End this STR madness

[Bjord]

And we started hiltslashing summer 2010, SO ONCE AGAIN NA IS FAIL. 

Also STR is more beneficial than AGI, so if anything's being crutched it's STR builds.

EU #1.

[Keshian]

And we started hiltslashing summer 2010, SO ONCE AGAIN NA IS FAIL. 

Also STR is more beneficial than AGI, so if anything's being crutched it's STR builds.

EU #1.

In summer 2010 all the servers were EU so FAILLL, try Castoring with 180 ping sometime.  Strength is better for non-backpedaling whores who actually know how to manual block and chamber.  All I ever see in melee on EU servers is s key, swing, s-key, swing over and over again, go to NA its chamber, block, counter-swing, block, swing, etc.

[Leshma]

LOL I just hit a guy wearing straw hat with an overhead and he didn't die. STR for teh LULZ

[ThePoopy]

In summer 2010 all the servers were EU so FAILLL, try Castoring with 180 ping sometime.  Strength is better for non-backpedaling whores who actually know how to manual block and chamber.  All I ever see in melee on EU servers is s key, swing, s-key, swing over and over again, go to NA its chamber, block, counter-swing, block, swing, etc.

eu melee has become boring and covard revarding, na will get it too soon ;D

[Vibe]

Strength does not directly modify movement speed or attack speed.

Directly not, but by reducing the weight penalties perhaps?

[Balton]

Directly not, but by reducing the weight penalties perhaps?

It indirectly buffs attack speed by allowing you to land a hit sooner in the swing arc.

[rustyspoon]

But you see, the fact that the average build has a 40% (15 to 21) increase of str over agi is the very problem itself. The *average* build should always be a perfect equilibrium of 18/18, or maintain a 16.67% (18 to 21) discrepancy at the very most for specialized characters (example: pure archer builds without power strike). When a difference of greater than 16.67% (let alone 40%) is the average build, it is a clear sign of poor balance.

Wow. Yeah, you do realize that your attributes have more to do with limiting your skill choices than anything else. There isn't actually a 40% difference between ANY mechanics between a 21/15 build and an 18/18 build.

To illustrate:

Here's a 21/15 shielder build:

Strength: 21
Agility: 15
Hit points: 70
Skills to attributes: 2
Ironflesh: 7
Power Strike: 7
Shield: 5
Athletics: 5
Weapon Master: 5
One Handed: 146

Here's an 18/18 shielder build:

Strength: 18
Agility: 18
Hit points: 65
Skills to attributes: 2
Ironflesh: 6
Power Strike: 6
Shield: 6
Athletics: 6
Weapon Master: 5
One Handed: 146

The difference between HP is roughly 7.2%
WPF is the same.
The difference between damage is 8%
Shield durability 8%.

They are pretty damn close overall. No where near a 40% difference as you claim. You can't take two arbitrary numbers and say there is a 40% difference between them when they themselves have barely any effect on the actual game mechanics. Especially when the original devs decided that skills should be increased when attributes reach multiples of 3. What if they did it in multiples of two?

An average build is just that, average. Good at everything, great at nothing. I do agree that something needs to be done to increase the viability of agi builds, but your WPF idea would really take a lot of the customization out of the game.

[Tydeus]

eu melee has become boring and covard revarding, na will get it too soon ;D

It's been there for quite a while. That's why myself and several others would like to see a fastest speed server of some sort.

[WaltF4]

The weight penalties for movement speed and attack speed are either independent of strength or are such weak functions of strength that the effects were unmeasurable in my testing.

[Balton]

Wow. Yeah, you do realize that your attributes have more to do with limiting your skill choices than anything else. There isn't actually a 40% difference between ANY mechanics between a 21/15 build and an 18/18 build.

To illustrate:

Here's a 21/15 shielder build:

Strength: 21
Agility: 15
Hit points: 70
Skills to attributes: 2
Ironflesh: 7
Power Strike: 7
Shield: 5
Athletics: 5
Weapon Master: 5
One Handed: 146

Here's an 18/18 shielder build:

Strength: 18
Agility: 18
Hit points: 65
Skills to attributes: 2
Ironflesh: 6
Power Strike: 6
Shield: 6
Athletics: 6
Weapon Master: 5
One Handed: 146

The difference between HP is roughly 7.2%
WPF is the same.
The difference between damage is 8%
Shield durability 8%.

They are pretty damn close overall. No where near a 40% difference as you claim. You can't take two arbitrary numbers and say there is a 40% difference between them when they themselves have barely any effect on the actual game mechanics. Especially when the original devs decided that skills should be increased when attributes reach multiples of 3. What if they did it in multiples of two?

