do something about greatswords?

[half]

That is what I really don't like about momentum -- it used to be that strong dudes wanted heavier weapons, which naturally forced you down the power tree. Now it seems like the optimal way to go is always down the finesse tree, regardless of your melee build.

Are other people having this experience?

Momentum was an idea of Scatha's. I think the main purpose was to allow a 'pressure valve' for the Strength limitations on weapons. For example if you are strong but find a great lighter artefact. You pay a price in terms of experience, but aren't as limited. I suppose it was also part of the plan to allow for some new interesting builds that plan on getting it to allow more critical hit / high strength play (he could speak to this better than I can).

When we first added it, people were eager to try it out but didn't quite know when to get it. Now that things have settled down, how are people finding it? We could get rid of it (or make it more expensive or something) if people are finding it too strong.

[wobbly]

For what its worth, I see greatswords as being mainly useful for characters with Charge, as the +3 strength will often put you above the usable strength on a Bastard Sword. Starting with high strength and/or other Strength bonuses like rings or potions could have the same effect. This use case is clearly narrower since the addition of Momentum and the simplification to how weight and strength interact. However, having an item that lets you skip an ability is a really big advantage -- imagine greatswords like bastard swords that come with a free ability. If I were playing an elf with charge and flanking, I'd want to use greatswords. I'm OK with the use cases being quite narrow since as others have pointed out, it looks like greatswords were a pretty niche weapon historically and were probably out of time period.

It's not exactly a free ability if you're grabbing the str pt. It's between momentum and knock back then and I'd generally prefer the better criticals and greater weapon choice of momemtum. Particularly with fineese. There's also the fact that any 3lber with the double evasion bonus is still a reasonable weight for riposte.

[taptap]

When we first added it, people were eager to try it out but didn't quite know when to get it. Now that things have settled down, how are people finding it? We could get rid of it (or make it more expensive or something) if people are finding it too strong.

I see it mainly as an alternative to rapid attack in using excess strength from a strength potion (/ charging bonus) and as the ability to make hammers a viable weapon. But it has the side effect on greatswords / great axes, both instantly looked much more useful again when I played with the no-ability challenge (on a strong Fingolfin).

Finesse / precision reducing "weight" for critical hits by 1 are abilities ppl happily pay xp for. Greatsword / bastard sword of the same damage is thus more like momentum for free as greatsword vs. several times finesse for free as bastard sword.

[wobbly]

It's also a matter of what stage of the game we're talking about. Early to mid game I can see a 6lb-er with follow through being a decent choice over a 3lb-er with momentum, but late game most of the strong artifact weapons are going to be 3lbers which need momentum. Dramborleg is 5lbs so you can skip momentum and just lose a damage side on the charge, but that's still a hand and a halfer. What true two-hander shines enough to make up for the weight late game?

[clouded]

I agree that the power side of things is lackluster and not very appealing. Similarly, low evasion/high protection was made worse in the last version too, all of the monster changes are much easier to deal with high evasion and flanking.

[debo]

What true two-hander shines enough to make up for the weight late game?

Saithnar, Calris, Gaurin, and Glend

[wobbly]

All fun weapons.
The trouble is Glend is the same damage output of Dramborleg pre-slay and at double the weight.

Calris has the accuracy and weight of a mattock and oddly enough on a high strength character isn't doing much more damage. Power and 7str Calris is 4-60, the mattock is 5-50. Perhaps a little unfair as that's on the charge, but on a fire resistant enemy such as a balrog, a plain mattocks will match it from 3str & power and a fine mattocks (do you have to build these? or will they actually drop?) is out performing it.

Saithnar is great when it drops, of course and I'm not sure I've actually seen Gaurin.

Edit: I honestly think after early/midgame the heavy 2hnders suit low str/melee like a smith or non-lorien doriath. You can't reliably critical and you can't punch through with the long sword but you can grab charge and still punch through on raw damage. Particularly with song of sharpness.

[bagori nd]

Here's an idea that might be OP/too complicated but maybe people might like: what about getting rid of Momentum, but building its effect into certain weapons (i.e. mithril swords and maybe a couple other items like Aeglos and Narsil).

I think the biggest problem with just getting rid of Momentum is that without it, mithril swords would not be worth using. Even if you just started with 2 points in Strength, you'll likely have at least 3 by the time you find them--too much for longswords, and for charging with greatswords. (Rapid Attack doesn't help much: it's usually better just to go for the heavier weapon.)

Giving them a free Momentum-like effect would make them worth using without having the side effect of making ordinary two-handers obsolete. It would be a nontrivial buff to mithril swords themselves, though, but since they come up so late in the game I think this is actually a good thing. The player is likely to have an artifact or really good ego weapon by the time they show up in numbers anyway, so even with the buff it's unlikely that randomly-generated mithril weapons will overshadow what the player already has.

[half]

I agree that the power side of things is lackluster and not very appealing. Similarly, low evasion/high protection was made worse in the last version too, all of the monster changes are much easier to deal with high evasion and flanking.

