It is time to re-balance two handers.

[Alfonso_M]

Two handers classes has been the meta since the patch 1.5.0. It wasnt always like that, it was a time when archers and thrown weapons dominate the matches, but that was before they nerfed the speed to aim and make it imposible to cover with your shield while the javelin is on thrown mode ( which is something i agree) But right now, doesnt matter if it is Skirmish, Captain, TDM or Siege, two handers class are everywhere and dominate the game. So, beofre exposing my ideas about how rebalance this class, first lets take a moment to see this class (Sidenote: Some of this ideas could apply for weapons that are used by other classes like Ranger or Warrior)

Two handers class has:
-More health than anyone: 110. (except guards, 100)
-Faster than anyone in their faction. (Except aserai, they are equals to skirmish class)
-Deadliest weapons. (They deals a lot of damage with each hit, move faster than one handers and great length)
-A shield by default. (It has 20 hp, but it already protect them from 1 hit/javelin and 2 arrows. This, plus their speed, make the archers/javelins completely useless to counter them)
-Low prices. (120 gold is cheap to this unit is capable to do on the battlefield)
-Crushthrought. ( A broken feature, with more RNG than Skill to use)
-A ton variety of perks, some of them completely broken. (Thrown weapons like franceskas or pilas make them more lethals)

Obviously some of these feature were implemented to balance the game (shields to counter archers when they were the meta) or by class design (To break shields or eliminate cavalry efficiently) but each of this classes has suffer a nerf that make them unable to counter two handers.

So, here are some ideas to rebalance this broken class, if there are some that was already expose in this forum please, forgive my ignorance:

-Make their maximun health at 100.
-Take out the shield or make it a perk (Like voulgiers) but beside voulgiers, i dont want to eliminate their superior version of two hand weapon. instead, i propose to exchange the shield with one of their thrown weapons, and since javelins are already nerfed, I propose to switch it for Franceskas and Pilas.
-Lower swing speed and handling for two hands weapons. With this change i hope to make these weapons heavier, less spammeable and to avoid abusing feints, keeping its damage. Aside, two handers sword would not need this change.
-Slow their speed base, make them the second fastest class on the faction, below skirmish or recruits.
-Limit Crushthrougth to the point where it only avaible to affect with Up attack after holding for 2 seconds. (Just like Morningstars in Warband)

These are my ideas. I invite you to express your opinion about them down below whatever it is, and to share your ideas about the current state of this class.

 

[Younes]

I haven't played in a while, but isn't the class itself a massive risk? I mean you can shoot it pretty easily

 

[Shatti]

"-Lower swing speed and handling for two hands weapons"
this is a bad solution
it will be more balanced, but combat skill will be irrelevant and the gameplay will suck more

 

[Alfonso_M]

I haven't played in a while, but isn't the class itself a massive risk? I mean you can shoot it pretty easily

Recents update have nerfed archers and javelins, they take longer to draw and aim with precison. That, plus the shield developer give them by default, has reduced their risk to be hit before they reach their prey. Even mounted units cannot shoot while galloping with precision, so there is no ¨real¨ counter to them.

 

[Johann Brahms]

Two handers classes has been the meta since the patch 1.5.0. It wasnt always like that, it was a time when archers and thrown weapons dominate the matches, but that was before they nerfed the speed to aim and make it imposible to cover with your shield while the javelin is on thrown mode ( which is something i agree) But right now, doesnt matter if it is Skirmish, Captain, TDM or Siege, two handers class are everywhere and dominate the game.

You're forwarding this claim as self-evident but it's contentious--I still see shields as widespread in skirmish mode. I never play captain mode so I won't comment on that, mostly skirmish/TDM/siege for me. I use two-handers primarily (though still using 1 handers and shields frequently) because it's more interesting gameplay in my view, directional blocking is one of the primary game mechanics you're essentially skipping with a shield; that makes them easier to use but again not really what I personally want to practice. If my team is losing I find myself more likely to grab a class with a shield so I have a better chance of not getting shot, better survivability. I also find that certain two-handed weapons are already so slow (menavlion: speed 78 or 74/71 for long/heavy variants) that I avoid them if I expect to be in 1v1s as opposed to team fights. You can get spammed repeatedly if you aren't extremely quick on the draw and even then it's risky versus someone who is facehugging you with a 1 hander.

