So is the possibility to solo all content, like I did.
So what?
People only had strong thralls because they made them so. Want a challenge? Leave them at the base. Or don’t even capture them. I captured them, leveled them, geared them up, made them as best as they could be. And then they stayed there, looking pretty at the base when I wanted a challenge. That’s how I do it today too. So what? This is me, that’s my playstyle. People do theirs.
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We get that your Crom’s gift to fighting, you blather on about it all of the time, with your stone knifes at level 10 clearing the Wine Cellar, etc.
Not trying to be rude, yet it does get a bit old, my apologies.
Not everyone has your talent, or your propensity to pound a keyboard, some like to play a more relaxed game, some are just not an FC god like yourself, pardon us peasants.
Not seeing a lot of this, mostly just the opposite. I personally think we have achieved thrall balance. Again the OP has good, positive feedback and I agree with it.
We are done here.
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Yes. And because YOU think, everyone else needs to agree, is it?
Well, some people actually loved stronger thralls. How was that a problem to you when you could choose not to have them? Tell me. Because if you though your thralls were too powerful, it was on you, entirely on you and nobody else. You could always have chisen weaker thralls, but now people who want them stronger can’t have them.
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Not seeing a lot of this, mostly just the opposite. I personally think we have achieved thrall balance. Again the OP has good, positive feedback and I agree with it.
We ARE done here.
You are actually making my point. Some people prefered having their thralls doing most of the fighting. But you want THEM to meet YOUR standards. So should I also want everyone else to meet mine? See the problem? And see your double standards? It’s fine that thralls got wrecked for them as long as they are in YOUR sweet spot.
The differece is that you could always have had weaker thralls, but now they sure can’t get them stronger.
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I don’t even know what exactly you two were disagreeing about for the last dozen posts.
Thralls are in a good spot IMO. Don’t spec for them and they are soft enough that you risk losing them if you aren’t careful. Spec for them and you can go make a sandwich while they kill whatever.
You’ve truly got the choice as commander or warrior at this stage of the games life.
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To be fair. JJDancer and I have butted heads before in very heated discussions about thrall balance. They felt they should remain strong, and I felt they should be nerfed. They can attest, we were diametrically opposed in this.
After 3.0, I have to agree with her. Thrall balance is in a very good spot right now. There are some issues I’d like to see addressed mainly with how stats and tiers work (mostly in transparency). But as far as the balance of using the thralls in combat, especially considering with their performance against bosses. They’re damn near right where I want them to be.
The fact that we can agree on this when we were so far apart, is nothing short of amazing. Its not so much that it should be their standard or mine, but Funcom has managed to bridge two ideals into agreement.
I don’t think they can get it any better than that. On the subject of a thrall’s performance.
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Well, you know I disagree with that. I explained why above. I do actually know players that enjoy less of the game now and they won’t improve their skills. They are older, don’t have a lot of time, their coordination is not great, etc. Thralls was how they managed. We could always choose not to have them. On pvp it’s another matter. And they still have the option to go private and tweak thralls. Still, I think it was unnecessary because the option to have weaker thralls was already in the game.
On pve you gained nothing. Some people lost unnecessarily.
Other than that, everyone now is basically limited to the top tier thralls. That’s bad. I know what you think about that, your idea for t4s and I like it, @Taemien .
I prefer how thralls are levelled now, how their perks make more sense, that we have the elixir of rebirth, etc, and know we couldn’t have the old thrall’s values with this new system. But top tier t4s are too weak IMO, and the proof is that people are losing them. This forum is but a small microcosm of the game. Keep that in mind. Also, a lot of people think asking for stronger thralls makes them look weak, worse players, so they don’t do it openly, but do it privately.
To me it’s the same. I already got used to the new version. But my opinion is that these new thralls are a notch bellow the mark. I can’t stand that you don’t have a thrall that beats the Arena Champ, because not so few players need them to.
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Hello? 
Archery builds?..
I said this at 3.0 launch… and it’s completely valid and works like a charm… Archery had a major damage buff with the transition to agility weapons…
You even have auto-lock (even thou you really shouldn’t with a bow imo…) so even older players lacking any form of coordination can do insane damage with a bow from a safe distance while an Authority thrall can fully tank bosses for them without ever losing their attention…
So I’ll repeat…
Anybody who used to do the “I’m gonna go for a coffee while my thrall kills this boss” fighting style… can still kill the bosses, but they need to help their thralls at least with a bow… and that’s enough…
I agree, thralls definitely needed a nerf and they got one… I think they were very generous in fact since they could’ve used even more of a nerf, but they sort of hit a sweet-spot where it’s acceptable for both camps like @Taemien said above
On this topic though my opinion is pretty strict… 
Thralls should NOT play the game for players… if somebody can’t be bothered to go and play the game and just wants to set some thralls lose and watch… they should go watch lord of the rings or something, it’s a much better movie 
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What’s your suggested archery build/setup?
Well here’s by far the Strongest Thrall of 3.1
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It’s pretty versatile so it doesn’t require a specific build
For this laid-back helping the thrall with a bow though you obviously want to go Authority for the thrall (at minimum you need the first perk so the thrall can hold on to the boss, but you can just max it)
Max Agility… or don’t, doesn’t really matter. It’s nice to take the precision shot thing that increases long range shot damage
Depending on how much you spent on those two you can split the rest in vitality / grit / expertise… Preferably 5 grit at least and 10 vitality is also nice to have
Something like a 20 Agi, 20 Auth, 10 Vit, 5 Grit, 5 Exp can work, but you can shuffle those numbers around to your liking provided you have the conditions above.
