[Stats] Strength Passive Still Too Potent

[DaveUKR]

I don't know what you guys are talking about. I had my lvl35 xbowman with 100 wpf in 2h and 180 wpf in crossbows. The build was 15-30 with 5 PS, 1 IF, 10 ath and 10 WM. I retired on lvl35 almost instantly after I tried it out. I put my arbalest in the chest, took a longsword and had scores like this:

(click to show/hide)

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

MW longsword which is very fast itself + 10 athletics made it extremely effective even though I didn't have a lot of PS or wpf. The numbers which you suggest will:
1) Kill the entire balance in ranged. Ranged with 200+ wpf is what we need, right?
2) Make fast sword users even better than now (longsword with a million of wpf FTW)

I suggest to tune WM bonuses by just moving it down like if you had 1 less WM according to your graphic.

[Grumbs]

I think removing free WPP per level will be less likely to unbalance things. If you give too much WPF if will be easier to hybrid or make archer/xbow more accurate

Otherwise just buff the bonus from WPF, so someone with 160 wpf in a weapon gets more damage than now

[Konrax]

4-9 WM doesn't look like too much of an increase compared to what we have, now ~10 points. I think 10+ WM probably deserves something compared to 10+ PS, so the high numbers there seem justified. Right now, there's little incentive to go higher than 27 agi without purposefully gimping yourself. A little testing is required to see how high one can increase wpf before it becomes too unfair in terms of weapon speed. I think the first few points are still pretty powerful, I would make it a little tougher for 1-5 WM.

I would agree with san that 1-5 WM shouldn't give that much wpf.

[Pentecost]

I would agree with san that 1-5 WM shouldn't give that much wpf.

I would point out that while 1-3 WM is a small investment, 5 WM or more is a comparatively large one and should get decent returns. 5 skill points is either 10 hp, the ability to ride a Destrier + all of the armored horses, or (as long as you have 70ish wpf after the armor and PT penalties) the ability to use all of the best throwing weapons in the game.

[oprah_winfrey]

I don't know what you guys are talking about. I had my lvl35 xbowman with 100 wpf in 2h and 180 wpf in crossbows. The build was 15-30 with 5 PS, 1 IF, 10 ath and 10 WM. I retired on lvl35 almost instantly after I tried it out. I put my arbalest in the chest, took a longsword and had scores like this:

(click to show/hide)

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

MW longsword which is very fast itself + 10 athletics made it extremely effective even though I didn't have a lot of PS or wpf. The numbers which you suggest will:
1) Kill the entire balance in ranged. Ranged with 200+ wpf is what we need, right?
2) Make fast sword users even better than now (longsword with a million of wpf FTW)

I suggest to tune WM bonuses by just moving it down like if you had 1 less WM according to your graphic.

Oh really? You were level 35 and were able to get kills. That is impressive.

Assuming you were 15-30 with 10 wm all in two hands, you would get 20 more wpf then under the current system. Really not that back breaking.

[Tydeus]

I don't know what you guys are talking about. I had my lvl35 xbowman with 100 wpf in 2h and 180 wpf in crossbows. The build was 15-30 with 5 PS, 1 IF, 10 ath and 10 WM. I retired on lvl35 almost instantly after I tried it out. I put my arbalest in the chest, took a longsword and had scores like this:

(click to show/hide)

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

MW longsword which is very fast itself + 10 athletics made it extremely effective even though I didn't have a lot of PS or wpf. The numbers which you suggest will:
1) Kill the entire balance in ranged. Ranged with 200+ wpf is what we need, right?
2) Make fast sword users even better than now (longsword with a million of wpf FTW)

I suggest to tune WM bonuses by just moving it down like if you had 1 less WM according to your graphic.

So you were able to have a perfect arbalest build while also having a decent melee build thanks to being level 35. It's not often that you see a crossbower admit that crossbows are overpowered in that you literally don't lose any real effectiveness by 'hybriding' with them. Anyway, this is why the crossbow was made 2 slots, so that you can't have the best of both worlds. Furthermore, you took the most extreme case for this, one that really isn't as much of an issue after the recent xbow nerf. You can't do that build with any other ranged weapon because they all have skill point requirements.

Edit: Anyway, it's extremely easy to edit, it's just a matter of making sure any alterations you make, are actually necessary.

[Spa_geh_tea]

I disagree. There are a number of reasons why the Tydeus' proposed schema is a good one:

1.) As Malaclypse said, there is an imbalance between extreme strength and extreme agility builds in terms of usefulness. There is currently no point in having an extreme agility build (ie 27 or more agility) for a melee character unless you are either very high level, a rageball alt, or someone who enjoys being dead most of the time. Extreme strength builds (ie 27 or more strength), on the other hand, are very rewarding to play on both duel and battle as long as you know how to block and have good awareness. Something that makes them of more equal effectiveness is a plus in my book.

