[Trexmaster]

River Sword used to be fine as it was, in the dark days of there being roughly two or three means of even dealing water damage that was fairly subpar compared to other forms of damage.

Nowadays with a wider variety of water damage sources, chaining together strings of attacks for massive damage (youkai spells being a huge outlier, river sword only exacerbating an already ridiculous damage source) is fairly common. Some people literally just use the sword for its 40% weakness.

I propose docking its 40% weakness to a 25% weakness on hit, that way it's far more unlikely to see 'Weak!' proc, while still providing a damage bonus.

Not to mention Splash exists now.

[Slydria]

Only issue I have with it being 25% is the fact that now triggering Weak goes from a likely scenario to an impossible scenario on a count of either the vast majority of players getting APT which in turns means getting enough SAN for even 1%. Or you could get the Fishing Quest stamp for that 1%.

But if that kind of thing is just too overbearing for a weapon on hit effect in the first place then no biggie, but if it's still intended to get off Weak then I'd suggest bumping it to 30% instead.

[Nanovelich]

40% is a massive damage boost for an element that runs off the best defensive stat in the game. Most opponents who have high enough evade to make getting the On Hit a problem will have sacrificed defenses to achieve that, and anyone who built for tanking not with water specifically in mind will be shredded.

The only thing someone running River Sword really has to worry about is Steel Aura, and that's hardly justification for keeping it as it is.


I could maybe accept 30% if the Weak is really that necessary for Splash's sake, but in that case, I'd rather just see River Sword apply 25% (or lower, honestly) and an additional effect that makes all Water damage register as Weak! without the actual damage behind it.

Defending its usefulness with Splash? Fair, because its scaling is really low, and it makes River Sword a good weapon to run on a class that's meant to run Swords anyway.

On the other hand, you have builds that specifically focus on high damage water spells, pumping stats defensively with an appropriate casting tool, ignoring River Sword's own scaling, and then running a strategy where you simply poke your opponent with River Sword regardless of how much damage the sword itself will do, knowing all your water spells are about to absolutely shred your opponent.

Running Spellthief? Weak! proc's means three water spells every round if you have them. Each getting +40% damage boost. Aside from maybe accounting for Hit, you get to build completely defensive too, with Evasion. Cool.

Running Youkai? Same deal for you when it comes to Sync-Mind. Your Youkai also get to hit twice with their spells when Weak! proc's. Who needs Fast Offense's spirit cheese?



Weak! processing alone is already worth it. That damage boost along with it makes it quite ridiculous.

And I'd rather that Weak! be something that's always there with the sword, in addition to a minor elemental resistance decrease, than something that's reliant on a heavy elemental resistance decrease, encouraging people to either always account for River Sword users when planning builds or play the 'swap equipment before each fight' counter-building game.

[Kameron8]

I don't personally think it should be able to trigger a Weak message, given how trivial it is to apply the debuff. Weak roughly translates to a 50% damage increase, assuming it gives a player one extra spell to cast, and 100% damage increase for Youkai. Given that it already gives a -30% resistance before that consideration, the item as a whole is just busted when you hash out the numbers.

Players don't need to build offensively to use it, since water is Vit scaling. I'd rather just see the debuff incapable of generating weakness, but if it's non-negotiable, at least wall the higher percent behind a requirement to crit with the sword.

[Snake]

More like, it's about time we get an accessory that absorbs water damage, like Circle Ring. It will narrow down most of this item's problems, since the biggest of them seems to be just main-handing a sword and off-handing a tome, then spamming water spells for free profit.

If the enemy can lol-absorb water damage, they'll need to use Nihilist on off-hand, and thus the tome part will be easily scratched aside.

[Kameron8]

More like, it's about time we get an accessory that absorbs water damage, like Circle Ring. It will narrow down most of this item's problems, since the biggest of them seems to be just main-handing a sword and off-handing a tome, then spamming water spells for free profit.

If the enemy can lol-absorb water damage, they'll need to use Nihilist on off-hand, and thus the tome part will be easily scratched aside.

This is not a sustainable line of thinking to balance items. If some axe in the future lets you swing four times, you wouldn't implement a pair of shoes that lets you absorb slashing damage. SL1 had absorbs and immunities to almost everything, trust me when I say it was not for the best. Even if this was added, who would want to deal with mandatory Nihilists and metagamed accessory swapping?

[Autumn]

There are ways to fight against river sword, for example it is an on hit, meaning steel aura will block it, and it is relilant on a hit check on a rather inaccurate weapon, which the parts for sword further accentuate this by lacking a lot of hit, the only exception is the Relilability talent, but still I think it should be able to trigger a weak message to encourage combo mages, but I don't think it should be so much weakness, 30% weakness sounds fine to me, if you want to be able to avoid the combo water mage, just get 1 coral item or something, since the biggest draw to the weapon is the ability to combo.


if the problem is youkai spells, well that's youkai spells they've been a huge problem for quite a while anyway.

[Lonestar]

I think the major problem here is mostly Spellthief grabbing all the water spells he can combined with this huge elemental debuff.
They can tap you 4 times with Red Sea/Kel/Rebia/Splash for huge amounts of damage.
Youkai are a problem? Sure, but they've been one for a good time as Spo said.

[Snake]

Maybe you're right. Yeah. Can't say I have that much experience with SL1, but I agree with your point, Kam.

30% water weakness wouldn't be a bad start, either.

[Sarinpa1]

why the f-

john is a bully


either way, common resist for all elements is at around 8%. Have any gear for additional resist, bam, no weak! message.
Using elemental weakness to archieve similiar effect that crits have, further capitalized on with fleur is a nice touch for mages. Reaver allows combos, verglas has combos, etcetera.

30% weakness already removes the weak message, and you still hit RES.

As someone that JUST YESTERDAY started using this, the most optimized build for this still has issues with landing a basic attack, doing sufficent damage and not running out of FP.

I'd lower it to 35%.

Fire mages with mere knockback can dish out immense damage. Pull? You can't do shit, not even threads save you. Againts those, you have to build fire res and have threads. Optimaly enchanted with flamewalk. Why is requiring the same for water to not decimate you (Slower.) that big of a problem. Especialy if it just takes one accessory or shoe slot.

This is not that incredibly strong compared to other combos in my eyes.