Return of Reckoning

So, after having tested most of the changes, I was thinking about the bigger picture on the impacts in AOE damage output realm vs relam.

What is the patch changing in regards of AOE?

mSH: they gained additional damage with the new Da Smell Wont Bother Me tactic that procs corp damage from every hit while Bad Gas is active. This is pretty nice additional damage together with Big Bouncin! or spamming Bounce to get additional auto hits for more single target focus. It also increases the armor by 50% so it is going to be a must have tactic for mSHs. The Squig Armor now gives flat 800 armor and with this tactic it is actually better than before when you don't have armor talis slotted. My test SHs armor increased from 1380 to 2952. That's more than 100%. Id say that this is a gain for mSHs even when Kaboom got nerfed in damage but the utility of the knock back is still unique and great.

SW: it obviously got a lot of nerfs. Split Arrows damage nerfed. Steady Aim nerfed for AOE. Powerful Draw nerfed. Broadhead Arrow and Spiral-Fletched Arrow range nerfed. Lileath nerfed in damage. Flame Arrow damage nerfed as well. Sure, AOE SW was too powerful and they needed a nerf but this is more of a total wrecking of AOE SWs.

Sorc: for AOE basically nothing but a minor cast speed increase for Gloom of Night. Mini buff.

BWs: I think they gained a bit with the Minor Slow Boils. Detonate seems to be a bit of a nerf to Flashfire procs from what I have read. They still need to go into melee range to do real AOE damage with their Conflagration tree. I think bombing will stay a niche spec because it needs really good support and therefore is not easy to pull off. You don't have the armor or mobility of a mSH that can jump in and out, Kaboom and Outta my Way! out. A LOT easier to do AOE damage with them in close range. Without going bombing it is only the Minor Slow Boils with the tactic that increased AOE a bit.

Magus/Engi: When focusing on the AOE mid tree they are very similar. Magus had and has a bit of an edge with an additional dot from Infernal Pain tactic and 15% crit bonus from SOV making them hit a bit harder than engis with AOE.

-> So in summary we could say that BWs and mSHs gained a bit and SWs lost a lot. In other words Order is going to lose a lot AOE since there were a lot of skirmish SWs running around.
-> In general Id say that Slayers are less popular than Choppas atm, so we are seeing more Choppas and most of them are running AOE.
-> In general Id say that most WLs are not using Spin to Win AOE specs anymore since it got nerfed. Not sure about Mara but there are still a some AOE maras in warbands.
-> In general Id say that destro has the better utility to roll over order with AOE because of the Mara KD, the Choppa pulls and the Dok snare prayer, allowing them to hold targets in place when they start mowing over them.

So, for Order: AOE Slayers and AOE WLs not popular atm, SW AOE wrecked hard, BW gained a little, Engi basically the same in AOE as Magus, still no AOE KD, Choppa pulls or snare prayer to hold people in place when doing AOE.

Whos gonna do the AOE on Order side? At the moment it is SWs. After the patch Order has three AOE classes that got nerfed into the ground: SW, Slayers and WLs leaving only BWs which are hard to play in close range and Engis.

All in all I think the patch it is a hard nerf for Order AOE and they are going to feel that imbalance. What do you think?

AoE in RoR is extremely OP... and season after season, that pushes the game further and further toward "blob" gameplay.

I miss small groups at the lake.

Id argue that it is also there to counter blobs. That's the whole point of AOE.

Great post and it hits the nail on the head.

If an Order class becomes good at AoE, it gets mega-nerfed.

Time and again this has been the case.

both sides will have pretty much equal aoe in all honesty. WH, SL and WL are all quite good in aoe currently, as are their analogs. aoe skirm was already overperforming by massive margins and the nerfs are jusified, it will still be playable it just won't be super far ahead of everyone else. on the flip side sorc loses their m2 which hurts their warband capability quite a lot, since morale/damage drops are everything when it comes to securing victory in a fight

for SL there is just a general lack of skill and adaptation in the community amongst most players to play them properly - there are a small handful of SL players putting up extremely impressive performances post-rework. in fact the most active/highest general performance 12-18man team currently plays with a SL/choppa player as their MA and they are doing extremely well

at the end of the day who wins fights is not determined by factors like on paper balance or napkin math, neither faction has any innate advantage over the other in terms of general balance

the victor is determined by who has superior organization, group coordination, positioning, game knowledge and individual/group mechanical skill. this is why you have 6-12mans farming 24mans on a regular basis - it isn't because they are stacking some broken class or because their faction has some dev bias advantage - it's just because they are better at the game than their opponents in all aforementioned categories

It´s true.
Even if WL was maybe too strong in aoe before, there was only a bit finetuning needed, not a big nerf. But WL is still better then Engie after the new patch. I can´t say much for BW.
Fact is that every class gets massive nerfs if they perform better then the opposite side wants it. Slayer, WL, SW and even 2h IB which definitely doesn´t make sense. Don't know about the direction of thinking here.

