Facts and myths about Lancer cav

[Assarhaddon]

Try to do an angle on other cav where you "cross their t" so they can't hit your horse's head so easily but you can lance them.  Harder with angle nerf, but doable.  Also slow your horse down to a crawl when right about to engage so they release lance too early.  If horses ram into each other aim lance up and drag down to not glance.

yes and they fall under these ..

The obvious: timing, the length of your lance and turning your horse.

[oprah_winfrey]

You should need to invest more points to make a lancer. As it is now, all you need is 5-6 riding to get on your horse and like 2-3 WM if you arent planning to use a polearm on the ground. Otherwise, you have what we have now, where a lot of high level players tacked on some riding and some pole proficiency and still have a regular level 30+ build on foot.

[Zlisch_The_Butcher]

You should need to invest more points to make a lancer. As it is now, all you need is 5-6 riding to get on your horse and like 2-3 WM if you arent planning to use a polearm on the ground. Otherwise, you have what we have now, where a lot of high level players tacked on some riding and some pole proficiency and still have a regular level 30+ build on foot.

Yes, but adding to the horse requirements isn't the answer, what this does is nerf the weak builds of HAs and HTs, just 'cuss making a lancer hybrid is some easy shit doesn't mean you should kill off every other kind of cav to prevent it.

[Moncho]

incoming suggestion, please read at your own risk:

(click to show/hide)

same as ranged needs HA, make using weapons on horseback receive a penalty to damage and swing speed bigger than the one now. Then add a new skill (very similar to HA in its implementation) that reduces this penalty, horse fighting, or some fancy name.

Reasoning behind this: Its not the same fighting on foot as on horseback, so we need some kind of way of showing that this guy actually trained on horseback.

This would probably need some adjustment in other areas of cavalry, but it could work.

[Renegat]

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 enemy’s head and make just massive damage, you can just press right mouse button to block all attacks (it’s so much better than auto block, and same time you don’t 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? It’s so simple thinking, you want to have everything, you don’t want any disadvantages and any counters.

lol, so many false information and poncifs about shielders, i advice you to try it out, you'll see how "easy" it is ;) Iwon't answer to that anyway, that's not the current subject and you obviously don't know what you're speaking about.

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.

I don't share your view on this point : In my opinion, each class should have at least one way to counter every others class. Of course, the difficulty should change according to what class you are and what class your ennemie is, but in short, i think there should not be "fatality". For exemple, an archer should have a way to counter a shielder, even if shielders have the advantage. Of course, the archer have to be realy skilled and good to do so, but saying "'oh it's a shielder, let's give up, it's my natural predator" is merely foolish and narrow-minded. What make this game that awesome is that almost every class have atleast one way to defend itself against every other class, wanting to remove that and just making the game "linear" would be a big mistake imo.
That works for shielders vs lancers too. A very skilled shielder should have at least one way to defend himself against lancer, even if he has a 65 length weapon. We have, it's what you called "sidewalk", i can beat a bad lancer with that, but i've never managed to kill tommy with it, for exemple, kerrigan very rarely, and maganda aswell. If you have difficulty with the sidewalk, put yourself in question and improve your skills, but whining about it is a waste of time.


Couching isn’t that easy as you think, you should really try lancer someday. It isn’t just like regular attack, you are mistaken here. Firstly, couching makes your horse much less maneuverable, which makes it predictable target. You also won’t be able to “hide” your horse’s 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, horse’s head won’t let you do that). More than that, couched lance moves much slower, it don’t 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” horse’s 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 horse’s head is even more expose to enemy stabs. Trying to couch good player will be equivalent to suicide charge most of the time.

Thanks but i've already played lancer, and couching is easy imo, no use to try to convince me that couching is difficult. I already explained why it is and how to do to avoid risks when you couch in my previous post.


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 can’t use shield on horseback (not enough weapon slots), so I can’t benefit from shield forcefield (which is ridiculous, but shielders don’t talk about that of course).

