Current take on "zerg busting" on RoR

[Ramasee]

A single-target, focused game actually makes zerging MORE potent due to the fact that there are 72 people attacking random single targets versus the 12 people fighting back. So to say that coordinated bomb warbands are a disease is quite ignorant. Also single target attacks deal higher damage, and in the case of ranged dps usually outrange AoE attacks. There are plenty of times to use single target focus tactics.

Very few people cross realm mid zone. People log out after they get slaughtered a few times by the opponent. Specially when there is no one around trying to marshall their faction to action. This problem is more exasperated outside of EU prime, since EU has many leaders. However, there are people who cross realm after a zone is taken, or if they log in and havent done much yet. These guilds usually change to the less populated side.

Small maps force zerging as well. So many of the t2/t3 zones that we play in create the problem. Also certain t4 zones have always been zerg heavy even on live due to the how the zone is designed. Just few places to spread out and pick off smaller fights. Then we have zero realm pride on the server and hardly anymore coordination between guilds. Large collections low pop guilds and other random players will always group up in blobs as a means of protection, since it requires the least amount of effort.

[Tesq]

i have to disagree on t2-t3 enforcing zerg, if you plan to move not on middle of map every time but take decour, pass pve, hide you can flank and avoid zerg, maps which REALLY force zerg and extreme blobs are BC/KV mostly and Tm follow right after by some extent sadly as yali said you cant do anything with out map editing, sigh,

wish list:
-underground tunnel system in tm
-palafit-bridges wood system in kv/bc

[roadkillrobin]

With no target caps and higher dmg scaling you can as the underdog realm use manouvers and terrain to get the jump on the enemies to try and equalize numbers aslong as you kill enough others. If you manage to take out the majorty of dps with such a move you also get dps advantage and can actually win the fight. But the low dps and target caps prevents this from happening.

The times, when certain melee dd were using aoe skills and damage got raised to insanely high levels because of the number of targets hit, were fun for those 6mans but horrible from a gameplay perspective.

It broke just about everything coz it was implemented for biased reasons rather them game mechanical ones. Same with cannons, it was meant to punish a certain playerbase and hope the rest would comfort to it by screwing deeply with core game mechanics. But the people it was intended to punish learned to use the mechanic to it's advantage and it ended up being an abomination of gameplay that just broke all core functions of the game.

[Aurandilaz]

unFix morals to old live 36 per sec gain from current 9 moral per sec.

Tie AAO to give boost to moral gains, AAO/2= extra moral gain per second. (at 20 aao, +10ms, at 100 aao, +50 ms... 400 aao, +200 ms gain rate)

Increase AoE cap from 9 to 15/18. Test it, alpha server you know?

Reverse the disrupt change patch, you can still stack HTL to build massive anti magic counter in oRvR + healer disrupt from willpower.

Change Choppa AoE pull from using Str to using Ballistic so that Dodge can counter it. It's currently absurdly good in wrecking apart order warbands as not all classes have the Parry needed to counter it. Mara pull is based on Int, with HTL boosting Disrupt and helping counter it, same with Magus/Engi pulls being countered by HTL in warband scale fighting.

Revert Flashfire back to 5 sec ICD + instacast compared to current 3s ICD and -50% cast time reduction, in actual fights you don't get to cast anything with AOE dmg causing set back every few milliseconds so that a 1.5sec cast might become 3-5 sec long attempt to shoot something before you drop dead or it just gets interrupted by a squig charging by.


These all could help make it easier for a smaller organized warband to fight against larger enemy zerg, many other good ideas also in this thread.
However the fundamental question remains, does a smaller side even deserve a chance to fight when properly outnumbered, or in terms of fair gameplay should they be able to fight back and even cause severe grievances to the larger attacking side? Because with current state of affairs, its pretty much guaranteed bigger zerg victory.

[Reesh]

unFix morals to old live 36 per sec gain from current 9 moral per sec.

Tie AAO to give boost to moral gains, AAO/2= extra moral gain per second. (at 20 aao, +10ms, at 100 aao, +50 ms... 400 aao, +200 ms gain rate)

Increase AoE cap from 9 to 15/18. Test it, alpha server you know?

