Spiral Knights - Does anyone use the Faust charge attack?

Does anyone use the Faust charge attack?

35 replies [Last post]

Mon, 03/05/2012 - 13:11

Sacrontine

I've been using a Gran Faust to cut up jelly as far as I can remember, yet I have very rarely used it's charge attack, and when I have, I've quickly regretted it. For those that don't know, the GF charge has an about 50% change of inflicting strong Curse on the user, usually making all weapons useless for a good 40 seconds. In my view this makes the charge attack wholly useless, it's simply never so strong as to be worth the risk.

Now, I'm not gonna complain about balance, because I still find GF to be a decent sword even without it's charge attack, but I still find it odd from a designing POV to make a charge attack that isn't worth using. That's why I'm asking: am I simply a wuss for not soaking the occasional curse effect or is the charge attack really as useless as it seems to me?

Mon, 03/05/2012 - 13:18

Demonicsothe

As useless as you've seen and

As useless as you've seen and experienced. I'll occasionally use it on jk, if I accidently charged it instead of my fov. Or the end of lichen lairs, for the lulz. It really isn't worth the long charge time to use.

Mon, 03/05/2012 - 13:49

Toastnaut

I use it :)

The Faust actually has one of the best charges in the game, which is balanced by the chance to curse yourself.

If you don't have any curse protection and/or extra weapon slots unlocked, it's very risky, though.

With no curse resistance from your armour or trinkets, you will curse 2-3 of your weapons, not all, and 3 out of four of your vials. Filling your curse resistance bar half way with trinkets or armour resistance reduces your number of weapons cursed to two, and vials down to two as well; it also reduces the curse duration by about 10 seconds.
Filling it more further reduces the penalties depending on how much resistance you have.

How much resistance you have also affects your chance of being cursed, even with no resistance I don't find that it's nearly as high as 50% though, and I use the Faust/Gran Faust charge a lot. With more resistance you will be cursed maybe 1/5 charge attacks or less.

As for the trade off for the risk, the charge attack is one of the strongest sword attacks available (I just finished the damage charts for every stratum for the Faust, so I know) and even against neutral monsters it does MUCH higher damage than the normal attacks, whereas most swords' charge does a bit less than double the damage of a normal attack. By "much higher" I mean, at depth 28 it's doing 601 damage to jellies and gremlins without a bonus (vs 288 for the normal attack) and 519 against constructs and beasts (vs only 200 on the normal attack.)

It can be risky, but against large, and strong monsters it can really save your butt, even if you do curse yourself. It's pretty good against the jelly king, but it's especially good against giant lichen colonies and silkwings hovering around behind things that you can't reach. Even though the bolt doesn't do much damage to them because they're fiends, it will pierce through to where they are, and if it curses them they will die very quickly.

Mon, 03/05/2012 - 14:17

Alynn

I use it

I use it quite often and im not bothered by the curse at all. I have no curse and I only get cursed 1/4 times. Even if I get cursed, I can just switch out to another wep :)

Mon, 03/05/2012 - 14:31

Paweu

I've used it, then Acheron

I've used it, then Acheron got buffed and i upgraded my Faust to Gran Faust so i don't anymore.

Mon, 03/05/2012 - 15:10

Thunderbunz

>> I've used it, then Acheron got buffed and i upgraded my Faust to Gran Faust so i don't anymore.

This. Acheron's charge attack blows away the GF's by a landslide.

Mon, 03/05/2012 - 15:43

Toastnaut

Acheron

Yeah, there is that.

I was super disappointed when I upgraded my Faust and it took two lifetimes to charge up to curse the heck out of things. I had Acheron first, and I still use it more.

When I use my Gran Faust I still use the charge whenever I can afford to. XD

Mon, 03/05/2012 - 22:42

Metagenic

lol sorry if I sound like an ass, but

Whenever someone curses himself with a Faust charge, I consume all the remedy capsules I can find.

Tue, 03/06/2012 - 01:23

Threshy

Sometimes....

