Agreed, I think what I've learned from my experience on this server thus far and reading the forums/balance discussions is that this game was not designed for a 24 player AoE cap and that trying to force this and make it work is not a good idea. The devs should really re-consider trying to turn RoR into "Daoc-lite" and just go back to the initial vision of the combat system, which wasn't "just spam AoE", and required good use of assisting, single target abilities, and AoE abilities all combined. There is no reason Rain of Fire or Napalm should be hitting 24 people, and therefore no reason that Dire Shielding should be shielding 24 people. The game was not designed for this and it fundamentally doesn't work. It makes large keep sieges/forts unfun for everyone but the RDPS aoe spammers. It reduces skill in gameplay in many battles, instead of actually picking targets and assisting and having smart ability usage, the vast majority of fights are just AoE spam-fests.adamthelc wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 2:23 pm So if a BW took 4300 damage in 3 seconds how much damage did they do in 3 seconds? 21,000? Maybe more depending on your procs.
I was surprised that dire shielding was AoE based and not group based. But it seems to be doing its job. It punishes people who do lots of attacks and makes them think twice about doing it.
Potentially hitting 24 people with bane shield does seem over the top, but then all AoE that can hit 24 people seems over the top.
All of the subsequent balance issues and discussions that revolve around AoE abilities and classes, etc... are a symptom, not the cause of the problem. The cause is a huge major change to the game's combat system, the AOE cap increase. This one change has caused this server and the devs more balance headaches then I think anyone realizes. Balance proposals around WE/WH? It's 100% about the AoE cap. Balance whines about Choppa and Slayer abilities such as Rampage and GTDC? It's acutally 100% about the AoE cap. People complaining about Bright Wizard and Engie AoE spam? Again, 100% about the AoE cap. Balance threads such as this about damage reflects? 100% about the AoE cap. The actual balance discussions are just red-herring arguments that skirt around the actual major issue, which is the AoE cap.
Unfortunately, the problem we have today is that the increase in AOE cap would require an entire rebalancing of the entire game and combat system to actually make it work well. The devs have done "some of this", but they haven't done the full balance pass to the game to account for the major system change they made. Just look at the WE/WH class and how they do in this "major system change" meta, and it is very clear that the AoE cap increase has not yielded the needed ability and system overhauls to make this change make sense.
Devs, I ask you think about doing 1 of 2 things here:
1. Go back to the real game, and revert the AoE cap changes, and subsequent AoE tweaks to those changes. This is the best and easiest solution. It was an interesting experiment, but it's causing more issues then it solves.
2. Keep the AOE cap, but re-balance the game around it. Make sure you go over ever single ability of every single class and make an informed decision about the AoE cap that each single ability has. Should it be 24? Should it be 12? Should it be 3? Tweak all AoE and ST numbers of all abilities to account for this major system change, and make sure that you don't leave entire classes and specs that aren't AoE focused in semi-useless states (such as WE/WHs, or the majority of single target specs for many classes).
The situation we have right now where we have a major system change from live (the AoE cap), but not a full balance pass to account and adjust for that change, is fraught with issue, and is the cause of most of this servers balance issues, even ones that don't seem to be related.
