2h stab

[Jarlek]

3 less than an Elegant Poleaxe
6 less than a German Poleaxe
8 less than a Poleaxe

5 pierce is a huge amount when you're talking about numbers in the 20s, that's just under 20% damage. The pikes are supposed to have relatively low pierce, as if they had high pierce, they'd be greatly OP. It'd be like giving high pierce to a lancer, you throw in movement speed and their ability to outrange everything, and of course it'd be broken. Bamboo Spear: 2000 Gold 25p, Sword of War: 13000 gold, 23p. Even if you make the argument that you can use greatswords as pikes, due to their effective reach, they'd still have both less range and less damage for more gold, even if you compare it to hoplites. You also have to be aware of one of the most counterintuitive, janky mechanics in warband. One that dictates that slow weapons should be more affected by speed modifiers than fast ones. So you see that 81/68 speed for those pikes? That's adding damage.

Why are you still using 23 pierce damage? The German has 26. Same as the Elegant Poleaxe. Even more when you use halfswording. Stop bitching.

[Rumblood]

When you look at a person holding a weapon of a given length, you can tell how far that person should be able to reach with that weapon from knowing how long the sword is, and how the human body works.

Right now, you can't. It looks more like the guy has a telescoping end of his sword that he pushes the button on like a switch blade to suddenly gain a couple feet of extended sword tip. (not to mention that you can  leave it hanging out there long enough for someone to etch their initials into the blade and it still does 100% thrust damage.)

[Youhou]

Downblock is the key

[Zlisch_The_Butcher]

Bamboo Spear: 2000 Gold 25p, Sword of War: 13000 gold, 23p. Even if you make the argument that you can use greatswords as pikes, due to their effective reach, they'd still have both less range and less damage for more gold.

But you see, greatswords aren't pikes, they can just be used as pikes while still being able to also use sideswings and overheads, in order to compare greatswords to spears and not say greatswords are way better you need to make greatswords two directional... and regarding them poleaxes, you greatsword still got far greater reach... and you got a secondary mode with quite nice pierce damage if you ever feel like it, greatswords are by far the most powerful weapons, and got the most powerfull stab, and if I jump right in front of a guy I can still stab him in the face even though our bodies collide... Nerf Please.

[Tydeus]

Why are you still using 23 pierce damage? The German has 26. Same as the Elegant Poleaxe. Even more when you use halfswording. Stop bitching.

Because that's the average for 2h stabs. The Danish is still only 24(1 point off from what I'm using), pretty much everything else has 22 or 23. You can't make global balance changes by focusing on extreme cases. The German Greatsword is a weapon that specializes in the thrust, it is the extreme case. The entire point of that weapon, is to focus on utilizing the thrust to its maximum potential.

What's your point by stating that the best thrust damage any 2h can get is only as good as the worst thrust damage of the Poleaxes? What's the point in stating it has better damage when using the polearm animation, when it would have less effective range than the poleaxe? Generally, you trade range for damage, or range for speed, seems logical to me that it would be so.

[Haboe]

Isnt the problem here that the 2h stab has high damage range and speed? Where polearms are doing worse on the stabs on average?

[Tydeus]

But you see, greatswords aren't pikes, they can just be used as pikes while still being able to also use sideswings and overheads, in order to compare greatswords to spears and not say greatswords are way better you need to make greatswords two directional... and regarding them poleaxes, you greatsword still got far greater reach... and you got a secondary mode with quite nice pierce damage if you ever feel like it, greatswords are by far the most powerful weapons, and got the most powerfull stab, and if I jump right in front of a guy I can still stab him in the face even though our bodies collide... Nerf Please.

Using it as a pike and being as effective as a pike are two totally different things. The second part, I'm actually in half agreement with. I think after losing polestagger, bi-directional weapons and spears are in need of a buff (and cmp said they need one), so if comparing their current stats, while not taking into account polestagger, I would say that greatswords are going to be better for all except the heaviest support roles. Where having two really long range attacks, rather than only one, becomes more important.

As far as Poleaxes go, greater reach for less damage. That's called balance. It's also only on one attack direction.

The secondary mode is a gimmick. Two-handed weapons get really shitty stats for side swings (and worse speed) in alt mode. Switching between the modes isn't something you can do on the fly. It's really janky, the animation switch isn't smooth, it has a delay afterwards, it can sometimes be hard to tell whether it even took place or not, and you choreograph the whole thing to enemies.

That last part of your post is just observation, where I've more often observed the same exact thing from polearms. They do have higher pierce damage after all. I personally find myself glancing from both equal amounts. For further info, none of my builds are str builds(thus less likely to glance because of extra PS), and only one even has IF, which is currently only 3.

[Tydeus]

Isnt the problem here that the 2h stab has high damage range and speed? Where polearms are doing worse on the stabs on average?

I hope not, because they objectively do not have high damage. As I said before, just go run the number with the damage calculator. 22-26 pierce is low to medium damage. Pierce is good, but it's so low numerically, that without a good speed modifier, you will never do more damage than your side swings, not even against an opponent with 70 armor.

But really, worse on average? Worse than awl pikes and ashwood pikes hell, a bamboo spear? Even the poleaxes? Can you explain this one, maybe show your "averages"?

Edit: Sorry about the double post, meant to just copy this over to the last post.

Edit 2: I don't mean to be a dick here, but this thread, outside of my posts, has been nearly 100% subjective in content. Last I checked, devs just passed that off as "whining".

[dodnet]

I hope not, because they objectively do not have high damage. As I said before, just go run the number with the damage calculator. 22-26 pierce is low to medium damage. Pierce is good, but it's so low numerically, that without a good speed modifier, you will never do more damage than your side swings, not even against an opponent with 70 armor.

