On an earlier version of Glory of Combat, for the bow offhand, you had a backflip. I fell in love with that and then you later changed it to the hop. You probably don't remember me challenging you on that decision but you had a good reason for the change.

I'm probably the only one who preferred the backflip over the hop so it probably wouldn't make sense for you to create an override mod for that specifically.

Funny thing today, while you were releasing this mod, I was going through your guide trying to figure out how to create what I wanted for the bow. I could not figure out how to get the offhand button to work. Maybe you could help me out with that?

I do remember people challenging me on it (though admittedly not specific people).

Sure I can solve that issue, the problem with the base game Bow class is that it has an Override entry in the WeaponUseTable. This override causes the Offhand input to perform a Light shot, regardless of whether there is a ComboRules entry for a Bow Offhand move.

Removing that override with a merger, whether control or conventional, should open the way for being able to add a functioning Offhand ability.

However, something to consider for 'attacks' that aren't intended to damage an enemy is that they still require a collision window so that they actually cost stamina to perform. The backflip should already have one included.

I did see that and removed the override in the WeaponUseTable but it did not seem to have an affect. Maybe I am missing something. I still could not get the controls to act separately.

I threw together a mod that added the backflip to the Bow and I got it to function in-game.

I removed the override via merger, copied over the Dagger flip entry, changed the ID + WeaponComboLead, and plugged them into the modcontroller.

You may have missed one of the steps along the way, that happened to me somewhat frequently when I was incorporating features of one weapon class into others.

When I could not even get the bow offhand hop to work on your mod, figured out what I missed. Invert bow controls option has to be enabled in the game's control settings.

Ok so some context, I had to look though some very old notes and play around with things, I Originally proposed this to Highmanes to back in early days to bring the two weapon types on par with each other I have played with their short sword archetypes. all this is a bit of combination of everything.

By itself
Light attacks would be quick slashes
Lights 1 2 and 3 from Highmane's Gladius and the Finisher being a Wide sweep from their short blades

Heavy attacks, lunging trusts with over slashes
Basically leave it as is rn I tried every other type and this is perhaps the best way. I also tried the Knife's from Highmane's heavies and while consistent I feel it would dull the feel of short swords

Running Attacks there were 2 ideas I had
1 was Light being the wide sweep attack and the heavy being a jumping trust attack. but in testing as playing a character on the taller side, I found myself missing my mark all too often in fights, which leads me to
Idea 2 heavy trusting attack into rapid stabs. Honestly this just tickles my Devil may cry Stinger inch, nothing more to it really and in theory I could land this a little more consistently

w/Shield
The Light chain become as it is now. it' just that good, specially we can get into rank and file battles. I love my Roman Legionnaire play style.

w/Thrown (SUPER EXPERIMENTAL LIKELY TO BE UN-BALENCED!)
Heavies become more akin to what Highmane have with knives. Reason being is a few things
In-Game Flavor text "In Primitve Cultures, Short Swords are scoffed at as little more than knives." a bit of an RP tradition for me and my thralls but In the past I liked to pair my Dancers set up as I like to have all my thralls to have some ranged option be it a Fighter, Archer, Bearer or Dancer. (Before weapon scaling was a thing) I originally also brought up their throwing off hands when paired with their gladius. Which they told me they had a different idea which I thought "Understandable and I can respect it." They haven't really done anything to change that, but that discussion is not really for here nor there.

That all on my revised notes I love to hear thoughts as always

PS also to the Bow offhand attack. Wild idea but what about doing a double shot? It was an idea I had a while back but then I thought "Wouldn't that make Twice-upon-a-Arrow useless"

@Lordbitchez My apologies, I thought I had responded at the time. That's bizarre that the game needs to have that setting switched on for the change to be present. At first I thought it could've been controller-related, but mine seemed to function without that setting enabled. There may be some evil spirits or gremlins at work somewhere lol.

@Codex31 I would have to pay that mod a visit again to understand the Light attack suggestion, I'll do that at some point before I unsub so I don't have to re-download it haha.

