Overall balancing roadmap request

[wonshot]

Introduction:
First of all this is not meant to be a complaining post, I very much respect and acknowledge this is a private server where the devs use their free time and dont get any payment for their efforts and time. And while I am just a mere guest in your house here, I would like to spark a healthy civil debate over if a Roadmap or "end goal" in terms of realm-balance. Simply for both devs and community members alike to have something to compare weekly changes towards. Maybe there is a change to one of my favorit chars, and it seems outragious as I read the patchnotes, but if i go over and read the roadmap and see that "my choppa has had its burst reduced but has lower cooldown now on displacement in form of GTTC" Because the roadmap aims at having destro as the favorit realm for displacements to deal with Orders strong suit in aoe stacking.
And I can shake off the frustation and kinda see where you are going with an upsetting change I will now have to adapt to.

Current balance:
As long as everything isnt mirrored, it will never be a perfect balance. That is the bottom line.
Somethings got mirrored because it was overperforming, it was "well balanced" and giving both sides the same tool was not upsetting the grand-scale of balance too much.
And there is absolutly noway to do the unforgiving job of attempting to handling balance changes, without getting massive flag, flame and be the lightning rod in a thunderstorm. Also everyone cant be pleased, you might handle the top priority of overperforming abilties but someone will take the adjustment personally or have their own set of ideas for what needs changing.

Many factors play into the outcome of each fight, did a healer distrupt a silence, who got the jump, did both sides have same numbers, gear and level, who had the better players?

The game is fun right now. The population is really good, content comes pretty often and dominating realm can change over night.
So why even put bring up balance?

With the introduction of Forts I think many players have realized the importance of bringing the right classes, specs and have good teamwork in order to be victories. Currently many of the classes have viable specs, or roles to perform in these Fortress fights. But there are still a few who simply dont have anything to do to contribute to a realmvictory in a fortress fight. Sure they might be doing really well in smallscale, roaming or scs. But in Forts they are not only taking up a valueable spot they must also be frustrated of finding themselves as sandbags. (White lions, stealthers and other classes with no Aoe or utilty)

And that brings me to my biggst concirn. Will these players accept that their classes are just not fit for this enviroment, and just not take part in fortress fights and instead roam at the portal and queue for scenarios, or will they get frustrated enough to reroll or even quit?

Because of the current meta of how forts play out all classes pretty much need a viable spec or role to prevent this. And this makes me look towards the largescale roles:

-Tanking, protection, mitigation
- Healing, ressing, mitigation, recovering
- Ranged presure damage
- Melee presure damage
- Utility such as pulls, displacements, cooldown increase, moral pump/drain, buffs

you could add a few more onto the list, but this is the core of what is needed for largescale situations like Fortresses where Line of sight chokepoints are the real "boss fight" and classes with weak/ no aoe and no utility will just be canon fodder in pushes simply having the role to soak enemy morals or fill up the targetlimmit from enemy aoes, to spread out the critical mass on a push.

Example of a roadmap to keep in mind for future balance changes:

- All classes must have a role in both 6man groups, or warband play (with new engame content in mind)
- All classes must be viable enough to have a role in all pve encounters, to avoid not getting invited based of class
- Both realms need to be competitive with eachother for both 6v6 and 24v24 and zerg vs zerg. One side cant be too dominant in either category.
- With limmited mirroring and different appeals on both realms, both Order and Destro will have builds, tools advantages that will cater better towards some playstyles. One side might have advantage in displacements, snares and drains, but shouldnt also have the stronger burst or moral-build. It will have to be a careful "give and take" situation.
- Gear tiers should be a ladder for added replay-ability and enjoyment, but with care for not too much powercreep giving newer chars/players too much of a disadvantage, but still rewarding players who have invested more time into their chars.
- Renown should be the direct progression path, along with Wards from pve set. Keeping the two seperate might be a good idea(?)
- Hybrid specs should never outperform a "pure" spec. E.G dpshealers/tanks should be viable, but very limmited in their offrole.

I would very much like to see some debate about if a Roadmap would be a help for players if they are to face adjustment of their classes, if the devs think providing the community with such a tool would be too much of a hazzle and it would just get abused to fingerpoint at changes and therefor no longer "allowing" badaid changes. And if the community as a whole think balance, despite all our complains, actually seem to be in an okay spot?

