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cRPG => Suggestions Corner => Game Balance Discussion => Topic started by: Jona on September 15, 2014, 08:28:56 pm

Title: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jona on September 15, 2014, 08:28:56 pm
I know that the usefulness of ironflesh has come up often, and I am sure what I am about to say has come up several times already, but since I have yet to see a thread with this exact idea, here goes...

As you all know the current metagame is to stack agi, forego IF, and min-max your high level build to victory. People with level 34+ builds will often opt for more versatility by adding shield skill or riding skill instead of maxing out IF. Or they instead choose to have one extra point in athletics or powerstrike. This makes high level builds like 15-30, 18-27, 21-24, 24-24, etc OP in my opinion. That said, pretty much any high level build is OP, but that is a discussion for another time...

I find it ridiculous that someone can easily have 6 PS, with 8 or 9 WM, 9 athletics, and plenty of skill points sprinkled into shield or riding, all while tanking hits since they have a +3 set of medium/high armor. You should need IF to be able to last so long. Even with my old level 30 build of 15-24, with 2 points of IF I could take way too many hits since I have lordly armor.

So, why not remove the health that you get from each point of strength, and instead increase the amount of health you get from each point of ironflesh to 5? This way, if you have a level 36 super agi build with no IF, you still have the same amount of health as level 1 peasant who has yet to spend any points in IF. The way it is currently set up, everyone gets 3 hp per 3 strength, with the option to invest in an extra 2 points by spending a skill point in IF. This means that at most, someone can get 5 hp per 3 strength, assuming they invest the points in IF. With my proposal it would remain exactly the same, only people that shun IF will have significantly less hp, as they should.

Questions? Comments? Concerns?
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Voncrow on September 15, 2014, 08:31:45 pm
21-14... high level build is OP
:shock:

In a more serious note, I don't think taking away the 1 hp per str is the right way of doing this. In fact with wpf switched from level to agility, I think we another stat tied down to strength. Although I do think a slight buff to 3 hp per if would be nice and a welcomed addition. Maybe increasing str can increase your chance to stunlock opponents weapons or increase melee weapon damage naturally. Something like that.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Sparvico on September 15, 2014, 08:34:28 pm
21-14 is the most OP build, I agree with that.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Voncrow on September 15, 2014, 08:39:17 pm
On another note, we could just increase the str requirements of all weapons and armour.(Other than xbows who have already had this done.) That would make str more important and help balance the over lack of strengths importance. Although this is balance in general and doesn't actually effect high level builds to the same extent as lower level builds.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jona on September 15, 2014, 08:50:19 pm
Har har... typos so funny.  :rolleyes:

Maybe that build is decent, actually... you could probably max out every skill at a high enough level with all the converted attribute points you will have. Lol, anyways...

I do not think we need to buff ironflesh whilst keeping the 1 hp per strength that we have now. People can tank hits with or without high ironflesh as is... I don't want to have to hit a tincan 15-20 times just because he is stacking strength AND newly improved ironflesh. Same goes for agi builds in light armor... if you allow some to stack ironflesh, and it is actually useful, then they too will be able to die in many, many hits... we need to focus on weakening the playerbase if anything, since looms give you such a huge boost.

As for the agi vs str argument, I think it would be perfectly fine with the hp removed. People bitch and moan that "agi is required now" since it is the only way to get wpf. Well, no one ever complained that str was the only way to use higher difficulty weapons/armor. Everyone seems to forget that str is the only thing letting you use what you do. You can use any weapon/armor you want with a 36-3 build, but you can't use anything you want with a 3-36 build. Sure, you will be able to stab with a rondel faster than anyone else, but that is about it. If anything, just increase the difficulty of more items such that someone with 18 str can't use 98% of the weapons available. However, if that is done in addition to the IF re-working proposed, then maybe, just MAYBE it would be too much too soon for agi builds.

Also, I am never a fan of limiting peoples' options. Re-working IF gives everyone a choice to be a weak agi whore, or a slightly less-fast, but durable agi whore. It doesn't necessarily eliminate the class entirely. The strength requirement for weapons is definitely something that is necessary, but I still don't like that it is so absolute. Maybe if you could use something with less strength than required, but have severe speed/damage reductions, it would be one thing. But the way it is now, it is all or nothing. It will FORCE people to have more balanced builds, while I think that there may still be some agi builds around after an IF re-working. They will simply be as fragile as they should be. Granted there might be some agi builds around if the difficulty of items increases, I am sure there will not be as many happy agi builds. It isn't much fun being able to use only half of the available weapons in the game.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Wolfsblood on September 15, 2014, 09:04:11 pm
I actually kinda like this idea (screws up my 'eavy cav build, but whatever) it definitely will make IF a useful skill again. I just feel that no hp per str is a huge nerf. maybe make it so every 3str is givin at least one hp. thats probably my cav's build biasing me there though :(

just means that i would have to forgo my hybrid and go pure polarm cav
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Voncrow on September 15, 2014, 09:04:36 pm
 :cry:

Just realized this wasn't a buff str thread, 5 hp per if would just give back the hp you get from not having it from str. (Kinda sad that I just realized that.)
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Algarn on September 15, 2014, 09:04:38 pm
I disagree. My melee character, and my archer (respectively 21/ 18 and 27/15), would have been having 70 hp on max level. I already need so much hits to go down, no need to stack even more hp. Maybe something could be done for str, but not increasing the hp you get with IF. A way to reduce the wpf loss from armor with str is much better for gameplay than having some true meatstacks.

EDIT : Fuck, didn't read what you said about str. I don't want hp stackers as people dying from 1 hit (could be fun as an archer though to kill everything with one arrow).
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: San on September 15, 2014, 09:33:08 pm
I don't think the game allows you to mess with the HP formula. I think you can, however, change your true ironflesh skill level. (ex. 3IF on site -> 5IF in game, changing how much HP per IF) but I am also not sure if that method is bug-free.

Not sure if this same opinion holds today: http://forum.melee.org/general-discussion/will-if-be-too-weak-after-the-wm-change/?viewresults
IF's usefulness is controversial. I'm still somewhat baffled by the results.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jona on September 15, 2014, 09:58:14 pm
I find it kind of hard to believe that changing the entire wpf formula so that it was instead based on agility and not level was do-able, but changing the hp formula is completely impossible. I would imagine that it would be a similar process as the wpf change. Heck, the wpf change also included shared wpf and such... it was a much larger change imo. Granted the outcome doesn't reflect how much work was involved behind the scenes, I would imagine something could be done to change the hp gaining system.

Does the warband system allow for negative skill values? Say for example someone who doesn't have any points in IF would still get their strength hp bonus from each point of str, but they would also have an effective -X IF so that it cancels out the str bonus from hp? Obviously if someone has 15 str, then there is no way to negate all of that with IF since it gives 2 hp per level... unless you can work with half-levels, which I am fairly certain it has been stated warband can't do.

Interesting poll results from the other thread. I think most people didn't really think that far ahead when voting. That, or they realized that IF was already pretty much useless and therefore its usefulness wouldn't be changing much, if at all. Even back when strength reigned supreme there were still people like Allers and Tretter which went full strength, but only put points into powerstrike. The reason for this is that for each PS you essentially get 3 health points... so why bother wasting skill points on 2 extra hp when you could put them all into the more important skill? I don't think IF needs a buff as-is, since then people will be walking tanks that never die, but I think to make it more useful the entire hp system needs to be re-worked.

And for those that seemed to have misread my initial post, let me clarify. This is not something to buff strength builds. This is an agi nerf. However, unlike the strength nerf that simultaneously buffed agi, the idea here is to hopefully only nerf one side without buffing the other. Sure, some strength builds with no IF may get affected, but it won't be as severe as the impact on agi builds since most strength builds accommodate for IF. The problem with the wpf patch was that it not only nerfed strength builds, it also marginally buffed agi builds, upsetting the balance. So while agi builds got slightly buffed (by having the alternative build weakened) they also got a slight buff with more wpf points. The idea here is to weaken agi builds who shun IF, but leave strength builds who are already stacking IF as-is.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Taser on September 15, 2014, 10:04:40 pm
Not a bad idea imo. It basically doesn't change the hp per IF technically but just makes IF itself much more valuable.

This will mean I have to get IF now tho Jona. Mang.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: San on September 16, 2014, 12:07:50 am
Some things are hardcoded. That's just how it is since this wasn't designed from the ground up to be very modular. As far as negative skill points goes, I doubt it but never saw anyone try it. I think IF should be buffed but I'm not entirely certain what's the most effective way where people would be likely to agree.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jona on September 16, 2014, 12:43:54 am
Yeah, there is very little reason to have any IF as of now. The main reason, imo, is simply because having strength gives you health as well. Per 3 strength points, most of the health increase comes from the strength alone, while only 2/5 come from IF. I don't see any way to change IF's effectiveness unless this could be changed. Simply buffing IF would make everyone super tanky, unless the entire damage system was reworked to accommodate...  :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Wraist on September 16, 2014, 01:09:08 am
There was an idea to have higher IF reduce the ranged stagger time, I think adding this would make people start taking it, especially if there were a point where it'd stop range stagger. Also, biased poll >.>
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: GOBBLINKINGREATLEADER on September 16, 2014, 01:14:46 am
I also think part of the solution to balancing agi-str (if they are indeed not balanced) is to increase the STR requirement on armors so that people will no longer be able to be tanky AND agile.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Kafein on September 16, 2014, 02:51:12 am
If you think IF isn't useful you have no idea what you are talking about. Which is understandable. I can gather you play the long axe often? No need for a build even remotely competitive when using that, you'll dominate anyway. Fact is with a good armor choice, investing in more IF instead of another agi tier is going to make you survive usually between 2 and 6 more hits. Agi is never going to make that much of a difference. The combination of high armor reduce and IF investment easily transforms someone into a damage sponge with only marginally lower acceleration, speed and wpf than a build that converted those IF skills into agi. Overall, IF is a much better skill than shield skill or riding as it remains fully effective under all circumstances and doesn't stop being effective above a certain item difficulty threshold.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Voncrow on September 16, 2014, 02:58:39 am
On another note, can't you just make it so every level of str you have you get -1 hp such as

hp = hp -1(str) 
then change if in the way San said or something like that.

