[Dev] Tank morale overhaul

[DokB]

Why reinvent the wheel and try to fix which isn’t broken? 90% of these proposed changes are not only terrible, but based on misinformation and clearly shows the creator doesn’t understand the morale and its uses. I mean seriously, BG m1 a bad heal? Giving KotBS a resolute defence + speed steroid morale? Skin of Iron and Rock Clutch being reworked into worse versions for some reason? Quit your Squabblin reworked from an average group buff into a silence when the BO already has several means of hindering casters/healers?
If this doesn’t prove how out of touch whoever keeps pushing these bizarre changes are (along with the guard changes) I don’t know what else to say except maybe lay off the crazy pills.

[adamthelc]

Why reinvent the wheel and try to fix which isn’t broken? 90% of these proposed changes are not only terrible, but based on misinformation and clearly shows the creator doesn’t understand the morale and its uses. I mean seriously, BG m1 a bad heal? Giving KotBS a resolute defence + speed steroid morale? Skin of Iron and Rock Clutch being reworked into worse versions for some reason? Quit your Squabblin reworked from an average group buff into a silence when the BO already has several means of hindering casters/healers?
If this doesn’t prove how out of touch whoever keeps pushing these bizarre changes are (along with the guard changes) I don’t know what else to say except maybe lay off the crazy pills.

I somewhat agree with the first statement, they may have gone overboard and changed some things that didnt need to be change. But I am not sure this is final, maybe they are just throwing some ideas out to see what people think.

I mostly agree with everyone's thoughts on the BG M1. The proposed change seems to be a little wonky. Timing a cleanse around a resource dump doesnt synergize as much as a cleanse and heal. I dont think the size of the heal is all that relevant, because if the size of the heal was the issue they could just make the heal better.

Skin of Iron was probably changed to make shield wall a choice, but that does leave 2h in a worse spot because clearly Iron Skin would be better for individual survival. But I am not sure that the proposed morale wouldnt actually be better overall.

Likewise the Rock Clutch change seems to be a case of evening that tier of Morales so that there is more choice instead of 1 morale being clearly better than others. You might not agree with it, but you shouldnt be confused by the reasoning.

Mostly I quoted not to call out any individual, but a type of poster. Why cant people just give their thoughts without the judgements and harsh criticism? You or may not be 100% right, but who **** cares? Say what you think about the proposed changes, without saying what you think about the people behind the changes. Creating animosity is unnecessary and taints the opportunity for collaboration that is possible.

[DokB]

It’s nothing personal, the people behind the changes just need to have better understanding of how the game works if they are going to try their hand at tuning it. In regard to a majority of these morale proposals and the reverted guard change, I believe sometimes harsh judgement are called for otherwise terrible changes may end up going through and being accepted by the community.

I also want to point out that Wargrim (in another thread) said that the in game poll that was sent to every single in game player upon entering the capital city for the guard change was 50/50 split. In my opinion this goes to show just how many people in this community are out of touch with the games mechanics and need to be told firmly otherwise we all get left with ****.

[zabis]

I disagree with removing the healing effect of Banish Weakness, it has saved my ass many times.

[anarchypark]

1) I didn't say it was too strong; I said that it is a strong Morale that rewards good usage of it, but is kinda meh if you don't use it properly - and that is totally fine. Such a Morale fits the class perfectly: BG and IB are universally regarded as the hardest tanks to play well, with a meticulous level of micromanagement involved if you want to get the best results - and 'correct' usage of Morales should be no exception to this.

2) You assume that the BG would be spec'd for heal...the heal spec is useless for both WB and group; it is an entirely solo/niche spec. For a conventional group BG, you will be spec'd Malice/Loath, or Malice/Anguish; you will not be spec'd for the heal because that's what having healers is for!

To reiterate: having an ability that gives big reward when used properly, and small reward when used poorly, is totally fine.

1k at good use? fine.
3k at good use? wrong.
again, if players find something too extream, that's the thing to fix. IMO

you can cover it up inside various fine tuning.
it doesn't change 1 skill can self heal tank too much, instantly.
problem starts from there.
it can be ok-ish, it can be extream.
why leave possiblity to go wrong? to ppl who always find loopholes.

@tesq, BG already have many panic buttons.

[Stortz]

I have only played SM in RoR, and so, can only give constructive criticism on it

Swordmaster
M4
Shadow Blades: morale drain removed and replaced with a choppa pull effect. Morale drain was simply bad and replaced with something more fun.

my only comment on this is that even if we have a slight nerf on Immaculate Defense, I just can't see this being used by anyone at a fort/ keep take. If I want a pull, I'll just ask a class that can pull, engi for a great pull, WL for a sneaky ST one.

M2
Wings of heaven: open for suggestions here. But it has to be replaced. Order already have more gap closers and this is a heavy armor wearing tank career, a pounce does not fit here.

it does fit since this is the 'sword dancer' character, maybe the snare could be toned down? IMO this ability should be a MORALE 1 and not a M2. Why? Because it's use is so niche and very situational. You don't usually build morale 2 unless you're in a medium long fight, and I can't really think of a no-brainer use for this. It's not like: 'I'll just pop this, no reason to'...

if you nerf the snare, move it to morale 1.

M1
Guard of steel: toughness component changed to a party increase of 800 armor. The armor increase fits better for fluff and also makes it more useful against melee but less useful against magic.

Move it to Morale 2 and make it 1000 armor. Swap with Wings.

