Lancing Advice

[Dragut]

Hi,

I recently picked up c-rpg again and I'm looking for some advice regarding cavalry.

Which horses are considered the best? (I was thinking Courser for field battles, Eastern Warhorse for tighter spots).
Which lances are considered the best overall? Which 1-handed swords are most practical to fight with from horseback but still not bad on foot?

If you got any tips or tricks concerning cavalry, please feel free to share them 

Cheers

[Dalfador]

Hi,

I recently picked up c-rpg again and I'm looking for some advice regarding cavalry.

Which horses are considered the best? (I was thinking Courser for field battles, Eastern Warhorse for tighter spots).
Which lances are considered the best overall? Which 1-handed swords are most practical to fight with from horseback but still not bad on foot?

If you got any tips or tricks concerning cavalry, please feel free to share them 

Cheers

For lancing, you'd want a fast horse. as a lancer your job is to ride in and skewer people who don't see it coming. never charge anyone who is aware of you head on; because cavalry, light horses in particular, suck. A courser is very fast, and a palfrey is a cheaper, less difficulty version that is also fast, but doesn't have good HP. light cavalry draw so much attention from archers, so you need to stay away from them and aware. you can outrun other cavalry which is nice. Heavy cavalry its the opposite.

For a lance, I'd recommend the light lance if you're trying to save money, the lance if you can afford it. The heavy lance sucks ass. sure its really long, but I ride a champion courser, and the heavy lance doesn't do enough damage for me.

ALTERNATIVELY: you could have a great lance, it is only couchable (you cant thrust with it); you wouldn't need any proficiency in polearms, if you used it exclusively. All WPF could go to 1h or something else you like.

For a sword, if you want to use it on horseback, there are many good choices, the arabian cavalry sword (high cut low pierce great length), the long arming sword (average over all), paramerion (a beast in everything), or the spathion.

You could also be a badass and use a morningstar on horseback and have 2h proficiency instead of 1h. I've played cavalry for about 2 years.

[San]

Dalfador has some nice advice.

If you aren't used to cavalry, padded warhorse or destrier are nice and safe picks.

The other lighter horses like the arabian and courser are tougher to learn, but you could get more out of it the less mistakes you make. Heavier horses are also great if you can afford it.


Lances are up to preference. Lance is great all around but struggles against a heavy lance user of equal skill. Heavy lance has even less counters than the lance at the cost of power. The only advice I could give for using them is to keep track of what kinds of timings and movements get you kills and aim to replicate it. I like using the most right or left I could move my lance when hitting something, while turning my horse away at the last moment. Against other cavalry, you'll have to learn to perform some manuevers that are a little bit less predictable.

For 1h, any one with length >= 100 is good to use. You maximize your damage if you try to hold your attacks for half a second (same as lance cav, too), making the small damage differences not too great.

[Penitent]

All good advices to follow so far.

I would expound a bit on the 1h weapon selection, since that's the area I know best.
If you want a weapon to be good on horseback, stick to the longer ones.  More is better.  Higher cut is generally preferable to a good stab -- though if you get good at stabbing with your 1h on horseback it can be good too.

All of the 1h swords can be decent on foot, but if you want that weapon to be good on foot though, you have to consider speed.  I would stick to a sword that has 98+speed.  If you can get a sword heirloomed 2 times, it increases the speed by 1 so you get more options.

Just my preference!  If you stray from these numbers a bit, you'll be fine.  For example the Italian sword is 98 length but a great horseback weapon.  The Nordic Champ Sword is 97 speed but still very good on foot.

[Dragut]

Thank you guys very much!

I consider(ed) myself a pretty okay horseman, used to roll with a MnG cavalry clan and I did lots of horse-combat in PW-mod and native.  I don't think the maneuvring won't be a big problem.
Right now I got a rouncey just because I wanted to start right away, but I will get myself a courser soon.

I got some funds from my old characters so I think I'll get the lance (using the great lance atm).
So concerning swords I should stick to the Arabian swords, the elite scimitar and the Italian sword? (I even got an Italian from an old shielder  )

What are your preferred styles of armor and shield?  Talking about weight etc.

I think I will just get a set like this : Courser, light armor, lance, sword, shield and  Eastern Warhorse, heavy armor, sword, shield.
Should I just not take a lance at all with a heavier charger set? Alternatives?


Thanks again!

Cheers


PS : I'm going for an eastern theme, the Chinese armors etc (They're Chinese right?)

[Tojo]

Cav mastah 420 Yolo swagkrunkjoose here
I like to stick all my w p f in one weapon type that way when I get knocked off my horse i am better at melee combat


Swords on horseback.... usually go for the longest  sword as length of weapon keeps you a safe distance from opponent.

