Debate about why Order is how it is.

[Foofmonger]

Bringing some of the unattractive builds and careers up to pair, on both realms to enjoy engame content should honestly be a top priority imho. Sure WH/WE shouldnt be main aoe classes, but atleast allow them the Niece dragongun spec for the 1/24 slot. Same for engineer and magus, give them a "noner" tactic with none of the turret bonuses and just a flat 25%bonus but disable turrets and make Self-destruct work without a turret for the bpaoe knockdown and the list goes on. Bringing classes up to pair with little tweaks to allow for more groupplay would be very welcome, since catering too much to pugging is probably the way to balance towards in very general.

This is probably the best solution and I also agree. Not every class has to "be the best" as everything, but they all need a niche in the end-game content. If they can't do anything better than everyone else on their realm, and effectively bring nothing unique to the table, that's clearly a class design problem (probably made by Mythic), that the RoR devs can probably fix and/or tweak.

[wraithghost]

As an Engi I don't feel I lack damage, and giving us loner would take any uniqueness from the class and be a cheap way of fixing the mechanic.

1 - The turrets need more hp and aoe avoidance or to be group heal able.
2 - The flame turret needs the same range as the grenade turret.
3 - Sort out the endgame gear so we don't have useless stats like weapon skill, auto attack haste and armor dissolves for our best rvr specs where 90% of the damage is corporeal.

All the above would be true for magus too although I guess they don't have wasted stats like weapon skill on their gear.

[Sarnai]

The big problem if this 100% anecodtal and totally biased assessment is that generally none of the order tanks look like they can fulfill the power fantasy that influences a lot of people when picking a class. Instead most of the typical power fantasy tropes for order are ranged tropes. Order lack big meaty men (Chosen/Mara/Orcs) and visual comic relief (Gobbos). The visual design of the order classes is more restrained (human, short-fat humanoid and tall-skinny humanoid) compared to the outlandish design of destruction classes (humanoid, muscle humanoid, naked elves, tiny angry yodas, ORCS ORCS ORCS ORCS ORCS). Even when players know how a class should be played, in their heads they are often still pretending to play out the power fantasy.

Nail, meet hammer.

[wonshot]

As an Engi I don't feel I lack damage, and giving us loner would take any uniqueness from the class and be a cheap way of fixing the mechanic.

I dont disagree at all. But for engineer to be deemed useful in roaming orvr and not just camping a highground such as a keepwall, you need to accept the pet will die to any aoe flying around. Not only do you lose your class mechanic, you dont have a way to deal with it like WL or SH has in form of a Loner tactic.

For me to play my frontline control-engineer i need to run 2 tactics to make the turret survive the aoe presure (reinforce Casing +160wounds to turret & Well-Oiled Machine instant redeploy) half of the time its still not enough to do a frontline pbaoe knockdown to battle the Destro mara M2 frontal setup. Heck even merging those two tactics would be a slight help for engineer and magus for roaming in utility builds for largescale. But a 25%loner tactic would allow Engineers to have a pure dps spot in warbands, just like SW need some Lilitharrow love on their Expertskirmisher tactic probably.

Whitelions are giving up their classmechanic in their pet when going for their weeeee'ling axe loner-boner-build, and i think most would prefer the invite to groupplay instead of getting told no but atleast they get to hug their turret in a sad attempt of comfort.

[Starx]

giving engineer/magus a 25% dmg tactic is just lazy, and no one would ever **** use their class mechanic over this tactic hence why I call it lazy.

Like I said in the other thread, give turrets AoE damage reduction like WL pet has. Entirely remove the +% damage component from the demons/turrets and give the Magus/Engineer the same treatment that was just given to mara (going through multipliers and bringing them out of the gutter).

The extra mile would be making engineer/magus something besides a sorc/bw in city. That means make them wanted without just bumping their damage up to par, give them utility that people want. Pull is a winmore meme ability in 24vs24 that only works well when you are fighting pugs. Engineer has pierce defenses which is pretty nice, other than that and the AoE KD what are they really bringing? Their morales are also a travesty.

