Squig Herder is a bit overtuned.

[XsorrowerX]

The main problem, in my opinion, is there is very little drawback to playing one. Very little counter to one unlike just about any other DPS class. Possibly this is what the team should shoot for. A possibility to make all builds viable for each class.

Maybe it's time to give some destro only skills/tactics to order. Run away to SW/AM - Squig Armor to SW to help aSW. Auto Detaunt's etc

Uh, aSW already has squig armor equivalent, it's called assualt stance. They can also get guerilla training to run around. AM is strong enough without Run Away/has other benefits.

To counter a melee squig herder you simply throw taunts and cc when they start their channels, which is how they do damage. To counter range, you simply hit them from beyond their effective range and kill their pet or focus them down because they are squishy. All order classes have better range than them now and do more cast/nuke damage. You can also detaunt the pet while attacking the SH himself.

[teiloh]

To counter a melee squig herder you simply throw taunts and cc when they start their channels, which is how they do damage. To counter range, you simply hit them from beyond their effective range and kill their pet or focus them down because they are squishy. All order classes have better range than them now and do more cast/nuke damage. You can also detaunt the pet while attacking the SH himself.

1. Then how do you have taunts and CC left for Zealot WOI, Choppa GTDC, Mara pull and the millions of other things you're supposed to "Just interrupt bro"?
2. Squig literally has greater range than every Order class except Rifle Engi, and they have a range reduction ability that SW no longer has
3. Detaunt the pet, then how do you detaunt the other 20+ Destro? How do you kill the pet when heeling the pet makes it whip back to the SH at warp speed?

[mryay]

Lol mate it's not negative criticism, both he and I are trying to say that we read (although you assumed I didnt) your post, but after seeing the screen, it seems like your focus is actually more about the pet damage than about its utility.
That is why I said your first point would have been better presented if you just said pet does A and B plus contribute to X% to your dmg, which is unbalanced because...

But like I stated before, just a personal opinion, if you think the post it's clear, it's good

Yeah I still don't think you understand. The entire point was to show that pet damage is decent enough (it's not really too strong) that it doesn't justify giving it a better passive than what a SW gets from a stance. This isn't necessarily a call for pet buffs to be nerfed, but rather pointing out how it's out of balance with Scout stance as well as WL stance bonuses.

Personally I'd just buff SW stance bonuses.

The problem is much deeper. SW has design issues.

SW skirmish is nice but the range is not OK. From a game balance perspective, SW operates at 65 feet to work effectively in AoE AND it needs a tactic whereas mSH does significant damage + is useful to the team in its role.
Furthermore, SW does physical damage, 65/45 feet is the range of tanks. The non-SW players should see the 80 to 140 damage flying on tanks when the arrow is not blocked/dodged.
SW does good damage on Choppa, WE, Sorcerer, Magus and rSH. Period.

To be blunt, if I am Warband leader for oRVR, or even more representative, for city, I would definitely use a BW range AoE or Bomb AoE, an Engi/nades instead.

SW Scout has problems in term of cast time, requirements skill requirements, and AP. For example, to have an efficient Festering Arrow, you need 2 tactics. And, "enchanted arrow" is broken for Flame arrow since the SW redesign.

And if you compare the SW to the rSH counterpart, the main advantage is not the pet, it is the skills availability without stance restrictions. For example, you, as being main "Path of Quick Shooting", you can chain "Behind Ya" -> "Red Tip Arrer" -> "Finish Them of". Having access to Finish Them Off in all build is powerful. And for those that would say "SW just need to switch stance" --> no, it is not as reactive because you must switch to scout, you loose auto-attack on the move and you don't have access to your skirmish skills for 5s.

Assault SW, is a single target melee tree, but as a difference with the mSH, the spec is more Hybrid since you must use your range attacks to be fully effective. However, the balance team has removed BHA from Assault, which means you need to switch to another stance (skimish most probably) to really the effect, losing the X2 armor buff and offensive buff, and the access to assault skills. Shadow Step in 5 of Assault Tree was necessary. But 40 feet range for 20s CD? You really need to test this in oRVR/SC/City to realize that the design need to be looked at.

