Horses - how to improve difficulty

[Rheinhardt]

Right now horses are a liability in hand-to-hand melee fighting. A proper warhorse should be as dangerous a melee combatant as the rider. We should be able to rear our horse and cause AOE bumps and knockdowns with trampling. Shields could absorb the damage and bumps and of course pikemen could keep horses at bay, but if we want horses to be more than motorcycles for lancers we need to make wade-in-and-crush heavy cavalry an alternative.

[San]

Now for a more facetious response:
You have to have intelligence to beat cavalry, but cavalry can just wait until you're occupied and attack you without opposition. Yeah, guys, be intelligent! Take responsibility and change your class to succeed! In other words, roll cav.

That's what I did. Respeccing my level 33 pure shielder into a 1h/polearm hybrid for anti-cav was my way of adapting to cav as my counter. As I leveled back up, I became a cav myself. I think cav should just pay more dearly for mistakes (running into objects, getting reared, charging into too many people, etc.)

-speed based damage on collisions
-speed based damage when dehorsed (average speed would be ~20%)
-stun when horse is reared so you can't get off or stab the polearm player
-give old lance angles for spears 150 length and less. More of an anti-cav role
-More damage to head, remove extra damage to legs. Removes massive damage from teamhits to horse. Makes it difficult to charge ranged characters.
-Make it more difficult to U-turn at high speeds

(not sure about these one)
-bump damage affected less by armor. Lower bump damage for low armor, slightly higher bump damage for high armor. I wear heavy armor and can barely feel bumps, while low armored people lose half their health.
-Shield helps mitigate bump damage/higher speeds before knockdown. Was thinking to leave shielder lacking offensive capabilities against lancers, but at least receiving a few defensive ones. It would help protect low armor shielders from cav, although cav would still counter them.
-Rearing polearms do extra damage to horses. Not sure about this, but many of the support polearms can't do too much after finally stopping the horse. Sometimes they do to little damage to even kill the horse or damage the rider much.

I think increasing other class options/quirks against lancer cav would make it more skill-based. Not letting cav get away with mistakes easily would also make it more skill-based. Good ranged will be able to take out cav if they can land a headshot. Cav can avoid getting hit in the head, and would need to watch out for spear users with the wider lance angle. They would need to go a bit faster to knockdown turtles, etc. I think it would be difficult to vastly change the controls and receive a positive response and have the problems fixed.

[Ealoseum]

Maybe make light horses go slightly slower if you are in heavy armor. Also could make the turning speed depend on armor weight and riding skill. And, if you add horse stamina, in could expend faster if the rider is heavy armored.

[LordBerenger]

Lol, AOE bumps.

[bruce]

And go play a horse archer and tell me just how "easy" it is.

What? It's easy as hell to play.

And a nightmare to score any kills with, would probably score kills easier with mounted pitchforkman. 

[chadz]

For those that _still_ haven't gotten it - it's not about balancing cav vs other classes, it's about balancing cav vs cav, skill wise - giving cavalry players a similar learning curve as, for example infantry. Giving cavalry fine nuances that players can use to their advantage and shine out when compared to other, less skillful/experienced players. Giving cav techniques to use that are hard, if not impossible to master.

It's not about cav being OP or UP.

I have no doubt this will once again just be ignored anyway.

Edit: there were some very interesting ideas in this thread, though, some that we have already come up with ourselves, and some new ones as well.

[bruce]

Good cavalrymen are already miles ahead in scoring kills then bad cavalry players, and nowdays with the "right hand stuck in retard mode" lance angles (ok, I guess I did not play much with it, it just feels too weird now), all the fun is in raping busy infantrymen anyway.

Or crossbowing, which is fun and potentially more fun with horse speed bonus counted for (and against, for those running and shooting my old friends) in the future.

[_Tak_]

it's about balancing cav vs cav, skill wise

Bring back the old lancing angle?  Right now after the maneuver / speed nerf I will only go for infantry and avoid Cav, so do many other cavs...

