Patch Notes 25/12/2020

[RuffRyder]

Considering the terrain there is a thin line between what a GM (and it’s an individual decision even, highly subjective) would consider an exploit or not.

If the team chose to start this, I don’t fear more spots being closed for ranged dps (on both sides, I could probably write 20 bug reports from the top of my head for locations I don’t consider an exploit), but what will come next?

Do we cover all PvE entrances so kiting groups can’t utilize them anymore?

Do we block off roof tops in Praag so e.g. Teefz or Theoddone (no shaming, you guys should be allowed to camp there) can’t ambush anymore?

Do we build walls around all warcamps or RvR border chapters so people can’t attack from there?

There’s plenty examples for locations like this, nothing has been done and hopefully won’t in the future once people start realizing that it’s part of the game, both being there and yes, also checking them beforehand and act accordingly to not expose yourself too much.

It’s not too much of an expectation to watch your location and the terrain around, it’s essential war behavior in both small and large scale. The lakes are favoring melee trains already, closing of such spots would lead to even more dominance of boring zergfest.

ty

[sonorous]

Considering the terrain there is a thin line between what a GM (and it’s an individual decision even, highly subjective) would consider an exploit or not.

If the team chose to start this, I don’t fear more spots being closed for ranged dps (on both sides, I could probably write 20 bug reports from the top of my head for locations I don’t consider an exploit), but what will come next?

Do we cover all PvE entrances so kiting groups can’t utilize them anymore?

Do we block off roof tops in Praag so e.g. Teefz or Theoddone (no shaming, you guys should be allowed to camp there) can’t ambush anymore?

Do we build walls around all warcamps or RvR border chapters so people can’t attack from there?

There’s plenty examples for locations like this, nothing has been done and hopefully won’t in the future once people start realizing that it’s part of the game, both being there and yes, also checking them beforehand and act accordingly to not expose yourself too much.

It’s not too much of an expectation to watch your location and the terrain around, it’s essential war behavior in both small and large scale. The lakes are favoring melee trains already, closing of such spots would lead to even more dominance of boring zergfest.

ty

This fine gentleman who i have never met and have absolutely no association with apart from vaguely hearing of his Bitterstone Engineer raises some very valid points. Lets see if pragmatism and common sense prevails. However i fear at this point his signature is more prescient especially considering some of the responses ive seen.

[Kragg]

whether it's exploit or not. it's border line at best.
here's example.
HP ch11 town cliff to Feiten's Lock path.
destro path was from Manor to pve load to order ch11 where town guard blocking cliff. very slim window to avoid guard range and LoS.
Talabecland Tower. you need to open outer wall when you need BO to rank up.
BC ch22 town cliff to nest on the branch.
and this patch towers. and many more.

smart game play? yeah hackers are smart. Financial schemes are smart.
i don't understand why devs don't touch engie/magus range. it's the start of all problems.
guess they really care about turret class.
but no, it's GM's fault bringing it to devs to ruin their fun.
get smart guys you're in dev's favor in my view.

i was preparing engie/magus balance proposal.
hope you don't get confused it was because of this. it's after 2sec sniper tactic.

Because we are the long range class of order perhaps? That has to carry around a turret and needs time to set up? That being said, we focus our gameplay around ambushing others. From behind bushes, on hillsides etc. That people do not look up a branch is not our problem. All those spots you mention, you can hit us and knock us off from or come up to us. If you aint getting close enough, it means we focus you down. You have two options; get your own ranged there, ake a detour, run passed and come up or have a squig hop up. It is that easy.

You want a damage and range nerf, not a balance proposal.

[Kragg]

Terrain should be used that way, funny how only something happens when Bitterstone Engi's lay some heavy whoopin down. Yet no ones reported/complained/pointed out Many magus doing the same **** in places that are even harder to get to. But this isn't about order vs destro, its about terrain and its place in the game.

A bunch of cowards with healing support vs solo magus with rotten self heal on cooldown?. Its totally the same. Terrain spots where you cannot prevent enemy
to come and fight you is not a problem. Spots where you can prevent enemy from coming by putting down aoe and mines that prevent jumping? That is not fair
at all. It was for the same reason the other tower at that bo got closed down and probably the reason for some other
spots still not shut down. After all, those spots just gives wh's/we's some fun hunting. Unless its brave roleplay midgets with heal support and half a wb camping.
I guess those spots will die soon too.

Have we farmed you lately? So salty!

[NSKaneda]

Don't nerf dawi snipers! They are the fluff piece of rvr and scouting for their 3-dwarf fire teams should be constant on anti sniper (rSH) squads

[oaliaen]

Ok , but who are speaking of engie nerfs?

