Let's discuss AoE CC

[mazi761111]

At present, 80%of the bad players and leisure players now, never learn better, complain in the forum every day. Essence So many good players have quit the game。

[GONDOR]

I appreciate your

Thank you for the post. To compliment your order bias, as you put it, let me share a bit of my Destro bias:

I agree completely about your assesment regarding positioning and melee blobs being currently the deciding factors of victory. I also agree that Destro currrently has superior repositioning/cc options. What I also believe, however, is that you are missing a few things in your analysis. Here they are:

1. Saving people from melee blobs isn't equal between factions: Order faction has to its arsenal defensive abilities to significantly mitigate damage taken, in an equally trivial manner as stacking melee blobs. All you need is a WP for his WOU bonus buff, a Kotbs to increase inc healing by 15% for party members, and if they are also feeling like it also reducing crit.dmg taken by 20%. Also keep in mind that RPs and WPs can be built fairly tankier than their destro counterparts if needed. Therefore, while Destro has it easier when it comes to positioning melee blobs, Order has it easier tanking those blobs in a consistent manner.

If only this were true - there is a substantive skew between buffs and debuffs.

Debuffs scale infinitely - everybody attacking the afflicted benefits - literally everybody. In or out of party, out of warband, it doesn't matter. Your target is CTBC is debuffed by 10% by someone out of your party? Enjoy the increased crit.

This such a big, and overlooked, point of balance. Debuffs not only scale infinitely, but have a much higher uptime, due to multiple sources. When fights get big, skill windows on debuff mean less, as you can rotate or refresh debuffs thanks to so many sources.

Flipping it over to buffs - it's unlikely that you'd have two KotBS (for example), that means a buff like vigilance won't be up all the time, or if it is, requires sacrifice. You compare this to something like, Wave of Scorn, the uptime can be quite high, as once it wears off any other Black Guard can re-apply it during your cooldown. Buffs don't get this increased re-applied uptime.

To give Vigilance a 100% uptime (restricted to your party), you'd need 3 KotBS in your party - and that's assuming it doesn't get buff-stripped.

This goes both ways, for both order and destro FWIW. It is heavily compounded by AOE caps.

2. Power of melee blobs: While you correctly surmised that melee blobs are indeed deadly killing machines, I believe you again failed to mention the relative effectiness of the the blobs between the factions. The power of the blobs mainly relies on massively timed channel skills that decimate enemies. The common way of countering those is to either mitigate their dmg through challenge or by interrupting them.
Challenge is unfortunately in a bad state at the moment where due to the small conal angle of the area it can only apply to so many enemies. And even if it does get applied, due to the nature of the current meta, 30 ft AOE channels can strip it almost instantly. Especially 30 ft omnidirectional ones with high hit frequency like WL's Whirling Axe. Which also brings me directly to the main point: interrupts.
For destro the best available tool in a melee blob v melee blob situation is Mara's Mouth of Tzeentch, with a narrow stripe-type hitbox and 40 ft range. For order the equivalent ability is WL's Echoing Roar, a 30ft radius omnidirectional AOE ability. Even when disregarding the player ratio in rvr between those two classes in favor of WLs, the area of effect between the two should be sufficient to show that, in a Destro vs Order melee blob fight, Destro will have a really hard time using their AOE channels to the fullest compared to Order. Which in turn forces Destro to rely on non-channeling potent AOE abilities (mainly stacking Choppas with the newly added Furious Stomping). People refer to it as poor man's Inevitable Doom, but currently due to the bugged state of ID I'd personally say it's a bit better. Whenever ID is fixed, expect the situation to turn even more in favor of order melee blobs.

It's not just the time channels that win fights, they are the straws that break the camel's back so to speak. It's all about layering - channels are done after you get pressure out, it's what tips the scale over.

I agree with the disparity of AOE interrupts - but I would push for WL's to be nerfed to be nerfed from 360, to making both theirs and marauders a reasonable cone. Cones reward positioning from both sides, and can have implications / tradeoffs on facings, which makes for good gameplay.

