I think thralls should still be hard to kill, but not impossible.
For example I was attacked by a player and their thrall. I was wearing silent legion, and the thrall 2 hit me with daggers.
Before that I managed to get quite a few swings at it with my star metal Great axe but I only just about saw them lose a slither of health
Dont quote something completely out of context…
No boss fight is hard with current thralls. And therefore you have only 1% chance.
So if boss fights should feel like boss fights (mostly from MMORPG point of view), then the thrall dmg output has to change and also the crappy dropchance.
I dont want to fight >10mins on a boss with 1% drop chance… The 1% dropchance in the wine cellar for the Pristine weapons alone are annyoing enough.
How is someone going to take you saying fixed dropped bosses can be hard.
Clear it up, are they hard or are they not?
And I was pointing out that none of the bosses are technically hard if you have a T3 or above thrall leveled past 10.
I think he meant was if bosses had fixed guaranteed drops, then he would be okay with them getting buffed and see them being actual hard intimidating bosses that he would fight for a good bit of time, this would also warrant a nerf in thrall damage from the looks of his message.
I got that. I was just re-iterating that Bosses should be unique and not part of a normal farm route. They do have fixed drops…FoPs, Recipes, Scraps, skeleton keys, and more harvest compared to normal NPC’s based on type (demon blood, haunch, hide, etc…). The RNG is what you get otherwise. Chests and maybe if you are lucky a weapon from the UC/Wine Cellar. But if you made x boss drop y weapon, then it would be back to farming a meta. I really which bosses were not just a higher tier harvest node, but that is what they are now. And back to the RNG. Making the items less available on officials would do 2 things…PVP give me a reason to raid and loot an enemy, and PVE, give me something to create trade economy. the only real ill effect would be for SP. But to me SP is the long play of the game. No socializing. No worries about decay (settings). No worries about getting raided. No purges (settings). So going thru the bosses, building, and possibly trying to collect everything legit (no admin spawn) is how i feel SP thrives. If they could include a working slider for NPC, Thrall, Mini Bosses, and Bosses that would make SP even more customization as well.
I feel the only time they should be boosted is raid time. this would bring traffic to the actual raiding hours. A lot of Alpha clans have 2 or 3 non combat players that only log in during the no raid time. They use the change to killing thralls and run around harvesting and then filling their caravans up for safe keeping. No way top make up the non combative harvesters. If you have a clan that can only play evenings, you are at a huge disadvantage resource wise.
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I would agree that PVE have more options because of private servers. But that should say something shouldn’t it? Those of us who rent a private server pay for the extra control on our experience, hence the push for more options. If everyone has to play vanilla, then modders are out of luck and while I dont use mods, many do and they might be a bit mad about it.
Also PVP gets plenty of support. If you sense hostility towards it, its likely based in the fact that PVP is often the reason a lot of stuff gets nerfed and other things are “rebalanced” and the PVE crowd chafe as a result. Also the condescension of many PVP players toward PVE got old a long time ago. That leads to the visceral reaction you might be noticing from people.
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Hello, Pot! Meet Mr. Kettle!
You are allowed to play however you want, but when you choose to make things hard on yourself, don’t complain that the game is too hard.
Blocking me is fine, that way you don’t have to listen to anyone with an opinion different than yours or critical of you. I’m sure that will lead to many constructive and fruitful things!
FWIW, the condescension and hostility towards PVP players by PVE players gets old as well, and there are plenty of visceral ugly reactions from PVE players as well. It’s not a one-way street there. As someone who has their feet planted solidly in both realms, I find it very frustrating that people can’t reasonably discuss problems that apply to all aspects of the game.
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Welcome to internet forums.
After reading through this thread I feel a solution to this would be to change the thrall balancing for PvP and PvE, problem with this solution is the amount of extra work it creates for funcom and that kind of weighs against it. My initial reaction would be to alter the power of thralls but seeing as nerf balance hasnt gone down so well, and making global nerfs like that can have unforseen chain reactions in the way thralls are valued and interact with different aspects of the game.
