Best standart melee weapons

[Gram]

Interested in finding out what weapons might be worth bothering to keep given that I've already got the Glaive of Pain, I decided to create another hobbit rogue, use debug options to max it out and give it a whole bunch of epic gear, and see what kind of damage numbers I came up with. Here's what I came up with (damage is rounded).
Regular weapons:

Name	Base	Evil	Undead	Brand	Naive avg
Wrath	430	522	794	612	589.5
Pain	584	584	584	584	584
Aule	440	540	641	641	565.5
Ringil	430	498	566	566	515
Aiglos	414	472	643	529	514.5
Eonwe	420	493	566	566	511.25
Eorling	455	538	455	455	475.75
Thunder	432	432	432	599	473.75
Crisdur	405	476	546	405	458
Eowyn	387	443	611	387	457
Aglaran	448	448	448	448	448
Ulmo	447	447	447	447	447
Durin	416	416	416	532	445
Anduril	376	426	476	476	438.5
Sting	414	445	475	414	437
Fundin	392	448	504	392	434
Erebor	400	400	400	490	422.5
Orome	379	379	379	532	417.25
Nain	400	400	400	400	400
Balli	380	380	380	380	380

Aggravating weapons:

Name	Base	Evil	Undead	Brand	Naive Avg
Grond	693	1011	1966	693	1090.75
Deathwr	555	753	1349	952	902.25
Doomcal	486	590	486	693	563.75
Zarcuth	448	531	614	614	551.75
Melkor	412	412	412	568	451
Anguire	410	451	410	491	440.5
Gothmog	391	391	391	524	424.25
Calris	398	466	398	398	415

Now of course the race and class and armor affect this, other slays can be worthwhile, different elemental brands have very different value, there are lots of other complications not addressed here, this is a very naive weighting, and it doesn't give extra credit to double-branded weapons like Thunderfist or Durin. I'm not claiming this table is a definitive ranking. Maybe I should have included a few other artifacts too. But here's some conclusions that I didn't know before:

1. Even considering that its brand is more commonly resisted than some, Trident of Wrath doesn't seem to get mentioned as much in discussions of top weapons as it would seem (thanks to useful slays) to deserve.
2. Doomcaller and Zarcuthra aren't too tempting if you have one of the better non-aggravating weapons, but Deathwreaker is in another league.
3. Sting and a couple other "midgame-quality" lightweight extra blows artifacts I looked at but didn't include in the table are surprisingly competitive when you have great off-weapon +damage.

I guess pretty much the only things I should keep if found are Aule, Eonwe, Ringil, Wrath, or Durin, with Aiglos, Aglarang, Eorlingas, Thunderfist, or Ulmo being borderline.

[Carnivean]

It's cool to see this list laid out.

Things to consider are:
A) that various weapons can get better with more blows, so what's good for a priest at 4 blows may not be the best for a warrior at 6.
B) to-hit and criticals affect actual damage.
C) Sauron doesn't resist Acid. Aule, Erebor and Durin use their brand damage against him.
C) certain "great" weapons would be good to see in the list.

[Timo Pietilä]

It's cool to see this list laid out.

Things to consider are:
A) that various weapons can get better with more blows, so what's good for a priest at 4 blows may not be the best for a warrior at 6.
B) to-hit and criticals affect actual damage.
C) Sauron doesn't resist Acid. Aule, Erebor and Durin use their brand damage against him.
C) certain "great" weapons would be good to see in the list.

Speed also makes big difference so most of the time Ringil actually beats everything else most of the time because it frees up a speed-item slot for other uses.

It bugs me that Aule got weakened couple of times during artifact and game rule tweaks. It used to be 9d3 x5 lightning brand. Now it is 18d1. No more variation from dice, it's always 18.

I think reason why Wrath doesn't get mentioned is that it used to be heavy 30lbs 3d8 trident, so that you could not get max blows with it (except counter-intuitively with mage and priest), and that is why it still feels less impressive than it actually is. Now it is much lighter 3d10 weapon.

Aule also has x5 kill dragon slay which you don't list. Ringil has equal x5 kill demon slay. As does Calris. Durin has double-brand which gives it at least brand against pretty much everything except few uniques and moving jellies, beholders and elementals.

Evil, Dragon, Demon, Undead are the main slays that actually mean something.

[Gram]

Timo, what value would you place on dragon and demon slays as compared with evil and undead? (That is, for the late game- I imagine e.g. that slay dragon would be more valuable around the stat gain levels when ancient dragons are a serious threat than it is for e.g. someone who's at CL 50 and DL 70+. Generally one doesn't have to choose between top-tier artifacts at DL40.)

In the above I've weighted base damage, evil, undead, and branded damage equally. It's simple enough to add more data for more slays and adjust weighting. Since I'm looking past the point where drolems could be a primary threat, I guess I could put max(evil,dragon) in the dragon column and max(evil, demon) in the demon column to help avoid overestimating the importance of having demon-specific and dragon-specific slays.

Come to think of it, except for bone golems, everything undead is evil too, so I should have done that for that column already. That benefits Eorlingas, Doomcaller, Anguirel, and Calris, and the only placing it affects is that Calris squeaks ahead of Gothmog.