[kmark101]

I have a solution proposal for the largest issue, morale play imbalance:

All morale pumps/drains should be removed from all class skills and tactics and should be only obtainable by the following ways:
- +morale on items (just like they are now)
- morale pumps/drains as item set bonuses

We could achieve the following results:

• Much more gear would be considered for top end game play, there would be suddenly a huge variation of gear setups available equally for both sides
• Characters would have to make true choices: be super tanky in the best sovereign set or be less tanky but contribute to the morale play? Or be superior dps with mix-match dps set or drop your morales earlier? These are the type of true choices that the best games are offering to the players
• Faction balance! I can't imagine an easier way that can actually be developed by the limited resources without touching any core elements of the game

[Starx]

I'd bet money that 9/10 of the instances order loses the fight is over before destro even gets m2.

Kind of a shitpost but really do I have to explain why morale and class balance doesn't really matter as much as the organization and system problems that order has.

Almost every single time i've solo qued on order (and I farmed full sov on dps am) there was extremely shitty class distribution, never had the problem on destro not once. There is also a reason why you can sit in que on destro for 20+ minutes even if you qued instantly while you get near instapops on order any time you que.

[dansari]

Spoiler:

I'd bet money that 9/10 of the instances order loses the fight is over before destro even gets m2.

Kind of a shitpost but really do I have to explain why morale and class balance doesn't really matter as much as the organization and system problems that order has.

Almost every single time i've solo qued on order (and I farmed full sov on dps am) there was extremely shitty class distribution, never had the problem on destro not once. There is also a reason why you can sit in que on destro for 20+ minutes even if you qued instantly while you get near instapops on order any time you que.

This is such a lazy explanation though. What if we explored *why* this might be happening? Again, recently we had a city score of 5-23. If you believe that there are 23*24 organized destro cities (552 players), I have a bridge to sell you. Let's break everything down when it comes to city setups:

Spoiler:

- KOBS bring 15% heal buff for group, which is negated by Chosen 25% incoming heal debuff aura. But if you don't have a knight in group, you're still going to be affected by the Chosen aura which means order is forced to run a kobs in every group (along with getting the crit buff on block and superior resists aura).
- SM bring cooldown decreaser, which counters cooldown increaser by squig. But WW only effects 6 targets, whereas squig can hit more than that (quick aside here that squig has free reign of where they want to place their cooldown increaser at any time with no cd pounce whereas order does not via Slayer), so order is forced to have one SM in group as well, else they are very susceptible to any cooldown increaser.
- Do you want a 2h knight? You probably want to drop a snb knight for it which means you lose the crit buff for group off Dirty Tricks, but at least you'll deal 1/6 the damage of a 2h Chosen while supplying a wounds debuff + ctbc debuff for the wb and you won't be getting debuffed to worse levels from BO corp debuff.
- Where does IB fit here? Their main unique abilities are the parry buff for one group member, the crit buff for one group member, and their 50% outgoing heal debuff. What do you plan to drop for the group to bring IB: 15% healing and resists that counter Chosen and Blorc, or cooldown decreaser to counter squig?

- Chosen bring -25% incoming heal aura for the entire wb, which negates some of the per group % healing bonuses order has without the same group restriction of 1 chosen per group; and an aoe wounds debuff they can use regardless of spec that negates the WP wounds buff, which once again forces order to run one WP per group else they will be effected even more by the Chosen base aoe wounds debuff. Chosen also has a self morale pump on block, which means they could drop Distracting Bellows pretty early in a fight (way before order will have theirs). 2h Chosen also brings a huge amount of damage and has an 66% uptime 25% parry buff that 2h knight lacks.. normally leading to a 2h Chosen which not only deals way more damage than 2h knight (due to Oppressing Blows, Relentless, and Rending Blade), but also has more defensive capability.
- Which brings us to the abomination that is Blorc. BO bring a huge aoe corp debuff (which order need to rely on engy for) AND an auto attack buff for the group (which helps melee assist trains heavily), conveniently corp debuffing for several sorc abilities and procs; the choice to add a cooldown decreaser to their aoe corp debuff (which does NOT require giving a free kd immunity to your target like SM's WW does); group absorbs+stats like SM; a single target cooldown increaser; the choice for an aoe snare that SM doesn't have; and a self morale pump with a, let's be honest, way over the top m3.
- BG bring aoe snare, 50% outgoing heal debuff which mirrors IB Punishing Knock but tied to a intelligence/willpower debuff that stacks 3x, and with 2h they can spread a ctbc debuff like kobs with once again, more defensive capability and damage. But due to the nature of how the group buffs are spread, it's much easier for destro to bring a 2h BG than it is order to bring a 2h knight, primarily because of:

