Shaman Karrakh quest chain..?! (Spoilers)

[Vulture]

Originally Posted by Helios

On topic: since we've been talking about the benefits of the Poison Dagger and Isshara's Whip, what is your opinion of the Battle Axe (+20% damage to users of cold steel weapons)? I was going through the fan manual and saw it, which has never been in one of my games, and I hadn't heard of it on the forums before.

Plain simple. It's a weapon and it gives not a single point of Atk or ldr --> complete rubbish. Unless you use at least 4 cold steel melees, which I'd never even try to do you won't have that much fun with it. Of the units it works with I'd only ever use Demons and (Ancient) Vampires but since their purpose is to be in bat form and restore losses it won't work with them, either.

About the other items: yes, if you use heavy physical melee (which I never do) only and those have enough speed: knock yourself out. My playstyle heavily relies on speed, damage avoidance, tactics and stuff so they're usually out of the question. +X Atk to all units > % damage to a certain type.
The Silver Rapier is an option for Karador if your Atk is high.

So the ranking would be:
1. Rapier (situational
2. Armor (shit and limited to units)
3. Drill (utter crap because some of the best melees don't even use physical dmg... and you can use a +X Atk in this slot instead)

Unless you definitely plan on using certain unit types only and exclusively just because you have an item for it, Armor and Drill are sub-par imho. If you do and can somehow pull it off throughout the game: have fun. You should see some funny numbers but it would be way too much hassle for me to take care of 4 or even 5 melees that take damage (loss preservation etc), and having to not use my favorite ones.