Tournament enemies are OP

[Duskmare]

Not unbeatable, just over powered compared to both the player character and every other character in the game.

For one the nutcracker perk doesn't matter against them. It just does nothing. I can see why but they could have at least given it some use. Maybe an extra stun or knockback or something instead of a knockout.

Secondly, they have a heck of a lot of health. Henry takes 4-5 hits to the head and he bleeds out (warhammer round) but I hit the enemy in the head 10 times and they're still swinging like nothing's happened.

Thirdly you can't swing at them more than once. I mean, admittedly this is an issue with every enemy in the game but it makes the combos pointless since any followup strikes just end up parried or perfect blocked, usually resulting in you taking damage instead.

[An East Side Guy]

many other people have completed this with out any issue. Maybe its not the game that is the problem.

[times05]

There is a bit of player skill involved, true, but it's not a huge factor. Character stats are much bigger. I lost my first 3 tournaments with sword ~11, strength ~14, defense ~10, mace/axe ~5.

Now though I can consistently win without having to reload (won last 4 tournaments), but my stats are much higher like sword ~ 20, strength ~20, defense 16, mace/axe ~ 10. Maybe last fight I have to really focus, but first 2 unless I don't pay attention I'm pretty much guaranteed to win.

I'm not delusional, I didn't get that much better as a player, but it did get easier because of stats and a few things I learned that work and that don't (like some combos I can almost never do, while others work fairly often).

Just go level up a bit. Sword/mace/axe, defense and strength. I mean there are few others, but those are main.

I found tournament to be decent tutorial on how to fight too, some things I noticed:

- Most enemy attacks I noticed I can just step away from. Not to side. Step back. More so against short weapons.
- Don't let yourself get cornered, can't step away then.
- Those you can't step away from, parry with tapping Q while countering in its direction. Try to get master strike (block and attack at same time). This will quickly become 2nd nature to you, even if successfully guessing attack direction is tricky.
- Don't run out of stamina, EVER, that's when you take most damage
- After you score a few hits I imagine my opponents stamina bar runs low, this is when I keep pressing him with more and more hits as they don't seem to fight back much at that point (must be tired?) Have to be careful to recognize this opportunity.
- Unless the enemy is really on the ropes (as described in previous point) and isn't defending (like most your strikes get through) BACK OFF after 2-3 (max 4) hits.
- (this really should be #1) DO NOT EVER BEGIN ATTACK FROM SAME DIRECTION YOU'VE HELD YOUR SWORD, even if it was for only a second. Like ALWAYS put it in some random direction first, THEN put it in direction you want to attack a split second before you actually attack. In my experience AI nearly always blocks attack if you held your sword in that direction for a little bit, sometimes even master strikes you back for being a newb. Chance seems to be MUCH lower if you trick them thinking you will start attack from one direction, but right before attacking switch direction. (Note: this is only for first attack in combo chain, every attack after first don't try to trick AI).

Combo tips:
- I literally have piece of paper hanging at the bottom of my monitor with all combos separated by weapon type.
- Mace/Axe specials combos almost never work.... like 1 in 10 times for me (maybe I suck? or my skill too low for them?)
- Longsword combos that work ( ^ > / , / * *, and / > * *, maybe on rare occasion * < \) the rest IMHO are absolutely useless.
- Combos will fail in middle, you need to recognize it. If suddenly on 1st or 2nd out of 3 attacks in combo AI counter attacks (OR DODGES) don't bother completing combo, it won't work anyway. Just defend, regain stamina, then start another combo. Each hit in combo MUST connect (either on body or on their block) and can not be interrupted for it to work.
- Watch what combo does what and what weapon type. Don't try to use short sword or hunting sword combo when you have Longsword out. It won't work!
- After successful combo try to get one more strike in immediately after as your opponent is staggering (if that succeeds, do 1 more, but if it fails or gets blocked back off.... as they'll recover quick).

[kth]

No, I found them to be easy. Maybe because I had ~300 hours played before patch with tournament went live. Want to give a few advices and pardon my english.

1) Dont bother with long combos before your enemy runs out of stamina - its a good way to lose the fight. If you try to perform multiple strikes one after another, enemy will just master strike you back. Few good master strikes towards you and cya next week.
2) Easy way #1: If your stats are high enough, you can just corner your opponent and clinch him with performing, for example, strike in his head with an axe/sword/etc after clinch.
3) Easy way #2: play defensive, use master strikes. This advice works for entire game and makes 1v1 combat very easy.

