Lack of build and party composition diversity has consequences; monoculture is a bitch. If your entire party is hard shut down by disarm that sounds like a you problem.
The enemy desperation attack when they can't do anything else is about as useful as struggle or an untrained tease is.
It's not changing.
I do not ever actually have my party shut down by disarms. I often have Cait in my party, and she stays on her base set purely because it diversifies the damage the party is capable of doing, rather than focusing on support, while still allowing for a dedicated heal, and if I don't she's usually replaced by Atugia, Berwyn, or Etheryn, depending on what I want. Parties should have diversity, but it's still annoying to have your character be effectively shut down while still being told "do something." The "And that's if all of your party is disarmed and also uses weapons (so no spellcaster and the like)" doesn't mean I expect it to happen, that's just where I feel it would be the only scenario in which using tease while disarmed could even get anything done: If everyone can't do anything but tease, than they may burst down an enemy with focused teasing, but outside of that scenario, having a single person disarmed effectively means that the tease is worthless as it's non-physical damage.
The "enemy desperation attack" is about as useful, except for the problem that it presumably deals hp damage, meaning that even if it's a small impact, it's still capable of making an impact. Meanwhile, a disarmed fighter either defends (which is essentially just waiting in terms of actual impact, unless that character happens to get hit by a strong attack on the one turn where they're disarmed), or teases, which does weak damage to resolve, something the party is not even targetting, effectively meaning that all it's useful for there is if the fighter wants to generate a small bit of threat. Having a weak punch while disarmed, which wouldn't do much damage, would still be better as it can have some impact, even if it's tiny.
You know the biggest advantage you have over enemies is that you have access to a truly massive amount of Armor, weapons, Abilities and consumables and you have and array of companions with different skillsets to tackle different enemies. No one build is going to handle every enemy with the same amount of ease some of them will be a struggle for certain builds. But none of them are insurmountable(apart from the bullshit invincible boss fights). you have all the tools you need to win and make the fight less of a pain in the ass, you just have to figure out the best way to use them.
Of course. My teams are never "all warriors" or "all spellcasters." I have diversity in team compositions, to help deal with different situations better. Honestly my issue isn't even that it shuts someone down, stun/prone also does that to every class but I have much more positive feelings about it than disarmed. Because stun/prone completely takes away the ability to act, it moves by smoothly, because I can't do anything anyways so why care? But with disarmed, I dislike it because, on some of the classes/builds (and also on Brint), it is pretty much a stun outside of a couple of ineffectual choices, but you still have to see your turn through.
Preparing equipment and abilities for set encounters in dungeons is fine. But in random encounters, you can't swap out an ability and playstyle after the encounter has begun, and you can't know what that encounter will be before you enter it. This is a relatively small point, but only one random encounter can inflict Silenced, while 4 (maybe more, I'm not sure, I am somewhat basing this off of the wiki and the wiki doesn't have anywhere near everything) can inflict Disarmed. There's still very few compared to the total number of encounters, but that still means that the ability to choose things and change things up for a random encounter is worsened for a weapon user. Also tease-immune enemies only exist in, like, one and a half random encounters, along with a few set encounters and even then usually as a side companion to a tease-vulnerable enemy.
But really, I don't even have a complaint that it makes things difficult for the characters who are most impacted by disarmed. As I said, I just find it incredibly annoying compared to stun (inflicted by 7-8 random encounter enemies, again I'm not sure, this is specifically about the Taothian Mage as I don't know if that's a random encounter enemy or an enemy in a specific place like a dungeon) or Prone (inflicted by 11 enemies in random encounters, though amongst encounter types it's more like 9 random encounters, two of which have two enemy types that can inflict it). And it's pretty much just because my options are severely limited to a few things that I would otherwise never use, and which pretty much don't have any benefit to me, but I still have to pick something. This problem only impacts weapon-based builds, sure, but I don't want to have to respec and swap out several pieces of equipment to deal effective magic damage just so that I don't get annoyed by a disarm done in a quest, particularly since I like to have different characters who are centered around some theme.
Also there's still the problem of non-mage builds being much more impacted by Disarmed and immunities than mage builds are by Silenced. If a game is going to have things to shut down certain builds in certain circumstances, don't make it so unevenly spread.
I don't really get this post in all honesty. It seems like a complaint that the disarm status affects Rangers, Thieves and Warriors more so than other classes, yet that's kind of the entire point. Class / Build diversity is a thing. Just as Rangers, Thieves and Warriors are moreso affected by disarmed, Charmers are more affected by Resolve damage immunities. Except, in that case it's actually more permanent than a semi-frequent annoyance.
