[PTS] Patch Notes 28/02/2025

[Magusar]

Honestly speaking, the general feeling from the rework is that it is too radical.
As I already said, the mechanics of DPS specializations for WP/DoK are close to balanced, literally add 1 good function (with a gap closer for the same WP) and increase the frequency of causing at least some significant damage. There are many variations on how this can be done - from a banal increase in damage of abilities outside of Sigmar's Wrath/Drawning in Blood, to reducing the cooldown time of the same Sigmar's Wrath/Drawning in Blood in specific conditions, something like "each use from the path of Wrath/Torture reduces the cooldown of Sigmar's Wrath/Drawning in Blood by 0.5 seconds."
Take the changes from the patch for Judgement and FoK, take the condition of the snare from the same patch, give an additional gap closer for WP and here we have good characters with an easier model for balancing both for the current realities and for future changes.
I already said that such a powerful tool as 1.6 armordebuff for hybrids is a strange decision, especially considering that this is a distinctive feature of some specialized damage dealers and among all the same specialized damage dealers, there are damage dealers who need such an armordebuff clearly more, which will easily complicate the balancing process in the future, during the DPS rework.

[Kabuchop]

I only tested the DPS AoE spec on Shaman and i gotta say, it's awesome! we are finally getting a real use for the Shaman on a warband setup as a dps class...

However! The healing specs are getting nerfed according the numbers other players have told me about.

I think changing the healing mechanics and heal output is not a really good thing to do, maybe try to find a balance or keep it as close as it is has always been.

So my feedback is: great work on the aoe dps rework but try to fix or maintain the healing specs.

[Sinisterror]

This does not need to be this complicated. For those who dont know this, Judgement/Fist of Khaine are the only "throw axe" Skills in this game that actually does dmg, why? Well because they are MELEE HEALERS who can ranged detaunt, cleanse, use hots but dont have an gap closer meaning Charge pull or Pounce.

Fok/Judgement doing okay dmg is the dps dok/wp's only chance against kiters. When they changed it to from 15ap/gain 15 resourses, i quote " Dps Wp/Dok have Ap issues not Essence/fury issues" And i understood that the person who is doing these changes are doing them from shield perspective and dont understand dps wp/dok.

And doing it from shield perspective is nothing wrong, except when you start to restrict skills to Shield only. Skills like Melee Grp heal while making Divine Strike/Consume Essence use Essence instead of Ap. If you need to restrict skills to justify the existence of shield wp/dok, i dont know what to tell you, except you should never have given shield to wp/dok.

Sigmars radiance/Transfer Essence are only Melee grp heal and only AP using one that also gives resourses back. When you lock this important skill to shield only when it truely is/was iconic Spec for 15 years. Shield dok/wp doesnt have ANY problems with fury/essence and shield is HEAL spec and essence is the heal resourse for the class. But even with Backline spec has 1 exception of Divine Mend/Khaines Invigoration that uses AP.

If SR/TE is not given back, then ds/ce/fok/judgement needs to use AP and give resourses as they do on pts atm. This is great! But then the other stuff:E Like Guilty Soul if it healed you/def target for dmg done is PERFECT Tactic. Meaning that it feels good, smooth useful but not op.

Sigmars Shield pts change is another good example of the rigght way! I would have loved it to be reflecting same amount of dmg back to attacker that you are healed from the skill. Lose 10rf per heal and gain 5rf per hit. Also 50% Charge on killing blow makes more sense for Wp than dok, and it doesnt need to exist on either.

Dps wp/dok shouldnt have Charge(Or 1600 armour debuff Ability/700-800 Armour debuff proc is fine) WH/WE shouldnt have OFF GCD Charge that functions as mini stealth as well. When you start to Mirror/Nerf wrong skills you start to see its not that simple. WL should be only class with pounce and it should be buffed back to original version with 10s snare 5s cooldown. To keep walls and beoyond.

