Grit feels outright required for any combat style, and a possible fix

@Community

I’m still unhappy regarding the Stamina changes. I am however still going to offer constructive criticism. I propose we meet in the middle regarding the stamina changes, but first I’ll outline the problems I’m having.

Grit: It is now pretty much required to have some level of grit or stamina boost to fight with decent rhythm (using combos, dodging, blocking in succession etc.) in melee combat. 100 stamina just isn’t enough.

Rolling: Age of War-ollin’ rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ what!
But yes. Roll spam is very much a thing now. Rolls give invulnerability, and nearly constant invulnerability with no down time isn’t very healthy for combat.

My proposed solution to these two issues:

  • Up the Stamina regen delay to 0.25
  • Halve the AoW stamina costs for attacks
  • Halve +max stamina bonuses from gear
  • Lower Grits stamina bonus to 2.5 per level (from 4) and
  • Remove the stamina bonus from Agility

The increase to Stamina delay will once again punish constant rolling, without killing the direction combat philosophy is headed in, as constant rolling will actually deplete stamina more consistantly.

Halving the AoW attack stamina costs will make what is 100 stamina now feel like 200, which imho feels around what the baseline should be (and give corrupted attribute fighters some breathing room). Subsequently lowering the bonus stamina gained from Grit and other sources will overall put them from “must have” to “good to have” while maintaining current combat philosophy.

Removing the stamina bonus from Agility isn’t absolutely necessary, but the way I’ve outlined everything, it’d go from +1 per level to +0.5 (important to note, if Grit does from +4 to +2.5, our effective maximum stamina is still the same). Agility also indirectly benfitted from the stamina changes, solely because it also gives stamina, despite how little.

I’m curious, because my builds were mostly unaffected by the changes as far as frequency of attacks. And when I say mostly I mean I can now spam attacks. I never went more than 10pts in Grit though and I’ve found around 5 lets you spam attacks.

Have you actually tested this? In my testing you don’t notice a difference till it is 1.0 and even then you have to stare at the stamina bar to see it. This might need to be adjusted between 1.0-1.5 and maybe even as high as 2.0 depending on server.

I don’t agree with this because it is possible to get to 200 stamina and at 50% 200 stamina becomes 400 effectively and that’s getting into stupid territory. If you have a build that requires a lot of Stamina, then you should focus on gear and Grit to achieve it.

Even with around 160 stamina you can knock down most non-boss enemies before running out.

Rolling Thrust is a big problem as well, and that can be solved by giving it a cooldown. Though I have seen suggestions saying to reduce the benefit to 50% stamina reduction, but I feel a cooldown is probably best. Even at 50% I think it would be spammed, spammed until someone runs out.

Another setting that needs to be looked at is the exaustion penalty. Default is 0.1 which of course means you should always go to exhaustion. An attack at 1 stamina is the most efficient attack in the game that isn’t rolling thrust. And this is because you regen from exhaustion at the same time as you do any other action.

Setting this to 5.0 brings an actual consequence and pressed players who don’t manage their stamina can be in an vulnerable position even from NPCs if they’re not careful.

Right now two of these settings can be done at the server level. The rolling thrust needs Funcom to fix.

I’mma be honest, no. I just based this off basic maths, but I was considering worst case, i.e heavy armour without the 25% bonus regen from perks. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be enough for lighter armour classes.

Thats were the second part comes into play, (effectively) halving sources of bonus stamina. With stats alone right now, we can get to 200, or a bonus of +100. Halving that too gets us to a stat of 150 from attributes, or 300 in effect compared to now. Still effectively more yes, but it was effectively 1000ish pre AoW.

I agree that it definitely would. I think 5 seconds is too punishing though, especially when you consider how fast stam can deplete now. Its a game over in PvP unless your opponent(s) are very unskilled. 5 seconds without roll, block, jump, climb or attack = dead

I would point out that 1.0 is the minimum I suggest.

The point of view I have on this is coming from someone who’s never really invested in Grit outside of 5-10 with zero +stamina gear, and with the changes I don’t see myself changing from that.

That is kind of the idea. If you can safely roll 4 times and the fifth puts you into exhaustion… if you’ve rolled 4 times and your opponent is causing you to consider rolling again or taking the hit and waiting a second to get another tick in to get out of the combo, you have that split second choice to make.

