Patch Notes 20/05/2021

[Delegator]

Destro playing order out of protest? Shocking. Maybe that'll teach us!

Sir, your posts are often disrespectful and biased against Destro community. I don't track who is who in Devs/GMs area but I know you are important and have a lot to say when it comes to balance . And this worries me.

Same.

Disrespectful, condescending, you name it. Probably part of the reason that the order pop hasn't dropped below 53% that I've seen in T2+ since the patch dropped. Hint to Wargrimnir -- it isn't about sending you a message, it's because the patch in general and you personally made it less fun to play. If that's your goal...OK, it's working.

[detrap]

You have two tanks on Destruction that AoE debuff wounds, Order only one and it has to be from the squishiest tank a 2H Knight. Focus Mending is only 15% extra incoming heals, does not affect melee heals, and helps make the most useless aura we have usable. 15% is usually not enough to counter any heal debuffs so it's a tactic that is easily replaceable.

Focused Mending is easily replaceable. Realm Champion, everybody.

Pray tell, what do you replace it with, exactly? Maybe Focused Offense. It would make sense, since they both have Focused; right?

The drawback to running FM is that you automatically lock up a tactic slot and otherwise crappy aura to use it. If healing isn't an issue, you might be better running something more useful. All situational of course.

[Winry]

Sir, your posts are often disrespectful and biased against Destro community. I don't track who is who in Devs/GMs area but I know you are important and have a lot to say when it comes to balance . And this worries me.

Same.

Disrespectful, condescending, you name it. Probably part of the reason that the order pop hasn't dropped below 53% that I've seen in T2+ since the patch dropped. Hint to Wargrimnir -- it isn't about sending you a message, it's because the patch in general and you personally made it less fun to play. If that's your goal...OK, it's working.

By less fun to play you mean you can't roll over order anymore since you don't have 2 CDR decreasers?

[Brutinho]

Well this patch has been quite a ride to process. I took a step back in order to gather my thoughts and articulate some constructive feedback cause as soon as I read some of the changes I was exactly like this dude:

Spoiler:

You guys are smoking CRACK.. You take WAHHHGGG from BLORK and GIVE IT TO SM with a freaking AOE interrupt??????????? On demand now? YOU BUFFED SM AND GUTTED ??????

What the actual HELL guys!???

RIP my Blork MAIN..

THANKS!

There are several topics that will be hidden with spoilers as not to create a huge wall of text and you, the reader can concentrate on the topic that has the most interest to you, just take into consideration that the background on certain ideas, proposals and feedback might have been explained in a different section

Patch reaction:

Spoiler:

Balance Background:
Game was not only balanced between cross faction skills/tactics, but also the access to morale. It is well known that Order had/has the upper hand when it comes to synergy and how easy is/was to organize the backbone of their warbands (WP/kobs/slayers). To offset these Destruction had way faster access to morale through morale drain and morale pumps (which was nerfed years ago), the morale was nerfed by giving it mitigation and on this last patch morale gain has been nerfed once again on Destro and mirrored on certain classes. Some skills were mirror, but without tackling the main issue which is the easy access to a solid setup, with that in mind here is my feedback on recent changes;

Engi/Magus:
Very good changes by fixing napalm/mist damage (made it defendable, lowered base damage and damage factor), but they should have gotten the 20% bonus damage nerfed they received. At least on a ST spec (can have turrets/demons giving 40% on rifleman/havoc and up to 20% on the other masteries)

BO/SM:
If realms wanted to have the same access to same amount of buffs/debuffs you should have kept the CDR on BO as it made it a desirable tank on large scale (even with it, it was/is the worst for small scale. It gave some flexibility to build warband set ups to destro and gave mSH and FotG shams a competitive spot on city.

Giving SM a better version of waaagh without requiring a tactic slot was a bit over the top. This also gives order an extra aoe interrupt (WL has one due to mara’s having a aoe KD, both engi/magus get one and now SM gets one) does that mean destroy will also get one? I feel that making the skill just an AOE interrupt and requiring a tactic which will give the CDR but interrupt only the tank’s target would have been a better implementation.

Some people on the forum have pointed out that it would have been better to remove the CDR from choppa. Actually Darknod, through discord had a very interesting idea. Make chopp fasta an AA haste and even the name of the skill will remain relevant, plus if rumors are true and they want to move it to 2h mastery, it will turn up very well. So, it is not the actual objective of the balance, but rather how you are implementing it.

