- You can 1 shot almost everything with couching. And no couching is not as risky as you describe it, why? As a 1 hander, my only option against lancers is to sidewalk on the right and do a left swing. How to counter that as a couchwhore lancer? Go a bit on your left before the impact. Many cav do that everytime, so it's impossible to kill them for a 1h. And please don't say me that i just have to sidewalk on the other side, even if i do it while the lancer is going on the left, his lance would hit my right arm.
You can sidewalk, jump, make left or right swing or thrust. But yeah, I agree shielder is one of easiest target for lancer to kill from all aware opponents (I wrote that before in this topic). Still, I believe you have easiest class to play, your swings are very fast, left swing by default aims enemys head and make just massive damage, you can just press right mouse button to block all attacks (its so much better than auto block, and same time you dont cheat at all), you can block all arrows, throwing stuff and almost all bolts. And you still want to be able to kill lancer easily with your short sword? Its so simple thinking, you want to have everything, you dont want any disadvantages and any counters.
If you want to be safe from cav, you can always use 2 slots spear, like Dalhi does. Then you will be almost unbeatable on the battlefield, something you want to force as balanced state. Really, shielder should be the last class to whine about other classes imbalance.
Couching isnt that easy as you think, you should really try lancer someday. It isnt just like regular attack, you are mistaken here. Firstly, couching makes your horse much less maneuverable, which makes it predictable target. You also wont be able to hide your horses head in last moment while using couch. Couching target which stands in front of your horse is impossible, since couched lance has different animation of holding it (regular attack is from far right side, which lets you hit targets standing in front of the horse, couching just drops lance down, you have no angle to attack targets in front, horses head wont let you do that). More than that, couched lance moves much slower, it dont react to your mouse moves instantly. If you want to move couched lance from right to left side of the horse (or the other way), lance needs to go round horses head, and it takes ages to do that, too long to do anything if target change direction of his movement just before you reach him. And still, couched lance is much shorter attack than regular lance stab, that means your horses head is even more expose to enemy stabs. Trying to couch good player will be equivalent to suicide charge most of the time.
- You 1 or 2 shot everything at high speed (i've 6 if, +3 katafraktoi armor, 57 head armor, and i often get one shot by lancers).
Maybe I have too low PS (just 6), but sometimes with high speed of horse I dont one-hit-kill even archers. And with latest horses maneuver nerf I cant just turn quickly and attack again, at least with my Destrier (I guess it is still possible with Arabian Warhorse, since this horse has ridiculous maneuver and acceleration/stopping abilities). But yeah, its true, with completely flat terrain, target which dont move away from you (standing still for example), at full speed and with head hit (so in perfect conditions), you will be able to kill many players just from one hit.
You can call this high risk, high reward, because just one mistake or bad luck, and your horses speed will work as your disadvantage. Even with Coat of Plates +3, at full speed, Im almost always dying from just 1 body hit of any weapon. Sometimes I can survive with like 5-10% hp left, but it dont happen often (not at full horse speed). So speed helps lancer, but same time can be deadly for him as well. Every attack can be your last one, no matter who you fight with.
- Even after having losing your horse, you can fight in melee with decent weapons and no lack of wpf (unlike archers and crossbowmen who can only fight with shit weap but mace and have rarely more than 80 wpf in 2h)
I guess you are talking about pure polearm build cav, which I use currently? Before that build I played as polearm/1h hybrid, so I had to split proficiencies. Yeah, playing full polearm cav has its advantages. Big disadvantage is I cant use shield on horseback (not enough weapon slots), so I cant benefit from shield forcefield (which is ridiculous, but shielders dont talk about that of course).
I remember times when you had to choose to protect head OR legs with your shield. Two cooperating archers could kill every shielder with small shield (especially rounded one) back then. I dont really understand forcefield existence in cRPG, since you can just buy any shield you want here, so if you want to have both head and legs protected from ranged, you can always take huge shield like Heavy Board Shield. Thats why in cRPG shielders dont need forcefield, they can choose big shield (better against ranged) or small shield (better in melee). It would give more options and will freshen up gameplay a bit. But that would be a nerf to infantry of course, so it has no chance to be implemented. You want to be able to block all arrows with Buckler, and kill all horses with your little sword, typical thinking.
Anyway, back to the topic. I had to sacrifice skill points to get riding. For high level char maybe it isnt big problem. For me it is, because Im running with 0 ATH. I dont know if you tried to melee with 0 ATH, but its just terrible. People are running around me, and Im basically standing target. Im not saying I cant kill anyone on foot, but its huge disadvantage to be slow. So you have to sacrifice something, at least if you are below 34-35.
- Again about fighting a shielder, you can bump/lance them easily, something you forgot to mention.
