With weighting moved what are people looking to replace that primary property slot? This would be for anyone with heavily+ weighting and no available guiding light flares. There is a long list of flares some common, some uncommon, as well as defender for possibilites.
Copied from the newly updated Item Properties page on the wiki.
Defensive bonus
Fire flares
Cold flares
Lightning flares
Acid flares
Vibration (earth, impact) flares
Disintegration flares
Disruption flares
Vacuum (void) flares
Plasma flares
Steam flares
Unbalance (burst of force) flares
Grapple (tendril of force) flares
Dispel flares
Mechanical (three varieties: slash, puncture, crush) flares
Defender is overrated in my opinion as it still is capped at +50 total. Why not just get a +50 weapon and stance down a bit?
In my view, it'll be mechanical puncture which will probably be impossible to find, Dispel, Grapple, Unbalance, Disruption, Disintegration, Acid,Vacuum, Plasma, Lightning, Fire, Vibration, Cold, and finally Steam flares, you know, for cooking dumplings and things.
Where is it stated that it is capped at +50? Zelnorn is maxed at +50 but that is because of the metal properties rather than Enchantment/Defensive Bonus
Someone made good use of the DB offered at rtcf to make a 7x/6x fusion bastard sword wasn't it?
@lochiven From my understanding the total bonus coming from the weapon can't exceed +50 with any combination in between. So like a +25/+25 or +40/+10 or +10/+40 etc. Someone who's 100% please confirm or correct.
Unless you really have no way of knockin' stuff down and really need to, I'd take grapple and unbalance out of the running too. If I recall correctly, they have higher thresholds for death crits than most of the other "normal" flares.
Edit to add:
Just checked the critical tables, and I was correct. Unbalance/grapple has a death crit threshold of rank 9 for most areas, when it can death crit. Most of the older ones, fire, lightning, et cetera, have rank between 6-7 depending on area to death crit.
@lochiven said in Flare choice when you have enough weighting to supress guiding light:
Where is it stated that it is capped at +50? Zelnorn is maxed at +50 but that is because of the metal properties rather than Enchantment/Defensive Bonus
Someone made good use of the DB offered at rtcf to make a 7x/6x fusion bastard sword wasn't it?
Yes, none of the property slots are tied to enchant.
You can theoretically, if approved, get a 10x enchant, 10x TD, or 10x DB, or 10X of weighting weapon or padding or resistance of each type etc for armor, with enchant.
Only zelnorn shares the bonus from enchant. But I think he wasn't saying that but just that stancing down effectively does the same thing,
The confusion might just be coming from the shorthand. If Zelnorn is normally put as 3x/2x, then something that is 3x with 2x DB, under the hood, is probably 3x W/ 2x DB. But for convenience, most people stack the bonuses into one syntax.
As for the initial question, I imagine like many things, it depends on what you're fighting. But I find Plasma, Acid, and Disintegrate, to be good "all around" flares. As Flimbo mentioned, Grapple/Unbalance are awesome, if you need them, but pointless if you don't.
@roblar, Stancing down would provide the DS at the cost of AS. If you can have 10x AS as well as 10x defender on the same item, why not have the best of both worlds. That being said, defender was never one I'd even have considered in the past since weighting/flares was always more desirable but it is worth at least considering now being that it is an always on effect rather than the offensive boost from a flare 1/5 swings (I think that was the % chance to flare but don't quote me)
Before adding several weighting services, acid flares were what I had on my morning star.
Yep, I was just saying I think that is what he was saying. Defender would indeed be better than stancing for not losing AS, other than the slot being used for defense instead of offense which I'd prefer.
I'm all about the best of both worlds though! So it is a better option than before but still not the best option in my opinion (maybe if you got it to +50, and/or are a squishier THW or non shield using type).
There's a 10x / 6x TD shield I know of...