Bastard swords.

[Kelugarn]

So we all know that in the last patch many of the "top tier" 2hs got rebalanced stats, and now the standard bastard sword is an unholy face-raping machine fueled by tears and blood of innocent children really, really fast.

How fast is it? Well before the patch my masterwork quarterstaff had a blazing 101 speed, 137 length, 22b swing and 24b thrust with knockdown, pole-arm animations, and a weight of 1.2, which was lowered to 1.0 with this patch (the same weight as a regular staff). Now a stock bastard sword after this patch has a speed of 101, a length of 101, 35c swing and 22p thrust, with 2h animations, and a weight of 1.8.

What the hell? I understand that the balance team wants a variety of weapons available for 2h player to use, but this is ridiculous.
From a realism perspective a pole-arm is a very versatile weapon that becomes incredibly lethal in the hands of an experienced user due to it's speed and reach. In cRPG the speed of pole-arms (excluding the short spear, staff, and quarterstaff), relative to other weapons, is medium low at best and the awful pole-arm animations make swings and thrust prone to glancing off of objects behind your character.
From a balance perspective the stats and price of the bastard sword make it some ludicrous bullshit. At 4,012 gold the bastard sword outclasses most top tier pole-arms in regard to speed and reach advantages while costing anywhere from 50-30% as much as most regularly used pole-arms.

But I'm not here to make a case for all pole-arms, just the lowly quarterstaff. Since the last patch reduced its weight to 80% of what it used to be knockdowns have been significantly harder to come by, and now that one of the three good "low cost" pole-arms is both out reached and slower than a higher damaging and heavier (read: more mass) 2h weapon I am officially saying that this is some bullshit.

Pole-arm animations suffer from huge reach penalties because the player holds the weapon in the middle of the shaft, and on a balanced weapon like a quarter staff this results in greater swing/block/transition speed at the cost of 20 to 30 units of effective length. How can a weapon that is swung with two hands placed across it's center of mass be slower than something swung with two hands (at one end) just behind said weapon's center of mass?

Even if the bastard sword is perfectly balanced at the hilt the distance between the tip of the sword is still greater than the distance between the two hands of someone holding a quarterstaff. In terms of physics this means that the moment of inertia for the staff will be less than the moment of inertia for the bastard sword. And if the moment of inertia is less for an object, it will rotate faster. Even disregarding the mass of the bastard sword and staff, it is clear that the staff will be able to swing faster than the (80% more massive, assuming M&B uses kg) sword.

With this in mind I would like to request that the balance team reconsiders the current state of staves.

TL;DR buff quarterstaff.

[Camaris]

You dont really want to tell us that Bastard sword  "in regard to  reach advantages" " outclasses most top tier pole-arms"?????
Thread done. Bullshit.

[BlindGuy]

Also dont use real life to try to get this balanced to your liking: IRL, bastard sword was the most deadly of swords, used on foot and on horseback: Noone ever rode to war with a quarterstaff if he had the choice, yet everyone (in the West, obviously, where the straight edged sword was the apex of warcraft) who could afford it would take a bastard sword. Its lighting fast, can cut unarmoured men down with ease, can stab thru armour, and was what all knights would train at: The massive 2handers that we have in cRPG were not widely used, and Im sorry to everyone who thinks they were, they just werent: the expense, the physical size needed to wield, and the difficulties of using one in anything but an open field battle would have meant that THE goto weapon was a longsword or bastard sword (hand and a half swords, that could be wielded with a shield while closing the ground or in tight formations, but long and strong enough to be wielded in both hands once the shield was destroyed or rendered useless by misiles).

Now, IRL ppl like style but in war they often just stick with what works best: for a long time I had felt the bastard sword needed some love to bring it to a realistic historic standard. Warriors for around 400 years believed a hand a half sword to be most efficient: They cannot all have been wrong, it was literally their life they gambled.


Also, about time the katana met its match, for too long inferior sword was superbuffed because of its hollywood pricetag.

[Mr_Oujamaflip]

To be fair, the quarterstaff is a glorified stick.

[Kelugarn]

You dont really want to tell us that Bastard sword  "in regard to  reach advantages" " outclasses most top tier pole-arms"?????
Thread done. Bullshit.

With the current 2h thrust's +80 reach bonus to the pole-arms +19 reach thrust (also pole-arm's best animation with respect to reach) a bastard sword can outreach everything short of a fauchard with proper timing and food work. The bonus reach 2h get on side swings also means that a bastard sword has an effective range exceeding that of all the poleaxes/bec/LHSM/long axes, only the glaive and GLB stand a solid chance of out reaching the bastard sword if they can maintain proper distance with footwork.

(click to show/hide)

Also dont use real life to try to get this balanced to your liking: IRL, bastard sword was the most deadly of swords, used on foot and on horseback: Noone ever rode to war with a quarterstaff if he had the choice, yet everyone (in the West, obviously, where the straight edged sword was the apex of warcraft) who could afford it would take a bastard sword. Its lighting fast, can cut unarmoured men down with ease, can stab thru armour, and was what all knights would train at: The massive 2handers that we have in cRPG were not widely used, and Im sorry to everyone who thinks they were, they just werent: the expense, the physical size needed to wield, and the difficulties of using one in anything but an open field battle would have meant that THE goto weapon was a longsword or bastard sword (hand and a half swords, that could be wielded with a shield while closing the ground or in tight formations, but long and strong enough to be wielded in both hands once the shield was destroyed or rendered useless by misiles).