- Chop Fasta, a second cooldown decreaser for destro on Choppa for the group (that every Choppa specs), which means Blorc is *not* a required tank slot in your group to counter Shatter Limbs, OR
- Replace Chosen with BG and have your BO run Da Greenest for the resist buff, and/or have zealot give resist buff instead of init (any good zealot can review enemy unit frames and see when their buff gets shattered) and/or sham resist buff. Because order really *can't* bring an engy most of the time, you're only getting debuffed from knight resists in the realm of -150ish, which both Da Greenest and zealot buff will cover and leave you better off vs BW damage.

So now we've determined why order is less versatile when it comes to tanks, let's talk about Engy v Magus. The biggest culprits being:

Spoiler:

- Destro murder ball is much more effective than order's in most situations, primarily due to the efficiency of 2h tanks (their damage being superior in most cases outside of 2h IB and their presence easier to slot as aforementioned); the overtuning of MSH, which has been broken for over a year and a half; the presence of an aoe kd on Mara that doesn't exist on order; and superior control of the morale game in every way. This means Magus rift (which *still* has no delay vs Engy which is on a delay) is *much* more beneficial than Engy magnet. Destro *want* to fight you in a ball, order *doesn't*.
- % crit tactic *not* tied to pet, which dies almost instantly to aoe damage
- BW stacking not being viable on order anymore, whereas sorc stacking is very viable, meaning magus can be valuable as a spirit debuffer and engy's corp debuffing isn't as valuable.

We don't need to talk about the abomination that is MSH vs the single target god that is ASW, nor the issues that plague both WE/WH, so let's talk about AM v sham. Sham have a much easier time slotting into warbands for a few main reasons:

Spoiler:

- Superior morale pump, no matter what some people will try to spin. An instant group buff you can pop before entering combat and then on the move far surpasses a single target stationary heal, which allows sham to be much more mobile than AM. It also allows destro as a *group* to reach morales faster than order, which is always more important when morale dropping than having *one* person hit m4. Destro also don't have to worry about morale drains at all, which means they will always have an edge in the morale game.
- Vastly superior incoming damage reduction in the auto detaunt racial vs Run Between Worlds.

Actually I lied let's talk about MSH vs ASW/WL. The biggest factors are:

Spoiler:

- Big Bouncin, which deals *way* too much damage on a class with that much armor capability, is even further made better by its 8s cooldown vs Whirling Axe's 13s cooldown (no such channel on ASW), meaning if you have a cooldown decreaser in group (once again, granted by either Choppa or Blorc), you can constantly spam it.
- A core single target kd, which neither WL nor ASW have nor have room to spec for, given the WL spec kd is tied to pet and you can only get the kd on ASW with 6pc Warlord or if you give up Crosscut or the defensive steroid pounce (neither being worth giving up).
- An aoe cooldown decreaser they can apply anywhere they want.
- A core single target snare which ASW doesn't have in melee (armored) stance.
- A corp aoe dot that syncs with Blorc corp debuff

None of these things are meant to say that order doesn't have over the top things that need to be tweaked, but it does highlight the vast differences in versatility between the two realms, and why *maybe* if you leave out 5 entire classes from warband viability, they will all flood to solo queue cities in the form of ranged SWs, dps AMs, WHs, and engies, or when it comes to IB, be so frustrated you play a different class entirely.

[emiliorv]

tl;dl

1. Disorganised order get farmed in cities. Disorganised destro don't get into cities.

if we could have access to data to check how many players queue solo in each faction and how many players queued dont get into city in each faction we could know how accurate is this point... But due to pop faction imbalance im pretty sure that its a point to take into consideration...

