balancing cav

[Elmetiacos]

Are people ITT seriously advocating a nerf for cavalry?

I've played a few generations as cavalry, because I think it's really fun - not because it's overpowered. If anything, I would almost say that it's UNDERpowered. That's right. Nearly every horse dies in 1-2 hits. For example, I can't even count the number of times that I've been killed by throwers recently. They kill my horse with one axe, then me with one more before I can even stand. It's absolutely ridiculous. Right now, any ranged players of any kind are able to deny cavalry access to huge portions of the battlefield. Some horses, like the courser and arabian, are able to mitigate this disadvantage because they're very strong in one area, but most horses are laughably weak. I WANT to play cavalry this generation, but if the past week is any indication I'll definitely have to re-spec to infantry. I'm just too vulnerable as cavalry.

I agree with all this, I've recently given up my cavalry alt, Sir_TenleyKnott, because he was so ineffective he was no longer any more fun. Get anywhere near the enemy infantry and you are hit with a hail of arrows from the archers and bolts from the growing number of hybrid crossbow infantry. If there's a thrower in there too, you are toast. And it seems like half of any team now is equipped with pikes, thanks to the glitch which makes them super-efficient melee weapons.

THIS is what's causing people to resort to using shameless tactics like backstabbing and AFK killing. There's just nothing else that they can do. As things are now, there are only a very small number of players that cavalry stand any sort of chance against. Anyone with a weapon whose length is >~110, or with a ranged weapon, can dispatch charging horses with ease. For example, I run around with a longsword and am virtually immune to cavalry. I one-shot their horse with a stab to the face and kill them before they even hit the ground. Again, it's ridiculous. Even most one handed weapons can beat them with a simple side-step and right swing.  In my opinion, every horse from the destrier on up needs at least another 10-20 points of hp/armor. ESPECIALLY the heavy horses.

Everyone lolstabs cavalry horses in the head now. Last night Hot_Chick killed 2 in a row with a katana - that's only length 95 and 17 damage. Any melee attack kills unarmoured horses; I gave up Sir_TenleyKnott mainly because I was getting most of my kills when I lost my horse in a cav duel and my opponents tried to finish me off!

There are effective cavalry out there, of course, but they are mostly people with a money sink who don't have to worry about upkeep and can ride about on Cataphract Horses or Chargers and/or wear Transitional or Plate. Playing as a light lancer is very difficult now.

[Casimir]

Ther is the disadvantage of whn your horse dies you can easily be hit twice on the ground while completly unable to defend yourself.  Also your faily exposed atop horses and become an easy and obvious targetr for any well positoned range players.

Cavalry is powerful, but its not without weaknesses as some people ehre would make out.

(click to show/hide)

buff 2h cav

[Gurnisson]

I've played a few generations as cavalry, because I think it's really fun - not because it's overpowered. If anything, I would almost say that it's UNDERpowered.

That would explain my K/D as level 30 cav being 5.8 without spawnraping nor hunting peasants and going several maps in a row without dying once. If you have decent awareness and good decision making you can often tear down half of the enemy team as cav. As infantry it's way harder since you can't really flee while outnumbered or flee from archers targeting you, and it's very rare that you can one-hit people that's not paying attention for a second or two. Cav is not easy for players that are bad decision makers since the speed bonus is a double-edged sword and one mistake might be the end of your round. However, cavalry is by far the easiest class to do well with if you play smart. You're basically untouchable if you don't do any mistakes.

That's right. Nearly every horse dies in 1-2 hits. For example, I can't even count the number of times that I've been killed by throwers recently. They kill my horse with one axe, then me with one more before I can even stand. It's absolutely ridiculous. Right now, any ranged players of any kind are able to deny cavalry access to huge portions of the battlefield. Some horses, like the courser and arabian, are able to mitigate this disadvantage because they're very strong in one area, but most horses are laughably weak. I WANT to play cavalry this generation, but if the past week is any indication I'll definitely have to re-spec to infantry. I'm just too vulnerable as cavalry.

Ranged counters cav, so you either try to stay away from the ones spotting you or you flank around and rape their range squad in the back. If you charge a thrower or an archer head on, you deserve to die.