Although I don't actually think this should happen, but is it actually impossible to do?
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jack1 on September 16, 2014, 04:08:42 am
The big problem that I find with agi based builds is that they break animations for me at 150-170+ wpf. Perhaps lowering the speed of everything(arrow speed, movement speed, wpf, weapon speed) at a particular ratio and then increasing the server speed? Other than that all you can do is buff IF ALOT so people actually use it(I haven't had it for 2 years) or buffing PS so higher str builds hit harder then the agi builds with their huge wpf damage enhancement.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jona on September 16, 2014, 05:13:36 am
If you think IF isn't useful you have no idea what you are talking about. Which is understandable. I can gather you play the long axe often? No need for a build even remotely competitive when using that, you'll dominate anyway. Fact is with a good armor choice, investing in more IF instead of another agi tier is going to make you survive usually between 2 and 6 more hits. Agi is never going to make that much of a difference. The combination of high armor reduce and IF investment easily transforms someone into a damage sponge with only marginally lower acceleration, speed and wpf than a build that converted those IF skills into agi. Overall, IF is a much better skill than shield skill or riding as it remains fully effective under all circumstances and doesn't stop being effective above a certain item difficulty threshold.

I stopped reading your BS at the bolded text. I mean, are we talking full +3 milanese tincan vs level 1 peasant? If so, sure... having the whopping 12 or so more hit points might allow you to survive that many more hits, assuming the poor peasant can even manage a solid non-glancing blow. But in practice? No... having a few more points in IF will never allow you to take that many more significant hits. Heck, almost no one even survives 6 solid hits nowadays, not even tincans... some IF is never going to change that.

And for the long axe dig, I have been playing my alt an awful lot recently in order to grind out some loompoints, and I have been placing just as highly, if not higher on the scoreboard when going 1h and 2h compared to my polearm main, which uses far more than just the long axe. Using my lower level alt is what influenced me to make this post, since having 3 less strength and 4 less IF made almost no impact in how many hits I could take. With that large a discrepancy in my IF stat, I could take maybe, MAYBE 1 more solid hit on my main. If we are counting glances as hits, well then I suppose I could take upwards of 10 more hits! But that would be retarded to... oh... wait...

The big problem that I find with agi based builds is that they break animations for me at 150-170+ wpf. Perhaps lowering the speed of everything(arrow speed, movement speed, wpf, weapon speed) at a particular ratio and then increasing the server speed? Other than that all you can do is buff IF ALOT so people actually use it(I haven't had it for 2 years) or buffing PS so higher str builds hit harder then the agi builds with their huge wpf damage enhancement.

I don't find that broken animations are limited to agi builds for me. Even with your 3WM build your 2h spam still insta-swings half the time.  :mad:  I am fairly certain that it is just server lag or broken game mechanics that have been around forever now.

Also, I believe that the main issue with agi builds hitting almost as hard as str builds is the speed bonus they get. Looking at damage calculators, wpf barely increases your damage output (compared to PS, anyways). However, something that is a lot harder to calculate is how much damage you get per athletics speed increase (assuming of course you know how to use that speed bonus). I am fairly certain that with your build you are not only fast, but have one of the highest damage outputs available, save for maybe a full PS build.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Digglez on September 16, 2014, 06:42:36 am
increase IF to 3-4 HP per and/or give it the ability to add to your armors soak value.  The more IF you have, the more effective it should be, ramping up in in a curve instead of linear progression
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Admerius on September 16, 2014, 01:30:11 pm
Here's another idea to make IF more viable,
Make it more exclusive and "cheaper"!

Change it ti 1IF for every 6 str instead of 3 str.
Change bonus from +2hp to +5 hp<<<------Edit: This might be to big a buff... maybe 4hp is enough

This way Str builds don't need to sink so much skillpoints in to IF, and it also gets buffed a bit.

Before
12 str 4 IF =55hp
18 str 6 IF=65hp
24 str 8 IF=75hp
30 str 10 IF=85hp

After:
12 str 2 IF =57hp(+2hp +2 free skillpoints)
18 str 3 IF=68hp(+3hp +3 free skillpoints)
24 str 4 IF=79hp(+4hp +4 free skillpoints)
30 str 5 IF=90hp(+5hp +5 free skillpoints)
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Kafein on September 16, 2014, 05:00:25 pm
I stopped reading your BS at the bolded text. I mean, are we talking full +3 milanese tincan vs level 1 peasant?

No, we're talking about somewhere around 38c against 70 body armor, which is pretty much where people tend to stop the armor stacking. With 6PS, 184 effective wpf and 33c it's not out of the ordinary to hit those guys more than 10 times before they die. I also have a lot of experience being the HP sponge myself so it's not like I'm trying to change the game to fit my build here. Surviving that many hits removes the tension and transforms combat into a numbers game. I'm relatively happy with the AGI/STR balance right now. Maybe STR could get a little something. However buffing IF in a way that increases survivability is the worst possible solution. If you want to make IF more useful what about reducing the free HP pool? You get 35HP at level 1 (+2 due to STR), but what about reducing that to 30?
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Grumbs on September 16, 2014, 05:27:20 pm
If high level builds weren't so OP we could shuffle around the STR reqs of armour and leave IF alone. Str guys will get a noticable benefit in terms of defence, when you add that they have good armour and more HP from STR and IF. I'd also increase the difference between low armour, medium and high. Get rid of +15 armour just from gloves, reduce the armour you get with light and medium armour and increase the STR requirement on medium-heavy armour

That will mean str get more defense than agi, but agi get all the benefits that come with fast acceleration and faster swings
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: korppis on September 16, 2014, 07:45:26 pm
I also think part of the solution to balancing agi-str (if they are indeed not balanced) is to increase the STR requirement on armors so that people will no longer be able to be tanky AND agile.

This would be good step to start with.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: _Tak_ on September 16, 2014, 07:48:50 pm
Give stun-resistance to IF and it should balance the game ;)
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jona on September 16, 2014, 07:59:27 pm
I also think part of the solution to balancing agi-str (if they are indeed not balanced) is to increase the STR requirement on armors so that people will no longer be able to be tanky AND agile.

This is definitely something to consider. My only objection to this, and I may be alone in this regard, is that I almost prefer fighting agi builds who are using heavy armor compared to agi builds in light armor. They receive a huge wpf reduction in addition to a hefty speed reduction. This almost defeats the entire purpose of their build. Sure, they move faster and swing faster than a tank using similar armor, but it isn't as bad as the super spammers who run around in something like the byrnie or mail shirt and fur, who are able to take a decent amount of hits but have great body armor compared to the total weight they are carrying. The agi builds who run around with anything of the weight comparable to the mail shirt (or less) can spam faster than the eye can see... that is when the agi build truly shines in my opinion.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Voncrow on September 16, 2014, 08:50:54 pm
With 6PS, 184 effective wpf and 33c it's not out of the ordinary to hit those guys more than 10 times before they die.


I don't know what game you are playing, but I never see that happen. I can take up to 5 hits if I'm lucky wearing my 72 body, 60 leg, 53 head, it rarely go beyond that that even if I'm fighting a one hander or anything other than peasant gear really. The build I use is 25/15 with 8 if and I usually die in 2-4 fours hits, 4 being pretty uncommon even then with my higher tier armour, and I rarely see otehr people fairing that much better. The fact that their are people in EU who are bullet proof makes me think something fishy is going on over there.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Dalfador on September 16, 2014, 10:00:09 pm
YES! You hit the nail on the head jona.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: StonedSteel on September 16, 2014, 10:28:38 pm
Change the game back to the way it was b4 Tydeus stupid agi overhaul.

There you go, all problems solved. Also change valor back to the way it was b4 tydeus changed it, to get more people playing for longer. Also change the xp requirements for lvls back to what it was b4 tydeus changed it. Also...ahhh heck, can we just get rid of Tydeus?
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Kafein on September 17, 2014, 12:37:01 am


I don't know what game you are playing, but I never see that happen. I can take up to 5 hits if I'm lucky wearing my 72 body, 60 leg, 53 head, it rarely go beyond that that even if I'm fighting a one hander or anything other than peasant gear really. The build I use is 25/15 with 8 if and I usually die in 2-4 fours hits, 4 being pretty uncommon even then with my higher tier armour, and I rarely see otehr people fairing that much better. The fact that their are people in EU who are bullet proof makes me think something fishy is going on over there.

Well it's my experience as someone wearing 70 body armor, with 24 STR and only 3IF. Some guys with very powerful weapons still hurt badly, but I can laugh at 1h bar the very powerful ones or if the other guy is stacking 10 PS. One of the consequences of the general drift towards AGI has been that tank builds got even more tankish due to lower damage.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: MURDERTRON on September 17, 2014, 12:50:25 am
Just tie the previously 111 WPF thing to AGI, with a target of 18.  Meaning, if you have 18 agi, you can have 111WPF in one weapon type, without any weapon mastery points.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: San on September 17, 2014, 12:58:02 am
I think that a good 70wpf should be frontloaded at the start.

Well it's my experience as someone wearing 70 body armor, with 24 STR and only 3IF. Some guys with very powerful weapons still hurt badly, but I can laugh at 1h bar the very powerful ones or if the other guy is stacking 10 PS. One of the consequences of the general drift towards AGI has been that tank builds got even more tankish due to lower damage.

Clearly IF is the one carrying your tankiness.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Killer on September 17, 2014, 03:53:48 am
I noticed when i was playing my 21-18 build and had 7 ironflesh that i could tank about 4-6 arrows (from normal foot archer) or take about 5 hits in melee and live (depending on person/ppl) when i had 64 body armor and when i was 12-27 with 0 ironflesh and had 60 body armor i took about 2 arrows and maybe 2 hits in melee before going down, but more recently i played a 27-12 build with about 7 or 8 ironflesh and an arrow took about 10-20%  heath off when i had 60 body armor on and this was from a bodkin which would half heath me with 12 str and 0 if (was a foot archer who shot not ha but not a longbow either irrc) also that build was fun to take a heashot from a bodkin arrow and live when i had a +0 black helmet on
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Gurnisson on September 17, 2014, 01:36:33 pm
Pretty much every (serious) build I make has ironflesh. Many times I've lived on with low hp and gone on to help my team a lot after that. Without IF you wouldn't get the chance to do that.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Falka on September 17, 2014, 03:47:09 pm
there were still people like Allers and Tretter which went full strength, but only put points into powerstrike. The reason for this is that for each PS you essentially get 3 health points... so why bother wasting skill points on 2 extra hp when you could put them all into the more important skill?

Because instead of 1 more PS you can have 7 more IF? At lvl 31 you can have either this build:
(click to show/hide)
or this one:
(click to show/hide)

First build has 1 more PS, second one 11 more hp. In other words; 8% more dmg or 18.6% more hp.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Falka on September 17, 2014, 03:51:42 pm
 :oops:
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: NJ_Legion_Icedtea on September 17, 2014, 03:56:45 pm
Haven't even thought about using IF for a long time now with my builds, just the thought of at lvl 31 having a 21/21 18/24 24/18 build instead of less agi/str and having IF instead.

