Debate about why Order is how it is.

[Kwatchi]

I guess that IC win by Order that just happened puts a wrench into this thread.

And for the sake of conversation, our premade only recruits out of /5 as an absolute last resort. Pulling strangers into our wb who don't know our strategy tends to backfire horribly.

[Starx]

The great switch is happening, a lot of destro guilds finished or nearly there and probably gonna be playing order soon.

[courtsdad1]

Well thats a great and mighty soap box of yours but kinda preaching to the choir, chief. I run /5 WB in city constantly and at a 90%+ Winrate (though last two weeks we had a rough patch due to bad heals/dps and we may be in the 80's now). And like I've said before we fight premades a majority of the time - Order has plenty of tools to beat destro its just condensed to fewer classes.

Again, youre whining. Deal with it and stop pretending its mechanics. You admit as much above. You are not a victim no matter how many ways you try to reword it.

Wait where am I a victim? I'm told all the time how i'm a bully; I'm very self aware.

Sounds like you need to take a chill pill, man, and get gud.

I'm fine and that's all you've got? I'm not the one whining about phantom problems.

[Bloodlet]

Again, youre whining. Deal with it and stop pretending its mechanics. You admit as much above. You are not a victim no matter how many ways you try to reword it.

Wait where am I a victim? I'm told all the time how i'm a bully; I'm very self aware.

Sounds like you need to take a chill pill, man, and get gud.

I'm fine and that's all you've got? I'm not the one whining about phantom problems.

Watch out everyone, we got a badass over here.

[hammerhead]

Again, youre whining. Deal with it and stop pretending its mechanics. You admit as much above. You are not a victim no matter how many ways you try to reword it.

You put the carriage in front of the horse. Try to walk through the patch notes and see how many nerf were done under the pretext of the destro whining. For two months, here were at least 2 large threads with a nagging and suggestion to nerf one or another order class. It's just ridiculous. The order has a weak front line and overpopulated skirmish classes with the lack of WB spec, because no one wants to spend their time on a class that will be hit in the next patch, or will remain over the years with non-working trees. The problem was uncovered with the introduction of forts and there was the same talk. And now even people wear their characters, and this thread will be forgotten and game content in which so much effort has been invested will turn into a rudiment, because it is easy to assume that if it is difficult to form a balanced group now, then it will only get worse. You have to be very naive and childishly stupid thinking that from the entire playerbase there is some sort of magical separation of skill from the selected fraction.

[Foofmonger]

If some order players are still thinking that destro win just because they have so much better classes, maybe you should try checking out the time 10 minutes before the second fort falls, until city siege is up.
Destro /5 chat is spammed so hard by literally 98% of players either trying to fill their warband or find a warband that you have problems right-clicking someone's name.
Meanwhile, on order /5 - nothing. At least half of all instances are full pugs, others do their recruitment in discords and end up with only 12 or 18.

Sure, those "full pug" 24mans on destro aren't very strong - but at least they all go for a 2-2-2 setup, which is the reason they beat the order 14dps warbands every single time, and even have a chance beating some of the premade ones.

I think you're oversimplifying the root problem of WHY there are so many shitty set-ups for order. On destro all 3 tanks have a solid spot, on Order IB is useless in WB (outside of M2/Guard being there to just soak up damage); on Order there are 3 DPS classes that are WB appropriate with the ability to bring one CC Engi if you're doing a traditional BW stack where as on destro only WE is left out to dry (and less so than WH due to the stronger melee train on Destro can absorb the WE easier than Order can absorb a WH, typically). Healer wise both sides will need 4 WP/DoKs, Zealot is better than RP for cities (WoI is one of the two best morale drop counter abilities in the game, the other being Mara KD), and Shammy is 10x more accessible for City due to two things a) Waagh and Chop Fasta means you can have 100% uptime on Fury of Da Green without having to double up on a class and b) the morale pump is more easily put into the rotation every 5s without hurting your healing output and meshes better with destro's morale pumping abilities.

So this is why destro will win more instances just based on number of city viable classes dictates how many throw-away instances there are.

