Which 2h weapon is best? (Dps tests inside)

Proscar

For 2h stamina builds, one yields best dps? Sword, mace, or axe?

Also...which enchant and trait is best with 2h?

---

ADDENDUM:

In the end, I ended up doing my own testing. However, it was done with small numbers and on things found in the normal world, especially the V10 giants in Rift. You can see spreadsheets below, and my thoughts behind things.

Summaries:
- Overall I found on various mobs that 2H mace was superior in damage PER HIT then 2H swords with precise trait, all other variables being the same
- Then however, it appears that in OVERALL DPS that 2H swords with sharpened trait outshined 2H swords with precise, as well as 2H maces with sharpened or precise.
- It appears that elemental damage (lightning) enchants were about the same as crushing enchants on 2H weapons, all other variables being the same.
- In the final tests, 30 champ points in mighty (as opposed to piercing) with 2H sharpened mace appears to yield the highest dps of all.


Certainly if anyone can provide further testing to add, it will add to the body of knowledge (esp with larger data pools).

golfer.dub17_ESO

Axes are good for specific sets with an "on-hit" effect (such as Valkyn Skoria), because the bleed effect counts as many individual hits.

For straight up damage I'm unsure if sword or mace is better. I believe maces are in general.

deepseamk20b14_ESO

I've been wondering whether sword or mace is better. Not sure just yet. If I actually rememeber, I may make a mace tonight and do some damage comparisons in PvP. I feel sword would be better in PvE though.

Robbmrp

As far as weapon damage goes, for any given level each one does the exact same damage as the other. So a V14 Battleaxe, GreatSword and Maul all have the same weapon damage amount. Enchants and item colors are the only thing that will increase the weapon damage on them. So a Green V14 BAxe will do less damage than a Blue V14 BAxe.

Khivas_Carrick

Robbmrp wrote: »

As far as weapon damage goes, for any given level each one does the exact same damage as the other. So a V14 Battleaxe, GreatSword and Maul all have the same weapon damage amount. Enchants and item colors are the only thing that will increase the weapon damage on them. So a Green V14 BAxe will do less damage than a Blue V14 BAxe.

I believe he's asking for passives, of which I prefer swords to anything else. I'd love it if axes added crit chance instead of bleeds though.

Maddux

I was testing it a few Days ago. 2 Greatswords and 2 Maces, Precise and Sharpened Traits.
The Difference between Precise and Sharpened isnt that big but the Greatsword does more Dmg as the Mace, dosnt matter which Trait you use. And the Difference is getting bigger if you get more Weaponpower.
20% Armorignore is fine if you face Heavy Armor Enemys and a waste if you hit on Light Armor. The % should scale with your Weaponpower to get in Line with Greatswords.
And the DoT from Axes also should scale with Weaponpower. You trade 6% more Dmg or a couple k Armorignore against a shity DoT and minimum Chance to Proc Valkyn Skoria.

Celless

I think as Maddux was saying, the Maul seems to yield higher numbers for me on a heavy armor target. But on average, the Great Sword has been my go to for 2H passives.

I have a preference for +weapon damage for 5 seconds on the AoE greatsword and seem to notice the largest DPS increase from the crushing enchant with the reduce armor.

For Valkyn Skoria set, I did reconsider the battle axe. Although I think I shied away from battle axe when I kept getting "target is immune to that effect" while leveling up. So it's been a long time.

Proscar

Hey guys,

So to answer my own question, I did a comparison between 2H maces and swords for damage, and here is what I found for you stamina weapon users. This is really a comparison between the passives in the 2H line. I didn't include axes, because until they make all things susceptible to bleeding (i.e. robots, daedra, etc) then I don't think their bonus is worth much compared to these two.

This is done with wrecking blow spam only. It is WITH the Empower buff from wrecking blow (i.e. this is after the first WB has been cast on enemy). It is without executioner.

The compared weapons are a purple 2H mace vs purple 2H sword, both are precise traited and with the lightning damage enchantment (these were leftover from prior makes, since I'm a sorc and tried to see if disintegrate worked with these).



From what I'm seeing, for the monsters tested (ease of access in crag, as a solo tester), it appears 2H mace is superior to 2H swords in all cases.

