This is my crapplication. It's really long and boring so I tried to break it up a little bit. I don't blame you if you don't read it, I wouldn't read it either. There's probably a lot of blatantly wrong stuff in there, too. You'd be insane to read it. You don't want to be insane, do you?
If I were on the item balancing team I would like to have an advisory or weapon-making/tweaking position. I don't want to be a big boy in charge, just an advisor to help get the opinion of the community. If you're familiar with my posts you know I'm a fan of polls which indicates that community perception is very important in any work I do. I think I've recently indicated with my map making and events promoting (even though I haven't gotten to running actual events yet...) I've indicated that I have the ability and will to dedicate hours to constructive nerdwork for this game.
I am familiar with creating and tweaking item models in Warband. I also play cRPG nearly every day for at least 10-15 minutes (usually more) so I am very familiar with the ever-changing balance of cRPG and the fads. I'm obviously most familiar with 1h and cavalry, but I have also done generations of polearm, throwing, 2h (okay only once), and crossbow.
My current advice towards the agenda of the balancing team would be the following:
SYLLABUS OF NERDY STUFF I WROTE:
First and foremost we should try and come up with ways to encourage more hybridization of builds and move away from pure min-maxing as the only successful way to play. This will hopefully make the game more fun. Second we need to alter what I feel is the current metagame of agility builds that are very quick but can take hits because of heavy armor and still deal ridiculously huge damage (I feel this is worst with polearm). Third (and this is how you can know I am relatively unbiased right now) we need to change (nerf) cavalry.
POLEARM OP:
The NA and EU duel tournaments were both absolutely dominated by polearm players. I did math on the distribution of classes in the final/top 10 players of the NA tournament and 90% of players were polearm. This leads me to believe that polearms are too strong compared to 1h and 2h in melee only situations. So I would first look at some way of bringing these three classes into alignment.
Individual changes for polearm I would suggest are to give weapons such as the long axe, long hafted blade, long bardiche, etc, a slight nerf to damage or speed. The damage on these weapons when you include a speed bonus is devastating and in my opinion too strong. They hit harder than a steel pick from horseback full speed to the face. Those weapons are just off the top of my head so don't fault me if they're not perfectly sensible, they are just my impression of the most popular polearms right now.
STR-AGI BALANCE
I think the most effective thing we could do to bring more balance to the str-agi paradigm isn't to revert to the old days of 45-str owning battles. What we should do is increase the str requirements on armor and weapons so that players using primarily agility don't get all the same damage and defense that str players get. It might help to balance str with agi if we made ironflesh more of a useful skill so that agi players by nature aren't as tough as str players. The vast majority of good players I have asked for advice in this game have all told me "ironflesh is worthless, don't use it". So maybe a slight buff to ironflesh.
2H
As far as putting 2h into alignment with the other melee classes I won't pretend I know what to do. I've played it for one generation and I was not good. I would say polearm is stronger than 2h right now though.
1H:
For 1h I would like to see a comeback of non-sword items. I feel that the combined change of knockdown proc and stab buffs by Tydeus really changed the spread of 1hs you used to see in the server. These days on a 75 population server you're lucky to see a 1her using a pick or a mace at all. Swords have by far become the most popular and successful weapon (the only one that tops the scoreboards). I would like to see knockdown chance for 1hs closer to what it was a year ago so we might see people use weapons like the Iberian Mace again. Also maybe give the lesser picks a bit of love, like the fighting pick.
CROSSBOW
I'm not a very good crossbow or very familiar with it but the most famous players of the class have all told me personally that they feel their class was nerfed to the point where it's not even fun to play it anymore.
CHANGE WPF/THROWING ESPECIALLY:
The whole WPF-spread thing of shared WPF in melee classes was a cool change! Very cool! However, I think it could be improved a little bit. It feels like all it did was boost WPF for hoplites because honestly who the fuck plays 1h/2h or 2h/pole. I think we could help hybridize classes by letting some melee WPF spread into ranged class WPF. I.E. 1h or polearm WPF could spread into throwing WPF so throwers can hybridize into 1h/thrower (viking) or hoplite/thrower (roman guy). I would love to see throwing put into a stronger spot than where it is right now. Even the best players in NA have to struggle to get to the top of the scoreboard as a thrower. It's less accurate than crossbow/archery but it seems like a lot of the time it still does less damage even when the stars align and you finally hit. Give a slight buff to the higher throwing items damage across the board (throwing axes, spears, lances).
EDIT: I nearly forgot, nerf cavalry. First of all reduce bump damage a fair amount, if you have 0 IF it takes like 3 good horse bumps to kill you. Nobody should get free damage just for hitting you with a horse. Remove this whole paradigm of trying to say cavalry is balanced by its upkeep being so much higher--upkeep doesn't stop people from playing it to destroy players that are better than them. We need to bring cavalry in line with the other melee classes somehow. First of all nerf the EU playstyle of 1h cav with heavy horse, heavy armor, and arabian cavalry sword. We also need to nerf HA and the ability of its players to engage in fights where one player has no chance of success, where the HA can just delay until it gets valour. I say we make the penalty of armor to WPF stronger on horseback, and slow their draw speed with movement. I don't know. You guys figure this one out. I'm not that smart.
