In the latest Developer stream that took place on Oct 23rd, it was mentioned by the Lead Designer, Alex, that the focus of the 2.2 update would be on combat, both player and npc. You can find this comment at the 47:20 mark in the video posted on YouTube. As a PVP player, I was both excited and nervous about update 2.2. After reading through the patch notes on testlive, I have to say that I’m pretty underwhelmed and frankly disappointed. From what I can tell, the changes to combat can be summed up as:
Stamina management won’t matter as much.
All armors but heavy are still obsolete. (Even more so now with the MASSIVE nerf to Yogs)
Follower’s dmg to players can be reduced as a setting.
Shields may make an appearance in PVP(?). Only for the fact that you can regen stam while blocking.
So here are my thoughts:
Good players will still manage their stamina well with even less of a penalty for a screw up. Meaning shields won’t be used for PVP, which seems to be the real focus of this update. I see next to zero balancing changes. Yog’s should’ve been nerfed over a year ago. However, 0% armor pen? Really? That’s not balancing, that’s straight up destroying. I see NO mention of mounts, which is the number one complaint in the PVP community. NO mention of Sabers, which is the second most complaint I see. The new setting “Thrall Damage to Players” is a great step in the right direction, but what about officials? Why is Funcom leaving the balancing up to private servers?. The majority of populated private servers, while there are some vanilla, are “No Mounts/No Cats” servers.
Thank you so much for the many bug fixes and the good things that are coming with this patch. It’s just very underwhelming as I was looking forward to the big “Combat Update”. I can see that Funcom is hiring a “Senior PVP Designer” for Dune. Why not for Conan Exiles? Do you have one already? Because it sure doesn’t seem like it. Are the rumors true and this game is just no longer a priority at Funcom?
I understand that things can happen in game development to uphend schedules and plans. I just think the PVP community needs to know, is that it?
That’s pretty much the size of it. Just a couple of thoughts to add -
From my testing on testlive so far, IMO shields are actually less useful than they were before - the passthrough stamina drain means you’re just better off moving around unless fighting a single low-dps enemy. (Plus what little skill element there was to their use - having to time blocking and not blocking in order to regain stamina (not exactly hard most of the time) has been removed - though I’m not sure that matters.)
It’s not just the PVP community in need of answers - as a PVE singleplayer (in theory the least ‘combat-oriented’ player group), these changes make combat feel far less interesting (and far less skill based than before). That said, I don’t deny that this update (even from an outsider’s perspective) seems like a particular slap in the face to PVP, especially given what was implied when it was announced.
There are good things, and bug fixes (plus failed bug fixes, new bugs and the return of older bugs…), but there are also a lot of issues. I really hope Funcom will take a serious look at addressing these issues (and preferably communicate with the player base while doing so).
@SirDaveWolf Have you tried the new system on testlive yet? I’d be interested in hearing your perspective on it. I generally like light armour, and am feeling like from what I’m experiencing there’s no real reason for anything but heavy right now, except in a couple of specific situations. Dodge and stamina in heavy armour just feel so easy right now on testlive. But that’s a perspective at my level of skill vs PVE content, so it would be interesting to get an angle of how the changes feel when fighting skillful opponents. (not so much how light armour is - it’s still fine, it’s just that there no longer feels much point to it when I can do all the same things in heavy and get the extra protection - more whether you experience the same greater ease of using heavy than before).
But you can bring down the weight of heavy armor drastically. So stamina regen won’t be a problem.
The real problem, and thats with heavy armor, is the slow roll. You can never escape the first hit right click spam of a spear with it. You will be in stagger all the time, forcing you to roll more and more. Also 1h swords will be your nightmare, since with animation canceling I can keep a guy in heavy armor perma knocked down (4th heavy hit from the sword).
That’s what I mean - the weight component of heavy armour is reducible, and with the new (testlive) stamina regen, it does indeed feel like no problem. Perhaps more significantly, the extended invincibility period on the roll makes even that feel ok in heavy armour (at least at my level). But I guess maybe if the roll is still too slow to start then the same tactic still works. Good to know, though I think it would be good to test it if you have time - that doubled invincibility period on the heavy roll, feels very strong coupled with the speed of stamina regen - but if you can keep them rolling, that negates the stamina regen, so it all depends on whether the roll still starts slow enough I guess.
I appreciate you checking it out - but I think you’ve missed my point - I am familiar with keeping a humanoid off their feet with timed strikes, I am suggesting that you could now perform to the same level in heavy armour, which (for most players) would mean there is no longer any reason to wear anything else.
Ok, it’s taken me a couple of views, but I think I’m finally starting to understand what you’re showing me. Are you double tapping the 2 slot (throwing axe) to get that animation cancel (rapid draw/sheath) or just single tapping? I’ll definitely need a lot of practice before I could reliably use that, but I can certainly see the benefit.
(To be honest, last night I thought what you meant by animation cancelling was that you were cancelling her animation by keeping her off her feet - I hadn’t even registered the changes to your own animations.)
Thanks for continuing my education in how PVP works (and CE combat in general) I look forward to seeing your thoughts when you’ve had a chance to test the new system in PVP.
@Chaoruk - seems like a bunch of alternatives I could try, I really appreciate the breakdown
With slow roll heavy still wont be an option for most PVP players but that’s mostly for an private no horse server. On official with these rere horses I guess u need it. And like SirDave said, if u wanna test it out against decent/good PVP players feel free to join that training server.
I have said it before and i will say it again. If you have a combat system that is static, clunky and reliant on the combat animations(because animations lock you down) you have a bad and unbalanced system. Animations on 1h swords and daggers are pretty much to go to option for PvP, why you might ask, and the answer is the animations them selves.
I look forward to seeing your thoughts when you’ve had a chance to test the new system in PVP.