Okay, I'll give it another go. I didn't even say anything in this thread, I just agreed with that other poster. How is it trolling again?
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The many issues i see with cavalry in MP
- Thread starter Yukmouth++
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I personally think cavalry are very balanced right now (aside from the Battanian faction which needs a buff) and if you are at all decent to the game it's pretty obvious where the weaknesses of cavalry are. Most of the issues players are having cavalry right now are just because they are not experienced in the game and don't understand the weaknesses of cav.
There that's my little rant. Almost every comment about cavalry made is incorrect. You are obviously an inexperienced player with not many hours in multiplayer. I hope that taleworlds does not take these requests seriously.
This is not true AT ALL. What are you on buddy? Have you ever fought a battle with another cav with yourself as cav? The speed you are traveling most definitely effects the damage dealt both too and from the rider.
This is also incorrect. Cav have the smallest shields in the game. I've been axed in the face may times even though I have been holding up my shield playing as cav.
You can just walk a step backwards, it's not that hard.
It's part of the team strategy. Cavalry is a SUPPORT class. By knocking you down they are helping their team in the infantry fight. I think this is a good feature and taleworlds has actually already nerfed this. In the real world you WOULD get knocked down if you were trampled by a horse it's just how it is. If you are having a problem getting knocked down you aren't staying close enough to your team.
Most of the heavy cav that would do this cost 190 or 200 gold. Most heavy infantry cost 140 or 150 gold. Effectively you are paying 50 extra gold to buy the horse for the class. I think that is fair. Also they aren't overboosted at all, the default cavalry melee weapons just do a medium amount of damage. If you're a good player you can act like a heavy infantry once getting dismounted, sure, but you're no better than a normal sergeant or legionary.
This isn't true at all. It takes a lot of experience playing cav to be able to get around spear infantry. Lances aren't any longer, the players you are facing are probably just better at their angles of attack than you are.
Horses are fast. You should be using your ALT key and looking around you at all times when out of combat. This is just part of the game.
There that's my little rant. Almost every comment about cavalry made is incorrect. You are obviously an inexperienced player with not many hours in multiplayer. I hope that taleworlds does not take these requests seriously.
salad_fork
Squire
I think cavalry is powerful and hard to counter and rightfully so for the cost, but I think it's only fair that they should also team damage the same way other classes do and bump their own teamates if they are not accurate in their movements. I would rather see cav become more difficult to play then flat out nerfed.
Also the diminishing turns on the rearing or the rearing duration itself should be tweaked. Currently you can only double rear a horse by waiting for the entire duration of the animation to be over and the rider has too much time to escape.
Also the diminishing turns on the rearing or the rearing duration itself should be tweaked. Currently you can only double rear a horse by waiting for the entire duration of the animation to be over and the rider has too much time to escape.
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These sound exactly what a guy who is taking advantage of OP troop class would say.
The new TDM maps are unplayable after a few minutes with most factions. You literally have 25% of players as cav up to top speed within a couple of seconds just galloping round in circles, couching people with no fear of death. There is no impact of riding at speed on your ability to aim, it's like gliding around in an F1 car with a lance attached.
Anyone who doesn't see the huge balancing issue is defending their own ability to keep taking advantage of imbalance.
MP at this point is just Cav spamming running in circles killing everyone but teammates. After that 2H spamming. Adding the crappy random re-spawn, being infantry sucks. I've died more times from getting lanced in the back. doing 360s every 5 seconds takes the tactics or using a team based strategy out of the game. Cav also ruins siege mode because that all every is at the last flag.
I don't play TDM - I only play Skirmish so I can't really speak for that. I see how cav can be unfair in TDM but TDM is not meant to be a fair mode at least how they have it set up now with 100 players on a medium size map. For skirmish mode cav is balanced fairly well. All the comments I made were in regard to skirmish mode.
