Black Orc balance change feedback (updated for patch release 23/10/2024)

[diegomess]

most of the new tank 13pts are somehow even worse than the old ones. the up times are terrible across the board and most are so boring it puts even more people off playing tanks

Nah.
Chosen is fine. 13pt is a good finisher.
All other tactics and abilities work seamlessy and i got sustained dmg. Easy rotation. Nice def + regen. No lost stats for lini or potions.
No such a thing for BO.

PS It is plain klear how much BO was before nerf and now.

did i just read that chosen 13pt rending blade is fine? its one of the worst 13pt abilities of any tank da hell u talking about.

[Panzer80]

A very nice in-depth analysis. As a long time BO player, I agree with all of this message. It would be nice to have all punts as a base guard break ability without taking a tactic slot. It's kind of the tanks secondary job.

[akisnaakkeli]

most of the new tank 13pts are somehow even worse than the old ones. the up times are terrible across the board and most are so boring it puts even more people off playing tanks

Nah.
Chosen is fine. 13pt is a good finisher.
All other tactics and abilities work seamlessy and i got sustained dmg. Easy rotation. Nice def + regen. No lost stats for lini or potions.
No such a thing for BO.

PS It is plain klear how much BO was before nerf and now.

did i just read that chosen 13pt rending blade is fine? its one of the worst 13pt abilities of any tank da hell u talking about.

I think he meant Tzeentch Reflection 1k+ Absorb now. But yes atm Rending Blade is pretty useless, Remnant from the time when Chosen had Crippling Strikes and Rending blade undefendable aoe 5s Cd was only there because Crippling strikes tactic. But now that Crippling Strikes doesnt exist Rending Blade is useless. Oppression also needs to be usable with 2h or shield.

[Ysaran]

I agree with your analysis. I just want to add that I actually like Chop Fasta, but it is not worth 13pt. Imho it is worth 5pt, while Arm Breaka should be core.

[JarlBerzirk]

Probably the best analysis of BO ive seen in a while. 81 full bis BO here and it almost feels like the Devs dont know what exactly to do with BO. Mine will stay shelved unfortunately, which is a real bummer considering how much time ive sunk into him.

[Culexus]

Patch update 21/06/2024

I was quite surprised that the tank patches came to an end so suddenly, with things like auras still left without a proper mechanic and no changes to bellows/enchantments etc. I guess the team just wanted to move on at this point as give some other classes some love, which is fair. I hope that BO receives some of the tweaks that you mentioned are still to come for tanks as some of the issues mentioned previously still need to be addressed.

Less Stabbin’ Me moved to Path of Da Boss tree

Feedback: The ability being in the tank tree was never the issue, which is why it was never brought up. Every other parry or block tactic for all the other tanks is in the tank tree so it was fine that it was there. The problem was we have no access to any defensive abilities now that You Wot!?! is gone. If we had a defensive ability the parry tactic could have stayed in the proper tree, rather than moving a self-defence buff into the group buff and support tree where it doesn’t belong. Players then could make a choice if they wish to spend points into the tank tree for extra defence at the cost of mastery points and a tactic slot, just as SM has to do with the absorb tactic.

When players are saying that the devs don’t know quite what to do with the BO or have no vision for the class this is what we mean. No one noticed that replacing You Wot!?! with a tactic in the tank tree would mess up our 2h build and prevent us taking Chop Fasta!, and now rather than a proper fix the tactic is in a place it clearly doesn’t belong rather than addressing the actual issue. This change is fine in that it provides a quick fix to the problem of mastery point allocation, but I hope that it’s just a temporary solution while a proper ability is worked on by the team.

Chop Fasta! now 20second duration.

Feedback: The increase 20sec makes the ability actually usable. The problem remains though that even with this it’s still not really worth speccing into. I posted some testing of the ability in another thread which gives a breakdown on how it works.

viewtopic.php?t=53352

The tldr version is in a perfect case scenario it will do a maximum of two AAs over 20secs. This is clearly not even close to being comparable to the SM equivalent and remains a terrible skill to take at 13pts. The worst thing being that the SM’s ability does an extra attack from behind, so if it uses the ability twice on an opponent in 20sec it does that same amount of additional hits (with an increase to crit) as our whole ability while still giving a strong DoT and +crit. It feels like the SM version was made by someone who understands SM and wanted to give it a powerful ability that synergises perfectly with its role, abilities, rotations, and gear, while the BO got whatever dps ability was left on a spreadsheet. I joke, but when you compare the two and consider they were both created at the same time it really does feel like that.

Proposed solution: As mentioned in my previous post, AA speed increases work better as passive effects that do their thing in the background while another effect is active, rather than the only effect of an ability. If Chop Fasta! was a No Plan ability that was 5pts or core it wouldn’t be so bad as the faster rate of AAs does help dps even if it doesn’t really add much. We could just use it once every 20sec and forget about it. But at 13pts and with the need to incorporate it into a plan rotation it really needs a core component of the ability to make it worth taking. I’ve spent far too much time thinking about this and this is sort of change I think it needs:

You Chop savagely at you enemy doing two powerful blows for a total of 350 damage and increasing the armour penetration of your attacks by 10% and auto attack speed by 50% for 20 seconds.