I'm not going to come up with The One True Ranking here, and I don't plan to e.g. dig into the code to try to get or improve on the let's-look-at-each-monster damage valuation used in power calculations, but I'd be glad of suggestions on how to refine my list somewhat.

[Derakon]

Timo, what value would you place on dragon and demon slays as compared with evil and undead? (That is, for the late game- I imagine e.g. that slay dragon would be more valuable around the stat gain levels when ancient dragons are a serious threat than it is for e.g. someone who's at CL 50 and DL 70+. Generally one doesn't have to choose between top-tier artifacts at DL40.)

I'm not Timo, but I'd rank demon and undead slays as being roughly equivalent in value. There's more nasty undead uniques than there are nasty demon uniques, but I feel like individual nasty demons are more common than individual nasty undead (which in the late game is mostly restricted to high-level liches, Nightwalkers/crawlers, and drujs that you don't melee anyway).

Slay dragon is never a priority for me; dragons are usually pretty easy kills. I don't think I've ever been scared of a dragon that wasn't Kavlax or massively out of depth. Which is kind of a shame, really.

[Gram]

Carnivean, I think to-hit and criticals are already figured into the damage calculation. Also, though as I said the class does change things, late in the game everyone can get their class's max blows except IIRC for warriors with Grond, so other than +attacks being proportionally more beneficial to lower-max-blows characters the differences are slight.

Certainly some ego Great Weapons deserve to be ranked with the artifacts. But it's harder to generate the ones you want via debug options and of course there's considerable variability on the bonuses. Here are a few I was able to snag:

Name								Base	Evil	Ev.Und.	Brand	Naive Avg
Mace of Disruption of Extra Attacks (5d8) (+16,+15) <+1>	551	551	891	551	636
Mace of Disruption (Holy Avenger) (5d8) (+16,+20) [+3] <+1>	491	633	774	491	597.25
Scythe of Slicing of Extra Attacks (8d4) (+17,+14) <+2>		591	591	591	591	591
Blade of Chaos of Extra Attacks (6d5) (+17,+14) <+2>		568	568	568	568	568
Mace of Disruption of *Slay Evil* (5d8) (+13,+15) <+1>		457	598	739	457	562.75
Scythe of Slicing (Holy Avenger) (8d4) (+17,+15) [+2] <+4>	428	546	664	428	516.5

Note that I didn't get a MoD of +2 attacks; I may try generating more later. Any other specific ego weapons people would particularly want to see compared?

[fph]

Carnivean, I think to-hit and criticals are already figured into the damage calculation.

Criticals are, but to-hit isn't. The actual probability of hitting a monster depends both on your +hit and the monster's armor, so it's impossible to give a damage calculation that applies to all monsters.

[Gram]

It can't give you a number that applies to all monsters, but it definitely does take to-hit into account. For instance, enchanting the Glaive of Pain (+0,+30) up to (+12,+30) raises its listed damage from 584 to 591. Maybe it's averaging across monsters? I'm sure someone else knows exactly what's going on here.

[Derakon]

It can't give you a number that applies to all monsters, but it definitely does take to-hit into account. For instance, enchanting the Glaive of Pain (+0,+30) up to (+12,+30) raises its listed damage from 584 to 591. Maybe it's averaging across monsters? I'm sure someone else knows exactly what's going on here.

It's taking crits into account. You crit more often with a higher to-hit (and presumably in a way that's independent of the monster you're fighting; I haven't checked). It doesn't take chance to hit into account though.

[Nick]

Slay dragon is never a priority for me; dragons are usually pretty easy kills. I don't think I've ever been scared of a dragon that wasn't Kavlax or massively out of depth. Which is kind of a shame, really.

Don't expect that to last

[Derakon]

Don't expect that to last

Why do you think I said that in the first place?

[Estie]

Assuming Ringil allows you to equip a +15 damage ring, youd get an increase of 15 x 5 = 75, putting Ringil on par with Wrath. Which creates the group of "outstanding four" of Wrath Pain Aule and Ringil - either is sufficient for the task and neither is significantly superior.

Deathwreaker, the only significantly better weapon, would be used only for the last 2 battles, when vault-clearing is over.

[Derakon]

Deathwreaker, the only significantly better weapon, would be used only for the last 2 battles, when vault-clearing is over.

If I find Deathwreaker or Doomcaller, I'm using them pretty much regardless of anything else because they're so rare. Screw optimal play.

[Estie]

If I find Deathwreaker or Doomcaller, I'm using them pretty much regardless of anything else because they're so rare. Screw optimal play.

You need to play more :P
But then, I would have quit long ago without randarts.

[Derakon]

You need to play more :P
But then, I would have quit long ago without randarts.

Well okay, there is a point. If I find Doomcaller or Deathwreaker, then something has gone desperately wrong with the RNG.

More seriously though, my games tend to end as soon as I hit the power threshold for Morgoth (that is, I don't hang around to kill uniques or gain equipment), so I spend relatively little time each game at the depths where the uber-items can plausibly be generated. I can't remember the last time I found Doomcaller or Deathwreaker, and I think I've only legitimately found the One Ring once.