Why not increase the lower bounds of wounding? Raise the tail a bit so to speak. Higher end wounding remains the same but lower end wounding increases.

I'm not a believer that the credit investment for warriors is its death warble.. I mean, I've spent a grand total of 550 credits on my Axe, it's by no means the best one out there:



I normally stay at about 19/17 str/dex depending on TF or not. Yet I still do decently against a decent range of people. Hell, I find more warrior woes from my 26Kbps internet connection then I do anything else, so maybe I'm biased >__>. It's like Sidd said, warrior combat is like playing a game of chess vs parry/stance/etc. Once you learn how someone prioritizes their stancing and parrying, it's nice how easily you can pick them apart.

The RNG can be a female dog at times, yeah I agree, but at least things like the dodge nerf and even the little bit of stun on OpenChest eases some of that pain. I will agree that getting demigod seems to be hands down a must. I've seen enough non-demi warriors who just can't get ANYWHERE to where I'm a believer on that point. That would be my only real gripe for Warriors, but then again, the ease of gaining Demigod gets easier all the time so even that's only a short lived gripe.


tl;dr Less worrying about the missrate, focus on something else. Think of how many missrate/rng reports never see the light of day. It's like spamming a Choke report every month, focus on other things instead, and I bet X class would come out better for it.

Focus

PB/AL

Syntax: Focus
Power: 2 (any)

This focused swing will avoid most of your opponent's combat defences, for example rebounding and stances, and it will greatly increase your chance of applying the most devastating affliction your target's body can be dealt. This counts as a swing.

Note: Since you are focusing your efforts to slow down your enemy, you will never be able to instantly kill your enemy with this attack.

BM/BC

Syntax: Focus
Power: 2 (any)

This focused swing will avoid most of your opponent's combat defences, for example rebounding and stances, and it will greatly increase your chance of applying the most devastating affliction your target's body can be dealt. This counts as a jab.

Note: Since you are focusing your efforts to slow down your enemy, you will never be able to instantly kill your enemy with this attack.

---

Power cost would be the same for 2-handers and 1-handers. Imagine a BM being guaranteed a double pinleg, as opposed to a PB landing a tendon back to back.

Wounding wouldn't be affected, simply the chance for landing a high-end affliction (of course following the appropriate wounding thresholds, e.g. PB wouldn't hit a tendon at medium wounds).

I thought my text wall sense was tingling.


Anyway:

My issue with things that force 1v1: The balancing of the game doesn't really support that. This would significantly favor certain archetypes/guilds/skill combinations more than others, as well as mean that stuff that necessitates either leaving the room or taking it in the face (inquisition, choke) has more implications than it currently does.

For example, my current set up is aimed mostly at helping a group. I liked the idea, especially after my knight time, and I've never particularly cared about getting my name on death sights at all. Even if its not the most effective thing in the world, it makes combat more attractive to me. If we created a set up where some ninjakari or researcher could force me in to a one v. one, that would seem... pretty diminished.


On the topic of knights:

At the end of the day, the fights that really matter happen in groups. Knights contribute a healthy amount to groups, with blocking, knockdowns, tackles, contributions from tertiaries (especially Night users and Trackers, possibly paradigmatics? (we'll see)) We see plently of kills in groups from knights as it is, since an opponent pinned by the gank train is usually easy to build deadly levels of wounds on quickly. I hate to be dismissive, but it often feels like many of the knight complaints can be boiled down to "I really wish we worked how monks work". And really, I can't blame them for that, monks routinely being seen as the most broken archetype.

That in mind, here's a potential solution regarding knight combat. It isn't perfect, but would help a bit:

Make wounding scale down in an exponential way based on the number of people in the room, to the point of being ineffective in group fights. This would create an incentive for knights to use damage weapons in group fights, as well as keeping them from being group fight death machines with rapid high end wounds. RP wise, this could be some sort of "combat press", the crowded fight not leaving room for precision strikes, meaning they can only hack away. Knights, of course, retain all the other group utility they bring to the table- movement control, a durable platform for tertiaries, etc.

