Return of Reckoning

In my adventures leveling up my BG I decided to do about ~100 scs over the course of 2 days. Pretty much 90% of those being solo que, though this isn't a PUG vs Premade argument.


The biggest offender contributing to horrible scenarios is them starting unbalanced population wise. I think around half? of the scenarios I did there was usually a ~2 man advantage on one side. This is actually a gigantic advantage, unless those extra people happen to be MDPS (MDPS is actually just garbage in pug scenarios honestly wish they were barred from solo queing and required them to que up with a guard). An extra healer can mean 50% more healing, more DPS = more pressure on your group, same with tanks. This game is really all about pressure, when the other team has man advantage and can afford to just sit on your backline without any consequences because they simply have more people your entire team just folds and you on the defensive the entire SC.

The amount of people, especially pugs who don't think tactically about situations is staggering. So when you are on a team that say has 7 players at the begging of a nordenwatch. And the other team has 9/10 and your team without a care in the world just charges up to fort and tries to fight man to man but loses horribly because of man disadvantage... things immediately go south and the other team begins to snowball hard. In unorganized scenarios the 1st fight/wipe in the most important because from this point on the likelyhood of a regroup especially in multipoint scenarios is low and you start seeing people trickling in and essentially feeding.

Having a system in place that ensures scenarios do not start, or at least let you leave the spawn until the numbers are even, and doing so for late coming players on both sides would go a long ways to making scenarios much more enjoyable.


The other big offender is archetype balance.

Healing and healers in general are required for any group to function, every single meta group ever concocted has 2 healers in it period. The amount of scenarios I see were one side has a single healer for the entire scenario is way too many, and you lose 99% of the time this happens to you and the other team has 3 or more healers. On the topic of healing, this game is balanced around it being overpowered by default when you are in small scale like scenarios. It's an RvR game, and healing needs to function at that level where you might be getting beat on by tons of DPS with AoE flying everywhere. So in small scale the great equalizer is heal debuffs, if you don't have these you won't get kills against a well built group ever.

Tanks form your frontline, and are necessary for backline as it takes pressure off them. Again, just like healing is overpowered in small scale, so is guard for essentially the same exact reasons. Tanks are also the most influential archetype on the field. They have very powerful mitigation mechanics like guard, challenge, certain morales, group buffs and utility along with good CC. While 3-2-1 groups are ran by a lot of guilds, it's really something that requires a higher level of communication and very good play and positioning. Generally speaking you also virtually always want 2 tanks in your pug sc groups.

DPS wise, like stated above you need a healdebuff in your group. Other than that it honestly doesn't matter too much in general, though RDPS is much better in pug situations because of the coordination and mandatory setups that MDPS need to thrive and play on the same level as RDPS do.

I know there is some kind of archetype balancer in place for scenario pops, but with all due respect to Az it's so bad it might as well not even exist. I know more stringent rules on allowing archetypes in will result in LONG que times for DPS classes, but honestly i'd rather have consistent good scenario pops than what we have now were a good chunk of scs are just steamrolls. And promoting people to at least que with a healer/tank friend will make scenarios better in general.


Honestly though, I just needed to vent after all these awful scenarios were taking the 10 minute leaver buff was more palatable than staying in, or we are just steamrolling so hard i just put guard and follower on a dps and alt tab for 5 minutes. The amount of actual good fights in scenarios is pretty slim. I know a lot of it comes down to people doing stupid stuff, and while you can't help that there are some things I do believe could be put in that could make scenarios much better than they are now.

considering scoring a guard as mdps is a very rare event and much less having a tank who actualy know how to rotate and play for for the mdps and grp in general ur argument is i feel kinda silly.

a perfect settup even pugging doesnt mean people know how to play. to give a example my last sc as tank in destro(defensive bo) we had a almost perfect setup 3 tanks, a sb chosen , and a 2hs bo ,1 dok and zealot and one choppa(one of the highest ones in server).

somewhat i ended having to swap guard for whole grp doing ping pong because neither of the other 2 tanks bothered to even use the guard , my advice in sc chat to atleast make the chosen and 2hs bo cross guard was meet with no answer .

in the end i sticked to choppa , and we won . although 480-500. and choppa actualy ended with 200k dmg and 21 killas . the other 2 tanks in exchanged managed to die a total of 17 times . the 2hs bo somewhat managed to die 10 times.


so based in your comment , why the mdps should be punished when he actualy was the factor we won the sc , while the other 2 tanks made the imposible for us to lose(lol momment was sb chosen blowing half 2 grp with a keg ).