Zoonanay
Knight
I agree Battania needs a buff to its cavalry unit, especially damage-wise as other cav can one-shot with 12.5 m/s velocity whilst it seems almost impossible at high/mid-speed to one-shot with Batt cav and cavalry shields dont need to be any smaller, they offer enough opportunity as it is.
The remaining problems with cavalry I all see as valid, it's just not beacuse of the reasons stated.
True, velocity works both ways, but the cavalryman has control over that velocity. Especailly with the new S+S and W+W mechanics a horseman can instantly stop his horse, and then back into half-gallop, real horses can sort of do this but from a realistic perspective it would almost definatley leave the rider unable to attack as his velocity is still heading forward. From a gameplay perspecive it means infantry have to make a 50/50 bet, is he going to continue to charge through me and I should stab now? Or is he gonna stop just before me, bait out my stab, and then stab me? In which case I should hold and try stab for the rider. It's a coin flip.
Once again, this alone is not too much of a problem, there are counters like javelins, bows or team work. But compile that with a 45 armour horse that can mitigate half of all pierce damage, cuts are effectively redundant and a 29 damage spear is going to do little when its hitting for a (post-armour mod) 15 on a 220 health horse. In Warband such a horse cost you over 1300 gold, and your starting pool was around 1600. Now the horse is valued at 50? Half the value of a peasant? A third of a Legionary?
The extra 50 gold value is extreme, the best value in the game.
- Not only do you get the capacity to disengage and engage enemies at will whenever you feel like it.
- Your above head-height of your opponents making high-damage neck/head hits unlikely.
- If you choose to increase velocity you can one-shot opponents
- You can bump enemies surrounded by allies to safely take them down with risky team hits
- You can use your horse's face to catch enemy weapons as they draw back (particularly Menavlions and Glaives) resulting in minimum damage and an easy opening for assisting troops
- You can hang in front of enemy skirmishers to draw fire/attention away from a team mate as without velocity an arrow is lucky to hit for 30.
There is even more value that the horse provides but that alone, should be way too much for a single class to provide, and way too much influence over the battlefield. The best archer couldn't shoot fast enough to help team mates as quick as a cav can, the best infantry isn't fast enough to get from fight-to-fight to swiftly influence overall outcomes. It seems the only real influence to result is cavalry.
There is a undoubt bias from new players that cavalry is overpowered due to the traditional problems, (Distancing, Velocity, Decision Making etc) but even past that I struggle to see on paper how a cavalryman is worse than any equivalent? The greatest weakness in my eyes is the 73/74 movement speed which makes 2v1 almost impossible and 1v1 difficult on foot.
I'm intrigued to hear your thoughts on how that infleunce is restricted? I didn't get to see Beta or Alpha and could've easily overlooked something which is clear when only experienced players are involved.
This is just part of how mount and blade is. You should never be able to fully guess what an opponent is going to do. If players never had to make decisions they would just win or lose 100% of fights. I've seen cav players do both of these things, and while playing infantry you have to make the decision based on the playstyle of your opponent and where the rest of your team is positioned.
I do agree with this. Armored horses offer way to much value and they make light horses feel like butter. My advice to this is to aim for headshots on a horse. This works with spears or throwing weapons or bows. Generally, it will yield 80-120 damage, and you can dismount the rider in 2 or 3 attacks. Hitting the horse anywhere else will do next to nothing in terms of damage.
In warband you also had complete control of the rest of your gear so it was an entirely different setting and tradeoff you had to make. With the class system in skirmish mode you only get a limited amount of starting gold, let's say it's the first round and you have 300. If you chose to go heavy cav for your first life you would be forced to spawn in as a peasant for your second. While this may still be advantageous if you're thinking of matches as only a 1v1, you have to remember that skirmish is a team based mode. Your 2nd spawn as a peasant could be detrimental to your team being able to hold their line near the end of a match, and if you make cavalry strategy mistakes such as charging into an enemy spawn at the beginning of a round (I see this ALL the time) you will instantly be killed by the enemy team and then waist your own team the spawn. A lot of balancing cav is based on the team you are facing and managing your own team composition.
