Why Cavalry Isn't Overpowered

[Joker86]

Why cavalry is overpowered:

Every cavalryman has an additional item any footman doesn't have. This item provides him with speed, which is protection, flexibility and increased speed bonus. It also enables him to knock people over, for which you need a blunt weapon with decent damage otherwise, and those weapons can be blocked, a horse bump can't. In many cases this horsebump also causes some damage.

He is paying this with three things:

- he has to spend a few points in riding skill
- he has to look out to not bump friendlies
- he can be stopped by a pike, though it's in 99% of the cases his own fault, and except to some damage to his horse in most cases nothing will happen, he will just turn around and ride away.

Now let's see if the advantages are made up by the disadvantages. If not: cav is OP.


Cav is OP. Period. 

[Darth_Tard]

To anyone who thinks cav is OP, get throwing. I lawl at cav, given that I can consistently one-shot unarmored cav, and frequently one-shot armored cav. You pull your arm back to throw, and they get the hell outta the way, or lose their horse. Problem solved 

[huscarl_johnson]

if you miss, you're fucked, and if you have to go out of your way to throw at a cav, you're almost certainly going to be in a position where a second one can spear the back of your head. As has been pointed out, all they have to do is not be stupid to rack up kills. You, as the foot guy, needs perfect constant 360 degree awareness, good aim, and the good luck to have an idiot charge you when you're prepared for it. Trample damage added to this mix is moronic.

[Memento_Mori]

if you miss, you're fucked, and if you have to go out of your way to throw at a cav, you're almost certainly going to be in a position where a second one can spear the back of your head. As has been pointed out, all they have to do is not be stupid to rack up kills. You, as the foot guy, needs perfect constant 360 degree awareness, good aim, and the good luck to have an idiot charge you when you're prepared for it. Trample damage added to this mix is moronic.

are you playing a deathmatch server? where are your team mates? Stick with your team and use team work to over come these things the same in any other team oriented game.

[Tai Feng]

are you playing a deathmatch server? where are your team mates? Stick with your team and use team work to over come these things the same in any other team oriented game.

 Organized cavalry will kill organized infantry, that much is clear. 


These arguments remind me of Native Khergits vs anything else comments. "Oh you just have to be organized as non Khergit, they are not overpowered." Right, so it's balanced because you have to be organized and enemy can act like headless chicken and still can win.

[AgentQ]

When I had to maintain additional 10k-30k horse, It suppose to give me a fair advantage. HORSE IS NOT OP, get over with it, learn to teamwork.

[Joker86]

I remind on my post at the top of this page.

Even throwing won't balance it out, as you can either shoot his horse or himself. If he didn't have a horse you could shoot only him. So if you shoot his horse, and even kill it, there is still the player itself, downgraded to infantry. (The fact that I can use the word "downgrade" says everything).

There is one single equation, noone can denie:

Player + horse > player + nothing.

In any case. So please close this topic, the OP statement got disproved.

Edit:

When I had to maintain additional 10k-30k horse, It suppose to give me a fair advantage. HORSE IS NOT OP, get over with it, learn to teamwork.

Where is the fucking teamplay cavalry needs to survive? Tell me! It's always the same... teamwork blablabla... pikes blablabla... throwing/ranged blablabla.... but every single of these "counterarguments" can be (and already was a hundred times) disproved. 

[_JoG_]

Organized cavalry will kill organized infantry, that much is clear. 

These arguments remind me of Native Khergits vs anything else comments. "Oh you just have to be organized as non Khergit, they are not overpowered." Right, so it's balanced because you have to be organized and enemy can act like headless chicken and still can win.

The biggest problem with khergits is their horse archers. It's pretty possible to stop the all-lancer team with a balanced force, otherwise everyone would play cav only.

[Tai Feng]

When I had to maintain additional 10k-30k horse, It suppose to give me a fair advantage. HORSE IS NOT OP, get over with it, learn to teamwork.

We already had this discussion and people who were saying what you're saying - lost. So be quiet.


Give me a 30,000-worth polearm that will give me as huge advantage as horse gives to you, and then we can talk about it.

A 6000-gold worth horse gives much much bigger advantage than 6000-worth polearm, or anything else for that price.

[ViiKOLD]

Right now I'm mostly playing as 2h cav, reason for this is simple - I'm not tired yet of playing it. I've played as lance cav, Ninja, acrher, 1h, thrower, anyway at some point you want to try something new.