Pole arms on horseback... I use a double sided lance cause everything else is way too mainstream for me. I wanted to add that if you are having trouble couching with lance, just pick up  a normal spear and thrust. Doing this helped me learn the sorta strange cav hitboxes.

archers kills are your bread and butter, they seem to be the class that pays the least attention to their backs. Enemy pole arms I avoid like the plague. All the other classes are pretty situational as they can't rear your horse.


When you go to attack another cav turn your horse away at the last second from your attack direction, this hopefully should keep your horse safe from other cav.

just my 2 cents.

[CrazyCracka420]

Good advice so far.  I'm a 13th gen cavalry lancer (and a few gens on an alt I used for retiring for heirlooms), so I some advice of my own I"m always willing to share

When you retire, heirloom your horse first before any other heirlooms to +3 (and then your weapon 2nd).  There's different tips on how to do this the best that I won't go too far into, but you have options like saving your first two heirloom points, and trying to sell those + some gold for a +3 item.  Otherwise you could sell your first heirloom point and never have to worry about upkeep again (400k gold or so).

For builds I'd suggest going minimum amount of agility needed for riding the horse you want to ride.  Typically for any cav class that is not using a shield, I would go 24/15, 21/18 or 18/21 (at level 30) depending on horse you want to ride.  For classes that use a shield, then drop 3 strength (so 21/15, 18/18, or 15/21).

For lancer cav, I prefer my courser since I am riding fast.  However a destrier is certainly acceptable as well (I'd probably stay away from armored horses since they are slower and you won't be getting that much needed speed bonus, since lances are pretty weak compared to a 2h or 1h weapon on horse).  The arabian warhorse is my favorite horse in the game, but for me going only 15 strength is too low, so not worth the trade off. 

I was always a 1h/polearm/shield cav.  At level 30 I was always 18/18 (since I decided to ride a courser).  In hindsight I wish I would have rode a destrier so I had more strength and power strike, but c'est la vie (sp?).

As a lancer, I prefer the heavy lance because I can go up against anyone else on horse and never have to worry about them having a reach advantage (including great lancers, you can outreach them if you time it right).  However when the heavy lance was weaker than it is now, I was a regular lancer for many generations, and it is by far the best lance if you can refrain yourself from going up against people with heavy lances.  It destroys infantry (that 10 less length isn't going to hurt you vs infantry if you are playing correctly) because of it's high damage output, and you can hit more infantry per minute than a heavy lance due to the increased speed. 

However as someone starting out without any heirlooms, using a regular destrier and a heavy lance would not be a great choice.  I only really like my heavy lance because it is +3 heirloomed, I have 24 strength, and I'm riding the fastest horse in the game (+3 courser).   I would highly recommend having you use a lance on a destrier and using either 24/15 or 21/15 for your build.  I really like having a shield, so naturally I also have some 1h WPF as well.  Shields protect you very nicely from ranged, but also just as importantly, from someone who has you dead to rights with a couched lance you can't avoid (technically you can chamber block a couched lance, but that is not very easy from horseback and without practice).

Also if you choose to use a shield, use a 4 skill shield (either the elite cav shield, or my favorite, the knightly heater shield.  There's also some other really good 4 skill shields out there like the knightly kite shield)

Now for build suggestions:

These are what I would suggest for you (you can play around with your builds using an updating character calculator that San created:  https://googledrive.com/host/0Bzs1vJv0tQLHZ3AwLUQ0Tkt0djg/calc.html )

24/15 Pure polearm cavalry riding destrier or barded warhorse:

(click to show/hide)

    Strength: 24
    Agility: 15
    Hit points: 59

    Skills to attributes: 8

    Power Strike: 8
    Athletics: 5
    Riding: 5
    Weapon Master: 5


    Polearm: 139

21/15 (1h/polearm/shield) this is the build I'd recommend using, also recommend a lance + destrier : 

(click to show/hide)

    Strength: 21
    Agility: 15
    Hit points: 62

    Unused attribute points: 1

    Skills to attributes: 2

    Ironflesh: 3
    Power Strike: 7
    Shield: 4
    Athletics: 5
    Riding: 5
    Weapon Master: 5

    One Handed: 108
    Polearm: 108

21/18 lancer cav (on courser) this is a pretty weak build compared to the 21/15 or 24/15, also can play around with IF and WM distribution:

(click to show/hide)

    Strength: 21
    Agility: 18
    Hit points: 56

    Skills to attributes: 8

    Power Strike: 7
    Athletics: 5
    Riding: 6
    Weapon Master: 5

    Polearm: 142

18/18 This is the build I always went with at level 30, 1h/polearm/shield cavalry using courser:

   

(click to show/hide)

Strength: 18
    Agility: 18
    Hit points: 55

    Skills to attributes: 2

    Ironflesh: 1
    Power Strike: 6
    Shield: 4
    Athletics: 6
    Riding: 6
    Weapon Master: 6

    One Handed: 125
    Polearm: 124

[Teeth]

I got a few tips:

