[blob]

[Alubert]

2. All heals in the game must go directly and exclusively to the healer party so as not to strengthen the zerg.

Possibly one of the dumbest thing I've read I've read on the forums. So in your "ideal" scenario when one healer is KD:d only the other healer in the same PT can help them al the others in the WB/scenario/hanging around just have to watch them die and can't do anything about it, but unlike in an actual 6v6 they might be getting hit by more than 2/3 dps.

How do you even come up with stuff like this?

You didn't read to the end.
Take another look.
It was about a few random aoe heals that everyone in the blob uses.

I would like them to be only within your party, but have a stronger effect.

You can still use ST hots/heals if you want.

[wonshot]

You have the wrong conclusions. Blob deals more damage and is guaranteed to win the fight. Lowering the AOE cap will make positioning and focusing damage more important. It will also reduce the defense against morale damage, increasing the chances for smaller and more experienced teams. This has been tested on live servers

About a year ago the aoe cap on RoR was tested. As someone who lead warbands back then. I had to change my shotcalling to being more Tank-frontline focused. Making sure the tanks would create a frontal wall to soak any incoming damage to our warband. If we were to get flanked, or swarmed the safest possition to go for a healer or a damagedealer was to run into the tank possition and hope all 8 friendly tanks would soak eight out of nine aoe target cap, and you and some other healers/damagedealers would split and share some of the incoming last spot so you didnt take the full damage from the entire amount of enemy damagedealers. This created more of a "stack up" blob up outcome within the warbands.

When outside of a warband, and with the 2025 overall mindset of most guilds and rvr players not forming 24man guild warbands and roaming, looking for other guildwarbads. We now have a tailtagging era on RoR. Those tailtaggers would be even more safe with a 9aoe cap. If they are involved in a say 30vs 35 fight, the safest spot for them to be is hiding within 9+ other players to spread any aoe dmg out or hope not to be included in the 9aoe cap of incoming cleaves.

Compared to now with the 24aoe cap, I have in the past 3 months never been repeating more on discord for our group "get out of the big stack" "kite away from the friendlies as thats where the enemy will cleave"

Fun thought experiment for anyone against 24 aoe cap. Try logging onto a Damagedealer play orvr for a sessions and check your combat logs and count how many times you actually drop an offensive Morale ability on much more than 9 players atm. Its more rare than you think.
Btw, No Manner guild on Norn?

As for the topic itself. I think the game needs to come up with rvr systems that incentivices players to spread out and fight their own fights, instead of just going closes area from WC where they can expect to run into enemy players. This, is leading to blobbing mixed with players no longer seeking the organic roaming 24v24 clashes.

[Alubert]

I think it's time to put an end to mindless aoe blob. What's been happening lately is a slap in the face to the game.
To my horror, 12-man teams are now aspiring to small scale!
We should start working on mechanics that make playing in a blob as unbeneficial as possible (the LoD solution of debuffing stats is the worst solution).

I suggest starting with small steps.
1. Aoe cap 9 celi - I don't need to explain why.
2. All heals in the game must go directly and exclusively to the healer party so as not to strengthen the zerg.
A. WP/DoK MB/KR - slightly stronger heal but only hits the party.
B. Shaman/AM FoDG/EoV - stronger heal but only hits the party.
C. Shaman/AM 3 target hot tactic - only hits the party.
D. RP/Zeal RoS/LA - stronger heal but only hits the party.
3. The last bonus tanks def sove affects the entire party and not others around them.
4. Reduction of aoe skills damage, especially wl/mara (although this is likely to be addressed in the upcoming dps balance patch) or doubling their CD.

First, we need to make sure that being in a blob does not give any benefits from others in the blob.

Could you still explain how does the #1 (aoe cap decrease) help vs zerging? I'm a bit out of the loop but the cap is 24 currently right? I mean at least in theory with 9-cap, if 24-man wb runs at at 6-man and 6man starts aoeing, WB members from 10 to 24 are not taking any damage while all of them can aoe back and hit all 6 members of 6-man if they are stacked enough.

Imo if you really want to punish zerging and zerg surfing, something drastic would be needed like LOTD-malus type of thing. That still wouldn't stop zerging but at least it would punish it. Another solution (although less effective solution imo) would be to buff aoe and increase cap further so 6-man bomb groups could bust zergs like in the days of old (ie earlyish live) but that would be even more drastic and have trickle effects on everything else AND organized 24 man of mediocre players would still beat good 6-man. Tbh at this point, nothing will stop zerging and 12-man "small scalers" and 24-man "medium scalers" will run this game until the end but it is what it is and this game is largely build for massive orvr anyway which also means zerging.

Also a side note on step 2: if you touch aoe heals (not a fan personally), please have aoe heals still hit your group member's pets (and better yet, make them possible to be visible in healer UI as separate enemy frame but thats whole another topic)

As for steps 3 and 4, I can get behind 3 and cooldown nerf part of step 4 (at least for wrecking ball and wl twirly axe channel). I think there is place for powerful aoe skills in this game but they can (and should) be balanced with long enough cooldowns.

Very simple.
Less damage from WL/Mara spin.
Less GTDC on more vulnerable targets because tanks will be hit more often.
I'm not just talking about zerg, but about limiting mindless AoE.

The 9 AoE cap worked well on the live server, and I don't understand why it needed to be changed.

