i wish the spears weren't nerfed as hard for the 1.22 snapshots

[metalsuccattack]

hi im like a month into playing this game and am in my third year in game. i recently went to try out the new update snapshots because i was interested in the new spear, but i realized that they do less damage and have a longer charge time now. im ok with reining in the damage, but the charge time for getting accurate shots with it is really brutal and i didn't think was a great trade off for the increase of materials you can craft the spear out of (the weapon ready time for throwing hasn't been changed but the time it takes for the spread to shrink has been lowered).

for a background, i started playing as a hunter and immediately found a system that works. falx for close range and farming flax from drifters, spear for high burst and medium range damage but you have to pick them up (i carry 7 spears), and then a bow for longer range or for when i don't have the speed to take out stuff with one burst of spears. i do kinda understand that throwing a spear every half second as a hunter class is probably the highest burst of raw damage that a player can do but i think its been smacked to the ground and its less reliable now. i believe the spear should be a heavy hitting ranged weapon (and long range melee) at the cost of lower durability and also not being stackable like arrows.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, metalsuccattack said:

i recently went to try out the new update snapshots because i was interested in the new spear, but i realized that they do less damage and have a longer charge time now.

For what it's worth the spears have been reverted to what they were before, mostly, in terms of charge time and attack. The only real difference now is that steel spears are what bronze spears used to be, and iron/steel spears can be quenched to further boost their attack power.

[metalsuccattack]

5 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

For what it's worth the spears have been reverted to what they were before, mostly, in terms of charge time and attack. The only real difference now is that steel spears are what bronze spears used to be, and iron/steel spears can be quenched to further boost their attack power.

is this the newest snapshot? in im 1.22 rc6 and the accuracy time is really brutal (update, i actually downloaded rc5 but i got the notification to download rc6 on that client so i thought it was the newest version) (update 2, its still brutal)

Edited March 31 by metalsuccattack

[LadyWYT]

16 minutes ago, metalsuccattack said:

is this the newest snapshot? in im 1.22 rc6 and the accuracy time is really brutal (update, i actually downloaded rc5 but i got the notification to download rc6 on that client so i thought it was the newest version) (update 2, its still brutal)

Yes. I don't recall exactly when the changes were last tweaked, but it was fairly recently.

[metalsuccattack]

19 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Yes. I don't recall exactly when the changes were last tweaked, but it was fairly recently.

unfortunately from downloading rc1 after testing rc6 and doing a video comparison, those dont seem to be in effect. 

[Teh Pizza Lady]

I believe the changes were made because players were just defaulting to spears and not taking the time to invest in other forms of weaponry, like the falx or the bow and arrows. Even as a hunter, I was favoring the spear for melee because it could also function as a ranged weapon in a pinch. Now you can fire off more shots from a bow and arrow, shoot further and faster with more accuracy, making it more valuable than a spear for long ranges. The spear was just supposed to be a dual-use weapon but it was powerful enough that it functioned better than the weapons that were specialized for those purposes. The nerfs were 110% necessary. Yes they went a little hard, but in rc.6, the spears feel a LOT better.

[LadyWYT]

7 minutes ago, metalsuccattack said:

unfortunately from downloading rc1 after testing rc6 and doing a video comparison, those dont seem to be in effect. 

I went and looked it up--the change occurred in rc1.

Quote

Tweak: Spear thrown damage and draw speed nerfs backed off by about half

The initial spear changes had spears taking about twice the charge time they do now, with almost a point less damage.

[metalsuccattack]

20 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

I believe the changes were made because players were just defaulting to spears and not taking the time to invest in other forms of weaponry, like the falx or the bow and arrows. Even as a hunter, I was favoring the spear for melee because it could also function as a ranged weapon in a pinch. Now you can fire off more shots from a bow and arrow, shoot further and faster with more accuracy, making it more valuable than a spear for long ranges. The spear was just supposed to be a dual-use weapon but it was powerful enough that it functioned better than the weapons that were specialized for those purposes. The nerfs were 110% necessary. Yes they went a little hard, but in rc.6, the spears feel a LOT better.

if so, id still prefer the spear to be a more effective in bursts for the fact that they don't stack. my setup is using falx for enemies like drifters up close because that lets them drop items, but then spears for higher tier enemies like corrupted or tainted variants and then arrows for bells and tier 4 enemies that i can slowly work away at from a safe spot. i think its a valid risk to run out of spears and then have to run into danger picking them up whereas arrows are more expendable because you can carry more (p.s. especially since early game inventory is super limited anyways so its not super inventory friendly to carry like 9 spears)