[Acidic]

Each time a road map/ prio list etc have been introduced it cause more cries and whines than problems it solves.
The maturity level of online game players as a mass is not really suitable to visions of how things might be done, they rage quit as soon as they see anything that could remotely be considered not in their interest.
Current internal discussion and react to feedback seems the best approach in my mind

[peterthepan3]

Should do away with the concept of 'hybrid dps healer': once you decide to invest into Divine Fury, 10% crit -healing - and whatever else that has a negative effect on your healing - you should be considered a DPS; this is the case in WoW, and I don't know why people have such a hard time grasping with the concept here.

If you give up the majority of your healing, you should 100% be able to fill in as a DPS: bear in mind that 'real' DPS classes already have an advantage in that they can choose 3 different ways of applying damage - while DPS AM/DOK/WP/Zealot/RP/Shaman are restricted to one.

In regards to WB/GROUP: it should be a no-brainer that every class should be able to perform a role within every environment at a high/organised level; you can't say 'well I see class X in my pug WBs, so I guess it's fine', and then use that as an argument for class X not needing any love in WB environments. As OP already said, the disparities that exist between classes will become more and more apparent when City Sieges become a thing.

[BeautfulToad]

I hope the order and destro become less like mirrors and have different metas. I think the White Lion puts order in a nice place for that, but there is a bit of me worried that some players argue loudly KotBS/Chosen + BW/Sorc + Slayer/Choppa + Warrior Priest/Shaman as the only viable warband composition.

It's more for variety and different types of tactics. I'd like to see movement toward facilitating or rewarding race specific groups in some way. Primarily so each class becomes important.

[wonshot]

1) hybrids

2) classes performing in 6man or warband

1) This was just a few random examples of subjects i would imagine would be important, ofc it was not a set-in-stone list I expected to be copy pasta'd. I respect your experince on the lol-dps warrriorpriest so much that I actually let you convince me of your points in terms of loldps healers should be viable. since 1v1 isnt the balancing point on here, and that did cloud my mind a little of how the ability to selfsustain might be an issue for solo roaming / pug stomping. But you convinced me sir

2) I will use White Lion as prime example here.
With our current Campaign zonelock system with Fortresses being the last step before we are pushed back to T2 zones, before we get city sieges. Fortress losses become more acceptable since the set bonuses are not that appealing for most classes lol, and depending on what time of day you play the dominating realm will most likely lose steam over the duration of a single zone or two. So players investing hours into a realm-wide zoneparing lock/city push is not a thing, yet(?)

So Whitelion in this example, will do mighty fine in roaming the privious zones, entering fortress and pouncing on players during stage2. But as soon as Stage3 arrives the class becomes a full on standbag and offers "nothing" apart from bodyblocking, targetcap soaking.
If we compare it to its destro mirror of Mara, it doesnt have
-aoe cc (strongest in the game imho for this largescale situation)
-moral / ap drain available (managing to get the moral drain tick off just once on a target pushing the funnel will make them unable to M4 drain in the case of kotbs)

I have been giving it alot of thourgh over the last week or so, and even thinking about siegetowers,ladders, grabling hooks, wall climb etc. for these singletarget classes. But each time I find a way in my head to allow these classes to have a propper role the counter arguement is always that other more useful classes for this sort of warfare could simply use the very same siegetower and then the root of the problem is not solved.

[Nekkma]

I think a roadmap will not avoid/lessen any criticism as alot of critic is unfounded or based on a faulty understanding of game mechanics to begin with. A roadmap would be open to interpretations and misunderstandings as well.

A roadmap, a clear mission statement, an objective, call it what you like, would however, be very useful for constructive criticism and for the devs themselves to evaluate their internal process. My personal feeling from the outside is that this is not the case, i.e. the devs do not have a shared and common objective, which results in a less coherent product.

[Tesq]

more than anything roadmaps as been of badomen for class balance rather than generate complaining.

wl/we/wh aoe fix.....sigh...

[Natherul]

a roadmap is probably never going to be released as even it it were released people would complain if x were never done.

We do however have some unwritten roadmap that we do follow that is unreleased


BUT we are moving to making current part of the "roadmap" more public

[Nekkma]

Why is it "unwritten"? Wouldn't it be much easier and better to have an actual written and formalized roadmap for you to assess proposed changes against? The idea that you can have an unwritten, unspoken or whatever you call it, common idea is quite unrealistic.

[wonshot]

a roadmap is probably never going to be released as even it it were released people would complain if x were never done.

We do however have some unwritten roadmap that we do follow that is unreleased


BUT we are moving to making current part of the "roadmap" more public

Thanks Nat. As I was making this topic I had several concirns as I thourght about if this would just create too much backlash if bandaid changes were needed, and the community would hold you guys "responsable" to diverting from such a roadmap, so I totally get it. Glad to see you got something internally (not because I didnt expect you to have it lol, just glad you have it)