Then if I think about going higher, shield/cav skill is always my initial reaction. Higher STR requirements, buffing IF AND speed bonus nerf would honestly be my solution to the agi whores (myself included)
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Huscarlton_Banks on September 17, 2014, 04:04:38 pm
It's worth considering that with an extra 3 AGI + 1 ath, you take less damage from hits if you backpedal properly(speed bonus for melee is still exponential), and it's possible that you may not even get hit.

The bad thing about ironflesh is that it really has all-or-nothing results, and it only does one thing.

Once you get to the point where ironflesh reliably makes you survive one more hit (meaning you only have 1 hp left), it's very difficult to survive another extra hit with a further investment unless your opponents were already doing miniscule damage (further points in IF * 2 > damage of hit).
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Voncrow on September 17, 2014, 04:26:57 pm
One of the consequences of the general drift towards AGI has been that tank builds got even more tankish due to lower damage.

That sounds more like a personal problem for people who go agi to me.  The fact that people deal less damage to them because a lot of people changed their builds isn't an argument one way or the other for buffing or nerfing. If that's the main reason for all you've said in this thread about str being too tanky, it's pretty much all irrelevant.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Thryn on September 17, 2014, 11:01:42 pm
Yesterday I was playing and I noticed that I was blackbarred; that's when I literally thought to myself "I'm alive because of Ironflesh." However, Ironflesh pretty much guarantees only 1 more hit before death - a bad 6 point trade off against shield, riding, etc.

Long story short, I would like for ironflesh to remain like it is on the 2+ health per level (it's not that great), and I would also like it to have some benefit against ranged attacks.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Gravoth_iii on September 17, 2014, 11:03:39 pm
Suggested many times, hp too hardcoded or whatever (lazy donkey i say, but hey what do i know).
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Phew on September 18, 2014, 09:51:47 pm
3 more AGI+1 Ath and wearing 7KG heavier armor (so your movement speed is the same) is always better for survivability than just spending those points on 7 IF, and you get more wpf as a bonus. The only drawback is the cost, but experienced players have more gold than they'll ever need anyway.

The main problem with agility is actually speed bonus; 18/27 guys hit just as hard as 27/18 guys, especially with thrusts. But the 18/27 is also just as tough, because he can use negative speed bonus and heavier armor to mitigate damage more effectively than the strength build guy.

1. Find a way to make 7 ironflesh more attractive than +3AGI, +1 ath, and +7kg armor
2. Find a way to reduce melee speed bonus without brutally nerfing cav (i.e. if the equation is a*v^n, decrease a and increase n)
3. Give another round of free respecs so everyone can drop their 21/24 builds
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: MURDERTRON on September 19, 2014, 03:36:41 pm
I'm pretty sure you're slower with 7kg more armor and 1 more ath.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Admerius on September 19, 2014, 03:48:02 pm
I just got another idea, that I'm going to throw out there...

If possible rename "Ironflesh" to "Battle hardened" or something similar

(click to show/hide)

The reason why it should be renamed will become apparent now:

Add a small wpf gain similar to WM to this new version of Ironflesh.
I mean SMALL wpf gain COMPARED to WM, like half or 1/3 of what the same rank in WM would give. Most likely even lower like 1/10th.

This will act as a alight de-nerf of pure str builds wpf.

I would propose making 11IF/3agi would cap att about 111wpf, that way 12PS/11IF builds will become playable again with hig-end medium armours and expensive heavy weapons without having to sell looms/play alts for those weapon repairs.

(click to show/hide)

I'm restating the idea again:
IF should get a small wpf gain just like WM but MUCH smaller.
11if/3agi should cap out with a single weapon type at about 110 wpf.



Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: MURDERTRON on September 19, 2014, 04:24:04 pm
That's exactly what they want to avoid.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jona on September 19, 2014, 06:32:30 pm
Pretty much every (serious) build I make has ironflesh. Many times I've lived on with low hp and gone on to help my team a lot after that. Without IF you wouldn't get the chance to do that.

Pretty much every (level 30) build I make has minimal, if any, ironflesh. Many times I've lived on with low hp and gone on to help my team a lot after that, all while thinking "Good thing I didn't invest in more IF, since I am gonna die in 1 hit regardless."
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Phew on September 19, 2014, 07:52:36 pm
Pretty much every (level 30) build I make has minimal, if any, ironflesh. Many times I've lived on with low hp and gone on to help my team a lot after that, all while thinking "Good thing I didn't invest in more IF, since I am gonna die in 1 hit regardless."

It's just a place to dump points if you won't be reaching the next level of PS or Athletics. I'll have 4 IF at lvl 35, only because I don't intend to ever hit level 36. Right now I'd trade Ironflesh for a decent internet connection :(
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Falka on September 19, 2014, 08:53:44 pm
Many times I've lived on with low hp and gone on to help my team a lot after that, all while thinking "Good thing I didn't invest in more IF, since I am gonna die in 1 hit regardless."

but not one teamhit!  :wink:
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Kalam on September 19, 2014, 10:04:03 pm
The big problem that I find with agi based builds is that they break animations for me at 150-170+ wpf. Perhaps lowering the speed of everything(arrow speed, movement speed, wpf, weapon speed) at a particular ratio and then increasing the server speed? Other than that all you can do is buff IF ALOT so people actually use it(I haven't had it for 2 years) or buffing PS so higher str builds hit harder then the agi builds with their huge wpf damage enhancement.

This is largely a frame rate issue, though it seems the server/your PC just gives up every now and then and you'll see an insta-swing (or stab) from just about any melee weapon.

The difference between 6 IF and no IF is the difference between getting 7-1 a map and 7-3 a map. Minor, sure, but it could be the difference between getting your team a multiplier or not. IF is invaluable against ranged weapons and teamhits, when combined with some armor.

In a one on one situation, IF is great because it allows you to take hits (on purpose) and use that to hit back in situations where you're feeling impatient or need to get rid of the enemy quickly.

And before people scream IT'S KALAM, HE'S AGIWHORE TO THE MAX...I've played and continue to play other builds. This is simply my preference.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Phew on September 19, 2014, 10:16:20 pm
This is largely a frame rate issue

The "swing animation skipping frames" thing that mostly (only?) happens with polearms can't be a framerate thing, because I have 144 fps  (lightboost LCD with strobing, so that is "realized" fps, not just what the video card is rendering) and I see it every time an agility polearmer swings a fast weapon. It definitively gets worse as my ping increases though, so I think it's a server-client sync issue. Extreme agility builds with 2h and 1h (i.e. you and San, respectively) just render "fast" animations, but they are clearly showing all the frames still. Polearm right swings and overheads just skip right from ready position to a hit.

I'm learning a lot about how many mechanics scale with ping, since my ISP has decided to slowly fluctuate between 38ms and 300ms.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Kalam on September 19, 2014, 10:24:31 pm
The "swing animation skipping frames" thing that mostly (only?) happens with polearms can't be a framerate thing, because I have 144 fps  (lightboost LCD with strobing, so that is "realized" fps, not just what the video card is rendering) and I see it every time an agility polearmer swings a fast weapon. It definitively gets worse as my ping increases though, so I think it's a server-client sync issue. Extreme agility builds with 2h and 1h (i.e. you and San, respectively) just render "fast" animations, but they are clearly showing all the frames still. Polearm right swings and overheads just skip right from ready position to a hit.

I'm learning a lot about how many mechanics scale with ping, since my ISP has decided to slowly fluctuate between 38ms and 300ms.

Yeh. I think the polearm swing thing happens more often just because it's not as smooth an animation as, say, the one-hand animations. Which were probably the best (not from a game balance viewpoint) animations until the recent change.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: agweber on September 20, 2014, 06:45:31 am
In a one on one situation, IF is great because it allows you to take hits (on purpose) and use that to hit back in situations where you're feeling impatient or need to get rid of the enemy quickly.

What? I've never gotten a swing in after getting hit, given the stun duration.

Also, I've never seen this insta-swing that's being discussed. Which makes me agree that it's likely a connection issue. I've got a 20-30 ping pretty much all the time. Maybe I should go play EU for a while and see if I can see it there.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Kafein on September 20, 2014, 12:10:03 pm
I think that a good 70wpf should be frontloaded at the start.

Clearly IF is the one carrying your tankiness.

My argument is that HP are valuable because they provide very real tankiness and allow surviving through a consequent number of errors, something Jona disagrees with. I'm simply using that example to show that "since I am gonna die in 1 hit regardless." isn't something one says often when using a good build with good equipment.

But what do I know, maybe half the playerbase in NA consists of morningstars and arbalests.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: pepejul on September 20, 2014, 12:36:16 pm
MAke shield STR dependent and archery AGI dependent... it will be funny to see running gays archers kitting real slow shieldy tanks while hours....
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jona on September 20, 2014, 06:35:41 pm
I'm simply using that example to show that "since I am gonna die in 1 hit regardless." isn't something one says often when using a good build with good equipment.

I think you misunderstood what I meant.... Gurnisson pointed out that whenever he is blackbarred he is thankful for having ironflesh, since it is what is keeping him alive, and no matter how much health you have you can still kill just as effectively. Now, I agree with that 100%, and obviously if you have plenty of points invested in IF then it will indeed be the reason you are alive whenever your health is really low. I was just pointing out that IF can be just as useless as it can be useful. Let us say that you have an 18 strength build with 0 IF, which will mean you have 53 hp. You get into a fight with someone and before dispatching him he hits you three times. You walk away blackbarred... I'm talking 1hp left. That means that he took a little over 17hp (17.3333333...) per hit. Now then, let's examine that scenario if you have IF maxed, so your hp is now 65. The enemy managed to hit you 3 times again, did the same amount of damage per hit, so at the end of the day you've got 65-52=13hp left. Okay, 13 seems a lot nicer than 1hp, right? Well, what if this enemy hit you again in each scenario? In scenario #1, where you have 1hp left, obviously you will die. What about scenario #2, where you have 6 more points invested in IF? Let's see... he does ~17 hp/hit, and you have 13hp left... yeah, you're still dead. The only times lots of IF is pretty much guaranteed to grant you prolonged life (not counting glances and 0PS peasant hits here) is when you are fully plated up against someone using a weak cut-damage weapon.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jack1 on September 20, 2014, 06:48:55 pm
This is largely a frame rate issue, though it seems the server/your PC just gives up every now and then and you'll see an insta-swing (or stab) from just about any melee weapon.

this is not a framerate issue, I am at constant 120 fps. It is also not a connection issue because I am always 23-27 ping. I rarely get lag and when I do it is just constant EU ping for hours. I usually play a single player game in that scenario.