So you would like to have your heavy lance to one shot almost everybody, your great long axe to fight on foot and a shield to not be shot by ranged? Since every class has this problem, I would not called that a disadvantage ;) Archers have it, Polearm and 2h also (not if they put skill point in shield and take a shield with them, but fighting with a shield on its back is realy painfull imo, that's why you don't often 2h/pole with shields on them ;) if you want to benefit from "shield forcefield", just be a shielder, not a lancer ... Don't understand what you're complaining about here.

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 don’t 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. That’s why in cRPG shielders don’t 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.

lol again, if two archers cooperate, one will go on the right, the other one the left, then cross fire. As i said previously, there should not be fatality in this game, willing to have linear class and action is foolish and narrow minded imo (for exemple, an archer can't do anything against a shielder, a shielder can't do anything against a lancer, a 2h can't do anything against an archer, and so on). By the way, i could just anwer something like "You want to be able to have a shield, an heavy lance on horseback AND a decent weapon to fight with on foot, being able to turn back fast when you miss and just bump your target, not seeing your horse dying after 5 hits from full loomed archers, not being killed by shielders because they have short weapons even if they are super-skilled, ans so on ... Typical thinking"

Anyway, back to the topic. I had to sacrifice skill points to get riding. For high level char maybe it isn’t big problem. For me it is, because I’m running with 0 ATH. I don’t know if you tried to melee with 0 ATH, but it’s just terrible. People are running around me, and I’m basically standing target. I’m not saying I can’t kill anyone on foot, but it’s huge disadvantage to be slow. So you have to sacrifice something, at least if you are below 34-35.

Poor dude, you're a cav and you have a disadvantage (slight imo) when you're on foot ...

It’s 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 isn’t even close as bad as sidewalking, shield forcefield, lack of fatigue or many, many more things.

lol

 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 didn’t like only Courser, because of its speed – you could hear it in last moment, just before attack, which was a bit problematic if I didn’t use tilde to spot it earlier for some reason. But it’s 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.

Well, you answer that to "how dare you saying that inf can backstab/gangbang poeple as easily as cav does, when you obviously know that cav can run over the whole map in 30 seconds and are more difficult to spot than inf". I don't get your point here ...

I’m sure most of people has at least loomed weapon, especially ranged gear isn’t 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.

So you think that most of ranged in crpg are at least gen 5 (i would have say gen 7, but for you 4 loompoint are enough to buy + 3 rus bow/arbalest and + 3 bodkin/tatar/steel bolts, so i'll take your standart)?
Don't know what to answer here ... Maybe we're not playing on the same server.


 I know as infantry I couldn’t 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 it’s 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, it’s true, but it works both ways around, rider can be 1-hit-killed as well.

Here was my point : Poleaxe users are or should be the "natural counter" to shielders, but in fact, a poleaxe user would have much more difficulty in killing a shielder than a lancer. That also works if you compare shielders against archers with lancers against archers and so on. Exemple : Put dalhi (who's known as a good shielder) against dieler with a poleaxe, who would win? I don't know. Now put Dalhi against musashi or masasa whith their horses (i think one of them is a decent lancer, don't remember which one)with his horse. I would bet on the lancer. You also can do that with a good 2h, a good polearm user (apart from pike/spear users) and so on. The result will be the same. 

I have to say, I don’t 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?

That would proves that lancers have a big advantage over many class, and that seeing a lancer whining about how difficult his class is is irrelevant.

And you finally got the point how it is to be lancer. Without backstabbing you are useless. Attacking only aware targets will end up lancer’s 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 don’t understand why this should be changed in your mind, especially cav don’t dominate battlefield as you are trying to prove, it’s pretty well balanced in my opinion. It’s just different class, which bases on people awareness. Until most people don’t pay attention what happens at their back, cav is fine as it is.

