Since Puissance was recently downgraded after the initial hysteria over its advantage for two handed weapon masters. I decided to do a few tests to see if it was truly now balanced. My test subject was Alger.

Alger's Armour Stats:

Fieldplate = Physical cutting: 83 Physical blunt: 86
Helm = Physical cutting: 86 Physical blunt: 83
Weapon Stats:

Morslade's Flails -

Damage: 132 Precision: 144 Speed: 199
Damage: 139 Precision: 127 Speed: 198

My Claymore -

Damage: 340 Precision: 325 Speed: 165
It has a Great Rune of the Jagged Lightning attached to it.

Testing:

Morslade:

Without Puissance -

Morslade swings a tormented spectre flail at you. You are thumped in the chest weakly.
Morslade swings a tormented spectre flail at you. Your knuckles are struck witha loud crack.

Total damage = 526

With Puissance -

Morslade swings a tormented spectre flail at you. You are cuffed lightly in the side of your face.
Morslade swings a tormented spectre flail at you. You are tapped in the stomach with little effect.

Total Damage = 891
Percentage Boost = 69.39%

Me:

Without Puissance -

Daevos swings a dragon-hilted claymore at you. The cut to your right leg leaves only a nick on your thigh.

Total Damage = 844

With Puissance -

Daevos swings a dragon-hilted claymore at you. The strike to your left arm barely cuts through the skin.

Total Damage = 922
Percentage Boost = 9.24%

Edit: Oh,. I forgot, Morslade had 13 strength at the time of the test. And I had 17.

Yeah, after the puissance downgrade, I noticed it was horrible as well. Against Kharvik, I normally took 400 damage, but with both Omen and Puissance, he only hit me for 900 damage, just barely doubled the damage. It is really sad that warriors finally had a reason to use our Trans Athletics skill, only to be nerfed so quickly.

And see, here I was about to write off the difference in poison effectiveness as a trade off...two handers could use things like puissance more effectively, but only got half the venom chances, or something.

Hopefully venoms will be addressed soon too

Actually, the damage I was doing with my axe (366/341/165) seems to fluctuate greatly, from 600 to 1200. When I was hitting Vesar, who is a mage with trans combat, I was doing only around 600 damage each hit. As a bonecrusher, one of my flails could do more than that.

Also Axlords no longer has coule/riposte, which is another big disadvantage when fighting other warriors.

Because of the recent bug with raze, I've been forced to use cleave more. Using it has changed my opinion a bit about the skill and I am now glad we have it. But I still think it shouldn't have a increased balance recovery time. It should be the same as a normal attack, with the actual attack part of the cleave doing half damage and wounds.

I also still think we need a true Lunge/Crush equivalent that does swings instead of jabs.

I think I like the puissance downgrade for two-handed. Honestly, even with that rune, damage is insane by them.

3586h, 2895m, 3888e, 0p, 17770en elrxkdb-
Daevos swings a dragon-hilted claymore at you. Daevos cuts your right leg,
striking a major artery which splurts blood in all directions.
outr yarrow
eat yarrow
/-- Parry Legs. PL/P7. --\\
2189h, 2895m, 3888e, 0p, 17770en elrxkdb- -1397h

That's with a 107/114 fullplate. Honestly, if it gets any better, even with the use of a trans skill, any other archetype besides those without putre or a fullplate/high cutting fieldplate will be decimated in a single hit.

Thats odd, since I did much less damage to Shiro and Alger. But then again, I did more damage than that with my broadswords since my average was about ly 1.5 against knights.

You say, "Tell me how much damage."
5861h, 3122m, 3371e, 10p elrx-
You swing a dragon-hilted claymore at Rafael. You cut his left bicep and blood freely flows down his arm.
5861h, 3122m, 3371e, 10p elr-
Rafael eats a sprig of marjoram.
5861h, 3122m, 3371e, 10p elr-
Sir Rafael Lenu, Compassion's Defender says, "1382."
5861h, 3122m, 3371e, 10p elr-
You have recovered balance on all limbs.
5861h, 3122m, 3371e, 10p elrx-
Rafael eats a sprig of chervil.
5861h, 3122m, 3371e, 10p elrx-
Rafael chants softly to himself, and his body momentarily becomes transparent, then solidifies and rebuilds itself.
5861h, 3122m, 3371e, 10p elrx-
With total concentration, you focus your next attack for a most puissant blow.
5861h, 3122m, 3371e, 5p lrx-
You have recovered equilibrium.
5861h, 3122m, 3371e, 5p elrx-
You swing a dragon-hilted claymore at Rafael. Your claymore cuts through the air, missing completely.
5861h, 3122m, 3371e, 5p elr-
You have recovered balance on all limbs.
5861h, 3122m, 3371e, 5p elrx-
You swing a dragon-hilted claymore at Rafael. You cut his right leg, striking a major artery which splurts blood in all directions.
Your blow was of puissant strength!
5861h, 3122m, 3371e, 5p elr-
Rafael eats a yarrow sprig.
5861h, 3122m, 3371e, 5p elr-
Rafael eats a yarrow sprig.
5861h, 3122m, 3371e, 5p elr-
Sir Rafael Lenu, Compassion's Defender says, "1217."

My Strength was at 19 at the time of the test.

Yes, but my point is that if puissance got any better it would desssstroy any other than those with putre or a good fullplate.

Is it only doubling the physical part? Maybe if you didn't have runes.

And my point is that damage skills like Puissance are extremely hard to balance. They can either be too good or too weak, and there is no real middle ground for them. The skill should be changed completely either into a more long term boost to damage or a wound damage modifier. Here was the idea the Ur'guard submitted for it in our last envoy report.

