Evaluating differences in sustain between factions - LOTD 12/05/24

[royaltydna]

I'll give my opinions on some of your assumptions, cuz i believe two are wrong.

Balanced between organizations:
Order was better. FMJ, Bene and Black Horror all brought the same amount of players, but FMJ had 2.5 to 3x as many kills as the other two. While on Order, FMJ and Retri had the same amount.

Order has better sustain tools:
Ideal comps, we can assume both WBs in a fight will have 4 RPs, 4 Zealots, 4 KobS and 4 (you don't really need 4 anymore imo) Chosens. RPs and Zealots give 25% Incoming Heal Buff, KobS gives 15% IHB but Chosen has a 25% Incoming Heal Debuff which affects everybody in a 30ft radius, or the melee line. That means Destro's melee line has a 25% IHB while Order only has 15%.

SMs don't use Raking Talons, they don't have the tactic slot. Its not a factor.

I believe the answer MIGHT be in Destro's better IHB, Shamans and mobility. If you look at the top10 Healers, we had four Shamans and 1 AM, and people that play a lot City will tell you that you need Fury of da Green and EoV to survive bursts. WPs, SMs, DoKs, they do a lot of fluff healing, but its HPS isn't high enough to sustain during the moments where fights are decided.

Then there is mobility. It has a direct correlation with DPS which people often overlook, both to being in range to do all your dmg and being able to avoid dmg. There is a reason one of the best Choppa players in the game runs Quick Escape. So if you can kite out of a DMG Drop, while Order can't, but still die being chased then the Recovery rate will get affected. That might be a relevant factor.

Doing this kind of analysis on a balanced City might help give us more information.

Also i like how the results were "Destro heals more" and people answered with "WLs are OP and SMs heal too much".

[Andamarine]

On last lotd destro had bh, fmj, hob. This should be enough if not for win at least for pretty balanced fights. But again we had warcamp farm for 30 mins without possibility to repent the enemy.

It was one of the best Lotd for destro in a long time, destro had a lot more(300+) kills than usually:
https://killboard.returnofreckoning.com ... 33392e4de9
https://killboard.returnofreckoning.com ... e8d2f3d85d
https://killboard.returnofreckoning.com ... 32a31bed7b

As for kills there was only one better in a months and it was last the only win for destro i can remember. It was very close, cca 1300/1400 kills, and it took almost 3 hours compared to standart 1h 10+ min order win, but yeah it happened:

https://killboard.returnofreckoning.com ... 15161a47f9

I don't know how much time spend OP to analyze 1 lotd, but it would be interesting to look more closely at least at last 5-10 lotd and compare it.

[leftayparxoun]

I'll give my opinions on some of your assumptions, cuz i believe two are wrong.

Balanced between organizations:
Order was better. FMJ, Bene and Black Horror all brought the same amount of players, but FMJ had 2.5 to 3x as many kills as the other two. While on Order, FMJ and Retri had the same amount.

Order has better sustain tools:
Ideal comps, we can assume both WBs in a fight will have 4 RPs, 4 Zealots, 4 KobS and 4 (you don't really need 4 anymore imo) Chosens. RPs and Zealots give 25% Incoming Heal Buff, KobS gives 15% IHB but Chosen has a 25% Incoming Heal Debuff which affects everybody in a 30ft radius, or the melee line. That means Destro's melee line has a 25% IHB while Order only has 15%.

SMs don't use Raking Talons, they don't have the tactic slot. Its not a factor.

I believe the answer MIGHT be in Destro's better IHB, Shamans and mobility. If you look at the top10 Healers, we had four Shamans and 1 AM, and people that play a lot City will tell you that you need Fury of da Green and EoV to survive bursts. WPs, SMs, DoKs, they do a lot of fluff healing, but its HPS isn't high enough to sustain during the moments where fights are decided.

Then there is mobility. It has a direct correlation with DPS which people often overlook, both to being in range to do all your dmg and being able to avoid dmg. There is a reason one of the best Choppa players in the game runs Quick Escape. So if you can kite out of a DMG Drop, while Order can't, but still die being chased then the Recovery rate will get affected. That might be a relevant factor.

Doing this kind of analysis on a balanced City might help give us more information.