Finally, survival abilities. A SW needs a stock of pots. period. If you don't have some, you will likely die if you receive damage. There is no heal, no absorb, there is one cleanse on morale. When I play my rSH, I feel much more confident to engage since I have CC on my pets, I can speed up (offensively and defensively), my pet can take damage for me and I can eat my squig for heal.

Overall, SW does need some good tweaks, bug fixing, and a clear role in Order for at least one of its Spec tree-like for the mSH. Above all:
- The stances and stance dancing must be rewarding. For example, I would add a temporary buff/debuff effect when you switch stances.
- Need better synergies between skills belonging to different trees
- Bring the SW CCs on par with the rSH.
- Make it more useful skills to the party: Leading Shot does not fly anymore, and Hunter's Favor only worth +1 skill in term of amount of AP.
- Remove/Balancing the "trade-offs". There are too many trade-offs on top of the stance mechanisms, which is THE trade-off by design. Some examples: Glass Arrow +Damage BUT +15AP, Leading Shot +8% crit BUT not on you, Bulls'eye +20% crit BUT 10% on you, Instinctive Aim +120 bal/str/ws BUT -120% toughness, Crosscut +10% damage BUT not for you, Steady Aim +25% crit rate BUT +1s cast on all skills, etc.


I wouldn't touch the latest design of the SH, I believe a nice job was done. It really feels like a "Hunter" class, Highly mobile, threatening. The only thing I would be looking at is the weakness of pets in AoE (I find them too weak), and the resistance to direct damage (I find it a tad too durable), and Kaboom is funny, but the punt is too powerful.

Cheers

[Brutinho]

Just passing through to address some points and shed light to certain misinformed (I hope they are not intentionally wrong) statements.
When it comes to damage/utility balance some seem to have forgotten a few things. Damage has been increased by using new tactics. 20% armor pen, 50% AA hast (both when pet is alive) and SWDW (+15% crit and crit damage on 2 skills).
Noteworthy: The damage added makes behind ya crit as much as ‘Finish em off’ crits while target is under 30% HP (basically another finisher that on average can crit 1200-1600 of soft targets), Red Tipped Arrow was gutted by having damage calculations go before the absorb break. I agree it needed some tuning down but SWDW crit increase could have been given to another skill instead, maybe even lower damage to match run n’ shoot and keep the absorb break before damage calculation.
These are 3 tactics you MUST use to maximize the damage you have access to on the ST mid range burst tree. Usually SHs will also take at least one of the stat tactics (Pick On Yer Own Size and/or Masterful Aim). In order to access the damage you will be giving away the defensive tactics (Run Away and Whazat behind you). This creates choices on how to build you SH, which is good!
The cost of having access to the damage increase (which it is not given baseline) comes with the cost of having about 43ft cut from range (which you no longer have access to). This makes the SH more vulnerable to pretty much anything out there and you will have to learn how to properly manage your escape tools and other utility in order to survive. You don’t have access to everything at once and the tools you have access to, you(s) are forgetting one must keep track of many more immunities on targets and also manage your CDs, your positioning and your pet’s positioning, not to mention your pet’s target when using skills like disarm. If you think this is ease, please share a video showcasing your amazing skills as a player.
Pet’s damage is quite good on spike squig, but like other (ranged) pets they die very fast. If it gets killed you will be losing access to a bunch of utility and damage from the pet itself and tactics mentioned above. There are 2 skills that will help you cast your pets on the go: Tastes like Chiken and Farty Squig. Using Tastes like Chiken just to insta cast another pet is very dangerous as you might need the defensive CD to survive. Farty Squig has a high AP cost that will be coupled with the Squig AP cost (about 110AP). Gas Squig will mostly be used when there is a blob of players or at forts/keeps; its damage and is not great (you sacrifice spike squig’s good damage for range and meh damage). You can increase pet’s damage by 25% with 33% uptime which is ok but nowhere near as good as other buffs which increase the player’s damage (SW, Mara, WL), this is not to say that I am looking for this kind of buff but just to put it into perspective. The one thing we can agree on is M1 Squig beast might need to be tone down to +100% from +150% if it stays on M1, then again it relays on the player’s ability to control the pet and coordinate the pet’s CD with the buff to maximize damage. Pros if everything goes right you can deal very high damage on a soft target that does not have any/little defenses and Cons pets damage will not go over absorbs or defenses like morale damage does.

