Thralls still too powerful, making non-thralls build feel unsatisfying

I’m not even going to read past the op but come on now. Thralls got nerfed to poop. I can target someone’s thrall down easy because their ai is terrible. Yes they do some damage but at a certain point you need to get a little better at fighting. Keep asking for thrall nerfs and maybe they will just take them out of the game. This community is seriously special

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Yet they still solo world, purge and vault bosses. They can’t be that bad.

I never play PvP so can’t really talk about that myself.

Said by a guy named “Boobie”.

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Maybe put some work into making the bosses a little harder? You can solo all those bosses as well so it sounds like a boss thing.

They nerfed thralls so the player can be the “hero”. That’s a pve thing because I can assure you the pvpers are already far superior to any thrall or boss. Try pvp sometime and tell me thralls need more nerfing.

A 4th grade come back. Don’t talk smack about boobie miles do some research

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I’m not sure how a harder boss wouldn’t still be just as much harder to both players and thralls, kind of defeating the point.

Also bosses as it is are sometimes quite the bullet sponges which is a bit of a turnoff honestly.

Which is a good thing, isn’t it?

I’d imagine - albeit I can’t back this up with actual data - that most players think it’s kind of cool to be the hero of the story and are a bit disappointed when their thralls end up doing all the work in the end.

Nah, not interested in it at all so wont try it either.

Perhaps they should just use different balancing for PvE and PvP thralls?

Well you have what seemed like a 4th grade nickname.

My nick is 6th grade since that’s when I came up with it.

So you know. Make your conclusion…

No one outside USA would know that some random American footballer was nicknamed “Boobie”.

Anyway, it’s pretty lame and childish to call - even indirectly - a community mentally disabled. It’s not only impolite in the context of this discussion itself, but it’s also kinda ableist.

So we could just not do that.

I’m not seeing it personally. Pre 3.0 yeah for sure. They were over the top.

I have a level 20 named thrall running with me and I gave her a legendary spear. She doesn’t out damage me at all but she holds her own.

I love it.

No where did I say that. If you interpreted it like that then that’s on you my friend.

Is that how you felt when your parents called you special? It’s all what you make it

An easy fix for you seems to be take no thralls with you or go grab some pets for some extra challenge.

This actually isn’t possible. 20 STR means without gear you do weapon damage 2x. So unless you’re using like a iron tier weapon compared to star metal tier on thrall. You will always outdamage your thrall.

Accursed Berserkers have a melee modifier of 1.12. This means they get a bonus of 12% damage. They get an additional +0.4% damage per point of strength. With the best set of perks, you’re looking at 21% bonus damage from strength or 33% total without gear. At level 20.

As long as you have 7 Strength or higher, you will be able to do more damage per swing than the best rolled thrall of that type if using the same gear.

If it rolled perfectly for vitality the same thrall would have ~5100hp. Impressive compared to the player but still quite vulnerable against certain foes and definitely still at risk at being overwhelmed.

As shown here, the best rolled (for damage) thrall equals that of a 6 STR/AGI player in damage. This does go up by a significant amount when a player has the Authority Attribute AND +Follower damage gear. But they are still edged out by a player using weapon damage gear.

If going by pure stats, yes I do believe a player without a thrall does less damage than a fully specced out authority. But that is only on paper and assuming the thrall attacks like a player does. Which unfortunately for those who use them, they don’t. Players attack much more often than a thrall resulting in much higher DPS.

You may ask anyone in this thread about my opinions on what thrall capabilities should be. I’ve butted heads with many of them in the past on the subject. They will tell you I am not a pro-thrall person. So understand that when I say the following statement that I am not biased towards thralls.

But I do believe the strength of thralls versus the player in 3.0 is in a good spot.

My biggest complaint about thralls is the fact that a player doesn’t have enough transparent information to discern between which thralls are better than the others without using external means. That’s a whole other thread of its own for discussion.

But I do not believe thrall damage or survivability is currently out of wack.