This is very wrong. The biggest DETERRENT to cavalry is archers. Any half-decent team will be able to utilize archery to drive off cavalry from the infantry. Like I said before, 2-3 headshots on the horse (which is fairly easy it is a large and unprotected hitbox) will take down the rider.
With this, I can sort of see where you're coming from, as the team cohesion is very important when dealing with support classes like cavalry or archers. As a competitive player (I was in the beta as well) typically only 1 or 2 players on each squad go cavalry. You never see a team with all cavalry because the simple fact is you can't win a match with a composition like that. However I do see how the complaints can be valid for public play with below-average players - if your whole team is running around out on their own thinking they're rambo cavalry will definitely have the advantage there. However, if your team is organized like it should be in more competitive play cavalry are forced to play a support role in charging the backs of infantry engagements or distracting archers. Whenever I see cav go on their own against a solid team they will always die.
Yes it affects the rider but not the horse. try it now, if you charge a horse full speed into a INFANTRY pike/lance/spear you do not get a damage buff because the infantryman is not moving as fast as a horse. It should be similar to mordhau where the spear gets a damage buff when a horse rides full speed into a spear.
The most damage I have ever done is like 60 damage to a HORSE with a spear.
I think this depends on the spear, off the top of my head the only factions that have infantry with longer spears than their cavalry counterparts is aserai, battania, and vlandia (They get pikes). Khergits and sturgians only have short spears for their infantry with only like 140 length (I could be wrong about this). While most if not all horseman have lances that are much longer than short spears.
I think this is more an issue with the class system, if we were able to choose what weapons we can spawn with it wouldnt be an issue at all but for some factions like khergits and sturgia, you cant even get a long enough spear to counter horses. Even if you do get the pike class, usually you have to sacrifice the pike for no shield so you get destroyed by archers anyways so its a lose lose, especially in skirmish.
They need to get rid of the class system and allow us to choose what weapons we can use and I think it will solve a lot of imbalance issues in the game.
Zoonanay
Knight
True, but in previous Mount and Blade you presented a serious threat to the horses life. You spear to its neck could be 3/4 of it's health. Here it is likely to hit for 60, just 1/4, at most. Previously this meant the gamble was equal for both partners, both shared the similar risk for similar rewards, I struggle to see the threat to the horse, and the rider's 1h polearm is always longer than an infantry 1h polearm, apart from with Khuzait so striking the rider upon equal skill level will tend towards the rider inequivocably.
Agreed, I feel Light Cav may even be underpowered, although its hard to tell definitively as it is so rarely played, although that is rather telling...
Throwing ranged is a viable option, a 119 damage pila even with 45% mitigation is still almost 70 damage, and with velocity can even one-shot. But a good cavalry as discussed, wouldn't let you one-shot his horse using velocity via the S+S mechanic, and a bad infantry (if both cav and infantry are bad on equal playing field) will probably miss their shot on the head under the pressure. And even if they hit, they still have the rider to contend with. Even if you equate gold, say 2 Knights (190) for 3 Sergeants (140) the Knights have a definitive advantage as they effectively have 4 health bars. Although without testing this is just rhetoric, health is an innate stat meanwhile a weapon's damage is only relevant if it hits and how well it hits, thus there is always an advantage to health but not always an advantage to a weapon.
In a team setting I can't see this as realistic, for instance, 6 Knight horses (49 Armour, 235 health) and 6 Legionary's with Pila (119 Damage, x2). The 49 armour will reduce damage by at least 45%, not certain if it's as simple as 1 armour = 1% mitigation and haven't found anything confirming this. So 45% of 119 = 66 (rounded up), double for headshot, 132, double for x2, 264. That is just 29 damage over the required amount, this is also assuming every pila not only hits but hits a headshot. Sure velocity will increase damage, but can also decrease damage and with the delay on throwing and inaccuracy of movement you can end up throwing at an enemy moving away from you or waste it in the chest. There is also the factor of recovering pila, but once again, if you die with it on your back it's gone forever.