So going down this line of logic (not trying to argue, just to solution based on your problem statement), would your suggestions be as such (assuming viable implied order wb dps classes are slayer/bw/wl)

1. Somehow make IB wb viable.
2. Make Engie (and/or Magus) more attractive for cities?
3. Make SW roughly as WB viable as SH?
4. Somehow make AM/Runie more viable in comparison to their destro counterparts?
5. Make WH/WE more attractive for cities?

If so (and I suppose if not so), do you believe that the crux of the issue is direct "underpoweredness" (i.e. order classes need raw buffs), a misplacement of realm wide viability (i.e. some order classes are overstacked versus others being understacked with relevant functionality), and/or a lack of access to specific synergies/stragies (in terms of cd reduction and AM/Shamans for example).

Follow up question: Assuming the order classes were somehow made viable. Can it be done in such a way that doesn't "turbocharge" their current top-tier synergy strategies? As in, do you think it is possible to fix the issue without having to potentially nerf other Order synergies/stratgies?

[Manatikik]

I run /5 WB in city constantly and at a 90%+ Winrate

That is also one of the things that all order try making their point when it's simply not true. I am 100% certain that you have a pool of certain players which you always take in your warband if possible and fill the remaining spots. That is no different for destro warbands. Stop acting like all destro warbands are the same 24 players for every city siege - it's simply not possible due to the random timing of city sieges.
Comparing to my warband which is one of the few that order seems to cry the most of, most of the times we maybe have 18 of our regulars, often just about 12, then the rest is filled with alliance or /5. It is not really that much more premade than your "/5 pug warband", that every single order premade claims they are - nor are we going for the same classes setup, like AT ALL. We take people we know or that we had before as long as it's 2-2-2 and not too many unstackable classes (Magus, Sham, even Choppa bc. morales), and just MAKE IT WORK by adjusting tactics and engages, and yes we lose sometimes because of our own randomness/puginess.

IDK you seem pretty triggered for being the bastion of destro coordination and supreme skill. My /5 is just that - /5. Theres typically 4-6 guildies that come then i /5 to fill the spots; I make a new throwaway discord every city and try to go for the same 2/2/2 class setup that i usually go for; so there goes any of your credibility for anything else if this is your "100% certain" statement. Maybe you should sit down, shut your mouth, and just enjoy the game if all you have to say is nonesense and puffery.

So going down this line of logic (not trying to argue, just to solution based on your problem statement), would your suggestions be as such (assuming viable implied order wb dps classes are slayer/bw/wl)

1. Somehow make IB wb viable.
2. Make Engie (and/or Magus) more attractive for cities?
3. Make SW roughly as WB viable as SH?
4. Somehow make AM/Runie more viable in comparison to their destro counterparts?
5. Make WH/WE more attractive for cities?

If so (and I suppose if not so), do you believe that the crux of the issue is direct "underpoweredness" (i.e. order classes need raw buffs), a misplacement of realm wide viability (i.e. some order classes are overstacked versus others being understacked with relevant functionality), and/or a lack of access to specific synergies/stragies (in terms of cd reduction and AM/Shamans for example).

Follow up question: Assuming the order classes were somehow made viable. Can it be done in such a way that doesn't "turbocharge" their current top-tier synergy strategies? As in, do you think it is possible to fix the issue without having to potentially nerf other Order synergies/stratgies?

Eh they're only problems if you want them to be problems. Order can just roll SM/Knight/WP/RP/BW/Slayer/WL and do fine; Destro just has a more diverse and interesting line up. But to address you points:

1. Eh I don't think every tank needs to be top tier. Vs pugs and a lot of destro IB is just fine; SM/Knight just bring top notch and for Destro 1 or 2 BG bring strong enough debuffs compared to chosen where its worth a slot.

2. I think Engie/Magus is in a fine position relatively for a utility DPS spot; magus benefits from the Rift > Magnet issues and just synergizes well with Destro's better displacement tools (which is a super cool playstyle)

3. I honestly don't think SW needs to be that strong. MSH is suuuuuuper good and I think trying to mirror that on SW is a mistake; I've gone into detail in other posts on how SW/SH can be fixed for range and put them in a spot in a WB where they aren't top tier but also not a never-gonna-take class.