Well the point of my post was not to say "nerf cav", i was lobbying for a lancer nerf some months ago, but i actually think cav is ok now. The main problem, in my opinion, is the number of cav on the battlefield nowadays, which i find overly huge. No wonder if you're aware or not when something like 15/20 ennemie cav are attacking your team on an open field, infantry can not handle that many cav, and it makes infantry acting like "ok, let's camp the corner of the map, so that cav won't be able to rape us too much thanks to invisible wall" or on a village map "let's camp this tower" or "let's camp those ruins" or "..." Camp camp camp, that's fucking boring, there's no tactic anymore, a group of 15 poeple can't flank while others are fighting because 15 cav will directly rape them, there were many ways to bring the victory to your team in making tactics with your clanmates or teammates, now the only viable one is to say to your team "ok guys, let's rush ruins and camp it, so that we won't get raped by lancers"

[Angellore]

Oh I get it now Renegat, you are trolling. Sorry, I’m not good troll hunter.

1) You are saying that every class should be able to kill every other class. So let’s think about this a little. Lancer/1h cav has no chances to kill pikeman/longspearman, horse archers and horse crossbowmans, regular archers and crossbowmans standing on top of stairs/ladders/in corners/on the roofs/mountains – so according to your own thinking lancer/1h cav should be hugely buffed (!). And same time you admit later, as a shielder, you can kill almost all lancers (except one guy) with your short sword. So your class is able to kill every lancer, except one guy. And I don’t think you are awesome, amazing and top player, there are plenty harder shielders to beat, but you still can kill every lancer except Tommy. So, as a shielder, you already have in game what you want to have, it makes no sense! Trolling!

2) Again, you admit that even with your short 1h sword you can often beat bad lancers, very rarely few best lancers, you didn’t beat yet just one guy (Tommy). But earlier you wrote lancer is unbeatable by shielder: “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.”. Completely lack of consequences here! Trolling!

3) You wrote I don’t lose anything for being cav and can still be regular infantry when dismounted. And when I replied I’m losing 8 skill points for being cav, which I could use for eg. ATH and IF as infantry, you wrote:  “Poor dude, you're a cav and you have a disadvantage (slight imo) when you're on foot”. You just admit your previous argument is invalid. And you used irony and imply I want to have riding, IF and ATH same time, and I never wanted that. Everything is fine as it is! Pointless discussion. Trolling!

4) You wrote that there is no tactics in this game because of cav, and it’s completely opposite. Cav can’t charge organized team, in fact cav get kills only thanks to disorganized enemy. Without cav people will just run randomly on their own with no fear. Argument that cav don’t let people to use tactics has no sense. Trolling!

Well, again I got trolled. I’m afraid, I just take everything too serious .

[Renegat]

1) You are saying that every class should be able to kill every other class. So let’s think about this a little. Lancer/1h cav has no chances to kill pikeman/longspearman, horse archers and horse crossbowmans, regular archers and crossbowmans standing on top of stairs/ladders/in corners/on the roofs/mountains – so according to your own thinking lancer/1h cav should be hugely buffed (!).

royans has no difficulty in killing HA/HX with his sword, so it should not be that difficult for a good lancer ;)

 And same time you admit later, as a shielder, you can kill almost all lancers (except one guy) with your short sword. So your class is able to kill every lancer, except one guy. And I don’t think you are awesome, amazing and top player, there are plenty harder shielders to beat, but you still can kill every lancer except Tommy. So, as a shielder, you already have in game what you want to have, it makes no sense! Trolling!

Learn to read, i said that we have only way to kill lancers, and this way is easy to counter for a lancer. Once you did that to a lancer, he won't make the same error twice (apart if he is stupid). Plus, i havn't speak about my own skills or whatever, don't try to make me say bullshit.

2) Again, you admit that even with your short 1h sword you can often beat bad lancers, very rarely few best lancers, you didn’t beat yet just one guy (Tommy). But earlier you wrote lancer is unbeatable by shielder: “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.”. Completely lack of consequences here! Trolling!

