Formations

[Dabbart]

I really wish morale/aoe bombing wasn't a thing.... Did it plenty with Inquisitors/red guard on Live. Was just as boring then as it is now.

I get the reasoning for it. I just wish those abilities, when hitting a group, had a max damage that was divided amongst those it hit. Morale bombs are just weak. Edit: Weak as in bad, sour, cheesey.

[Fey]

I will never understand this notion of morale abilities coupled with illegitimacy. If morales are invalid, then so are tactics and normal abilities. If you're so leet then you would anticipate and recover from morale bombs. To me this is just, nerf them because they beat us in the most obvious fashion. Smarten up and devise your own strategy. Morale is already relegated to obscurity. Right now you could just delete morale 4 spec abilities from the game and negate a major element of game design. Again, I can't understand the hostility to morale, fights have to reach a conclusion and morale abilities are just another facet and an important one.

[Dabbart]

I will never understand this notion of putting words into peoples mouths. I never called them illegitimate. I just find it a boring strategy that strains for the easiest method of dumping undefendable DPS.

Using Zs with winds of insanity to knock people onto oil, or in conjunction with get to the choppa or 2 Zs bouncing you back and forth as you explode. Entirely legitimate, still cheesey as ****.

Just cause you can, doesn't mean you should. Bomb away. It is a very viable strategy, andany PUG WB can utilize it. It's easy, and it works.

[lilsabin]

Here is a example of close formation fighting.

https://youtu.be/8RkIWZj0_ps?t=803

Ideally I wanted the group comp to be 2 chosen's 2 magus's and 2 zealots for the chaos meatgrinder. We used what we had available at the time. The destro group shown has a serious ap feed and is making use of a defensive morale cycle/cycling challenge shouts blah blah. The serious AP feed allows the group to perform higher then normal. You can pump out higher healing, damage and perma HTL if you want to. If we had a 2nd dps (rift magus or dps aoe zealot w/heal debuff) that fight might have ended differently. If I was able to get the ideal group comp setup for this formation type it would be even nastier and harder to kill. That group comp is not amazing at roaming but can hold down a location like a boss and makes it painful for you to fight on their terms. Although the destro group isn't making a lot of movement the players are busy trying to maintain game effect cycle's. What I'm saying is the group is highly engaged and is very active and is not a boring play-style to participate in.

Please note how long the 5 man destro group lasts against 18 players. I'm the zealot.

On live I would run 2 6 man groups of close formation type fighting style to great effect but conducted with dwarves and not chaos. The goal for us was objective based pvp. We focused on winning the Sc's and being incredibly tough.

this fight was eternal , jesus , so long , i lost track of it

[Collateral]

I only ran that group for one day... I am just showcasing a play-style with that post. That group can get super tight. It was even the wrong group comp.

The fighting style can get brutal. If I can control the CC of my players and I'm running a predominately chaos faction warband. I'll keep your raze morale bomb away permanently with winds of insanity cycling zealots that are guarded. Winds isn't subject to immunities. I'll drain you with marauders.

The goal here isn't to get into a pissing contest with you collateral. The goal here is to expand your thinking. Look at the tools you have available. Re-think what you think is possible. I did that play-style for years with dwarves. I lightly tested it with chaos which wasn't even the correct group comp.

No I'm not pissing on you, completely the opposite. You don't know how much we hate morale bombing. But it's a tool in the game and we will use it to it's best potential. It is how it is, who gets to morales first usually wins, especially if you fight the zerg. I genuinely asked you, how long do you think you can last against morale bombs?

[Marsares]

I really wish morale/aoe bombing wasn't a thing.... Did it plenty with Inquisitors/red guard on Live. Was just as boring then as it is now.

I get the reasoning for it. I just wish those abilities, when hitting a group, had a max damage that was divided amongst those it hit. Morale bombs are just weak. Edit: Weak as in bad, sour, cheesey.

I am so with you... did years of Morale bombing on Live with Crimson, then a bit of Red Gued and then on RoR with Kings Own and now Phalanx.

Hardly anybody I ever played with liked it though... when the games revolves around whoever can build morales the quickest and then dump them (yes, there is more to it than I portray here, but still) it just gets dull quickly.

