Shattered Kingdoms

Wolverine stance needs very fast weapons combined with pretty powerful haste in order to reach 4 attacks with a weapon in my experience.

I just re-read through these two old threads, but both were resolved by the patch that was announced here:
http://www.shatteredkingdoms.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=25548
I also didn't see anything in those threads that was talking about slow or religion spells.

I've done some re-testing and my results are as follows:
- Haste and fury stack.
- Weapon speed enchantment does not stack with either (or both).

I'm not seeing the issue reported with lower haste bonus.
I do see a bug caused by the 2015 fix with the spells that cause slow when used in conjunction with speed spells.
The slow issue is a bit complicated to fix, but I can do it. Having haste and fury stack though seems overpowered.

If you want to give more feedback, now would be a good time.

Haste has the drawback of fatigue. Wild fighting with haste stacks, so at first glance it may seem to work. Testing with claymore though yields different results (2-3 attacks) as if haste and fury completely cancel each other out.

Imo, haste and speed runes should not stack, but when stacking with fury, only the highest out of the two should stack with fury. It was only when haste, runes, AND fury stacked in the past that caused massive damage output.

I tried it specifically with claymore and at first I thought I saw what you meant with fury. But it turned out that when my character berserked that time, he failed his fury check. Once I actually successfully furied it worked fine. Could that have been the confusion?

I will log and pm my results. Basically it seemed as if haste alone was working fine (3 attacks) but when combined with fury, it dropped to 2-3 attack routines as if they cancelled one another out. Testing with fast but low damage weapons like a sai yielded different results as it seemed to work just fine with those.

Unless something has changed since I made this post, then these were my findings from the second post in this thread, and I can guarantee that in my tests the barbarian was furied every time.

However, onto the topic at hand:This is a good direction to go, however there is an alternative that I've outlined below. TL DR at the bottom.

Here's the current state of things.

Weapon speed doesn't stack with haste.
Weapon speed does stack with specialize.
Weapon speed doesn't stack with fury.


Weapon speed doesn't stack with haste. This is good. Without overbuffing melee, this gives players a worthwhile choice to make (Do I enchant speed onto this weapon to make it more useful without haste, or do I enchant accuracy/damage and rely on haste to be at maximum strength?) and isn't a factor that benefits any one class over another, because haste is classless. This is also good for balance, because if weapon speed, haste and fury/specialize stacked, a sorc would be able to get 5 attacks with massive weapons on a charm, and that would be too powerful. It also makes sense, as both haste and weapon speed are magical effects. I am glad that haste doesn't stack with weapon speed. This should stay as it is.

Weapon speed does stack with specialize. This is also good. It's good -because- haste doesn't stack with weapon speed, meaning that you're still making the same decision as a merc that you'd make as any other class when it comes to determining what weapons to use and whether or not speed is a good enchantment. If haste didn't stack with specialize or fury, you would be weakening mercs and leaving barbarians in their weakened state. It's also counter-intuitive that a magic spell would be cancelled out by your primary class feature.

Weapon speed doesn't stack with fury. This isn't good for balance or game-sense, and should be changed. Both specialize and fury are the two respective class features of mercs and barbarians, meaning that if one stacks with haste and the other doesn't, then there's an imbalance there. Yes, I realize that there are more pros and cons to both skills than just how they interact with weapon speed, but this is a fundamental imbalance that's quite noticeable. If anything it's an unnecessary nerf to MR barbs, who can't use haste and thus are screwed out of using bigger weapons to their full potential.

In it's current form, either specialize is stronger than fury for stacking with haste, or fury is weaker because it doesn't. One of these needs to change, and it shouldn't be a nerf to haste by lowering the things it stacks with. Haste already has two huge drawbacks in reduced natural regen and fatigue. It doesn't need any more nerfs.

So here's two directions you could take, if you ask me. Both have their pros and cons.

A) You can allow speed enchantments to stack with fury, while leaving the other rules intact. Barbs and mercs will still stay at the absolute top of the food chain with regard to melee viability, and their respective primary class features will be more balanced with regard to each other and easier for players to understand. This is the option that maintains the status quo of the game the most while fixing balance issues.

