Hi, all!
This probably has been done many times before, but feel the self-destructive need to give it another try:
How to make stats useful on thralls?
Why the need for change?
Yes, yes, stats are useful - but to a very limited degree.
- Strength does increase melee damage, but only to a small degree when compared to inborn melee damage multipliers. The faction, thrall level and weapon have much more influence than the strength value.
- Agility gives some armor. Human thralls don’t really need that, as you can put them in heavy armor anyhow.
- Vitality is good. Really good, in fact. Maybe too good, at least when compared to the other attributes. But let’s not get into nerfing Vitality, but into buffing the other stuff.
- Accuracy has the same problem as strength, with the added problem that archer thralls aren’t all that useful when compared to melee thralls.
- Grit does absolutely nothing on thralls afaik.
- Encumbrance, again, does nothing.
- Survival is supposed to reduce the duration of debuffs. That looks somewhat useful, but actually isn’t. Reducing the duration is useless if the debuff is reapplied by the attacker - and that’s usually the case. When a boss gives bleed, poison or crush armor, then it’ll stack that constantly up to maximum stacks and keep it there no matter the duration.
What’s the objective?
Making all stats more useful would help to balance thralls, factions, perks and even armor.
- The mostly random nature of attribute gains and perks makes leveling thralls a huge gamble. You can get a rrrreally powerful minion, or you can get the buffoon archer thrall with near-sighted and cannibal perks. If all stats had some use to them, it’d be a gamble what your thrall is good at, but not if he/she is good at all.
- Currently, only armor with vitality and possibly strength armor is really useful to thralls. That makes it somewhat boring to pick an armor for your thrall.
What’s the scope?
I assume that Funcom doesn’t have the developer time to completely revamp the thrall or attribute system. So, any changes should try to be small-scale, just changing numbers instead of introducing completely new mechanics or functions.
Some ideas
Stat and Perk gain
- Make all thralls gain four stat points on level up, distributed randomly and four attributes, with one point determined by the food given to them. That should keep things random enough, but within reasonable boundaries.
- Introduce a potion to remove a level from a thrall (or add that to the Potion of Bestial Memory). That would allow to reroll terrible perks, but keep it grindy.
Strength
- Remove the damage bonus on daggers and spears.
- Else, leave as is.
Agility
- Increase the armor bonus to 10 per point.
Vitality
- Leave as is.
Accuracy
- Adds extra damage on daggers and spears, just as with strength before.
- Else, leave as is.
Grit
- For every ten points of Grit, the Thrall regenerates one point of health every second.
Encumbrance
- Thralls get a damage penalty for wearing armor: 10% for light, 20% for medium, 40% for heavy.
- Encumbrance reduces that penalty, 2 points for 1%, to a minimum of 0% / 10% / 20%.
Survival
- Survival reduces the damage from bleed and poison by 1% per point, to a minimum of 10%.
Fix for non-existent stats
- Grid and Encumbrance currently aren’t present or - I assume - not displayed on Thralls. If it isn’t viable to add or display these stats, one could do the following with the aforementioned changes:
- Move the Grit bonus to Survival.
- Remove the Survival dot damage reduction.
- Just add the damage penalty from Encumbrance.
- Armor that gives Encumbrance bonus to thralls instead gives Agility. Grit gives Survival instead when put on a thrall.
Optional: Normalize hidden Thrall stats
The Problem
Thralls currently vary in power a lot due to hidden stats. That creates two problems:
- Players that don’t read the Wiki or watch guide videos will never find out why some thralls suck and some don’t. The game doesn’t explain anything about that. Some players will be frustrated as their Thralls just don’t cut it, even in PvE, and complain or quit the game.
- Thralls from some Factions are much, much weaker than others. I understand the need for power progression, but that’s already present through Thrall leveling. In high level surroundings, your thrall will level much, much faster than at the starting area/river.
Fix
- Each thrall starts with 3000 health.
- Each thrall starts with 9 attribute points instead of 45, i. e. only 1 point for every point they currently have.
- Each point of Vitality adds 500 health for every thrall.
- Change all thrall leveling speed to medium.
- Change all melee damage modifiers to x.25 per Tier for Fighters, e. g. 1.0 for Tier 4 Thralls such as Snowhunter and 1.25 for purge thralls.
- Change all ranged damage modifier to x.5 per Tier for Archers. That’d make bows somewhat viable on thralls.
- Fighters/Archers get half that for their non-favored weapon, e. g. ranged for Fighters.
What would that achieve/do?
- Players would have to pick between tanky, heavily armored thralls or lightly armored, but heavy hitting thralls.
- Some Factions would be more viable as thralls.
- A Thrall’s Faction would have an influence on optimal weapon choices. Relic Hunters would be good with spears and daggers, Heirs of the North with sword and maces. That would increase the number of viable followers, add variety and add another thing/perspective to collect/hunt.
So, what do you think? What be your ideas to increase thrall and armor variety?
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