White Lion Changes (8/25/2018)

[Sanao]

In what aspect of gameplay was guardian broken? Was it 6 v 6? Was it in warbands? Say the words so we can stop dancing around the truth. “I, Catholicism198, believe that Guardian was broken because they were too powerful in a _____ group setting”. Fill in that blank for me. Tell the devs what you feel this game should be balanced around.

Azareal just beat me to it, but are you seriously now trying to assert that Guardian White Lion wasn't vastly over performing? Dropping all guise of being the unbiased White Lion main now?

Since Azareal has already stated that a second attempt at changing the WL is coming in the next patch, the discussion of the current changes are moot. That said, I don't think any legitimately objective person doesn't acknowledge that Guardian White Lion was vastly over performing in any small scale encounter. Which includes 6v6.

The spec had a degree of stability that was entirely out of proportion with the amount of damage it could do. The weakness of the WL within a 6v6 was always the pet and this remained true with Guardian. The difference was that, while a Guardian White Lion was more heavily dependent on the pet for their damage, it was still damage that was easily comparable to more fragile mDPS. That is inherently unbalanced, the class has little meaningful trade off and it narrows down the opponent's options for counter play when killing the elf becomes entirely unlikely.

The notion that it didn't have an effective place within a warband is not sufficient cause to make it heavily outperform anything else in every other arena of the game. You have lost all objective perspective if you do not accept the spec needed heavily tuning down.

[Fiskrens]

So upon some more testing I have a few points to bring up

1) AP regen, Maras have subvert strength tactic and Wl has no similar tactic

2) Mara's hotbars change when they change mutations so that they can place the abilites they want to use for every mutation. This means they require much fewer keybinds than WL currently.

3) str/tough buff is only usable in woodsman while Mara can use theirs in monst/brut. Also it doesn't give as much str as the tooltip says.

4) WL debuff tree and dps tree are not the same as is the case with Mara (savagery with brut as finisher and monst as survival) making WL very clunky to use in comparison

5) Too many abilities need specific pet debuffs as a condition compared to mara. For instance

6) WL lost 25% dmg buff while Maras kept theirs.

7) 80 toughness (woodsman) is not on par with monst proc.

8) Hack with tactic is now stackable wounds debuff, Hack is a low dmg ability and stacking it gets very costly. Compare this with mara that gets an ability with 10sec cd which can be used in any mutation and does pretty good dmg.

If devs want WL to go this route then these are a few things to look over. Ap regen and hotbars being the most urgent so that the class functions somewhat fluidly atleast.

EDIT: Removed one of the points (wounds debuff) When I realized I had brought it up twice.

[nat3s]

Everyone knew WL was op, that's why so many people rolled them. I think taking into account 1v1 and small scale is entirely legit when making balancing decisions. People rolled a WL to dominate these areas of the game because they knew they had an unfair advantage.

WL can't have it all, group/wb utility as well as being the best small man spec, that just wouldn't be balanced.

As it happens, they still have way more burst than a Mara and are still probably the best 1v1 class in the game.

[oaliaen]

aza is the man

[Azarael]

So upon some more testing I have a few points to bring up

1) AP regen, Maras have subvert strength tactic and Wl has no similar tactic

2) Mara's hotbars change when they change mutations so that they can place the abilites they want to use for every mutation. This means they require much fewer keybinds than WL currently.

3) str/tough buff is only usable in woodsman while Mara can use theirs in monst/brut. Also it doesn't give as much str as the tooltip says.

4) WL debuff tree and dps tree are not the same as is the case with Mara (savagery with brut as finisher and monst as survival) making WL very clunky to use in comparison

5) Too many abilities need specific pet debuffs as a condition compared to mara. For instance

6) WL lost 25% dmg buff while Maras kept theirs.

7) 80 toughness (woodsman) is not on par with monst proc.

