Return of Reckoning

kmark101 wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 10:02 pm

Stophy22 wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 9:12 pm Maybe give knights a similar tactic to turn all dmg into elemental dmg like chosens discord wings and idk what ironbreakers issue or problem is. I still remember Volgos videos and I’m not sure what’s changed since then.

If the topic still stands, why isn’t order playing tanks, I genuinely believe it’s because of such strong ranged alternatives. And what that one person said about the trifecta of strong classes (engi, WL, bw) explains really well an alternative reason.

It is explained in a recent topic about IB's warband viability, but to summarize it in short, the root of the problem is that IB (and knight, too) is focused on physical damage type, thats how it's skillset has been built. But in the last few years, the only thing that significantly increased on every piece of gear is the value of armor. Add that the popularity of armor talismans and armor potions and suddenly you can see why these classes have problems with damage: their hits are maximum 75% mitigated, even after the class built-in armor debuff tools. This was not the case when Volgo made his videos, as conq was the highest level gear and you could still debuff effectively. Meanwhile, magic damage types are capped at 45% resist. Not hard to see where the imbalance is and it is growing every day, every single piece of gear has more armor than the previous tier. In the special case of knight, they lost Runefang's WS ingredient, which was their answer to do physical damage first of all, so they got completely neutered.... and received a tactic which turns their damage to magical, while taking 15% damage at the same time... who would ever slot this I have no idea. And just to make it a bit more complicated, chosen's spirit damage type has 4 different classes on destro side who can debuff... while for elemental damage type... yea you guessed it, only the knight's own aura of -160. So this is why order tanks do no damage atm.

I mean BG and Black Orc both do physical dmg too, right?

Stophy22 wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 10:09 pm I mean BG and Black Orc both do physical dmg too, right?

Since they were not built around effective single target armor debuffs they have other tools to overcome this. For example Skull Thumper is corporeal damage or the spammable 0 cooldown aoe skills.

Martok wrote: Sun May 10, 2020 4:49 pm A lesson we all should have learned from the Core Guard Ability Change experience of 2019. Your point is simple yet elegant and I fail to understand why so many seem unable to grasp it.

What was the Core Guard Ability Change experience of 2019? I was not around for this, would like to know the context/history. Guard does seem to work differently from retail WAR. I don't remember it persisting through death, and it seems as though someone can be guarded by more than one tank simultaneously, though I'm not sure. I haven't experienced a time where guard failed to apply because someone else was already guarding.

Martok wrote: Sun May 10, 2020 4:49 pm Yeah, agreed. However another aspect of this issue is expressed by the willingness of a certain percentage of the player-base to conform in order to insure perpetual inclusion within that certain percentage of the player-base. Meaning the stick being employed doesn't bother them.

The stick will work for some people, including me. But it could work a lot better if the skids were greased. I know it affects my choices. I've bounced around many classes for the last two weeks as I've gotten back in this game, for both Order and Destruction, trying to settle on one or a faction that I think I will stick with long-term. End-game viability is something I keep in mind, along with the fact that metas always change, and two months from now, we could have a very different situation with just a few small changes that suddenly make one class or spec a lot more desirable or beneficial in ways and places they are not currently.

I've ultimately decided on Order, and to main a tank. For many reasons:

1) Destruction has a significant population advantage, which as I described before, means they have labor surplus and can be pickier. I will have an easier time end-game getting groups and guilds on Order, especially so if I am in one of the "in need" classes/specs. Less so on Destruction where it will be more competitive, and as a new person getting back into the game, I anticipate Order side will likely be a little more willing to put up with learning than Destro where they can just pick a veteran and leave me out.

2) Destruction has a significant population advantage, which means for Order, there's it's a target-rich environment, generally speaking. Being on the underdog means faster queues for SC, more demand for services, and more targets.

3) Destruction has a significant population advantage, and generally performs better overall, which to me makes it EZ-mode. I want a challenge, and I want to make a difference. I think I am much more likely to achieve that on Order than on Destro.

4) Going Destro would make the situation worse, going Order helps. I like helping. I may just be one person, but it's a swing of 2 people (one less on Destro, one more on Order) than if I went the other way. Every little bit adds up.

