What IS balanced?

[Chasab]

pure builds are balanced

sword and board > range > 2hander > Sword and board

Hybrids however are not balanced

Hybrid>Sword and board
Hybrid>range
Hybrid>2hander

Cav is fine, if your not aware of your surroundings a cav can kill you, if you refuse to carry a polearm cav will kill you.
Crushthrough could use some tweaks.

[Kophka]

Hybrids however are not balanced

Hybrid>Sword and board
Hybrid>range
Hybrid>2hander

If you want to try to balance hybrids, support the wpf requirements for weapons idea that's being tossed around by players these days. The reasoning behind it is that the top tier weapons would require specialist levels of wpf, and hybrids would be limited to the lower tiers of equipment. Say I'm a throwing/1hand/shield hybrid, 110 throwing, 120 1 hand. This means, even with 24 str and 8 pt, I could use neither the throwing lances, or a side sword. I'd be limited to say, heavy throwing axes/javs and a broad axe or Nordic champ tier sword. Now, if I'm really skilled, I can kill you consistently with even the low tier weapons, but I really think it'd bring some balance back to the game for the masses.

EDIT : Should have clarified, the wpf requirements are IN ADDITION to the current str/pd/pt requirements. Agi buffers get no special considerations .

[Seawied]

pure builds are balanced

sword and board > range > 2hander > Sword and board

Hybrids however are not balanced

Hybrid>Sword and board
Hybrid>range
Hybrid>2hander

Cav is fine, if your not aware of your surroundings a cav can kill you, if you refuse to carry a polearm cav will kill you.
Crushthrough could use some tweaks.

Agreed. Some items could use some tweaking, but the overall class itself is fine. Its the hybrids which gets the best of both worlds with very limited draw back. Tweaking the WPF curve would help curtail this as well as adding higher requirements for the top tier weapons.

@Kophka, I believe wpf req is impossible due to hard-coding.

[Kophka]

@Kophka, I believe wpf req is impossible due to hard-coding.

From what I've been hearing about the WSE, they can tweak things however they like, and the WSE tells the game to do it. If true, (or even partially true), wpf requirements can be added with the regular requirements, which is at least worth a look if it can be done.

[Seawied]

If thats in fact the case, then awesome. Its definitely one potential way of making hybrids less common.