SH:

Spoiler:

For atleast geared SHs the changes are not that bad, i think. The overall dmg output was extreme as i mentioned months before but the reduced range of the rsh created a weird spot where changes could drastically impact the class as a whole (means more careful adjustments are advised and not uncontrolled nearly impulsive like changes).
But then again, i cant speak for SHs with like vanq and below and it seems that their struggle is yet again increased seemingly invalidating the whole concept of reworking the sh because his struggles in competitive situations in the first place.
If i would try to apply a grade system used in germany (1 = excellent to 6 = very, veeery bad) i would think the overall changes of this patch as a whole earned a 4-. Maybe im wrong.

Also the squig pet is still horribly bugged with teleporting behind the player and not adjusting its position when attacking a new enemy (who is in range), making it easily killed by melees because its just running into its old position. Means: The patch doesnt work. Made github entries on that but its that way since May 8th... Maybe its fixed with the hotfix atm but if not welcome to this comment.

-Range got a nice adjustment, most people will drop ‘sharpened arrer’ and go for ‘masterful aim’ and slot WS talis now, so depending on how armor pen tactics and armor bonus works there is slight to moderate amount of armor pen loss. The only thing I would have give back is brining QS to 75ft range base as the reduction of range was justified by the burst capabilities that they had.

-Squigbeast was an excellent change as I had voiced many times in the past.

- Melee got something weird thing going on for it. Due to the limited access to CDR from removing waaagh and been able to spam big bouncin’ (which was a requirement to be in competitive terms with other dps) the filler option was a good implementation. Not sure about removing the KD, but I kind of get where it is coming from. This for sure will impact mSH on small scale (specially ranked). Changes to SA were good as giving easy access to melee tools was a bit too much. Reducing OMW to 25% was just a big nono. Could have just mirrored to other charge abilities. I would have made ‘indisgestion’ undefendable to really be on par with ‘shatter limbs’ (rampage + shatter limbs).

Also, tactics like sharper toof and sharper arrer are undesirable now.
Sharper toof: was changed to give an AOE filler to mSH which does make any sense to slot now. Could have rework it to give other effect, like AOE interrupt (if SM is keeping his) and make RTA a copy paste of ‘spellbreaker’.
Sharper arrer: armor pen on the most useless mastery could have great potential to actually bring forward big shootin as a whole, brining it more in par with scout.

I would say the mSH needs a small rework, might make a proposal once all changes happening are set in stone.

PS: Please fix the pets or return them back to before May 8th patch. It just gave all pet’s AI -200 IQ. I already put it on the bugtracker with videos. Thanks

AM/SHAM:
-Very good change on AP drain
-I would have made hots area a bit bigger, maybe 30ft still affecting only 2 extra people though

- As for ‘bolstering boom, this will have massive repercussions. Should only affect group members like other morale pumps.

DOK/WP:
-The dps changes were very nice
-AOE detaunt I would argue that having to chose between perma ST detaunt or a 30ft aoe detaunt 50% uptime could have been better.

WL:
-Good change to brutal pounce to match CD on other KD abilities
-Not too sure about morale pump, could have too much of an impact on small scale

Suggestions not directly tie to patch

Spoiler:

AOE cap:
Bring back some cap on AOE skills or reduce their damage depending on how many victims they hit. Currently most classes are forced to go AOE spec as you only need 2 ST DPS per city if you are even running a ST group. I remember is live the cap was 5 and you could spec tactics to increase it to 9 players. Maybe we can have AOE affect 6-9-12 players and have damage adjusted accordingly (e.g. 6 player AOE skills no change in damage, 9 player AOE skills will damage diminish slightly and 12 player skill will have damage diminish moderately)

Satanlol does a great job explaining the AOE change proposal (you can find it here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=45268)

City suggestions:
In regards to Forts lockout a few patches back and also

A) Behavior needs to be changed organically, not force.
You don’t want people xrealming have city rewards increased when pushing zones on the faction you go to city with (e.g. 1 extra crest per stage and if you switch factions you don’t only loose on the bonus, but you get a -1 crest per stage)

B) Population control / maximizing endgame for everyone:
-You can only Q as 12 or 24 man. Devs wanted to promote pugs to get organized. By introducing a lower scale city, pugs won't be as overwhelmed with the organization of a 24 man and this will promote ST builds as well. At the current state of the game AOE is king because it affects 24 players and damage difference from ST abilities is not that noticeable.
- When timer is done 2x12 will be matched vs any 24 man already Q’d.
- Allow 12 man WBs to Q for a longer time so but you won’t have 24 WBs avoid other 24 WBs as MANY premades currently do.

