Maul vs. Lance

[phalen33]

So decided to play around with my fixskill and moved one of my warriors from a lance to a maul. Picked up ambushing and executioner's stance. Have to say I like feint then head kersplat. I do miss my pike and noticed a little dip in power when I berserk mstrike a room.

My warriors are elfs and I set stats for 50. So my agidex is 65 right now. I could pickup an enhancive or two to get 5 seconds rt reduction. That would put me at 7 seconds rt for ambush with a lance.

So was wondering should I stick with maul at 6 second ambush or go 7 second ambush with a lance?

Also, I usually hit hard enough for a rank 9 crit against non-plate. With a lance I would have to be randomized down to a 5 and do puncture damage, which is 66% chance, to not kill with a head shot. Which should make it 13.3% chance not to kill with a rank 9 head crit. The other option would be to aim for the eyes.

So my second question is on ambush. I know eyes are harder to aim for then head and a lance being bigger is harder then a maul to aim. Ambush ranks plateau with diminishing returns. So does increased difficulty in weapon and body part reduce the percent I plateau at or does it simply increase the ranks need to plateau and will plateau at the same percent as any other part/weapon? In other words eye and lance increase difficulty to hit but can I train that difficulty off with more ambush or will my chance to hit always be lower?

[hello]

So decided to play around with my fixskill and moved one of my warriors from a lance to a maul. Picked up ambushing and executioner's stance. Have to say I like feint then head kersplat. I do miss my pike and noticed a little dip in power when I berserk mstrike a room.

My warriors are elfs and I set stats for 50. So my agidex is 65 right now. I could pickup an enhancive or two to get 5 seconds rt reduction. That would put me at 7 seconds rt for ambush with a lance.

So was wondering should I stick with maul at 6 second ambush or go 7 second ambush with a lance?

Also, I usually hit hard enough for a rank 9 crit against non-plate. With a lance I would have to be randomized down to a 5 and do puncture damage, which is 66% chance, to not kill with a head shot. Which should make it 13.3% chance not to kill with a rank 9 head crit. The other option would be to aim for the eyes.

So my second question is on ambush. I know eyes are harder to aim for then head and a lance being bigger is harder then a maul to aim. Ambush ranks plateau with diminishing returns. So does increased difficulty in weapon and body part reduce the percent I plateau at or does it simply increase the ranks need to plateau and will plateau at the same percent as any other part/weapon? In other words eye and lance increase difficulty to hit but can I train that difficulty off with more ambush or will my chance to hit always be lower?

Depends if you MSTRIKE or berserk a lot. If so, lance is better. Otherwise go with maul. Or, if you're way post cap and train in both, hotkey a switch and use both.

[neimanz1]

whichever you could swing with min rt

[phalen33]

I probably will do both when I'm capped. I mainly find myself using berserk in Reim. Regular hunting I don't usually see more then 3 mobs in a room. Hmm..

[hello]

I probably will do both when I'm capped. I mainly find myself using berserk in Reim. Regular hunting I don't usually see more then 3 mobs in a room. Hmm..

If you're mostly hunting in Reim, Lance is by far better since everything in there is non-corp undead. If you headhunt on live critters I would recommend maul. It's not only 13% chance you won't get a guaranteed head kill with a lance, lances are notoriously difficult to aim. My warrior even when he was pushing level 70 still didn't have max ambush hit rate with 30 ranks in ambush and 35 perception.

[Whirlin]

So was wondering should I stick with maul at 6 second ambush or go 7 second ambush with a lance?

Also, I usually hit hard enough for a rank 9 crit against non-plate. With a lance I would have to be randomized down to a 5 and do puncture damage, which is 66% chance, to not kill with a head shot. Which should make it 13.3% chance not to kill with a rank 9 head crit. The other option would be to aim for the eyes.

So my second question is on ambush. I know eyes are harder to aim for then head and a lance being bigger is harder then a maul to aim. Ambush ranks plateau with diminishing returns. So does increased difficulty in weapon and body part reduce the percent I plateau at or does it simply increase the ranks need to plateau and will plateau at the same percent as any other part/weapon? In other words eye and lance increase difficulty to hit but can I train that difficulty off with more ambush or will my chance to hit always be lower?

By the math, you're right, swinging a lance, assuming a 100% ambush rate, With a T9 critical, you're looking at 86.68% chance of killing with eyes versus 86.66 chance of killing against head.
With a Maul against the head, with the same assumptions of a T9 critical, hitting the target, you're looking at a 100% chance of killing on the head.

I'd lean towards a maul for consistency with ambushing.

While piercing critical tables are much better than crushing, the problem that you'll run into is in aiming for the eyes, and having your damage randomized to crushing damage 33% of the time. So while eye criticals are fatal on the piercing table for T4/T5/T6, they're not on the crushing tables, so 1/3rd of the time, your T4/5/6 eye crits will not be fatal.

Conversely, if you decide to go for head/neck, the difference isn't as huge, with only T5 being fatal with crush where it's not fatal with puncture. However, if you're going to go for head/neck anyway, may as well just stick to a maul full time.

Another point to consider is the REACH of the weapon. However, both Mauls and Lances do add a few feet of effective reach, and eyes/head are both 1.0 critter height modifier, so there shouldn't be a huge difference with your selection.

The intangible... If eyes are in fact harder to aim for than the head, that would lean more towards using a maul.

Lastly, the RT... Shaving 1 second off of the RT from 7 to 6 seconds is a 14% increase in killing speed.