A quick note on ID and Furious Stomping - they aren't on the same applicability or power; I wouldn't expect the tide to turn back.

For a similar reasons of buffs vs debuffs:

ID

• Ends if the target dies
• Can be cleansed
  Counter-play mechanics are important, cleanses are
• Ranged, unlike a shatter
• Cleanses have no defensive checks to get around
• Can be done relatively easily - no positioning required as you can be out of the ball and cast
• Isn't PBAOE - this is a big one; Furious Stomping has a much higher degree of control, agency, and applicability. ID is "set and forget", but you don't control where your target moves, if they die, or who it clips (just everyone). Furious Stompin' leaves all the decisions up to you.

Someone might think about how layering debuffs favours ID, but you can layer enchantments too, and then you're faced with the differences in applying a shatter vs a cleanse.

I still dunno why melee AOE is 30/40ft, it's not only unreasonable, it's completely skillless for melee. Beyond forgiving. Also FWIW, I do think some melee PBAOE ability should be large (still not 30ft), but certainly not the damage focussed ones. Things with a debuff (like a snare) or a challenge/CC are there to provide area control in messy situations.

All in all, I enjoyed your analysis and while you are on the right about the discrepancy in CC/movement tools between the factions, it cannot be viewed in vacuum. Should an equalization take place (despite the game striving to avoid direct mirrors) it should be also accompanied by nerfs/buffs in other important aspects of a wb's strength.

I think the whole not mirroring is a huge part of the problem; and I'm not talking about mirrored skills or tactics, but mirrored specs/mastery. Some skills aren't in their mirrored place because "we don't want to mirror", and that leads to wonky mastery builds that are gumby to run. This piles up on not only the efficiency of the class, but how many people play it.

A great example at the moment is 2H Ironbreaker with Grudge-born Fury and Blood of Grimnir; there's a whole "you have to sacrifice to gain" thought process going on - drop grudge-born fury, or run +2 and drop a skill and tactic, or don't bother. Compare it to BG where they have the option of running 2h with either WW or Crimson Death, they now have two nice specs for all-scale play - I'm not sure what sacrifices they have to make to have these well-rounded, and importantly, fun to play, specs.

It makes little sense to have restrictive such class designs and mastery, pidgeon-holing classes into a 2-3 viable specs, instead of giving a wealth of options, is poor balance and poor design. It flattens the meta, removes depth, and requires an even more "hand-on" balance approach. It strips the organic nature out of the meta - when you give people access to tools, they will counter the meta, and counter the counter meta, and so it evolves.

[GONDOR]

After a good read of that huge wall of text in the OP, I agree with the core pain-point (and that's not GTDC or COC, for you copium inhalers).

All the posts crowing about how it's Order QQ are in bad-faith, and missing the forest for the trees.

TLDR:

• Melee ball scary, stacking cleave at 30ft aoe with mobility is a problem
• Procs/debuffs, specifically those afflicting mobility (COC etc.) need stronger ICDs or wider windows. Personally I think 2-3 seconds is more than enough - that shouldn't affect small-scale, but will open up opportunity in large scale.
• Lack of reward or even need to play well due to generous AOE and ezmode skills (applies to both order and destro)

There are some other topics within that wall of text, that aren't specifically called out, but touched on, like overall faction and class synergy, current meta favouritism (melee, not order or destro FYI), varied toolkit availabilities, zero-sum balance, general bulk, and even minor things like racial tactics.

All of these things are under-assessed, under-addressed, under-recognised, and under-balanced, which leads to a large amount of (apparent) skew.

[Sever1n]

Covenant of celerity is pure cancer mechanic and have to go and never come back. Topic starter just said all negative **** that was sucking sanity from order side for years and was discussed every day on every lvl.

[leftayparxoun]

Thanks for the reply. Here my 2 cents:

If only this were true - there is a substantive skew between buffs and debuffs.

Debuffs scale infinitely - everybody attacking the afflicted benefits - literally everybody. In or out of party, out of warband, it doesn't matter. Your target is CTBC is debuffed by 10% by someone out of your party? Enjoy the increased crit.

