Scaling Keep Lords

[Gachimuchi]

Preface: During EU time when you have 4 warbands clogging the keep, having the damage to kill a Keep Lord is not a problem and you can just throw bodies at it. Coordinated warbands with a purpose-built group for tanking the Keep Lord is also an option. Unfortunately during lower population hours(30v30ish) the Keep Lord is too strong for anything short of two warbands to possibly handle. Even if one side gets up on the upper floor and wipes out all of the opposing players in the keep; Pugs being pugs will reset the Lord over and over(or the Lord turning into a beyblade and wiping everyone in the room).

Solution: Scale Keep Lord strength down in lower population RvR. Even if the attacking side overcomes numerical advantage of the defenders they won't be able to handle the Keep Lord. You can't organize random pugs to not spam AoE in the Lord Room and use tactics that 'organized' WB guilds do in EU time.

Spoiler:

Personal Opinion:

I think the whole raidboss tier Keep Lord thing is pushing the limits for what constitutes RvR which is traditionally large-scale player versus player combat. Not RvR with a side-dish of PvE.

Can a mod move this to suggestions and feedback?

[Jaycub]

Agree with this, and about EU times if you have enough bodies to throw at lord you can just melt it still. Would even like to see it a bit stronger during those situations.

But how to scale the lord, maybe make the AI or abilities different, just increasing the damage/hp could cause some problems.

[Theseus]

Preface: During EU time when you have 4 warbands clogging the keep, having the damage to kill a Keep Lord is not a problem and you can just throw bodies at it. Coordinated warbands with a purpose-built group for tanking the Keep Lord is also an option. Unfortunately during lower population hours(30v30ish) the Keep Lord is too strong for anything short of two warbands to possibly handle. Even if one side gets up on the upper floor and wipes out all of the opposing players in the keep; Pugs being pugs will reset the Lord over and over(or the Lord turning into a beyblade and wiping everyone in the room).

Solution: Scale Keep Lord strength down in lower population RvR. Even if the attacking side overcomes numerical advantage of the defenders they won't be able to handle the Keep Lord. You can't organize random pugs to not spam AoE in the Lord Room and use tactics that 'organized' WB guilds do in EU time.

Spoiler:

Personal Opinion:

I think the whole raidboss tier Keep Lord thing is pushing the limits for what constitutes RvR which is traditionally large-scale player versus player combat. Not RvR with a side-dish of PvE.

Can a mod move this to suggestions and feedback?

Sounds reasonable, but I have one question: What the hell is a beyblade?

[Amidala]

Preface: During EU time when you have 4 warbands clogging the keep, having the damage to kill a Keep Lord is not a problem and you can just throw bodies at it. Coordinated warbands with a purpose-built group for tanking the Keep Lord is also an option. Unfortunately during lower population hours(30v30ish) the Keep Lord is too strong for anything short of two warbands to possibly handle. Even if one side gets up on the upper floor and wipes out all of the opposing players in the keep; Pugs being pugs will reset the Lord over and over(or the Lord turning into a beyblade and wiping everyone in the room).

Solution: Scale Keep Lord strength down in lower population RvR. Even if the attacking side overcomes numerical advantage of the defenders they won't be able to handle the Keep Lord. You can't organize random pugs to not spam AoE in the Lord Room and use tactics that 'organized' WB guilds do in EU time.

Spoiler:

Personal Opinion:

I think the whole raidboss tier Keep Lord thing is pushing the limits for what constitutes RvR which is traditionally large-scale player versus player combat. Not RvR with a side-dish of PvE.

Can a mod move this to suggestions and feedback?

Sounds reasonable, but I have one question: What the hell is a beyblade?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfTgifdRMKQ

[Theseus]

Preface: During EU time when you have 4 warbands clogging the keep, having the damage to kill a Keep Lord is not a problem and you can just throw bodies at it. Coordinated warbands with a purpose-built group for tanking the Keep Lord is also an option. Unfortunately during lower population hours(30v30ish) the Keep Lord is too strong for anything short of two warbands to possibly handle. Even if one side gets up on the upper floor and wipes out all of the opposing players in the keep; Pugs being pugs will reset the Lord over and over(or the Lord turning into a beyblade and wiping everyone in the room).

Solution: Scale Keep Lord strength down in lower population RvR. Even if the attacking side overcomes numerical advantage of the defenders they won't be able to handle the Keep Lord. You can't organize random pugs to not spam AoE in the Lord Room and use tactics that 'organized' WB guilds do in EU time.

Spoiler:

Personal Opinion:

I think the whole raidboss tier Keep Lord thing is pushing the limits for what constitutes RvR which is traditionally large-scale player versus player combat. Not RvR with a side-dish of PvE.

Can a mod move this to suggestions and feedback?

