Return of Reckoning

detrap wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2021 6:14 am

Aethilmar wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:26 pm

Detangler wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 9:31 pm SM has the same mechanics as BO, and is basically the same class. BO has option for more raw damage, SM gets a lot more spirit damage. Chosen/BO is meta on destro side. same goes for order. Its not just the WW buff that makes SM meta, lol.

Out of curiosity what else makes SM "meta"? I am truly curious b/c when I join a premade for city as a WW Shieldmaster nobody says anything about any of my other abilities but they are very, very, very interested in me firing off WW every 20-24 seconds.

And nobody cares about me joining when I'm in 2-hander mode unless they are desperate for a guard.

Your winds is crucial because choppa's give the group 20 seconds every 40 seconds of reduced cooldowns and the black orc 10 seconds every 20 seconds. For order it's all we have to barely compete with it. On top of Winds you have your knockback, aoe interrupt and aoe damage debuffs to counter their channeling and damage output of their blob.

Yep. At rr83 I am well aware of what abilities my Shieldmaster has. My point, to be clear, is that nobody would have a SM join the warband if they didn't have Whispering Wind. The slot would be taken by an IB rather easily. None of those other abilities you mention would, individually or taken as a whole, would get an SM a warband slot over an IB or a Knight. DT + RT is the closest but not enough as nobody ever cares (or asks) if I have it slotted. And Healmaster is another possibility if it actually did enough healing to sorta matter under any kind of pressure (it doesn't but can look good on the scoreboard).

Aethilmar wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2021 6:50 am

detrap wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2021 6:14 am

Aethilmar wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:26 pm

Out of curiosity what else makes SM "meta"? I am truly curious b/c when I join a premade for city as a WW Shieldmaster nobody says anything about any of my other abilities but they are very, very, very interested in me firing off WW every 20-24 seconds.

And nobody cares about me joining when I'm in 2-hander mode unless they are desperate for a guard.

Your winds is crucial because choppa's give the group 20 seconds every 40 seconds of reduced cooldowns and the black orc 10 seconds every 20 seconds. For order it's all we have to barely compete with it. On top of Winds you have your knockback, aoe interrupt and aoe damage debuffs to counter their channeling and damage output of their blob.

Yep. At rr83 I am well aware of what abilities my Shieldmaster has. My point, to be clear, is that nobody would have a SM join the warband if they didn't have Whispering Wind. The slot would be taken by an IB rather easily. None of those other abilities you mention would, individually or taken as a whole, would get an SM a warband slot over an IB or a Knight. DT + RT is the closest but not enough as nobody ever cares (or asks) if I have it slotted. And Healmaster is another possibility if it actually did enough healing to sorta matter under any kind of pressure (it doesn't but can look good on the scoreboard).

Well why on earth would you not run WW when you are vaul/hoeth specced, it's the same issue for black orcs as well. If people don't care about DT+RT then they most likely don't know about it.

detrap wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2021 10:23 am

Aethilmar wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2021 6:50 am

detrap wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2021 6:14 am

Your winds is crucial because choppa's give the group 20 seconds every 40 seconds of reduced cooldowns and the black orc 10 seconds every 20 seconds. For order it's all we have to barely compete with it. On top of Winds you have your knockback, aoe interrupt and aoe damage debuffs to counter their channeling and damage output of their blob.

Yep. At rr83 I am well aware of what abilities my Shieldmaster has. My point, to be clear, is that nobody would have a SM join the warband if they didn't have Whispering Wind. The slot would be taken by an IB rather easily. None of those other abilities you mention would, individually or taken as a whole, would get an SM a warband slot over an IB or a Knight. DT + RT is the closest but not enough as nobody ever cares (or asks) if I have it slotted. And Healmaster is another possibility if it actually did enough healing to sorta matter under any kind of pressure (it doesn't but can look good on the scoreboard).

Well why on earth would you not run WW when you are vaul/hoeth specced, it's the same issue for black orcs as well. If people don't care about DT+RT then they most likely don't know about it.