I recently got a faust because I was extremely tired of jellies owning me. I only occasionally use it and often regret it too. BUT if I get curse resist I will use it more. My friend with an acheron does seem to be more useful against large groups of jellies though.

Tue, 03/06/2012 - 03:16

Metagenic

About shadow swords

I think Faust is an inferior choice to be honest. Acheron is way better. It's fast enough to hit gremlins reliably, and its charge attack is extremely useful. Quick charge, 5 AOE explosions, and no self-curse.

Tue, 03/06/2012 - 03:50

#10

Batabii

I love to use the charge

I love to use the charge attack against clusters of enemies, but GF's is too slow to bother with in the meantime. As for the curse, I only seem to get stuck with it 30% of the time or so, and I always have 3 weapon slots.

As far as I'm concerned, being able to curse enemies makes it the best shadow weapon in the game.

Tue, 03/06/2012 - 11:52

#11

Aureate

Processing Thoughts of You Always

Yes, but only when I have a third weapon slot... otherwise the risk isn't worth it since I have crappy luck ._.

Tue, 03/06/2012 - 12:50

#12

Bopp

my two cents

I haven't used a Faust in many months, because I upgraded to GF. GF takes a really long time to charge. That is the main reason why I rarely use the charge attack. (Also, I'm usually using Acheron.)

Tue, 03/06/2012 - 13:22

#13

Derpules

I use the charge whenever I can.

It's why I got CTR H. :P Just make sure you have the equivalent of Curse Max + Low; then only one of your weapons gets cursed. A minor inconvenience.

Curse gear is very cheap.

Tue, 03/06/2012 - 19:00

#14

Dagordae

Curse resist

Just get curse resist gear. The Gran Faust has one of the best charge attacks in the game; massive damage, good range, very good chance of cursing, and knockback. And it is way better than the Acheron. Much higher damage, chance for a good status effect, and nothing weak towards shadow is hard to hit.

Tue, 03/06/2012 - 19:05

#15

Demonicsothe

@Dagordae

Massive damage? Acheron charge has comparable damage with the full wave, which is not hard to achieve. Acheron also has a higher range, with no wall-hug disability. Good chance of cursing, and a even better chance of self curse.

Getting curse resist armour like deadshot, reduces the potential damage output of faust line charges. Whereas, acheron can use skolver to increase the damage.

Besides, acheron can charge way faster than GF. And before you say get ctr, that same ctr will boost acherons as well, so it still has a faster charge.

Tue, 03/06/2012 - 19:21

#16

Dagordae

So you have comparable

So you have comparable damage, only with a charge attack, and no chance for curse. Oh, and much less knockback from a hit.
The actual sword can juggle anything indefinitely with ease, Curse trinkets are cheap and effective at negating curse, I have two trinkets and cursing only makes me change my sword occasionally. And, honestly, the acheron is the worst sword in the brandish line. Every other one can put on a fairly effective status effect while doing comparable damage.

BTW, campared damagewise, Gran faust does several hundred more with a full wave. I'm at about 900 for the initial hit and 300 for each one afterword, acheron is at 600 initial burst and 200 per explosion.

And by hit I mean charge or normal hit, Faust's charge sends them flying across the room, Acheron's simply pushes them to the edge of the explosions.

Tue, 03/06/2012 - 20:01

#17

Derpules

@Demonicsothe

Okay, first off, I'm not claiming that Faust charge is optimal. It pretty plainly is not optimal. It's just viable, and useful.

That said, you're off-base on the Curse resist analysis. Yes, gear with built-in Curse tends to suck. That's why you get your Curse resist in UV form instead, and still use that leet offense bonus gear. High + Med is supercheap, and is enough to reduce your weapons self-Cursed to one.

Of course, if you were already aiming for significant UVs on your gear, then trying to get Curse resist on top of that is going to be difficult and expensive due to the relative rarity of multi-UVs. But in my experience, despite the high level of activity on the trade forum, your average player isn't that much concerned about UVs. For someone who would otherwise have gone with a clean set, or maybe a couple of lows, it's no great sacrifice to pay maybe 50kcr in the AH for a High and a Med.

