Warrior Combo Changes. (Horizontal/Vertical)

Suggestions
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#1

So my biggest suggestion is thus: Make combos vertical/horizontal instead of specific directions and I’ll explain why I think this is a worthwhile change.

Firstly, repetitive motions / tedium / monotony: The fairly sweeping gestures of the warrior even if you’re just flicking provoke through a shield for 2 hours isn’t just mind numbing, it’s unreliable given the janky hitboxes of anything bigger than a twig. It seems like all enemies just use basic capsule hitboxes which makes every encounter an awkward dance of “how far do I need to be for all these awkward upswings to not bug out as horizontal swings - but not so far that my hits just phase through the bosses’ arms”

Making it so people can move fluidly and switch up how they execute their combos (We only have 4 combos and only use 2 of them anyway) would be a great boon for an already somewhat physically demanding class.

Secondly, it’s a creative outlet. Each class has various approaches, whether it’s runemages with their various “shortcuts” the 5 rangers out there using the pitiful Rapidity style, or what orbs Musketeers bring, whatever. Warriors are kinda just pidgeonholed into “LRU” for 2 hours whether they flick it through their shield or not or use actual swings. The fact the flicking through your shield rapidly for provoke is better than charging it is probably against the design philosophy of the devs as it is but this would mean we can have our own style whether we’re left or right handed, or just want to lessen the strain on our arms after an hour or two of playing. Changing it from 4 vectors to 2 wouldn’t even interfere with players who like the system fine as it is now / rely on muscle memory to execute combos.

Lastly, there’s only 4 combos. LRU, LULR, RUUL, URLU.
What’s important is that these combos already work with this proposed change. None of the combos in the game would interfere with each other with this system, and there’s even room for another combo if devs wanted to add one (like say, the interrupt suggestion in another thread.)

Provoke -> LRU -> Horizontal, Horizontal, Vertical
Wound -> LULR -> H,V,H,H
Cleave -> RUUL -> H,V,V,H
Hamstring -> URLU -> V,H,H,V

TLDR: Do away with the absurdly awkward and mostly janky upswings along with the extremely tedious/repetitive combo system and replace the 4 directions with simply vertical or horizontal swings so warriors can lessen some of the strain and show a little style in their fights.

edited to get rid of a bunch of unnecessary exposition and focus on the main suggestion / topic.

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#2

When I kite it’s pretty useful

To get this right, you want to the left right up and make it anything that has two horizontal swings with anything that has a vertical swing? I feel like that would have far too much interference and few experienced warriors would want to change because the muscle memory is already there.

Well, you can. Just charge your combo and don’t use it until the next mob if that’s what you’re looking for. And if you’re level 30, it automatically charges it for you. Either way if you’re fast enough spamming your combos instead of charging is much more effective.

Another thing about choosing when to use it, I would have to press the trigger to use my combo every 5 or so seconds and if I understood it right I’d be sword rushing/possibly using my ultimate.

#3

Sword Rush is only when you press the trigger on something already highlighted (at least that’s how it’s worked for me) so holding it during swinging shouldn’t use your rush, your ult is holding both triggers so I could see that being an issue if you’re trying to shield bash mid combo, in which case maybe use the grip instead of the trigger on the sword.

That “muscle memory” doesn’t have to change, the same combos would still work LRU is still effectively two horizontal swings followed by a vertical. As for “interference” I included all the combos in the game currently to showcase that there wouldn’t be any. Provoke is HHV, no other combo starts with that 3 swing combo, it’s HVH(H), HVV(H), or VHH(V).

Most warriors just use Wound (solo) or Provoke (group). I’ve used hamstring and cleave a few times here and there but honestly they’re 4 swings and involve 2 janky af upswings a piece so they’re already incredibly awkward and often unreliable. If we could combine combos like provoke and wound or hamstring and cleave that’d be cool for kiting small groups like the rats in sewers - but that’s outside the scope of this topic.

Even if we ignore the storing charges until you press a button during a swing and just make combos 2 vector instead of 4 vector, I think that’d be a worthwhile change just by itself to alleviate a lot of the repetition and allow for more fluid movements (and perhaps make the class a bit more accessible to left handed people? lol)

#4

How would muscle memory need to change if LRU becomes HHV?

HHV would mean:

LRU
RLU
LRD
RLD

would all work. There would be no issues given the current combos unless they added new combos or changed the combos. (All that would change would be that Down could be used instead of Up and Left and Right could be swapped. This would also make it easier for a newer Left Handed player to learn the controls since they wouldn’t need to be reversed).

I have to say that Hamstring does have very limited usage from what I’ve seen. It does have some uses, but for most encounters, it just isn’t useful enough.

I can see where needing to pull the trigger each time would get annoying though.

#5

Yeah I removed the other suggestion from the post, the big one I want to see implemented is the 2 vector combos instead of 4 vector combos. Makes the class both much less monotonous and a bit more accessible.

#6

Never said it needed to change, I said it wouldn’t be used much

#7

I think it’d still make a difference, it’s obviously up to people using it but new players aren’t gonna be conditioned into flicking the ol’ LRU thousands of times, and left handed or older or whatever the case may be would (hopefully) enjoy being able to move a bit more “proper” or fluid, with the option to change things up a bit during a session or longer dungeon - whatever the case may be. I know I sure would love to have some freedom to change up how I stand there spamming the same 3 short movements for half an hour to an hour at a time lol :confused:

#8

My biggest issue is cleave has a single different swing than wound which may make you get cleave. Again, that interference. If you mess up and get confused you may try and restart provoke and the game will take it as something completely different and no only are you not generating agro, you’re not healing

#9

The system is already pretty janky and doesn’t register up swings as vertical half the time so I kinda get your point there, but I think this would actually alleviate that issue if we’re able to do an over head cut instead.