CountTalabecland wrote: Wed Jul 29, 2026 12:45 pm Great post and it hits the nail on the head.

If an Order class becomes good at AoE, it gets mega-nerfed.

Time and again this has been the case.

This is true. But Slayer Nerf happened 2-3 years after RoR changed Guard Dmg Mechanics from UNDEFENDABLE Attack on Main target is never undefendable to guard mechanic. Then they changed it to undefendable Second hand dmg is undefendable for Guard mechanic... And with 24 aoe cap, Rampage literally ignored guard mechanic for years - I would like to know who and why anyone wanted this change? Because everyone who plays the game could have told you that this is horrible idea. Also same time they changed Undefendable Attacks going through Morale Defenses... If Spammable undefendable attack goes through 100% Morale avoidances + guard mechanic, i mean COME ON this is reversal of what "should" be. Only morale dmg should go through 100% Morale avoidances (Because offense has to be better than defense in the end) because Morale is the Ultimate in this game, and if basic core ability negates all that, what is the point of it?

And this leads to slayer overnerf and we are left what we have now. Then became Super OP Wl that had 25% Armour pene+25% Loner dmg Spin aoe ability critting for 2k that hits 360 around you and has 2.5-3x higher dmg than ANY single target wl ability... : D This was true for Marauder as well. These needed small adjustments not removing or overnerfing them.

If there is morale dmg cap, no 50% Aoe heal debuffs and Aoe abilities hit harder than single target abilities, i mean this obviously is stupid and promotes ONLY AE DMG no CC no Counters No Possibilities. Its kinda hilarious/sad to me that RoR has nerfed all the best single target abilities(too many to start counting, but just a few are non Critting Witchbrew/Leonine Frenzy and Shield tree hit combo black orc) and then overbuffed aoe, and overnerfed it after a while.

We need OP single target abilities in this game much more than we need Op Aoe abilities. And when there was 9 ae cap and 9s aoe 40ft Stagger, all of a sudden old version of Dwarf tactic reduced this to 4.5s - That is a real difference in power and much more clever way to play than we do play RoR currently. When all the meaning and point of doing something is reduced to automation and highest aoe dmg domination, its not a wonder why most have stopped playing.

Between my 3 affected classes in aoe sorc, aoe bw, aoe msh id say your initial post is sorta on point.

MSH gained the ability to layer more burst aoe with the cooldown increaser into BB or filler bounce, if you can do this on a killstack with Witchking up you almost have a mini choppa layering of aoe dmg following the same patern:
1) frontal dot
2) aura/debuff the targets
3) channel

Choppa does it with Frontal dot, stomp, Bring it on. Now MSH can do it with frontal dot, puke, BB.
This is a nice addition to destro and MSH.

Sorc becoming more of a mid/far range caster really remainins to be seen how potent it will be in real rvr. Losing Shatter might be a big hit for Destro, they might need to rethink how to clash. Will they forfeit the M2 coin flip tradeoffs? Will they keep running WEs/Maras to fill the M2 Tempo slot. Or will they run more Choppas/MSH/Sorcs which all now play more towards ability tempo. Time will tell. Destro does have the unique tools in Winds, Outtamyway, and Tank self pumps to get to M3 Bellow or M4 defensive morales before order so we might be back to the classic Order M2 tempo loss and Destro trying to outlast that by getting stronger CC in and waiting for their own advantages to come online.

BW nothing much changed, the resist debuff doesnt add or change anything. Order already had acces to these in SM, knight, Engineer. WB BWs will not have room or build for running the Mini Slowboil tactic, Aoe BWs will not have room for 8 mastery points + tactic from middletree just to do what Engineer does for free in Acid bomb corp aoe debuff.

Speaking of Engineer, they might have a spamable utility Blunderbus build dealing corp damage now. Maybe even some layering of dots+spamable DD+double tick Staticdischarge. I havnt looked much into the class as its biggest issue to me, wasnt solved of cutting it lose from the immobile pet issues. Maybe some warbands will run a BB spam engineer (Jempire seems to like Engineers) This is a decent attempt of giving Engineer a class-stacking build

Someone will have to do the math of this, but didnt SW have like two softcapped mainstats extremely high armor pen and 50%+crit chance while playing from 65ft. It was absolutely overtuned if thats the case and order will have to play the game without it carrying the warbands, it was leeching behind lol.
On paper I think the actual order warbands minus the freeleeching legolasses behind who ironicly was carrying the fights, should be more internally balanced.
It really will depend on how sorc comes out, if it tried to Closequater SS spam, then slotting a slayer is a brilliant counter. If sorc stats back, that might be harder to deal with. Sorc can still frontline bomb, but might have to run selfpump to rush to M3 and match the destro warbands M2 drop tempo. but will fall into the role of Choppa where you dont add morale damage on the M2 command but instead can unload your 4 DC channels in a row.

What? AOE mSH got stronger? Who would have ever guessed this would happen in a ranged balance patch?

(yeah, I know that wasn't constructive but I'm just enjoying the incoming train wreck)