Shattered Kingdoms

This is slightly related to a bug discussion topic from last year. The playerbase back then expressed their frustration but I don't think it got translated very well in the thread.

Disarm has always had an exceedingly high rate of sending a PC's weapon flying. This didn't used to be a huge problem, however, as a result of a combination of successive changes, disarm has become way too powerful of a skill, and on top of that, it affects the game negatively in its current state by making melee classes frustrating to play and requiring hoarding of multiple backup weapons for melee classes.

Here's a list of the changes that have brought disarm to the bad point that it's at right now.

1. The get command was disabled during combat. While it does prevent the offensive option of taking your enemies' weapon from them and then recalling if things go south afterwards, this is still a huge buff to disarm because it completely prevents the person you disarmed from getting their weapon and using it again in the fight, whereas they used to be able to.
2. Bash and trip were nerfed. By nerfing these two staple skills, all other skills are made more powerful. In addition, given that bash and trip being nerfed elongates combat via allowing for more time for healing potions to be quaffed, that means that players will have much more time to disarm during that combat, and since sending a weapon flying removes it from that fight permanently, this is also a huge buff to disarm.
3. The hoarding code prevents characters from having more than 6 extra wearable items on their person. This means that it's very unlikely for a character to have more than one or two backup weapons, if that, because not only are good backup weapons hard to find, they take up precious slots that could otherwise be used to hold gear for a friend or for swapping out gear in special circumstances.
4. Kip-up was added in. This is minor, but it means that swashbucklers are virtually guaranteed to be able to have multiple disarm attempts in an even fight, even if they go prone through the new bash/trip nerfs.

Now, all of these changes are good changes: I have no problem with them at all, and I'm glad they all went in: None of them, to my knowledge, were meant to be a buff to disarm either. What I do have a problem with is that as a result, disarm is now way too powerful. It already was a strong option before these changes, now it's just blatantly overpowered. Before all of these changes, disarm used to be a really good option that allowed you to disarm someone and either A) take their weapon in the best case scenario for the disarming person, or B) force them to pick up and/or wield their weapon again while you were in disarm lag in the best case scenario for the disarm victim.

Now, disarm is a skill that has a very high probability of completely preventing your opponent from using that weapon for the entire rest of the fight. Since fights will in general last longer now that bashing is off the table in an even fight and healing potions are going to extend fights as a result, that makes disarm the best skill to use in 90+% of PvP. For the meager cost of 1 round of combat lag, you can use a skill that has a very reasonable chance to remove an opponents weapon in the fight permanently: And more than likely, they aren't going to have more than 2 backups, if even that.

Yes, I do acknowledge that using a two handed weapon or using hand weapons can mitigate or remove the chance of being disarmed, but hand weapons are only available for one class and one cabal, and two handed weapons are inherently very dangerous to use in the front rank and only provide a bonus against disarm, not a guarantee.

I think disarm needs a nerf, and not in the way of adding more drawbacks with regard to lag or PE cost. Even if you doubled the lag and PE cost, it would be less useful, yet it would still be a skill that fundamentally allows you to remove someone's weapon from a fight entirely, and I think that's broken.

My suggestion is as follows: I think that it should simply never fling weapons to the ground anymore. It's already like that for NPCs: For whatever reason, whether it be a coded exception or the fact that most NPCs have 25 dex (something a great deal of PC warriors builds can no longer attain ever since the haste nerfs), disarm simply never flings an NPC weapon to the ground. As a counter-point for PCs, one time on Berr, my halfling swashbuckler in the dreamscape, I got disarmed three times in a single fight from a boss NPC wielding a -sickle- (Which is horribly inaccurate) and legit ran out of weapons to use. In PvP combat, disarm has a frustratingly high success rate, often times the very first disarm in a fight will send one person's weapon flying, meaning that the winner of the fight is ultimately going to be the one who disarms first, or who disarms more: Eventually one of the opponents is going to run out of weapons and the other one will win by default by being able to sit in the room and spam "get all" until the other person runs away.

Removing the "to ground" possibility to disarm will be a nerf to the skill, but it will be a deserved one which will still leave it as a viable option: You'll still be able to disarm someone which will require them purposefully re-wielding the weapon in order to use it again, which will still incur wield lag based on weapon speed.

If you make this change, warriors will be much more satisfying to play and extra weapon hoarding won't be a requirement for melee classes like it currently is. Everyone wins!

Does no one else care about this or is the post too long? If it's just too long, here's a TL:DR.

TL:DR; Disarm is overpowered because when it flings your weapon to the ground (which is extremely likely) it permanently removes that weapon from the fight since you can't get items from the ground while fighting. I've had "boss" NPCs using a sickle throw my 3 different high accuracy weapons to the ground against my swashbuckler. I've had multiple PKs where the very first disarm attempt from either side caused a weapon to be thrown to the ground.

This is broken and bad for the game, because it reduces the options available for PK, encourages hoarding of good weaponry, and makes it very frustrating to play a front-liner.

