Patch Notes 22/08/2024

[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.

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

The warbands are still melee heavy. Solos tend to pick range DD, which is just a logical conclusion and of course roaming groups, since they can keep more distance to enemy wbs and pick individual targets.
90% of range DD are easy kills, since they play too static. It's still the go to pick for casuals with little time to build groups and you can be more active than on a melee class without support.

[what63]

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?

Simple logic. Ranged is far easier to have a fun casual time on. You could buff melee damage ten times over and people would still largely opt for ranged when not playing in a guild setting, simply because it allows them to dodge the requirement of guards and heals. Additionally the 24 man cap for example also makes pug melee far less safe in RvR, no more actually getting to do something as long as you have some semblance of a meatshield.

This will never change unless GUARD sees major change to where you no longer have to have guard to enjoy the same level of mitigation as someone that simply has a group with a tank.

What matters is not what you see the general trend being amongst the pugs, but what compositions are generally used when people build a warband to farm them.......

[live4treasure]

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.

You see, them having more parry than years ago is actually a misconception in this case. Before if you had an equal of WS compared to attackers STR, you would recieve 7.5% parry from your defensive stat. Obviously, most of the time you would have lower, and so over the course of the calculation you'd end up at maybe 3% positive parry after comparison of STR and WS. It also never overflowed into flat parry bonuses from RR or items, as those could only be affected by flat strikethrough. This isn't the case now either, as STR based strikethrough can penetrate flat Parry boni.

Right now, using average initiative amounts, STR cap penetrates a flat 10% parry, while most melee dps will have a native 6% parry in their kit. So actually, what happens is not only do you not get a positive bonus to parry chance, you end up in the negative. Generally speaking, the less parry you have the more of a big deal each additional % of parry that you lose is, because various classes have ways of applying flat debuffs to avoidance.

So no, not only have most melee dps lost about 15-20% raw parry compared to before this patch, they in fact mathematically have less parry than they did years ago by a significant margin. This contributes to melee dps being quite fragile on the RVR scene at the moment.

I think that the changes were not well thought out, and need to be rolled back and reconsidered, as well as a general mission statement for them stated. As it stands now, it doesn't seem like the main consideration was whether or not the state of Weapon Skill made melee dps OP, but simply that Weapon Skill being such a high value stat was unelegant, much like Initiative being a stat that wasn't valued high was unelegant. It seems the purpose was to right this percieved injustice first and foremost. It's a massive overarching change for a relatively minor problem.

[M4RXman]

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?

I stand corrected - in which case I will change my opinion and say that the patch is more reasonable than I thought.

It is a shame that it has been timed to launch just after the BiS ring event however.

[what63]

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.

You see, them having more parry than years ago is actually a misconception in this case. Before if you had an equal of WS compared to attackers STR, you would recieve 7.5% parry from your defensive stat. Obviously, most of the time you would have lower, and so over the course of the calculation you'd end up at maybe 3% positive parry after comparison of STR and WS. It also never overflowed into flat parry bonuses from RR or items, as those could only be affected by flat strikethrough. This isn't the case now either, as STR based strikethrough can penetrate flat Parry boni.

Right now, using average initiative amounts, STR cap penetrates a flat 10% parry, while most melee dps will have a native 6% parry in their kit. So actually, what happens is not only do you not get a positive bonus to parry chance, you end up in the negative. Generally speaking, the less parry you have the more of a big deal each additional % of parry that you lose is, because various classes have ways of applying flat debuffs to avoidance.

So no, not only have most melee dps lost about 15-20% raw parry compared to before this patch, they in fact mathematically have less parry than they did years ago by a significant margin. This contributes to melee dps being quite fragile on the RVR scene at the moment.

I think that the changes were not well thought out, and need to be rolled back and reconsidered, as well as a general mission statement for them stated. As it stands now, it doesn't seem like the main consideration was whether or not the state of Weapon Skill made melee dps OP, but simply that Weapon Skill being such a high value stat was unelegant, much like Initiative being a stat that wasn't valued high was unelegant. It seems the purpose was to right this percieved injustice first and foremost.

