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Revert AOE detaunt change

Structured balance proposals should be posted here. Posts in this section will be taken into account during class balance reviews.
Bloodmasked
Posts: 200

Revert AOE detaunt change

Post#1 » Tue May 25, 2021 11:48 am

Change note:

"The reasoning behind this is to nerf the ability for healing WP/Dok players to stand and tank multiple players with a 100% AoE detaunt uptime. This change is in-line with the Sham/Am AOE detaunt uptime of 33%, and is an overdue nerf considering the medium armor survivability that WP/Dok already enjoy."

Issue:

My dok used to use aoe detaunt in chalice spec and occasionally as dps and shield. It was very effective and was the main self defensive tool besides healing, fleeing, potting, line of sighting, and punting. I still use the new aoe detaunt as chalice since there is little choice over tactics.

Now the aoe detaunt tactic does literally nothing in dps and shield spec, because of the recent change making it only give 5 second for aoe component and 15 second for your target.

Saying that dok should have its aoe detaunt nerf because shaman don't have one that is 100% uptime is non sensical. Balance changes should not mean mirroring classes, either between the factions or between archetypes.

Reasoning:

Shaman have the following advantages over dok: sticky feets, more cast on the move abilities, run away, auto detaunt, a punt that isn't parried by mdps easily, a strong ap drain to apply on enemy, stronger focus heals (shrug it off/aint done yet), also a single target detaunt for 15 seconds and aoe detaunt for 10 seconds as two separate abilities. Being able to apply the shaman detaunts separately I believe has advantages in various situations you can think of.

Doks detaunt in particular means that the dok cannot pillage essence or essence lash because they will break their detaunt, dok has to use a tactic slot to even have aoe detaunt, the detaunt is not easy to use as dps or shield because u cannot use ur aoe abilities or else risk breaking detaunt, the dok aoe detaunt only lasts 5 seconds and shaman 10 (dok cooldown 15, shaman cooldown 30).

There is more problems with the new detaunt, because the single target component lasts much longer you therefore have to apply it to the target who is the greatest threat. For example a sovereign witch hunter is attacking me and a noob 31 arch mage is dotting me up from a distance, in this situation I would have 3 options. 1. walk up to AM and detaunt the WH, or from a distance: 2. detaunt the AM, 3. detaunt the WH. Unfortunately the best course of action is to detaunt the sov WH for 15 seconds immediately, so effectively my detaunt is single target in this case.

The dok detaunt should be strong considering it takes up a tactic slot. Dok having medium armor only goes so far since any good melee train will train you down if you cannot escape in time, and is irrelevant to any enemy who deals magic damage. I believe it is a learn to play issue that warbands are unable to kill doks who are sitting inside or at melee range of the enemy blob, that single target assisting is either non existent or not fully coordinated and therefore these doks are getting away with surviving by chance rather than their aoe detaunt being overpowered. Therefore the nerf is handholding towards the enemies who are facing doks rather than being any improvement to the overall class balance of doks. Having the permanent detaunt was good because it meant that doks did not require babysitting from tanks, it is quite boring gameplay to simply run towards ur tank compared to trying to hold your ground as dok while kiting the enemy.

Conclusion:

Revert the aoe detaunt change because it is only a unreasonable nerf. I am not complaining that I am too squishy since of course this new change can be worked around easily (such as by being guarded). But in particular it changes the gameplay style of dok, and has effectively removed some niche specs from dps and shield which used the tactic. In a self sustaining healer class, which I believe the role of the dok to be, you should be able to have this detaunt and I do not view it as overpowered since there are counterplays. For example knockdown/silence the healer so you can hit them for 3 or 4 seconds before they can press detaunt, or wait for the detaunt to just be about to end then do the same. Another counterplay is to use ranged dps because it will be unlikely that the dok can detaunt them all especially if there are multiple and they are not in range of the dok's 30ft aoe detaunt.

For dok overall if there is to be any change for the regular healing spec, then it should be to make more tactics useful. At the moment there isn't much reason to use anything except for 160 willpower, group cleanse, aoe detaunt and group ap pump.

Side notes: In terms of nerfs per se I would much prefer changes to the healing aspect of dok, which can become very linear. For larger scale healing you can make essence lash only do 6 targets for 90 essence instead of giving you 250 essence when you throw it at 17+ people. For smaller scaler healing you can make the channel soul essence ability "blood offering" be classified as 'easy to be set back' and therefore cannot be used under pressure unless you have focus mind enabled. (those changes in of themselves would probably make healing an impossible task, so would need to be accompanied by other contrasting changes) Changes such as these would make being a good dok harder to accomplish by having to manage your soul essence better. I think in the dps and shield spec there is also little manage of soul essence, for example rend soul costs 100 essence but while it is on cooldown you can easily regain that to then use rend soul again on cooldown. I stop here because this thread is primarily directed towards the recent change and its reversion rather than about wider opinions about future dok changes.

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