Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful

[Sandersson Jankins]

It's not a gimmick, because this is what everyone does, and the purpose of the thread is to end the practice.

Just like the wpf patch ended the practice of stacking ridiculous str/agi while ignoring WM, something should be done to encourage people to choose between survivability or damage output, rather that getting both just by putting points in strength and ignoring IF. There are 24/24 guys running around fast as fvck in heavy armor that still take 10+ hits to kill. Make them give up 3 str or agi if they still want to be tanky.

no you don't understand

i mean fucking retarded builds like 33-12, not balanced shithead sanic/hulk hybrids

[Tydeus]

There are 24/24 guys running around fast as fvck in heavy armor that still take 10+ hits to kill. Make them give up 3 str or agi if they still want to be tanky.

Rather than focusing on the fact that it's an extremely high level build, you choose to complain about one small facet of such? If you converted all your points, you'd be able to reach 24/24 with 4 skill points to split between WM and IF by level 35, at 36 you have 7 and at 37 you have 10. It's not the build, it's the character level. Furthermore, the strength of a single player's 24/24 build, even when forsaking IF, says nothing about the viability of the str and agi attributes.

[Huscarlton_Banks]

It's probably more the armor/experienced use of speed malus + weapon animation time that makes something like a 24/24 tanky rather than the few extra hp in STR, since all of their points will be in Athletics/Powerstrike/WM, in that order.

I'm not sure that they'd have all that much additional survivability over a 18/24, 27/21 or 18/27 seems more optimal for 36, maybe 21/27 or 18/30 for 37(Think this is just Aldo).

Most people with crazy high level builds like that generally have enough experience to do well even with STF builds though, +3-6 AGI + 1-2 more athletics just makes things a bit easier.

[Phew]

It's probably more the armor/experienced use of speed malus

Yes, exactly my point. Putting 7 points into 3 more agility and 1 more athletics not only improves maneuverability and damage output, it improves survivability (due to speed malus plus ability to wear heavier armor and maintain run speed). 7 IF just improves survivability, and not even as well as athletics does.

The WM patch took WM from an oft-neglected skill to a must-have skill. Why not do the same for IF?

My suggestion is to make IF give a penalty to your opponent's speed bonus. That makes the skill desirable and puts a damper on these 18/27+ guys running around one-shotting people with pierce weapons thanks to absurd speed bonus.

[Jack1]

hi, 24/24 guy here, I can say that my build has an advantage over everybody but people who stack wpf. I still get spammed to death by anybody with 9 wpm.

and I also take a shitload of hits because i'm using 60+ body armor and always backpeddle when I am blocking/chambering/whatever. whenever I go balls to the walls W key hero I usually get 2 or 3 hit like everybody else.

[Huscarlton_Banks]

AFAIK, there's no direct way to grab the speed bonus value on hit from the module system/WSE.

[Phew]

AFAIK, there's no direct way to grab the speed bonus value on hit from the module system/WSE.

Could you have IF apply extra mitigation to only pierce damage? It's pierce attacks that are the easiest to abuse speed bonus with, so this would accomplish the same thing. And it would screw ranged, so that's icing on the cake.

[Tydeus]

14 hp not as good as a single point of athletics? What? Baffling. I think people are just grossly oversimplifying the complex relations between character builds, armor, weapons and terrain. Thus making the ridiculous conclusions like 1 athletics > 14 hp, inevitable. A single point in athletics, especially after weight penalties from armor, is rather minor, yet 14 hp can easily allow one to sustain an extra full damage hit. Additionally, athletics doesn't simply reduce damage a player takes. In reality, it expands both the lows and the highs that a player can receive.

 

It's pierce attacks that are the easiest to abuse speed bonus with, so this would accomplish the same thing.

What? Do you mean thrusts? The Great Maul actually scales the best with speed bonus, in that the same speed bonus % results in a larger effective increase in damage than with any other weapon, and this remains true for most high damage blunt weapons.

[MURDERTRON]

14 hp not as good as a single point of athletics? What? Baffling. I think people are just grossly oversimplifying the complex relations between character builds, armor, weapons and terrain. Thus making the ridiculous conclusions like 1 athletics > 14 hp, inevitable. A single point in athletics, especially after weight penalties from armor, is rather minor, yet 14 hp can easily allow one to sustain an extra full damage hit. Additionally, athletics doesn't simply reduce damage a player takes. In reality, it expands both the lows and the highs that a player can receive.