This such a big, and overlooked, point of balance. Debuffs not only scale infinitely, but have a much higher uptime, due to multiple sources. When fights get big, skill windows on debuff mean less, as you can rotate or refresh debuffs thanks to so many sources.

Flipping it over to buffs - it's unlikely that you'd have two KotBS (for example), that means a buff like vigilance won't be up all the time, or if it is, requires sacrifice. You compare this to something like, Wave of Scorn, the uptime can be quite high, as once it wears off any other Black Guard can re-apply it during your cooldown. Buffs don't get this increased re-applied uptime.

To give Vigilance a 100% uptime (restricted to your party), you'd need 3 KotBS in your party - and that's assuming it doesn't get buff-stripped.

This goes both ways, for both order and destro FWIW. It is heavily compounded by AOE caps.

To my knowledge BG's Crimson Death is the only non-mirrored debuff for Order, as far as normal abilities go. The infinite stacking arguement is also correct (as long as there are enough people hitting them) and it also applies to things like Vigilance (since they can be viewed as enemy debuffs instead).

While uptime is an important thing to consider, in most cases a 100% uptime is not needed. Ensuring that your backline doesnt crumble before the enemy backline does can more often than not be decided in seconds. After all, a buff for 10 s with 30 a cd can also be viewed as a permanent one with 33% of the potency. If timed correctly to the enemy channels drop, the potency becomes even higher.

Also, in fights where every second matters, stripping debuffs as a mdps is often a waste since that 1 GCD could have been spent on doing AOE channels or applying critical debuffs instead of ST removing buffs from people. So while, yes, buffs can be removed, that is usually done by enemy tanks and is a slow process in terms of current rvr warband engagements. This also applies to both factions even though Destro usually have access to fewer buffs worth stripping.

A quick note on ID and Furious Stomping - they aren't on the same applicability or power; I wouldn't expect the tide to turn back.

One thing that I believe should be mentioned, especially after your previous analysis, is the fundamental difference between the two:

- Furious Stomping has a 20 s cd meaning that in the context of a single engagement it will only come to play one time/Choppa. Maybe twice if it's prolonged.

- ID on the other hand, when combined with Swordmaster's WW, can reach a 0 s cd. This effectively means that in a single engagement, of let's say 15 s, you could reasonably expect each Slayer to use it around 7 times.

And regarding cleansing, in the same 15 s example:

In that same timeframe, a Dok could cleanse the party of 1 Ailment/Hex 3 times. Due to the nature of ID (dmg every 2 s) cleansing one, at a time after the initial application, will only remove the remaining ticks of it. Moreover, when stacking IDs at 1 or 2 people per party, the party cleanse can only remove that many applications/5 s. And that is if we also ignore layering of similar debuffs alongside ID.

I should also add that Zealot, the prefered healer for a destro party composition, has no proper way to cleanse Ailments, let alone do it party-wide.

Summing up: ID applications scale linearly and therefore their damage also scales linearly with the number of Slayers (the linear factor depending on if the Slayers have access to SM's WW) while group Ailment Cleanses are limited to one per 5 s on normal Destro comps.
When stacking IDs on a few targets (as Slayers under WW) the rate of the healers cleansing damage is far outpaced by the rate of applying damage through stacks.

Furious Stomping also scales linearly to the amount of Choppas and, similarly to Slayers under WW, can barely be countered by a mechanic (in this case disenchanting them).

If ID getting fixed is about to break the balance yet again, we can only wait and see. After all, 1 of the 2 critical bugs on it was already fixed yesterday and should be deployed soon.

[Fey]

Cc barely exists on RoR when you compare it to a game like DaoC. This attitude is why no one can have nice things. Big Brawlin got nerfed into oblivion because of people whining and failing to adapt to the situation. Same thing with Slice Through. It used to be amazing, now its trash. The game needs more aoe cc, not less.

If you can't be bothered to position properly you deserve to be punished.

