Talk:Exalted Weapon/@comment-32972576-20180726210502

I got playing around with Valkyr following the update after a long time of her sitting in my arsenal, gathering dust. I'd forgotten how much fun she is!

I was interested in how a couple of mods, Drifting Contact and Berserker, operate now that they are potentially equippable to both the main equipped melee and the exalted weapon simultaneously. There were a number of questions I wanted to answer:

- Is there any point modding both weapons with these, or do I just need one melee weapon modded to gain the benefits of the mods? Why/why not?

- Does modding both weapons with the same mod magnify/double the effect of the mod?

- What might be the most efficient way to mod melees for Excal/Titania/Valkyr/Wukong given my findings?

After some testing (although with Valkyr only, my only caveat here), I managed to arrive at some conclusions:

- Drifting Contact: both the equippable melee weapon and the exalted weapon have separate combo counters and are treated by the game separately. Modding only one of the melee weapons with this has no impact on the other weapon - the other weapon will have no boost to combo duration, not share any of the other weapon's combo counter, or have it's status chance increased. If I plan on using my exalted melee weapon a lot, Drifting Contact is the only mod which will increase combo duration and boost my damage via the counter and I need it on there, even if outside of Exalted Blade/Hysteria/etc. I'm using my equippable melee a lot too.

- Berserker: the attack speed bonus is capped at 75% and is independent of which melee weapon is used, but only the weapon(s) with Berserker equipped can trigger the bonus. For example, I can put Berserker only on the equippable melee, score critical hits to get the 75% speed bonus, then swap to the exalted weapon and still have the bonus for as long as it lasts (or vice versa). If I plan on using Exalted Blade/Hysteria/etc. for only short bursts at a time and want the attack speed bonus, using only one copy of Berserker between the two weapons might be more efficient, particularly if I am mostly relying on my equippable melee weapon outside of the time using the exalted one.

How could I draw all this together? I would suggest that modding the exalted melee weapon with both Drifting Contact and Berserker is worth considering if the exalted weapon is going to be used extensively, to maximise damage output via its separate combo counter, to build/maintain a high attack speed and to modestly raise its status chance. These mods might be less useful if I choose to use my equippable melee option a lot and scale to a reasonable combo multiplier, particularly Berserker as the attack speed bonus will apply to both weapons once active.

I hope that this was useful to someone. Perhaps you might like to share your experiences/opinions? I wrote this based on what I observed and felt was correct from my perspective.