[WL] AoE spec too strong for city siege

[wargrimnir]

Again, it's not that the spec itself is overpowered in any way, it's just that stacking it is way too strong compared to pretty much anything else.

@Bombling and ask him how effective stacking 6-7 brightwizards is?

Maybe stack 6-7 slayers and see how effective that is? I suspect getting hit by 6 Flurrys at once is gonna kill most people after two or three attacks.

If you're concerned about stacking classes, then it's time to adapt. You can do this with all kinds of classes.

When morale meta was at it's peak, stacking marauders to drain morale was a thing.

When Raze was an M2, having a frontline of tanks stacking unmitigatable 65' cone morale damage was a thing.

Stacking 6 shamans got in on it for a bit when Ere' We Go was stacking and would proc 6 times per green lazer tick of damage.

And what happened after these periods? Did the stacking method continued to be overpowered or were there balance changes made to it? Because I think the scope of the thread/discussion is to take a look at how one may go at balancing such effective "class stacking metas", and potentially if there are any counters (ya know, instead of just complaining about other classes, or other "stacking strats"). As far as I know, BW and Slayers are still very effective to stack in city comps, but since I'm a returning player I'm not sure what the counters are or if there are any.

Perhaps its all a part of a bigger issue in general, that's hard to balance. Stacking hard hitting aoe classes seem to be in favor lately for many meta WB setup, especially for City and its many choke points.

They're mostly done for memes and everything eventually has a counter.

[Illuminati]

There are a couple of balance issues here I hope are being discussed by the staff, including,

-White lion pets are hit by AoE but take no damage. This reduces the amount of true players that can be hit by Destro AoE. NO other pet class has this immunity. Why does no other pet class have this?
-The pet is the highest mitigation, by far, of any pet class (It’s like running around with a tank companion in a single player game).
-The White Lion class has incredible mobility (pounce hits for greater than it did on live), highest single target burst, armor pen/ignore, etc. I have a 70 MSH, it doesn’t compare to WL pounce damage at all.

The class is far too overturned. Please, please, take a look at it. It has armor debuffs, heal debuffs, an execute, snare/root immunity, utility, insane burst, mobility, a pounce, a pull, and it even looks damn good.

No other class this much capability. It is by far the most imbalanced thing in the game today (not talking about small tweaks needed to mSH mobility, Slayer Rampage, Rain of Fire stacking, -etc.).

[Cimba]

Lets get some stats into this. I checked discord and found stats for 13 city fights since the 10th of march. The warband brought

• 3 times 3 WLs
• 7 times 4 WLs
• 2 times 5 WLs
• 1 time 6 WLs (as seen on the earlier screenshot)

There were probably a couple more city fights in that time frame but thats the data I got. So in 10 out 13 city inis there were 4 or less WLs. Does that even count as stack? If so then we also regularly run WP and KOTBS stacks but I dont see anyone complaining about them...

[Illuminati]

Lets get some stats into this. I checked discord and found stats for 13 city fights since the 10th of march. The warband brought

• 3 times 3 WLs
• 7 times 4 WLs
• 2 times 5 WLs
• 1 time 6 WLs (as seen on the earlier screenshot)

There were probably a couple more city fights in that time frame but thats the data I got. So in 10 out 13 city inis there were 4 or less WLs. Does that even count as stack? If so then we also regularly run WP and KOTBS stacks but I dont see anyone complaining about them...

How about this stat? Every WL pet takes up an AOE morale damage slot by destro, resulting in either a -1/24th, -1/9th morale mitigator to Order. I don’t expect staff to mess with the stacking piece (agree with Wargrim on class stacking) but this class in particular is so overturned even my min max moronic friends wont play it.

The problem isn’t the class stacking, the problem is the class. It needs damage reduced on some of its abilities by 10-20%, its armor debuff reduced, its execute removed, its mobility damage reduced by 50%, etc. etc. I feel bad for WHs, ASWs with this prodigal son in existence.

[Cimba]

How about this stat? Every WL pet takes up an AOE morale damage slot by destro, resulting in either a -1/24th, -1/9th morale mitigator to Order. I don’t expect staff to mess with the stacking piece (agree with Wargrim on class stacking) but this class in particular is so overturned even my min max moronic friends wont play it.

The problem isn’t the class stacking, the problem is the class. It needs damage reduced on some of its abilities by 10-20%, its armor debuff reduced, its execute removed, its mobility damage reduced by 50%, etc. etc. I feel bad for WHs, ASWs with this prodigal son in existence.

Thats a funny bit of trivia I didnt know. Provided it is true. Unfortunately I have some trouble imagining the relavance to the aoe WL because there is a noticable lack of actual lions in these warbands. But maybe I am just not empathic enough to your whines about hypothetical 'morale mitigators' when I cant even get to morale 1 if there are 1-2 marauder around who know what they're doing.

But dont let me stop you. I am sure your posts will entertain a great many people for a least a couple of minutes.

[Illuminati]

How about this stat? Every WL pet takes up an AOE morale damage slot by destro, resulting in either a -1/24th, -1/9th morale mitigator to Order. I don’t expect staff to mess with the stacking piece (agree with Wargrim on class stacking) but this class in particular is so overturned even my min max moronic friends wont play it.

The problem isn’t the class stacking, the problem is the class. It needs damage reduced on some of its abilities by 10-20%, its armor debuff reduced, its execute removed, its mobility damage reduced by 50%, etc. etc. I feel bad for WHs, ASWs with this prodigal son in existence.

Thats a funny bit of trivia I didnt know. Provided it is true. Unfortunately I have some trouble imagining the relavance to the aoe WL because there is a noticable lack of actual lions in these warbands. But maybe I am just not empathic enough to your whines about hypothetical 'morale mitigators' when I cant even get to morale 1 if there are 1-2 marauder around who know what they're doing.

