It’s because of your build, but eventually you’ll have the experience to do it alone! In this battle I had 0 authority, so in the middle of the fight my lvl 20 Berserker died and a minute later my horse. This however was on pvec server, that I hurt my thralls too, but I didn’t fight where they did, or I was careful not to hit them because now I produce a huge amount of damage and I can kill them faster than the opponent.
Thralls are nerfed seriously and that’s a fact. Especially horses are not functioning like they use too, they stack in corners instead of running around and they fall extremely easy. This reminds me the old days that we didn’t use horses for this reason, it’s clearly a bad rollback!
BUT!!!
I am still learning the game (new update) like we all do, I do appreciate the YouTube efforts out there and especially @Wak4863 is in my heart, but I never totally follow their advises, I test different things on my own because this part of the game goes and never come back!
2 days ago I placed two perks on authority to test and I corrupted these 2 only. I kept my fighter style, because I don’t trust thralls after 2.4 and I want to stay alive thank you! My thrall reminded me the old good thralls with lower vitality and greater risk because we share the damage I take, but they were hitting better with the frenzy perk and they were damn more helpful. @JJDancer did you try this? I bet you’ll love it. OK, I lost my one third of my vitality and grit but, split the damage was extremely handy, because my thrall has 8 times my hp pool so it wasn’t that bad! Fellow exiles will you try this build please to tell me your opinion? I believe the balance is still to be discovered and we need to test and share!
I build mainly to get rid of the penalties of encumbrance. So far I am going to have to level up my thralls so they’ll be able to out-perform me. I generally like to survive, and I tend to find myself hoarding resources after a short while, but mainly it’s so I can grab a lot of loot and stockpile resources.
If you don’t want a strong thrall, then get a thrall that is wearer. When i go to the unamed city i bring an arena champion with me. Yes i have my own sever. Most of my thralls are level 3 in a mega fight i always take the best thrall i have. And so will others.
True, and there is a mod that lets you level thralls to 100 regardless of the tier. It could be a I, II, II, or unique named Thrall who’s name existed before being put on the wheel. It can make thralls so much more OP that an OP one will more than easily be an unstoppable monster.
Thralls become more important as you play, and I know a thrall with no levels will be weak and frail, an easy kill for a boss… I’m still doing a solo play run.
Unless they used admin commands, they were at least capable enough to obtain the thrall itself. Which means they should be able to outperform the thrall, even after it is leveled up.
Thus the issue brought up by the OP isn’t one of competence, but ignorance of what they’re seeing. If one doesn’t know how the system works or has tools to display the end results. Then its easy to make an assumption one way or another.
But its been proven in the discussion. They can choose to believe the facts presented or just keep on with an ignorant delusion. They haven’t yet displayed which choice they have made. So its best to not make assumptions. That’s the mistake that led to the thread being created.
1] Leveling said thrall for base defense during a purge
2] Using a bearer to gather stuff
3] Participating in a purge
If you think the thralls are too powerful, or they hit harder than you do, fix your build. Spoiler - Corrupted strength is great and all, but combined with Agility and solid battle tactics, your thrall just gets in the way.
Actually… scratch that one.
Here @tzaeru I made this one specifically for you, I believe it will settle this discussion of feeling like a “worthless bystander”.
Thrall vs Crocodile boss / Player vs Crocodile boss. Side by side… literally… not through the power of some magic editing…
Keep in mind, I am still on a farming / bearer build, this could be improved a lot. I am also wearing Skelos Cultist Master and as such granting my follower a whopping 50% damage increase… without that I reckon he would’ve taken much longer… Anders is a top tier RHTS
I was also just being clumsy and trying to get combos missing a lot then getting hit and had to run around and heal up a bit, usually I can avoid their stuff, but my character has camera anxiety
Before coming up with the idea of doing it side by side, I did a few attempts where I tried to do it one after the other, but then you’d have to look at the timestamps and would have a video twice the length so I think this is more clear. On average he typically takes ~2 minutes and I am 20-30 seconds faster though when I don’t miss half my attacks
Good post that tries shows what I and a lot of other players already know, but…
You are constantly using the highest damage attack available in the game, whilst the poor thrall struggles with his confused 1h Mace attacks, (i.e. not min/max’ing between light/heavy).
Even though it’s impossible to get a strictly fair and unbiased test, (because AI can never do what a player can do, i.e. dodge staggers/knockdowns, switch weapons, time attacks etc etc), it still would have been a fairer test if you both used the same weapon.
i.e. Try the same test with both of you using the same 2H swords and roughly the same % damage increase, (taking into account all buffs), you will still win for all the above reasons, but it should be much closer.
P.S. I am not having a go at you, I basically agree with you, I just don’t think your test clearly proves the conclusion as much as you think it does.
I am also constantly evading and using the advantages that I have as opposed to what I don’t.
That’s the whole point of my video… that the player is not supposed to play on the “dumbed down” playing field of the thralls… but instead of having 6k HP, just think a little.
I actually think this test is more fair in a sense that it favors the thrall heavily… Why? Because his hp allows him to face-tank and the weapon I gave him actually gives him hyper armor for most of the fight. Several times he completely ignored the tailswipe of the crocodile and did damage to him at the same time while I had to retreat.
And lastly, while I do agree that the combo katana-dash is pretty strong… if I didn’t have to worry about getting killed I could do far more damage with regular light / heavy combos including stacking bleed etc. (Also, a shortsword is capable of similar DPS with the quickstab I just felt for this enemy the katana might be better)
Overall I think this very clearly shows that players are not “useless” or “in the way bystanders” as OP said… now whether or not I’m 30 seconds faster than the thrall I think is irrelevant at this point, since it already debunks the vastly exaggerated claims of the player being useless compared to thralls
Edit:
Oh I realized after posting that maybe you haven’t tried maces for thralls, I met a lot of people here who haven’t. But basically the AI is the best with 1 handed maces, they use them far better than any other weapon and will typically deal more single-target damage with them than a 2h sword, that’s why he had that
The reason being is why shouldn’t a player use the highest damage attacks they can do? Such an attack is not available to thralls. It is a capability of the player, even if it is unique to the player. Even if a thrall had access to it (it can through a mod), it wouldn’t be able to use it in a smart way that a player would.
