Suggestions to re-balance throwing.

[Cheap_Shot]

I am. Shockingly I'm in LLJK, but I appreciate the offer and consideration. Thank you. They have my support for continuing to use throwing weapons. Maybe they should come by and give some input since they use them? I'm still hoping someone on the balance team will comment. One did in another thread about throwing, mentioning possible changes still up for discussion. They haven't been back since to discuss them though. Still hopeful.

All in all, throwing is just very fun. It's not something people would consider possible as a dedicated build, but cRPG is all about shaping your character and coming up with new playstyles that work for you. As an example, there's a player who runs around shirtless with 10 athletics and a long dagger. He just destroys me. I've never seen such fast attacks, and it made me smile since someone had found a unique and interesting way to play. People try to force you into cookie cutter builds. Be a two hander, be an archer, go cav, and the constant nerfs to everything else punish those who don't. All I want to do all round is throw, and I'm very good at it. I'm nowhere near skilled at melee, my strengths lie in judging distance and timing. I'd like to be able to keep playing the way I want to play, and really my suggestions would let me do that without turning the game upside down. Hell, at this point I'd even settle for just lowered wpf need and increased stack, but I'd prefer if they were all considered. Outside the box builds are the most interesting part of this game in my experience. Getting killed by someone with a confusing playstyle only makes me curious. I wonder how they've managed to make X weapon deadly while riding Y and wearing Z. Without this constant variety, battles will just get tired and predictable. This counters this, that counters that. It's much more exciting when you have to stop because you don't know yet what counters someone. Then it's really a test of skill and a reason to enjoy the battle.

edit:

your suggestions might fix it for you... but honestly i would make another suggestion... when throwing was super popular it was a problem, definitely. but why was it so popular? because it was super easy to hybrid, thats why! so a possible fix would be... keep the wpf requirment, maybe even make it higher! but give throwers more ammo and more damage. there were never all that many dedicated throwers... it was just a ton of people who put a few points in power throw, 0 throw wpf, and hucked shit everywhere. if hybrid remains difficult, but dedicated becomes viable... you will see a few throwers out there... maybe not a ton, but the ones who really like that play style would be able to do so... they would be at a severe disadvantage in melee, but they could at least kill people at range...

I did consider that. I can't agree because of how serious the wpf problem is for throwing. Making the wpf so high has the only effect of making it so throwing is ONLY possible as hybrid builds, and no where near effective enough to make it an option over crossbows. Currently the steep wpf need per powerthrow makes PT 10 unreachable unlike PS 10, which is an unfair unbalance. It is very easy for melee builds to incorporate 10 powerstrike and start one hit killing people. They have no such restrictions that throwers have when trying to reach the max PT. Throwing is a strength based style, and 30 strength is needed to get power throw 10. Unfortunately, because of the high wpf need, throwers are unable to wear most armors because it effects their accuracy too much. Any medium armor will knock the effective powerthrow level down, especially at higher levels, and destroy already poor accuracy. Throwers receive an angry reed error message at the beginning of each round to tell them this.
To get to powerthrow 10, you need 140 wpf, which means 12 agi and 4 weaponmaster on top of the 30 str. That means you have to convert almost all of your skills to attributes to raise the wpf high enough, and there is not enough left over to allow you to wear any armor at all, or invest in a secondary weapon to scavenge and defend with. Unlike archers who have high agility and can run away, or crossbow users who can wear heavy armor, throwers are slow strength characters with 0 room for athletics and not enough skill points remaining at level 31 for an amount of iron flesh that would matter. This makes them the equivilant of slow wet paper in a melee battle, which happens often because throwers run out of ammo, as well as have poor range and accuracy, and have to get close to land hits.

This is why the wpf is a problem. It isn't fair or balanced that 10 powerstrike is so easily reachable, yet 10 powerthrow has been made impossible. Even only at powerthrow 8, I am getting the red message occasionally when I get sick of dieing in 1-2 hits and try for better then peasant armor. We don't really need more damage. More shots and accuracy would do. You could even keep the slots as is and increase powerthrow need for some weapons too if it helps. Go ahead and remove the lance like in the proposal, it was a stupid no skill weapon and I never used it anyway. It's been made even more then useless anyway. Just please please, the wpf need is too much and has cut off even the option of high level throwing. 

[LLJK_Korea1]

hands off from Cheap Shot, he's mine. 

[ArchonAlarion]

Historically speaking  a durp a durpa video game, guy wearing samurai armor using medieval European weapons hurp hurp realism.

There is a difference between what actually happened and what is physically possible. It is not physically possible for throwing weapons to be as effective as you would wish them.

Throwing weapons do not naturally make a primary "class" so to speak. They are more like pistols or grenade launchers in Call of Duty (I play on occasion); they supplement a melee fighter's combat versatility. It should be possible to be a dedicated thrower, but this should come with the disadvantages of using weapons that have limited battlefield usage/effectiveness.

