Apparently it’s not a necessary strategy because I’m hearing of any number of players who commonly DON’T use said strategy.
So it is more about FC taking away the choice for players who did employ that strategy. Because they don’t feel it’s an optimal one.
Commonly hearing how bosses can wreck thralls now if you aren’t helping them. That means my choice to let a thrall fight a boss as been taken away.
We’re back to the fact that it was my choice to play the game that way, it was PvE so it affected literally nobody else. Yet it was decided that my choice wasn’t valid or proper, and so it needed to be dealt with.
Yep, a lot of people are forgetting stuff like this.
FC is bottlenecking the gameplay in specific directions.
You want to use thralls. You MUST use authority to power them back up to pre-3.0 levels.
You want to force thralls to fight for your amusement. We don’t want that, you MUST step in and fight with them.
You want to use specific thralls because you like them better? Nope, you MUST use specific ones, because the others are too weak now and not viable.
You must be a warrior/archer exile.
You cannot play a character with a commanding presence to get others to do your bidding for you. They aren’t strong enough because you’re forced into a hero/anti-hero role.
Nothing wrong with making options for a player to be the hero.
Everything wrong with forcing said hero role onto the player as the only option.
They could have expanded player perks greatly to make more options.
One thing should have been to put these perks as Feats (as in D&D feats) and left attributes strictly alone as stat values.
And then have branching perk trees to allow you to increase your capabilities in myriad ways.
Weapon trees for varying weapon types to refine your usage of them.
Armor trees to pick and enhance your skills with your chosen armor types.
Leadership trees for governing thralls and enhancing them.
Construction trees for building and defending your base.
Mounted trees for movement and attack/defense while mounted.
To the extent you could choose to be what and who you wished to be in the exiled lands.
Don’t wanna fight? Push Leadership and let your minions do it for you.
Don’t want strong minions? Ignore the leadership and focus your talents on weapons and armor.
Want to be an architect and build beautiful structures? Pick stuff from construction and make it happen.
Yes there is a potion to reset your points. Yes you can hop between any number of these options. But the choice is there and not being forced onto you.
The Thrall nerf does take away that choice. It narrows down the viable thralls to a select group with a select melee or archery damage modifier because that damage is necessary. Further narrowed down to the thrall with the better HP modifier. Refined by shoving potions down their throats until you get the best perk trio you can for that particular thrall and deciding whether you want to pump their HP for tanking, melee for fighting, or archery for shooting enemies.
Edit: And saying no, you don’t need thralls like this. You can now do it yourself, is the equivalent of saying “git gud” and a BS argument. It’s not about “gittin’ gud” at the game. It’s about the freedom to play a sandbox game how you want to do so. Not how others feel you should.