Tue, 03/06/2012 - 19:41

#18

Fehzor

I use the charge. Its

I use the charge. Its amazing.

Tue, 03/06/2012 - 20:03

#19

Demonicsothe

You guys mistaken me. I'm not

You guys mistaken me. I'm not arguing that faust charges are terrible, or weak, or unviable.

At Dagordae, I was arguing that acheron has a stronger and better charge. What's favorable in acheron's charge, is that you don't need ctr, don't need gear with curse resist, uv or not.

@Derpule: That is kind of limiting though, that one needs to pay for certain gear or uv to be able to use a weapon's charge without a dangerous side-effect. Especially since, with 50k, one can buy 750 ce at 6600cr/100ce. That is almost all the ce cost of crafting a 5* weapon. Or, buy a 5* recipe at basil price, with enough left over to obtain around 350ce. A paltry amount compared to some spenders, but a significant amount to simply reduce the negative effects of one weapon.

Tue, 03/06/2012 - 20:13

#20

Derpules

Mm, but now you've changed your tune

I don't disagree with anything you're now saying, but "needs additional 50kcr expenditure" is not the same as "useless", is it? Once you make that expenditure--or if, for whatever reason, you've already made the sub-optimal choice of a built-in Curse armour/helm--it's very useful indeed.

Tue, 03/06/2012 - 20:26

#21

Demonicsothe

I don't recall changing any

I don't recall changing any of my tune. If you are referring to my first post, it was not worded in "faust charge sucks and is totally useless." I specifically put, "as you've experienced" for a reason.

If you had already spent 50k for it, might as well put it to good use where there is use for it, I don't disagree. But requiring you to spend that much because you don't have it, is a rather big drawback for the sword.

Tue, 03/06/2012 - 22:58

#22

Bopp

Curse trinkets?

Dagordae, you use your trinket slots for curse trinkets? I use mine for offensive trinkets.

Wed, 03/07/2012 - 05:52

#23

Sacrontine

I should add that I only use

I should add that I only use two weapon slots (and no trinkets), so the curse turns me completely helpless for the full forty seconds, and don't think it's worth the trouble to invest in curse-resistant gear for the sake of one weapon. That said, after reading Toastnaut's post I now think I'll try using it as a situational ability against stronger opponents when I have remedy capsules available, so let's see what happens.

Wed, 03/07/2012 - 06:34

#24

Derpules

I wouldn't recommend it.

Your remedy caps might get Cursed. . . .

Wed, 03/07/2012 - 07:30

#25

Griseolar

If you like using the Faust's

If you like using the Faust's charge attack and you're already adapted to handling the curse, just continue using it as you see fit. Just because you have a different playstyle to some other people doesn't necessarily make you a bad teamplayer.

Wed, 03/07/2012 - 09:01

#26

Demonicsothe

If you are planning to charge

If you are planning to charge a faust, you could drop all of your remedies beforehand. Charge, unleash, and walk over a remedy to pick it up, uncursed.

Wed, 03/07/2012 - 22:41

#27

Derpules

Talk about bothersome, though!

I'd rather pay 50kcr once myself. :P

Seriously though, I feel silly for not thinking of that. Would have been a big help in the time before my curse gear hit 4*.

Thu, 03/08/2012 - 15:10

#28

Jackbauerisboss

My 2 cents

@Demonicsothe: You might not be saying Gran Faust charge is suckish, but I am :P

Gran Faust charge is silly and useless. When comparing to an Acheron:

1. Acheron charge damage is extremely close to a Faust's
2. Acheron charges in like half the time of a Gran Faust. You say get UV's? That same UV will help and Acheron in the same proportion, thus making the Acheron better yet again
3. The curse chance just completely rules out Gran Faust charge. You say get UV's? Why waste your money on getting such a pathetic UV? Wouldn't you rather get a status resistance or damage resistance UV?
4. Curse trinkets......I don't think I even have to explain the silliness in this
5. General purpose, Acheron is above Gran Faust yet again. The speed lets you shield cancel much easier, and the full damage combo of the Acheron is more than the Gran Faust

Overall, I thinly Acheron quite nicely takes 1st place in best shadow sword. I'm sure there are other reasons I could have listed that I was too lazy to do, but this obviously proves my point.