4. AM is really strong. You need a good AM (there's like 3 who can run EoV, all of them play with TUP/Phalanx) and set it up in a double WW SM group to make EoV Shine. Issue with AM is as L2P issue not a balance issue (Shammy just has an easier time getting to that level for the aforementioned stuff). RP is perfectly viable; Zealot just edges it out due to WoI and Windblock; there's nothing wrong with having a slight advantage on a class over its mirror especially when it doesn't make RP any worse just cause Zealot is better for cities.

5. Honestly WH/WE is in a decent slot; in good WB's you can find room for one usually for ST Party or as a Pump/Drain bot (and outgoing HD bot).

Honestly I think the underlying issue is how strong the morale game currently is in Cities (and unrelated, 6v6). I think ST AoE morales need addressing (especially on Tanks) and Pumps/Drains need to be more normalized. The main balance issue stems from changes made years ago here to address issue from Live in the 100 days that were mirrored in T2/T3 due to the current gear/ability pools. The base game was balanced around Order having more "raw power" and crit stacking vs Destro's domination of Morale Game. Order's Crit stacking was neutered back in the day to maintain balance pre-city, which made sense, but at this point the morale game in system needs a double check. I think raw damage (on both sides) was over-nerfed for the current armor/wounds pools that Invader/Sov level players are now currently in which leads to only being able to truly play and win with Morales (in an even match up; in an uneven matchup both sides can just steam roll the opposition with whatever comp they have).

[Nekkma]

I don't really get the more diversive line up talk. From my experience, the more serious /5 wb leaders on destro basically go for:
Tanks: chosen and bo, possibly one BG but not more. Most of the time it is 4 chosens and 4 bos.
Dps: A mix of choppa, mara and msh. 1 token rdps for champ (preferably a sorc)
Healer: 1 dok for each group plus shaman or zealot for second spot.

This is more or less the same as on order with the exception of healers where AMs seem to struggle to get spots. The difference in class viability between sides basically is that msh and shaman can be stacked (tho I still beleive that the avarage player will perform better on zealot than shaman) and sw and am can not.

WH/WE/aSW can be part of a ST group but not in great numbers.

None of the sides want to bring magus or engi, and if you bring those classes you bring 1. Difference here is that there seem to be 10 engies per magus. It also seems as there are way more IBs around than BGs.

In the end, destro has 3 classes that you don't want more than 1, if at all. Order has 5. The bigger issue however, is that the unwanted classes on order are very popular while the unwanted classes on destro are much less popular. This is a player mentality issue, prefering to play rdps solomode class, and not a realm balance issue.

If we "fixed" aSW to an aoe dps wb spec and made some improvements to AM so that the diversity is more or less mirrored, you still have the hordes of engies and low number of tanks to deal with on order side which is much less of an issue on destro.

[EsthelielSunfury]

The difference in class viability between sides basically is that msh and shaman can be stacked and sw and am can not.

.killthread

[Foofmonger]

Both perfectly fair and very interesting arguments from both Nekkma and Manatikik, thanks for the responses.

So to boil down the crux of the issue, it's realistically a combination of the things you've spoken towards that has lead to this dichotomy:

1. That there likely needs to be morale system normalization in general.
2. Effective EHP outpacing DPS at a rate in which to kill in an organized setting, groups need to rely on coordinated pure damage burst cycles (morale drops). Also relates to point 1.
3. Some potential minor class tweaks needed here and there for expansion of viability for some slightly underperforming classes (maybe).

And to both of your points, t's also somewhat a class distribution issue. More unwanted classes for cities have a higher percentage of players on Order than on Destro. I wonder if this relates to Bomblings original point, or if there are other non-appearance factors that play into very compartmentalized order class distribution that we are seeing, in comparison to the more even distribution on destro.

All very interesting stuff to think over, thanks again.