Patch Notes 31/1/2017

[Grunbag]

@Aza : does the aoe change apply on napalm , or napalm is not an aoe direct damage ?

See pumatouches testing some pages ago:
Napalm and Landmine are unaffected.

Thanks glorian I missed it

[CommissarG]

It's almost as if this is the intent. I don't know why some people are still under the impression that there is any skill or interest in the current implementation of large scale combat in this game. Your own fears make this clear - without bombing, you say, large scale combat will resolve down to mass ST. You make no mention of battlefield strategy and tactics, and it seems that the epitome of strategy in this game is a basic flank attack or hitting M2 in sync. I'm sorry but it doesn't make you amazing battlefield commanders. It's basic ****, and if the pinnacle of this game is getting 23 people to listen to you and fire off M2 in sync then you should be embarrassed.

This is likely to be an unpopular opinion, as usual. That's OK. I can honestly say that I've never been impressed by anything I've seen in ORvR, and I don't think that's because I'm the one with the problem.

I'm going to take a stab at this. Firstly, what is this "zerg" people keep talking about? Is it 1 warband of pugs? 2 warbands? Anything larger than a 6 man? What about 4 totally coordinated guild warbands?

I see a few fundamental issues with trying to make zerging obsolete.

Firstly, people who enjoy 6-man controlled combat already have outlets for that style of game-play, scenarios, the recent BO changes so they can dodge zergs on open rvr, pick off stragglers trying to re-inforce the main group. They already have a use, a place and can work in orvr.

Is it as technically skilled as dedicated 6 man teams? Absolutely not. But zergs offer one absolutely crucial place for people who are more casual at the game. The guy that plays two hours a week or a day, and just wants to log on his shadow warrior, participate in an epic fight and shoot goblins. The VAST majority of people playing this game do not have guilds, friends, groups or spare time to form such dedicated and coordinated forces, and the zerg allows them to have their fun regardless.

But you should just "git gud" isn't a good enough argument, because instead of "getting gud" people will "git gone".
People who want to play in dedicate 6 mans or organised guild warbands already likely are, and their numbers are much smaller than the joe bloggs from what I have seen.

The zerg allows me if I just have an hour to play to jump on, straight into the safety of a group and have a scrap without needed to find 6 people all on the right classes, hoping my guild/friends are all online. I do understand it's less "tactical", but for many of us, it is plain fun and mostly important for a low population private server keeps the game accessible.

The game HAS to be accessible to people outside the elite hardcore, because if the game reaches the point where pugging is so heavily punished that they just get steamrolled by game mechanics they will just leave. Then who do the organised ones have to play against? The same 40 hardcore guys who stuck around will become stale opponents.

There is also the perception that Warhammer Online was always meant to be about the clash of armies, my fondest memories from live were of fortress defences or assaults with hundreds of players, yes it was a zerg, yes it was chaotic, but it looked glorious and was enjoyable.

Now, I lead pug warbands almost every day. It can be hard enough to get them to do simple things like xguard each other. If I now have to teach them to spread like schools of fish in the two minutes before we start fighting I might as well just not bother.

So if I stop leading pug warbands because I can't get them to do what is needed to beat guild groups (whereas at least now there is a fighting chance who will? There isn't exactly an abundance of people who lead groups on order. About 5-6 regulars. So the pugs will stop playing?

I'm just voicing some concerns I envisage from taking the game down this route. If you remove zerging, what is your plan to keep the less hard-core player in the game?

TL:DR: While zerging might be seen as less skillful I firmly believe it keeps the games population large enough to keep RoR alive.

[Haojin]

Man, large scale is not spamming M2 in sync, its much much more, im inviting you to participate in our organised wb combat. Seriously, you will like it, its not as primitive. I promise you will like it:D And you will teach us some tricks aswell why not? Most of the strategies and formation changes is impossible to use atm due to descent amount of factors, mostly cause: you are facing collision and perma snared.

That's weird, since i have had a bazillion discussions with your guild leader (always on good terms) and he insists all WB fights revolve around pumping morale on everyone and then M2 bombing.

