Order Warband class-roles

[wonshot]

Hello,

After having chatted with some of the newcomer fresh warband & guildleaders who have joined recently they have asked for advice and overview about which classes and roles each career can fulfill, the synergies, and some meta picks.
This might change with balance changes and some of this might differ from person to person in terms of what is meta.

Table of content:
1) Warband stucture and why
2) Concenpt of critialmass
3) Archtype basicroles
4) Each career specific advantage

1) Warband structure
A warband can field 24 slots, four groups with 6 in each.
A standard setup will be refered to as a 2-2-2 Meaning two tanks, two damagedealers, and two healers per group.
You can run warbands without a 2-2-2 structure, but everything becomes a tradeoff of what you are gaining vs what you are giving up. For example if you give up a Tank-spot to gain an extra dps in a party, that means you will have one less Guard, Challenge, M3 Bellow or M4 IM. But instead gain the extra damage pressure.
Having the standard structure leads to damagedealers feeling more safe with the balanced healing per second from two healers in their party, while having a Guard to mitigate 50% damage intake while in guard-range. This leads to more outgoing pressure. A damagedealer who is hesitating will not apply their maximum outgoing pressure and will often lead to losses.

2) The concept of Criticalmass in an aoe warband.
In a 24vs24 warband vs warband situation of 2-2-2. The 8 damagedealers will try to overwhelm the healing output of the enemy 8 healers.
If the damagedealers are aoeing on top of eachother this damage from 8 damagedealers hitting all 24targets will becomes higher damage per second, than the healers who in general can only heal their 6partymembers can recover, and the aoe damage pressure will become leathal and lead to kills. This I will refer to as reaching criticalmass. There are ways to both limmit the enemy criticalmass, or increasing each party's healing per second such as tanks doing a Challenge rotation because Guard + Challenge stacks with damagemitigation, and on top of that having Healing on Time applied before the confrontation will increase the Healing per second when Healers need to mash the group-heals as the pressure comes in.
In very basic terms, aoe wb vs aoe wb comes down to damage dealers trying to break the Healing per second from the enemy healers with coordinated fire, interrupts, crowdcontrol and singletarget assting to create a snowball effect.
Imagine if you kill one healer in the enemy warband, if that healer is dead their group only have 50% healing capacity. If an other healer in the warband is then ressing the dead healer, then now two groups are on half healing capacity and they are very exposed to being wiped.

3) Archtype basicroles
- Tanks have the role of Controling the fight & mitigating damage intake.
Under this task comes the basics of Guard. First of all Guard + Detaunt doesnt stack. So in very basic setups the tanks will guard damagedealers who are then able to go more offensive in their builds, where as Healers will build more tanky and rely more on their detaunts and in some cases will require guard assistance when fully focused. Guarding your group, and applying Challenge on the enemy Damagedealers are the main sources of protection and mitigation. After that comes buff stripping on the enemy targets, removing blessings and enchantments can boots the survivability alot and stop enemy output.
Applying snares will help control the enemy and help setup in fight in your team's favor.
Interrupting enemy Channels, enemy healer's resses in a snowball situation, and using singletarget knockdown or singletarget super-punts on enemy tanks are basicly removing 50% damage mitigation from the enemy damagedealers and can carry fights.

- Damagedealers argubly have it the easiest, they need to bring gear and throw that gear at the enemy with maximum damage rotations on the Mainassist's targets or killzone around the MA. Some damagedealing classes have strong debuffs such as cooldown increasers, stat debuffs, or healdebuffs or interrupt abilities. It is not only damage spam that kills the enemy, debufs and utility carries aswel when used correctly. Following the assigned mainassist and connecting the damage into a deathball and reaching criticalmass is very important. Balance between applying aoe pressure and finishing low targets with singletarget burst is key.

- Healers are some of the more situational classes. Reading the fight is everything. Predicting where you can stand, where the fight will move if your team is pushing forward and you need to push forward too to stay in heal range, or if the enemy is advancing towards your location and you need to relocate before getting caught bythe enemy killzone.
Applying HoTs before you are falling behind in incoming damage vs your healing output helps to stabilize the group healthbars, and if your party is stable then crosshealing to whomever is getting targeted or struggling in the other groups. Remember if you only heal your own group, and the enemy 8damagedealers are hitting your team, 2 healers can rarely handle the damage from 8Damagedealers. Crosshealing, Hotting and clensing from all four parties makes a stable warband.

4) Each career specific advantage

Ironbreaker: Normal tank duties of mitigating damage.
Bodyguarding their Oathfriend with singletarget buffs, especially +25% parry buff.
Strong advantage in the effect of Earthshatter being undefendable snare around them. Other nice duo-buffs such as snareremoval and group ap pump.
Stackable to around 2/8 per warband for optimized.