[Jeff]

If you really want to cheese it, force a clinch and then stab once. They are much less likely to perfect block after they are reeling from losing the clinch. You can repeat that as many times as you want.

I also like to stand there and wait for them to attack, and attempt to perfect block or master strike their attack and then do a quick stab after.

Doing a full swing into where they are holding their weapon is what really gets you in trouble. The trick is to be patient and wait for them to decide on a position and attack where they aren't holding their weapon. This way, if you are good at blocking, you can perfect block their counter attack and then repeat until you deplete their stamina and then press the advantage by swinging non-stop at this point. This might be the fastest way to end an opponent.

[theo]

Originally posted by Duskmare:

just over powered compared to both the player character and every other character in the game.

You know you can train, practice, and level your character up, right?

[Duskmare]

All these people assuming I couldn't handle it. I beat the tournament on the second try. I was just surprised at how much health the enemies had. Especially since they're supposed to be using the same equipment. Ironically the last guy, black whatever, was the easiest to beat since the warhammer actually worked on him and went through his head armour.

Plus, making a perk useless is pretty terrible regardless of context.

Like I said before, the last comment was more about all fighting rather than the tournament specifically. It's just a bit silly that you can rarely use combos when they're set up as one of the main combat mechanics.

Anyway, I was mostly just moaning about how much health the enemies had.

Thanks to times05 for the great info though. Lots of good stuff in there. The idea about writing combos beneath the screen is pretty solid. I always forget them when it comes to fighting.

[Lieste]

They don't have any more health than normal - it is you only striking once with a 'properly balanced' weapon set (rather than the utterly fictional St Georges light sabre) which in the vanilla game ticks down stamina which recovers before you hit them again.

If you pressed harder then your second and third hits would disable the opponent fairly reliably.

I disliked the stamina 'armour' - it encourages passivity and causes the effect you think you are seeing of 'huge health pools' - a missed parry with full stamina results in no or limited injury, but after you have attacked, the same error leaves you nearly dead... which is silly. I get bruised just as much (if not perhaps more) if I fail my first parry as if I make the error towards the end of a protracted exchange (especially since a first cut from wide measure is usually a fairly bold attack, and the hit landing from Kreig is often a short-edge tap - though these can still be firm, they are not the same as a wrath-strike). In my WIP modding I have reduced weapon damage considerably (and reduced/mostly eliminated the 'item scaling with levels'), but have got rid of the requirement to drain stamina before wounding. Stamina is still a pool for actions, but isn't protective as armour (or a regenerating pseudo-health pool).

[theSeb]

I struggled with the tournament before both Henry and I traind our combat skills. Now it's quite boring and I am tired of winning. You would think that the sign up chap would know my name by now though. The audience knows my name. I've won it like 40 times.

[Duskmare]

Originally posted by Lieste:

They don't have any more health than normal - it is you only striking once with a 'properly balanced' weapon set (rather than the utterly fictional St Georges light sabre) which in the vanilla game ticks down stamina which recovers before you hit them again.

If you pressed harder then your second and third hits would disable the opponent fairly reliably.

I disliked the stamina 'armour' - it encourages passivity and causes the effect you think you are seeing of 'huge health pools' - a missed parry with full stamina results in no or limited injury, but after you have attacked, the same error leaves you nearly dead... which is silly. I get bruised just as much (if not perhaps more) if I fail my first parry as if I make the error towards the end of a protracted exchange (especially since a first cut from wide measure is usually a fairly bold attack, and the hit landing from Kreig is often a short-edge tap - though these can still be firm, they are not the same as a wrath-strike). In my WIP modding I have reduced weapon damage considerably (and reduced/mostly eliminated the 'item scaling with levels'), but have got rid of the requirement to drain stamina before wounding. Stamina is still a pool for actions, but isn't protective as armour (or a regenerating pseudo-health pool).

Wow this is a really detailed reply. You seem to know a lot about the mechanics behind the game, which is strange because I can't find any information about these things anywhere. The wiki is practically empty.

Maybe that's what it is then. I do remember beating black whatever with 3 hits in a row, so perhaps I'd run him out of stamina and that was what caused it to do so much damage. Every other guy I was using the clinch then head wack technique, so they were spaced out and the enemy could have recovered stamina between them.

Am I right in thinking that master strikes (the parry strikes) ignore the stamina armour? I seemed to take a good amount of damage from them when other normal strikes did almost nothing. I'm on hardcore mode so I could only really tell from the amount of wounding inflicted.