In return for this, increase the amount of damage knights do in general (perhaps through weapon stats, if possible, since they are ultimately more fixed- if its done through strength, you can get a lot of stacking with race choice + every buff you can find). This would supplement the above group function, as well as alleviate some of the one vs. one issues.

Is there any chance of making bleed runes help bleed tics a bit more? From warriors that I'd spoken to while an AL and PB, bleed runes are a waste of good credits. Increase bleeding, increase mana usage which in turn would increase the frequency of sipping mana/health, which means people can't just apply and regen/scroll/sparkle through damage.

Liok's idea isn't a bad one, I'd gladly pay a power cost if it meant I could tilt the RNG towards giving the higher affliction if I meet the wounds criteria. A supplementary idea to his suggestion is would it be possible that if you use that attack, it guarantees an affliction period? You may not get that amputate you were looking for, but hey, something that required a cure of some variety happened. It would make the power cost a little bit easier for most folks to stomach.

Edit: Removed.

Edit: MOAR RUNES... is not the solution.

Oh, I wouldn't say that nothing can be done. It's just really difficult, given how many different things are out there that affect warriors and significantly affect DPS / WPS (I had a list of some of it earlier).

Things like:
1) Stance
2) Parry
3) Dodge (the acrobatics ability)
4) Rebounding
5) Rune of Absorption
6) Shield Rune
7) Rune of Gripping
8) Armour stats
9) Natural miss rate

and so on.

Taking a look at some of the things that have been added in to 'counter' warriors could take away a lot of the variables, leading to an easier time of balancing. The problem is that there are just so many in effect that really minor tweaks to any warrior formula can skew things greatly; if you're able to do wounds faster than they can cure, great. If not, you're out-of-luck.

Note that most of the things on that list are also RNG-based, too.

Though I saw that having combatstyles confer a specific percentage wounds/damage/whatever in an earlier post was not feasible, would it be possible to have combatstyles effect hit rate/aff proc rate/dodge rate?

Ie, concentrated makes affs more likely to proc (essentially a dex buff), aggressive would give you a chance to riposte on a dodge as opposed to a parry, one that acts provides what could be summed up as another dose of sharpness on a weapon (cumulative with the oil, further reducing miss rate), etc.

My apologies if I'm beating a dead horse Estarra, I'm just attempting to find solutions via modifying skills that exist as opposed to adding more skills. If that's not doable, would it then be possible to have...what would essentially be the same as kata mods available to add to maneuvers?


Edit: Silly mage, stances != combatstyles!
Edit2: Added one more idea to combatstyle effects.

I would weep tears of joy. Or alternatively, AdvancedManeuvers, wherein your maneuvers not only can be used to proc a lower wound over a higher one, but instead can be used to actually increase the odds of a higher aff proc'ing (if the RNG hits one level below it as well).

For instance, if you have the wounds to amputate, but the RNG only falls into the tendon category, using an advanced maneuver with only amputate would proc it. However lower wound categories (lacerate, etc) wouldn't. It would slant the RNG just a little in favor of warriors again.

This still doesn't solve the problem wherein without demi+runes you simply can't build wounds on a top tier opponent (requires both, not either-or, unless you have multiple mitigating factors like Forging runes, racials, Moon/Night weapon stat increases, to compensate). Don't know how that can be fixed beyond changing things that, as previously said, will really screw up the sudden and vast jump between viable fully min-maxed endgame warriors and non-viable everyone else warriors.

Random ideas:

To balance group combat: When a warrior hits someone they become numbed to other warriors and take fewer wounds for the next x seconds. This would need heavy tweaking of course in terms of the wound reduction because I don't think warrior stack is that much worse than damage stacking (1.9k Sidd wasps ) so I don't think the reduction would actually need to be that much.

To buff solo warriors: (I think I may have stolen this from someone but I can't remember) feint 3p for 1h 6p for 2h:

FEINT

Through misdirection of one's parry you can cause an opponent to move in to a vulnerable position bypassing their parry. The greater attention that they have paid to parrying the targeted part the more wounds are inflicted, and the less attention they have paid greatly increases the chance for this attack to miss. This counts as a swing.

