BO, Should I even bother?

[bw10]

short answer: yes - because its a tank and youll always find a group
long answer: no because its the shittiest tank in the game; both snb and 2h. youll be better off literally playing any other tank. especially chosen or knight

[TrainInVain]

All this effin doom and gloom, just because a class isn't meta. Even the big name rvr guilds will spam looking for tanks for 18-24 man groups. Look and you will find plenty ork players out there are successful and ask the 2h or snb ones you see who are doing well.

[bw10]

its the shittiest tank out of them by a mile... "but some people make it "work"". thats just dishonest at the moment, because whoever can make bo "work" would propably excel at any other tank

[Hazmy]

Just because you could play the other tanks better - doesn't mean one shouldn't play the rest of the classes. That's not dishonest it's being reasonable.

Especially if they like Black Orc - they can 100% play it and have fun unless they plan to be the next Ranked God - which judging from the repeating 20-30 names in the leaderboard not a lot of people are interested in and the average joe on this server just wants to have fun in a blob.

Black Orc is completely fine for that. Not everything is about meta, and frankly most are probably not on the level anyway to make proper use of the meta.

[Culexus]

Is the BO the worst tank in the game? Yes, by a large margin. Looking at the career builder and seeing what other tanks have compared to BO is just depressing.

Should you play a BO if that's the class you want to play? Absolutely yes. If you want to chase the (current) meta then play another tank, but if you play the class you love any meta changes won't matter, you'll have fun regardless. I love my clunky BO and have no regrets about it being my main.

A lot of the negativity about the BO you're reading is partly due to the fact that the single tactic that made us somewhat meta (which says a lot about the state of the class) was removed 3 years ago and the the devs put all balance changes on hold straight after for the ability rework. We've been stuck in our current state with no change in sight for all this time which can be pretty frustrating. But with the ability rework almost done and balance changes finally on the horizon the BO will certainly be getting some buffs, and current meta classes maybe getting nerfs, so keep that in mind.

[bradbury111]

BO is a great pve tank, decent pvp tank. 2 straight forward build: 2h: strong offtank to watchout for 20s, very gear and renown dependent; 1h + shield full tank, viable since lvl1, that can be completely ignored since t4, good for a last man standing mode (if there would be one).
There's little to no room for experiment things, most of his high rank skills (and their paired tactics) are gimmicks and the good ones are locked to specific weapon presets.

Has an interesting mechanics helps you keep going if you're into mastering the class, if not BOs skillset by itself doesn't give the motivation to keep going after a while.

Don't know about the upcoming changes though, hope for the best, less resctrictions, less gimmicks, but more a into the waaagh.

[what63]

Just because you could play the other tanks better - doesn't mean one shouldn't play the rest of the classes. That's not dishonest it's being reasonable.

Especially if they like Black Orc - they can 100% play it and have fun unless they plan to be the next Ranked God - which judging from the repeating 20-30 names in the leaderboard not a lot of people are interested in and the average joe on this server just wants to have fun in a blob.

Black Orc is completely fine for that. Not everything is about meta, and frankly most are probably not on the level anyway to make proper use of the meta.

Well, no one is dismissing that a lot of people simply don't care if their class isn't on the very cutting edge of the meta and whatnot. It's not a hard position to respect. In the same vein, maybe we could respect that people that do care also exist and are entitled to not only ask for input on any given class, but to also offer insights and opinions on matters to eachother?

Fact of the matter that something as "small" as Da Biggest! never worked like Live on RoR, for example. On RoR it procs once per hit at most, at 25% chance with the chance of refreshing itself to just the same stat you had, be that a ballistic skill buff or something you actually wanted, pulling from a huge selection of stats with limited duration, as such it's already suffering quite significant reliability issues for something like solo roaming or smaller scale pvp. Now, some of the recent complaints are rooted in the fact that this is getting much, much worse with the rework still! The bellows were given a hard ICD for the ability rework, meaning you no longer get to enjoy multiple procs even from doing AoE, for example by utilizing Big Swing to advance plans when fighting pet classes, or when doing 6v6. You do one ability, you may get one proc, that's the end of it.

To contrast this to live, it could proc MULTIPLE TIMES OFF A SINGLE INSTANCE OF DAMAGE. It had a 25% chance PER STAT PER HIT (or well, likely an ICD per stat, anyways), quite logically, because it pulls from such a huge pool. The class has the very bare minimum of statrelated interactions outside of bellow, scaling with points into defensive trees and tactics equipped for those specs to be able to provide something without investing into the damage tree, but for a 2h/more damage oriented spec, you don't even get a strength buff. The bellow is IT. And it goes from good>worse>"I migth aswell run wounds bellow even though I got 0 points into the tree that scales it", over the history of post-live.

Now, you might see how maybe being aware of what is going on with classes could prevent someone from wasting a bunch of time on something they actually don't want in the end, with the whole perspective thing in the mix. Especially when you consider that Chosen for example, that already had access to always on strength and toughness auras, now has a strength tactic aswell, which also serves as a second toughness tactic, on top of getting to deal magic damage and by default having overall better tools for most jobs at most scales. BO gets an RNG proc that just keeps getting worse and worse. Sure, not everyone cares, but these things aren't stated on tooltips anywhere, they're minute details that have drastic impact on what your class actually is and is capable of, and there are plenty of people that want to know!

Edit: Actual implementation of Da Greenest! stated above is likely severely incorrect; the why behind multiple procs was misremembered there. The mistake here is that it steals the same stat from all targets hit. The proc is 30ft, if you hit three people on live, they all rolled separately for which stat to grant, as far as I can tell from researching it a bit instead of just blurting out from memory.