This depends on exact point of reference, and actual stat investment (aside from definitely loosing the baseline parry you would have from WS previously in most cases). The live formula did not separate the stats as such, this was added post-live. It is true that a melee DPS with an actual investment into parry will run into cases where they have an additional 4-6% or so deficit relative to last year with zero regearing, but for all intents and purposes, most of them are loosing effectively the amount they received from WS, due to debuffs, an unwillingnes to invest in parry and the likes. Which is a trivial amount, the exception being incoming hits from SnB tanks, which is relevant if we look at new approach vs pre-january formula.

The major loosers are certain solo specs, and more importantly, certain tanks. Overall there are so many aspects of the game that are incredibly lopsided post-january, the current situation is merely a reflection of what a major mistake that whole thing was. However, at least the current iteration of the game far more closely reflects the historical state than the months between january and now, and as far as I'm concerned, as it is close to impossible to get a 1:1 to pre-january, marginally less parry is far better than SIGNIFICANTLY more on DPS, even if it comes at the expense of other archetypes.

[live4treasure]

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.

You see, them having more parry than years ago is actually a misconception in this case. Before if you had an equal of WS compared to attackers STR, you would recieve 7.5% parry from your defensive stat. Obviously, most of the time you would have lower, and so over the course of the calculation you'd end up at maybe 3% positive parry after comparison of STR and WS. It also never overflowed into flat parry bonuses from RR or items, as those could only be affected by flat strikethrough. This isn't the case now either, as STR based strikethrough can penetrate flat Parry boni.

Right now, using average initiative amounts, STR cap penetrates a flat 10% parry, while most melee dps will have a native 6% parry in their kit. So actually, what happens is not only do you not get a positive bonus to parry chance, you end up in the negative. Generally speaking, the less parry you have the more of a big deal each additional % of parry that you lose is, because various classes have ways of applying flat debuffs to avoidance.

So no, not only have most melee dps lost about 15-20% raw parry compared to before this patch, they in fact mathematically have less parry than they did years ago by a significant margin. This contributes to melee dps being quite fragile on the RVR scene at the moment.

I think that the changes were not well thought out, and need to be rolled back and reconsidered, as well as a general mission statement for them stated. As it stands now, it doesn't seem like the main consideration was whether or not the state of Weapon Skill made melee dps OP, but simply that Weapon Skill being such a high value stat was unelegant, much like Initiative being a stat that wasn't valued high was unelegant. It seems the purpose was to right this percieved injustice first and foremost.

This depends on exact point of reference, and actual stat investment (aside from definitely loosing the baseline parry you would have from WS previously in most cases). The live formula did not separate the stats as such, this was added post-live. It is true that a melee DPS with an actual investment into parry will run into cases where they have an additional 4-6% or so deficit relative to last year with zero regearing, but for all intents and purposes, most of them are loosing effectively the amount they received from WS, due to debuffs, an unwillingnes to invest in parry and the likes. Which is a trivial amount, the exception being incoming hits from SnB tanks, which is relevant if we look at new approach vs pre-january formula.

The major loosers are certain solo specs, and more importantly, certain tanks. Overall there are so many aspects of the game that are incredibly lopsided post-january, the current situation is merely a reflection of what a major mistake that whole thing was. However, at least the current iteration of the game far more closely reflects the historical state than the months between january and now, and as far as I'm concerned, as it is close to impossible to get a 1:1 to pre-january, marginally less parry is far better than SIGNIFICANTLY more on DPS, even if it comes at the expense of other archetypes.

I'm glad the conversation has progressed past trying to sepparate facts from false and into something where a discussion can be held.

That being said, this is where we happen to disagree. In my opinion the 9 cap experiment showed that at the warband vs warband level slower TTK results in a more enjoyable game experience for everyone involved, balance aspects and ability to take on outnumbering forces aside.

