A little context from my perspective since I know most of you are more knowledgeable and experienced than me:
My primary alt is Tandrael, a Red Eagle warrior with 19 13 11 19 18 stats. I’ve played him mostly combo and sometimes dodge. Zerk attack was not a huge assest for him, but it was quite useful in pve like smobbing. My other two warriors are an abs unclanned human and an abs unclanned trolloc. Zerk attack was an enormous asset for them in pve and pvp. I stopped playing from late 2019 and started playing again July 2021. I did not experience warriors with damage mitigation or warriors with with increased damage against humanoid players, so my experience for warriors without zerk attack (not counting playing warriors before zerk attack was implemented) is them in their current state (I never used projectiles on a warrior.) My playtimes are usually at non-peak hours, 8-11 am server time. I also play two hunters, two fcs, an mc, and a rogue.
Long and short is that I believe that five additional ob and additional melee damage against humanoid mobs is not enough to make warriors attractive enough to compete with hunters playing the same setup. My lazy idea to buff warriors would be to make their innate additional ob 10, but I don’t know if that would be enough. I might even go so far as to say make it 10 ob and five pb. This would help warriors break defense, bash better, and more likely to hit their bashed opponents.
As things currently stand, I feel mostly useless on Tandrael, and completely useless on my abs warriors. Part of this feeling is that I think abs weapons aren’t in a great place, but that is certainly a different discussion. Due to the fact that most of the pk I participate in is low numbers, autotrack is immensely valuable. I’d feel that if I bashed better and landed more bashed and unbashed attacks, I think that I’d feel less useless on a warrior.
I’m really looking forward to hearing the rest of your ideas as to the state of warriors, and what (if anything) you think could be done to make them competitive with the rest of the classes. Please know, I’m not trying to whine about zerk attack being gone, I just want to play warriors that don’t feel like hunters without autotrack and worse pracs. Thanks for the company.
Warriors Need a (Slight?) Buff
Re: Warriors Need a (Slight?) Buff
It appears the Imms are somewhat working on this though its slow going and probably will require coding.
-The Imms moved the OB/weight around on weapons to try and keep them bashing the same but with a greater chance of breaking defense (...course they had downed them in the first place)
-They've targeted a bunch of broken defensive builds - ie. the parry dodge build where you could pull like 145/200+
-And downed high defense parry trinkets
-They've downed the abs on combo.
The best explanation for this is probably by Zarth. Essentially if you are a troll wielding a non-club - you bash 60% best case all the time regardless of your OB, weight etc. If you are fighting a combo human the human won't focus on dodge. A DB of like 85 is bashed the same as a DB of like 115. Instead they'd focus on OB/Abs/and parry. If they produce enough defense you still have to bash to hit them, you might even get parried, and they potentially hit like old school abs weapons because a lot of combo weapons are 6d6, 5d8 etc.
The changes above target many of those things. They've attempted to reduce the abs so the combo user takes more damage, reduce the PB so they get hit more often, and increase abs OB so you land more etc.
Zarth's suggestion was to change the baseline bash landing rates which is fascinating but may create other issues.
-The Imms moved the OB/weight around on weapons to try and keep them bashing the same but with a greater chance of breaking defense (...course they had downed them in the first place)
-They've targeted a bunch of broken defensive builds - ie. the parry dodge build where you could pull like 145/200+
-And downed high defense parry trinkets
-They've downed the abs on combo.
The best explanation for this is probably by Zarth. Essentially if you are a troll wielding a non-club - you bash 60% best case all the time regardless of your OB, weight etc. If you are fighting a combo human the human won't focus on dodge. A DB of like 85 is bashed the same as a DB of like 115. Instead they'd focus on OB/Abs/and parry. If they produce enough defense you still have to bash to hit them, you might even get parried, and they potentially hit like old school abs weapons because a lot of combo weapons are 6d6, 5d8 etc.
The changes above target many of those things. They've attempted to reduce the abs so the combo user takes more damage, reduce the PB so they get hit more often, and increase abs OB so you land more etc.
Zarth's suggestion was to change the baseline bash landing rates which is fascinating but may create other issues.
Re: Warriors Need a (Slight?) Buff
Thanks for all of that information, Eol; I’ve always appreciated your perspective since the days of the original forums. I agree with your conclusions regarding the directions the imms are going with abs v combo v dodge balance. My issue with that however is that these changes affect hunters the same as warriors leaving warriors as hunters without autotrack and worse pracs with five extra ob.Eol wrote: ↑Fri Dec 03, 2021 7:14 pmIt appears the Imms are somewhat working on this though its slow going and probably will require coding.