True Warband is a different setting, extrapolations shouldn't really be drawn it was more a comparison of value. Irrational behaviour shouldn't really determine balancing, all parties should be considered rational as the average player generally is, so charging into spawn is not really a factor that should determine balance, neither should skill-based interactions such as a player dying without getting a kill, statistically before dying the cavalry would contribute to their team, before spawning as said peasant and further contributing, ideally of an exact contribution value of 300 gold in the average player.
I could see 2-3 arrows with a longbow, but I'd be surprised if a 56 damage bow, after armour mod, could 2-3 shot a heavy horse. The other factor to consider is draw time, a long bow may miss opportunities to shoot a fast moving horse simply due to the time it takes to draw the bow, this is something weaker bows do not struggle with. In either case, 2-3 arrows is a best case scenario, at best.
I've been tending to avoid competitive judgements as many of the players are far more familiar with Warband than Bannerlord, as would make sense, and thus are transfering the same competitive strategies from Warband to Bannerlord, with little adaption so far. This is expected but will undoubtedly change as people get used to the new mechanics. In my opinion, infantry will struggle to be relevant, as they can only fight each other. Archers will run, cavalry can choose to disengage.
In combination, a cavalryman charging an infantry from behind, who is chasing an archer, is a impossible to defeat combo.
A: Turn to the rider with spear and stab, stop the horse, shot in back, possibly stabbed by rider upon recovery. Net Result - Lose Health.
B: Keep going foward, get couch lanced.
Net Result - Dead.
C: Attempt to dodge using body movement, possibly shot, possibly stabbed.
Net Result - Possibly Dead.
This combo with a competent rider using S+S and W+W can and will be repeated each time the archer is ready to loose another arrow (approx. 1.5 seconds), I struggle to see how the infantryman can begin to counter this combo, even as a group, say three infantry against one archer and one cavalry. The cavalry goes in, slows, absorbs any thrown at low velocity, archer takes shot. Repeat. Someone still has to turn for the cavalry. The moment one infantry dies before one archer or cavalry dies, the effect snowballs, it becomes harder to beat. Meaning you're only ever as strong as your least aware infantryman.
The only scenario's I can think where infantry has advantage, is against a archer with no shield, however with Khan's Guard Glaive and similar classes this may hardly be an issue. Or killing someone knocked onto the ground, however cavalry and archers can also both perform this role, albeit not quite as well. Can you example a few other situations they do have advantage in?
Soz for the word wall. I'm bad at conciseness.
TheRealCasca
Recruit
I'm absolutely sure I have very positive K/D against cav in sieges. Yes, they sometimes catch me off guard or I fail to time attack right and get killed. But with weapons like menavlion I absolutely wreck any passing cav with overhead swings. And my other favorite approach is to javelin incoming horses in the face, often for 200+ damage and throwing second javelin in the back of unseated rider. I block only when I'm lazy or in a hurry or can't swing myself. Cav is good for mowing noobs or players unaware of their surroundings, but experienced player aware of cav will avoid the attack more often than not and even attack the horse/rider.
I have never once seen a cav player do this and perfectly dodge projectiles and attacks. If you have please take video and sent it to me (also i'd want to recruit that player whoever can do that lol). Dodging every projectile just isn't possible. Also a similar thing can be said for infantry as you can crouch to avoid getting shot.
This is the main point I've been trying to make. Cav a great at mowing down noobs but any experienced player won't have much of an issue dealing with them.
The player in that picture though doesn't seem at all close to their team. I can see that most of his teammates are still alive, and maybe if he worked better with is team the cav wouldn't be able to do this. Most of the issues players are having with cav is because they go rambo and expect no consequences for it.
He's being spawnkilled.
he respawned and first that to happen is cav rush him. he not a noob player but just think how often that happens to new players also most of his team were new players so that must of been a terrible experience for them being zerged by cav for 3 rounds straight.
