Hey, I was just wondering is it possible for a Druid to effectively useother weapons in combat.
If trained properly, can they use bows, rapiers, swords, axes, daggers as effective or almost as effective as others wihin Achaea?

If so which would you recommend and why?

Other weapons are rather essential to Druid combat. I would recommend a handaxe to help set up limb breaks. A flail wouldn't be awful, either.

Yah I have a flail and working on a handaxe. Depends on yoru race. If your raja stick with a quarterstaff because it's fast enough to do what you need. otherwise get a flail.

You need to put a buttload into weaponry (at least to shatter) though. Druid combat is hard without weaponry.

okay, I am a tsol'aa. The Scimitar, seems like a great weapon as welland seems great for RP purposes as well.

As long as you aren't a dark-skinned tsol'aa who dual-wields scimitars.

I think bow would be pretty cool as a Druid, and envenomed arrows never hurt, but I know next to nothing about combat, so don't take what I say to heart.

I'm assuming this is a typo because yes, yes they do.

Well I ment using them in combat but yeah whatever

Bows are nice... love mine... but are they really affective unless you get an artie bow??

With hydra morph out, shatter/loki and shatter/negate will be useful, to say the least...

I've always wanted to try raja druid with artie bow for reflexed meteors followed by artied mauls + bees

that would just be ouch....

I thought bows couldn't be used at all if they weren't knight or serpent? Aside from artie bows, of course.

This is correct.

And retarded.

Sorry for the noob question, but what's the benefit of shattering instead of mauling or arm/legclamping to break limbs? Does it take fewer hits to break it, or have a shorter balance? Does it do the same amount of damage?

If there really are significant benefits to having shatter I may reconsider what to save my credits up for...

You should be saving up credits to give to me, so no need to reconsider!

Shatter is (in many cases) a one-hit mangle. So yeah, it's quite a bit quicker.

cripple (1 mending)
break (1 resto 1 mending)
mangle (2 resto 1 mending)

Ah, thanks. That does sound appealing.

But how "in many cases"? One nice thing about mauling/legclamping is that you always know how many times you have to do it before the limb breaks. Does shatter have some random factor, or does it vary by my strength, or by the opponent, or what?

I know it varies by damage stat on the weapon, and I'd imagine it'd vary by strength. In general, you could easilly get a warhammer to simgle-hit break legs.

It also varies based on the max health of the target, but there's little you can do about that.

Shatter is determined by weapon damage and your opponent's max health, as well as having proficiency in the weapon you're shattering with.

Edit: Strength doesn't affect whether a limb will break from shatter or not.

Okay. Thanks for the help everyone.

thanks for the help everyone, as well

Also, as far as I remember, blunt weapons are better for shattering than edged weapons. That's why most people use warhammers and flails and such, to my recollection.

Well, aside from battleaxes, blunt weapons are the only weapons you can shatter with.

I just keep imagining someone lopping a person's limb off when they use an axe to shatter.