[SL] why so unpopular?

[what63]

The slayer’s damage used to be worth all of the babysitting and support that it needs. Now, post nerf, it is not worth it.

Super uneconomical DPS compared to the more survivable/mobile dps classes that do the same or greater damage.

Slayer needs 1) more damage, 2) more survivability, or 3) more CC or utility.

Slayer needs nothing, it already got so much (they are still up by a good margin relative to before they got a channel and whatnot). What is needed is for WL to be brought down in the damage department to fit their mobility and otherwise non-existent dependencies that let them just go and do damage, where they need to, exactly when they need to. WL being overbuffed doesn't mean SL needs to be overbuffed to compete.

WL is overpowered, the barely functioning class relying on the bugged pet?

Destros and their never ending quest to nerf anything remotely good on order.

Meanwhile, choppas and maras still pull through the walls, floors and doors while destro side has access to 2 immunity-ignoring AOE punts with order having 0.

You people need to stop confusing statements about warband play with other stuff, WL is in no way reliant on pet in warband play, and isn't even close to being "barely functioning". It's just quite braindead because it's all mobility and raw throughput with no mechanic to play. oRvR warband play is quite specifically where SL is having issues competing with the raw throughput, ease of play and massive mobility of WL.

And yeah, stop looking at balance as purely realm vs realm based. How classes on the same realm stack up against eachother is just as important. Realm vs realm balance only kicks in when determining combined potential when trying to make the classes on the same realm all have enough value to be slottable. At the moment, WL is taking a far greater piece of that budget than anything else in oRvR.

WL pet being buggy in smaller scale is frustrating, I get that, and I still think WL being roughly as bursty as it is there is important as it always served as the main threat against the destro ranged. The case is weaker with SWs being so whacky for sure (again because the combined potential is important), just to point that out, but this really isn't the area where SL falls super far behind relative to years past. SL just never had a great time in this context to begin with outside of super kitted groups, which was and is fine. Just the result of being a brawler as opposed to a pure burst class as far as ST goes.

[Panel]

The slayer’s damage used to be worth all of the babysitting and support that it needs. Now, post nerf, it is not worth it.

Super uneconomical DPS compared to the more survivable/mobile dps classes that do the same or greater damage.

Slayer needs 1) more damage, 2) more survivability, or 3) more CC or utility.

Slayer needs nothing, it already got so much (they are still up by a good margin relative to before they got a channel and whatnot). What is needed is for WL to be brought down in the damage department to fit their mobility and otherwise non-existent dependencies that let them just go and do damage, where they need to, exactly when they need to. WL being overbuffed doesn't mean SL needs to be overbuffed to compete.

WL is overpowered, the barely functioning class relying on the bugged pet?

Destros and their never ending quest to nerf anything remotely good on order.

Meanwhile, choppas and maras still pull through the walls, floors and doors while destro side has access to 2 immunity-ignoring AOE punts with order having 0.

Hows that barely functioning Wl of yours going on the top of the killboard - i wish my characters barely functioned like that

[Farrul]

You people need to stop confusing statements about warband play with other stuff, WL is in no way reliant on pet in warband play, and isn't even close to being "barely functioning". It's just quite braindead because it's all mobility and raw throughput with no mechanic to play. oRvR warband play is quite specifically where SL is having issues competing with the raw throughput, ease of play and massive mobility of WL.

The fact that WL can't use a pet( which is the core mechanic of the class) in warband play could be considered '' barely functioning '' indeed, Loner always was a band-aid fix to a glaring class issue, pet survivability.

Regarding the Slayer , its unpopular due to it's own shortcomings after a series of nerfs which hit the class hard. The lastest being the WS-INI change. Hence why many quit the game / slayers etc.

White lions has nothing to do with it, except in the mind of destro players what whish to turn the imho legit complaints of latest slayer nerfs into another nerf high elf class topic to suit their own agenda, insidious but obvious. ( refers to the ones who started derailing).

[Tisaya]

Slayer needs nothing, it already got so much (they are still up by a good margin relative to before they got a channel and whatnot). What is needed is for WL to be brought down in the damage department to fit their mobility and otherwise non-existent dependencies that let them just go and do damage, where they need to, exactly when they need to. WL being overbuffed doesn't mean SL needs to be overbuffed to compete.

WL is overpowered, the barely functioning class relying on the bugged pet?

Destros and their never ending quest to nerf anything remotely good on order.

Meanwhile, choppas and maras still pull through the walls, floors and doors while destro side has access to 2 immunity-ignoring AOE punts with order having 0.