~meis

Thu, 03/08/2012 - 18:30

#29

Derpules

The Faust is inferior.

No question. But "inferior" is not the same as "silly and useless". This game is perfectly playable with even the most underpowered weapon, and the Faust is not that: it's a strong PvE weapon eclipsed by an even stronger PvE weapon.

Re: UVs, Curse High on Wolver goes for a few tens of k cr. An actually defensively useful UV like ele high goes for maybe 2k CE. They really aren't comparable at all.

Thu, 03/08/2012 - 22:54

#30

Extred

Own playstyle

It depends on the player heavily, if you like heavy swords, you will mostly likely prefer Gran Faust over Acheron. For me I seriously hate the brandish lines, I have used a Glacius and a Combuster before and I hated it, to me the charged attack doesn't knock back enemies far enough and sometimes things that got hit does not flinch and comes jumping back and bite me. Not only that, when using normal 3 hit combos, the feel so different from a leviathan blade but it just doesn't feel right and it always seems like it doesn't have a knockback as much as the leviathan blade.

I never have that problem with Divine Avenger or Gran Faust. Loving the Divine Avenger and Gran Faust charge attacks as it knocks back enemies quite far away to do another charge and it is much safer to use as you can use the 1st hit and then shield, heck even with just the first hit, it hits things away and allows some space for running.

Well, I think I am a little off topic here, the curse of the charged attack doesn't bother me at all. if you have 4 weapon slots, you still can use 2 of your weapons. I used Gran Faust charged attack almost everywhere with jellies, Gremlins, sometimes even the robots in arenas. It is true that the charge time of Gran Faust is VERY slow, well that's the only downside of it. Well when you really like using a certain weapon, you will start to accept it's downside or try to minimize the flaws of a weapon. That's what I did anyway by using CTR trinklets. With a CTR Max, the charge time of the Gran Faust is around the same as a Divine Avenger(with no CTR bonus apart from the CTR medium when you heat it up to lvl10).

Fri, 03/09/2012 - 22:24

#31

Jackbauerisboss

Misunderstanding

@ Derpules: I didn't say the Gran Faust was "silly and useless", I said the CHARGE was. The Gran Faust can be a good weapon in some places. I was commenting on the charge, which is obviously what this thread is about.

~meis

Sun, 03/11/2012 - 02:29

#32

Fraxur

I only have Faust right now

I only have Faust right now so I do use the charge sometimes. But if I have my Radiant Silvermail on (has max curse resist), I will probably be using Faust charge a lot.

Sun, 03/11/2012 - 03:16

#33

Derpules

@Jackbauerisboss

I was referring to the charge too, i.e. I think the charge is inferior but useful and usable. Sorry if I was unclear.

Sun, 03/11/2012 - 10:20

#34

Qwao

Curse....

I spam Faust charge whenever gremlins annoy me or when jellies swarm me and get me killed- Jellies tend to clump together making faust charge and bullet likely to curse them and gremlins just get hurt a lot.

I don't really care with curse since I have 3 slots. Even if the last slot happens to be a sentenza, at least it gets the job done. I've rarely had cases when the not-cursed weapon turns out to be something unusable (say a 3* weapon I'm heating in a T3 Arena). Although sometimes I forget I'm wearing Armor of the Fallen and get myself cursed, in which case I go all "fml".

On a side note I don't really understand charge times. I hear from guildies vortexes charge ay blast bomb rate at 3-4*, and mist bomb rate at 5*. And then I know personally ISB charges slower. Here I'm hearing GF charging slower then faust- what's up with that? And why doesn't the wiki have proof? :|

Sun, 03/11/2012 - 11:17

#35

Demonicsothe

Because curse as a status is

Because curse as a status is so effing powerful. Curse something, and watch it destroy itself.

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Does anyone use the Faust charge attack?