What this does is not only did we get back 24 cap, which fair enough, if 9 cap didn't work then it didn't work, but also we sped up the TTK of melee dps. In short, we've a taken a step in the exact opposite direction to what we've discovered to be fun.

Now, because the melee line is more fragile, the ranged dps are also prone to be under pressure faster, because whether or not a melee line collapses under pressure or not is also decided much faster, and thus RDPS have to start retreating and kiting sooner. In short, everyone gets to enjoy less of the game's main gameplay as a result.

That's why this patch, in my opinion, needs to be re-evaluated. The goal was to slow down TTK even if slightly, not increase it further.

[what63]

You see, them having more parry than years ago is actually a misconception in this case. Before if you had an equal of WS compared to attackers STR, you would recieve 7.5% parry from your defensive stat. Obviously, most of the time you would have lower, and so over the course of the calculation you'd end up at maybe 3% positive parry after comparison of STR and WS. It also never overflowed into flat parry bonuses from RR or items, as those could only be affected by flat strikethrough. This isn't the case now either, as STR based strikethrough can penetrate flat Parry boni.

Right now, using average initiative amounts, STR cap penetrates a flat 10% parry, while most melee dps will have a native 6% parry in their kit. So actually, what happens is not only do you not get a positive bonus to parry chance, you end up in the negative. Generally speaking, the less parry you have the more of a big deal each additional % of parry that you lose is, because various classes have ways of applying flat debuffs to avoidance.

So no, not only have most melee dps lost about 15-20% raw parry compared to before this patch, they in fact mathematically have less parry than they did years ago by a significant margin. This contributes to melee dps being quite fragile on the RVR scene at the moment.

I think that the changes were not well thought out, and need to be rolled back and reconsidered, as well as a general mission statement for them stated. As it stands now, it doesn't seem like the main consideration was whether or not the state of Weapon Skill made melee dps OP, but simply that Weapon Skill being such a high value stat was unelegant, much like Initiative being a stat that wasn't valued high was unelegant. It seems the purpose was to right this percieved injustice first and foremost.

This depends on exact point of reference, and actual stat investment (aside from definitely loosing the baseline parry you would have from WS previously in most cases). The live formula did not separate the stats as such, this was added post-live. It is true that a melee DPS with an actual investment into parry will run into cases where they have an additional 4-6% or so deficit relative to last year with zero regearing, but for all intents and purposes, most of them are loosing effectively the amount they received from WS, due to debuffs, an unwillingnes to invest in parry and the likes. Which is a trivial amount, the exception being incoming hits from SnB tanks, which is relevant if we look at new approach vs pre-january formula.

The major loosers are certain solo specs, and more importantly, certain tanks. Overall there are so many aspects of the game that are incredibly lopsided post-january, the current situation is merely a reflection of what a major mistake that whole thing was. However, at least the current iteration of the game far more closely reflects the historical state than the months between january and now, and as far as I'm concerned, as it is close to impossible to get a 1:1 to pre-january, marginally less parry is far better than SIGNIFICANTLY more on DPS, even if it comes at the expense of other archetypes.

I'm glad the conversation has progressed past trying to sepparate facts from false and into something where a discussion can be held.

That being said, this is where we happen to disagree. In my opinion the 9 cap experiment showed that at the warband vs warband level slower TTK results in a more enjoyable game experience for everyone involved, balance aspects and ability to take on outnumbering forces aside.

What this does is not only did we get back 24 cap, which fair enough, if 9 cap didn't work then it didn't work, but also we sped up the TTK of melee dps. In short, we've a taken a step in the exact opposite direction to what we've discovered to be fun.

Now, because the melee line is more fragile, the ranged dps are also prone to be under pressure faster, because whether or not a melee line collapses under pressure or not is also decided much faster, and thus RDPS have to start retreating and kiting sooner. In short, everyone gets to enjoy less of the game's main gameplay as a result.

That's why this patch, in my opinion, needs to be re-evaluated. The goal was to slow down TTK even if slightly, not increase it further.

