The size shield that you uses impacts the MM a great deal. Using a buckler, it's still possible, but hard. Using a tower shield is next to impossible.

Yeah, maybe a buckler, but most of the warriors who use shields use towers. Maybe a second shield (buckler) as an option but...eh...still.

*Mohrgan grins cheerfully*

Having Shield Use modify the penalty would be one interesting option. Definitely not there as implemented, I'm fully 3x at cap.

I also think the UAC is really awesome, in general. Just not for a shield using warrior in plate. I'd be interested in hearing from THW/Brawling warriors with lots of dodge how using Voln Fu with the UAC works, since I assume they are wearing plate too.

*Mohrgan grins cheerfully*

As a capped sorcerer with 0 ranks in brawling and CM, I can jab a rolton with a medium shield....jes sayen!

R>jab def
You attempt to jab a spectral triton defender!
Your attack is hindered by holding a golden vultite maul!
You have good positioning against a spectral triton defender.
UAF: 605 vs UDF: 517 = 1.170 * MM: 36 + d100: 49 = 91
A close miss!
Roundtime: 3 sec.
R>jab def
You attempt to jab a spectral triton defender!
Your attack is hindered by holding a golden vultite maul!
You have good positioning against a spectral triton defender.
UAF: 605 vs UDF: 517 = 1.170 * MM: 34 + d100: 56 = 95
A close miss!
Roundtime: 3 sec.

R>jab
You attempt to jab a spectral triton defender!
Your attack is hindered by holding a vultite katana!
You have decent positioning against a spectral triton defender.
UAF: 605 vs UDF: 517 = 1.170 * MM: 34 + d100: 64 = 103
... and hit for 1 point of damage!
Ineffectual strike knocks a wisp of ether from the triton defender's right arm.
Roundtime: 3 sec.

>jab
You attempt to jab a spectral triton defender!
Your attack is hindered by holding a vultite katana!
You have decent positioning against a spectral triton defender.
UAF: 605 vs UDF: 517 = 1.170 * MM: 33 + d100: 15 = 53
A close miss!
Roundtime: 3 sec.

That is with a THW in hand

R>jab def
You make a precise attempt to jab a spectral triton defender!
You have good positioning against a spectral triton defender.
UAF: 597 vs UDF: 481 = 1.241 * MM: 81 + d100: 49 = 149
... and hit for 4 points of damage!
Quick strike rips left arm open!
To your dismay it quickly closes on its own.
Strike leaves foe vulnerable to a followup kick attack!
Roundtime: 4 sec.

>kick
You make a precise attempt to kick a spectral triton defender!
You have decent positioning against a spectral triton defender.
UAF: 597 vs UDF: 440 = 1.356 * MM: 99 + d100: 100 = 234
... and hit for 45 points of damage!
Light strike to the triton defender's head.
A wisp of vapor trickles earthward.
Roundtime: 6 sec.

R>smite
You make a precise attempt to smite a spectral triton defender!
You have decent positioning against a spectral triton defender.
Your arm and fist briefly glow silver with holy power!
UAF: 597 vs UDF: 440 = 1.356 * MM: 89 + d100: 32 = 152
A crimson mist suddenly surrounds the triton defender as she is unwillingly drawn into the corporeal plane!
Roundtime: 5 sec.

>kick neck
You make a precise attempt to kick a spectral triton defender!
You have decent positioning against a spectral triton defender.
UAF: 597 vs UDF: 501 = 1.191 * MM: 85 + d100: 88 = 189
... and hit for 34 points of damage!
The triton defender glares maliciously as the strike slides through its right hand.
You hear a sound like a weeping child as a white glow separates itself from the triton defender's body as it rises, disappearing into the heavens.
The spectral form of the triton defender tenses in agony as she begins to dissolve from the bottom up!
Roundtime: 6 sec.

That is bare handed. You'll notice the difference in the MMs. I also don't have any enchanted gear to increase my UAF which would help. I did pull off one crit kill on a defender, the system has some quirks that will take a bit of getting used to. For me, I may use it to set up defenders for a head strike, but I don't see me using it to actually kill them. I also lose 50 DS putting away my weapon, my DS still isn't bad in offensive, but the loss of DS is certainly noticeable.