[Spellbound]

Well said and I just hate some are turning a blind eye to this when balancing and feel it’s not necessary. I’ve done plenty of balancing as part of the WH live and DAOC live class leads/balancing crew with Devs internally and we know when something is an issue.

-If a class has sub par performing lines, they need a buff
-If numbers show certain classes are less in population versus others, they need a buff
-If the realm overall is suffering in certain instances like Order losing majority of the city, it’s admin/Dev responsibility to find the culprit with their internal data.
-If a class gets less invites to end game or certain events, they need adjustments.

I have spoken and shared some insight to admin but not sure who truely handles balancing.

Order loses more population to destro as they get frustrated and don’t get high RR then. While Destro get higher RR since it’s enjoyable more and get Royal Crests much, much easier with larger win percentage. This causes more imbalance in fights.

Yes, some destro classes such as mSH need a tone down as we can make any alt mSH to test and they ARE overtuned.

Problem is some order classes need love for city sieges.

Game is pretty decent in open field. Yes scenarios and city instances are rough due to less tanks, healers or less morale/weaker blob techniques. Make adjustments to some order tanks and healers to encourage them more.

Of course as a Developer you can’t force people to play certain classes. Players overall aren’t stupid. There are weaker classes. AM can’t be mobile where as Shaman can. Engy have to cast the pull where Magus can do instant pulls. Choppas have 40ft pull which needs to be toned down to 20-30ft and speed boost REMOVED.

You’ll start we see much more balanced city sieges and can do small adjustments time to time.

Don’t need to overnerf anyone. Just help the weak lines and u popular classes.

Spoiler:

I'd bet money that 9/10 of the instances order loses the fight is over before destro even gets m2.

Kind of a shitpost but really do I have to explain why morale and class balance doesn't really matter as much as the organization and system problems that order has.

Almost every single time i've solo qued on order (and I farmed full sov on dps am) there was extremely shitty class distribution, never had the problem on destro not once. There is also a reason why you can sit in que on destro for 20+ minutes even if you qued instantly while you get near instapops on order any time you que.

This is such a lazy explanation though. What if we explored *why* this might be happening? Again, recently we had a city score of 5-23. If you believe that there are 23*24 organized destro cities (552 players), I have a bridge to sell you. Let's break everything down when it comes to city setups:

Spoiler:

- KOBS bring 15% heal buff for group, which is negated by Chosen 25% incoming heal debuff aura. But if you don't have a knight in group, you're still going to be affected by the Chosen aura which means order is forced to run a kobs in every group (along with getting the crit buff on block and superior resists aura).
- SM bring cooldown decreaser, which counters cooldown increaser by squig. But WW only effects 6 targets, whereas squig can hit more than that (quick aside here that squig has free reign of where they want to place their cooldown increaser at any time with no cd pounce whereas order does not via Slayer), so order is forced to have one SM in group as well, else they are very susceptible to any cooldown increaser.
- Do you want a 2h knight? You probably want to drop a snb knight for it which means you lose the crit buff for group off Dirty Tricks, but at least you'll deal 1/6 the damage of a 2h Chosen while supplying a wounds debuff + ctbc debuff for the wb and you won't be getting debuffed to worse levels from BO corp debuff.
- Where does IB fit here? Their main unique abilities are the parry buff for one group member, the crit buff for one group member, and their 50% outgoing heal debuff. What do you plan to drop for the group to bring IB: 15% healing and resists that counter Chosen and Blorc, or cooldown decreaser to counter squig?

