Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful

[Jona]

I know that the usefulness of ironflesh has come up often, and I am sure what I am about to say has come up several times already, but since I have yet to see a thread with this exact idea, here goes...

As you all know the current metagame is to stack agi, forego IF, and min-max your high level build to victory. People with level 34+ builds will often opt for more versatility by adding shield skill or riding skill instead of maxing out IF. Or they instead choose to have one extra point in athletics or powerstrike. This makes high level builds like 15-30, 18-27, 21-24, 24-24, etc OP in my opinion. That said, pretty much any high level build is OP, but that is a discussion for another time...

I find it ridiculous that someone can easily have 6 PS, with 8 or 9 WM, 9 athletics, and plenty of skill points sprinkled into shield or riding, all while tanking hits since they have a +3 set of medium/high armor. You should need IF to be able to last so long. Even with my old level 30 build of 15-24, with 2 points of IF I could take way too many hits since I have lordly armor.

So, why not remove the health that you get from each point of strength, and instead increase the amount of health you get from each point of ironflesh to 5? This way, if you have a level 36 super agi build with no IF, you still have the same amount of health as level 1 peasant who has yet to spend any points in IF. The way it is currently set up, everyone gets 3 hp per 3 strength, with the option to invest in an extra 2 points by spending a skill point in IF. This means that at most, someone can get 5 hp per 3 strength, assuming they invest the points in IF. With my proposal it would remain exactly the same, only people that shun IF will have significantly less hp, as they should.

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

[Voncrow]

21-14... high level build is OP

In a more serious note, I don't think taking away the 1 hp per str is the right way of doing this. In fact with wpf switched from level to agility, I think we another stat tied down to strength. Although I do think a slight buff to 3 hp per if would be nice and a welcomed addition. Maybe increasing str can increase your chance to stunlock opponents weapons or increase melee weapon damage naturally. Something like that.

[Sparvico]

21-14 is the most OP build, I agree with that.

[Voncrow]

On another note, we could just increase the str requirements of all weapons and armour.(Other than xbows who have already had this done.) That would make str more important and help balance the over lack of strengths importance. Although this is balance in general and doesn't actually effect high level builds to the same extent as lower level builds.

[Jona]

Har har... typos so funny. 

Maybe that build is decent, actually... you could probably max out every skill at a high enough level with all the converted attribute points you will have. Lol, anyways...

I do not think we need to buff ironflesh whilst keeping the 1 hp per strength that we have now. People can tank hits with or without high ironflesh as is... I don't want to have to hit a tincan 15-20 times just because he is stacking strength AND newly improved ironflesh. Same goes for agi builds in light armor... if you allow some to stack ironflesh, and it is actually useful, then they too will be able to die in many, many hits... we need to focus on weakening the playerbase if anything, since looms give you such a huge boost.

As for the agi vs str argument, I think it would be perfectly fine with the hp removed. People bitch and moan that "agi is required now" since it is the only way to get wpf. Well, no one ever complained that str was the only way to use higher difficulty weapons/armor. Everyone seems to forget that str is the only thing letting you use what you do. You can use any weapon/armor you want with a 36-3 build, but you can't use anything you want with a 3-36 build. Sure, you will be able to stab with a rondel faster than anyone else, but that is about it. If anything, just increase the difficulty of more items such that someone with 18 str can't use 98% of the weapons available. However, if that is done in addition to the IF re-working proposed, then maybe, just MAYBE it would be too much too soon for agi builds.

Also, I am never a fan of limiting peoples' options. Re-working IF gives everyone a choice to be a weak agi whore, or a slightly less-fast, but durable agi whore. It doesn't necessarily eliminate the class entirely. The strength requirement for weapons is definitely something that is necessary, but I still don't like that it is so absolute. Maybe if you could use something with less strength than required, but have severe speed/damage reductions, it would be one thing. But the way it is now, it is all or nothing. It will FORCE people to have more balanced builds, while I think that there may still be some agi builds around after an IF re-working. They will simply be as fragile as they should be. Granted there might be some agi builds around if the difficulty of items increases, I am sure there will not be as many happy agi builds. It isn't much fun being able to use only half of the available weapons in the game.