But dont let me stop you. I am sure your posts will entertain a great many people for a least a couple of minutes.

If you’re unaware how broken WL in totality compared to a single ability of other classes (including Order ones), then I cannot help you. The reason it is becoming more evident is there were tools in place to mitigate them like Crippling Strikes, Winds of Insanity, etc., which are now gone.

Even Shebali (the great one) will not post a single Merc video, Coholic (Elite) will not log on because they know and shamefully admit it how the skill gap of dealing with a pet and truly playing the class is trivialized to what it has become.

[Sigford]

@Bombling and ask him how effective stacking 6-7 brightwizards is?

Maybe stack 6-7 slayers and see how effective that is? I suspect getting hit by 6 Flurrys at once is gonna kill most people after two or three attacks.

If you're concerned about stacking classes, then it's time to adapt. You can do this with all kinds of classes.

When morale meta was at it's peak, stacking marauders to drain morale was a thing.

When Raze was an M2, having a frontline of tanks stacking unmitigatable 65' cone morale damage was a thing.

Stacking 6 shamans got in on it for a bit when Ere' We Go was stacking and would proc 6 times per green lazer tick of damage.

And what happened after these periods? Did the stacking method continued to be overpowered or were there balance changes made to it? Because I think the scope of the thread/discussion is to take a look at how one may go at balancing such effective "class stacking metas", and potentially if there are any counters (ya know, instead of just complaining about other classes, or other "stacking strats"). As far as I know, BW and Slayers are still very effective to stack in city comps, but since I'm a returning player I'm not sure what the counters are or if there are any.

Perhaps its all a part of a bigger issue in general, that's hard to balance. Stacking hard hitting aoe classes seem to be in favor lately for many meta WB setup, especially for City and its many choke points.

They're mostly done for memes and everything eventually has a counter.

The last sentence there is partially what's concerning. This White Lion group that they're running is versatile against pretty much any setup. Is there a counter? Ofc I'm sure just about any WB that runs consistently with at least a 12 man core could come up with a counter no problem. The issue is creating a counter for the WL groups that doesn't go well against pretty much anything else. As mentioned previously in the thread

as many AoE+riposte WEs as possible

would likely be a decent counter against the WLs, but that composition would get absolutely hammered by pretty much EVERY other WB composition order runs. Neither Order nor Destro should have to formulate a specific composition to fight certain WB compositions in the city to stand a solid fighting chance. I think most people just want it acknowledge that certain classes are kind of broken at this stage in the game and to hopefully have some balance changes.

[Aurandilaz]

Bellows and challenge stacks. On top of Sorc WWS. And even those probably used to stack with Crippling Strikes which is now nerfed from game completely.
Zealots Winds used to be hard counter vs any order attempt of using melee, so the february nerf to Winds where its more or less no longer used enables Order to run successful melee trains, which is somewhat a new game aspect compared to years of trying to run melee but getting Winds of Insanityed to all corners of the blob and then squig bumped back and forth without immunities given.
That being said, were it to comes back, Order would just go back to normal BW stacking, as is tradition.

Order also has hard time countering pouncing squigs that then arrive to backlines and unleash debuffs, CC and aoe dmg. But now that squig in face causes less death by lag, it has lost some efficiency, including the nerf to the cd increaser debuff.

The best way to counter multiple enemy dps, whether they are BWs, or Slayers, or WLs, is to kill them. Obviously keeping WL in one place is more of an effort, but a good KD or ChCh and the target will still go down, assuming proper focus.

A stack of DPS, if they are focusing and playing coordinated, will get lot of kills and provide local aoe pressure. So you could probably make this thread about any dps class in game with the same arguments "stacking X is too powerful pls nerf".

[R3xz]

Bellows and challenge stacks. On top of Sorc WWS. And even those probably used to stack with Crippling Strikes which is now nerfed from game completely.
Zealots Winds used to be hard counter vs any order attempt of using melee, so the february nerf to Winds where its more or less no longer used enables Order to run successful melee trains, which is somewhat a new game aspect compared to years of trying to run melee but getting Winds of Insanityed to all corners of the blob and then squig bumped back and forth without immunities given.
That being said, were it to comes back, Order would just go back to normal BW stacking, as is tradition.

Order also has hard time countering pouncing squigs that then arrive to backlines and unleash debuffs, CC and aoe dmg. But now that squig in face causes less death by lag, it has lost some efficiency, including the nerf to the cd increaser debuff.

The best way to counter multiple enemy dps, whether they are BWs, or Slayers, or WLs, is to kill them. Obviously keeping WL in one place is more of an effort, but a good KD or ChCh and the target will still go down, assuming proper focus.

A stack of DPS, if they are focusing and playing coordinated, will get lot of kills and provide local aoe pressure. So you could probably make this thread about any dps class in game with the same arguments "stacking X is too powerful pls nerf".

Except that the majority of melee dps can't put localized aoe pressure anywhere they want, so I don't see how this is a good argument to make. I think the aoe and disruption in combination with pounce is what makes it powerful. You can access the squishiest part of the warband immediately, without having to worry about CCs or taking damage beforehand, and disrupt the casters, taking the initiative. The mirror to this class' playstyle is also nowhere near as effective. Usually, the best way to kill a dps class is to have the initiatve on them before they can take the initiative on you, but this one's the exception I guess.

[satanicomoderno]

This is the most stupid and laughable post of the whole Forum. If you think WL is that strong, try to kill a msh or a we, or a dok. LOL

Another one destro crybaby bothering people for being pwned for the bad bad wl.