Feedback on Champion Challenge

[Aluviya]

There are certain issues I see with Champion Challenge Morale that I'd like to bring up.

Before the ability rework patch, in small-scale PvP such as group-ranked matches against decent opponents, success required a good DPS rotation, the target's tank being punted, and the target's healers being crowd-controlled – the "golden sequence" as one person once said. Currently, damage is consistently very high, and aside from the proc ICD and weaponskill counting for autoattacks, I can't pinpoint what exactly has changed. However, these changes, or perhaps others unknown to me, have certainly led to the recurring meta of tunneling a target rather than involving the strategic gameplay as previously described.

In this high-damage meta, previously core morales such as Demolishing Strike have mostly lost their purpose, especially in team compositions that include other sources of morale or non-morale armor debuffs.

Additionally, the most recent version of Champion Challenge is activatable way beyond 5 ft, which causes a target to warp approximately 5-10 feet towards the tank. This warping effect is problematic, especially when a target has immunity to roots, which Champion Challenge usually prevents. For instance, immunity via morales (Focused Mind) or set procs (Unconstrained, Victorious Proc) can be bypassed, causing the target to warp towards the tank and be rooted for around 1-1.5 seconds alongside the warp animation finishing. Check video: https://youtu.be/He3FbOiUWIc

The game's logic dictates that lower-tier morales should have lesser effectiveness or be removable/deniable by higher-tier morales. Champion Challenge, in its current design, is partially ignoring this logic by being sold as a double-edged sword, applying the root also on the tank. I see the point here for ORvR play.
However, I'd have to question that in the context of small-scale PvP. Here, most of the time, the victim is a Melee-DPS. That said, tanks can reproducibly often use the morale from max range (due to lag?), which in most cases leads to the target being ChCh'ed further than 5 ft away (despite the warping effect - which I assume was added due to this problem) with the result of the target not being able to use any abilities as it exceeds their max attack range. This effectively means that you lose a big portion of your team's damage output, and the only option left is sustaining damage (And yes, 10 seconds is huge for this type of content), preventing any tactical moves for the duration of it. From this point on the tunneled target has an effective immunity of 20 seconds outside of the Champion Challenge before it can be used again. For most melee classes, this the timewindow time to escape multiple snares that are reapplied constantly. What is actually the downside here, I'd love to ask is it just me or does it feel straight like an imbalanced morale as it is up very soon and has practically become an opener with a good chance to kill someone.

[Omegus]

The tl;dr of my reply below: the ability has bugs

Additionally, the most recent version of Champion Challenge is activatable way beyond 5 ft, which causes a target to warp approximately 5-10 feet towards the tank.

The "point to point" distance (i.e. middle of the attacker to the middle of a defender) of a 5ft range ability is actually 15ft as everyone has a 5ft radius bounding circle around them. This is not a ROR thing and is actually part of the client checks when highlighting whether an ability is in range to use. The 5ft distance of melee abilities refers to the distance between the two bounding circles. If each circle has a radius of 5ft then that's 10ft in total plus 5ft for the actual ability range gives a point-to-point range of 15ft. The same applies for ranged attacks, i.e. a ranged attack with a 100ft range actually has a point-to-point range of 110ft.

What appears to be happening is that when the opponent is pulled in, it pulls the opponent to within 5ft of the centre of the attacker rather than respecting the bounding circles, so even if the enemy was in melee range (15ft point-to-point) it still gets pulled into 5ft point-to-point. Note the 5ft point-to-point distance is a guess, it might be a bit longer but it still looks to be pulling people too close. Additionally there is bug on the tracker where sometimes it turns the person around AND moves them a bit further away if the victim was actually too close: https://bugs.returnofreckoning.com/view.php?id=22629

This warping effect is problematic, especially when a target has no immunity to roots, which Champion Challenge usually prevents. For instance, immunity via morales (Focused Mind) or set procs (Unconstrained, Victorious Proc) can be bypassed, causing the target to warp towards the tank and be rooted for around 1-1.5 seconds alongside the warp animation finishing. Check video: https://youtu.be/He3FbOiUWIc

30 seconds on the bug tracker would so that the target being pulled while immune has been reported as a bug at least twice and is not yet fixed:

https://bugs.returnofreckoning.com/view.php?id=22433
https://bugs.returnofreckoning.com/view.php?id=22567

The game's logic dictates that lower-tier morales should have lesser effectiveness or be removable/deniable by higher-tier morales.

This is not actually a thing. Higher tier morales to not trump lower tier morales, and to my knowledge there is nothing in the game's "logic" to support this.

[Uchoo]

There's a ton of weird bugs or accidental reversions that need to be fixed yet following the ability rework.