So, beofre exposing my ideas about how rebalance this class, first lets take a moment to see this class (Sidenote: Some of this ideas could apply for weapons that are used by other classes like Ranger or Warrior)
Two handers class has:
-More health than anyone: 110. (except guards, 100)

The way you're phrasing this is misleading--it's obvious that armor advantages can easily outweigh a health advantage. Looking at health in isolation is a bad way to summarize survivability. Two handed classes have extremely weak shields if they have any just to close the distance, comparing Menavlion Infantry to Legionary it's obvious that the former at 110 HP and (a max of) 16 armor is more vulnerable than the class with 100 HP, a (maximum of) 50 armor and a shield with 140 or 220 durability. If my only goal was to tank hits it's obvious that Voulgier's 110 HP 12 or 21 armor depending on perks is more vulnerable than the sergeant with 100 HP, up to 46 armor, and a shield with as much as 225 durability.

-Faster than anyone in their faction. (Except aserai, they are equals to skirmish class)

Brigand/berserker are 81/82--I don't see why Sturgia's heavy inf (Varyag: 77) should be as fast as units which are drastically more vulnerable to any sort of damage than it is. Varyag has 48 armor, 10 or 6 for Brigand/Berserker, makes sense the units which are basically naked are marginally faster.

This is a similar pattern for other factions. What should be most notable here is that even the slowest units are not so slow that they can't catch the fastest units when backpedalling. If a sharpshooter is chasing me with a 1 hander and I'm backpedalling as berserker, it's not the case that my backpedalling is faster than their forward movement. This would be a really serious problem if the speed differences were that great between any two classes, since the faster class (if it had or could get a reach advantage) would be untouchable. This isn't the case for the current game as would be obvious to anyone who has tried backpedalling with a menavlion. This isn't a big deal and it seems reasonable that the classes wearing 10 times as much armor are going to be a bit slower, this just means that heavy infantry can't successfully run away from people with almost no armor over very long distances. You can still run away, it just means you'll eventually get caught if the guy chasing you is naked and you're wearing as much armor as anyone can wear.

-Deadliest weapons. (They deals a lot of damage with each hit, move faster than one handers and great length)

If they didn't do more damage nobody would use them, because they're almost always slower (you're mostly wrong about that part). If you're dealing with the major disadvantage of not having a shield, or having a very weak one only which breaks after 1 pilum, and you have to actually think about blocking (unlike people with shields), I think it's only fair that your weapon hits harder. Let's point to the elephant in the room here which is that having to block feints is infinitely easier with a shield than it is with a two hander and your ability to just survive for several seconds in a team fight if you get cornered is much greater without having to actively block, and you obviously are much better able to press against ranged classes with a shield.

Speed: the fastest two handers (e.g. two handed swords for Aserai/Vlandia) are not faster than most one-handed swords (excepting the fastest one of all, the falx at speed 100) and they sacrifice an enormous amount of damage to be the faster weapon choice of the specific class. Specifically, you lose 51 damage (153 vs 102) if you bring the two-handed sword (93 speed) instead of the bardiche (86 speed) as the Aserai guard. The Voulgier's slower weapon with 127 damage has 86 speed (Voulge) the faster 2-handed sword has 93 speed, 96 damage. Comparatively, one handers: legionary sword is 94 speed/64 damage, Heavy Ild for Khuzaits is 93 speed/73 damage, Kaskara for Skirmisher is 93 speed/68 damage, Imperial heavy axe is 98 speed/85 damage, Western mace is 96 speed/46 damage. There is only one two hander, the falx, which is faster than any of these, and you give up a big reach/damage advantage by taking it instead of the Rhomphaia.

-A shield by default. (It has 20 hp, but it already protect them from 1 hit/javelin and 2 arrows. This, plus their speed, make the archers/javelins completely useless to counter them)

Archers routinely will shoot into the sides of classes with extraordinarily durable shields during teamfights in Skirmish, where this presents a risk of teamkilling, and are not useless to counter that form of heavy infantry. The idea that they're then useless against two handers because they now have a flimsy shield is an exaggeration.