I get where people like Zeb who are calling rather for a player buff are coming from as nerfing has led to further issue in the past. I agree however with ppl like Malagant in that thralls feel really strong at the moment, Perhaps I am less upset by this than someone like Malagant because I am used to games where NPC/followers can end up much stronger than players, ARK is very much like that, certain tames are really weak while others make the player look like a mouse trying to fight a lion.
I did however have an idea about a possible solution that may be the middle ground answer to the issue. Maybe if thralls took extra damage from players when on follow. So have gaurding thralls be as they are now ( reason I say this is I think having thralls actually become viable as defense against things like offlining is a step in the right direction). What I have gathered from posts on here of those calling for nerfs, is that they feel the problem most when dealing with other players or groups that are roaming around with their group of follower thralls and feel they don’t stand a chance against them. The a.i for a thrall on follow is a lot more aggressive and much better at not derping out than thralls on guard. As for those cautious of a general nerf, they seem to be concerned about the way that could once again change the relationship between thralls and other aspects of the game which would affect certain playstyles in PvP and a lot of PvE.
So in order to balance this if thralls got some kind of debuff penalty, say 50 - 80 % extra damage when attacked by another player. It would be a way to nerf the thrall + player vs player interaction without directly nerfing thralls. This would leave thralls effectively at the same strength when being used in PvE, it also would still make thralls really strong as base defense, but it would nerf players ability to go roaming the starter beach with a group of lvl 20s and have no one be able to contest them. I do think there should be more ways to deal with a group running around with their thralls than just having to have a group with your own thralls. Having the only counter to something be mimicing the same thing at the opponent is bad balance. This would be a way of both nerfing thralls (in a sense) and also buffing players against thralls (in a sense), while not affecting thralls relationship to other aspects of the game like bosses and npc’s.
Dunno if others agree but I see that as a best of both worlds middle ground that maybe we all could agree on. Also would be much easier for Funcom to implement something like that instead of a rework of thrall power levels or player power levels. Just an idea 
Nah, simple damage debuff would be bland. We need a melee weapon applying some sort of “Maddening” 
debuff, forcing a thrall to attack random nearby player for 15 seconds, before recovering his sanity and continuing to follow his master. This way lone players could gain a temporary “ally” if jumped on by 2-3 players with thralls. 
Of course, thralls can still “lock on” that lone player - and destroy him - but that what we already have now. 
@tin_egg Problem with implementing things like this that add some flare and creativity in the mix is that it opens the door to unforeseen consequences, exploits and chain reactions in gameplay that may lead to undesirable playstyle, it may seem bland but sometimes simple and eloquent fixes are much more efficient than complicated solutions. Introducing a weapon like this would leave too much room for exploit, imagine someone coming into your thrall compound and turning your guards against you as a method of grief. Best believe players would do this just to hound and create headaches for others instead of using it for an actual in game gain or advantage.
Also idea’s that are more complex like that require much more work from Funcoms side and so are much less likely to be the course they will choose. I can promise you now the devs are more likely to favor simple eloquent fixes that will have minor unforeseen consequences and that will be easy for them to implement.
I personally would like to see a heavy nerf to thei damage vs players, the problem isn’t their health cus you will more than likely not land enough hits to kill a 15k-20k health thrall even with the increased damage to them. The problem that I’ve seen with most pvpers is that they can 1-2 shot you, if they had to take 5-6 swings to kill a player, I can almost guarantee you that you would see a drastic drop in people complaining about them in pvp. The ones you would see from pvp would probably be players hiding behind their thralls but that’s just an assumption.
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See the thing that I find weird is why do PVP players even have Thralls for out in the world, sure in their bases needed for off line and online raiding or if purge but in the World why?
Is it suppose to be players v player so why even have a thrall who is in your way or over powered as some see it. You all have clans to do the dungeons with so no need for Thralls there, no need for them when you go out to get a thrall take a clan member. Also as you all enjoy those battles this will make it much more balanced, again it will be just player v player.
Now when you decide to raid another base really if pvp is what you want then why take thralls but if you need to as the other clan you are raiding has many thralls. Soon that will be fixed with the new update they are testing on testlive with the culling of all the thralls down to allowed amount?