Those who have an problem with WL pouncing to keep walls or you being pulled from keep walls by engi/magus, why? I dont understand that the only thing that can make Keep fights ACTUAL FIGHTS is the Magus/Engi pulling 4-5 People and WL pouncing on there keeping very close to edge and being in guard range. If you are afraid of dying in this game where dying needs to happen for any of us to enjoy the game, i mean how cant people see that when you take away every unique and powerful skill that is not an actual issue but makes the game BETTER? Man if there was timestamped RoR 2017 available for RoR players to see how it was with all these layers that are now gone and we are left with 1-2 button spamming... This game was better/worked smoother in 2017 i have hard time wrapping my head around that.

There was no bugs like using 2 skills at the same time and one of them happens, but the another one goes on cooldown, this happened to me 2 times last times i was 1h on pts and no its not visual bug. All the X-Y-Z restrictions are also making weird things happen, Sometimes you cant attack someone who is in range and in los but is standing on a stone? Then you jump on the stone and can attack, and btw they can attack you, but you cant them. Im sure when someone is doing this, its not on purpose(for 95%)

These restrictions like shield only, be it wp/dok or Oppression/Vigilance will not please anyone or make game better experience, the opposite actually. You can use any 5ft skill when you jump, but you cant use Pounce when you JUMP : D If you think that Spamming 1-2 skills makes you viable in RvR/Or you want the game to work that way and the only way to be viable is the few button spam, why you prefer it like this? If you played aor or ror before 24ae cap, morale dmg cap,before 50% aoe HD's were removed,Super strong CC gone and most importantly 035-04s faster GCD. What makes you prefer current RoR ?

[Bozzax]

The covenant and prayer tactics are here to combat rp/zl heal increase monopoly. Now cos of zl/rp tactic need you mandatory 1 zl/rp at each group while dok/wp + am/sh doesnt have any synergy whatsoever. So that tactic wont buff overall healing cos till now you got it permanently from other source. Thise tactics will just bring more synergy between heal classes. Atm best heal setup is am+rp and zealot+shammy so that tactic will hopefully shake that meta.

Beside that the proc is on hit which exclude much or less healers (better for dps) so it has some downsides

DoK (medium armor) gets a passive +25% outgoing and a group wide passive 25% incoming

Shaman (light armour) gets tactics bloat an akward new mini mech some random very unreliable extra heals and yet another racial nerf. Hard to say where this one lands it is going to be a ride.

Clearly needed!

Spoiler:

[Farrul]

Still, look at the gap closer for both specializations - they should not be too strong in this regard, because weakness to rdps is natural for them, but they also cannot be too weak, and wp is exactly too weak (0) in this direction. Regarding the gap closer of the dok - it's too early to say, but most likely he will be stronger than he should be in this direction - the "machine gun" from FoK with CoC combination can turn into a ranged permanent snare with a continuation of heavier snares - you will never run away from dps or even heal/snb Dok and his teammates, if you are something like BW/Eng/none hard to kill healer without Focused Mind, you will be destoyed for random proc of CoC.

In regards to the wp lacking a gap closer, it wouldn't take too much to fix the problem, a simple speed buff proc on Judgement set at a low %(20-25) and lasting a short duration is all that is required to give them some sort of tool vs kiting ranged classes without being too powerful. It could even be conditional to only proc from behind like the WH snare pistol ability.

It would be better with a speed buff over snaring the enemy like the old judgement since it only affects the WP's ability to close the gap and not everyone else vs that target, in fact this is what makes CoC an the new Fok maybe too good since the danger comes from being able to snare someone for the benefit of everyone, not only for the benefit of the Dok trying to close the gap.

But WP not having a single ( 0 indeed) gap closer in a melee dps spec is just not acceptable and never was. Nobody was asking for a full fledged mdps charge equivalent, just something that fits the spec. IIRC Retribution Paladins in WOW( dps paladin) had something similar, Pursuit of justice iirc, that proced off a ranged attack and gave the Paladin a temporal speed buff. Nonone ever complained about that, just felt logical.