8) Hack with tactic is now stackable wounds debuff, Hack is a low dmg ability and stacking it gets very costly. Compare this with mara that gets an ability with 10sec cd which can be used in any mutation and does pretty good dmg.

If devs want WL to go this route then these are a few things to look over. Ap regen and hotbars being the most urgent so that the class functions somewhat fluidly atleast.

EDIT: Removed one of the points (wounds debuff) When I realized I had brought it up twice.

Vast majority of this has been solved for next patch.

[nat3s]

Only thing which needs tweaking is the WL doesn't need to stance dance as much as the Mara which makes it a much easier class. I think that needs adjusting. If you want Mara utility then you need the APM drawback that comes with it imo.

[Theseus]

So upon some more testing I have a few points to bring up

1) AP regen, Maras have subvert strength tactic and Wl has no similar tactic

2) Mara's hotbars change when they change mutations so that they can place the abilites they want to use for every mutation. This means they require much fewer keybinds than WL currently.

3) str/tough buff is only usable in woodsman while Mara can use theirs in monst/brut. Also it doesn't give as much str as the tooltip says.

4) WL debuff tree and dps tree are not the same as is the case with Mara (savagery with brut as finisher and monst as survival) making WL very clunky to use in comparison

5) Too many abilities need specific pet debuffs as a condition compared to mara. For instance

6) WL lost 25% dmg buff while Maras kept theirs.

7) 80 toughness (woodsman) is not on par with monst proc.

8) Hack with tactic is now stackable wounds debuff, Hack is a low dmg ability and stacking it gets very costly. Compare this with mara that gets an ability with 10sec cd which can be used in any mutation and does pretty good dmg.

If devs want WL to go this route then these are a few things to look over. Ap regen and hotbars being the most urgent so that the class functions somewhat fluidly atleast.

EDIT: Removed one of the points (wounds debuff) When I realized I had brought it up twice.

Vast majority of this has been solved for next patch.

One thing I would have to add to the discussion. Its the packhunting tactic. Before it gave you AA haste as long as you ran trained to hunt. So it was up almost all the time if you didnt change the training. Now it is bound to craft of the axeman, so it only applies when you are in that stance, which means quite a performance drop for this quite great tactic.

[Fiskrens]

So upon some more testing I have a few points to bring up

1) AP regen, Maras have subvert strength tactic and Wl has no similar tactic

2) Mara's hotbars change when they change mutations so that they can place the abilites they want to use for every mutation. This means they require much fewer keybinds than WL currently.

3) str/tough buff is only usable in woodsman while Mara can use theirs in monst/brut. Also it doesn't give as much str as the tooltip says.

4) WL debuff tree and dps tree are not the same as is the case with Mara (savagery with brut as finisher and monst as survival) making WL very clunky to use in comparison

5) Too many abilities need specific pet debuffs as a condition compared to mara. For instance

6) WL lost 25% dmg buff while Maras kept theirs.

7) 80 toughness (woodsman) is not on par with monst proc.

8) Hack with tactic is now stackable wounds debuff, Hack is a low dmg ability and stacking it gets very costly. Compare this with mara that gets an ability with 10sec cd which can be used in any mutation and does pretty good dmg.

If devs want WL to go this route then these are a few things to look over. Ap regen and hotbars being the most urgent so that the class functions somewhat fluidly atleast.

EDIT: Removed one of the points (wounds debuff) When I realized I had brought it up twice.

Vast majority of this has been solved for next patch.

One thing I would have to add to the discussion. Its the packhunting tactic. Before it gave you AA haste as long as you ran trained to hunt. So it was up almost all the time if you didnt change the training. Now it is bound to craft of the axeman, so it only applies when you are in that stance, which means quite a performance drop for this quite great tactic.

Yes I've noticed that it becomes a pretty useless tactic as you spend at most 50% of your time in axeman if you wanna keep armor debuff up. Add to that the time you might spend in woodsman stance and the tactic becomes even worse. Overall I've noticed a significant dps decrease as hunter/axe compared to before, pretty harsh imo.