Also i like how the results were "Destro heals more" and people answered with "WLs are OP and SMs heal too much".

Hey there I think you are talking about LNM instead of FMJ when you say they had the same kills as Retri. I wouldn't be so sure that kills are the definitive metric for organisation since that also depends on the fights you pick and those you don't pick (having to defend certain points). I should state that I'm not too knowledgeable on relative guild wb strengths, however.

To my knowledge there are also AOE incoming heal debuffs on Order side such as on dps Runepriest (albeit requires a crit and to hit people) or Fortress weapon proc on WLs. Plus Kotbs also has a 25% outgoing heal debuff that can potentially be applied to enemy healers withing 30 ft. Chosen's one is for sure is far easier to apply and maintain.

As for Swordmaster and Racking Talons, Uchoo regards it as ''Always use'' in his guide (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=51827), but I'm not sure if most Swordmasters agree with his opinion and follow that advice. I would assume they do.

Regarding the AM/Shammy comment I agree with you.

I see how mobility could play an important factor, however a lot of the times LOTD comes down to chokepoint fights and standstills there.

I'm also planning to perform a similar analysis to 1 or 2 recent balanced City fights and compare the results. Please look forward to that!

Finally, let me correct a misconception. The results regarding Recovery indicate that Destro performs better in that regard, but that doesn't necessarily correlate to overall healing. In the ''What happened in this LOTD'' subsection, as well as in a previous comment here, I show that despite Destro having ~30% more healers (17 more, with around 10 of those being Sov+ geared) they actually ended up doing 99% of the total heal Order did (32.9 million vs 33.2 million). This is the contradiction I also try to address in my Interpretation section.

[leftayparxoun]

I don't know how much time spend OP to analyze 1 lotd, but it would be interesting to look more closely at least at last 5-10 lotd and compare it.

It took around 10 h to type out the entire analysis, but I'd say after having the methodology already established it would take around 3-4h per LOTD now. Maybe around twice as fast if I have an ''assistant'' helping me type down data on excel.

As mentioned in the previous comment, I plan on first doing the same analysis on 1 or 2 recent balanced City fights to figure out how a non-LOTD skirmish looks like regarding Recovery. That should take a lot less time and I might even do so tomorrow. I will keep you posted.

[royaltydna]

Hey there I think you are talking about LNM instead of FMJ when you say they had the same kills as Retri... I should state that I'm not too knowledgeable on relative guild wb strengths, however.

You're right, typo, meant LNM. I mean, screw it i was gonna avoid this but this discussion is too good to hide information. Retri, LNM and FMJ are on a tier above. Cross is close behind, but BH and Bene suffer from having very good MA's (in Bene's case it depends on who is MA'ing, the differece is massive) but they are flankers - you can count on them only engaging in fights where they 100% know they'll win. The other Guilds were running smaller scale and there are some VERY good people in there, but it doesn't help our current issue.

To my knowledge there are also AOE incoming heal debuffs on Order side such as on dps Runepriest (albeit requires a crit and to hit people) or Fortress weapon proc on WLs...

As for Swordmaster and Racking Talons, Uchoo regards it as ''Always use'' in his guide.

You are right, i forgot about WL's Fortress Weapon IHD. It has to be somewhat equal then, cuz the weapon proc doesn't have a 100% uptime rate like Chosen Aura. The take i'm coming out of with this is that "Order's design of having better healing against Destro's better CC and mobility" is gimped then.

And Uchoo's guide (great dude btw) isn't what the best SMs i know follow, that one thing is outdated.

Finally, let me correct a misconception. The results regarding Recovery indicate that Destro performs better in that regard, but that doesn't necessarily correlate to overall healing. In the ''What happened in this LOTD'' subsection, as well as in a previous comment here, I show that despite Destro having ~30% more healers (17 more, with around 10 of those being Sov+ geared) they actually ended up doing 99% of the total heal Order did (32.9 million vs 33.2 million). This is the contradiction I also try to address in my Interpretation section.