Now, IRL ppl like style but in war they often just stick with what works best: for a long time I had felt the bastard sword needed some love to bring it to a realistic historic standard. Warriors for around 400 years believed a hand a half sword to be most efficient: They cannot all have been wrong, it was literally their life they gambled.


Also, about time the katana met its match, for too long inferior sword was superbuffed because of its hollywood pricetag.

I'm not sure why you're talking about other 2h swords and the katana, or why you chastise me for trying to use physics as a realism point and then go on a questionable historical rant. My main point is that pole-arms have no weapon that's comparable to the bastard sword in terms of speed and lethality. You said yourself it was "the most deadly of swords" and I'm fine with that, it's just that the current system of animations and balancing has started to limit most pole-arms to support roles or slow heavy hitting S-key hero weapons. Yes, there are far more varieties of support pole-arms than 2hers but that's not all they're good for.
Ignoring further realism discussion, I'm just trying to get the pole-arms rebalanced so that there's a fast and decent damage weapon on price/par with the current bastard sword. I really don't care if they just add more weight to the quarterstaff or something along those lines, I just want something to be done.

To be fair, the quarterstaff is a glorified stick.

A lance is a glorified stick, a shield is a glorified plank, a sword is just a glorified hunk of metal. Over simplifying things gets us nowhere.

edit: said great axes instead of long axes, oops.

[Camaris]

With the current 2h thrust's +80 reach bonus to the pole-arms +19 reach thrust (also pole-arm's best animation with respect to reach) a bastard sword can outreach everything short of a fauchard with proper timing and food work. The bonus reach 2h get on side swings also means that a bastard sword has an effective range exceeding that of all the poleaxes/bec/LHSM/long axes, only the glaive and GLB stand a solid chance of out reaching the bastard sword if they can maintain proper distance with footwork.

HAHAGAGAGAMUHAHAHAMAHAHAHAHA!!!!

[BlindGuy]

Glorified chunk of metal still beats glorified stick. 

[Torben]

buff quarterstaff.

!!!!!!

[Thomek]

I'm generally happy the devs are finally buffing shorter weapons again. Makes it more of a dilemma which weapon to go for.

Still I think polearms could also be looked into, some, like GLA and other top tier is a no-brainer when it comes to choosing your wep.. Insane damage, insta-hiltslash + shieldbreaking and great range. For battle, perhaps some of the best weapons in the game. Just look at people who knows how to use them.

Some shorter polearms could need a little buff though. But polearm variety of actually used weapons, has generally been higher than 2h.

[bredeus]

thats because lots of them cannot be used with shield

[Gurnisson]

Still I think polearms could also be looked into, some, like GLA and other top tier is a no-brainer when it comes to choosing your wep.. Insane damage, insta-hiltslash + shieldbreaking and great range.

GLA has shit range and a liability of a thrust. It was op when polestagger was around, now it's pretty average. There's a lot of better choices out there. (G)LB, Glaive, (german) Poleaxe, LHB

[Casimir]

I believe the devs should continue with the current process, making mid tier weapons of all types the best while presenting the current top tier weapons as 'specialist' side grades rather than flt out better all round.

E.g. Push more towards (heavy)bastard swords / 'two handed sword' the primary weapon of choice for 2hs, making the 'Greatswords' highly specialised and more expensive e.g. inc damage for greatly decreased spped
More polearms using Warspear / pike and less with glaives / poleaxes etc.
More 1h using arming sword / winged mace. rather than champion swords etc.

[Thomek]

GLA has shit range and a liability of a thrust. It was op when polestagger was around, now it's pretty average. There's a lot of better choices out there. (G)LB, Glaive, (german) Poleaxe, LHB

You are probably right I don't have too much experience with them, but tried the GLA on my polearm alt few days ago, and it was very effective. (Just to try something I considered OP) But then again, I guess I mostly compare it to the katana..

@Casimir
Idk if mid-tier, but they could at least do something about the power of the longest and shorter weapons for the sake of variety. Would be interesting to i.ex let bastard sword and german greatsword cost the same, then buff bastard sword until they can be considered equally effective in battle. But that seems to be the way they are going, so it's interesting to see what comes of it all.

Similar thing should be done to armor, so there would be actual dilemmas there, and not some kind of sweetspot around the kuyaks. I'm talking about looking into cost and weight. Perhaps the heaviest armors should be slightly lighter and a tiny bit cheaper, and the heavy mediums slightly heavier i.ex..

The armors are also unexitingly linear with relation to cost and protection. One could imagine something that was light and strong but very expensive, or strong but very cheap. The danger there is that people would end up using fewer armors again, so the pricing should really be done well.

(Which is why I think prices should be influenced by item popularity, but thats another discussion.)

[Tydeus]

Prices for a lot of things need redone, as they're terrible. 65K gold horse? Really, it's actually that effective?

[Malaclypse]

The Longsword/HBS/Bastard Sword were in good places before and were very effective weapons. The reason for the change as I understand it is that they were underused on EU servers.  On NA Longsword was already the most prevalent 2-handed sword on the battlefield (as per the last percentage stats I saw which are, admittedly, somewhat dated), so for this side of the pond the buff is likely to have the opposite effect as on EU (decreasing diversity instead of increasing it).