Realm Champions

Spoiler:

There have been a lot of talks about the champions, from what I can take from it is that, unfortunately, it was poorly organized or purposely mishandled.

Back when it was announced, the language used to describe how the RCs will work was that devs would choose RCs from a group of players with experience in their own classes. They would give their input and voice their concerns in regards to upcoming changes. Most people did not know who the RCs were and the few that knew was through insider information. RCs should have been announced after accepting the duty and certain safeguards set in place (some anti-harassment rules).

Tabelrel has a great way of explaining this

Spoiler:

Just a few of thoughts, not about the individual balance changes themselves but the overall process of getting there.

Firstly, they say that justice shouldn't only be done but be seen to be done and I think here with this specific patch and the various comments from the RC's the process may not have worked as intended. While the discussions between the RC's themselves or RC's and devs shouldn't be a free for all for everyone to chip in on I think its important that those discussions should be visible to the community so they can feed back to their relevant RC's. Perhaps in that respect the discussions should be published on a forum topic, but only the RC's can post to it but allows the community to read and feed back privately to the RC's their views.

Secondly, so all these balance changes can be put in some sort of context what is the strategy that the RC's/Devs are working too. What is your end game idea guys that you are trying to achieve? If people understood a bit better where you are trying to get to I think that would add a bit of context. I personally would be sad to see a strategy where we try to perfectly mirror everything as wasn't that the unique point of AoR/RoR.

Thirdly, is this too much all at once and paraphrasing one of Bomblings comments the time is a bit awkward re the state of Destro. I can understand that constant weekly sprints is alot for a group of volunteer devs, hats off to them for doing it I wouldn't want to do it as you need a life outside RoR for sure. Although we also need to avoid the AoR situation where big changes are made on an infrequent basis and classes or the peoples perception of their class being broken and staying broken for a long period of time just turns them off the game and they never return. That ties back to the first two points of transparency and overall strategy.

This next part will sound a bit harsh, but I am giving my opinion with good intentions and I am trying to get through to at least 1 dev. Considering that players have voiced their concerns in how RCs was handled, some of the answers some RCs have given and the lack of acknowledgement of this issue from the dev team has me thinking that it was all a farce and you kept/listened to people that mostly agreed with the proposed changes or RCs were use to shift blame if balancing was not well received. I am still willing to give the benefit of the doubt and that this RCs just didn’t work as intended.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Xergon, Sulorie, Carthage the original 3 RC for destro had 3-4 months for counter proposals. Xergon posted few sentences once per 2 months before removal due to lack of participation and gathering feedback from Destro, unlike Rydiak and myself did publicity offering to get feedback. Carthage had RL and had to go AWOL. They were there to give proposals and counter proposals from community feedback and none were given other than comments. Their participation was nearly nil.

Overall RoR Staff makes decisions not RC. Take it up with Destro experienced RC why they didn’t counter propose for 4 months and debate topics over being silent.

Everyone has opinions such as myself, you, other players and staff. No patch or idea will be perfect. Things will always change for one side or another.

Remember SW buff lasted 48 hours while SH got to hold theirs for 6 months. Just move on and play the game if choose to keep going and keep giving feedback to RC, whoever they might be rather than complain patch day.

Hold on big boi... indeed i did not participate in spamming every thread how good every proposals were, in most i was interested in i stated my view and i had no need to post in every thread 10-15 times (if i knew im expected to do that from the start i would not join RC at all), agreeing with each other how good those proposals are and so on... I viewed my opinion clearly and it was not welcomed. Its ok, now some ppl have totally free hand of doing as they please. Some ppl wanted me out for reasons not connected with balance at all (or maybe because i was obstacle to those), and they succeeded.

While i did agreed with what u were aiming for i did not agreed with path u took to achieve it.

And yes RC dont do balance on their own but they do have impact on reviewing and proposing changes. But if some ppl have enough IQ will understand how some changes made through fully.

Egos set aside; it is not too late to admit when something doesn’t go as planned. You can look by the way MOST people on the forums reacted and pretty much all agree that the intention of the patch was good, but poor execution.