Hows that barely functioning Wl of yours going on the top of the killboard - i wish my characters barely functioned like that

If you judge classes strength by the killboard, there's a WE there, that isn't even 40 yet. WE nerf incoming?

Feel free to roll a WL, but don't cry when the pet despawns at the start of the fight and you instantly lose 75% damage and all cc.

[what63]

You people need to stop confusing statements about warband play with other stuff, WL is in no way reliant on pet in warband play, and isn't even close to being "barely functioning". It's just quite braindead because it's all mobility and raw throughput with no mechanic to play. oRvR warband play is quite specifically where SL is having issues competing with the raw throughput, ease of play and massive mobility of WL.

The fact that WL can't use a pet( which is the core mechanic of the class) in warband play could be considered '' barely functioning '' indeed, Loner always was a band-aid fix to a glaring class issue, pet survivability.

Regarding the Slayer , its unpopular due to it's own shortcomings after a series of nerfs which hit the class hard. The lastest being the WS-INI change. Hence why many quit the game / slayers etc.

White lions has nothing to do with it, except in the mind of destro players what whish to turn the imho legit complaints of latest slayer nerfs into another nerf high elf class topic to suit their own agenda, insidious but obvious. ( refers to the ones who started derailing).

Oh no, WL can use a pet- it gets not to. That being said, Loner is such a strong replacement for it that there is no point in using it, it would indeed make sense to lessen the WLs damage and solve pet issues in larger scale on the whole as far as warbanding goes, but that's a whole 'nother chapter. The current state of certain things are a smidge out of tune even after considering any pet related interactions. WL would essentially be functional as an AoE class with Loner just gone, a the moment, due to the quite ridiculous nature of the buffs it received on throughput.

SL had buff after buff after buff after buff. WL had buff after buff after buff after buff, where warbanding is concerned. Both classes received an absolutely unjustifiable amount of raw damage, resulting in a meta where TTK is low to the point of something like the WS/INI patch looking disastrous while in fact being entirely reasonable. Same goes for Choppa, and Mara being moved from utility at the core to pure deeps. All of these need to go back to more live like designs for intrarealm balance to make sense, and for TTK to go back to somewhat sane levels. WL should have gotten utility, not raw damage, or in other words as noted, pet fixes, allthough completely impossible to balance without making the pet less of a separate entity and more just a thematic thing carrying abilities.

This again isn't an order vs destruction or personal bias thing, at all. It is a simple fact that DPS class diversity was entirely nuked in favour of making certain "popular" classes entirely stackable. Destruction could be shitting on order for days, and WL would still have too high throughput. You don't look at order vs destro and just toss a crapton of stuff onto a single class. You make things like DPS AM, DPS RP, WH, Engi, SW and other low tier classes bring stuff that balances the scales out and enables the more stackable classes, to make the whole picture more balanced. Essentially how things used to be back in the day, right, where the meta was well rounded enough that you got value out of AP drains, cooldown reducers, cooldown increasers, pulls, morale drains, AP drains and all kinds of fun stuff on account of DPS classes, as opposed to stacking a single thing till death (Yes, BW was completely nuts, SLs initial rounds did diversify however, but they eventually just went way too far. CQ being gutted was also a major L for order diversity in regards to BW, engi and SW never recovered). Right now it's all gone, DPS classes either just do enough damage to kill the enemy before they kill you, or get binned. And WL for years now has in reality just had a far easier time killing before dying, the latest shifts in gamestates have solidified this mentally more than anything.

The worst thing that could happen would be for SL to be buffed into "popularity" again. What needs to happen is for intra-realm balance to be restored. And that means bringing down WL damage, bringing down SL damage (and yes, choppa and mara, probably squiggie), increasing their utility, increasing the damage and where needed utility on other classes+mirrors mentioned. The single minded garbage that lead to popular DPS classes becoming all raw damage while the rest were effectively deleted needs to be a thing of the past, and some of the subtle but well thought out synergies that the actual professional developers at Mythic gave us need to come back and be expanded on. They weren't perfect, and things like pre-buff WL were absolutely dead, but the way this was solved was on the whole very detrimental. Only when the warbands are diverse again, OUTSIDE of the three alternating stack picks, start thinking about realm vs realm balance in terms of throughput, and touch on multiple classes to solve.

[Panel]

WL is overpowered, the barely functioning class relying on the bugged pet?

Destros and their never ending quest to nerf anything remotely good on order.

Meanwhile, choppas and maras still pull through the walls, floors and doors while destro side has access to 2 immunity-ignoring AOE punts with order having 0.

