The combat is killing me... literally

[Tessrana]

I am new to the game (but not new to action-combat systems like this in general) and in the moment I am confronted with how utter trash and unfair the combat is.

(note: I play without lock on because that is disabled on the private server I am playing on. And I can ony play in 3rd person because of Motion Sickness)
My problems in bullet points:
- stun resistence on enemies after 3 hits. I know that is for balancing and would be ok if it were not for the fact that:
- enemies seems to have infinite stamina and will run and attack without pause
- enemies are attack-sliding into me like fricking homing missiles from every angle in a 180 degree radius, making repositioning sideways and backing away totally useless (they have clearly lock on themselves)
- enemy attacks are hitting me without even physically connecting (last one was a croco biting the air half a meter away from me)
-some attacks seems to hit me in an animation where the attack is not even going on yet (noticed especially on enemies with hammers)

in the meantime:
- I as the player can be stunlocked into oblivion. with no way to get ot of there.
- I have very limited stamina and nearly no time to regenerate it inmidst the battle because the enemy does not stop charging at me. Plus stamina regenerations seems to be slowed down in combat.
- roll has no iframes and the distance is abysmal, plus the end of the roll is extremely slow, in which the enmies cross the distance from the roll already
- even if I gained enough distance for example through the dual blade backjump, the enemy hit me regardless because of either attack-sliding or the abysmal large hitbox.
- blocking might be useful but doubles down on the stamina problem

I have tried different weapons so far (s&s, pike, daggers, 2H clubs)
The daggers are generally good at single targets, but very bad against multible enemies because of short range and the hitbox and attack-sliding problems apply in both cases anyway

S&S is good... until your stamina runs out or your shield breaks, then you are dead.
And that happens fast. And as long as the enemy does not use gaurdbreaking attacks.

2H club is slow, holding you in place and has limited reach.

Pike seems to be very good at multiple enemies... until they come to close and you cannot hit them any more. Also no means to gain distance again because you cannot get away from enemies once they have closed in on you, because even if you turn heel, and run, they will stick to you like glue.

I have no idea how to fight anything besides crocos at this point.

[annatar3]

1. Try 1hAxe+shield. I think it will be better with given circumstances
2. Find server with target lock enabled.

[DarkFire]

A couple of suggestions:

1. Don't bother with lock-on. Not using it takes a bit of getting used to but eventually you'll find that it's a crutch and that not using it offers more freedom to target different enemies during a fight.

2. No matter what gear you have or what level you are, getting in to combat with many enemies at the same time is a serious problem. There are a few areas where it can't really be avoided but most of the time try to aggro 1 or at most 2 enemies at once - this makes fighting much more manageable, especially if you're still in the process of levelling and have low overall stamina and / or armour.

3. A shield can be your best friend. Some enemies will suffer a short stun if you block their attack with your shield, giving you time to get in a few light attacks, a heavy attack or even a combo. I'd recommend using a shield & mace or shield & axe. Both offer good combinations of light & heavy attacks with the benefit of being able to block when necessary.

4. Once you get used to how the various enemy types attack you'll see that most of them telegraph a strong attack which you can avoid by simply sidestepping out of the way. Once they start their wind-up they won't stop if you move to the side. This does however rely on only fighting 1-on-1 or 1-on-2 at most. Getting mobbed is usually a recipe for disaster under any circumstances.

[Dread Swoop]

Stagger effects are separated into two main categories: stumbles and stuns. Most attacks have stumbles tied to them, which can interrupt attacks / movement, however stumbles can be broken by dodging during the animation. Stuns come with the same effects as stumbles, but cannot be broken by dodges, but they tend to be much less used, though I would argue still too much (especially watch out for two-handed maces). And it should be pointed out that Funcom has said that stagger resistance for NPCs will be removed in Age of War, which you can interpret how you'd like.

For enemies landing unfair hits, I'll say that from my time adjusting animations for mods that Funcom left in a 'generous' amount of wiggle-room for enemy hitboxes, some of which don't bear resemblance to the attacks which they're tied to. I've supplied pictures in the past of examples of this, but I got the sense that doing so is verboten, so I won't for now.

[Xevyr]

My problems in bullet points:
- stun resistence on enemies after 3 hits. I know that is for balancing and would be ok if it were not for the fact that:

More like 8

- enemies seems to have infinite stamina and will run and attack without pause

They often take very long pauses at the end of their attack animations to account for that.

- enemies are attack-sliding into me like fricking homing missiles from every angle in a 180 degree radius, making repositioning sideways and backing away totally useless (they have clearly lock on themselves)

No.. :) I'm not sure what you mean by "attack-sliding", maybe they have 1h swords and using the heavy opener that has a short dash?... otherwise it's not a thing.