I don't think cav is as bad as people are stating in this thread, but there are definitely some issues with heavy cav.
For one, I think Cav is much too maneuverable, especially in more enclosed maps. If a Cav runs full speed into a wall and stops, no problem W+W and they're on their merry way in a second or two. This makes it very difficult to punish Cav who make mistakes or poor decisions when riding their horse. Yes, Cav should have a mobility advantage, they're on a horse. However, if they make a mistake it should leave them open to be punished for that mistake. If a Cav is stopped by a spear and rears or makes a mistake when charging at enemies, those are punishable just fine. But from what I see in Skirmish, Cav are riding in to situations that would be ridiculous to ride into without expecting to sacrifice themselves or at least losing their horse for the effort.
Second is that knockdowns are a little too long, I don't see a difference if a horse knocks you to the ground or a Cav rider being thrown from their horse full gallop, their horse dies and they take a tumble. Yet a player knocked down by the horse is down for quite a few seconds longer and is unable to defend themselves. While the Cav rider takes a tumble, is able to throw up his shield while on the ground allowing him the chance to get up, and is up considerably faster than the player knocked down by the horse. It needs to be tweaked so players knocked over by Cav have the same chances Cav players have when losing their horse I think.
Third, I think either there needs to be some gold adjustments to the class itself as there really isn't any option to choose lighter cav unless you really want to save the gold. They are in every way inferior to Heavy Cav, their horses are brought down faster, the rider has less armor and on a few factions lacks a shield to defend against ranged attacks, has less armor for the rider, and their less armored horse does not bump enemies as easily as an armored horse does.
Also, fall damage to horses needs to be increased on Cav, for the Desert Market map, I've seen horses choose to leap from the roof where A point is to get away as they know the horse will survive the fall rather than try to get themselves out of a bad situation in a more reasonable fashion. Likely could make it so the rider also receives a portion of fall damage rather than just the horse, but I think it should be increased a bit further regardless.
I think making some changes in those areas and opinions on Cav being op might change quite a bit.
For one, I think Cav is much too maneuverable, especially in more enclosed maps. If a Cav runs full speed into a wall and stops, no problem W+W and they're on their merry way in a second or two. This makes it very difficult to punish Cav who make mistakes or poor decisions when riding their horse. Yes, Cav should have a mobility advantage, they're on a horse. However, if they make a mistake it should leave them open to be punished for that mistake. If a Cav is stopped by a spear and rears or makes a mistake when charging at enemies, those are punishable just fine. But from what I see in Skirmish, Cav are riding in to situations that would be ridiculous to ride into without expecting to sacrifice themselves or at least losing their horse for the effort.
Second is that knockdowns are a little too long, I don't see a difference if a horse knocks you to the ground or a Cav rider being thrown from their horse full gallop, their horse dies and they take a tumble. Yet a player knocked down by the horse is down for quite a few seconds longer and is unable to defend themselves. While the Cav rider takes a tumble, is able to throw up his shield while on the ground allowing him the chance to get up, and is up considerably faster than the player knocked down by the horse. It needs to be tweaked so players knocked over by Cav have the same chances Cav players have when losing their horse I think.
Third, I think either there needs to be some gold adjustments to the class itself as there really isn't any option to choose lighter cav unless you really want to save the gold. They are in every way inferior to Heavy Cav, their horses are brought down faster, the rider has less armor and on a few factions lacks a shield to defend against ranged attacks, has less armor for the rider, and their less armored horse does not bump enemies as easily as an armored horse does.
Also, fall damage to horses needs to be increased on Cav, for the Desert Market map, I've seen horses choose to leap from the roof where A point is to get away as they know the horse will survive the fall rather than try to get themselves out of a bad situation in a more reasonable fashion. Likely could make it so the rider also receives a portion of fall damage rather than just the horse, but I think it should be increased a bit further regardless.
I think making some changes in those areas and opinions on Cav being op might change quite a bit.
