(Mythic) origins of balance

[footpatrol2]

So this is a long post and will be followed by other long posts in the racial sections. I thought I’d share my experience with this game on live as I feel it could be insightful. To me what I’m about to say is obvious. Maybe its obvious to other players also, I don't know their experiences. But it still seems like it is not so obvious when I hear people talking ingame.

So I started playing this game and eventually got into joining other people’s premades. Then eventually I started running my own premades because I didn’t want to wait to join an existing one. Then we started doing morale pushes. Since we were doing morale pushes and wanted to get our morale up as fast as possible I started looking for abilities that could increase morale faster. Then I stumbled onto something strange which was at the time a renown tactic that would increase your morale gain by 5% per member of your grp that was the same race… Which means you’d get a 25% morale boost for a same race. This got me thinking why? To my knowledge this tactic doesn't exist anymore.

So I started looking at potential same race premades. I eventually started with just a 6 man dwarf premade. The inter synergy was kinda crazy but it lacked stuff. I wanted the pull from the engineer and the napalm from the engineer. At the time this could be done with one engineer but it would gut his build. So then I started running 12 man dwarf premades so I could get the pull and napalm. The synergy started stacking and the abilities all started to make more sense. The builds were basically pure builds of the same tree using most if not all of the abilities in the tree. I’m not saying it was unbeatable but it was very strong. I eventually ended up running 18 man premades of dwarves which could have easily ran into a warband of premades. All spec specific with morale pushes, and a stupid amount of organization and coordination. Morale 4 pushes done in racial premades is amazing... and racial premade with morale pushes look amazing also.

So people love their dwarves. They also like the idea of a warband of dwarves. I’ve tried to get a warband of high elves together but was unsuccessful. Not because it couldn’t work but because there was not enough player interest. I was successful in running a 6 man premade of high elves though and was able to beat other high end premades. Sometimes you win sometimes you lose. So super quick note Dwarves are about stacking buffs/armor and the pull. High elves are all about Whisper winds and spirit damage and controlling the movement/precision strikes. I also attempted to run Chaos but there was zero interest at the time.

So I have a design type job. In design a major problem is communication between designer and customer. The designer will design something based on the communication of the customer AND guessing his intentional use. Lots of times there are mistakes and miscommunication. It is my opinion that this game was created and balanced around racial organized group play (premades). The player base never fully recognized this for whatever reasons. It was a bad design flaw of the company to not convey this. In a way they did and in a way they did not. So mythic thought in addition, that the playerbase would be at least 60% premade 40% solo. Obviously they were wrong.

Eventually mythic started to lose players. Since mythic actually listened to their players they started hacking up the classes abilities in an attempt to save subscribers. There is still a lot of synergy in racial groups but its been hacked up.
I’ll actually get into the specifics in the racial sections of these forums. I’ll be covering dwarves, high elves, chaos and greenskins. I’ll be able to explain why some weird abilities exist and why some dps/healer classes are tanky. I have not done extensive research into empire and dark elves because they have always dominated the meta and I wouldn’t be able to prove anything if I beat other premades with those racial groups.

This is Tendertoes from the dwarf grps and alltimebad from the high elf groups.
Currently I’ll by trying to start this again but with Greenskins hopefully there will be enough player interest.

[Sulorie]

Nobody here does single-race premades apart from roleplaying. It has no benefit anymore and there have to be different healers to cover all debuff types.

[Karast]

I can see a little bit of where you are going, but I think you remember things a little to rosily.

I to did racial warbands, all dwarf at that. They had a lot of problems from a balance perspective. In an all dwarf warband you had no real damage pressure. Since slayers were not out at launch. The only killing power you had was either engi M2 dumps, or building up to M4 and doing an Axe slam / rune of skewering bomb. By the time slayers came, the racial tactics were on the way out. But they did help dps a lot.

As a warband it is not effective at all to wait for morales. The only time you can do this is in a keep fight, or if your following another warband. I literally did this for years with Grom Karaz, and the Bloodstone Clan back on Burlock, and then for a bit on Karak Norn. It was not effective. You lacked serious sustain, at the beginning of a fight you do well, but RP run out of AP fast with Gheal spam, and even with guard they are a lot squishier than WP. But kiting is not an option. Engi's cannot provide dps and kite. The main reason we had any success at all was because we were on vent fighting pug warbands, or we would ambush with full morale on guild warbands, but doing toe to toe fights wasn't an option, and it was very depressing for a dwarf guild not to be able to go toe to toe.

There are a lot of things you miss out on. BW dps is a big one, knight auras, WP fast gheal / tankyness / group cleanse.

If you are talking about a 6 man premade. IB / SL with RP is not a bad mix, but you miss out on a lot.

[lawfol]

I can surely believe the original design was race based...Camelot was based on three factions...in WAR we have three parings. But did not survive the release.
The added fun of a dwarf only premade surely counters any missing "trick" imo.