• Use the S button. Most important trick in the cavalry bag at least in my opinion is slowing down your horse at the right moments to mess up your opponents timing and allow you to better compensate for opponents movement. Riding full speed all the time is gonna net you the best damage output, but you are going to miss a lot more and missing often gets you killed. Better to hit with lower damage than miss completely. This is key for winning lancer duels as well.
• Refresh your stab. Doing small holds on your stabs is very important as holding the stab for 0.6 seconds makes it do 120% damage, which is the sweetspot. What many people do not know however is that holding any attack for more than 1.2 seconds makes it damage output drop below 100% and goes as far down as 50%. Lancers are a class that often hold their attacks while riding around and if do not refresh your swings that means you do 50% damage everytime you did a bit of riding.
• Awareness is the most important skill. Knowing how to get to an opponent, having planned and checked your escape route, keeping a look out for high damage ranged, avoiding friendly cav, paying attention to enemy cav. Think about what you are doing and always think about why you died and what you did wrong.
• Don't be a cunt and rush to the enemy spawn, instead try to take out the cav that do it to your spawn. Cav that spawnrush are tryhard baddies and they should feel bad.

[CrazyCracka420]

Good tips teeth.  Especially the part about changing speeds (and directions, i.e. swerving in for the kill) is important to keep other cavalry from getting their timing down, but also infantry as well (you can get some good couched lances in this way by starting out away from someone and veering into them). 

One tip I somewhat disagree with (even though I do it) Is to go after enemy cavalry.  With a heavy lance and if you get good at timing, it's very easy to do, and very helpful for your team. But for most cavalry, the best way you can help contribute to your teams' success, is to assist your infantry.  Try to attack enemy infantry that is near your own friendly infantry.  Not only are they distracted (meaning easier to kill) You can also bump them to the ground and they are easy targets for your own team. 

[San]

^Very good advice from Teeth, since I often see players be unaware of some of these details. Especially remember the first 2 about movement and holds. Cav is a thinking class. If you are getting chased, you can match speeds in order to reduce damage heavily. No need to risk getting hit if you don't need to. I think attacking other cav is a preference thing, but definitely a preference that I have.

Your horse is also disposable. Finding key locations to get off the horse, especially at low horse health, could be more effective than risking death after getting it killed. For example, if you have split proficiency in 1h, and there is a small archer encampment where they wouldn't be aware of your presence if you snuck by on horseback and attacked them on foot.

[Macropus]

I'm a noob at cav so I only got one advice about your controls:
bind your "Rear" and "Dismount" actions on hotkeys like 1, 2, 3 or such. Also chose to "remove dehorsing by action" (or something like that).
So what you get is: you can stop your horse instantly whenever you want (to prevent teambump, to fuck up enemy cav's timing, etc), you also only dismount by pressing a key so you don't have to worry about accidental dismounting when you're trying to pick up something from the ground (a lance or a shield for example).

[Teeth]

One tip I somewhat disagree with (even though I do it) Is to go after enemy cavalry.  With a heavy lance and if you get good at timing, it's very easy to do, and very helpful for your team. But for most cavalry, the best way you can help contribute to your teams' success, is to assist your infantry.

Yeah I specifically meant after spawn situations when there are some easy kills up for grabs. It often leads to scrub cav coming in to scoop them up and they usually fail to notice the couched lance coming in from behind the spawn area. Just moving with your team as they spawn can prevent a lot of early deaths. Unless you have a very maneuverable horse, a heavy lance, or like the challenge (like me), attacking enemy cavalry in a head to head is very risky and kind of a stupid thing to do. Hanging behind the group fight and scooping up the cav that attack your infantry is the least risky way to deal with other cavalry but best way to spent your round is probably continous harassment of enemy infantry.

[CrazyCracka420]

Yeah I realize that I do my best (both score and kills) as well as help our team the best, when I go after enemy infantry and play the "risk vs reward game" (i.e. don't take too large of risks unless we're down a lot of people, or the enemy is heavily outnumbered).  But I like the challenge of going 1v1 vs a couched great lance or another heavy lance, so I don't always play smart, and will usually take the challenge   Especially if I know that other player is a good heavy lancer, I am telling myself the whole time "this is not helping your team" and/or "This is a complete crap shoot" as I gleefully ride towards the enemy.  It was even worse when I was using a lance, my stubbornness/competitiveness would compel me to try and go head to head vs very good players who also had a heavy lance. 

[Dragut]

Something annoying I noticed is that I can't get 18/18 with my STF    So right now I'm at 17/18 to meet the requirements for a courser.  I'm probably just gonna grind a new character to the right level.

Thank you for the input guys!

Cheers

[CrazyCracka420]

You can get 18/18 with a STF...you have to convert two skill points into attributes.  That's what you should be doing on your main character as well when you get to level 30 (because you most likely will retire as soon as you hit level 31). 

Also my religious quote in my signature is better than yours.