I wouldn't. That's the point. It is required and the only reason anybody asks for a SM is as a WW bot. And maybe BO are in a similar situation with having one ability everybody wants them for and no other reason (I don't know. I don't play one but have heard they are more generally useful than SM).

As for DT + RT ... people do know and nobody cares. Never been asked about it once as WW > everything else.

Aethilmar wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2021 4:41 pm

detrap wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2021 10:23 am

Aethilmar wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2021 6:50 am

Yep. At rr83 I am well aware of what abilities my Shieldmaster has. My point, to be clear, is that nobody would have a SM join the warband if they didn't have Whispering Wind. The slot would be taken by an IB rather easily. None of those other abilities you mention would, individually or taken as a whole, would get an SM a warband slot over an IB or a Knight. DT + RT is the closest but not enough as nobody ever cares (or asks) if I have it slotted. And Healmaster is another possibility if it actually did enough healing to sorta matter under any kind of pressure (it doesn't but can look good on the scoreboard).

Well why on earth would you not run WW when you are vaul/hoeth specced, it's the same issue for black orcs as well. If people don't care about DT+RT then they most likely don't know about it.

I wouldn't. That's the point. It is required and the only reason anybody asks for a SM is as a WW bot. And maybe BO are in a similar situation with having one ability everybody wants them for and no other reason (I don't know. I don't play one but have heard they are more generally useful than SM).

As for DT + RT ... people do know and nobody cares. Never been asked about it once as WW > everything else.

There's plenty to do as a WW bot, I wouldn't see how it's boring. If someone doesn't care about damage mitigation then they don't know enough bout RT. BO's are not superior in their utility outside of cooldown reduction. In WW spec you can still put out a lot of damage and heals with modified gear and tactics. Or if they don't care for RT you can spec the khaine tree for even more damage and stat stealing capabilities.

SMs are needed primarily for WW, yes. But i'm not sure i understand the issue here.

Besides chosen and knight, all tanks have just one important team ability (except BG i guess). It would be greedy to ask for more.

Now, it would be nice for BO/SM to have maybe a little extra 2H utility. But they are the hardest hitting among the 2Hs.

On the other spectrum you have knight. Besides auras, it has Dirty Tricks and Focused Mending. Even 2H knight has AoE crit, defense and wound debuff.

It's a powerhouse for any group. And it's boring AF to play. Ofc personal opinions vary, but there's no denying the lack of abilities and wet noodle damage (in literally any spec).

Careful what you wish for. I doubt SM could get both more utility AND maintain same level of damage.

WW is a muchkin combo gone bad

gke96 wrote: Tue Feb 02, 2021 12:28 pm I will complain about some problems with Whispering Wind here.

First of all I don't know what the person who initially designed the ability was thinking, but the "silence" is a major DOWNSIDE to the ability. It just gives free immunity and this is definitely not an ability you use in order to silence people. Searching for targets to not give free immunity is a major pain.

Secondly this is a melee ability and it is defendable. It hits 2 times if at least one of them hits the buff is activated but if both of them are defended (happens in zergy fights sometimes if you cant find a non-tank target) the buff is not activated.

So you have to bother picking a non-tank target which you don't mind giving immunity to or already immune in the middle of the fight.

These makes WW a huge pain to use and it is definitely not an enjoyable experience.

Suggestion: Put the silence to Dazzling Strike instead.

Originally there were no immunity timer's in this game... so thats why whispering winds had a dual purpose. Maybe make whisper winds silence not grant immunity?

gke96 wrote: Tue Feb 02, 2021 12:28 pm I will complain about some problems with Whispering Wind here.

First of all I don't know what the person who initially designed the ability was thinking, but the "silence" is a major DOWNSIDE to the ability. It just gives free immunity and this is definitely not an ability you use in order to silence people.