2.) As it is currently implemented, there is little reason to get a lot of WM over converting the extra skill points you would save or allocating them somewhere else. With the free 111 wpf he gets from leveling, a straight 1 weapon melee build usually only wants about 3 WM to offset the penalty from his armor. This would be fine except that even hybrids don't get as much out of WM as they do with a similar investment in other skills. 7 WM is currently not enough to use even 3 weapon classes at 110 wpf (before armor penalty), whereas 7 riding is enough to use nearly every horse better than the majority of the population.

3.) From the standpoint of game design, it makes agility and WM parallel with strength and IF. With a change in the vein of what Tydeus has suggested, you would be able to get decent wpf with sufficiently high agility and no WM in the same way that you would be able to get decent HP with sufficiently high strength even with no IF, although you would get a greater benefit in both cases by actually investing skill points.

The specifics of it may need some tweaks, but the general idea of it is definitely sound. Some people have raised concerns about excessively high weapon speeds coming out of a wpf rework, but I do not think that will be a major issue because cRPG now has an absolute level cap of 36 and no wpf carryover on retirement. It is unlikely many people would be able to get more than 200 wpf in one weapon class without either being very high level or sacrificing everything else to do so, and the requirements of specific items can be adjusted if a problem arises.

Get better servers. They currently barely handle 160wpf melee, so fast players don't even see animations.

No. Just....hell no.

Pick a balance, either extremes or middle. We can't have both, currently devs have balanced for middle. 

[Phew]

I'd like to see Weapon Master enable more advanced features beyond base speed/damage increases:

-Deeper feints (especially with unbalanced weapons)
-Less chance to be block stunned or crushed through
-Larger animation sweet spots
-More damage bonus from holds
-Longer chamber window
-etc

Basically "duelist" features. Right now strength provides many of the above benefits, when it should be WM. High agility lets you get a positional advantage over your opponent, only to glance on them. Meanwhile, the strength 2h-er is glad to let you behind him, because his sideswings still hit for full damage back there. Pretty backwards if you ask me.

[Torben]

Maybe a small reduction to wpf penalty from armor.

either this or decrease athletics reduction from armor weight.  this would be a straight counter to the IF you get from strenght,  and i would even make sense in a remote way.

[Kafein]

Just remove the free HP from STR. That alone would actually be a gigantic buff to IF, even if keeping it just the same (+2 hp per level). At the same time, reduce armor weight by a percentage for all armors. This would have the effect of nerfing str+plate crutching and buffing armor globally at the same time.

[Tydeus]

Just remove the free HP from STR. That alone would actually be a gigantic buff to IF, even if keeping it just the same (+2 hp per level). At the same time, reduce armor weight by a percentage for all armors. This would have the effect of nerfing str+plate crutching and buffing armor globally at the same time.

I think this would actually be one of the most terrible things that you could do. If you remove the passive HP from str then you're going to have a lot of people running around with only 35 hp, and that's not going to make for a very fun crpg experience. If you lower the weight on all armors by a percent, then you're giving everyone more reason to use higher armor equipment. Even if you were to say that this in theory was good, you'd still be guilty of not acknowledging that the heaviest armors would get the largest benefit out of this. But that's not the only issue I have with it. Anything that results in a higher average armor value per player than what we have right now, without rebalancing many other facets of this game, is going to come with a heap of negatives.

For starters, higher average armor values directly harms the effectiveness and variety of certain weapons/builds. We recently buffed the swing damage on low tier polearms specifically because the amount of armor that the majority of infantry gets, can make for a very one sided fight. You have to have a high str build if you want to minimize the likelihood of your swing bouncing off your opponents armor on a perfectly legitimate swing, and thus getting yourself cut in half because your opponent was simply spamming. An increase in the average armor values would undo this change, and further polarize one handed sword effectiveness.

Whether directly or indirectly, increasing armor values is the last thing that we should be doing right now. A better proposal, would be to lower the effect of weight on runspeed as athletics increases. But as someone who often plays 15/30 and 12/33 stf builds in very heavy/plate armor, I don't think it's necessary. Those stf builds of mine aren't ineffective for any reason other than the fact that they do such tiny amounts of damage. That build is perfectly viable against a 35~ body armor opponent.

tl;dr version: It's armor values and free wpf that cause str to be so much more effective than agi.

