Gladiators, Drop your spears!

A trend has been going around among gladiators recently. Although gladiators are able to wield many weapons as their ‘multi-tasking’ class description goes, almost all of their skills require a polearm to use. As more and more people saw the polearm as the main weapon of the gladiators, a few stood up saying otherwise, saying dual-wielding is actually more efficient than polearms.

This is the very post that popularized the dual-wield gladiator builds. I assume a lot of gladiator-wannabes here will find it informative.

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Gladiators, Drop your spears!

Greetings, I’m a lvl 45 dual-wield glad from 카이시엘 server. If you have a different opinion, than please read what I’m going to say first before you start flaming.

There is a variety of weapons for a gladiator to choose from. We are probably the class with most equip-able weapons. Before I get on to my main points, let’s go over the characteristics of each weapon.

• Dagger – one hand weapon with low attack power but with high speed(1.2) and critical rating(100)
• Long sword – one hand weapon with average damage , speed(1.4), and critical rating(50)
• Mace – one hand weapon with high damage, average speed(1.5), and low critical rating(10) Many comes with caster related stats
• Two-handed sword – two hand weapon with very high damage. slow speed(2.4) high accuracy but low critical rating
• Polearm – two hand weapon with highest damage and medium critical rating(50) but has slow speed(2.8) and low accuracy
• Long bow – two hand weapon with ranged attacks. it’s not very efficient for a gladiator to use but its useful for chases

This is the basic picture.

What are the cons and pros of using the one-hand weapons?

1. Dagger – Fast attack speed with high critical rating; low damage
2. Long sword – medium everything
3. Mace – High damage with medium speed and low critical rating

There’s not much to long sword, but something amazing happens if you use the dagger + mace combo.

You get the positive attributes of the daggers and maces combined.

In other words, you get the attack power of the mace combined with the high speed and critical rating of the dagger. It puts out so much damage that you basically become Aion’s top dpser. How much damage you get on polearms? I crit for over 4k on mobs.

What are the cons and pros of using the two-hand weapons?

1. Two-handed sword – high damage and decent speed for a two hand weapon; its high accuracy makes it a nice 1:1 pvp weapon
2. Polearm – very high damage and its knock down effect makes it a nice RvR weapon; however, its low critical rating is a minus

* You can often see polearm-glads losing to assassins in 1:1 because they can’t overcome assassins’ dodge rating. This is mostly because of their weapons’ low accuracy. While a polearm’s knock back is great for mass pvp, it loses its shine in 1:1s and PvE. For polearm-glads, they really can’t do much for their low accuracy except food/improvement stones.

Polearm is indeed a good weapon for RvR. It’s also the gladiator-only weapon so a lot of people go with the polearms, but I suggest that all of you forget about the polearms and try using other weapons.

Do not think ordinary and just go “only polearms are for glads.”‘

For example, most people thought staff was the best thing for chanters during beta, but then people realized mace + shield was actually better.

Read the points below and reconsider

♦Attack speed

Dual-wield glads (1.5) have almost twice the attack speed of polearm glads (2.8) If we are talking unique weapons with more stats, then the difference is much bigger.

Ex. For +20% atk speed stat, dual-wields get it as 40% while polearms get 20% (1.5 becomes 0.9 with 40% increase while 2.8 becomes 2.24 with 20% increase)

♦Attack power

• Improvement stones – dual-wields get 8 slots to socket, while polearms only get 4
• Stat increases – dual-wields get it applied double, while polearms get it only once

-We are talking unique-grade gear here.

I use 알루키나 set, which applies ( +19% atk speed / +48 phsycial crit / +241 mana / 4 socket improvements ) to my weapons.

Basically,

for dual wield, I get +38% atk speed / +96 crit / +482 mana / 8 socket improvements

while for polearm I get, +19% atk speed / +48 phsycial crit / +241 mana / 4 socket improvements

♦Comparison In PvE

Test subject: 벨루스란 Draconewt Soldier

[Skill: Blade Explosion]

• Dual-wield – highest crit 4,584
• Polearm – highest crit 1,876 [+Knock down]

[Sigma Skill: Blade Shockwave]

• Dual-wield – highest crit 5,184
• Polearm – highest crit 2,042 [+Knock down]

♦Comparison In PvP

Test subject: Lvl 45 Templar

• Dual-wield – 100% skill land rate, highest crit 1,700
• Polearm – 90% skill land rate, highest crit 600 [+Knock down]

Test subject: Lvl 45 Assassin

• Dual-wield – 100% skill land rate, highest crit 3,800
• Polearm – 40% skill land rate, highest crit 1,400 [+Knock down]

Test subject: Lvl 45 Ranger

• Dual-wield – 100% skill land rate, highest crit 3,950
• Polearm – 30% skill land rae, highest crit 1,700 [+Knock down]

Test Subject: Lvl 45 Sorcerer

• Dual-wield -100% skill land rate, highest crit 4,300
• Polearm – 100% skill land rate, highest crit 2,750 [+Knock down]

Test Subject: Lvl 45 Cleric

• Dual-wield – 100% skill land rate, highest crit 1,900
• Polearm – 100% skill land rate, highest crit 750 [+Knock down]

* Note that there are lots of variables in PvP

Now think about it. Are you just gonna insist on polearm because class description says so or would you give change a chance? I’d like to recommend the latter.

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Original Post

Elliot – It’s nice that gladiators are finding ways to improve themselves (dual-wield glads claim to get up to 3x damage output compared to polearm glads), but a question comes into my mind: Exactly how useless are the gladiator skills that NcSoft designed for them, that gladiators are choosing to spam regular attacks rather than using their skills? A lot of gladiators are actually annoyed by this movement, not because they don’t want to become stronger, but because if they improve themselves this way, they’ll never receive the needed buff patches on their skills. Also, the movement basically pissed off every class since gladiators are rolling on everything and worsened the gladiators’ reputation as the “Iteminator” (Half of the replies to the original thread consisted of other class people calling the gladiators item pigs)

A gladiator meets another gladiator in abyss. They just stand in the same spot, press attack button, and watch while pushing pot button with their left hand and their right hand fingers crossed for a crit. Is that the direction that Aion PvP is going at? That’s actually going back to Lineage 1 combat style. Is NCsoft doing a good job?