Edit: I had 10 riding and still i canot control my rouncey well in a Cav fight, I notice nothing except speed buff on horse, the maneuver of riding a rouncey on riding 4 is the same as riding 10 (Champ rouncey)

[cmp]

Good cavalrymen are already miles ahead in scoring kills then bad cavalry players

Not really, kills are a horrible metric for skill. Spawnrape/backstab-only can get a shitload of them, yet they're still mediocre players when compared to Oberyn/TomMyyY/Kerrigan/insert-good-cav-player-name-here.

[Torben]

(click to show/hide)

Good cavalrymen are already miles ahead in scoring kills then bad cavalry players, and nowdays with the "right hand stuck in retard mode" lance angles (ok, I guess I did not play much with it, it just feels too weird now), all the fun is in raping busy infantrymen anyway.

Or crossbowing, which is fun and potentially more fun with horse speed bonus counted for (and against, for those running and shooting my old friends) in the future.

I disagree.  Most fun is still trying to best other cav in 1 vs many situations.


chadz!!!  Upping cav vs cav,  you are the best! 

btw:  how about giving lances a health bar like shields have,  but make them sheathable again and giving back old lancespectrum?  upping gaming experience,  need in choice making and forcing more combatvariety.

next to that, add sidestepping ofc,  and the horses free will : )

[Rebelyell]

maybe lets make lance hard to control on hores back??
newbe will not abel to hit target proper when pro will have no problem with that.

but if you want balance cav vs cav

2h cav need buff

2h cavalery:

no shield
low weapon speed
high penalty to dmg
not really many weapons to use

Axe- Joke weapon
Two Handed Axe- joke weapon
Battle Axe- short.....
Shortened Voulge- not soo bad but
Shortened Military Scythe-that weapon is amazing because its long, and uber slowe....
Two Handed War Axe-not really
War Axe-.......
Bastard Sword-to short but almost there
Persian War Axe-nice dmg
Mace-only for pros
Bardiche-really good weapon and awesome when loomed
Heavy Bastard Sword- good weapon bud longsword is better
Persian Battle Axe-short slowe but really high dmg
Great Axe-awesome weapon, really strong and almost long
Morningstar-1 hit story
Longsword-best 2h sword for 2h cav


There is fave weapons what 2h cav can use but almost all cav 1h are longer and faster, and they are abel to use shield and they have normal dmg on horse.

I dont have problem with that but i love to see other 2h weapons useable on horse like

Dadao
Long Iron Mace
Bar Mace
Miaodao

and maybe

Two Handed Sword

that weapons will give 2h cav other kind of dmg and lenght, lets make 2h cav based on long slow weapons or short with high dmg and no shield protection

NO i don't forget about katana, to gay weapon for that list.

[Vibe]

As for cav vs cav - I dare say more effective/teamplaying cav is the one that supports or lances unaware/in-combat infantry. You're much more useful attacking and thining infantry than wasting minutes dueling another cav.

[EyeBeat]

For those that _still_ haven't gotten it - it's not about balancing cav vs other classes, it's about balancing cav vs cav, skill wise - giving cavalry players a similar learning curve as, for example infantry. Giving cavalry fine nuances that players can use to their advantage and shine out when compared to other, less skillful/experienced players. Giving cav techniques to use that are hard, if not impossible to master.

It's not about cav being OP or UP.

I have no doubt this will once again just be ignored anyway.

Edit: there were some very interesting ideas in this thread, though, some that we have already come up with ourselves, and some new ones as well.

You should make xbow cav more effective since they are so hard to master!

Seriously you should make it so that xbow cav can reload faster when going fast or going down inclines.  An automatic reload if they get hit.  Plus 40 armor to all xbow cav but not archer cav... they shoot too fast...

This makes cav more of an interesting idea for new players.

[Chivers_United]

btw:  how about giving lances a health bar like shields have,  but make them sheathable again and giving back old lancespectrum?  upping gaming experience,  need in choice making and forcing more combatvariety.

one of the best ideas yet. you hit someone in full plate and wooden shaft doesn't break but you can continue on to murder rest of team, makes no sense. lances should break fairly easily and quickly, that's what they did if you couched them IRL anyway, only way to get longevity out of your lance was to stay behind your shield wall and stab over their heads.

[Mustikki]

Make couched lance break when hit against a shield.
With high wpf, it would not break with the first couch.
Same with against armored horses or tincans, but with lower chance to break.

- That would lower the use of trolololo couched lance.