-Low prices. (120 gold is cheap to this unit is capable to do on the battlefield)

Also easily killed by throwing weapons, cav or archers since you have low survivability.

-Crushthrought. ( A broken feature, with more RNG than Skill to use)

Totally agreed, if it's not 100% removed it should only apply to a maul or hammer and it should be slow. It's pretty anti-competitive.

-A ton variety of perks, some of them completely broken. (Thrown weapons like franceskas or pilas make them more lethals)

If for example franceskas are broken for Voulgiers they're obviously more broken for Sergeants who have a much more protective shield to hide behind when throwing them.

Obviously some of these feature were implemented to balance the game (shields to counter archers when they were the meta) or by class design (To break shields or eliminate cavalry efficiently) but each of this classes has suffer a nerf that make them unable to counter two handers.

I don't find myself unable to kill 2 handers when playing ranged or heavy inf with shield.

-Lower swing speed and handling for two hands weapons. With this change i hope to make these weapons heavier, less spammeable and to avoid abusing feints, keeping its damage. Aside, two handers sword would not need this change.

"Abusing feints?" Most one handed weapons are faster so obviously they should be more able to abuse feints as soon as they close the distance which shouldn't be that hard to do since they have a shield which blocks all directions simultaneously without any special input from the user. Rhetorical question: are feints harder to deal with if you have a shield or if you don't?

The only two handers which are competitive in speed with one handers are the fastest (and weakest hitting) two handers; specifically these are the swords (including falx)--I guess the highland spiked mace is surprisingly fast at 92. The other two handers: bardiche, voulge, glaive, menavlion, maul, rhomphaia, are all significantly slower than one handed weapons and below 90 in speed.

If you want to make them significantly slower, what's going to happen is that they're all going to wind up being like menavlion, namely, almost unusable against players who are just swinging as fast as they can with one handers.

If someone is completely unable to hit back at people using handers against him when he has a one-handed sword and shield, he's not playing well enough to evaluate balance. I am not sure if you are experiencing that issue, but if you are, it's not a problem with the class.

 

[Roadpork]

what is two-hander?
there are only 4 classes in this game:
cavalry,
ranger,
thrower,
some random dude holding shields try to stay alive

 

[Greedalicious]

The way you're phrasing this is misleading--it's obvious that armor advantages can easily outweigh a health advantage. Looking at health in isolation is a bad way to summarize survivability. Two handed classes have extremely weak shields if they have any just to close the distance, comparing Menavlion Infantry to Legionary it's obvious that the former at 110 HP and (a max of) 16 armor is more vulnerable than the class with 100 HP, a (maximum of) 50 armor and a shield with 140 or 220 durability. If my only goal was to tank hits it's obvious that Voulgier's 110 HP 12 or 21 armor depending on perks is more vulnerable than the sergeant with 100 HP, up to 46 armor, and a shield with as much as 225 durability.

Speed is armour. If the two hander plays right, they can pick and choose whatever melee fight they want with zero risk, as their movement speed is so much higher.
Health being higher for certain classes just messes up peoples understanding of the game. Why not just give them 3-4+ armor instead? The difference isnt that high, but its enough for people, especially when just starting out to say "uhm I hit him for 105 damage how is he alive?" Yeah they get used to it, but they could just abit of armor instead.
Their shield hp isnt that relevant since its mostly there to tank arrow fire. I've seen two handers run up to multiple archers and crisscross around, because of their movement speed, the shield, and the low fire rate of archers, he breached the gap and killed them both. Two handed classes are basically an apex predator right now.

Brigand/berserker are 81/82--I don't see why Sturgia's heavy inf (Varyag: 77) should be as fast as units which are drastically more vulnerable to any sort of damage than it is. Varyag has 48 armor, 10 or 6 for Brigand/Berserker, makes sense the units which are basically naked are marginally faster.

