New Patch Cavalry Changes

[imisshotmail]

are mostly good, thank the lord heavy cavalry is finally being nerfed.

if any one thinks otherwise, please direct all discussion to this thread and make sure to post your cavalry KDR along with your opinion.

signed,
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[polkafranzi]

Anyone can have that kdr with a little know-how, hell GTX probably got 800:1 seeing as he quits the second he dies.

Fucking lowbie (not you).

[Tydeus]

Anyone can have that kdr with a little know-how, hell GTX probably got 800:1 seeing as he quits the second he dies.

Fucking lowbie (not you).

You're talking to a clanless guy who always plays by himself and with 120 ping. Somehow I really doubt just "anyone" can get even close to 6:1 over 800 kills with those conditions.

[Pandemona]

How the fuck you managed to get 27 mails? I hardly get more than 2 and they're mostly armoury related.

And about changes, i rather read instead of typing since i don't believe it will be any better if i type. But i can say cavalry wasn't really nerfed, it simply has been made impossible to play for some people. There is no way you can get proper build for level 30 if you want to use heavy horse now.

[imisshotmail]

How the fuck you managed to get 27 mails? I hardly get more than 2 and they're mostly armoury related.

And about changes, i rather read instead of typing since i don't believe it will be any better if i type. But i can say cavalry wasn't really nerfed, it simply has been made impossible to play for some people. There is no way you can get proper build for level 30 if you want to use heavy horse now.

18/24
6ps 8rid 2shield 1wm

or

15/24
assorted stats i don't remember


Either one is really good for heavy cavalry at level 30, the thing is they are dedicated cavalry builds. They aren't very good in melee, with the first one being completely useless once dehorsed. Thats exactly how it should be though, heavy horses are extremely strong and you should have to sacrifice other things to be able to use them.

[Dexxtaa]

It's a buff to heavy cavalry.

7 riding requirement? I checked it out on my alt. It's fffffaaaasst. I can use Keyarna my Eastern Warhorse as a lancing platform now.

I'm okay with that, though.

[Legs]

you should have to sacrifice other things to be able to use them.

"Other things" being all of your money forever.

Some people don't care because they're rich marketplace jews but I've burned almost a million gold as heavy cavalry and I'm not even through my fourth generation yet. That's a whole lot of money to spend purely on upkeep.

[Macropus]

"Other things" being all of your money forever.

Some people don't care because they're rich marketplace jews but I've burned almost a million gold as heavy cavalry and I'm not even through my fourth generation yet. That's a whole lot of money to spend purely on upkeep.

Well to be fair, you don't have to be some extremely greedy marketplace whore to get easy 100k per day by trading, to use for upkeep.

[Joseph Porta]

Does this mean my armor wise inferior arabian is now also inferior speed wise?



Nvm, only the req changed? Gg afggots, get used to no IF bitches

[San]

Long post. Will just post all of my posts from the proposal, taking out the edits to stats. I can't get the exact format since the thread is locked. Only going to post my own reasonings. If you see horse edits that aren't consistent with current stats, that means that it was changed in future posts.

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"Mr. X" made a post a while ago with cav stats. I agree with the baseline for "Mr. X's" proposal, but there were quite a few stats that I felt required additional tweaks. Mostly, less charge for the more maneuverable horses/ faster horses getting more charge and durability tweaks. I think heavy horses also might need to have their armour scaled down, especially after the ranged changes, but probably at the cost of a lower price than what "Mr. X" proposed.

Quote from: "Mr. X" on February 05, 2014, 12:52:48 pm

       

        Cavalry is too strong in the hands of unskilled players, compared to other classes where to do well you have to at least be somewhat decent at the class (throwing not included in that), as cavalry you can put it in the hands of a terrible player and they will go at least 1:1, put it in the hands of any competent player and its 2:1, 3:1 and more. Cavalry needs to be changed so that skill is more of a factor.
         
        The reasons that as of now, skill isn't so much of a factor are plentiful but I would definitely say the main reason is-
         
         
        Cavalry being an almost exclusively hybrid class
        There is pretty much no reason to not go an 21/15 or 18/18 build as cav, with the very worst melee hybrid someone would go being 15/21, which still is pretty decent. This makes all cavalry players less so cav, and more melee with a bonus. If they get even 1 kill per round on a horse before being dismounted that is basically one free kill before they get to melee just like any other melee player. I don't see how this is fair at all considering how powerful a "weapon" a horse is in this game even if you disregard things like lancing off a horse, or being a 1h/2h cav, with just a horse you have the ability to get around the battlefield faster than anyone else and knockdown people guaranteed if you hit them.
         
