Except the agi guy is more likely to sacrifice IF for WM than the str guy is. Most people don't have enough skill points to max all of their main skills, which means things have to be sacrificed. With a level 30 build, you have to make sacrifices even with a low conversion 18/21 build. Either Panos and such people are essentially complaining about level 35+ guys who can max everything, or their complaint is with the extremes. The initial cannot be addressed without greatly harming players who continue to retire and the latter would seem to make your comparison irrelevant.
I think it's something between the former and the latter. EU is filled with high levels + Panos tends to get a specific point of view and stick to it for a long time instead of analysing if he isn't making any mistakes himself. Probably a few good holds, a change in damage type or something else could help him, dunno.
Also it's pretty easy to deliver huge damage with minmaxed build like 27/18 + some high damage weapons (miaodao/axes/bec/others). With a build like this you may see things die faster, even if armoured.
I very often fill IF as the last thing.
EDIT:
Agi + heavy armor is great when the whole server is wearing similarly heavy armor. In most other cases, it's stilll good, but lighter armors are probably equally to slightly more effective most of the way down in most scenarios.
I had something where armor looms were changed so that light gear had decreased weight and heavy gear increased weight but gave you more armor. Gloves were also adjusted so that light gloves gave less armor and weight while heavy gloves gave around the same armor but with a hefty weight penalty.
Finally, difficulties were scaled down from 24 for body armors and 21 for the other equipment, mostly decreasing by 2 at every difficulty decrease (gloves received +2-3 with the same scaling since the scaling is good already). Milanese: 24, Churburg: 20, coat of plates: 18, etc. That particular scaling would allow the use of most armor while also giving the strength builds some exclusivity with the best heavy armors.
Max armor values (rounding down for weights)
12 strength: 51: Heraldic Mail with Tabard(45) + Wisby Gauntlets (6), 12.2 + 0.5 = 12.7 weight
15 strength: 61: Serbian Lamellar with Kneecops (53) + Hourglass Gloves (8), 17.7 + 1 = 18.7 weight
18 strength: 72: Saracen Elite Armor (60) + Plate Mittens (12), 23 + 2.4 = 25.4 weight
21 strength: 77: Churburg Cuirass (63) + Heavy Gauntlets (14), 26.2 + 3 = 29.4 weight
24 strength: 81: Milanese Plate (67) + Heavy Gauntlets (14), 30.9 + 3 = 33.9 weight
Higher difficulty is pretty much shut down at this point based on the current votes, but difficulty was a separate vote from the loom values. Even without the difficulty increases, the way the stats would work would give more intrinsic penalties/benefits, allowing a person to choose between movement speed or wpf penalties. At the same weight, the average armor would be lower by a few points, while the extremes would be compensated with the appropriate cost.
That's nice! Tell me San, if things are getting balanced in a way so that everything has some sort of a role, can we expect any upkeep rebalance? (heavy glance, greatswords, etc.? Ex. Longsword, when it comes to stats, is
exactly between HBS and Two Handed Sword yet is more expensive then those 2 other swords. My crappiest 2h (GGS) is also my most expensive weapon. Epic Bec and epic Lance are somehow cheap and Flamberge even though it's a good weapon, it's very occasional and it's upkeep is too high imo. There are probably more examples)
TL;DR Going to rebalance upkeep of weapons?
Poll