Edited March 31 by metalsuccattack

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, metalsuccattack said:

if so, id still prefer the spear to be a more effective in bursts for the fact that they don't stack. my setup is using falx for enemies like drifters up close because that lets them drop items, but then spears for higher tier enemies like corrupted or tainted variants and then arrows for bells and tier 4 enemies that i can slowly work away at from a safe spot. i think its a valid risk to run out of spears and then have to run into danger picking them up whereas arrows are more expendable because you can carry more

The burst damage is why the spears were nerfed though. Prior to 1.22, spears had rather high damage when thrown, and could be thrown very quickly, meaning that targets that didn't die in the initial barrage could be finished off with a hit or two in melee. If there's enough space, the player can easily kite enemies around to pick up thrown spears, even when wearing armor, ensuring they can have a steady supply of spears to keep throwing. While this kind of damage might be very convenient, it's not really good for the long-term health of the game when thrown spears are outclassing every other available weapon.

As it stands, the spear has become a solid general purpose weapon, good for both melee and ranged combat but master of neither. In melee, it has a longer reach than the falx, but doesn't have autoloot available, has less base damage, and can't be sharpened for critical hits. In ranged combat, the spear hits harder per shot than the bow, but spears can't be thrown as far as a bow can shoot, they don't stack like arrows can, and the slightly longer windup for throwing means the player needs to be intentional about when they choose to fire the spear.

24 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

I believe the changes were made because players were just defaulting to spears and not taking the time to invest in other forms of weaponry, like the falx or the bow and arrows. Even as a hunter, I was favoring the spear for melee because it could also function as a ranged weapon in a pinch. Now you can fire off more shots from a bow and arrow, shoot further and faster with more accuracy, making it more valuable than a spear for long ranges. The spear was just supposed to be a dual-use weapon but it was powerful enough that it functioned better than the weapons that were specialized for those purposes. The nerfs were 110% necessary. Yes they went a little hard, but in rc.6, the spears feel a LOT better.

Pretty much. When I finally did the math on the old spears, thrown spears turned out to be the best option for even the Blackguard, which has a penalty to ranged damage. It really says a lot when the class that isn't supposed to be good at ranged combat has a ranged weapon as its best damage output.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

20 minutes ago, metalsuccattack said:

if so, id still prefer the spear to be a more effective in bursts for the fact that they don't stack

A steel arrow (+2.5 dmg) fired from a recurve bow (4.0 base dmg) does 0.5 damage less than a steel spear (7.0 dmg) when thrown, stack way higher, can shoot further, faster, and with better accuracy. The bow and arrow IS your burst damage. They just require a bit more work to get there. The spear only does as much damage as it does because it's a larger weapon, but is slower, cannot be thrown as far or with the same accuracy as the specialized ranged weapon. To me, that's not worth the extra 0.5 damage per hit, especially since I can fire off two shots in the time it takes me to throw a spear and ready a 2nd one.

You can check the wiki pages for the bow, arrow, and spear if you dont' believe me.

Edited March 31 by Teh Pizza Lady

[metalsuccattack]

20 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

A steel arrow (+2.5 dmg) fired from a recurve bow (4.0 base dmg) does 0.5 damage less than a steel spear (7.0 dmg) when thrown, stack way higher, can shoot further, faster, and with better accuracy. The bow and arrow IS your burst damage. They just require a bit more work to get there. The spear only does as much damage as it does because it's a larger weapon, but is slower, cannot be thrown as far or with the same accuracy as the specialized ranged weapon. To me, that's not worth the extra 0.5 damage per hit, especially since I can fire off two shots in the time it takes me to throw a spear and ready a 2nd one.

You can check the wiki pages for the bow, arrow, and spear if you dont' believe me.

burst damage is being able to do a lot of damage at once, but not a lot of damage over time since it has a cooldown or is limited by some other resource. i guess its fine that the bow and arrow is able to outdo the spear eventually in terms of range damage by the time you get to the last tier of tools but in order to do that the devs made the spears worse overall, despite the newer tiers. (maybe the spear ends up specializing in longer range melee combat towards the iron and steel age and become pikes or halberds as arrows become more efficient)

im also well aware of the damage statistics for the bow arrow and spear as well. but despite the lower per hit damage and easier to break ammo, the bow with lower tier arrows are still fine for like defensive events like temporal storms where you just need to do consistent damage at a safe range and the enemies are going at you or at least not going anywhere; whereas the spear is better for offensive stuff or hunting where you need to take out a smaller group of things or one thing as quick and with as little hits as possible (or to keep forward momentum) and thats the balance i would like the game to retain. 

