I'm not very articulate when it comes to balance threads but I'll throw an opinion at that.
I've ran mostly balanced and agi builds and this gen I decided to go strength. In my opinion, strength is actually way better and I have no problems with agi builds. I don't know, maybe HoC just isn't bad anymore.
Edit: What I'm saying is that I don't believe agi is inherently better and needs to be "balanced" I don't believe your performance is tied to your build.
It wasn't at all going be a long boring essay praising me and my "pro mlg crpging skills," and using that as an argument for the nerfing of, well, me. It's just that back in ye olden times, when strength crutchers reigned supreme, agility was still a viable and strong option. You would see plenty of this in longtime players like canary and other members of chaos. Eventually I think I became a decent example of how to properly utilize high agility towards the end of the reign of strength builds. My point being is that agility builds were in a good place before strength was nerfed, a really good, balanced place. Sure it was a strong option in the right hands, but isn't any build, really?
The problems arose when they decided to nerf strength because sure, while agility was strong, strength was more than strong at the time, it was OP. But when they nerfed strength, they buffed agility. Strength builds lost massive amounts of wpf, which translates into some speed loss in addition to a good amount of extra killing power. Since wpf affects both swing speed and damage output, strength builds lost a lot here, arguably too much. Simultaneously, agility builds
gained a small boost to both swing speed and damage output. While their kryptonite is nerfed, agility builds got better... makes sense, right?
Now while it may seem like strength builds are still plenty viable, and sure, they definitely are, they aren't nearly as useful as they used to be. Strength builds were always a good build when surrounded by teammates... you just needed to get one or two good hits in and your enemy is more than likely dead. Nowadays, however, with everyone being an agility build you would think that they would die even easier than ever before, right? Not exactly. Don't forget that strength builds lost a decent amount of damage output with all the lost wpf (or any strength build that has wpf lost out on a few points of PS), while agility builds can easily just use their massive athletics advantage to negate a ton of damage using the hyper-realistic speed bonus mechanics embedded in warband. And because of this speed bonus, agility builds can often times dish out comparable damage to the nerfed strength build with the proper footwork, which can easily be picked up on in no time at all.
Come the recent revival patch, agility builds became even stronger than ever before. When the average level hovered around maybe 32, the difficulties on weapons and armor were relatively balanced and were at good levels. Now with 3 more attribute points to use, why dump them into strength when you've got more than enough strength for the requirements of your gear? You used to need 20 strength to use any melee weapon in the game, which made 21 strength a good, average (maybe a little above average) strength level (with 18 strength perhaps being more common, especially for polearms and 1handers, who don't need over 18 for any weapon). Well, 21 strength is relatively low now, considering the crazy builds one could make at level 36-37. There is little reason to ever have more than 18-21 strength in a build now (unless of course you want to be a strength build, for w.e. reason), since the gear requirements have yet to be updated to coincide with the new norm of crpg.
Strength builds used to be the slow-moving, hard-hitting, plate-crutching warriors that a medieval knight actually was. Nowadays with enough armor they can tank plenty of hits, sure, but so can any agility build wearing comparable armor. The only time the amount of hits they could take would differ would probably be when up against a blunt or pierce weapon. Even then, an agility build could potentially tank more hits (or even cause more glances) since they could dance around the battlefield like fully-plated ballerinas with their athletics compared to their sloth-like counterparts.
