[WL] AoE spec too strong for city siege

[Omegus]

Random screenshots with ridiculously mis-matched teams are always a good balance evidence!

Are there any more-or-less balanced premade vs premade examples of this tactic?

The screenshot I posted was from a premade that has a very good success rate in the city (not "the best", but very good).

Yet you choose to hide the names, which makes me think you expect people to disagree with your assessment of that premade

No I hid the names as I didn't ask them for permission to post the screenshot (it was from discord) and I had hoped hiding the names would stop it turning into a "your premade is ****" conversation, but there's always someone I suppose. The purpose of the screenshot was also just to show the kind of devastation that this setup can wreck.

[AxelF]

Random screenshots with ridiculously mis-matched teams are always a good balance evidence!

Are there any more-or-less balanced premade vs premade examples of this tactic?

The screenshot I posted was from a premade that has a very good success rate in the city (not "the best", but very good).

A very good success rate from fighting pug WBs the vast majority of the time, and getting lulled into a false sense of security/superiority like most organised WBs. If they're a good WB they will adjust to these new and unexpected tactics, and bring a composition and tactics of their own to counter and defeat it. But no, far easier to scream nerf on the forums and then just go back to steamrolling pugs and thinking they're good players

And no this isn't a 'your premade is ****' post it's a 'you've come up against completely new problems than you're used to facing, and your normal composition and tactics aren't cutting it. Instead of whining about it, think outside the box, as the other side have done, and come up with some tactics to counter it rather than immediately running to the forums and crying for the opposition to be nerfed' post.

[Omegus]

A very good success rate from fighting pug WBs the vast majority of the time, and getting lulled into a false sense of security/superiority like most organised WBs. If they're a good WB they will adjust to these new and unexpected tactics, and bring a composition and tactics of their own to counter and defeat it. But no, far easier to scream nerf on the forums and then just go back to steamrolling pugs and thinking they're good players

And no this isn't a 'your premade is ****' post it's a 'you've come up against completely new problems than you're used to facing, and your normal composition and tactics aren't cutting it. Instead of whining about it, think outside the box, as the other side have done, and come up with some tactics to counter it rather than immediately running to the forums and crying for the opposition to be nerfed' post.

Chill . One person posted, I was just trying to show some evidence as to where he was coming from. To shut down some of your assumptions: the premade knows the difference between pugs and proper premades and has had wins (and losses) against strong order premades as well. It's actually beaten some form of the WL premade too by out-playing them on objectives; this isn't the first time the WB has faced the WL group. The kill count and damage was still horrifically lop-sided. The destro WB has made several changes as cities have developed and new opponents and/or strats encountered.

We can still discuss whether the sheer killing power of this order setup is intended along with the healer lock-down it can provide without resorting to L2P name calling. Much like a critical mass of BWs can overpower most/all healing it seems there is now another setup that can achieve the same thing through different means. Remember when everyone was running massed pouncing indigestion mSH at the start of sieges? Guess what, there was plenty of complaining and it was deemed too strong so indigestion was toned down.

There could be obvious counters and weaknesses to the WL setup - if you can think of them then by all means participate in the conversion. I myself have thought of some for a straight-up fight but the very narrow enclosed areas of the cities limit your movement options and mobility which this order WB setup can capitalise on. If it was just 24 vs 24 in an open field then the conversation would be very different compared to throwing in the city layout and objectives. There's also the other issue to think of that if you bring something too specialized then you end up easily losing to something else and I would hate for city WB compositions to become rock, paper, scissors (I'm not implying it's like that at the moment!).


Personally I blame it all on the nerf to Wind of Insanity but I'm a salty zealot who wants to dps so I would say that

[Bosli]

A very good success rate from fighting pug WBs the vast majority of the time, and getting lulled into a false sense of security/superiority like most organised WBs.
[...]
Instead of whining about it, think outside the box, as the other side have done, and come up with some tactics to counter it rather than immediately running to the forums and crying for the opposition to be nerfed' post.

We fight proper premades most of the time (at least 4 of 5 sieges - so often that we're beginning to feel like we're cursed), and as someone else said already, win some and lose some (we won against every premade we faced multiple times at least once). We don't have a win rate that high against the top notch ones simply because we don't consist of jobless players that can all be online for every single siege, so our warband's strength varies a bit, while most actual order premades (the handful of them that exist) seem extremely consistent in their core players.