[Teh Pizza Lady]

7 minutes ago, metalsuccattack said:

burst damage is being able to do a lot of damage at once, but not a lot of damage over time since it has a cooldown or is limited by some other resource. i guess its fine that the bow and arrow is able to outdo the spear eventually in terms of range damage by the time you get to the last tier of tools but in order to do that the devs made the spears worse overall, despite the newer tiers. (maybe the spear ends up specializing in longer range melee combat towards the iron and steel age and become pikes or halberds as arrows become more efficient)

im also well aware of the damage statistics for the bow arrow and spear as well. but despite the lower per hit damage and easier to break ammo, the bow with lower tier arrows are still fine for like defensive events like temporal storms where you just need to do consistent damage at a safe range and the enemies are going at you or at least not going anywhere; whereas the spear is better for offensive stuff or hunting where you need to take out a smaller group of things or one thing as quick and with as little hits as possible (or to keep forward momentum) and thats the balance i would like the game to retain. 

I'm sorry, maybe I'm misunderstanding you entirely then or we're using different definitions for "burst damage". Spears still hit harder per throw, but burst isn't just about a single hit of damage. It's about how much damage you can do in an amount of time.

If I can land two arrows in the time it takes to throw a single spear (and hit the target since spears are harder to aim and less accurate), then the bow is effectively doing more burst damage than a single spear toss which makes it the better ranged option despite having a lower per-hit damage.

Also if you are able to accurately land any sort of ranged hits during a temporal storm, please teach me your ways. I almost always have to resort to melee to do anything during a storm because the visual distortion is too high to land any hits further than 10 yards.

[metalsuccattack]

53 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

The burst damage is why the spears were nerfed though. Prior to 1.22, spears had rather high damage when thrown, and could be thrown very quickly, meaning that targets that didn't die in the initial barrage could be finished off with a hit or two in melee. If there's enough space, the player can easily kite enemies around to pick up thrown spears, even when wearing armor, ensuring they can have a steady supply of spears to keep throwing. While this kind of damage might be very convenient, it's not really good for the long-term health of the game when thrown spears are outclassing every other available weapon.

As it stands, the spear has become a solid general purpose weapon, good for both melee and ranged combat but master of neither. In melee, it has a longer reach than the falx, but doesn't have autoloot available, has less base damage, and can't be sharpened for critical hits. In ranged combat, the spear hits harder per shot than the bow, but spears can't be thrown as far as a bow can shoot, they don't stack like arrows can, and the slightly longer windup for throwing means the player needs to be intentional about when they choose to fire the spear.

Pretty much. When I finally did the math on the old spears, thrown spears turned out to be the best option for even the Blackguard, which has a penalty to ranged damage. It really says a lot when the class that isn't supposed to be good at ranged combat has a ranged weapon as its best damage output.

im ok with reigning in the damage of the thrown spear, especially to make room for newer tiers. but i feel like the way to balance that should go both ways for other weapons (aside from tool sharpening) instead of just reducing the spears own damage and fire rate to make the other weapons better. i already kind of thought that the shorter range and non stackable properties balanced the spear out compared to a bow, plus ranged damage overall already does eventually become less effective the heavier armor you wear due to increased range charge time, though in practice i haven't seen the effect of this yet. 

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, metalsuccattack said:

im ok with reigning in the damage of the thrown spear, especially to make room for newer tiers. but i feel like the way to balance that should go both ways for other weapons (aside from tool sharpening) instead of just reducing the spears own damage and fire rate to make the other weapons better.

The problem with boosting the damage of other weapons to overcome the burst damage of the old spears, is then creature health needs to be adjusted as well. Otherwise the monsters and tougher wildlife like bears won't pose any kind of threat since the player will be able to mow them down more easily. Rather than try to adjust all those numbers, it's much easier to focus just on the spear's numbers, and adjust the health of some of the smaller creatures like chickens and rabbits to ensure that early game hunting isn't too hard.

