Patch Notes 23/03/2019

[altharion1]

Any dev going to give us some insight on this change?

Why? What it’s trying to achieve?

[Charon]

Spoiler:

Well, commentary from a warbandpleb and pvegrinder;

It's bit confusing. Guard is the main purpose of having a tank in party - to mitigate damage, and on the side add some extra dmg pressure and possible debuff arsenal or buffs, some CC - yet the main task is mitigating damage in guard range, which is about as vital as it gets when ensuring that melee can function in a game where hordes of people play ranged dps due to relative easy of ranged low risk pewpew vs high risk high reward meleetrain, where a vulnerable melee dps has to push while taking often quite severe ranged pressure.

Were SnB tanks underperforming? Hardly. They are mostly either for warband specs, or pve specs. Some SnB tanks were good, others like, say BG, or IB, just trash (class balance issues) - and they are still there at the bottom of the barrel compared to better SnB tank picks.
Were ranged dps underperforming? Doubting. Yet, as result of change, melee dps trying to push with Guard help,will now melt faster, so this is an indirect buff to ranged meta game, which is pretty typical for orvr campaign and especially keeps/forts. Not that scs either lack ranged players.
Then, were 2h tanks overperforming? Also doubting. You have limited the availability of some vital CC gaming from SnB specs, meaning you need 2h for best possible CC puntgaming. Taking 2h instead of SnB was a conscious risk, of losing HTL + block coverage, in favour of extra dps from larger weapon and variety of other buffs that are in many cases locked to 2hander specs (all good BG stuff basically + SM WoDS which about as career defining as WL Pounce).


You have already "nuked" some 2hander specs in past, namely all the known 2hander warband specs;
in memoriam of;
-2hander Chosen - loss of Crippling Strikes (30% dmg reduction was balanced - assuming your enemy has actually competent BW players each pumping out 12.000 damage per second which they are capable of; -30% dmg to that and they are pumping still 8.4k dps - not my fault majority of the BWs or Order warbands are incapable of getting good BW dps players to play competently together)

-2h Knight - crit aura nerf, again running one 2hander knight in WB was worth the +10% chance to be critted on enemies when KOTB ran a melee aura combined with tactic - this was changed to affect one of their AoE abilities which is on 10 sec cd, which basically was a death sentence to the previous warband spec as getting said debuff out only every 10 sec and possibly parried/blocked made it unviable. That on top of having a high risk tank melting always before other tanks, and then having their dps melt faster as well.

-2h BG build - again, despite having been playing Destro warbands for about 2 years or so - we have never included a 2h BG in our normal warband compositions, simply because you lose so much from not taking a BO or a Chosen with SnB + multiple utility loss, for a possible gain of +10 chance to be crit on enemies assuming perfectly landed Crimson Death. Their Guarded target would melt fast, and the tank would also melt faster than normal warband tanks. Too high risk, limited reward - TUP running 0 BGs since forever, and because of today's patch, well, we already buried the coffin of the BG class, but lets add one final nail to it?


Why this all is so confusing - is because no one has given a good properly thorough explanation as to why 2hander Guard needed nerfing. Due to this change in meta gameplay, it will have after-tremors on both viability of meleetrains itself and boosting the power of ranged gameplay as enemy melee Guard is now quite abruptly nerfhammered.

Again very good statement - and i think again no one will care about it - Az Wl case repeats.

[Martok]

All guard effects are now halved in effect if not using a shield.

There are those in game who already whine about the mere existence of two-hand tanks, this could render them suicidal.

[Ugle]

Pretty usless, shortshighted sh!tty change. Never saw such a unison reaction by community, should open your eyes. Wonder what was the intention to achieve with this?

[Feanor]

What a wonderful change, hopefully the first of many. I mean there are some dastardly WP's out there who throw heals while using a 2 handed hammer. To discourage this you should quickly change it so that their heals are only 25% of actual healers. I mean if you wanted to heal you'd go hammer/book right?

[Martok]

For the same reason why we won't get trainers in forts or global chat back and other questionable changes that most of community was against.

As Forts are just an expanded keep assault/defense I personally don't see the need for trainers in the fort. By the time a Fort triggers you are either ready or you are not. As for Global Chat, disabling cross-realm chat was a cosmically good idea.

[Morf]

I dont need to add to the comments made about guard change its pretty clear how everyone sees it but what i will say and have been saying for a looong time is you devs have so many experienced players to bounce ideas off to help improve balance but still refuse to do so, it confuses me greatly why u wouldn't use those knowledgeable players to help improve the game.

[Martok]

Killing 2h tree in small scale where it was only viable is a really bad change. You were already forced to use a shield for warband fighting due to HTL. The loss of avoidance was a big tradeoff already as a tank reducing your avoidance for output utility was a fair trade-off.

Don't really get the constant tank nerfs.

I do.

[dalen]

What a wonderful change, hopefully the first of many. I mean there are some dastardly WP's out there who throw heals while using a 2 handed hammer. To discourage this you should quickly change it so that their heals are only 25% of actual healers. I mean if you wanted to heal you'd go hammer/book right?

Their casted heals are already far less than 25% of a book+hammer healer. So not sure what you are trying to say here.

Also this change lowers 2h guard to half of SnB tanks, not to a quarter.

[DanielWinner]

I, as a BG main, briefly expressed my opinion in the cancelled 6v6 event thread but I will post it here too so devs could gather feedback in one thread.
So after this change as a 2h tank I will have following things to do:
1) Be a deadweight as a tank in SCs and focus on damage which is lower than such on dps classes and some dps healers. Therefore just become a pure soloer.
2) Start to run SnB with half of my offensive utility being cut off.
3) Leave BG to have a long rest since it's not needed in good WBs and playing SnB HTL bot just only because of guard change is just silly.

So 2h-s are no longer tanks now (which they were) but they still can't perform dps or even bruiser roles too. It would be much better if that restriction was moved to Focused Offense tactic so any player, that wanted to dps, could pick it and had less tank utility but better offensive capabilities and other players, who wanted to play 2h as a defensive/utility tanks, could continue to play as they played before. Though current change just kinda ruined experience of a good portion of tanks on the server and didn't give them any other good alternatives.