That's exactly the same point here, don't know why you need to repeat it. Plus, what you quote is about couching, what you're speaking about is about lancing, i advice you to put more concentration in your reading, that would prevent you from saying nonsense like this one.

3) You wrote I don’t lose anything for being cav and can still be regular infantry when dismounted. And when I replied I’m losing 8 skill points for being cav, which I could use for eg. ATH and IF as infantry, you wrote:  “Poor dude, you're a cav and you have a disadvantage (slight imo) when you're on foot”.

as you can see in your quote, there is a "slight imo", this means that the "disadvantage" of lancers when they're on foot is almost not noticable. Here is the problem i was pointing, so there is no nonsense between that and what i was saying previously.

4) You wrote that there is no tactics in this game because of cav, and it’s completely opposite. Cav can’t charge organized team, in fact cav get kills only thanks to disorganized enemy. Without cav people will just run randomly on their own with no fear. Argument that cav don’t let people to use tactics has no sense. Trolling!

You know what you're saying is totally wrong. Of course cav kill isolated ennemies, but if it was the only thing they could kill, they wouldn't have that many kills. You're so bad faith, you use fallacious argument just to prove your point, which is silly and slow down the discussion.
In all that discussion, your only "weapon" was to find some nonsense in what i was saying, which makes the debate boring and useless. Someone who would have want to make the discussion usefull would have try to find other arguments to prove his point, and make the discussion "go up" (don't know if that expression exist in english).

I tried to pull your attention on the upsurge of cav number, which is the main problem for me. But instead of answering something clever (yes or no with some arguments) you just pass off this point and kept on trying to find some nonsense in what i was saying. Even when i made a concession, that lancers don't need a nerf imo, you stayed on this discussion "nerf cav or don't nerf it". I actually thought we could have a serious, or at least argumented, discussion, but it seems we can't.
Oh, and i don't permit you to dim my 1h skills, since you obviously don't know what you're talking about. I havn't, at any moment, spoke of you or your skills, cause it has no sense to bring that in such a discussion. So the minimum would have been to do the same towards me.

[Plavor]

So many noobs in this topic.

Fool 1 ) Angellore

Fool 2 ) Renegat

However, try to refer to the arguments of the opposite or you will fail discussing properly.

[Zlisch_The_Butcher]

Royans has no difficulty in killing HA/HX with his sword, so it should not be that difficult for a good lancer ;)

I gotta call your bullshit here, unless he's on a champ arabian and after ages of dodging and slowly getting closer he might catch the HA/HX (or the HA/HX is a noob who sucks at riding, fuck I can catch tons of horrible HA who suck and would never hit me on my lancer alt as well), HA/HX can just shoot his horse, and a HT can charge straight at him, holding a throwing lance prepared to throw it in his chest the moment he lowers his gay ass shield.

[Stonewallis]

As a perpetually low tier, part-time player who sucks in melee and thus relies on lancer cav or crossbow each generation or respec, I'd like to say that if this concern over gameplay balance was ignored by the modders and reality was adhered too, people would adjust.  Lets be fair, the state of the game is a free for all battle with hardly anything tactical about it, much less formations.  So 1 handers and 2 handers complaining lancers are OP, no SHIT, it's what happened in REALITY.  Stay close to polearms or go and do your free for all and stop whining.  But why are you even whining, my crossbow character had a 2h as a secondary weapon and as shitty as I play all around, it is easier killing a charging lancer with my utter lack of skill with a 2h than it is to kill a 2h with my lack of skill with a lance.  Thus I am impressed upon sincerely, that the ones complaining about lancers are utter bundle of stickss.

Game balance should be controlled by upkeep and thus equipment costs, not determined with class vs. class bitching and whining.  How any infantry without a pike or polearm can whine about lancers given the current state of the game and cost of horse is beyond belief.  50% of us are below average players, and I know those who are complaining about lancers here are the guys who are having trouble with the half-dozen lancers at the top of the list who are awesome, and not the rest of us they skewer with a 2 hander the rest of the time.