But the speed stat is not accurate. I might be wrong here but the speed stat is from when weapons and shields didnt have any weight, and only movement speed mattered. Since they added weight, the movement speed is no longer correct, which is why you see heavy infantry move so much slower than other infantry, while still having relatively close stats. Shields weigh alot, and since weapons dont even have a weight stat ingame, who knows. Two handers get more movement speed, and their equipment loadout is often lighter, making them even faster.

This is a similar pattern for other factions. What should be most notable here is that even the slowest units are not so slow that they can't catch the fastest units when backpedalling. If a sharpshooter is chasing me with a 1 hander and I'm backpedalling as berserker, it's not the case that my backpedalling is faster than their forward movement. This would be a really serious problem if the speed differences were that great between any two classes, since the faster class (if it had or could get a reach advantage) would be untouchable. This isn't the case for the current game as would be obvious to anyone who has tried backpedalling with a menavlion. This isn't a big deal and it seems reasonable that the classes wearing 10 times as much armor are going to be a bit slower, this just means that heavy infantry can't successfully run away from people with almost no armor over very long distances. You can still run away, it just means you'll eventually get caught if the guy chasing you is naked and you're wearing as much armor as anyone can wear.

Backpeddling is incredibly slow,yes, but walking to the side carries very little, if any movement speed penalty at all. So two handers can side step and swing/overhead and other classes cant do anything about them. Because of the insane arc of swings, you can have people side stepping, changing direction to forward, turn into their swings and hit targets behind them that try to chase them.

If they didn't do more damage nobody would use them, because they're almost always slower (you're mostly wrong about that part). If you're dealing with the major disadvantage of not having a shield, or having a very weak one only which breaks after 1 pilum, and you have to actually think about blocking (unlike people with shields), I think it's only fair that your weapon hits harder. Let's point to the elephant in the room here which is that having to block feints is infinitely easier with a shield than it is with a two hander and your ability to just survive for several seconds in a team fight if you get cornered is much greater without having to actively block, and you obviously are much better able to press against ranged classes with a shield.

Two handers should definitly do more damage, but right now they have every advantage possible, with the exeption of armor. If Taleworld wanted the class to be beginner friendly, they messed up, because people who learn the game will still be able to use this class, and aboslutely demolish anyone and everyone. Again, as a two handed class, you can run into a fight, do some attacks, stay out of enemy reach, then decide meh screw it, I'll go fight over here instead, and the multiple opponents you were fighting have zero way of stopping you.

Archers routinely will shoot into the sides of classes with extraordinarily durable shields during teamfights in Skirmish, where this presents a risk of teamkilling, and are not useless to counter that form of heavy infantry. The idea that they're then useless against two handers because they now have a flimsy shield is an exaggeration.

Somewhat covered this, the sum of all the parts make two handers incredibly strong against archers. Once the two hander gets the archer in melee, the archer has basically no tools to defend themself anymore. Voulge can crush through Pavise shields, with a weight of 7.

Also easily killed by throwing weapons, cav or archers since you have low survivability.

Which is effectively the only way to kill them. Throwing weapon damage is insanely high in general to be honest, and the throwing axe animation is faster than light.

Totally agreed, if it's not 100% removed it should only apply to a maul or hammer and it should be slow. It's pretty anti-competitive.

At the moment I'd rather it just be removed. It takes away a large chunk of skill from the game, and seing 1 slight nerf every 2 months is just going to take too long. Heavily agree that its anti competitive.

If for example franceskas are broken for Voulgiers they're obviously more broken for Sergeants who have a much more protective shield to hide behind when throwing them.

Cant argue with that, the throwing axes are quick to throw and the stun from being pushed seems to be non existant. Several times I've pushed a thrower into melee range and I end up with an axe in my head for 90 damage because I trusted the stunning when I shouldnt have. Atleast theres only a single Pila per user.

I don't find myself unable to kill 2 handers when playing ranged or heavy inf with shield.

Mostly thats correct, especially on TDM and Siege. But if you play a competitive player whos mastered the bull****tery of it, you might aswell drop your block and accept death. 90% of players using two handers cant block. Why learn to block when they can just spam attacks and move out of the range of any attacks comming their way?