[Hazmy]

....

I very much respect meta-discussions when they are asked for at the right place, and I usually don't participate in those posts, unfortunately I can't say the opposite is true and meta is often forced into discussions where no one asked about it. I find that equally disrespectful - but this discussion doesn't help OP.

To go back to OP's original question - is Black Orc "hopeless and damned forever into oblivion?" or :

I was primarily worried about being precluded from RVR and content because my favorite class is ass

Let's see what we have currently:

• - If you Guard-Swap well you are already better than most Tank players - > Welcome in Warbands

• - Black Orcs will be invited into Warbands simply out of necessity into both Pugs and Organized.

• - Have we seen Black Orcs successfully solo roam? Yes

• - Have we seen Black Orcs successfully 1vX? Yes

• - Are there Black Orcs in Top Solo Ranked? Yes

• - Are there Black Orcs in Top Group Ranked? Yes, you can see it every week

• - Are Black Orcs invited into City Fights? Yes

• - Can Black Orcs Tank PvE? Yes

Are Black Orcs the best Tank? Not even close - but are they hopeless beyond redemption? Hell no, in fact Black Orcs have access to every content in the game and even if we cross out some of these for some reason - they have reliable access to more content in the game than the majority of other classes including top picks for certain game modes, and they are still successful.

Which is my point - no need to scare people away from a class they wish to play and overcomplicate it with scary words and theorycrafting that has nothign to do with the question, and yes as a Black Orc you can fully enjoy all content in RoR as proven day-to-day by many people including top PvP Ranked Players.

I'm simply an advocate of not fearmongering people into extremes about the balance of the game when it's nearly not as hardcore as a lot of us tend to portray it. Should you share in-depth information about it if you wish to help, sure that's awesome even - but calling it terrible / **** / garbage and what not isn't helpful to anyone.

[what63]

....

I very much respect meta-discussions when they are asked for at the right place, and I usually don't participate in those posts, unfortunately I can't say the opposite is true and meta is often forced into discussions where no one asked about it. I find that equally disrespectful - but this discussion doesn't help OP.

To go back to OP's original question - is Black Orc "hopeless and damned forever into oblivion?"

Let's see what we have currently:

• - If you Guard-Swap well you are already better than most Tank players - > Welcome in Warbands

• - Black Orcs will be invited into Warbands simply out of necessity into both Pugs and Organized.

• - Have we seen Black Orcs successfully solo roam? Yes

• - Have we seen Black Orcs successfully 1vX? Yes

• - Are there Black Orcs in Top Solo Ranked? Yes

• - Are there Black Orcs in Top Group Ranked? Yes, you can see it every week

• - Are Black Orcs invited into City Fights? Yes

• - Can Black Orcs Tank PvE? Yes

Are Black Orcs the best Tank? Not even close - but are they hopeless beyond redemption? Hell no, in fact Black Orcs have access to every content in the game and even if we cross out some of these for some reason - they have reliable access to more content in the game than the majority of other classes including top picks for certain game modes, and they are still successful.

Which is my point - no need to scare people away from a class they wish to play and overcomplicate it with scary words and theorycrafting that has nothign to do with the question, and yes as a Black Orc you can fully enjoy all content in RoR as proven day-to-day by many people including top PvP Ranked Players.

I'm simply an advocate of not fearmongering people into extremes about the balance of the game when it's nearly not as hardcore as a lot of us tend to portray it. Should you share in-depth information about it if you wish to help, sure that's awesome even - but calling it terrible / **** / garbage and what not isn't helpful to anyone.

Right, while all valid- the question of OP can be boiled down to "Are we in a rich get richer situation?". It's obvious that any tank is better than no tank, if a tank is what you need. This is not in dispute. Neither is the fact that there are enough people around that even a magus can participate in all content. And providing this side of the story is important, you're completely correct. However, these things also aren't strict meta issues. The issues BO face are such that unless you play BO out of pure, unadulterated love for the class from a thematic level up, that you cannot find for anything else, you will find a fair few of the existing and actively developing flaws to be severe enough to crush your fun with the class. Even if they were granted a one off trick that cements them as the best tank in the game, like dunno, giving them CF back or something.

Essentially, something can be meta because it works to enable min-maxed setups, but be absolutely unfun outside of that. And I don't care about meta. I'm not arguing because I think BO should be buffed to be an always pick in all four parties of a warband. I'm arguing because the overall funcitionality of the class on the day to day has degraded to such a degree that I wouldn't enjoy that day to day part of the game even if I was technically the best warband tank in the game. And well, this also answers the "rich get richer" thing. Because this seems to be the case. It's not necessarily a concious development, but BO keeps taking hits to all aspects of the class that made them function on any level outside of guardbotting. These aren't things that take them out of any meta, or would enable them to be meta if buffed instead, but make up the core of the class in every situation of regular play. It will never loose its ability to be a tank. It may never become "meta". But if we see this further weakening of the very funaments of the class continue to the point where they just buckle under completely, it just won't be any fun outside of cheesing whatever button it gets to have a shot at getting into "hardcore" guild 24 mans anyways, while the other tanks just keeps on getting loaded up with more and more spice to not only make them solid in warbands and 6v6, but be fun in various specs and playstyles outside of the more hardcore stuff.

And on the whole, is it better to point out that errors are being made, or to shut up about it because some people may enjoy it anyways?

[Bozzax]

BO:s topping solo ranked?