You know what… Just because I’m nice… copied my db to single-player and made a new set of armor
Here it is a true PvE build with heavy armor and lots of face-tanking. I went all thrall on him
Choose the Voidforge Dragon so technically I have a 8% str bonus while Anders there has 25% but it gives me a bit of extra HP for face tanking and some stamina…
I bet it’s very far from what you were expecting… and excuse the crocodile corpses, the first resulted in Anders being kicked all the way to the base so another thrall helped him… it happens in this one too, but only at the very end so I didn’t want to remake it again just for that.
This one proves 2 points in one… first that indeed you can outdamage your thrall even with completely button-masher facetanking… and second is what I mentioned above, that thralls indeed outperform any weapon with 1h maces (I wasn’t faster here than with my agi build… the thrall was much slower though)
I think Thralls are in a very good place at the moment, they are strong enough to hold on their own even with 0 authority but not strong enough to 1shot everything.
They are still stupid af, but i can live with that… although i don´t understand why sometimes, even if the thrall is not attacking they get agroed by the enemies im fighting with…
My only wish right now is that i could command them to change weapons or change their fighting style with a single button without having to go though all the wheel of options.
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Full AGI in medium armor and 1 piece of heavy is stronger than heavy armor and a 2 hander, no need for corruption at all. Voidforged Gladius with a advanced damage fitting does 96 damage base with 18% armor pen, but roll once and stab them in them in the back with heavy thrust and you are not looking at 53% armor pen. We are stronger than we used to be by a large margin, but 3 zombies with Frenzy and +20 to every stat or a geared out thrall will still outperform a player in some cases.
20 authority builds should give a thrall a solid 1 handed axe as they do WAY more consistent damage with hyperarmor state and status like bleed/poisons. Feed them salted pork and gear them better. A t4 armorer and slap them in Purified Legion Helm and Chest, Arena Champion Legs, God Breaker Mits and Hyperborian slaver boots on EL, or Aspect of the Wolf, Voidforged Ribs, Serpantman Bracers, Hyperborian Slaver Legs and Boots (OR DLC Equivalent 5% legs and boots) on Siptah and they do SIGNIFICANTLY more damage than with a 2 hander as they are prone to being staggered or knocked down. Then they can keep up a LOT easier if not outright outperform a player in damage still.
Okay? I’m wondering about the point, since had you followed the thread you would’ve seen that I had a simple full Agi farmer’s build, I set up a 2 handed weapon test specifically because it was requested that both I and the thrall use 2handed swords.
We’re on Exiled lands, no Gladius here However not a fan of the rolling thrust builds, quick-stabs can do much higher DPS in PvE and if I want more armor pen (against mammoths and rockslides) I have a Blade of Seven Winds with 100% armor pen which gets the job done.
Nope, they don’t outperform 1 handed maces with 1 handed axes, maces have hyper armor on every swing pretty much btw and they do the full combos with them.
I didn’t use food buffs on either him or myself and his gear is fine, it has 25% strength and 1.7k armor… sure it’s not “min-maxed” to extremes but it’s close and much simpler to get so it was more than adequate for what we were testing.
If you would’ve checked out what this topic was all about then you would’ve realized I am aware… in fact I said it before I even tested it that the thrall had an advantage because of the mace providing hyper armor… then I did the test with 2 handed swords as requested by @Yup above and indeed, the thrall took more than a full minute longer to kill the same boss than with a mace that had less damage.
I agree! Especially with the changes to the attribute system bringing players up a notch. I like it!
Yup, that’s why I basically made OP a mini-series here lol (should release it as a DVD)
It seems to both me and a lot of others that OP might be mislead by the plain healthbar you get in an unmodded game thinking they do way less damage than their thralls, so I made a bunch of clips with various scenarios of the player and thrall side-by-side killing the same boss with actual visible healthbar and damage numbers. Hopefully that’s going to help them decide whether thralls are truly that much stronger than the player
I really think it is about right. I have to save my companion thrall in any difficult fight and I CAN!!! Something I could never do before 3.0. Before 3.0 if my thrall got into trouble it was just dead, no way I could get into a fight that difficult and not be instantly slaughtered by whatever it was.
At the same time you can’t put 20 points into Authority and still have a decent fighting build. One of your other stats would have to be trimmed down. As a builder I have no stat points left for Strength as it is. I can spare 10 points for Followers and no more.
Players may Max-Min, but they always do. The game should not be built for them alone.
This part isn’t entirely true
You actually can have 2 aspects of that… So… builder… fighter… thrall master… you CAN pick two not just one which is a kinda nice change from pre-3.0 where if you went with a farmer build then you really sucked in combat. Now you can have a builder / farmer build and still be more than competent of a fighter. In turn you could also dump those expertise points in authority should you wish to so you can become a fighter / thrall master with a limited inventory capacity
I do similar
My build is farmer/thrallmaster hybrid
Got my authority maxed out and corrupted for max thrall damage then alot in expertise so I can gather like a beast with 0 in agility or str
I can see how someone would possibly reverse it and go fighter/thrallmaster with more in str or agi instead of my pick in expertise or even farmer/fighter
ALOT of possible combos with this system and I spent the entire first few days of 3.0 resetting and testing builds before settling on the one I have