"Abusing feints?" Most one handed weapons are faster so obviously they should be more able to abuse feints as soon as they close the distance which shouldn't be that hard to do since they have a shield which blocks all directions simultaneously without any special input from the user. Rhetorical question: are feints harder to deal with if you have a shield or if you don't?

Has to do with animations aswell and how well they can hide their actions. There are some feints in the game that are almost unblockable, regardless if theyre one handed or two handed. Nothing should be unblockable in a game like this.

The only two handers which are competitive in speed with one handers are the fastest (and weakest hitting) two handers; specifically these are the swords (including falx)--I guess the highland spiked mace is surprisingly fast at 92. The other two handers: bardiche, voulge, glaive, menavlion, maul, rhomphaia, are all significantly slower than one handed weapons and below 90 in speed.

If you want to make them significantly slower, what's going to happen is that they're all going to wind up being like menavlion, namely, almost unusable against players who are just swinging as fast as they can with one handers.

If someone is completely unable to hit back at people using handers against him when he has a one-handed sword and shield, he's not playing well enough to evaluate balance. I am not sure if you are experiencing that issue, but if you are, it's not a problem with the class.

I dont mind two handers being fast, somewhat makes sense that they are, but the weapon speed almost doesnt matter when theyre never in any danger to begin with.
Fighting against two handers is one of the absolute most frustrating things in this game, and if people dont understand why theyre overpowered I dont know what to say.

The quickest solution for me would be to take that sledgehammer of theirs and crush their movement speed advantage. Making them have the same movement speed as the rest of infantry should fix most of the issues. Maybe give them abit more armor if thats needed, and for the love of all that is holy, remove crush through.

 

[Hans 77]

Sorry, I can't co-sign this OP.

I agree (along with everyone on planet earth) that crush through has to go away -forever, and I'll add that the S+A and S+D movement is maybe a little too strong, for it allows faster classes to practically run the Boston Marathon backwards during combat.

Those two things need to be tweaked, for sure, but I don't see a problem with the other grievances you mentioned about 2H classes.

2H are extremely vulnerable to ranged attacks, and while archery and throwing weapons aren't as braindead as they were pre-1.5, they're still absurdly user-friendly. This is especially true for archery, which has retained its pinpoint accuracy (you just have to hold your draw a half-second longer).

Plus, most 2H classes' armor rating falls <20, making them quite fragile. The extra 5-10 hp is practically worthless.

2H are a rather flawed class, and their effectiveness is limited, as evident by their use in competitive Skirmish; 2H are either absent or used in a very niche role -they're never the dominant paradigm of a team comp.

Are 2H strong in TDM and Siege? Sure. But I could also say the same for any and all cav, archers, and heavy inf classes.

If your argument was about 2H in the Captain Mode meta, then I can't really add any input, as I don't know enough about Captain Mode.

 

[Mushbeast]

I'd say their insane speed is the main issue. It can feel like a two-handed weapon is faster than a one-handed sword on just about any 2h weapon because the character can keep strafing to the side and keep you at the start of their swing arc. I reckon spears (I'm gonna keep going on about them til they get some lovin) used to be quite a decent counter to 2handers, but due to their movement speed now they are only good for about one stab before it's impossible to clear the distance to use them effectively.

At the end of the day I wish they'd make one handed swords pack a bit more of a punch rather than having to nerf other classes to accommodate for it.

 

[hoonii]

Crushthrough will be adjusted with the next patch, its already in the beta, according to devs all 2handers except only hammer will be much harder to crushthrough with, and with hammers its going to be less likely, but still more than others.
Spamming is not the weapons problem but the systems. If you get your footworking right and swing from the correct side with good timing you can spam and be faster than anything. Their damage is ok, its what you would expect from a two handed weapon(you don't think a two handed greataxe would only poke you do you). Voulge is a different story though, its insane crushthrough capability and insanely high weapon damage is absurd and may need a slight damage nerf, its stronger than the menavlion right now. Also franceskas should be removed or reduced in number for voulgiers. Voulgiers and menav infantry are very strong skirmish shock troops because of their range and shield breaking ability AND crushthrough ability.
I agree to shields being given to shock infantry, I don't remember berserkers at the time having a shield. Shields should be reverted.