[kirraha]

Just a thought from me. You lock of people from camping roofs, will you then maybe lock off all houses in rvr so ppl can't sit inside them and camp aswell? Take Reikland for example. You can have one or two WB sitting inside one of those houses inside the keep zone and farm ppl without anyone being able to get them.
I don't mind the bitterstones sitting on a house or a tower and snipe a little goblin. But don't just punish them if you wanna point on things and lock areas off. You maybe should start with the houses in reikland keep?

Tbh I don't care, I like an open world with little invicible walls. It opens up for creativity. Imagine spenfing 15 min climbing to one spot to maybe snipe ppl for a short while til destro gets tierd of you and bomb you down with their range DD.

[Sprak]

Terrain should be used that way, funny how only something happens when Bitterstone Engi's lay some heavy whoopin down. Yet no ones reported/complained/pointed out Many magus doing the same **** in places that are even harder to get to. But this isn't about order vs destro, its about terrain and its place in the game.

A bunch of cowards with healing support vs solo magus with rotten self heal on cooldown?. Its totally the same. Terrain spots where you cannot prevent enemy
to come and fight you is not a problem. Spots where you can prevent enemy from coming by putting down aoe and mines that prevent jumping? That is not fair
at all. It was for the same reason the other tower at that bo got closed down and probably the reason for some other
spots still not shut down. After all, those spots just gives wh's/we's some fun hunting. Unless its brave roleplay midgets with heal support and half a wb camping.
I guess those spots will die soon too.

So anyone who forms a party, uses strategy, and brings heals are cowards... Sounds like you may have been peppered by a bunch of bitterstone and are now adding salt to top off the seasoning. The point that was being made is that there are people on both sides of the fence utilizing terrain. Just yesterday there was a magus camping a very hard to reach spot in Caledor, killing people running to hatreds way. Magus have just as much utility of engi's, punts, stuns, incredible long range massive dps. Just because they don't party up with a heal, doesn't make the discussion on terrain any more or less legitimate.

There could be a lot of things done to add strategy to the game, make it more interesting, more creative, and a lot more fun to play. Blocking off or removing terrain that allow for strategic positioning is not one of them. If anything you should be tweaking, adjusting, and balancing the areas of terrain where there are strategic advantages. Add more or create easier accessible entry points to positions, don't make them as easily defendable, etc.

As others have mentioned, its unfair to be able to defend a BO from inside a building. Praag rooftops have to go. No more towers... etc.

Like honestly, when and where does it stop? and why punish people for playing creatively and strategically?

[Brutinho]

I few days before patch day I had written some feedback on the SH proporal thread Jurki created a while back. With the new changes I would like to adjust said feedback

Spoiler:

Last couple of weeks I have been trying a few things and I wanted to give it a good try before I posted my findings. First I like the direction the team has taken with the last couple of patches. Addressing the damage (Sharper arrer not working on pet) and certain skills (like finish em off to BS p9). That been said, there are mainly 2 points I would suggest taking a look into.

1) Explosive arrer: The problem with this skills is that is suppose to bring a tool to keep targets away but having a cast time of 2 secs just feels counter productive. Having it as AOE also punishes the skill as no one wants to be giving away free immunities. I suggest lowering the cast to 1 sec (keeping 20sec CD) or insta cast (increasing to 30 sec CD). In both cases AOE would go away.

A couple of players feedback about EA proposal to make it single target and less of a cast time was that the skill is meant to a large scale fight. To this I say; yes, on its current state it is the only utilization you can give. Personally I would like to keep anything AOE to path of bouncin' and make adjustments to EA to be a proper single target skill.

Spoiler:

2) Range and range increasers: As I way to try how QS would feel like with 75ft I have been running 5p Invader and using spike squig instead of been (also obligated) using gas squig. It is true that both pets should have their uses and their moments, but with QS's current state is very difficult to justify the use of spike squig as it means death. The increase to 75 ft is nothing out of the ordinary, but gives a good balance between risk and reward for well played SH. It feels challenging but not impossible to survive certain scenarios. There are sets(set) out there that increase range, but this set (invader) is out of date compared to endgame gear such as WL, SOV main and SOV off. The sacrifice of stats is far too great to commit to. With that context I want to propose in increase of QS skills to 75ft with one of the following considerations:

With the current changes to pounce-like abilities there is no need to increase the baseline range of QS skill anymore. that been said, it is important to update endgame gear to reflect the variety of bonuses for different playstyles. As I have mentioned before: 'Warlord set is a lower item level than SOV and there fore with lower stats. It is already the set that focuses on path of QS which makes it the perfect candidate for a QS range bonus. The reasoning is that players would have to sacrifice certain damage bonuses from SOV main such as 6% armor pen and 6% crit in order to get the range bonus from Warlord. Bonus could be adjusted to 10 ft on QS skills only if placed at 4piece bonus or 10ft to all range skills if place at 5p (exactly as invader set)

I was surprised by the new direction the devs took on this patch. I like the adjustment to pounce-like abilities, scaping tools like run away tactic as range for some classes has been adjusted as well they don't need to be that powerful anymore. Maybe Magus/Engi range should be looked at next as they no longer need that much range due to the recent changes to gap closers. This could also help to avoid putting restrictions to terrain.