Someone did mentioned that Squig buffs were better than SW. I would say they are different. As far as I can tell both scout and gas squig are at the same level. The reason why scout gives 10% and gas gives 15 flat is because SW already has a few skills at 100ft on the ‘mid-range’ mastery (One gets pet the other gets 80-120 ballistics). When you look at their melee stance/form and the mid-range, one is focused on burst and the other on survivability and AOE. Skirmish and Bouncin’ are the AOE spec and thus they give a bit more defensive stats (toughness for SW and toughness for Squig Amor), Quick shootin’ and Assault are focused on burst in the ST mastery (Assault gets extra AA damage and AA haste proc and WS, Spike squig gets decent damage output).

Yes, SH are doing more damage now, but they are also more vulnerable, and they are nowhere near the burst of a WH/WE and many others. It will take a skilled player in order to utilize all the tools avaialbe in order to escape and that is what pisses people off. When it comes to SH I am by no means an expert but I do pretty good. I am currently using 5p invader and WL mix for the range bonus as 10ft gives me a bit of a better margin of error, but I do sacrifice a lot of stats and damage bonuses from gear (5p SOV gives more bal/wounds/armor pen/crit chance). I have found some burst while on Quick Shootin’ when using a slow hitting bow (like Bloodlord) and paired up with 50% AA haste tactic and Spike Squig to AA on the move (this means you are at 65 ft).
Sorry but I believe this is a L2P issue more than anything else. You should take a look at order players that can use their classes very well and I have a hard time getting any kills on them because they are aware, they have good positioning and they know how to exhaust defensive cool downs.

WL: Avallet runs on a 3-6 man and handles his lion very well, HelloKitty usually a 6 man and knows when to attack and when to retreat and Confused usually with a 6 man extremely tough to get a kill on this guy (I salute you sir)
WH: Jughurta (I won’t disclose your build, but man the burst lol ), There is another WH that also has an absurd burst and I love going against as him as it keeps me on my toes.
AM: Angelfuran , adeni…aredi … damn man I forgot you name, but he/she plays the AM very well as well
Engi: Alec (love this guy, extremely difficult to get a kill on)
And many others whom I love to go against because it is challenging.

PS: whoever said SH have more range besides engis/magus stop doing drugs. 65ft is less than 100ft. Engis and magus still have access to range increasing tactics and pet passives while on their mid-range AOE mastery. AOE speced rSW and burst rSH are the ones with the least range.

[NSKaneda]

Spoiler:

Buffed 80ft =/= base 100ft. Sure, aoe is melee on Herders right now and they traded range for burst and additional utility. I'd be happy to get old utility range back giving up rKD

But it's not about 1:1 mirroring just as it's not about solo roaming. You've nerfed range and survivability of rSHs, maybe quit while you're ahead?

The aoe rSW used to have 99ft, with a tactic. Instead we got some armor penetration tactic during the rework, putting the aoe build permanently in 65ft range.
So we all got nerfed with the range, at least you can get it up to 80ft?

rSHs aoe is nerfed to melee range in mSH tree (and I'm ok with it). Only ST can get up to 80ft but rSWs ST is 100 (and that's ok too).