        At the moment playing pure cavalry builds is just nerfing yourself for no good reason since the benefits of being able to melee far outweigh 1-2 more riding you could get from not getting any athletics in your build. I propose that the riding of the better horses need to be increased so that you have to make an actual tradeoff to use them, you should not be able to have the same melee build you have using a Rouncey, that you have using a Destrier, or the same as a Destrier when you are using a Mamluk ect.
        This change would make being a pure cavalry build pretty much necessary for using the armoured horses, makes the destrier-tier horses worse melee builds and thus will force most of the fair-weather cavalry players to use a rouncey level horse, which is a much fairer tier of horse to hybrid with. It also allows you to balance horses in a much better way now, you can balance things like the heavier horses with the knowledge that the players using them, will not have athletics in their build so they can be buffed (or kept the same) to compensate for that.

I overall agree. The one thing I disagree is agility-focused cav being worse. The extra acceleration helps damage and bumping immensely. Agility builds are also much more viable on the ground than they used to be. Even so, I feel that it's necessary to make armoured cav much less accessible. A level 30 build would need to be 12-24 and would need to sacrifice WM for shield (otherwise he'd only have 2 shield).

I also think that the useless horses should be better, screw it. Also, prices are estimates. Do what you will to make the price close to what's listed.

Made the extremes a little more prominent and added a few more weaknesses (speed for courser, charge for chargers, hp for large warhorse/mamluk, etc.). Lowered the prices of heavier horses by a lot, as well as armor, hp, and charge (except for chargers). Courser maneuver to 40, arabian speed to 40. I think centralizing around 41 speed made it very difficult to chase anything.

I think if people agree with the change, %-based looms for horses might be a possibility in the far future. There's so many tweaks that I'm bound to be inconsistent somewhere. Your input is greatly appreciated.

This is an aside, but these are general aspects of cav that need to be changed whenever the opportunity arises (WSE2 update, etc):
-Make weak spots 1/2 armour instead of 0 armour.
-Make the head/legs weak spots for both melee and ranged.
-Make bones 5,6,7 that encompass the head count as hitting the head (right now, only the nose, bone 7, counts).
-give a 2x headshot multiplier for ranged.
-Attack-wise, reduce bump slash/stab damage to 75% of its current value (not the actual bump damage itself if I'm not wording it clearly).
-1h/2h cav penalties on my other thread if that gets approved.

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About horse Hp, I think that the maneuverable horses should remain with less Hp. It does make sense for the more speed-oriented horses to have decent health. Styles of not getting hit vs. charging towards your opponent.

Rouncey = Destrier-lite
Palfrey = Courser-lite
Steppe = arabian-lite
Desert = Eastern-lite with maneuver focus

I have always felt that horse durability is already very high from my extensive time with a destrier in 2012. Through the end of 2012 and most of 2013, surviving with a +3 rouncey was still a simple task. A +3 destrier under the proposed stats would have 140 health and 29 armour. +15 hp would bring every horse above 100 hp, and most horses received better armour (outside of steppe, which received increased manueverability). Many horses are inherently tankier against ranged and the leg armour change would also solve many problems against melee.

My thoughts on the chargers were to keep their high charge and have better speed for the price of manueverability. Because of this, I felt that it was a buff(at charging) and therefore shouldn't be kings of tanking hits at the same time. Comparatively, that's why I wanted the mamluk to be the horse with the highest HP, while the chargers have a much larger charge stat. That's also why I didn't reduce its armour as much, since it lost HP as well.

How about 125/135 for the chargers?

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I personally believe that speed is mostly for horse vs. horse. I believe that horse vs horse takes into account all stats as factors. You can outmaneuver, chase, tank a hit to deliver your own, etc.

I believe that against infantry, a combination of bulk, charge, "acceleration" (some combination of speed and manuever), and partly maneuver by itself are most important.

Using the rouncey as a base for core stats:

Donkey: -21
Sumpter: -8
Rouncey: +0
Steppe: +1 (but the rouncey has better bulk+charge)
Desert horse: +2
Palfrey: +2
Courser: +4
Arabian: +4
Destrier: +1 (but has much better bulk+charge than those nearby)
Eastern: +4

You get the idea. After that is where you get to the warhorses. A possibly slightly underpowered palfrey is less desirable than a possibly slightly overpowered palfrey imho, especially when there are better horses nearby.