Tydeus has a good point for once.  If you had a hilarious 39/3 build, what would be more useful?  14hp or 1 ath?  With 1 ath, you're still slower than everyone, and you'll probably lose most of the benefit because you probably have to wear heavy armor to survive.  So, 14hp is certainly more useful.  The same is probably true if you only had 3 ath; 4 ath still means you're slower than everyone else.  It's really when you get to extreme builds that one becomes clearly more useful than the other.  For example, I have 9 ath, which makes me incredibly strong, but I also wear light armor and have no IF.  That means I should be backing out of strikes more often than blocking them, because low hp with low armor won't get me very far if I take hits.  However, since I'm generally faster than everyone, at this point, I'd probably take 14 hp over 1 more ath.

Realistically, the 1 ath is probably only worth it if you have 4, 5, 6, or maybe 7 ath already and that's still heavily dependent on the amount of armor you wear.

And if it happens to be raining or a severely hilly map, the hp is better 10/10 times.

[San]

I disagree with 7 IF being better than 1 ath. Any point of athletics that bring you near the average or brings you over greatly aids you strategically. Additionally, you only need to wear extra armor to mitigate only an extra 3-4 damage per hit if you don't want to rely on the improved defensive options from athletics. You're simply provided with more options with extra athletics.

One mustn't discount the other agility focused skills such as extra WM, too.

[Huscarlton_Banks]

14 extra HP generally just means you survive that one extra hit more often. The movement speed gained from the athletics point isn't that big, but you also have to consider the movement speed bonus that the +3 AGI gives, which is close to an additional athletics point.

[Phew]

14 hp not as good as a single point of athletics? What?

It's not just 14 hp vs. 1 athletics; it's usually 14 hp vs ~7 body armor, since the higher athletics allows you to wear heavier armor for the same run speed. The +7 armor forces more glances and is generally better than +14 HP, unless you are at a really low armor already. 

Or like San said, you can continue to wear the same armor and gain a tactical advantage due to higher speed; it's your choice. IF needs some kind of secondary benefit beyond just pure HPs before people will choose it over 3agi+1 more athletics+1 more WM.

[Jack1]

Let's put it this way, would you rather have X HP with mail tier armor or X HP+14 with kuyak tier armor? Your the same exact thing in terms of speed and it generally takes as many hits or more depending on thbsituation and opponents. It also allows you to invest 1 point in wm without the trouble of the agility points which is nothing to ignore either.

[MURDERTRON]

Let's put it this way, would you rather have X HP with mail tier armor or X HP+14 with kuyak tier armor? Your the same exact thing in terms of speed and it generally takes as many hits or more depending on thbsituation and opponents. It also allows you to invest 1 point in wm without the trouble of the agility points which is nothing to ignore either.

Yea but on the flip side, you can use that argument just as easily to say you can boost PS.

To the other guys:  Although many can use athletics to move away from swings to take less damage, let's not pretend it doesn't work against you as well.  Even if half the people here can use it to take less damage in 1v1s, once you're fighting multiple opponents I think it's a fairly moot point.

[Tydeus]

21str/Xagi

56 hp, 65 armor vs 70 hp 57 armor. On average that's about 3 damage per hit for cut weapons, less for pierce or blunt (because the additional armor counts for less).

I can understand the argument here, that it seems like this is a little too similar, but you're still oversimplifying. That 7 additional weight causes you to lose far more wpf than what you gain by the mere 3 agility, likely even with the additional 1 WM you could get if you spent an 8th skill point.

On the other hand, you could simply leave your armor unchanged, which is what most people do, and take the additional athletics for what it is (the speed increase). If you're doing that though, you can't be tempted to talk about athletics increases as though the effectiveness gains remain the same at all amounts/weights, which is what most people have done, thus far. As athletics increases, so too do the penalties on movement from weight. Meaning that you gain more effective athletics points at lower values than at higher ones.

Second, if you're already running faster than 95% of the playerbase, one additional athletics point so that you can run faster than 98%, isn't even worth talking about, that's about as minor as it gets. Furthermore, when fighting in groups or closed in areas, you're not even capable of utilizing any gains you might have from athletics. What's more, if your weapon is significantly shorter (20cm+) than your opponents, they're able to minimize any effects one would normally gain from athletics.