As i've mentioned before, but worth mentioning again. All the mdps classes can use Flee + AP potions for a secondary charge effect beyond their normal 30 sec cooldwon 50% buff so they got 2 x charge abilities in fact. But the WP can't even utilize Flee since it would drain all their Righteous fury leaving them useless. Hence it would be good indeed if the devs could recognize how crippled the WP is in this regard and finally give WP a tool like it certainly deserves to have.

[amaroq]

Still, look at the gap closer for both specializations - they should not be too strong in this regard, because weakness to rdps is natural for them, but they also cannot be too weak, and wp is exactly too weak (0) in this direction. Regarding the gap closer of the dok - it's too early to say, but most likely he will be stronger than he should be in this direction - the "machine gun" from FoK with CoC combination can turn into a ranged permanent snare with a continuation of heavier snares - you will never run away from dps or even heal/snb Dok and his teammates, if you are something like BW/Eng/none hard to kill healer without Focused Mind, you will be destoyed for random proc of CoC.

In regards to the wp lacking a gap closer, it wouldn't take too much to fix the problem, a simple speed buff proc on Judgement set at a low %(20-25) and lasting a short duration is all that is required to give them some sort of tool vs kiting ranged classes without being too powerful. It could even be conditional to only proc from behind like the WH snare pistol ability.

It would be better with a speed buff over snaring the enemy like the old judgement since it only affects the WP's ability to close the gap and not everyone else vs that target, in fact this is what makes CoC an the new Fok maybe too good since the danger comes from being able to snare someone for the benefit of everyone, not only for the benefit of the Dok trying to close the gap.

But WP not having a single ( 0 indeed) gap closer in a melee dps spec is just not acceptable and never was. Nobody was asking for a full fledged mdps charge equivalent, just something that fits the spec. IIRC Retribution Paladins in WOW( dps paladin) had something similar, Pursuit of justice iirc, that proced off a ranged attack and gave the Paladin a temporal speed buff. Nonone ever complained about that, just felt logical.

As i've mentioned before, but worth mentioning again. All the mdps classes can use Flee + AP potions for a secondary charge effect beyond their normal 30 sec cooldwon 50% buff so they got 2 x charge abilities in fact. But the WP can't even utilize Flee since it would drain all their Righteous fury leaving them useless. Hence it would be good indeed if the devs could recognize how crippled the WP is in this regard and finally give WP a tool like it certainly deserves to have.

I love how ppl are calling it this "new FoK CoC" spam lmao the original version of FoK and Judgement were AP cost and was for an extremely long time. It was actually one of not so distant patches that changed it. Further more the so called "OP" part wasn't the spammable dmg, which plz the love of god stop comparing FoK or Judgement dmg to rDPS numbers rofl its not even close. If it comes down to rDPS numbers vs FoK dmg the DoK/WP loses every time. Anyways the part that truly made it strong as an AP ability was being able to pop flee + AP pot then using FoK/Judge to rebuild essence while on the move hitting the kiter so that when you did connect you were able to pop a self heal.
The biggest so called problem with CoC being really good as slightly mentioned above is if it procs from other group sources that normally wouldn't allow for the team to close distance such as toss axe, sham laser, or some random fluff ability. But if you have even 1 proper rDPS in the vicinity then it's not the DoK, FoK, or CoC thats the real threat to ranged, its the other actual ranged. Whom all either have the ranged on demand CC or enough DPS even while on the move to fell most targets if left unchecked.

I'm a bit curious as to why the level of re-work is so dramatic here? This was the "healer" patch and while DPS specs are still on healer classes and some, AKA Zealot, seriously needed work in the DPS sense. DPS WP/DoK is about as balanced as you can really get in current state. Perhaps some minor tweaks but nothing major needed. Unless ofc you want them to be viable as dps in WB which there are some pretty simple ways to go about that increasing that without gutting or redesigning the entire class/spec/play style. If its not broke maybe don't fix it?
My guess to changing FoK/judge to AP is likely to make it a more suitable button to press while running around in blobs. This isn't really needed. Having it consume essence already was enough to remove the "cheese" from the ability being useable with flee+pot.

