Aventurier Armor (NOW WITH PICTURES)

[Terath]

Think about it this way, dear Devs

Early Legionnaire had just an upgrade in his 1h skill + 1h weapons. But then he recieved a buff (throwables+ lighter armors)

It was considered the worst Infantry class before that Buff

Recently Inf got another HP buff on Hard and Ragnarok

Less Attention were given to Aventurier. Halberdier and Ranger.

Aventurier should get lighter Armor

Crossbows reduced in weight (except big shot, elegant crossbow or dead shot for knockdown)

Right now Aventurier is the least Popular Class

Halberdier and Ranger get the same (but smaller HP treatment) as Inf

Right now, Inf has a hero who can kite (Legi), Archers and Pike can, but there is no real Crossbow-Class that can do that.

(yes if you ditch the armor then you can do it even with an Ailadrodd)

I was never the developer that would respond to feature requests, really, unless I was named in them or it was directly related to my original job (modeling). I suppose now that I've taken over more front-end responsibilities I'll start responding to feature requests as well. Please bear with me.

As a general reminder, while Aventurier may not be the most efficient class to play, it still is technically viable. That, however, does not mean that it is also a fun class to play. While Sentinel may work well with Archer, since Archer has the speed to be able to backpedal and have a semblance of agility that combos well with one-handers, Crossbowman's general kit lacks that pretty much in entirety. Aventurier is fun to play on paper, at least; it is one of the only classes you could roll with a class-specific shield (Noble Bastion) that isn't marketplace or locked to Infantry, and the one-handers are pretty damn strong in their own right. However, the lack of agility, the weight of Crossbowman's armour and the fact that you have to stop moving to reload crossbows really hampers any ability to pull off anything relating to kiting. I personally support kiting in general, so I feel that Aventurier could use a lot of love, as I also feel that all classes should have one hero class that allows them to kite.

Here are two key additions that I personally would make to Aventurier that would allow it to not only be able to have a larger amount of speed, but also have a weapon kit that compliments the class's purpose.

One-handed Crossbows
Kaasovic and I have talked about this before, and it is doable. One-handed crossbows would function like a regular crossbow, but you can reload them while moving. Of course, this means that other stats like damage and projectile flight speed would have to take a penalty, as not being able to move and reload at the same time is seen as one of the largest detriments of using a crossbow over any other ranged weapon (also, with other ranged weapons, you don't really have to reload). These new crossbows would be low-damage but high-speed, which I believe would compliment kiting and the movement of Aventurier very well.

Aventurier-locked Armour
As was suggested in the OP. Most likely, this would just be body armours. The armours would be very similar to Legionnaire's very light armour. This would allow Aventurier to mainly have more speed, but it also allows Aventurier to look different, which may not matter to some, but is still cool to have. The proposed retextured native armour is very kind, but I would most likely find or create new armour models for this change. I really do appreciate the effort put into this feature request.

This is all my personal opinion, of course; neither of these changes have been discussed at length with the rest of the dev team (I guess one-handed crossbows, in which we confirmed that it would work in theory, and wasn't necessarily attached to Aventurier). I do, however, think that the disparity between the non-efficient classes and the most efficient classes is... large. Classes like Ranger, Halberdier, Sentinel and Aventurier could use more love, just to bring them up to somewhat-equal level to other, more efficient classes.
I feel that having better armour isn't really a specialty for a class, unless you're Juggernaut in which the difference is really noticeable. Ranger and Halberdier's armour isn't enough to support an entire class with, and Sentinel and Aventurier's one-handed swords aren't enough to support an entire class with either. I've been trying to think of ways to make these classes have their own specialty, so that they are not only more appealing but bring something entirely new to gameplay, or at least something special to the battlefield. An idea that's been brought up for Sentinels is to give them their own line of shields, which I'm not entirely partial to for some reason, but to me it doesn't feel right (as you couldn't equip a bow + arrows + sword + shield without one of the items being a support item (although the fourth slot being taken up by support items is supposed to go away anyways). There haven't been many changes to Ranger or Halberdier that I've been partial to either. However, with these proposed additions, Aventurier would have its own theme (speed, kiting, agility), its own line of weapons and armour that support that (one-handed crossbows, light armour), and on top of that would still have their strong one-handed weapons and capabilities.

Please share your thoughts and ideas below. These changes are only proposed ideas, currently, and not planned to be added until the changes and additions are approved by the team.
Also, keep your ideas and discussions on-topic, as I know some of you have issues with posting your ideas in the right threads.
Also, don't dump stat changes on my head. That shit's annoying.