Also, you’ll know if a combo worked by more than just the audio so if you do a bunch of cuts and get no combo restarting (usually) isn’t an issue if you see where one combo finished or if you accidentally did a different combo or whatever it’s not hard to get your bearings fairly quickly.

If you accidentally wound instead of cleave you’ll definitely know by audio or lack thereof and can just start a new combo just as an example. It wouldn’t be any easier or harder than it is now to get your bearings with your combos and get back in the fight.

#10

80k Rapidity doesn’t sound pitiful to me. In fact, the Rapidity ranger I play with pulls higher DPS than most mages lol

#11

Didn’t use to, but I guess there was the dps rebalance. The point was other classes have a bit of variety or self expression. Play style variance. Warrior just has tank or “less effective tank” with the same combo being spammed the whole time depending on solo or group play lol.

#12

Technically downward swings register as right swings. I used to provoke left, down, up until they added the blessing that would trigger every time I went for a downward swing. I talked with the devs about why they use up swings years ago and they said down was too inconsistent. The natural motion of down for most people is a diagonal and not straight down and the system didn’t register it accurately at all. Maybe it can be changed or at least looked at now, but that was the original reasoning.

Edit: Diagonal down left triggered as a left, so wound would trigger of you did a left up down right with the up down being a disco-move type motion lol. Vertical down = right. Diagonal left = left

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#13

I don’t see why it can’t just be a “pie” split into even sections so if you start from one quadrant and end in another you can easily determine direction :confused:

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#14

I do kind of see why that might be hard (due to weird hitboxes and it could cause problems for players that might do no look swings (I do this if a mob teleports (or moves very quickly) around me), but I do agree that a section based could be nice. Start of swing could be center of a ‘3x3’ grid on movement and it could look at what quadrants the sword moves through. (I say 3x3 in quotations because you would probably want more grid points than that, but 3x3 gives an easy to understand idea of what I’m talking about).

#15

I would LOVE the combos to include diagonal swings. I enjoy hitting on the diagonal, but this doesn’t do nearly so much damage. IRL I imagine that diagonal swings would be as effective as horizontal and vertical ones, so why not include? Also, I would like the combos to make more sense in terms of arm movement. I find the combos feel really awkward as I avoid swinging in a non-combo directions to get my combo in!

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#16

Yea either or, anything’s better than what we have currently lol. Having to jab yourself or awkwardly move backwards to make sure your upswings connect is really dumb. Diagonals typically count as horizontal strikes no matter how close to vertical they are, so it seems like they don’t even take the whole “swing” into account it’s just a “vector at the registered point of impact” which is particularly bad with any kind of lag or the tiniest bit of horizontal movement in any of your swings (which humans are bound to do, particularly on the upswings that are awkward enough without having to be picture perfect)

Make it so you need to hold the trigger to pop the mighty/prot buff when pointing up, and make the combos just horizontal/vertical. Make vertical as forgiving as horizontal is currently. How that works is obviously up to the devs, but since it seems they’re just taking a vector/direction as soon as the sword impacts the hitbox, make it take 2 samples even if it’s just a simple split second delay after the first one - that at least gives you a line you can approximate to the nearest 90°.

#17

I don’t know much about how this game is programmed. If BeatSaber can tell what angle I’m hitting at as well as how close to the center of the block and the correct timing, I assume it’s possible for OrbusVR to also develop that type of specificity??? Maybe?

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#18

They don’t even need all that much, just stop registering everything as horizontal and let us use more fluid movements instead of just torquing our shoulder with hundreds of specifically up swings in every combo. It’d still require skill and practice while letting us move in a way that’s more natural.

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#19

Yeah, I really wish the devs would take a leaf out of BeatSaber’s book though. If you look at Beatsaber’s hit detection and flow and compare it to Bard, Runemage, and Warrior, you can see that Beat Saber really worked hard on their hit detection and flow in comparison (granted, that is a key part of their game unlike Orbus, where you can blame user error for everything).

But look at rhythm games and how usually there is a flow to the actions. In beat saber, you usually will see up down up down in normal mode instead of up up up up. Each beat is designed to bring you to the next. In Osu, many maps are designed where each action leads you to the next point.

In Orbus…
We have Runes where the same action can trigger two different spells if they are even just slightly different (including tracing a spell in the journal).
We have Bards where the beats are just… not fun to listen to and where the notes just seem like generic whacking at random keys instead of feeling like you are actually playing music.
We have Warriors where their hit detection can be iffy at times and where the combos really do not mesh together.

I think it might be too late for Orbus to fix their hit detection though. That is more something you want to fix early in the development cycle because that is usually when it would be easiest to fix instead of waiting for the poor hit detection to be ingrained into the mechanics to fix it.

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#20

If you draw the rune correctly, you’ll get the right spell. Everytime. It’s more difficult than it sounds, but it’s true. Make sure when you trace it from the journal, it’s perfectly perpendicular to the ground. Any angle can mess it up.

It’sa ton of fun lol. Each instrument has a set repeating pattern, and activating the different instruments in different orders gives new tunes. Experienced Bards can even tell what instruments other Bards use just by the tune! If you want to play music you can. There have been plenty of players who play full on songs on the marimba. One more note and we’d get a full scale which would be nice (or a system like LOTRO!), but it’s the first real VRMMO, not a music game.

The detection isn’t an issue for many many players. Like any VR game, it’ll take time to learn the proper muscle memory but you’ll get there if you spend the time :slight_smile: Blade and Sorcery this is not.