-The Imms moved the OB/weight around on weapons to try and keep them bashing the same but with a greater chance of breaking defense (...course they had downed them in the first place)
-They've targeted a bunch of broken defensive builds - ie. the parry dodge build where you could pull like 145/200+
-And downed high defense parry trinkets
-They've downed the abs on combo.
The best explanation for this is probably by Zarth. Essentially if you are a troll wielding a non-club - you bash 60% best case all the time regardless of your OB, weight etc. If you are fighting a combo human the human won't focus on dodge. A DB of like 85 is bashed the same as a DB of like 115. Instead they'd focus on OB/Abs/and parry. If they produce enough defense you still have to bash to hit them, you might even get parried, and they potentially hit like old school abs weapons because a lot of combo weapons are 6d6, 5d8 etc.
The changes above target many of those things. They've attempted to reduce the abs so the combo user takes more damage, reduce the PB so they get hit more often, and increase abs OB so you land more etc.
Zarth's suggestion was to change the baseline bash landing rates which is fascinating but may create other issues.
Re: Warriors Need a (Slight?) Buff
I think warriors are in a fine place tbh. The ob bonus and dmg reduction vs humanoid mobs makes them powerful still. They're worse than hunters in pk because of no autotrack, but they still do everything hunters do a little bit better because of the ob bonus.
Re: Warriors Need a (Slight?) Buff
I respectfully disagree. Although I know you have a wealth of experience playing a bunch of classes including a ds master warrior, I just can’t agree that five ob and extra damage against humanoid mobs comes anywhere close to autotrack and better pracs. Perhaps I’m completely wrong.
Re: Warriors Need a (Slight?) Buff
I don't think there's any bonus that compares to autotrack, honestly. Warriors have always been worse hunters who are better for one thing. It used to be burst damage, now it's PvE (and the ob boost is nice in pk, though we need to improve abs weapons). Warriors are now the strongest PvE class, which I think people have been using very successfully.Tandrael wrote: ↑Fri Dec 03, 2021 7:44 pmI respectfully disagree. Although I know you have a wealth of experience playing a bunch of classes including a ds master warrior, I just can’t agree that five ob and extra damage against humanoid mobs comes anywhere close to autotrack and better pracs. Perhaps I’m completely wrong.
Re: Warriors Need a (Slight?) Buff
I personally wish everyone had autotrack but it will never happen.
Warriors are problematic. They didn't really exist until zerk attack did. I can name a few pre-zerkers, but its really a class that was made, that we became attached to, that exists for a reason that isn't there anymore. We're what is essentially the 4th iteration.
The benefit of the current variation is that it doesn't tremendously skew combat which was problematic in version 2 and 3rd. Strong additional combat bonuses - even a 10% attack bonus berserk could blow things up. If you want something, apart from the fact the fact that it will be coding, you have to make it gentle and passive.
I touched it above, but changing the bash baseline against combo/armor (non-dodge builds) would be something albeit I personally wish it was global to all bashers. Ie. Warriors start at 65% instead of 60%.
Some sort of zone "sense" ie. warriors can hear combat in the zone would be ...interesting(?), but we're doing a lot of things lately that are unbeatable/unblockable/incredibly powerful ie. forms of zone sense, more people with ravens etc. There's things I like about these because in a lot of situations track cannot keep up with how people move and because it sucks following someone all the way in who is long gone, but a combat sense would not help with an opponent running away which I suppose is what warriors need.
Perhaps warriors should just be able to see bloody tracks, but that only helps with trolls as humans don't leave blood.
Warriors are problematic. They didn't really exist until zerk attack did. I can name a few pre-zerkers, but its really a class that was made, that we became attached to, that exists for a reason that isn't there anymore. We're what is essentially the 4th iteration.
The benefit of the current variation is that it doesn't tremendously skew combat which was problematic in version 2 and 3rd. Strong additional combat bonuses - even a 10% attack bonus berserk could blow things up. If you want something, apart from the fact the fact that it will be coding, you have to make it gentle and passive.
I touched it above, but changing the bash baseline against combo/armor (non-dodge builds) would be something albeit I personally wish it was global to all bashers. Ie. Warriors start at 65% instead of 60%.
Some sort of zone "sense" ie. warriors can hear combat in the zone would be ...interesting(?), but we're doing a lot of things lately that are unbeatable/unblockable/incredibly powerful ie. forms of zone sense, more people with ravens etc. There's things I like about these because in a lot of situations track cannot keep up with how people move and because it sucks following someone all the way in who is long gone, but a combat sense would not help with an opponent running away which I suppose is what warriors need.
