Never forget what they took from us
Man, sorcery really was cool back in Age of Sorcery. You farm a bunch of sacrifices, study the rituals and work your way through the tome to unlock great new abilities.
You unlock some cool new armor, and a cool new set of weapons. It’s a cool gimmick, you can summon this demonic gear in a pinch and it’s pretty good but locks your corruption in. This is corrupted equipment, for a corrupted build.
Not to worry, you have some cool corrupted perks in strength to make the most of it. Half stamina is rough, but you can still get in a good few swings.
Then Age of War happened
Stamina nerfs all around, everything costs more to swing. Everyone shifts over to dumping into grit, wearing stamina boosting armor, and using lighter weapons all while being more sparing with their attacks.
So what happened to the corrupted build? Let’s look at some numbers:
- Total Stamina at 0 Grit: 50 corrupted
- Total Stamina at 20 Grit: 90 corrupted
- Total Stamina at 20 Grit, with Abyssal Armor: 97
And the warhammer attack cost?
45 Heavy, 33 Light
Now I’m no mathmetician, but assuming we want to avoid going into negative stamina and have a bit left over to dodge for the inevitable hit coming at us right after, that means at at 0 grit you can attack once. 20 grit, one third of your total amount of attribute points, you can attack two times. And the bonus 7 stamina on your armor? Keep the change, loser. That’s your dodge fund for when you blow the rest of your stamina on two whole heavy swings.
So I raise the question, why does this weapon still exist?
It does less damage than Hanuman’s Gada, which has the penalty of incredible weight, but you can swing it twice as much in a clean build. Likewise, very closely behind the Abyssal maul is the new Misplaced Guardian’s Will Breaker, which also is usable in a clean build. Pretty much, any worthwhile warhammer is usable clean. Except the Abyssal Maul. This thing is made for a corrupted build, it immediately corrupts you on being equipped, that’s how you’re supposed to use it. You’re supposed to only be able to hit 1-2 times with it. It’s like a pre-rework Sword of Crom, except worse in every way.
There’s some pretty stinky legendaries in the game, but the crime most of them commit is being pretty mediocre for what they are. The sin of this ungodly abomination is that it actively punishes you for using it. There’s also Destroyer, and the Blackheart weapons that also have this same problem.
I just can’t understand why. Why would you create a weapon, intentionally, make it part of the core sorcery progression, make it clearly meant to be used by sorcerers, only for it to be the literal worst weapon a corrupted build could use?
I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but this abomination, this affront to humanity, is an insult to corrupted builds. It’s unusable in it’s current state. The very existence of this weapon is a paradox, it’s a weapon made by sorcerer for sorcerers, and yet punishes you for being a sorcerer while trying to use it. This is no glass cannon type scenario, this is no one-hit design, this is just straight up unforgivable trash.
And it’s part of the larger problem; corrupted stamina.
Many weapon types suffer from the new costs, warhammers being the most extreme example but not the only one. Pretty much any 2-handed weapon is completely worthless in a corrupted build now. The cost to use is through the roof, and the benefit you get from corruption doesn’t make up for it. At max corrupted strength, that’s a bonus 20% damage… at the cost of halving your potential attacks. A total lack of corrupted agility makes it a joke to even consider unless you’re doing it solely for the cheap-cost attack weapons like daggers or shortswords, which Den unfairly favors as his favorite child weapon type.
Potential Solutions:
- Finish the job. Add corrupted grit, with either some kind of leech effect to steal stamina from your opponent or a scaling reduction on attack cost.
- Reduce stamina cost on cursed weapons. If you’re channeling demonic forces to swing this near-weightless thing around already and it’s eaten half your max HP, at least let me swing it more than two times.
- Separate corruption from health and stamina. Stamina changes already are painfully greedy and most of the bonuses are an insulting amount. +20 health per point in vit, but +3 stamina per point in grit, are you kidding me? That’s +1.5 for a corrupted build, that’s just an insulting joke when you’re charging 45 stamina for an attack.
- Revert the change entirely. Honestly, I’m not on board with this but a lot of people are. Clean builds get to swing more frequently, corrupted builds can actually finish a combo again, everyone wins. Lore-accurate barbarians don’t need to take a lunch break mid-battle because they got a little too tuckered out fighting.
Frequently Argued Points:
- “Just don’t use a corrupted build” - brilliant, why not just remove it from the game then? It used to be an alternate playstyle that was fairly beneficial with proportionate penalty, now it’s not.
- “Use X armor instead for even more stamina” - I could, sure, but that just forces you to cling to a meta just to try to get a crumb more worth out of your suffering. And besides, the bonus stamina given by armor is halved when fully corrupted. Even good ol’ leggings of Kurak only give you a third of an extra attack, that’s a pitiful amount, and you’d be subbing out the bonus damage and HP from the abyssal for that. I’d rather 10% more damage from the hit that hits instead of a third of a hit I can’t afford to hit.
- “Just don’t use the weapon if you hate it” - See point 1, just remove it if the solution to it sucking is to just not use it.
- “Corrupted builds are too strong” - +20% bonus damage for -50% attacks? Those totals ain’t adding up. That’s still a net DPS loss.
- “You’re not meant to be doing full combos all the time” ok but when there’s a perk for combo finishers in the clean strength perks and they get extra advantages like knocking down enemies, how is it fair that we are just hard locked out of using them?
- “Just use a thrall/zombies” NO. If I can solo anything and everything in this game on a clean build, why the hell can I not do that when corrupted? Corrupted builds should be an alternative playstyle to a clean build, not an even more handicapped babysitter crutch while your three zomberserkers do everything for you. Do you need them to feed and dress you too?
- “Sorcerers in the lore are weak” yes, yes they are. Conan regularly cuts them up in a fight. That’s why I have half health. Do I also need that half stamina to be utterly consumed the second I swing my 0.1lb stick in the air? I’d also like to point out that in Age of Conan, Dark Templars aren’t enfeebled worthless sacks of corrupted potatoes relying on their babysitter crutches.
- (This one’s for Arcanist) “Just play with reduced stamina cost or disable stamina” That’s not a solution, that’s a bandaid. Balance should be based on the base settings of the game, not how it is on easy mode. If you play on easy of course the game is gonna be easy. But if it sucks on normal, that needs to be addressed.