how to truely balance cavalry

[Overdriven]

Don't tell crap, any player who is in retire loop play about 85% of time in endgame with high enough ridding skill and ps to be unaffected. Cav speed and maneuver is way too high and need to be lowered by fair amount (43 maneuver/speed top), but lesser horses should be imo less affected (but still affected - 1/2 points decrease would be good approx).

Made us statistics are fun. Seeing as level 31 is double of 1-30. That would mean that players in the retire loop are playing 50% of their time at full level/end game. Not 85%. So perhaps obey your own rule

And cav is always target practice, unless the archer sucks. Nothing funner than shooting down horsies as an archer. Problem is pubby archers seem to think shooting peasants is more useful to a team than shooting horsies.

[Diomedes]

Cav can safely engage any infantry with non-long polearm weapon, without risk if he play it right. If he made a mistake he deserve to get hit and even die.

My Italian Sword disagrees with you.  Even when I played without sound, with an exceptionally limited threshold for anticipating cavalry, I was able to kill many charging horses or riders with a stab.  Chalking this up to the riders "making a mistake" is disingenuous to the fragility of light cavalry and the unique flexibility of M&B's close-combat mechanics.

[kongxinga]

From my experience, hitting people while airborne on a horse does not seem to give the sudden speed drop when hitting people normally. Often the rule is, when in a clump, jump. But I am not too sure on this. And four or five people in loose formation is not enough to stop most horses at top speeds, but back in the good days with 250 people servers, I have ridden my mamluke into a clump and got stopped by losing too much momentum. Solution? Get another heavy cav to follow behind you as wingman to let both charge through.

If you are pure infantry and die to a dismounted dragoon, I am sorry for your extremely poor ping. Same goes to pure cavalry losing lance duels to dragoons. Remember for cav or dragoons, getting dismounted is usually a death sentence due to the free hits. And dragoons are often the first to get dismounted in a cavalry furball, either getting horse shot off by HA, then dying to the mop up melee cav before they get up, or getting lanced off and then shot. And everyone dies if they meet those organized hunter killer pike teams and get dehorsed.

Someone made a good point to archers, getting that +1 to kills by shooting a peasant is not as good as getting 0 kills and dehorsing 3 cav, thus saving 6 tunnelvisioning teamamte 2 hand duelers from being backstabbed, thus winning the game. But you know score fixation is heavy around here.

[Digglez]

My Italian Sword disagrees with you.  Even when I played without sound, with an exceptionally limited threshold for anticipating cavalry, I was able to kill many charging horses or riders with a stab.  Chalking this up to the riders "making a mistake" is disingenuous to the fragility of light cavalry and the unique flexibility of M&B's close-combat mechanics.

Heh you've gotten me a few too many times with this.  You learn who is a good with a stabbing 1h and to dont directly charge them.  I get alot of lazy cav this way too, especially if they dont line their horse/lances up properly.  Dont underestimate the 1h stab weapons when your horse is doing 30mph to impale itself.

I would like them to add the horse charge dmg after it dies/going down though if you're in the way.  That'd be fun.

[Lech]

Made us statistics are fun. Seeing as level 31 is double of 1-30. That would mean that players in the retire loop are playing 50% of their time at full level/end game. Not 85%. So perhaps obey your own rule

And cav is always target practice, unless the archer sucks. Nothing funner than shooting down horsies as an archer. Problem is pubby archers seem to think shooting peasants is more useful to a team than shooting horsies.

24+/27+ (class dependent) is endgame.

[Overdriven]

24+/27+ (class dependent) is endgame.

How so? I'd say only when you've gotten full stats can it be said as endgame.

[Thucydides]

How so? I'd say only when you've gotten full stats can it be said as endgame.

not really, its a gradual progression towards an endgame. Generally, at 27 the attribute and stat points added will not dramatically affect your ability to play, hence you're stable and at the "end game"

Diomedes, yes you can dehorse a horse with a 1h stab, but does it happen often? I can easily chop down a horse when i overhead them or left swing, but rarely is that possible because of the incredible maneuverability of horses, allow them to abort a charge when i spot them. You probably can get kills with it because people don't expect a 1h to be able to kill a horse, but if you had a sign that said "i can stab really well" do you think you'll be able to pull off the same results?  When you're a 2h or polearm, Cav are much more weary of you compared to if you were a 1h.

[roymorrison]

Why do I receive damage when I am run over by a horse, but a horse does not receive damage when it slams into a wall going full speed?

I dislike cav as much as the next guy, but seriously the majority of cav are crappy players who couldn't couch an afk to save their multiplier, so it's not really a big deal.