The other problem is the skill system. The reason my melee chars do not use throwing is not because throwing has been nerfed or anything, but simply because I do not have the powerthrow to use them. The difficulty of all weapons should be based on strength.

Then you will begin to see throwing as it should be; a supplementary weapon that many melee fighters will take to increase their versatility.

[Gorath]

Shockingly I'm in LLJK

Explains so much.

It isn't fair or balanced that 10 powerstrike is so easily reachable, yet 10 powerthrow has been made impossible.

One requires skill, the other simply requires a love of penis.

[Lorenzo_of_Iberia]

Historically, throwing weapons had limited usage. Making an entire class around them and forcing it to be equivalent to the other artificial classes is what you are suggesting. Imo, this will slowly ruin the game until it is no longer recognizable as mount and blade, but instead as a goofy-ass reincarnation of mainstream sock-raper-schizo mmorpg.

Historically speaking, throwing weapons have been used extensively well up until medieval ages. A javelin for example could pierce heavy armour, you also gotta remember that historically speaking no one was going to survive a javelin to the abdomen, or a 2h sword would not be able to wield a sword over his head rapidly swinging it around (a.k.a feinting), He would lose balance and get killed, they were very much a weapon used for crushing through formations. This is a game and if you want to take throwing weapons down to reality, you'd have to bring bows, 2h weapons, polarms and horses to it too. Then whining would occur. Throwers worked, people whined cause they didnt have the foresight to put a couple of points into shield and then just ran around with 2h's, no shield and whined more because a class had taken advantage of their bad choice Sadly there are a lot of 2h's who are very skilled with their weapons, unrealistically swinging it round like a nun-chuck, who can't accept it when players wisely choose to take advantage of their lack of shield

[Dezilagel]

grenade launchers in Call of Duty (I play on occasion)

Do you happen to be playing a "friendly archer"?

[Damug]

One requires skill, the other simply requires a love of penis.

Don't be so hard on people with Power Strike Gorath.  It isn't very nice.

[Cheap_Shot]

One requires skill, the other simply requires a love of penis.

I know, I even made a comic about it. You don't have to be so self hating though. People are a lot more progressive and open minded then they used to be. You may lash out Gorath, but I accept you for who you are. Also I appreciate that you understand how much skill it requires to be good at throwing. I guess I misjudged you.

[MouthnHoof]

Historically speaking, throwing weapons have been used extensively well up until medieval ages.

"Extensively" is not the word I would use. They were common, but no army was built around it. Skirmish throwers were typically lower kind of troops that nobody took seriously. Some front line infantry carried thrown weapons, but the ammo was typically 1-2 projectiles. They were thrown into the enemy mass from short range just before the lines meet and that's it. No need to even aim them at a specific person.

In small scale combat they are nearly useless. Unlike against a line, throwing at an individual who can dodge and maneuver makes hitting a very low probability. Javelins are slow enough that if thrown from more than a couple of meters away, you can move out of their way.

The problem in the game was that EVERYBODY carried some kind of a ranged weapon. The game mechanic allows very little dodging ability (you cannot even bend) which made them effective against an aware person. To top it, the game allows the player to throw and then draw out a big F*ing poleaxe from his back - drawing anything but a short blade is not nearly as fast in real life, not to mention the complete inability to unsheath large 2H weapons or even to carry most of them on your back. This is why in reality, throwers used short, easy to draw weapons, which they can prepare in the 2 seconds between the throw and the clashing of the lines.

I would not want to go back to the constant barrage of projectiles. I do not mind throwing as a minor secondary, but only for troops that use 1H weapons (more "unsheathable" flags to large weapons!) and the number of projectiles is extremely limited (stacks of 1!, so 1H+shield+2 ammo), but allow them to be picked up. On these conditions, throwing can get some buff.

[Diavolo]

The romans used throwing weapons very effectively. The legionaires had giant shield, pilum (short spear to stab with and to throw) and gladius (short sword to stab the enemy with while blocking at the same time).

M&B is set in about 1350 A.D. though, a lot later than the romans, but throwing weapons probably was used a bit.

To avoid everyone having throwing weapons, just have Power Throw have a larger effect on damage and speed and not have it reduce wpf of throwing at all. Also reduce the base damage of the throwing weapons to weigh up for this. That way throwers would have to get a decent amount of Power throw to deal good damage, but high power throw should be possible. (unlike now when power throw removes so much wpf that you have to make a tradeoff between wpf and dealing damage at all)

[San]

I don't care about that historic mumbo jumbo, especially since most of it will be misinformation and irrelevant anyways. There is no reason to abolish a whole type of weapon and series of styles to uselessness. It is not impossible to make throwing a viable option while maintaining balance. Right now, the game fully prevents this, therefore losing a whole lot of depth.