Its not that easy, but yeah it happens from time to time. This game has plenty of illogical possibilities, but of course you are focusing on bump lance, which isnt even close as bad as sidewalking, shield forcefield, lack of fatigue or many, many more things. And no, I dont want sidewalking to be changed, since that would completely change melee, make it slower and much more predictable, like in real life where you have to use your muscles before you do any action. Realism isnt always the way to go and I understand that. But somehow everyone is talking about realism only when they want to nerf archers or cav.
- You compared inf (who backstab and gang alot in your opinion) with cav who are actually doing the same. Fallacious argument again, how dare you putting cav and infantry on the same line when you know that cav can come from every sides and that you can hardly see them coming when you're fighting due to their speed.
I never really had problems with spotting cav, maybe because I was paying more attention to it? I think bigger problem is silent infantry, which makes almost no sound at all, even with heavy armor. You can easily hear most horses, and with 4 speakers (or more), you know from which side they comes. I remember as infantry I didnt like only Courser, because of its speed you could hear it in last moment, just before attack, which was a bit problematic if I didnt use tilde to spot it earlier for some reason. But its good thing imo to have this kind of horse, it gives more alternatives to cav class. But no, I never had problems with hearing other, slower horses than Courser. Also, you can use Lauder Horses cheat to get even bigger advantage over cav.
- You are complaining because your horse can "only" handle 4 or 5 shot into body by full loomed archer's gears? Why didn't you give us stats with non loomed archer/crossbowmen gears instead? It would be much more relevant since the majority of ranged do not have full loomed weapons ;) bad faith again, at least try to be more objective next time you write such a long text.
Im sure most of people has at least loomed weapon, especially ranged gear isnt that expensive, 2 loompoints are enough to buy ranged weapon +3 (you can get 2 loompoints after just few weeks of playing). Crossbowman (arbalester) does high damage to horse, no matter is his arbalest at +0 or +3. And as for new archer, he has hard life here in crpg, no matter if we are talking about damage against horses or damage against players archer without loomed bow is pretty useless here. Well, yeah he can use Longbow +0, it has nice damage (like Rus Bow +3), but not many people does that, maybe because Long Bow often has pause before it shoots (before it releases the arrow). I completely agree, damage of low level archer, with unloomed bow (like Horn Bow) is a joke, but its overall problem. At the moment its too big difference between lvl 2x archer with bow +0 and lvl 35 archer with bow +3. The first ones can barely make even K:D ratio if they are lucky, and the other ones does pretty well indeed.
Anyway, horse is very predictable target, it can't sidewalk or change direction of movement quickly. It's possible to take down horses even from 200 meters for ranged. And it's definitely not pleasant to be hit in horses head by an archer from such a long range. Aware ranged is biggest treat to horses, especially if many ranged are in game same time (horse always has same HP, no matter if there are 10, 20 or 30 ranged in game). So no, I dont think mixed 1 bolt and 2 arrows into horse body during 7 minutes of Battle is too much to kill it, especially Im using Destrier +3, which is much tougher horse than Courser or Arabian (they can be killed from 2-3 body hits from archers). With rate of fire and range archer has, with horses path predictability, its not really that hard to kill horse even from bigger range.
- You take a lot of risks each time you try to kill someone who's not a peasant? Isn't that the case for every class? If you wanted to do a comparison between inf and cav, it would have been more relevant to do it here. Is it more difficult to kill a 1h (for exemple) as a lancer or as a poleaxe-user? Here is a good comparison ;)
I know as infantry I couldnt be 1-hit-killed by shielder, as lancer it happens very often. Every class has its advantages and disadvantages. If you are talking about risk involved, I think its much less risky to attack shielder as poleaxe user, you can make 2-3 mistakes and still be alive. As for being easy, you probably want to hear that lancer can 1-hit-kill shielder. Yeah, its true, but it works both ways around, rider can be 1-hit-killed as well.
I have to say, I dont see any sense in this kind of comparison what about is it easier to kill archer by 2h user or shielder? And what this comparison really proves? That we have different classes with different advantages and disadvantages?
Oh, and i don't think moving this topic into the Beginners Help and Guides is a good idea. He's explaining how to get kills as a lancer, not how to be usefull as a lancer, if newbies followed such advices, they would just attack peasants and avoid everything else. In other words, they would be merely useless.
And you finally got the point how it is to be lancer. Without backstabbing you are useless. Attacking only aware targets will end up lancers life in first 30 seconds of the battle. At the moment playing lancer is almost purely tactical game, you need to analyze your success chance for every attack, if the risk is too high, just skip the target and try to find better one. If you choose wrong target, make mistake or attack faked unaware player, you will quickly end up dead. I find this tactical game very funny, and I dont understand why this should be changed in your mind, especially cav dont dominate battlefield as you are trying to prove, its pretty well balanced in my opinion. Its just different class, which bases on people awareness. Until most people dont pay attention what happens at their back, cav is fine as it is.