I really hope the balance team will not just rebalance some classes, but really take a long and hard look at some game-wide mechanics, with morales first in line.

[footpatrol2]

It depends on scale and location.
I don't think this game scales very well at engagements higher then 24 vs 24. I only say this because the endgame endgame was city fights which were 24 vs 24.
Lets assume your talking about 24 vs 24 equal engagements.

I'm coming at this from a chaos premade warband perspective. Which can make use of this playstyle the best destro side.

If you make use of timing/cycling winds of insanity in a warband setting and control your warbands movement/placement/CC, the opposition can't reliably melee morale bomb you. They can't put down sustained melee dps if you don't want them too. They will have too at range morale bomb you. Bring like 5 or 6 winds of insanty's, for redundancy. Some can be dps zealots.

If they brought a lot of at range morale bombs your kinda screwed. Or just spread out but it will be rough.

Here is how I would do it.

Spoiler:

Take your entire warband and use close formation type. Try to get super super close to each other. Make someone carry a guild banner and everyone follows the banner extremely closely I'm talking shoulder to shoulder close. Thats what I did with dwarves. When you move you move as a group. Give warning to everyone when your moving. You want to move mist to mist. Have magus call out mist cooldown timer's. The slower you move the stronger you are if your taking magus players. You give up strength for speed if your not set up before the engagment begins. If you get caught with your pants down it is your fault. You can't get caught with your pants down in this type of group ideally. Think of this group as a slow moving meat grinder that eats anything in its slow moving path.

Note: This is not a fast roaming warband setup. This is a Bo holding/keep defense / Slow moving warband set up. It takes time to get your cycle's going. You might want to not even mount so you can keep your warping spirit tactic buff up at all times. You want to hug walls. At the first sign of trouble you need to set up shop pre-emptively and try to start early engagements to get your morale's up to start your defensive morale cycle. You need to pick ideal fighting locations like I picked in the video.

Stack on top of the magus pets. Have the magus pets take lasting chaos tactic for warband ap feeds. Think about serious Ap feeds. Gear defensively. GET your defensive morale cycle up ASAP. Pop Eye of sheerian early until sprout carapace can get up.
Incorrect morale gain rates hurt a lot to getting your defensive morale cycle up.

Would you like me to do a write up on a chaos warband comp?

[Collateral]

We were thinking about doing a chaos warband after the greenskin event. We know that it could be incredibly tanky, but the damage potential is not too great I imagine. Also I'm not sure if it fits our playstyle, like you said it's a defensive slow moving warband. But maybe one day we make one and see exactly how it would work.

[footpatrol2]

Previously I listed 6 man formation types. Those 2 formation types are very simple idea's. When you expand that to 12 man formation types it gets a lot more complicated. I'm going to define different formation types by positioning of their groups. The core concepts listed previously apply. Depending on group composition you can freely flow in and out of these formation types. Some group composition types are hardset into one formation type others are not.
Example:

Spoiler:

On AoR I ran a 12 man dwarf group composition which had one group type hardset to close formation. The 2nd group type was able to freely flow into open formations or collapse on the 1st group to support the close formation type.

Hardset close formation group composition was:
2 IB's (SnB depending on opposition)
2 engineer's (napalm/magnet)
2 Runies
This group composition was the heart of the 12 man and provided a massive ap feed and had access to 3 defensive morale cycle's. The purpose of this group was to take the objective's and be rock hard.

Free flowing group composition type
2 IB's (SnB depending on opposition)
2 shatter limbs slayer's
2 Runies
This group could hunt down/finish targets or collapse on the Engineer's group to assist in providing a persistant Ap Bomb.

The above 12 man group composition type was capable of using Double Close/close, Hybrid: Open/Fwd close, Hybrid: Open/Back close, Hybrid: Open/Mid Close formation types.

The most common formation type that player's naturally form into is the double open.

Here I'm going to list out some 12 man formation types.

Double Open


Double Close/close


Double Close/separate


Hybrid Open/Fwd Close


Hybrid: Open/Back Close


Hybrid: Open/Mid Close


Obviously the more groups you add the more complicated the formations can get. All these formation types do not take into account terrain. If you add in terrain the formations get more complicated. The close formation type's are good at keep defenses or in close/chokepoint fighting.