Well I dont mind the dodge, but if someone doesnt want to use a shield that should also be viable. Shields compromise your damage for defense. I mean, the roll doesnt bother me, but I’m not a heavy pvp guy. You would think that all the fighting styles should be relatively equal in viability, provided you’ve got the right weapon. When the dodge was first slowed, I actually found I was getting hit less as I was staying under the attacks longer.
You have to adapt to the challenge in front of you. Using a shield against mobs is not smart. Using against 1 Boss is. Different situations, different tactics.
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what else are your suggestions? Your comment alone doesn’t do anything at all
I am suggesting to not think one build is cure all in PVE.
- When i am going thralling in the cities, i take a War hammer with me. It clears mobs off me so i can readjust. Or if i have the blade of adventurer, i will use it.
- When i take on certain bosses, i use ax ans shield. Venom infused if i have it. Bleed + poison stacks help speed up the fight, plus the lunge attack for heavy gives me a quick hit after dodging.
- Some bosses i use the War hammer to sunder 5 times, then use mace heavies. Again the lunge attacks.
- When farming, i use the Enc Legendary 2H for +5 to my enc to allow for 2 str. Makes clearing brimstone lake a lake a lot easier.
- PVP, use Mitra’s justice for the de-buffer, and mix and match different styles depending on my enemy.
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I still don’t get what all of this has to do with dealing with bosses attack patterns, damage, sizes, while solo. Not trying to sound rude, just being honest.
For instance, what do you do to solo the croc boss? Light armor and daggers with Max agility? Heavy and hammers with Max hp to facetank? That’s the point.
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I haven’t been playing after the mounts/movement patch-update, I played like you said 15 minutes and was done. Keep looking at the forums for some light in the sky, but it’s keeps getting darker.
Good luck!
ps. FunCom broke the whole game, not just dodge…whole movement system about this area.
ps2. Don’t mind the players that keeps this game “alive”, suggest to me they didn’t came to the top yet knowing how much work things costs and the updates destroys it again and again.
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Different bosses (and different situations) may require different sets of tools. But we, the players, are also different, and my specific playstyle may not suit everyone else. So even if I explain in very great detail how I defeat a certain NPC, it may not be helpful to you if your playstyle is very different from mine.
My default setup is daggers, light armor and max agility against everything until proven ineffective. I also carry a spear, a two-handed sword, an axe and a sword, and a warhammer for some very specific situations (namely, skeleton bosses in the Unnamed City - I sunder, my thrall kills).
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I use very different techniques for each. Venom infused daggers to stack blled and poison, then shield venom infused ax for the boss croc. But i do this rarely (if at all any more), as i play official PVP, and time is the most precious thing on there. So i face plant with a T4 level 20 Purge Fighter for @2 minute kills. and only hunt the UC and warmakers for the better weapons.
Why spend so much time complaining about the game, instead of actually playing it and getting used to change? All you’re doing is wasting your own time and that of others by reminiscing of a bygone era of pretending to be an armadillo
Thank you!
For me, it’s heavy armor and venom-infused daggers.
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Horseback and Festering One
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I agree with your concerns here Skillo, and also those of other players such as @Fire, @Sielgaudys and, although for different reasons in his case, also with @SirDaveWolf. While I have learned to adapt (to varying degrees) to the changes in the dodge system, there is no two ways about it for me; it is still worse than its predecessor. Moreover, it has negatively impacted upon the fun factor me, and also the viability of certain playstyles.
Even when the dodge has been ‘upgraded’ all the way to Agility 50, it is still slower than it was under the old dodge system. The recovery time is horrible, and this is coming from someone who runs around with Agility 20 by default, as I like the ‘Cat Like’ perk. As I see it, the change has created problems for Singleplayers/Solo players on one hand, and PvP on the other. Period.
Singleplayer & online Solo players:
The changes have made certain sections borderline impossible to complete without a thrall now. Fighting larger groups and certain bosses has now become ridiculous. Because of the slower animations and frankly lousy recovery speed. As soon as our iframes run out, enemies are landing multiple free blows on us before we can even recover and defend ourselves. Now add into this equation a big group of enemies (eg-Wights in the Wine Cellar dungeon) or a high damaging boss which performs multiple strikes in quick succession (eg-Kinscourge, Warmakers Champion, and to a lesser extent the Scorpion King) and the result is almost always fatal. Ok those are the drawbacks. The benefits to these modes are…‘realism’.
PvP mode:
Considering this change was aimed at PvP, it was quite unpopular. While Im no expert at PvP, I know that many seasoned veterans such as SirDaveWolf are unhappy with the change, and I understand and accept his reasoning. It has resulted in weird metas such as Claws, Bow spamming and…Thralls, which seem to now be able to 2 shot players. To make matters worse, clans can now annihilate newbies and Online Solo players, who now stand almost no chance of either defeating them or outruning them. The negative is that many PvPers are now tired of pokethrall meta, and having to have one with them virtually all the time (much like Singleplayers).
