What in the world is up with my fighting?

[Aeryck 795]

Since returning to the game a month ago, I am completely useless in combat. I used to waltz from encounter to encounter, slaying foes, sometimes many at once. To be fair, I had a fully casted rare Glimmer spear and drake armor. Now I have only a non-rare semi-casted glimmer spear, and 70-80ql plate. But I am getting absolutely mauled in combat. I am doing everything I used to; aggressive stance, proper height, distance, moves, focusing, defending direction enemy is attacking. Tonight I got attacked by a bear on my deed and nearly died. I had to retreat inside and change to my spear, and even then I missed my attack 6 times in a row and REALLY almost died. My skills and log are below. What am I missing? What could be causing this horrible fighting?

 

 

https://niarja.com/universes/online/clusters/freedom/skills/Aeryck

 

Spoiler

[22:15:11] Old greenish brown bear moves in to attack you.
[22:15:13] Old greenish brown bear tries to move into position to target your left parts.
[22:15:15] Old greenish brown bear targets your left parts.
[22:15:16] You miss with the right hand.
[22:15:17] Old greenish brown bear tries to move into position to target your lower right parts.
[22:15:18] Old greenish brown bear targets your lower right parts.
[22:15:20] Old greenish brown bear mauls you extremely hard in the right thigh and harms it.
[22:15:21] You miss with the sickle.
[22:15:22] The attack to the right thigh glances off your armour.
[22:15:25] You cut old greenish brown bear very hard in the stomach and harm it.
[22:15:25] Your weapon causes pain deep inside old greenish brown bear.
[22:15:26] You will now fight aggressively.
[22:15:27] Old greenish brown bear mauls you extremely hard in the right thigh and harms it.
[22:15:28] You aim to push old greenish brown bear over with your shield.
[22:15:32] Old greenish brown bear mauls you extremely hard in the right calf and harms it.
[22:15:32] You cut old greenish brown bear extremely hard in the stomach and damage it.
[22:15:32] Your weapon causes pain deep inside old greenish brown bear.
[22:15:35] You miss with the sickle.
[22:15:38] You miss with the sickle.
[22:15:38] Old greenish brown bear mauls you extremely hard in the right thigh and hurts it.
[22:15:41] You cut old greenish brown bear extremely hard in the stomach and damage it.
[22:15:41] Your weapon causes pain deep inside old greenish brown bear.
[22:15:42] Old greenish brown bear mauls you deadly hard in the right calf and harms it.
[22:15:43] Old greenish brown bear mauls you extremely hard in the right thigh and harms it.
[22:15:44] You cut old greenish brown bear deadly hard in the left thigh and damage it.
[22:15:44] Your weapon causes pain deep inside old greenish brown bear.
[22:15:47] Old greenish brown bear seems to focus.
[22:15:47] You miss with the sickle.
[22:15:48] Old greenish brown bear now seems more focused.
[22:15:50] You easily parry with your sickle.
[22:15:50] Old greenish brown bear mauls you extremely hard in the right thigh and harms it.
[22:15:50] You miss with the sickle.
[22:15:53] You barely evade the blow to the right foot.
[22:15:53] You miss with the sickle.
[22:15:57] You miss with the sickle.
[22:15:59] Old greenish brown bear tries to move into position to target your upper right parts.
[22:16:00] You cut old greenish brown bear extremely hard in the stomach and damage it.
[22:16:00] Your weapon causes pain deep inside old greenish brown bear.
[22:16:01] Old greenish brown bear targets your upper right parts.
[22:16:02] Old greenish brown bear mauls you extremely hard in the right upper arm and harms it.
[22:16:02] A sudden pain hits old greenish brown bear in the same location that she hit you.
[22:16:03] You miss with the sickle.
[22:16:04] Old greenish brown bear tries to move into position to target your lower left parts.
[22:16:06] You miss with the sickle.
[22:16:07] Old greenish brown bear targets your lower left parts.
[22:16:08] You safely parry with your sickle.
[22:16:08] Old greenish brown bear mauls you extremely hard in the left thigh and harms it.
[22:16:09] You miss with the sickle.
[22:16:10] The attack to the left thigh glances off your armour.
[22:16:10] Old greenish brown bear mauls you deadly hard in the left thigh and harms it.
[22:16:11] You barely evade the blow to the left foot.
[22:16:12] You miss with the sickle.
[22:17:23] You try to pierce old greenish brown bear.
[22:17:23] Old greenish brown bear moves in to attack you.
[22:17:27] You miss with the spear.
[22:17:30] Old greenish brown bear mauls you extremely hard in the stomach and harms it.
[22:17:30] You miss with the spear.
[22:17:32] Old greenish brown bear tries to move into position to target your upper left parts.
[22:17:34] You miss with the spear.
[22:17:38] Old greenish brown bear targets your upper left parts.
[22:17:38] You miss with the spear.
[22:17:40] Old greenish brown bear tries to move into position to target your upper center parts.
[22:17:42] You miss with the spear.
[22:17:46] Old greenish brown bear targets your upper center parts.
[22:17:46] You miss with the spear.
[22:17:47] Old greenish brown bear mauls you extremely hard in the head and hurts it.
 

 

Edited August 12, 2022 by Aeryck

[fencejumper 279]

It could have something to do with the 26 sickle skill that you have. While the sickle is viewed as a good weapon, it's not actually a weapon and but will get better with higher skill.

[Tor 313]

Third person view?

[Aeryck 795]

I only occasionally use the sickle. I am working on skilling it and only fight neutral mobs at the moment. I just happened to have it equipped. I still had trouble with this bear with my spear, and usually use my spear.

