I tried to make a HA and ended up respecing it because it is absolutely useless. Clearly my horse does more damage than I could ever do. I am an addition to the horse, he is not an addition to me.
I'm sure most of this has been said before, but I guess it doesn't hurt to repeat since nothing has been done about it yet.
Just to go over some of the recent changes to HA and archers in general:1. Horse Ranged damage penalty(20%) and damage cap(15 damage).2. Horse ranged max speed reduced to 80%.3. Ranged weight penalty made percentage-based and is now applied before the PT/PD/HA penalties as 1.5x the melee penalty.Then the stat changes:|
- Bodkin Arrows | old | new |
|----------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------|-------------------------------|
| weight | 7 | 8 |
| max ammo | 15 | 10 |
| thrust damage | 2 pierce | 1 pierce |
|____________________________________________________|________________________________|_______________________________|
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
|
|----------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------|-------------------------------|
| weight | 7 | 8 |
| max ammo | 20 | 15 |
| thrust damage | 5 cut | 4 cut |
|____________________________________________________|________________________________|_______________________________|
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
|
- Barbed Arrows | old | new |
|----------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------|-------------------------------|
| weight | 7 | 8 |
| max ammo | 22 | 13 |
| thrust damage | 7 cut | 6 cut |
|____________________________________________________|________________________________|_______________________________|
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
|
- Tatar Arrows | old | new |
|----------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------|-------------------------------|
| weight | 7 | 8 |
| max ammo | 18 | 11 |
| thrust damage | 10 cut | 9 cut |
|____________________________________________________|________________________________|_______________________________|
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Before I go over all of this, I just want to point out a few things that matter when talking about ranged balancing:
- All archery balancing in the past year has always been balanced around masterwork bows and arrows. Meaning, if you do not invest at least 6 heirloom points to use masterwork bows and arrows, you will perform in a less-than-balanced environment for these classes. These are the only classes in the game that do not reward you for investing heirloom points, but instead penalize you for not doing so.
- With the new increase to levels, everyone now has more health, more armor, more athletics, more strength, more everything. So not only is ranged damage, weight, ammunition, etc. significantly nerfed, everyone else has more armor, more health, and move a lot faster, which in itself is a nerf to ranged classes. Of course, you can make the argument that now ranged classes can move faster and use melee weapons if they choose to go hybrid, but the core of the class, you know...the BOW and ARROWS...are much less effective than ever before, especially for HA. Few players go above 6 Powerdraw as it hurts wpf, so while melee classes get to be stronger and faster with their primary weapons, ranged classes don't benefit with their primary weapons, and are only encouraged to use secondary weapons or heavier armor, which means even less ammunition and less speed so it is unlikely to be used.
- Of course, valour is non-existent for ranged players, so let's go ahead an bring this up. Now, in all fairness being able to snipe people across the map or deal damage while being relatively protected should not warrant "valour", but let's understand it from a meta-perspective. For a melee player, infantry or cavalry, they merely need to jump into the fray and deal a lot of damage and are rewarded with valour. This means if they would have lost x5, they keep it. If they won the round on x1, they jump to x3. Valour is very important for players who aren't in a clan or, let's be honest, everyone (since most clans are dying or dead now). So simply for playing a ranged class, you get significantly less gold and experience than other classes. Not to mention the higher chance you have to repair all of your shit in the first place. I make more money as heavy cavalry, always getting valour, than I do as any ranged class.
So with all of that out of the way, let's go back over #1: Horse Ranged damage penalty(20%) and damage cap(15 damage).Basically, no matter how good you are at headshots or how accurate you are from a moving horse, you get to do a maximum of 15 damage. Which means you have to hit a peasant 3-5 times to get a kill. For a good perspective, there are people who can kill a peasant with
punches faster than you can kill one with
arrows. Now, this of course, is considering you actually did the full 15 damage. When you read the 20% ranged damage penalty, this does not take into consideration the penalties you ALREADY have from being mounted, the Horse Archery penalties. This is simply an additional damage penalty on top of all the pre-existing ones. Respec your STF, make a HA, go to duel, ask someone to wear medium-heavy armor, and watch them absorb all of your ammo. Then imagine if you were actually in battle, and he wasn't standing still, and you were actually moving. Then you can assume at least 30-50% of those shots flat-out missed, and calculate the total damage you can possibly deal with your puny quiver, assuming no one has killed you yet.
Alright, now let's talk about #2: Horse ranged max speed reduced to 80%.Go to any horse in the shop, look at its "Speed" and multiply that by 0.8. To save you the trouble, I'll just go ahead and say a horse archer on a
courser, is slower than a melee player on a
plated charger. Now, I haven't tested this and have reason to believe it is not the case, but whatever the case is, any melee cavalry can catch up and kill any HA without much effort if they have relatively the same horses. This also makes it more difficult for Horse Archers to evade ranged infantry. To be fair, I'm not complaining about this particular nerf, by itself it makes sense. However, stacked with the astronomical amount of other nerfs HA got, it doesn't make sense and neither does the viability of the HA class.
#3 Just makes ranged classes even slower and less accurate. If you look carefully at all the arrow changes, you will notice that all quivers receives a HUGE decrease in ammunition. Up to nearly 50% in the case of the barbed arrows. Holy shit, let me get this strait, not only do the arrows do LESS DAMAGE and WEIGH MORE, they also get 25-50% of their ammunition wiped? Nah, I still don't quite understand...let me try again. So if you were a Horse Archer, you get a significantly slower horse, you can do only a maximum of 15 damage, your damage is 20% less plus the HA skill penalties, you can't kill anything in the game with a headshot, you can't kill anything in the game with TWO headshots, you have to have a masterwork bow, masterwork arrows, and championed horse just to be up-to-balancing performance, and now you don't even have enough ammo to kill more than three people in battle, assuming you get the chance to use all of your arrows? What am I missing here?
If you have 20+ armor and you see a horse archer, you might as well not worry. Just avoid them and wait for them to die.
If you have 30+ armor and you see a horse archer, you might as well not worry. You don't even really have to avoid them either.
If you have 40+ armor and you see a horse archer, just ignore them and go about your business.
If you have 50+ armor and you see a horse archer, you can close your eyes and stand still until they run out of ammo, then laugh at them and bash their brains in with your superior skill.
So how is the HA class even viable? Is the objective in balancing the game suppose to be making all classes equally viable? Or is it to make certain players who play melee infantry have more fun than everyone else?
