Rogues and Non-Piercing Weapons
 

Hi all! First time trying out EQ in earnest and I decided to check out Rogue since I enjoyed playing it in WoW. My biggest question is is it worth leveling the other melee weapon skills besides piercing as a Rogue? The wiki highly suggested maintaining piercing skill above all else and I'm curious if this will limit my weapon choices when I eventually unlock Dual Wielding.

Well mainhand needs to be a piercer.
Offhand can be anything equippable, so it's probably worth keeping some other skills up, just in case.

It would suck to get a screaming mace, or electrum-bladed wakizashi, and your skill is 1 with it.

Its nice to keep your skills up to date, but its not a big deal as weapon skills are very easy to level.

Got it so pretty much like the system in WoW where you want to maintain or at least have learned a weaponskill. Thanks for the quick reply, I'll try to keep them somewhat leveled then in relation to piercing.

Yep, exactly. It's more difficult in early levels to keep them all maxed, but soon xp will slow down significantly. Easier then to swap out weapons for a bit and skill up.

I know this isn't directly relevant to the thread topic but I'd figure it'd be better to ask here instead of making a new thread. When going for weapon upgrades where do I find the balance between weapon damage and attack delay? Am I always going to want to go for bigger damage numbers or can faster but weaker weapons be viable? For example Dagger vs Rapier.

As a rogue, you want your highest damage piercer in MH basically all the time, regardless of delay for BS. Given that all the classic weaps have crap ratios anyways, this is especially true.

Offhand is whatever best ratio thing you have.

Ah that makes sense, thanks.

Allow me to confuse you:

Your DPS is ((DMG*2)+DMG BONUS)/DLY. So if you keep a higher delay weapon in your MH, that damage bonus is applied less often, thus lowering your DPS. That bonus is applied to main hand weapon only. Is the lowering of constant DPS worth an increase in BS damage? Is swapping a larger damage weapon in just for that backstab worth it? The swap resets your swing timer, so think carefully about that last one.

IMHO your job as a rogue is to deliver constant high DPS. Your BS is just a tool in that toolbox; don't shine up your hammer and let the other tools rust.

divide damage into delay when comparing weapons.

for example

6 dmg 31 delay weapon =0.1935483

vs 7 dmg 42 delay = 0.166666

if looking at a weapon that is not in main hand for backstab than the first weapon is actually better. the ratio is higher