Balancingteam, Developers and the community

[wonshot]

From the outside view of these last 5-6 weeks of waiting for these WL changes (partly because they were important but also because they were the first on the list and some of us were very interested in the following topics on the priority list)

Why did this WL overhaul not get canceled and corrected earlier in the process then, because right now we esentially have 5 weeks of work down the drain and still remain stuck in a super imbalanced realm vs realm state (is this still not understood to be critical?)

And can someone honestly actually say that the Torq issue is not exactly the same as before, it would seem nothing has changed;

- Aze made balancing changes, and torq didnt want them implimented.
- Balancing team came up with changes Torq whisper to Yaliskas ear and VETOd and/or stopped internally and the balancing team disbands due to frustration of wasting their time.

Seems to me that the "team" was just put together to create a smokescreen for the community to forget about the Q n' A issues that came to light, two months have passed and we are in the exact same situation. So for those who doubted my orignal post in this topic and later realized it was true, enjoy future Guarian WL implimentations and Meatball SH. Because that is the direction we are going.

[Natherul]

There was no whispers in the dark but all the leads expressed concerns and yes I agree it should have been rectified way earlier.

[Charon]

Spoiler:

The reversion of the changes to WL was down to 2 things, first being a massive loss of WL players showing their displeasure with the changes done and secondly the rest of the team did not like the butchering of the career that was done (removing the real "mechanic" of the career and slapping on maras mechanic to it).

The gearset is due to the same reason as everything else slowing down.

Logic being this;
player chooses class to roll -> wants to play smallscale -> rolls WL -> dominates smallscale thanks to pet mechanic and "army of two"
player chooses class to roll -> wants to play largescale -> rolls BW -> plays well in largescale because best AoE dps in game

after 10 years of WL players knowing they have no spot in warbands due to how their class works, just how many pro-AoE spec WL player comments did you expect? The people wanting to play warbands rolled other classes, simply because past decade has proven to everyone which classes work in warbands and which do not.
But hold up; how will an AoE lacking Wl play when Forts and Cities eventually come out? Will an organized warband preparing a coordinate push somehow invite a WL that is specialized in ganking people and doesn't really contribute at all towards the actual campaign push that consists of warbands locking keeps and zones... is the future somehow based on 6mans and 1s and 2mans capturing keeps and bringing down Fortress Lords, or will the process still be on the shoulders of the Warbands?
Will all classes be able to compete on warband level gameplay? Not currently, some classes just lack AoE, or their AoE is so lacklustre no serious warband will want them in their setup.

We have seen the comments from certain devs regarding their opinions of "warbandshitters" - and we know there seems certain bias towards ensuring morales don't scare pugs (only way to justify BW m2 nerf were pug arguments, organized Destro premade warbands had zero issues winning against it) and making them pretty much harmless when it comes to largscale and current lack of "burst" morale bombs (remaining dps classes with burst M2s; Magus, WE, WH, SW, SH... none really "core" wb classes)

Fact is, general oRvR balance is very much BW-centric... and the only way to break this BW-monopoly is if other Order classes can fill their shoes. Sure, nerf BW M2 but meanwhile Order gets AoE WL to compensate for lost burst, yet now the latter doesn't exist. Nerf Flashfire because too many Disrupts, well Disrupts now gone, nerf remains.
Nerfs above would be fine if BW wasn't the only thing holding Order AoE dps output flowing, if Engis, WHs, WLs, Slayers, SWs would be there to step up - currently they don't.
There isn't an Order frontline, there is no row of mdps in medium armour swallowing dmg the same Destro has lines of Maras, Choppas, +5k armored SHs just taking scratches while the Sorcs can hide behind them.
It's BW BW BW BW BW BW.... because for some reason the WL players who rolled WL because it was best class for smallscale surprisingly aren't instantly interested in becoming Warband players... yet many of the warband players (those few remaining who are left) are perfectly willing to hop on their WL alts in case optimizing their organized warband requires them to log from BW to WL for the good of the realm.


The state of largescale balance, its so absurdly biased in favour of Destro it isn't even funny, it's pretty much boring to bring your organized warband with all the utility and watch enemies melt because thanks to balance, they cannot do jackshit about it.

.t Nynaewe, rr78 Sorceress of TUP

good point

.... yehh i already hearing criyes of all those small scale wls ;p...

However, the problem is that order does't have any real perspective that this vacume in rvr balance will be addres in any near future.. The whole problem is well know from ... t4 release maybe
and another months long debate about wl rvr role only lead to ....... did not lead any where realy.... . So taking consideration current state of affairs.. stalmate in devs team .. time that is required for community to get use to the new ....etc, chances for significant changes in order rvr performance are... let say low.
From this perspectuve is there any sense to release new rvr content that require proper wb v wb play when it will bring destruction domination 70/30 at least.

[lefze]

There was no whispers in the dark but all the leads expressed concerns and yes I agree it should have been rectified way earlier.

Yet there is no balance lead. Kinda invalidates the whole thing.

(and not a single lead from other departments qualified to make a single call about balance)

[Aurandilaz]

Ok lets address the elephant in the room about the WL balance topic.

The problem was that from the outset the rules was that tweaks were to be done and not major reworks, this in combination with removing career mechanics for an entire mastery tree was what caused the friction.

Now Ill be the first to admit that it should have been addressed before being posted on the forum but it was not.

I think everyone on the team is/was hoping that it was all done in regards to reworking rules and departments but as you can see its an ongoing process.

And as for joining the project as a coder ofc I might be biased due to my position but I would do it in a heartbeat for the time that I have available as I love the game. Sure there are times where someone is asked to not do something or in some cases do something they may not like at the consensus of the leads. But I dont see any project working without leadership in this manner.