CSA_Stonewallis

[Smoothrich]

As a perpetually low tier, part-time player who sucks in melee and thus relies on lancer cav or crossbow each generation or respec, I'd like to say that if this concern over gameplay balance was ignored by the modders and reality was adhered too, people would adjust.  Lets be fair, the state of the game is a free for all battle with hardly anything tactical about it, much less formations.  So 1 handers and 2 handers complaining lancers are OP, no SHIT, it's what happened in REALITY.  Stay close to polearms or go and do your free for all and stop whining.  But why are you even whining, my crossbow character had a 2h as a secondary weapon and as shitty as I play all around, it is easier killing a charging lancer with my utter lack of skill with a 2h than it is to kill a 2h with my lack of skill with a lance.  Thus I am impressed upon sincerely, that the ones complaining about lancers are utter bundle of stickss.

Game balance should be controlled by upkeep and thus equipment costs, not determined with class vs. class bitching and whining.  How any infantry without a pike or polearm can whine about lancers given the current state of the game and cost of horse is beyond belief.  50% of us are below average players, and I know those who are complaining about lancers here are the guys who are having trouble with the half-dozen lancers at the top of the list who are awesome, and not the rest of us they skewer with a 2 hander the rest of the time.

CSA_Stonewallis

Nope, I'm a pretty damn good cavalry player, EU cav tournament champion (with NA ping) in fact, and I think the class does a broken amount of damage.  I only play 2hander on my main (where I can almost always kill any cav lancer coming at me with big jukes and greatsword thrusts), but since they added transfer looms to alts, every few weeks I make a pure cav alt with a champ desti and mw heavy lance, go 30-3 or so on 1-2 maps, shake my head at how OP cav is and never play the class again.

[OpenPalm]

Nope, I'm a pretty damn good cavalry player, EU cav tournament champion (with NA ping) in fact, and I think the class does a broken amount of damage.  I only play 2hander on my main (where I can almost always kill any cav lancer coming at me with big jukes and greatsword thrusts), but since they added transfer looms to alts, every few weeks I make a pure cav alt with a champ desti and mw heavy lance, go 30-3 or so on 1-2 maps, shake my head at how OP cav is and never play the class again.

So one of the best cav does well in battle when he has mw items... news flash.

[BlueKnight]

(click to show/hide)

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 enemy’s head and make just massive damage, you can just press right mouse button to block all attacks (it’s so much better than auto block, and same time you don’t 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? It’s so simple thinking, you want to have everything, you don’t 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 isn’t that easy as you think, you should really try lancer someday. It isn’t just like regular attack, you are mistaken here. Firstly, couching makes your horse much less maneuverable, which makes it predictable target. You also won’t be able to “hide” your horse’s 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, horse’s head won’t let you do that). More than that, couched lance moves much slower, it don’t 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” horse’s 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 horse’s head is even more expose to enemy stabs. Trying to couch good player will be equivalent to suicide charge most of the time.
Maybe I have too low PS (just 6), but sometimes with high speed of horse I don’t one-hit-kill even archers. And with latest horses maneuver nerf I can’t 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, it’s true, with completely flat terrain, target which don’t 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 horse’s speed will work as your disadvantage. Even with Coat of Plates +3, at full speed, I’m almost always dying from just 1 body hit of any weapon. Sometimes I can survive with like 5-10% hp left, but it don’t 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.
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 can’t use shield on horseback (not enough weapon slots), so I can’t benefit from shield forcefield (which is ridiculous, but shielders don’t 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 don’t 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. That’s why in cRPG shielders don’t 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 isn’t big problem. For me it is, because I’m running with 0 ATH. I don’t know if you tried to melee with 0 ATH, but it’s just terrible. People are running around me, and I’m basically standing target. I’m not saying I can’t kill anyone on foot, but it’s huge disadvantage to be slow. So you have to sacrifice something, at least if you are below 34-35.
It’s 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 isn’t even close as bad as sidewalking, shield forcefield, lack of fatigue or many, many more things. And no, I don’t 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 isn’t 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.
 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 didn’t like only Courser, because of its speed – you could hear it in last moment, just before attack, which was a bit problematic if I didn’t use tilde to spot it earlier for some reason. But it’s 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.
I’m sure most of people has at least loomed weapon, especially ranged gear isn’t 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 it’s overall problem. At the moment it’s 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 horse’s 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 don’t think mixed 1 bolt and 2 arrows into horse body during 7 minutes of Battle is too much to kill it, especially I’m 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, it’s not really that hard to kill horse even from bigger range.
 I know as infantry I couldn’t 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 it’s 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, it’s true, but it works both ways around, rider can be 1-hit-killed as well.
I have to say, I don’t 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?
And you finally got the point how it is to be lancer. Without backstabbing you are useless. Attacking only aware targets will end up lancer’s 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 don’t understand why this should be changed in your mind, especially cav don’t dominate battlefield as you are trying to prove, it’s pretty well balanced in my opinion. It’s just different class, which bases on people awareness. Until most people don’t pay attention what happens at their back, cav is fine as it is.

