Re: City Winner History?
Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2020 2:57 pm
SH is definitely the biggest discrepancy. You can stack MSHs much easier than you can stack ASWs, simply because any kind of 24v24+ meta is going to be dominated by AoE damage. A single ASW can work very well on the ST assist train for order, but you can easily run 2-4 MSHs and have no major issues on Destro. Both RSW and RSH are pretty mediocre/bad in city and barely run by anyone (I think they're slightly underrated personally but that's my own opinion).CountTalabecland wrote: ↑Wed Jul 29, 2020 2:26 pmIts more complicated than that when it comes to balance. Shaman and SH are both quite a bit better than their mirrors, Magus is solid in low numbers and WE is in the same boat as WH but has far easier target selection due to the squish most Order plays. But, yes, if you are playing Order right now the solution is not to play the overplayed and underpowered SW, WH, heal AM, and role something that hasn't been ruined or made useless or is spammed by smooth brained bots like Engi.Spoiler:
Shaman is better than AM, but it's still competing intra-realm for spots in cities. Most destro wbs will take exactly 1 shaman as the ideal comp, the times we have to stack shamans is simply the same as Order having to stack AMs (we can't find anyone else, we don't want 2-3 shamans). Either way, order or destro, you have 1 spot in city for this class more or less.
WH/WE are basically only viable in the ST assist train spot as a 1 of for either realm.
I'm starting to move away from the "the issue with Order is that they have more unviable classes" as a philosophy. This is "slightly" true, when it comes to ASW vs MSH, but that's about it in the grand scheme of things. The other unwanted classes on Order have mirrors on destro that are equally unwanted more or less. It's not that Shamans or WE's are easily getting city spots on destro, and those archetypes issues with being part of the city meta are greater than an "Order vs Destro" balancing concept, they just aren't good in cities as a whole, regardless of which version you are playing.
I think Order's balance issues aren't really about things like "AMs are slightly worse then Shamans" (which is an issue to be fair, just not the main one), and I'm actually leaning more towards Teiloh's and others arguments about things like an overabundance of cd reducers on destro, GTDC being so broken/buggy, etc... and other macro level reasons for the discrepancy.
You are correct though, it is very complicated when it comes to balance, and unfortunately with varying sizes/types of content and so many different classes it's just hard to ensure that things are balanced at all levels of play. That doesn't mean we can't try though.
A good example is: If this thread was about 6v6s, the narrative would be reversed. Order tends to be stronger than destro in that content type for various reasons, the same way that Destro is better in 24v24 for various reasons. Order tends to be great at ORvR/keep/fort defenses, where it's an uphill battle for destro in some situations. Etc... It's not like "Destro always beats order at all times" but it certainly seems to have an advantage in the city structure and content. Now this matters because this is the end-game content and how we acquire end-game gear/currency, so this is the content that "matters", it doesn't matter if Order can whoop Destro in ranked 6v6 because you don't get sov gear there. It doesn't matter that Order is better at holding forts than Destro, because again, it's not the end game.
The unfortunately reality of MMOs with gear grinds is that people do want the best gear, and they want to be able to obtain that gear, so that's what they are going to play/optimize for. City is the most important content in this game at the moment, and if the rough relatively gameplay there isn't balanced, it will cause player sat issues.