Nerf Agi and Make Ironflesh Useful

[imisshotmail]

people vastly underestimate what 14 HP actually means in reality, it's often way more than just 1 more hit if you are getting hit with low speed bonus attacks which you should be in most cases. even in the worst cases 1 extra hit is HUGE, there is no penalty in this game for being on low HP other than the obvious fact you are closer to dying, but if you get blackbarred you can still fight on exactly the same as if you were at full HP. I end rounds with almost no health left all the time, mostly from tanking ranged hits, what it provides is way better than being slightly faster in those cases.

agility now is strong, as it should be.. it seems as if people have forgotten how the best melee builds used to be minimum 27+str with heavy armour and how awful and annoying it was to face, it's so much better now where the best builds are more balanced in the middle (although if you want to grief a glaive with full plate and 30str is still hilariously OP).

[Taser]

One thing I notice though is that battle rewards agi heavy builds (15/24 and up) because there's no coherent formations nor a strong disadvantage of going lone wolf.

Strat however gives a strong benefit of having higher str. There are formations and places to defend and so forth. So if you have high str along with IF you're more useful since there's less room to maneuver. This definitely is true for sieges.

So it all has its place. I think its pretty good. IF can be more useful but it definitely shines with high armor where the high armor soak along with high HP make the most of every last bit of HP. Otherwise its kind of a throwaway skill.

[Grumbs]

I feel like STR is kind of player skill capped as a play style, while agi allows you to do so much more.

Athletics gives you movement speed that allows you to have vastly superior footwork, chase players, dodge shots, get speed bonus etc. I don't even have any wpf over 139 but with 8 athletics I feel my lvl 35 build is better than my old 24/18 with all WPF in one weapon type (before the str nerf btw), just because of athletics. I fight more fluidly and find it easier to kill players. I don't care about WPF much, but that movement speed is comparatively overpowered imo. With str you hit with marginally higher damage (considering WPF's damage bonus) and have a skill that can have 0 affect on your round. That extra bit of PS and HP is nothing compared to athletics imo

[MURDERTRON]

To compound in what Taser is saying, agi builds aren't very good for siege.  I mean, outside of spawning early and going straight for the flags before the enemy can spawn.

Strat and siege usually turn in to giant brawls, and if I get surrounded, that's it for me.  I know I'm dead because I don't have the luxury to take a hit to get out of being surrounded.

I also noticed there seems to be some sort of unfounded fear of heavily armored agi builds, but they don't really exist.  Like Tydeus said, the higher your agi, the more it is effected by speed modifiers whether that's from armor weight, weapon weight and length, terrain or weather.  Agi whores wear light to medium armor.  Of the people on NA rocking the 18/27 build, I wear a lamellar vest, Noodles wears a druzhina mail shirt, goldilocks wears Saracen padded or other ridiculously light armor, and conqeefador wears pilgrim robes.  We all die in 2 hits or two heavy horse bumps.

[San]

I think strength + IF provides some good durability, but I also think that strength by itself does, too. IF is great in a duel setting since every bit of health helps and admittedly for modes like siege. People shouldn't estimate ninja-ing in siege, though, especially at mid-population.

[Huscarlton_Banks]

people vastly underestimate what 14 HP actually means in reality, it's often way more than just 1 more hit if you are getting hit with low speed bonus attacks which you should be in most cases. even in the worst cases 1 extra hit is HUGE, there is no penalty in this game for being on low HP other than the obvious fact you are closer to dying, but if you get blackbarred you can still fight on exactly the same as if you were at full HP. I end rounds with almost no health left all the time, mostly from tanking ranged hits, what it provides is way better than being slightly faster in those cases.

With 7 IF at 21 STR, you can basically think of it as:

Survived a hit, and have 20% or below health - IF saved you

You can break it down even more -

0-3% - Your seventh IF point saved you
~3-6% - Your sixth IF point saved you
~6-9% - Your fifth IF point saved you
~9-12% - Your fourth IF point saved you
~12-15% - Your third IF point saved you
~15-18% - Your second IF point saved you
~18-20% - Your first IF point saved you

Died with at least 20% health remaining before your last hit - IF didn't do anything that life.
Died after getting to any of the health %s above in one hit - Your IF points above the point that actually saved you didn't do anything that life.
Survived a round with more than 20% health remaining - IF didn't do anything that life.
Survived a round after getting to one of the health %s above -  Your IF points above the point that actually saved you didn't do anything that life.

