Patch Notes 22/08/2024

[Lareal]

Just to be clear: In no way in this post am I calling for a nerf to any class. My intent is to compare some of the strengths of various classes, and to point out the flawed thinking that went into this RSH nerf.
Although, I do have several MDPS, I am fairly inexperienced with them and will withhold comment on the WS/INI changes. My goal is to address the SH nerfs, but only in the context of RSH, which is what I primarily play.

I knew a RSH nerf was coming a few months ago, when the professional ‘Nerf XXX Class’ crew started to portray RSH as some kind of unstoppable killing machine. When this has happened in the past, the devs saw fit to nerf that class, so I knew an RSH nerf was coming, even though nothing had really changed on the RSH in quite a while. So what happened? Why suddenly were certain people ( and always the say people) whining about RSH? Well, if you read their post a few things become clear:
1) They are talking about solo or duo encounters. Run speed on a RSH is pretty much irrelevant in WB play.
2) They died to the RSH while chasing them. In other words, they played the RSHs game and lost. The equivalent is a pure RSH running to melee range to fight a slayer. It’s stupid. One of the commenters even said that nerfing the Run Away ability was not enough, as the RSH would just hit flee. Well, easy answer: don’t wanna die? Stop chasing the RSH. Use terrain, break line of sight, etc.
3) They have not played an RSH, at least for an extended period. Some of the comments prove this. They whine that RSH has a squig with a taunt! OMG, how can this be allowed? What they fail to realize is that RSHs rarely use that particular squig, as it pretty much suck for RVR. There are numerous other examples that show that someone just went to career builder and looked at the abilities.

Others whined about how much supposed defense a RSH has. No one who has played a RSH for a period of time would believe this. The RSH has one, and only one RELIABLE defense: Speed. Speed is the RSHs armor. So lets look at all the RSHs supposed defense. Light armor, minimal resists, and almost no toughness. Even less if you run the WS tactic, which takes my toughness to the 50s. So, if the RSH can stay out of range of MDPS/Tanks, they die. Speed is essential.

Squig Armor: Decent protection in melee range, but if the RSH is in melee range, he screwed up, and is close to death. Not having thrown any points into the melee tree, most RSH will do poor damage in SA, and loses access to all their ranged abilities that actually do damage. So while SA has its uses, it is not a panacea. Now its 50% of what it was. That’s ok though, adding 50, or even 100% to RSH armor is still really low armor.

Sticky Squigs: Short term snare, and short self-punt. This ability fails often, and even when it works you have to start in melee range to the enemy, which means you are most likely snared. (BTW RSH only has an M2 to break snares.) If it works and you self-punt, you are still in range to many MDPS/Tank abilities, WH finishers for example. I will say it does work well with your back to a cliff though.
Detaunt and Run Away tactics: Good, but hardly game breaking. You are relying on a proc, and for the detaunt tactic can’t then attack the person attacking you. Also, despite what the whiners say, no one I know runs both, and many run neither. Running both would seriously affect DPS. I am sure there is a RSH who does, but I haven’t met him.

M1 (concealment) 7 sec dodge/disrupt. Awesome, if you spec it. I don’t. It great vs. ranged, but doesn’t help vs. tanks/MDPS, so most RSH run Squig Beast or the knockback.

That’s it for defense for the most part. No snare break except m2, and most classes in the game having ranged KDs, snares or staggers. Its walking the razors edge to stay in the Goldilocks zone and not get snared. Snared=dead. The Devs cite the RSHs ‘impressive escape tools’, and then move one of them to the top of the tree. Run Away should honestly be core, not even in a master tree. It is that important to have a reliable speed buff.

Lets compare to other classes defense tools:
Tanks: Every friggin CC in the game (except pulls), massive armor, massive toughness, charge, ranged roots and staggers, good self-heals, etc.

WH/WE: The king and queen of escape artists. Stealth, mini-stealth plus speed buff LOW on the mastery tree, Self-punt plus a FRIGGIN STAGGER, AOE detaunt, and M1 100% parry and dodge, and an easily speccable 7 sec disrupt.

Other MDPS: Charge (use it to run away from the RSH instead of chasing him), Root/snare breaks, M1 parry/dodge, KDs, for WL: pet snare and run away, for choppa/slayer decent self-heals, and regen tactics (tbh not sure how much these are actually specced, I defer to the experience slayer/choppas out there.)

Engie/Magus: Great defense if specced for it. Heal/regen, does well with lots of toughness/wounds, add in staggers and KB. KD as well, although it requires pet.