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I disagree. You can sit back and let your thrall do all the work, but I easily out-damage it. Probably doing 50% or higher damage than the thrall with 10 points in the follower stat. If you can’t do that it’s you or your weapon. Some weapons have tricks or other benefits. I usually need to go in and help my thrall or it dies vs difficult foes.

Mhh…
Maybe they are “too” powerful, if one really minmaxed that thrall.
This does take some effort, as well as playerdmg takes effort.
There are two factions: one going for thralls as always, one going for solo builds like you

Anyway… there is that thing called dmg multiplier. Northern thralls like that berserker got about 2.24 I think? Maybe lowering that would solve your issue - and (possibly) create an issue for everyone who plays with thralls. Not that you care about that I guess.
edit: Only read that 1.12 later. Guess those are cimmerian? Anyway. I still had those values from wiki.

That being said… do you actually buff yourself properly? Aside of 20 str or agi, some good armor as well as a good weapon, there is consumables like potions, food, warpaint… Also thralls can only die once and nurturing a good to perfect thrall seriously takes time. (I do think of leveling thralls as being a pain.)

To me, this sounds like you put bananas, strawberries, a mango, and an onion into a blender, and now you’re complaining that the onions are bad because you didn’t like your smoothie.

I don’t know what dungeon you were in, what enemies you were fighting, how many players were with you, and how many followers they had, but those are important things to take into account.

Let me try to put this into perspective. For starters, I play solo. Not single-player, but alone on an official server. I have 0 in authority myself, and I’ve got my fair share of followers killed before I stopped taking them with me. They’re like wet paper right now.

I’ll probably try out an authority spec one of these days, to see what that playstyle is like, and I fully expect my followers to be powerful, because they’ll be all that stands between me and my enemies. If they fail to protect me, if they can’t help me win the fight, then the authority spec will be useless to me and I’ll respec into some other build and never put any points into authority again.

Now, if I’m going to run around with a whole bunch of other people, I expect that my contribution to the fight will be a lot more limited. The more in the party, the less significant I’ll be. That’s one of the reasons why I play solo: being a “hero” is a lot more likely when there’s no one to cast their shadow on you :stuck_out_tongue:

So my advice would be to perhaps put a bit more effort into coordinating with your friends, instead of asking Funcom to nerf things even further. At some point, you have to come to terms with the fact that this game has to keep supporting a multitude of playstyles, not just yours.

Whether you like it or not, followers are dumber than a sack of hammers when compared to a player. I’m not saying this to disparage the devs and their skills, it’s just the way this game works. The more you want to rely on them, the stronger they have to be. I find the authority attribute a really smart solution for that particular problem, and I think that what you describe would make followers not viable for solo players like me.

When you have two players with a strength build, they can communicate to adapt their tactics. When you have a player with a strength build and a thrall that’s does “damage comparable to a strength build”, well, it’s gonna be a disaster.

Right now, the worst thing that happens with your playstyle is that you feel dissatisfied with the gameplay in certain situations, but it’s not like you can’t fight certain fights or you keep losing your followers. If Funcom nerfed the followers per your suggestion, my playstyle would face a limitation like that, i.e. there would be certain fights I couldn’t win with my followers, without losing them.

When I compare your avoidable dissatisfaction with the possibility of having my playstyle crippled, I think I know which one I would pick :smiley:

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C’mon. “Special” is used as a schoolyard insult, you know that.

At least own up to what you said.

Ya, I do go around a lot without thralls and we often leave thralls at base when heading to dungeons in my friend group. More fun that way! :slight_smile:

He has an Accursed Berserker (one of the higher dmg thralls). Melee bonus of 1.12 or 12%. It has a starting strength of 15. Its level 10 and could have a strength of 25 or 28 with a strength perk which is another 11% (0.4% per strength). If they are using Strength damage armor (its non-epic, so I assume basic), then that puts their total damage bonus at 38%.