Perhaps warriors should just be able to see bloody tracks, but that only helps with trolls as humans don't leave blood.
Re: Warriors Need a (Slight?) Buff
I ran some analysis mainly around 2 things:
1) offensive capabilities of 21 str vs mounted human
2) affect of bonus stacking
Here are the results against a 147/190 setup that Kilgore was using. I had an eaxe with an abs set and only 1 parry and based all numbers off of that.
Assumptions:
Zerk gives 1.6 attacks per round (reasonable)
Bash gives 2 hits per bash (lol)
Damage is given as total damage per round = damage per bash / 3
Master damage is a flat +3 (post was unclear, I read it as clan rank/2 rounded down, though it could be a die roll??)
Bash gives 1.3x damage
Here is a similar analysis while brave
So what does this show?
First off, a 21 str trolloc is roughly 6% better offensively than a 19 str mounted human (more than I thought!). This can be reduced if the human maximizes their offensive potential by getting level 7 ride. Level 7 ride ends up being about a 3.5% damage increase compared to level 6!
Secondly, we can see that warders are absolutely insane in the current landscape. While zerk the weakest warder setup is 30% better than a fade and has 70% more offensive output of the closest trolloc! While brave (removing attack) the warder is still 13% better than the closest comparison (21 str master warrior trolloc). A brave warder is ~8x stronger than a 19 str trolloc!!
Thirdly, warriors are not really weak in comparison to hunters. They went from being 60% better than a hunter while zerk to being 15-20% better than a hunter all of the time.
Warriors were downed (warriors that zerked often like me in particular!), but the main issue is that abs is still pretty bad. Warriors (especially darkside warriors) are mainly abs and therefore feel weaker. If we look at what Elysia said in the thread about smobbing
viewtopic.php?f=74&t=15438&start=30#p132873
I think the solution is to follow through with what Elysia said earlier and compress the situation:
1) Remove berserk attack from fades and warders, if it was bad for warriors then it's even worse for warders.
2) Remove ob bonus on str above 19 (remove 10 ob from 21 str trollocs)
3) Remove 5% bash bonus to riding, increase maximum bash chance to 65% for everything
4) Remove 5 ob from level 6 ride and 3 from level 7 ride.
5) Change master bonus to +5 ob
6) Change warder bonus to +5 ob
7) Change warrior bonus to +3 ob
What would this do to the brave setups (zerk now doesn't have a non-linearity so it can be ignored imo):
Now things are much more compressed and can be upped to make everyone feel better. Warders are now only 3.5x better than a 19 str trolloc.
With appropriate abs weapon changes this would make abs hunters more viable (increasing trackers??) and with the cap at 65% bash instead of 60% you'd see combo get effectively downed in comparison to dodge and abs while leaving the abs/dodge balance unaffected.
For example, here's the affect of adding 10 ob and 0.5 lbs to an eaxe in that situation:
Now we're cooking with grease!
1) offensive capabilities of 21 str vs mounted human
2) affect of bonus stacking
Here are the results against a 147/190 setup that Kilgore was using. I had an eaxe with an abs set and only 1 parry and based all numbers off of that.
Assumptions:
Zerk gives 1.6 attacks per round (reasonable)
Bash gives 2 hits per bash (lol)
Damage is given as total damage per round = damage per bash / 3
Master damage is a flat +3 (post was unclear, I read it as clan rank/2 rounded down, though it could be a die roll??)
