Patch Notes 06/02/2024

[Jajcek12]

Grumble an mutter taken-I
Paraphrasing Conan

(ballance gods) , I have never prayed to you before.
I have no tongue for it.
No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad,
Why we fought or why we died.
No, all that Matters is that two stood against many.
That's what's important.
Valor pleases you, (bllance gods), so grant me one request -
Grant me revenge!
And if you do not listen, then the Hell with you!"

(sorry for offtop i had to)

[zumos2]

Making an observation that you don't seem to have a deep understanding of the class is not a personal attack. Its an observation.

Right ...

You said an IB can buff their own auto attack damage, yes? Shield spec wont have much damage to begin with, so count them out. That means you're talking 2H spec. What 70 RR career mastery spec would you think would work with this ability? Grudge-Born Fury is out of the question, unless you want to give up THREE of the FOUR key abilities/tactics that make 2H spec decent- knockdown, 10% damage/5% parry tactic, aoe snare, 10% crit/str buff for self/oath friend. Parry buff is completely out of the question here if you are talking a pure IB damage build.

Making choices, yes, but why on earth would you sacrifice 10% damage and 5% parry, knockdown, and aoe snare for a weak aoe damage skill that costs a significant amount of grudge (something IB has no real way to build quickly unlike the BG) and only gives a small boost to auto attack damage? Heavy Blow was decent damage after full grudges, but now your best damage ability is Grudge-Born Fury. How are you going to have both this new ability and GBF in the same build? Sacrifice a set bonus for +2 masteries from sov gear to dilute possible IB stats to grab a couple of these abilities? I'm sincerely asking here, because it seems myself and the rest of the community see what you all did and have not come up with any reasonable explanation as to why this is an overall benefit to the class.

Maybe I missed the cacophany of cries about Ironbreaker damage being too strong on these forums. Anyone else able to find these threads somewhere?

You still seem to want to have it all: Both highest personal damage and great group utility. Yes if you want to take Blood of Grimnir, you won't be able to take GBF. Something that could even change in the future. But 11-0-13 spec is still a great option for 2H build using Blood of Grimnir. And 5-5-13 is a great option for SnB build with Blood of Grimnir. Both would be very potent builds for small scale groups.

As for warband, if I'm an order dps, there is no tank I'd rather have as my guard than an IB.

Overall I believe IB is in a strong spot at the moment. But obviously we keep an eye on how they perform over time.

[Rotgut]

SnB IB seems fine. If fights remain as fast as they were last night, Grudge might become an issue. By the time you have enough Grudge, after casting your Parry and Crit buff, to use Blood of Grimnir and to make Earthshatter do any dmg at all, the fight is kinda over.

Is the Dual Wield parry buff fixed yet? And can y'all share your thoughts on Slayers being an upfront dmg class now, and Choppa's dmg buff impact?

[Gravord]

just look at setups of certain players and you will see what will be next "balance". Normaly I would argue that "They just don't know it better" or they have no experience with some classes, but the truth is, they are very well aware what they are doing and how, and the experience most of them have comes from the enemy side.

Why do people propagate such easy to destroy narratives? If i wanted an easy mode for my classes, why would i push for best utility tool (chop fasta) be removed? Bonus dmg is nice but it will never match to full time party and self cd reductor on such good uptime as it was.
Im not going to play shield or 2h def bg myself, having that ability moved there gives me personally nothing, What it gives is better balance and reason for def/shield bgs to be taken to warband, because with that utility and the rest of the tools they already got, they can fight for the spots now with both other tanks. Least played tank in game, with his least played weapon, got reason to be picked, madness!
Could go on but its pointless anyway. No amount of evidence and examples will ever be enough.

[hogun]

[/quote]
And 5-5-13 is a great option for SnB build with Blood of Grimnir.
[/quote]

plzzzz,

no shield mastery for S&b ? no earthshatter ...no run shield ...

so you think its better to have 1 skill blood of grimnir and loose 3 ib strong skill ? plzzz

[zumos2]

plzzzz,

no shield mastery for S&b ? no earthshatter ...no run shield ...

so you think its better to have 1 skill blood of grimnir and loose 3 ib strong skill ? plzzz

https://builder.returnofreckoning.com/c ... mm=&mt=&t=

You don't need shield mastery and you can get the other skills ...

[nocturnalguest]

You still seem to want to have it all: Both highest personal damage and great group utility. Yes if you want to take Blood of Grimnir, you won't be able to take GBF. Something that could even change in the future. But 11-0-13 spec is still a great option for 2H build using Blood of Grimnir. And 5-5-13 is a great option for SnB build with Blood of Grimnir. Both would be very potent builds for small scale groups.

As for warband, if I'm an order dps, there is no tank I'd rather have as my guard than an IB.

Overall I believe IB is in a strong spot at the moment. But obviously we keep an eye on how they perform over time.

