Aoe Cap feedback after playing with it

[CyunUnderis]

cap will never make anything better or worse concerning big or small wbs. Is another plane of reasoning entirely. There is no way you can make a warband fight 2 or 3 together under any circumstance. If that would be the case, rvr would be senseles.
Do aoe cap influence small wb vs high wb? No. Nor positive nor negatively. Is another matter entirely.

Why a bigger cap (or no cap) will never make anything better for big/small WB ?

Right now, a 12 can't really fight/bomb a 24+ (or you must not play a MDPS composition), because the 12 will have 4 tanks and 4 DPS in the melee and will hit 9 people where the 24 will have 8 tanks and 8 DPS in the melee. So, naturally, the 24 will hit everyone where the 12-men won't. Sure, the 12-men tanks will have a lot of to do, with punts on enemy tanks to pressure the DPS then the 12-men will try to bomb, but at the end, having more number is just the easy way. The 9 cap can make sense in 24v24, but this is not helping small teams at all.

Before, with the 24 cap, this was not a problem.

In this kind of scenario (6/12 vs 24 or more), AoE CC/Defensives skills (like Challenge or Bellow) capped on 9 targets are clearly not helping small-scale players. Previously, a good stagger on a part of the WB was perfect and cool help a smaller team to kill or to kite. But not anymore. On top of that, with the nerf on the AoE snare, it is even harder to kite a WB as 6/12-men (% snare and duration reduced). So, right now, you have less CC, less way to hit enough players as a 12-men. But, again, with a bigger or no cap, the problem doesn't exist anymore, so this is better for smaller teams.

Why a smaller team can't fight a bigger one ? Why is that ? And if this is the case (a better small team can fight a bigger one), why RvR would make no sense ? This is not like commando/elite teams that can fight against larger and less organized groups don't exist. And before you say it was not possible for small teams to take bigger teams in RoR, it was.

Why can't we reward players that play better ? If in a 12 vs 24 scenario, a 12-men manages to use their skills better than the 24 (better kiting to temporise bigger CD, plays with the LoS/distance, use morale drop when the enemy is packed, ...), why the 12 can't be rewarded ? Right now, with this change (and some of the previous patch), a 12-men will have a harder time to do this ALONE (far from the zerg). And I'm not going to talk about the 6-men for whom it's even harder. At the moment, I don't see a reason to go roam in prime time as a 6-men (if you don't like to zerg-surf). You'll be hunted by WBs or you'll kill solo players.

If you have time, read this thread where leaders/players talked about the 24-cap : viewtopic.php?t=33676

@Bombling,

I agree with your first post (that's why I didn't answer at first).
With the summer, we (12-men guild) didn't took the time to play. I'll try to see what a 6/12 can do in cities first. I think this is will more balanced, but, to be honest, I don't think this change was necessary for cities anyway (and this is not the point of this thread anyway).
For RvR, from what I saw, it helps RDPS parties (6/12) that zerg-surf (we do this kind of thing from times to times, but this is not that funny at some points). I'll make another post when I have more datas to share.

[lumpi33]

I read a lot about the cap needs to be reverted again in order to give smaller forces a chances against bigger forces.

After playing a week or two with the new cap I absolutely see no issue with it. It's fine and I would say it's better than before.

Im probably the only one that would rather take power from 24 warbands than give them more. The majority of the players are still pugs/casuals. When you give 24 man warband too much power they will become unkillable by these pugs even having a much bigger force.

Furthermore I think the assumption is wrong that it would help smaller force to win against bigger ones. Why? You can do aoe stacking without being the underdog, then the disadvantage of the underdog is even bigger. It affects both sides. The dominating and the underdog.

It's a double edged sword. I think we are better off with the 9 cap and Id even go further and reduce the power of those try-hard 24 man warbands even further. Sov people with 8 healers, 8 tanks and 8 dps are just too hard to kill with an unorganized force. The majority is unorganized though. Id say more power to the pugs is the way to go to increase the population again. Nobody cares if a premade can kill a larger force and if pugs lose to a larger force then they have no problem with it.

Organized warbands still have their superior survivability. They have only lost a bit of killing power with that change and it was necessary. So no, no reverting. Damage seems fine and fights more enjoyable.

[arturziomas]

I played tank healer and aoe dps since aoe cap was decreased and I love it, every single fight just feels better and fights are a lot more fun, to be honest I don't feel like writing paragraphs, I just really hope this aoe cap stays.

