Best Weapon Traits

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What do you think the best weapon traits are? Do you pay attention to them when using weapons or do you pay more attention to the weapon’s ability? I’ll list a bunch of weapon traits just for a refresher. I have Quick at the top because it’s clearly the best trait there is, no questions asked, and it’s only found on two weapons (Rope Dart and Norbert’s Turnip). Silence is crazy, so it has to be up there. Enchanting is very popular as well, and very powerful, because it’s a free 2 mana every turn (it’s one of the reasons Life and Death is so difficult to play against, because you are playing against a clock till they can cast again, even if they have few matches). Deadly is very good because it isn’t color specific and is equivalent to 8 mana spread evenly, every time. Hexed I put on the list just to be thorough, although sometimes it backfires because traits trigger after the weapon’s ability (it will apply all the debuffs, THEN it will transform).

Anyway, what do you think? What would be the best set of weapon traits in the game? Do you think there’s already a weapon that has them? There are obviously a ton of weapon traits I didn’t bother listing because they are so incredibly useless (Rusty is one of them: Eliminate 4 Armor from the first enemy). Personally, I think the Doomed Statue (yellow Artifact) has an amazing set of traits: it cleanses you, it enchants you, it silences the first enemy, and then it drains 2 mana from yellow enemies, and you have a 25% chance of gaining 2 magic with Lucky). Rope Dart is also very good: it entangles the first enemy, after pulling them of course, you get an extra turn, and it destroys 3 gems, which helps set up useful matching after using it.

What kind of traits would you like to see? Do you think we’ll ever see weapons with 6 traits? Doomed weapons only have 5 traits, just like Mythics (which is one more than the Legendary weapons, which only have 4).

Quick: Gain an extra turn
Enchanting: Enchant myself
Peaceful: Silence the first enemy
Deadly: Give all Allies 2 Mana
Radiant: Give 1 mana to all allies
All other color specific mana givers (although these are 2 mana, and I don’t know why they aren’t actually 3 since Deadly is -strictly- better than them)
Shielding: Barrier myself
Color restricted 2 Mana traits
Destroy 3 color specific gems
Destroy 1 color specific gem
Hexed: 10% chance to transform the first enemy into a Giant Toad
Webbed: Web the first enemy
Leeching: Steal 2 Mana from the first enemy
Curing: Cleanse myself
Frozen: freeze the first enemy
Damned: Curse the first Enemy
Wraithlike: Steal 1 Magic from the first enemy
Draining: Drain 3 Mana from the first enemy
Tangling: Entangle the first enemy
Bone: Create a Bonestorm
All other storms (Ice, Fire, Leaf, Dark, Dust, Light)
Ruined: Create a Doomskull (only useful when you’re already trying to create doomskull cascades)
Striking/Reaching/Treacherous: Deal 5 damage to the first/second/last enemy (Reaching is only on Polearms and Treacherous is only on Daggers, but Striking can be found on everything else)
Create a gem (different from destroy because you don’t gain the mana unless it creates a match)

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Don’t know if your list is in order of preference? But I’d put leeching/draining in the top 5. A perma drained enemy is arguably better than silenced, b/c it still mana blocks the troops below. On teams without good loops for constant drain the silence would be better.

… Reflection of Good does both, so just use that I guess and all bases are covered :wink:

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I basically just agree with a lot of what’s been said here, including the nice list of upgrades on the Doomed Statue and the potency of mana drain/leech, as shown by weapons like L&D, JoE, RoG.

Sacred (self-bless) is decent, didn’t see it there.

My list of best ones would be something along the lines of Quick, Draining, Shielding, Peaceful, Sacred, Enchanting, Tangling/Frozen/Damned, Deadly…

I actually rate Lightning (deal 5 scatter damage) pretty poorly, since it rarely does meaningful damage and can often trigger beneficial enemy traits (e.g. Orbweaver, Orcs).

The storms can be useful, but are very situational, and I’d much prefer weapons be able to be temporarily or non-permanently imbued with a particular element/storm for when they cast, similar to enchanting weapons or inserting gems/runes into weapons in other games.

With Doomed Glaive, I often find myself wishing that Tangling applied to the second enemy instead of the first, so another version of that could be interesting.

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Enchanting is probably my favorite as it lets weapons be much more powerful than they have any right to be. It makes them much easier to cast multiple times. Anu’s Sceptre, Life and Death, Orb of Winter etc.

One of my favorite weapon traits that I’ve never used is Mass Marked. Its an easy accidental snowball effect under the right situations. Unfortunately, I don’t have Prey Seeker and don’t use Wild Hunter… yet

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