 

[greedogre]

Speed is armour. If the two hander plays right, they can pick and choose whatever melee fight they want with zero risk, as their movement speed is so much higher.
Health being higher for certain classes just messes up peoples understanding of the game. Why not just give them 3-4+ armor instead? The difference isnt that high, but its enough for people, especially when just starting out to say "uhm I hit him for 105 damage how is he alive?" Yeah they get used to it, but they could just abit of armor instead.
Their shield hp isnt that relevant since its mostly there to tank arrow fire. I've seen two handers run up to multiple archers and crisscross around, because of their movement speed, the shield, and the low fire rate of archers, he breached the gap and killed them both. Two handed classes are basically an apex predator right now.


But the speed stat is not accurate. I might be wrong here but the speed stat is from when weapons and shields didnt have any weight, and only movement speed mattered. Since they added weight, the movement speed is no longer correct, which is why you see heavy infantry move so much slower than other infantry, while still having relatively close stats. Shields weigh alot, and since weapons dont even have a weight stat ingame, who knows. Two handers get more movement speed, and their equipment loadout is often lighter, making them even faster.


Backpeddling is incredibly slow,yes, but walking to the side carries very little, if any movement speed penalty at all. So two handers can side step and swing/overhead and other classes cant do anything about them. Because of the insane arc of swings, you can have people side stepping, changing direction to forward, turn into their swings and hit targets behind them that try to chase them.


Two handers should definitly do more damage, but right now they have every advantage possible, with the exeption of armor. If Taleworld wanted the class to be beginner friendly, they messed up, because people who learn the game will still be able to use this class, and aboslutely demolish anyone and everyone. Again, as a two handed class, you can run into a fight, do some attacks, stay out of enemy reach, then decide meh screw it, I'll go fight over here instead, and the multiple opponents you were fighting have zero way of stopping you.


Somewhat covered this, the sum of all the parts make two handers incredibly strong against archers. Once the two hander gets the archer in melee, the archer has basically no tools to defend themself anymore. Voulge can crush through Pavise shields, with a weight of 7.


Which is effectively the only way to kill them. Throwing weapon damage is insanely high in general to be honest, and the throwing axe animation is faster than light.


At the moment I'd rather it just be removed. It takes away a large chunk of skill from the game, and seing 1 slight nerf every 2 months is just going to take too long. Heavily agree that its anti competitive.


Cant argue with that, the throwing axes are quick to throw and the stun from being pushed seems to be non existant. Several times I've pushed a thrower into melee range and I end up with an axe in my head for 90 damage because I trusted the stunning when I shouldnt have. Atleast theres only a single Pila per user.


Mostly thats correct, especially on TDM and Siege. But if you play a competitive player whos mastered the bull****tery of it, you might aswell drop your block and accept death. 90% of players using two handers cant block. Why learn to block when they can just spam attacks and move out of the range of any attacks comming their way?


Has to do with animations aswell and how well they can hide their actions. There are some feints in the game that are almost unblockable, regardless if theyre one handed or two handed. Nothing should be unblockable in a game like this.


I dont mind two handers being fast, somewhat makes sense that they are, but the weapon speed almost doesnt matter when theyre never in any danger to begin with.
Fighting against two handers is one of the absolute most frustrating things in this game, and if people dont understand why theyre overpowered I dont know what to say.

The quickest solution for me would be to take that sledgehammer of theirs and crush their movement speed advantage. Making them have the same movement speed as the rest of infantry should fix most of the issues. Maybe give them abit more armor if thats needed, and for the love of all that is holy, remove crush through.

as usual agree everything you said, just backing up with a weird example i played recently. 2v2 skirmish, my teammate is not existence no kill no assit, 2 round in a row my legionery take care 2 of their varagian no problem, then they switch tactic one with 2h-hammer +1 varagian. they bring back 2 round in a row in last round last stand my full health legionary vs 2h, first life die in 2 swing, with experence (against other HI) i thought my swing will make contact. then switch to levy class same gear shield and hammer (i pick up on the gound), make 6 hit in a row kill that 2h 2 life. to be frank if the BRAIN DEAD developer give heavy shield and heavy 1h weapon i will took levy eveytime over that stupied legionary punching beg.

same style same weapon loadout, just that small speed different make a huge difference. even with comperhansive post like this and i think you still missing 2 very important fact, one is HI is too slow good player can still ultilize offenive kick to Hi which wont happen for any other class. and 2, weapon you bring to kill other Hi is terrible for fighting 2h compound with the speed disadvantage, they just cant fit into the strike position that often and block after 1.5 is not that hard since fient is not as powerfull as it used to be, make a dueling situation very frusrating.

