City Warbands and Pugs class issues

[Vdalin]

Corresponding to the good post about the State of RVR and the Elephant in the room, this is another concern about issues with City instances and WBs for which I don't have an answer.

I have been playing regularly since live alpha and am an officer several guilds, on both sides that are not very active that I don't want to leave because I have many friends in them. This means I usually end up in pug WBs in city. For some reason, the current view for what makes a successful city wb is a 2/2/2 with 2 mdps, no ranged and no single target anything. This means on order that if you are a BW, AM, WH and to a lesser extent a SW, you are out of luck in getting into an organized wb. The same is true for the mirror destro toons. It has gotten so bad, you often can't join a high lvl guild with these classes anymore unless you are already in one, an even then you are discouraged from bringing them to city. These issues exist for rr 80+ toons, sub 70 players not in a high lvl guild must have it worse.

The impact of this is that is that if you are in one of these dis-favored classes, you have to join a pug or go solo in city, which usually guarantees getting rolled. The pug wbs go out, get rolled once and afk the rest of each stage, which is a major problem for a lot of players. There is nothing more damaging to the game than needing a bored afk wb on a regular basis. I don't have any suggestions for a fix, but its certainly worth a discussion.

[Aurandilaz]

if you want to win, get organized, and then discover why other organizations might want to bring something resembling "meta", since they also prefer to win when it comes to endgame city grind.
you can play whatever class for fun and still enjoy the game, just don't be surprised if your 1v1 friendly class has very limited role in endgame content aimed at warband vs warband fights.
meanwhile the aforementioned BW and SW do just fine spamming their ranged pewpew in fort funnels, while the mdps suffer and die to random ROF ticks.

[Finblast]

This is the same problem that plagues a lot of online games and there's always been a really easy solution to this problem, make pug city instances have matchmaking. For each engi/wh make the other side have equel number of magyus/we.

Now whether the devs can or want to do this is another thing.

[emiliorv]

...that I don't want to leave...

its a matter of choice => you choose to stay in a inactive guild forcing yourself to play in pug wb. If you dont like the results of your choice probably the solution is change it, get your main char into a active guild and stop to play with randoms.

[emiliorv]

For each engi/wh make the other side have equel number of magyus/we.

This is simple impossible since the population for mirror classes on both realms arent the same => 100% sure that destro dont have same engis than order, probably less than half (or less). Also that kind or hard matchmaking will make that most ppl dont get any pops at all.

[Finblast]

For each engi/wh make the other side have equel number of magyus/we.

This is simple impossible since the population for mirror classes on both realms arent the same => 100% sure that destro dont have same engis than order, probably less than half (or less). Also that kind or hard matchmaking will make that most ppl dont get any pops at all.

It's miles ahead of the current system that creates unbalances matches where the outcome is decided before the fight begins. It's not perfect but I believe it's
the best solution you are ever going to get. Now I didn't go into details because honestly I don't think it will ever be implemented, but you can add features to it that would negate some of the problems you mentioned.

The system could firstly try to create groups where classes would be mirrored from the player pool, if by the end of the city que time there are still people in the pool to fill it could ask the player if he/she would like to be placed into the left over pool where matches are unbalanced, they could choose to do so.

You could also divide classes into different tiers that would be matched, engi/wh could both occupy the same tier etc etc.

The balance on this game will never be in a spot where every class would be wanted for constructed groups so you need some kind of mm for the pug groups to make the game atleast somewhat enjoyable to all the people who don't want to play meta classes.

[M0rw47h]

Just add Solo Ranked 2/2/2 machmaking for PUGs...
I've seen DPS+Tanks in one instance and DPS+Healers in another, it's not rocket science that usualy better players with awful setup will lose to much worse players with better setup. Yet, if you tell people to build 2/2/2 themsleves, they will discard all SWs/WHs/Engineers and part of BWs for their SL/WL melee train dream...

[Gravord]

For some reason, the current view for what makes a successful city wb is a 2/2/2 with 2 mdps, no ranged and no single target anything. This means on order that if you are a BW, AM, WH and to a lesser extent a SW, you are out of luck in getting into an organized wb. The same is true for the mirror destro toons.

Sorry to say but those are some serious misconceptions right there. Any class you listed is viable for city. Good BW is not only viable but highly desirable. Ofc if said BW entire gaming experience up untill entering city siege was afk macro spamming rof then ofc he will be farmed mercilesly and overall useless to his team. Player problem, not the class. Same gos for AMs. EoV spec can pump top heal numbers in the instance, yet most players live in depressing conviction that they are playing weak heal class and reduce themselves to ress bots - yet again, fault is on player side, nothing wrong with the class. As for WH, its viable dps for city, 1 or 2, yes, not 10, doesnt mean its useless. Most organized warbands try to get a strong single target party with WH/lion/asw (any 2 out of 3 works) in it. As it stands now theres no useless city siege class on either side, cant say the same about players playing those classes.

[emiliorv]

For some reason, the current view for what makes a successful city wb is a 2/2/2 with 2 mdps, no ranged and no single target anything. This means on order that if you are a BW, AM, WH and to a lesser extent a SW, you are out of luck in getting into an organized wb. The same is true for the mirror destro toons.

Sorry to say but those are some serious misconceptions right there. Any class you listed is viable for city. Good BW is not only viable but highly desirable. Ofc if said BW entire gaming experience up untill entering city siege was afk macro spamming rof then ofc he will be farmed mercilesly and overall useless to his team. Player problem, not the class. Same gos for AMs. EoV spec can pump top heal numbers in the instance, yet most players live in depressing conviction that they are playing weak heal class and reduce themselves to ress bots - yet again, fault is on player side, nothing wrong with the class. As for WH, its viable dps for city, 1 or 2, yes, not 10, doesnt mean its useless. Most organized warbands try to get a strong single target party with WH/lion/asw (any 2 out of 3 works) in it. As it stands now theres no useless city siege class on either side, cant say the same about players playing those classes.

Yestarday in IC defense with the wb i joined (destro)=> after phase 1+2 top destro dps was: magus>sorc>choppa. We won the 3 stages. PUG wb from /5 with 2/2/2 setup in discord.
Dunno about order WB => they had tanks/heals (mostly wps)/dps but i cant say if was a proper premade or not.

[Wam]

Gravord is right... some fringe classes comparitvely speaking could use a little love but in the right hands can still perform well enough for the most part(there is usually a spot for a niche class) the issue is mostly player issue and being sub par, this is something the player base ignorantly won't accept despite the differences in numbers being clear as day that its a player skill level issue(something dev's cannot balance for). People talk about gear/renown/enemy numbers but i've seen many bad SOV wp's in cities who should perform alot better and be almost demi god status and they wipe easier than the few good AM's which exist.

Also there is not enough population to seperate pug/premade... and half the time alot of premades are fairly puggy... anyone can beat anyone, with the right setup/skill level/mentality.

If you do ranked / sc's... you know Melee premade generally will have advantage its similar in city to some degree... however ranged can still work though if co-ordinated and not just stand still no kiting, healers clump up and not spreading get one CC, face tank all the aoe and die in few seconds.