Ah, this thread is full of amaze.
A few quick personal perspectives.
PvP
Thralls need a nerf to play on a level closer to that of an actual player. Thralls are, undeniably, way too powerful in PvP. They’re the cream cheese for all encounters, offensively and defensively. Hands down. No argument. This might be the cleanest nerf as well, and testlive has given the opportunity to show thralls more on par with the player, enabling a slight shift in loadout, while also being more careful with how you use your thrall.
PvE
Thralls are in addition to being the cream cheese in PvP, also the strongest and most viable weapon for all PvE content. For those who think thralls were nerfed during follower update, you need to level your gimp up and equip appropriate gear for it. It will ‘show you dae wae’ in every single PvE encounter beyond what pro-follower patch ever could. The current thrall settings on live do not show a thoughtful game design. Even for a solo-player. Conan Exiles should not be the game where you get to order an AI out on a mission to wipe out your dungeon contents so you can reap the treasures without spending more than a healing arrow or two. I’m not saying this patch is going to be perfect, but it’s a huge leap in the right direction.
I quit
If you are one of those who pull the ‘this is unacceptable, I’m quitting’-card. Bye. You want to add value and to be taken seriously, you have to try it out on testlive and preferably add constructive criticism and feedback. This is how it goes. You’re currently not contributing to the community by any stretch.
Other remarks
For those who compare thrall nerf to purge issues. If you are level 29 along noob river with 5 thralls and a buggy purge wipes you out - this is not exactly a good reason to not nerf thralls. It just raises the point that purges do need some work. I think we all know this, including Funcom. I’m certain it’s on their board among a lot of other fixes they are intending to shed light on this year.
I run a server with what we call nightmare survival settings. It is the most extreme difficulty I’ve seen in the game to date, and currently there is no support for thralls or minions of any kind due to the insane power they’re wielding. The current state of thralls reduces immersion significantly for us. We’re talking about solos, duos, and trios who wander into the dungeons in teams without thralls to take on all the bosses. They still manage, just fine. They manage level 5 purges too. It’s just takes more time and is more difficult, which for a lot of players is an important layer of immersion. Immersion is the keyword here.
When thralls are added into this nightmare cocktail mix, the difficulty setting becomes obsolete. Obsolete for PvP and obsolete for PvE. It’s just an overwhelming damage modifier porting around slashing your heads off, while you sit back and enjoy an expired, lukewarm orange juice with a smug loot grin on your face. And to that special someone, this thrall nerf makes the player stronger - not weaker. I think that is obvious from testlive.
Testlive is available to everyone. Test it out. The new changes are actually surprisingly good, even from the perspective of a solo player or in a co-op game.
With that said, as a server owner I would like to have the opportunity to customize the settings on my own accord. The reason is simple: I want to be able to control the difficulty rate provided to the players on my own server. I’m also generally a fan of unforgiving difficulties. I’d nerf them more.
I apologize if my two cents got stuck in your throat.
tl;dr. See attached photo.
You are not cool.
