@Xevyr do you think they have that bow? 
Sure and I will. Who knows? Maybe they like RP as Robin Hoods.
Archery is pretty good now.
Here’s a quick example of the type of damage a simple Star Metal bow can do (bowmaker made)
This is the optimal scenario though, with high distance, headshots from behind and both buffs active, however with the build I mentioned above.
This is just to showcase the potential damage of shots though, which is pretty damn high 
Obviously in a live scenario you still have to hit your target, which can be a fun game like you said! Improving aim.
I did some quick tests with a simple cimmerian berserker following in normal heavy armor (non-epic) and a star metal mace… we killed a rockslide with ease (berserker above 80% hp), the arena champion as well, though with her it’s sketchy obviously and requires luck, it could’ve gone the other way around just as easily (but she’s optional and not meant to be tanked by thralls 
) Also killed the giant croc and the tortured king.
In all of these bossfights with targets moving around and whatnot it pretty much averaged out as doing half the damage of the berserker, which I would say is still very decent since you’re in perfect safety and being able to provide another 0.5x a well trained berserker is very decent and enough to make most fights easy.
So… idk, I guess it’s up to people to try it and see how they like it but I’d say it’s definitely viable for those who previously did not help the thrall at all.
This wasn’t short of awesome. Do you mund if I recommend them this clip?
Thanks a lot, @Xevyr !
Sure, I made a better one though
Here… I recorded a Rockslide fight separately!
You can’t tell me there aren’t people who’d prefer this to being constantly knocked around 
and because of his armor and arrows having decent ARP, in this case I even went above the Berserker You can ofc put epic armor on the thrall and give them food buffs too to speed things up so there’s still more room for improvement.
Gotta drive now, but I’ll see it the moment I get home. 
Thanks again, @Xevyr !
Your wrong- and no i dont need to prove it. War party enables me to run my build as a commander and not a Tank or DPS build like many others do.
Funcom knows what ive done and all the creative ways i get the thrall system to work. But im not your average run of the mill player.
That will depend on the server, the server Edu plays / played on has exceptionally bad performance even in good times so that would explain why they observed this.
In any case, I agree that war party and well trained are fairly balanced atm.
Prior to Chapter 2, I did a test with 2 truly identical (carbon copy twins) thralls with war party and well trained vs. giant crocodile boss.
The well trained one killed it faster and by a pretty significant margin (did the equivalent of 3 war party thralls instead of 2), however RNG factors in a lot ofc. I did the test 3 times, all 3 times the Well trained one came out on top, but in the other 2 cases when I wasn’t recording they were much closer (~20-40 dps apart).
After Chapter 2 someone on the steam forums did a similar test, though their thralls weren’t identical, in that case the war party ones won
Ofc for the single thrall I used consumables and skelos armor, since it’s only fair to do so as it applies in that case and doesn’t if you have war party so it makes sense to use the strengths you have access to.
Anyway, here’s the video in case anyone’s interested in actual numbers
Despite this (like I said there’s a lot of RNG and other occasions were closer), I would say that they’re really well balanced and it’s really situational which one is better for what and both version is good enough so that you can just pick whichever you prefer, like Akomo did for example
All my tests for builds are on officials.
Ive got one that isnt war party which i havent tested extensively yet. But war party is new so i wanted to put it through its paces.
Ive been through the Black Keep, the Sunken City and the Wine cellar on purpose because of tight quarters. Extensive use of the distance system enables you the player not being blocked in by them.
Accidental pressing the E key on your location will bunch them up on you to the point where you cant move at times so im always aware of that.When that happens i logout and onto the next server till they go back home.
Otherwise im quite pleased with it so far.
I think War Party edges out Well Trained in some cases but not all.
Like in the video @Xevyr shows, they probably do well because only one thrall is knocked down and the other can freely do damage in a War Party, where as a Well Trained solo thrall gets knocked down and all damage stops till they get back up.
