Black Orc balance change feedback (updated for patch release 21/06/2024)

[Culexus]

I was going to wait for the tank changes to be done to post a full version of this but since the balance patches seem to be on hiatus I’ll just go through what’s been done so far.

We’z Bigger/Linecracka!

Feedback: Great change and has finally made We’z Bigger usable. Linecracka! is pretty much mandatory, but the skill is good enough that it would still function without it. This change has given snb BO a purpose in a wb again. The only problem with this ability is the animation, which is just a random weapon swing and doesn't fit at all with a buffing charge ability like We'z Bigger.

Proposed Solution: Change the animation to match that shield bash of Da Toughest!. Just as Waaaagh! shares the animation of the other bellows. Will finally give a suitable animation as the BO leads the charge to war!

Big Brawlin’

Feedback: I’ve tested this a lot as adding a aoe snare to the BOs limited group cc seemed like it could be great, but the fact is that increasing the cooldown to 20sec is just a flat downgrade to Big Swing. Nobody uses Big Swing for the tiny amount of damage or minor debuff, but rather to get through the the da’ Gud plan! to da Best Plan!! as it’s the most efficient skill for doing that as it’s spammable and requires no target. I get you want all aoe snares cds to be 20sec, but having to give up a tactic slot that makes one of our core abilities worse just isn’t worth it. It’s shame as the aoe snare feels really good to use as you feel like you’re contributing to the fight in a visible way.

Proposed Solution: [EDIT: UPDATED SOLUTION FOR THIS THAT KEEPS THE 20sec SNARE COOLDOWN IN THE POST FOR PATCH 03/05/2024 BELOW] Remove the cd increaser and lower the cd to 10sec. No one cares about the cd increaser as it’s so minor it basically does nothing and has no synergy with the snare. Lowering the cd to 10sec stops the ability from being spammable while still allowing Big Swing to be used as a filler.

Can’t Hit Me!

Feedback: Adding a cd destroyed the skill’s primarily use as a body blocking skill for defence or as an ‘oh crap’ button for high damage pressure. With all the interrupts flying about in RvR not being able to instantly re-apply it makes it useless in most situations. The 60% movement speed debuff was already enough of a downside to the ability and emphasised it’s purpose of making you an immovable wall.

Proposed Solution: Just revert the change and remove the cd.

Walk It Off!

Feedback: Good ability. Nothing more than that to say about it really as it’s good without being op or making the other morales pointless in comparison. Good job.

Git Out!

Feedback: BO finally gets a punt! Except it’s not really a punt, it’s an interrupt that requires a tactic to make it a punt. The purpose of a punt is to separate targets, this fails to do that without the tactic as it only knocks targets back a few feet. No ability should require a tactic to make it do what it’s supposed to already do. I know we’re not the only tank that suffers from this weird design choice and this is true for all all them.

We also suffer from this ability being tied to the mechanic so it can’t be used on demand. Da’ Gud plan! is the hardest of the stances to use due to the cd on Changin’ Da Plan. You also always want to apply a snare before punting, which we can’t do unless Changin’ Da Plan is off cd as both the snare an punt are in the same stance. So to get a successful snare>punt you need to go: No Plan ability (have to use an ability as need to save Changin’ Da Plan) >snare>Changin’ Da Plan>Punt. That’s 4 abilities to stance dance to do what any other tank can do in 2, this takes away precious seconds from the snare duration and if you have a cd increaser on you or Changin’ Da Plan is on cooldown it doesn’t work at all. Why would you take BO over Chosen or Blackguard for 6v6 again?

Proposed Solution: Make the punt an actual punt by giving it the kb range as if it was equipped with the tactic as standard. Change the tactic to make the punt apply a snare on use. Keep the cd decrease for 2h.

Treat all cc like Where You Going? and remove the stance requirement. No cc (including Down Ya Go) should be tied to the mechanic as the timing of them is too important to be restricted to stance dancing and is a major reason why BO will always be last pick for a 6man group. Having the punts tied to da’ Gud plan! offers no upside to it’s downside as the middle plan does nothing besides acting as a barrier to da' Best Plan!!. If you’re really set on keeping the punts tied to the plan, move it to da’ Best Plan!! and make it a super punt. Yeah you can’t then go punt>kd, but at least then it actually offers something for being in the mechanic and you can easily go snare>punt.

Overall thoughts.

