Tank Morale Overhaul Thread v2

[normanis]

when we will see new morale changes in reality not on papper? we can discuss all it byt we need to see it also ( test) to have better conlsusion.
isnt gm have test server where they invite ppl so they can test new changes? i remember in begin when we go to t2 gms invited choosens to test it
i think pounce morale for sm - tank no need it, replace it with sw morale lileaths forgivness ( more usefull for tank)
maby change ib morales similar to black orc ( u will not believe byt ib and black orc are more similar than, black orc with sm) and make ib pump morale tactic
byt like i said i whant to see it in life not on papper. on papper they are only words

[Tanski]

Leave Khaine's warding how it is. This is a fantastic morale for breaking through funnels, and it does not matter if there are other tanks in the party as BG gets a block channel.

[Helltrain]

M4 - Flawless Defense - Tank Tree

Current - 100' party buff, increase all avoidance by 50% for 10s
Proposed - 100' party buff, increase all avoidance by 30% for 10s

50% is too damn high! Relative to other tank morales anyway. Sure they don't get anything for themselves, but at 30% it's still the strongest group avoidance buff in the game.

Why would i use 30% avoidance when i can use 60% dmg reduction ? its only good for melee and its flaw is angle (front parry/block), its lot worst for caster.
Why not giving wounds buff, like 240wounds for 20s, designed to oppose moral drop.

[heybaws]

Kotbs - no morale pump, m3 damage nerfed to 900.
Bork - has easiest morale pump, m3 damage buffed to 1500. May i ask why? Kotbs most likely will be drained by marauders aswell, while bork will just pump himself to m3 during fight in the open field, this damage changes should be opposite, or both remain at currrent 1200 damage.
Also agreed with Helltrain, good option for a defencive m4 is ability to survive morale drop, group wounds buff is the one, strong group healing on each block (current BG m4) is another, block parry and stuff just not worth it. Maybe it would be nice to have defencive morale that will decrease enemy morale damage only, as alternative to ID.

[Anthr]

M2 - Guard of Steel (swapping Wings of Heaven to M1)

Current - 100' party buff, increase Toughness by 120 for 10s
Proposed - 100' party buff, increase Armor by 800 for 20s

The swap on these is two-fold. First we didn't want to do a flat nerf to WoH, moving it down to M1 makes it more accessible, and allows us to change it as a tradeoff. Second, Guard of Steel being a party buff simply does not belong in the M1 slot. To compensate for that, making it a Morale armor buff and extending the duration to 20s should be satisfactory.

M1 - Wings of Heaven

Current - Pounce up to 100' feet (really?) to your target. Snare enemies in the area by 60% for 10s
Proposed - Pounce up to 45' to your target, deal 600 damage to enemies within 20' when you land.

Bringing this range down to 45' and adding a bit of AOE splash damage on the landing instead of a vicious 60% snare should bring it in line with M1 effectiveness. Problems with very long movements like this come in two flavors, magically appearing tank elves due to server latency (kind of looks like warping), and the ability to get to places that probably shouldn't be gotten to. 45' is plenty for a front line tank to reasonably hop around.

I think these morales should be unchanged. Guard of Steel is not a strong morale even though its a party buff and while demolishing or chch usually better sometimes it can be used in m1 given the situation. If its moved to m2 people will use bellow instead.

As for wings, its an important part of the SM toolkit, it acts as both an escape and initiation tool. I suggest it stays at m2, but if you want to nerf it let it at keep either the range or the snare, preferably the range. The 600 aoe proposed damage is useless - its not bad but not worth spending your morale on. Consider that SM does not have a half snare tactic like IB and is not as tanky as KOBS and does not have vigilance. When you're getting smacked by a bunch of people SM has no real way to flat mitigate damage - instead it uses WOH to try to escape by pouncing to a target far away and escape some pressure. It's the equalizing tool. Personally I wouldn't touch it. If you don't want tanks flying into keeps just issue a warning not to do it and people probably wont. As for lag and not loading the swordmaster, that's not really a problem with wings of heaven - that's a problem with the server and if a player can't load a swordmaster they probably can't load the other 300 players that is causing their computer to stall.