Also I think your not understanding what I'm saying in terms of breaking animations. I'm talking about when the high wpf people double swing you and the second hit lands right when they release it. I know there is a difference between animations breaking and fast weapons. You and San rarely break animations and just swing fast. Krosis, spiritus, and on a rare occasion jona breaks them in the way I'm talking. It is also more noticeable if you have a character with lower WPF.



The difference between 6 IF and no IF is the difference between getting 7-1 a map and 7-3 a map. Minor, sure, but it could be the difference between getting your team a multiplier or not. IF is invaluable against ranged weapons and teamhits, when combined with some armor.

jona explained this well but might I add that getting 1 more ath means getting to an archer in 1 or 2 less shots, helps you dodge better etc. And one more power strike kills an enemy instead of black barring them and may make you survive?


Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: San on September 20, 2014, 07:43:49 pm
My argument is that HP are valuable because they provide very real tankiness and allow surviving through a consequent number of errors, something Jona disagrees with. I'm simply using that example to show that "since I am gonna die in 1 hit regardless." isn't something one says often when using a good build with good equipment.

But what do I know, maybe half the playerbase in NA consists of morningstars and arbalests.

My stance is that with good enough strength and armor, you're tanky enough such that +3 strength +1 PS,  +3 agi +1 ath, Riding, Shield, etc. are more valuable. It does make sense that IF's HP increase is weak because it's a global skill that only provides benefits everyone/doesn't rely on gear, but since damage sources are likely to exceed the amount of HP gained from IF, it's not worth it. +3 strength and +1 PS vs 7IF is 11hp at worst. With any extra points left over, that value shrinks to 9 or lower.

Problem is that max HP is already in a pretty good spot in mine and I believe many others' opinions I think. Either low IF builds need less HP and have IF scale better (can't be done since HP from strength is hardcoded), or give an additional property to IF outside of HP increases which won't make it any more broken against melee in your eyes.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Wraist on September 20, 2014, 08:02:23 pm
I was thinking, since a lot of people have an issue with agi's sticking on armor and being faster than an average str build, and I would rather not have the armor difficulty upped, why not do something like increase armor weight and increase the str reduction to how armor effects your movement speed?

Also, IF for range stun shortening, and make a counter to the shield skill [ie +13% damage vs shield/IF; blatant lobbying is blatant]
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Falka on September 20, 2014, 08:18:55 pm
(click to show/hide)

You could say the same about any skill I guess. Power Strike e.g. With +3 Claymore you're able to kill almost everyone in 3 hits I think, no matter if you have 6 or 8 PS, so what, PS is useless?  :wink:
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jona on September 21, 2014, 02:28:34 am
You could say the same about any skill I guess. Power Strike e.g. With +3 Claymore you're able to kill almost everyone in 3 hits I think, no matter if you have 6 or 8 PS, so what, PS is useless?  :wink:

The difference between 6 and 8 PS is not a 6 skill point difference.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Wraist on September 21, 2014, 02:37:02 am
The difference between 6 and 8 PS is not a 6 skill point difference.

It's 7
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Macropus on September 21, 2014, 02:52:37 am
Can't say agi is definitely OP, but I wouldn't mind to see a slight damage nerf, either by removing the damage bonus from WPF or reducing the speed bonus damage for all classes by like 10-15%.

It's 7
Well no, it's 14 (assuming you have 18 str in case of 6 PS and 24 str in case of 8 PS).

The difference between 6 and 8 PS is not a 6 skill point difference.
Which kinda proves Falkas point since if the difference of whole 6 attribute and 2 skill points of Power strike doesn't result in much damage difference, there's even less point in putting it into PS.

Anyway, to me IF seems to be reasonably useful, 7 points of IF usually increase your HP pool by 20-30% which is easily competitive with damage bonus of PS or any other skill.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Wraist on September 21, 2014, 02:56:21 am
Can't say agi is definitely OP, but I wouldn't mind to see a slight damage nerf, either by removing the damage bonus from WPF or reducing the speed bonus damage for all classes by like 10-15%.
Well no, it's 14 (assuming you have 18 str in case of 6 PS and 24 str in case of 8 PS).

You are correct, my apologies ~_~
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jona on September 21, 2014, 07:52:37 am
Which kinda proves Falkas point since if the difference of whole 6 attribute and 2 skill points of Power strike doesn't result in much damage difference, there's even less point in putting it into PS.

Well if you pump 6 attribute points into strength in order to put 2 skill points into PS and not IF, you get 6 hp (at essentially no cost) and a 16% damage increase. There is no way to get a "free" damage increase. Let's put it this way... sure IF can be useful, but if you have 1 skill point to use and you just hit the next multiple of 3 for strength... do you put that skillpoint into PS or IF?  Look at it this way, PS gives you an 8% increase in damage output, regardless of the weapon you use. IF gives you 2 hp, regardless of how much hp you have. So at level 1, with 38 hp, that 2 extra hp is only ~5.3%. Now what if you have 18 strength, and put your first point into IF? Then that is only a 3.6% increase. The trend continues onwards, of course, where 2 hp becomes a smaller and smaller increase with respect to your total health. PS will remain a constant 8% each and every time you spend a skill point on it.

I think we have kind of gone off on a tangent here, discussing whether or not you should invest 7 points into +3 agi/str and then +1 WM/ATH/PS or all 7 into IF. I sure hope having 7 points in one skill would prove more useful (which is still debatable, imo) than having just 1 in any other. As others have mentioned, someone who knows how to use speed bonus really well might get way more out of just 1 more point in athletics than they ever could out of 7 in IF. With a ton of athletics you can avoid getting hit at all, or always giving your opponent negative speed bonus so if you DO get hit, it barely even hurts, regardless of the fact that you have little to no IF.

To prove my point (which is merely that IF is the weakest skill) just think to yourself, as a melee build, how would you rank the importance of IF, PS, Ath, WM?

Imo, they would be:

1. Athletics
2. Power Strike
3. Weapon Master
4. Iron Flesh

Athletics and PS are definitely really close, and I would say that at lower levels each increase in PS is more advantageous than athletics, but once you get past 5 PS or so, athletics becomes more powerful. As for weapon master, once you get past a decent amount of wpf... around 140 or so, then you are pretty much set, and anything on top of that is merely bonus. IF however just never seems like an attractive option, or something that you look forwards to after leveling up. When one of my alts gets a new point in athletics, PS, or even WM, I practically jump for joy. Another point in IF makes such a small, unnoticeable difference there is no reason to look forwards to it. That said, sure jumping from 0 IF to 7 IF is awesome... but compare that to the difference from 0 PS or 0 ATH to 7.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Macropus on September 21, 2014, 11:07:22 am
Oh wow, there must be a slight misunderstanding. IF is definitely the least usefull skill, which doesn't mean its not worth putting as many points as you can into it. We're not comparing 7 IF to 7 PS, but merely 7 IF to +3 Str and 1 PS. 
Anyway, I think its all about preference, which is good as it means it's relatively balanced.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Kalam on September 21, 2014, 05:18:23 pm


I wish I had footage of how things were with 200+ wpf, to try and determine if this was the cause. I wonder sometimes if it isn't just an optical illusion that is caused by the longer, oddly proportioned weapons. I've noticed that I saw this, for instance, with the masterwork goeddendag I used to use.

What? I've never gotten a swing in after getting hit, given the stun duration.

Also, I've never seen this insta-swing that's being discussed. Which makes me agree that it's likely a connection issue. I've got a 20-30 ping pretty much all the time. Maybe I should go play EU for a while and see if I can see it there.

I do it regularly enough, and both Tretter and Firebus utilize it often.

I like the idea of increasing armor difficulty to deal with high agility characters. I'll be the first one to admit that without decent, loomed armor the deaths come twice as fast.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: MURDERTRON on September 21, 2014, 05:46:47 pm
IF is the least useful skill because it adds nothing to your ability to do damage.  PS obviously increases your damage and causes you to glance less.  WM allies you to swing faster and beat your opponent to the hit, and also increases your damage slightly.  Athletics allows you to move faster, letting you pick your spots, go for ganks, but it also lets you run away and choose your opponents.  Athletics can also add to your damage if you use your speed bonus, but according to San its not as much as you think.  I believe that's because your agi adds more to your acceleration, while athletics adds more to your top speed.  Since fighting involves repositioning yourself constantly, you rarely achieve top speed, the exception to that would be spinners.  IF only allows you to take more hits, and you can't make a build around getting hit.  A good player obviously hits more than he gets hit most rounds, so IF doesn't directly increase your deadliness, but it certainly isn't useless.

Think of it this way.  In every iteration if Counter-Strike, you bought armor almost every round, although it didn't directly increase your killing power.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: FRANK_THE_TANK on October 07, 2014, 06:06:18 am
Make all armour from weight 21.1 up to 23.6 req 18 STR and everything above that should req 22 str. Make heavy gauntlets req 21 as well.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: korppis on October 07, 2014, 07:07:59 am
How about leaving IF with +2 hp bonus but also make it give +1 to armor? Say it's a skill that also makes you utilize your armor better or something. That way it would give a bit better soak value for high str/if builds, and high agi wouldn't benefit so much unless they use heavy armors... which could be countered by tweaking strength requirements.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Molly on October 07, 2014, 08:31:21 am
IF is the least useful skill because it adds nothing to your ability to do damage. [...]
Ofc it does. You're allowed to miss more blocks, you live longer, you have the chance to do more damage (over time).
It does not affect your damage directly, true, but it does add to your ability to do damage.

Not enough tho. Played a Strength build the last couple of days and I was really disappointed when I went from 3 IF to 6 IF on a level up. There is literally no noticeable difference between 3 and 6 IF.
Lesson learned: always max. Strength and only put the useless left-over points into IF. Although even 2 Throwing is probably more useful.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Molly on October 07, 2014, 10:27:22 am
True, in theory it should add to survivability and therefore to damage output (over time).
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Mr.K. on October 07, 2014, 12:46:09 pm
With low or medium armor you don't really notice the difference, but with heavier armors 60+ BA you can survive one or two hits or a couple of HA arrows more if you have 7IF instead of 0. Pretty much all my chars have maxed IF so I can keep blocking with my face.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Kafein on October 07, 2014, 12:56:07 pm
I don't agree IF isn't powerful, or that it should be more powerful. It multiplies the effect of armor by an actually sizable fraction. Getting 33% more HP (that's roughly the difference between 0 IF and max IF) means that considering an after action report, a random hit from that report is 33% less likely to kill you than with 0 IF. In turn this means that each of your lives are 33% longer (assuming hits are evenly distributed over time). When you use a lot of armor, damage is not coarse enough for that reasoning to be invalid. I agree it's not that useful if you don't have much armor though.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Sandersson Jankins on October 08, 2014, 09:14:26 pm
b-but this also would nerf my not-as-effective gimmick of stacking STR without IF so I can gain obscene amounts of PS.

pls no
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Phew on October 08, 2014, 09:35:21 pm
b-but this also would nerf my not-as-effective gimmick of stacking STR without IF so I can gain obscene amounts of PS.

pls no

It's not a gimmick, because this is what everyone does, and the purpose of the thread is to end the practice.