Hows that barely functioning Wl of yours going on the top of the killboard - i wish my characters barely functioned like that

If you judge classes strength by the killboard, there's a WE there, that isn't even 40 yet. WE nerf incoming?

Feel free to roll a WL, but don't cry when the pet despawns at the start of the fight and you instantly lose 75% damage and all cc.

Reference to your Wl killboard performance is not a judgement of strength but rather to demonstrate that your claim the class barely functions is at best hyperbole or at worst utter BS - no character that "barely functions" would do so well. The WE? so what?- just a red herring as there is no claim it barely functions.

[Panel]

You people need to stop confusing statements about warband play with other stuff, WL is in no way reliant on pet in warband play, and isn't even close to being "barely functioning". It's just quite braindead because it's all mobility and raw throughput with no mechanic to play. oRvR warband play is quite specifically where SL is having issues competing with the raw throughput, ease of play and massive mobility of WL.

The fact that WL can't use a pet( which is the core mechanic of the class) in warband play could be considered '' barely functioning '' indeed, Loner always was a band-aid fix to a glaring class issue, pet survivability.

Regarding the Slayer , its unpopular due to it's own shortcomings after a series of nerfs which hit the class hard. The lastest being the WS-INI change. Hence why many quit the game / slayers etc.

White lions has nothing to do with it, except in the mind of destro players what whish to turn the imho legit complaints of latest slayer nerfs into another nerf high elf class topic to suit their own agenda, insidious but obvious. ( refers to the ones who started derailing).

Oh no, WL can use a pet- it gets not to. That being said, Loner is such a strong replacement for it that there is no point in using it, it would indeed make sense to lessen the WLs damage and solve pet issues in larger scale on the whole as far as warbanding goes, but that's a whole 'nother chapter. The current state of certain things are a smidge out of tune even after considering any pet related interactions. WL would essentially be functional as an AoE class with Loner just gone, a the moment, due to the quite ridiculous nature of the buffs it received on throughput.

SL had buff after buff after buff after buff. WL had buff after buff after buff after buff, where warbanding is concerned. Both classes received an absolutely unjustifiable amount of raw damage, resulting in a meta where TTK is low to the point of something like the WS/INI patch looking disastrous while in fact being entirely reasonable. Same goes for Choppa, and Mara being moved from utility at the core to pure deeps. All of these need to go back to more live like designs for intrarealm balance to make sense, and for TTK to go back to somewhat sane levels. WL should have gotten utility, not raw damage, or in other words as noted, pet fixes, allthough completely impossible to balance without making the pet less of a separate entity and more just a thematic thing carrying abilities.

This again isn't an order vs destruction or personal bias thing, at all. It is a simple fact that DPS class diversity was entirely nuked in favour of making certain "popular" classes entirely stackable. Destruction could be shitting on order for days, and WL would still have too high throughput. You don't look at order vs destro and just toss a crapton of stuff onto a single class. You make things like DPS AM, DPS RP, WH, Engi, SW and other low tier classes bring stuff that balances the scales out and enables the more stackable classes, to make the whole picture more balanced. Essentially how things used to be back in the day, right, where the meta was well rounded enough that you got value out of AP drains, cooldown reducers, cooldown increasers, pulls, morale drains, AP drains and all kinds of fun stuff on account of DPS classes, as opposed to stacking a single thing till death (Yes, BW was completely nuts, SLs initial rounds did diversify however, but they eventually just went way too far. CQ being gutted was also a major L for order diversity in regards to BW, engi and SW never recovered). Right now it's all gone, DPS classes either just do enough damage to kill the enemy before they kill you, or get binned. And WL for years now has in reality just had a far easier time killing before dying, the latest shifts in gamestates have solidified this mentally more than anything.

The worst thing that could happen would be for SL to be buffed into "popularity" again. What needs to happen is for intra-realm balance to be restored. And that means bringing down WL damage, bringing down SL damage (and yes, choppa and mara, probably squiggie), increasing their utility, increasing the damage and where needed utility on other classes+mirrors mentioned. The single minded garbage that lead to popular DPS classes becoming all raw damage while the rest were effectively deleted needs to be a thing of the past, and some of the subtle but well thought out synergies that the actual professional developers at Mythic gave us need to come back and be expanded on. They weren't perfect, and things like pre-buff WL were absolutely dead, but the way this was solved was on the whole very detrimental. Only when the warbands are diverse again, OUTSIDE of the three alternating stack picks, start thinking about realm vs realm balance in terms of throughput, and touch on multiple classes to solve.