Clarification on the morales: You can't win the fights with only morales, but early morale bombs makes the combats really bursty and for me it's silly. But, I think everyone except warband players thinks bombing warbands are all about:

-some pewpew aoe bomb
-survive till M2
-dump morales at the same time and win.

But there is more, some examples we're always using:
-challange rotations
-focused aoe bomb
-cc pressure
-ap-morale drains
-cd-bt increasers
-desicion of pressure spot, frontline or backline
-desicion of push side.
-desicion of debuff spot.
-true gear-spec optimization
-true warband composition
-sustainable and coordinated healing.
-res rotations.

[Tankbeardz]

No its not. Its a composition of 18-24 people. Not 3-4 6mans.

And that thinking is why it will never get balanced. 4 coordinated 6 mans > 18-24 pugs. I have yet to see a 24 man group heal or cleanse...have you?

Its coz you don't think outside the box of 6man groups You need several compositions in a warband. You need to have raw damage. To little of this and you can't kill anything. You need defensive debuffs to withstand a blast from opposing warbands such as morale drains, CD increasers stat debuffs etz. This is provided from combination if tanks and dps. Already here you can see that the way you compose a warband is different from composing a group. You're using groups within the warband to fill a cerain role within the warband. Its basicly how you compose a 6 man of individual players in small scale. For a example
They way to counter a Destro morale drop is by combinating Archmages Morale pump with a Kotbs m4. Then you start adding peices to that group to optimize its purpise. Since alot of single target focus healing is goin to the Knight here its gonna need dps classes thats in less need of grouphealing. Then you have built a group rather then the purpose to kill is by keeping your warband alive.

The way you complose a WB is not any different...you ideally want 2 healers and a mix of 2 /2 or 1/3 Tanks to DPS ...You don't make 6 man dps groups because they die since you can not focus heal them or guard them effectively. Sure you can out of party heal...but your own group suffers because of it.

You can have different 6 man set ups to perform different roles...but it still comes down to several 6 man groups working together. Your box doesn't seem to include logic.

[roadkillrobin]

Man, large scale is not spamming M2 in sync, its much much more, im inviting you to participate in our organised wb combat. Seriously, you will like it, its not as primitive. I promise you will like it:D And you will teach us some tricks aswell why not? Most of the strategies and formation changes is impossible to use atm due to descent amount of factors, mostly cause: you are facing collision and perma snared.

That's weird, since i have had a bazillion discussions with your guild leader (always on good terms) and he insists all WB fights revolve around pumping morale on everyone and then M2 bombing.

Movement is actually the main ingridient in a sucessfull warband. If your movement is **** nothing works. As for morales. Yes I think the whole morale damage mechanic is actually whats need to be looked at. To much tactics revolving around dropping that unmitigatble damge.

[Grunbag]

The tests were performed with 2 Engis at my side. It may be worth noting, that when they got in front for Soft Cover, we expected a decrease of 30%, but experienced a decrease of only about 20%. Perhaps we didn't take all considerations into account, so not 100% sure on this one, but it is worth investigating further. On that note; "Self" does not count as a Friendly Target in a 360 degree aoe, does it?

Thanks for the feedback , I guess the decrease cannot down below 20% as it wrote on patch note .

Don't think "self" are counting on a 360 Degree aoe , but later we'll have to take a look at 360 degree aoe because you'll always have at least one allies within 30 feet around you , except if you're crazy enough to go alone in the middle of destro ! Let's test it and adapt for now .

[Azarael]

discussion of zerg

Definition of zerg: Any mass large enough to ruin the tactical and strategic depth of the game. The threshold for that happening, for me, is very low.

Regarding 6 man play vs warband play: the problem is that the game's mechanics work far better in small scale than they do in large scale. They were designed for that, so that's no surprise; the idea of RvR was a late addition. The more players you add in one place, the more the game leans towards pure damage and pure heal rather than manipulating the more subtle mechanics of the game. This point is already proven by the prevalence of bombing and the threat of ST focus warbands if bombing is no longer viable, both based on use of damage and nothing more, and by the complaints about RDPS, as mass/firepower versus range is a major factor to be controlled when dealing with melee and ranged units in the same game.

