Rotgut wrote: Sat Mar 09, 2024 3:09 pm
Yeah, they are. We'll have to wait till Devs reach the "Balance DPS" phase of their roadmap.
To make a case for rDPS in WBs tho. They don't need Guard. You can make a 1 tank, 2 healers, 1 BW/Sorc (for the proc and they can even play midrange if u want) and 2 rDPS party and it will work. That duo > 1 mDPS. Imo that is a good balance decision. mDPS should do more dmg than rDPS, but you can sacrifice a bit of CC and Tankiness to bring an extra DPS to increase your WB's dmg.
Balancing should be made around kiting, CCc, immunities - all that little dance - and not just DPS numbers, imo. Don't know how it could be done, its probably a pipe dream that they'll be able to make rDPS fully functional outside of blobwarfare and chokes, because i think the biggest challenge to that are Greenskin classes. They have self speed buff, immunities on command, pulls, pounce and 360º movable AoE. Gonna have to do a lot of spell changing while trying to not make rDPS absurdly OP at the same time.
That's not a case for rDPS WBs. If it was, we'd already see it.
MDPS is overperforming because RDPS can't come to the table/be at the bar in group play. A large chunk of it goes beyond numbers - it's down to macro and micro mechanics.
Melee AOEs are 30ft
Ridiculously generous - completely erodes the skill for melee to be in melee range. Most games would put 30ft into the short range category, instead of melee. It's wild that people think 30ft range is melee. It covers a huge area, and it's exceptionally easy to land on lots of targets. It's also much more forgiving being so huge to maximise damage, and favours blobs as they're able to stack hard and stack lazily to overlap their damage zones easily.
There is no skill and no real need to play tight as part of a melee train when it's this generous.
Ranged AOEs are static in more ways than one
Ranged AOEs are usually (not always) accompanied by a cast time or channel, or are placed on the ground and can't subsequently be moved. You compare this to melee AOEs, they emanate from the player, and move with the player. Situation has changed? No problem, just move the players and you can adapt. Ranged AOE requires better forethought and coordination to maximise its impact - this is the case in any rvr game. Ranged bomb takes planning, kiting, chokes, and synchronisation to pull off - melee is much more brutish and easy.
Melee is much easier to drive around with
Most warbands don't have the coordination (guilded or pug) to pull off an effective ranged bomb - nevermind the fact that ranged bomb doesn't exist. This isn't a slight to the guilds; it just requires tighter callouts and group play than anything I've heard in the last month, and actually requires comms to work effectively.
Melee synergises well with all buffs, auras, and damage overlapping from a clustered mobile centre
If you stack up on a central train location (warband leader) all buffs and offensive debuffs cleave out from that central location. This means you'll always get maximum effectiveness, as long as people stick with the marker. The nature of ranged mechanics means they'll often be spaghettied or at distance - buffs/debuffs might not properly land or take a higher level of capability to apply effectively.
Many Ranged AOEs don't stack (mostly GTAOE - equivalent to melee 360 PBAOE)
IDK why this is - definitely something that's come up a few times recently in the Discord. It's hard to bring anything to the table in a Warband in terms of effectiveness when you're at best a token class since it's better to stack up AOE damage that can stack, instead of AOE damage that can't. A large part of the kill skew will be down to this - for every 1 sorc, you might have 2-3 more choppas (BW:Lions, pick your poison). It's more effective for the warband and that's reflected in the numbers.
Bulk
Bulk is an important and often unknown factor in RvR combat - the mere presence of players in a location can change the pace or direction of a battle. What I mean by this is have you seen how X faction runs away when there's a whole bunch of players running at them? Melee has both the battlefield presence, and the bulk (resistances, EHP, etc.) to push the fight around - ranged doesn't. This is a huge factor in battlefield and fight flow and control.
