I thought I'd find out opinions on the Combat skillset. Are stances for combat proving to be useful to people? Or are stances more or less pretty useless in combat? Please post your thoughts.

Most fights don't last long enough to even consider using them. I wager they would be good in versus combat but I rarely even think of using them personally.

I have yet to use them except in testing. The fact that you lose the stance when you walk has something to do with that I believe

I bet people will start using them often enough after they've been annihilated by knights some more .

My combat is too low for me to ever used it to know.

I did use the knighthood stances, but I found aggressive to be more effective while hunting then concentrated.
I was fabled Bonecruser and missed alot with 2 master morningstars.

I've tried the legs stance once or twice, but you can't move around without losing your stance. It may become more useful after I work out a script for auto-stancing (kinda like auto-holding-your-breath in Achaea). Given the abilities in other skills compared to Combat and the stances, I think Combat may be the last skill I'll ever learn.

Fairly useless, but I'll admit, I haven't extensively tested them out. It'd be nice not to lose that stance when you move.

I'd basically echo what is said here. Stances don't seem to have much effect, and are lost when you move.

On that point: it is quite possible to move and maintain a stance, just ask any person who does any martial art (even 'soft' ones like Tai Chi).

Maybe, after moving to a new location, you only have to wait 3 seconds and all your previous stances come back again?

Well, not all stances can be maintained when walking. Er, real ones, that is.
But yeah, most can. On the other hand, it doesn't take balance, so it's not really too much of a problem, is it?

If you were responding to my idea - I know stances can't, in real life, be kept while walking. Which is why it would take 3 seconds after entering a new room for your stances to return. That would happen automatically in real life if you were on the ball.

Good idea.

Well, I was actually responding to Hiriako. I'm not exactly a master martial artist (quiet Nika) but most of the stances I do can be maintained while moving. It certainly doesn't take 3 seconds to get into them.

This problem was brought up in Beta when stances took balance to go into. Now, to enter a stance you retain balance still, so it is VERY simple to have a reflex that puts your stance up when moving. I use it all the time and it works fine

Stances are absolutely critical to fighting well.

I found they reduced very little if any damage, and I took maybe 10 less points of body part damage (when I was being hit for 50 body part damage.) I'll have to test it specifically, that was just a passing observation

Ethelon,
I suppose I only remembered the beta version.


On a side note, for someone that doesn't use them much, what is the best stance, or most effective against who?

I only use two of the combatstyles - aggressive when I am using my broads and lightning when I am using my rapiers, normally because I want the extra wounding capability when I am slower and when I have my rapiers all I want to do is load up on poisons faster. The stances I will eventually use properly as I finish building a small script to be able to change between em depending on what im doing.

Edit: Deleted because I skimmed rather then actually reading what someone said.

You realize that stances does not equal combatstyles, right?