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Armour roughly translates to a 1.5:1 damage ratio for cut. That means that the 3 decreased armour on the destrier translates to around 2 more damage per hit before the multipliers. Decreasing the armour which helps decreases maximum hits taken is more important than the HP, which mostly helps against minimum hits (and is largely superficial when looking at differences of 10).

Looking at destrier's stats, the 22 armour compared to +6 armour +4 charge, +8 armour +6 charge, etc. + minimal stat difference, It's hard to see how destrier is much better. Compared to horses next to the destrier, it loses out in total maneuver+speed values for better bulk. The destrier is noticeably faster, but the armour difference matters more than the hp difference and the maneuver is close until you reach horses that vastly out-tank the destrier.


I think that the heavy horses are just way too good. The 2-3 difference is speed is made up for the +15-20 charge and armour.

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heavy armor + heavy horse
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The heavy horse was taken out of the armoury after this, used lighter armour, KD "plummeted"

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Both on heavy horse, +0 lance, armor reduced to green tunic over mail and military fork sidearm
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All of these builds were 15-21, which is why I believe 7 isn't enough for some of these horses, yet provides you with a good selection of lighter horses. That's why I can't yield on this. 7 horses available at 8 difficulty, 7 horses available at 7 difficulty, a good 4 at 5 difficulty, and so on.

There was also a time where I used a +3 arabian the entire time, and it was only a 3.4 final KD, worse than all of those that had some heavy cav mixed in. I believe that -1 speed while making it bulkier is a fair trade for keeping it at 7 difficulty.

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I believe that the stat tweaks does not nerf any horse harshly outside of the eastern warhorse, which I thought was too fast for its maneuverability + charge.

Going to go through each of the "problem" horses individually, since you didn't seem to disagree with the adjustments for the lighter horses. Speed was buffed for some of them, but that affects cav v cav which I find lacking right now, moreso than cav vs infantry. Fast playstyles against infantry are more risky.

Arabian: You mentioned that you believe that Arabian deserves to have 8 riding. I believe that the -1 to speed and existence of the eastern horse dropping down to 7 difficulty and speed increase of the courser. For cav vs. cav, for example a light horse lancer chasing a ranged player on an arabian, the sped up courser and eastern horse both have their advantages to catch up to the arabian that now has reduced speed. People managed to catch up to desert horses and steppe horses due to the lack of speed, and I feel that we may be able to do the same. The 41 speed makes it so that the arabian is hard to catch while maintaining supreme maneuverability.

I also believe that the most maneuverable horses should not have great charge. Since your horse is more maneuverable at a fraction of your top speed, being able to follow your opponent and knock down easily at the same time is too much. The lower charge demands a higher speed to knockdown. The faster horses with good charge can knock down better with good frontal acceleration, but theoretically they shouldn't be able to turn into dodging infantry too easily.

Heavy horses in general:

Against ranged:
Some #s using +3 horses. Because of the nature of speed bonus against melee, going to use neutral jarid +3 damage of 41p, 7PT and 170wpf

Destrier: 150hp, 26 armour
41.5-48.4, 4 hits to kill (29 armour is 39-46, 3-4 hits) +15 hp barely beat out 3 armour from these numbers. Keep in mind that when it had penetration, 41p did 43-50, 44p did 47-55hp

Barded warhorse: 140hp, 32 armour
39-46, 4 hits to kill

Even at the lowest armour levels, durability against ranged is better than before. Even with the proposed armour changes, they would still be better than before the penetration change, just less over the top than they are now.

47 armour with penetration: 32.3-39.4. 40 armour without penetration: 32.0-38.4. See what I mean? Higher damage attacks such as the throwing lance/arbalest/heavy xbow see larger decreases in damage. 41p throwing is similar to 35p long bow, so lower-tier bows may see slightly increased damage which doesn't matter much.

Against melee:
Cav on melee is already messed up because of the 0 armour. For now, that would make many of the Hp increases perform better against melee. My proposal includes leg armour being increased to half the horse's armour, which would dramatically increase the minimum amount of hits to kill a horse.

These two reasons are why the armour decrease + general HP increase makes sense and are not full out nerfs when they were just greatly indirectly buffed.

Now onto the other horses...

Barded warhorse:
Because of the maneuver increase, I felt that the charge should be lower. Because its survivability isn't much better than the Destrier's, the destrier's armour may be decreased to 20 and Barded's HP up to 128 or whatever (why, Tydeus...). That would give the armour and charge a more noticeable difference.

