I read a lot about the balance of Thrall in pve and pvp and how actually it seems that Thralls are far too strong in pvp.
I am a player who mainly plays solo and with very few people and occasionally but still I come up with an idea :
Why not add a valor for the character making him receive a lot less dmgs for Thralls. I mean a value player could adjust like the amount of xp or ressources we gain that would define how much a player receive from being hit by an ennemy Thrall.
Doing so Thrall would still have their strenght against other Thralls or any dangerous ennemy without being a powerhouse against players.
4 Likes
It is only PvP.
In PvE it is your personal decision if you use a thrall or not. And even you will use a thrall it is again your personal decision which one you will use. A high leveled Berserker or a weaker thrall (i.e. named one from the starter area).
So if you think that you are missing the challenge your personal choice was wrong.
There are a lot of player absolut happy with the current situation and if you are not happy you have all option to change it for yourself.
1 Like
Some need to have their power dialed back, but some like the Frost giant bodyguard need a major buff! i just got the game last week and LOVE it! After an hour of trying to get the boss to spawn and beating her down for 20 minutes i get a bodyguard that has to be guarded by me!
No.
What I meant was, that it is your decision which thrall is fighting on your side!
Have you read my this:
Well I’m not a pvp expert but I’ll take a crack at addressing this. In PvP how you choose to play is in part based on how others choose to play. You could choose to use lower tier, lower damage thralls, just as you could choose to use lower tier weapons. But if you did that, you would be placing yourself at a severe disadvantage, if literally anyone else decided to use high damage thralls. Just as if someone used high tier weapons against you. Why would you knowingly put yourself at a severe disadvantage against other players?
And severe is probably an understatement here. I know it’s been discussed a million times, but no matter what way you look at it Thralls are way overpowered. A good thrall, even low level, has way more Heath than a standard player build (approximately 10x) and deals significantly more damage than a player even with a maxed strength build. They are both tanks for damage and high damage dealing warriors. Yes there are cheesy ways to take out thralls from a distance and their ai is currently a little slow. But nonetheless a well outfitted thrall could easily one to two shot you, even if you are 40 health in epic flawless heavy armor (this is arena champion level of damage). This means instead of fighting a thrall one on one like a true barbarian a smart player will either take them out from a distance (if possible) or have their own thrall fight them, maybe providing some assistance here or there if you’re feeling brave.
So instead of player vs player, PvP is becoming more of thrall vs thrall, with player assistance. Which kinda defeats the purpose at least from my stand point. I do PvP, mostly to fight other players because they are more interesting dynamic opponents. Blowing things up is also fun, but it’s the join of combat that keeps things interesting. I think a slider to control thrall damage to a player as the OP mentioned would be a good compromise to address this issue. Personally, I feel a major rebalancing of both thralls and players is in order. But this topic has been discussed ad nauseam. And I understand there are many different opinions out there. Still PvP with current thrall stats really needs to be addressed to get back to actual player vs player combat.
1 Like
It absolutely ruins PVP. Our clan was in a 3v5 yesterday, 6v10 with thralls. 4 Swords of Crom were in play (2 on each team). You absolutely need to wait until thralls are occupied before being able to fully engage. My thrall 1 shot a player off his horse, then killed the horse in one combo, moved on to another thrall. The enemy I engaged, his thrall was chasing my teammate with another player. My teammate ran too far and the thrall of my opponent teleported back and 1 shot me from well over 600 hp with 69% damage reduction from my mixed armor set. I was running 50 str 55 vit 10 agi 30 grit 20 enc 5 acc 5 surv. (Includes my typical weapon/buffs etc), slightly higher stats are possible. I should not have to pass 60 vitality ever and be past 80% damage reduction to avoid being 1 shot. I don’t even know how a thrall can hit over 600, I did a rough calculation of a berserker (3.92 damage multiplier) with the Sword of Crom with a master weapon kit, 10% str buff, and fairly decent str stats, and I got around 600, but then you have to add in his armor penetration which is around 20-30, and the players armor reduction of usually 60-80%. So I thought I’d never take over 300-350 damage from 1 shot with my set up, but apparently not lol. Even if I had been 2 shot, or stacked with sunder, (maybe another thrall also hit at the same time), this is ridiculous.
We raided a base with 50 thralls geared up and leveled up while the players were not even online, it took us 2 full raiding days to clear it, we got 1 shot at least 50 times while trying to be encumbrance spec with 20-30 vitality in heavy armor. Not to mention their triple layered buildings with roof intersections and 3 gates per foundation spamming, but that’s a topic for another thread. Oh, and why do thralls do massively more damage than us and have 10-20k hp? My snowhunter literally has 20k hp and can 1 shot most builds. Berserkers have 10k usually, and you can farm 100 of them in a few days of grinding…
You’re darn right they are good fighters and I want one of them on my side when I fight a boss too. Because bosses have a lot of hp and most of them deal a lot of damage. But let’s consider player builds for a second. If you do an all around fighter build you need to put a lot of points in strength, quite a few points in vitality, and you’re going to need some grit and some encumbrance too. So maybe you go 50 pts strength 40 vitality. That’s a pretty strong build but you’ll definitely sacrifice grit for it. And good luck achieving that high strength without a decent amount of buffs (so it won’t be permanent). Or maybe you want to be a tank so you go 50 vitality. My point is there is no way you’re going 50 vitality and 50 strength and sill have enough grit/encumbrance to move and fight. At least not without a crazy amount of buffs which will be very temporary. If you want to deal damage or you want to tank you need to specialize. That means sacrificing in other areas.
