Shattered Kingdoms

I feel like just totally undoing it would be too big a boon to warriors who are already stronk these days. What if prone only removed the offensive stances, like aggressive and wolverine? If you're playing defensively, going prone would not reset anything. That way tanking gets some of its balls back, swashies can still be useful in front, and barbs/mercs will only be moderately adjusted in the damage dealing arena.

I'm curious, those who play warriors, do you play more in aggressive or defensive stance?
Under what conditions do you do each?

One big disparity here is that people can use aggressive stance as intended with no risk of losing it. 2nd row with a massive pole arm, molesting HP pools.

Defensive is only useful front row, and has mitigated usefulness now because you are going to get bashed. No doubt about that unless you're a lightie in a certain cabal.

I'd like to chime in and say a lot of people have brought up good points in this thread.

1) I agree with Finney's assertions. I believe accuracy is more of an issue than damage by an enormous factor.
2) I agree that aggressive stance is de-facto riskless since it can be used effectively outside the reach of prone-applying moves, and under that I feel that defensive stance should make the likelihood of bash landing less than 35%. We need to put a stop to this two decade run of bash being the best melee skill.
3) grep, your graphs please me.
4) There is no way massive weapons should ever, ever hit 5 attacks a round and have the accuracy that they have a snowball's chance in hell of hitting all 5 hits. Four is stretching it, but I'd be okay with it with haste. The fact this has been allowed to occur is a severe oversight, in my opinion.

I don't see a condition for defensive stance except in some PvE. Think of it this way: the longer the fight goes on, the more likely you are to go prone in the front row, so you have to put out the maximum damage you can as fast as you can before you end up in neutral stance.

I'd like to qualify this with the fact that you do it in PVP when you have someone else to do the killing for you, and you need them alive as long as possible to do that killing.

Massive weapons are able to get five attacks because haste and speed stack, which should obviously get changed. I think the staff should start with the accuracy and speed changes, since those two will significantly reduce melee damage. It may not be necessary to change the success rate of bash, if characters are not dying in two rounds. You don't want to swing the pendulum too far and go from dying in a single bash to never dying at all.

I keep seeing MR barbarians come up in this thread, but the evidence (i.e. the log site) simply does not demonstrate that they are overpowered. They negate preparation, which is a good thing in my opinion since winning or losing PK should not be determined by which player has more time to spend on SK.

An easy experimental patch is possible without too much refactoring. Take the original speed value of a weapon and divide it by its current speed value for the percent speed change. Apply this percentage as a reduction proportion to total accuracy. If you're striking with a weapon faster than it is meant to be handled, you pay for it with deteriorating accuracy. It may still be possible to have a five swings worth of speed with a halberd, but if it is only designed for two and a half then you wind up only able to use 50% of your accuracy on those strikes. This creates a tactical environment where players are as rewarded for understanding the situation at hand and choosing an appropriate response as they are Skinner Boxing prep time beforehand.

Ideally yes, that's how it should work. But in reality, it's not. Like I said, the longer it goes, the sooner you are prone, so being mode defensive so that the one behind you can do damage just means you'll do less damage for a round, get proned, and die. The best option given the way it works now is for you and the person behind you to both be aggressive, so that you do sa am much damage as you can before dying. Defensive stance does not help you survive the front row in pvp that's not 1v1, it just means you have a lower contribution to the fight before dying.

Why can't massive weapons just have a cap on the number attacks they can get per round no matter the speed/haste given? Wouldn't that be the simplest way of dealing with massive weapons without needing to nerfing their stats?