 

[TheBard]

Remove the Cru$hthrough on all two handed weapons and limit it to hammers and the class will be put in the place it belongs and be balanced.

Regarding twohanders: I like them being part of the meta, it's something new and if employed right they deserve their place, we had swo/bo being king for nearly a decade now, I'd say we can go for a little change.

Archers and projectiles or cav routinely remove shocks from the field, so I don't see an issue there and this little shield is not going to give you an edge against an archer knowing what she's/he's doing. Heck, I'm like the worst archer you can imagine and I still manage to foot-shoot those guys on medium range.

Spoiler: how to remove shocks

You want to kill shocks? Here is a proven method which works 100% all the time: kill it with fire and don't go 1v1. The stun will be too extreme. Take a friend and punish them by one going sideswing, the other up swing, guaranteed $$$ profit. Or shoot them. Or throw them. That way you force them to go swo/bo if they managed to loot a side arm + shield or they die. In team fights you can try to get behind them, it's usually worth taking a hit if you can effectively remove the shock from the teamfight, they are reliant on manual blocking, squishy and that's their weak spot.
If help by teammates is no option and you can bolt, then tail between legs and run for your money.
When you're forced into a 1v1, keep following them and try to evade getting kickslashed while trying to outsmart him. If you S-Key, you lose.

 

[Yukmouth++]

Good old story. 2h should be balanced differently between modes. Taleworlds keeps trying and trying to balance thing across modes, it doesnt work. The 1.5.2 gave a decent balance to skirmish, but destroyed the other modes by making the 2h hit de ceiling. I assume they will nerf them, which will make them too weak in skirmish and the wheel keeps rolling until they f*****g realize they need to have SEPARATE balances for SEPARATES modes. Especially the g*d d**n mode that is NPCs fighting and not players.

 

[TheBard]

Good old story. 2h should be balanced differently between modes. Taleworlds keeps trying and trying to balance thing across modes, it doesnt work. The 1.5.2 gave a decent balance to skirmish, but destroyed the other modes by making the 2h hit de ceiling. I assume they will nerf them, which will make them too weak in skirmish and the wheel keeps rolling until they f*****g realize they need to have SEPARATE balances for SEPARATES modes. Especially the g*d d**n mode that is NPCs fighting and not players.

If we talk Captain, okay, it's beyond ****ed up there and I actually feel sorry for you guys lol. For all the other game modes the guide lines I wrote down above apply.

 

[greedogre]

Remove the Cru$hthrough on all two handed weapons and limit it to hammers and the class will be put in the place it belongs and be balanced.

Regarding twohanders: I like them being part of the meta, it's something new and if employed right they deserve their place, we had swo/bo being king for nearly a decade now, I'd say we can go for a little change.

Archers and projectiles or cav routinely remove shocks from the field, so I don't see an issue there and this little shield is not going to give you an edge against an archer knowing what she's/he's doing. Heck, I'm like the worst archer you can imagine and I still manage to foot-shoot those guys on medium range.

