Changes to whips

[Acanafrog]

The change on the whip disarm from 4ap to 5ap has made some great brother options completely garbage. With the addition of the whip and disarm it basically made a functioning stun into the game. I am able to stun 2 times a round, very similar to disarming two people, but unlike stun it actually works on most enemies. Stun hits what less then half and basically none of the ones you want it to.

Example of why this change really hurts interesting builds, compared to the 2 handers that most people get forced to play.

With 2 disarm you have the ability to help your team with a brother that only really needs great accuracy and fatigue.
With 4ap you can have the choice of 2 disarm attacks helping control bigger fights that are against you.
As well it allows for synergy with pikes
Allowing for disarm and attack.
Lots of times you get a brother who has 3* attack and nothing else, mostly a waste of a character but with old whips you had a brother that was actually helpful to the team.
Now with 5ap only thing it kinda works with is some ranged weapons unfortunately that means that great 3* acc and not very good other stats guy is useless because you would also need to something get ranged up to a fairly high level.

Now, obviously you figured that this disarming (what you would use the whips for anyway) is stronger then liked. So I will give you 2 options off the top of my head that would be more enjoyable to (arguably) most players.
1) 5ap cost to start but another skill added to the game, right now cleaver takes away 15 chance to hit. So, instead whip mastery with -1ap cost to use disarm and perhaps something like higher chance to hit body. (With such little damage and a lot of weapons taking out body armor first it’s a nice little buff to getting some damage and bleed off with the whip.)
Note that the 15 chance to hit is not factoring in giving enemies the chance to not be disarmed.
2) Other option is revert back to 4 AP cost and up the miss rate to 20 or 25.
If my limited knowledge of the mechanics are correct, your best chance would be 95 – 25= 70 with the large fatigue cost to do the disarm you are still getting closer to 1 disarm a round unless you have a really good fatigue and max attack character. As a 80 attack character would be only getting a 55% hit chance

It would be a real shame to see a brother with unique and enjoyable builds that would have some use in beginning but also follow into late game. Especially since the brother would generally just be sent away otherwise.
You had a really great idea and it was really enjoyable to play and build different combinations to have that all taken away because you did the lazy way and just added 1 more ap…

Hopefully you will reconsider

[RusBear]

Whips disarm – too powerfull option for game mech even if it will have 6 ap fo hit. Enemies usuall have no reserve weapons. Work good for all “hard” tipes like warriors and top acient undead. Has 3 tile range. We have already crazy daggers.We had naked 75% nimble, QH shield abuse, 4 arbalestes in pocket… no need make 1 more error.

[kem]

Its complex issue.
Balancing by accuracy makes it invalid as a choice vs targets with high mdef (targets you really want to target are dangerous, and dangerous enemies tend to have better than avg mdef.)
Balancing by FAT makes it OP on high fat chars.
4 AP allows for 3 bros to control 6 tough enemies, that is OP.

Current version is OK-ish, but 4AP leftover taxes you with a mandatory QH perk to do something usefull with said 4 AP. That makes it a bit underwhelming, but still useful (as that is THE ONLY way to control a stun-immune target. (Taunt has lots of restrictions).

Personally, I’d like it to be able to be used as an offhand slot weapon (a unique mainhand-dualgrip-offhand choice) to allow for a weapon+whip combo without a QH perk (duelist should apply) or control kit (mace+whip, without a QH perk) or whip+net combo.
That solves a problem with not really usefull 4 AP lefover, when used as a control tool, and doesn’t allow for massed 4 AP use, and doesn’t require a buff to its controlling potencial to offset a hier AP cost (past 5).

But it takes dev time..

[Acanafrog]

I understand that it helps control enemies and that is exactly why it should be in the game.
Most game mode without mods you have 12 guys. Black monolith for example can have 47 enemies. So even if a whip guy can control 2/1 enemy is still 4/1 vs the group.
On top of that with proposed lower accuracy it would be more like 60-70% chance to hit so it isn’t even guaranteed 2/1 for whips.

If you feel like the whips are to strong because characters don’t have backup weapons would that not be similar to stun? It to is powerful because they can’t do anything on their turn. Though I’m sure you use stun at some points in the game and would use it if available on more enemy types. With whips enemy can still attack (badly), can move, can pick up weapon and or switch weapon if available. This all is “if” the whip hits.
Originally you took cleaver skill and you lose the -15 accuracy nerf giving really high chances to disarm. If the changes in suggesting are in the game you would have the exceptional brothers able to get 55-70% chance twice.
Resulting in a choice for the player.

