Ranged stagger: Should it stay or should it go

[Jarold]

I would like to see someone come up with a good Pros and Cons list about ranged stun. Then we will see if it is truly good or bad. But we all know it's bad.

[Leshma]

It is great for ranged, especially low level ones. Also precise archers can make good use of it. It's bad for everyone else. Without ranged stun, low damaging projectiles will become pointless. Right now they are used to interrupt enemy attack and stop him in his tracks.

Not sure can they just remove stun from arrows, it probably affects all projectiles in the same way.

[Templar_Steevee]

for me it's already some kind of different kind of stun from projectiles. Sometimes if i shot someone frome close distance he is knocking back after shot (probably really high dmg recived) and sometimes he just gest interrupted in movement (shot in arms for lower dmg).

about pros for stun:
-some kind of realism if you are dealing high dmg (if you get shot from heavy arrow it will interrupt your movement)
-getting wounded is not nice and if you are weak (low hp agi whores) and light armor you will feel hit in hard way

cons:
- almost glance shots (taking away few percents of hp) are intterupting movement
- high amount of armor is not protecting from cut dmg (it should IMO)
-stun after low dmg arrows least too long

[Rumblood]

It is great for ranged, especially low level ones. Also precise archers can make good use of it. It's bad for everyone else. Without ranged stun, low damaging projectiles will become pointless. Right now they are used to interrupt enemy attack and stop him in his tracks.

What is the point of a pointless weapon? If taking away stun will make them pointless, then a damage increase to make them not pointless is called for.
For Steevee...No, no amount of armor should make you totally immune to damage from a weapon.

[Jona]

What is the point of a pointless weapon? If taking away stun will make them pointless, then a damage increase to make them not pointless is called for.
For Steevee...No, no amount of armor should make you totally immune to damage from a weapon.

What I got out of their statements is basically that low level, low PD archers shouldn't be able to pick up a tatar bow and practically keep a guy pinned in place while only dealing 1% damage each hit. A low level peasant with only 1-2 powerstrike will probably glance more times then not against an averagely armored foe... no reason that low level archers can't be just as useless.

One time in siege I was getting shot at by this pesky archer who used a tatar bow... each shot he hit me and each hit I was stunned. It took me ages just to run the last 10 paces to the flag. I couldn't change course and chase after him since the clock was almost depleted, and so he kept getting shot after shot sunk into my back. The problem was after I got hit the first time, I was stunned. So now I knew that an archer had me in his sites, and started trying the usual evasive maneuvers... well it didn't work too well when I could only take 1 step in any direction before the next arrow came. I asked the guy later what his build was and he had simply stated he was relatively low level, had low str at the time but maxed out agi and thus WM, hence he could snipe me repeatedly. Now not every archer is nearly so accurate (thank god for that) but what really bugged me is that i was delayed... hit maybe 6-7 times, and literally lost only 1/8 of my health, tops. Sure, you could take that statement to a buff archery thread since I took minimal damage, but the real discussion here is why on earth would something so weak (was he shooting me with suction cup arrows or something?) be stunning me when getting hit by a pure str build great maul would only knock me back 1/20 times?

By the way your signature is a good representation of arrow stun atm, pappy.

[Adamar]

What is the point of a pointless weapon? If taking away stun will make them pointless, then a damage increase to make them not pointless is called for.
For Steevee...No, no amount of armor should make you totally immune to damage from a weapon.

Maybe it should. There already is such a thing as glances, especially in melee. So maybe the very best armors should glance most of the weaker arrows. It would be better than taking this mod further into the fantasy realm with no arrow stun overall.

[Rumblood]

Maybe it should. There already is such a thing as glances, especially in melee. So maybe the very best armors should glance most of the weaker arrows. It would be better than taking this mod further into the fantasy realm with no arrow stun overall.

No, no amount of armor should make you totally immune to damage from a weapon.

[Kafein]

I think the reason melee bounces are inacceptable (and why weapons that are highly subject to those are extremely unpopular) is because having this randomly happen to you means your opponent gets a free hit. At range it doesn't work the same. An arrow that does 0 damage has as much influence on you as a miss, which means none unless that was for interrupting an xbower or archer about to shoot you or shooting a melee guy at a distance short enough to warrant you should be sheathing or dropping your bow and taking your sidearm instead of shooting.

However I'm myself more inclined to leave ranged damage as it is, maybe tweak it in favor of shooting lightly armored targets a little bit, but not much else.

[CrazyCracka420]

I still don't see any proper justification that explains why pole stagger was bad, but ranged stagger is good.  And I'm not trying to make this into a "nerf ranged" thread.  I don't think it was fair to call removal of pole stagger a "polearms" nerf, rather than a "fix" to the game of something that should never have been. 

[Kafein]

Polestagger wasn't completely removed either. You can block after being hit by one, but polearm attacks still interrupt movement, which makes them king of ganking.

And yes removing its former higher body stagger was, "fix" or not, a big nerf to polearms. There's nothing wrong with that though, polearms today are not weak by any stretch of the imagination.

[Jona]

You can block after being hit by one, but polearm attacks still interrupt movement, which makes them king of ganking.

Any weapon type can interrupt your movement... I just yesterday jumped away from a guy with a short warhammer... it managed to hit me midair, and my character just stopped right there, above the ground, all momentum canceled, and fell straight down. If people are running away from me and i catch up and overhead them they are stunned no longer than if I do the same with a 2hander.

[Byrdi]

Is this only for archery or not.

I think stun is very important for throwing weapons to keep them somewhat viable and I can't really immagine someone taking an arbalest bolt without stunning in some way.
Though it seem like a good idea to remove the stun from archery and then revert the weight of arrows as a compensation since kiting would no longer be a problem.

[Kafein]

Any weapon type can interrupt your movement... I just yesterday jumped away from a guy with a short warhammer... it managed to hit me midair, and my character just stopped right there, above the ground, all momentum canceled, and fell straight down. If people are running away from me and i catch up and overhead them they are stunned no longer than if I do the same with a 2hander.

Hits in midair are not the same thing. And no, polearms bring you to a complete stop while other weapon types don't interrupt movement at all. Although of course knockdown still does stop you.

[Rumblood]

I think the reason melee bounces are inacceptable (and why weapons that are highly subject to those are extremely unpopular) is because having this randomly happen to you means your opponent gets a free hit.

I agree, the amount of glances is ridiculous and the measure of a low damage weapon should be its low damage, not its inability to do any damage at all due to "glance".

[Smoothrich]

I agree, the amount of glances is ridiculous and the measure of a low damage weapon should be its low damage, not its inability to do any damage at all due to "glance".

Honestly, I think the game was far better balanced when cut weapons had a good chance of actually glancing against high armor values back in older cRPG. So people used fast swords to kill light infantry and often had backup hammers or picks to deal with heavy armor. Totally reasonable.

A couple years ago they totally fucked the soak/whatever values for armor that basically made cut do one half as much damage and pierce/blunt be way way stronger, but removed cut glancing. So in turn people went to full STR builds with great swords and bardiches to do similar damage and were the best in every situation (often still are.)

Now they nerfed WPF so basically everyone takes a million hits to kill regardless of build or IF because most weapons do pathetic damage against armor, unless you are using an awlpike type weapon or pierce ranged, which do relatively far too much damage on top of their other benefits.

Aka nerf buff fix armor penetration/soak values and you will find yourself with a more balanced game overall.