Teutogen Guard animation issue

I believe I've identified the issue with Teutogen Guard's animations. Or rather with one animation. The issue appears to be the impact position for attack\_1 is placed such that it is behind the TG model at the end of the swing.


As you can see above the Wolf-Kin ends this attack with the impact zone roughly in line with the weapons final position.


The Teutogen Guard on the other hand have the impact zone behind where their weapon ends it's swing which I believe is the primary source of the unit's issues. Additionally it appears the splash cone is a bit too far back. I took the liberty of making a mod to test the impact of shifting the impact position and then both the impact position and the cone to better reflect the guards end position.


Now in testing the difference is pretty mild, but combats end 10+ seconds faster on average which suggests a notable improvement in damage output. However the results are pretty variable which makes sense given the RNG involved in both MA/MD rolls and animations selection rates since there are 3 attack animations and each is equally likely to be played. Below is a 5v5 comparison vs Chaos Warrior Great Weapons.



If I had more time I'd isolate the problem animation by changing the usage rates to remove the other 2 from the pool then compare damage outputs, or adjust TG to have one entity and a huge health pool to determine if there is a difference in damage application based on animation.

However I do not currently have the time to do the full testing necessary to claim this with full confidence as a fix. I intend to do the more in depth testing described above but it isn't likely I'll be able to do so until next week. I'll update this post at that time.

If folks want to play around with it with either a larger testing sample or want to mod the unit to better isolate and compare animation performance the files for this fix are included in a mod I made with a variety of animation fixes, mostly for monsters. Those all are functional as it is significantly easier to test animations when you have only one attacker.

[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3812996758](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3812996758)

Ultimately Teutogen Guard struggle from significant anti-synergy in their kit, they are discouraged from charging by expert charge defense and weak charge bonus, and yet they do not receive any damage boost to compensate for the lack of additional attacks made from the mid ranks pushing forwards that a charge provides (this is why charge reflection was added, otherwise you had this weird incentive to charge halberds and spears at large targets).

Them losing to other GW units that have more synergy and lower prices is unsurprising and in my opinion would be so even with fully functional animations. Either making them cheaper so they don't bleed value as badly or giving them charge reflection to reduce the anti-synergy of a GW unit being discouraged from charging would be my suggestion for minimal changes to improve functionality with minimal changes.

A special thanks to u/Hand_Me_Down_Genes whose mod swapping the TG to the wolfkin skeleton was instrumental in isolating the difference in impact position which appears to be a factor in TG's weird performance.