[Scottx125]

Spoiler:

Thank you for the post. To compliment your order bias, as you put it, let me share a bit of my Destro bias:

I agree completely about your assesment regarding positioning and melee blobs being currently the deciding factors of victory. I also agree that Destro currrently has superior repositioning/cc options. What I also believe, however, is that you are missing a few things in your analysis. Here they are:

1. Saving people from melee blobs isn't equal between factions: Order faction has to its arsenal defensive abilities to significantly mitigate damage taken, in an equally trivial manner as stacking melee blobs. All you need is a WP for his WOU bonus buff, a Kotbs to increase inc healing by 15% for party members, and if they are also feeling like it also reducing crit.dmg taken by 20%. Also keep in mind that RPs and WPs can be built fairly tankier than their destro counterparts if needed. Therefore, while Destro has it easier when it comes to positioning melee blobs, Order has it easier tanking those blobs in a consistent manner.

2. Power of melee blobs: While you correctly surmised that melee blobs are indeed deadly killing machines, I believe you again failed to mention the relative effectiness of the the blobs between the factions. The power of the blobs mainly relies on massively timed channel skills that decimate enemies. The common way of countering those is to either mitigate their dmg through challenge or by interrupting them.
Challenge is unfortunately in a bad state at the moment where due to the small conal angle of the area it can only apply to so many enemies. And even if it does get applied, due to the nature of the current meta, 30 ft AOE channels can strip it almost instantly. Especially 30 ft omnidirectional ones with high hit frequency like WL's Whirling Axe. Which also brings me directly to the main point: interrupts.
For destro the best available tool in a melee blob v melee blob situation is Mara's Mouth of Tzeentch, with a narrow stripe-type hitbox and 40 ft range. For order the equivalent ability is WL's Echoing Roar, a 30ft radius omnidirectional AOE ability. Even when disregarding the player ratio in rvr between those two classes in favor of WLs, the area of effect between the two should be sufficient to show that, in a Destro vs Order melee blob fight, Destro will have a really hard time using their AOE channels to the fullest compared to Order. Which in turn forces Destro to rely on non-channeling potent AOE abilities (mainly stacking Choppas with the newly added Furious Stomping). People refer to it as poor man's Inevitable Doom, but currently due to the bugged state of ID I'd personally say it's a bit better. Whenever ID is fixed, expect the situation to turn even more in favor of order melee blobs.

All in all, I enjoyed your analysis and while you are on the right about the discrepancy in CC/movement tools between the factions, it cannot be viewed in vacuum. Should an equalization take place (despite the game striving to avoid direct mirrors) it should be also accompanied by nerfs/buffs in other important aspects of a wb's strength.

P.S. I also expect people to provide counterguements about both GTDC and CoC since the former turns Choppas into immunity vendors and the later relies on chance.

WP's are tankier but they're not gonna survive in a melee blob for very long. Literally the only difference between an AM/WP is the fact they have medium armour. All their other abilities are subject to situational usage, but I'd argue the fact that an AM can cast from 60-90ft away more than makes up for their lack of armour and defensive tactics, they also out heal WPs (and btw, you can strip the wounds buff very easily>.>). Yes, order healing is quite strong but so is destro healing. Healers across the board are extremely potent. But a WP may I remind you, whilst it has quick casting group heals and a channel, most of it's healing power is derived from it's channel and hots. If you get pulled into a blob and try to cast your AoE heal, you're gonna do a fat lot of nothing due to the setback caused by the amount of hits you take, that 1s cast easily becomes a 2-4 second cast. As it stands with the current blob meta going on, I'd say WP is probably the worst healer to bring to an ORVR primetime WB, primarily because there's no way you can survive being within 30ft of a melee blob (and you need to be within 30ft to do most of your effective healing).

It's pretty obvious destro for quite some time has had the advantage in terms of ORVR fights due to their abundance of CC. Now combined with the fact that the new choppa ability hits like a truck and they have amazing CC/dps abilities and they're pretty survivable for a dps. It makes them pretty hard to face massed in a melee blob. Kinda explains why most of the top kills are choppas of late.