I wouldn’t bother with corrupting stats for this.
As for armor, that’s also very lenient. I’d probably just go with the skelos master thou.
The big bonus comes with the bow if you can get the red mother’s reach then that’s awesome, with some obsidian or similar arrows, otherwise the best bow you can craft.
Also, use charged head-shots on large HP stuff to preserve arrows. It won’t look like much, but you’ll actually be doing pretty insane damage, almost as much as the thrall from a completely safe distance.
Edit: Forgot to mention, if you do max Authority, I’d go with well trained! The single thrall is actually quite effective and one less person trying to stand in the way of your arrows 
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WTF did I just watch?
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The first thrall with no hitbox! ^^
You better keep that hidden until they fix it! 
But the cat, or should I say fox, is out of the bag and already went viral! 
I still think t4s are a notch bellow their sweet spot. I’m sure others think different and I concede that thralls ended up much better than I thought they would be after the nerf. I think funcom should have been a little more careful because of DOT bosses, since removing survival left thralls overexposed to poison dmg.
Anyway, my point is that besides pvp, the kind of thralls we had was always our choice and I detest that people blame the game for something that was a direct result of their own actions.
I don’t like to baby sit thralls, like at all. Never liked. They need to take care of their business. But their AI works so poorly that I simply don’t trust them. If I don’t take a thrall with me, I feel way more relaxed because I only have to worry about myself. Pre 3.0, that’s what happened if I took a thrall. I didn’t have to worry about it at all. Even if it glitched, something that happens frequently due to their broken pathfinding in some dungeons, I would notice and just keep going until it teleported. Once this didn’t happen and I actually lost a thrall in the black keep. I was fighting the boss and the thrall never came. Then I discovered it had died. It glitched on the stairs and by some reason it didn’t teleport. The skeletons killed the thrall, but it took them their sweet time. As it never happened before in that dungeon, I was really surprised. I had more than enough time to go gown and probably solve whatever was going on. But the worse is the wine cellar. Man, thralls glitch like mad in there if you are near the restarting hour. I used 1) avoid going in there at those hours 2) going there just to see the craziness. Once I ended up fighting Thag in pitch black, only seeing his health bar! I don’t know how I survived that one.
Well, people, or better said, most people won’t do archery builds, @Xevyr . Sure, you can use a bow much better than you used to, but still.
I don’t have the right to say to anyone how he should play the game if their playstyle doesn’t impinge on my own. And that happened because we could already have weaker thralls if we wanted.
Now, are thralls ballanced? I don’t think so. They fall short of what they should be, or, better said, the best thralls should be a little better and a lot of non top tier t4s need a serious buff to remain relevant. Poison dmg is a problem that also needs fixing.
Are thralls in MUCH better shape than I though they would be? Definitely yes.
I think, or at least I consider myself unbiased because I don’t actually need thralls. I like them, but I don’t need them.
Now, is the shape thralls are in so bad that it bothers me? No. I can live with them being like they are. But when I take one, instead of feeling helped, I feel burdened in some occasions. That frustrates me a little. As I said, I don’t like having to worry about them surviving.
I don’t know… it’s an agility build so they’re free to use daggers, shortswords and katanas as well, it’s not like they’re forced to use a bow.
However there are players who are simply afraid of going near bosses… OR are in some way irritated by it (for example getting anxiety from giant bosses blocking their view) and a large number of those players previously relied exclusively on thralls… they sent the thrall in and just watched.
The archery method I described gives them a chance to keep their distance like before but at the same time help their thrall and do a lot of damage, which they might end up enjoying more than they enjoyed just watching and waiting in the past.
I wasn’t suggesting it for MOST people, I was suggesting it for those cases where people feel like they can no longer do PvE content because they’re just not good at fighting and their thralls might not be able to cleanly solo everything anymore, this will provide more than enough assistance to complete most bosses though.
As for your case… I still don’t quite understand it just like I didn’t pre-3.0 You seem to want strong thralls, but at the same time keep them at home 
and the things you listed as issues don’t really have anything to do with thrall balancing.
To put it simply… thralls should NEVER be balanced for the poor performance of some servers… it’s the other way around… the server performance needs to be improved.
Oh one more thing regarding this:
Do you know just how much? A headshot from the red mother’s reach can go in excess of 400 damage in a single hit So we’re not talking about some small insignificant change here, it can literally oneshot a boar in the north.
Yeah, but it’s a harder build for pve. They go heavy armor because they lack dodging skills. Dude, these players aren’t really good fighters… 
But with strong thralls they made it. I won’t make a big fuss about it.
Things ended up much better than I thought they would. If asked, personally I like it more now. It’s a matter of principle that makes me speak.
Yea ofc… that’s why I’m suggesting the above since this way they don’t even need to go near bosses… and the thrall with the 5 point Auth perk can actually tank bosses without losing their attention - which means they no longer need to dodge at all and can easily dispatch weaker foes even in melee with a light attack spam of a katana
Idk, I think you should give it a try and see just how no-brainer it is. I know you don’t need it, but I think after you try it you’ll be recommending it for less skilled players as well