I have to keep my faith up and assume RoR developers are not on purpose trying to butcher their own game;
you first gather what 6-8 people to "balance talks", then have those hard-to-find neutrally-biased veteran players spend 5 weeks with coming up with a balance proposal for WL rework in way that doesn't shift the RvR balance too much nor causes too much harm to all those solo WL players that are the "true backbone" of order realm (and forum complaints),
the results were posted in balance discussions, discussions were had with very few actual White Lion warband players commenting in, a lot of Destro mains commenting that "burning house is fine", some WL players lamenting the loss of "balanced 1v1 Guardian spec" and other absurdist balancing comments. Now if you hadn't killed most of Order WB firepower with BW nerfs, maybe, just maybe you might have gained more comments from organized order warband players, alas lot seem gone from the game. You have during EU time CNTK and 3rd Bitterstones trying in 2-3 days per week, apart from that it is up to pugleaders or just Destro coming to farm their dailies.

Now lets talk WL class mechanic; the retarded pet that has been the bane of the class since forever
either its buggy, lags through terrain, ignore terrain when pulling, stat contributions are wonky and the pet might randomly vanish, hooray we all love it. On the other end, some less than optimal balancing led to the birth of Guardian WL where players were more tanky than most tanks while selfhealing and watching their pet win 1v4 fights for them.
The mechanic doesn't work properly in any scale. In 6v6, you focus and butcher the pet asap so WL dmg drops.
In 1v1 (which should never be the focus of the gameplay when balancing), you most likely want to kill pet as well because otherwise you are being ganked by "army of two".
In WB scale, the pet explodes like is known to happen to every magus and engi turret on daily basis.
Unless you somehow buff the pet to stand against something, say, 8 tanks and 8 dps from an organized warband guild unleashing their bombs towards that direction where it would soak 5-10k damage per second and somehow live, it's not gonna make it in warband environment. (while not being healed by healers who cannot target it via unitframes)
And if you give pet retardedly strong buffs to survive against full guild warbands, its gonna be absurdly strong when facing situation where its not being bombed by 4-8 high renown rank BiS dps players.

Which is why, Aza, and now your balance team both came to conclusion that WB spec MUST BE WITHOUT PET, because neither of those aforementioned parties are idiots - they know how largescale combat works. The WL pet mechanic does not function in largescale, pets never do. SH's in past before you butchered the class (muh class DNA yeah right) would not run pets in largescale because their players were not idiots. Engi and Magi would desperately try to find a spot behind bombing lines where their pet might not explode in initial 3-5 seconds but might just make it over the 10-15 sec mark assuming positioning away from bomb centre.
WL by their nature is close combat class, so the pet would have to be near the player, AT THE FRONTLINE. PETS DIE AT THE FRONTLINE.

"friction with removing class mechanics".... like what the hell, how stupid do you expect your players to be to swallow some garbage reasoning like that?

Now stop trying to on purpose kill RvR balance with insane logic and do something to ensure Order realm won't be farmed 24/7 whenever Destro has either NRM, PNP, TUP, L2P or half a dozen semiorganized pug wbs out.
From last weeks experience of playing in an 8-8-8 minmaxed organized TUP destro warband as one of their main sorcs, it's pretty **** sad out there.

[Charon]

I think our devs are real roleplayers. They want to create in game reality close as much possible to The End of Times concep where order 6-man guerilla groups fight to the bitter end with overwhelming destruction hordes..... till the fu.... Age of Sigmar

Unfortunately ...

[qwerty113]

Just let Aza come back, make the thing just let it go you know

[Ramasee]

Pet-based right tree using TTH (rr40):
https://ror-career-builder.herokuapp.co ... ,4290,4280

Non pet-based right tree using TT (rr50):
https://ror-career-builder.herokuapp.co ... ,4294,4263

This was from the revised proposal that was ready to go as soon as the previous one locked. Difference in the two builds being that the pet-based one deals less damage due to physical but has more survivability (and so does the pet) and the non-pet one deals more damage in spirit but has less survival tools.

Pet-based ST damage (rr70) using TTK:
https://ror-career-builder.herokuapp.co ... ,4253,4264

Non Pet-based ST damage (rr70) using TT:
https://ror-career-builder.herokuapp.co ... ,4276,4258

You could also use loner and pick up TTK or TTH instead. We were thinking about removing loner down the line if the second proposal went through.

YOU SHALL NOT CAST build (rr60) using TTH:
https://ror-career-builder.herokuapp.co ... ,4280,4285

Sacrificing some burst damage in favor of making casters cry.

This was all shot down before the revision could come out to the forums.

[Slmjmosumb]

What about having one tree focused on aoe, one on single target and finally a third focused on survivability. Pet would be tied strongly to single target/small group and essentially removed or made passive in the aoe spec. Both aoe or single target would likely spec into survival as secondary. Glass cannon could forgo survival as l for added damage potential from aoe or single target off spec. Easy peasy.

[peterthepan3]

What about having one tree focused on aoe, one on single target and finally a third focused on survivability. Pet would be tied strongly to single target/small group and essentially removed or made passive in the aoe spec. Both aoe or single target would likely spec into survival as secondary. Glass cannon could forgo survival as l for added damage potential from aoe or single target off spec. Easy peasy.

The thing is, having a tree dedicated to 'survivability' doesn't really tell us much, i.e. in what environment does this tree work in? We are not particularly interested in balancing around 1v1, truth be told. If your role is that of a damage dealer then you need to be able to perform said role within all relevant environments of gameplay (this doesn't mean removing a spec favoured for solo play, but also means not deliberately making changes to facilitate to solo play; group/WB must trump in this regard).