Take back “Go for the Jugular”

[Dawidio123]

Non-pvp player talk

After 3-4 months since restart pvp is dead since almost everyone who actually does it quits at that point, and b12 becomes meta literally the second you can get steel so like week 3-4? (I think, idk, i don't do mining i just get my steel gear from a chest).

You don't seem to understand why jugular was even that good, it wasn't "vibrant", it was one button combo that you could spam since the only good defense against it was zig-zag + quick dodge (god forbid you were running artful + zigzag + sidestep as your defenses), basically every zig zag allowing your enemy to jugular you once more and deal some chip damage due to it's insane armor penetration, and you needing to also quick dodge allowing them to actually deal damage and openings faster than you could deal with it. So you could either try to defend yourself and get killed by the chip damage, or you could just go for it and start to jugular the other party to race them to ko (and you won't run out of ip since you can just qb if they don't zig zag).

To sum it up, there wasn't just one single thing that was broken about jugular that could be easily fixed, it was the sum of uac moves having stupid armor pen, it dealing same openings it damages, it having 40 base damage and 30% grevious, it dealing red openings which couldn't be dealt with other than zig zag (which gives your enemy exact number of ip they need to jugular you again), and allowing you to run it with shield up as uac/melee hybrid due to stupid combat stat scaling (needing more than 2x their combat stat to actually have advantage) making it useless to actually focus on one combat stat and making hybrids the default go to since you ain't getting twice their uac or melee even if you focus 100% on it (getting 200/200 is easier than getting 400/1 uac/melee and the first one is actually better).

It's also worth noting just how hard it is to actually balance the combat move by changing just the combat move and not everything else. If they made it 4 ip to use it might be a bit worse in 1v1 but it still would be pretty similar in normal pvp, increasing it's cd probably wouldn't do much since cds don't matter that much when you are running around, making it deal less damage maybe could do the trick but where's the line of it being not op and also not useless, they could reduce the overall armor pen of uac moves but then all the uac moves would suffer (Honestly doesn't seem that bad of an idea if it was coupled with uac moves scaling better with str or something to compensate but that's a big change).

Honestly I think you should participate a bit in pvp before posting about it, because if you had faced shield up + jugular zergs you would know they were just obnoxious to deal with. They might have nerfed it a bit too much making it nearly completely useless but it's better than it still being op.

[yym331]

Non-pvp player talk

After 3-4 months since restart pvp is dead since almost everyone who actually does it quits at that point, and b12 becomes meta literally the second you can get steel so like week 3-4? (I think, idk, i don't do mining i just get my steel gear from a chest).

You don't seem to understand why jugular was even that good, it wasn't "vibrant", it was one button combo that you could spam since the only good defense against it was zig-zag + quick dodge (god forbid you were running artful + zigzag + sidestep as your defenses), basically every zig zag allowing your enemy to jugular you once more and deal some chip damage due to it's insane armor penetration, and you needing to also quick dodge allowing them to actually deal damage and openings faster than you could deal with it. So you could either try to defend yourself and get killed by the chip damage, or you could just go for it and start to jugular the other party to race them to ko (and you won't run out of ip since you can just qb if they don't zig zag).

To sum it up, there wasn't just one single thing that was broken about jugular that could be easily fixed, it was the sum of uac moves having stupid armor pen, it dealing same openings it damages, it having 40 base damage and 30% grevious, it dealing red openings which couldn't be dealt with other than zig zag (which gives your enemy exact number of ip they need to jugular you again), and allowing you to run it with shield up as uac/melee hybrid due to stupid combat stat scaling (needing more than 2x their combat stat to actually have advantage) making it useless to actually focus on one combat stat and making hybrids the default go to since you ain't getting twice their uac or melee even if you focus 100% on it (getting 200/200 is easier than getting 400/1 uac/melee and the first one is actually better).

It's also worth noting just how hard it is to actually balance the combat move by changing just the combat move and not everything else. If they made it 4 ip to use it might be a bit worse in 1v1 but it still would be pretty similar in normal pvp, increasing it's cd probably wouldn't do much since cds don't matter that much when you are running around, making it deal less damage maybe could do the trick but where's the line of it being not op and also not useless, they could reduce the overall armor pen of uac moves but then all the uac moves would suffer (Honestly doesn't seem that bad of an idea if it was coupled with uac moves scaling better with str or something to compensate but that's a big change).

Honestly I think you should participate a bit in pvp before posting about it, because if you had faced shield up + jugular zergs you would know they were just obnoxious to deal with. They might have nerfed it a bit too much making it nearly completely useless but it's better than it still being op.

If PvP were to conclude within just about three months or so from the game's start, does it really make sense to prioritize it? Sorry if my wording came across a bit snarky there, haha.

