OP Horse Archers

[Erathsmus]

Ok, so how do we fix this game balance wise? Let's put them on turtle mounts....How does this happen in real life? Horse archers tear everything up on flatland period. HAs have already been nerfed, they are a difficult class to play as and get high k/ds, and have potential to help the team greatly (just like shielders in siege mode). Yes, 4  dedicated Horse Archers are a scary force on a battlefield....But 4 dedicated bowman can shoot them down no problem (especially since the typical HA horse, is lightly armored). If they are such a problem, grab a bow...if you dont want to grab a bow, you better be able to hop around very swiftly. And if you are a lancer complaining about horse archers, well hey, horse archers and pikeman are your natural weakness, so armor up.

[Overdriven]

And if you are a lancer complaining about horse archers, well hey, horse archers and pikeman are your natural weakness, so armor up.

True...I don't even bother trying to aim for an armoured horse. It's at that point that I go for the rider. But then typically armoured horses have armoured riders...so I leave them alone and go for the light horses

[Murchad]

Like I said. I apologise if I seem overly defensive. I realised that after I had said it!

I don't think there's ever an excuse to GTX Seawied. Not in Warband. It's simply admitting defeat. Rather I like to be persistent and if even 1 time out of 20 I can kill someone who is owning me over and over then I'm happy.

There are some maps that are so tilted to a particular playstyle as to make other playstyles almost unplayable.   eg. maps with archer really good archer nests without enough archers/shielders on your own team is not good.
or wide open maps with no cover with no pikemen on your team. cav run you over.
I think this is a good reason to have an alt, sometimes your team needs something to fill the void.
my 2 chars are polearms char and HA which both are very useful for team in different cases.
seawied plays cav so if he is on a team with few cav/HA vs a team with lots of HA. there really isnt alot he can do short of dismounting and grabbing a crossbow or shield if he has shield skill.

[Seawied]

I don't think there's ever an excuse to GTX Seawied. Not in Warband. It's simply admitting defeat. Rather I like to be persistent and if even 1 time out of 20 I can kill someone who is owning me over and over then I'm happy.

You haven't played against Murchad 


In all serious though, I very rarely rage quit. I'm not the type that goes FPS doug on his keyboard

[Murchad]

True...I don't even bother trying to aim for an armoured horse. It's at that point that I go for the rider. But then typically armoured horses have armoured riders...so I leave them alone and go for the light horses

this is a good example of what makes HAs good.
they can pick and choose their battles.
they are not super strong but are great at exploiting weaknesses.
shoot horses first because they are the ones that can catch you.
stay out of range of archers until later in the battle so there are fewer of them left to shoot you.
and shoot most of your arrows at thin skinned targets who aren't dodging or taking cover.
that is how you get high k:d:r
(also not missing with arrows and dodging yourself)

sometimes you have to do what is better for the team and waste lots of arrows on the really good enemies who are wreaking havoc on your team. but in most cases killing lots of medium skilled players is better than killing 1 good player.

[Chaos]

HAs are annoyingly good at taking out cavalry but as cav I can accept that good HAs are supposed to make me their bitch. I can't really say how unfair HAs are to infantry since my xbowman is so light armored anyway that he deserves to be shot to pieces by even weak bows. What truly irks me are the capabilities of HAs that ride high maneuver horses, especially when you see them trampling the same archers over and over to death by riding in tight circles. But then again that's more of a problem with horses rather than with horse archers.

[Glyph]

HAs are annoyingly good at taking out cavalry but as cav I can accept that good HAs are supposed to make me their bitch. I can't really say how unfair HAs are to infantry since my xbowman is so light armored anyway that he deserves to be shot to pieces by even weak bows. What truly irks me are the capabilities of HAs that ride high maneuver horses, especially when you see them trampling the same archers over and over to death by riding in tight circles. But then again that's more of a problem with horses rather than with horse archers.

though HA's use the continues bumps a lot more thanother cav

[Siboire]

though HA's use the continues bumps a lot more thanother cav

if u're being bumped and can't do anything it means either one of 2 things:
Either you were brainless enough to go rambo and get dehorsed and you're now prey to a HA
or
you can't poke the horse while it charges at u (even one handers can stab a horse right before he gets trampled, dealing enough damage to discourage any new attemps from HA to trample the said shielder/2hander again)

I never saw somebody "aboozing" horse bumping. Like I said, stab the horse right before it hits you and it should deal enough damage to make the guy think twice before charging at you again.   And as cav, come back to the main group of your team (better if you have archers), normally everybody goes for HA killz if they can so an intelligent HA will flee if you get some cover from your infantry archers.

