How much more balanced would LD be if the SS and Troika lines were half as fast, but had one or two longer range, and the toothpicks were a bit faster than they are but had a range of one?
Theory about balance
The great thing about those heavy swords is that the accuracy skill requirement is reduced. Think about it this way:
Toothpick-knight presses the attack button before an enemy actually dashes within range. The attack misses because it is too fast.
Troika-knight presses the attack button before an enemy actually dashes within range. Since the troika is slower, the attack hits...
...and the double swipe spammers(me) secretly laugh.
Anyway, the heavy swords are slow enough that they can hit incoming enemies easily, but they are also fast enough to hit enemies that are about to stun-lock up close. If the heavy swords were too slow, the Troika-knight MUST attack early. A Brandish-knight would utterly destroy the Troika-knight by dodging the first swipe, and then he would proceed to stun-lock the Troika-knight.
Basically, this theory would not work.
@Feyi: Yeah, I just thought of this idea while playing and it seemed pretty good.
@Teh: No one said you could only use one weapon, did they? This makes SS more of a support weapon, better for teamfights but makes it kind of a stupid idea to bring such an unwieldy sword into a 1v1. The reason I came up with this idea was I suddenly realized it felt weird to fight with a weapon that takes sometimes only 2 hits to kill a person, but is/can be fast enough to be used on its own. This makes it almost impossible to use solely a heavy sword (which really doesn't make any sense in the first place), you have to combo it with some other weapon. Whether that be a faster sword, a gun, or a bomb.
The toothpick change was kind of an afterthought extension to the theory, and I didn't factor in the invinci frames or the lag issues that come with such a short range. What if the range was made the same as the brandish?
And another point about the slow swords, part of this change would implement a slight delay before your swing actually starts, like a wind-up. More emphasis on timing, again. I was considering making the slow lines do even more damage to compensate, but that seems a little bit overkill doesn't it?
If that suggestion makes it impossible to solely use a heavy weapon, then it would be even more unbalanced since the toothpick can still be used by itself.
Now let's think about the "multiple-weapon" thing. Yes, people carry multiple weapons. Let's say that a troika is used AT ALL under these new circumstances. As a support weapon under these new circumstances, the troika would be horrifically slow. A troika user would get rammed by virtually everyone, even with a brandish as a side weapon. A heavy weapon can only be shield-canceled so quickly.
BTW, yes you can solely use a heavy sword in a sensible way. Last knight(terrible pun), I was playing tier 2 with:
Troika(the 2* one)
Kilowatt Pulsar
Dusker Cap
Dusker Coat
Tri-heart Pendant
With this loadout, I got 5.6k and enough caps to say I wasn't damage hunting. True proof that a heavy sword can be used as a primary, and that 2* weapons can be amazing.
Do you feel like you should be able to use a weapon that does immense damage by itself with no support and be completely fine? That seems a bit imbalanced.
On the flipside, you could say that toothpick can still be used on its own. Could you balance that by keeping the toothpick range lower but also decreasing the damage? That would make it severely impractical to use only a toothpick since it would take so long to kill anything, but it would still be comparable to a brandish because it has a wider swing range.
btw, the whole point of this is to promote more strategic and diverse play.
Decreasing the damage of the toothpick will make it utterly miserable to use. This is like turning a 3* weapon into a 2* weapon, so it would be out of the question.
There are more effects to this. You have not addressed the brandishes. The brandishes hit very hard on dusker gear, which in this situation would render the heavy swords and toothpicks obsolete.
You did just say yourself that 2* weapons can be amazing, and I did pretty well in T3 before I upgraded my DTB to a BTB. And I did try to address brandishes somewhat; I said that they aren't completely OP because they are harder to land a hit with than toothpicks are and would be. Maybe that's just more from a personal standpoint (I suck with brandishes), but it does hold up in theory.
From what I understand, there is only like a 15% difference in max damage between a 4* and 5* weapon. Is it similar between 2* and 3* in t2 LD?
Trokia is a standard weapon for me as recon in t2, but in my loadout it's only used if I get a freeze/deathmark on the target otherwise the risk of swinging is usually too great.
In regards to the origional post, My triglav already feels half as fast as any of the other sealed sword lines with no real advantage over them that I can see. Just a standard half tile range upgrade on that line of weapon would be pretty legit I think. The charge attack is pretty fun either way :).
This guy.
This guy gets it.
That being said, I feel like the gunner update is going to put a very different spin on LD, and with a lot of people already running hybrid sets, LD's going to become a 3D bullet-hell.
damage max or ultra is like a 2% difference Blueflood, but it's one hit less you need to do.
Also yes ret, gunner update will make LD hell for people who don't play completely lag-free.
DI is a linear 4% increase. The formula for applying DI is the following:
baseDamage * (1 + DI * 0.04)
DI is the number your DI is at. Low = 1, medium = 2, and so on.
Taking defence is a simple matter of subtracting the player's defence from the number one calculated above so long as defence < damage/2. I'd like to remember that this means that DI will increase your damage by more than 4% per level when you're up against a target with some defence, like players.
Should have clarified that a bit more, was in a hurry. All i meant was that it's 4 FF hits vs 3 with the difference between DI ultra/max on a 2 pent striker.
So yeah, 4* vs 5* is a noticeable difference.
4* vs 5* is a 7.5% difference, if I'm not mistaken. What makes it seem like more is that damage peaks at different places. For 4* items, in S5. For 5* weapons, in S6. LD takes place at D25.
Note that this is 4% raw damage increase before defense is applied. Since defense is a linear reduction, your 4% damage increase will generally lead to more than 4% more damage.
Hypothetical example: Suppose Final Flourish deals 300 damage raw and enemy has 120 defense. You deal 180 net damage.
A +1 Final Flourish (4% boost from 300) now deals 312. Against the same enemy, you now deal 192 damage, which is a 7% increase in damage from what you used to do.
Just an example, not real numbers, folks.
EDIT: damn you people respond really fast, carry on...
@Blueflood: Sorry, forgot about that weird speed difference. In making this change ideally that would be changed/removed/fixed. Also... does anything have a range that's not a full tile? As in like 3.5 range?
@Rete: Oooh. Right. Guns. Well, I guess we would have to see how the new guns play out before we can say anything about how this would fit in. But if it's anything like you're suggesting, it won't even matter because guns will reign supreme :P
@Feyi: Only lag-free? I play with <50ms ping and guns already give me hell. Just ask Bugos, Blue or Danielflame... I just kind of run the opposite direction when they're gunning at this point, it's so bad. (Although I might just be really bad at dodging bullets >_>)
@Teh: y u no answer?
Yes, I did say that 2* weapons could be amazing. Even though they could be, 2* weapons are still at a disadvantage.
The brandishes (generally) hit a lot harder than toothpicks, which puts them at a head start straight away. The biggest part to combat this, though, is with the incredible reach of the toothpicks. Taking away the distance, damage, and leaving the wideness basically turns a swift flourish into a wrench wand that is easier to use without AA.
That's my view.
Yeah, your threads of late haven't been your best ones tbh Klipik.
This might seem like a fun experiments but eventually you would just rule out everyone without a really good connection.
Also: toothpicks already run into invinciframes with their current speed.
There is a lot more needed to balance out LD/SK. (Acheron/brandishes/chaos comes to mind)