If 14 HP really is giving you more than one extra hit(really unlikely, given damage reporter values), you have to consider how many hits you would normally be able to take.

After the first time IF saves you you're not left with a lot of wiggle room, you'll have 14 hit points left maximum (you can take 13 more damage before dying).

If you're able to squeeze more than one hit out of 13 damage, then you would necessarily have to be able to take a crapton of hits already (7IF is just +25% base health for 21 STR, you should be able to take #extra hits from IF * 4 already).

IF gets more useful in siege/strat since they're settings where a life persists for a very long time in comparison to battle, but the NA siege/strat scene seems mostly dead.

[Kafein]

Why is it that so many NA players claim that 33% more HP doesn't even make them survive one more hit? You don't have full +3 armor over there? Or everybody is a 10PS great maul bulldozer ?

[Tydeus]

Why is it that so many NA players claim that 33% more HP doesn't even make them survive one more hit? You don't have full +3 armor over there? Or everybody is a 10PS great maul bulldozer ?

I haven't played in about two months, but unless NA has changed something, they use a fair bit less armor than EU does, on average.

[Huscarlton_Banks]

Why is it that so many NA players claim that 33% more HP doesn't even make them survive one more hit? You don't have full +3 armor over there? Or everybody is a 10PS great maul bulldozer ?

You'd need to be 33 or 36 str for a 33% HP increase, it's more likely that the bonus will be between 20.00-27.11%.

3 STR : 38 base (+2 from IF = 40, 5.26% HP increase from investment)
6 STR : 41 base (+4 from IF = 45, 10.25% HP increase from investment)
9 STR : 44 base (+6 from IF = 50, 13.63% HP increase from investment)
12 STR: 47 base (+8 from IF = 55, 17.02% HP increase from investment)
15 STR: 50 base (+10 from IF = 60, 20.00% HP increase from investment)
18 STR: 53 base (+12 from IF = 65, 22.64% HP increase from investment)
21 STR: 56 base (+14 from IF = 70, 25.00% HP increase from investment)
24 STR: 59 base (+16 from IF = 75, 27.11% HP increase from investment)
27 STR: 62 base (+18 from IF = 80, 29.03% HP increase from investment)
30 STR: 65 base (+20 from IF = 85, 30.76% HP increase from investment)
33 STR: 68 base (+22 from IF = 90, 32.35% HP increase from investment)
36 STR: 71 base (+24 from IF = 95, 33.80% HP increase from investment)

I did notice that I need more swings to take people down in EU1, but I always just thought it was a bad timing due to latency thing, I guess the average armor level might be higher in EU1. NA1 also tends to be fairly heavy on 45+ cut weapons and/or pierce/blunt weapons, I didn't really pay attention to the melee weapons on EU1, was distracted by the greater volumes of ranged.

45-49c weapons deal over 20 damage with a bad hold and zero speed bonus with 21/21 vs 65 armor. Something like a +3 morningstar/+3 bec doesn't even need a hold or speed bonus to do 20+ most of the time. Chances are there are a lot of times where people take a crapload of overkill on the last strike, and the extra HP will do nothing after the first extra hit.

In NA1, I'd say anything above Rus Scale/Pronoia could probably be considered unusually heavy, to the point where whenever I see an armor with plate in the name I immediately assume it's one of maybe ~4 people (leman, dutchydave, oralroberts, firebus), whenever I see transitional armor I immediately assume it's King_James_of_Acre, and whenever I see black armor I assume it's Devilize or his clone buddy.

Generally I only need 4-5 non-held, non-glancing strikes max to take down the heaviest armored people on NA1 with a +3 Liuyedao (6 PS, 173 effective WPF) when I aim at the feet/head, less hits if I bother to use holds or if I decide to use a steel pick instead.

