For context I’m a veteran souls player, every game of FromSofts I have maxed achievements on, difficulty and achievement therein are my jam. I tend to play mages and battle mages in these games. Heavy armor and spells, and then dabble into martial skills. And if I’m going to play martial weapons I like them big, I’m not a dagger and bow kind of player.
The souls series had a good idea with “fat rolling” in that it limited your ability to slap on the best armor and just face tank some things, but after awhile it got watered down with the constant changes to poise and fashion and armor caps to being meaningless.
Wicked here is the first game I’ve noticed that takes armor seriously, it reduces your damage significantly. But do you know what’s better than mitigating damage? NOT TAKING DAMAGE in the first place. This is why light and medium rolling always takes the forefront in these games. Iframes>armor. Because of this I’m always forced out of my plate armor to be successful.
Wicked does a lot of things right here, being able to augment down equipment weight is great, and barge like monster hunter and now DD2 is an useful skill, BUT I must say the investment gap is WAAAAAAY too high. My highest stat right now is equip load and I can barely wear full mesh. This investment slows the game down as I can’t armor down a bosses health, I have to attack. Barge as it stands consumed way too much stamina to employ effectively.
My suggestions, TLDR;
Heavy armor is useless in any game as not taking damage by mobility is always better than mitigating damage.
Heavy armor feels meaningful in the game for the amount of damage it is able to mitigate, but the investment to utilize it is way too high given you can’t kill something with defensive stats (unless you make a thorns build, but then why?)
Fat rolling should be completely removed and instead replaced with a diminishing return system. Much like light rolling to medium rolling, “heavy” rolling should be a small side step that happens semi quickly with lower iframes and severely less distance traveled than its competitors. What plate wearing knight would throw himself to the ground to roll? Quick side step that takes more stamina just makes more sense.
Barge needs a serious stamina reduction in cost. You can essentially use it once and then you have a sliver to heavy attack once and then be out of stamina yourself, or you use it as a pause to refill your stamina and watching your opponent go unpunished.
I’m loving the game so far and would love to finally see a game like this give heavy armor preference users rewarded for their play style.