Shielder popularity

[NuberT]

well I play mostly siege

[oprah_winfrey]

I think I see what you are saying, but I disagree that polearms are the counter to shields.  Polearms are the counter to cav mostly, and cav is the counter to shields (so are all axe weapons).

I guess glance nerf was kind of a buff for shielders, but even back before that when I had 6PS and any decent 1h weapon I hardly ever glanced.

Polearms are a counter to shielders because they have the best weapons with bonus to shields.

Nubert, I am curious though why do players recover faster from a long maul now?

[Penitent]

The above two posts:

Ah yes, I see what you mean.  I play siege a lot too. 
Personally though, if I knew I was going to come up against a lot of shields and I could pick any class, I would choose 1h/shield and take an axe.  Polearms are good against shields because they have the long breaking weapons, but I usually die when using them once the shielder gets up close and starts spamming. 

[NuberT]

Polearms are a counter to shielders because they have the best weapons with bonus to shields.

Nubert, I am curious though why do players recover faster from a long maul now?

due to removal of polestun modifier x1.5, if thats what they changed about polestun, not sure though, if that ever existed  .

Well couldn't land many overheads anyway, my long maul is already in the armory

[oprah_winfrey]

due to removal of polestagger modifier x1.5, if thats what they changed about polestagger, not sure though, if that ever existed  .

Well couldn't land many overheads anyway, my long maul is already in the armory

I don't think the long maul ever had polestagger since it has knockdown.

[NuberT]

I don't think the long maul ever had polestagger since it has knockdown.

mhh yeah maybe it just felt like it because 2nd overhead didnt register (turning limit).

But I guess you know what I mean, before the recent changes the guy who was hit by overhead could not fight back directly, he had to hope to get out of reach or that the second overhead would miss.

The mechanic was silly for sure, but essential for survival when playing with long maul.

[Dalhi]

I am not sure if the number of shielder is growing, I'd say that it really depends on time/day, I remeber playing maps with 5-6 shielders in 50 players team, other time team consisted of almost 40% of shields. Personally I prefer to have a shielder by my side then spamming zerg two hander, I have to watch all the time not to block his swings with shield accidenatly becouse some of them just don't think doing a right swing when they have ally on their right side can stop the attack on ally. Not to mention greater overall survavibility, chance to get shot is singnificly lower, not like shielders are immune to range but as we all know it does help.

Havn't played for last few days too much but I didn't noticed any change to stab. Overheads are crap for everyone. Enemie at facehugging distance can easly avoid getting hit with overhead from 1h sword, to be honest I used to miss quite a lot of whose attacks but now it is much more harder. If someone doesn't have a shield to grant himself basic cover from range then it was only his choice and foult, convert few points and there you go, problem solved. Maybe hitting with mauls is more difficult but definatly you can KO and finish helpless oponent with second attack. Removing polestagger probably slightly decreased the amount of kills that avarage polearmer can get but I see it as more nerf to blob then individuals (not counting cheap backpedalling right swing spamming wankers).

O yeah, pity that tincans with longest weapons are no longer invincible in melee 

[rustyspoon]

somehow they have been "buffed" constantly in the last 18 months:

glancing chances decreased

Honestly I've always seen this as a nerf to 1-handers. Here's why:

Though they decreased glance chances, they increased the amount of damage that armor absorbed. So less hits glance, but you need more hits to kill someone.

The only time you really glanced was if you had a cut weapon, relatively low strength and you were fighting someone with heavy loomed armor. In those situations cut weapons are as useless now as they were before the change.

What that change really did was reduce the effectiveness of cut weapons against medium armor, which is the most common armor in the game. On medium armor you never glanced anyway, but now you need more hits to kill someone. Not really a buff to 1-handers there.

Unfortunately, pierce and blunt damage types are far superior to cut unless you are fighting someone with no armor. Cut damage only really starts to shine when you are REALLY stacking strength. High cut weapons benefit the most from stacked strength due to them gaining the most from Power strike (due to power strike being a percentage-based increase). 1-handers (who generally have lower str due to shield requirements) also suffer from less of a damage increase from power-strike due to the lower initial damage of their weapons.