Order had the advantage in funnels because of Rampage. Which was necessary since destro tanks were on the whole far tankier on average than their order alternatives. Now that order has lost much of that utility, we're riding the meta train of slayer parry builds and WL spin to win builds to remain competitive in ORVR.

The biggest problem, is that it only takes 1 idiot to do the wrong CC to completely ruin your chances at CCing a melee blob. If it's timed poorly and they all get immunities, you're pretty much done for, even if you/your warband didn't make the mistake.

destro tanks were on the whole far tankier on average than their order alternatives

Why do people say that so often? Kotbs is by far the best Tank in the whole game. IB is also very strong, and for a long time, BO was considered the worst Tank of all.
Yes, Chosen is a fine tank, but to say he is tankier than a Kotbs is not true. You know that they have ! 50% ! DMG reduction on demand? for 10 seconds with a 30 seconds CD!
And I don't start with all their utility.
I'm not saying that Destro Tanks are all worse than Order's, but I would never dare say that Destro Tanks are by far tankier than their Order alternative.

I'm not even mad, but I don't understand why nobody acknowledges that Kotbs even got buffed with the last patches. And I don't want him to get nerfed or something because that is what the Kotbs is; the ultimate Tank and that is fine.

Also, there are so many posts about the bad state of Order lately, but they are doing so well in almost all aspects of the game.
They win the most cities, winning in LOTD lately, and get the most forts. the only thing that is not in their favor are the numbers, and even that is only a matter of time till the next turn of tides begins. I don't want to say that Order is overpowered or something; I'm only a bit confused why there are so many voices that say that the last patch broke Order while they almost win everything that matters.

Oh, and sorry, I didn't want to derail the original theme of the post. You have some legit concerns and are posting them in a fair manner.

Not anymore, they closed the gap with the recent patches but before. KOTBS had amazing grp utility but was the squishiest tank in the game. You could barely get 50% block and its ini is low. And we won LOTD recently because guild leaders who I won't mention had been banned, reducing Destro's short term capability to fight back in an organised fashion.

Apologise for the slight derailment, we're back on top now .

[Scottx125]

Cc barely exists on RoR when you compare it to a game like DaoC. This attitude is why no one can have nice things. Big Brawlin got nerfed into oblivion because of people whining and failing to adapt to the situation. Same thing with Slice Through. It used to be amazing, now its trash. The game needs more aoe cc, not less.

If you can't be bothered to position properly you deserve to be punished.

My issue with that is you can't choose when and where to use certain CC. Like a stun or pull for example. If someone uses it and ruins your org's pull plan. It's completely useless for 30s. However, I wouldn't want CC to have little to no immunity because I'd rather faster more flowing gameplay rather than CC madness.

I also think some CC abilities are far easier to use well like the GTTC, because you're already going to be in melee and then you pop that and pull everyone into the meat grinder, regardless of it's reduced range. So I think there needs to be a balance of what AOE abilities can and should do, should it do damage? Should it be more about CC? Should it be more about utility? It shouldn't be all 3.

[GONDOR]

To my knowledge BG's Crimson Death is the only non-mirrored debuff for Order, as far as normal abilities go. The infinite stacking arguement is also correct (as long as there are enough people hitting them) and it also applies to things like Vigilance (since they can be viewed as enemy debuffs instead).

While uptime is an important thing to consider, in most cases a 100% uptime is not needed. Ensuring that your backline doesnt crumble before the enemy backline does can more often than not be decided in seconds. After all, a buff for 10 s with 30 a cd can also be viewed as a permanent one with 33% of the potency. If timed correctly to the enemy channels drop, the potency becomes even higher.

Also, in fights where every second matters, stripping debuffs as a mdps is often a waste since that 1 GCD could have been spent on doing AOE channels or applying critical debuffs instead of ST removing buffs from people. So while, yes, buffs can be removed, that is usually done by enemy tanks and is a slow process in terms of current rvr warband engagements. This also applies to both factions even though Destro usually have access to fewer buffs worth stripping.

True and fair, but in the context of ORVR, buffs only apply to 6. You need to have ideal group make-ups where a debuff can be applied from anywhere in the opposing party and tag >6. There's a difference in cap, and it becomes very pronounced with the large AOE cap. For 1 GCD, you (could) debuff 24, and only buff 6.