In my opinion the issue with most of the tank morale are the M4s vs. the dominating strength of immaculate defense. Most of the M1s-M3s are fine as is.

[wonshot]

Any news about a morale overhaul? How is the process going?

[hammerhead]

If you change SM M2, this automatically makes the BG an irreplaceable in ranked . Having all the tools (a supper pant, 70% uptime parry, antidetount), Destruction has the exclusive right to quickly break guard range.

Also, before changing the IB tank M4 should be offered something in the tree in which there is nothing to take except one encore skill and tactics on the shield.

[Jeliel80]

I dont understand why BG should get a Solar Flare mirror, while the morale game is already completely unbalanced in destro favor.
2 tanks with self pump and Mara 24 targets aoe drain its plenty enough, if you wanna mirror Solar Flare, then mirror the aoe morale drain as well, like on WL aoe spec for example.

You guys cant be so out of touch from the game to dont understand that.

M3 blorc aoe silence is devastating, 10 sec disorient even more so...

Tbh I would love the removal of direct aoe dmg morale from the game, ofc with a rebalancing of raw dmg/heal, we would have a better funnier experience.

[teiloh]

Yep. A single Marauder can drain anywhere from 20-30 morale per second from an entire Warband in theory. Two would mean Order is permanently at 0 morale.

Order's morale boosters are fewer in number, on weirder classes. The WH morale drain requires attacks from behind, and is in a decidedly non-AoE tree, so that isn't going to work too well on an entire Warband, for example. Excluding the fact that WH's aren't exactly meta in WB play.

Some comments:

On Chosen M2:

"but feedback was largely positive for the existing effect."

+300% heals, by my calculations, is roughly +6,000-35,000 willpower for anyone healing you, depending on the spell and its stat contribution.

Roughly, using a single target heal and healing on average for 1500 before crits, the +4500 would require 4500/3 (stat contribution) * 5 WP modifier = 7,500 willpower to emulate. In order to get a HoT to tick for 650 +1950 that healer would need 1950/1.5 (stat), * 5 (for each tick) * 5 WP modifier = 32,500 willpower in order to equal this much healing.

It can make even hot ticks of the much-maligned heal+hot heal for 800-850 on a crit. For all intents and purposes, if you have a healer in your group or some hots on you, you are immortal. For 15 seconds, vs. the Ironbreaker's 5 seconds.

Lets compare to the KOTBS, where consensus was this:

"KotBS already have some rather significant ways to boost their stats, adding in 720 points of Morale stats that stack with those is way overkill"

+240 is double the AM/Shaman's AOE stat debuffs. It's three times KOTBS/Chosen auras, SM/BO stat steal, or RP/Zealot marks. 1.5x some Scout/Mara stances. A few rare tactics/abilities grant net +240 stats on hit. These are all abilities that essentially have 100% uptime. The KOTBS morale provides the equivalent of a top-line skill for about 30 seconds. It's very good, and versatile, unique and helpful. But I think if we're calling it overpowered, we need further justification.

The +720 stat does not compare to the +7000-35000 incoming Willpower that the Chosen gets (which for all intents and purposes, is a personal stat for the Chosen). The Chosen ability has no answers anywhere on any realm. An Archmage with Desperation (+40%), Magical Infusion (+25%), RP Tactic Buff (+25%), Knight Tactic Buff (+15%) does not even gain a bonus equal to one-third the Chosen effect. To get one third of the effect of a single M2, Order needs three tactic slots on three classes, grouped, and the target must be under 25% health. Whereas the effect of the KOTBS can be duplicated/canceled out with one to three passive AOE abilities that don't cost anything.

So using the argument in favor of changing IB M2 (e.g. immortality is too strong), the Chosen M2 should probably be reduced in duration by one third.

With the argument for nerfing Knight M2, the Chosen M2 should probably be nerfed to less than one third of its current power. A reduction to 10 seconds and a 100% boost would still grant it the equivalent of +thousands of incoming Willpower, and it'd still excel the combined tactics of three classes (while it's up). It would be, give or take, 90-100% immortality depending on the Chosen.

As for Wings of Heaven, there are only two AOE morale snares that I'm aware of (WOH and Squig Goo). Removing this entirely from Order would be a problem.