I'd welcome some numbers from bosses and things we know have high armor.

Celless

Proscar wrote: »

Hey guys,

So to answer my own question, I did a comparison between 2H maces and swords for damage, and here is what I found for you stamina weapon users. This is really a comparison between the passives in the 2H line. I didn't include axes, because until they make all things susceptible to bleeding (i.e. robots, daedra, etc) then I don't think their bonus is worth much compared to these two.

This is done with wrecking blow spam only. It is WITH the Empower buff from wrecking blow (i.e. this is after the first WB has been cast on enemy). It is without executioner.

The compared weapons are a purple 2H mace vs purple 2H sword, both are precise traited and with the lightning damage enchantment (these were leftover from prior makes, since I'm a sorc and tried to see if disintegrate worked with these).



From what I'm seeing, for the monsters tested (ease of access in crag, as a solo tester), it appears 2H mace is superior to 2H swords in all cases.

I'd welcome some numbers from bosses and things we know have high armor.

I'm glad you posted this.

I think my biggest issue with mauls is that I haven't found the equivalent of a Master's Great Sword or a Dominion Greatsword.

The former giving an extra +150ish weapon damage over a crafted weapon of comparable quality even when the enchant runs dry. The latter reducing the target's armor by 2000ish instead of 1000.

But you're right. Without live numbers, this doesn't get us very far. You've rekindled the flame (and a hole in my coin purse) for wanting to test how things truly work on some bosses in 1.6.

Such questions...
Maul
Maul with Sharpened
Maul with Crushing enchant
Greatsword
Greatsword with Sharpened
Greatsword with Crushing enchant
Maul with Piercing champion points
Greatsword with Piercing Champion points
Maul with Sharpened, Crushing enchant, and Piercing champion points
Greatsword with Sharpened, Crushing enchant, and Piercing champion points

Proscar

Your questions interest me too. Makes you wonder if armor penetration is the best stat overall then, which would make stacking enchants and cps the best setup as you discuss at the end. I have tried a pvp sword (covenant) but dropped it after they nerfed the crit rate with 1.6 (although extra health is nice). Never have obtained a master 2h yet.

I may actually just stack out armor pen in cp and see what happens. Right now i have 10 pts in it, and i already have a little data on the wimpy mobs above. If damage and overall dps goes up i will let you know.

But with all good research, always good to have others replicate findins, so feel free to add amy numbers anyone else may find.

deepseamk20b14_ESO

I tested sword and mace myself a couple of days ago. Mace is better in PvP. Mace also gave me better numbers in PvE but some situations where the PvE target has no armor to begin with sword was better.

Dagoth_Rac

If 650 armor negates 1% damage, you would need to get 3,250 armor penetration to gain 5% damage and match the greatsword damage bonus. So 20% of the enemy armor would need to exceed 3250. 3250 / 0.20 = 16,250. I have no idea how common it is for bosses to have that much armor or if it varies from boss to boss.

On the other hand, the 7% crit bonus from a gold Precise Weapon only gives you roughly 3.5% bonus damage. So if you could get 2,275 armor penetration from Sharpened, it would equal Precise. But without knowing the exact armor values of bosses it is hard to know what is better.

Proscar

Thanks for the math, not that great at that part. I did do a few more tests here, this time between sharpened and piercing. Numbers are kinda unexpected but overall not a huge difference. Again for these tests, I tried to manipulate only one variable.

So here is precise mace and sword vs sharpened mace and sword. Again, all weapons are purple V14, with lightning enchant for consistency (for what I had laying around). I was hitting only the V10 giants in the Rift, with wrecking blow spam only (again after the initial Empower buff).



Per hit, sharpened dose more damage obviously. For precise to work, we gotta see how it does with final DPS.

So for overall DPS, I just did 10 giants that happened to walk into my crosshairs and recorded DPS. Numbers are a bit surprising to me, but I think a larger pool would give better data. I got bored with just 40 though...so someone else could do more lol.



So from this, it appears that sharpened swords seems to be the best. Perhaps with these little giants, the sharpened trait on a mace provided no extra benefit given all armor was already negated (if they are actually wearing armor with their loincloths).

