Shattered Kingdoms

Well, as far as I can tell, Flamberge had its accuracy and damage downed, and its damage upped. This seems like a decent tradeoff, but the thing was that a flamberge had the _perfect_ speed, only just reaching three attacks when you were specced in it, and then 4 if you slapped a GM haste on top of it. Thus is had comparably huge damage and uncanny accuracy, making it hard as heck to parry and packing a huge wallop when it hit...

So upping the speed of an item that more or less had the speed anyone could ever want, and downing the two stats that made it desirable regardless of the fact that the point upped in speed might exceed the points downed in damage and accuracy, it's still not certain that it could be called a buff.

I was thinking about it last night and I could see splitting accuracy into two categories, accuracy (the ability to strike with precision IE to hit roll), and parry ability (The ability for the weapon to be used to parry anohter attack). This would allow for larger weapons like the flamberge and No-dachi to have a greater span. Under that system I could see the weapons comparing as

Flamberge less accuracy than a No-dachi
Flamberge being less damaging than a no-dachi
Flamberge being faster than a no-dachi
Flamberge being better parrying than a no-dachi.

It sort of already is Redman. At least that is the theory. The accuracy hardcoded on the weapon is what determines the parry ability and the to-hit is some combination of the accuracy plus whatever to-hit enchantments are on the weapon. Meaning that no matter how you enchant your weapon, it won't parry better, but the misschance is lowered. (And maybe dodge as well, but that is just my own pet-theory.)

This would be a decent analysis, assuming it were true. Unfortunately, it states that all three values were changed, when in fact, one of them wasn't changed at all. This again demonstrates the point that you can't rely on comparisons against other weapons to determine balance changes.

I will paypal 1 dollar to anyone who makes a weapons list, and i'm sure there are others who would probably pay more.

You are incorrectly presupposing that a net "buff" to speed and a net "wimp" to accuracy or damage would result in an overall neutral change. When one takes a weapon that is chosen purely for its high damage/accuracy and is already capable of hitting 4 attacks when spec'd/hasted, and receives a boost to its speed which is not statistically relevant when affects are taken into account, the addition of "speed" is meaningless in pkill compared to the loss of damage or accuracy.

You are ignoring the fact that although you buffed the majority of weapons and wimped only a fraction of them, you have wimped the vast majority of weapons that active pkers have specialized. If half the mercenaries who actively pk use a khopesh, and you wimp khopesh, you have wimped half of the weapons players use in the mud - not 1/40 or less, despite how many worthless subtypes exist.

Regardless, although Dulrik seems to believe that by buffing flamberge speed by, for example, "6 points" and wimping flamberge damage by "5 points" he has buffed flamberge overall, things do not always work the way a coder might design things. Not all weapon values are created equal.

There was a campaign a few years ago to make sure that weapon subtypes could either be 1h or 2h, but not both - I reported (and had an imm change in front of me) the 1handed halberds in Seawatch, along with other weapons. I agree that no-dachi's should either be 1h or 2h.

When I find some time to play a sorc/priest for a week or so and build another compare list I will be able to point out many more details, no worries all - but I doubt I do it before December, so somebody else should get on the ball.

The one-handed halberds are still one handed.


...further research shows the "halberds" are actually lances.

I'm not ignoring that at all. Nerfing the weapons that everyone was using because they believed them to be the best was obviously intentional. The point is that those weapons should be more equivalent to other weapons so that its not so obvious what the "best spec" should be.

People cry that their spec'd mercs are not quite as lethal as they were before, but the crying ignores the fact that they probably can't do any better by choosing different weapons. I've said over and over that if you can prove that the weapon you chose is obviously no longer competitive, you should send some email with evidence. I still have ZERO of those in my inbox.

Availability seems to be a big factor to choosing a spec, I want to spec in some polearm but im not sure, it seems a lot of weapons don't have anything better than mith thats not too hard to obtain.

I don't mean to sound negative or anything but, after so many changes in weapons, I personally feel that testing them and making a list is kinda futile since it will change again soon enough. I just don't have the willpower and/or time to get into exploring a weapon system that I don't really understand, that has a concept I don't really like.

I think maybe one of the reasons your inbox is not getting any such mail is because other players are also kinda tired of this in their own way.

I used to like swashies and mercs a lot. Now, Its going to take a lot of persuasion for me to roll a character that is dependent on weapons. It was the original reason I rolled a priest, and when I ended up in the fist, so much the better for me.