 

5 minutes ago, metalsuccattack said:

i already kind of thought that the shorter range and non stackable properties balanced the spear out compared to a bow, plus ranged damage overall already does eventually become less effective the heavier armor you wear due to increased range charge time, though in practice i haven't seen the effect of this yet. 

Heavier armor does impose harsher penalties on ranged combat, yes, however chain armor is quite protective while imposing relatively few penalties to movement and ranged combat. Gambeson is also quite protective as a tier 2 armor, with even fewer drawbacks.

The non-stackable property of spears is a disadvantage, but if the player can outrun the enemy then it's a simple enough task to kite the target and pick up spears that have been fired, meaning that the player really only needs to carry 3-4 spears on average. With bigger backpacks in the late game the inventory space is even less of an issue. The only exception here is tunnel-fighting in the underground, but in that case the player can block off passages with fences or other blocks to stop enemies from reaching them.

It's also worth noting that the Hunter class has traits that boost movement speed as well as range, ranged damage, and accuracy--armor penalties won't affect them nearly as much as other classes when it comes to ranged combat. Ironically, Hunter and Clockmaker are the fastest classes in armor thanks to the inherent +10% movement speed; the only exception is plate armor, in which case they're evenly matched with Blackguard.

In any case, the main point is that if spears are going to be a weapon that hits much harder than the bow, then they need to have a slower fire rate to balance it out, especially when there's a class with inherent bonuses to ranged combat. That also tends to be ranged weapon balance for videogames in general--ranged weapons with low damage per shot typically have very high burst damage to compensate, while weapons that deal a lot of damage in a single shot will have a slow fire rate in order to make players consider those shots carefully. Adding a weapon that does a lot of damage with each shot, that also has a fast rate of fire, is an easy way to get players to always opt for that weapon in every situation, if not always pick the ranged class as well.

[metalsuccattack]

4 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

I'm sorry, maybe I'm misunderstanding you entirely then or we're using different definitions for "burst damage". Spears still hit harder per throw, but burst isn't just about a single hit of damage. It's about how much damage you can do in an amount of time.

If I can land two arrows in the time it takes to throw a single spear (and hit the target since spears are harder to aim and less accurate), then the bow is effectively doing more burst damage than a single spear toss which makes it the better ranged option despite having a lower per-hit damage.

Also if you are able to accurately land any sort of ranged hits during a temporal storm, please teach me your ways. I almost always have to resort to melee to do anything during a storm because the visual distortion is too high to land any hits further than 10 yards.

in terms of balancing the damages of the spear and bow, i think of comparing it to the lightning and rocket launcher from the quake games but with the damage values and fire rates kinda swapped. the LG does a lot of damage per second and fires fast but is medium to short range and runs out of ammo really quick. whereas the rocket launcher is slower and projectile based but has the better range and per damage hit, with the slower fire rate meaning that you can do more damage overall. this is kinda the dynamic i found with the two ranged weapons when i played that i would like sustained.

(quake is way faster paced though with more dedicated level design for balancing out the weapons, along with the rocket launcher being explosive. still, being up close or at medium range in the open against a player with the LG will cause your health to drain very fast unless you can directly hit them with a rocket)

i turn down the warping effects of the temporal storm in the accessibility menu and just pretend that the hunter has really good eyes, since everything is gonna be harder to see than in broad daylight anyways because of the rust colored fog and especially at night. and this is also why im okay with spears being high burst damage because the risk of getting damaged up close by a tier 3/4 enemy as a hunter with lesser armor to optimize range damage output is a risk im okay with taking when i need to recollect my spears, plus bowtorns.

[metalsuccattack]

5 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

The problem with boosting the damage of other weapons to overcome the burst damage of the old spears, is then creature health needs to be adjusted as well. Otherwise the monsters and tougher wildlife like bears won't pose any kind of threat since the player will be able to mow them down more easily. Rather than try to adjust all those numbers, it's much easier to focus just on the spear's numbers, and adjust the health of some of the smaller creatures like chickens and rabbits to ensure that early game hunting isn't too hard.

 

Heavier armor does impose harsher penalties on ranged combat, yes, however chain armor is quite protective while imposing relatively few penalties to movement and ranged combat. Gambeson is also quite protective as a tier 2 armor, with even fewer drawbacks.