Sorc/BW: Ok, they need some defensive love.

SW: Pretty much a perma-speed buff with a 4 point tactic, self-punt, assault stance armor buff, ranged KD.(one poster said RSH disarm, which is tied to pet, should only work in melee range, so should the same be said of the SW KD?)

Healers: No need to say anything.

So please, explain this nerf. It was obviously to affect solo play, which supposedly we don’t do balance changes for. Are you next going to move the WE/WH mini-stealth to 13 points? Maybe you’ll move the rugged tactic for tanks up the tree because they have too much defense?
Hopefully, I have made it clear that speed IS defense for a RSH. Relying on procs is not good enough, they need an on demand speed buff to counter charges from tanks and MDPS. Squig armor won’t save them, especially with the nerfs to that and all the ranged snare/stagger tools they have. RSH also needs some sort of snare break. Maybe make Sticky Squigz proc a snare break/immunity. A class that relies on mobility to survive has to wait for an M2? Silly.
I also urge the devs to stop letting a few folks in the forums drive class changes. Instead, talk to people in the forums, use a range of levels of players for suggestions, and play the class for a while before making drastic changes.
A Final note: This nerf hits low level RSH the hardest, as now they will have to wait quite a while for a reliable speed buff, so they will be little more than WL bait.

[Tyrvald]

my Friend i have slayer and wl too. And i can say that order use much more ranged dps than destro.
Iam not saying it is bad. It is fine but current advantage of range vs meelee is much much too high.

On number of ranged by each side, hard to know ( side biased for sure ) but I totally agree of your word on the current advantage of range vs melee.
Specially on avoidance / Strikethrought new system

[live4treasure]

This was a change that made melee even more fragile in a meta where they were under considerable pressure. It turned what was a mild complaint into an actual problem, and you can see it in how fast melee dps die in RVR now.

Please revert the WS changes and reconsider your approach.

From where this pressure is coming from and how the WS change affects it?

While I think it's really obvious, I'll go ahead and put it on paper.

Whenever you are in an RVR situation, any character, when they take damage, are taking damage from different sources at different stages.

You will have melee and ranged damage in this capacity. While nothing really changed for melee dps during the point in time when they would be closing in or waiting for morale, once the melee dps has closed in they will start taking not only ranged damage, but also melee damage.

Currently, many MDPS have lost anywhere from 15-20% parry, because even if they do slot initiative talismans to try and recover the defensive loss, their base initiative is always lower and they always get much less of it from gear than Weapon Skill. So it's a straight loss in survivability at the stage of the fight where they have engaged and are fighting in melee. In other words, melee dps would take a significant amount of pressure as it is in the past, ranged dps is quite powerful in the current meta, but now they also take a significantly larger amount of additional pressure when they close in to fight in melee.

This causes the meta to swing significantly in ranged dps favour, because melee dps are not nearly as durable as they used to be in the moment of the game where they are meant to shine - namely melee combat. It's an overall decrease in their effectiveness, when arguably they didn't need the nerf.

[what63]

When a bug has been a part of the system for so long that people have built entire characters/builds/playstyles around It, It stops being a bug and becomes a feature.

"for so long that people have built entire characters/builds/playstyles around It". You do aware that ws giving that much parry only started from 25/01/2024 patch, right?

This is what people are missing, how parry from WS used to work appears to have been widely misunderstood due to the overinflated values displayed on the paperdoll which were based on being hit by an attacker with 150 strength.

Prior to January this year if you understood how WS parry worked then you knew that it really wasn't worth pumping weaponskill for parry alone, because it only gave an appreciable amount if you were being hit by attackers with low strength who are not going to deal much damage anyway. If you wanted parry you went +% items.,

However, since the paperdoll values were based on 150 strength attacker, people must have really believed their 800 WS was giving them 25% parry. Against an opponent with softcapped strength it would really have been more like 5%, I believe?

In an effort to make the system more easily understandable the devs then changed this to a flat bonus at 3x the amount strength was giving strikethrough which was a ridiculous buff. Now 800 WS gave 24% parry (but offset by -10% from 1000 str strikethrough).

With the current setup of initiative, 200 init gives 6% parry... which is about the same you'd have against a soft-capped str opponent under the system prior to Jan 2024...

Maybe this drama could have been avoided if, prior to the Jan 2024 patch, the paper doll was updated to show WS parry based on an opponent with a much higher strength value, say 800 or 1000. People might not have felt like they "lost" a load of parry if it was explained properly.