Just like the wpf patch ended the practice of stacking ridiculous str/agi while ignoring WM, something should be done to encourage people to choose between survivability or damage output, rather that getting both just by putting points in strength and ignoring IF. There are 24/24 guys running around fast as fvck in heavy armor that still take 10+ hits to kill. Make them give up 3 str or agi if they still want to be tanky.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Sandersson Jankins on October 08, 2014, 09:46:55 pm
It's not a gimmick, because this is what everyone does, and the purpose of the thread is to end the practice.

Just like the wpf patch ended the practice of stacking ridiculous str/agi while ignoring WM, something should be done to encourage people to choose between survivability or damage output, rather that getting both just by putting points in strength and ignoring IF. There are 24/24 guys running around fast as fvck in heavy armor that still take 10+ hits to kill. Make them give up 3 str or agi if they still want to be tanky.

no you don't understand

i mean fucking retarded builds like 33-12, not balanced shithead sanic/hulk hybrids
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Tydeus on October 12, 2014, 03:02:15 pm
There are 24/24 guys running around fast as fvck in heavy armor that still take 10+ hits to kill. Make them give up 3 str or agi if they still want to be tanky.
Rather than focusing on the fact that it's an extremely high level build, you choose to complain about one small facet of such? If you converted all your points, you'd be able to reach 24/24 with 4 skill points to split between WM and IF by level 35, at 36 you have 7 and at 37 you have 10. It's not the build, it's the character level. Furthermore, the strength of a single player's 24/24 build, even when forsaking IF, says nothing about the viability of the str and agi attributes.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Huscarlton_Banks on October 12, 2014, 03:37:54 pm
It's probably more the armor/experienced use of speed malus + weapon animation time that makes something like a 24/24 tanky rather than the few extra hp in STR, since all of their points will be in Athletics/Powerstrike/WM, in that order.

I'm not sure that they'd have all that much additional survivability over a 18/24, 27/21 or 18/27 seems more optimal for 36, maybe 21/27 or 18/30 for 37(Think this is just Aldo).

Most people with crazy high level builds like that generally have enough experience to do well even with STF builds though, +3-6 AGI + 1-2 more athletics just makes things a bit easier.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Phew on October 12, 2014, 05:01:51 pm
It's probably more the armor/experienced use of speed malus

Yes, exactly my point. Putting 7 points into 3 more agility and 1 more athletics not only improves maneuverability and damage output, it improves survivability (due to speed malus plus ability to wear heavier armor and maintain run speed). 7 IF just improves survivability, and not even as well as athletics does.

The WM patch took WM from an oft-neglected skill to a must-have skill. Why not do the same for IF?

My suggestion is to make IF give a penalty to your opponent's speed bonus. That makes the skill desirable and puts a damper on these 18/27+ guys running around one-shotting people with pierce weapons thanks to absurd speed bonus.

Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jack1 on October 12, 2014, 05:04:59 pm
hi, 24/24 guy here, I can say that my build has an advantage over everybody but people who stack wpf. I still get spammed to death by anybody with 9 wpm.

and I also take a shitload of hits because i'm using 60+ body armor and always backpeddle when I am blocking/chambering/whatever. whenever I go balls to the walls W key hero I usually get 2 or 3 hit like everybody else.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Huscarlton_Banks on October 12, 2014, 05:05:50 pm
AFAIK, there's no direct way to grab the speed bonus value on hit from the module system/WSE.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Phew on October 12, 2014, 05:33:18 pm
AFAIK, there's no direct way to grab the speed bonus value on hit from the module system/WSE.

Could you have IF apply extra mitigation to only pierce damage? It's pierce attacks that are the easiest to abuse speed bonus with, so this would accomplish the same thing. And it would screw ranged, so that's icing on the cake.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Tydeus on October 12, 2014, 05:43:24 pm
14 hp not as good as a single point of athletics? What? Baffling. I think people are just grossly oversimplifying the complex relations between character builds, armor, weapons and terrain. Thus making the ridiculous conclusions like 1 athletics > 14 hp, inevitable. A single point in athletics, especially after weight penalties from armor, is rather minor, yet 14 hp can easily allow one to sustain an extra full damage hit. Additionally, athletics doesn't simply reduce damage a player takes. In reality, it expands both the lows and the highs that a player can receive.

 :|

It's pierce attacks that are the easiest to abuse speed bonus with, so this would accomplish the same thing.
What? Do you mean thrusts? The Great Maul actually scales the best with speed bonus, in that the same speed bonus % results in a larger effective increase in damage than with any other weapon, and this remains true for most high damage blunt weapons.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: MURDERTRON on October 12, 2014, 05:55:55 pm
14 hp not as good as a single point of athletics? What? Baffling. I think people are just grossly oversimplifying the complex relations between character builds, armor, weapons and terrain. Thus making the ridiculous conclusions like 1 athletics > 14 hp, inevitable. A single point in athletics, especially after weight penalties from armor, is rather minor, yet 14 hp can easily allow one to sustain an extra full damage hit. Additionally, athletics doesn't simply reduce damage a player takes. In reality, it expands both the lows and the highs that a player can receive.

Tydeus has a good point for once.  If you had a hilarious 39/3 build, what would be more useful?  14hp or 1 ath?  With 1 ath, you're still slower than everyone, and you'll probably lose most of the benefit because you probably have to wear heavy armor to survive.  So, 14hp is certainly more useful.  The same is probably true if you only had 3 ath; 4 ath still means you're slower than everyone else.  It's really when you get to extreme builds that one becomes clearly more useful than the other.  For example, I have 9 ath, which makes me incredibly strong, but I also wear light armor and have no IF.  That means I should be backing out of strikes more often than blocking them, because low hp with low armor won't get me very far if I take hits.  However, since I'm generally faster than everyone, at this point, I'd probably take 14 hp over 1 more ath.

Realistically, the 1 ath is probably only worth it if you have 4, 5, 6, or maybe 7 ath already and that's still heavily dependent on the amount of armor you wear.

And if it happens to be raining or a severely hilly map, the hp is better 10/10 times.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: San on October 12, 2014, 06:09:43 pm
I disagree with 7 IF being better than 1 ath. Any point of athletics that bring you near the average or brings you over greatly aids you strategically. Additionally, you only need to wear extra armor to mitigate only an extra 3-4 damage per hit if you don't want to rely on the improved defensive options from athletics. You're simply provided with more options with extra athletics.

One mustn't discount the other agility focused skills such as extra WM, too.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Huscarlton_Banks on October 12, 2014, 06:19:05 pm
14 extra HP generally just means you survive that one extra hit more often. The movement speed gained from the athletics point isn't that big, but you also have to consider the movement speed bonus that the +3 AGI gives, which is close to an additional athletics point.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Phew on October 12, 2014, 06:37:32 pm
14 hp not as good as a single point of athletics? What?

It's not just 14 hp vs. 1 athletics; it's usually 14 hp vs ~7 body armor, since the higher athletics allows you to wear heavier armor for the same run speed. The +7 armor forces more glances and is generally better than +14 HP, unless you are at a really low armor already. 

Or like San said, you can continue to wear the same armor and gain a tactical advantage due to higher speed; it's your choice. IF needs some kind of secondary benefit beyond just pure HPs before people will choose it over 3agi+1 more athletics+1 more WM.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jack1 on October 12, 2014, 06:45:03 pm
Let's put it this way, would you rather have X HP with mail tier armor or X HP+14 with kuyak tier armor? Your the same exact thing in terms of speed and it generally takes as many hits or more depending on thbsituation and opponents. It also allows you to invest 1 point in wm without the trouble of the agility points which is nothing to ignore either.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: MURDERTRON on October 12, 2014, 06:48:12 pm
Let's put it this way, would you rather have X HP with mail tier armor or X HP+14 with kuyak tier armor? Your the same exact thing in terms of speed and it generally takes as many hits or more depending on thbsituation and opponents. It also allows you to invest 1 point in wm without the trouble of the agility points which is nothing to ignore either.
Yea but on the flip side, you can use that argument just as easily to say you can boost PS.

To the other guys:  Although many can use athletics to move away from swings to take less damage, let's not pretend it doesn't work against you as well.  Even if half the people here can use it to take less damage in 1v1s, once you're fighting multiple opponents I think it's a fairly moot point.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Tydeus on October 12, 2014, 07:26:01 pm
21str/Xagi

56 hp, 65 armor vs 70 hp 57 armor. On average that's about 3 damage per hit for cut weapons, less for pierce or blunt (because the additional armor counts for less).

I can understand the argument here, that it seems like this is a little too similar, but you're still oversimplifying. That 7 additional weight causes you to lose far more wpf than what you gain by the mere 3 agility, likely even with the additional 1 WM you could get if you spent an 8th skill point.

On the other hand, you could simply leave your armor unchanged, which is what most people do, and take the additional athletics for what it is (the speed increase). If you're doing that though, you can't be tempted to talk about athletics increases as though the effectiveness gains remain the same at all amounts/weights, which is what most people have done, thus far. As athletics increases, so too do the penalties on movement from weight. Meaning that you gain more effective athletics points at lower values than at higher ones.

Second, if you're already running faster than 95% of the playerbase, one additional athletics point so that you can run faster than 98%, isn't even worth talking about, that's about as minor as it gets. Furthermore, when fighting in groups or closed in areas, you're not even capable of utilizing any gains you might have from athletics. What's more, if your weapon is significantly shorter (20cm+) than your opponents, they're able to minimize any effects one would normally gain from athletics.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: imisshotmail on October 12, 2014, 09:53:39 pm
people vastly underestimate what 14 HP actually means in reality, it's often way more than just 1 more hit if you are getting hit with low speed bonus attacks which you should be in most cases. even in the worst cases 1 extra hit is HUGE, there is no penalty in this game for being on low HP other than the obvious fact you are closer to dying, but if you get blackbarred you can still fight on exactly the same as if you were at full HP. I end rounds with almost no health left all the time, mostly from tanking ranged hits, what it provides is way better than being slightly faster in those cases.

agility now is strong, as it should be.. it seems as if people have forgotten how the best melee builds used to be minimum 27+str with heavy armour and how awful and annoying it was to face, it's so much better now where the best builds are more balanced in the middle (although if you want to grief a glaive with full plate and 30str is still hilariously OP).
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Taser on October 12, 2014, 09:58:38 pm
One thing I notice though is that battle rewards agi heavy builds (15/24 and up) because there's no coherent formations nor a strong disadvantage of going lone wolf.