The only question is cost. Do you already have a nice lance and you want to make it work, or already have a nice maul? Or does the ramp-up time not matter to you?

[phalen33]

The Whirlin has spoken! Thanks for the input, makes me feel better about switching.

Cost at the moment isn't the problem. More silvers then I can sell with no one buying. It's finding a nice maul that someone wants to sell.

[Whirlin]

The Whirlin has spoken! Thanks for the input, makes me feel better about switching.

Cost at the moment isn't the problem. More silvers then I can sell with no one buying. It's finding a nice maul that someone wants to sell.

To address some of the other things... you would see a better damage/results with a lance when mstriking or berserking, due to the unaimed nature of those attacks, and advantageous DFs of Lances versus mauls... MStriking, depending on how much MOC training you have, would have a fairly high lance RT, and recovery time, but Mstrike RT caps at 3 swings, so once you get to 5+ and you're locked in at 3 swing RT... it's beautiful. At the end of the day though, either a maul or lance will either tear the crap out of something during berserk or mstrike.

Also regarding Reim... at cap with the Hand of the Arkati, things don't last more than a single attack round from the group anyway, your damage output is almost irrelevant. Solo Reim... that just sounds miserable.

[phalen33]

I run two warriors that are 36 right now through Reim. Not sure how it scales at 100 but right now it's pretty easy. I have to farm a little towards the end for scrip but I normally do a full run in under an hour with only a couple minor wounds.

I'm stopped at 60 moc right now. 5 open and 3 focused. Lance for me is 12 seconds for 3+ hits. If I get a little more agidex I should be able to get that to 11. Maul is 2 seconds faster. Of course with that doesn't matter with berserk. If I get swarmed in reim then the entire room is dead in 15 seconds or less with two lance wielding berserkers. Have to see how mauls do on my next run if I can find a second nice maul.

[Donquix]

I run two warriors that are 36 right now through Reim. Not sure how it scales at 100 but right now it's pretty easy. I have to farm a little towards the end for scrip but I normally do a full run in under an hour with only a couple minor wounds.

I'm stopped at 60 moc right now. 5 open and 3 focused. Lance for me is 12 seconds for 3+ hits. If I get a little more agidex I should be able to get that to 11. Maul is 2 seconds faster. Of course with that doesn't matter with berserk. If I get swarmed in reim then the entire room is dead in 15 seconds or less with two lance wielding berserkers. Have to see how mauls do on my next run if I can find a second nice maul.

I would be shocked if a comparable maul would be better for you as a berserking warrior against non-corp undead.

Mauls do have have one huge advantage over lances no one has mentioned: they have appropriate alternate nouns of testsubo and SLEDGEHAMMER. Which are both awesome, with lance you get shit like "sarissa", might well just say sissy.

...he types while playing a lance wielding character.

[hello]

At those levels I would just go with maul, really polearms like Lance I consider end game weapons 70+ due to the copious amounts of CM + ambush + perc to aim with them, not to mention the bigger RTs. You do get a DS bonus though.

[phalen33]

If I endlessly ran Reim I would stick with lances. If I could make a decent profit running Reim then I would run it endlessly. If it had better drops or ghost bucks were worth more then I would do it for fun and profit. As it is I only run it once in awhile for fun.

[Gnomad]

If you're mostly hunting in Reim, Lance is by far better since everything in there is non-corp undead. If you headhunt on live critters I would recommend maul. It's not only 13% chance you won't get a guaranteed head kill with a lance, lances are notoriously difficult to aim. My warrior even when he was pushing level 70 still didn't have max ambush hit rate with 30 ranks in ambush and 35 perception.
Postcap rogues with daggers can't hit the 95% ambush rate aiming at the eyes (or even head/neck), so I wouldn't expect to be anywhere near that as warrior with a lance.

https://gswiki.play.net/Predator%27s_Eye_(saved_post)

[chowell]

Out of curiosity, does anyone use charge with a lance and is there any data out there on its effectiveness? I always thought that seemed like a nice perk of using a polearm over a THW, especially against the turtled WOF caster types.

[phalen33]

I played with charge a little bit with my lances. Wasn't that great IMO. I'm a master of warrior tricks so I use feint all the time. According to the wiki charge only changes stance in some cases. Prone, stunned and in defensive should still be higher ds then offensive and standing. So feint should and seemed to lower DS more then charge on casters. Also 12 stamina vs 7 and 7 rt vs 3 rt... Feint wins I think.

[Axhinde]

Except feint can't knock down, stun, or outright kill a target, all of which charge can do.

[phalen33]

Don't need it to be down or stunned. Just need it to be in offensive and I squish its head with my big hammer. Working out so far. Tried charge but just didn't seem worth the 7 second rt to me.

[khorpulent]

Charge is really powerful, but it's too slow and expensive to be that useful in combat. My polearm warrior had 5 ranks of charge, but I only ever used it when I was trying to show off or trying not to kill all the bandits before my hunting partner. I could feint 2.33 times in the 7 seconds it takes to charge once. I also think that charge has a race-based penalty (or at least no bonus), so the races that are fast enough to actually use a lance don't charge that well because they're not giantmen or whatever.

As far as I can tell, the main benefit to learning charge is that you can defend creatures that are charging you. It really, really sucks to get hit with charge.

To me, the lance only beats the maul if you're berserking. You can't aim a lance for shit, and even with high AGI/DEX, the mstrike RT is prohibitive. That being said, when I had my warrior I berserked all the damn time because a lance is so insanely powerful when you can mstrike over and over with no RT to worry about.