Abilities and Spec Trees

[Fey]

Whoa huge post deleted by preview, bummer. Basically what I was saying to myself for half an hour is abilities sometimes don't line up with spec trees. Black Orc for example, Da Big Un' is in Da Boss tree when it should be in Da Brawler. There really is no argument for a two-handed ability to be in a disassociated spec tree.

Clobber is the highest delve opener for B.O., it should be in Da Brawler, Wot Armor could be moved to tank tree to give it a buff. Da Brawler is already the strongest tree even with the KD buff to Da Toughest, moving clobber into it gives Da Brawler two useless base skills; which adds to the attractiveness to the other trees.

Da Boss still sucks outloud, No Choppin' Me is worthless since it doesn't buff twice. The only way to make it viable is to make it the true buff/debuff tree and swap bellows with Da Brawler. I have no idea how viable this is, and it isn't a prioity, more just thinking while can't playing.

On a completely separate note, the shatter enhancements for the tanks are all over the place. And the KOTBS one is in a tree, um, what?

I.B. Sever Blessing - 119
S.M. Shatter Enchantment - 119
B.O.: Shatter Enchantment - 127
Chosen: Sever Blessing - 134
KOTBS: Shatter Confidence - 178 This ability improves with Path of Glory. Someone thought that because shatter enhancement isn't affected by spec with any of the other FIVE **** TANKS Kotbs gets theirs put in a tree to boost its effectiveness. The Destroy confidence tactic should be given to S.M. obvious change.
B.G.:Shatter enchantment - 348
Why this doesn't do the same damage delve is beyond me. Maybe the website has it wrong.

[Fey]

In retrospect moving abilities around sounds hard, instead move the shatter enhancement abilities into the weakest tree. Also make it into an opener for SM BO, that would be a nice buff and probably quite easy to implement.

If the team is skilled you could implement some kind of buff protect for defensive target. For example: tank shatters enchantment/blessing, defensive target gets no specific buff, but rather a 5 second decoy buff that target can have only one of and protects against another shatter enhancement. Although, due to what Jaycub said about Guard, do tanks need to be stronger? Discuss!

[Jaycub]

The problem with tanks/guard is, it's such a central mechanic to the game because of how strong it is, and how little counter play it has. Especially when you factor in how it stacks with challenge and other defensive mechanics that are overturned like TB etc... and how every class has access to detaunts, and AoE detaunts which act like essentially guard for the duration. And then you figure how much it was buffed from the CC immunity patch.

This contributes heavily to the powergap between solo/pug players and full premades especially but not only in scenario environments, because having a proper group setup is one of the most important things you need in this game due to things like guard, challenge, healing in general, etc...

Nothing is worse than getting into a scenario with a bunch of dps and like 1 healer and a tank while the other team has a balanced composition and just gets a free steamroll win. Even late night NA destro seems to have tons of scs with super tank and heal heavy compositions that random pug groups cannot deal with. DPS seems to be the least important thing you need in this game, not to say you don't need it... but I would always rather be heavy on tanks and healing than on dps.

This is because DPS don't have offensive tools that are on the same power level of things like guard. detaunt, challenge etc... except for 50% incoming heal debuffs which end up being the most important thing you can have as a dps. Learned that the hard way running 2 BaL WH group the other day and losing to a tank/heal heavy group where we couldn't kill anything no matter how hard we tried, but once one of us grabbed PTF it was a night and day difference.

The other problem is when you start talking about stuff in detail like this the people who don't like competitive play like scenarios, and just want to have fun zerging in RvR see changes to core mechanics like these as a threat to their playstyle, and I think in some aspects they are right in that. Certain changes that would break some of the really stale small scale 6v6 or 12v12 gameplay could have negative effects in unorganized large scale fighting in ORvR which is honestly the main attraction for this game.

I could go on forever, but honestly a lot of what I say is probably total BS but these types of things don't really get discussed enough for there to be a really studied/good answer to a lot of this.

[Fey]

I could listen all day, but thinking about it for five seconds proves you right. How many abilities are insta-cast +%50 damage for fifteen seconds? Or, buff target player indefinitely to do twice as much damage? Now I feel like a idiot ever dying.

[Fey]

Transference and Changer's Touch in the Zealot trees are two tactics that bare this out as well. They would synergize much better if they were simply switched.

[Karast]

I could listen all day, but thinking about it for five seconds proves you right. How many abilities are insta-cast +%50 damage for fifteen seconds? Or, buff target player indefinitely to do twice as much damage? Now I feel like a idiot ever dying.

Well it is important to note that when you do look at dps, and in particular the top / functional dps for premades, you'll notice they have access to some very important things.

The 50% heal debuff is one of them.

But when you take a hard look at MDPS and BW/Sorc they tend to have either scaling class mechanics like BW / Sorc and Choppa / SL, or they have access to crit damage tactics, these make a big difference for dps'ers and they are almost mandatory later on in T4.

Dps'er who don't have access to scaling mechanics and crit damage tactics, or good heal debuffs have a real hard time finding group spots, because they do not have the burst to cut through healing, or the ability to reduce it.

[Vdova]

To be honest tank mechanics is one of many factors why is this game special. I would not touch any of those abbilities mentioned(guard,challenge,cc) counter to this mechanics is assisting,switching targets,counter ccs like knockback( stagger healers in back line,knocback guardbot and assist on target)

[Jaycub]

I really like guard, and the other mechanics I am complaining about it makes tanks usable in PvP compared to other games. But I don't like how it is setup currently to allow for virtually no counter play.

Trying to switch targets is pretty much fruitless because 2 tanks can keep a group pretty much permanently guarded due to the skill having no cooldown whatsoever. Even if you do manage to punt away a tank a lot of classes are just going to use their AoE detaunt as a temporary guard while he runs back, and then that tank is immune to being punted for 30+ seconds. Meaning you absolutely need perfection execution and voice communication to setup punts, knockdowns, and other CC in the same instant to get the wombo combo off or you are just screwed, another display of the powergap between super organized groups and pugs that will never be overcome.

Most times in scenarios I find that if we are against a premade we just focus people we know are in the pug group because they go down in like 3 globals with 2 dps assisting, and then hope that our 6 man or whatever can overwhelm the other premade with our pug group intact. It's just really cheesy and again another display of the power gap that exists between a group that is setup properly and random pugs etc...

I don't think anyone wants these abilities and mechanics removed from the game, just tweaked to create a better meta than we are in now by allowing for reliable counterplay to exist. Things like having a CD on guard, putting some of the more worthless/mindless CC abilities into their own class of immunity to mitigate "free CC immunity XD", having abilities that can possibly purge guard, an offensive counterpart to challenge, maybe even tweaking the numbers for guard in terms of damage mitigation etc...