Disarm against PCs should be changed to, like against NPCs, never throw your weapon to the ground.

Thank you guys for voting, but does no one have anything else to add here? It's really frustrating when the very first disarm in a fight has a very high chance of removing the target weapon from the fight completely. The game would be so much better if you couldn't lose weapons to the ground anymore, like has already been done for NPCs.

I voted yes and agreed with you. What more needed to be said?

Unless wield were changed at the same time to be unusable prone, this would render disarm pretty worthless when you consider opportunity cost of using disarm vs other skills.

Do you really think so? Disarm has the lag of kick (less than a combat round), has no penalty like bash and trip do, and in the absolute -best- case scenario for the person being disarmed, they have instant reactions and only suffer the re-wielding lag, which can be anything from instant for a sai to about the same lag as disarm for a slower weapon. It's much more likely that the person being disarmed will also be in the middle of skill lag from something else, like trip, bash, dirt kick, taunt, heckle, or quaffing, so you're likely to get one, maybe even two rounds of someone not using one of their weapons for doing damage or parrying, or in the case of a swashbuckler, riposte'ing.

Right now, disarm is number one priority if you're in melee combat with someone, unless they're using a weapon that can't be disarmed. Even if disarm was changed it would still be more useful than bash or trip against someone with high reflex, it just wouldn't be the absolute clear victor that it is right now.

Do you agree that disarm is too strong, and would you suggest something different for a nerf? I don't think that greater penalties in the form of extra skill lag time or even a lowering of success rate is the right direction, because honestly, being able to remove someone's weapon from a fight completely is just way too blatantly overpowered. I was fine with it before the changes when you could pick up your own weapon in the disarm lag potentially, but now that's straight up impossible. I've legitimately been disarmed OUT of weaponry on a swashbuckler by a NPC that was using a sickle, no less.

I think I've said before that I think it's over the top. Some of the changes that have gone in have made it more of a choice than it used to be - except in the case of Merc specialized in finesse weapon vs swashbuckler.

I only meant what I said, that wield should not be usable prone of a change like this is made.

I can see that point, adding in some synergy between bash/trip and disarm would be nice I suppose to compensate for the nerf.


For some specific examples in case anyone else is still just wondering whether I'm spouting all this out of theorycrafting, here are some specific examples from my PvP on recent characters.

Berr, my halfling swashbuckler, fought Garnon, a giant barbarian. In between quaffing a couple of heal vials, getting bashed and kipping up, and other things, Garnon using his khopesh failed his first two disarms against Berr and then succeeded on the third disarm, throwing Berr's khopesh to the ground. Afterwards, Berr equipped a no-dachi and sickle, then on the very first disarm attempt against Garnon, threw his khopesh to the ground, at which point Garnon had to switch to a glaive in the front rank because he didn't have any extra one-handed weapons. As a result he lost horribly.

Rall, my human merc, fought Khalim, a human swashbuckler on two separate occasions. On the first occasion, I think Rall tried to disarm Khalim twice (maybe just once), failed those disarms, and then Khalim recalled. When they fought again shortly afterwards, Khalim started the fight by heckling Rall, and in the heckle lag Rall disarmed Khalim's main hand weapon and threw it to the ground on the first try. The second action from Rall was to quaff a healing potion to get back up to nearly full HP, and the third action was to disarm Khalim's second weapon to the ground on the first try. Rall's khopesh had maybe 4-5 total enchantments to accuracy. Khalim had only one round of combat where he was able to use both of his weapons, and after the third round of combat both of his weapons were removed from the battle completely.

In multiple duel environments between swashbucklers and mercenaries that I've been involved in (swash v swash and merc v swash), disarm has proved to have a very meaningful chance -on both sides simultaneously- of throwing a weapon to the ground, including two handed weapons which are suppose to have a penalty to being disarmed.

Currently, all fights (except those using wild-fighting weapons) are won or lost based upon whether disarm succeeds. Whether against Khalim I got lucky, or whether it was statistically probable to disarm both of the enemy swashbucklers finesse weapons on the first try, the skill is broken and needs to be nerfed. It's harmful to the game to have your weapons be able to be removed from a fight permanently. It's also way too OP that there's a cabal in the game which can freely disarm while also not being able to be disarmed themselves, which in my opinion is too much of a buff with disarm in its current state.

What do you mean? In my duels with a khopesh specc'ed merc vs swash, both sides were able to throw the other's weapons to the ground with the same measure of success. There was only one fight tested recently for me, but khopesh spec merc vs khopesh/kama equipped swash resulted in the following disarm successes/attempts.

merc: out of four disarm attempts, sent the swash weapon flying once, disarmed the swash (but kept weapon) twice, and failed to disarm once.

swash: Out of two disarm attempts with the khopesh/kama equipped, one sent the merc's khopesh flying, one failed to anything.

If any melee class fights a swashbuckler and their very first skill they focus on isn't disarm, they're doing things horribly wrong.

I already agreed that your character should go for disarm vs swash. But that's just really not true for everyone.