The test server was open for days and I continually asked people if they were happy with the numbers.

Unfortunately, strengths impact is way too much at the moment and it would be nice if that could be reduced in favour of weapon stats meaning more. It was too far one way before the last adjustment and now it's too far the other way.

There were only like, two people there (myself and one other, Desitrus I think) when we were working on the combat style things, and we were only really testing combat style impact. We weren't looking at the behind-the-scene strength impact because that wasn't what we were testing. That was more of an aside, that turned out to be a massive issue once we could actually see it in practice.

So, as I said, if the issue is the combatstyles-- we can remove, and replace them with something else.

I did some testing with Ceren on the test server, I noticed the STR impact and prec worthlessness before it was even put into the actual game.

The formulas were adjusted so you should have been testing everything. I'm pretty sure that was clear. Anyway, the point was that the last change wasn't dumped on players but rather we went to great lengths to get feedback from warriors to make sure it was what was wanted.

What would you replace combat styles with?

Alas, revamping forging is looking more and more like something that can't be done in a month!

I don't recall anyone saying anything.

I wasn't an envoy and I think Ceren did say something about it a long while back.

That's so he could get the jump on all the other warriors and make everyone else cry

Alas, you caught me. It worked though. Back to being serious though, again I'm fairly certain Ceren said something and I know I did some testing with Desitrus on this subject.

Mental note: Vathael can no longer test anything.

I was kidding. =\\ I was pretty miffed about the change to be honest with you because the few hundred dollars I spent on my scimitars was now worthless.

The first step of it wasn't that, the first step was just a couple of envoys on the test server checking it out as the numbers were tweaked and we could see how the things were working ("Hey, too good! Hmm... back to being worthless..."), that kind of thing. That's the part I'm talking about and the part I signed off on. I believe I had some issues with the open test server for testing it (forget what at this point). But combat styles could be replaced with something that always gives a fixed bonus, or could not even be really related to combat at all (if the formula is being tweaked yet again, maybe it's better to just not have to worry about these things that mess around with it even more).

Perhaps something like Defensive gives a 5% dodge rate (PC and NPC), concentrated reducing the chance you can miss, etc. Still have to pick just one.

Really, you should mostly just be talking with Desi and a few others.

Though really:

• The randomness needs to go, first and foremost. It needs to be removed. Just kill it forever now, or it will just find its way back.
• People have the same base weapons now. Variety is an illusion. People will always find the optimal solution. Esoteric rules, conditions, and radnomness don't change this, they just frustrate the crap out of people. This is a "bad thing".
• Change comes with cost. The forging issue can be largely killed with the base premises of stat caps, but people losing their great stuff is always going to create dissent. Yet, if the problem is to be solved, it needs to be done.

Lemme summarize. Rather than revamping forging, this has turned into more of a backdoor to redo the warrior formulas and replace half the skills in general knighthood? Just asking!

Yup!

Needs doing

Well, I think there are a lot of things that need looked at with warriors and the change to weapon stats is what initiated the talk about how warrior stats don't mean anything and combatstyles, etc. I only use combatstyle aggressive since it's the only one that isn't completely terrible offensively. Sure forging needs fixed but for anyone to actually forge for anything besides max speed weapons, prec/damage stats would have to mean something again. Getting into that, though, would likely stir up the whole precision means way too much I'm getting beheaded in a few attacks or 5k damage combos from max damage weapons/elementals with ibululu like before which inspired the whole combatstyle revamp.

I predicted this in the other thread, that's half the problem with forging is the way stats work. The other half is the random factor and for those of us who cannot afford weapon runes, the changes you're proposing seem like it would make it harder for us to be viable combatants.

Redoing forging requires redoing the Knight formula.

If redoing the Knight formula is easier without having the combat styles, then that is an option. If not, they don't need to be replaced.

Does forging have to be revamped so completely? Can something less impactful be done? Maybe keep the option to use steel and modify weapons stat by stat with the cap being the total stats you got out of the forge?

I've heard this from others and I, myself, think that warriors are the most balanced right now as opposed to how they were before. I just think that the bottom needs to come up a little bit without raising the top end to bring the non-demi/non-arties up to par.