Spoiler:

To counter a melee squig herder you simply throw taunts and cc when they start their channels, which is how they do damage. To counter range, you simply hit them from beyond their effective range and kill their pet or focus them down because they are squishy. All order classes have better range than them now and do more cast/nuke damage. You can also detaunt the pet while attacking the SH himself.

1. Then how do you have taunts and CC left for Zealot WOI, Choppa GTDC, Mara pull and the millions of other things you're supposed to "Just interrupt bro"?
2. Squig literally has greater range than every Order class except Rifle Engi, and they have a range reduction ability that SW no longer has
3. Detaunt the pet, then how do you detaunt the other 20+ Destro? How do you kill the pet when heeling the pet makes it whip back to the SH at warp speed?

1. KOTBS channel interrupt aura + other interrupts. AP drain. Challenge. AM debuffs. Silence. Stagger. Disarms. Armour debuffs. There's a lot of tools to use against melee channel balls and those are just few.

2. Your anti rSH crusade is blinding you. AMs - 100ft range. Engies - best range in game, hands down. SWs - 100ft+ (outside of aoe). BWs - 80-100ft.
rSH: 65ft, 80ft with gas squig, 90ft with gas and invader. And their aoe is in melee.
Greater range, yeah right.

3. If you're worrying about single rSH in a warband your healers are slacking. Tastes like stuntie: 5*179 = 895. That's barely one hot crit from a healer. And pets die fast in aoe, not to mention that you can CC them as well. Come on...


Read Brutinho's post, he makes good points. Also, mechanic wise SWs should be compared to Marauders, not SHs

[teiloh]

1. KOTBS channel interrupt aura + other interrupts. AP drain. Challenge. AM debuffs. Silence. Stagger. Disarms. Armour debuffs. There's a lot of tools to use against melee channel balls and those are just few.

2. Your anti rSH crusade is blinding you. AMs - 100ft range. Engies - best range in game, hands down. SWs - 100ft+ (outside of aoe). BWs - 80-100ft.
rSH: 65ft, 80ft with gas squig, 90ft with gas and invader. And their aoe is in melee.
Greater range, yeah right.

3. If you're worrying about single rSH in a warband your healers are slacking. Tastes like stuntie: 5*179 = 895. That's barely one hot crit from a healer. And pets die fast in aoe, not to mention that you can CC them as well. Come on...

Read Brutinho's post, he makes good points. Also, mechanic wise SWs should be compared to Marauders, not SHs

1. There is no such thing as a channel interrupt aura. Everything else you listed works against everything. Challenge does not interrupt.

2. You are forgetting the entire Big Shootin' tree.

3. What does Taste Like Stuntie have to do with the pet's survivability?

[NSKaneda]

Spoiler:

1. KOTBS channel interrupt aura + other interrupts. AP drain. Challenge. AM debuffs. Silence. Stagger. Disarms. Armour debuffs. There's a lot of tools to use against melee channel balls and those are just few.

2. Your anti rSH crusade is blinding you. AMs - 100ft range. Engies - best range in game, hands down. SWs - 100ft+ (outside of aoe). BWs - 80-100ft.
rSH: 65ft, 80ft with gas squig, 90ft with gas and invader. And their aoe is in melee.
Greater range, yeah right.

3. If you're worrying about single rSH in a warband your healers are slacking. Tastes like stuntie: 5*179 = 895. That's barely one hot crit from a healer. And pets die fast in aoe, not to mention that you can CC them as well. Come on...

Read Brutinho's post, he makes good points. Also, mechanic wise SWs should be compared to Marauders, not SHs

1. There is no such thing as a channel interrupt aura. Everything else you listed works against everything. Challenge does not interrupt.

2. You are forgetting the entire Big Shootin' tree.

3. What does Taste Like Stuntie have to do with the pet's survivability?

1. To Victory! Aura. Try it sometimes.
Challenge lowers dmg and helps you use other tools while giving your heals time to react.