I plan on testing crushing enchant vs lightning enchant next. Forgive the formatting...I'm not great at posting on forums lol.

Proscar

So this next set was interesting. Here used V14 purple swords, both precise traited, with one enchanted with shock damage, one with crushing (both purple glyphs). Tested on 15 giants this time (V10), but again this is still a small sample size so numbers can be variable based on how lucky I got with crits. For instance, the DPS here for precise lightning weapon is lower than what I got on earlier tests (8.6K now vs 8.9K before).

For the damage you see on the crusher numbers, it is after Empower buff from WB, and during the 5 sec window of armor reduction for the crusher enchant.



But overall, not really seeing a big difference between elemental damage vs crusher, which is interesting. I should note also that disintegrate (for sorcs) didn't proc at all with lightning weapon.

The similarity between DPS may be due to the fact that crusher proc'd once during the life of the giant, whereas lightning went off twice usually. (Recall that there is a 4 sec internal cooldown between the procs.)

Next up, I think I will play around with CP in the mage constellation, probably at least armor pen vs weapon damage (30 points into each).

Proscar

So here is my final analysis. For this one, I compared again maces vs swords, precise vs sharpened, but most importantly champion points: 30 points in mighty (Mage constellation) vs 30 points in piercing (Mage constellation). Mighty increases physical damage and piercing increases armor penetration.

Again for the testing, I was hitting V10 giants in Rift. The weapons are purple V14 swords and maces, with either precise or sharpened traits. All 4 weapons had lightning enchants for consistency. Attacks were wrecking blow spam only. All buffs remained the same throughout testing.

---

First, the damage chart for 30 points in Piercing (and 0 points in Mighty):



As we see here, sharpened obviously does more damage per hit than precise does. Sword hits harder than mace, similar to what we saw earlier.

Now for the DPS for 30 points in Piercing (and 0 points in Mighty). These numbers are the averages, based on the first 15 kills that I had on the giants:



Thus from my testing with Piercing, 2H sharpened sword appears to be the winner for that set.

---

However, the next set is very interesting. This set was done for 30 points in Mighty, and 0 points in Piercing.

The damage chart:



Here you can see that 2H sharpened maces are ahead by a huge amount. I was getting 10k on non-crit WBs here!

And the final DPS:



This confirms then that 2H sharpened maces takes the lead, when there are 30 points in mighty.

---

TLDR: From my testing on wimpy V10 giants, 2H sharpened maces with focus on Mighty points in the Mage Constellation provides the highest DPS overall (in the things I have tested).

I answered my own question, and hopefully this is helpful to others.

Of note...I didn't test Precise Strikes. Because I got tired of killing giants and it was late.

Stannum

Hmm interesting numbers. I think DW will be also interesting.
On VR tigers two swords are better, but on VR10 snakes s+s<h+h<s+h (tested with flying blade skill)

LIQUID741

These are some of my fav. posts on ESO forums...such good info. that has the #'s to back it up. Thank you for this!

Nutronic

Great information! This gives me the idea that maces with this combo would work best in PVE for consistency in battle against most foes where the armor reduction matters because it's percent based so high from the get go. My question then is would axes with high crit bleed and mighty be better for sustained fights in PVP if you had a healing debuff.... need to test this myself at some point.

Proscar

I actually would prefer axes myself just because...well they are axes. But they only proc bleeds with light or heavy attacks, and not with weapon skills. If they would proc on weapon skills then you coul make some killer damage, especially with large groups bleeding all over the place with cleave spam. The damage to nearby enemies with the first 2h passive (sorry, can't recall the name right now) also will not proc axe bleeds. I checked.

Unfortunately too, it appears to me that just spamming wrecking blow gives as much, if not more dps, than light or medium weaving. This further kills axe usefulness if you are just spamming wb. Of course you lose on ultimate gains and monster helm procs without weaving also.

Then of course, some things just won't bleed, which kills cleave and axes both.

Specifically for pvp as you are discussing, i shouldnt really provide any input as my pvp experience is very limited. However, from what I have read, most 2h will spam wb in pvp, which again provides no axe bleeds if this is the case.