Thralls do not do this. Even if you were to put them up agains a player with 50 strength and 50 vitality, a good thrall will easily out preform the player in both health/damage taken and damage dealt. That doesn’t seem over powered to you? Perhaps I should rephrase. Thralls are over powered relative to a player (maybe not a boss, but I lean towards thinking they are overpowered here too). How you fix this Imbalance is up to debate. The OP’s idea isn’t bad one. But there is no doubt in my mind that they are overpowered.
+50 vit +50 str… i leveled a toon with this build, and it was fun. tally up.
I think you may be missing my point here. Even with that build a good leveled thrall is going to way out perform you in damage dealt per blow, and way way out perform you in the amount of damage it can take. My point stands relative to level 60 player Thralls are much “tankier” and much stronger. Some are much much stronger. We can and have argued the merits and what can be done to balance this, if anything. But is there really still anyone whose going to argue that thralls aren’t significantly stronger then even the strongest player? They might be slower, not as smart, but they are way stronger. Hopefully we can at least agree on that and move from there.
1 Like
I’ll argue that, as it brings strategy into a game based on survival, building, and domination. I like it even when the build is an under-powered toon. There is fun here.
Guys that’s wonderful to hear your complains about how you are getting your ■■■beaten to death.
But what do u think about what I proposed ?
The idea behind that post was to propose a solution not getting everyone complaining. That’s not the point.
So I propose this idea of reduction of dmgs by percentages, does any think it’s bad, would like to see something else or not
If the thralls would be smarter, Funcom could reduce their dmg output and I wouldnt have a problem with it. And I am also PvE only.
But as long as they are so stupid as they are now, we need the dmg.
Just watch your thrall fighting against many bosses. They always want to get to the center of the boss… Until then, they dont attack at all and get hit so often…
Then they attack 1 time. Maybe 2 time and stop… So why not full combo?
And after knock-back, the thralls hit the air as the boss is mosten not there and then the thrall get knock-backed again and repeat the circle of hitting the air…
I think it’s a good suggestion. Currently, thrall damage is directly tied to NPC damage. It has been suggested before that thrall damage should be its own slider instead, and I agree. In Single-player and private servers both, this would help create the overall difficulty setting that players want. Now, if you want to reduce thrall damage you also need to reduce NPC damage. Although this does make the player a more active party in combat, it also makes the game less lethal, and not everyone likes that.
Of course, this slider wouldn’t actually help official servers, especially the PvP ones where thralls play a major role in being competitive. But it would give Funcom a tool to adjust thrall damage on PvP servers as necessary. PvP servers alreasy have different exp and harvesting multipliers than PvE servers, so damage multipliers shouldn’t pose any more difficulty.
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As I mentioned before, I think this (percentage damage decrease to player characters only- controllable by slider) would be a good short term fix for the problem in PvP. Good suggestion.
Ideally I would personally like to see a more thorough balancing pass for both PvE and PvP at some point. But as some have mentioned PvE really offers you options so it isn’t as necessary to change and could remain as is.
The slider should only be for “thralls against HUMAN players”. So the PvE content would still be same hard/easy with the same thrall.
He isnt the first one with this suggestion… Its the easiest one can even think of, which doesnt change any other game-mode, except the one who wants changes (PvP).
And it is even done several times. For XP and resource gathering.
Weapons are a different case, so I understand that “balancing” will effect every mode.
And it should also be done for thrall-limit cap. Its a server setting anyway. Raise it for PvE (but not sth too high like 200 per clan, but 100 for a full clan at PvE seems not much - maybe in the middle? 150).
Devils advocate…but on a official PVE/PVE-C another player having an OP thrall and you trying to solo could become an issue when running certain dungeons/areas.
Example…
Solo player wants to farm FoP, but ownats the challlenge of not having thrall 2 minute kill each and every boss.
I start on the were-hyena dead boss in NW corner of UC. It takes me 15 minutes…i then run to the next boss, but somemone with an OP thrall has just killed it, so i run to the next boss, and same thing, the next boss and same thing. Boht the the solo and the OP player know the “best” route, so now i am chasing ghosts, and they are running circles thru out the UC before i can even get a 2nd kill. I must now change up my game play because i choose not use the OP thrall. I get frustrated and give in, get me a a FoP machine thrall, because, well i have to sleep and eat in real life.
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I think separate sliders for both would be welcome. Many PvE players think that thralls are too strong for PvE, turning the game into “Easy Mode”, or they feel that the player doesn’t feel like a hero because their own contribution to e.g. boss fights is insignificant compared to their thralls’ output.
So the ideal situation would be to split the current sliders into the following:
- Player damage vs. NPCs (excl. Followers)
- Player damage vs. Followers
- (Player damage vs. players, in case someone wants longer or shorter, more brutal duels)
- Follower damage vs. players
- Follower damage vs. NPCs
- Follower damage vs. Followers
- NPC damage vs. players
- NPC damage vs. Followers
- (NPC damage vs. NPCs, because hyenas fight ostriches, komodos fight hookbills, wights fight Cimmerians, etc.)
This way, server admins would be able to customize their combat settings to best suit their needs.
3 Likes
Slaves are the only normal defense of a small clan or a single player, reducing damage, these players will leave and pvp with no one else
2 Likes
I saw these pvp. the crowd kills loners. They only attack when in most
either will break the base when you are offline