An average build is just that, average. Good at everything, great at nothing. I do agree that something needs to be done to increase the viability of agi builds, but your WPF idea would really take a lot of the customization out of the game.

You're supposed to compare 21/15 to 15/21, not to 18/18. 18/18 would ideally be the standard. To increase a stat from 15 to 21, you would need to add 40% of that stat to itself. So, 140% of 15 is 21. Now, let us compare 21/15 to 15/21 using your method.

Here's a 21/15 shielder build:

Strength: 21
Agility: 15
Hit points: 70
Skills to attributes: 2
Ironflesh: 7
Power Strike: 7
Shield: 5
Athletics: 5
Weapon Master: 5
One Handed: 146

Here's a 15/21 shielder build:

Strength: 15
Agility: 21
Hit points: 60
Skills to attributes: 2
Ironflesh: 5
Power Strike: 5
Shield: 7
Athletics: 7
Weapon Master: 5
One Handed: 146

Strength gets 16.67% more HP.
Strength gets 16% more damage.
Agility gets 16% more shield durability.
Agility runs slightly faster.

It's quite clear which build is superior, and in turn, understandable why the average build has 40% more strength than agility.

[rustyspoon]

You're supposed to compare 21/15 to 15/21, not to 18/18. 18/18 would ideally be the standard. To increase a stat from 15 to 21, you would need to add 40% of that stat to itself. So, 140% of 15 is 21. Now, let us compare 21/15 to 15/21 using your method.

Here's a 21/15 shielder build:

Strength: 21
Agility: 15
Hit points: 70
Skills to attributes: 2
Ironflesh: 7
Power Strike: 7
Shield: 5
Athletics: 5
Weapon Master: 5
One Handed: 146

Here's a 15/21 shielder build:

Strength: 15
Agility: 21
Hit points: 60
Skills to attributes: 2
Ironflesh: 5
Power Strike: 5
Shield: 7
Athletics: 7
Weapon Master: 5
One Handed: 146

Strength gets 16.67% more HP.
Strength gets 16% more damage.
Agility gets 16% more shield durability.
Agility runs slightly faster.

It's quite clear which build is superior, and in turn, understandable why the average build has 40% more strength than agility.

It is time again for teh maths. Again I disagree.

First is hp. It's actually a 14.3% difference. Only 10 hp. Not too much. Depending on the armor you are wearing you'd be able to survive 1 more hit. With the increase in athletics it's much easier to stay out of range. You're more in danger from team hits than hits from the enemy.

Now let's look at damage because this is much more interesting.

Let's say that each build is using a Knightly Arming Sword. It does 32 damage. With 5PS you'd be doing 44.8 damage per swing. With 7PS you'd be doing 49.92 per swing. However, that doesn't take speed bonus into account. With speed bonus you can do ridiculous amounts of damage. Even with 4PS I can 2 hit some people who are wearing medium helmets with head hits. With a good speed bonus you can meet or exceed the damage of the 7ps. Sure, in a straight up fight if each one was swinging at each other the 15 str guy would go down first, but no fight ever works like that.

Another interesting point to consider. Since armor soak values are also percentage based, the attacks of the 7ps guy would get reduced more than the 5ps guy. Again, helping to bridge the gap. Interesting, no?

What I'm really trying to say is that both of those builds are pretty balanced. Anything that's only 3 points off the norm (18/18) in any direction falls under balanced. Builds that start to go outside of that range start to show the differences between str and agi builds. One big reason is the speed bonus itself. I'm pretty sure speed bonus is capped at 100% giving agi builds a limit on that damage modifier. Also, that same damage modifier works against them. Stacking strength does nothing but good things and the scaling gets REALLY ridiculous with high damage weapons. Agi builds start to get worse as athletics is stacked because you can only get so much of a speed bonus and the diminishing returns of WPF damage bonus starts very early.

[Tydeus]

It is time again for teh maths. Again I disagree.

First is hp. It's actually a 14.3% difference. Only 10 hp. Not too much.

No, Balton is definitely right. 70 is 116.67% of 60.

Only 10 hp. Not too much. Depending on the armor you are wearing you'd be able to survive 1 to 2 more hits. With the increase in athletics it's much easier to stay out of range. You're more in danger from team hits than hits from the enemy.

Now let's look at damage because this is much more interesting.