And that's entirely fair, but avoidance simply isn't ever going to be the correct way to modulate TTK on DPS IMO. While a slower TTK is indeed desirable in larger scales, much of the issues there (aside from 24 cap) come down to the many buffs that have taken place over the years changing typical utility picks into absolute AoE murder lawnmowers. AoE damage in so many cases rivalling/beating ST damage is absurd, and for as long as that remains the state of things, only frustrating approaches to modulating the landscape remain.

To elaborate, avoidance negating full damage along with CC and often core debuffs/mechanic builders makes it just outright frustrating to play against at high values. Less noticeable at scale, but it deteriorates lower scale gameplay significantly. There needs to be a healthy amount of it, and it should not be the bandaid to solve large scale TTK. Outside of something silly like including parry in HTL, which at this point may not even be the worst idea conceived

[azgul]

You explaining crit changes to make sw and sh more flexible & then U add cast time to squig armor xDDD so there are 2 options:

1) those changes are done completely random
2) its buff for SW and nerf for SH but U want to present that as fair compensation for both classes. SW can insta switch and have defence while SH will die in cast time very flexible

[live4treasure]

This depends on exact point of reference, and actual stat investment (aside from definitely loosing the baseline parry you would have from WS previously in most cases). The live formula did not separate the stats as such, this was added post-live. It is true that a melee DPS with an actual investment into parry will run into cases where they have an additional 4-6% or so deficit relative to last year with zero regearing, but for all intents and purposes, most of them are loosing effectively the amount they received from WS, due to debuffs, an unwillingnes to invest in parry and the likes. Which is a trivial amount, the exception being incoming hits from SnB tanks, which is relevant if we look at new approach vs pre-january formula.

The major loosers are certain solo specs, and more importantly, certain tanks. Overall there are so many aspects of the game that are incredibly lopsided post-january, the current situation is merely a reflection of what a major mistake that whole thing was. However, at least the current iteration of the game far more closely reflects the historical state than the months between january and now, and as far as I'm concerned, as it is close to impossible to get a 1:1 to pre-january, marginally less parry is far better than SIGNIFICANTLY more on DPS, even if it comes at the expense of other archetypes.

I'm glad the conversation has progressed past trying to sepparate facts from false and into something where a discussion can be held.

That being said, this is where we happen to disagree. In my opinion the 9 cap experiment showed that at the warband vs warband level slower TTK results in a more enjoyable game experience for everyone involved, balance aspects and ability to take on outnumbering forces aside.

What this does is not only did we get back 24 cap, which fair enough, if 9 cap didn't work then it didn't work, but also we sped up the TTK of melee dps. In short, we've a taken a step in the exact opposite direction to what we've discovered to be fun.

Now, because the melee line is more fragile, the ranged dps are also prone to be under pressure faster, because whether or not a melee line collapses under pressure or not is also decided much faster, and thus RDPS have to start retreating and kiting sooner. In short, everyone gets to enjoy less of the game's main gameplay as a result.

That's why this patch, in my opinion, needs to be re-evaluated. The goal was to slow down TTK even if slightly, not increase it further.

And that's entirely fair, but avoidance simply isn't ever going to be the correct way to modulate TTK on DPS IMO. While a slower TTK is indeed desirable in larger scales, much of the issues there (aside from 24 cap) come down to the many buffs that have taken place over the years changing typical utility picks into absolute AoE murder lawnmowers. AoE damage in so many cases rivalling/beating ST damage is absurd, and for as long as that remains the state of things, only frustrating approaches to modulating the landscape remain.

To elaborate, avoidance negating full damage along with CC and often core debuffs/mechanic builders makes it just outright frustrating to play against at high values. Less noticeable at scale, but it deteriorates lower scale gameplay significantly. There needs to be a healthy amount of it, and it should not be the bandaid to solve large scale TTK. Outside of something silly like including parry in HTL, which at this point may not even be the worst idea conceived

Well, I'm glad we at least agree that slower TTK is preferable. So in this case, I believe that making a change that speeds up TTK without doing anything to at the very least counterbalance it for the melee dps is a net negative for the game at large. If there is some overarching vision to this Weapon Skill change as part of some larger balance state, then this change should have been pushed back until that point, rather than being introduced adhoc and against the vast majority of the community protesting it. Additionally, whatever advantage melee dps individually gained from having both high parry and high armor penetration wasn't significant enough to really effect large scale RvR in a negative way. You can see the massive backlash even in this thread, several guilds on strike, some of them simply up and left the server and so on.