Interesting points. I just drew a diagram of the current Melee ability tree and it is indeed skewed in favour of Finesse. For example, Finesse leads to 4 things, 2 of which are impossible without it. Power leads to 2 things, neither of which is impossible without it. The big difference was that we replaced Stun with Momentum and changed one of its pre-reqs from Power to Follow-Through (which Finesse can lead to). Perhaps it would be better if the pre-req was Power. I'm open to suggestions on this. We were not intending to nerf the power side of the tree.

From memory, we also were not intending to skew the monsters to be easier with Evasion/Flanking. So we may have hurt some of the balance in the game when making other changes.

[taptap]

I agree that the power side of things is lackluster and not very appealing. Similarly, low evasion/high protection was made worse in the last version too, all of the monster changes are much easier to deal with high evasion and flanking.

Can you elaborate? Flanking easterlings, charging orc warriors or exchanging cats? Or ?

[clouded]

Can you elaborate? Flanking easterlings, charging orc warriors or exchanging cats? Or ?

Those are all examples of flanking, I shouldn't have mentioned flanking specifically I suppose. It's just that anything with an effect on its melee (or ranged) is going to be much worse when you have very low evasion and rely on protection. The wights draining stats is an example, you are both more likely to get hit and since it's a touch attack (without damage) your higher protection doesn't help you. Poison works the same way, and there are some very major poison threats later on. I think the only thing going super heavy on protection has going for it is that it's fun and comparitively low investment (which can go into smithing etc).

[wobbly]

I don't understand the poison bit. Isn't it a bite (armour helps) or breath (evasion won't help). Orc charge favours flanking (as you can move to ruin their charge) and the way they chain charge makes low melee tanks (like mail, kite shield, gauntlets) life very hard as you have to kill them quicker before they get to many. Blocking is ineffective, they get too many, they punch through & they exchange and charge on the same round. Cat warriors were always hard on high protection, now harder. I don't mind this, you can take crowd fighting and exchange places yourself. (Side note, very funny with riposte against cats - like your dancing with them)

Edit: high protection is still the easiest way of dealing with archers

[absolutego]

anything with a melee brand is way worse with low evasion. poison piles up really fast, and the fire/cold raukos (even snow trolls) hit very hard and destroy items (at least i think ururaukar do?).

there's also the fact that abilities like blocking or heavy armour force you into certain items, while dodging/flanking works on every character.

and i imagine that many people don't care about this, but if you intend to fight morgoth, he's simply awful with low evasion (something about the earthquakes' trigger).

I don't understand the poison bit.

i nearly always take poison resistance from the will tree whenever i go heavy protection. you shouldn't die to distended spiders unless your evasion is in the dumps early on, but werewolf packs and ancient spiders are awful.

high protection is still the easiest way of dealing with archers

true, but their AI is so deterministic that i just don't care about archers.
cat assassins are probably the single worst threat to no-prot characters, but that's about it.

Perhaps it would be better if the pre-req was Power

i'd rather see the power tree improved than momentum made more expensive. if it comes to that i would rather nerf it somehow (momentum is so good that you'll probably get it anyway?).

I'm open to suggestions on this. We were not intending to nerf the power side of the tree.

my main gripe on this is that i just don't like knock-back(*). it's useless against groups and counter-productive against certain monsters (e.g. anything that breathes, unless you really need the charge bonus) and a pain to toggle.

so the core abilities of the power tree are power, charge, and that's about it until strength (i would rather take momentum than knock-back on my way to strength even if i'm using a very heavy weapon, because i can always find a better, lighter weapon, and criticals are really good). maybe the rapid attack pre-req could be moved from subtlety to the power tree? it's probably a fun ability, but i've only ever taken it right before the throne room because it's so awkward to get.

(*) chain-charge-knock-back would be cute if it actually worked i guess. flank-charge against walls is fun but really situational.

Stun

i started playing sil after this was removed. was it really unbalanced? it seems like the sort of thing that could differentiate the tree.

[wobbly]

Been doing a few test runs of high evasion & I'm seeing what people mean here. This dwarf is hardly high evasion but he's about as high as I can get & still take artifice at the 1st forge & he's naked to boot:

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=16926

A Beor, Glamdring ruined him as a tester but up until 500' he only had 1 melee/will/stealth/perception, 3 archery around orc thief depth & the rest evasion. The biggest issue was no see-invisible at 600' & just a torch for light at 700':

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=16922

A Feanor played in kamakazie style to 450'. I'm just diving, fighting carelessly in the centre of rooms instead of sensibly:

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=16923

Starting to think that for the 1st 500' the best strategy is nothing but evasion. You can fight fine with out melee. Maybe you need a little will for resistance & a bow for insects(you can kill them without but it's so tedious)

Edit: Perhaps I need to withdraw my earlier statements, I may of come down with a case of foot-in-mouth:

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=16931

[taptap]

my main gripe on this is that i just don't like knock-back(*). it's useless against groups and counter-productive against certain monsters (e.g. anything that breathes, unless you really need the charge bonus) and a pain to toggle.

two-handed polearm + knockback is probably the melee build best able to handle lack of resists (by knocking back serpents around corners).

@clouded: i don't agree that all the changes are easier to high evasion chars. orc charge gives a +3 to hit as well, easterlings are about immune against flanking tactics now and cats exchanging you out of your corridor in a surrounded position in the middle of a room can be as deadly to high evasion chars as it might be to low evasion (but high armour, critical resist) ones.