Let's say that each build is using a Knightly Arming Sword. It does 32 damage. With 5PS you'd be doing 44.8 damage per swing. With 7PS you'd be doing 49.92 per swing. However, that doesn't take speed bonus into account. With speed bonus you can do ridiculous amounts of damage. Even with 4PS I can 2 hit some people who are wearing medium helmets with head hits. With a good speed bonus you can meet or exceed the damage of the 7ps. Sure, in a straight up fight if each one was swinging at each other the 15 str guy would go down first, but no fight ever works like that.

Another interesting point to consider. Since armor soak values are also percentage based, the attacks of the 7ps guy would get reduced more than the 5ps guy. Again, helping to bridge the gap. Interesting, no?

What I'm really trying to say is that both of those builds are pretty balanced. Anything that's only 3 points off the norm (18/18) in any direction falls under balanced. Builds that start to go outside of that range start to show the differences between str and agi builds. One big reason is the speed bonus itself. I'm pretty sure speed bonus is capped at 100% giving agi builds a limit on that damage modifier. Also, that same damage modifier works against them. Stacking strength does nothing but good things and the scaling gets REALLY ridiculous with high damage weapons. Agi builds start to get worse as athletics is stacked because you can only get so much of a speed bonus and the diminishing returns of WPF damage bonus starts very early.

Much easier to stay out of range is the same as "Much easier to not be in combat", other than this, 2 athletics isn't going to do shit in a 1v1, it's more about weapon length at that point.

You're either overestimating the amount of difference than 2 athletics makes on a speed bonus or you're not even taking into consideration the speed bonus of the str build.

The soak factor makes less of a difference in how it is implemented, than even a single point in powerstrike would make.

100% speed bonus isn't something you'll see outside of the realm of cavalry and I know, at least in native, it isn't capped at 100%.

I'll finish up my complete damage calculator sometime this week, it calculates damage for all types of weapons(including ranged) then release it to the community. It's from a few months back when the soak value/reduce values were changed the first time, so there's some updating I need to do with it, then run it by Espu/cmp to make sure it's 100% accurate. Everything was taken from cmp's posts/crpg files so there shouldn't be much issue.

[Thomek]

The solution is not nerfing STR.

Let me illustrate, I call the below graph the:

===== GRAPH OF STR VS AGI AWESOMNESS =====
                                  Higher is better

What we have now:
PURE STR                      BALANCED                  PURE AGI
---------------------------------------
                                                -----------
                                                              --------
                                                                        ------
                                                                                ----

It is bad because we reduce player type variation.
                                                   

If you nerf STR only it will look like this:
PURE STR                      BALANCED                  PURE AGI
                                     -----------
                        ----------              -----------
             --------                                          --------
     ------                                                               ------
 ---                                                                               ----

It is even worse, because everyone will go balanced.

What it SHOULD look like is this:
PURE STR                      BALANCED                  PURE AGI
----------------------------------------------------------------------

In the ultimate STR vs AGI balance, every kind of AGI to STR should be equally good, but different to play.

How should one buff AGI side?
More wpf = game breaking speeds. (More bugs and netcode problems) So not that.

Also one must take into account Hybrids.
My proposal with them is to treat wpf curves differently if u have more than 1 skill.

[Teeth]

How should one buff AGI side?
More wpf = game breaking speeds. (More bugs and netcode problems) So not that.

Good point overall, but I disagree with this one. I think we are far below game breaking speed levels. I believe currently you get 181 wpf for a 12/27 build. A 12/27 build is already quite inefficient so lets say the max wpf in this game is 181.

In 2010 we had gamebreaking speeds due to wpf levels being over 200, but we should not forget that with every patch since then weapons have been reduced in speed. I remember using a 97 speed Long Hafted Blade (96 base, loomed once) with a 12/27 build with 181 wpf in March or something. The LHB now has a base speed of 92. There are many other weapons that got treated the same. The overall average weapon speed is much lower than in in early 2011 and Native.

I think a 12/27 build should be able to get 200 wpf. Increasing wpf should be possible due to the lower weapon speeds. So flatten the wpf curve so Strength builds get a little less and Agility builds get some more.

[hippy_with_a_scimi]

In 2010 we had gamebreaking speeds due to wpf levels being over 200, but we should not forget that with every patch since then weapons have been reduced in speed. I remember using a 97 speed Long Hafted Blade (96 base, loomed once) with a 12/27 build with 181 wpf in March or something. The LHB now has a base speed of 92. There are many other weapons that got treated the same. The overall average weapon speed is much lower than in in early 2011 and Native.

im not sure why people say over 200 is game breaking speeds , over 300 is game breaking speed , i used to fought people over 200 all the time back then and its not that bad

Kesh with his 300+ machine gun bow was the funnies