MW Light Lance has 31 pierce, MW Long Spear has 29 pierce, MW Bamboo Spear has 28 pierce. MW X Swords have 24-28 pierce. Thats not much difference. Non MW items even have less difference as spears gain 3 pierce while Swords only gain 2 pierce on MW.

I do heavy damage with Long Spear or Light Lance, so do you with a X Sword with almost the same reach (or even more) as my Light Lance and 4 directions, compared to my 2 or 1 with Long Spear.

BTW: Talking about Poleaxes is useless, as almost no one uses these and they are really short!

[Rantrex]

Why does it always needs to start from something like: "Nerf 2h!"? Couldn't you write: Should we buff archers and poles a bit because of 2h plague?

Btw, take a look at medieval battlefield (real). Three guys made some wagers for who will fund beer after battle. [1. - 0 2. - 1 3. - 2].

Guy A  was holding greatsword under his coat(somehow).
Guy B based on his poleaxe.
Guy C looked at his one-haded sword and shield on the next chair.

Enemy archers nor cavalaryman didn't show up.

How d'you think, who won and was most drunk after all?

[a_bear_irl]

i'd like to point out that these threads/this sentiment (nerf 2h) has only popped up after polestun/overhead+stab spin was removed/nerfed. before, the "melee balance" worked like so

shield - autoblock, excellent left/overhand, ridiculous stab activation - short/weak weapons, slower
2h - best animations ~elite duelz~, reach - either use cut or use unbalanced weapons, expensive
pole - versatility (pierce, cut, blunt, v. long range) and polestun - shit animations

but now with the nerfs added in, shielder overhead and stab was nerfed into the ground, the polearm 2 directional weapons are worthless and the rest of the polearms no longer have their bad animations offset by polestun.

basically like i've said in a dozen threads those two nerfs were a terrible idea and should be reverted asap

[duurrr]

i'd like to point out that these threads/this sentiment (nerf 2h) has only popped up after polestagger/overhead+stab spin was removed/nerfed. before, the "melee balance" worked like so

shield - autoblock, excellent left/overhand, ridiculous stab activation - short/weak weapons, slower
2h - best animations ~elite duelz~, reach - either use cut or use unbalanced weapons, expensive
pole - versatility (pierce, cut, blunt, v. long range) and polestagger - shit animations

but now with the nerfs added in, shielder overhead and stab was nerfed into the ground, the polearm 2 directional weapons are worthless and the rest of the polearms no longer have their bad animations offset by polestagger.

basically like i've said in a dozen threads those two nerfs were a terrible idea and should be reverted asap

the game was too hard when you could use twitchy movement to do feints bro

lets make the game turn based and completely remove feinting, awsum

[TurmoilTom]

Actually, the devs found that polestagger wasn't the only annoying thing polearms did. They also did damage, so they're removing that next patch.

[sF_Guardian]

Actually, the devs found that polestagger wasn't the only annoying thing polearms did. They also did damage, so they're removing that next patch.

Dont worry, cmp uses Poleaxe ;-)

[Tydeus]

MW Light Lance has 31 pierce, MW Long Spear has 29 pierce, MW Bamboo Spear has 28 pierce. MW X Swords have 24-28 pierce. Thats not much difference. Non MW items even have less difference as spears gain 3 pierce while Swords only gain 2 pierce on MW.

I do heavy damage with Long Spear or Light Lance, so do you with a X Sword with almost the same reach (or even more) as my Light Lance and 4 directions, compared to my 2 or 1 with Long Spear.

BTW: Talking about Poleaxes is useless, as almost no one uses these and they are really short!

I don't really see the point of comparing it to a lance when so much of the damage is from being located on a speeding horse. We went over the pikes. They still have a ton more effective length and have additional damage due to stupid warband mechanics.

Here, I'll run the numbers for you and copy paste from the damage calc.

21 str, 7 PS, 100 wpf, 40 c 2h:
40 armor - 21 - 40
50 armor - 13 - 35
60 armor - 7 - 30
70 armor - 3 - 25

21 str, 7 PS, 100 wpf, 23 p 2h:
40 armor - 11 - 24
50 armor - 6 - 21
60 armor - 1 - 17
70 armor - 0 - 14

You will never get a 100% speed bonus on foot. 20% on average is probably realistic, and even with that you're still not doing anywhere near the amount of damage that you'd do, if you just chose a side swing.

21 str, 7 PS, 100 wpf, 30 p pole:
40 armor - 21 - 34
50 armor - 14 - 30
60 armor - 8 - 27
70 armor - 4 - 23

Polearms with 30 or more pierce thrust: Battle Fork, Awlpike, Long Awlpike, Ashwood Pike, Double Sided Lance, Poleaxe. There are more, but I excluded them for obvious reasons.

Just look at what you'd do to a plated enemy, and compare that to what even a side swing would do for a two hander, easily comparable, meanwhile, the 2h thrust pales in comparison, and it's only 7 pierce less. 30% damage difference to a 40 armored target between the thrusts, yet it's only a 20% difference of damage on the weapons themselves. It's pierce damage, point for point it makes more of a difference on the final damage outcome than cut does.

Finally, last I checked from a link cmp pasted in irc, polearms are pretty damn well balanced with each other, with the most popular polearm (outside of lances), being below 5%. So there's no reason to think that they're bad or that no one is using them. Furthermore, there is only one thread about poleaxe balance in the first 5 pages(I didn't bother going further) of the balance discussion section, and it's about "Internal Poleaxe Balance" Nothing suggesting they are on a whole, inferior items.

basically like i've said in a dozen threads those two nerfs were a terrible idea and should be reverted asap

Don't think it's going to get reverted any time soon, but I do know that it's getting changed/cleaned up, quite a bit.