An 8 strength player does a tad more damage than that thrall. The OP has 20 strength. For the thrall to be out performing the OP, the thrall needs to be attacking 4x more often than they are.

I’m going to give the OP the benefit of the doubt and say that don’t know exactly how little their thrall is actually contributing. Hence ignorance of the subject rather than incompetence as a player.

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Your numbers are plain off. Not sure what part exactly is wrong, but it’s pretty obvious when comparing side by side that the thrall is doing more damage than you suggest they would.

Your post has multiple mistakes.
After 2.4 WE are the beasts, not the thralls!
Now we are even more so I cannot see a point here sorry!
If you think that you do less damage than your thrall then maybe you are not even fighting :man_shrugging:. Now with sorcery even your kick does more damage from your thrall.
So…
Either you Play on a private server either you are trolling here! If you wish to have a standard experience you can always try on barbaric server or on pvec, pvp that you hurt your thrall and then maybe you will understand how damn stronger you are, because you are. The stupid thralls have only hp and random combos, nothing else. You seem very confident, so please take a lvl 0 thrall, with the gear you said in the harpies and good luck. Or take 2 lvl 20 on the rockslide but don’t help, good luck again. Or take 3 on arena champion and don’t help, good luck again.
YOU ARE THE BEAST, THEY ARE ONLY HEALING PILLOWS M8! Play the game the way you like and respect others too. Some people in this game do not like, or can’t fight like you. Me for example I hate thralls, they are only annoying when I fight, but in some cases, like wine cellar or harpies, they are damn useful! A simple lag in there and you may even loose your gear if you loose temper. Before the update you could do every single boss (except rockslide) with darfari stone weapons alone, so now it’s way more easier. For me, not for everyone!
I am really happy with the thrall nerf, more than you can imagine, but I can see that they become butter. And the nerf is way good, it doesn’t need more.
Now in pvp servers you can kill a lvl 20 thrall faster than his boss, it’s ok, really OK now.
No more nerfs!

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Here’s a demonstration:

My setup:


Light Attack:


Heavy Attack:


Thrall Stats:


Thrall Light Attack:


Thrall Heavy Attack:


Both me and the Thrall are using a Star Metal Greatsword and both using Pictish Warbrave Epic (for the increased armor so he doesn’t die to the boss, not boosted by armorer).

You can see I am doing quite a bit more damage than the thrall.

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You must be sniffing to much dream dust my guy.

This scorpion is some time a thrall killer! A few months ago I placed in front of him 4 Berserkers, with their starting gear, I just gave them exotic feast. Before the scorpion go to 60%hp all 4 of them were dead.
THE OLD BERSERKERS, NOT THE NEW ONES. So it’s really obvious that the op is trolling!

The thing is, not everyone wants to play like you. Thralls are certainly not unstoppable anymore, and with their limited AI, they have to be tough and they have to deal a lot of damage. Because they cannot dodge and can barely aim. They also cannot prioritize targets.

If you don’t like thralls don’t play with them. If you somehow can’t stop yourself from using them, that’s on you.

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I have to disagree with the OP. Thralls are not powerful enough. I play single player, and a thrall can be the difference between life and death. Going into a boss fight, I can only have one Thrall with me at a time, if my thrall dies, I’m as good as dead next!

Has anyone else noticed that thralls with a truncheon no longer deal stun to enemies? I tried to use a group of thralls armed with truncheons, and they no longer knock out enemies, instead, my thralls end up killed because truncheons don’t do damage, but wild humanoid enemies still deal heavy damage! There was a time where I could have an army of thralls outside of somewhere I needed more thralls from, and I could have them knock out as many as I can lure into the mob! Now? Nope! My thralls die a horrible painful death! And blunted weapons like the blunted arrows and blunted spear no longer do stun damage! They do regular damage! That has to be a bug, because the blunted weapons I remember used to knock humans out like a truncheon!

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Have you ever thought that maybe the problem is not with thralls?

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