I admire your will of proving that you are right lol. I would just say "fuck renegat". Your answers are well-thought and I agree with almost everything if not everything. Sometimes as a cav I used to go infantry because I didn't want that giant upkeep and wanted to kill easier. You control things more when you are on foot. Also Renegat about your "new life when dismounted"... Usually that life ends after 2 seconds when they rape you on the ground lol.... Damn 60+ armour is useless then. There are also many obstacles and even a randomly running rouncey can stop you, you will rear up and be fucked. on Arabian things are easier but not every player wants to sacrifice his athetics to 1 more riding especially that that horse might not even reach the enemies....

Also cav is meant to be played when there are lots of cav. Cav uses unawarness of the players, so the more cav, the more chaos, the more powerful cav is during the battle. That's why always when like 10 GK come and make clear battle a mess, it is easier for them to kill. You need to remember that 1 cav can bump the target while trying to attack him and second cav (just following) might finish the enemy. That's cavs' teamwork and it shouldn't be nerfed. It's like when you have 2 archers and a shielder. If archers aren't brainless newcomers, then they will probably beat that shielder.

TLDR incoming... I sense it.

[BlueKnight]

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I admire your will of proving that you are right lol. I would just say "fuck renegat". Your answers are well-thought and I agree with almost everything if not everything. Sometimes as a cav I used to go infantry because I didn't want that giant upkeep and wanted to kill easier. You control things more when you are on foot. Also Renegat about your "new life when dismounted"... Usually that life ends after 2 seconds when they rape you on the ground lol.... Damn 60+ armour is useless then. There are also many obstacles and even a randomly running rouncey can stop you, you will rear up and be fucked. on Arabian things are easier but not every player wants to sacrifice his athetics to 1 more riding especially that that horse might not even reach the enemies....

Also cav is meant to be played when there are lots of cav. Cav uses unawarness of the players, so the more cav, the more chaos, the more powerful cav is during the battle. That's why always when like 10 GK come and make clear battle a mess, it is easier for them to kill. You need to remember that 1 cav can bump the target while trying to attack him and second cav (just following) might finish the enemy. That's cavs' teamwork and it shouldn't be nerfed. It's like when you have 2 archers and a shielder. If archers aren't brainless newcomers, then they will probably beat that shielder.

TLDR incoming... I sense it.

Also I remember a lot of people surviving couches ( me included and not even mentioning h. lance attacks...) Sometimes I felt sorry to the cav that hit me and did only 40% loss of HP... Poor riskers

EDIT: I made a mistake and pressed quote not modify so I have posted double post. Sry

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Nope, I'm a pretty damn good cavalry player, EU cav tournament champion (with NA ping) in fact, and I think the class does a broken amount of damage.  I only play 2hander on my main (where I can almost always kill any cav lancer coming at me with big jukes and greatsword thrusts), but since they added transfer looms to alts, every few weeks I make a pure cav alt with a champ desti and mw heavy lance, go 30-3 or so on 1-2 maps, shake my head at how OP cav is and never play the class again.