THIS is what's causing people to resort to using shameless tactics like backstabbing and AFK killing. There's just nothing else that they can do. As things are now, there are only a very small number of players that cavalry stand any sort of chance against. Anyone with a weapon whose length is >~110, or with a ranged weapon, can dispatch charging horses with ease. For example, I run around with a longsword and am virtually immune to cavalry. I one-shot their horse with a stab to the face and kill them before they even hit the ground. Again, it's ridiculous. Even most one handed weapons can beat them with a simple side-step and right swing.  In my opinion, every horse from the destrier on up needs at least another 10-20 points of hp/armor. ESPECIALLY the heavy horses. Those suckers should be able to take a real beating - and that's about all they should be able to do. As things are now, that's the only thing that they CAN'T do. Reduce their speed and charge stats and increase their durability significantly so that they can actually be used as intended. They shouldn't be running all over like the light horses or knocking people down like some kind of big stupid bowling ball, they should be trotting or walking through the thick of battle, alongside the footmen. That's their niche. A little faster than infantry, but less agile and unable to block attacks to the horse.

Longsword and immune to cavalry? Those cav have to be really bad then. Anyone with a weapon shorter than a long awlpike is pretty easy to take down with a heavy lance. Hell, you can even reliably couch people using regular awlpikes. Just pretend that you're couching head on and then turn your horse to the left when you're pretty close. Easily dodgeable for the awlpiker but if he tries to out-thrust you, he will be couched down.

- cavalry are weak against ranged AND infantry

Nope, they're not. They're strong against infantry and while they counter archers they're also countered by them.

- cavalry are strong against unaware and AFK players

Well, true, but I don't really see any class not being strong against AFK players.

- heavier horses need more durability

Well, the leg damage is quite retarded but being hit by a melee weapon is your own fault. Heavy horses are still great since you take a lot more arrows before going down.

- heavier horses need less speed and much less charge

While I agree that the bump damage should be nerfed (or making the cavalry having to be at top speed to bump someone down), I don't agree that heavy horses should be even slower than what they are.

P.S. nerf ranged

No

[CrazyCracka420]

Give me an awl pike and try to couch me, I won't dodge. 

[Turboflex]

That would explain my K/D as level 30 cav being 5.8 without spawnraping nor hunting peasants and going several maps in a row without dying once. If you have decent awareness and good decision making you can often tear down half of the enemy team as cav. As infantry it's way harder since you can't really flee while outnumbered or flee from archers targeting you, and it's very rare that you can one-hit people that's not paying attention for a second or two. Cav is not easy for players that are bad decision makers since the speed bonus is a double-edged sword and one mistake might be the end of your round. However, cavalry is by far the easiest class to do well with if you play smart. You're basically untouchable if you don't do any mistakes.

This is the bottom line. If cav is so weak as some defenders here advocate, why do good players who go cav always magnify their kill stats compared to being infantry?? It's easy as fuck to get tonnes kills as cav if you play it smart.

[Casimir]

Balancing cav purely in the capabilities of lancers is the same as balancing footman on the ability of just polearm users.  Widen your vision and accept that lancers, although representing a majority of cav, perform differently to other cavalry.

[Lactose_the_intolerant]

gurnisson sums it up pretty well.
But i really have to emphasize on some points.

If your horse gets headshot by a heavy throwing axe you really diserved it. the thing drops fast, has slow missile speed so high anticipation is needed and it really doesnt travel far. you stay just 15 meters away and if he's still throwing his axe he's wasting his ammo (and his build, the investment you have to do in order to throw weapons should make throwers realise that they shouldnt spam stupidly)

Doing a head on pass on a thrower is deadly for both, you seem to consider this is only dangerous for cavalry!
-If you miss your throw you get lanced and/or suffer massive bump damage.(deadly 90% of the time for the thrower)
-you hit the horse but it doesnt die,  see above
-you kill the horse, two possibilities :
                                                          - he lanced you at the same time, you die(yes already happened many times, you can ask trikipuma about that)
                                                          - cav get up for a decent fight because his investment in hybriding is good (with different endings , cav gets bumrape, or cav wins whatever...)
-You hit the rider!!! he doesnt die, but your safe he didnt lance you! oh yea you suffer massive bump damage...rider gets his mistake forgivens and bumrapes more unaware people
-you kill the rider huzzah...*BUMP* (and die  )

But

Cav doesnt need a nerf...

Leg damage should be reverted, it's to high, making heavy horses near to useless. People don't seem to understand that the more you nerf them, the more you force them into a backstabbing role, creating even more rage and cav balance threads.