Padded warhorse:
Pretty good already and was better than the barded in every way. Speed + a little more charge and armour vs. maneuver makes it a more difficult choice to choose between these horses.

War Horse can be 7 or 8. I can bring it back to 7 based on the stats that they have. It may be okay to bring the large warhorse down to 7, too, although I am apprehensive about it.

War horse:
It might not be good enough for 8 riding I admit. The charge and armour adjustments were needed. 34 charge matching its "large" version was ridiculous. 41-41 stats are also quite good for those good armour and charge values

Large Warhorse:
Could be reduced to 7 riding also because of the maneuver decrease. I felt that the large warhorse needed superior hp to some of the other medium-heavy horses around it. It also received less of a charge decrease.

Cataphract:
-5 armour for 8hp is a good tradeoff. Charge is down to 33 to give room for the mamluk and chargers whom it beats in maneuver and speed. It shouldn't have superior speed + maneuver and similar charge imho.

Eastern Warhorse:
I believe that 42 maneuver on a heavy horse is an extreme stat making it quite too powerful in some regards. Because of that, it should have more weaknesses in the speed and armour department compared to the cataphract. It still has 1 more core base stat than the cataphract (which is important for the heavier horses) for less bulk and charge. 42 maneuver + 30 charge is still very good, but now the horse would have to go a higher % of its max speed to fully knock down.

Charger:
Instead of an awkward mamluk clone, the horse is more designed for high charge damage at full speed. That's why I increased speed and charge and decreased maneuver. The speed can actually increase to 40 since 35-36 maneuver begins to reach the extreme lows. The armour decrease was to emphasize the difference in bulk between the charger and plated charger (and mamluk) as well as lower the gap of armour between the cataphract and charger. The higher extremes of armour also needed to be toned down more.

Mamluk:
I felt that this horse should have always had the highest hp. Armour can be bumped up to 55 on second thought, since there's nothing else remarkable about it. On second thought, 38 speed might be more interesting. It pretty much assumes what the charger was in a bulkier form, though.

Plated charger:
A bulkier form of the charger. It still has great armour that's close to the maximum head armour on the heaviest helmet. It was too good at too many things so that it outshined the mamluk. It's now more designed for charging while tanking hits at the same time.

7 vs 8 riding
I feel that 7 riding is "specialized" while 8 is "ultra specialized." We tried having a horse by itself have 8 riding, the eastern horse, and that fell flat on its face. 15-21 is already a perfectly viable build and isn't inferior to 21-15 imo. I feel that the very heavy horses should require builds specialized around them, with the price reduction increasing their availability by a little bit. 7 riding already provides one with a wealth of different horse-types, 5 riding still provides some decent horses, and the sumpter isn't completely worthless at least. 12-24 will still work well. It's more about the skill investment than the builds for the final goal.

There were annoying gaps for 4 and 6 riding, but I felt that it would be better to buff those horses to their counterparts instead of creating unwanted middleground horses. The courser and destrier could work at 6 and the steppe/rouncey at 4, but I believe the proposed stats may be too high for those difficulties. What do you think about that, though?

[Macropus]

It's a buff to heavy cavalry.

7 riding requirement? I checked it out on my alt. It's fffffaaaasst. I can use Keyarna my Eastern Warhorse as a lancing platform now.

I'm okay with that, though.

What kind of logic is that? I don't get it.
You say raising the difficulty was a buff because heavy horses are fast with 7 riding? But they always were! The only thing that was changed is that you can't use it at lower riding levels. How is that a buff?

[Oberyn]

Even then, doesn't the speed+maneuv bonus only come in play for every riding skill above the minimum requirement?

[Macropus]

Even then, doesn't the speed+maneuv bonus only come in play for every riding skill above the minimum requirement?

I don't think so, would've made rouncey-type horses quite OP before the patch.

[Teeth]

Huh, doubt anyone in EU comes even close to 6.2. NA must be cav heaven. Preference for shorter weapons, fewer archers and probably not much cav awareness either.

Apart from that, excellent nerf to heavy cav. I think it was clear by now upkeep does not function as a reliable balancing mechanism, higher riding is a sensible choice. Wanna ride a tough and heavy horse, gotta spend more points on it.

[Sparvico]

Inb4 every HA that already had 8 riding anyhow scoops up a +3 eastern or cataphract on the cheap cause all the silly market dwellers think they were nerfed.