5) I chose tank because I have always enjoyed it most in this game, and Order needs more tanks. In the ideal 2-2-2 composition, Tanks and Healers, together making up 1/2 of all classes, are 2/3 of the warband, so I think that'll be easier to get involved, and help out the faction. I also considered WP, and I'll probably level one up as well for variety and an alternative, even though I enjoy DoK more (so far).

Looking back at that list, some of the motivation is end-game viability, so the "stick" is playing a role in my decisionmaking, both in pushing me away from Destro and towards Order, and also int he class I chose. But ultimately I chose the class because I like the tank role and its what I enjoy most. It's additional pressure to do it, but I probably would have ended up there anyway. I also enjoy Engineer, and the stick was a factor in eliminating that choice.

It has an effect, but its not sufficient. In addition to helping Order as a faction, there could be more granular catch-up mechanics for desired or under-represented classes (like tanks and healers) to level up, gear up, and renown-up faster to fill the need, and encourage others to fill the need who may be contemplating it. That's what I mean by "Grease the skids" - people who do research like myself could look at it, weigh it all, and then choose a faster path - the one in most need. Or new players who are on the fence or unsure could be steered towards the most needed classes if the faster progression were to be known to them at character creation time.

Martok wrote: Sun May 10, 2020 4:49 pm Which constitutes another reason I support the idea of a PUG City instance. When I see a number of SW's or WH's or Engi's or DPS AM's or AM's in any spec all standing around outside the city gates trying to find a warband and ultimately being forced to solo-que or not get in the city at all it bothers me because it gives me pause to wonder if that was truly the intent of how the system was designed.

Regarding system design...in this sort of situation where the game is carrying on in spirit long after the original game is gone, I think its important to keep in mind that many of the systems in the game were put in at a very different time and motivation for the developers. They may have had business goals or had design ideas overridden or tainted by disagreements on the team, or had ideas they were merely experimenting with, not sure how it would play out with intention to adjust. They may have made changes long ago after seeing how things play out if it resulted in undesirable or un-fun situations. They also didn't really see much long-term effects as this server has been going a very long time compared to retail WAR. We're seeing situations and player habits that have evolved long past what the original developers likely anticipated. I think the important thing is keeping with the spirit of the design philosophy and change things where necessary to make the game fun.

I'm encouraged when I see some changes to things in ROR because I think for the most part the developers working on this game understand that, but I also see a lot of caution that might affect guilds and benefits of them. Guilds are extremely sticky for any game, so it is reasonable to me to have caution for things that might result in less motivation to join a guild or less benefits from being in one or organizing. For example, if you can get mostly the same benefits from pugging as you can being in an organized group, it can negatively impact motivation and desire to do organized groups. I expect that might be why there's some resistance there.

Omegus wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 7:11 pm

Mordd wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 5:22 pm

Omegus wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 5:06 pm When Order brings the right DPS classes in a 2-2-2 and avoids the morale drop: https://i.imgur.com/QsC2pVC.jpg

Isnt that the one you were just saying how they still lost stage 3?

Yes. In stage 1 and 2 we were slaughtered and in stage 3 we were just able to hold onto our champs before they all despawned and we got a clutch win on the king kill by 4%. Our WB leader deserves some respect for getting us through.

I could talk about how the killcount means nothing and how staying positive and engaged in the face of over whelming odds resulted in a 5 star city win on stage 3... but we all know few if any players will change their behaviour based on this thread.

I won a stage 3 in a pug last week where we were stomped in the first 2 stages. most people still try. in our case having far too many dps and no tanks pays off when you can almost insta respawn.

I'm not even going to talk about comparing classes, as a lot had been said, and I'm just going to focus on possible reasons of why there is a shortage of tanks in Order. As a tank as main character, there are few challenges I notice:
- Tank is a heavily team-depending class. If I'm a rdps I could just try to pewpew people from the distance without even having a party, if I'm a mdps I can try to gank solo people, and as a healer I can hot random people from safety and keep getting my renown.
As a def tank (it has been clear already that dps spec is not viable) , I'm supposed to be on the frontline, so even if I'm tankier than other classes, I will still have to depend on people healing me. Furthermore, I will still need also dps to kill while I tank, otherwise my impact will be minimum. This will require that I usually run on an organized warband, or join pugs and hope for the best.
This extra effort in a daily basis makes that people who are more casual-minded (or just can't be bothered with it) don't play a tank.