- enemy attacks are hitting me without even physically connecting (last one was a croco biting the air half a meter away from me)

Yes, the attack collisions of creatures isn't lined up with their actual teeth lol.. but it's a really safe bet that if you're infront of them when they do a fronal attack, you'll get hit. So don't be infront of them.

-some attacks seems to hit me in an animation where the attack is not even going on yet (noticed especially on enemies with hammers)

Not sure I'm understanding this correctly, but if so... The game has something called Hyper Armor. It's a combat state toggle and it happens briefly during attacks. Various weapons have different lengths of hyper armor windows during their attack animations.
Whenever you or an enemy has hyper armor, it means they cannot be staggered or knocked down in any way and they'll continue their attack that was in progress.

Maces for example have a pretty long window on heavy openers and finishers, which makes it a really bad idea to try and stunlock an enemy that just started a mace heavy opener.

War-axe heavy attacks also have a really good hyper armor window on them, which makes them an excellent player weapon against crowds, especially since the heavy finisher knocks everybody down around you.

in the meantime:
- I as the player can be stunlocked into oblivion. with no way to get ot of there.

You can actually very easily dodge out of stunlocks if you got caught

- I have very limited stamina and nearly no time to regenerate it inmidst the battle because the enemy does not stop charging at me. Plus stamina regenerations seems to be slowed down in combat.

This is just lack of experience with the combat system. You're probably stressing too much and overusing your stamina. You can pretty much delay any fight by walking in a semi-circle and regenerating stamina easily while avoiding all attacks, since enemy attacks are mostly linear, so walking in an arc or side-stepping pretty much auto-avoids them :P

- roll has no iframes and the distance is abysmal, plus the end of the roll is extremely slow, in which the enmies cross the distance from the roll already

Not true, in fact it's not even frames.. it's a very generous 0.35 second window where you're completely immune to all damage.
I have a feeling you might be carrying way more stuff than you should be... Dodge is heavily impacted by the amount of weight you're carrying, especially the recovery phase at the end: https://conanexiles.fandom.com/wiki/Dodge

- even if I gained enough distance for example through the dual blade backjump, the enemy hit me regardless because of either attack-sliding or the abysmal large hitbox.

If you do it before they reach you then not really, though that move isn't very useful against NPCs since it's linear and thus in line with their attacks if they're running towards you.. by the time you recover from it they usually catch up, unless you do more flips in a row, but it's not very useful vs NPCs.

- blocking might be useful but doubles down on the stamina problem

Blocking can be very useful indeed, though not at early levels.. It's still useful, but while you're blocking you can't really do much unless you find a window to retaliate. If you have a thrall with you though, it becomes much more powerful since if you decided to block an attack, your thrall can still attack the enemy in the meantime.

Overall the combat system is actually pretty decent once you get used to it.

Here's a silly example of me fighting the Tortured King with a spear :D :D (it was a challenge, normally you'd never want to do this since the spear has one of the worst damage in PvE so it took forever), but you can see how you can bait even fairly fast attacks and then side-step, this works on pretty much any enemy in this game. You can also see the damage immunity during rolls if you time it right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFF8km3XKxU

For PvE I'd recommend war-axes if you use a strength build, or shortsword (for single target) / katana (for multiple enemies) if agility. Daggers are really good for bleeding hard enemies, since you can spend most of the time avoiding and only refresh the bleed stack with a single heavy attack every 8 seconds.

If all else fails, you can just get a really strong thrall and have them do most of the fighting.. there's even an attribute tree to specialize into it, Authority.

Anyway, hope that helps.

[Mike Hawthorne]

I have used a Dragon Ax, Shield, and Dragon Bow, and virtually nothing else for years.
There are very few things that I can't kill with just a few hits, or arrows.

It will take you a while to get there but once you can it works.

For tougher things have a Thrall level 20, you can take out all but the toughest foes between the two of you.

Thralls I equipped with the best weapons and Armour that I can get from killing bosses, because if you use them they wear out and can't be repaired, if they use them they last forever.

If you are early in the game just make sure you take the bad guys on one at a time and remember if you are losing you can outrun almost anything else in the game.

Most of them don't recover their health, runoff, recover and reengage. Especially when capturing high-grade Thralls in the early game.

Once you have a trained Thrall, getting more or better ones is much easier. remember to give them a club and take away their weapon. Put them in heavy armor, and if your health gets low, run off heal and then go back after the target.

It won't be long until the combat will seem really easy.

And for training, Thralls start out with Crocks, remember they get the points even if you do the killing as long as they are following. It will only take a short time to get them to level 7 or 8 then go to the Arena, kill the dead dogs, and raid the village.