Swordmaster Whispering winds cooldown decreaser for highelf synergy groups. Rakin Talon 20% aoe damage mitigation debuff which stacks with Guard + Challenge for amazing survival on Order only advantage. Group absorb bubble, aoe interrupt and in some cases the M1 Wings aoe snare-jump.
Stackable to around 2/8 per warband for optimized.

Knight The bread and butter of Order party tanking.
The auras are buffing the group while also debuffing enemies around the knight, too good stat value to not have in each group.
Knight with shield can bring 5% critchance buff with tactic upon blocking. and the mandatory +15% stacking incoming healing effect on one of their auras. Makes Order healing and survivability go up.
Twohanded knight brings the aoe woundsdebuff and critchance aoe debuff.
Stackable to around 4/8 per warband for optimized.

Warriorpriest The group muscle healing of old.
The medium armor and lower casttime per groupheal makes for a strock grouphealer, but lacks in singlehealing and crosshealing.
The Singletarget HoT + grouphot + Healingprayer makes good muscle healing, and the order-only group woundsbuff increases the durability of order groups.
The double resource mechanic with AP+RF can be seen as a pro or a con. WP used to be super stackable but have fallen off due to nerfs.
The role of the Warriorpriest is to keep the party stable, M2 syphon can be used against enemy morale-drops as the warriorpriest can easier be on the front to mid-line with shoter groupheal casttime they dont need Focused Mind m2 as much as the AP-healers RP/AM
Stackable between 2-4/8 per warband for optimized.

Runepriest The crosshealer and amplifier of the warband.
With the Healing rituation counting as Directheal, you can proc the AP-pump tactic, +25%incoming heal blessing upon critheal, absorb procs and setbonus procs very often. RP having extra Armor+armorpenignore proc on their singletarget HoT makes for alot of mitigation.
Very strong crosshealing and helping applying +25%healing procs and mitiations when crosshealing.
Not a class that should be top of healingdone, as RP is more of an amplyfier for the other healers and not a raid-healer or group-muclehealer.
For extra extreme utility can do aoe armor debuffs, rune of battle for any little extra criticalmass, and in the future do 30%income aoe healdebuffs
Stackable between 2-4/8 per warband for optimized.

Archmage The singletarget Hot affecting 3 targets makes for extra Healingpersec increased on the warband, the MoM snare puddle with aoe init debuff on top, and naturally the almighty Energy of Vaul 5sec cast with Swordmaster requirement Whispering wind to make it spamable to increase the Raid-healing of the whole warband when stacking on your defensive target increases the survivability of your whole warband when played correctly. Harder to play due to having to position towards having offensive targets + defensive targets in use and needing the Highelf synergy.
Stackable between 2/8 per warband for optimized.

Slayer The "perfect" aoe class.
Slayer simply just does it all, and does it well! Having low cooldown singletarget healdebuff, ability to Numb strike a guarding tank, Rampage + Retribution burst, and ID being utterly bonkers with all the procs it can provide makes destro tanks feel like they are wasting points going defensive as you bypass it all.
The strong mobility, the overloaded utility and the hybrid option of doing Singletarget pressure and aoe pressure when needed is just oh so good.
Shattered Limbs cooldown increaser debuff applied on spam-heavy classes like DoK can really shut down enemy classes and overwhelm them.
Stackable between 4-8/8 per warband for optimized.

Whitelion Loner lion is pretty much always the way because the hassle when the pet dies and how the lion pet is not getting affected by groupheals nor hots. Bringing whitelions for their aoe spam + channels, using a weapong with chance to either +25%incoming healdebuff or armor debuff brings utility to your warband ontop of the much needed aoe interrupt which counters pretty much every single destro aoe dps build: MSH, Sorc, Mara, Chop.
Stackable between 1-4/8 per warband for optimized.

Brightwizard Low mobility, no utility, and damage output is contested from other classes. BW has the advantage of dealing magic damage and facing the resist softcap of 40% and not dealing with armor stacking. The AoE silence can setup a nice burst if the enemy healers are stacked and you can punish them for it. Small advantage in dealing morale damage with Explosive Force tactic, and buffing Flames of Rhuin to the party. Flashfire tactic can bring some burst either singletarget or aoe. Due to Rain of fire not stacking with other rain of fires this class is hard to run several off as only Fireballbarrage can fully bring this class into the ranged advantage of being a RDPS when its too dangerous to go in full melee bombing.
Stackable between 1-2/8 per warband for optimized.

