Despite the removal of cavalry's 360 degree turret style pokes, cavalry will soon be the strongest builds in the game.
Its not that cavalry have any sort of item or horse which is instant win, its that their main counter was overnerfed.
In this patch, the pike received a number of changes, including significant damage reduction on heirloomed versions of the weapon.
The nerfs that cause problems with the overall balance of the game are as follows
#1 The pike now takes up 2 slots, instead of 1.
#2 The pike must be equipped at all times or it is dropped to the ground.
The purpose to these nerfs is to force players to specialize more and not be a swiss-army knife. While I support the idea of forcing players to choose what they need to rely on their teammates for, using both of these nerfs on the same item was a bad idea. Why?
Because either one of these nerfs by itself would have been sufficient to attain the goal of the patch.
If a pike takes up 2 slots, the player will be forced to pick between a real melee weapon, or be an archer/crossbower who is nearly completely unable to fend for themselves if they are cornered.
If you must equip the pike at all times, you are unable to lure a skilled cavalry player to attack a seemingly helpless person in the field. Additionally, by having the pike out at all times, you are forcing the piker to be very vulnerable to anyone who can facehug effectively, as well as having the piker exposed to any number of missile attacks.
The end result of each of these: a player who uses the pike is most likely going to be effective at killing a horse, but notably ineffective in many other situations. However, when you use both of these together, you have a player whose only strength is killing a horse.
If the piker is pressured in melee under the current system, the player has to drop their pike and draw out their melee weapon to fight off the opponent. Because most battles involve kiting and footwork, the player will, in most cases, be separated from their 2 slot weapon. Once this occurs, they are now much less effective at fighting off cavalry.
Cavalry had a counter, and the aforementioned counter was not considered by the greater crpg community to be overpowered. By adding BOTH of these nerfs to the pike, you have made the pike significantly less effective at doing its singular job. I strongly urge you to remove one of the two mentioned nerfs in this post, or, if my predictions are correct, the sheer number of cavalry characters will overwhelm crpg.
tl;dr version- By making the pike take up 2 slots, and forcing the player to drop the pike if they change weapons, pikers are now crippled against melee, archers, crossbowers, and throwers, thereby making pikers less common. This will in-turn make cavalry more powerful and more common.
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