 

I do use third person view. Does this matter?

[Ekcin 2026]

Do you use defensive fighting? I recall that unintentionally switching from aggressive (initially also normal) stance to defensive made me feel like a noob, combat lasting three or four times longer, damage dealt ridiculous, damage received so huge that I had to retreat and heal up frequently.

 

I learnt from players with high defensive skill, and especially high longsword (blocking weapon) skill in addition, that defensive could work fine under those circumstances so I wont badmouth it. But with low def, and a not well blocking weapon like sickle, it can be a nightmare. I use def with no weapon in hand for tamimg, and to drop food in our house champ goblin pen to avoid tragedies😎.

.

Edited August 12, 2022 by Ekcin
typo

[Ohana 894]

It's a greenish bear. That makes it almost as hard as a champion. For the fight you pasted, you where using your sickle at low skill.

 

[Aeryck 795]

Even when using Agressive I have problems. One troll takes me to half health.

 

After switching to Spear I missed 6 times in a row. People used to say that wearing a backpack lowers CR. Is this correct?

[Tor 313]

47 minutes ago, Aeryck said:

I do use third person view. Does this matter?

 

It probably aren't facing your opponent in third person view

[Aeryck 795]

Just now, Tor said:

 

It probably aren't facing your opponent in third person view

omg I am going to feel really dumb if this is the problem. I don’t think they had third person when I left. I do tend to pan around and look at stuff while fighting.

[Tigrosaur 30]

Third person view was added with the steam release of wurm in 2020 and brings an undocumented feature that the majority of PvP players know of but is not well known for others:

When in third person view the direction your character is facing at is no longer updated.

 

What this means is if your character last faced north in first person and you switch into third person, your character will forever always be facing north until you go back into first person to manually change it.

 

This may seem super counterintuitive or "bugged" but it actually has a bigger usage in PvP:

In many MMOs the direction your character is facing at is important and wurm is no exception - shield blocking, flanking*, archery, spell casting - they all use the players facing direction.

(* flanking only uses the defending players direction when the defending player is not on a mount, otherwise the mount facing direction)

 

In most 3D MMOs you have two options to rotate your camera - one is to rotate only your camera to look around you (often left-mouse-button) and the other is to rotate your camera together with the facing direction of your character (often right-mouse-button).

In wurm this behavior is achieved by switching back and forth between first person and third person view, so when you are in combat you first go into first person view to face your direct opponent and then switch into third person view if you want to look around you to assess the situation without facing away from your opponent, then back into first person view when you need to recalibrate your facing direction.

 

Arguably this mechanic can be confusing if you don't know about it because when you are in third person view your character seems to turn around and look into the direction of your camera but this is on your side only and not updated / transmitted to the server - other people still see you staring/facing north without any head/body movements.

[Holar 1396]

Low sickle skill and not using a shield with a 1 handed weapon would probably be the culprit. With 83 fight skill and the gear your using shouldn’t get you to half health fighting a greenish bear or regular troll. Put that shield on and fight in 1st person!

[Docterchese 1457]

Also adding another potential factor - plate armour has a low glance rate against "crush" type attacks (which I think includes mauling). I noticed something could be up with your armour as the greenish bear was hitting you pretty hard even with characteristics and FS similar to my char: [22:15:20] Old greenish brown bear mauls you extremely hard in the right thigh and harms it.

 

You may be better off switching to studded leather for PvE, as it has a better glance rate against "crush" attacks, in fact almost double the glance rate of plate - which I think you generally see from the most dangerous PvE mobs (trolls) while also having a better movement rate and only being a tiny bit weaker than plate (62.5% base damage reduction vs. 65% for plate). https://www.wurmpedia.com/index.php/Armour

 

I haven't PvP'd in a long time so my knowledge might be really off, but I believe plate sees more use in PvP (when dragon armour isn't available) mostly because it has better glance rates against "pierce" attacks (i.e. swords), of which swords are a very common PvP weapon. However, that attack type is much less common in PvE.

 

 

[Merc 54]

Switch to normal fighting mode when using the sickle as aggressive doesn't really offer it a bonus due to being at swing speed cap. Never use third person while in combat. Dump Essence Drain as it's a bad enchant in general, the worst of both worlds. The absolute best enchant for PvE is Venom as it does not glance against enemy armour (this does not apply to unique mobs however). Another good alternative is Bloodthirst + Acid Imbue, though the damage will take a while to ramp up as you work your way towards 10k Bloodthirst. Rely on cotton and passive regeneration to heal yourself, do not use LT as it is a crutch.

 

If you don't have drake anymore, invest in a chain set. It's an alternative to studded leather and will offer you much more protection in combat for a small movement speed penalty, which is irrelevant if you are mounted anyway.

Plate on the other hand takes much more damage meaning more frequent imps required, doesn't offer much more DR, is way heavier, and as the poster above stated, the most dangerous mobs you'll face usually do mauling damage anyway which is what plate armour is weak against. For enchants, avoid AoSP as it does minimal damage to mobs. Instead, use Web Armour as it will slow down enemy attack speed when they hit you, meaning you take less damage for the duration of the fight. Start using a shield with the sickle. Once you've got a decent shield skill you'll take way less damage. Any shield is fine for PvE.

[Aeryck 795]

So much thanks to everyone. I think the camera is going to be the biggest culprit.

 

I’ll get a suit if leather and mail too and see which I like. I should say that I have Utaccha Slime as well, so that’s not helping with the Bashing mobs. Hoping to get the counter tome at some time to balance it out.