Back to topic. "Cav need to make mistake to die" - yeap, you right, but it's true to any other class as well, so if 2h dosn't make any mistakes it should be OP, right? Try dueling with Urist for example, 1h\2h in his hands are true OP.

But what you really want? Get back to summer? When horses was so underpowered that you rarely saw them at all.

Plated charger are OP, but how many of them you see right now? Pre-patch there was a rare situation to see more than one of them at the same time. Not all of the "plate charger riders" was owning just because of the horse, does Finn became a bad cav now?


"Player + horse > player + nothing" that depends on many other factors, like their skill, equipment, level.

Let's get it straight, using the same approach:
"Player + bow\xbow > player + no shield"
"Player + shield > player + bow\xbow"
"Player + bow + horse> player + horse"
....
Does these advantages always a deciding factor of who wins? Too many other factors are important to know outcome.

[Thomek]

Thing is however, that horse is in an extra slot.

That means:

Player + Horse + Anything > Player + Anything.

Imo horse should at least, use on of the normal 4 slots.

[Everkistus]

Imo horse should at least, use on of the normal 4 slots.

I actually agree on this one.

[Joker86]

Does these advantages always a deciding factor of who wins? Too many other factors are important to know outcome.

Nice try, you almost got me. Almost. 

Plated charger are OP, but how many of them you see right now? Pre-patch there was a rare situation to see more than one of them at the same time. Not all of the "plate charger riders" was owning just because of the horse, does Finn became a bad cav now?

Finn uses a charger currently, which is only a bit "better". Still a heavily OP horse.

But what you really want? Get back to summer? When horses was so underpowered that you rarely saw them at all.

To be honest, this was less of an problem than OP cavalry. So if I had to chose between horses from directly pre-patch and horses from this summer, I would choose the summer. But of course I would simply prefer balanced cav.

"Player + horse > player + nothing" that depends on many other factors, like their skill, equipment, level.

Let's get it straight, using the same approach:
"Player + bow\xbow > player + no shield"
"Player + shield > player + bow\xbow"
"Player + bow + horse> player + horse"

You are comparing apples to oranges here. So I marked them. (As my quote with "player" was meant to have the weapons included I marked the first players green, too.).

Horses belong into horse slots, weapons into weapon slots. The horse is always an ADDITIONAL item to the weapon slots, and I would say in most cases the horse, this additional item, is MORE important than 99% of all possible weapon slots items. A masterwork elegant poleaxe or something like that is the only thing being able to make up for... hmmm... a rouncey at the most.

So some kind of rock-paper-scissors WITHIN the same slot category (weapons) is always whished for, as it improves overall gameplay. But this doesn't work with classes which simply use an additional slot.

So cavalry stays OP, unless the additional use of a horse gets balanced by BOTH nerfed horse stats AND some secondary penalties using a horse, e.g. remarkably lower skills or poor other equipment.

Also, of course, I assumed the SAME player with same level and same skills, riding a horse or not. As I said: for the investment of a few skill points into riding skill you get higher mobility, flexibility, protection, knockdown + bump damage and increased speed bonus. Even pikes and throwing and other ranged weapons can't be counted as counterargument, as they are also a threat to footmen.

The only current disadvantage is higher upkeep, but especially for the cheaper horses you don't really feel it. A rouncey is a perfect horse for me, and I pay 370 gold upkeep or so for it. This has to be increased by 2000% or so. 

[Bulzur]

Thing is however, that horse is in an extra slot.

That means:

Player + Horse + Anything > Player + Anything.

Imo horse should at least, use on of the normal 4 slots.

Wohoooo ! 
Nice idea !! No more espada/steel shield/ huscarl shield / 1h axe cav !!
Or worse,  xbow/bolt/1h/shield or xbow/polearm (with 2 sorts of polarms : heavy lance and something for foot).

Cav would have to buy and use items ONLY for when they're on their horse, and thus we'll kill them way more easily on foot.
+1 for this SUGG......... except.... this is probably a talewords thingy impossible to change. :'(

[Joker86]

Right. I can't imagine any way to place a horse in a weapon slot. This was suggested a few times already, each time it was denied: hardcoded!

Anyway, this wouldn't solve things ultimately, as a horse would still be a special item for itself. No axe or shield can give you that additional speed or two attacks at the same time (bump+slash/stab or bump+shot). It would only restrict cavalry players to 3 instead of four slots, which would be only a minor secondary disadvantage. Horses would still remain oranges compared to the weapon-apples.