So, many weapons, particularly the Weapon/Shield combos, have a lot of variety in their Charged Attack sequence, often resulting in totally different outcomes whether you get a single-target smash, an anti-armor headshot, or a ‘crowd pleaser’.
Consequently, if you’re trying to alternate between Attack and Charged Attack in the middle of a fight it’s not clear which type of attack you’re going to get. There’s some predictability to it, in that if I do one Attack, I know if I do a Charged Attack, then I’ll get the 2nd attack in the Charged Attack sequence.
But, this is incredibly frustrating for several weapons and very bad from a design perspective as you’re essentially telling the player their attacks are going to have a completely random outcome since very few people have the skillset to keep track of both of these attack sequences simultaneously.
The only way to be certain is to do a quick tap of right-click, which resets the combo, and then you know you’ll get the first attack from the next sequence you start. This feels more like an unintended workaround, than intentional design.
Please make it so that if you switch to Charged Attack, that you always start at the first attack in the sequence. That way the player can predict with certainty what they’re about to do.
This kind of goes hand in hand with the whole attempting to push more than once or twice with a shield weapon combo. Sword and shield doesnt seem to be affected by it as much, but whenever im using a mace/shield combo, I cant just hold right mouse and spam left, since majority of the time it will do the follow through attack (even if i wait a quarter of a second after pushing), or it will stop registering that I am holding right mouse button unless i release and reclick it.
The part that i think makes it coincide with this is that if I do a shield push -> charged attack -> shield push -> charged charged attack, sometimes it doesnt do the second push, instead just raises the shield and im stuck for half a second before i can do anything else, or it will skip the shield all together and Ill take a few hits while the second charged attack is running
The charged/light combos are what give the game’s combat a lot of it’s depth. They are extremely important in getting the particular attack chain you want, and provide an avenue of skill development past the basics of attacking and blocking lengthening the skill curve and providing a far more satisfying sense of combat mastery.
Let’s take a look at the Halberd as an example, the first charged attack is a sweep. Extremely useful and dependable, this attack needs to be the first attack as you need to lead with it into a horde. The second two attacks are long reach pokes that are excellent for killing elites or just hitting a horde coming at you in a line. If you are facing an elite you don’t want to have to wait for the slow charged sweep, so you use light 1 which also does nice armored damage on head shots, and chain directly into your anti-armor charged attacks.
The combos are reliable when you learn them, and you can reset combos by throwing up a quick block to.
The Halberd makes pretty heavy use of block combo cancelling to get the sweeping attack again (it’s worth doing the second strike just because of how fast it is, then reset)
I love the way you can build different combos with different sequences of light/charged attacks.
The must not change it, it’s just a learning curve.
Without directional attack control, it’s the only control we have over our attack patterns
This was actually present in the closed beta test, but was reverted because it creates a janky experience. I actually reported it during the test.
For instance, with most slashing weapons, both the first strike of the light attacks, and the first strike of the heavy attacks come from the right side of the character. If you do a light attack, then a charged attack in sequence, you would get two swings coming from the right side of the character, which makes the animations look strange with an instant wind-up from the same side, and ruins the back and forth rhythm of swinging and fighting.
The way the system currently works, you can alternate between attack types while also alternating swinging directions. It makes combat much more fluid and allows you to create your own combos depending on the type of attack you want. It’s very predictable I’d say, just not covered in the tutorial.
If its going to be intended , then at the very least the two attack sequences should have the same number of attacks. Using a weapon with a 2-part charged attack sequence, and a 3-part attack sequence (e.g bardin hammer+shield) just feels like a random mess once youre wailing into a horde. Its too easy to lose track of where you are with a pairing like that.