The Drunken Lizard Pub

After multiple play throughs with multiple different melee builds I realized something disturbing with my most recent Piercing spec rogue. I never seemed to score a Critical hit when using my weapon feat of Double Strike.

All my other melee builds would often combine Critical hits with weapon feats (Furry Strike for UA, Devastating Blow for Bludgeon, etc) but it doesn't seem to work with Double Strike. Has anyone else noticed this? Has it ever been reported as a bug? I can't imagine this would be intentional but I suppose it's possible??

I sure hope this is addressed for Book III. Rogue classes are hard enough to play without being cheated out of critical strikes during weapon feats!

(additional note, I did notice Nefarious strike occurred during a double strike once, just never seen a critical hit with it)

That's an interesting observation. Did you also look at the numbers? Would it be possible that you scored critical without it showing in the text?

I remember that when I was new to this game I once got a ridiculously high number for damage, without being clear where this high damage came from. It was with piercing weapons, but not with a double strike. I uploaded the example at the time: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3683.

I'm not saying that the answer is that you got critical hits without them showing in the message log, but it seems that there are some unexplained things going on when it comes to damage calculation/recording, and especially with Piercing Weapons?
For conclusions we need more data, I suppose.

From what I remember of double strike it's the worst of the melee feats because it does to hit rolls for each strike unlike the others that always hit. This might be why you aren't seeing as many critical hits,

That's an interesting example of crazy damage. This is exactly the opposite problem though. I'm NOT seeing high damage from each hit. Not only does it not say Critical in the text but the damage is consistent with regular, non-crit hits.

My standard hits are 50-80 (level 20 in Power Mode with ~50 skill) which is the same damage I see with Double Strike (only there are two strikes back to back). My single swing Crits are in the 100-120 range.

Fortunately, like the other weapon feats, Double Strike never misses. Both attacks always connect, but the damage rolls are independently rolled (e.g. 52 for the first, 58 for the second)... which is why this seems broken. With my weapon skill at or above 50, I score crits all the time with standard swings, but when using Double Strike it never happens.

Robbed I tell you! (Is that ironic for a Rogue class??)

Yeah, that does sound like something's wrong then. From the game's description we're getting that critical hits should be possible on the feat's strikes, so then something's not working as intended here.

So what are you saying? Is piercing strike completely useless as a weapon feat or does it have a use, just not as much as swords, cleaving and unarmed?

Personally, i havent used piercing except in book 1 but i wanted to give it a second try in book 2 for the double strike. If double strike is useless then i might just go with one of the others.

deathknight1728 wrote:So what are you saying? Is piercing strike completely useless as a weapon feat or does it have a use, just not as much as swords, cleaving and unarmed?

Personally, i havent used piercing except in book 1 but i wanted to give it a second try in book 2 for the double strike. If double strike is useless then i might just go with one of the others.

I've used piercing weapons several times in Book II run throughs and find it extremely effective. I'll have to pay attention in my current run to see if it's getting critical hits or not.