Claymores and Their Useless State

[Wolferz]

Hello all,

I would like to bring up the issue of the uselessnes of claymores due to their very long delay time and relatively low damage in comparison to smaller swords. Can something be done to make the Claymore actualy usuable? The easiest way I can think of would be to either increase its damage or decrease its delay. The current delay/damage ratio is aweful. I do not know if something is already planned to fix this problem (perhaps weapon skills [the ones developed in gsoc] will be independant of delay) or if they will be made two handed and then the delay reduced or what. If this is the case I understand. Its just a shame to see a potentialy cool weapon sitting around collecting dust.

[Bonifarzia]

There is one other big factor that should be taken into account: Weapon ranges.
While this features seems to be supported by the combat manager for a very long time, the actual ranges of melee weapons are all the same, probably for reasons of balance.

[Rigwyn]

I think clays were originally supposed to be the Cadillac of swords in real life. In-game, sabres are king ( or were some time back ) mainly because they deal more damage per second. ( This may be outdated )

[Eonwind]

Claymore damage seems already fine to me, it's more than 50% bigger than a sabre and 45% bigger than a longsword, however it pays off this huge damage difference with a weapon delay bigger than any other blade: its speed is about 135% slower than a longsword and a shortsword, however it has a higher chance to block the target attack, which is an advantage to consider.
Weapons range are actually not much considered (the value for melee weapons are all the same) but in the future they should be an important balancing factor.
That said I think claymore are a bit slower than it should be but it should have a small range increment as well.

[LigH]

Not to forget: Claymores are meant to be two-handed weapons; but PlaneShift does not yet support this feature well. Developers may restrict wielding Claymores to only one specific hand already, but I believe it is not yet possible to force the other hand being empty.

[Bonifarzia]

it has a higher chance to block the target attack

Right, this point was raised quite a few times, but i think it would really help to give some more information about base item stats like this one. For example, we had a huge number of shield types for which nobody could really tell the technical difference. What was changed about that? Even more shields were added

[chaon]

Bump.. How hard would it be to adjust this?  Are these stats hard coded in?  Are they adjustable in the database.  Claymore swords should be renamed the blade of commerce because all they are good for is selling.  This topic is about five years old.   If it can't be done or it isn't the right time at least give some feedback as to why.

[HugsWontletgo]

 Actually I was unaware that claymores had a higher rates of blocking opponents!
But to me it always seemed that attack and defence modifiers were what made all
two handed weapons if not as appealing as single handled weapons, I blame modifiers
for number of disbalancive things..
 But on the other hand is weapon balance so crucial? I don't think there's many things
that require much of effort to defeat at maxed stats and ~100 skill, so choosing any
weapon based on your character preference should get you by, few hits longer fights
don't seem to me like much of a difference. Monsters are really weak, that might be
more of a problem, so I often use poles to mush them cause it seems more fun :3 So
if your character really likes claymores I don't see why it couldn't use them as it's
primary weapon, even with all there disadvantages compared with other weapons..

[Can-ned Food]

Monsters are really weak,

I can't remember if I only talked about this in-game, but most of the big everyday creatures should be very difficult to defeat.  Maxxed stats only means that you are the strongest that your character's physiology allows; even the strongest and most athletic Homo sapiens alive, supreme master of both karate and xingyi, would probably have a rough time if they attempted to take down a bull African elephant during musth while armed only with a platinum steel longsword.  Maulberlords seem much more fierce.
Just because Chuck Norris can do it, doesn't mean that Igesal should be able to do it.

Disregarding, of course, the difference between systemic health modelling, with ultra-detailed combat mechanics, and pools of health-points that most games use if they don't have the aforementioned ultra-detailed combat mechanics.
Something like that fencing game for the Nintendo Wii.

Leads to my suggestion:  each class of weapons enables certain combat moves and techniques.  More than there are already, and more of them should be specialized to different weapons.  They should also have different stance requirements.
Beasties should be more or less vulnerable to different moves.  Similarly, certain combinations of weapons can shift the balance of chance–to–hit between two combatants — parrying and such.

Examples:  thrusting forward with a reckless lunge, which either pushes the target backwards or leaves you more vulnerable to a strike; half-sword stance, which increases your ability to parry but decreases the damage done and changes it to blunt mode.

[Eonwind]

When this topic was first raised two-handed weapons were not fully supported (so you could wield two of them despite they were 2-handed). So, back then it was not advisable to change the claymore stats.

Now the 2-handed flag is fully implemented and only one two-handed weapon can be wielded at time, it could be a good time to revise their damage.

The change is not difficult to do, we only need to change one vale in the database. It's just a matter to get it right, which means going after all the weapons damage output to be sure they are quite right and avoid messing up the balance again.

[Eonwind]

I just want to add a small update about the topic.
As of now the task of balancing claymores (and weapons generally speaking) must be put on hold.
The reason is, as we are working on the PSUnreal combat, some mechanic like weapon speed will probably be dropped in favor of a more real-time and responsive approach. Therefore the weapon balance maybe radically different from what is today. Since we plan to port the current database, at some point, I think it could be a waste of time to try to fix the problem now. Given my current time restrain I will focus on working on the new system.