It's like introducing a change that allows a tank to guard 3 people at once.

In general, the game should aim to make it impossible to kill anything without ST assistance, even in a wb environment.

There should be no aoe HD, not even 25% incoming HD.

But that's my subjective opinion as someone who considers aoe to be evil

[Nikt]

In these days most healthy for RoR will be 12 ppl warband format.
Smaller warband means:
1) more different characters as wb leaders, and RoR lack leaders heavy
2) a smaller warband means a lower sense of security and therefore a greater commitment to its survival
3) Smaller warbands and a larger number of leaders will force a more diverse game. It is much harder to get four leaders to cooperate than two. Proven in real life:)
4) a greater sense of agency and influence on the situation for players.

The pressure on the organization is really intense and basically you either have warband in "2-2-2x4" style or you are forced to "Tailgating" like say Bombling

[kleinbuchstabe]

1. Nerf AoE damage drasticaly. Leads to more use of ST+ assist > less braindead gameplay, more essential coordination, better fights and not just "overrun" by numbers...

2. Split the renown points between the participants of the kill, and dont give 100% of renown points to everyone. That makes blob play far less worth. Also it leads to a situation that we had in the past: its not worth it for warbands to chase solos and small groups below 6man.

3. Give Battlefield objectives more weight, wich gives people advantageous reasons to split up.

[illumius]

I witnessed an experiment to reduce the AoE cap. I saw a Retribution warband defeat 3 destry warbands. The battles became longer and more interesting.
The difference between a typical rvr demager and someone more experience became noticeable.

The number of targets you can hit depends on the type of fight. In an open area, it's rare to hit more than 6 targets. However, when blobs are fighting, you can hit all 24 targets. Casters using ground target skills are an exception. But if you reduce the aoe cap and increase the damage from these skills, then the benefit from such damage dealers will become greater.

The game really needs to increase the importance of the sorcerers and rdps of the order side. This will bring back the variety to the gameplay

[nocturnalguest]

You have the wrong conclusions. Blob deals more damage and is guaranteed to win the fight. Lowering the AOE cap will make positioning and focusing damage more important. It will also reduce the defense against morale damage, increasing the chances for smaller and more experienced teams. This has been tested on live servers

I remember very well how we hunted warbands as a group during the Karak-Norn era. Moreover, the balance of classes on live servers allowed us to create different group options.

We need a global buff that will depend on the current online status of the factions. This buff should enhance the side's siege weapons. For example, 56% vs 44% oil and cannons deal 30% more damage. Cannons cannot be defended against.

Nah i dont.

Blob is not dealing more damage, also its not guaranteed to win the fights, its just that degradation levels are so huge that third of orvr population cant press more then 2 buttons. Lowering the cap will make stacking in one spot more safe. It wont reduce the defense against morale damage, it will just make it so 6men wont be able to scratch big blob, it will kill the chances for smaller and more experienced teams. This has been tested here many times before.

Also its irrelevant to compare with live, live is whole different game, even combat formulas are different now.

Also siege weapons were nightmare before nerf. I dont mind them, but back then t3 was max ppl carried cannons around zones with them in regular orvr fights. That was just pure cancer. Not that i mind it to be totally unbalanced, crazy and fun tho, but all gonna rant like never before. Forum will explode lol

P.S. oh, and i almost forgot to comment yours second suggestions - increase ST dmg, decrease AoE. well, if it would be so simple, hah, gotta rebalance half of game modes around that and hell knows what else, not a viable offer... however its obvious that you are generally correct on a take in terms of AoE vs ST, but i do believe its better to smartly tweak all those nasty AoE abilities one by one rather then do such titanic overhaul you suggest.

[diedrake]

Simple way of stopping Zergs as follows:

1. Aoe abilities only max 9 players/mobs at a time.
2. whichever party kills a target, that party alone gets the rr and crest, not the whole wb or wbs.... not sure why that was ever changed btw
3. Reduce aoe damage by a flat 20%, so that st abilities hit harder.
4. introduce friendly fire to none targeted abilities. (spins from mara/ WL, annihilate from BW, puddles from engy and AM are just examples)

5. attach more damage and healing or the underdogs, unless during a keep/fort siege. (40% aao exmple 5% more healing/damage/ 60% aao 10%)
6. Maybe bring back moral bombing again. I know not fun for some, but in an organized wb was pretty effective killing 2 to 2.5 wbs at a time

As of RN, RvR is boring as heck becuase of the blob v blob playing yo-yo from one bo to the WC and back for hours.

[Fey]

The counter for blob was always aoe morale damage drop. That was considered to be rudimentary gameplay, aka "pressing one button."

The big organized WB guilds didn't like dying, so RoR gutted it. Here we are.

[Gratian]

The reason why AE melee cap of 9 worked on live was because there was either no cap or 24 max on rdps, spell dependent if I recall correctly.

Caping all dps to 9 was destined to fail when they tested here. Now with the snare changes, that cap is amplified and ubiquitous.

Don't forget that melee range was far less on live. Despite what the tool tips say on skills here for melee, you can test it and see 25ft is ~ 60ft. You can literally stack 6-8 mdps one behind the other and all cleave the front line.

Live had asymmetric snare application, and asymmetric dps application, which is why high numbers of players there was a better experience.

I agree with the OP sentiments, the game feels and plays bad.