Spoiler: how to remove shocks

You want to kill shocks? Here is a proven method which works 100% all the time: kill it with fire and don't go 1v1. The stun will be too extreme. Take a friend and punish them by one going sideswing, the other up swing, guaranteed $$$ profit. Or shoot them. Or throw them. That way you force them to go swo/bo if they managed to loot a side arm + shield or they die. In team fights you can try to get behind them, it's usually worth taking a hit if you can effectively remove the shock from the teamfight, they are reliant on manual blocking, squishy and that's their weak spot.
If help by teammates is no option and you can bolt, then tail between legs and run for your money.
When you're forced into a 1v1, keep following them and try to evade getting kickslashed while trying to outsmart him. If you S-Key, you lose.

no my suggestion is to streamline the entire infantry line movement speed, this wont affect any average user experence at all, what Greedalicious says what Developer fail is those new feature they added to make the game easier for new player are not impactfull at all for those users, but above certain skill level make certain player compelete untouchable in certain situation. for example of the 2h am not talking about player that would fell into triple left feint to upper slash 80% of the time, am talking about player that will make 10 consecutive block in a row even you shield bash them serval time during the blocking.

and to balance two hand is first step to balance archers otherwise if you try to balance archers you will see a 2h compelely take over the infantry role in average skirmish game. because that is how ridiculars archer is right now. again am not talking about archer that can only make 30% hit rate in a long range. there are archers i can name at least 4 in my region right now can land 80-90% shot in a confused shield fight while both shielder are spin like crazy, and they can do that wtih an unpunishable range and increadiable dmg. projictle speed need to lower at least 20%-30% so archer have to get closed to deliever the same kinda hit rate. and if they have to get closed then you start to have fighting chance.

 

[TheBard]

Well, ranged gets buffed again in the next patch, so tough luck for that.

 

[greedogre]

WHAT???? did Developer's brain injury getting wrost? and this is not even an insult, it's a simple fact if that's true.

why knight of rhodes (KR) is on the TOP of the clan leader borad. because they have 3 out 4 archer i mention above, experence play against them it's compelele... stupidtiy and degree of awkwardness where eveything that suppose to work end up not working at all.

a barding heavy horse head out for scout getting kill before that damn rider even fell into the gound. a frontal 6 shield HI frontal charge lost 2 guy before even reach their archer line.

and you finally reach them they demolish you or your shield with 2h weapon, then whole team run away and shot you to death or simply just smash you with 2 hand when you get upset enough.

you know what, i know 2 of those archers and i start team up with them at night in skirmish, and average win rate i feel like more than 90%, the only lost is because they start to lost interest in playing archer. yea good luck with that range buff, if that's true i guess am done.

 

[Mushbeast]

They're not necessarily going to get buffed, but have a rework in how the accuracy works and to differentiate specific weapons. You can watch the latest Development Update to see some of the changes in action. Whether it works out better or worse for archers we're yet to see.

In my eyes, the best archer would always dominate the best swordsman as there's simply no 100% effective way to block or dodge arrows, whereas the archer can generally run away and if worst comes to worst, engage in melee where they're honestly not that much weaker. It sort of comes down to whether the archer misses, rather than anything meaningful that you as an infantry have done to counter it.

On another note, please give us a melee only mode. I know splitting the player base is a silly idea at this point especially, but I would honestly come back and play more regularly without the frustration of the aforementioned points.

 

[TheBard]

Well, time to draw gets decreased and as it looks the aim stays a bit more longer sharp then we have it now, so that's a buff. Period.

Maybe this comes from impression of DIvision A in BEAST, but there's a reason there are not many archers put into action there and that's because they will relently and always get pressured because one archer able to shoot with no pressure is deleting 2-3 players on the opposing team, no biggie.
Dedicated archers even cried to me as their captain that "they can't do **** because they instantly get focussed". Weeeeeell, you have the class with the highest damage output and no risk to take damage yourself if you are not pressured, ofc you get focussed and pushed.

If you check wild public games, you have games where there are four light archers demolishing heavy infantry and heavy cav alike with relentless crossfire as well, so while I do understand why the devs do it (increase the fun of archer play?) I hardly find it justified.

 

[Rangah]

On the topic of two handers, I cry out in despair for a flat damage reduction all across the board, I'm having less and less fun getting one-tap deleted by a voulge, hammer or a menavlion due to a single mistake. With proper footwork and angling, a 2h can hit faster than most 1h weapons, combine that with crush through and w-e-w we have infantry that can run circles around you, staying out of range and dealing 60+ dmg per hit with the chance to crush through.

And having Fiann, an archer class, be able to do more damage in melee per swing than all shield infantry in the game due to spawning with a 2h sword is just

Yikes.