Strat however gives a strong benefit of having higher str. There are formations and places to defend and so forth. So if you have high str along with IF you're more useful since there's less room to maneuver. This definitely is true for sieges.

So it all has its place. I think its pretty good. IF can be more useful but it definitely shines with high armor where the high armor soak along with high HP make the most of every last bit of HP. Otherwise its kind of a throwaway skill.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Grumbs on October 12, 2014, 10:39:26 pm
I feel like STR is kind of player skill capped as a play style, while agi allows you to do so much more.

Athletics gives you movement speed that allows you to have vastly superior footwork, chase players, dodge shots, get speed bonus etc. I don't even have any wpf over 139 but with 8 athletics I feel my lvl 35 build is better than my old 24/18 with all WPF in one weapon type (before the str nerf btw), just because of athletics. I fight more fluidly and find it easier to kill players. I don't care about WPF much, but that movement speed is comparatively overpowered imo. With str you hit with marginally higher damage (considering WPF's damage bonus) and have a skill that can have 0 affect on your round. That extra bit of PS and HP is nothing compared to athletics imo
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: MURDERTRON on October 12, 2014, 10:45:38 pm
To compound in what Taser is saying, agi builds aren't very good for siege.  I mean, outside of spawning early and going straight for the flags before the enemy can spawn.

Strat and siege usually turn in to giant brawls, and if I get surrounded, that's it for me.  I know I'm dead because I don't have the luxury to take a hit to get out of being surrounded.

I also noticed there seems to be some sort of unfounded fear of heavily armored agi builds, but they don't really exist.  Like Tydeus said, the higher your agi, the more it is effected by speed modifiers whether that's from armor weight, weapon weight and length, terrain or weather.  Agi whores wear light to medium armor.  Of the people on NA rocking the 18/27 build, I wear a lamellar vest, Noodles wears a druzhina mail shirt, goldilocks wears Saracen padded or other ridiculously light armor, and conqeefador wears pilgrim robes.  We all die in 2 hits or two heavy horse bumps.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: San on October 13, 2014, 05:42:52 am
I think strength + IF provides some good durability, but I also think that strength by itself does, too. IF is great in a duel setting since every bit of health helps and admittedly for modes like siege. People shouldn't estimate ninja-ing in siege, though, especially at mid-population.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Huscarlton_Banks on October 13, 2014, 08:18:16 am
people vastly underestimate what 14 HP actually means in reality, it's often way more than just 1 more hit if you are getting hit with low speed bonus attacks which you should be in most cases. even in the worst cases 1 extra hit is HUGE, there is no penalty in this game for being on low HP other than the obvious fact you are closer to dying, but if you get blackbarred you can still fight on exactly the same as if you were at full HP. I end rounds with almost no health left all the time, mostly from tanking ranged hits, what it provides is way better than being slightly faster in those cases.

With 7 IF at 21 STR, you can basically think of it as:

Survived a hit, and have 20% or below health - IF saved you

You can break it down even more -

0-3% - Your seventh IF point saved you
~3-6% - Your sixth IF point saved you
~6-9% - Your fifth IF point saved you
~9-12% - Your fourth IF point saved you
~12-15% - Your third IF point saved you
~15-18% - Your second IF point saved you
~18-20% - Your first IF point saved you

Died with at least 20% health remaining before your last hit - IF didn't do anything that life.
Died after getting to any of the health %s above in one hit - Your IF points above the point that actually saved you didn't do anything that life.
Survived a round with more than 20% health remaining - IF didn't do anything that life.
Survived a round after getting to one of the health %s above -  Your IF points above the point that actually saved you didn't do anything that life.

If 14 HP really is giving you more than one extra hit(really unlikely, given damage reporter values), you have to consider how many hits you would normally be able to take.

After the first time IF saves you you're not left with a lot of wiggle room, you'll have 14 hit points left maximum (you can take 13 more damage before dying).

If you're able to squeeze more than one hit out of 13 damage, then you would necessarily have to be able to take a crapton of hits already (7IF is just +25% base health for 21 STR, you should be able to take #extra hits from IF * 4 already).

IF gets more useful in siege/strat since they're settings where a life persists for a very long time in comparison to battle, but the NA siege/strat scene seems mostly dead.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Kafein on October 13, 2014, 06:28:26 pm
Why is it that so many NA players claim that 33% more HP doesn't even make them survive one more hit? You don't have full +3 armor over there? Or everybody is a 10PS great maul bulldozer ?
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Tydeus on October 13, 2014, 06:36:41 pm
Why is it that so many NA players claim that 33% more HP doesn't even make them survive one more hit? You don't have full +3 armor over there? Or everybody is a 10PS great maul bulldozer ?
I haven't played in about two months, but unless NA has changed something, they use a fair bit less armor than EU does, on average.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Huscarlton_Banks on October 13, 2014, 08:47:12 pm
Why is it that so many NA players claim that 33% more HP doesn't even make them survive one more hit? You don't have full +3 armor over there? Or everybody is a 10PS great maul bulldozer ?

You'd need to be 33 or 36 str for a 33% HP increase, it's more likely that the bonus will be between 20.00-27.11%.

3 STR : 38 base (+2 from IF = 40, 5.26% HP increase from investment)
6 STR : 41 base (+4 from IF = 45, 10.25% HP increase from investment)
9 STR : 44 base (+6 from IF = 50, 13.63% HP increase from investment)
12 STR: 47 base (+8 from IF = 55, 17.02% HP increase from investment)
15 STR: 50 base (+10 from IF = 60, 20.00% HP increase from investment)
18 STR: 53 base (+12 from IF = 65, 22.64% HP increase from investment)
21 STR: 56 base (+14 from IF = 70, 25.00% HP increase from investment)
24 STR: 59 base (+16 from IF = 75, 27.11% HP increase from investment)
27 STR: 62 base (+18 from IF = 80, 29.03% HP increase from investment)
30 STR: 65 base (+20 from IF = 85, 30.76% HP increase from investment)
33 STR: 68 base (+22 from IF = 90, 32.35% HP increase from investment)
36 STR: 71 base (+24 from IF = 95, 33.80% HP increase from investment)

I did notice that I need more swings to take people down in EU1, but I always just thought it was a bad timing due to latency thing, I guess the average armor level might be higher in EU1. NA1 also tends to be fairly heavy on 45+ cut weapons and/or pierce/blunt weapons, I didn't really pay attention to the melee weapons on EU1, was distracted by the greater volumes of ranged.

45-49c weapons deal over 20 damage with a bad hold and zero speed bonus with 21/21 vs 65 armor. Something like a +3 morningstar/+3 bec doesn't even need a hold or speed bonus to do 20+ most of the time. Chances are there are a lot of times where people take a crapload of overkill on the last strike, and the extra HP will do nothing after the first extra hit.

In NA1, I'd say anything above Rus Scale/Pronoia could probably be considered unusually heavy, to the point where whenever I see an armor with plate in the name I immediately assume it's one of maybe ~4 people (leman, dutchydave, oralroberts, firebus), whenever I see transitional armor I immediately assume it's King_James_of_Acre, and whenever I see black armor I assume it's Devilize or his clone buddy.

Generally I only need 4-5 non-held, non-glancing strikes max to take down the heaviest armored people on NA1 with a +3 Liuyedao (6 PS, 173 effective WPF) when I aim at the feet/head, less hits if I bother to use holds or if I decide to use a steel pick instead.

I deal around ~15 damage on leg strikes vs +3 trans + +3 shynbaulds (65 armor total) after suboptimal but positive speed bonuses (8 ath strafes) + really badly timed holds. On a properly held head strike with a good speed bonus I'll easily deal way past 20-25++ damage on ~55 head armors.

With a +3 steel pick I do ~18-20+ damage with a badly held strike and zero speed bonus on a leg swing vs the armor above, haven't tested head hits.

These aren't very high numbers since 1h tends to deal much less damage than 2h/polearms, but they're high enough that they create many instances where extra HP from IF just falls into uselessly soaking up overkill damage after the first extra hit survived.

It's worse when you start looking at the damage on +3 morningstars/45c+ weapons/+3 bec/+3 long spiked club/strong pole stabs/couches/anything with a horseback speed bonus + headshot on a non-bumped target, it's not unusual to see something like 70++ effective damage using a +3 morningstar to the face vs the heaviest helmets from horseback while riding below 75% max speed on the armored horses.

Couches are even worse in that regard, someone with 0 ps/1 wpf/6 riding can easily do upwards of 80+ effective damage with an unloomed jousting lance and an unloomed courser on a chest hit on the heaviest possible loomed body armor + gloves without going anywhere near full speed.

I guess IF could help people when I'm using a club or a practice sword to be incredibly greedy with upkeep give myself a challenge, so I guess there's that.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Taser on October 13, 2014, 09:09:10 pm
Why is it that so many NA players claim that 33% more HP doesn't even make them survive one more hit? You don't have full +3 armor over there? Or everybody is a 10PS great maul bulldozer ?

What Ty and Carlton said.

High armor is a rarity. It is usually pulled out to troll rather than to actually use as a regular armor. A few people do use plate as part of their regular setup but like I said its rare.

Its considered lame to use high armor so there's pressure to use lower armor (which gives benefit for ath anyway). Add in repair cost and being slower and most of NA would just rather use a decent mid tier armor.

Like my main's highest armor that I own is a blue tunic over mail. It is +3. NA just doesn't like high armor. We'll use it in strat but not in regular battle or siege. Unless we're trolling and then we take a wooden stick along with that plate.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Phew on October 13, 2014, 09:26:35 pm
High armor is a rarity.

NA armor situation has kind of become a race to the bottom. Before the WM buff, everyone was 27/15 or similar and wearing at least 14kg body armor (Heavy Kuyak+). With that patch, they all respecced to 21/21 or similar. Then they got fed up losing to 18/27 polearmers where they still get 2-shot while being s-keyed and spammed, so they spec even more agility themselves and wear lighter armor so they can keep up. So now most melee are in <12kg body armor, 16 kg at the most.

I find that agi polearmers (most of NA melee now) 2-shot me regardless of what armor I wear (up to 65+), so I've been going progressively lighter myself.

I don't think the original M&B devs had 9 ath, 200 wpf, 36p +3 awlpikes in mind when the speed bonus formula was created. Tone down speed bonus, and you'll find that strength and IF will make a comeback.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Huscarlton_Banks on October 13, 2014, 09:35:26 pm
Toning down melee speed bonus significantly has its risks as well --

Stabs while backpedalling would suddenly deal much more damage.

Actually, backpedalling attacks in general would do a lot more damage, stabs would just be the most effected.

