First off, the Palfrey is already a very unpopular and useless horse, only really losing to a sumpter and steppe horse and overall the rouncy is better so buffing the rouncys health by a bit wont really do anything and making it need 5 riding skill is just making the horse pointless.
And seeing as you suggested the destrier and other armored horses should have a minimum of 6 riding, I'm going to presume you think some of them should have even more then 6 riding skill? if so thats just stupid!
As for removing couching from all lances except the great lance, yeah I can accept that
Rouncey
hit points: 95
body armor: 16
difficulty: 3
speed: 41
maneuver: 41
charge: 20
| Palfrey
hit points: 85
body armor: 12
difficulty: 3
speed: 42
maneuver: 41
charge: 18
| Palfrey (suggested)
hit points: 100
body armor: 14
difficulty: 5
speed: 42
maneuver: 41
charge: 18 |
Perhaps a tad more armor and charge damage would be appropriate, say 20 armor and 22 charge, but right now the palfrey is really useless. Buffing it to fit between the rouncey and the destrier, while raising the requirement to the old destrier requirement seems like a nice way to balance cavalry and give the palfrey a niche. With regards to your other comment, no, I don't think they should be higher than six. When I say the minimum riding requirement should be 6 I mean 'six riding, specifically, should be the minimum amount of riding a player needs to mount the horse' not 'the stat should be changed to six or higher'.
1. As a 5 riding player myself, cav hybrid is very powerful. It is hard to differentiate what makes a 5 riding cav hybrid that much better than a 6 riding hybrid, though. I would be fine with the change.
2. Sounds reasonable. I don't believe agility movement speed should be removed. I also think that you should get higher levels of wpp depending on what agility you have, so it starts to get much more effective after 15 agi.
5. Sure, but I don't think it will really fix anything, but it will offer diversity and give the classes more specialties.
1) Sadly, internal cav balance is really kind of poor at the moment. I don't mean to criticize the item balance team, as it would be a complicated set of items to tweak. The complications just get compounded because turning and acceleration are not separable. There's really three different horses right now (steppe/desert/arabian, rouncey/palfrey/courser, destrier/armored) with slightly varying stats that aren't necessarily proportional to the requirement nor the upkeep cost. I'd personally like to see them split into fast/tanky/maneuverable trees with a low stat/unarmored/cheap/low requirement version, low stat/armored/medium cost/medium requirement version, high stat/unarmored/medium cost/high requirement version, and medium stat/armored/high cost/high requirement version. In my horse balance fantasyland it would probably be rouncey/charger/destrier/plated charger for the tanky group, palfrey/war horse/courser/mamluk for the fast group, and desert/cataphract/arabian/large warhorse for the maneuverable group. The sumpter could remain in it's kind of odd peasant-horse position, and perhaps the steppe could be a very cheap, very weak, low requirement, balanced horse geared towards use while leveling. edit: I realized I didn't actually address your comment. My point is that changing the riding requirement is a very easy change that could help with the large number of cav without reworking cav stats entirely.
2) I actually really love the extra movement speed from agility, but it's part of the problem with archer kiting at the moment. It just makes athletics less of a requirement for maneuverability much the same way the strength health bonus less of a requirement for survivability.
3) Agreed, if it were to solve the influx of ranged players, it would need to incorporate a damage nerf (nerf nerf nerf
) that made strength more attractive as a damage dealing option. Right now I'd settle for variety.