[Elerion]

"The paper is OP!" said the rock to the scissor. "As a rock I should be able to counter it, I mean that would bring balance to this game".

Unfortunately, this is a flawed analogy to HA. If HA is scissors, there exists no rock. The class doesn't have a real counter.

Luckily, HA's scissors are dull and generally not very dangerous. Their supreme survivability and lack of real counters would be an issue if they could rack up kills like no tomorrow. They can't.

HA's are fine. Fucking annoying, but fine.

[Kenji]

True...I don't even bother trying to aim for an armoured horse. It's at that point that I go for the rider. But then typically armoured horses have armoured riders...so I leave them alone and go for the light horses

Now you're talking.

While my plated charger mostly took arrows like nothing (HAs can't use longbow) except those longbows and crossbows, after a few shots they'll start aiming higher, which is pointed directly at me . Don't know how many times I died like a knight falling off a horse with an arrow in my back.

Glad you're not complaining about fully plated characters, since the repair cost is just astronomical (It pays to be prepared, I suppose).

[dontgothere]

Hi!    I haven't read the whole thread, sorry, but I'll keep my message short so it's no bother:

I've done both horse archery and foot archery, and the main thing keeping the two balanced is the fact that HA's can't use very good bows.  Plus, foot archers have a lot more versatility in most maps - they can go to inaccessible spots, snipe from a hiding spot, retain greater melee capability, etc.  I'd say that once you factor in the repair costs of being any kind of cav, HA's are well-balanced with archers and each is going to have some maps where it has an advantage over the other.

[Malaclypse]

One thing I'm getting from this, and from all OP XXXXX threads really, is that it would be nice to have a team balance system that reflects, among other things, stat/skill investment. If it's possible, it could get rid of the issues surrounding a team that has all/most of the archers or lance cavalry or horse archers or what have you on one side, along with their natural counters...

[Michael]

I never saw somebody "aboozing" horse bumping.

How much time did you spend on EU1 and EU4? When I had my heavy plated charger, steel shield, ah, these were the good days before those pussy developers gave the courser higher charge damage than the heavy plated charger RIDICULOUS.

But even nowadays, a smart player will always "abooze" the horse "bumping", and be it only to knock the enemy down, so that a teammate can slash the enemy in the face while hes trying to get up.
Also, the courser at full speed still does insane damage against light armored footmen, like shielders or archers.

[Overdriven]

Glad you're not complaining about fully plated characters, since the repair cost is just astronomical (It pays to be prepared, I suppose).

I have no problem with the plated charger. If you can afford it, and are willing to use it then you've probably earned the right (or leached like no tomorrow, but I like to think well of people). The repair costs more than make up for any advantage they have.

How much time did you spend on EU1 and EU4? When I had my heavy plated charger, steel shield, ah, these were the good days before those pussy developers gave the courser higher charge damage than the heavy plated charger RIDICULOUS.

But even nowadays, a smart player will always "abooze" the horse "bumping", and be it only to knock the enemy down, so that a teammate can slash the enemy in the face while hes trying to get up.
Also, the courser at full speed still does insane damage against light armored footmen, like shielders or archers.

True...even though I hate using the horse bump method because I feel cheap, it has saved my life more than a few times, and earned me a couple of kills. And yes, a good few of my kills have been my courser bumping at full speed, often unintentionally, partly because a courser really isn't that easy to turn at full speed. But sometimes I do use it deliberately if I really need to.

[Siboire]

How much time did you spend on EU1 and EU4? When I had my heavy plated charger, steel shield, ah, these were the good days before those pussy developers gave the courser higher charge damage than the heavy plated charger RIDICULOUS.

But even nowadays, a smart player will always "abooze" the horse "bumping", and be it only to knock the enemy down, so that a teammate can slash the enemy in the face while hes trying to get up.
Also, the courser at full speed still does insane damage against light armored footmen, like shielders or archers.

By aboozing I meant somebody that does nothing but horse bump to get kills. In NA I saw some lulzbuild like this (BeastLover and some other names I can't remember) but it was more annoying than really doing anything else.