Does anyone find the combatstyles have effects large enough to be useful?

If not, why not increase the effects until they are noticeable? This would both revitalize a neglected element of warrior combat and perhaps address some other issues with the class.

Defensive - May be the only one adequate right now, and is only useful against - other warriors. I would be glad of suggestions but don't have any myself at the moment.

Aggressive - Who would trade an extra 30% damage for doing 70% of normal wounds? Would that be enough to see the rebirth of damage warriors? This would be a change from the present stance, which trades off stancing for damage. Given stancing only affects other warriors, a significant damage buff for merely a stance penalty would have balance implications against other classes. Trading off against wounding is an attempt to even things out.

Concentrated - What about an extra 20% wounds for doing 80% of normal damage? Right now, wounding dominates damage, so the shift doesn't need to be as dramatic as with Aggressive.

Lightning - An extra .2 seconds faster in exchange for doing 80% of normal damage?

All of these numbers are just guesses as to what might be balanced. I hope that others feel free to throw out their own estimates of what would be too little, and what too much. I do think that any changes must ensure that the benefits are noticeable, and it would be nice if this were a way to add damage warriors back in.

These numbers are too big to be imbalanced. Maybe cut the bonus/penalty of each stance by half? That'd sound more balanced, but could still be enough.

Yes, a 10% wounding damage (for example) IS that big of an advantage.

I certainly wouldn't argue with cutting them down significantly. I aimed for larger numbers than are probably correct because right now the bonuses nearly aren't perceptible. As long as they end up adding a real element of strategy on the margin, I'd be happy. If they also somehow make damage warriors vaguely plausible in aggressive, that would a pleasant addition.

10% wounding would be large - that's a cosmic champion rune, effectively. Of course, with that AND a cosmic champion rune...

Anyone else have thoughts on the proper orders of magnitude? It's ok if the tradeoffs outweigh the upsides from a neutral assessment of all attributes - the point is to let a warrior focus on one area of combat at the expense of something else.

I was thinking about something along these lines:

Aggresive: +5% damage, -10% wounding

Concentrated: +5% wounding, -10% damage

Lightning: -0.2 waiting time, -5% wounding and damage

Defensive: -10% wounding and damage, 10% chance to avoid any attack

Defensive probably needs changing, Lightning could be adjusted to -0.15, or -0.1 balance time. Aggresive and Concentrated are in my opinion good. (Of course they should be good in my opinion, it's MY post after all!)

I'd bump Aggressive, but again, that's because I'm looking for a backdoor fix for damage warriors. 15/30?

Defensive... is that what it does, right now? I think it just adds to stancing right now. And while that seems to be effective enough - there is a rant or two on it if you search - I think anyone would gladly trade it for that 10%. Might be too much though - that's practically a rune of absorbtion. Better, in some ways.

Maybe leave it as is, with the stancing bonus, and have 5-10% off wounding and damage?

Cosmetically, I might add a 'balanced' combatstyle to be used instead of combatstyle none for when you don't want to use any.

To be honest, I think Cuber's version of things is much more realistic.

But does anyone have any good test stats on the current styles? How much difference do they make?

Retested it just now. Literally zero discernable difference between none, aggressive, and defensive. Lightning and concentrated both dealt 6% less damage, concentrated did 5% more wounds.

Test was on a warrior in fullplate, and base damage/wounds was 738/312.

Test with a different weapon produced the same results for none, aggressive, and defensive. Lightning and concentrated both dealt 11.5% less damage, and concentrated did 1% more wounds.

Test was on a warrior in fullplate, and base damage/wounds was 438/337.

Because the tests show different percentages, I submit that we are looking at flat amounts here.

That is, aggressive/defensive/none do NOTHING to damage or wounds dealt. Lightning and concentrated subtract the same flat amount from damage; concentrated adds a different flat amount to wounds.

Any flat addition would, as this one does, diminish into negligiblity very rapidly as strength and weapon quality rise.

So, Aiakon, in answer to your question - they make a material difference at low levels, and are utterly ineffective at high levels, except for the small balance bonus from lightning. And possibly the stance bonus from defensive. Also, it is not inconceivable that aggressive boosts hunting somehow, but not damage against others.

IPS Driver Error.

If I remember right, Ixion did tests on all these combat styles, and showed that they are pretty useless save for defensive which, unless they ninja nerfed it, was the best since it makes warriors using it, much harder to hit by other warriors, but it didn't do anything against say a cosmic/mage who of course would never miss.

Did you test for the speed increase on lightning, Vaerhon?

The speed increase if I remember right was something like .05 or .10 or something, it isn't anything that you would see a major difference with, but I cannot remember if that was before or after they said they did some changes to combatstyles. But lets check:




Ok so without combatstyle lightning you get 01.093-03.875 which would be : 2.782 seconds

And with combatstyle lightning you get 35.656-38.281 = 2.625
and another time is 47.015-49.609 = 2.594

This would avg to 2.6095

So basically, combatstyle lightning increases your speed by 0.1725, which isn't much. And if you are using combatstyle lightning aren't your attacks not as strong as when you are using concentrated? So you suffer for 0.17 on speed? I guess it is ok for bashing, but you aren't going to notice much of a difference. If it has penalties to using it, I would say give it a flat 0.5 sec increase.

@Ceren I did test it, but variable latency really hurts when trying to pin down times this small, and I didn't have much more than a guess that it was on the order of .1 seconds. Thankfully, Ixion stepped up with some data.

.5 seconds would be just huge. If lightning reliably gives .2 seconds off each swing, that's plenty. Let it drop damage and wounds by 5%, and save it for attempting mantakaya locks, beheading, and other times when speed is all that mattes. Going for double amputations - whatever.

Going back to Cuber's proposal, then, and fiddling with it -

Defensive - Keep the stance benefit (anyone want to test it to get an idea of how good it is right now?), drop wounding and damage 5-10%, depending on just how strong the stance benefit is. Use it to make warrior on warrior fights even slower and more strategic when in trouble.

Aggressive - 10% more damage, 20% less wounds. Use it for group fights, hunting, or damaging someone out. Is that enough to damage someone out under the right circumstances? Too much?

Concentrated - 5% more wounding, 10% less damage. Use it for at least some phase of most one on one fights, since even if damage warriors worked, they won't be damaging out other warriors very easily.

Lightning - Keep the .2 second swing decrease (or set decrease to .2 seconds, just in case), reduce damage and wounds by 10%.

Are any of these too strong? Do any non-warriors want to weigh in on what, exactly, 10% extra damage would mean to your character's hide? Ideally, it should elicit sincere concern but neither hysterical laughter nor stark terror.

Are any of these too weak? I think I would find each to provide noticeable differences, and be worth using in different tactical situations. And that's all the change I would want, really.

Yeah .5 sec may be too much, but hey we can all dream can't we. I think it should be quicker than the .17 it is now, since it makes damage and wounding less already and .17 isnt that much of a speed up. I say maybe .25 to .3 of a second with the wound/damage reduction it has now.

.25-.3 seconds isn't nuts, but right now lightning reduces damage by a flat amount, as best I can tell. Which makes the reduction nearly meaningless for a high strength race with a high damage weapon. Better to shift it to a percentage, so the choice has meaning for all warriors. Right now, lightning doesn't reduce wounds at all, and keeping that would be too much. If lightning doesn't reduce wounds, and does increase swing speed by .2-.3 seconds, what's the point of ever fighting with concentrated?

They should both have their uses in doing wound afflictions, but in different ways - use concentrated to build up wounds, and lightning to cash in on them.