Was it worth it? No, it wasn't. Is the game more enjoyable to play after this change? No, it isn't. Which leads me to conclude that for the time being, the right choice is to revert it and think of an alternative. Otherwise, what the hell are we even doing here?

[what63]

I'm glad the conversation has progressed past trying to sepparate facts from false and into something where a discussion can be held.

That being said, this is where we happen to disagree. In my opinion the 9 cap experiment showed that at the warband vs warband level slower TTK results in a more enjoyable game experience for everyone involved, balance aspects and ability to take on outnumbering forces aside.

What this does is not only did we get back 24 cap, which fair enough, if 9 cap didn't work then it didn't work, but also we sped up the TTK of melee dps. In short, we've a taken a step in the exact opposite direction to what we've discovered to be fun.

Now, because the melee line is more fragile, the ranged dps are also prone to be under pressure faster, because whether or not a melee line collapses under pressure or not is also decided much faster, and thus RDPS have to start retreating and kiting sooner. In short, everyone gets to enjoy less of the game's main gameplay as a result.

That's why this patch, in my opinion, needs to be re-evaluated. The goal was to slow down TTK even if slightly, not increase it further.

And that's entirely fair, but avoidance simply isn't ever going to be the correct way to modulate TTK on DPS IMO. While a slower TTK is indeed desirable in larger scales, much of the issues there (aside from 24 cap) come down to the many buffs that have taken place over the years changing typical utility picks into absolute AoE murder lawnmowers. AoE damage in so many cases rivalling/beating ST damage is absurd, and for as long as that remains the state of things, only frustrating approaches to modulating the landscape remain.

To elaborate, avoidance negating full damage along with CC and often core debuffs/mechanic builders makes it just outright frustrating to play against at high values. Less noticeable at scale, but it deteriorates lower scale gameplay significantly. There needs to be a healthy amount of it, and it should not be the bandaid to solve large scale TTK. Outside of something silly like including parry in HTL, which at this point may not even be the worst idea conceived

Well, I'm glad we at least agree that slower TTK is preferable. So in this case, I believe that making a change that speeds up TTK without doing anything to at the very least counterbalance it for the melee dps is a net negative for the game at large. If there is some overarching vision to this Weapon Skill change as part of some larger balance state, then this change should have been pushed back until that point, rather than being introduced adhoc and against the vast majority of the community protesting it. Additionally, whatever advantage melee dps individually gained from having both high parry and high armor penetration wasn't significant enough to really effect large scale RvR in a negative way. You can see the massive backlash even in this thread, several guilds on strike, some of them simply up and left the server and so on.

Was it worth it? No, it wasn't. Is the game more enjoyable to play after this change? No, it isn't. Which leads me to conclude that for the time being, the right choice is to revert it and think of an alternative. Otherwise, what the hell are we even doing here?

I might be a bit of a cynic, but I fear that an appropriate response to the TTK issue would garner far more backlash even, as simply put, it wouldn't involve a MDPS only approach. And sadly despite the specifics of parry technically affecting large scale, the game revolves around so much more, and the change kinda had to happen regardless. Not saying the execution is great, or even good, but it's in the ballpark.

You could be right in that timing may have changed things, but honestly a patch attempting to normalize avoidance values in addition to nerfing most of the prominent AoE damage in one go... Honestly I don't see the community accepting any form of attempt at fixing real issues, because the same inertia we see for a state that has only lasted for a few months would apply in even stronger form. People love mowing down masses of people, it's that simple, loosing that for a more sound game state is gonna hurt no matter what.