Puissance: Right now, this skill is considered by almost all warriors to be a useless skill, especially for one that is gained at transcendant. It should be changed to increase wound damage delivered for a period of time, instead of increasing damage for one hit.

I agree that the nature of puissance needs to change. Before this "horrible" downgrade..a guy like Torak prepares for battles, puts all defences up, is ready to fight, then they start fighting and...



BAM...

I'm sure Torak must have really enjoyed this fight, fair, interesting, taught him a lot, next time he's gonna do a lot better against!

..or not.

I agree with Daevos about the Lunge and Crush thing, and how cleave should have a faster recovery time. It was funny with one swing, I did an instant kill on him

I don't think pureblade should be about raw damage, it should be about raw wounding, thus amputating, crackelbow, kneecap and behead should be made much more easy.

Right now they're about impossible to ever pull off in a real fight, even with 400+ precision. Against a fullplate, you're never even going to get off anything but arteries, openchest and dysentry, good armour just negates wounding entirely.

Another note going from that, is that the armour code regarding wounds should be softened a great deal, weak armour needs to protect some more, strong armour some less.

Then to give a little more control, swings should hit one out of two limbs, instead of three limbs, otherwise it is far too random, all useful pureblade and axelord afflictions are given by swings.

Against someone with fieldplate and trans resilience, I think pureblade and axelord damage is fine, just the wounding isn't enough.

But still, once weaponsaura and forging runes are fixed to give the same boosts for axelords and pureblades than for BM's and BC's (+20 instead of +10), it'll look better.

470 damage claymore, anyone?

I've been thinking about it (but admittedly not in the realms using it for combat). I'm sort of dissapointed in a way by these specializations. The other archetypes skills are pretty drastically different, offering real distinctions between different choices and different utility. The weapon specializations seem MOSTLY aesthetic. Sure, it looks different to use a 2 handed sword instead of dual wielding. There are some differences, like I get half as many poison chances. The afflictions are a little different, but a good number of them aren't even just the same end result, but actually the same skill just copied from blademaster.

I guess there is already some variance built into the system, in that being 'a blademaster' doesn't specify whether you are focused on damage, wounds, speed, some combination, or whatever. But I can't help but think Pureblade and Axelord don't measure up in coolness, variance, or utility to psionics, dreamweaving, or astrology.

No offense to those who worked and are working on it...I do like it (I switched, after all). It just seems like a lot more of a superficial change than the other options you've presented other archetypes.

It seems poisons is behaving oddly with 2 handed weapons. When I tested earlier with Syntobis (an Axelord) I was struck 7 times in a row, no poison on 1st hit, 4 poisons coming off on the 2nd-5th strikes for 4 in a row, no poison on the 6th, and poison hits on the 7th.

I'm a bit disappointed at the new specializations as well, over half the afflictions were taken from Blademasters, the Transcendent abilities are, well, really crappy, (Decapitate is exactly the same as Judge, but at Trans instead of somewhere in Virt or Fabled skillrank, and Roundhouse is a joke, 5 powers to strike once at all of your enemies..wow), not to mention all the trade-offs they had to give up.

That being said, they are great, but compared to what the Mages and Guardians got for their new skillsets, these are awefully bland and seems mostly recycled.

PS- Don't zap me.

Decided to evaluate Pureblade more thoroughly in the form of a envoy report. Here is the initial work.

Pureblade
This is truly a innovative idea in IRE, where dual weapons is the staple. But the implementation was a little flawed in my opinion and that stems in large part of the skills in the set. Which are largely made up of Blademaster afflictions. Afflictions that are easily cured but were useful for Blademasters since they were able to deliver atleast two afflictions at the time most of the time. The only truly good afflictions in Pureblade right now for two handed weapons, are the three critical ones AmputateLeg, AmputateArm, and Behead. But they are critical wounds and thus hard to achieve.

Skill Change Suggestions
CollapseLungs: Basically reiterating a opinion I stated in the Ur'guard's last envoy report. But the requirement that your opponent have a puncturedlung before this affliction is even possible is especially troublesome for Pureblade specialists. Since they can only deal one wound at a time, and puncturedlung is extremely easy to cure. That requirement should be removed in Pureblade atleast.

LegTendon: In my study of the Pureblade skillset, I noticed that this affliction required only a heavy wound state instead of the critical wound that is required for Blademaster. That is definitely a step in the right direction. But the fact remains that this affliction is weak because it can be instantly cured by regeneration. It should be a delayed cure like damaged limbs.

Decapitate: I am thankful that the requirement that your target be prone before this skill could be utilized was removed. But I don't think it goes far enough when you compare this to the Celestine's Judge or even to Cleave of the other IRE games. For two reasons, one both those skills are not trans skills, two the supplemental skills of both the Celestines and the other Knights assist is making the skill possible to pull off. Namely, The Celestine angel's hindering attacks, and the other Knight's falcon which could knock people off balance. To counter this, I think the power cost should be lowered as well as the time necessary to successfully decapitate someone

New Skill Suggestions
Assault: In a burst of energy, you will surge forward to deliver a swift and accurate vertical slash to your opponent, overwhelming their defensive preparations such as parry and stances. This counts as a swing. Power cost: 3

Misc.

Change Suggestions

Two handed weapons: I've thought long and hard on how to balance the afflicting capabilities of two handers against one handers without changing most of the skills involved. And the best solution that occurs to me at this time other than making the venom afflicting of two handers 100%, would be to add a chance of stunning to every blow we deliver because of the greater force and weight that our weapons hit with.

A note about decapitate. Taken alone, it is superior to Celestine judgement since you can begin the attack without the person being in the room with you in case you want to gamble on the person stumbling into your insta-death sword.