Pretty much what it says above. I was thinking that, since stances are being added in CotW, at least according to some of the alpha testers, this might be a good way to lay the melee balance issues to rest (haha). So much of the melee balance debate revolves around dual wielding, it might just be simplest to make the Dual Wielding bonuses dependent on your being in a stance, and the weapon skill bonuses likewise. Since all stances are mutual exclusive, you could only dual wield by sacrificing the benefits of your weapon skill. This opens up some room to push the power of weapon skills without unbalancing dual wield, while still allowing dual wield to be powerful. It also changes the play style of dual wield versus skilled weapon play, since skilled users will want to craft the best weapons they can while dual wielders will be content with anything they can scavenge, since they have no specific skills to worry about filling. Add some more powerful weapon crafting recipes, particularly ones that don't require tinkering, and push the individual weapon skills and sword and board might be a little more viable than it is now. Of course, evil chest weapons go back to the forefront of melee balance issues, but at least we won't have as much griping about dual wield. Hopefully. Also, if this is done, I'd like to see a separate place to keep track of stances, maybe something down by the character portrait, 'cause the buff list can get really cluttered without stances there. If every warrior has to keep track of one, its just one more thing eating up the left side of your screen...
We had a debate about balance and stances among the alpha testers, and determined that the only way to make stances work out balance-wise is to have each skill's stances be independent of the others'. So right now you can have Dagger Sneak-Crit Stance and Polearm Massive Damage Stance active both at the same time -- because otherwise each successive weapon skill you took would be less and less valuable. So while your suggestion is a good one, it's based on mechanics that don't actually exist anywhere. Sorry! If it helps, I can tell you that as of the latest alpha build, Dual Wield only gives you 1.5x your weapon skills' bonuses if you dual wield two of the same weapon. So that should help. CoE weapons are also being nerfed in some sort of evil fashion that Nicholas has hinted at but I haven't seen...I gather they're getting either stat penalties or they have evil anti-player procs on them. Maybe both.
Aw... I had been under the impression that stances were mutually exclusive, a la Kung Fu. u_u Well, it was a thought. A nerf for DW is something, at least. And all weapon skills are getting a stance, right? That won't be effected by DW at all?
Well, we haven't seen the core changes, so we don't know yet, but my assumption is that yes, all weapons will have stances. Also, David has hinted at some form of XML being added that prevents skills from being activated if you don't have the appropriate equipment equipped, so that might change the game a bit (hello, Shield Mastery!) -- but he hasn't specifically said that that code will make it into the CotW release.
I really hope the aforementioned Shield Bearer-related code changes make it into CoW. I also hope similar changes are made to Master of Arms. I feel as though as long as dual wielding bonuses are only applied when using two weapons, it's fine as is. The other nerfs ought to address its power quite nicely. By the way, I've noticed that some Sword tooltips say that abilities scale off of , and yet dredmorpedia states Overhau scales off of Burliness. scaling precludes use of swords in most warrior builds due to armor. Will this be changed with the addition of Daggers, or will Swords remain a Rogue skill? I'd like to see swords as something that'd work for both warriors and Rogues, so maybe scaling off of or something else would work better.
Different abilities in the skills can scale to different things. And I fail to understand your desire. Swords are just one weapon type. No reason exists to make them the best or negate the negatives that have been carefully balanced over time. Swords are good enough as they are.
Different abilities in the skills can scale to different things. And I fail to understand your desire. Swords are just one weapon type. No reason exists to make them the best or negate the negatives that have been carefully balanced over time. Swords are good enough as they are. *Edit* Something really ugly happened when I posted the reply here. See the image below. Each is noted as #10 in the thread, yet I only clicked post once. I am leaving things as they are for a minute to see what happens.
Wasn't the change in scaling instituted last patch? I'm not asking for them to be the best. I just like using them in warrior builds.
Code: <spell name="Liechtenauer's Overhau" downtime="5" type="adjacent" icon="skills/warrior/swordplay1_32.png" > <description text="You have a chance to strike your enemies with Teutonic Might! Hits one enemy very hard. Scales to Nimbleness."/> <effect type="damage" piercing="1" piercingF="0.25" bleed="1" primaryScale="0" /> <anim sprite="sprites/sfx/fleshbore/fleshbore" frames="7" firstframe="0" sfx="fleshbore" framerate="100" centerEffect="0"/> </spell> <spell name="Thibault's Trompement" downtime="9" type="template" templateID="03" anchored="1" icon="skills/warrior/swordplay2_32.png" attack="1"> <description text="Why go around when you can attack *through* your foe? This attack strikes your enemy and anyone standing behind them. Scales to Nimbleness."/> <effect type="damage" slashing="2" slashingF="0.25" piercing="2" primaryScale="2" /> <anim sprite="sprites/sfx/impact_piercing/impact_piercing" frames="3" sfx="impact" framerate="100" centerEffect="0"/> </spell> The flavor text of each says , yet they use different scales... One is clearly wrong. I will update this in a moment after I look up what those actually mean. Overhau scales to .
That's what I thought. Trompement still scales on though, as well as . Some odd scaling there, imo. But, I'm not very keen on balance. I'd like to point out that this is nothing more than a desire and if others see it as not worth it/harmful to balance, I'm not going to argue very insistently.
