gisborne wrote: Sat Jul 11, 2026 3:48 am
Slowbro wrote: Fri Jul 10, 2026 2:28 pm
Overall defensive stats are way to strong.
Every defensive stat is weaker than its offensive counterpart.
Ex: It takes 9 itemization points to get 1% defense strikethrough. It takes 18 itemization points to get 1% to all defenses.
Ex2: Main stats give power + strikethrough. Toughness just cancels power, but gives no counter to the strikethrough.
Ex3: Offensive crit and defensive crit cost the same. Defensive crit has a cap (the attacker's crit rate) while offensive crit has no cap.
Ex4: Initiative gives less value than other stats. 100 initiative gives 5% crit reduction = 50 points, 3% parry = 27 points, 3% dodge = 13.5 points for a total of 90.5 points. In other words, it's cheaper to have the individual components than initiative.
You make it sound like offensive has an advantage over defensive. It might be true only looking at stats contribution and that's what you are been talking here.
However. In general it is MUCH easier to gain defensive than offensive. In group play a simple guard alone takes 50% damage off a target and after that you still have detaunt, absorbs, heals, disrupt/dodge/parry, out of range, invisibility and stuff. You have very cheap renown abilities to boost your defense but for example no renown ability to increase strike through. There are also much stronger defensive abilities/tactics than offensive. A shield channel alone blocks almost everything. In RoR it is not easy at all to kill a target of a 2/2/2 group that knows how to play. In warband play it is getting even worse because then you have 8 healers watching.
From what I see in orvr when TUP or Formosa and some others is that they barely ever die and finishing their session with hundreds of kills. Their tanks are almost unkillable. They cross guard, stagger, punt around, holding their morals back so they can always just walk away. Since you can't kill their tanks, you are also having a hard time killing their dps and their healers are so far behind that you can't even reach them or put pressure on them.
Even if they are good players and in BIS gear, it is game breaking from my point of view. Dying is part of the game. When you can't kill them even with much higher numbers then something is wrong. In situations we have right now where the pop is rather low such a warband will just dominate everything and will lead to people switching sides or logging off -> ergo, action is dropping like a stone. Then they switch sides and do it again so basically the pug players are getting farmed again.
This is catering to a minority of elite players and screwing over pugs, solos and casuals in a big way.
What makes this situation worse is that catching abilities are stronger than escaping abilities. Like the snare proc of the DoK can hit you from 100ft away, so everything near 100ft of a destro blob is in danger. Same with stagger or ranged snares. It destroys any solo, small scale play because they can catch you that easy. Guess why stealthers are that famous? They have a great toolkit but most importantly they can escape these situations.
You might think that it has been always be that way. This is only partly true. Yes, the abilities are there forever but the way the game is played has changed. Guilds like TUP farming pugs in such an excessive way, their side switching, the stealther dominance and such has led to a pretty toxic environment. I see a lot more cheesy game play with how they play, how they prevent keep takes, how they optimize their setup for maximum pug farming power (like their SW warband on order, or their mara/choppa kd/snare/pulling on destro). In solo/smallscale you see something similar. Multiple tanky def WEs popping out of nowhere and getting away with their cheesy escapes. THIS IS NOT now the game used to be.
Their softening of the lock out, their crazy overbuffing of stealthers, the weird disrupt changes and such all made that situation worse. People are feeling it but don't seem to know what has really changed.
And btw I also think that the tank and especially healer overhaul made it worse. e.g. the additional heals and faster heals on AM/Shaman just made tanky warbands even more survivable while casuals just getting burst down. So it played into the hands of the premades again.