As far as Champ's goes: In a game where 3 seconds of CC provides 30 seconds of Immunity and FPS-like TTK, Champ's Challenge is 10 seconds of CC. Especially brutal after the cone of fire changes and the current "warping bug" or whatever it is that often spins the target of CC to have their back facing the tank. So if you get spun, you can't even hit people back or use detaunt lol. Maybe there's some discussion to be had here.

[vanbuinen77]

It should be morale 2 or lower its duration to 5 secs.

[3Form]

I have noticed many issues with it, definitely the "warping bug" that Uchoo mentions.

How is CC meant to work? I vaguely remember that you and the target are meant to be facing each other in the "ring" . But for a long time now I've actually been able to set it up so I'm behind the victim and get to bypass all their defences.

More recently though it seems the victim rotates 90 degrees so I often set it up completely wrong.

I've also noticed sometimes when I'm challenged, that if the challenger is behind me, I can get my attacks to land as long as I'm not holding the right mouse button (maybe not the channels though). In much the same way that if you cast an ability on an NPC behind you, your character will turn to face them.

[ShadowWar]

Conversely, I've lost count of the number of times I've champions challenged someone and they are outside of my melee range. So I just throw daggers, and pop what I can.

[Aluviya]

There's a ton of weird bugs or accidental reversions that need to be fixed yet following the ability rework.

As far as Champ's goes: In a game where 3 seconds of CC provides 30 seconds of Immunity and FPS-like TTK, Champ's Challenge is 10 seconds of CC. Especially brutal after the cone of fire changes and the current "warping bug" or whatever it is that often spins the target of CC to have their back facing the tank. So if you get spun, you can't even hit people back or use detaunt lol. Maybe there's some discussion to be had here.

Would like to keep this suggestion/discussion active. This is really still an issue and I'd love to see more participation (especially of those who are in charge of balance)

[Sever1n]

Would like to keep this suggestion/discussion active. This is really still an issue and I'd love to see more participation (especially of those who are in charge of balance)

Sadly devs react to such sugestions in months/ years.

CC overperforming, its prob strongest cc ingame coz its literary force you to show your back for tons of dmg, indicates for all that target is vulnerable, last forever and have no counterplay for person whos in CC. Dont think people in ranked also happy about double CC meta cos it literally constant milking squishiest target out of pots till submision.

Posible solutions probably reduce duration, make it be breakable by antisnares/fm, or put it higher in morale list so its would be hard to use x2 of them till people get countermorales.

[akisnaakkeli]

We need Stronger CC instead of less CC... We need Morale 2 100% Dmg back to Engi,Sw and SH. Tactics like Runefang being lvl 15 core and giving 720 stats, so what? That was the only thing giving any Ws/Parry/parry strikethru. Crippling Strikes back,suddenly undefendable rending blade becomes good again, obviously designed to proc Crippling strikes but not changed after removal of CS. SW used to have tactic that gives your party 15% Crit. Kotbs gave 10% Crit on top of that so 25% Crit just like that. We need this kind of actual power in tactics and morales/abilities.

People need to get used to dying in this game, this is srsly a huge issue that people avoid dying, even at the cost of all fun. Dying in a pvp game is kinda half of the goddamn point and no one is having fun when no one dies. Always go for the kill, its just much more healthier way to play not caring about dying but caring about the KILL even at the cost of dying. Also in the video's i posted, notice there actually all classes present, not stacking only slayer or bw etc. And it was because for obvious reasons everyone should have place in RvR, it is the Main Driving force in the game, and excluding classes because they can do good solo but solo is not the point according to everyone so wtf?

Check what 2 parties could do in Aor and is again possible in RoR if we get 50% Aoe healdebuffs back + Morale dmg cap removed or start removing dmg after 4800hp not 2400hp. And man how forgiving Wp grp heal was, you could move while casting it if you moved at the correct time=)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJCkHPF ... Qg&index=3

Also This kind of Battlefield Objective gameplay IS SO MUCH MORE REWARDING than box running. Pls make Bo's matter again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YeKSfP ... Qg&index=6

[Rotgut]

I have no feedback regarding Champ Challenge's range, but its impact i can talk about.

Champ + Demo is a strong kill attempt, but there is a counter. You just punt enemy DPS one at a time. Punting them both together is bad cuz Champ lasts for 10sec so they have time to run back in, and two DPS on the target can reach unhealable damage. But if only one DPS is hitting the target the enemy will not get a kill.

My only problem with it is that its another aspect of 6v6 that relies on tanks. Doing both the CC and countering it. Sure, some DPS classes can KD or Crit Debuff as a defensive play and that helps out, but its mostly a tank job. 6v6s are 80%, if not more, a tank game. I have no interest in asking the Dev Team to focus on 6v6 balance but you know, if it is possible, then the main thing imo is decreasing reliance on tanks to do almost everything - offensively and defensively - and give other archetypes more things to do.