Melee - biggest hitter?

[fordfanboi]

What class combo has the biggest hits? I believe the Scythe has the largest damage range? but does it offer the largest hits when skills are involved?

I've been playing a Paragon and he produces some nice DPS ( biggest similar level hits are 70ish ), but I wouldn't mind trying something close combat with massive hits. Maybe go Hammer mastery on my secondary?

Thanks!

[liamSlayer]

I would say assasin with there attack chains

[jayeddie]

What class combo has the biggest hits? I believe the Scythe has the largest damage range? but does it offer the largest hits when skills are involved?

I've been playing a Paragon and he produces some nice DPS ( biggest similar level hits are 70ish ), but I wouldn't mind trying something close combat with massive hits. Maybe go Hammer mastery on my secondary?

Thanks!

Try a 'sin. They can develop some serious DPS w/ a good combo. Just be careful and don't tank. They're melee, but play more like a caster.

[fordfanboi]

Assassin's have the largest single hits with a 17 base damage weapon? WOW! What skill gives them such a large increase over something that does 41 base damage?

Thanks!

[jayeddie]

Assassin's have the largest single hits with a 17 base damage weapon? WOW! What skill gives them such a large increase over something that does 41 base damage?

Thanks!

Most daggers do piercing damage which has a little armor penetration (meaning partially ignores armor). An average single strike on a 'sin (while skill enhanced) can be upwards of 40hp, dependant on various things. A typical 'sin combo includes 3 distinct strikes, a lead, an off-hand, and a dual. Duals have the potential to hit twice (dual-attack) resulting in 4 hits per combo about 95% of the time.

Daggers have the fastest attack rate of any weapon, therefore if each hit in a combo (which many of us consider 1 "attack") is an "average" hit, you wind up w/ (again, on average) 160+ points of damage in a touch over 1-second. That doesn't include critical hits, which a 'sin can land about 50-60% of the time. Add a 20/20 "Sundering" mod and it gets even yummier

It also doesn't include degen from poison or bleeding, if they are part of your combo, or any other conditions such as blind, daze, cripple, even DW.

[The Boz]

To correct jayeddie:
Piercing damage has NO inherent armor penetration.
Dual Attacks always strike twice, doing the base damage and the listed additional damage twice.
Daggers attack at the same speed as Swords and Axes, once every 1.33 seconds. They do have a bonus of being able to randomly strike with both blades while NOT using a skill, which can double the chances of getting a critical hit.
An Assassin with 12 in Dagger Mastery and Critical Strikes attacking a level 20 target will have approximately 30% chances of having any one of his hits result in a critical hit. This may be further increased by Way of the Assassin, Critical Eye, and other skills like it.
Also, when a foe is fleeing from you, all your melee attacks that hit are automatically critical hits against that foe.
A critical hit deals the maximum damage possible against the target's Armor Level, multiplied by 1.414(square root of 2). Now, this is in itself not much for an assassin, but it's important to know that it fuels the assassin with energy. A critical hit with a scythe deals the most damage, with hammers in second place and axes in third.

And yes, the Assassin is capable of dealing the most spike damage and the most prolongued DPS.

[Aiiane]

The real question is, are you asking about biggest hits in terms of lots of damage in a short amount of time (irregardless of how many "packets" it comes in, i.e. numbers displayed on your screen), or are you asking about the biggest number that'd pop up on your screen?

The former, certainly assassins with their attack chains - individual damage numbers might be ~50 when you count skills, but they can make 5-6+ numbers pop up in a span of a second or two.

For the latter, probably warriors - Final Thrust on a target below 50% does a pretty big single hit.

[Drec Sutal]

Basically if you put up team of 10 standardized foes, a warrior would take them out first, then a paragon. If you put up only *one* target, a sin would win no contest. Sins tend to do spikes of damage and then pretty much auto-attack for a while, while warriors tend to do fairly consistent damage that is larger on average then the sin. It kinda goes with their names (a warrior is better in a pitched battle, a sin is perfect for taking out a lone target ASAP).

I believe the biggest possible single martial hit in the game is a dervish with several (not necessarily offensive) enchantments on it.

[jayeddie]

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough on a couple things, sorry.

A Dual-attack does always attack twice, but whether it actually hits successfully twice or not is dependant on a couple of things, enemy enchants, blind condition, and a couple others.
Base crit percentage is around 30%. I use critical eye almost all the time, so I tend to get alot of crits (50-60%) :shrug:

[The Boz]

Warriors have the more sustainable DPS, while an Assassin has to work for it a bit. And Warriors can survive in the heat of battle much more easily. That is why most Assassin builds, especially the PvP ones, are hit and run spikes.
And regarding the biggest damaging attack skill... Blades of Steel? Impale?

EDIT: to jayeddie
Sure, with a 16 in one and Critical Eye, reaching 50% isn't really hard, and does wonders for your energy reserves.