After the nerf/patch SM's how are you.........

[Nekkma]

And You wot is trash in comparision to Wods without cd.

Regarding the change it turned out to be super annoying as it seem to get interupted constantly. Never noticed it previously so maybe something broke/changed with patch. It probably needed a nerf tho but I think I would rather have slightly increased ap/sec than added the cd. Still having about 60% parry with eagle's flight up and the new longer duration make it more of a priority.

[fatelvis]

There was a similar problem with engies phosphorous shells being instantly interrupted by damage right after the system change. It got fixed by now so chances are high that wods channel will be fixed as well.

[Fenris78]

WoDS should not be interrupted by anything other than hard CC and unblocked interrupts (and morales / taunts ofc). Period.

Having to suffer the now broken skill is enough of punishment, considering it impact the only true defensive skill we had as 2H SM.
The tradeoff to have only a self-bonus, while Hold the Line is also benefiting to allies, was meant to balance the skill, as well as inability to do anything other than that during channel.

If WW was still 20s cd, I would have - maybe - considered adding the 5s cd to WoDS, but now adding cd to both skills is just killing the uniqueness of the class.

Just set WW back as it was and add 5s cd to WoDS if you consider it too strong.


For that matters WoDS was only effective during keep pushes, to whistand the melee aoe stacking near doors, then - maybe - be able to disrupt casters lines if nobody jumped you from behind to kill/CC you. All of that with close to zero AP remaining after channel.

Other than that its a meme skill, really. I never used it for other situation, other than chasing kiting rdps maybe, to avoid shaman dots or something like that.

[Zxul]

There is some problem with channels in general, on chosen Relentless gets interrupted very often as well for example.

[Ruin]

For that matters WoDS was only effective during keep pushes, to whistand the melee aoe stacking near doors, then - maybe - be able to disrupt casters lines if nobody jumped you from behind to kill/CC you. All of that with close to zero AP remaining after channel.

Other than that its a meme skill, really. I never used it for other situation, other than chasing kiting rdps maybe, to avoid shaman dots or something like that.

To be honest in a keep push a tank should swap to shield either way.

Also this might change the brainless SM play composing of jumping in the thick of fightng, and just using WODS instead of thinking of posiotioning and using some others skills.

[Flowson]

painful stuff

2h SM being butchered

high damage / low survivability

finally noramlized this op skill.

Also this might change the brainless SM play composing of jumping in the thick of fightng, and just using WODS instead of thinking of posiotioning and using some others skills.

Balancing is not about "nerfing" classes, but about reducing unequal advantages in order to create a fair Setting for balanced fights.

From the developer's side, it is important to say that each Class of RoR should have those special features that are unique to them. However, this does not result in Uber-Clases which only grant advantages without the corresponding disadvantages - compared to their coresponding class from a different fraction.

It's not about reflecting / Mirroring classes equally at all cost - but rather putting strengths and weaknesses in an acceptable relationship.

The key question is not whether one class is particularly dominant - but whether this behavior is useful with regard to the other classes.

seriously - no one ofu s is gonna let a class die - some of them just have to be revised.

Before making any changes, we ask ourselves the following question: if I want to win fairly - Without exploiting the system: "Does this way of playing / Skill / Ability / Tactic grant me an advantage that I shouldn't have? If this is ture - its need to be adressed. if not: we need to ask further: what side effects does this cause? and how does this one-sidedly influence the outcome of battles. if we assume that it will have a nevgativ input we will do everything we can to find a stable foundation for everyone based on common sense , Lore and Community. - and honeytly not, becuase to want people to suffer without a reason.

Flowson

[Alubert]

I don't understand something here.
Why are you defending an indefensible case.
SM as the only tank in the game was able to increase offensive stats completely without looking at defensive because defensive was based on only one incredibly op skill.
Now like every other tank he has to do what others do.
Either hit hard and die or go defensive.
To say that WoDS was SM's only defensive option is nonsense. He has access like any other tank to stats and abilities.
Plus with WW he can use WoDS without CD.
Plus with morale he has the best mobility of any tank in the game.
In general, SM after the changes I think has dethroned Knight as the best tank in the game.

[nocturnalguest]

Balancing is not about "nerfing" classes, but about reducing unequal advantages in order to create a fair Setting for balanced fights.

From the developer's side, it is important to say that each Class of RoR should have those special features that are unique to them. However, this does not result in Uber-Clases which only grant advantages without the corresponding disadvantages - compared to their coresponding class from a different fraction.

