Fix Pikes, Lances, Spears

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Title is self explanatory. Pikes are useless, so are Lances (used as inf).


  • Direct head hits against horses aren't working most of the time and hardly delivery any damage.
  • Cooldown on thursts is way to long
  • Overhead swings are out of control and will likely only hit a riders shield
  • Thursts are taking weeks to release
  • Also a lot of Thursts just bounce of whereas normal spears stab you down like a dagger
 
- Post attack release windup animation needs to be removed or sped up 5X
- Damage needs to happen way earlier in the animation
- Spears need to be held closer to the end rather than in the middle, and remove opposite collision box
- Damage to rear the horse needs to be slightly lower
- Cone to rear the horse needs to be slightly larger

- Add spear bracing.

Character in stances with the spear ready, needs to act as a couch lance and do damage if the collision velocity is high (5+ M/S)
 
Also please consider to let the spear perform swings from the side. They don't need to do much damage, it's more for mixing things up. They are super easy to block because you can just attack from 2 sides. Feinting is basicly useless as soon as the enemy closed the gap. If you feint, you give your opponent even more time to come closer, which results in spear bouncing of and the spear user will eat the full hit of his enemy.
If those side swings are not a problem with the menavilion, i don't see one with a spear.
If damage is the problem with sideswings, you could take away the damage, but give them the ability to knock people back/to side.
 
A pretty good example of what is wrong with the lances and spear is the Kontos, when you play as a north raider. The hit animation span is extremely short and hitting is extremely difficult, while with the speed of the horse simply getting touched by the lance/spear head should hurt, even if it's a little bit before or after the hit animation...
 
the main problem is that the devs have a "horse & mount fetish"
m&b posted in Instagram yesterday about how "horses are better than dogs"
and how they follow u to battle and lines and lines of talking about them




i could accept being smashed by a heavy horse running in speed, i love realism
even if spear is my favorite weapon

--but--

-people who say spears are good:
they think of it as specific weapon and they are happy to stop a horse with it
-people who say spears isn't that good: (like me)
because they want it to be their main war weapon, but they can't rely on it (disadvantage when in 1vs1)

i don't want to switch to other weapon because spears are bad in 1vs1
this is not a total war game.
give spears swings at least when "un-shielded"
 
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The threshold to rear a horse seems tied to the angle of the body part hit.

If the rider turns their horse last second, the head and neck are at a 20 degree angle to the infantry you're charging despite the horse continuing its trajectory into the infantryman.

This makes it likely the stab glances, but worse, even if you got a good damage hit, it wont stop the horse. You could hit for 150, if it isn't at a dead angle to the horses direction then its not gonna rear and you're going to get counter-lanced or knock down for trying.

Horses are wimps. It's a well documented fact. If you stab a horse, with anything, it's going to panic. Even the most battle hardened war horses are still horses, if they get scared they're going to bolt.

This should be representative in the game, both for gameplay and realism elements. You could increase the angle threshold for horse rearing but this might cause over-sensitivity, tying it in as a moving degree based on total angulation of the different parts of the horse entity compared to its baseline standing angulation would probably lead to less extraneous variables whilst solving this issue.

Either way, horse's should rear when stabbed. This is just a fact.
 
That video also shows one of the greatest weaknesses of mounted combat in this game: damage windows are unaffected by relative speed. Doesn't matter if you're early or late in a thrust animation the damage of a horse running into you or you running into someone on a horse should still do a ton of damage but it just bounces off for whatever reason.
 
The threshold to rear a horse seems tied to the angle of the body part hit.

If the rider turns their horse last second, the head and neck are at a 20 degree angle to the infantry you're charging despite the horse continuing its trajectory into the infantryman.

This makes it likely the stab glances, but worse, even if you got a good damage hit, it wont stop the horse. You could hit for 150, if it isn't at a dead angle to the horses direction then its not gonna rear and you're going to get counter-lanced or knock down for trying.

Horses are wimps. It's a well documented fact. If you stab a horse, with anything, it's going to panic. Even the most battle hardened war horses are still horses, if they get scared they're going to bolt.

This should be representative in the game, both for gameplay and realism elements. You could increase the angle threshold for horse rearing but this might cause over-sensitivity, tying it in as a moving degree based on total angulation of the different parts of the horse entity compared to its baseline standing angulation would probably lead to less extraneous variables whilst solving this issue.

Either way, horse's should rear when stabbed. This is just a fact.

This is 100% accurate. The main point to grasp from this is that horses should stop also when they are hit from a slight angle. At this moment horses only stop if you hit them from a dead angle which is totally ridiculous.
 
Singleplayer perk says that polearms will be able to knock riders off their horse, maybe that will be a game changer in regards to cavalry.
 
And they have been so since last year's alpha period (June/July '19)... with no news on the front.



Ahhhh this goddamn clip will never die.

My opinion on the topic:

Lances are okay. They don't need to be good for infantry.
Pikes are akward but I like to use them against cavalry and they can be quite useful.
The issue why I never use them is that you exchange them against shields.

Javs are strong.

Spears are still super strong in Teamfights.
1 vs 1 Spears are simply wierd. You glance in unexpectet situations or can get good hits in situations where you are expecting to glance.

I love spears, but for everything except cav counters and team fights, I don't like to use them anymore.
 
Ahhhh this goddamn clip will never die.
[...]
:lol: So you prefer this one?



Nah, There are too many inconsistencies currently present with spears ando other combat related stuff ... I know that development is sometimes complicated and that one variable can destabilize the whole. However, I've been reading about this and other issues the "we'll fix it soon" response from devs and unfortunately the nails are still not hit.
 
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.
 
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