[Duukar]

Same.

Disrespectful, condescending, you name it. Probably part of the reason that the order pop hasn't dropped below 53% that I've seen in T2+ since the patch dropped. Hint to Wargrimnir -- it isn't about sending you a message, it's because the patch in general and you personally made it less fun to play. If that's your goal...OK, it's working.

By less fun to play you mean you can't roll over order anymore since you don't have 2 CDR decreasers?

Most WBs I’ve run in over the past 6 months have included MAYBE 1 choppah. More often we ran with zero. We form stronk ORVR wbs and have a good success rate in city. The most choppahs I’ve seen in a city lately was 2.

If you bring more than one or two choppahs it’s called a throw comp.

These are the facts. Having 2 CDRs in group was rare and usually only in 1/4 groups if at all.

Try again.

[wargrimnir]

Realm Champions
There have been a lot of talks about the champions, from what I can take from it is that, unfortunately, it was poorly organized or purposely mishandled.

Back when it was announced, the language used to describe how the RCs will work was that devs would choose RCs from a group of players with experience in their own classes. They would give their input and voice their concerns in regards to upcoming changes. Most people did not know who the RCs were and the few that knew was through insider information. RCs should have been announced after accepting the duty and certain safeguards set in place (some anti-harassment rules).

Tabelrel has a great way of explaining this

Spoiler:

Just a few of thoughts, not about the individual balance changes themselves but the overall process of getting there.

Firstly, they say that justice shouldn't only be done but be seen to be done and I think here with this specific patch and the various comments from the RC's the process may not have worked as intended. While the discussions between the RC's themselves or RC's and devs shouldn't be a free for all for everyone to chip in on I think its important that those discussions should be visible to the community so they can feed back to their relevant RC's. Perhaps in that respect the discussions should be published on a forum topic, but only the RC's can post to it but allows the community to read and feed back privately to the RC's their views.

Secondly, so all these balance changes can be put in some sort of context what is the strategy that the RC's/Devs are working too. What is your end game idea guys that you are trying to achieve? If people understood a bit better where you are trying to get to I think that would add a bit of context. I personally would be sad to see a strategy where we try to perfectly mirror everything as wasn't that the unique point of AoR/RoR.

Thirdly, is this too much all at once and paraphrasing one of Bomblings comments the time is a bit awkward re the state of Destro. I can understand that constant weekly sprints is alot for a group of volunteer devs, hats off to them for doing it I wouldn't want to do it as you need a life outside RoR for sure. Although we also need to avoid the AoR situation where big changes are made on an infrequent basis and classes or the peoples perception of their class being broken and staying broken for a long period of time just turns them off the game and they never return. That ties back to the first two points of transparency and overall strategy.

This next part will sound a bit harsh, but I am giving my opinion with good intentions and I am trying to get through to at least 1 dev. Considering that players have voiced their concerns in how RCs was handled, some of the answers some RCs have given and the lack of acknowledgement of this issue from the dev team has me thinking that it was all a farce and you kept/listened to people that mostly agreed with the proposed changes or RCs were use to shift blame if balancing was not well received. I am still willing to give the benefit of the doubt and that this RCs just didn’t work as intended.

Egos set aside; it is not too late to admit when something doesn’t go as planned. You can look by the way MOST people on the forums reacted and pretty much all agree that the intention of the patch was good, but poor execution.

Regarding Tabelrel's comments.
RC discussions in the future are not going to be public unless they reach out to you. That would be incredibly disruptive for them to have to field all of the anger you currently see regarding the changes we've made. Internal dev discussions don't happen in public forums either, and they're not going to. Sorry if that disappoints.

The context of the changes were based on a list of focus items that were provided to RC's. Most of these came from the internal balance team, some came from RC discussions. Again, these things aren't public, and we don't intend to make them public until you see the resulting patch released. I'm not sure why anyone is expecting us to hold conceptualization discussions publicly, we've never said we are remotely interested in doing that.

Our current plan for balance is to do large infrequent changes. Regular development will continue in the meantime. Unfortunately it looks like the expectations of the team, and the reality of what we're doing have diverged.

And your comments.
I had no intention of exposing the RC team, but left it open if they wanted to be public in this process. None of them were forthcoming about their position, that was their choice. That's just respecting privacy, no other reason.