If you want them to fit in WBs focus the changes around their AoE ability. Something such as: uses 30AP + 30essence to do +30% dmg+ignore CD? but if you run out of essence it does -10% dmg+original CD? then give WP a pillage essence like ability for faster resource gen. Or maybe even look at putting some DPS chalice/books in the game vendors and let them stay "dps" with the AP+resouece mechanic while giving them a sort of passive regen?

Over the years the dev team has made a lot of changes overall to the DPS spec of DoK/WP - many things are different than live. IMO you guys have done a wonderful job of making the class/spec feel smooth, impactful, and play not only like the hybrid DPS it is but without losing its DPS identity. I'd hate to see you guys lose all those great and meaningful changes from the years just to give them attention where I don't think they were even looking for any? Changes to the heal spec of both classes are def worth looking at as many have mentioned.

[Bozzax]

Guys really need to consider giving shaman the same group hot or removing it from AM (+10-15% more healing from wild healing will be borderline anyway)

Some random procs off casting with a 15s refocus timer won’t be near as effective as a off cd 5-7s group hot ticking away. (I am guessing a bit here since it isn't tested in game and under pressure)

Why I suspect it to be subpar to a reliable grp hot ...
1. Random so not providing the same cosy warm back healing
2. Will be setback / disabled / interrupted
3. Less effective on the move
4. 15s refocus time just kills the efficiency
5. Shamans forfeit FM to get a ”group”hot
6. Above all the tactics bloat is just hard to predict

[Bozzax]

Beefing WP (what looks like a bonkers all in one), Beefing AM (Wild + Shiny new grp hot), Beefing DoK (to match WP), Not beefing Shaman (to my best understanding mostly tactics bloat and random heals galore plus nerfing racial). Lastly pulling the pants down on RP/Zele (happens also to be dest reliable source of absorbs) is unexpected. Even more so as order already draw significant extra passive heals from their tanks (Kniggit and SM). Something I thought was left unmirrored bc of destruction having more absorption.

This makes even less sense as WP (39%) and Shaman (45%) are making out the backbone of healing going by played %. (The difference here (+6% sham) is likely due to looks, Grufrip and Shamans being one of the better solo toons). WP is as we all know to be unrewarding to play alone.

Spoiler:

If stats was different it would make more sens but since order out kill dest (2%) with a lower population (dest +19%) I can't understand your balancing.

Spoiler:

I think you should push this there is no need for more theory crafting and honestly I'll just continue to play my alts until stuff are great again.

[amputationsaw]

for i know the dev team focuses patch notes mostly on pvp/rvr/player interaction stuff and i appreciate that. tho i think this server needs so many little QoL bug fixes. i play here for more than 10 years now and some things are still not working or not added.

*AH npc bugging out which needs a relog
*AH searches only 1 side so you never can look into to whole supply of the AH
*you can't shitclick item names into AH searchbar, you always have to menually type in the item name
*you have to mannuelly delete mail windows from rvr bags or other items
*you have to manually type in player name that you want to send something via mail. make it like wow does to adopt names from your toons/friendlist to speed up this process
*items not stacking automatically when rightclicking them into your bank/inventory
*you can't switch a SnB mash up with a 2H weapon by just rightclicking on it in your bag. you have to pull the weapons out of the slots first
*items sometimes disapper in your bag when slotting a talisman. relog is neccesary
*mount up animation freezes when you cancel it

i know these are little things that don't affect fights in this game but after such a long time this server still feels so buggy and unfinished, fixing smaller bugs would greatly improve the gaming experience and make players happy

[Nameless]

*AH npc bugging out which needs a relog

To avoid relog you should just use /rel and you could use AH normally. Still it is annoying bug