Let me try to word it differently tho. Amount of your choices should be optimized around group composition synergies (and in the end define your role in it) and its efficeincy in overall scheme of things, the meta. When you change something like this you have to be simulating anyhow how it will be playing out, what groups people will build around it, how effective those groups will be, what will be their role and how meta will look like. Depending on detalization of such simulation you make a decision. The more data you have, the better. Here you took away stable role of ap pump and replace it with +25% aa dmg. Reasons and possibilities to utilize it are misty for me, exact efficiency too (yet).

So, we (you) have data for BO's WAAAGH doing pretty much the same thing but no critical resource cost, with lower uptime and big corp debuff. What group synergies have been built around this skill, how efficient they were? Were BO's taking it, were groups have been built utilizing this skill? What game modes (city, orvr, sc, 6v6) have been utilising this skill? How could it be translated into order realm considering order classes? All that without CD reduction of course. You know the answers.

So now back to IB:
11-0-13 spec where should it shine? you skip runic shield and ap pump or trade crit for one of those but its a false choice, i believe that crit >>> unsupported ap pump (also you would be getting 3 of them if required by kotbs, rp, wp) and runic shield, you skip parry (its exact effiecency is very questionable in reality btw, i admit, ive posted before detailed opinion why i think so, so its not like skipping parry is definitely no go, there are no all arounders, there are game modes where its possible and there are game modes where its impossible)... 6v6, random SCs? How effective in reality will be a group build around such IB spec? How in comparison to other possible choices they perform? other 2h spec option is with +2 13-0-13 or 9-5-13 with alot of trade offs that i cant atm thinktank how to overcome to build proper group. What IB will bring to justify its spot with this ability? Why take this ability if you can still get all the shinies and play like before? you could 15-5-5, 13-5-9, 13-0-9 etc etc. IB still has alot of options but now minus ap pump with gnm and no soloyolo shenanigans (lower diversity which i believe overally worse for the game).
5-5-13 is orvr/city only (or some RDPS favoring SCs) and incredibly questionable. i call it a plain nerf (lackluster to stay consistent, ok ) to what IB could do being 5-5-13 or 0-11-13. Once BoG gets fixed you will have what tooltip says and its +25% AA dmg which is irrelevant in big aoe fights.

All hopes is that im just stupid (thankfully here i think im not alone, ha) and dont see something very strong around this new skill. The other possible outcome is that its useless so you guys just created another dead 13 pointer. Time will surely tell.
I would totally understand if you would introduce it with elemental debuff on it of the same value as BO's WAAAGH. Synergies are very clear, overall slight dmg buff into order for orvr. Ok. Why not do that i dont understand. You could finetune it afterwards by either just removing it or adjusting the value if looking into statistics you would find it overperforming.

[hogun]

plzzzz,

no shield mastery for S&b ? no earthshatter ...no run shield ...

so you think its better to have 1 skill blood of grimnir and loose 3 ib strong skill ? plzzz

https://builder.returnofreckoning.com/c ... mm=&mt=&t=

You don't need shield mastery and you can get the other skills ...

why play S&B if you have not shield mastery ? play 2h

[Ruin]

In regard to the change to We’z Bigger\ Vaul’s Tempering, with the introduction of 6 sec immunities (Unstoppable and Immovable) it also provides a protection to skill/tacticss like Power Etchings, so slows/effects that are being applied after the CC is over, but not applying if the CC is defended by immunity. I would like to point out those types of tactics to be kept in consideration, when additional immunities are put in the game, lowering their efficiency.

[Everdin]

just look at setups of certain players and you will see what will be next "balance". Normaly I would argue that "They just don't know it better" or they have no experience with some classes, but the truth is, they are very well aware what they are doing and how, and the experience most of them have comes from the enemy side.

Why do people propagate such easy to destroy narratives? If i wanted an easy mode for my classes, why would i push for best utility tool (chop fasta) be removed? Bonus dmg is nice but it will never match to full time party and self cd reductor on such good uptime as it was.
Im not going to play shield or 2h def bg myself, having that ability moved there gives me personally nothing, What it gives is better balance and reason for def/shield bgs to be taken to warband, because with that utility and the rest of the tools they already got, they can fight for the spots now with both other tanks. Least played tank in game, with his least played weapon, got reason to be picked, madness!
Could go on but its pointless anyway. No amount of evidence and examples will ever be enough.

We are totaly one opinion here, there will never be enough evidence and examples that I would trust you an inch regarding this topic.

It does not matter what you write here, your streams show how you play and how you argue. There is no self reflect in your gameplay, as soon as you loose you start ranting about the enemy classes or your own people. You promoting a very offensive and frontloaded playstyle. Often enough you complaint about range-kite groups, just because you couldn't handle it. Suddenly there were a lot of snare changes and changes evolving around this topic. Blackorc got groupcharge, suddenly we can't see you without an orc on your side (may be some bad luck regarding the timing I met you). And don't tell me the ne chopper ability is not more then just a little bonus. All this combined makes it hard to believe a "I won't use it, trust me bro". While, yes you would loose something, you still can play offensive with this ability, or did I miss the "shield only" marker?

Edit: Maybe more turst would be given if you handle balance discussion more openly, why not openly discuss in the forum? Not everyone can write, but everyone can read.