As far as combo variants off sprint attacks, I've had that idea for a couple weapon classes but you're right the SS does lend itself to an immediate flurry barrage. The early versions of Glory taught me that the jumping stabs aren't very reliable, but now that I understand how to manipulate the collision boxes properly it would mitigate the issues on that end. I'll definitely consider it.

Again for the Heavy w/ Throwing Axe attacks, I'd have to give that mod another look.

One thing I've been teetering on for quite a while now has been the Shield Bash combos. The intent behind them was to allow a strike with the Shield at any point in a combo chain, with a secondary goal to make those attacks less powerful to counterbalance the benefit of blocking incoming damage. Of course that combo was designed long before the combo pathing system that exists today came into being, so it will probably need to be looked at. Maybe some return to the base game model, maybe something new. That line of thinking applies to all the 1H weapons, but particularly to the Shortsword as it really feels as if it should be paired with a Shield.

@Dread Swoop Then perhaps this might be an idea. Shield Strikes from block. Kinda like Katana's Dash attack but not sure how hard it would be to set something like that up. n then the mechanical night mare and balancing that could present.

I might need a refresher on how your mod handles this, but base game any attack that would use shield animations scale off your main weapon stats, not the shield spite the fact it has damage and armor pen values listed. AND I'm pretty sure that it also uses your main weapons durability as well. Which is all a little silly but small steps first.

And yea after playing with SS again after so long it feels like it made to be paired with a shield. And then attribute scaling seems to have double down on that philosophy. Least with Valor. dual wield with SS/throwing is somewhat an option when you have the right build which lends it self to a more Flanker Playstyle (Or more often correct mods) ;)

I got plenty more notes for the other weapons too I'll just need to make sense of before I can offer my insight

In both the main game and this mod, the reason why shield strikes use the stats of the main-hand weapon is because the game derives the numbers from the weapon marked in the combo entry as the 'WeaponComboLead', which is almost always set to the main-hand.

Some related phenomena include Offhand kicks for weapons, which for all 1H weapons are marked as Unarmed Lead, but 2H weapons are marked as whatever the particular weapon is. Thus, most 2H kicks do considerably more damage than 1H, and often need to be constrained by lowering their damage multiplier substantially.

It's possible to mark shield bashes with the shield as the primary weapon, however an issue I've come across in the past is that, for whatever reason, switching the marked primary weapon breaks the combo chain after the offending attack. For example, if I were to go Light 1 -> Heavy 2, the game would not allow me to progress to Light or Heavy 3, if that makes sense.

As for Shield bashes using the Offhand input, an issue I've run into before is that the block 'attack' entry appears to supersede anything else that attempts to take its place, which would prevent locating the shield bashes there. Though I agree that would be an interesting place for them, especially if I could set them up properly to block incoming strikes while the attack is being performed.

I should mention that it's been quite a while since I last tried to incorporate either idea, and things may have changed in the interim, so I'll see if it's now possible.

Hey, first of all this is a must have mod in my modlist and one of my favorites. However with the recent update I find the drain of stamina way too high and needs rebalance, right now from the start bow can only be power shoot once since it drains almost 70% of the stamina and even with some points in grit the bow drains stamina on hit which deplets all the bar, making it a impracticable weapon when other weapons can execute full combos and still leave stamina for a roll. However this has also affected the backward dodge which deplets 70% of the stamina as well for the bow.

@Betochas I'll take a look at Bow stamina, I had feedback regarding the Bow dodge costing too much elsewhere as well.

Hey Dread,

First of all, great mod as always. Really glad to see it back, considering it was a staple of my server back in the day.

Secondly, I would like to ask your take on battleaxes and claws.

Before Funcom expanded the battleaxe lineup and gave them a more interesting full moveset, your modification that used maul animations was great. But now that those new, unique animations are available, battleaxes in Glory of Combat feel like they've got no uniqueness, behaving like slightly modified mauls rather than as their own unique weapon class. Maybe incorporating the newer animations from the modern vanilla battleaxe could help make them stick out as a weapon again.