[Renork]

In what aspect of gameplay was guardian broken? Was it 6 v 6? Was it in warbands? Say the words so we can stop dancing around the truth. “I, Catholicism198, believe that Guardian was broken because they were too powerful in a _____ group setting”. Fill in that blank for me. Tell the devs what you feel this game should be balanced around.

Azareal just beat me to it, but are you seriously now trying to assert that Guardian White Lion wasn't vastly over performing? Dropping all guise of being the unbiased White Lion main now?

Since Azareal has already stated that a second attempt at changing the WL is coming in the next patch, the discussion of the current changes are moot. That said, I don't think any legitimately objective person doesn't acknowledge that Guardian White Lion was vastly over performing in any small scale encounter. Which includes 6v6.

The spec had a degree of stability that was entirely out of proportion with the amount of damage it could do. The weakness of the WL within a 6v6 was always the pet and this remained true with Guardian. The difference was that, while a Guardian White Lion was more heavily dependent on the pet for their damage, it was still damage that was easily comparable to more fragile mDPS. That is inherently unbalanced, the class has little meaningful trade off and it narrows down the opponent's options for counter play when killing the elf becomes entirely unlikely.

The notion that it didn't have an effective place within a warband is not sufficient cause to make it heavily outperform anything else in every other arena of the game. You have lost all objective perspective if you do not accept the spec needed heavily tuning down.

This right here. Majority of people that switched to playing WL's after they were "tweaked" rode the RP gravy train, so please don't come cry about how much time you "invested" in your class. Even the biggest of idiots could play the class effortlessly, and not having a "role" in warband play didn't justify the immense amount of burst you could generate. That being said, you're going to get another set of tweaks coming up, so it's quite obvious that Azarael is doing his best to balance things around. You have the option to continue testing so that the class can continue to get polished, or take a break and come back later.

[Fiskrens]

In what aspect of gameplay was guardian broken? Was it 6 v 6? Was it in warbands? Say the words so we can stop dancing around the truth. “I, Catholicism198, believe that Guardian was broken because they were too powerful in a _____ group setting”. Fill in that blank for me. Tell the devs what you feel this game should be balanced around.

Azareal just beat me to it, but are you seriously now trying to assert that Guardian White Lion wasn't vastly over performing? Dropping all guise of being the unbiased White Lion main now?

Since Azareal has already stated that a second attempt at changing the WL is coming in the next patch, the discussion of the current changes are moot. That said, I don't think any legitimately objective person doesn't acknowledge that Guardian White Lion was vastly over performing in any small scale encounter. Which includes 6v6.

The spec had a degree of stability that was entirely out of proportion with the amount of damage it could do. The weakness of the WL within a 6v6 was always the pet and this remained true with Guardian. The difference was that, while a Guardian White Lion was more heavily dependent on the pet for their damage, it was still damage that was easily comparable to more fragile mDPS. That is inherently unbalanced, the class has little meaningful trade off and it narrows down the opponent's options for counter play when killing the elf becomes entirely unlikely.

The notion that it didn't have an effective place within a warband is not sufficient cause to make it heavily outperform anything else in every other arena of the game. You have lost all objective perspective if you do not accept the spec needed heavily tuning down.

This right here. Majority of people that switched to playing WL's after they were "tweaked" rode the RP gravy train, so please don't come cry about how much time you "invested" in your class. Even the biggest of idiots could play the class effortlessly, and not having a "role" in warband play didn't justify the immense amount of burst you could generate. That being said, you're going to get another set of tweaks coming up, so it's quite obvious that Azarael is doing his best to balance things around. You have the option to continue testing so that the class can continue to get polished, or take a break and come back later.

I guess you can move those 5 renown points you spent in futile strikes back into some more offensive stats now mr glasscannon magus.