Your point about returning utility to classes is spot on. Take Mara for example - its obvious from the placement of aoe debuffs in the monstro tree and the easy reached AP drain in savagery that the intention for Monstro Maras was to be modest dps while being tanky enough to spread aoe debuffs into the enemy WB/s. Sadly this play style is not viable as the either the proc/s chance is too low or the proc itself so small it will have low to limited effect on the enemy.
Of course the "penalty" for this utility was low aoe dps. Now Monstro Mara utility outside of pull and KD is non existent but they still pay the "utility penalty".
I would be happy with low dps ( got enough pew pew characters and tired of it) providing the debuffs were made meaningful again. The chance to play a useful spec without caring about kills would give me a new lease of life on the game and would be a ton a fun for me at least.

[Farrul]

Oh no, WL can use a pet- it gets not to. That being said, Loner is such a strong replacement for it that there is no point in using it, it would indeed make sense to lessen the WLs damage and solve pet issues in larger scale on the whole as far as warbanding goes, but that's a whole 'nother chapter. The current state of certain things are a smidge out of tune even after considering any pet related interactions. WL would essentially be functional as an AoE class with Loner just gone, a the moment, due to the quite ridiculous nature of the buffs it received on throughput.

SL had buff after buff after buff after buff. WL had buff after buff after buff after buff, where warbanding is concerned. Both classes received an absolutely unjustifiable amount of raw damage, resulting in a meta where TTK is low to the point of something like the WS/INI patch looking disastrous while in fact being entirely reasonable. Same goes for Choppa, and Mara being moved from utility at the core to pure deeps. All of these need to go back to more live like designs for intrarealm balance to make sense, and for TTK to go back to somewhat sane levels. WL should have gotten utility, not raw damage, or in other words as noted, pet fixes, allthough completely impossible to balance without making the pet less of a separate entity and more just a thematic thing carrying abilities.

It is actually absurd to believe Loner is a replacement to the pet considering that half the class toolkit is gone with it including all CC, no Loner is an unfortunate necessity not a replacement. It is also a painful reminder of the balance failure which is the White lion pet, a melee pet with no surviviability at all is a mockery in a balance sense ( just take a look at other similar games, such as World of warcraft to realize how melee pets are done correctly).

Without Loner the AoE WL would still be playing pet-less, the only thing left to do is to slot ''Revenge'' Tactic as the pet will spend all the time dead in combat anyways, it has no presence in any kind of battle involving large-scale damage, it instantly dies and goes into the ridiculous long 15 sec cooldown.

As far as these buffs are concerned, i can think of one direct buff, conditional removal of Primal Fury, otherwise it has been nothing but nerfs. Wl is a shadow of its former self as any long time player would tell you. 50% armor shred tactic nerfed into 25% ( stacks with WS but overall a net loss). Pounce CD added to loner. Pounce range nerfed down to 40ft. Pet made completely hopeless after ability rework patch, AI busted and pet speed slowed down considerably which has been added to the bugtracker, admitet by some dev but never resolved. So where are these direct WL buffs you claim, i can't think of any except how procs interact which isn't a WL exclusive.

As far as Slayer, and you mention Choppa etc these classes just needed Rampage/GTDC fixed and that's about it, i will have to completely disagree since what we have now is a ranged spam fest, who is going to play a ''naked dwarf'' that dies in seconds and requires babysitting 9/10 of the time, when you could play a Shaman spamming dots/healing/kite 3 players at once. There must be some kind of incentive to play under those conditions or nobody will, which is exactly what we are seeing in the game right now ( relatively speaking).

I have to once again disagree, except for a few outliers ( such as the absurdity of the former Regen Def/ WE etc) there was not much to nerf, many things to improve however and to empower so that players actually stick to the game, not forsake it.

[what63]

Oh no, WL can use a pet- it gets not to. That being said, Loner is such a strong replacement for it that there is no point in using it, it would indeed make sense to lessen the WLs damage and solve pet issues in larger scale on the whole as far as warbanding goes, but that's a whole 'nother chapter. The current state of certain things are a smidge out of tune even after considering any pet related interactions. WL would essentially be functional as an AoE class with Loner just gone, a the moment, due to the quite ridiculous nature of the buffs it received on throughput.

SL had buff after buff after buff after buff. WL had buff after buff after buff after buff, where warbanding is concerned. Both classes received an absolutely unjustifiable amount of raw damage, resulting in a meta where TTK is low to the point of something like the WS/INI patch looking disastrous while in fact being entirely reasonable. Same goes for Choppa, and Mara being moved from utility at the core to pure deeps. All of these need to go back to more live like designs for intrarealm balance to make sense, and for TTK to go back to somewhat sane levels. WL should have gotten utility, not raw damage, or in other words as noted, pet fixes, allthough completely impossible to balance without making the pet less of a separate entity and more just a thematic thing carrying abilities.

