I am not as much interested as I used to be, but still some Ideas I have:
- Fix bows:
Longbow should have the fastest missile speed, Short Bow the slowest, current balance is stupid. Though leave the Longbow at 40, maybe increase it to 41/42, and afterwards scale all missile speeds with this so Longbow stays the one with the highest. Weapon speed just the other way around, Short bow the fastest, Long Bow the slowest.
Because of HA balance Yumi should get a slightly higher missile speed than Hornbow, while Hornbow gets the faster reload speed.
Alternative: Reduce the amount of Arrows per stack by ~30% (loomed arrows will get very useful again), remove pierce damage from Bodkin Arrows and give the Longbow back its pierce damage as it used to be
The more arrows you want to carry with you/shot the cheaper arrows you need to use, so you do less damage. To do high damage you want bodkins, which will have 10 arrows per stack at +0. Moreover Longbow will be the only bow with pierce damage, meaning that it will be very effective against plate armor, but due to its high reload time it will be a waste to shot peasants, cheaper & faster bows will be suited for this job.
Bodkins should be at 9 or 10 cut dmg.
- Xbows:
Make Arbalest 3 Slot. Arbalesters will keep the ability to 1 shot targets, but lose their melee capability because they are limited to 0 slot weapons. This will give the Heavy Crossbow a place aswell. It can 2 shot targets on the body and 1 shot on headshots like the Arbalests, but you will be able to carry a better melee weapon with you, therefore this will just increase the learning curve for Xbowers, and once they manage to do enough headshots there won't be much of a difference in using Arbalest or Heavy Crossbows for them.
- Daggers:
Increase the damage of Daggers slightly, but remove the ability to use a Dagger with a Shield. There always used to be ppl using Daggers as weapon, but most of them needed a bit skill in order to chamber attacks. Now there is too many running around with a Dagger/Shield which makes it way too easy to use.
When you cannot use a Shield anymore there should be no problem in buffing the Daggers damage, because then ppl will have to start chambering again if they want to do more than quick backstabbing.
- Horse Ranged:
When the pierce damage goes to the Longbow only few HA's will be able to do decent against tincans (landing headshots still does damage if you use Arrows and Horn Bow, but only the good ones can do that). Therefore Horse Xbowers should be the ones focusing the heavy armored opponents and leave light targets to HA's.
HX needs to be balanced with the HAs. The heavies Combo Horsearchers can use will be Yumi and bodkins (which should have about 9-10 cut dmg), making less damage than Light xbow + Steel bolts (the missile speed makes a huge difference), even against light armored targets. Light Crossbows must either get their reload speed increased by ~30% or lose the same amount of damage. Reducing the Damage will reduce their effictivity against light armored targets aswell, so it would make more sense to reduce the reload speed which leads to the same situation the Longbow users will have: it is not worth their time to shot a peasant while they could be shoting a tincan.
They will still do more damage against heavy armored targets thanks to their pierce damage, but won't be as effective against light/medium as Horsearchers.
- Cav:
Lancers are fine imo, if the ride around on Arabian Warhorses they are very annoying, but can be countered by downblocking. 1h cav needs to get nerfed. The swords damage scales way too much with your movement speed, enabling 1h cav to everything except for Str crutching tincans if they land a proper hit on the head. Just reduce the bonus damage they get from their movement speed on horse by a third, light armored targets (aka Archers) will still die from a hit to the head, but melee will survive.
- 2h swords:
Nodachi: 43 Cut, 91 Speed, 122 Length
Miaodao: 42 Cut, 96 Speed, 115 Length
Highland Claymore: 43 Cut, 92 Speed, 117 Length
Really, do this 7 points in length and 1 point in damage compensate for the 5 less in speed the Nodachi has compared to Miaodao? Or having 5 length more than the Highland Claymore, but who cares, Claymore can stab which will outreach Nodachi anytime. It can stun 1hers with an overhead, but the Claymore can do the same with .5 weight less while being cheaper and superior. Nodachi should get like 1 or 2 points more in damage.