SnB BO is finally useful in a wb again after all the dark years after the Waaaagh! Nerf. Our new abilities feel good to use and are visibly doing something to buff the group (unlike the powerful but passive Chosen auras for example) or cc the enemy. Some of them are not quite where they need to be, but as this is the first round of changes they can be tweaked. BO still has a lot of fundamental problems with the class with many abilities/tactics being trash or anti-synergistic, the mechanic not offering enough upside to compensate it’s downside and generally not having a ‘niche’ to fulfil in the same way that Chosen or Blackguards do. The team is moving in the right direction though, and I’m optimistic about the future of the class and look forward to the seeing how everything comes together once the tank balance changes are finished.

And if there’s one ability change you make, please make Ya Missed Me work on Block AND parry (or just parry and move to Brawler tree) so 2h finally get a decent, unique debuff. A great st skill for smallscale that can only be used by snb which is never brought to smallscale. This change would be a nice buff to 2h BO and go towards making him more viable in a 6man where it currently struggles for a spot.

[Dawe]

Hear Hear!
Absolutely agree.
Punt abilities at the moment are there but being useless, unless you are using a tactic and it ties you to 1 play style.
An SnB Borc should have a decent crowd control as well. Can't hit me was not necessarely worth it before the CD compared to shiled wall, but now... Takes extra space on the interface as it is rendered useless:( Big swing CD plus right in the jibblets CD makes it a hastle to move forward from Da Gud plan. If we want to make an affect in WB we have to use Change plan every rotation, and just every 3rd rotation we can do a natural fluent full circle. It affects fluency of gameplay, and the general usefulness of the class.

Dadumbest LVL 60+ BO

[Culexus]

Patch update 03/05/2024

So to say that the last patch for the BO wasn’t well received would be a bit of an understatement. Emotions ran high from many, myself included, but now the dust has settled it’s time to give some proper feedback. This feedback is from my own testing and from discussion with some other BO players. As it focuses on 2h builds it’s mainly been tested in scenarios and solo roaming. I understand that balance isn’t based around solo roaming, nor should it be, but it does give a great feel for the abilities as each one is so impactful to a fight that sometimes gets lost in group play.

KD in Gud plan! and punt in Best plan!

I know some feel differently, but I really like this change. Being able to snare>punt and kd>channel feels much more fluid as it requires less use of Changin’ Da Plan. Snare>punt>cdp>kd also feels better to use than the previous snare>cdp>punt>kd. It would still be better if the punt and kd weren’t tied to the plan, but if they are staying within the plan system (an idea i'm starting to warm to if the abilities are giving a buff to compensate) this is feels like a good way of doing it.

Arm Breaka

A flat buff to the ability. It’s still not particularly strong outside of solo but it’s not terrible either. Going from Gud to No Plan frees up Gud Plan! a bit which is nice.

Less Stabbin’ Me (Parry Tactic)

It would be good as an addition to a defensive ability that provides parry, but in no way should it be our sole defence for 2h. The base parry being 10% is an improvement so it’s not useless outside of 2 gcds. Not sure why this wasn’t done with the crit tactic as well as it feels like an odd outlier as all the other tactics have something at base level.

The main use of the tactic before was getting to Best Plan! and using HTL to give us the extra block. I understand the reason for the change as 2 tactics that give a flat +10% block is too much, but with Can’t Hit Me! being useless and U Wot!?! gone it does remove one of the unique characteristics of the BO which was having really high block. Whether the change to this tactic is a positive or negative change has yet to be seen until more of the tank patches are out.

The removal of U Wot!?!

Was U Wot stong? Yes. But it was a 13pt ability that came with a downside of having a 10sec downtime in which you were snared for the duration. It’s removal has left us with no defensive (eg +parry/block etc) abilities, a flat 10% less damage, and forces us to give up a dps tactic slot for the parry tactic, reducing our damage even more. Having an ability with “too long an uptime” is no reason to remove it as other classes have +20% parry abilities with a 20sec uptime and a 10sec cooldown so they can easily keep a 100% uptime. U Wot!?! was a fun, class defining ability and it’s removal, rather than just a nerf, was not warranted and has put an already struggling 2h spec in the dirt as we’re now less tanky and do less damage. The ability should have been reworked and moved to another tree if you don’t want defensive abilities in the 2h tree. This has to be fixed for 2h BO to be viable again.

Proposed solution: Change Tuffer ‘n Nails (which is currently not used in any spec) to an aoe damage/defensive buff ability in the same vain as SM’s crushing advance. This actually solves 2 problems at once as not only does it give us a defensive ability that’s core, but making it an aoe ability means we have another ability in the Gud Plan! that can easily be used to get to Best plan! rather than just relying Big Swing. This allows us to then use the aoe snare tactic without it massively impacting the mechanic (see the first post for more detail on this) and allows the aoe snare to remain at 20sec to keep consistency with the other aoe snares. The ability would have to lose the shield requirement of course to allow it to be used in 2h spec. Imagine it something like:

Deals 194 damage to all enemies within 15ft and increases your chance to parry by 15% for 20 seconds.