This may be insanely overpowered or underpowered and I can't decide which but I like it because it's a finesse sort of move. You would have to be paying quite a bit of attention to their stance and parry to use it at all and it'd allow you to punish people who overly prioritze their head for example. I'm not so much hoping that this gets implemented but rather that it inspires a better idea from someone else.

Gotta remember though, it's necessary to balance around Demi/Arties else things get really out of whack, really fast.

And, to clarify my previous idea about maneuvers and mods, I was curious if it would be possible to add two specific styles of mods to them, positive and negative. A positive mod would be a buff, to damage, wounds, aff rate, poison aff rate, chance to avoid dodge, etc. A negative mod would be the opposite, it would reduce the amount of damage/wounds/etc. Mods have to be applied at a 1:1 ratio, ie I can have damage and wounds buff, but I take a hit on aff rate and poison aff rate.

All the things that warriors hate (stance, parry, dodge, lack of aff, etc) could be mitigated at a cost that the warrior determines for themselves. Allows for a lot more options in combat (which I think is a good thing) and each one can be adjusted by itself if it proves too strong.

Edit: Redacted stupid idea. To get an idea of stupid it is...

Oh, and having a mod that gives you a chance (quite small, I should thing) to land an affliction one level higher than the person's current wound level (possibly bar head from this, since behead at heavy sounds like a baaaaad idea just waiting to be abused).

(Heavy wound arm amputates don't sound much better)

Solution to the huge issue with the vast gulf between demi+artis and everyone else? Lower the cost of the weapon runes to something more appropriate to a -required- part of the archetype. It shouldn't cost 4.6Kcr for full runes and the oh so necessary pliers, on top of all your skills. That's . Transing Knighthood spec in the first place costs less than 200cr with the conversion bonus. The requirement of spending at least 15 -times- what it took to trans in order to get the runes you need (not including pliers) in order to make that skill viable? That really upsets me.

Demigod is a whole other thing, and is very achievable if you're determined and focused.
ie.

Played : 5 days, 15 hours, and 42 minutes
Level : 97 (40.23%)


Edit: That's not what I meant by the maneuver thing. It would require Critical wounds to pull off the amputate. It would just make the actual RNG roll for that swing proc your amputate if it landed in either heavy or crit. If you didn't have crit wounds, then the roll landing in heavy wouldn't do anything.

I'd also like weapon runes to be aura based jewel runes and not attached but with the pliers released I don't think that's going to happen. It's slightly unfair that monks weapon runes benefit their hunting and warriors do not (unless they are so rich that they can afford another set of stat runes).

(Don't run away Estarra!)

Very true Xenthos. I hadn't thought about the ramifications of it. Perhaps bar all critical wounds from it then?

Edit: Ah, okay, I misunderstood Phant's idea. Ignore what I'd put about the jump up a step mod.

This. I thought of something like this, though it was more concerned with multiple warriors hitting the same limb. I think that making warriors stack less in groups would leave more room to expand elsewhere.

Wouldn't be very helpful. I can build to heavy wounds on about everyone I've fought (barring Ceana, a Tae'dae Moonie fullplated Serenguard with a parrying system that prevents successive hits) pretty easily. The issue is building to crit (and scoring a crit wound you're lookin' for) which is a whole different monster.

Please note that what lilija thought I meant, was not in fact what was said. (And her edit to that fact.)

Edit: And I think a big part of what I'm pissed about is that the runes needed to make Knighthood viable (the runes we balance around having) cost at least FIFTEEN TIMES what the skill itself does. That's ridiculous. Having to pay for a skill fifteen more times over in order to compete? What. The. Hell.

Honestly the above fact is one of the biggest reasons for so many of the complaints that I have heard. At Demi+Artis, warriors are pretty balanced. The problem is that the sheer insane pricetag on getting there means that most players haven't a prayer of reaching that point until YEARS from now, all to reach the point that their archetype is -balanced - around. It's not the point where they're now arti'd out and uberpowered or anything approaching that. It's the cost of being the equal of any other class.

I'll vouch for the fact that the last part of the above post merits attention.

Sorry but you did exactly that elsewhere. You released monks, who can give warrior afflictions (some of the best ones too which are CRITICAL wounds for warriors) with certainty at momentum.