Actually, now that I think about it the 'last gasp' perk doesn't trigger either. It's annoying that the tournament seems to have alternate combat rules where half your learned perks don't apply.

[Lieste]

Master strikes hurt you, because in order to trigger them you have to have made an attack (which consumes some of your stamina (at first, rather a lot, later somewhat less)).

Also the people who masterstrike often, usually have weapons which can simply 'hit through' armour and stamina to a degree, so they *really* hit hard in it's absence. There is no valid reason for swords to be able to cut through armour, and while a 'tickle' is a reasonable compromise to the need to accomplish something (in the absence of control and disarm), the type of 'one hit kill' you see with high levels and the more "light sabre" type swords is misplaced.

[CloudSeeker]

Not really. They have just high end enemies at the end. You can win it early in the game.

[times05]

That's actually a good explanation. Stamina acts as armor, or more accurately regenerative shield. For both you and opponent. It's like regenerative shield in Halo or some similar shooter game. If you shoot each other once every 15 seconds, all you're doing is hitting shield and it regenerates without any damage to actual health.

If you and your opponent trade 1 hit every 10-15 seconds, the fight can last almost FOREVER. Which might seem like health pools are ridiculously high. They're not though.

On master strike you lose a little bit of health (or your opponent), but it's like 1/10th or 1/15th. It's guaranteed damage, but without follow ups it does very little damage on its own. So yeah, you'll kill him, or he'll master strike you to death, but it will take a long time.

Main way to win is really recognizing when your opponent is out of stamina (when their shield is down), this is when they have really hard time blocking and their health drops dramatically on successful hit. You let them recover a bit and their stamina shield will be back up (but not as high as before if their health is damaged, stamina bar only goes up as high as current health after all). Same for you, only take risks when you have stamina, aka only peek out of cover when your shields are up (a 3d shooter analogy).

That's really the main mechanic behind doing damage.

[Duskmare]

Originally posted by times05:

That's actually a good explanation. Stamina acts as armor, or more accurately regenerative shield. For both you and opponent. It's like regenerative shield in Halo or some similar shooter game. If you shoot each other once every 15 seconds, all you're doing is hitting shield and it regenerates without any damage to actual health.

If you and your opponent trade 1 hit every 10-15 seconds, the fight can last almost FOREVER. Which might seem like health pools are ridiculously high. They're not though.

On master strike you lose a little bit of health (or your opponent), but it's like 1/10th or 1/15th. It's guaranteed damage, but without follow ups it does very little damage on its own. So yeah, you'll kill him, or he'll master strike you to death, but it will take a long time.

Main way to win is really recognizing when your opponent is out of stamina (when their shield is down), this is when they have really hard time blocking and their health drops dramatically on successful hit. You let them recover a bit and their stamina shield will be back up (but not as high as before if their health is damaged, stamina bar only goes up as high as current health after all). Same for you, only take risks when you have stamina, aka only peek out of cover when your shields are up (a 3d shooter analogy).

That's really the main mechanic behind doing damage.

I forgot all about the stamina only going as high as health thing because I'm missing the HUD. Oups, haha. Thanks for the reminder!

[WizardOfCause]

I've been playing this tourney for weeks and have found that the second and third opponents do seem overpowered. They win every clinch no matter what. I can land a series of strikes in succession and even knock them into a corner and they'll take no damage as a result. Meanwhile a simple shift and stab on their part does me in right away. This is probably the most frustrating part of this game.

[psychotron666]

Originally posted by WizardOfCause:

I've been playing this tourney for weeks and have found that the second and third opponents do seem overpowered. They win every clinch no matter what. I can land a series of strikes in succession and even knock them into a corner and they'll take no damage as a result. Meanwhile a simple shift and stab on their part does me in right away. This is probably the most frustrating part of this game.

Huh. My first attempt at like level 3 (didn't even have perfect blocks unlocked yet) I won one round against the first guy then lost twice in a row. Then my second attempt at like level 6 or something I made it all the way to the last guy and even won the first round and barely lost the second round to be defeated in the third.

They may be tough, but they aren't that tough. They are supposed to be the best fighters around, and it's a dlc so was likely made for more content of people who were in the end game, so made for late game if not end game players.

If anything it gives you good training, my first attempt I gained like 8 levels in various skills in the first fight, it was well worth the 60 bucks