Some of those clips people look like they are aiming while not intending to.

>kick
You make a precise attempt to kick a spectral triton defender!

You have to set your aim location to random in order not to aim. "precise" in the messaging indicates it was aimed and you take the usual RT penalty for aiming.

My opinion from my beta testing was that it would kill the sword/board/brawl style for squares. I think its been tweaked to be even worse since then, possibly in an attempt to make it unviable for pures and magical semis to UAC with shield too and not just kill it for warriors.

I haven't decided yet whether to give up brawling, Voln, or retire the character, but the build is dead.

It seems entirely reasonable that grappling would be a problem, but you should be able to punch or kick with a shield in one hand, and kick with a THW. In both cases there should be a penalty, but it shouldn't be so bad as to make it virtually unviable. Punching with a THW in hand never really made sense, nice or not.

The same goes for armor. A penalty for plate makes sense, but this is a fantasy land, we do a lot of things in heavy armor that aren't all that possible in reality. Any penalty should be small.

Kerl

It seems excessive only if you still think of unarmed combat as what it used to be, a special attack. Now its been moved to be an actual combat style instead of just an added benny you can train. Being able to use it with a shield would be like being able to use archery with a shield.

You can still do the Voln OHE/Shield/Brawling path but you aren't going to be what you were before, actually just a OHE/Shield warrior with a mechanics bypassing special attack against undead. Now you are a geniune multi discipline warrior build like all the non-Voln types. You can successfully use both of your combat styles seperately but you'll have to make actual trade offs now.

This means that you can't specialize your other training, especially your cman's to just min/max your ohe/shield build. Now you'll need to spread it out to cover the unarmed combat build as well, just like you would if you were a non-Voln brawling style user. This applies to equipment as well.

Give it some time and think of it that way, as you would if you picked up a second combat style. The other thing to keep in mind is we also don't have the UCS gear available which will add directly to your UAF and parry as well as add in flares. That's another big benefit, your UCS gear at step 8 Voln is now permablessed.

I know its not what anyone wants to hear and I sympathize. I'm not posting this to dump on anyone's concerns, but I just wanted to give an outside perspective on it. Its not as bad as it looks at first pass. Hope it helps.

>You can still do the Voln OHE/Shield/Brawling path but you aren't going to be what you were before, actually just a OHE/Shield warrior with a mechanics bypassing special attack against undead. Now you are a geniune multi discipline warrior build like all the non-Voln types.

You can't still do this. The UAC is a two handed system. Previously brawl was a one handed system. If your previous build was based on TWC or THW then its not a big deal, but if it was based on shield you are stuffed.

>It seems entirely reasonable that grappling would be a problem, but you should be able to punch or kick with a shield in one hand, and kick with a THW. In both cases there should be a penalty, but it shouldn't be so bad as to make it virtually unviable. Punching with a THW in hand never really made sense, nice or not.--Kerl

A fix along these lines would make me pretty happy with everything. The shield penalty (or perhaps the "not both hands open" penalty--I also have a warrior who uses polearms, but I have not tried anything with him yet) is what is really killing this change for me. So much of it is good. This one fix that Kerl suggested would make me extremely happy.

--David

"At a moment like this, I can't help but wonder, 'What would Jimmy Buffett do?'"

>However I'm not too sure, because what other secondary combat style would be better?

Hurling. If it ever gets fixed, or if you have the right toy. Otherwise just switching between weapons, because there isn't another secondary style any more. Brawling used to provide a special attack for one and two handed use. It now only provides a special attack for two handed use.