You can gain several levels each time you do it until you get up in the teens.
Then just keep killing things until they get to level 20 and start working on another one.

Pretty soon you will have a well-guarded camp.

[Jaq]

Originally posted by Tessrana:

- stun resistence on enemies after 3 hits.

Usually 3 hits on the second combo. If it happens on the first combo they must have caught some blows elsewhere. While it's not that big a deal to work around once you know it's coming, wait 11 more days and it will be gone entirely with the next update. All blows that normally stagger will be guaranteed, except against enemies much larger than you and some undead.

- enemy attacks are hitting me without even physically connecting (last one was a croco biting the air half a meter away from me)

If you mean a giant croc, yeah their oversized hit box has caught me more than once. But now you know you need extra distance with them. Lag/bad ping can also be a factor in these situations.

- I have very limited stamina and nearly no time to regenerate it inmidst the battle because the enemy does not stop charging at me. Plus stamina regenerations seems to be slowed down in combat.

Wait for the update in 11 days and your stamina regen will be greatly buffed, unless...

- roll has no iframes and the distance is abysmal, plus the end of the roll is extremely slow, in which the enmies cross the distance from the roll already

... you're carrying a heavy load, as the above quote suggests. Try taking off your armor, dumping your entire inventory into a chest, and then spamming the dodge button naked with green encumbrance. You'll see a dramatic difference in how fast the dodge is, how fast you recover, how much stamina it costs, and how fast your stamina recovers. And that's going to be even more important after the update in 11 days.

For new players learning to fight, I recommend wearing medium armor lightened with weight reduction and carrying no more than yellow encumbrance. Once you've learned most of the npc attack patterns you'll want to graduate to light armor. Heavy armor is for thralls and players with 20 expertise/20 authority builds who are just going to voyeur while their thrall fights.

Lastly, and I know this is noobish advice but let's just get it out there, remember that your enemies cannot swim and cannot climb. Sometimes you just have to let the NPCs have their victory and retreat. We've all been there, no shame in it, especially when you're still learning. Jumping off the nearest cliff and grabbing the walls as you fall beats respawning at your bed.

[SkeL]

I played this game years ago but now after all the overhaul which supposedly was to make the game better it doesn't feel like it.

Player Health is ridiculously low.

[OgreLeg]

I thought it was just me. I actually went searching for why I was having such a terrible time with the combat. I just came back after a few years off and nothing is the same. Somehow it's worse? Mobs running backwards, archers can't turn while fighting, and (exactly as you said) getting hit constant by things way, way, noticeably way outside my hitbox. If I get killed, my body explodes before the thrall even begins their attack animation.

Roll is crap. Utter and complete crap. Your roll rarely actually evades an attack and even if it does, it takes so long to complete that they just walk up to you and hit you again. Literally 1 mob can swing, you roll but get hit anyway, then the mob saunters over and starts another combo before you're out of your roll animation. It's rough.

Thank god for modders. The mods are the only thing that saved this game for me.

[cattibria]

Changes/fixes are coming to the combat system. I do realize this is a necro thread...

https://youtu.be/h1CpHWPvAB0?si=aeZsEyNi5rOloXlx

"Pretty bad changes" is being polite in my opinion.

[Jaq]

Originally posted by OgreLeg:

I thought it was just me.

It isn't just you, but you gravedug an old thread that isn't relevant to your issues.

Mobs running backwards, archers can't turn while fighting, and (exactly as you said) getting hit constant by things way, way, noticeably way outside my hitbox.

These are all related to a big mis-adjustment with regard to how targetting works, introduced in the update just before the holidays. It is not working as intended and will be fixed. Not soon enough imo, but eventually.

Roll is crap. Utter and complete crap. Your roll rarely actually evades an attack and even if it does, it takes so long to complete that they just walk up to you and hit you again.

This sounds like you might be playing a trash goblin Beast of Burden build. If you wear heavy armor plus carry your house on your back, you don't get to have a worthwhile roll. That part is working as intended. Wear light armor and carry nothing, and you can spam roll non-stop like a lunatic. You do need to roll earlier than it looks like you should need to, at least in the current build. Roll early, roll often, at least until they re-adjust the targeting behavior.

[Macdallan]

Against certain enemies the one handed mace with NO shield works really well - and I say no shield because the shield changes the combos. It's pretty fast and can stagger fairly reliably. One of the attacks can even leg sweep many of the human and humanoid enemies and knock them down. Light, LIght, Heavy, Heavy is my go-to most of the time. I can essentially "stun lock" a lot of enemies by waiting a half second after I finish the combo then re-starting it right away, and that's even if it doesn't knock them down. If it knocks them over it's even better. :D

It also has decent armour penetration so it can do well against heavily armoured opponents - and it can sunder.