Disarm -- A New Keeper Tweak

I'm sure by now several of you have noticed a change regarding disarm.  It had appeared that disarm had been disabled and I thought maybe it was an accidental bug, so I messaged Keeper on the topic and received this reply:

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On or around turn 940, I made a change to disarm mechanics that eliminated the prior text "<attacker> attempts to disarm <defender>'s weapon!", and it's success or failure result text.

I made this change deliberately to address a balance issue with the existing (and original) disarm mechanic.  The intent of the change was to significantly strengthen the disarm ability, not to eliminate or weaken it.

Prior to turn 940, statistical analysis showed that, the more trains a warrior acquired in Disarm, the worse they performed (in win ratio) against the broad field of opponent types.  Although they did disarm their opponents considerably more with more trains, their overall W/L ratio went down the more trains in Disarm they received.   The reason is that Disarm is special in that it does not deal damage when it succeeds.  That same attack attempt could otherwise (without Disarm trains) have been used to hit normally for full damage, or possibly to use another special that also deals damage (Sweep, Shield Rush, Bash-through, etc).  It is complex and somewhat counter-intuitive, but the net statistical outcome was that expending an attack to simply disarm an opponent is not as effective for overall W/L as just attacking them normally.   Obviously, this was not the desired effect of the Disarm skill - it was meant to be additive to any abilities the warrior already had, not an increasing detriment against the bulk of the opponent field.

The fix was to make a Disarm attempts additive to a successful attack attempt.  Disarm (the ability) has been moved to be additive with normal Primary and Secondary arm hits.  Statistical analysis showed that this fix was successful - incremental Disarm trains now improve win percentage against the broad opponent base.  So when you see "<defender>'s <weapon-name> is knocked from his grasp!!!", that is the fixed/new disarm ability.  Yes, there always was a fixed chance to disarm (via impact) even with no Disarm trains, however now this effect increases significantly with additional trains in Disarm.

At some point in the future, I may extend the fight engine to support Disarm as a non-attack using ability.  At that point I will be able to restore the old disarm text as well (which is not trigger-able at all now), but the mechanic above will likely always remain as a core part of disarm.
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I am withholding comment for now, as I have developed quite a few (sometimes conflicting) thoughts on the topic.  Keeper has been steadily tweaking the game over the years, with this being one of the most obvious changes recently.  What do you think of it?  Any questions, thoughts, comments?

I have been doing some testing of this and I believe disarm has been completely turned off.

I have been training fairly heavily in disarm as of late, so I'm going to have to pay closer attention to whether or not this skill is working.

Well, a gladiator can now aim for the arms and not worry about any wasted disarm attempts instead of attacks.  I'm guessing that sweep, which also has a similar attempt, won't be tweaked, as successful sweeps also dish out some damage, unlike disarms.

I've seen disarm work, but only when facing the monster APPLE NEWTON with an inexperienced gladiator.

turn 1015
APPLE NEWTON lunges skillfully forward
APPLE NEWTON carefully strikes at VESPERSAURUS's right arm
APPLE NEWTON strikes home with an aimed attack
APPLE NEWTON has landed a potentially critical blow!
   The weapon disappears into the wound!
VESPERSAURUS's target shield is knocked from his grasp!
VESPERSAURUS switches his backup target shield to his primary hand!
* VESPERSAURUS switches to strategy 4
APPLE NEWTON says 'I KILL SO THE IPAD MAY YET LIVE!'
APPLE NEWTON lunges with the grace of a gazelle!
APPLE NEWTON lashes out at VESPERSAURUS's right arm
APPLE NEWTON's aimed attack hits!
   A horrendous blow has been struck!
VESPERSAURUS's target shield is knocked from his grasp!
VESPERSAURUS has been permanently injured in the weapon arm!!!
VESPERSAURUS's weapon arm feels numb!
VESPERSAURUS's fans look depressed

I see more weapons breaking than getting disarmed now.

My Swodrbreaker/Short Sword elves who master up disarm destroy weapons and disarm often.

I noticed that my stilettoeer with a master in disarm never disarms. Like never ever. I have a super smart short sword elf and I've considered having him try disarm.

Did keeper also tweak which weapons work with disarm? Is the stiletto too small now for disarming? I never used to have trouble with stilettoeers disarming opponents.

My short sword warrior with an 8 in disarm, NEVER disarms.

I'm not sure I'd spend the time trying to get that skill up another point.

Thank you for the advice Vic. Fortunately for my return I didn’t have any of my smucks training Disarm...but then again I did get my usual 15 or so trains between all of them....

That's what you get for running dummies. If you'd just dump ALL your points into int with every rollup, you'd be getting triple trains with every gladiator, every week. Yeah, that's the solution. Pump int. And when yer done with int, put max points in pre. Trust me.