Currently with high attack skill and cleaver I am pretty much guaranteed to disarm 1 guy.
Vs me having to take the chance in order to try and disarm 1-2 guys if the rolls are between 55-70%

The argument of 3 controlling 6 is not guaranteed if you only have a 55-70% chance to hit. On top of that you are losing damage to do this. You don’t get to swing a Pike throw an axe or shoot an arrow.
It does however allow you the option and flexibility to whip 2x not guaranteed to hit. Whip quick hands and attack. Giving options to the situation.

On top of everything most builds need great brother, but this takes an ok brother with great attack and fatigue and actually makes him useful in fights through most sections of the game. You trade off damage and killing speed to do this.

Often times it feels like devs think everything needs to be brutally hard in the game. If I had a real life mercenary company and I was going to take on 30 orks why would I only let 12 men fight?

Previously the whips where fun build to run, it’s unique and different to everything else and made use of Brothers not always picked. I’m not saying make them as strong as before I’m saying make them somewhere in the middle. Still a incredibly disappointing nerf as a potential for a unique class is lost.

As to takes times, I am a firm believer of getting things done right before, simple testing could have foreseen this problem yet was originally released.

[Acanafrog]

RusBear wrote:

Whips disarm – too powerfull option for game mech even if it will have 6 ap fo hit. Enemies usuall have no reserve weapons. Work good for all “hard” tipes like warriors and top acient undead. Has 3 tile range. We have already crazy daggers.We had naked 75% nimble, QH shield abuse, 4 arbalestes in pocket… no need make 1 more error.

Personally I feel like the more viable and unique builds in this game offer the greatest replayability and enjoyment.
Most gamers who really enjoy a game will try to to get every advantage and min max to make the best character to play. In saying that we want the game to continue to grow and it is hard for new players.

First off this is a single player game so let’s say you personally hate that whips disarm people you simply could not use whips. Call it a challenge run whatever. You are playing single player game basically you can handicap yourself as much as you want. You listed a number of examples as mistakes but you can easily choose not to use any of those.

My bigger point in this is you probably are fine with using 2h hammers swords and axes. As they are in general the strongest options to run in the game. You probably have archers that take out goblins at range. So why are 2h or bows not op? Maybe we should lower the damage of all two handers to something closer to 1 handed with double grip???
They are just as much op as the whip, they do a job. In the case of two handers they kill things quickly with high damage. In the case of bows they are effective at hitting advancing troops and killing enemy archers and high priority targets.

The enemy has a number of op options available to them. A crossbows used by ai or the computer who uses round swing with it’s own troops nearby can do so because they only need to fight one fight.
Injuries to ai vs player characters are vastly harsher for the player as a injured can last days so multiple fights. Why can enemy bring in 40 troops but players can’t? Just as it sucks for me to get a pierced arm and lose accuracy for 5 days it sucks to the ai fallen hero that loses his weapon to a disarm. The thing is the enemy could disarm my character as well if programmed to do so.

For argument sake let’s say there are 10 amazing builds in the game right now. Why would you as a player be upset if there was 20 or 30?
Would that not be amazing to replay try different things? Have even more backgrounds be viable have different star combinations actually be good, would that not be great? They literally gave this to us at the start of this expansion a unique and different build that was actually effective.

If you are running a 2h axe Frontline character, you are using an “op” build. For some reason though you think that is ok, but not other builds…. Why would it be so bad for a whip to be as good? At the end of the day would it not give you and everyone more replayability more options and different runs? All of this giving you, the player the option to use it or not based on your likes or dislikes. Because this is a single player game you will never have to face anyone using what you consider op builds or class/weapon selections. For myself I could be a worse player overall then you, maybe using a whip twice was truly overpowered.For me either way it was exciting to have something different to use that was effective in that role. At the end of the day I was far more excited to play the game then after the nerf especially after seeing a very unique builds be effective.

I am not saying the whips couldn’t use some work to find a sweet spot. In actual fact I think 2 disarms with lower chance to hit would be very interesting.I would love a middle ground from the release and the current nerf. As the different build was very fluid and fun to play with 5ap it loses that adaptability that was very refreshing.

[Author]

Posts