Bash gives 1.3x damage
Code: Select all
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+-----+-------------+--------------+
| Setup | OB | Bash Chance | Damage Round |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+-----+-------------+--------------+
| Zerk 19 Str Master Mounted Warder Warrior(Level 7 Ride) | 216 | 65 | 23.07916555 |
| Zerk 19 Str Master Mounted Warder Warrior(Level 6 Ride) | 215 | 65 | 22.93942467 |
| Zerk 19 Str Master Mounted Warder Hunter (Level 6 Ride) (old Warrior) | 210 | 63 | 21.51389906 |
| Zerk 21 Str Master Trolloc Warrior (Old) | 204 | 51 | 17.4717881 |
| Zerk 19 Str Mounted Fade (Level 6 Ride) | 200 | 52 | 16.43352764 |
| Zerk 21 Str Master Trolloc Warrior | 209 | 57 | 12.67081356 |
| Zerk 19 Str Master Mounted Warrior (Level 7 ride) | 206 | 59 | 12.23183233 |
| Zerk 19 Str Master Mounted Warrior (Level 6 ride) | 205 | 58 | 11.93282795 |
| Zerk 21 Str Master Trolloc Hunter | 204 | 51 | 10.91986756 |
| Zerk 19 Str Master Mounted Hunter (Level 6 Ride) | 200 | 52 | 10.27095477 |
| Zerk 19 Str Master Trolloc Hunter | 194 | 39 | 7.289130969 |
| Zerk 19 Str Trolloc Hunter | 184 | 28 | 4.300796311 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+-----+-------------+--------------+
Code: Select all
+----------------------------------------------------------+-----+-------------+--------------+
| Setup | OB | Bash Chance | Damage Round |
+----------------------------------------------------------+-----+-------------+--------------+
| Brave 19 Str Master Mounted Warder Warrior(Level 6 Ride) | 200 | 52 | 10.27095477 |
| Brave 19 Str Master Mounted Warder Hunter (Level 6 Ride) | 195 | 46 | 8.681059747 |
| Brave 21 Str Master Trolloc Warrior | 194 | 39 | 7.64563171 |
| Brave 19 Str Master Mounted Warrior (Level 7 ride) | 191 | 41 | 7.433930344 |
| Brave 19 Str Master Mounted Warrior (Level 6 ride) | 190 | 40 | 7.175683715 |
| Brave 21 Str Master Trolloc Hunter (old warrior) | 189 | 34 | 6.329050757 |
| Brave 19 Str Mounted Fade (Level 6 Ride) | 185 | 34 | 5.763415578 |
| Brave 19 Str Master Mounted Hunter (Level 6 Ride) | 185 | 34 | 5.763415578 |
| Brave 19 Str Master Trolloc Hunter | 179 | 22 | 3.452790621 |
| Brave 19 Str Trolloc Hunter | 169 | 10 | 1.238077277 |
+----------------------------------------------------------+-----+-------------+--------------+
First off, a 21 str trolloc is roughly 6% better offensively than a 19 str mounted human (more than I thought!). This can be reduced if the human maximizes their offensive potential by getting level 7 ride. Level 7 ride ends up being about a 3.5% damage increase compared to level 6!
Secondly, we can see that warders are absolutely insane in the current landscape. While zerk the weakest warder setup is 30% better than a fade and has 70% more offensive output of the closest trolloc! While brave (removing attack) the warder is still 13% better than the closest comparison (21 str master warrior trolloc). A brave warder is ~8x stronger than a 19 str trolloc!!
Thirdly, warriors are not really weak in comparison to hunters. They went from being 60% better than a hunter while zerk to being 15-20% better than a hunter all of the time.
Warriors were downed (warriors that zerked often like me in particular!), but the main issue is that abs is still pretty bad. Warriors (especially darkside warriors) are mainly abs and therefore feel weaker. If we look at what Elysia said in the thread about smobbing
viewtopic.php?f=74&t=15438&start=30#p132873
Things start to make sense. Let's say we decided to up abs weapons by 10%. That brings a brave 19 str trolloc up to a 20% chance to bash a 147 db set. But it also brings a brave 21 str master trolloc warrior up to 49% and a brave 19 str master warder warrior up to 62%! This is basically what we saw before and the dodgers complained almost constantly (especially about certain combo weapons!).One final thing I keep forgetting to say is that the general idea of changes has been to bring outliers closer together, so the game is easier to balance:
I think the solution is to follow through with what Elysia said earlier and compress the situation:
1) Remove berserk attack from fades and warders, if it was bad for warriors then it's even worse for warders.
2) Remove ob bonus on str above 19 (remove 10 ob from 21 str trollocs)
3) Remove 5% bash bonus to riding, increase maximum bash chance to 65% for everything
4) Remove 5 ob from level 6 ride and 3 from level 7 ride.