[Kafein]

I think this would actually be one of the most terrible things that you could do. If you remove the passive HP from str then you're going to have a lot of people running around with only 35 hp, and that's not going to make for a very fun crpg experience. If you lower the weight on all armors by a percent, then you're giving everyone more reason to use higher armor equipment. Even if you were to say that this in theory was good, you'd still be guilty of not acknowledging that the heaviest armors would get the largest benefit out of this. But that's not the only issue I have with it. Anything that results in a higher average armor value per player than what we have right now, without rebalancing many other facets of this game, is going to come with a heap of negatives.

For starters, higher average armor values directly harms the effectiveness and variety of certain weapons/builds. We recently buffed the swing damage on low tier polearms specifically because the amount of armor that the majority of infantry gets, can make for a very one sided fight. You have to have a high str build if you want to minimize the likelihood of your swing bouncing off your opponents armor on a perfectly legitimate swing, and thus getting yourself cut in half because your opponent was simply spamming. An increase in the average armor values would undo this change, and further polarize one handed sword effectiveness.

Whether directly or indirectly, increasing armor values is the last thing that we should be doing right now. A better proposal, would be to lower the effect of weight on runspeed as athletics increases. But as someone who often plays 15/30 and 12/33 stf builds in very heavy/plate armor, I don't think it's necessary. Those stf builds of mine aren't ineffective for any reason other than the fact that they do such tiny amounts of damage. That build is perfectly viable against a 35~ body armor opponent.

tl;dr version: It's armor values and free wpf that cause str to be so much more effective than agi.

You are entirely right. To be honest I was more focused on making combat more lethal than to balance the damage types when I wrote this. I still think the difference in HP between low and high str builds is too high, though. Reasonable investment in STR and IF can easily multiply your lifespan by two, which is too much (not considering armor).

[LordRichrich]

I've been playing extreme str and extreme agi build for a while. I'm by no means Phase or Dave or osmeone, this is what I've found:

30/8 - max ath, wm, ps and if. Using great sword, morningstar, bardiche Great for siege, great for non-bodkin archers, great for cluster fucks. Not so great vs any ranged I have to chase, caught in the open, vs mutiple enimies that keep distance.

9/21 - Used to have a 9/24, both points are the same tho. Max ps, ath and wm. Great for battle where there's enough room to sneak round the enemy, lighting fast strikes. The wpf and movement speed mean I can hit like a truck if I get it right. On the 9/24 char, I found Byz_Teeth standing still. I ran at him, slashed his head twice and he died. When I was dead I asked him what he had build wise. +3 guard helmet, some IF and 21 str. I can run away from anyone i dont like, cav are super easy to dodge, back peddle faster than ppl can run, can dodge ranged 99% of the time. Not so great on smaller maps, die in 1 hit mostly too.

I personally find these builds equally fun to play. They are both situational, but the str can work in more situations just because there's ALWAYS a clump of melee players. But I'd say my agi char is more useful, I can run into a melee, hit the best enemy players and dart off again, I usually charge archer nests, and as they can't kite I can stop them firing for 30 seconds until I get overwhelmed.

So really, if you want to get kills, go str. But a correctly played agi build is a million times more useful to the team.

[Vex.]

So by nerfing str health arbalest, rus bow etc... will start to onehit these people with 18/21 builds etc? Well thats a great idea! everyone will have a base health on 35 hp ish (real smart). And after a month ranged will get nerfed even more than before. yay! fuck the nerfs, buff something instead... I've been playing mercenaries for a while now, i find it much more fun than crpg because of these whiners who fucks up the balance by "nerf that its too OP omg nerf nerf nerf"... Simply crpg isnt fun in melee/ranged anymore, everything is so damn slow + the turn nerf a while back ruins my beloved mauling. ruined the stabs etc... I really miss the old crpg from 2010 (not the way the gold/xp system worked, but the combat system).

Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf

[Jarlek]

So by nerfing str health arbalest, rus bow etc... will start to onehit these people with 18/21 builds etc? Well thats a great idea! everyone will have a base health on 35 hp ish (real smart). And after a month ranged will get nerfed even more than before. yay! fuck the nerfs, buff something instead... I've been playing mercenaries for a while now, i find it much more fun than crpg because of these whiners who fucks up the balance by "nerf that its too OP omg nerf nerf nerf"... Simply crpg isnt fun in melee/ranged anymore, everything is so damn slow + the turn nerf a while back ruins my beloved mauling. ruined the stabs etc... I really miss the old crpg from 2010 (not the way the gold/xp system worked, but the combat system).

Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf

Vex. You got 1 or 2 IF and 82 health. Do you really not see the problem with this?