Regarding people wanting to zerg: it's path of least resistance, not some kind of requirement. People band together in big groups because it's easier and stronger. The last part is the problem.

[anarchypark]

OMG! i'm picturing this
melees charging forward in line formation! carefully coordinated to not break the line
engie gunline? no,it's time for slayers line of death!

worried about allies reducing your damage?
penetration!
fire 150% aoe few times b4 glorious death i'll be guard bot for that melee gladly
for rpds... well u were the problem of 'safety in numbers' i guess
get nuff or get out of zerg

honestly i think devs are genius, how do u come up with these ideas? just amazing

and spliting wb to 2g + 2g operation will work better
cuz mindless zergs will do less dmg and get hit by bonus aoe from organised small grp
i'm sure organised wb can do it easily

[roadkillrobin]

And that thinking is why it will never get balanced. 4 coordinated 6 mans > 18-24 pugs. I have yet to see a 24 man group heal or cleanse...have you?

Its coz you don't think outside the box of 6man groups You need several compositions in a warband. You need to have raw damage. To little of this and you can't kill anything. You need defensive debuffs to withstand a blast from opposing warbands such as morale drains, CD increasers stat debuffs etz. This is provided from combination if tanks and dps. Already here you can see that the way you compose a warband is different from composing a group. You're using groups within the warband to fill a cerain role within the warband. Its basicly how you compose a 6 man of individual players in small scale. For a example
They way to counter a Destro morale drop is by combinating Archmages Morale pump with a Kotbs m4. Then you start adding peices to that group to optimize its purpise. Since alot of single target focus healing is goin to the Knight here its gonna need dps classes thats in less need of grouphealing. Then you have built a group rather then the purpose to kill is by keeping your warband alive.

The way you complose a WB is not any different...you ideally want 2 healers and a mix of 2 /2 or 1/3 Tanks to DPS ...You don't make 6 man dps groups because they die since you can not focus heal them or guard them effectively. Sure you can out of party heal...but your own group suffers because of it.

You can have different 6 man set ups to perform different roles...but it still comes down to several 6 man groups working together. Your box doesn't seem to include logic.

I explained in a rather simple way. I try to simplefy it even more then.

A group in ORVR warband function the same way way as a individual player in a group does in a small scale groups. Its to fill a purpose in the composition. You're gonna have the dps groups thats main purpose is to do damage these groups function much like a DPS class, in its purpose. And you gonna have support groups wich main purpuse is to counter play, rift, debuff aswell as aply support damage these function much like the tank class for its purpose. Wich is increasing dps output and the surivabillity of your warband as a whole. A melee ST group within a warband function much like a WH or WE wich is to inflitrate backlines and kill of healers. Weather or not it uses 2/2/2 set up or not to compose the group for thid role is irrelevant. You compose the group to have a purpose for the warband. Is that logical enough for you?

[Collateral]

With no disrespect Aza, I have to say that you really have no idea what you are talking about here. It makes me sad when you make no difference between unorganized zerg and organized guild warbands. I really feel like we are not important to you at all when you put us in the same group with the actual 'zergs'. What you said here is very far from reality. We don't just 'bomb' everything on m2 or whatever you want to think. There is a great deal of strategy believe it or not. Positioning is very important, I don't understand why you think it made no difference, or that it wasn't important. Multiple times were we outnumbered and flanked, we had to change our front lines, swap guards on our healers or even other tanks, push through the enemy even if we take loses and so on. You should only hear Hao when he is in full focus, and it takes a lot of focus, not only from the leader but from everyone else, believe me. It's simply not just 'bomb here guys'.

We will adapt to these changes and test them, you can be sure of that. And we will give you our feedback, becasue we love this game. I personaly won't give up just like that without even giving it a try and constructing an educated opinion. Although, certain theories can be developed without excesive testing first.