High wpf in throwing should help you, not harm you. It feels like an extra penalization for no reason.
About actual weapon changes:
Increase damage, keep low ammo/accuracy- People will probably complain about this more. It emphasizes hybridization if it's still effective at low wpf levels
Increase ammo/accuracy- More ammo ensures that dedicated throwers can actually you know, throw and not run out of ammo so easily. Hybrids will still be used, but due to the less damage it's not really going to kill since their effective PT shouldn't be very high. This assumes that dedicated throwers can actually use 10 PT to actually do damage


tl;dr

Throwing should have more accuracy and ammo. Only increase power if you really don't want to increase accuracy or ammo by that much.

Dedicated throwers should be doing much more damage than hybrids- which means tweak or remove the wpf too low nerf.

Hybrid throwers shouldn't do that much damage, so hybrids can throw at mid-close range which helps give 1-2 less swings for the kill as well as all-around versatility.


I had to retire my character fully from throwing, and it will probably remain that way until they bring it back to a reasonable level. Well probably not, since I enjoyed throwing in general, since it was a nice change from 2h/cav/archer single player.

[Lorenzo_of_Iberia]

"Extensively" is not the word I would use. They were common, but no army was built around it. Skirmish throwers were typically lower kind of troops that nobody took seriously. Some front line infantry carried thrown weapons, but the ammo was typically 1-2 projectiles. They were thrown into the enemy mass from short range just before the lines meet and that's it. No need to even aim them at a specific person.

You are right that some people didnt took them seriously e.g. At the battle of  the romans didn't take the numidian cavalry seriously, but then they lost all their cav to numidian cavalry (which were primarily javalry) and got flanked, routed and chased down by the same cavalry. Javelins can also be carried in relatively large amounts as they are afterall small spears... for example a roman soldier on top of his armour, large shield and sword would carry two heavy javelins designed for breaking shields, often piercing the man behing. So I think its more than possible to take even 6 javelins on your back, with a small sidearm, though speed would be reduced but as throwers often have low agility we see that anyways. Javelins would still be used in medieval times for the piercing power and cause its a very cost effective weapon.

Throwing weapons are really not hard to dodge at anything over 4 metres or so. Most Players seem to do it just fine if they are aware of you, so for a thrower to make an effective hit, I've found he has to wait for the opponent to close. On accuracy I believe you can find videos of people hitting targets with throwing weapons from quite a distance when trained

if franz ferdinand can do it... Why cant a trained thrower?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugyi9KbzPMc&feature=related
Similar speed as in game i reckon :/

I agree on the problem of unsheathing huge weapons and such, but that applies to almost any class tbh

[22nd_King_Plazek]

On of the main contributing factors to the difficulty of dodging throwing weapons is their inaccuracy.

"OH look he is aiming ahead of me I will dodge backwards!"

/Axe in the face

[Cheap_Shot]

haha that happens more often then you'd think. The best way to dodge throwing weapons is to just run directly toward the thrower without zigging. I can center you all I want, but most of the time my weapons fly wild not even going inside the reticule, but far to the side. I have 130 wpf in throwing too. 

That suggestion to lower base damage but have powerthrow increase damage and accuracy more is a good one. Do that, decrease wpf need, and boost stacks or lower slots. Done!

[ArchonAlarion]

Historically speaking, throwing weapons have been used extensively well up until medieval ages. A javelin for example could pierce heavy armour, you also gotta remember that historically speaking no one was going to survive a javelin to the abdomen, or a 2h sword would not be able to wield a sword over his head rapidly swinging it around (a.k.a feinting), He would lose balance and get killed, they were very much a weapon used for crushing through formations. This is a game and if you want to take throwing weapons down to reality, you'd have to bring bows, 2h weapons, polarms and horses to it too. Then whining would occur. Throwers worked, people whined cause they didnt have the foresight to put a couple of points into shield and then just ran around with 2h's, no shield and whined more because a class had taken advantage of their bad choice Sadly there are a lot of 2h's who are very skilled with their weapons, unrealistically swinging it round like a nun-chuck, who can't accept it when players wisely choose to take advantage of their lack of shield

Throwing weapons should be common enough, but not useful enough to be considered "primary" weapons.

Should there be an "Unarmed" class too (With spiked gauntlets, kung fu, "powerfist", etc), just because we can conceive it as a distinct playstyle? No. Sometimes, weapons have limited uses. Throwing is one of them. It is a supplement to a melee soldier's combat versatility, not an effective style by itself.

Do you happen to be playing a "friendly archer"?

One of my alts (Dirty_Drop) is a low level archer, but I prefer polearm/melee builds.


The cure is to make the difficulty of throwing (and all weapons for that matter) based on strength. That way, throwing will still be realistically limited in effectiveness (as it should!), but more people will take throwing weapons to hurl at the enemy before charging into the fray.