But ultimately you shouldn’t be allowing yourself to be pressured that much. Or consider more stamina in the future to give yourself a bit more wiggle room.

I don’t really mind the stamina changes to the cost of attacks. Prior to this Grit was kinda there for the perks and that’s about it. I also had no intention of using any stamina gear either. I don’t really have a reason to change this personally. But I do admit that this isn’t exactly set in stone, as I could see some benefit to using more Grit or using some form of +stamina gear.

This is a good thing. And to be honest when I first saw this thread, it made me think that most got used to using very little in the means of Grit investment and +stamina gear and to do the same thing they did before, they need to, hence the complaint. I get that it kind stinks to have to swap out builds, but in the end this is not a bad thing.

Like I said, for me I’m still on the fence about swapping around my build. But the good thing is, I do have consideration towards doing so. It wouldn’t be good if I didn’t.

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I’m actually coming from the same boat, I generally went 10 because of the flat bonus at 5 then the regen at 10. Then again, I always used heavy for combat too, but I could manage despite the deficit. With the AoW changes the balance shifted for worse in some places and better in others for me.

What is appears to me now, is that the balancing of stamina between the armour classes is now outdated, which explains our differing experiences. I’ve always felt it should be balanced other ways, sprint speed, stagger recovery speed & blocking cost to name a few.

I personally see no reason to speck into stamina. The regen is so fast that I can run seemingly without needing to stop. As far as combat I’ve always been a minuin-mancer.

On a personal level, this one does not particularly care for the new cadence.
This one preferred the longer burst of action with a longer recovery.

However, this one is not certain the particular suggestions will net the desired result.

Hop on and play around, especially in single player, to get a feel for how the cadence works. Theorey crafting is well and good, but when the opportunity to jump in the lab presents, stress test.

There is quite a bit packaged with the new combat structure. This one sees a picture, and whether this one agrees or not, the rapidly stamina consumption is tied to the higher damage lower HP model and application of debuffs on first heavy attack.

Grit is an important investment, and Strength has suffered (looking at you Combo Master) while Agility has significantly benefited (hallo there Rolling Thrust, this one sees you are the way things are done now), but these are far from the only moving parts.

One moving part mentioned was agro habits of enemies and a hard limit on how many will attack at once. This makes crowd control weapons significantly less utile.
In addition there is the upcoming hyper armour adjustment.

While this one agrees in principle with a desire to see slower consumption and recovery, rather than eroding Agility (stripping it’s Stamina bonus), this one would rather see Strength improved (With Combo Master reducing the Stamina cost of subsequent attacks in a Combo, rather than boosting the damage of an attack that is unaffordable), for example.

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I know I’ll be a minority here, but I actually like things exactly as they are.
I wouldn’t touch a thing.
I would prefer a status effect to avoid too much rolling. You’re given three rolls and a cooldown of 30 secs would be needed before being able to do it again without a harsh penality. If you went for the forth roll you would get a dizzy status effect where you couldn’t roll and your movement would be severely impaired, maybe even knocking you down. Even better would be making it gradual, starting from the first roll which was penalty free, but increasing from then on. The second roll would give you a slight impairment, the third could be felt, the fourth would knock you down.

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Nah, you’re not. I will say just this and leave. I can see the stress reduction in fights, i can feel it. I once again will congratulate Dennis and team because this time the update on ps4 is simply fantastic!!!

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I was terribly worried about it, @stelagel . That was what worried me the most, in fact, that I could feel stuck or dragging my feet. I was completely mistaken. However, I understand how this change can affect pvp negatively, but I wouldn’t tweak stamina. I would add a status effect like the one I suggested above, both for pvp and pve.

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Stamina worked perfectly fine. They didn´t had to change a thing.

This whole one poke and one hit and roll mechanic destroyes the whole game. Somebody with just a little bit of fighting experience in gaming will leave instantly if they see this nonsense. This ain´t a combatsystem, its a joke.

There is absolutely nothing the lead designer can be thanked for.

All you the hardcore fans are doing right now is trying to find something, anything that is positiv about this ridiculous update and adapt somehow to it so you can still play and somehow enjoy the game. But even as the biggest fan of this game I can not swallow down every bs they sell me.

