Weapon balancing

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#1

I am working on a fighting game inspired by criminality (the old public dev server version that was taken down a few years ago, not current version) and combat warriors, I am currently on the topic of weapon balance and I wanted to take a slightly different approach.

The idea I have in mind is 3 weapon classes, light, heavy, and hybrid. Light is fast swinging weapons with smaller hitboxes and less damage, Heavy is harder hitting weapons with larger hitboxes but slower attacks, and hybrid is a combination of the two. Very much inspired by combat warriors, but I am trying to incentivize experimentation with the different weapon classes, I do not want every player to only pick hybrid weapons. So I was thinking of having more upsides and downsides for light and heavy weapons and have them be a bit more favoring towards a specific playstyle, and hybrids will be a bit of everything and be more reliable and consistent but a bit more boring to use.

Does anyone know of any interesting effects and sort that light and heavy weapons could have? Cause I am struggling for ideas.

#2

Light:

  • A quick slash attack that makes the player jolt forward while dealing low-medium damage. The cooldown will be lower than the heavy.

  • A spin attack that deals damage all around the player with lowered walkspeed and medium cooldown.

Heavy:

  • A high damage smash attack that deals very high AoE damage, but the players’ movespeed would be lowered dramatically. The cooldown will be higher than the light.
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#3

What i think:

Light weapons :

Fast Attack Speed
Better Mobility
Low Damage
Bonus: Sprint Hability
Can outspeed very well
Damaging an armored foe will do 50% less damage
( or 0 Damage depending on where the user is hitting )


Heavy:
Slow Attack Speed
Slow Mobility
Great Damage
Larger hitbox (Area effect?)
Bonus: When hit, increase defense or some Status ( for a few seconds)
1. Good for crowd control (Area Effect)
2. Does more damage to Heavy armored foes
3. Sometimes the user can miss because fast wielders 
can kite your attack
4. Can break the armor of the user
5. Extra but overpowered (Can kill instantly if hit on the head lol)

Hybrid:
Normal Attack Speed
Normal Mobility
Normal Attack
Normal hitbox
Bonus: Below
1. Depending on the weapon the user wield, he will get some extra effects:
Spear: You can thrown the spear and pick it up later, however, others users can take your Spear (optional)

2. Sword: Can make a spin attack, dealing 2x damage, but making your Mobility slow while spinning while making you very vulnerable to Heavy wielders
(And fast wielders will kite you easily)

3. Rapier: Deal even lesser damage, but your Mobility will be 2x faster
making the user very hard to hit

--Others weapons can be added, but for now i'll end here
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