And even within your own post did you reference that you can tease (you even implied that a purely physical build that resorts to tease whilst disarmed is actually more casually effective than a tease-centric build...) whilst disarmed. And defending (defend) is a thing too, so the "practically can't [do something]" (for purely physical builds) assertion is a bit weird.
In any case, just because there are currently no (in combat) preventative / restricting status effects on the resolve damage front, and the silence status effect is not more commonplace, doesn't mean it will always be as such. I'd think that your post might be reflective of a bit of recency bias. Sure it can be annoying, but there are definitely other options when one is affected by disarm (consumables, tease - which you even admitted to, defend).
So, it's not just Charmer's or Mages (either kind) that have options - even if they're not affected to the same degree. Mages (both kinds) particularly are semi-reliant (to a degree, attributes help somewhat too) on Catalyst weapons for crit chance / accuracy for their spells, so when they get disarmed they too suffer (to an extent), in any case.
And tbh, even when playing a Charmer a disarm is just as annoying then (no basic attack whilst powers on cd), so it's not like it's a thing that exclusively feels annoying on a specific class, even if the impact is arguably not the same. As seen with the other comparisons within this post, every class / build may be subjected to specific pros / cons, which honestly just makes sense for reaching some level of balance with all the class / build diversity present in-game.
As I said at the end of the last little bit, if you want to use status effects and immunities to promote build/party diversity, spread it out evenly. Mages very rarely ever get impacted by Silenced, and when they do it's only when fighting kitsune so you can prepare for that. Disarmed happens much more often, from varying sources rather than one specific faction. Tease immunities largely only impacts beast or ghost type enemies, and outside of dungeon bosses most of them are honestly pretty weak compared to others, with only a few enemies which aren't of those types (like Sigrune, Benny, or the Arcane Golem) having tease immunity. I may be wrong, but as far as I can tell, that's how it is. So you can usually know about it based on faction for counters to magic and teasing, but disarmed is spread amongst several enemy types
The "implication" came in the form of the first sentence, right? Where I posed that either it's strong enough to not need to build for it, or it's weak enough that you won't have much of an impact. I then immediately followed it up with "I believe that, most of the time, it's the latter." So, you know, I definitely implied that it is when I said that it isn't the case. It's weak enough that most of the time, there isn't a point for an unarmed weapon-user to actually use it.
As for defending, I stand by the idea that it's practically nothing while disarmed. It halves the damage that you take, and in normal combat all that really essentially means is that you took the wait action. It's only really useful if you're at low enough health that one undefended hit will take you out, but a defended hit won't, and the enemy isn't low enough that you could finish them off and not need to worry, so you pick defend so that the healer can heal. In a disarmed situation, the defense isn't a critical/useful strategic tool, its utility is entirely in retaining a status quo rather than making an impact.
In terms of recency bias, I don't think so? It's a negativity bias, not a recency bias. Pretty much all of my recent characters have been Mages and Charmers. I think it's the negativity bias since my main characters from before were a Warrior and a ranged Thief, so I remember the annoyance much more greatly despite how I generally don't experience it now. In regards to tease, I didn't "admit" to it, I talked about how it's pretty much pointless for a weapon-user to use while disarmed. Defend is pretty much the only thing I actually did while disarmed with the weapon users, so of course I know you can do it, but I view it as having very little impact outside of a few situations. And consumables are... Eh? I pretty much never use them, honestly. I have a hoarder's habit. I knew that I could use them while disarmed, but I never thought to because I simply never use consumables. I only use a consumable in a game if it's easily renewable/gatherable and it has a very strong impact. Basically, I only use consumables if they're Estus from Dark Souls, or arrows in the same game. In CoC2, your main source of healing is usually going to be the powers of a dedicated healer or a split support/damage dealer, plus healing items aren't something I have, like, a stack of, so I could know that I have a comfortable enough amount of them.
I know about how Mages get impacted. I did say
White and Black Mages don't rely on their weapons, but they're still a large aspect of the power Mages can utilize.
in the post you're responding to. It's just a much lower impact, so you can still do make your actual attacks, even if they're less effective, rather than having to not attack at all.
For Charmers, yeah, it's annoying when you're not using a tease-based build. I was honestly mostly just thinking about charmers as tease-based, since that's what they excel at, but for support builds, I suppose it's pretty annoying, since that's the passive damage you can contribute. It's not as annoying as not being able to access powers due to the effect, but it is still pretty annoying.
Honestly I don't really want any change. Except for maybe being able to punch while disarmed. Most of what I've written is more just to vent the frustration I felt with the status effect, while trying to rationalize/justify it.