[Vibax]

Very interesting post and replys tbh.
On the topic of making smaller groups been abble to fight larger grp of enemys I think nothing more need to be said. The patch completly miss the mark and anyone who is experienced enough in those situations aggrees on that.
Seems like some people are trying to deviate the topic of the OP (like always pretty much).
Would be interesting to know what playstyle all those players that seems to enjoy the change are playing. There is no right or wrong answer. It just depends on what people enjoy, like are you zerg player, a zerg surfer, an AAO fighter etc.
Now it comes down to what the devs want to do. Seems like they are trying to fix the issue of zerging or at least say they are, because I really don't see how people can imagine than reducing the amount of targets you can hit will benefit more the smaller squad.
We also have to keep in mind that right now the test is benefiting from the increase of population due to the ring event. If things stay the same (aoe cap) I really wouldnt be surprise to see, once the event is over, an even more dominant side (outside of eu prime) facing nothing but range kite grps.
Been a leader myself of WB's I can say this, a Pug wb on discord (that is what my wb's were) could fight up to 2 wb's given the right circumstances (if I was lucky to get full WB with lvl 40 with decent gear enough facing non 2/2/2 wb's, and in the right position). Right now 24v24 feels gud but the RvR isnt about a fair fight at all (you got GvG or citys for that). And if a side has more numbers and start loosing fights they will just grp up in order to win them (everyone is playing to win afterall). The problem we've seen so far in my opinion is just very 1 sided RvR situations and if we stick it to 9 aoe cap this will be even worst in the near futur.
We just gotta wait and see what the devs will do in order to give fight back mecanic to very large numbers, cause what they came up with didnt help at all.

[Hellforce]

I agree. I almost exclusively play in 6mans when roaming, so here is the current situation when a 6man encounters a warband:

6man hits 9 targets with its abilities
24man hits 6 targets with its abilities

When previously it was this:
6man hits 24 targets with its abilities
24man hits 6 targets with its abilities

So if the intention is to make it easier for smaller forces to bust zergs, then I'd say the design was flawed from the start. If anything, logic dictates that the target cap should be *increased* so the smaller force has an even greater effect on its engagement versus a larger force.

Devs, please revert the target cap back to 24.

I totally agree with you!! Unfortunately the new aoe cap only benefits blobing!! I played since the change in pug WBs and organized WBs and saw that the biggest blob would always win easily!! When I played with small scale groups or half WB groups I saw that although we tried everything there was not a way to win a biggest group even if we were organized , knew almost perfect how to play our character and had very good leader and live chat!! So my conclusion is that this aoe cap will destroy slowly slowly anything organized in the game (6men -12men -WBs) and its really sad because the builds and tactics in this game are so nice and when you really understand the strategics and how to overcome a biggest group or opponent , that's where you really get the whole clever and magical creation of this game!! Stop having the opportunity to become better and be more organized sometimes is like staying forever in Tier 1 and the biggest group win's every time!! No fun in that

[Kaeldrick]

I agree with Bombling and every post explaining how it's impossible to deal with a larger group.

This change made that way is just a zerg encouraging feature.

Reminder for team : 24AoE cap was a change made some years ago but it has been done with a lot of dmg adjustments (exclusively nerfs) on every single AoE skill. Please don't do such random code changes, it's actually killing smaller teams (12-18 men guilds have no chance against a 1 to 2 warband force now, it was hard but possible before).

[Kaeldrick]

I played tank healer and aoe dps since aoe cap was decreased and I love it, every single fight just feels better and fights are a lot more fun, to be honest I don't feel like writing paragraphs, I just really hope this aoe cap stays.

Get out from zerg and try to fight when outnumbered mate, you may notice some things

[Akalukz]

Problem is everyone that wants the changes back to 24 are used to instagibbing other groups, now they can't, and they are mad. This is a good change for the game, fights are more fun for pug's casuals, that is exactly who we should be thinking about.

[Nameless]

With 24 cap most common gameplay were mara run aoe kd all and the fight is over within 2 gcds.
Not a fan of this gameplay.
I like 9 man cap but we need more zerg busting tools and most importantly change if bos to matter more and to make ppl split so u never build zerg cos u lose the map

[lumpi33]

Problem is everyone that wants the changes back to 24 are used to instagibbing other groups, now they can't, and they are mad. This is a good change for the game, fights are more fun for pug's casuals, that is exactly who we should be thinking about.

Amen.