Even with the 3x dodge it isn't worth the trouble, maybe if you had TWC to go along with it to get the DS from using an offhanded weapon but that is a lot of training just to be able to use a secondary attack skill. And it seems wrong to me that a warrior would have to go through all that when that is supposed to be our thing. I'll still keep the brawling for the reasons that Roblar mentioned, but as it is now it wouldn't be of much use to me while hunting like level. Someone posted it in the unarmed combat folder, and while they could have been a bit nicer about it I do agree with what was said. They could have brought the system to be more inline with current game play without wrecking it for so many people. Instead they worry about making it not so overpowered when that should be the goal, with the need for tiering up it still wouldn't match the speed of archery or casting but it would have more general use. Also seems silly to me because they've essentially created a system that will be used solely by one profession with the exception of people who are far enough post cap that such restrictions no longer matter.

We're considering changes to held item penalties. I was probably overzealous in increasing them after feedback from the beta indicated that the previous penalties barely had an effect.

I'm THW user (though, I used to do OHE/Shield/Brawling Voln with my character before I converted) and I always 2X dodging and brawling, so I find the new system to be more effective. There are some downsides. Here are my thoughts...

I miss throw because it had a better guarantee of getting something prone, but grapple does way more damage and stuns more frequently. Partly because of no throw, UAC is not as good against non-corporeal undead. There's not enough chance for a knockdown or stun and you don't seem to do enough damage if you try to tier up your jabs, so you just spam punch. Smite is useless. Its duration is not even long enough to hit something, let alone kill it. I also don't use kick as much unless I'm tiered up to it since it's a 5 sec RT and I figure I might as well use a claidhmore/two-handesword/whatever for the same RT.

In general, the system works better for me. I've been doing more damage and more crits than I used to and I kill things quicker. It's very easy to get something stunned before it can hit me and then just tear it to pieces. Of course, I was already kind of built around the system, so it makes sense that it would work for me. It sucks that the OHE 1X brawling build is useless and even a 2X build seems pointless unless for RP reasons. Voln fu used to be cool in that it was so versatile. It was sort of more of a secondary or utility skill, but you could work a lot of good gimmicks with it. Way back in GS3, I had a friend who was level 12 or something and used to put on full plate, rub a haste medallion, and just punch tomb wights to death. He'd be fried in a minute. Anyway, now it's more of an all or nothing thing. I think that, for someone like me who is trained better for it, UAC is a good replacement for voln fu. In general, however, it seems voln fu is gone and UAC is something completely different. It's definitely a different way of fighting. To use an example: with voln fu I used to always open with a throw and then use punches, kicks, or weapons. With this I always start with a jab or a punch and I'm not limited to undead. Still mostly stick with the claidhmore for the living.

Geijon is still built as a 3 weapon user. I haven't played with UAC enough to add it into my combat much as most Warriors Feint, Neck/Head crit with mauls nowdays, and I'm no different, but posts like these are helpful and I'm a pretty consistant forum reader.

-G

It's hard to train a warrior wrong; armor, shield, and a couple of weapon types. (THW plus OHE/brawling/shield lets you switch back and forth, so you can use a shield for better DS (and shield bash!) or go for inflicting heavy damage, whichever the scenario calls for).

The bells of Hell
go ting-a-ling-a-ling
for you but not for me

>Myself, I'd see if you could push for bucklers at least to be classified as a crushing-type brawling weapon for purposes of the UAC. It makes logical and game-balance sense to me.

- Metadi, the punny one<

I know I'm a little late to the party with this reply, but I wanted to re-address this issue. I've been advocating the use of a shield to be used as a weapon for quite a few years now. Especially for a warrior, fully trained in: Sheild Use, Brawling, Two Weapon Combat, and Combat Manuvers...I don't understand why a small or medium sized shield couldn't be implemented as an off-hand weapon? Add 1-3 seconds RT according to training, and use it like any other two weapon swinging build. Historically I would say there's more than enough evidence supporting the fact that shields were implemented not only as defensive tools, but offensive weapons as well.

I remember I really wanted to see some kind of in game change that gave shields some offensive properties after watching "300", lol! But it was awesome to see them recreate spartans using their shields so effectively, both defensively and especially offensively! I'm not saying adopt shields as a brawling weapon, but we should still be able to use them as a weapon, IMO it would defintely breathe some desperately needed life back into the sword and board builds...