[Karast]

Spoiler:

After yesterday fort fight in which destro failed miserably, there's something I wished to mention.

When a tank with 11k hp and immaculate defense up dies in about 2-3 seconds, something is just wrong (and with ID nerf coming, I can't even imagine how you're supposed to take any fort whatsoever). Ttk in this game has always been very low, too low if you ask me. And this situation just confirmed it for me even more. Destro were droping like moths flying into a flame. Order basically just had to push one button (of course, the situation could be reversed, it's the same thing).

It has been like this for a long time, and I just feel like something should be done about it, now that you guys are thinking about morales. When your game comes down to pushing one button in critical moments, it simply isn't right, not for me at least. Yes people have to coordinate it, but that's not too complicated. So then, if you are thinking about removing raze from snb tanks, why not go one level higher and simply remove all damaging morales from tanks if, as you said, tanks are support and not dps?

Yes I know that burst is king in rvr, especially in forts and keeps. So how could tanks possibly help with anything in those situations? Well, if you want tanks to tank, give them the tools. Instead of having m4s be damaging, make them all purely supporting (tho I guess you could keep the ones in dps trees somewhat damaging). Damage buffs/debuffs, crit buffs/debuffs, crit damage buffs/debuffs, heal buffs/debuffs, cleanses/immunities, speed buffs, absorbs, cd reductions, snares, morale drains/buffs, build time increasers/decreasers. These are just off the top of my head, so some might probably be too strong or too weak (and some of those already exist), but you get the point. Also, many have mentioned how you have to gimp yourself for those m4s. So obviously you want something pretty good in return. And 1800 damage over a period of time is absolutely not worth it. One way to make them worth while could be making them m3s instead, but then you really have to watch out what kind of buffs they will have.

Let dps deal damage, and let tanks tank. Then I think you will have a nice, well rounded and well defined game. As it is currently, raw damage is dominating, so it's no wonder that tanks will be using raze, or other damaging morales they might have.

There are a lot of things that would have to change for this to work, as you simply can't look at such defining abilities on their own, isolated from so many other factors. Well I hope you guys figure it out, there's a lot of valuable feedback here.

Not that I don't fully understand your point where it often just comes down to morale bomb vs. morale bomb in forts.

But how else are you supposed to kill a tanky tank like a BO with 11k health that is spamming channeling block and HTL?

You can't get enough dps to even make a dent without morales, and since you can't really push or pressure most healers, all forts become is morale bomb vs morale bomb and who has more / better in the end.

I kind of think that this particular problem has more to do with the current design of keeps and forts than, with morale abilities overall.

[wpc56]

My suggestion is for developer to provide more context for balance type of discussion. I won't mention what I think of the design other than I don't agree with most of what's been proposed.

If developer can provide a problem statement that would help everyone focus feedback on the area you seek feedback on.

Are you trying to balance tank morale as a overall realm balance? class balance? tank archetype balance or what I suspect it's specific to fort balance?

Also you can't just look at morale balance without also looking at how morale pump/drain are implemented on both side.

So if you are looking at fort tank morale balance, you already know the problem child is immaculate defense and solar flare. Simply give destruction a mirror to solar flare equivalent, nerf immaculate defense and call it a day.

[Tesq]

1) I didn't say it was too strong; I said that it is a strong Morale that rewards good usage of it, but is kinda meh if you don't use it properly - and that is totally fine. Such a Morale fits the class perfectly: BG and IB are universally regarded as the hardest tanks to play well, with a meticulous level of micromanagement involved if you want to get the best results - and 'correct' usage of Morales should be no exception to this.

2) You assume that the BG would be spec'd for heal...the heal spec is useless for both WB and group; it is an entirely solo/niche spec. For a conventional group BG, you will be spec'd Malice/Loath, or Malice/Anguish; you will not be spec'd for the heal because that's what having healers is for!

To reiterate: having an ability that gives big reward when used properly, and small reward when used poorly, is totally fine.

1k at good use? fine.
3k at good use? wrong.
again, if players find something too extream, that's the thing to fix. IMO

you can cover it up inside various fine tuning.
it doesn't change 1 skill can self heal tank too much, instantly.
problem starts from there.
it can be ok-ish, it can be extream.
why leave possiblity to go wrong? to ppl who always find loopholes.

@tesq, BG already have many panic buttons.

No it dosent because how they are implemented for exemple: FoF is terrible because is proportional and not additive and most of his tactics stuff is for balance it with ib tactics tools pletoria.
None shall pass till it get fix to have 10 sec duration and channeling removed will never be a panic button and moreover its only for shield; m1 is the only realistic panic button for bg since fof is too high right now due how masterys are organized i have a rr70 bg aswell...

[NoRKaLKiLLa]

I'm all for a morale overhaul, however I want to approach it in a methodical manor with an established intent. That being:

Make all speccable M4's accessible to their class without requiring the point investment. This opens up three more slots for speccable abilities in the future, but most importantly as all classes now have 4 options to choose from, we can establish a baseline of performance (say for example, immaculate defense in it's current state) and adjust the remaining to be on par with the other three choices for that class so there is a situation in which each of the abilities might be useful. Then we do the same with m3 and m2s, establishing a baseline of performance and either enhancing or reducing the Morales effectiveness slightly, or bumping it up or down from 2/3. Then we move on to the next archtype.

This is so predicated upon the assumption we permit all m4s without point instant. Does anyone agree or disagree with my proposed methodology?