Engineer Alot of utility paked in one class. Pierce Defence tactic is good for removing destro defences. AoE knockdown with the turret, staggering the enemy backline or a flankattack, Electromagnet in some cases. Napalm not stacking with other Napalms makes this class not very stackable as you get the full effect of the utility kit from just one engineer. Ranged aoe interrupts, buildup time increaser etc is pretty decent utility.
Stackable between 0-1/8 per warband for optimized.

Shadowwarrior Requires highelf whispering winds utility for Barrage spam to have meaningful aoe dps while morale draining.
Gives the warband acces to M2 Ambush snare which is nice for setting up a fight in your favor.
Also has acces to Pirce Defenec tactic.
Stackable between 0-1/8 per warband for optimized.

Whichhunter The class struggles in warband warfare because it doesnt have a spamable aoe attack to shake off enemy tank's Challenges so its expected to always be under -30% dmage output. Dragon gun for moraledrain/pump + outgoing healdebuff/init debuff/ap drain is decent utility along with the Stealher opener aoe armor debuff for a heavy psyical dpstrain. Dragongun having longcooldown means the warbands combined criticalmass will suffer abit and will be more bursty than spammy, limmits the stackability of this carrer as the opputunity cost is too heavy
Stackable between 0-1/8 per warband for optimized.

[bw10]

good post, free bump. i think high elf classes are entirely skippable in optimal comp though. whats your opinion on that? given that knight AP aura debuff stacks and is entirely independent from player input / cc

[Paxsanarion]

Excellent Post......thank you

[paperclipdog]

i think high elf classes are entirely skippable in optimal comp though.

Puddle is too good to skip. When you want puddle you need AMs, AMs need SMs.
AM healing is a huge buff to the surviveability of all parties. They are the best crosshealers by far. Just make sure to not **** up the parties: 1 AM 1 Runie 1 Kotbs 1 SM. Otherwise your group will just die/not do damage.
SMs also have aoe interrupt and raking talons.

For the DPS, ambush from SW will be key to not get kited every fight until the SM wings buff happens which will make SM mandatory.
You could maybe skip lions but they still have aoe interrupts which are amazing, do good damage, have a useful morale drop and have some utility from their weapons, plus they can't easily be kited.

No elves means you get kited, can't kite and every channel eats your wb.

Tldr: No.

[wonshot]

good post, free bump. i think high elf classes are entirely skippable in optimal comp though. whats your opinion on that? given that knight AP aura debuff stacks and is entirely independent from player input / cc

I understand the argument, stacking more slayers would be an option and having more knights for ap aura.
But I personally think there is waaay too much you would be giving up by not having some highelves such as:

- WL with Healdebuff proc on weapon. 10%chance to apply 25%incoming healdebuff is one of the best ways for order to copy the 25%incoming healdebuff aura from Chosen, which knight doesnt have acces to (knight aura is 25% outgoing healdebuff and healers should never stack so low value in this)

- WL aoe interrupt can stop MeleeSquigherder Bigbouncing, Choppas GTDC, Choppas Bring it On, Sorcs DC, Mara spin, Hold the line from tanks, BO block channel, Healers casting groupheal etc. All of the main burst comes from channels after the morale-per-second nerf patch.

- Rakin Talon from SM stacking 20%+ 50%guard + 30%Challenge is just free 20%migitation you would lose out on to not apply on the mainball of destro, plus an other secondary aoe interupt, and Whispering winds makes all partytanks be able to spam remove enchantment/blessing. Imagine a tank removing a singeltarget HoT on the enemy damagedealer, removing +25%blessing proc, Removing selfbuffs such as mara/wl 25%dmg burst windows for 10sec. Chopfaster and other utility buffs. All of these goddies can be shattered. Party healers can spam their clense to get rid of Mara WS/init debuff, Healdebuffs, DoTs, Drop da basher as a curse etc.

- Archmage with Energy of vaul will be able to provide 1-3k extra healing per second during Whispering winds, to each party who previously would only benefit from their own prehotting + groupheal spam phase. With EoV+WW raidhealing its like having 2healers per group to having three. This would make some of the Order warbands who get flattend during a Mara aoe knockdown probably live and stand back up without the fight being over.

I would even go as far and say because of the lack of Highelf synergy-groups Order guilds dont have the aoe interrupts to stop the damagepressure from destro channels, pulls and burst, and they do die in a knockdown or coordinated pull, because they take too much damage, mitigate too little, and damagedealers from order hesistate and therefor the pressure is rarely returned to destro who are playing on their own terms too often because lack of SMs especially.