Stun

[trebecs]

I could be wrong on this, but it seems like if you stun your opponent at the very end of a round it essentially has no effect. The round ends right after your hit and the stun is wiped away at the beginning of the next round. I'm not exactly sure what the best solution is to this, but it seems like the stun should not be tied to rounds and should instead be tied to how many attacks you lose after the stun. So a stun at the end of a round would cause the stunned to lose just as many attacks as a stun at the beginning of a round.

76

[Apoca1ypse]

having it tied to attacks lost would give the advantage to glads that have huge agility and swing a lot.

TBH i'd leave it as is because stun is still OP :P Nearly every time I see a glad get stunned, they lose.

[trebecs]

I guess I shouldn't have said attacks lost, but more % of attacks lost. Similar to hamstring, except they would be consecutive and could carry over into the next round.

[Apoca1ypse]

lost % of attacks + unable to defend for that duration sounds ok.

[Alba Kebab]

If there was an actual timer we could simply tie it to time, ie 2 secs or whatever.

[oedi]

I think it works well as it is now, if you want to get the full effect you also need to be fast. Its nothing like jumping out of the start block, stun your opponent and breeze in for an easy win.
Stun do not need to be stronger, if anything I will agree with Apoc its still a bit on the powerful side.

[trebecs]

I wouldn't argue that it needs to be more powerful either. Maybe more consistent, but my big issue is the notion that this is some sort of gentleman's fight. It is somewhat implied that a gladiator is going to take a break at the end of a round to grab some water and let his opponent recover from a stunning before they try and kill each other again. That is the only explanation that I can come up with as to why a gladiator would always recover from a stun in between rounds.

[oedi]

I agree its not always easy to see the story behind game mechanics. Another game mechanic involving stun is that the enforcer some times will ``save you from certain death `` even though your opponent is stunned and cannot make any attacks.

[Kreegan]

Stun is fine as it is. My only complaint about it is... not about it but about the non-damage version of War Cry which could result in a wasted attack if the Stun effect gets resisted. Other than that, Stun is still a fight winner fairly often when it succeeds.

[Apoca1ypse]

same could be said for barreling attack then Kreegan. It's just the risk you take with those skills.

Getting a stun in from war cry nearly always gets a win, so having it work every time would be OP.

[Kreegan]

I'm not saying that it should work every time but it will be good if it at least always deals damage when the skill is maxed (same for Barreling Attack). It's hardly overpowered if your gladiator actually injures the opponent with a successful attack. :)

[Dainoji]

Even if the stun is resisted often times you land a can not defend crit which can be pretty debilitating for defensive war and theatrics glads.

[Kreegan]

Can Not Defend is nice in theory but in practice it only works for gladiators with fast weapons. A War with maces/axes, heavy swords or a 2H weapon sees next to no benefit from it because of the low amount of attacks per round (1-2 usually, quite rarely 3) and the effect from Can Not Defend is gone at the beginning of the next round (except in the very rare cases when the effect lasts for 2 rounds).

[Kreegan]

So let's bring this back to the table - War Cry is worthless in its current form. Reasons:
1. The stun chance seems to be generally lower than the chance for a "regular" stun triggered by a critical hit. A successful stun resulting from War Cry is a very rare sight;
2. There is a skill which reduces the chance to get stunned and a race with native stun resistance, further reducing the usefulness of War Cry;
3. The Can Not Defend effect is pretty weak, whether it will trigger or not will hardly change anything;
4. The greatest fault of the skill however is that it will not deal damage in some 1/3 of the cases which on top of the above is the real deal-breaker. I can certainly say that I've lost twice more fights because of non-damaging, resisted War Cry (up to 3 times per battle!) than I've won when it decided to work properly. This thing alone not only makes the skill inefficient, it actually even hurts your gladiator's performance;
5. And finally, with the current rounds, a War Cry triggering at the end of the round, even if successful, wields no benefits at all because its effect will expire at the beginning of the next round, save maybe some 2-round long Can Not Defend.
I think I have the only gladiator in Blood Gods with War Cry (that's how popular it is) and if it wasn't for the turned pyramid unlearning system, I would've disposed of it long ago - but currently this would mean losing Create Distance for quite some time... Frankly, I'll probably do it in the near future if there is no sign that the skill be re-worked, even if this means a month or so of even worse performance. This is not the way to go however, War Cry just needs to be fixed. Any chance for this to happen?

[oedi]

1122 used to have war cry ;)

[Prinny]

Mid Boss used to have it aswell :D

[Kreegan]

Soon we'll have the complete list of gladiators who used to have War Cry but no longer do. :rolleyes:

[Pit Lord]

Probably the worse skill in the game. The only situation I can imagine it can be good is if some kind of fast hitting war is fighting defense stacker. Probably war with fastest axe main hand (for strenght based weapon since the skill is strenght based :)) and fastest shield off-hand (for more hits per round).

Still doesn't make much sense to me because even if we assume cannot defend lower the defense significantly the gladiator still must break this defense to score the war cry hit. But if he is able to score the war cry hit than he don't really need war cry ;).

And there are so many gladiators who don't care if they cannot defend...

[Adoede]

I tried Seraph Zurell as a dual wield sword war based on war cry. Terrible. Boy do I regret that now...I have to retrain 4 skills from level 10 to zero.

[Kreegan]

Nate, can you comment? Something along the lines "War Cry works as intended" or "it can use some improvement" will suffice.

[Nate]

"War Cry works as intended" or "it can use some improvement"

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

[Kreegan]

Thanks, that would do as well.

[Nate]

Haha, War Cry is a good skill, and it isn't for everyone. It works better for some builds than others. Could it be modified, sure. Does it need to, not really. Will it change in the future? Maybe.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

[Adoede]

I just noticed if your glad is below the 20% health zone and your opponent War Cry's you, your glad gives up the fight. Happened twice to me vs. Face Peeler on a glad who has 10 Grim Determination...gave up even with 200+ hit points left.

[Kreegan]

The conquests seem to have different logic about who gives up and when compared to the standard arena fights, I've had cases where one of the party members retreats with almost full health because the other 4 got dropped very quickly and the respective boss is barely scratched. On the arena, you won't see War Cry forcing anyone to surrender.

Nate, thanks for the second answer, I can now start making plans with some greater certainty. :) In any case, War Cry is one of the least used skills in the upper brackets, probably the most neglected one, so it looks like a lot of people don't think it fits their builds. I'm not a fan of marginally useful skills myself, especially when these marginal uses are pretty hard to find, but as long as there is a way to get rid of what you don't need, that's OK.