I feel like there is currently very little drawback to wearing heavy armor. Yeah we can’t use the rollback but the heavy armor dodge does the job when needed, and since we have 70%+ dmg resistance we can take a few hits anyway. We can hit like a truck and take hits like a tank, with slightly less mobility. I personally feel like this is really unbalanced and results in the game lacking variety in playstyles in PvP. There are some people rocking their niche out there with darfari gear or whatever, which is the exception rather than the rule.
I think an easy fix could be to simply make heavy armor heavier so that we are forced to but more points into encumbrance, sacrificing strength or other attributes.
I find it is unbalanced. WIth enough Player SKill you can compensate it with light/medium in a pvp enviroment however in general terms is not balanced at all but I dont think increasing the weight is a good idea. Is a bit too heavy already that you cant do much but to fight if you havent invested a good amount of points in weight.
I do rather see more benefits on the usage of medium/light. Maybe increasing its stats bonus or reducing a little bit the stats bonus on heavy gears.
No need to have heavier armor. I think we should simply consume more stamina by sprinting and attacking to represent the high weight of this protection.
Heavy armor can be made an encumbrance perk. But increasing weight is just a waste.
Making it an encumbrance perk also gives grinder’s (who lack dmg) a leg up.
In that vein, I think light armor would be a good agility/grit perk, and leaving medium armor as your default armor.
Even before the SL nerfs, I was seeing peeps in Medium Vanir killing people in SL. Hell I was killing peeps in SL with Conan’s Royal medium armor (encumbrance build).
Now that SL has been ‘balanced’ there’s no reason to nerf any sort of heavy armor. Its already loaded with enough drawbacks that I don’t use it.
Why not instead of adjusting heavy armor, give light armor more benefits so that both have their uses? Such as a dodge-all-damage chance or attack speed increase or some other boost. Or what if light armor gave the most stat increases, so that when wearing it you’re powerful but die quickly (glass cannon)
Right now Light Armor has no modifier to stamina usage. Medium has a slight, and heavy the most.
What this means is Light Armor with Flex kits can climb nearly forever (actually can with climbing gear). It also has the largest length of a roll dodge.
I use it quite frequently depending on what I’m doing. I don’t use it in direct fighting, but make heavy use of it in sapping. The issue with armor is everyone typically duels. Whether it be a consensual duel, or one that they inflict upon one another when out and about. In either case its a 1v1.
Most raiding is done offline except on the servers that bar that. In those cases when players fight in packs versus other packs. Heavy Armor suddenly isn’t as useful when 3-4 people are stabbing at you. Medium tends to be a bit easier to deal with multiple opponents.
Light comes into play when you need to climb over things to get into a flanking position or to sap a wall/trebuchet.
But the majority of players won’t ever see that. Which is unfortunate, because the ability to deal 9500 damage about 30+ times from wearing light armor is pretty substantial.
That’s a good way to kill heavy armor, nobody will use heavy then.
Light and medium armor users can carry poison orbs and more healing items/pvp elixirs and to add more to that, can loot more items from a dead player where the heavy armor player can barely loot a few items.
Then we have the climb problems aswell, where you have to go naked to climb during raids which puts you at great risk.
If you use light and medium armor try not to use two handed swords and warhammers. I mostly use heavy armor during PvP but when enough players fill that role I step down to medium/light armor to support teammates by dealing good damage, good dodge and loot a lot of gear without getting above 100%
Heavy armor does its job if people are stupid enough to trade damage with a heavy armor user when they are medium/light, it is not the heavy armor users fault that the light/medium armor player does not use his mobility and more flexible inventory to his advantage.
A heavy armor user has to dodge once then sprint away to get to safety, this is the biggest advantage heavy armor currently has, and it is not hard to punish this as the heavy armor user probably has about 50-60% stamina left by then if hes below 20 grit which he most likely is. You can put pressure and kill the heavy armor user by depleting his stamina by forcing another engagement.
if light/medium armor use one handed weapons with shields as blocking is so easy and OP right now, get an axe to knockdown/bleed after the heavy armor user has stopped swinging, you can literally choose when to engage safely with the shield. Even spears are good for light/medium armor.
There are so many ways to counter heavy armor but people in this game generally are new or just never bothers to think of things like this and just goes for the straight out spam right click and hope for the best type of fight.
But to be fair I find the light armor to be more useless since medium armor outshines it in every aspect.
It should be about if light armor should get buffs
It’s just for the sake of realism. I find it absurd that a guy in heavy armor runs as fast and as long as a guy in a swimsuit.
In Nioh we feel the difference between the 3 types of armor. Great freedom of movement in light armor, but every shot can be fatal. On the contrary, heavy armor reduces movement speed and consumes more endurance by attacking, which force you to temporise to raise the bar. Medium armor is a good compromise. But as in Conan the bar of endurance goes up quickly.
When we block a blow, we lose endurance, propotrionally to the strength of the hit blocked. Heavy armor helps reduce endurance loss by blocking.
This system is extremely well thought out for duel, 1 against 2 are very difficult and from 3 against 1 it is impossible. Realistic and effective.
The idea was not to nerf just the heavy armor, but to rethink all types of armor for more realism. A soldier in heavy armor will be quickly tired if he is harassed by a zamorian thief, and if he had to run after a guy in his underpants, he could never catch him, that’s logical.
You have to make balances between realism and fun gameplay. Conan doesn’t exactly strike me as a medieval combat simulator to me.
Now if you want some historical numbers. Swords should weigh no more than 4-5 pounds. two handed swords up to 6 pounds. Shields 4-11 pounds. Chainmail weighed around 20-30 pounds. Full plate 50-90 depending on time period and social status.
Due to the fairly even distribution of weight around the whole body, full plate wasn’t as physically taxing or limiting as you might think it would be. It’s not like carrying 90 pounds on your back or lugging around boxes.
I don’t really share your experience tbh. Our clan just rolls all heavy with one guy having a lot in encumbrance, and place a few chests or a vault close to the raid, so having enough explosives and inventory space hasn’t been a problem.
When we raid we only need to controll one area anyway, in which case we can just trade hits and win if they don’t have the same gear and build.
That’s actually a really cool suggestion!
Like the sword master, who wears nothing but his robes, to be completely unfettered and reliant on his grace and skill.
Like a monk, light on his feat, soaring like a leaf in the wind.
Like a sorcerer, prefering comfort both in and out of his confidence in his abilities.