Almost every player is loosing massiv amount if not all of his possessions right now and you are sitting here thanking Denis for the biggest nonsense update in the history of Conan Exiles. You are literally ignoring everything that is going on right now and spitting on people that lost all their belongings, including the destruction of the last pvp community there is in Conan. Are you are all out of your mind?

I wonder how you can think that Conan Exiles can have a future with such updates in storage. Do you even recognize how many people are at the egde of leaving this game right now? In case you haven´t noticed it yet, this just isn´t a minor hickup we simply laugh away by pretending everything is fine and the stamina change is what the game had needed.

Funcom f… this chapter up to a scalle of another level. Congratulations!

Ps: (german) am besten spielen wir alle jetzt noch schön ringelpietz mit anfassen, weil das update ja so großartig toll geworden ist. Lächerlich. Einfach nur noch lächerlich.

Sums up this age pretty much

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It did.
But after trying the new system, I’m cool with it despite my opinion before trying it.
Now that I did, I liked it. I don use spears, so poke and roll won’t ever be my playstyle. My favorite weapon for pvp is the katana and it’s broken with this update. It needs fixing.

I never do that. If I don’t like something, I’m very vocal about it. The thralls nerfdom annoys me terribly, but I already wrote copious amounts of ctiticism about it.
You could say I’m a hardcore fan of what this game could be. In reality, I’m a bit disappointed about its state.

I don’t have just a little bit of fighting experience. I have many years of it in many different games.
Conan combat system will never be as polished as a combat specific game.
I can understand people don’t like it, but I enjoyed it. Is it better than it was? No. It’s different. Is it a top notch combat experience? Not by a long shot and it will never be.

I didn’t comment that in this topic.
They crapped the bed with extreme prejudice. I said that in another topic.
What happened was beyond ridiculous.

Agree.
They need to do much better and stop trying to fix what isn’t broken and actually fix what is.

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@MarcosC , under what circumstances could you see someone finding the Combo Master Perk useful?

This is one example.

While the new system overall is a matter of taste, the part that sticks in this one’s craw is that it doesn’t seem to have been thoroughly thought thru in regards to all the things it disadvantages.
It works well for what it favours, but it leans heavily into one true wayism.

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I’ll admit that as a Sorcerer I’m not a fan of the change, however for all my non corrupted characters I’ve adjusted just fine.

I’ll reiterate my stance that for Sorcerers like me, in lieu of reverting or altering the change, I’d like to request a corrupted Grit line with a perk that addresses the problem by cutting the cost of our attacks by at least 1/4 of current costs (though I would prefer it to be 1/2).

I feel like most of the people here don’t have any pvp experience? Grit is totally useless right now, the stamina you get from equipment is more than enough and the perks are completely useless too. There is literally less reasons than before to go anything that is not 20 vit 20 str 20 agi right now. Spear is completely broken, even more than before. Overall the fight just seems faster and less tactic? As a sidenote, heavy and medium armors are now kinda viable, although, you don’t get much difference in the way you play with it…

It only works if you do a 4HA combo, right? I seldom do them so I always opt for 2nd skin. I always prefer consistent dmg over situational dmg. Besides, rolling thrust is just too good not to use, so I’ve been taking that in consideration.
It would only be usefull for strenght/grit builds.

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That’s why I suggested limiting rolling via status effect.
Anyway, players will keep on killing and players will keep on dying. You’ll see.

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“Hardcore” or “Pro” PvP players claim that you do not need to invest into stamina at all anymore because of the fast regeneration rate.

Doing combos was never really a thing in PvP. But now it is more apppearant. Roll’n Poke with rolling thrust and spear for example. I saw someone stream 1v1 PvP on twitch and this person was Poke’n Rolling for 10 minutes straight in a fight.

To sum it up: you basically fight like where the only source of stamina cost is your dodge roll. This is stamina independent, because it is percentage based. And thus making corrupted builds actually viable for PvP.

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Most people who reply on the forums have never really done any pvp. As people before me said, at the present moment you only use stamina when you roll thanks to the rolling thrust perk making your attack free of cost. You also regen your stamina instantly while rolling and poking for the most part so grit is completely useless. This also makes 90% of the weapons unable to compete with spear at the moment.

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