Reverse the disrupt change patch, you can still stack HTL to build massive anti magic counter in oRvR + healer disrupt from willpower.

Change Choppa AoE pull from using Str to using Ballistic so that Dodge can counter it. It's currently absurdly good in wrecking apart order warbands as not all classes have the Parry needed to counter it. Mara pull is based on Int, with HTL boosting Disrupt and helping counter it, same with Magus/Engi pulls being countered by HTL in warband scale fighting.

Revert Flashfire back to 5 sec ICD + instacast compared to current 3s ICD and -50% cast time reduction, in actual fights you don't get to cast anything with AOE dmg causing set back every few milliseconds so that a 1.5sec cast might become 3-5 sec long attempt to shoot something before you drop dead or it just gets interrupted by a squig charging by.


These all could help make it easier for a smaller organized warband to fight against larger enemy zerg, many other good ideas also in this thread.
However the fundamental question remains, does a smaller side even deserve a chance to fight when properly outnumbered, or in terms of fair gameplay should they be able to fight back and even cause severe grievances to the larger attacking side? Because with current state of affairs, its pretty much guaranteed bigger zerg victory.

Pretty much this ^.

Also, old live state for a while was fun, because you could form a specific 12-18 man composition to counter mindless blobs of potential double the amount of your fellas. Currently as Aura said it's "who brings more".

[CountTalabecland]

Fixing the zerg would be a hard thing to test, just by the fact that the zerg needs to be happening and monitored reliably (as past aoe tinkering has demonstrated, player behavior is hard to predict), rather than the qq of the losing side.

On the other hand, I wonder what might happen if less people on Order as a whole rolled rdps and actually met the dest melee pugs with order melee pugs? I find "zerging" to be less about numbers and more often about the order pug wb's inability to pick a spot and stand their ground or to actually push, rather than running and melting due to being 60% rdps. CNTK and BT guild wbs are good at finding a way to zerg bust and get some momentum but they definitely don't have the kind of PUG support that destro has.

Ocara and destro PUG wbs are good at "zerging" or pushing because their front line is rock hard and the classes are more balanced than half the wb being unguarded rdps, so more often than not they run right past me and the 2 other tanks in the wb and get to the squishies in PUG situations.

[Dammy095]

unFix morals to old live 36 per sec gain from current 9 moral per sec.

Tie AAO to give boost to moral gains, AAO/2= extra moral gain per second. (at 20 aao, +10ms, at 100 aao, +50 ms... 400 aao, +200 ms gain rate)

Increase AoE cap from 9 to 15/18. Test it, alpha server you know?

Reverse the disrupt change patch, you can still stack HTL to build massive anti magic counter in oRvR + healer disrupt from willpower.

Change Choppa AoE pull from using Str to using Ballistic so that Dodge can counter it. It's currently absurdly good in wrecking apart order warbands as not all classes have the Parry needed to counter it. Mara pull is based on Int, with HTL boosting Disrupt and helping counter it, same with Magus/Engi pulls being countered by HTL in warband scale fighting.

Revert Flashfire back to 5 sec ICD + instacast compared to current 3s ICD and -50% cast time reduction, in actual fights you don't get to cast anything with AOE dmg causing set back every few milliseconds so that a 1.5sec cast might become 3-5 sec long attempt to shoot something before you drop dead or it just gets interrupted by a squig charging by.


These all could help make it easier for a smaller organized warband to fight against larger enemy zerg, many other good ideas also in this thread.
However the fundamental question remains, does a smaller side even deserve a chance to fight when properly outnumbered, or in terms of fair gameplay should they be able to fight back and even cause severe grievances to the larger attacking side? Because with current state of affairs, its pretty much guaranteed bigger zerg victory.

yeah make BW bomb squads even better

[Dabbart]

I think the change to a xrealm chat killed Zerg Busting. The inability to talk smack and ridicule those with a numerical advantage that still refused to fight broke the game. WAR is balanced around the ability to talk ****. W/o it, we are doomed to endless Zerg battles on BOs.