I recall asking this next question back in the day, but don't recall what the answer was: is it all possible to give the battleaxe offhand block to other two-handed weapons? With the ability to block, two handers would become universal, all-in-one weapons, while one handers would have more versatility since you can customize their offhand ability with throwing axes and shields.

I noticed you haven't made any edits to claws/punch daggers, and would like to ask if you had any inclinations to do so. Honestly, I like their style, but in practice they often feel like inferior daggers. Their offhand attack looks like it would be neat as a heavy finisher, and incorporating some unarmed and dagger animations could make them look and perform better. Fist weapons work in both a "monk/martial artist" style of combat and a feral, beastman style like what they used to have. Right now they don't fit in either theme and generally just don't put out as much damage as daggers with even less maneuverability.

Wurm,

I appreciate the feedback.

Regarding 2H Axes, I understand where you're coming from, and I have received similar feedback in the past. I'm not a fan of some of the newer axe animations because, at least to my eyes, the Heavy seem a bit too jerky (the pacing within the animations has a slow-enough setup and fast-enough execution that it doesn't seem quite right). Plus Heavy 4 has a rebound at the end which I don't care for. The Light animations also have a lot of strikes with the handle of the axe, where I'd prefer to see the business end used more.

The current setup, while perhaps uninspired, does fill a niche. 2H Axes are usually very high raw damage with no armor penetration, contrasting with 2H Maces, with lower damage but very high AP. The sweeping Light combo can be very effective at dispatching multiple lightly-armored targets, with a lot of concentrated power in the truncated Heavy combo.

That being said, the internal pacing could be alleviated to some degree with a little work. I have also done some experiments in the past using some of the handle strikes, but have run into issues with the combo progressing properly, however it could be that I was overlooking something. Overall it would require more testing but I could incorporate some of the new animations in the future.

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For blocking, yes I believe the ability to block could be extended to other weapons, particularly 2H Maces. The existing animation is more or less already compatible for Maces, but it might require serious modifications to visually work with Swords and Spears.

For blocking to be recognized, the blueprint for the weapon class has to be adjusted, which would require either 1.) doing quick and dirty edits of the base weapon classes or 2.) making copies of the weapon class BPs and re-assigning every weapon of that type to the new BPs. There may be a third option, but would require more knowledge and expertise on my part.

There are pros and cons to each approach. The base edits are quicker to do and more compatible with mod-added weapons, but has potential compatibility issues with future game updates. Making new classes reduces the risk of issues with future game updates and is technically the more 'correct' approach, but makes switching over DLC items more annoying, and doesn't support mod-added weapons at all.

My personal opinion is that I favor the dirty edit method for mod compatibility, but I don't want to actually do a dirty edit, so I'm holding position until Funcom decides to support weapon-blocking or they stop updating the game altogether.

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On Claws / Punch Daggers / Fist Weapons, I haven't done much work on them for two main reasons. The first is that I don't particularly like them, sorry to say, but the second reason is that the number of animations which could be modified for use with them is rather low. In the past, I have considered giving them the Unarmed animations as a meme.

Somewhere I think I have the old claw animations stowed away, so those could theoretically be used for a more feral variant of the weapon class. I think I even had a mod at some point which reverted the animations.

But for the normal class, you're right I probably should do some work on them. Some animations could be adjusted to perform faster, notifier windows could be adjusted to allow movement earlier in the animation, damage multipliers could be adjusted, and so on. The combos themselves could be adjusted, move the Offhand attack into a transition between Light and Heavy and use something else in Offhand, something like that.

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Hopefully the above wasn't too much of a rambling mess and I explained my positions somewhat coherently. I can look into the Axes and Punch Daggers when I'm working on the next update, whenever that may be. I've been meaning to do a new playthrough in Age of Heroes, but just haven't got around to it.

Thanks again for the feedback!