It's actually an interesting example of indirect mirroring. BO has a silence core ability and SM has aoe resist debuff as core, SM has mastery ability for silence and BO has mastery ability for aoe resist debuff.
The cd reducer part is open to opinion for which is better, but with the move away from smallscale to wb, BO overall will be better imo. SM only needs 1 mastery point and no tactic slots to get cd redux, this is good for 2hander in small scale with offensive sov+2 bonus, you can get cd reducer while retaining your damage.
BO can't do this even with sov+2 since you need extra mastery point and lose an offensive tactic slot to get the cd redux, so you need to pick one or the other not both.
In wb scale, Waaggh ease of use, reliability and uptime makes it far superior and you don't miss the tactic slot as much as if you are 2hander in smallscale. Think this causes a lot of grief since SM could easily accomodate extra tactic (snb sm tactic options not great compared to BO) to make WW aoe and not require target but option not available.


Imo the silence component of WW is not really an issue, in small scale you use on someone who already has immunity, in wb it's not ideal but generally giving immunity to 1 guy is not going to change much in grand scheme of things, the main problem I found with it is defendable and you need a target which limits when you can use it, never really worried about the silence component.
Example, attacking/defending funnel, BO can have cd redux running on cooldown where SM can't use it at all until push etc.

So I think that was the original idea, SM better for 2hander smallscale, BO better for snb wb, but now with heavy focus on city and wbs etc I think it's a good idea to trial changes to freshen things up and monitor the impact and then make additional adjustments as needed.

Minor change:
WW buff procs even if attack is defended. This gives more reliability to WW while still being inferior to Waagh since Waagh needs tactic, WW still needs target and will give free immunity if target isn't already immune.

More direct mirroring approach:
Wrath of Hoeth is now Silence, SM and BO both have silence ability as core
WW now debuffs spirit resist and does aoe spirit dmg, SM and BO both have mastery ability for aoe resist debuff.
BO still needs tactic but retains +25 aa dmg component.

As it stands SM cd redux better than BO for 2hander smallscale, BO cd redux better than SM for everything else. If these changes came in, WW would be straight up better than Waaggh in all formats, it would be a nerf for all 2hander SM not running Sov+2 who can no longer debuff spirit resists as core. This moves more toward direct mirroring which is a direction this server generally doesn't head in, but I'd like to see some change come in and then trialled for a time to monitor impact and can always revert or adjust as needed.

Finally for people asking why snb BO better than snb SM:

I agree with the OP , this should be put in balance proposal section of the forums if you want it read by someone on the balance team.

Cardiff wrote: Sat Feb 27, 2021 11:25 pm

gke96 wrote: Tue Feb 02, 2021 12:28 pm I will complain about some problems with Whispering Wind here.

First of all I don't know what the person who initially designed the ability was thinking, but the "silence" is a major DOWNSIDE to the ability. It just gives free immunity and this is definitely not an ability you use in order to silence people.

Finally for people asking why snb BO better than snb SM:

Spoiler:

BO has:

Block tactic
Morale on Block
+160 wounds tactic
+50% block channel no cd
Dumpable m3

SM has:
Weird healing tactics
No dmg morales

But SM is best dps tank in game, with super cheese WODS, so again your interpretation may vary depending on your preferred scale

Is that all the SM has over the BO? Strange...

Even if Winds buff would proc regardless if the attack is successful, it is still greatly inferior in orvr when compared to the BO's one.

Any warband encounter for the first 30 seconds results in the following:

SM is staggered, snared, punted, perfect stance resetting twice, target is already dead, target in range but because of lag is not, and then finally hitting the only thing in range and its a tank and it gets block/parried twice.

But making it proc 100% would be a nice start, the use of Winds is sometimes non-existent in funnels because all the targets are usually tanks.

In regards to the topic of mirroring, I'm sure the SM had the cd reducer first, and for some reason it was they given to the BO a few years ago. This is part of the reason you will see SM being the least played tank. There is less room for error playing the class in any format of pvp, compared to the BO. It is easier to look good with a heavily undergeared snb BO in a city compared to better geared SM.

Morale pumps are another issue of this game that needs addressing. Having two tanks on destro with self pump is a head scratcher.