It has a lower +parry than other tank parry buffs but has no cooldown to compensate. Having no cooldown is important to allow it to be a Gud Plan! Filler in the same way that Big Swing is now. duration is 20sec so it doesn't ahve to be re-applied on every other rotation (Eagle's Flight should also be 20sec for the same reason). Armour buff is removed as it’s pointless as it doesn’t stack with potions or Da Greenest, hence the ability never being used.

Chop Fasta!

Although I appreciate someone has taken the time to code this and as much as I’m grateful for all the hard work the devs put into this game, it has to be said that this ability is terrible. It’s kinda shocking that it made it to the live patch after the overwhelmingly negative feedback it received in the patch preview notes. Compare this 13pt ability to IB’s 5pt ability that provides str+crit for yourself and your defensive target for 20sec you can see how bad this is for 13pts. There are many reasons it doesn’t work, so please bare with me as I’ll try to explain some of them as clearly as I can.

1. We can’t actually take it

Look at the following build that takes Chop Fasta!, parry tactic and the kd.

RoR.builders - Black Orc

As the parry buff and KD are mandatory you are left with 1 mastery point to spend. Can you make a viable 2h build with that? We could of course ignore the parry tactic, but are then left with only the parry we have on gear making us much less tanky and taking much more guard damage.

2. It stops providing a buff when we use our main damage dealing ability.

We always lose 3 seconds of the 10 second duration due to us almost always using T’ree Hit Combo on cooldown as it’s our main source of damage. As THC is a channel AAs don’t tick while it’s up.

3.The short duration makes it pointless and/or a chore to use.

AA speed increases need to have a long uptime as the damage comes from stacking additional AA hits over time, so it provided sustained damage rather than burst. With the 10 second duration it basically gives 1 extra AA hit every 10 second so we have to keep constantly re-applying it every other rotation to see any value from it. Being in Gud Plan! we also have the snare, Knockdown, Big Swing, and Right in Da Jibbles to keep up so it’s just not possible. As mentioned above, the fact that our channel eats into the uptime makes this problem even worse.

4.Its only synergy is with another 13pt ability.

The ability has no synergy with anything other than WAAAGH! which we will realistically never take together. Look at this build that uses both and tell me you can make a viable 2h build from this.

RoR.builders - Black Orc

We can only use it if we don’t go from Gud Plan! to THC as if we go CF>THC we immediately lose 3 seconds of the duration. Look at the SM equivalent Sapping Strike with its DoT+10% crit buff. They can use SS then go straight to the channel which will provide them with extra burst damage, and all subsequent abilities used will benefit from it as well while the DoT ticks over. Or look at IB with AA speed as a core ability and access to the AA damage boost, both at 20sec. Although AA speed increases are powerful over time, it doesn’t help with dealing burst damage which is what is needed to make a tanks dps assist work in a group setting. AA speed increases are better as passives from abilities/tactics or group wide abilities where the sustained damage adds up.

5.The hit from behind conditional.

We’re a tank, we should be in players faces. This feels like something for a WE/WH rather than a tank. Really odd choice for an extra part of an ability where pretty much anything else would have been more fitting such as a strikethrough, armour pen etc.

6. The phantom swing attack animation.

Not as big of a deal as the other problems, but the fact that the ability is a 1 hit ability while the animation shows 2 hits is really janky and feels weird to use. I get it, the ability is called Chop Fasta! so you want to show it choppin’ a lot, but having the ability do a swing that doesn’t connect is not the way to do it. It has the same problem as the animation for We’z Bigger were it feels like someone just forgot to put a proper animation in there and with all due respect, seems very amateurish from a design point of view.

Proposed Solution: Make it a proper 13pt ability for the damage assist tank. Get rid of the AA speed increase and give us the same crit boost as SM then up the damage and split the ability into 2 quick hits to match the animation. Like with the SM, the crit boost boosts the damage potential of all our abilities and synergises with Skull Thumper, Gork Smash! and Stab you Gooder. Get rid of the silly ‘behind your opponent’ conditional and replace it with something like strikethough or armour penetration. BO will never be able to reach the damage potential of the SM due to SM doing spiritual damage, but little combos like this go some way to helping us keep pace.

If you really want to keep the AA increase as part of the ability, increase the duration to 20 seconds and add something that makes it provide a boost to THC such as a strikethough or armour penetration. Alternately just scrap the whole ability and put something new in it’s place.

