We have yet to address the greased up elephant in the room
To me warlock vs jugg boils down do you think spirit or magic is worse for strength.
Seeing how arcanium went I have little faith in cestus being good for em and maybe 50 years we’ll get a strength relic but who knows if that would even be good
my spirit hound on my corb imbued with light and like ~100+ range is funny as hell, all of my ranged moves literally go soaring
I think it’s going to be paladin. They already have incredible efficiency on their basic attacks due to corb imbue, and with blast shapes coming to paladin and tiers being removed and downscaling mage, paladin is going to be the better blast beam javelin merchant
Jarl Ivar’s phase 2 is a decent example of a melee fight actually working. Boss fights in general are definitely possible to balance around melee/tight arena/both because a boss can have custom attacks to work around it, but normal npcs & players aren’t bound to moves specifically tailored to be fun in the environment (and in the case of players, it outright can’t).
Combined with AO’s unique combat system and fs generally not having some kind of wild damage output, fs often plays more around movement demon and striking with shot, axe, crescendo, aftershock, or whatever is available in your toolkit. That or being a grab merchant. Getting sent directly into your opponent’s face is a bad position provided your opponent is actually prepared for it. Granted, fs is very good at the movement demon shtick and faster fs are able to catch people off guard with stray advancing hits, but there are a lot of longer ranged moves that have better risk-reward ratio (crash can be followed up into a quick shockwave smash, but blast has better immediate reward and has less risk of being blown up by an opponent than being in their face)
meh. Ever since strength weapon requirements got changed I am extremely indifferent about them.
Seismic slash sucks and has sucked for years, colossal cleave got “optimized” into oblivion, and all level 100 strength weapons are now glorified level 50 weapons with a funny stat spread that usually works to your detriment in an arena 1v1 setting.
The only big advantage strength weapons have over regular is that argos weapons are effectively warlord’s level 40 good-quality weapons, something no other class has access to and something that allows warlord to use level 150 weapon abilities. That won’t be particularly relevant anymore when the level cap goes to 190.
lets not forget them getting array!!! (everyone lovesss array)
true, ur right about fs having alot better combo/layup potential than others, but my main issue is how AO went from traditional rpg stats to powerstacking. isnt an solvable issue, but its worse with npcs.
with players you have high (usually) functioning people behind the screen making combat interesting and fun, like an actual match. with npcs, all they do is spam +700! +700! +700! without end. my argument isnt “nerf npcs!!”, its give fighting styles an actual REASON to go in and do damage, actually threaten people for getting in your terrain cause thats THE POINT OF THE CLASS. atleast, thats what i think the point of fighting style or hybrids is, threaten at closerange
(on the topic of npcs vetex needs to change their behavior cause i should NOT be getting grabbed out of my casting by a level 12 rookie pirate, or having an annihilation get outclashed by a group of them either. like grabbing works great on players, but for npcs its like fighting alanon part two)
depending on users its still an issue. speed nerf on most if not all of your weapons isnt a impossible hurdle to jump over, ive seen many handicapped players still make strength weapons work. but you are right about weapon abilities, i think thats another main reason why savantlord/warlord had to get nerfed early into full release
its 5am and i poorly explained what i meant so i dont mind if i get obvious and valid arguements to my side, but all im meaning is with levels increasing npcs arent gonna be enjoyable to fight against. dragons are highlevel npcs BUT have choreographed skills and it is definitely a test of skill. i managed to solo a mythical as a wind metal mage, yet i struggle against ingame humanoid npcs because they do things that normally shouldnt be possible.
against players im put up against someone like me, someone who can actually put their skill and smarts to test, but everytime i fight a nightmarish atlant or my rival (my fault for picking him) i get to red hp and have to retreat because they somehow can spurt out random bullcrap to no end. by the way, this is on MAGE. if i have to pack up my stuff and basically leave a fight because of how unrelenting an npc is WITH A BUILD THATS MEANT TO BE RANGED thats SAD. not a skill issue on my part, just one of the many bad parts to the game to wave away
back to the point of warlock being crap tho, just buff fighting styles overall and not make it some weird gimmick and make people enjoy using magic punches 
oh my god i hate this so much
ill charge up a SINGLE skill to try to hit a rival and they’ll dash literally 5 times in a second like what???
sure just fucking speedblitz me ig
that might’ve been me
I haven’t played in like 5 months so my memory might be off but poise breaks tend to only really trigger if you’re already curb stomping them
This is a funny yet beautiful sight to witness
bteam nuke strength builds
yeah
poise breaks were meant to buff strength, but they only really trigger when you don’t need them
and never trigger when actually needed
this is correct and is also why i never understood their introduction to the game
all poise breaks served is to allow strength builds to trivialize almost all bosses with zero difficulty and be utterly useless anywhere else
why was this added
oh yeah that was the exact video i saw, couldve swore you used the poisebreak though but i guess not
Warlocks complaining after their class has been S or A tier for 90% of the game
they still are minus the fact that savant makes them mostly redundant even when compared to other hybrids
still in a way better position than juggernaut due to spirit imbues being consistently worse than magic on fs specifically
spirit is a 10% buff no strings attached
You loose higher tier strength skills which is a lost