Recent content by Chaoslian

MP_Erik said:

Can it be that the problem is not just the spear but stabbing in general is weak? Swinging your weapon gives you a cone of almost 180° where you deal effective damage; stabbing gives you just one line and that with extra restrictions to your minimum range. I've recently tried to stab someone with a sword and it seems just not worth it.
I also find it quite strange that the same weapon deals 40dmg if you stab it with 2 hands and 150dmg if you throw it with one hand. (Though I quite like that they buffed throwing weapons. In Warband they were always quite useless.)

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Yes, thats one reason, why glancing feels so inconsistent. Not only that you have this "restricted line" you mentioned, this also changes with the length of the spear you use.

There are arguments for not changing spears that i don't understand. Please keep in mind, that i talk about 2h spears. Spear and shield is mostly okay, besides of glancing to easy

Spears are good as support weapons
Well, they are, if you are in a 2vs1 sitatuation. And balancing a weapon on 2vs1 doesn't seem right to me.
If you are in a 2vs2 fight, you can usually have 1 stab at your buddys opponent, until you will get facehugged. People are not keeping on distance, and wait until you stab them...
So you have this first stab, and after that, you're useless, as soon as someone is decent in blocking or brings a shield.

Spears are used in skirmish
Are there really people, that play skirmish with a 2h spear? I can't really imagine that. 2h weapons needed a shield to be able to play skirmish, cause there were useless. And for some reasons, spears a capable of a fightm though you can just attack from 2 directions, have to maintain disctance and doing lower damage, than a 1h sword? Compare it directly to 2h weapons. The only "advantage" is the extended range. And this range is not even extended, it's shifted, cause you lose this range on the other side in close combat. A 2h weapon is faster, can hit easier because of swings, does more damage, can fight close quarter, can use feints, has 4 attack directions AND has crushtrough. So why 2h needed a buff to be able to compete and spears do not?

Spears vs cav
In my opinion, spears don't need a buff against cav. They need a chance to fight back. I have absoluty no problems with killing cav, but i also use the spear as main weapon.

Side swings
In my opinion, this is really needed. Those swings don't need to do much damage, it's mostly for mixing things up, and gaining some space in close combat. For me, it would be even enough, if they wouldn't do damage, but pushing the enemy a bit back so you can gain some space

Hit boxes of shields
One big problem i see with spears are the extended hitboxes of shields. I don't know how often i stabbed someone from the side on a part, that was clearly not covered by a shield, and i was still blocked.

For what i'm seeing, spears are not used by people. At least not in TDM or siege, i had whole games there withouth seeing a 2h spear. Very few play with shield and spear, but compared to all other weapons...

This was discussed in a varity of threads. Unfortunately, TW stated that they are happy with spears currently and don't plan to change them.
Spears were op in beta, and now a big part of this community seems to be scared, that there will be a spear meta, if TW decides to buff them.

Aprikosenmann said:

I don't know if we are talking about the same thing.
Spears are in a good spot yes, but most infantry cannot spawn them anymore.
Long Spears is what most Inf get and the Long Spear is anything but "useful in melee mostly as a support weapon"


This is more or less the truth when you talk about long spears I think. Its not worth to spawn the ultimate Cav-counter when you can never hold it in hand and even if you keep away from the fight to hold it the cav will not ride into you.

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exactly this. Have the ones that say spears are allright tried playing with 2h spear? It's so easy to counter, that it's just not worth the effort.

also, you are not good against cav, you are good against horses. Thats a difference.

On Squirmish:
I don't play skirmish, therefore i don't know. Are there really people that play spear without shield?

Can we please get an information, what will be done about spears?
Nobody plays this weapon on foot because of various reasons. Me and some other people already opened threads about this
(by example https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/1-5-spear-combat.429482/#post-9517259 or https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/fix-pikes-lances-spears.425701/page-2#post-9491048 or https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...mited-compared-to-other-weapons.424227/page-2)
but there was never an answer from tw.

There is basically nobody playing a 2h spear, and very few that play with shield and spear. I had whole siege and tdm games without seeing a single spear. If you plan to keep this weapon as a horsestopper only, then please tell us at least, so we can switch to another weapon.

Me and some other players already created various threads about this, and were completly ignored from TW. (by example https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/fix-pikes-lances-spears.425701/)
The main problem seems to be that spears were OP in beta and were downgraded to a horsestopper for "balancing".

The idea that spears have to maintain distance doesnt work (at least not how its currently implemented). The enemy just needs to hold up a shield until they are so close, you can't hit them anymore because of glancing. Even if you manage to kick them, that doesn't really help you, cause all they need to do is blocking and facehugging again.
In my opinion, thats also the reason nobody plays with spears. Nobody wants to be just a horsestopper. Nobody wants a weapon with wich you have to gamble with every 2nd hit.

After some testing with a 2H spear, i can say, it got slightly better. At least somehow...
The stabs now feel way better than before. At least most of the times. Sometimes they are slower than other times. But that could also be the performance of the beta servers. Sometimes they seem a bit laggy.