I think if the game balanced teams based on class, there would be less complaining about cav and archer spam.  It's only when one team has an overwhelming amount of cav that I start to see a problem.  If both teams autobalanced after the first round based on class, and both teams received equal numbers of cav, archers, and shielders, I think we'd see a much more balanced and fun battle.

[Lech]

How so? I'd say only when you've gotten full stats can it be said as endgame.

With my build, i reach the endgame at lvl 28 (5if is not crucial, as it's not 6 wm). From lvl 25 i have near engame as i lack just 1 shield, 1 wm, 1 ps and 5if and i'm on just 15  str.

2h and Pole builds can reach engame faster as they do just fine with lesser amount of power strike than 1h sword + shield. Horse Archers reach engame slower than my build, as it's done on lvl 30. But average endgame is between the lines i stated, judging from builds i meet in game.

[Diomedes]

Diomedes, yes you can dehorse a horse with a 1h stab, but does it happen often? I can easily chop down a horse when i overhead them or left swing, but rarely is that possible because of the incredible maneuverability of horses, allow them to abort a charge when i spot them. You probably can get kills with it because people don't expect a 1h to be able to kill a horse, but if you had a sign that said "i can stab really well" do you think you'll be able to pull off the same results?  When you're a 2h or polearm, Cav are much more weary of you compared to if you were a 1h.

Yeah, the two things that generally stop me from 1-stabbing light cav are their maneuverability and the exceptional skill of some players.  My post earlier was in regards to the idea that cavalry are unbeatable in combat - which I don't find to be the case.  There is, however, the other issue of light cav being able to pull out before a fight at the absolute last moment.  Not just rapid acceleration through a skirmish, which seems very sensible IMO, but full-stopping or turning on a quarter before engaging.  So long as fast and maneuverable cav can withhold committing to fights they're fairly safe from everything but bowmen.  That said, when light cav commit to fights they're at a far higher risk than most other players.  Strong hits to the horse's head, stabs during the initial rush (what I do), and leaping blows with a slight speed bonus all doom light cavalry players to a quick and difficult-to-avoid death.

Balancing cav is a tricky and fraught business which I try to stay away from.  I posted my earlier comments merely to correct a factual inaccuracy, rather than to build premises for a larger argument.

[Ronin]

In native I get rid of the enemy horses with my throwing weapons with ease. But in cRPG I don't have throwing based character, because it is said to be useless. Maybe buffing throwing again would balance the cavalry a bit.

From what I've seen the only thing that can balance the cavalries is the map. If it is a siege map you can't play cavalry for example. In most of the battle maps, cavalry owns.

Edit:
And sorry diomedes but if a cavalry with a 180 pixels long lance is beaten to an italian sworder, he deserves to die.

[Siiem]

I only have issues with MW heavly lances 1 hit killing without actually couching, other than that cav is mostly fine.

[Renegat]

Hello,
in my opinion, the main problem is cav's damages.
Indeed, most of lancers can one-shot almost everybody with a simple hit (in other words, not a couched lance hit), even if they are not at their full speed (and even if you have a heavy armor). Moreover, lancers use very long weapon, so most of inf can't do anything against them. So for me cav, and in particulary lancers, are OP.
Besides, i don't know if it's the same in NA, but in EU, the number of cav increased a lot those last months. So it's not rare to see like a dozen of cav (and 75% of those cav are lancers) in the same team, which is a bit unplayable for inf who don't have any way to protect themselves.
As far as i'm concerned, the only way i found to protect myself against lancers was to become a 1h cav. In this way, i can flee ennemy lancers ><. Of course, i can one shot many poeple (with a mw military cleaver and at full speed i can), but 1h/2h cav take much more risk than lancers, because they are vulnerable against 2h sword, most of polearmes, and 1h sword (if they know how to jump slash or if they know how to use a thrust).
So in my opinion the main problem of cav balance is the fact that lancers do so much damages in compare to other class. And the high number of cav is due to this problem, because we often see lancers with 35/45 kills at the end of a row, so poeple want to do the same and become lancers.

PS: Sorry if i did grammar mistakes, i'm not english so i still have difficulty in writting english correctly  ^^

PS2: And please don't say me that lancers do many kills because they are skilled, maybe 10% of them are, the rest just use a (herloomed) sarranid warhorse + (herloomed) heavy lance and one shot everything without taking any risk

PS3: Siiem, you're realy luckie if you're one shot only by lancers who have mw heavy lance xd

[Vibe]

I only have issues with MW heavly lances 1 hit killing without actually couching, other than that cav is mostly fine.

Doesn't even need to be a MW lance.

[Seawied]

Doesn't even need to be a MW lance.

doesn't even require a whole lot of PS either. Light lance + 3 or 4 ps + courser=1 hits.