However playing my last order sc as slayer in a perfect grp set up. 2 sb tanks (ib +ktbo) a wl and wp am healer. neither me or the mdps ever got guard . infact the ib spend almost 8 mins busing himself agaisnt a turtle chosen . while the destru team wich had only 1 healer while we had 5, end winning the sc because the only 2 mdps trying to reach the back line got anhilated by a combination of magus and sorcs( maybe is the very first time i got realy dominated by destru ranged, im more used to happen when i play agaisnt order).


its true sc matchmaking isnt fair , often bad . the fact double premade agaisnt pugs happens to much. pure and simple bad players are on both sides . people abusing duo que to form premades inside pug sc .


but some times happens u got luck and u got the right people wich make a bad balance sc get fliped .Beating once nicky premade in a isha because somewhat we pulled good players wich despite bad class synergy, manage to win. or forcing once lob to suck it up and keep stone in the mourkain alley because we actualy beat em with pugs ...

its true though for each of these rare but very rewarding momments u lose 50 scs but well . u not going to stop it ever happening .

all the changes on the world in scs not gonna change the fact if u got enough bad players u going to lose anyway even if ur grp sinergy is superior.

MDPS are fine, i've seen WHs and WEs win games. SCs have been popping really fast lately though, so i would be for enforcing basic class limits. i just leave if we only have 1 healer, quitter be damned

tanks who don't use guard past t1 should be exiled

delet this.
And by "this", I mean your BG.

Not knowing what level of competition is on both sides of a solo SC is what makes it exciting.
Theres nothing that should be fixed when it comes to solo SC's, it is what it is.
Get your character to dictate control of the SC as much as possible , rather then relying on other players performing on a above average skill level.

Getting angry and trying to teach players the basics is not the right way about it.
Solo SC compared to when it first out ,has been more challenging because good solo players are increasing and driving out the really bad ones.
Probably in a while most players in a solo SC ,will be able to play at a basic performing level....at least in T4 SC's

You are here on a double way crusade.

One is SC balance before start.
The other thing is the stupidity of mankind.

One of the above can be dealt with by coding.

People simply don't want to play healers (and support roles in general). PUG SCs as a consequence will always be low on healing, no matter what.
Further reading about the subject...

Totaly agree.. being a scenario expert myself queing up as a solo witch elf (4k scenarios emblems) you said it all.

Problem N 1- Unbalanced population, those 2 man diference always happen.. If they ever fix this, is the dream..devs waste too much time adding items for t1/t2/t3 and fixing stuff there where people dont even stay for a week. Action happens in t4.

You can be a warmachine, but if you just kill and forget BOs, you will lose the sc even with 40 kills VS 10. Seen that so many times. The good part of being in solo sc is the lack of communication, so rarely a tank will be as fast as in a premade guarding the healers. If you have good mdps, the healer will drop and gg for all. This said, I've seen 2h tanks doing the job of mdps more than fine, including the fact they can punt a tank far from his target while sustaining a decent damage.

Krima wrote:....

Problem N 1- Unbalanced population, those 2 man diference always happen.. If they ever fix this, is the dream..devs waste too much time adding items for t1/t2/t3 and fixing stuff there where people dont even stay for a week. Action happens in t4.

There aren't THE DEVS. There are coders, DB developers, and a lot of other devs.
Working on the items is DB work.
If they stop fixing it not a single line of code, SCs or RvR changes would be made faster.

Or to make it short: You don't know what is happening behind the curtain. So don't think you can give an educated opinion on priorities.