It would be interesting to see some cases where the player is tanking and the thralls are doing DPS. Or using Pets instead of thralls.
I’m certain using 3 zombies with Well Trained versus 4 Zombies in a Warparty is better to go with the buffed 3.
think alot of people also fail to take into account that even though they lose any stat boosts from your own character sheet they still double up on stat boosts you can apply directly to them like elixirs, food, armor buffs, etc
I run war party with corrupted authority and all +str% gear on both my thralls plus keep strength elixirs and cooked pork rinds buffs on them and they down bosses so GD fast it’s a joke. literally only boss that can kill them is arena champion but a thrall doesn’t exist on officials that can take her on without player help.
the buff from corrupted authority also applies to both with war party.
Also wanted to note I reroll their perks til I get mostly +str perks like Angry Drunk and Might of Giants. They don’t need the 5 vit they lose from Angry drunk cause the bosses die so fast they take very little damage.
Just want to clarify that while what you said is true… those are all percentage bonuses - as such they do not sway things one way or another.
For example if the well trained thrall does 100 damage and the war party thralls do 50 damage each. adding a 10% damage bonus to the one thrall dealing the 100 damage will give you 10 extra damage, while adding the 10% damage bonus to each of the war party ones… will still result in 10 extra damage.
That’s why I didn’t bother with corrupting and frenzy for example, since it would’ve just needlessly complicated things (requiring the player to also hit things constantly so it doesn’t drop)
But yea, I agree that war party can be very very effective and in the case of the Arena Champion for example I would think they have an edge since they stagger her twice as much!. (also the case with PvP - or rather 2 thralls vs 1 like we’ve seen in Firespark’s video for example where the 2 thralls win pretty much because they chain-stun the single thrall)
But that complication is the main benefit of war party. It’s doubles the frenzy bonus potential when dealing with normal thralls and shoots up the DPS considerably compared to well trained. While I agree that the zombies may be a better to do well trained, for human thralls it’s war party all the way. The doubling of DPS is better than additional DPS.
No it doesn’t like I just pointed out above.
It is a percentage bonus… if one thrall is stronger than 2 others… it will remain stronger no matter what amount of percentage increase you apply to all 3 of them
The obvious advantage I see on having war party is the possibility of a ménage inside the hunter’s tent, in the middle of the woods! But that’s just my imagination running wild, I guess…
But two thralls hitting the one is what matters. Yes the one thrall is more powerful but will go down faster than the two thralls. When you take armor reduction into place, the difference in damage potential difference isn’t that significant and so having the double dealing matters more than the extra added.
Did you watch the video linked?
I did and I’m not sure why you are getting different results. Wak and firespark did a study on this using near copied thralls and found 2 thralls were better and confirmed my own observations.
Wak and Firespark are wrong 
not because they’re Wak and Firespark But because they set up the test incorrectly - if you check I did leave a comment on that.
Their thralls are NOT identical, mine are actual copies with the same stats, same perks and same base NPC
They also didn’t take advantage of consumables / thrall damage armor applying to the single thrall and the worst of all is that they’re pitting the 1 thrall up against the 2 thralls in a direct fight against each-other…
That defeats the whole purpose as even if you disregard damage entirely, the fact that 2 thralls are attacking DOES double the amount of stagger / knockdowns so they’re essentially chain-stunning the single thrall.
That is not an objective measure of damage or DPS, but rather a very specific PvP scenario.
I already mentioned above that in this particular scenario they are indeed much better since they just chain-stun.
Edit: Actually I’m not entirely sure, but I do think Firespark changed the title of that video to clarify that it’s about PvP afterwards in which case they’re not wrong and it does apply to that scenario
I remember it having a more generic title implying it’s a general test between the two build back in November, however I could be wrong on that, someone did link it in a discussion on steam about thralls in PvE, hence why I remember the video. Bottom line, what you see there doesn’t translate to every scenario, same way my results don’t either.