My theory regarding this is down to Shammy/AM dominance then, IHB difference is out and mobility is hard to quantify. My main argument is still based on City meta which demands AMs and Shammy. WPs and DoKs are the "Engis/Magus" of healing. They do a lot of numbers, but their real impact is misguided, most of it is just fluff healing. When the dmg that actually leads to kills is occurring they don't have the burst healing (outside of a one use spell) that AM/Sham has. Thats what i'm thinking that the Total Heal and Recovery Rate means. Both Order and Destro had a lot of fluff healing, Destro had better burst healing with their more impactful Shamans.

Imo its the worst problem in this game atm. Classes need to have meaningful impact outside of how much burst, dps or hps, they can do. We don't need to nerf AM, SM, Sham or WL, we need to buff the rest so they can bring something relevant to the table. Powerful debuffs, buffs (like what RPs and Zealots bring), CC, anything. Their "thing" can result into increasing the WB's burst, that is fine, but rn we are in a situation of "why bring a SL for Shatter Limbs when another WL is simply better?" situation.

[Andamarine]

and as for the 20% healer difference I'd point mainly towards Kotbs ''Focused Mending'' +15% bonus party healing tactic. This plays into Order's sustain design philosophy as mentioned in the ''Order has better sustain tools'' subsection of the analysis.

As for why this is Order's faction design, I wouldn't know. You'd have to get a proper answer from someone else.

I think it has a lot to do with AoE interupts tools:

Destro has Magus with ranged 20 feets radius AoE , same as Engi but Magus is least played character in ROR (only 410 active characters in last 3 months vs for exmaple 1198 choppas ). Engi is little more popular with 500+ acitve because a dwarf with a big gun is somehow sexy.

Second AoE interupt has Mara Mouth of Tzeentch - rectangle 20x40 feets in front of him, it is not a 90°cone from what i tested, it has constant width and you cant hit anything more than 10 feets to the left of right from your position. So it hits area approx. 800 square feets.

vs.

Echiong Roar of WL - interupts 360 ° radius , 25 feets around you and you pet. Let's not talk pet as he is not much usable in blobs and consider every WL loner.
Area interupted is 3,14 x (25x25) = 1962,5 square feets. In other words you need more than 3 percetly coordinated and positioned Marauders to hit and interupt same area as WL does with pressing one skil button. Difference can be even much bigger in smaller fights where pet don't die instantly and you send him interupt targets away from you.

And to make difference even bigger SM got Redirected Force AoE interupt - it hits approx. 400 square feets area in front of SM from what i tested (20x20 feets) in last balance patch. It is usable in any balance stance and it is conditional (needs parry, block, disrupt or dodge ) but even with my 2H SM i have it ready always on CD, as you parry at least one attack in 10s even without using Wall of Dartling Steel.

More often you are interupted you do less healing, less damage etc.. expecially with current "Channel/Proc Meta" and in blob fights where fights are decided in a first seconds of contact. You are interupted as healer=you are dead a few seconds later.

[Lisutaris]

Please keep in mind, that older LOTD scenarios maybe had a different game version (balance patches).
That's why it does not really make sense to compare those, they have to be in the same game version bracket.

That's why this LOTD was most likely chosen. Best possible LOTD with current game version.

[leftayparxoun]

New analysis of a quite equal City fight on 13/5/24 is also ready:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tqj ... sp=sharing

You will see how despite Order losing, they managed to sustain themselves much better than Destro did, achieving a (destro to order) Recovery ratio of ~0.55 compared to this LOTD's 1.68.

The city results are in line with my Interpretation of Order's sustain-oriented design in the LOTD analysis and (imo) give further credibility to my thoughts regarding some underlying factor(s) skewing the outcome of this LOTD.

P.S: Interestingly enough, having 3 times more Shamy's than AMs doesn't seem to give destro any significant advantage regarding healing OR Recovery.

[Bozzax]

I marvel at ppl not knowing what healers are the backbone in a wb 2024 or thinking ”mobility” is relevant after recent patches

Value of the healer = heals + protection + group clns (not visible) + damage procs ( not visible ) + heal buffs ( make others look better) + ability to sustain pressure (deaths is a clue) + burst heals (not visible)+ cc ( not visible )

[royaltydna]

Just thought of something. Ingame scoreboard counts dmg done to NPCs as "Kill Dmg", is the website doing so too?

Any players that were in that City remember how it went? Did Order cap anything? Who killed the Lords in phases 2 and 3?