It is actually absurd to believe Loner is a replacement to the pet considering that half the class toolkit is gone with it including all CC, no Loner is an unfortunate necessity not a replacement. It is also a painful reminder of the balance failure which is the White lion pet, a melee pet with no surviviability at all is a mockery in a balance sense ( just take a look at other similar games, such as World of warcraft to realize how melee pets are done correctly).

Without Loner the AoE WL would still be playing pet-less, the only thing left to do is to slot ''Revenge'' Tactic as the pet will spend all the time dead in combat anyways, it has no presence in any kind of battle involving large-scale damage, it instantly dies and goes into the ridiculous long 15 sec cooldown.

As far as these buffs are concerned, i can think of one direct buff, conditional removal of Primal Fury, otherwise it has been nothing but nerfs. Wl is a shadow of its former self as any long time player would tell you. 50% armor shred tactic nerfed into 25% ( stacks with WS but overall a net loss). Pounce CD added to loner. Pounce range nerfed down to 40ft. Pet made completely hopeless after ability rework patch, AI busted and pet speed slowed down considerably which has been added to the bugtracker, admitet by some dev but never resolved. So where are these direct WL buffs you claim, i can't think of any except how procs interact which isn't a WL exclusive.

As far as Slayer, and you mention Choppa etc these classes just needed Rampage/GTDC fixed and that's about it, i will have to completely disagree since what we have now is a ranged spam fest, who is going to play a ''naked dwarf'' that dies in seconds and requires babysitting 9/10 of the time, when you could play a Shaman spamming dots/healing/kite 3 players at once. There must be some kind of incentive to play under those conditions or nobody will, which is exactly what we are seeing in the game right now ( relatively speaking).

I have to once again disagree, except for a few outliers ( such as the absurdity of the former Regen Def/ WE etc) there was not much to nerf, many things to improve however and to empower so that players actually stick to the game, not forsake it.

The only thing that needs to be said here, is that Whirling Axe used to do all of like 100-150 damage a tick, with no access to arpen, only conditional damage increasers. A single AoE WL is worth like four-five Mythic/earlier and saner RoR WLs in a warband just on account of throughput lol.

The damage is buffed so high that even if you unslot Loner and run without pet entirely, you are still doing more damage than you did back then with pet out and crit damage tactic on or with revenge active, like multiple times over on average. Looking at the actual value changes that have taken place should be an obvious indicator that the conditional change on PF is just a drop in the ocean. Again, it's not that the pet doesn't have issues or couldn't bring more to the class with fixes, it's that the actual abilities you press on WL have been buffed and will do hundreds of percent more damage on the average compared to what they used to. Literally. The pet being defunct doesn't even compute with how far they went. Loner is such a small drop in the overall picture that you can easily unslot it and have the option to summon pet for occasional CC and still be very much in the green in the damage department relative to Mythic/sane RoR WL when talking AoE specs.

My point is that this level of damage shouldn't be a thing whatsoever on something mobile with no defensive downsides. Better take the damage down by a few tens of percents and either fix pet or give other utility that boosts a full warband or group to make it worth bringing a couple WLs per WB, as opposed to 4-8 being optimal. This by default solves SL competition. SL aswell should be worth bringing a couple of, no more. From there both need to be adjusted to fit the rest of the order classes more closely, with the very worst ones brought up only slightly. Doing this in any other fashion will just result in more powercreep and even lower TTK at scale.

"Range fest" stuff is no different from what it has been in the past, ranged will always be king in unorganized. And immobile melee like SL will always be the loosers. Vice versa as organization goes up. If you for whatever reason buff SL just to make it compete with ranged DPS in arbitrary unorganized RvR, you will just further wreck the top end meta and degrade TTK situation. Certain ranged classes simply shouldn't be delivering as much untelegraphed damage as they are. When sorc/BW timestamps were the primary danger, it was all a lot more manageable but those have now become the easiest things to deal with. But then again, not overly relevant in actual WB play, where the babysitting will take care of absolutely everything.

[Sinisterror]

There really wont be change for the better considering melee dps because Gcd change from 1.15s to 1.5s hardcap. Meaning 8 instant skills vs 6 instant skills in same timeframe.

Peple dont seem to grasp that longer cast times espesially if over 1.5s will benefit from this MASSIVELY and Melee has 2 skills less to use in 10s. And that matters in that time alot. On top of that there are so much ranged instant skills that match melee dps dmg which obviously makes no sense. Not just instant range skills but overall RoR has buffed Ranged dmg from Live