5) Change master bonus to +5 ob
6) Change warder bonus to +5 ob
7) Change warrior bonus to +3 ob
What would this do to the brave setups (zerk now doesn't have a non-linearity so it can be ignored imo):
Code: Select all
+----------------------------------------------------------+-----+-------------+--------------+
| Setup | OB | Bash Chance | Damage Round |
+----------------------------------------------------------+-----+-------------+--------------+
| Brave 19 Str Master Mounted Warder Warrior(Level 6 Ride) | 183 | 26 | 4.300457121 |
| Brave 19 Str Master Mounted Warder Hunter (Level 6 Ride) | 180 | 23 | 3.658818844 |
| Brave 19 Str Master Mounted Warrior (Level 7 ride) | 178 | 20 | 3.095165674 |
| Brave 21 Str Master Trolloc Warrior | 177 | 19 | 3.040638212 |
| Brave 19 Str Master Mounted Warrior (Level 6 ride) | 175 | 17 | 2.518918963 |
| Brave 21 Str Master Trolloc Hunter | 174 | 16 | 2.449997921 |
| Brave 19 Str Master Trolloc Hunter | 174 | 16 | 2.335759346 |
| Brave 19 Str Mounted Fade (Level 6 Ride) | 172 | 13 | 1.840606608 |
| Brave 19 Str Master Mounted Hunter (Level 6 Ride) | 172 | 13 | 1.840606608 |
| Brave 19 Str Trolloc Hunter | 169 | 10 | 1.238077277 |
+----------------------------------------------------------+-----+-------------+--------------+
With appropriate abs weapon changes this would make abs hunters more viable (increasing trackers??) and with the cap at 65% bash instead of 60% you'd see combo get effectively downed in comparison to dodge and abs while leaving the abs/dodge balance unaffected.
For example, here's the affect of adding 10 ob and 0.5 lbs to an eaxe in that situation:
Code: Select all
+----------------------------------------------------------+-----+-------------+--------------+
| Setup | OB | Bash Chance | Damage Round |
+----------------------------------------------------------+-----+-------------+--------------+
| Brave 19 Str Master Mounted Warder Warrior(Level 6 Ride) | 191 | 42 | 7.615245718 |
| Brave 19 Str Master Mounted Warder Hunter (Level 6 Ride) | 188 | 39 | 6.84524817 |
| Brave 19 Str Master Mounted Warrior (Level 7 ride) | 186 | 36 | 6.175472023 |
| Brave 21 Str Master Trolloc Warrior | 185 | 35 | 6.223098627 |
| Brave 19 Str Master Mounted Warrior (Level 6 ride) | 183 | 33 | 5.4582725 |
| Brave 21 Str Master Trolloc Hunter | 182 | 31 | 5.310567255 |
| Brave 19 Str Master Trolloc Hunter | 182 | 31 | 5.062945968 |
| Brave 19 Str Mounted Fade (Level 6 Ride) | 180 | 29 | 4.613293325 |
| Brave 19 Str Master Mounted Hunter (Level 6 Ride) | 180 | 29 | 4.613293325 |
| Brave 19 Str Trolloc Hunter | 177 | 25 | 3.498099878 |
+----------------------------------------------------------+-----+-------------+--------------+
Re: Warriors Need a (Slight?) Buff
If you're playing an abs warrior you're going to be relying on bash to deal consistent damage and this is where you're going wrong. There is no other offensive ability in game that even when you're successful, will at worst cause 0 damage and more than likely if against a dodger/comboer trigger an autowimpy flee to get the salt flowing 
I stopped playing abs/bash (DS only) when the weapon changes coupled with the current gimmicky warrior 'bonuses' rolled out and only use the cheesiest of setups available - troll rogue or gleamer/kick and my favourite - pb combo fencing blades/kick. I don't want warriors restored to the OP smoblords they were but I do want them to be viable and reliable damage dealing class when using an abs/bash set-up. When other classes can use bash more effectively than a warrior(tricksy FC's!) why even bother?
I stopped playing abs/bash (DS only) when the weapon changes coupled with the current gimmicky warrior 'bonuses' rolled out and only use the cheesiest of setups available - troll rogue or gleamer/kick and my favourite - pb combo fencing blades/kick. I don't want warriors restored to the OP smoblords they were but I do want them to be viable and reliable damage dealing class when using an abs/bash set-up. When other classes can use bash more effectively than a warrior(tricksy FC's!) why even bother?
Re: Warriors Need a (Slight?) Buff
Irons we have in the fire:
I maintain my position that bash is a bad skill, and I'm not sorry, damnit!
- Some changes to the values of postures are in the queue, although the effect of those is generally to lessen the gap between masters and !masters.
- We've discussed giving warriors and slight HP regen uptick (not to be cumulative with the warder one). So far no firm decisions have been made.
- Aureus is making ongoing weapons changes which I have paid zero attention to, if I'm honest, but the point is he's keeping an eye on it.
- Flash disapproves of warrior redux treating mobs and players differently; at some point we will have to change it in some fashion yet to be determined. This is not a discussion we've devoted much time to, currently.
I maintain my position that bash is a bad skill, and I'm not sorry, damnit!