However a lot of the feedback to this change has been incredibly petulant.

5.7% parry was the figure in your example with 800 WS prior to january yeah. It's ludicrous to pull out the post-patch figure as a baseline and behave as if that in any way resembles what was the state for years and years prior. Especially considering that on live the formula wasn't separated into stat contested portion and hard avoidance portion so things were even bleaker in terms of DPS having avoidance at all.

Personally absolutely despise the current change still, purely because altering the stats in such a lopsided way feels very, very janky. The spirit of the change is valid however to some extent. The correct approach would be to simply revert to the mythic-like formula that existed for years, with other minor botched experiments sprinkled around. The weakest side with this was the initiative calculation as relates to reduced chance to be crit, could simply keep that aspect of the new approach.

[zulnam]

The real crime is how much i don't want to play Ironclad, my alltime favorite scenario map, after it was changed from 12v12 to 6v6 a few years ago.

[ravezaar]

u really went ahead with the WS change ? cant believe what iam seeing

u really went ahead with the WS change ? cant believe what iam seeing

Sadly yes...
Even There is 20 pages to explain why this change is a bad bad bad Idea (except for ranged DPS already overboosted with debuff and strikethrought)

And finally, What is the interest to have PTS test if nothing is taken account - specially with the slayer / choppa mechanic
we are simply deadmeat grind for all others classe by now.
-

Just need an answer to this follwing question...
What is the Armor penetration tool that the slayer have ? (I think the Choppas are in the same trouble)

Because you said that.

It’s important to note that while physical damage classes need to invest in two stats (for damage and defense) compared to one for magical damage classes, physical damage classes also have access to armor penetration tools that help compensate for this. But this discrepancy is something we will look into balancing longer term.

Either it is simply a fake in the patch note
or maybe I don't know the Slayer class and need your light ....

Agree Slayer year bin a rough one but now with the most insane change ever I think this class is basicly finihsed and done with it, cant see any really continue playing it. Iv quit and 2 more who mained Slayer did aswell. Choppas is basicly in smae situation only 1 more tool then Slayer vs say the rdps creep but yea the WS change feels like final nail in the coffin for these classes and maybe for RoR aswell.

GL to you if carry on

[Speedyluck]

few hours of solo roaming as destro player after patch.

What change from my pov?

order small groups are builded now in 90% of situations of dps rp, dps am, bw, sw + any tank or even not.
SMall scale and solo for destro became fighting with slows instead of enemies.

Welcome in the Order Gameplay style .. While since several years we play oftenly against Shamy / SH/ Sorc Kittng Squad /small scale with a BG for a Tennis punt before the death

my Friend i have slayer and wl too. And i can say that order use much more ranged dps than destro.
Iam not saying it is bad. It is fine but current advantage of range vs meelee is much much too high.

if you cant beat them, join them, lots of my slayer friends are now playing/leveling rdps already.

[Sulorie]

This causes the meta to swing significantly in ranged dps favour, because melee dps are not nearly as durable as they used to be in the moment of the game where they are meant to shine - namely melee combat. It's an overall decrease in their effectiveness, when arguably they didn't need the nerf.

We had years of rampage complaints with destro frontline having basically no avoidance at all and people managed to play around it and now it all dramatically changed? Sorry but this is dishonest.
Furthermore chop/slay always had and still have the debuff option to strip all or almost all melee avoidance, depending on target. For the longest time parry from WS was significantly lower. Not your words but this specific change doesn't kill melee classes or they would have been dead years ago. They got a buff which now got reverted a bit. Still more parry than years ago.

[rychu007]

This causes the meta to swing significantly in ranged dps favour, because melee dps are not nearly as durable as they used to be in the moment of the game where they are meant to shine - namely melee combat. It's an overall decrease in their effectiveness, when arguably they didn't need the nerf.

We had years of rampage complaints with destro frontline having basically no avoidance at all and people managed to play around it and now it all dramatically changed? Sorry but this is dishonest.
Furthermore chop/slay always had and still have the debuff option to strip all or almost all melee avoidance, depending on target. For the longest time parry from WS was significantly lower. Not your words but this specific change doesn't kill melee classes or they would have been dead years ago. They got a buff which now got reverted a bit. Still more parry than years ago.

still more range dps every day than years ago. why?

[Everdin]

A lot of rdps, never played rdps before, no idea how kiting works, no frontline to protect them, it's gonna be a great time for mdps