It's not about reflecting / Mirroring classes equally at all cost - but rather putting strengths and weaknesses in an acceptable relationship.

The key question is not whether one class is particularly dominant - but whether this behavior is useful with regard to the other classes.

seriously - no one ofu s is gonna let a class die - some of them just have to be revised.

Before making any changes, we ask ourselves the following question: if I want to win fairly - Without exploiting the system: "Does this way of playing / Skill / Ability / Tactic grant me an advantage that I shouldn't have? If this is ture - its need to be adressed. if not: we need to ask further: what side effects does this cause? and how does this one-sidedly influence the outcome of battles. if we assume that it will have a nevgativ input we will do everything we can to find a stable foundation for everyone based on common sense , Lore and Community. - and honeytly not, becuase to want people to suffer without a reason.

Flowson

You know what? There are very many ways to balance things out. Nerfing something is only one of them. If something is considered overperforming instead of providing more counterplay options via e.g. fixing huge amount of absolutly garbage tactics/abilities/etc and thus opening more diversity/build options and growing a game we see just countless nerfs to alot of very unique things, it leads to lowering diversity, narrowing gameplay and hit things that are actually working ok and has/had counterplay...
So before making any changes, team can also ask themselves if their criterias and proofs of overperforming are solid enough to justify nerf as the only possible option as their reaction.

So in regards to SM, i dont personally know or have solid opinion about it, is nerf justfied enough for wods or not and i do believe it wasnt previously gamebreaking nor i think its useless and broken now, to me the change is not that major and doesnt lead to big meta shifts in grand scheme of things. Also you cant discuss SM alone as for balance you have to consider everything else, at least need to consider all other tank performances, how they interact with group, how synergies or not, what they bring overally etc etc etc. But i can bet nobody in team did ever discuss any kind of options to provide more counterplays to wods (or wods+ww option) to balance it out. Somehow it was ultimatively judged to be nerfed and boom, here we are. Hence the reaction of people.

To me, balancing is more about action - response and their parameters. If there is something to do, then there should be something to counter it and efforts put into both of those actions should be somewhat equal. Thats the balance. We somehow have had somewhat balanced state here but now we are in a state of meta shifts. But we never had proper approaches to balance things in RoR imo. I see it as random buff/nerf hammer swings. Many players i know share such pov too.

So tl;dr i strongly disagree that one needs to ask themselves some questions about "expoilting", "advantages" etc. There needs to be a group of people within team with very deep game knowledge, ideally big enough, which should understand clearly "action" -> "response" and their parameters. And there has to be some lead balance dev that would thinktank meta shifts designs so after few years this "balance" wouldnt lead to a total boredomness for players.

[bw10]

i lurk these forums for years now and never once i saw someone complaining about wods. did bg really had a mirror of that skill on live though?

[Aethilmar]

i lurk these forums for years now and never once i saw someone complaining about wods. did bg really had a mirror of that skill on live though?

Naw. Nobody complained about it and as far as I can recall BG never had the equivalent. It was always a SM thing b/c of something folks here seem to be conveniently forgetting when they talk about the "OP" defensive ability.

2H SM are by far the most fragile of the 2H tanks (minus WoDS). They can be built tanky but will never be as tanky as the tanky version of the other 2H tanks (except maybe BO these days). The tradeoff there was (in theory) they were more offensive oriented up to the point of almost being mdps in the most extreme configuration (as were BO). WoDS was the emergency button (on live drained AP faster than here) and if it went down the SM went down.

Further Chosen (and Knights) have been angry for a while because their damage was nerfed. On live they were the premiere tanks. Damage (ravage, ravage, ravage) and unkillable all in one package. There, honestly, was little reason to play the other tanks although IB had "Cave Win" and SM had ... well they existed. 2H were good in duos but generally not a good tank as either 2H or shield.

SM got some adjustments here that made them viable in one capacity (WW bot) and took off some of the rough edges. These latest moves very clearly moved them down a notch even taking the new punt into account. It has its uses and it is actually a good punt but it doesn't play into the original design niche for SM (proc based buff/debuff that is tied into keeping an offensive posture i.e. attacking).

Honestly there seems to be a general assault on the High Elves of late but time will tell if this is an artifact of the transition or a general direction. Not a good start that they nerf an Order tank and the Order CD reducer and kept the Destro one "temporarily" untouched though.