Here’s the current state as far as I understand it:
When your thrall paths to an enemy and reaches attack range it will roll some dice and select whatever random combo is on the table of that number. If the thrall has a sword and shield equipped they could run up to an enemy swing LA, HA, LA , HA and then they will roll again and possibly block for 5 seconds. As of this current state if your thrall is not using a mace (with no offhand) or maybe a 2H sword your thrall will perform pretty terribly and do stupid actions like kick randomly or block when they have an opening to attack or while surrounded they will repeatedly try to start a slow heavy combo and remain stun locked.
Here’s a proposed state:
What I am suggesting is the simplest form of what players want which is customizable combo tables for each thrall, but that feels way more complicated than what I am suggesting.
Under thrall tactics there will be 3 new selectable options:
Option 1: Combo style - Light
The thrall only performs light attacks (literally only pressing the light attack button is all they will do in combat besides pathing to target)
Option 2: Combo style - Default
The thrall behaves as they do now, randomly selecting combos from tables which enables them to use special attacks at random
Option 3: Combo style - Heavy
The thrall only performs heavy attacks (literally only pressing the heavy attack button is all they will do in combat besides pathing to target)
And that’s it, what this does is that the burden of tactics goes back on the player, depending on the situation you will be able to equip your thrall with a weapon and set how that weapon will combo which will increase many different weapons effectiveness for various situations.
You want javelin thralls to just throw javelins? Set to heavy attack and done
You want archer thralls to be ammo efficient and just use charged attacks? Set to heavy attack and done
You want your thrall to focus on stunlocking so you can get those heavy attacks off? Give them a katana, set for light and done
You know your thrall will be wading into Xv1 combat? Set for light with a 2h hammer or 2h sword and watch them actually fight in way that you can predict.
Thralls will be able to use predatory weapons, do off hand weapon combos without throwing the daggers away, use whirlwind blades to actually whirlwind.
Will this be a perfect fix? Absolutely not. Some weapons work best with mixed combos, and sometimes the special attack is part of that rotation. But this is not a perfect solution, this is the simplest solution that will solve many of the issues and bring thrall combat performance back to players skill and understanding of weapon mechanics and enemy mechanics than just RNG determining how a fight goes.