I am okay with Red tipped arrow changes as long as Slayer's Spellbreaker is working the same (not sure if it does so I am genuinely asking for info). They are both spec-able 13p skills.

Sidenotes:

Spoiler:

BHA changes are welcome as aSW would always point out that mSH had access to HD, they just had to l2p and use it before going into squig armor. Now aSW have to either stance dance, use draw blood instead of BHA before HD or wait until a teammate uses an ailment. Not a huge impact. Shadowtstep giving less defences to match the decrease on defences to mSH was bound to happen. Lets remember that like rSH, aSW is meant for a small scale fights.

[Teefz]

Combat and Careers

General Changes

- Run Away (Goblin tactic): this tactic will now trigger at most once every 10s.

Does this mean that all racial tactics will be looked at in the near future?

Clearly there are some racial tactics that are completely garbage and never gets used, such as:

'Too Smart for Dat'
'Don't Bother Me None'
'Bend the Winds'
'Stubborness'
'Alignment of Naggaroth'
'Bathing in Blood'
'Unwavering Faith'
'Sigmar's Favor'
'Tzeentch' Warding'
... and so on

While you have some racial tactics on certain races, primarily dwarfs and greenskins, that is more or less mandatory for multiple specs:

'Stoutness of Stone'
'Ancestral Inheritance'
'Stab You Gooder'
'I'm Da Biggest'

Currently, there is a big disparity between the racials. Run Away! was obviously part of the usefull racials in the game, but with new 10s icd, this tactic is simply not worth the tactic slot anymore after the rework. Which ultimately means, that rSH will do more damage while being easier to catch, if they do not manage their dcds correctly. Fine by me - not sure people on the recieving end will agree in the long run though.
Are we looking at a general nerf across the board? or will the other tactics be reworked to be worth considering?

Balance Changes

- Kaboom! : This ability has been renamed Lemme Out! and now share CD with Squig Armor.

- Da Waaagh Iz Strong: The retrigger interval of this tactic is changed from 1 second to 3 seconds.

Why was KABOOM! renamed?
I agree that KABOOM!/Lemme Out! should have a cooldown, but it should not be linked with the Squig Armor CD. This change, amongst other things, took away rSH's ability to reliably help out their team with AOE punt. Currently, if you wanna punt: Squig armor -> wait 5s -> punt. In those 5s, the opportunity to help is gone in most cases. Imo add a seperate cooldown to whatever you decide the ability should be called - can even make it 10s+. Currently the shared CD is the biggest problem. And no, Exploding Arrer is not a reliable option either. Squigs should have never gotten a mirror ability of 'Geddoff/Cleansing Flare', while sacrificing the previous insta aoe ailment. With the amount of CC the class already has, this is simply bad design.

Pre rework 'Da Waaagh Iz Strong' was very niche and only saw its uses in one or two situations. So obviously it needed some attention and love. But after rework and with the above changes, this tactic is still a waste of a tactic slot. Wasn't the rework suppose to add better options, instead of mirroring a inferior version of 'Gork's barbs/Playing with Fire' to a tactic slot?

Contents

General

- The towers at the Ruins of Greystone Keep and Kinschels's Stronhold BOs are classed as illegal areas, meaning that you will get the overextension debuff if you stand on top of them.

Spoiler:

As the Spot was reachable since 11 years on live I guess it was obviously intended by the old devs in their endless wisdom.

Btw. Here is the Video for getting a nerf the next day if you dare to kill a GM in RvR.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/849951139

Needless to say we where whiped 3 minutes later by the same Warband because PnP knows how to jump on the spot too.

I thought we had gotten rid of these impulsive changes made on the fly and pushed out on live server ASAP, because someone died in pvp, when Torque left the building? I guess too much credit was given. Honestly sad, that with the limited time that the team has, it occasionally gets used to push their own agenda. Really struggling to see the issue with this, especially considering that Bitterstone has been doing this since '14('15?) on this server, and all of the sudden because the wrong person at the wrong time died, it merits a Overextension debuff and it's considered abuse, but it hasn't been in the past 5+ years.