Melee cav would probably become a bit shitty though.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Sandersson Jankins on October 13, 2014, 09:43:59 pm
oh god what, I really HAVEN'T played in a while

NA players are in a reverse arms race to lower armour values? Fuck all that, I'll still use my +3 Transitional every time I get in there. Gotta get that armour on since I give a big ole' fuck you to IF. I'm still plenty fast in it with 6 athletics.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Phew on October 13, 2014, 09:51:22 pm
Toning down melee speed bonus significantly has its risks as well --

Stabs while backpedalling would suddenly deal much more damage.

Actually, backpedalling attacks in general would do a lot more damage, stabs would just be the most effected.

Melee cav would probably become a bit shitty though.

I'm sure it's a moot point anyway. It's the 100th case of "can only change with WSE, only cmp does WSE, cmp is too busy working on the poorly-named other game", etc.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Huscarlton_Banks on October 13, 2014, 10:31:46 pm
Speed bonuses are easily changed in the server settings file in the module folder (Module.ini? I'm not on my desktop.), it's right there along with armor soak values, flinching from damage thresholds, which brf files to load, etc.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Phew on October 13, 2014, 10:52:59 pm
Speed bonuses are easily changed in the server settings file in the module folder (Module.ini? I'm not on my desktop.), it's right there along with armor soak values, flinching from damage thresholds, which brf files to load, etc.

Ah, cool. In that case, is the current equation a linear function of relative closing speed, or squared function? I'm assuming squared, since that's the physical relationship for kinetic energy. i.e. Bonus=A*V^2 where A is some factor and V is the relative velocity between attacker and defender.

If it's indeed squared, my suggestion would be to test a higher power, like 3-4, with the factor reduced so that speed bonus on a fast-ish horse remains unaffected:
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Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Huscarlton_Banks on October 13, 2014, 11:10:09 pm
raw_damage *= math.pow(melee_damage_speed_power, speed_bonus)

You can use this JavaScript sample to get an idea of what kind of multiplier you'll get.

http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/tryit.asp?filename=tryjsref_pow

Set speed_bonus zero for neutral speed bonus (both players standing still)

Set melee_damage_speed_power to 1 to completely nullify speed bonus effects on damage no matter how high speed_bonus % is (think this is how ranged is set up right now).

I have no idea what speed_bonus actually translates to in real units, but it differs for pretty much every attack animation, so you'll have to set up crpg attack animations + wse in your own module to find them out.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Kafein on October 14, 2014, 12:50:23 am
You'd need to be 33 or 36 str for a 33% HP increase, it's more likely that the bonus will be between 20.00-27.11%.

3 STR : 38 base (+2 from IF = 40, 5.26% HP increase from investment)
6 STR : 41 base (+4 from IF = 45, 10.25% HP increase from investment)
9 STR : 44 base (+6 from IF = 50, 13.63% HP increase from investment)
12 STR: 47 base (+8 from IF = 55, 17.02% HP increase from investment)
15 STR: 50 base (+10 from IF = 60, 20.00% HP increase from investment)
18 STR: 53 base (+12 from IF = 65, 22.64% HP increase from investment)
21 STR: 56 base (+14 from IF = 70, 25.00% HP increase from investment)
24 STR: 59 base (+16 from IF = 75, 27.11% HP increase from investment)
27 STR: 62 base (+18 from IF = 80, 29.03% HP increase from investment)
30 STR: 65 base (+20 from IF = 85, 30.76% HP increase from investment)
33 STR: 68 base (+22 from IF = 90, 32.35% HP increase from investment)
36 STR: 71 base (+24 from IF = 95, 33.80% HP increase from investment)

I did notice that I need more swings to take people down in EU1, but I always just thought it was a bad timing due to latency thing, I guess the average armor level might be higher in EU1. NA1 also tends to be fairly heavy on 45+ cut weapons and/or pierce/blunt weapons, I didn't really pay attention to the melee weapons on EU1, was distracted by the greater volumes of ranged.

45-49c weapons deal over 20 damage with a bad hold and zero speed bonus with 21/21 vs 65 armor. Something like a +3 morningstar/+3 bec doesn't even need a hold or speed bonus to do 20+ most of the time. Chances are there are a lot of times where people take a crapload of overkill on the last strike, and the extra HP will do nothing after the first extra hit.

In NA1, I'd say anything above Rus Scale/Pronoia could probably be considered unusually heavy, to the point where whenever I see an armor with plate in the name I immediately assume it's one of maybe ~4 people (leman, dutchydave, oralroberts, firebus), whenever I see transitional armor I immediately assume it's King_James_of_Acre, and whenever I see black armor I assume it's Devilize or his clone buddy.

Generally I only need 4-5 non-held, non-glancing strikes max to take down the heaviest armored people on NA1 with a +3 Liuyedao (6 PS, 173 effective WPF) when I aim at the feet/head, less hits if I bother to use holds or if I decide to use a steel pick instead.

I deal around ~15 damage on leg strikes vs +3 trans + +3 shynbaulds (65 armor total) after suboptimal but positive speed bonuses (8 ath strafes) + really badly timed holds. On a properly held head strike with a good speed bonus I'll easily deal way past 20-25++ damage on ~55 head armors.

With a +3 steel pick I do ~18-20+ damage with a badly held strike and zero speed bonus on a leg swing vs the armor above, haven't tested head hits.

These aren't very high numbers since 1h tends to deal much less damage than 2h/polearms, but they're high enough that they create many instances where extra HP from IF just falls into uselessly soaking up overkill damage after the first extra hit survived.

It's worse when you start looking at the damage on +3 morningstars/45c+ weapons/+3 bec/+3 long spiked club/strong pole stabs/couches/anything with a horseback speed bonus + headshot on a non-bumped target, it's not unusual to see something like 70++ effective damage using a +3 morningstar to the face vs the heaviest helmets from horseback while riding below 75% max speed on the armored horses.

Couches are even worse in that regard, someone with 0 ps/1 wpf/6 riding can easily do upwards of 80+ effective damage with an unloomed jousting lance and an unloomed courser on a chest hit on the heaviest possible loomed body armor + gloves without going anywhere near full speed.

I guess IF could help people when I'm using a club or a practice sword to be incredibly greedy with upkeep give myself a challenge, so I guess there's that.

Well, my worst experience of 6PS 184 wpf and a 35c weapon was 14-shotting Butan once, not counting bounces. The funny part is that it wasn't staged, that fight went on for nearly a minute, in the middle of a castle. Now, Butan had around max armor so it's not really fair, but armor values in the 70s aren't really rare here. Due to that armor, people also move around trying to make enemy attacks bounce rather than empowering their own.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: imisshotmail on October 14, 2014, 01:30:27 am
NA armor situation has kind of become a race to the bottom. Before the WM buff, everyone was 27/15 or similar and wearing at least 14kg body armor (Heavy Kuyak+). With that patch, they all respecced to 21/21 or similar. Then they got fed up losing to 18/27 polearmers where they still get 2-shot while being s-keyed and spammed, so they spec even more agility themselves and wear lighter armor so they can keep up. So now most melee are in <12kg body armor, 16 kg at the most.

I find that agi polearmers (most of NA melee now) 2-shot me regardless of what armor I wear (up to 65+), so I've been going progressively lighter myself.

I don't think the original M&B devs had 9 ath, 200 wpf, 36p +3 awlpikes in mind when the speed bonus formula was created. Tone down speed bonus, and you'll find that strength and IF will make a comeback.

If you get hit by high speed bonus attacks it's almost always your own fault for having poor footwork.
I have 0 idea how anybody can complain about people using light armour and being agility builds.. it's so much easier to kill someone like that if you are better than them than if they are in heavy armour and high strength (assuming they don't just run away ofc).

Really what it just seems like to me is better players are beating you, and because they are high agility builds you get mad and think it's Unbalanced.

A typical case of the
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Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Phew on October 14, 2014, 02:59:59 pm
If you get hit by high speed bonus attacks it's almost always your own fault for having poor footwork.
I have 0 idea how anybody can complain about people using light armour and being agility builds..

If you read the thread, you'd notice that it's about people forsaking IF in favor of more agility, which has sh!t all to do with footwork. Most of these people still achieve 60+ body armor by wearing loomed medium armor and high armor loomed gloves, so we're not talking about light armor either.

If you are going to interrupt the adults when they are talking, at least keep it on topic.

Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: MURDERTRON on October 14, 2014, 04:32:24 pm
CRPG community's idea of 'light' armour is generally around 60 body armour

Nah, only on EU, you filthy plate crutchers.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: San on October 15, 2014, 04:41:33 pm
Before, the weight threshold before wpf penalty was 10. Now it's the max between Strength / 3 and IF * 2, with a minimum of 6. It's a buff for ranged and melee strength-builds. Greater penalties for gloves, too.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Phew on October 15, 2014, 04:57:31 pm
Before, the weight threshold before wpf penalty was 10. Now it's the max between Strength / 3 and IF * 2, with a minimum of 6. It's a buff for ranged and melee strength-builds. Greater penalties for gloves, too.

I'll reserve judgement, but I'm really liking all the ideas you guys came up with for this patch, this IF buff especially.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Huscarlton_Banks on October 15, 2014, 05:25:12 pm
Don't worry, I'm sure there'll be plenty of time/reasons to burn us at the stake.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: MURDERTRON on October 15, 2014, 05:38:13 pm
Before, the weight threshold before wpf penalty was 10. Now it's the max between Strength / 3 and IF * 2, with a minimum of 6. It's a buff for ranged and melee strength-builds. Greater penalties for gloves, too.

Gloves are fucked and the prophecy of elitewarrior86 has become true!
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Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: SayAttack on October 18, 2014, 05:27:46 am
if u dont mind...)

Quote
14 hp not as good as a single point of athletics?
definitely
 and 7ath even much more better than 7if.
agi allows you to survive and do more damage - fast ppl, harder to aim and shoot, harder to couch and bump-slash; in melee its harder to spam and kick'em, they have a great advantage in controlling distance - very easy to make a mistake, trying to catch them  "on a length", even if their weapon shorter;s-key style is based on a lot of athletics; today they are also have wp buff, almost always they maxing wm to fully realize this advantage(if u got IF u cant afford max wm) - their weapon much faster and given a  speed modification it damages very tough; finally, agiwhore  can at any time to leave the dangerous area of battle(pretty often agiwhore in losing team = valourmaker)
IF allows you to survive much longer and ...do what? what can do an iron guy, who, roughly speaking, stands still? who cares how many damage u can get, if you still can not hit back? siege only guy...defend side only.
agi allows you to do many things, makes u extremely dangerous atleast for 2 classes,  but with less chance of mistakes - IF its, unfortunately,  just a longer staying in a state of futility.