You're quite heavy-handed with categorization. Of course, I acknowledge that compared to you, I might have participated in fewer battles, but I do have some PvP experience. However, for someone who has never taken part in PvP and is solely focused on PvE, things like Combat moves such as 'Go for the Jugular' probably wouldn't even register on their radar. They might not even take note of any downward adjustments. They might not even realize any changes made in that direction.

During the initial days of the game, in PvE hunting, it's often more efficient to kick off with a high-base Openings move like 'Takedown'. Bears tend to struggle with 'Reeling'.

Returning to the main topic, as I mentioned before, I believe extreme balance adjustments might not have been necessary. For instance, adjustments like +30% Off Balance or +15% Off Balance and +5% Cornered could have sufficed. Additionally, when considering a complete set of Combat moves, are there any players who actively make use of moves like 'Kick' or 'Rip Apart'? Is there any value in retaining techniques that can't be utilized?

[Nightdawg]

No, jugular would be retarded all year long.

The way stats and gear scale, that 30-40% armor penetration (I still don't fucking know how much it is, but it's still too much) UA moves have is wayyy too annoying to deal with.

With enough autism, you can even get KITO to be an obnoxious bitch once you have 6k str but only q500 gear.

I'm sorry, but jugular was a braindead move for pvp. Hafen has many nice aspects about pvp that require some brains, and braindead shit like that shouldn't be part of it.
It's a good thing that they changed jugular this way. Small adjustments are always a million times better than overhauling a whole system or extremely nerfing/buffing something (like swords doubled their armor pen then got nerfed back to what they used to be, rather than just testing the waters with a small 15% buff or something like that).

[yym331]

I'm glad that we were able to have a discussion together, even if there might have been some challenges in expressing your intentions due to your English proficiency. Learning and growth are valuable aspects of any conversation. Let's put this topic to rest (I was retarded).

I've taken up a lot of Dawidio123's time and everyone else's as well. Thank you very much for your kindness

[Dawidio123]

If PvP were to conclude within just about three months or so from the game's start, does it really make sense to prioritize it? Sorry if my wording came across a bit snarky there, haha.

If the player count dips to less than 10% of it's value at the start of the world is it really worth pushing content for those few players left? (Tbh it being 2 months since last patch indicates that not even devs think so).

...Additionally, when considering a complete set of Combat moves, are there any players who actively make use of moves like 'Kick' or 'Rip Apart'? Is there any value in retaining techniques that can't be utilized?

Not every move needs to be meta, to add to it, it's quite normal for most of them to not be meta since no matter how you balance there will be a meta deck and it won't include most moves. Is storm of swords meta? No. But it's cool and it is usable. Is raven's bite meta? Nope. But a punch+raven's bite deck actually shreds in small scale pvp. I actually made some decks for spars that used rip apart and they were actually not that bad (not good, but kinda funny to slap that rip apart out of nowhere), and honestly it's for the better. A move that opens and damages every opening shouldn't really be good, otherwise everyone would just use it. It's not that those moves are unusable, it's just that there are moves that do the job of killing things better than others, while those other moves do have their own niche uses. I think having some bad-ish moves allows for the system to have more depth and actually makes good moves good while allowing for some off-meta bullshit to fuck shit up because people aren't prepared for it (Raven's bite deck is countered hard by regain composure but nobody uses that).

But let's face it PVE in this game is a joke so there is no point to balance combat around it, you can cheese basically every encounter, and i think the game is balanced around it up to a point. For example cachas, they can and they will break your knarr and they can be faster than a knarr, you can't really fight them fairly out in the ocean.
Mammoths have honestly just bullshit stats to 1v1 them so you either cheese them in a trap, cheese them from a ledge, or get like 10 guys and hope you kill it before it downs all of you (and then do a hunger reset to heal wounds hehe).
Basically any animal that can be fought from a boat can be just outranged with a sword, and you can just reaggro them whenever they run (Since you can't really chase them without a horse and they bleed out too slowly for it to be a reliable way to hunt).

Perhaps jugular was nerfed too far but afaik everyone who did pvp early was happy about this change, perhaps having it open red yellow is a bit shit since it's countered by zig zag, so maybe red blue would be a tad better also allowing it to combo with cleave. On the other hand that might just make it a superior version of kito since it only costs 1 ip more and only has a bit more cd so more changes might be necessary to balance it out. And since devs do not test things and don't engage in pvp it would probably take them half a year and half a dozen updates to even have a chance of getting it right.

[Halbertz]

f i recall correctly it was the only move that allowed people to kill bears reliably before getting tinker axes.

ARP doesnt work in PVE bozo. You ll get reach weapon before you outstr bear armor in any case.

I didn't read all the words above, but generally jugular isn't the case. Main issue of the combat system is lack of variety (because 50% of moves are objectively bad or/and outperformed by few good moves). IMO.