This game’s combat system is already really rough around the edges; ranges, timings, attack hitboxes, a lot of it is bad because it’s so weird. That’s not the whole story. So we allow some slack there for the other things this game does. This is not an esports game. Alright, but it’s already pushing the limits of reasonable on some things, however, on shields, especially with Dwarf, it just goes way beyond that.
With Dwarf and a shield, it is a total crapshoot fighting while moving backward. Dwarf has no range on his own hitbox. You have to be only moving forward (which is not possible), otherwise you trigger the game’s chase mode and then you’re totally screwed with how they attack you.
I don’t know if shields make your hitbox bigger, but I really think they do. I think this is how you made shields draw and wall. Well it’s not a good method or at least not how it’s done. I do know that Dwarf’s hitbox is bigger on its own. You have one character who is on a different playing field than the one the game is balanced for which the other four classes use.
When playing with a shield it stretches what you’re seeing on screen to broken territory.
It’s easy for this stuff to get mishandled when you have a load of children yammering about skill and so on. Noise entirely amplified by the bad balance all over the game earlier on, which wasn’t recognized at the time, and of which much still exists. When it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work because it doesn’t work right, not because it starts to after a lot of practice.
You are right, this happens with the Elf spear too…I have seen enemies skating forward and doing a big extendo-arm hit from 2-3m away, when visually (much worse at higher FOV) there is no way they should have hit you. This happens like you say, when you fight running backwards like with the spear, daggers, any weapon which requires distance to charge swings (spear) or has limited reach (daggers). Coupled with the go-go-gadget arms of the enemies in this game this makes melee extremely counter-intuitive (where judging distance for defence is pointless because, for example, slave rats have 3m long arms, and the distance rules for player and mobs are different) in a game with an otherwise awesome melee combat feel.
I can’t really understand what the OP is on about? But from the looks of it he doesn’t like the shield? Brah, just hold down the left click for his first attack. The shield bash knocks down or staggers almost every single mob in the entire game. Follow up with a block push and repeat. With the talent for more stamina regen on heavy attacks, you will never run out and can CC an entire horde. After the knock back, switch to pistols and kill everything.
If you had a flamethrower then you really don’t even need a melee weapon lol. Take an axe to deal with armour and gg.
Well there’s your problem right there… A spear? What do you think this is? The beta? lol
In all seriousness, the spear is actually good for clearing hordes and staying out of reach. It just doesn’t preform anywhere near as good as the glaive or sword&daggers or daggers. And it’s damage is too low, you just tickle bosses with it and the armour damage is non existent, at least it feels like that.
Exactly. The surfing the enemies do, and the reach they have, combined with the fact that sometimes they’ll just immediately hit you when they look like they aren’t ready for it, makes combat based on what you’re seeing a total crapshoot.
With the Dwarf though, especially with a shield, it’s worse. You just can’t play it. It doesn’t match what you’re seeing. It’s not just the running attacks. You can literally be attacked by standing attacks at a distance just outside your own melee. It’s just completely broken. So either shield needs to be fixed, or some kind of passive DR to balance out the bad.
That´s surely not the shield or spear or whatelse, sounds more like a p2p connection issue.
Actually the dwarg (especially Ironbreaker) is pretty much broken with his passiv + Shield… stop fighting, just stack Stamina, push the enemies away (this is what the shield is made for) and then hit , block and push again, hit etc… Stupid, takes time, but easy broken.
And yeah the enemies are forced to use “long range” melee-weapons too… so every “short weapon” like daggers are high risks on waveclears, but would be broken af if they won´t.
It’s pretty hard to understand this post. Something about the shield being bad from what I gather.
Though, I do extremely well with the axe and shield so it doesn’t seem to add up. I take maybe two or three hits in a whole run because everything around me is either dead or knocked on their butts.
Here are the bullet points I managed to extract from it:
When dodging/moving in any direction than forward, hostile NPCs will tether when performing an attack animation (skating).
Dwarf’s X + Shield’s range is very short, making countering or interrupting tethered NPCs’ attacks more difficult.
People who are interested in balance discussion are children.
Possible Assumptions:
The dwarf’s hit box increases when using X + Shield without increasing his melee range to compensate.
The OP FoV may be set too high.
The NPC “skating” issue actually has been brought up and discussed many times on many forums. The last I remember about it is it being assumed it will be alleviated when dedicated servers are released.
My fov is set to 100. This is very standard. Asking a PC first game to be set below 90 is ridiculous. Even if it was a case of extreme FOV causing some confusion, it could be adapted to with practice. It just isn’t as simple as that. They can hit you from too far, and FOV ( at least at my setting of 100 ) has nothing to do with it.
It’s not so much that “tethering” as you put it is the major problem (but it is bs on its own), but the fact that it, combined with the increased threat range and reduced mobility that a shield gives you, can lead to situations where enemies can hit you when you can’t hit them, situations where enemies will immediately trigger fast attacks at a range you are not expecting them, and just a general disconnect between how things are visually and how they can actually be.
It’s not so much that X+Shield is very short, so much as it is your hitbox zone makes your effective range shorter.
“People who are interested in balance discussion are children.”