The only people we removed from RC's were the ones that went inactive and didn't respond to direct messages. Regarding Xergon specifically, he assured me he was working on a specific proposal that we asked for, never posted it, and went two months without commenting. When he did finally comment, it was a one-liner, and it was clear he was not taking the position seriously. Otherwise the program worked as intended, and we will continue using it in the future.

[Delegator]

Same.

Disrespectful, condescending, you name it. Probably part of the reason that the order pop hasn't dropped below 53% that I've seen in T2+ since the patch dropped. Hint to Wargrimnir -- it isn't about sending you a message, it's because the patch in general and you personally made it less fun to play. If that's your goal...OK, it's working.

By less fun to play you mean you can't roll over order anymore since you don't have 2 CDR decreasers?

Well my Borc is level 4 and I have never once played City so…nice try at making assumptions. What I see is the constant AAO of order number dominating open RVR. And while it isn’t fun steamrolling people with superior numbers (which is why my Order level 40s have been on the shelf for a couple of months) it is even less fun being steamrolled. And even less still having a GM make snarky comments about it.

So would you like me to make assumptions about where you are coming from now? They would probably just as completely off base.

[Teek]

anyone who brought up the MSH being op was shat on by so many people crying in this thread. Most responses were l2p, git good noob.

VALIDATION FEELS GREAT.

Keep the tears coming, I need more salt!

[Powell]

anyone who brought up the MSH being op was shat on by so many people crying in this thread. Most responses were l2p, git good noob.

VALIDATION FEELS GREAT.

Keep the tears coming, I need more salt!

Stuff like this is why the server/forums is in the state it is in.

I don't blame you, I bet that felt really good to type out and post. I could see why. When rhetoric and the tone like this, comes from the top, why wouldn't you follow suit?

This whole tribal mentality that is prevalent from the top down on this server

Destro playing order out of protest? Shocking. Maybe that'll teach us!

Us? Even if you meant it as a third person rhetorical "Us" the Freudian slip is there and could have easily been a "them".

It is pretty bizarre. One would think that the main goal for these forums would be a level headed independent discussion of abilities and how they interact with one another. A level headed look at why the server is the way it is and what the goal the admin team hopes for the future.

All I'm seeing is tribal contention in a weird "You vs me" mentality and further a "my side vs your side!" mentality. Even weirder when the tone comes from the top - riddled with offense taken where none was intended - and when that happens you can't blame others to follow suit seeing as that type of behavior is implicitly condoned.

At the end of the day we are all playing the same game..... and we need each other.

Would it be fun for destro if there were no order? No. Would it be fun for order if there were no destro? No.

[wargrimnir]

Us? Even if you meant it as a third person rhetorical "Us" the Freudian slip is there and could have easily been a "them".

It is pretty bizarre. One would think that the main goal for these forums would be a level headed independent discussion of abilities and how they interact with one another. A level headed look at why the server is the way it is and what the goal the admin team hopes for the future.

All I'm seeing is tribal contention in a weird "You vs me" mentality and further a "my side vs your side!" mentality. Even weirder when the tone comes from the top, and when that happens you can't blame others to follow suit seeing as that type of behavior is implicitly condoned.

At the end of the day we are all playing the same game..... and we need each other.

Would it be fun for destro if there were no order? No. Would it be fun for order if there were no destro? No.

We went above and beyond to bring balance changes to the table with fully typed out reasoning after months of debate among several groups of people, and in large part with people who represent a significant portion of of the players on the server who otherwise wouldn't be caught dead posting on the forums. It doesn't matter what kind of prep you do in advance, there's a loud minority of players who use the forums to bash on development as soon as they find something they can twist to deem flawed. If you're around the forums long enough you'll start to identify the chronic abusers, it's nothing unique to the changes today. "Us" is the people who spent dozens of hours and weekends planning and debating these changes before releasing them, and the "Them" are the people that didn't like the changes or just want to fabricate drama and pressure. Everyone else kept playing the game.

Forum drama happens, one of the many ways players around here operate. People need therapy, catharsis, and salty entertainment. Stirring up the forums with drivel scratches that itch, and as long as they don't violate TOS, it's just another form of PvP. When people cross the line, they find out.

Unfortunately, people think raging against a change will get it reverted. That very rarely happens, and it's never from external pressure. We know what to look for when it comes to adjusting changes, it's not people on the forums stirring the pot.