We fought these WL warbands 3 or 4 times already, so I wouldn't call it "immediately". Obviously it's not that hard to come up with a counter (as many AoE+riposte WEs as possible), but as Zomega said, city sieges shouldn't be rock-paper-scissors and they should never be decided before it even started.

Also, to be honest, the WL warband(s?) isn't even playing their strengths as well as they could yet. Like I said, with every DPS being able to pounce with big single burst and high bomb capabilities, nobody can prevent backline deaths. Blobbing up doesn't help at all, because then every single healer is shut down completely and the warband gets bombed in less than 5 seconds.

If you think we are trash and don't believe just HOW crazy strong this setup is, log on your destro toon, gather some people you think are good and ask them to fight you 24v24. Though I doubt they will accept, since they don't want their easy-win-setup nerfed.

[Bosli]

Spoiler:

Why is a MAGUS topping the damage charts? That's a better question.

Also, im not sure what one should think of this reaction by the dev playing the class in question as a main.

[wargrimnir]

Spoiler:

Why is a MAGUS topping the damage charts? That's a better question.

Also, im not sure what one should think of this reaction by the dev playing the class in question as a main.

It's funny because WL's have been crying about not having a viable warband spec. We've made no changes to said spec, and suddenly everyone is crying about WL's have an OVERPOWERED warband spec. How can you not laugh? It is bizarro world simply because a group of high RR and well geared players absolutely dunked in response to a challenge.

[toffikx]

We don't have a win rate that high against the top notch ones simply because we don't consist of jobless players that can all be online for every single siege.

[Bosli]

It's funny because WL's have been crying about not having a viable warband spec. We've made no changes to said spec, and suddenly everyone is crying about WL's have an OVERPOWERED warband spec. How can you not laugh? It is bizarro world simply because a group of high RR and well geared players absolutely dunked in response to a challenge.

Again, it's not that the spec itself is overpowered in any way, it's just that stacking it is way too strong compared to pretty much anything else.

[wargrimnir]

It's funny because WL's have been crying about not having a viable warband spec. We've made no changes to said spec, and suddenly everyone is crying about WL's have an OVERPOWERED warband spec. How can you not laugh? It is bizarro world simply because a group of high RR and well geared players absolutely dunked in response to a challenge.

Again, it's not that the spec itself is overpowered in any way, it's just that stacking it is way too strong compared to pretty much anything else.

@Bombling and ask him how effective stacking 6-7 brightwizards is?

Maybe stack 6-7 slayers and see how effective that is? I suspect getting hit by 6 Flurrys at once is gonna kill most people after two or three attacks.

If you're concerned about stacking classes, then it's time to adapt. You can do this with all kinds of classes.

When morale meta was at it's peak, stacking marauders to drain morale was a thing.

When Raze was an M2, having a frontline of tanks stacking unmitigatable 65' cone morale damage was a thing.

Stacking 6 shamans got in on it for a bit when Ere' We Go was stacking and would proc 6 times per green lazer tick of damage.

[R3xz]

It's funny because WL's have been crying about not having a viable warband spec. We've made no changes to said spec, and suddenly everyone is crying about WL's have an OVERPOWERED warband spec. How can you not laugh? It is bizarro world simply because a group of high RR and well geared players absolutely dunked in response to a challenge.

Again, it's not that the spec itself is overpowered in any way, it's just that stacking it is way too strong compared to pretty much anything else.

@Bombling and ask him how effective stacking 6-7 brightwizards is?

Maybe stack 6-7 slayers and see how effective that is? I suspect getting hit by 6 Flurrys at once is gonna kill most people after two or three attacks.

If you're concerned about stacking classes, then it's time to adapt. You can do this with all kinds of classes.

When morale meta was at it's peak, stacking marauders to drain morale was a thing.

When Raze was an M2, having a frontline of tanks stacking unmitigatable 65' cone morale damage was a thing.

Stacking 6 shamans got in on it for a bit when Ere' We Go was stacking and would proc 6 times per green lazer tick of damage.

And what happened after these periods? Did the stacking method continued to be overpowered or were there balance changes made to it? Because I think the scope of the thread/discussion is to take a look at how one may go at balancing such effective "class stacking metas", and potentially if there are any counters (ya know, instead of just complaining about other classes, or other "stacking strats"). As far as I know, BW and Slayers are still very effective to stack in city comps, but since I'm a returning player I'm not sure what the counters are or if there are any.

Perhaps its all a part of a bigger issue in general, that's hard to balance. Stacking hard hitting aoe classes seem to be in favor lately for many meta WB setup, especially for City and its many choke points.