Sounds reasonable, but I have one question: What the hell is a beyblade?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfTgifdRMKQ

Ok, the thought of a keep lord turning into a giant roundabout is at the same time confusing and amusing.^^

[blakokami]

Agree with the OP.

I like a lot of the new changes to RvR and feel like its in a really good place now EXCEPT for the keep lord's strength. I have been a part of keep takes now where we have more than a WB on our side, at which point my guild group can go and wipe all of the destro in the keep, and still not be able to take down the lord. This is even with tanking it against a wall faced away from the WB's. I think the main problem is that he resets too easily and he also de-aggros too easily aswell. Any random pug can get aggro even from just aoe abilities that they spam.

There is another thing that seems to make him extremely powerful atm, which is taunt/challenge or any other type of interrupt move not cancelling his whirlwind ability ( the one where he kills everyone around him in about 3 seconds). We tried to interrupt the keep lord as soon as we saw the animation start, but nothing we tried actually interrupted him. Couple that with the fact that a knock down or something wont work either in some cases because ppl spam their abilities on him and so he basically has immunity up the whole time. Possibly reducing immunity timers on the Keep Lord would help.

[Azarael]

There is another thing that seems to make him extremely powerful atm, which is taunt/challenge or any other type of interrupt move not cancelling his whirlwind ability ( the one where he kills everyone around him in about 3 seconds).

Bug, will fix.

[UmmOK]

Do any of you remember the City Sieges? The part wherein players from your side would morph into GIANT versions of themselves and have "keep lord" style health and attributes?

I've always though that for ORvR Keep takes, the development team should randomly assign one defending player as the "Keep Lord" and make him/her 2x their normal size with an identifier over their heads. Normal abilities, armor, and movement speed, but a slightly larger health pool.

This change should take place at the first damage of the first door, allowing the Keep Lord to help in the defense and rally the players to him/her at the end. Once the 2nd door is down, the player assigned as Keep Lord is only allowed to move between the 1st and 2nd floors. If he leaves the keep, disconnects (cleanly or uncleanly), the keep goes to the attackers and the player "Keep Lord" gets some sort of a quitter's debuff or cowards debuff wherein they can't be assigned Keep Lord for a week or something. This will help keep the xrealming sabotage to a minimum.

Something like this takes the PvE out of the ORvR and would be kinda fun.

Clearly, the player assigned as Keep Lord would have to have immunity to punts (the cheapshot way of making him leave the Keep) but snares and KD should still work with typical cooldowns.

I dunno. It definitely need work, but I like the idea of a player-based keep lord and defenders. It also avoids the usual reset bugs and crap like that.

my .2 cents

[Toldavf]

Well from what I've seen of the lords the basically boil down to 4 abilities.

A frontal instant cast aoe cleave
This would necessitate facing him away from people its pretty simple to deal with

An aoe punt
It looks like it was intended to have a short build up time where players are meant to react with interrupts but as it is so poorly telegraphed when that might be is generally a mystery.

Whirlwind
Again i think its meant to be interruptible. I'm not sure if it has a build up time or if it is just a nastier version of wrecking ball but its damage really allows no reaction time or counter play. gain its a very poorly telegraphed attack whatever subtle visual clues are in place are lost under 20 something players casting spells and spamming abilities.

Clip Tendon
It shows as a curse at least on destro cant say what it is on order though i hope its an ailment. Its a bit of a problem but its not nuking people at least.

[Gachimuchi]

Your premise of it being a "raidboss" is comical, its an exceptionally basic encounter which prevents the actual fight from being over 10 seconds after the keep door falls and the biggest issue to victory isnt the lord or even the other side, its what your side does and being a complete imbecile and doing stupid things should have consequences so in this respect the Lord is an absolute ideal addition, as is requiring a reasonable amount of numbers to take the keep. 6 people shouldnt be taking keeps regardless of timezone.

Well what else would I call it? It requires lots of players to take down and uses abilities that need to be reacted to and countered.

I do agree partially that it shouldn't be faceroll but there's only so much you can do to regulate random pugs(read: not much at all) that are not barred from participating and you can't necessarily screen all of them with a WB.

I didn't ever imply 6-mans should be able to take a keep by themselves.

Following the introduction of a Lord that doesnt fall over when you sneeze on it large scale battles have increased significantly, no longer does a realm get caught in a battle then a sly half warband of people runs off to cap an empty zone.

Not one thread has appeared to deconstruct what the lord is actually doing, what his abilities do or how to counter them, they are basically "wahhh its too hard" which is possibly the case but until someone actually tries to take it apart properly, as you do in your actual "rvr combat" (not just zerging are we?) theres very little to come back on. Agro mechanics work, if random pugs are getting agro on simple aoes then your tanks are doing something very wrong.

Usually when keeps are taken it is sheer force of numbers that drown out whatever mechanics/abilties that players need to be mindful of when fighting the keep lord.