The non-stackable property of spears is a disadvantage, but if the player can outrun the enemy then it's a simple enough task to kite the target and pick up spears that have been fired, meaning that the player really only needs to carry 3-4 spears on average. With bigger backpacks in the late game the inventory space is even less of an issue. The only exception here is tunnel-fighting in the underground, but in that case the player can block off passages with fences or other blocks to stop enemies from reaching them.

It's also worth noting that the Hunter class has traits that boost movement speed as well as range, ranged damage, and accuracy--armor penalties won't affect them nearly as much as other classes when it comes to ranged combat. Ironically, Hunter and Clockmaker are the fastest classes in armor thanks to the inherent +10% movement speed; the only exception is plate armor, in which case they're evenly matched with Blackguard.

In any case, the main point is that if spears are going to be a weapon that hits much harder than the bow, then they need to have a slower fire rate to balance it out, especially when there's a class with inherent bonuses to ranged combat. That also tends to be ranged weapon balance for videogames in general--ranged weapons with low damage per shot typically have very high burst damage to compensate, while weapons that deal a lot of damage in a single shot will have a slow fire rate in order to make players consider those shots carefully. Adding a weapon that does a lot of damage with each shot, that also has a fast rate of fire, is an easy way to get players to always opt for that weapon in every situation, if not always pick the ranged class as well.

for this, maybe have the spear do more damage to compensate for firing slower then, but the dynamics of the ranged weapons in VS is still unique. in terms of comparing the bow and spear id say its kinda like a shotgun compared to the automatic weapons instead of automatic weapons to a sniper, and even then i still have to charge the spear a bit longer in order to make shots against farther targets compared to the bow. recovering spears can be kinda risky or slightly hard even with the large model size if you throw it towards shrubs or bushes, in a dense forest, at long range or into the darkness of the night or a cave, especially when that puts you in risk of getting hit by shivers or bears that may run faster than you.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

1 hour ago, metalsuccattack said:

in terms of balancing the damages of the spear and bow, i think of comparing it to the lightning and rocket launcher from the quake games but with the damage values and fire rates kinda swapped. the LG does a lot of damage per second and fires fast but is medium to short range and runs out of ammo really quick. whereas the rocket launcher is slower and projectile based but has the better range and per damage hit, with the slower fire rate meaning that you can do more damage overall. this is kinda the dynamic i found with the two ranged weapons when i played that i would like sustained.

(quake is way faster paced though with more dedicated level design for balancing out the weapons, along with the rocket launcher being explosive. still, being up close or at medium range in the open against a player with the LG will cause your health to drain very fast unless you can directly hit them with a rocket)

i turn down the warping effects of the temporal storm in the accessibility menu and just pretend that the hunter has really good eyes, since everything is gonna be harder to see than in broad daylight anyways because of the rust colored fog and especially at night. and this is also why im okay with spears being high burst damage because the risk of getting damaged up close by a tier 3/4 enemy as a hunter with lesser armor to optimize range damage output is a risk im okay with taking when i need to recollect my spears, plus bowtorns.

I think the disconnect here is that the spear isn’t really meant to compete with the bow as a dedicated ranged weapon in the first place. It’s more of a hybrid weapon that can be used in melee, while also having a longer reach than any other melee weapons, and can be thrown, through which it applies knockback on hit.

Because of that, it already brings a lot of utility that the bow doesn’t have. The bow is a specialized ranged weapon, so it makes sense that it eventually outperforms the spear in pure ranged damage output. If the spear also matched or beat the bow in ranged performance on top of everything else it can do, there wouldn’t really be a reason to use the bow at all...which is what we'd have pre 1.22 changes.

All in all, the Quake comparison is interesting but it doesn't really fit. Looking it up the LG has tracking which helps with hitting opponents and the RL has splash damage which the spear does not. Perhaps if we got a weapon with splash damage like the Quake RL, then we could look at having a slow weapon that deals a LOT of damage. The spear just isn't that weapon.

[PoisonedPawn777]

The nerf to spears was 100% necessary, even with the nerf I would argue it's the weapon of choice in most situations. Machine gunning spears at an onrushing enemy if neither realistic nor good gameplay. It takes time to throw a spear with any real force, and my seraph can launch them off his backfoot. Not to mention the fact that I can quench iron+ spearheads keeping them comparable to the falx in late game, can't quench arrowheads. I still carry bows and a falx for situational purposes, but the spear is the everyday go to.