Career: Black Orc
Played changes: yes
Impression of change:bad
Suggested cap: 6 (will bring aoe and st into better balance) increase diversity of class viability
Issue area: increases meta dependence and setup gap between pug and organized reducing fun while increasing Rolf stomp
My initial view of the change is that is does not improve game play or alter zeroing.
The change only increases the effectiveness of aoe dps classes and makes The difference in output even more noticeable on the battle field.
Here is a video of the new game play
Click here to watch on YouTube
This clearly shows fights are even faster, pugs get completely destroyed and when organized wb blob (in this case order) they kill everything in their path. So change is not improving things just making the things it is trying to fix worse
The skills that made any particular class into the meta have been amped up casing them to be even more effective. This is obviously a boost to min/max teams as thier damage output is increased about 2 1/2 times due just to increased target cap.
Result of this is difference between pug and organized is magnified by said 2 1/2 meaning a decent organized WB is more effective fights over in much shorter time , generally a reduction of fun.
Siege : not tested yet will come back to
Zerg: the only change affecting here is the content of the Zerg, if said Zerg is organized it will be able to blow though anything else if Zerg is weak it will get wiped .
Summary : increased aoe cap only reinforces the gap between well performing classes and gear, the results are fights over extremely fast and not interesting fights.
Where should the limit be : probably 6 pr less
Suggestions how to handle aoe: reduce damage out put in proportion to targets his, ie aoe damage and st damage total output is much close to each other
Note: blobbing and the maps. Currently the zones provide large numbers of chock points espcialy t4 maps. These maps with tunnels, mountain ways, bridges , keeps, forts and such force WB vs WB fights to have very narrow compact front lines . Typically the spots that bomb WB shined in the past and will be unstoppable with this change. As said range effects are mitigated in open areas but the choke points are plenty and have significant impact on the game. So arguments about range have impact but still are not Mitigated by unblob due to maps.
In general Some classes win and some lose but overall there is huge dps shif in the game, moving it closer to just a pure dps race instead of some tactics. This shift will further alienate certain classes while bringing range aoe into a better place
Note 2: seems like the split of good/bad is according to class players play with BW and typical air classes in favor rest not. Makes sense as archetype has a lot to do with the player mind set. With this change game moves away from the fight and just into win/lose without ifixing Zerg but just make if meta ape DPS oriented.
Note 3: Update after Tuesday fights in CW
The blobbing was excessive from order side , as predicted the blobs just get bigger
The fights WB vs WB is over in seconds, it’s not fighting its “mass free cheese”
Duel guild bomb WB with stacked BW incinerate pretty much anything
Single guild warbands Rolf stomp pugs
Summary , even if we kill a WB this is just not interesting and a very low entertainment play style to the point of wondering why we logged in
Note 4: the problem with this change is that it is geared at enabling Bomb warbands to take out/hurt zergs . The problem is that the mechanics that a bomb warband use is identical to that of the Zerg. That is concentrated fire .
The bomb groups do this by blobbing and this is exactly what a Zerg does.
So any change that favors a bomb group will be definition feed the Zerg.
To this extent increasing aoe cap , damage or healing in aoe form will feed bomb and Zerg group alike.
Only thing to do is reduce aoe damage when stacked so that it punished blobbing into very tight compact groups. Doing this would also fix class inclusion as aoe centric bombing will not have the same effect.