Shattered Kingdoms

While this is true, bash is still means #1 of enacting prone. It's the most commonly used, and this change favors the DPS side of the melee equation (the side that was already heavily favored and didn't need the help). Tanking melee in SK is pretty ridiculous and requires a TON more prep and time to do effectively, as well as specific build choices that can make or break the build. This nerf to the ability to tank is completely the wrong way to go.

This change isn't enough really, it should be costing xp in order to change stances.

I don't understand what the goal of this particular update was. Can you tell us what you were trying to do, or what direction you were trying to go with this prone change, Dulrik?

Hedgehog stance sounds awesome with kip up combo. I don't like the prone=neutral idea though. Maybe allow changing of stance while prone. Or remove it and change hs to a timer with a reasonable PE cost and pin the user in place for duration. Still, very awesome. We should have another bonanza to celebrate.

Building out the stance system with more powerful stances requires that there be a solution to people using them. The fact that there was no solution had already proven to be a problem in the past. When thinking about how you would logically deal with someone in a stance, being knocked prone just makes perfect sense.

As usual, neither knee-jerk reactions nor calling me names is going to make me sympathetic to your point of view. Suggesting balance alternatives will always get your farther. As usual, I will almost certainly wait until I see what actually occurs in the game after a period of player's readjusting before deciding what to do next.

Not true. It turned out there was a way to cheat it by using the combat command as a backdoor to stance that didn't have the same restrictions on its use. Apparently there were logs showing at least a few people using it that way, although possibly they didn't realize they were getting away with a disallowed action.

Can we at least not get stance changes when we fail bash, trips?

You are knocking yourself prone in those situations, so I wouldn't change that. After all, I just made bash "so much more powerful" (according to some), it's only fair that it has an equivalent new drawback as well.

Things you can suggest which I might possibly consider later on: revising lag/move costs for changing stance, or possibly automatically setting you back to your last stance on recovering from prone, but at some other cost.

Do you realize how accurate aggressive-stance bash is, Dulrik? You've just provided every DPS running the ability to completely nerf the hell out of any tanks they're facing, with limited to no drawbacks.

Also, I don't see anyone calling you names.

Please at least reduce lag on altering stance.

And since this change was introduced to balance more powerful stances, maybe instead of just knocking everyone into neutral, bashing would only change the stance of someone in one of these more powerful stances (I'm using this in the plural because you did, and it kind of seems like hedgehog stance might not be the last of its kind) into the next, common stance.

For instance, if hedgehog stance is some sort of ultra defensive, then bash would knock the swashie into defensive instead. But against someone with a plain old jane stance, it wouldn't have an effect.