It’s easily apparent that open ridicule is the one and only change that really matters. Everything else has been tried and failed. Toggled on and off to no avail. No combat system, damage system, resource system, or bolster will ever have half the functionality of ridicule. Make Insults Great Again! /jk

Also, why do people keep saying Zerg wins period... everything else being equal, yes the Zerg wins. How many times have you curb stomped a WB of lowbies or PUGs that didn’t have enough tanks/healers? Smashed that AFK WB at a BO? Rolled into the back of a WB on a keep door and murder/raped half of them before anyone even noticed?

An organized group of 24 40/40+s will beat a group of 6 organized 40/40+s 9/10 times in a straight fight. If that wasn’t the case, none of us would play such a horribly balanced game.

[Sedok]

But does the game actually allow us to fight "against all odds"?

It depends on how exactly you define "against all odds". If we're talking about a "zerg" that is composed of multiple, average pick-up warbands, then yes, it is possible. However, if those warbands are organized to a decent level, then no, it is not possible. Also, there's a big difference between fighting and busting a "zerg"; one can fight a "zerg" for hours, but never deal it a crippling-enough defeat that it causes significant attrition. Busting a "zerg", meaning going after it with the specific intent of inflicting such a defeat, is another matter entirely. It is possible if the outnumbered force is an organized warband fighting against pick-ups, but I do not believe it is possible between two organized entities.

There are a number of factors that greatly reduce an organized warband's capabilities in dealing with a larger force on RoR, but the two primary ones are the AoE target limit reduction and the changes to the calculation of disrupt.

The AoE target limit reduction may seem like a nice feature for small-scale, but at the warband level it enables "zerging". A 6man jumping and bombing a 12man can bring it down to 3 in the ambush, reducing the opposing force to 50% of their own strength. At the warband level however, if a 24man bombs a 48man, they can only bring it down to 39 idealistically, still a ~55% larger force than their own.

The calculation of disrupt significantly nerfs the overall output of magical bombing damage. Even if you stack disrupt strikethrough (ignoring the damage output costs of doing so), you still get a significant amount of disrupts against even pick-up warbands. Now, if you were going against an organized opponents, who's tanks were keeping Hold the Line! up and the warband members were spec'd for Deft Defender, you're magical rdps can barely touch the opposing force, let alone break them.

[...]but honestly the bomb WB are a disease in themselves .

How do you expect people to deal with "zergs" then? Train a 100-strong force down one by one?

I get the impression that you would be the person to complain about "zergs" as well. One of the great absurdities of WAR's history is that the players would bitch endlessly about both "zergs" and "bombing", wanting them nerf'd/removed and/or citing them as a reason for the game being "bad". What all those people failed to realize is that "bombing" was the only way for players to deal with "zergs"; the removal of the former just made the latter worse.

Not much fun being hit by a aoe spewing WB.

Hate to break it to you, but being defeated isn't supposed to be fun.

The big problem with zergs is the players unfortunately. Too manny players once wiped a few times by a better WB will not try and understand the problem and address them with tactics instead the Zerg up to kill that group , once one side is heavily blabbing the othe side follows suit.

Humans are tribal animals and are hardwired to follow a path of least resistance and cost, so it is our nature to look for more people to overwhelm an opponent for an easy victory. Whine about it all you want, but that's the reality that you're faced with.

Tie AAO to give boost to moral gains, AAO/2= extra moral gain per second. (at 20 aao, +10ms, at 100 aao, +50 ms... 400 aao, +200 ms gain rate)

This would make Destruction far too strong, as they are the ones with all the morale gain tactics, AoE morale pump, and AoE morale drain. It would make the morale meta even more lopsided.

However the fundamental question remains, does a smaller side even deserve a chance to fight when properly outnumbered, or in terms of fair gameplay should they be able to fight back and even cause severe grievances to the larger attacking side?

A great competitive game always allows its underdog to come back.

[Yaliskah]

Just a question ( nothing planned and answers wont have the value of a decision )
Would it change anything if AAO gains were increased ? For exemple for a 100% AAO renown gain and medal droprate and contribution would be ×3 or x4 or x5 ? Dunno if i'm clear.