- Chosen bring -25% incoming heal aura for the entire wb, which negates some of the per group % healing bonuses order has without the same group restriction of 1 chosen per group; and an aoe wounds debuff they can use regardless of spec that negates the WP wounds buff, which once again forces order to run one WP per group else they will be effected even more by the Chosen base aoe wounds debuff. Chosen also has a self morale pump on block, which means they could drop Distracting Bellows pretty early in a fight (way before order will have theirs). 2h Chosen also brings a huge amount of damage and has an 66% uptime 25% parry buff that 2h knight lacks.. normally leading to a 2h Chosen which not only deals way more damage than 2h knight (due to Oppressing Blows, Relentless, and Rending Blade), but also has more defensive capability.
- Which brings us to the abomination that is Blorc. BO bring a huge aoe corp debuff (which order need to rely on engy for) AND an auto attack buff for the group (which helps melee assist trains heavily), conveniently corp debuffing for several sorc abilities and procs; the choice to add a cooldown decreaser to their aoe corp debuff (which does NOT require giving a free kd immunity to your target like SM's WW does); group absorbs+stats like SM; a single target cooldown increaser; the choice for an aoe snare that SM doesn't have; and a self morale pump with a, let's be honest, way over the top m3.
- BG bring aoe snare, 50% outgoing heal debuff which mirrors IB Punishing Knock but tied to a intelligence/willpower debuff that stacks 3x, and with 2h they can spread a ctbc debuff like kobs with once again, more defensive capability and damage. But due to the nature of how the group buffs are spread, it's much easier for destro to bring a 2h BG than it is order to bring a 2h knight, primarily because of:

- Chop Fasta, a second cooldown decreaser for destro on Choppa for the group (that every Choppa specs), which means Blorc is *not* a required tank slot in your group to counter Shatter Limbs, OR
- Replace Chosen with BG and have your BO run Da Greenest for the resist buff, and/or have zealot give resist buff instead of init (any good zealot can review enemy unit frames and see when their buff gets shattered) and/or sham resist buff. Because order really *can't* bring an engy most of the time, you're only getting debuffed from knight resists in the realm of -150ish, which both Da Greenest and zealot buff will cover and leave you better off vs BW damage.

So now we've determined why order is less versatile when it comes to tanks, let's talk about Engy v Magus. The biggest culprits being:

Spoiler:

- Destro murder ball is much more effective than order's in most situations, primarily due to the efficiency of 2h tanks (their damage being superior in most cases outside of 2h IB and their presence easier to slot as aforementioned); the overtuning of MSH, which has been broken for over a year and a half; the presence of an aoe kd on Mara that doesn't exist on order; and superior control of the morale game in every way. This means Magus rift (which *still* has no delay vs Engy which is on a delay) is *much* more beneficial than Engy magnet. Destro *want* to fight you in a ball, order *doesn't*.
- % crit tactic *not* tied to pet, which dies almost instantly to aoe damage
- BW stacking not being viable on order anymore, whereas sorc stacking is very viable, meaning magus can be valuable as a spirit debuffer and engy's corp debuffing isn't as valuable.

We don't need to talk about the abomination that is MSH vs the single target god that is ASW, nor the issues that plague both WE/WH, so let's talk about AM v sham. Sham have a much easier time slotting into warbands for a few main reasons:

Spoiler:

- Superior morale pump, no matter what some people will try to spin. An instant group buff you can pop before entering combat and then on the move far surpasses a single target stationary heal, which allows sham to be much more mobile than AM. It also allows destro as a *group* to reach morales faster than order, which is always more important when morale dropping than having *one* person hit m4. Destro also don't have to worry about morale drains at all, which means they will always have an edge in the morale game.
- Vastly superior incoming damage reduction in the auto detaunt racial vs Run Between Worlds.

Actually I lied let's talk about MSH vs ASW/WL. The biggest factors are:

Spoiler:

- Big Bouncin, which deals *way* too much damage on a class with that much armor capability, is even further made better by its 8s cooldown vs Whirling Axe's 13s cooldown (no such channel on ASW), meaning if you have a cooldown decreaser in group (once again, granted by either Choppa or Blorc), you can constantly spam it.
- A core single target kd, which neither WL nor ASW have nor have room to spec for, given the WL spec kd is tied to pet and you can only get the kd on ASW with 6pc Warlord or if you give up Crosscut or the defensive steroid pounce (neither being worth giving up).
- An aoe cooldown decreaser they can apply anywhere they want.
- A core single target snare which ASW doesn't have in melee (armored) stance.
- A corp aoe dot that syncs with Blorc corp debuff

None of these things are meant to say that order doesn't have over the top things that need to be tweaked, but it does highlight the vast differences in versatility between the two realms, and why *maybe* if you leave out 5 entire classes from warband viability, they will all flood to solo queue cities in the form of ranged SWs, dps AMs, WHs, and engies, or when it comes to IB, be so frustrated you play a different class entirely.