Yes, every second matters in a fight, but high uptime/refreshing buffs makes a big difference and slowly pushes odds apart. COC (I don't want to use it as an example, but it's the easiest that comes to mind) having a 100% uptime has a pretty big impact - being snared every crucial second of that fight, when Juggernaut or cleanse only buys you a few more seconds is huge.

You don't need 100% uptime on many debuffs, or buffs, sure, but when it's not hard to do, they make a continued impact - I suggest you look up marginal gains. If fights are only measured in seconds, then every second counts for more.

Saying buff-stripping is the duty of tanks is true, as is the removing of debuffs a duty for healers. Removing buffs is harder than removing debuffs, but debuffs have the benefit of scaling up to 1:24 GCD trade, effectively GCD choking healers, buff strips are a 1:1 gcd trade, since it's just on the target, or a 1:6 if you want to go the "but what about" route.

One thing that I believe should be mentioned, especially after your previous analysis, is the fundamental difference between the two:

- Furious Stomping has a 20 s cd meaning that in the context of a single engagement it will only come to play one time/Choppa. Maybe twice if it's prolonged.

- ID on the other hand, when combined with Swordmaster's WW, can reach a 0 s cd. This effectively means that in a single engagement, of let's say 15 s, you could reasonably expect each Slayer to use it around 7 times.

And regarding cleansing, in the same 15 s example:

In that same timeframe, a Dok could cleanse the party of 1 Ailment/Hex 3 times. Due to the nature of ID (dmg every 2 s) cleansing one, at a time after the initial application, will only remove the remaining ticks of it. Moreover, when stacking IDs at 1 or 2 people per party, the party cleanse can only remove that many applications/5 s. And that is if we also ignore layering of similar debuffs alongside ID.

I should also add that Zealot, the prefered healer for a destro party composition, has no proper way to cleanse Ailments, let alone do it party-wide.

Summing up: ID applications scale linearly and therefore their damage also scales linearly with the number of Slayers (the linear factor depending on if the Slayers have access to SM's WW) while group Ailment Cleanses are limited to one per 5 s on normal Destro comps.
When stacking IDs on a few targets (as Slayers under WW) the rate of the healers cleansing damage is far outpaced by the rate of applying damage through stacks.

Furious Stomping also scales linearly to the amount of Choppas and, similarly to Slayers under WW, can barely be countered by a mechanic (in this case disenchanting them).

If ID getting fixed is about to break the balance yet again, we can only wait and see. After all, 1 of the 2 critical bugs on it was already fixed yesterday and should be deployed soon.

If you are going to use ID with WW as an example, then you should also use Cleanse with FotWK. They are both zero CD and subsequently become a 1:1 GCD trade. More slayers in an example? More healers. It's all 2/2/2.

Destro comps aren't limited to the 5s limit (and they weren't before with Chop Fasta).

My tank, Ironbreaker, can't shatter enchantments, therefore useless against Furious Stomping. Clearly, we need to buff IB to a chrome shine.

I don't like either ID or Furious Stompin', but as a driver (not for RoR), I know hands down which of the two I would prefer in my group comp; and it isn't ID.

[CyunUnderis]

To my knowledge BG's Crimson Death is the only non-mirrored debuff for Order, as far as normal abilities go.

Arcing Swing + Overpowering Swing from Knight is the equivalent for the Order. But Deeply Impaled from the Marauder is not mirrored.

If you are going to use ID with WW as an example, then you should also use Cleanse with FotWK. They are both zero CD and subsequently become a 1:1 GCD trade. More slayers in an example? More healers. It's all 2/2/2.

I don't think the example you took is good (especially in 24 vs 24 or Zerg vs Zerg - might be more real in 6 vs 6 or 12 vs 12). The greater the mass, the weaker the combo Clean + CD reducer is compared to the combo ID + CD reducer because, like you say, there is a lot of debuffs (including DoT), so ID will naturally be covered, even if the Slayers don't do it themselves.