2H styles suffering. What are people's thoughts?

[Pit Lord]

Cyn you forgot two additional things about strenght based weapons:

1. Strenght based weapons increase hp.

2. Strenght based weapons ignore defense.

The second is very important for the metagame.

The metagame flow is fast/sharp/agility > slow/blunt/strenght > defense > fast/sharp/agility.

It is just a general flow of the metagame.

[Cynaidh]

Cyn you forgot two additional things about strenght based weapons:

1. Strenght based weapons increase hp.

2. Strenght based weapons ignore defense.

Yes I totally forgot that str does increase your hp some, good point!

The 2nd one i don't know anything about this, is this something that Nate confirmed while i was out? I know there are str skills that reduce you opponents defense in the rage tree, but i was not under the impression that strength itself did so, the tooltip for it doesn't mention that i dont think.

[Pit Lord]

I know there are str skills that reduce you opponents defense in the rage tree

It may be the reason but we cannot expect gladiator with build focused on destroying defenses to perform good against a speed build.

[Dainoji]

I've read a comment or two about war glads being knocked down and having trouble getting back up. There is already an option available to players to mitigate this. Choose Dunder for your glad's race. You will get knocked down a lot less. Just as being an Urk makes getting stunned a very rare event. It will still happen but not as often.

[Kreegan]

Strength-based weapons don't get through armour because they are Strength-based weapons. Try to run some gladiator without any skills from the Rage tree, Feint or Death from Above and you'll rarely see any major hits against heavy armour even with maces (which have greater armour-piercing capabilities than bladed weapons, that's for sure).

And by the way have you checked how much each point of Strength increases Health? 1-2 initially, 2-3 points on high level gladiators. If you need Health, you go for Stamina and Size, not Strength.

[Pit Lord]

And by the way have you checked how much each point of Strength increases Health? 1-2 initially, 2-3 points on high level gladiators. If you need Health, you go for Stamina and Size, not Strength.

The point is it is added bonus when you are stacking damage.

[Cynaidh]

Alba i am looking at top end play for sure, and glads who go 200+ in their main stats are becoming more and more common at the top, i looked at quite a few glads yesterday when i was compiling data for my above post and its surprising how many have stats like that in fact it was so common i think 250+ is now what i would consider top end now.

Bottom line for me is i see no point in running a strength weapon based offensive gladiator at this point if your goal is to compete in blood gods, with agility being used for bonus damage on agility weapons now the balance is way off, it used to be you picked one or the other, a few big damage hits per round (str) or a lot of medium damage hits per round with faster initiative (agil), now after the change its a few big damage hits per round (str) vs a lot of big damage hits per round with faster initiative (agil). I think the balance issue here is obvious. Really this hurts Rage gladiator's the most as 2 out of 3 of their weapons are str based. Warriors at least have swords and pole-arms (Hubba Gubba is showing us that stacking agility with a pole-arm rocks).

I think this trend can be seen in the top 10 with 80% of the glads being agility weapon users, including a glad with 250 agility using a purple main hand weapon who is in the top 5. I don't think a strength based glad could pull that off with that level of gear. I expect that as more and more agility based glads get leveled and geared up will see more and more of the strength based offensive gladiators pushed down the ranks. A part of this is due to how most of the strength based i have looked at are running 170+ agility so they are having to split there stats to stay competitive where the agility glads get to use str as a dump stat. Overall agility focus just seems vastly better then strength.

[Nate]

Very interesting debate we have going here with some very good energy and ideas. Some of the observations that are being pointed out no doubt seem true from the perspective of each manager. One interesting omission in the debate is talk of fight strategies. I suppose that is because everyone is of course using perfect and optimal strategies for their build. Besides, those silly little things couldn't possibly be a factor and the notion that one manager might be better at setting them than another is absurd!

I have a two question for all those interested:

1) If we had the ability to go back and look at all the fights over the past months what do you think the "agility based weapons vs strength based weapons" win ratio would be for agility based weapons? We're only talking about when a gladiator using an agility based weapon is matched up against a gladiator using a strength based weapon.

2) What win/loss ratio would you consider to be "balanced" enough as to be acceptable? e.g. 50%-60% win ratio for either agility or strength based weapons.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

[Cynaidh]

I suppose that is because everyone is of course using perfect and optimal strategies for their build. Besides, those silly little things couldn't possibly be a factor and the notion that one manager might be better at setting them than another is absurd!

Well of course everyone here is using perfect strategies, I'd expect nothing less from my fellow managers.

1) If we had the ability to go back and look at all the fights over the past months what do you think the "agility based weapons vs strength based weapons" win ratio would be for agility based weapons? We're only talking about when a gladiator using an agility based weapon is matched up against a gladiator using a strength based weapon.

I think this depends on the level of the game, at the early game i would think it would be very even, once your in primus i'd expect it to start leaning towards the agility winning more, and at the high end of blood gods i think we know in equal gear agility will be much higher. But what level of the game the glads are at would really change the ratio I believe.

Honestly though i'd love to see averages of high end simulated gladiators, i know you have a nice simulator to do mass fights for data

If these two glads fought each other 1000 times what do you think the win/loss would be would be?

Rage 250-100-150-100-90-100-150 axes and maces spec with duel fast axes
Rage 100-100-250-100-90-150-150 blades spec with duel short swords

But an even better question how would their win loss ratios be vs theatrics/warriors with the same type stats.

2) What win/loss ratio would you consider to be "balanced" enough as to be acceptable? e.g. 50%-60% win ratio for either agility or strength based weapons.

Overall I think the closer to 50% the better for the health of the game, cause if one is even 5% better then the other then that is a significant advantage just based on if your weapon is agility or strength based. This leads to less diversity as lets be honest we all want to win and be at the top, so any advantage is huge!

[Kreegan]

V1) If we had the ability to go back and look at all the fights over the past months what do you think the "agility based weapons vs strength based weapons" win ratio would be for agility based weapons? We're only talking about when a gladiator using an agility based weapon is matched up against a gladiator using a strength based weapon.

2) What win/loss ratio would you consider to be "balanced" enough as to be acceptable? e.g. 50%-60% win ratio for either agility or strength based weapons.

For 1) I guess it depends on the match. If you match a gladiator with full Blood Gods gear equipped with Strength-based weapons with a newbie in the bracket with Agility-weapons, I guess the former will win pretty often. If you match gladiators who are equally well-equipped, I'll certainly bet for the Agility guy.
2) 50% is quite enough, there's nothing more balanced than an eye for an eye.

And Nate, the problem is not necessarily with who scores more wins in the long run, it's more with the manner in which a certain build can overpower another. A Strength-based gladiator can lose a fight against some Agility monster in round 1 and will lose it quite often no later than round 1. All it takes is a single successful stun, knockdown or hamstring. If none of these trigger, the fight will still not be exactly even because of bleeding and the high damage output per round of the speed builds but if they do, the fight just ends because your fighter's overall activity changes from slow to crippled (no matter how high you set you Activity level ). The Strength guys can't do that because they can't land that many attacks per round even if they manage to disable the opponent for a while - hence one of the reasons why War Cry is usually wasted on a gladiator who can't attack frequently.

@Aboede, if you manage to make a gladiator who has 250 Strength and 250 Agility, he'll probably nail him/herself to number 1 in Blood Gods. I doubt that this will ever be possible, even if you have incredible luck with the Blacksmith items.