Talk:Ixil's Spike (spear)/@comment-91.101.24.133-20200211203018/@comment-8506165-20200213221825

I tested MR too after writing my comment. At least in EE MR doesn't block Impaler bonus damage.

Ravager: if you're fighting something immune to instakills then the odds are it's immune to the CC on Ixil's Spike's pin too, which means it's just dealing extra damage with a save against it. Which... is nice, but I don't consider it game-breakingly awesome. As for dual-wielding versus 2-handing it's a bit more even late-game once Whirlwind Attack comes into play - really depends what you've got available for your off-hand. Crom Faeyr, obviously, but there's only one of them. Maybe Defender of Easthaven.

The pushback on Staff of the Ram is mildly irritating at best, in my opinion. It can actually be useful if you just knock one thing way out of the fight and switch to attacking the rest in the meantime. And even if you have to chase down the thing you're attacking because of the knockback with quad-movement off Boots of Speed/Haste it's hardly a massive chore.

As for Soul Reaver a lot of dangerous enemies are spellcasters, yes, but if they're just pure spellcasters and they're alone it's fairly trivial to become immune to them in vanilla given very few spellcasters strip you of protections or attempt to lower your resistances. Meanwhile there are bosses and minibosses aplenty that may chuck some spells or abilities around but then switch to dangerous melee. Dragons, Amelyssan, Demogorgon, various demons...So I actually rate the THAC0 penalty off Soul Reaver fairly highly, it helps a lot against such enemies.

Free Action doesn't stop Maze, no. I think the only things that stop the maze status effect if the spell goes through are Chaotic Commands and things like Enrage.

Maybe next time I do a Kensai run I'll flip them over to Spears for lategame to see how I like Ixil's. I don't remember being really wowed by it last time I used it, but maybe I'm being unfair to it. Still think there are plenty of two-handers that are competitive and it's not in Carsomyr-tier, but discussing this has made me realise I'm probably underrating it a bit, especially if it's forged early into ToB.