-Tanks job, even when performed extremely well, is usually overseen and outshined by the feats of other classes.
For example, when a city or a scenario finish, people usually will sort up by damage and/or healing and be like: "woah this guy did x killingbows or x millions of damage!" or "this guy healed so much and ressed us all the time".
It's very strange that anyone says something like: "Amazing guard switching, we didn't crumble because of you!", "Good crowd control!" or anything similar (there are a few though <3).
I know people doesn't play the game to be praised by others as main reason, but it doesn't really help either to incentivate people to play tanks.


I don't see easy fix for any of these two points. For the first one, the only possible solution I see would be reworking some tank abilities to have a viable dps spec, but this might cause to have even a shorter number of defensive tanks (as a lot of people wouldn't even bothering respeccing when needed).
As for the second reason, as far as the data displayed remains being what is it (damage, killing blows, heals), tanks job will be kept in darkness. I wouldn't recommend adding something like "damage taken from guard" as it might make people focus on the wrong things. To be honest is hard to measure and I don't have a solution for this.
All I can ask for is for people to raise awareness, and cherish your tanks.

this^

ppl dont play tanks because its hard and ungrateful(not in premades/const/rvr guilds) work.

I see it a bit differently, as someone who is playing both tanks and healers.
I find playing tank extremly frustrating, as often my own team mates are doing annoying things like:

• awful positioning making guard swaps irrevalent;
• break my roots with fluff AoE, which doesn't have any meaning;
• people running away from me when I need to guard swap to them, instead running to me;
• don't pay attention to staggers and simply break them, even when they are placed on side and they should assist on main assist (different direction);
• give free immunities for no reason, so I can't punt that guard away, stagger healers before morale dump, or save our own healers from melee train with stagger;
• use charge at bad moments and run out of my guard range forcing me to pop flee so I can keep up with them so they will not die, losing all morales I had (AP can be refilled with pots);
• and probably the most annoying thing - people don't respect tanks, I nearly always get praised for my healing, but as tank I hear only complains like "why my guard is not with me" after I got punted away/staggered/knocked down...

All of those often make me feel like my entire hard work is wasted.

Another thing and probably the most important! I feel like order tanks have simply much lesser impact on fights than their destruction counterparts (aside from one KotBS getting pump to SF as fast as possible or funnel/keep fights situations where you always have full morales). Thats mainly, because tanks on both sides have similar tools, yet order tanks, unlike destruction ones (CH/BO) don't have self morale pump, which means they can't rotate Distracting Bellows so casualy as CH, or drop their M3 as easily as CH/BO do during morale dumps. While we may argue that self pump is balanced due to other tools characters have, clearly ability to drop Morales which have high impact on fights feel more rewarding than having +5% crit on block for the team (Dirty Tricks) or passive +15% healing on your Stay Focused!.

xanniez wrote: Tue May 12, 2020 6:51 am As for the second reason, as far as the data displayed remains being what is it (damage, killing blows, heals), tanks job will be kept in darkness. I wouldn't recommend adding something like "damage taken from guard" as it might make people focus on the wrong things. To be honest is hard to measure and I don't have a solution for this.

I might be wrong, but I believe on Live there was a stat in scenario leaderboards that was "Damage Taken", which could be used to see how much damage your tanks were soaking up.

Bottom line is Destro has 2 more viable classes for the meta as of right now in the form of Shaman > AM and SH > SW. So if you grab in a bag and make a group more likely Destro will have a competent group than Order.

Second is Destro is more melee focused which makes it infinitely easier to push and be offensive. Tanks can more easily stick with melee guards and can actually use their abilities. With the lean of ranged being in Orders favor it makes it to where the tanks guarding the ranged dps ARENT IN RANGE TO EVEN USE THE MAJORITY OF THEIR KIT, which nullifies a huge portion of agency for Order. Which makes rolling a tank less desirable and more difficult to do your job on Order side.


In short. Destro OP. Def isn't a 'ZoMg oRdEr JuSt SuCkS' issue.

To collect some real numbers about career representation on both sides I have been collecting data from RvR now for the past 3 days. The methodology is that I scan active RvR zones with the ZonePop addon (not T1). Each scan is done with a few hours between and never the same zone twice in a row. So far I am up to 15 scans. Here are the results: https://imgur.com/a/JPcwnbV