Though stabs feel now much better, the core problems of the spear where not touched.
- You still glance to often. Bottom attack is mostly okay, but the top attack seems to need more range than the bottom attack, and is glancing therefore more often. So you have to rely on you bottom attack in cqc.
- Only 2 attack directions, making this weapon super easy to block. As soon as someone comes in, that is decent in blocking or brings a shield, your basically useless.

bracing is a nice to have, but i doubt, that this will help to get more people into spears. It only works with pikes ect, and nobody will run around with them, cause you can't really fight infantery with it. It doesn't help, that TD is the only mode where this could be slightly relevant. In siege, cav is not really important, in squirmish nobody will charge into a braced pike. I Never play captain, so i can't say much about there.

What i really don't like is the increased swingspead of the 2H weapons. Some of them are now so fast, that you can't stab between their hits, even if you parried the hit. 2H weapons were actually a target, you had good chances against. But with this swing speed and crushtrough...

I have to say, the menavilion feels great currently.
I still want swings on spears (2H). Make them a bit faster, and take away that absurd damage. If swings are not a problem for menavilion, why are they for spears?

Footbeard said:

This thread makes me sad at how many good points there are here. The SP and MP experiences should feel the same and should feel good. Currently MP feels pretty lackluster for a fair few reasons but I think the main reason (excluding exacerbated block delay) is the movement speed. SP feels responsive and snappy, MP does feel a lil like treacle or molasses.

I know it's somewhat controversial to suggest sprinting in M & B but hear this out. The sprint key still serves as zoom if you have a projectile weapon equipped and has <x> cooldown after switching to melee. Melee characters have a sprint function, unbound by stamina, that is faster than max runspeed but slower than horse movement. This would allow for melee units to catch kiting archer units. It would be a good idea to restrict actions possible during sprint (crouch, interact, kick, pickup, draw/sheathe)

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Though i don't think that this will happen, i really like the idea. Would make playing as infanterist a bit more interessting

+1 for reflecting damage. Punishes the right ones and hopefully the constant 1vs5 would stop

Yeah, thats why i said, shields should block where they are in melee. As far as i know there a is a difference if you attack with a projectile or a melee attack. Projectile blocking is assisted with a "magnetic" hitbox. You can even see this sometimes in first person.

Therefore, it would be possible to lower the shield hitbox in melee, without lowering the protection against archers.
And yes, hitboxes of shields are way bigger than the shield. You can test that best with a spear (or any other stab).

I think the problem is not the shield HP directly but that it's pretty hard to get around shields for 2 reasons.
1) shields are to big to be fun in melee. But you need these big shields against archers, or it will be too easy for them, to shoot you.
2) shields are blocking a bigger area than they should (in melee). Often, you hit a clearly non covered part, and the hit is still blocked. In my opinion, shields should just block, where they are in melee.

Rangah said:

I disagree with this part.

The same way swords aren't horse stoppers - but can hurt them (well, not QUITE at the moment, but in theory), spears aren't a main weapon against other infantry - but can still hurt them. Spears by their nature aren't that viable as main weapons, due to them having only 2 attack directions and thus, relatively easy to counter. However, they are still an excellent support weapon in Xv1 situations and groupfights.

Arguably, in the hands of a skilled player, they can even be considered to be too strong, due to them being capable of dealing damage at the very start of their animation and just generally spammable if used well. Granted, in their current state they can be quite unpredictable and do damage when you don't expect them to, but bounce when you do. With practice though, spear+shield becomes an excellent combo for groupfights + anti cav (also, at the moment, not QUITE, but eh). Which, imo, is as it should be.

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Why? In real life, spears ARE viable main weapon. In this Game no other weapon does have that many restrictions.
- 2 attack directions, so easy to block
- If the enemy is to close, you bounce. this also varies if you use the top attack or the bottom attack
- sometimes you bounce where you shouldn't and vice versa
- The release is very slow.
- stabs are way harder to land, than swings.
- Because of these points: If packet loss comes in, good luck. Now every hit is gambling.
- Because of this points, feinting is useless because you give your enemy more time to close the gap again. You will bounce and eat the hit
- Shield can block both spear attack directions with a left or right block

and even if you manage all of that, you are doing less damage, than a One handed weapon. Compare that directly to a 2H Weapon. All this, just for 30cm reach, that you lose on the other side? This isn't event remotly balanced.

Also keep in mind, that we talk about grabbing a spear with 2H. Shield and spear is halfway decent. The only thing that has to change there is the minimum required range, and this weird release.

If spears keep like that, they will not be used. How many 2H spear users did you see in your last games? And how many of them could do anything, as soon as you enganged? Hell i have a faible for spears, and even i don't want to play them anymore. Why should anyone, whos not into spears, choose it, if he has to deal with all of this?

You are right, cav is actually too strong. But with my post, i wanted to show another problem.

I saw a lot of post, that spears should be buffed against cav only. But it's not done with that alone.
As long, als the spear is not a full reliable main weapon (and it's not currently), there will be to few people to stop them.
You need people, that are already running around with a spear. Just switching to it as soon as you see cav doesnt work most of the time.
If you let people decide between "i can be usefull against Infantry", and "i can stop a horse", they will mostly decide to pick the first one.
Also if you kill the horse, you still have to kill the rider. If you are now in a heavy disadvantage against that rider, it's pretty disencouraging.
This job simply has to be made attractive.
Spears shouldnt be just horse stoppers.

I wanted to up this thread, in hope, that it's considered in the next patch.
Spear users are currently rare, because with all this problems, they are not fun to use.
There are some spear and shield users but i see less and less.
2H spear is nearly nonexistent.

Thats also one of the reasons cav seems so overwhelming. There is simply no one to stop them.