All of this silliness came about because we nerfed dodging. I am seeing a LOT of drawbacks from this change, and relatively few betterments.
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So basically seems like the change didn’t help anyone at all? That’s a big deal. I started playing after the change and can say that i immediately hated dealing with PVE content from day 1.
Yes, after testing these multiple times with several builds, it all comes down to tanking damage and having 50/50 tea and haunch. Dodging 9/10 times does not work, because you are too slow, because their reach is too wide, or something else. Your skill imput (i honestly think that dodge timing should matter more than your gear and hp) barely matters.
The same with backswing animations. Why so freaking long? with some weapons, you are locked in place for quite some time after stopping attacking. The only way to deal with that is by sheathing your weapon or rolling. In what game sheathing your weapon is a major mechanic needed to make a weapon barely useable?? For instance, some FPS games can improve your shooting speed by putting your gun back and pulling it back up, mainly with snipers. But snipers do not take 10 years to shoot normally, the default time is acceptable for the game. You are min maxing, raising the skill ceiling. Here is just default to not suck for some weapons (2h sword is the worst).
Between dodging, this weird sheathing mechanic, some clunky animations around big bosses, i’m having a terrible experience.
I really don’t know man, sometimes feels like i just don’t know how to enjoy the game. Using a thrall feels bad but the intented way, soloing feels awful, yet many here don’t see no issues with either. I just want to have some fun.
There are style considerations. Its not always about making something the most effective in combat if for style reasons the devs want it to be more “realistic”. Then the question becomes, if its realistic, is it still a useful mechanic? I would say the dodge still has utility and if it were this way from the beginning, we would never know what we were missing.
Curious, do you think the dodge we have now is a downgrade to what we had?
No I just think its different.
Well if dodge were like this from the beginning, bosses would also have been different, i think.
Their reach, attack speed, turn rate, it all comes in how the player (and hopefully not the thrall) can deal with it.
Most bosses were made before the change so…?
…it was around that player, the dodgemaster3000. Not ‘‘this’’
I agree, but that doesn’t make the dodge change bad. There are plenty of other things in this game that either aren’t well thought-out or are deliberately designed in such a way that you need a group or a thrall, which is something I personally dislike.
Let’s take that apart, but before we go there, a disclaimer: this is my own, personal opinion on how I think the game should be designed. 
I’ll start with the most objective part of the whole thing: my experience with the Scorpion King. The dodge actually improved my fights with that boss. With the old dodge, I would almost always get hit by that damnable tail sweep, because I would only have a split second to: 1) realize it was about to happen, 2) execute a double dodge and 3) pray I wasn’t too close for it to work anyway. With the new dodge, it’s much easier to negate or diminish the effects of the tail sweep, as long as you’re not lagging too much.
Single enemies with rapid multiple strikes are a more subjective topic. I don’t think dodge should be the right tool for that. We don’t have a parry or counter-attack action, so the only other logical thing would be to block. Unfortunately, Funcom has done a really bad job with the shield. Occasionally, it’ll work the way it should, but a lot of times it either won’t register properly and you’ll get pummeled, or the enemies just keep attacking too fast. It’s possible to block-then-dodge, but it’s too tricky and involves luck. I think Funcom should fix this by making shields work better and giving us some kind of parry or counter.
The most subjective topic here would probably be big groups of enemies. My opinion is that those should be hard at best and fatal at worst, but that it shouldn’t be a kind of situation that is forced on the players, like in the Wine Cellar. You wanna wade into a group of 10 skeletons or 6 Cimmerians because you’re feeling cocky or because you weren’t paying attention? That’s on you – and if you win, it should feel glorious. But I firmly believe that Funcom shouldn’t design their dungeons in such a way that it’s inevitable to end up surrounded by a large group of enemies.
That’s the direct extension of my belief that Funcom either shouldn’t design dungeons that require groups/thralls or, if they do, those shouldn’t offer anything you couldn’t get by soloing other places. The latter wouldn’t make those group-themed dungeons worthless – they would just have to balance it properly. Imagine if there’s a soloable dungeon that drops at most 10 “unobtanium” and that there’s another dungeon designed for a group of 3 (i.e. you can’t solo it even with a thrall) that drops 60 “unobtanium”. You’re better of getting a group of 3 and doing the group dungeon, but you’re not obliged to just because “unobtanium” doesn’t drop anywhere else
I don’t think it’s just “realism”. Some fights are much more engaging and fun now. Some are more feasible. I don’t think the new dodge was a bad change (from a PVE point of view), I just think it removed a band-aid that was covering other problems…
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Im not sure it would be different. Funcom could have changed the bosses when they changed the dodge, so for now, I have nothing other than the assumption than its how they prefer we experience the game.