I believe, that the cav population is a hybrid problem. Cav is the easiest hybrid to have and the most diverse. You can or play on foot, or zoom about on horseback!!! With the drawback of spending 5 skill in riding and for what you get that's pretty investment worthy. You don't suffer from distributing wpf in different class, you dont have armor restrirctions, and be pretty much as effective in those two classes(foot and cav) as any guy who's invested in one playstyle!

so i'd beleive you should limit acces to cav BUT on the other hand, make real cav players, and by that i talk about cav with 7, 8 riding skill, really worthwile, give it some bonuses

[Elmetiacos]

That would explain my K/D as level 30 cav being 5.8 without spawnraping nor hunting peasants and going several maps in a row without dying once.

What weapon, armour and horse are you using? What's the upkeep on all that?

[Smoothrich]

Cav is really fucking easy and really fucking OP.

If you say cav is too hard to do well in you are honestly the worst player at the easiest class in the game.

Shame on you, and for god's sake stop posting in the balance forum.

[Son Of Odin]

get the sand out of your vagina and man up.

[Rusty_Shacklefjord]

wordswordswords poorly sectioned quotes words words

I'm not going to nit pick and deconstruct your entire post into little segments, especially since most of it is just your silly opinions, but there are a few key points I'd like to contest:

Using a top player as an example of how well a class is balanced is just stupid.

Your hypothetical is completely irrelevant to a realistic discussion of balance. A perfect player that never makes any mistakes could do really well as cavalry - but at the same time, they would do well with ANY class. Rohypnol switching to a horse-crossbowman is a great example of this. It's a class that's never been considered to be that effective, and still isn't for the vast majority of players. However, because he's a skilled player he was able to make it work. Likewise, your personal success as cavalry is probably more a result of your own level of skill than of the inherent effectiveness of the class.

As things are now, a few top players are able to do very well as cavalry, and everyone else is helpless. Highly skilled players can kill dozens of enemies with ease, to the point that it's almost not even fun to do any more. Meanwhile, average players are 1hko'd over and over and have nothing to show for it but a huge repair bill. Normally I'd be in favor of this kind of skill gap, but in this instance I think that it's too extreme. It's just not a good way to make the game fun. By increasing durability, you widen the margin of error for cavalry and allow newer players do to a little better. By decreasing speed/charge/maneuver, you make older players less overwhelmingly powerful. Skilled cavalry players would still be able to beat out unskilled players, but not by such a ridiculously wide margin.

I think that people's frustrations with cavalry stem primarily from this good player vs bad player dichotomy. If you want to make people happy, the class has to be balanced for both.

Also, as a bit of an aside, making the changes that I'm advocating here would also make it so that the riding skill would actually be valuable outside of fulfilling difficulty requirements. People could still have handling comparable to what we have now, but they would actually have to invest some points beyond the bare minimum. It would open up a subset of pure cavalry vs all of the hybrid cavalry that we have now.

[Leshma]

Killed some schmucks today, every single one was proper lance stab in the face on aware opponent. Still miss wide lance angle.

Bring back old lance angle and nerf couch damage four times. Also change req for Arabian to 6 and buff Coursers maneuver by two points (it's the most beautiful horse in crpg, it deserves to be the best).

That way only good cav will kill something, noobs will die in cav duels in first minutes. Which will lead to less cav but good ones will be feared and most people will try to avoid them. After that you can make long spear and pike 2 slot again, but make sure to nerf lolpiking (feinting, jumping, lolspinstab and most importantly fix pikes going through walls and teammates).

[Leshma]

Forgot one thing. To avoid hatred of couch lovers I have one more change.

Buff Great Lance and other couch only lances to 60-80 damage, so that only those lances one hit when couched.

[Son Of Odin]

Leshma I always thought you hated cavalry . I would like to see the old lance angle coming back. Maybe nerf the couch damage small bit in exchange, not too much tho ^^

[Leshma]

I liked cavalry but I don't like what cavalry has become.

And no, you can't have wide lance angle and one hit couch with heavy lance.

I would also buff lance speed a bit, heavy lance by 5%, lance by 15% and Light Lance by 20%. But only when used on horse, on foot current values are more then enough.

Couching is a cool thing but its poorly implemented in this game. It's oversimplified.