Maybe NA lacks awarness?

[Bulzur]

For the fun, and to know what was all the fuss about, i took my dear polearm alt :

Guard_Leyla, was a longspear user 18/21, and i had fun with it. Then it struck me, why being passive, having to always watch for my back, when i can be the one irritating people. Oh, and i can't buy HP with an alt, so let's use all this money.
So Guard_Leyla retired (+2 longspear, hourra) and made a 18/18 build at level 30 :
6 riding, 6 athletic, 6 PS, 5 WM, 6 IF. And guess what, i can still be a pretty good longspear support on any map (seriously, 1 WM and 1 ATH is not much of a difference)  AND i can use a destrier.

Now i only ever played one gen of cav. Yet, every 3 maps, i'm topping the scoreboard between GKs. I didn't ever bother reading guides or whatever, just spectated good cavs.
And yes, i'm usefull : i never spawnrape (destrier unheirloomed is too slow, and i'm like Torben, i despise spawnrapers), i mainly kill range, i do a shit load of bumps.
And most of the times, i die stupidly to a thrower, an xbow, another cav (Musashi is mean), and... that's all.

And i'll add this to you : I'm a bad player. I am only a decent blocker, i don't have the good patience of a good cav, and i miss 3/4th of my couches (practice makes perfect, but i only couch once per map, so not a lot of opportunities to practice). Yet, i can kill bagge, i can bump Tor, etc... all thoses things i couldn't dream of doing as a longspear user. What is the downside ? Upkeep. And ? That's all.

At this time, after playing for nearly a year, after having seen GK playing 3/4th of their time on horses, i can tell you upkeep is in no way a good mean of balancing a cav. Cav is skilless currently, and any noob can stab an archer in the face from behind, just after he moved, while going at high speed. You get dehorsed by range from far away, grab your 2slot backup melee weapon that NO longspear user could afford anyway, and continue wreaking havoc. Did that plenty of times. It's ridiculous.

Awareness ? How do you expect an archer to shoot if he looks behind him ?


I pretty much agree with Renegat on most of the "facts".
Though i believe a little "nerf" like fall damage would be enough to satisfy the infantry.

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And i'd like to remind the attitude of cavs :
cav : "fuck this, after being dehorsed, i die in 2sec, there's no such thing as a 2nd life on foot.
infantry :"then why do you care about implementing a fall damage if you'll die anyway without hitting anyone ?
cav : "shut up gtfo l2p get awareness nuub."
infantry : "o_O"

Thanks for the answer cav, go back backstabbing people.

EDIT :

cav sucks, the problem is same as with ranged, they can't won't kill eachother untill they really have to cus it's to big risk.
this leads to both rapin infantry every round and that's why everybody hates you guys

- increase lance radius so good cav can kill bad cav without risk
- increase lance speed (or just decrease sweetspot somehow) it's way to easy to hit targets with this 1 sec long attack (this goes for all wepons tho)

Totally disagree with the comparaison :

cav vs cav : 1 cav dies, the other survives full health. That's how it is usually, but it's rare.
range vs range : range HATES range, and will prioritize shooting them, always (unlike cavs who like to go for no-risk targets). Problem is, at long range, it's soooo easy to dodge expected arrows. So, after 4-6 arrows shot, they change target. They CANT kill each other.
The only way they can, is when they take risks flanking to get closer on the side, or sticking to infantry, or being in medium distance when you can't react to "feint" shots.

To compare cav with range was silly, and that's why i pointed it out.
Also, cav vs cav duels. They're all alone on a side of the map.
range vs range duels. You can bet one of them will be backstabbed by a cav, or have to run away from inf.