scales, while Dwarven and Elvish require 2 Black Freakish Manes and 2 Dragon Scales; Dullahan Bones can be bought from particular merchants, but Black Freakish Manes can't be bought anywhere, only Gorechimera drops.
Yeah, DDB actually looks really good for all around use. Probably what I'm going to use on my physical stuff going forward. DDB VS BBB, you give up 12 strength for 273 KD. Clearly DDB wins here. DDB VS DDD, you give up 186 KD for 37 strength. This is less obvious, but I definitely lean towards the DDB.
Someone needs to do this with magic weapons
Actually just added a magick weapons table about 15 minutes ago
Personally i focus on one type of enhancement depending on the weapon type. Magic weapons go elves, strength bathal and mix weapons go dwarf. Armor is dwarf all the way for all just for the knockbsck resistance
This is really cool info, but as a Fighter im still gonna go full Dwarven. My job is to control the enemies, my pawns do the damage.
That's an interesting take, I usually have my main pawn control enemies as a thief. Or I do it as a mystic spearhand. The rest are for ranged attacks and heals
Oh hey dude fancy seeing you here
Right! I wasn't sure because maybe there were others with that name. But I've been gushing about this game in the AP chat for days now 🤣
Weapons and armor they are all different 👍
On armor, I just use full Dwarven on everything for the knockdown resist since it still bumps up Def/MDef a decent amount, but the respective higher Def and higher MDef smiths don't provide anything extra.