Overall Thoughts

2h BO took a huge hit with this patch to the point of us not really having a viable (or fun) 2h spec. We’ve become less tanky and do significantly less damage for no gain. We weren’t wanted in a 6man over CH or BG before this, but now it’s a not even a consideration.

This is the only build I can come up with for 2h.

RoR.builders - Black Orc

As you can see it doesn’t bring anything particularity exciting to the table. All our tactics are dedicated to boring mandatory tactics that don’t leave any room for our dps boosting tactics Gork Smash!, Stab You Gooder and Loudmouth so our damage output is minimal. It doesn’t provide any decent buffs or debuffs outside of the RNG bellow which makes the few stat debuffs we do apply pointless as they don’t (and of course shouldn’t) stack.

You wrote this regarding the BO in the recent rework balancing roadmap:

"After years of neglect for the Black Orcs, we are happy to bring them back where they deserve to be in both small and large scale. With We’z Bigger and Linecracka! they have gotten a unique tool for warband play and their excellent damage output and new knockback will now make them a great pick for small scale teams too."

If you are basing the BO’s position in smallscale on it’s damage output then I’m afraid, as you can see in the builds above, it hasn't worked. As we’ve lost 2 tactic slots for the punt and parry and have also lost U Wot!?! we’re now doing less damage with less survivability than before the patch. While SM damage was already the highest of any tank and has been boosted even further, the most nerfed tank in the game continues to receive nerfs. We’re a physical damage tank whose niche is putting out extra damage pressure, but without damage buffing abilities such as a strength buff outside of the bellow, armour pen buff, strikethrough, crit boost etc, while also not bringing any decent buffs or debuffs to the table that the other tanks can’t do better. There are simple ways to go about helping with this that I’ve mentioned before like getting rid of the punt tactic and making Ya Missed Me work on parry. Other changes like the proposed change to Tuffer ‘n Nailz and Chop Fasta! will help, along with things like swapping positions of Not in da Face! and Arm breaka so 2h can have access to the cd increaser, a single target ability that no other tank can bring to the table but we can’t currently spec into as 2h.

2H BO is in a pretty terrible place right now, but it can be fixed. It doesn’t feel like anyone on the Dev team plays BO or that there's any real vision for the class so the balance changes have been a bit hit and miss. It seems like where as other tanks like KotBS can get massive power boosts and it’s considered fine, when the team look at the BO they’re hesitant to give it anything as good (We'z Bigger/tactic being the exception) as it could be ‘a bit too strong’ or 'too far away from WAR'. This may not be true but is certainly how it appears from the outside when you look at some of the changes we've received compared to other classes. The change to We'z Bigger and the speed boost tactic is great, but the viability of an entire class cannot just come from a single ability/tactic combo.

There are plenty of amazing, experienced BOs on the forums that have given great feedback in many threads and I hope that even if you think I’m way off the mark, that they are listened to by the dev team to gain more understanding of the class and how it plays. But ultimately, the task of making the 2h BO as viable a pick as CH and BG is appointed to you dev team, and if you do not find a way, no one will.

[Moonbiter]

I played 2h BO after You Wot nerf for some time, mostly sc and solo. I switched for 2h Chosen after that. Chosen is much more viable for solo and sc than BO for my own exp.

I totally agree dat BO in current state is not gud.
New 13pt ability is totally useless. Other abilities and tactics in mutual contradiction.

My + to BO redesign.

[akisnaakkeli]

Culexus Analysis was very good! +1 - If you wot is not coming back, Then Add Waagh! 25% Aa dmg Proc to Chop Fasta with 10% Parry stacking. The 10% Crit like Sm gets, add that to blorc list as well. Then it somewhat compensates You wot _ D and it should do double high Dmg hits. 14s Duration 9s cooldown. Also old Double Ws buff with old No Choppin' Me 240ws buff that stacked with Stat Steal Bellow, correct if i remember wrong.

Then Replace Waaagh with With the new Punt but now its 13 pts Skill but wont require Tactic, and Is High Air Semi Long distance.

[jacetheace]

I am an 80+ black orc who really only plays 2h and has played off and on since 2018/19. Below are some of the main issues which have always plagued 2H Black Orc but have become very apparent with the removal of U Wot?.

