Spear has been the primary weapon of Dark Knights since this game came out. Why, you may ask? For those who don't know, Spears get a damage bonus from the "Stab" animation, while Polearms get a damage bonus from the "Swing" animation (formulas below). This makes sense considering how those weapons work. The issue is with their third job attacking skills, Crusher and Fury. For heroes and paladins, Brandish and Blast have psuedo-random chances for the attack to be either a swing or a stab, but for Dark Knights, the animation is forced depending on the move. Crusher will always stab, Fury will always swing. As a result, any Dark Knight wielding a polearm will do significantly less damage with Crusher than a Dark Knight using a spear. This is a tragedy, because the objectively most aesthetically pleasing weapon in the game (do NOT debate with me on this), the Crimson Arcglaive, is a polearm, and serves very little purpose beyond flair or maybe a Dark Knight using only Fury in LHC (even then there's better stat polearms). My question then is: Is it possible to make the Polearm version of Dragon Crusher force a swing animation on every hit? I understand it doesn't make sense with the look of the animation, but Polearms serve very little purpose in Royals, and it's quite sad honestly. And to be fair to every Dark Knight who likes spears, the Spear version of Fury could be a forced stab animation, so we don't have to deal with any wonky hybrid builds just to be optimal. Additionally, maybe no one wants this and I'm just sad I can't be a hipster and play a Polearm Dark Knight without sucking major ass. But who knows, just a proposition. uwu Note* These formulas may or may not be exactly correct for Royals, but there is definitely a noticeable damage difference if you test these weapons and animations. Spoiler: Ayumilove Damage Formulas Spear (Swinging) Primary: STR * 3.0 Secondary: DEX Spear (Stabbing) Primary: STR * 5.0 Secondary: DEX Polearm (Swinging) Primary: STR * 5.0 Secondary: DEX Polearm (Stabbing) Primary: STR * 3.0 Secondary: DEX FOOTNOTE After some discussion with guild, it's come to my attention that this change would also nerf Sky Skis, as Purple Surfboards are one speed faster and 5 additional attack. This could possibly be circumvented by either reducing PSB attacks by 5, or adding 5 to Sky Skis. Not the greatest solution but probably the easiest. Alternatively, add another end game spear that's on par (or better) than the PSB.
Amazing with so much class improvements, especially to drk and it's popularity this has been totally ignored, but I think it always will. Axes got some buffs for some reason, guessing bc it was so easy, and before yeepog. But yeah I love PA and the options and realizing there is zero meta for it here was a "crusher" Old but lots of input here https://royals.ms/forum/threads/general-warrior-feedback-and-useless-skills.160831/
I hit 200 on drk in GMS on original BB patch release with a perfect 3 godly lined Arcglaive Drk pole/spear was only fixed with dark impaler released, removing stab/slash multipliers. Also Berserk for a period was if your HP was like 60% higher you got the damage buff lol. I don’t think you can realistically fix polearm with pre-bb mechanics without massive overhauls to be lets say only 0-10% less efficient than spear drk. Just the headache of thinking how to balance ski without fucking over the existing population is a headache to think about. BB fixed so many long term issues: Stab/Slash formulas (spear, sword, polearm, axe, BW) (Most of these were resolved with straight up new skills: Dark Impaler, Intrepid Slash, idk paladin lol) Attack formulas (1h vs 2h weps, thieves scaling too well, etc.) Mage Ultimates abuse Avoid/Accuracy system overhauled While its easy to fix/balance weapons such as Axe or BW that wouldn’t ruin the economy cause of their usage rate is so low, if Royals went the balance direction Nexon did, which I liked for the most part, and reworked avoid/acc system and hard nerfed Thief scaling, I’m sure the economy would look ugly and a large % of the 2 year+ players would contemplate quitting, see Shadow Shifter nerfs. TLDR: No real simple way to fix pole arm in pre-bb Nerf Thieves Moeyuki
Pole Arm has the niche of being favoured until like level 80-90 and later at meta-grinding spots such as Hymes. The availability of the Surfboards is also fairly decent. PA and PA scrolls are very cheap and new players can easily get themself good gear when going for PA before 4rth job and bossing. I find it also to be much more fun to grind pre 4rth job with PA Crusher than Fury. What Cynn said, yes the actually get it on par with Spears a massive overhaul is required. I am a massive fan of spreading some viability, but I don't think removing the identity of the weapon by making PA Crusher same dps as Spear Crusher is the right option. Neither is nerfing Spears. I think DK's are at a good spot right now and don't need either more or less damage. Some other potential fixes: significantly increase PA Fury's Damage Modifier significantly increase PA Crusher's Damage Modifier (instead of removing the swing/stab difference) Change Damage formula for PA so that their Stab is not so bad and/or their swing is even better. Create Unique Damage formula for PA Crusher, like NL's L7 or TT (not a fan tbh) Increase w.atk of all PA Increase attack speed of all PA Curious to hear where the discussion of making Sacrifice a swing only skill to improve PA is right now. Allthough, making this change would force PA DK to give up on another skill like Crusher, Dragon Roar, or 1 full and 1 half or either Elemental Resistance and Power Crash. PA DK could also use 4rth job skill points since we see to have some spare but that would diminish these efforts to make PA more viable since then DK's have to choose between maxing Zerk, Stance, Beholder or a damage dealing skill before like level 150. Therefor not really a fan.
