Your example of archers being strong is a larger group of them shooting down at shieldless infantry charging at them uphill at extremely close range with the second strongest bow shown so far?Varrak 说:https://youtu.be/L5o2fn64OdQ?t=340
Archers look pretty strong to me. They massacred a group of men within seconds.
You can't even see how many arrows are in the rest.
Well I play all 3 classes quite regularly, but mostly archer competitively. Warband archers definitely shoot faster in one animation than what these Bannerlord archers do in two. The extra time comes in how long it takes to pull the arrow out of the quiver and nock it. In warband, the arrow is pulled out of the quiver and nocked faster.KhergitLancer80 说:
It has already been confirmed that players deal double damage to bots in captains mode. So really, that shot would normally do 23-24 damage, and considering units have around 100-150 hp now, that's pretty low, especially for such a short distance shot. As I said, archery damage seems proportionally low. I see cav dealing massive damage in general and infantry dealing massive damage to cav with spears. That's great and all, but why does archery do so little in comparison?KhergitLancer80 说:
As mentioned many times throughout all these similar discussions, realism is not something to base balance on. A horse that is immune to arrows is a horrible game concept. A horse that is close to immune to anything shouldn't even be in multiplayer. I think it's important that every individual class has a viable way to defeat another on its own; teamwork to be left as a way to make killing much more efficient, not an absolute necessity.KhergitLancer80 说:
I don't know what you are seeing, but what I saw between 1:00 and 1:23 was a body shot that did 27 damage at x2 damage (so really 13-14 damage normally), a headshot that did 93 damage at x2 damage and another headshot that did 81 at x2 (so normally those headshots don't even deal half of a unit's health), and the final body shot that only does 30 damage at x2 damage (so really 15 damage normally.) And then at 1:30 a 36 damage to a horse that is really only 18 damage regularly which is probably only like 1/9 of that horses total health, and it wasn't even armored. Again, this is absolutely pathetic damage compared to the damage cav and inf have been dishing out.KhergitLancer80 说:
The competitive standard is still 8v8.578 说:
I think ranged weapons are, for the most part, working just fine in the competitive scene. The only concern related to "ranged weapons" that was been discussed recently is nord cav being able to drop free javelins for infantry that can keep them for free if they survive until the next round. Long story short, the strongest infantry in the game also having a viable short-medium ranged weapon for free is a bit too strong.
If you want to know what changes I'd personally make to ranged weapons, here you go:
- I think bows such as the short bow and nomad bow could use some slight speed reductions. It can be very tedious for infantry to do anything when they have an archer with a bow with a speed rating of 97 barraging them with arrows. I think the sweet spot in warband for bows is a speed rating of 89, one point below the khergit bow and one point above the strong bow.
- I think all bows should have roughly same speed rating (ex. Long Bow and War Bow at 88, Strong Bow and Khergit bow at 89, Nomad Bow and Short Bow at 90) the only difference between them should be weight and damage. The higher the damage, the more the bow should weigh and cost. The reason Long Bows and War Bows rarely get used is because they're simply too slow. Archers with faster bows have a big advantage over them, and they are too slow to do anything against cav that constantly bump them down, turn around and bump them down again before they can release an arrow to do any kind of damage.
- I think shield penetration from crossbows should be removed from multiplayer. I think it's pretty lame that bolts can pierce straight through some of the lower end shields. If a shield visually blocks a shot, it should block the shot. That being said, I also think the magical barrier around shields should be removed and greater shield control should be given to infantry so they can manually block a much larger range, including 90 degrees upwards to block xbows that try to jump over infantry to shoot over the maximum shield height coverage, and the ability to completely cover their feet to prevent foot shots if they predict it or see it coming.
- The throwing weapon skill requirements should all be dropped to 1 so all infantry can throw back any throwing weapons that had been thrown at them. I find it pretty odd that most infantry can't even pick up heavy throwing axes.
- Crossbows should lose more accuracy during movement and should take a little longer to aim accurately again. This is mainly to prevent them from being fairly accurate while jumping over objects, or peaking around corners to take quick accurate shots and get back to cover so quickly.
But as I've said many times now, you can't implement these things without nerfing cav at the same time or you really mess with the balance of the game. Archers aren't at the top of the food chain in warband, cavalry are. The only thing archers have going for them is an effective long range attack. They are the worst at melee, they have the lowest health, they have the lowest mobility, they have the worst armor selections, they have the worst melee weapon selection, etc. They literally have nothing other than an effective long ranged attack. Cavalry on the other hand, have the highest mobility in the game, they have the highest damage output in the game (thanks to speed bonuses), they have the best armor selections in the game, they have access to what are basically medieval tanks, they have unblockable high damage attacks (couches), etc. They even have an extremely powerful solo and teamplay ability in their bumps... and it's the only damn thing that doesn't damage teammates for some reason. Cav has so much **** going for them with such few drawbacks to themselves or their teammates, it's disgusting.
Fun fact: Swadian Cav in multiplayer have the highest one handed proficiency, yes that's right, higher than any infantry, meaning swadian cav can swing one handed weapons the fastest out of any unit in multiplayer. Coupled with the fact that they have reduced horse prices and get long awlpikes dropped for them in the competitive scene, ****'s obviously broken fam.
My general outlook on the state of warband's balance is: Infantry are fine as they are, archers need a slight nerf to their firing rate to even out with infantry in terms of effectiveness, and cavalry needs a decent amount of minor nerfs to be better balanced with infantry and archers. I say minor because the changes required are fairly simple, just a matter of decreasing horse speed, maneuverability, armor stats by one or two points, and making long awlpikes a weapon that can't be used on horseback, just like pikes. Making bumps affect teammates would be the only major change that would really affect how cav approach team fights.
Don't think I'm speaking on behalf of the entire competitive scene though, this is just my personal view on things. Only some parts of what I have said are unanimously agreed on, some other bits are things that haven't really been seriously discussed yet because very few people touch the subject of fixing warband because "why bother? bannerlord is right around the corner", the thing that has been said for over 3 years now