It's unfortunate, but after the change you're always better off with a blunt or pierce weapon as a 1-hander than cut.

Here are some examples:

12 str 4 PS 100 wpf armed with military pick (30 pierce) vs 30 armor:
average damage: 24.5

12 str 4 PS 100 wpf armed with military pick (30 pierce) vs 50 armor:
average damage: 15

18 str 6 PS 100 wpf armed with military cleaver (35 cut) vs 30 armor:
average damage: 29.5

18 str 6 PS 100 wpf armed with military cleaver (35 cut) vs 50 armor:
average damage: 17.5

In this example, the pick user is using a weapon that does (5!) less points of damage AND has 2 less points of power strike, but the damage levels aren't far off.

24 str 8 PS 100 wpf armed with steel pick (32 pierce) vs 30 armor:
average damage: 38

24 str 8 PS 100 wpf armed with steel pick (32 pierce) vs 50 armor:
average damage: 27.5

24 str 8 PS 100 wpf armed with military cleaver (35 cut) vs 30 armor:
average damage: 35

24 str 8 PS 100 wpf armed with military cleaver (35 cut) vs 50 armor:
average damage: 21.5

Give him a steel pick and the same exact str values and you see how terrible cut is.

All the armor change did was make your average fight last longer - which is dumb.

[San]

Not to mention that looms for 1h weapons are a little off.

Looming a pierce/blunt weapon gives you +3 in those respective damage types, a much greater benefit than looming a cut weapon. In addition, many of those weapons are considered maces/hammers, so they get an increase in weight, allowing for them to easily stun other 1h weapons while maintaining a high weapon speed. This would be fixed once the 1h weapons have reliable stabs, though!

[Cyclopsided]

In Na BAttle we have:
The most Shielders we've had in months
Slightly following the HUGE upsurge in throwers. THe most throwers since the golden age of throwing before the great throwing nerf. (not close to how many we had back then... it was everybody...)
We also have plenty of other ranged. It is only natural to go 1h shield.

The odd thing is the huge amount of cavalry we have. we need the ranged to coutner cavalry, it is the only offensive counter to cav (Pikes are DEFENSIVE counters. the horse has to run into it.) We have the lowest amount of pure 2h/pure polearms ever. Of course we still have them, haha they'll never die. But there is proportionally less than ever in NA.


HERE'S THE THING. I think it is a great thing there are more shielders. I've been playing on an archer recently, and archery is all about teamwork. If I have 1h/shield and a hoplite working together with me, I am safe to shoot every single cav down without threat to me. When they engage enemy players without shields, I get free shots on the enemy that are guaranteed not to hit my teammates. If the guy charges at me, they hit him in the back. This is small scale teamwork, 3 players. But we amplify our effectiveness as I follow them around through battle. I'm never more than 15 meters from the melee fights as an archer. And I feel safe.
The more and more teamwork you see from shielders working with ranged teammates, It is beautiful. They both survive much longer AND get much more kills.
(and if they're in NH they probably are 1h shielders WITH throwing, heh)


Now you're going to hate me hard, but If I could set up a 30 vs 30 team match. My team would be 10 archers  and 20 1h/shielder + throwing hybrids (21/15 build). Nothing else. No 2h, no cav, nothing. It would facestomp everything. Every shielder would have 2 stacks of heavy throwing axes. The archers would always target enemy cav and dehorse them before the throwers would have to throw many. Teamwork wise, I don't know why there aren't more of this. I suppose it might lose to a pure cavalry team, but that would depend only on the map. I don't know of anything it isn't safe from and counters hard. the 1h/shield/throw hybrids are so safe and powerful in teamplay. Individually they might make little impact, but 5 of them working together is crazy. They get exponentially stronger.
One day we'll see the FoTM flood of 1h/shield/throwing hybrids, and it'll stick.

[Ujin]

The more shielders the better the game would look and feel, imo. Looks more realistic (than a bunch of kuyak clones with 2h), fights last longer, less random deaths, lets teams do nice looking but mostly useless shield walls etc.
I think it'd make much more sense if the majority of infantry were shielders with some 2h and polearm players.