[roadkillrobin]

I'm also quit sure the orginal idea was to have racial synnergy over realm synnergy.
The Greenskins got synnergy hints all over it, this was the best Morale building Race.
Also if you look at Black Orcs Da Boss Tree you see some really obvius synnergy with with SH's melee tree. Er'we Go build on Shamans + Stremght in Numbas from SH's + Youz se me blok' dat on BO and you whole team would be on m4 really quick.

[Sulorie]

No serious shaman would make a moral pump build, because their tactics are just supbar for this matter. Unless you think it is ok to waste 2 tactic slots for 300 moral every 10 sec.

That said, it is pretty obvious that Mythic had race synergies in mind, when you take a look at the Highelves or Dwarfs.

[lilsabin]

so , those people had the best idea to develop a game , where at first you needed to be in a group for it to work , then , you had to be in a group of people who had picked the same race as you for it to be better ? i am still trying to figure out what was wrong in their brain .

[roadkillrobin]

No serious shaman would make a moral pump build, because their tactics are just supbar for this matter. Unless you think it is ok to waste 2 tactic slots for 300 moral every 10 sec.

That said, it is pretty obvious that Mythic had race synergies in mind, when you take a look at the Highelves or Dwarfs.

Frsrt off, Shamans only have 2 tactics for healing. The rest are pretty bad.
Then your missing some more racial synnergy here aswell. Chop Fasta + Ere We Go, You have 2 Shamans giving 300 morale every 5 sec. Pre Hot, Ere We Go, Grouheal, Ere We Go, Groupheal, Ere We Go Groupheal.

[footpatrol2]

@Karast

We played the dwarf grp for a year or so... I think? I'm not sure but a long long time. We were able to take on premade melee trains easily. We were able to take on at the time big name premades. Sometimes we would win sometimes we would lose. Maybe they were horrible I dunno.

I'd argue that it was the opposite. The weakness of the dwarf grp is not having max buffs in the beginning of the fight which was when we were weakest. Once the buffs were all going at max we were a super hard nut to crack.

I'm halfway through the dwarf write up at the moment. I'll be doing a write up on the factions stated earlier. A one sentence summary of the dwarf grp is a napalm/rift 12 man. Our Grimnir Runepriests were tougher then warriorpriests due to him stacking as much armor as possible in tali's, him using the armor tactic and depending on the inspiring presence of the Brotherhood IB for his willpower.

[Karast]

@Karast

We played the dwarf grp for a year or so... I think? I'm not sure but a long long time. We were able to take on premade melee trains easily. We were able to take on at the time big name premades. Sometimes we would win sometimes we would lose. Maybe they were horrible I dunno.

I'd argue that it was the opposite. The weakness of the dwarf grp is not having max buffs in the beginning of the fight which was when we were weakest. Once the buffs were all going at max we were a super hard nut to crack.

I'm halfway through the dwarf write up at the moment. I'll be doing a write up on the factions stated earlier. A one sentence summary of the dwarf grp is a napalm/rift 12 man. Our Grimnir Runepriests were tougher then warriorpriests due to him stacking as much armor as possible in tali's, him using the armor tactic and depending on the inspiring presence of the Brotherhood IB for his willpower.

Did you play EU or US? There was a very different dynamic when it came to warbands setups early on. EU caught on to the bombing and sorc / BW stacking a lot sooner, where on US there was a lot more melee training / assist. It was a very different game depending on what server you were on, and when you played. On Burlok towards the end, and then on Norn there was a lot of full bomb setups, that just metaled people, and rune priest healing just couldn't keep up due AP / cast time issues. Also you don't got to take my word for this. There are a lot of guys and gals around from those days from both order and destro. I need to check but there might still be youtube videos.

When you talk about armor tali stacking, that is something that WP's did as well, and they didn't need to bother with the armor tactic since they have higher base armor.

I am not shitting on balance, but even back at launch a racially diverse warband was much more effective than the racial warbands. There was a lot of synergy between the races.

For example combine Kotbs running dirty tricks, SM with whispering winds, and then dps rune priest running the heal debuff tactic, and you have an effective means of stacking up an AoE incoming heal debuff. Engi does a great job of feeding BW's, because we have the high value corp debuff, and we can pull then AoE'd so that they can focus their dps. WL has a simply fantastic armor debuff that worked well in a melee assist. AM and their instant rez's work great in warbands for quick res's and their resist buff meant runepriest can give initiative buff to reduce crit. There is a lot of great synergy that you miss out on running a full racial group.

When you get up to warband scale you see a lot of more niche roles like dps rune priest / magnet engi / healing AM / dps AM, shine where you would hardly ever see them in small scale / 6v6.

Edit

I am sorry if it sounds like I am coming off a bit harsh. I really enjoyed running racial warbands for the feel and flare. But from a competitive standpoint they got destroyed. Good players did a lot with them, but pound for pound they couldn't win out.