1. Lack of powerful/unique tools to bolster allies or debuff enemies outside of stat modification
- the Black Orc's main tools are wot armour, trip em up, skull thumper and stat steal.
- big swing in conjunction with in da jibblies and stat steal can really help to reduce melee dps damage
- savin me hide 80% magic damage reduction for your allies is underrated against magic damage

2. decent amount of crowd control for a tank but nothing special
- main tools are down ya go, shut yer face, AoE tank snare, AoE punt, Single target punt
- no tank should ever have to pay a tactic slot for a functioning punt

3. Lack of consistent and reliable damage
- Black Orc due to having purely physical damage and an armour debuff is best against lightly armoured classes but can struggle against medium and heavily armoured classes
- waaaagh and skull thumper are the only sources of corporeal damage that we have
- it is difficult to incorporate high weapon skill into builds to have reliable damage
- builds tend towards either high str/crit or some str with some crit and some weapon skill.
- before the removal of u wot, the build that I ran was in the latter category. It used gud at big chopping, loudmouth, ave another one and gork smash for sustained high dps. I was able to defeat the training construct in IC in 18 seconds (only possible by using demolishing strike rank 1 morale) (obviously sacrificed all of my survivability for this build)
- I've never found crit builds to be reliable. (I don't have off SOV though)

4. lack of survivability
- outside of stacking parry with the new less stabbing me, Black orc has weak defences and little sustain
- essentially we're a punching bag with a potentially high health pool if we slot im da biggest
- the location of the new less stabbin me impedes build diversity

5. lack of impactful/useful abilities in da brawler tree
- arm breaka and the old sapping strike used to mirror each other. Both abilities were always poorly regarded which is why SM got theirs reworked. It doesn't have to mirror SM's new sapping strike but arm breaka should be reworked.
- Chop fasta: SM got the new sapping strike which buffs their entire kit for 10 seconds since it increases their crit by 10% (not to mention the DoT increases their burst during their melee channel), whereas black orc got chop fasta which gives us approximately 3 extra auto attacks in a 10 second time frame and has anti-synergy with tree hit combo. I understand the reasoning behind the removal of U Wot? but it really does feel like a slap in the face when we get such a poor ability and our mirror class gets a great one.

[tazdingo]

most of the new tank 13pts are somehow even worse than the old ones. the up times are terrible across the board and most are so boring it puts even more people off playing tanks

[Moonbiter]

most of the new tank 13pts are somehow even worse than the old ones. the up times are terrible across the board and most are so boring it puts even more people off playing tanks

Nah.
Chosen is fine. 13pt is a good finisher.
All other tactics and abilities work seamlessy and i got sustained dmg. Easy rotation. Nice def + regen. No lost stats for lini or potions.
No such a thing for BO.

PS It is plain klear how much BO was before nerf and now.

[Bozzax]

The assist burst bo had is gone as is the group synergy with choppa.

You wot removal was the right direction imho tho bc the class was over reliant on this ability to function (any spec tbh). Also it didn’t require synergy and was a 100% selfish ability not a fan of those

Today the most reasonable solution would be a full 1.4.8 reversal and start balancing from that instead of this patchwork we have. It won’t happen tho so you guys are just better off playing another class

(Strengths, x2 snare, x2 ws buff (was way less armor pen available), good burst with THC, procing dot and loudmouth), RIJBlies + DyG for 4,5s disable and morale pump also could swing from off to def by changing tactics wo respec.

Ordies may scream unfair but IB actually was equally potent if not better … awesome punt, snare resistant, cc resistance, long cave win and un screwed Heavy Blow problem is most don’t understand that that ability filled the same purpose as LM, THC and AAO for BO as IB and BO mirrored loosely)

2008-2012 SnB killla was actually a very good class wo st punt and a guaranteed pick for roam group. The class had “hidden”depth was loosely mirrored with SM and IB and had flair and this what I like most with the balancing pre ROR.
2014-2023 worst tank in game by a wide margin (CDR made it mandatory for wbs a period though)
2024 not needed really in any context outside of rp or greenskin waaaaaghbands

[jacetheace]

You Wot removal was only the correct decision if they actually give BO compensation buffs. For myself here are some of the non-negotiable changes that need to happen with the class. (I don't want to type paragraphs so I'll just list them without explanation for now)

- removal of chop fasta (I would appreciate an unblockable ability)
- you got nuffin changed to a core tactic (healing amount should not be linked to how many points in Da boss tree you have)
- less stabbin me moved into da boss tree at 3 points
- Dat was great reworked (dead tactic that doesn't stack)
- ya missed me should require either block or parry
- new heal tactic at three points in da toughest tree?
- Let BO and SM have a base 10% crit on their crit tactic.
- ave another one should be allowed to crit (exception to proc changes)
- da greenest should be allowed to proc on defence
- no choppin me reworked