I deal around ~15 damage on leg strikes vs +3 trans + +3 shynbaulds (65 armor total) after suboptimal but positive speed bonuses (8 ath strafes) + really badly timed holds. On a properly held head strike with a good speed bonus I'll easily deal way past 20-25++ damage on ~55 head armors.

With a +3 steel pick I do ~18-20+ damage with a badly held strike and zero speed bonus on a leg swing vs the armor above, haven't tested head hits.

These aren't very high numbers since 1h tends to deal much less damage than 2h/polearms, but they're high enough that they create many instances where extra HP from IF just falls into uselessly soaking up overkill damage after the first extra hit survived.

It's worse when you start looking at the damage on +3 morningstars/45c+ weapons/+3 bec/+3 long spiked club/strong pole stabs/couches/anything with a horseback speed bonus + headshot on a non-bumped target, it's not unusual to see something like 70++ effective damage using a +3 morningstar to the face vs the heaviest helmets from horseback while riding below 75% max speed on the armored horses.

Couches are even worse in that regard, someone with 0 ps/1 wpf/6 riding can easily do upwards of 80+ effective damage with an unloomed jousting lance and an unloomed courser on a chest hit on the heaviest possible loomed body armor + gloves without going anywhere near full speed.

I guess IF could help people when I'm using a club or a practice sword to be incredibly greedy with upkeep give myself a challenge, so I guess there's that.

[Taser]

Why is it that so many NA players claim that 33% more HP doesn't even make them survive one more hit? You don't have full +3 armor over there? Or everybody is a 10PS great maul bulldozer ?

What Ty and Carlton said.

High armor is a rarity. It is usually pulled out to troll rather than to actually use as a regular armor. A few people do use plate as part of their regular setup but like I said its rare.

Its considered lame to use high armor so there's pressure to use lower armor (which gives benefit for ath anyway). Add in repair cost and being slower and most of NA would just rather use a decent mid tier armor.

Like my main's highest armor that I own is a blue tunic over mail. It is +3. NA just doesn't like high armor. We'll use it in strat but not in regular battle or siege. Unless we're trolling and then we take a wooden stick along with that plate.

[Phew]

High armor is a rarity.

NA armor situation has kind of become a race to the bottom. Before the WM buff, everyone was 27/15 or similar and wearing at least 14kg body armor (Heavy Kuyak+). With that patch, they all respecced to 21/21 or similar. Then they got fed up losing to 18/27 polearmers where they still get 2-shot while being s-keyed and spammed, so they spec even more agility themselves and wear lighter armor so they can keep up. So now most melee are in <12kg body armor, 16 kg at the most.

I find that agi polearmers (most of NA melee now) 2-shot me regardless of what armor I wear (up to 65+), so I've been going progressively lighter myself.

I don't think the original M&B devs had 9 ath, 200 wpf, 36p +3 awlpikes in mind when the speed bonus formula was created. Tone down speed bonus, and you'll find that strength and IF will make a comeback.

[Huscarlton_Banks]

Toning down melee speed bonus significantly has its risks as well --

Stabs while backpedalling would suddenly deal much more damage.

Actually, backpedalling attacks in general would do a lot more damage, stabs would just be the most effected.

Melee cav would probably become a bit shitty though.

[Sandersson Jankins]

oh god what, I really HAVEN'T played in a while

NA players are in a reverse arms race to lower armour values? Fuck all that, I'll still use my +3 Transitional every time I get in there. Gotta get that armour on since I give a big ole' fuck you to IF. I'm still plenty fast in it with 6 athletics.

[Phew]

Toning down melee speed bonus significantly has its risks as well --

Stabs while backpedalling would suddenly deal much more damage.

Actually, backpedalling attacks in general would do a lot more damage, stabs would just be the most effected.

Melee cav would probably become a bit shitty though.

I'm sure it's a moot point anyway. It's the 100th case of "can only change with WSE, only cmp does WSE, cmp is too busy working on the poorly-named other game", etc.

[Huscarlton_Banks]

Speed bonuses are easily changed in the server settings file in the module folder (Module.ini? I'm not on my desktop.), it's right there along with armor soak values, flinching from damage thresholds, which brf files to load, etc.