Patch Notes 04/01/2020

[JoryGlory]

Witch elf
- On your knees morale drain and gain changed to 125 125. (down from 300 300).

Witch hunters
- Dragon Guns morale drain and gain changed to 125 125. (down from 300 300).

I would keep the drain component at 200 but remove the pump completely. This would leave warbands a tool to play the morale game on their own terms but remove the absurd pumping potential.

This.
Order completely lost their tools to counter destro morale play in open rvr.
2/3 of destro tanks have morale selfpump tactic, while order tanks has nothing like this.I mean chosens can easily reach m2 reducing dmg (like in 15 seconds), then start rotation on order dps dealers while destro dps and borks gathering dmg morales (sorcs m2, mara m2, bork m3 with silence) and just bomb.Order has nothing against this right now, cause even bork self-pump is better than wh drain right now, while mara can just drain anything in 30ft just using his 2 aoe dps buttons.Balanced.

Mirroring is bad ofc, then take dmg M2 back from sorcs maybe?

Funny is that you not mention the self Moralpump from Zelot and MSH in use with AoE KBs with out CC immu and AoE Ressi/Armor debuff + AoE Moralpump from Shaman.

[convexte]

Funny is that you not mention the self Moralpump from Zelot and MSH in use with AoE KBs with out CC immu and AoE Ressi/Armor debuff + AoE Moralpump from Shaman.

AoE KBs without CC immunities is not about morale play, but yeah, its **** op.

[Hat]

If you ever wonder why we don't touch balance for months at a time, this thread is a great example. It brings out the worst in people posting on the forums. Imagine if we actually started making large changes.

There is vitirol, sure, but It's pretty frustrating that there hasn't been properly thought out balance changes since Aza had his little 2 hour rant and got kicked from the team and also the balance/proposals forum has been completely dead and may as well just get deleted from the forums because nobody from the RoR team ever seems to interact with it anymore since peter got removed as balance mod.

Of the things that actually need balancing: GTDC is the most unfun, broken ability in this game and slightly tweaking the speed increase and range of it does not fix it and leaving it in it's current state for around a year really, really **** sucks. Melee SH is just ridiculously overpowered, it has all the tools you could ever want in one single class that it would take a paragraph of text just to describe how broken it is and how it essentially several order classes in one, and again, it has not been tweaked in a year. Destro warbands finally realized the power of zealot aoe knockback of entire order warbands without triggering immunity - another thing order has no equivalent too and is HUGE in forts / chokepoints, Mara morale drain is also completely dominating open rvr currently as there is no real counter to this that order can come up with (one of the small ways to counter it incidentally just got nerfed lol) but that's another thing entirely. These are just some things that are actual issues in the current game but instead you come up with these baffling tweaks to chosen and kotbs - this is why people are getting worked up.

Runefang was perhaps too good sure, but the changes that have been made to it along with removing ap from stay focused is honestly overkill. There is already a major issue with Order lacking tanks and this will exacerbate the issue further as a side effect. And there have been several posts already about 1) The majority of Chosen's damage output is already spirit based so the new tactic is utterly pointless 2) -20% heals is absolutely in no universe comparable to 15% extra damage recieved.

Some of Aza's balance changes were pretty bad but at least he listened to the playerbase and interacted on the forums for tweaks to his ideas, not to mention the balance changes to big issues seemed to happen almost every other week when he was in charge. Oh well.

[Hat]

If you ever wonder why we don't touch balance for months at a time, this thread is a great example. It brings out the worst in people posting on the forums. Imagine if we actually started making large changes.

While it is true that with any change there will always be some people annoyed, you also need to be self-critical when you make some poor changes, in this case to the Kotbs/Chosen. Where I can understand the argumentation behind the WE/WH changes, the changes to Kotbs/Chosen just made them both worse for no reason. As nerfing Kotbs/Chosen was not your argumentation and therefor I believe not your goal. That makes me wonder which people from the team are now responsible for making balance changes? And to whom do they listen for advice? Having a small group of players from both sides and both small and large scale environment to just fire away your ideas before spending your free time implementing them could be helpful. It doesn't mean they decide what happens, but having a first round of detailled and respectful feedback is better than just throwing your ideas online on the server and getting a shitstorm on the forums.

That was the entire idea of the balance proposal forums, which has been a ghost town for like 2 years at this point.

[zumos2]

Spoiler:

If you ever wonder why we don't touch balance for months at a time, this thread is a great example. It brings out the worst in people posting on the forums. Imagine if we actually started making large changes.

While it is true that with any change there will always be some people annoyed, you also need to be self-critical when you make some poor changes, in this case to the Kotbs/Chosen. Where I can understand the argumentation behind the WE/WH changes, the changes to Kotbs/Chosen just made them both worse for no reason. As nerfing Kotbs/Chosen was not your argumentation and therefor I believe not your goal. That makes me wonder which people from the team are now responsible for making balance changes? And to whom do they listen for advice? Having a small group of players from both sides and both small and large scale environment to just fire away your ideas before spending your free time implementing them could be helpful. It doesn't mean they decide what happens, but having a first round of detailled and respectful feedback is better than just throwing your ideas online on the server and getting a shitstorm on the forums.