2. No, I'm not. Big Shooting is stationary and slow af. If you can't brake line of sight or catch BShooting squig then nerfing them down to 75ft won't help you.

3. As a healer to heal a pet you have to select that pet in a blob of players. mSH can use TLS to heal it. Unless you meant heeling as in following closely but then we're back to pets dying fast in aoe.

[teiloh]

1. To Victory! Aura. Try it sometimes.
Challenge lowers dmg and helps you use other tools while giving your heals time to react.

2. No, I'm not. Big Shooting is stationary and slow af. If you can't brake line of sight or catch BShooting squig then nerfing them down to 75ft won't help you.

3. As a healer to heal a pet you have to select that pet in a blob of players. mSH can use TLS to heal it. Unless you meant heeling as in following closely but then we're back to pets dying fast in aoe.

1. To Victory is a setback aura, it's not an interrupt aura.

2. You can break LOS with Bright Wizards and Shadow Warriors and Engineers as well. Why is a 2s cast Squig Herder attack easier to dodge than a 3s cast Fireball or Snipe?

3. TLS heals the Squig Herder and not the pet. But yeah by heel I mean having the pet come back to you.

[NSKaneda]

Spoiler:

1. To Victory! Aura. Try it sometimes.
Challenge lowers dmg and helps you use other tools while giving your heals time to react.

2. No, I'm not. Big Shooting is stationary and slow af. If you can't brake line of sight or catch BShooting squig then nerfing them down to 75ft won't help you.

3. As a healer to heal a pet you have to select that pet in a blob of players. mSH can use TLS to heal it. Unless you meant heeling as in following closely but then we're back to pets dying fast in aoe.

1. To Victory is a setback aura, it's not an interrupt aura.

2. You can break LOS with Bright Wizards and Shadow Warriors and Engineers as well. Why is a 2s cast Squig Herder attack easier to dodge than a 3s cast Fireball or Snipe?

3. TLS heals the Squig Herder and not the pet. But yeah by heel I mean having the pet come back to you.

1. And how does setback work?

2. Easier? No. As easy as? Yes. You can see the animation, you know what's coming.

3. You know of course that you have to manually call your squig back, right?

[Neverever]

Spoiler:

1. To Victory! Aura. Try it sometimes.
Challenge lowers dmg and helps you use other tools while giving your heals time to react.

2. No, I'm not. Big Shooting is stationary and slow af. If you can't brake line of sight or catch BShooting squig then nerfing them down to 75ft won't help you.

3. As a healer to heal a pet you have to select that pet in a blob of players. mSH can use TLS to heal it. Unless you meant heeling as in following closely but then we're back to pets dying fast in aoe.

1. To Victory is a setback aura, it's not an interrupt aura.

2. You can break LOS with Bright Wizards and Shadow Warriors and Engineers as well. Why is a 2s cast Squig Herder attack easier to dodge than a 3s cast Fireball or Snipe?

3. TLS heals the Squig Herder and not the pet. But yeah by heel I mean having the pet come back to you.

1. And how does setback work?

2. Easier? No. As easy as? Yes. You can see the animation, you know what's coming.

3. You know of course that you have to manually call your squig back, right?

Dude you can't explain anything to a person who has access to a rr70+ SH and the only way he thought he could prove that SH is OP is to send his pet to attack people in a SC. It is obvious he doesn't have a clue how that class works and he fails on playing one. Otherwise, it wouldn't be so hard to record a regular game play of the class and show us how OP it is.. He can't do that obviously. He just doesn't like getting killed by SHs. Probably that's why he lvled up a SH anyway to have those goodies but ofc the grass is actually not that greener when you get to the otherside. As he clearly stated by him before he thinks SH shouldn't be a threat like other dps classes. Poeple shouldn't waste interrupt skills on such a subordinated class while there are real dps classes out there to use them against... He is just blinded by his own SH crusade as you justly noted above. So let him whine in his little illusionary world.