Why armour pen? As a physical damage dealer low armour pen is what always make us worse at dealing damage compared to SM against medium and heavy armour. Providing an ability with armour pen will, much like the SM version, synergise with all our abilities and AAs. This means that like the SM version it can be used before the channel to increase its damage, making it fit easier into a rotation whereas it really doesn’t have a reason to do that now. The SM ability will provide the potential for higher burst within a shorter window, while this gives a more reliable and longer duration damage increase, making both abilities powerful but distinct. The damage of the two blows matches the SM ability ‘Heart Seeker’ so the two hit animation makes sense. The AA increase remains a part of the ability, but now is a secondary effect where it is more suited.

The armour pen is especially useful for lowbie BOs who don’t yet have access to warlord gear so suffer from hitting like noodles as they level where as lowbie SMs don’t have to worry about this. As the damage assist tanks, dps is more important to BO and SM than the other tanks at lower levels. It will also open other gear options for higher level players outside of warlord, finally making off-sov more viable.

I know that direct ability ideas are never used and don’t expect the exact ability above to be made. But I do feel that some variation of this is best way of improving the ability that makes it balanced with the SM version, while keeping the ability theme and making it distinct to the BO.

Overall thoughts.

So, with the tank patches over and only tweaks left to do, let’s have a look at how BO performs in it’s different roles since the patches and what could be looked at in the future.

SnB

SnB BO feels like it’s in a really good place and feels great to play. We bring a unique buff with We’z Bigger+Linecraka!, good morale pump, good block, aoe punt, and some decent buffs and aoe debuffs. Even though not that much has really changed since before the patches, We’z Bigger+Linecraka! Have finally giving us a useful role in a warband again which makes all our other abilities shine. We’re not at Knight levels of power, but we don’t’ have to be and bring our own unique tools and playstyle that makes us (in my opinion) one of the most fun classes to play. There are still a couple of things that could do with being looked at to SnB really shine.

- Another Gud Plan aoe with no cooldown so we can use to get to Best Plan effectively beyond just Big Swing. This would then allow us to take the aoe snare without it having a massive impact on the mechanic. I talk more about this in my first and second post.

- Da Greenest bellow working on defence and on being hit. This may be how it worked on live, but it’s ridiculous to have an ability that punishes a tank for stacking defences, thereby not providing you party with much needed resists. Reverting this back to defence and on hit will allow it to do its job again while retaining its downside of the 10sec uptime and requiring coming into contact with that damage type.

2-Handed

Even with the changes in the last patch 2h handed remains in a dire state outside of solo. With the loss of two tactic slots for parry and punt, You Wot!?! removed, and Chop Fasta! Being dead on arrival, 2h handed really has nothing to offer beyond extra sustained damage and -10sec on the punt, leaving us far better off going SnB for small-scale for all the buffs and debuffs it brings. I wrote enough about this in the last post so won’t go into it again but there are some changes that need to be made to make 2h viable again. I really hope something is done about this soon as 2h is one of the most fun ways to play the class.

- Not in Da Face and Ya Missed me being available to 2h. These are the only debuffs BO has beyond stats debuffs (yep, have a look) and need to be available to 2h.

- Punt tactic incorporated into the ability. It’s a best plan ability now so it would fit perfectly and give us an upside to the downside of having the punt tied to the stance system.

- Chop Fasta! Buffed.

- Defensive ability outside of the parry tactic.

Now that the tank patches are over this should be by last long feedback post. I hope if the devs do read this that you’ve found something useful from this thread, even if you disagree with it. Although most of the feedback focusses more on the negative than the positive, this is just the nature of feedback threads as more needs to be said about exactly why something is a negative and to give ideas from experienced players on possible solutions to address it. None of the feedback here is intended to be a personal criticism of the dev team, but rather to give feedback from experienced BOs on the changes made to the class and how it now plays, both the good and the bad. Overall, I think the changes made since the patches started are mostly positive for the game (yes, even giving the cd reducer to BG) and look forward to seeing what you have instore for the other classes as you move forward.

[Bozzax]

No SnB BO is a shadow of what it used to be so even with speed buff it is 3d pick for any real 6man content.

2h is a disaster lets just leave it there

Solo not impressive there either

It is a dead end simple as that

[Fey]

I'll have to set aside 40 minutes to read the above post.

I was on BO, the other night I noticed I was like 20k from 81 so I had to play. I'm not Bis or even close, just Bloodlord with the weapon. Got a couple event rings but nothing too fancy.

It was my first time using Chop Fasta, and the damage was on par with a single auto attack. Sometimes my white damage was out pacing the 13 point ability.

My weapon skill is like in the 400s. The growth rate on Chop Fasta feels bad man. Sadly I'm like everyone else. Vanq SnB Chosen just looks better as I'm not crazy fond of 2-hand tanker.

I'm mad at myself for not going with BG three years ago. Well in a greenskin guild I suppose there's no choice. I curse your name F00tpatrol!

[Fey]

Now that you mention it.

BO punt should work like this..

No plan: knock up ala right in the jibblies. Useful for interrupt and keeping a target within range to focus down.

Gud plan: normal whatever punt, good in a pinch.

Da Best Plan: something like BG superpunt
probably slightly smaller range. Optimal usage and a new fun way for to play BO.

BO are the beefiest boys on the battlefield. They should have the biggest punt, imo. Now that BG has WW give BO the better punt.

[tazdingo]

give us and SM the old undefendable shield punt, this standardization is miserable. every tank is so dull and plays exactly the same now. whoopee, aa haste, defensive abilities with up times so bad you can't even build around them and homogenized cc for everyone. a group would have to pay me by the hour to tank for them these days