I really like both of these ideas. I just want Polearms to be viable without ruining spears or the economy as a whole. I could live with PAs being a bit worse than spears, as to not suddenly upset the balance and weapon market of a class. As long as it's actually playable, and not just a total meme like it is right now, I'd be happy.
Based on the damage formula it seems to me that increasing the modifiers for the unfavored attacks for both weapons from *3.0 to somewhere around *3.5 - *4 would possibly increase overall viability without significantly ruining the economy for spears and PAs. It is kind of sad that a whole weapon class, featuring some pretty cool designs, is just completely obsolete.
As usual I have some colorful thoughts. In the grand scheme of the class, I think sacrifice was intended to be the mitigating/maintenance tool for holding berserk, as opposed to roar, which kicks it off. This is why sacrifice ignores defense-up buffs, so the damage dealt/taken is theoretically averaged for the player instead of possibly rolling more sacs than necessary to drop into zerk, or so you don't likely use it more than necessary in case you do drop into zerk so you don't also use sac while in zerk (unless you want to) This is also why I suggest sac should be able to ignore weapon cancel: 1. It's not super strong, so this suggestion isn't about abusing damage or favoring drks 2. Helps them potentially hold zerk while waiting out a cancel 3. Sac is a risk to the player, so using this to maintain is still dangerous, but I think it should be a more viable tool Unfortunately the slash/stab makes it a bit unpredictable to use it this way, so does sharp eyes, so I also suggest: 1. Making sac always favor the weapon ratio 100% 2. Making sac always use the opposite animation your weapon prefers 100%. This does safer, smaller amounts of damage, but still ignores def up and cancel (and possibly DR) 3. Making the damage you take from sac with SE the same without it, it's too hazardous and unpredictable for the two skills to work or expect the player to account for it, therefore just keep the self damage vanilla even during SE To fix a few things at once: Dragons blood SP could go up to say 30 or more, and instead of buff attack, slightly buff your weapon's preferred animation ratio, but also increase the HP loss. (Ratio increases based on your hands stat, so it will increase as you level, not just from DB) Lose PA/spear skill delineation, and just go down to two skills instead of four, just Crusher, just Fury. This would make stacking DB with a PA viable, making PA slightly more risky than spear, giving significance to both weapons in the economy. Spear would be safer, and very well established in the market Give DB a prerequisite of lvl 5 or higher sacrifice, and maybe 5 levels of crusher and fury DB effect stops working if your HP drops to 1 This makes dragons blood actually useful inside the att pot meta, while still being a stylistically risky dk skill if you can use it safely. This is also still similar enough of an att boost to the "free att pot skill" Ironmen-type purists Finally, having iron will and iron body both reduce the self inflicted damage of roar, sac, and DB. For dks style, these skills should help them reduce self inflicted damage as well if you invest in these skills I don't see the point of having useless skills and weapons when royals obviously prefers only one weapon bc it holds in the economy. Just remove PA and give ppl PA NX covers instead if they're going to be totally useless
The Machlear is an aesthetic creamdream, another reason to buff pa and give dks the Dragonrider pq, and everyone a way to farm dragon scales/spirits, and uhhh maybe some bosshunting gear stimulators maybe pls Dks love fighting dragons, and some kind of viable PA style would be great (especially someone like me who has a PA skill invested dk waiting for it lol) Just some simple suggestions: Have polearm crushers damage increase vs less mobs, doing the most 1v1? PA crusher hits 4 enemies for 2 lines instead of 6 for 1? PA crusher can proc final att if active, adding a line, costs HP+mp? PA crusher does more damage in the air? PA crusher is a chargeable attack, more dmg/lines if fully charged? Or just tweak the dmg/multipliers/ratios and make PA comparable in some fashion or playstyle not even necessarily better than spear bc why not?
It's pretty simple to buff it, you can just buff Sacrifice to 500-550% damage from 350%. This way the 1vs1 DPS of pole arms would actually be a little stronger than spears, but it's still balanced cause you lose hp per hit and can't hit multiple targets with it. You can also tweak the stab multiplier of pole arms instead, the high level pole arms look like halberds anyway and should still do decent damage when stabbing
Only problem with sac is the SE multiplier makes it dangerous, and it still has a wild ratio, but I agree it deserves some attention like some of my suggestions earlier in the thread
It could be a bit dangerous yeah, you could hit 199k then lose 10k hp instantly which is risky. Another option is that since pole arm and spear crusher are separate skills, you can buff pole arm crusher to around 250% damage to make up for the lower multiplier. Kinda like how they buffed axe mastery
Isnt it a perfect arglaive now the best PA in game? With fast speed higher atk, speed than purple board and have str too. Btw even fury is buffed it still has the effect to decrease ur hp which is a headache.
It is, but PSB's avaidability and Arcglaives unavaidability due to hard crafting requirements make it much easier to get a good PSB then vice versa sadly.