Dagoth_Rac

I do not understand why so many mobs are immune to bleeding. Yes, I know skeletons have no veins. But verisimilitude goes out the window when you can do fire DoT against a Flame Atronach and poison DoT against a spider and so on. Why does the game only care about physiology when bleeding is in question?

Proscar

I agree, with DW and 2H, bleeds are pretty important for a couple of the weapon skills, plus the passives for axes. The buff last year to axe bleeds was nice, but I would rather they removed the immunities.

I think this topic has already been done to death, but hopefully they will remove the bleed immunity.

Nutronic

The problem with WB spam is the wind-up and blocks. Axe bleed bypasses blocking and I think might go through shields. I am not 100% on these though so I'll have to try them out myself.

Proscar

So just to clarify on the bleeds, since I have been very interested in making a dot dps for skoria set, bleeds in pvp can be blocked and prevent them from being put on. Once they are put on though, they can be blocked and reduced, as well as purged. Blocknig aside, bleeds bypass all armor and can crit, so that is nice. However, in pvp they are pretty easily mitigated.

I don't think they go through damage shields currently either, but rather just eat away at them. This however I'm not 100% sure of.

Father

Mauls is the king. I've tested this during pts maces always had 0.5-1k more dmg. Tested this with wrecking blow from sneak.
You will see a bugger difference on Hummanoids cause they wear armor.

sebban

Very interesting thread, and thank you for all your efforts in testing. I would like to know if Sharpened Mauls are still king versus bosses in Dungeons, Trials and VDSA, especially if there is a source of Major Fracture. Done any tests on Blood Spawn in Spindleclutch or the dude in SO for example?

Alcast

Regular mobs: almost 0 armor
World/dung Bosses: If you put major fracture on them they almost end up with 0 Armor
Trial Bosses: Shitloads of armor, still have to do some testing.

The only good place to use mace and/or sharpened is in trials.

Also, Master 2H is only aviable with a Sword which gives you an EXTRA Weap dmg bonus whereas you cant get that from a Mace etc, that is also why Sword 2H(to be exact Master2H) is better

deepseamk20b14_ESO

Alcast wrote: »

Regular mobs: almost 0 armor
World/dung Bosses: If you put major fracture on them they almost end up with 0 Armor
Trial Bosses: Shitloads of armor, still have to do some testing.

The only good place to use mace and/or sharpened is in trials.

Also, Master 2H is only aviable with a Sword which gives you an EXTRA Weap dmg bonus whereas you cant get that from a Mace etc, that is also why Sword 2H(to be exact Master2H) is better

What's the enchant on the 2h sword again?

Khivas_Carrick

So coming back to this, has anybody tested 2H maces out in Trials?

supernico

I Did some tests weeks ago. 2H Sword / Mace Sharpened. Vs low armor, sword does more dmg, vs high armor targets, mace does more dmg, cuz it has more armor amount to penetrate .

Proscar

I feel that the numbers I posted above do show that the sharpened 2H sword does indeed outshine the sharpened 2H mace when head to head...however things seem to change when you start changing up the CPs. I only tested 30 each for those, but mace pulled ahead for me when points were in mighty (as opposed to piercing).

However as I did note, these were only done on giants. What we need is more data on bloodspawn or trial bosses, which I don't have easy access to really. Someone in a bigger guild may need to provide this data, and certainly data and numbers always make these posts more fun.

As of now I'm rocking a 2h mace and loving it, but I wouldn't mind swapping back to sword if someone can show they pull ahead at some point. I may actually swap anyway in the future just due to the number of sets that use sword instead of mace...but bashing things with a maul is just so satisfying.

Proscar

Alcast wrote: »

Regular mobs: almost 0 armor
World/dung Bosses: If you put major fracture on them they almost end up with 0 Armor
Trial Bosses: Shitloads of armor, still have to do some testing.

The only good place to use mace and/or sharpened is in trials.

Thanks for the data on the armor, but the testing was done actually on regular mobs (elite v10 giants) who have 0 armor and the mace was still superior with 30 points in mighty. If there is more armor to be seen in trials, then I would suspect mace would only do even better.