The Item and Class Stat Balance Thread

[DR.]

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[TerrorBite]

Proposed changes: higher ath for inf and crossbowmen, and lighter crossbowman, halb, ranger armour

I see that when there are not enough players to cade from wave 1, those players must kite or die/leave. I also see that the ones who die/leave first are consistently crossbowmen and infantry.

Crossbowman Balance:
It feels like when making the classes, archers and pikemen were chosen to be kiting classes 'because they'd be good at it', even though with low athletics they would not be underpowered. I don't see why crossbowmen should not be able to kite; it wouldn't make them OP behind cades, nor would they be especially strong kiters, but being able to survive, and take some shots at the snipers far away while the archers and pikemen focus most of the nord bulk is at least worth playing.

I tried 2 manning hard on aventurier, using emblemed for speed (23 weight). Each shot would take me ages, as I was slower than the pikeman and had to reload, but was kind of playable. Then when we got entranced berserkers, they could 'easily' outspeed me once i dropped by gear. On archer and pikeman entranced have never been an issue. 
If playing light weight aventurier isn't worth it when there aren't enough players on for cading, you can only imagine how much worse t4, pavise, chosen, and repeater (+10 weight repeater bows) would be. 
I did test swadian recruit armour + no boot speed on aventurier and it was impressive, but now we're taking away the main bonus of crossbowmen over pikes and archers; armour.


It's hard to quantify without tests, but I think all crossbowman armour weight should be dropped by about half, and they should also receive a fair bit more athletics. Keeping in mind high weight might cause armourless kiting, and aventurier should still be worth using over chosen when kiting. Repeater weight might be too high, but depends on how everything is balanced.



Infantry Balance:
As for infantry, as they are they can certainly be useful when kiting, just by picking off stray nords and corner shielding. Now if inf had more athletics, it should help them to reach a better spot to corner shield, and allow them to choose not to shield on the fast moving waves. As a bonus it might be a good idea if they can break off shielding/picking off strays and actually maintain some distance, instead of forcing combat until they are dead. 
As a benchmark, I'd like to see them being able to survive hard waves 9, 11, 12, 15 once cades break (when setting up cades on certain waves when kiting), as dying as an inf on each of those waves (not so much 9) is quite painful. 
I'd like to stress that besides their low survivability, few man kiting with inf are really useful for picking off the easier and mixed waves, assassins, slashing, and cade/corner shielding occasionally. They're really close to being good enough to kite on, but just not worth using yet.

For infantry increasing the athletics might be the best option. 


Assuming the crossbowman and infantry changes, it should still be difficult to kite when there are +4/5 players on, as it is now. I'm hoping that I will no longer have to say to new players. 
"sorry you chose wrong, I know you wanted to be a crossbowman/infantry but they're useless. Make another account and re-earn that 750k so you can go pikeman/archer hero"


Ranger/Halb:
I also want to note that as halb/ranger i use my normal light body armours when kiting, so my only bonus is ironflesh, gloves, and helmet. This is little compared to the bonuses provided by master peltast, warden, sentry, marauder. This is expected to some extent, as a cade specialised class. Surcoat overmail and the likes with 10 weight might be OP, but ~20 weight feel unnecessary in the same way that crossbowmen not kiting is. I think going midway between the weights might be better (surcoat having 17 weight instead of 22 -> still heavier than bear), master halb mail having 17 weight instead of 25, etc). 
I'd prefer to see heavy pike/archer armours as the main hero class 'bonus', not something I decide against using, over tracker.

[TerrorBite]

umm bump?

[Daedra]

Why milanese plate for legionaire has better stats than leather overmail for halberdier. I know, halberdier has more athletics and iron flesh than legionaire, but milanese plate is craft item

[Corrndog]

Why milanese plate for legionaire has better stats than leather overmail for halberdier. I know, halberdier has more athletics and iron flesh than legionaire, but milanese plate is craft item

Becouse it's for infantry?