[Turkhammer]

The more shielders the better the game would look and feel, imo. Looks more realistic (than a bunch of kuyak clones with 2h), fights last longer, less random deaths, lets teams do nice looking but mostly useless shield walls etc.
I think it'd make much more sense if the majority of infantry were shielders with some 2h and polearm players.

Gasp!  Heretic!  You mentioned realism in connection with crpg.  I see a stake and fire in your future, blasphemer.

I would like the ability to stab from behind a raised shield, just like the Roman legions did it.  They had sword and shield figured out a long time ago.

[NuberT]

Honestly I've always seen this as a nerf to 1-handers. Here's why:

Though they decreased glance chances, they increased the amount of damage that armor absorbed. So less hits glance, but you need more hits to kill someone.

The only time you really glanced was if you had a cut weapon, relatively low strength and you were fighting someone with heavy loomed armor. In those situations cut weapons are as useless now as they were before the change.

What that change really did was reduce the effectiveness of cut weapons against medium armor, which is the most common armor in the game. On medium armor you never glanced anyway, but now you need more hits to kill someone. Not really a buff to 1-handers there.

I never played 1h, so I can only see the other side here. 1h glanced a lot on me (62 body armor,+3 tabard and plate mittens) especially in groupfights. Now you are mosty stunned in groupfights with shielders around, even when you are able to swing you will likely hit a shield while gathering momentum. I would say this makes it easier for 1h and harder for polearm/2h .

[Taser]

Dex basically nailed it. Classes change as time goes by since more people will gravitate towards one type of class and then other people will change their class to counter it and so on and so forth. The cycle of crpg.

Although I will say that I haven't noticed too many new shielders. There are a few more but not too many people. Most of the shielders I fight are NH which makes me glad I have a shield with their damn throwing axes lol.

[Lemmy_Winks]

Warning wall of text. Just pick a paragraph

What I've noticed over the years is that classes move in "seasons"

From my experience in cRPG (at the time of my joining this mod, Oct-ish 2010), it was shielder central. If you didn't have a shield, you got shot. This was the phasing out of the archer era.

From what I've seen it's been

archers > shielders > horses > polearms > 2h > archers/ranged > crossbowery (the age of the Chaos Operators) > horse archers + crossbows > shielders +2h > horses > polearms (and then the nerf) > horses + shielders (current)


This is pulling off the trend off the top of my head (based on failing memory and natural predators). Of course the 2h heroes have really persisted throughout the trends, simply that their tactics change and hybrids are used (instead of pure 2h).

At the time of the Chaos crossbros, I noticed the increase in horse archers to naturally prey on the immobility of the Operators (when they needed the reload). From there, we saw some foot archers spring up to counter that, which lead to more lancer cav to prey on the archers etc.

As cRPG grows and matures (in development, nothing to say about the community), the combat becomes a more even spread, as fighters realize after a bit that joint operations by several different classes functions better, instead of one merry-go-round of counter-classing (yes it's cool to see a legion with identical armor and weapons, but there is no variation in combat potential, which means easy defeat from ONE predator).

The only major exception which ran counter to my trend model (that crude arrow thing up three paragraphs) is the [horses > polearm > horses] section. I assume it's because the polearms got the nerf (which we had coming), but nothing came to the cavalry, which is - as of now - severely overpowered. They got an indirect buff simply because their melee counter-class has been compromised (because people haven't yet adapted; give it time), range remains a viable counter to horses, but are vulnerable to the speeding, backstabbing cherry picker poopooheads (I'm one) that represent the cav class (both scout and mounted infantry).

Right now, shielders are a fad. Much like the FotM weapons that you find throughout the months of gameplay. Remember when the Bec de Corbin with the fucking biggest dildo on the sex market? Now check the marketplace and see how many are flooding it.

Shielding will have its time, axes and polearms will come into play to counteract the shielding crew. Then the 2h heroes will have their age again. This is just the way of cRPG.

Dextta you should create a Predator-Prey formula and model to represent the shifting changes in class populations.