Quote
IF is great in a duel setting

if u mean IF instead of agi  , i also disagree with it - imo agiwhoring suggests minimizing of incoming damage, especially in melee and especially in 1on1 situation, no one will sacrifice agi, which is the key to success. did not die from a 2-3 hits them allows +3 sets

for example, pls look at this preparing to new patch
(click to show/hide)

i think it's kind of a typical example of builds, im sure it will be more then usefull. on practice IF its just a waste of skills. 1point there its just like Butan on eu3

if here is also allowed to speak about personal experience, I played long enough on 21/21 777 and I can say that  with medium or a bit heavier armor its rly pretty tanky, but when someone like Knitler hits you in the head removing  more then half hp and you do realize that next one will be the last -   u dont give shit about 1 or 2 or even 3 IF and thinking about 1 more in  shields or wm to have time to block it. on the other hand, playing an inf with 6 or 7 athletics, personally for me its  2 completely different games , with 7 im much more dangerous... which consequently allows me to be more survivable^^
therefore I support if's buff, especially expense of agi
(sry about my eng).
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Shaksie on October 18, 2014, 05:42:04 am
You do actually feel very disadvantaged with no IF, whenever I start Q_Qing about being weak despite having 65 armor, I always remember that I'm being a bastard with no IF. When I do get IF, I'm significantly tankier.
I suppose IF its for people like me who do stupid shit and/or can't block very well.
That being said I think it could add a bit of base armor and maybe 3 health per point, it seems significantly weaker than the other skills.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Grumbs on October 20, 2014, 03:56:32 pm
Still rather say no to IF and pump the skill points into a build with more agi/athletics. I don't even think PS is worth taking str for compared to agi still. That movement speed is such a huge bonus in a melee fight, and more WM gives you more WPF than some IF which doesn't really help much imo
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Camaris on October 20, 2014, 05:25:52 pm
Just look at Siege... there are some players with high if. They kill and kill and kill cause they can take 4-6 hits every time and CAN ignore some of those hits.
IF is very powerful most people just dont realize how powerful it is.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Mr.K. on October 20, 2014, 06:25:11 pm
Still rather say no to IF and pump the skill points into a build with more agi/athletics. I don't even think PS is worth taking str for compared to agi still. That movement speed is such a huge bonus in a melee fight, and more WM gives you more WPF than some IF which doesn't really help much imo

Just because that's how you feel doesn't make it a universal fact. I play agi (12/36) and strength (36/9) builds all the time, extreme both ends and balanced (24/21) as well and I really don't see the issue you and some others keep raising with the "agi masterrace". As an average skill level player I always do better with a str build than I do with an agi build. Best KDs I get with a balanced str leaning build.

All of the classes play differently and depending on my build I might have to choose different targets. If I have low str, I'll try to avoid ranged and really heavy infantry that can kill me with 1-2 swings. If I play strength, I need to avoid the corsairs of the battlefield that can just dance around me. Balanced builds are better because they work against both types of players (especially with polearm/greatsword) and you only really need to avoid ranged. Good players with agi builds can be annoying, but it's not the agi part that makes them strong, it's their skill.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Tydeus on October 20, 2014, 08:33:08 pm
and more WM gives you more WPF than some IF which doesn't really help much imo
That depends 100% on how much armor you use, nothing else.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Phew on October 20, 2014, 08:46:15 pm
The IF change is welcome and definitely adds an interesting mechanic. However, I notice that when wearing medium armor, you don't see any wpf advantage from IF until you exceed 3-4 points in the skill. This is unfortunate, since most people are now lvl 37 and that level doesn't allow "complete" builds, so you end up with "leftover" points. However, IF isn't a great option for leftover points, since you don't get the wpf benefit unless you are nearly maxing it.

I wish the wpf benefit could be linear with IF skill, instead of loaded to the last few points as you max IF. This would encourage greater build variety, as the IF skill is now very "all or nothing". The strength component of the wpf penalty reduction formula is nearly insignificant; I'd rather see it be a simple linear function of IF.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jona on October 20, 2014, 09:18:56 pm
The IF change is welcome and definitely adds an interesting mechanic. However, I notice that when wearing medium armor, you don't see any wpf advantage from IF until you exceed 3-4 points in the skill. This is unfortunate, since most people are now lvl 37 and that level doesn't allow "complete" builds, so you end up with "leftover" points. However, IF isn't a great option for leftover points, since you don't get the wpf benefit unless you are nearly maxing it.

I wish the wpf benefit could be linear with IF skill, instead of loaded to the last few points as you max IF. This would encourage greater build variety, as the IF skill is now very "all or nothing". The strength component of the wpf penalty reduction formula is nearly insignificant; I'd rather see it be a simple linear function of IF.

I think the minimum threshold was lowered from 10 to 6, and the threshold is now calculated by IF*2. Therefore having 3 IF changes nothing, since it is equal to 6, the automatic minimum. Also I agree with you about 37 not allowing "complete" builds and this kind of once again indirectly allows for IF to be the "leftover point dumpster." I used to have 6 IF, but now I only have 4 IF since I wanted to keep my 4 shield skill.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Phew on October 20, 2014, 09:31:33 pm
I think the minimum threshold was lowered from 10 to 6, and the threshold is now calculated by IF*2. Therefore having 3 IF changes nothing, since it is equal to 6, the automatic minimum. Also I agree with you about 37 not allowing "complete" builds and this kind of once again indirectly allows for IF to be the "leftover point dumpster." I used to have 6 IF, but now I only have 4 IF since I wanted to keep my 4 shield skill.

I might go back and forth between 18/25 with maxed skills (current) and 21/24 with 4 IF and 5 shield. I exchanged for that black/red Rus Scale for purely aesthetic reasons, which is really fat so I'm probably stuck on maxed IF builds. Hope siege gets populated again; siege is kind to fat shielders, unlike battle.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jona on October 20, 2014, 09:36:39 pm
I might go back and forth between 18/25 with maxed skills (current) and 21/24 with 4 IF and 5 shield. I exchanged for that black/red Rus Scale for purely aesthetic reasons, which is really fat so I'm probably stuck on maxed IF builds. Hope siege gets populated again; siege is kind to fat shielders, unlike battle.

You might have wanted to wait until the new heraldic armors you've had your eyes on were added to use up your heirloom exchange. Unless you like the new rus scale better than even those, of course. Cuz they are on their way... just a little delayed.

If I were you, I would go 21-24 or 24-21 as a shielder, without a doubt. 6PS can barely cut it for me when using 1handers. I know that you like to max out your shield skill, however I never went past 5, and I am currently plenty happy with only 4.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: San on October 20, 2014, 09:37:17 pm
Removing the min. 6 and strength factors would hurt hybrids and agi builds even more. No IF would mean that you can't wear armor without a penalty. Because of the exponential scale (that's needed for plate), medium armor would be like wearing plate for those that don't use IF. It's also easier to scale the IF function since strength works separately.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Phew on October 20, 2014, 09:49:10 pm
Removing the min. 6 and strength factors would hurt hybrids and agi builds even more. No IF would mean that you can't wear armor without a penalty. Because of the exponential scale (that's needed for plate), medium armor would be like wearing plate for those that don't use IF. It's also easier to scale the IF function since strength works separately.

Linearized about balanced builds/medium armor, the first 3-4 IF do nothing and the last 3-4 IF give you about ~4wpf each. I'm sure there is some way to make it so each IF pt gives about ~2wpf while not screwing hybrids and agi builds.

Quote
You might have wanted to wait until the new heraldic armors you've had your eyes on were added to use up your heirloom exchange. Unless you like the new rus scale better than even those, of course. Cuz they are on their way... just a little delayed.

If I were you, I would go 21-24 or 24-21 as a shielder, without a doubt. 6PS can barely cut it for me when using 1handers. I know that you like to max out your shield skill, however I never went past 5, and I am currently plenty happy with only 4.

I know, I'll probably still get the new heraldic mail anyway; I still got 5LPs sitting around. I never really notice any difference between 6-8PS with 4D 1h swords; it's still all about held head strikes if you want to actually hurt someone with those. I can always whip out my axe, which is 40c now! I don't play strat, so I plan to take advantage of the weekly respecs to try stuff out. I'd be fine with 5 shield skill if 4IF actually gave a wpf bonus, but I'd rather do more neutral nudge damage than just get 8HP.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Taser on October 20, 2014, 10:47:43 pm
You might have wanted to wait until the new heraldic armors you've had your eyes on were added to use up your heirloom exchange. Unless you like the new rus scale better than even those, of course. Cuz they are on their way... just a little delayed.

If I were you, I would go 21-24 or 24-21 as a shielder, without a doubt. 6PS can barely cut it for me when using 1handers. I know that you like to max out your shield skill, however I never went past 5, and I am currently plenty happy with only 4.

What's wrong with 6 PS for 1h?

Guess Jona just can't cut it.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Ujin on October 21, 2014, 09:05:51 am
You might have wanted to wait until the new heraldic armors you've had your eyes on were added to use up your heirloom exchange.
Pardon me for interfering , what heraldic armors are you talking about ?
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Jona on October 21, 2014, 01:44:14 pm
Pardon me for interfering , what heraldic armors are you talking about ?

I believe that these armors are going to be made heraldic, and maybe replace some of the current native heraldic armors:

Mail with Surcoat
(click to show/hide)

Plated Mail with Surcoat
(click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Knitler on October 21, 2014, 04:30:48 pm
if here is also allowed to speak about personal experience, I played long enough on 21/21 777 and I can say that  with medium or a bit heavier armor its rly pretty tanky, but when someone like Knitler hits you in the head removing  more then half hp and you do realize that next one will be the last -   u dont give shit about 1 or 2 or even 3 IF and thinking about 1 more in  shields or wm to have time to block it. on the other hand, playing an inf with 6 or 7 athletics, personally for me its  2 completely different games , with 7 im much more dangerous... which consequently allows me to be more survivable^^
therefore I support if's buff, especially expense of agi
(sry about my eng).

Always aim for the head - im 24/21 btw.
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: San on October 21, 2014, 05:09:58 pm
Linearized about balanced builds/medium armor, the first 3-4 IF do nothing and the last 3-4 IF give you about ~4wpf each. I'm sure there is some way to make it so each IF pt gives about ~2wpf while not screwing hybrids and agi builds.

Probably Str/3 + IF
Title: Re: Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful
Post by: Phew on October 21, 2014, 05:56:26 pm
Probably Str/3 + IF

Current is the greater of Str/3 or IF*2?

If so, I like Str/3 + IF a lot more. Would make the first 3-4 points in IF just as good as the last 3-4, and it would be a minimal change for both extreme agility and str builds.