That was the entire idea of the balance proposal forums, which has been a ghost town for like 2 years at this point.

Proposal Forum is a different way around: Player proposing ideas. I was talking about a place where the Devs can tell their ideas to a small group that can give good feedback on them.

I was never a fan of the Proposal Forum for several reasons. The main reason is that proposals always look at tactics/abilities way too individually (so in isolation), losing sight of a bigger picture. Even the most broken class has useless masteries, tactics, abilities etc, and the other way around is true as well. Further, because any random person without good knowledge of all of the game can make a proposal, it always felt like a fight against bad ideas to me.

[Boursk]

Seeing the knight tears brings great joy to this one aswell as Gobtar in spirit - Thank you

[tazdingo]

glad to finally see new balance changes, pls don't let the whiners stop this from taking off again. there has always been massive potential in dead and useless abilities and tactics but some people are so scared of having to adapt to any change

[Cornerback]

If you ever wonder why we don't touch balance for months at a time, this thread is a great example. It brings out the worst in people posting on the forums. Imagine if we actually started making large changes.

There is vitirol, sure, but It's pretty frustrating that there hasn't been properly thought out balance changes since Aza had his little 2 hour rant and got kicked from the team and also the balance/proposals forum has been completely dead and may as well just get deleted from the forums because nobody from the RoR team ever seems to interact with it anymore since peter got removed as balance mod.

Of the things that actually need balancing: GTDC is the most unfun, broken ability in this game and slightly tweaking the speed increase and range of it does not fix it and leaving it in it's current state for around a year really, really **** sucks. Melee SH is just ridiculously overpowered, it has all the tools you could ever want in one single class that it would take a paragraph of text just to describe how broken it is and how it essentially several order classes in one, and again, it has not been tweaked in a year. Destro warbands finally realized the power of zealot aoe knockback of entire order warbands without triggering immunity - another thing order has no equivalent too and is HUGE in forts / chokepoints, Mara morale drain is also completely dominating open rvr currently as there is no real counter to this that order can come up with (one of the small ways to counter it incidentally just got nerfed lol) but that's another thing entirely. These are just some things that are actual issues in the current game but instead you come up with these baffling tweaks to chosen and kotbs - this is why people are getting worked up.

Runefang was perhaps too good sure, but the changes that have been made to it along with removing ap from stay focused is honestly overkill. There is already a major issue with Order lacking tanks and this will exacerbate the issue further as a side effect. And there have been several posts already about 1) The majority of Chosen's damage output is already spirit based so the new tactic is utterly pointless 2) -20% heals is absolutely in no universe comparable to 15% extra damage recieved.

Some of Aza's balance changes were pretty bad but at least he listened to the playerbase and interacted on the forums for tweaks to his ideas, not to mention the balance changes to big issues seemed to happen almost every other week when he was in charge. Oh well.

True story. Coming from an agile software development background, you ideally want to minimize waste and work as "customer" centric as possible. You ideally do this by creating a vision, sharing this vision, collectting feedback on this vision and then incrementally implementing it using short feedback loops to inspect and adapt as needed. Simply implementing changes without checking if the "customer" actually wants them is quite an anti-pattern. So is not reverting/adapting them if the feedback is negative (see stuff like melee squig).

[Grudges2814]

I understand why the reservations where put back. Last time I checked you guys wrote "this is a test" when the reservations were removed. I'm from NA eastern so fort populations arent that bad(low numbers) to be honest, specially during prime time. However, they were extremely helpful for leveling characters I enjoy playing as, and pretty quickly got tokens that would take me weeks/months to get. Im a casual and staying for hours just to lock a pairing for fort is not something I cant invest in anymore.

The dyes made me raise an eyebrow. Having said that...man still waiting for that dwarf helm piece from the camp guards, you know? the one with the eye guard and horns on the side, gold trim, gromril plate..think they be called..."OathKeepers"

I do love the combat in this game, the dream is that every path is usable and relevant right? Its a fear right now, a concern that its not like that(seemingly) and that we would eventually end up being a "meh factor", a place holder for some of these paths.

Either way, thanks for the work you do

[Secrets]

Just as an FYI, the balance changes to Knight/Chosen are just a test - as with any changes, they may not be permanent and we're keeping an eye on this thread for feedback as well as engaging with community members about the changes.
The WH/WE nerf to morale gain was due to the ability overperforming, and was changed as a result of feedback from the community.

The dyes are also changing again, I would highly not recommend using the items and keeping them safely in your bags until the next patch hits.

Keep the feedback coming and keep it constructive as possible, please