[Wolfsblood]

I actually kinda like this idea (screws up my 'eavy cav build, but whatever) it definitely will make IF a useful skill again. I just feel that no hp per str is a huge nerf. maybe make it so every 3str is givin at least one hp. thats probably my cav's build biasing me there though

just means that i would have to forgo my hybrid and go pure polarm cav

[Voncrow]

 

Just realized this wasn't a buff str thread, 5 hp per if would just give back the hp you get from not having it from str. (Kinda sad that I just realized that.)

[Algarn]

I disagree. My melee character, and my archer (respectively 21/ 18 and 27/15), would have been having 70 hp on max level. I already need so much hits to go down, no need to stack even more hp. Maybe something could be done for str, but not increasing the hp you get with IF. A way to reduce the wpf loss from armor with str is much better for gameplay than having some true meatstacks.

EDIT : Fuck, didn't read what you said about str. I don't want hp stackers as people dying from 1 hit (could be fun as an archer though to kill everything with one arrow).

[San]

I don't think the game allows you to mess with the HP formula. I think you can, however, change your true ironflesh skill level. (ex. 3IF on site -> 5IF in game, changing how much HP per IF) but I am also not sure if that method is bug-free.

Not sure if this same opinion holds today: http://forum.melee.org/general-discussion/will-if-be-too-weak-after-the-wm-change/?viewresults
IF's usefulness is controversial. I'm still somewhat baffled by the results.

[Jona]

I find it kind of hard to believe that changing the entire wpf formula so that it was instead based on agility and not level was do-able, but changing the hp formula is completely impossible. I would imagine that it would be a similar process as the wpf change. Heck, the wpf change also included shared wpf and such... it was a much larger change imo. Granted the outcome doesn't reflect how much work was involved behind the scenes, I would imagine something could be done to change the hp gaining system.

Does the warband system allow for negative skill values? Say for example someone who doesn't have any points in IF would still get their strength hp bonus from each point of str, but they would also have an effective -X IF so that it cancels out the str bonus from hp? Obviously if someone has 15 str, then there is no way to negate all of that with IF since it gives 2 hp per level... unless you can work with half-levels, which I am fairly certain it has been stated warband can't do.

Interesting poll results from the other thread. I think most people didn't really think that far ahead when voting. That, or they realized that IF was already pretty much useless and therefore its usefulness wouldn't be changing much, if at all. Even back when strength reigned supreme there were still people like Allers and Tretter which went full strength, but only put points into powerstrike. The reason for this is that for each PS you essentially get 3 health points... so why bother wasting skill points on 2 extra hp when you could put them all into the more important skill? I don't think IF needs a buff as-is, since then people will be walking tanks that never die, but I think to make it more useful the entire hp system needs to be re-worked.

And for those that seemed to have misread my initial post, let me clarify. This is not something to buff strength builds. This is an agi nerf. However, unlike the strength nerf that simultaneously buffed agi, the idea here is to hopefully only nerf one side without buffing the other. Sure, some strength builds with no IF may get affected, but it won't be as severe as the impact on agi builds since most strength builds accommodate for IF. The problem with the wpf patch was that it not only nerfed strength builds, it also marginally buffed agi builds, upsetting the balance. So while agi builds got slightly buffed (by having the alternative build weakened) they also got a slight buff with more wpf points. The idea here is to weaken agi builds who shun IF, but leave strength builds who are already stacking IF as-is.

[Taser]

Not a bad idea imo. It basically doesn't change the hp per IF technically but just makes IF itself much more valuable.

This will mean I have to get IF now tho Jona. Mang.

[San]

Some things are hardcoded. That's just how it is since this wasn't designed from the ground up to be very modular. As far as negative skill points goes, I doubt it but never saw anyone try it. I think IF should be buffed but I'm not entirely certain what's the most effective way where people would be likely to agree.

[Jona]

Yeah, there is very little reason to have any IF as of now. The main reason, imo, is simply because having strength gives you health as well. Per 3 strength points, most of the health increase comes from the strength alone, while only 2/5 come from IF. I don't see any way to change IF's effectiveness unless this could be changed. Simply buffing IF would make everyone super tanky, unless the entire damage system was reworked to accommodate... 

[Wraist]

There was an idea to have higher IF reduce the ranged stagger time, I think adding this would make people start taking it, especially if there were a point where it'd stop range stagger. Also, biased poll >.>

[GOBBLINKINGREATLEADER]

I also think part of the solution to balancing agi-str (if they are indeed not balanced) is to increase the STR requirement on armors so that people will no longer be able to be tanky AND agile.