Now being out in the wild by yourself is risky if another clan is out and about with more members together sure but that is big draw for PVP right, the battle, the having to be more experienced or stronger or just a better player but why would you all need thralls with you out in the wild at all?
I also think the way to make it more balanced is that you can not have more then one named thralls like Erii or Spinas, a clan should be allowed one of each named thrall not a crate filled with them.
The would start to balance out the game a bit I would think. I also think thralls should be like animals you have in your inventory if you do not put them in an animal tamer in a certain amount of time they go bad, that way you can not keep them for weeks in a box filled with other named thralls broken and just waiting for you to place when one of yours dies.
You should have to go out in the world and recapture them break then have a certain amount of time to place them kind of like god tokens, you have time limit on how long you can box them up . I also think that should be across the board on all platforms and all game types.
I’ve had a very reasonable friend recently convince me otherwise. In PvP melee/ranged-combat with mounts, we’ve also been provided guns. Why wouldn’t we want to carry a gun, and for that matter, the best gun?
We have counters to powerful thralls, in the form of all kinds of vicious arrows that strip armor and bleed, poison or just plain quiver. It’s become a more complex game now – counter and re-counter. It requires a whole new, balanced skillset.
Lol well then why are all the pvper all omg thralls are so over powered, guess they missed the gun.
It seems that many pvp do not agree with those counters or do not think they work well enough to put them on the same footing as thralls so instead of changing their skill set they want to change the thralls. I think we should change the rules to make it so there are not 250 Spinas and that you can not just have boxes of named thralls waiting, that in its self will bring some balance as not every one will be sporting the best dressed kick ass thralls but then I also think that things like the god breaker armor and the sword of crom should not be allowed to be given to thralls, they should be player only.
Thralls are not so over powered dressed in regular armor or without the best weapons in the game. If every one wants balance then it will take a whole lot more then just nerfs the thrall damage.
I also think Funcom should go back to when one player could get one of each legendary weapon not 100 of each if they farm bosses to line their walls with Archers with all the same legendary bows or fighters with the very best weapons in the game.
I didn’t mean to imply that this particular setup is finished, balanced or anything above a trial phase. Over the last few days I’ve been looking up other melee games that “do it well,” and very few can actually bring it. And even then, they’re not at the level of complexity that we have right now.
After digging through server settings and testing what looks good on the new TestLive version, with the right multipliers, we can make them as strong as we want. I think the balance issue that’s most essential is the time it takes to train + level: this builds intrinsic value to the point that it’s untenable to have a thrall be killed so easily by another player or a Purge. Once this fundamental middle ground is reached between players, PvE and PvP alike, we’ll have a base and max HP that are closer to reasonable.
They get their rhubarb rubbed whenever there’s a non-approved rebalancing. I’ve been on the receiving end of Berserker strikes recently. They’re not pleasant, but they’re not two-shots. If you’re facing people with thralls, make yourself a damage sponge.
Even if you go full godbreaker and 5 vitality, a purge thrall( that of which most clans have in pvp that know what they are doing) will have a legendary weapon and top tier armor on their thrall, he will 1 shot you if he does a downward slash or 2-3 shot you with anything else. Even a lian or Janos can do the same and they are basic trainable thralls.
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Thralls make everything more convienient, why would I go fight a boss with 10 guys when instead I can do the exact same thing, probably faster if I had a top tier thrall and that saves the other clan members to do other things. It’s more efficient. As far as fighting goes, people will do anything for a upper hand in a fight, no matter how disrespectful or dirty it may be. So if you are fighting a clan that pulled thralls with them to a fight and your clan didn’t, no matter how skilled your clan is, you guys will lose 100% of the time. That’s why pvpers pull thralls in fights because if we didn’t, the other clan would waste us 100% of the time with their thralls. Now you have a 10v10 with 20 thralls in the mix, it’s just all about time, who gets 1shot first by a thrall, who can get the better numbers first. Not fun to fight against or with… Also I play on a pvp server not only to fight but to also raid, pvp is the only server type on official that allows building destruction.