Example (Numbers not to scale): Barbarian enchants +2 speed onto a weapon with +1 innate speed and furies for +8 speed. His total speed bonus should be +11: 8 from the fury, 3 from the speed enchants. If the barbarian uses a haste spell strong enough to grant him +4 speed, his speed bonus should be +12, because out of weapon speed enchants and haste, only the highest of the two stacks.

Similarly, if the barbarian enchants +4 speed onto a weapon with +4 speed innate and furies for +8 speed, then he can reach a total of +16 speed on that weapon. However, by doing so he is all but completely forsaking accuracy and damage enchants, while also forfeiting the ability to ever gain a weapon speed benefit from using haste. For those worried about whether this would be overpowered: Mercs can already do this, and they cannot reach 5 attacks with a massive weapon except for a dwarf with a battle axe that has innate great speed (I think there's only one) and has great speed added onto it.

B) An alternative that I only thought of while writing this post would be to remove haste stacking with specialize and fury, and allow haste to stack with weapon speed. This would -lower- strength of mercs and barbs, especially those that would otherwise have GM sorcs to cast haste on them, while increasing the power of all other hasted melee/ranged classes relative to them. There may be other implications I haven't thought of yet either given that I just thought about this in the last few minutes. It wouldn't actually increase the power of sorcs barb/merc charms, because the speed bonus of GM fury and specialize is greater than the speed bonus granted by GM haste and full speed enchants. It would also -much- more greatly increase the value of innate speed enchantments on weaponry, which isn't necessarily a good thing, while also decreasing the value of haste for mercs and barbs, as it would be granting only a dex bonus, not a speed bonus, except for mercs using unspecialized weapons. It would also, perhaps too much, increase the value of the weapon speed enchantment compared to its counterparts.

Example: A barbarian enchants +4 speed onto a weapon with +4 speed innate and furies for +8 speed, then he can reach a total of +16 speed on that weapon. If this sounds like the above case, it is: Except in this case there's no way that the barbarian can -ever- attack faster than his fury bonus provides through the haste spell.

On the other hand, however, a rogue, paladin, hellion, scout or bard would be able to enchant +4 speed onto a weapon with +4 speed innate and then be hasted for +4 speed to provide a total of +12 speed maximum: Much closer to the maximum speed potential for a merc or barb under the current code.


TL;DR: Either A) weapon speed should stack with fury to bring barbs in line with mercs,
or B) weapon speed should not stack with specialize or fury, yet -be- allowed to stack with haste, directly weakening mercs while increasing the relative power of all other adventuring classes compared to barbs and mercs.

And just to reiterate the reason I created this thread: I used weak haste and fury, got 5 attacks with an unenchanted weapon. Then I swapped the unenchanted weapon for another of the same subtype that had +2 speed, and I no longer got 4 attacks. That's buggy. Regardless of any stacking rules, a weapon with speed enchants should never attack slower than an unenchanted weapon, but when I used weak haste and weaker speed enchants, it did. My specifics are posted again below for reference. I avoided going into the specific numbers or subtypes out of respect for IC information. I did this on April 29 2016, when I posted the thread.

Totally wrong. The only meaningful choice is whether to be extraordinarily lazy and low powered or whether to enchant accuracy on one weapon and have another one sitting around with speed if you're desperate for a no-haste situational weapon.

If melee damage was lowered by some % factor and NPC hps were reduced by the same factor, and speed stacked with haste, you'd have a meaningful choice.

Just to be clear, it looks like you just said that the best option is to enchant accuracy and then get haste unless you aren't going to have haste, at which point speed is better.

So it sounds like you think speed is the best enchantment.

Why, then, would you suggest "fixing" that by giving another buff to speed enchants by letting them stack with haste, while doing nothing that would increase the usefulness of the other two enchants? That would just make speed enchants the all out winner in the overwhelming majority of circumstances, even moreso than right now.